TIMELINE (Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta)

Let's use this thread as a reference point to discuss the Prague connection.

Late 1999
A German news item says that Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah report their passports had been stolen. The German Interior Ministry says this may have been a plan to clear any record of travel to Afghanistan.

June 2
According to Czech officials, Mohamed Atta arrives in Prague by bus and stays there for 24 hours.

April 2001
Czech Interior Minister, Stanislav Gross says a meeting between Atta and Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence agent took place in Prague, several weeks before Al-Ani was expelled from the country April 22, 2001, for conduct incompatible with his diplomatic status. There are reports that this was possibly the third or fourth meeting between Atta and Al-Ani.

(previous post did not include the year 2000)
June 2, 2000
According to Czech officials, Mohamed Atta arrives in Prague by bus and stays there for 24 hours.

(from Captain's Quarters) August 11, 2005
Rethinking Prague After Able Danger
The official line espoused (at least for the moment) by the 9/11 Commission for their omission of the Able Danger data-mining project that correctly identified Mohammed Atta and three other 9/11 hijackers more than a year prior to 9/11 is that the data supplied by the Army AD intelligence information clashed with what the Commission "knew" about Atta's whereabouts. Spokesman Al Felzenberg told the media that although the Commission lied earlier about not being briefed on Able Danger, they disregarded it for this reason:

Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the commission's follow-up project called the 9/11 Public Discourse Project, had said earlier this week that the panel was unaware of intelligence specifically naming Atta. But he said subsequent information provided Wednesday confirmed that the commission had been aware of the intelligence.
The information did not make it into the final report because it was not consistent with what the commission knew about Atta's whereabouts before the attacks, Felzenberg said.

Felzenberg did not go into specifics. However, the only dispute about Atta's whereabouts in the days before 9/11 is whether Atta traveled to Prague in April 2001. Czech intelligence insisted -- in fact, still insists -- that Atta came to Prague on April 9th and met with Iraqi diplomat Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al Ani and a member of the Iraqi intelligence service. A meeting with the Iraqis so close to the mission would strongly indicate a connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, at least in terms of logistical support.

The Commission report insists that the meeting never occurred, and explained its reasoning on pages 228-9:

The FBI has gathered evidence indicating that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 4 (as evidenced by a bank surveillance camera photo), and in Coral Springs, Florida on April 11, where he and Shehhi leased an apartment.On April 6, 9, 10, and 11,Atta’s cellular telephone was used numerous times to call various lodging establishments in Florida from cell sites within Florida.We cannot confirm that he placed those calls. But there are no U.S. records indicating that Atta departed the country during this period. Czech officials have reviewed their flight and border records as well for any indication that Atta was in the Czech Republic in April 2001, including records of anyone crossing the border who even looked Arab.They have also reviewed pictures from the area near the Iraqi embassy and have not discovered photos of anyone who looked like Atta. No evidence has been found that Atta was in the Czech Republic in April 2001.
All this does, of course, is tell us that Atta's phone got used during the time frame he supposedly traveled. As they say, anyone could have used that phone during his absence. They then run down their reasoning against that timing:

These findings cannot absolutely rule out the possibility that Atta was in Prague on April 9, 2001. He could have used an alias to travel and a passport under that alias, but this would be an exception to his practice of using his true name while traveling (as he did in January and would in July when he took his next overseas trip). The FBI and CIA have uncovered no evidence that Atta held any fraudulent passports.
KSM and Binalshibh both deny that an Atta-Ani meeting occurred. There was no reason for such a meeting, especially considering the risk it would pose to the operation. By April 2001, all four pilots had completed most of their training,and the muscle hijackers were about to begin entering the United States.

The available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Atta-Ani meeting.

The Commission never took into account the following:

* Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and Binalshibh had given American intelligence disinformation; at the beginning of Chapter 7, the Commission dismisses KSM's assertions about a lack of AQ contacts in Southern California. Why rely on them here?

* If Iraq had a hand in 9/11, the Iraqis would have required Atta to travel using special cover when they met. The Iraqis would not have wanted the Americans to link Atta with Saddam. They certainly would have provided him a special passport and false identity for such a meeting; they had done the same with Ramzi Yousef, the 1993 WTC bomber, using Kuwaiti paperwork stolen during their 1991 invasion. In fact, no one is sure that Ramzi Yousef is his actual name.

* The purpose of the trip may have been to ensure that the "muscle hijackers" did get into the US safely, and to arrange for logistical and financial support to make that happen. It would have also given Atta an opportunity to finalize all plans before proceeding with the final phases of his mission.

* The reason that "[t]he available evidence does not support the original Czech report of an Atta-Ani meeting" could be that they left out the Able Danger evidence that might support it.

The insistence that Atta could never have been in Prague on April 9, 2001 despite the insistence of Czech intelligence to the contrary never stood on firm ground. With this new revelation about Able Danger and the immediate invocation of the Commission-approved Atta timeline, it becomes even less sure and more suspicious than ever.

If Able Danger supports Czech intelligence, which at the moment remains just speculation, it will prove tremendously explosive. The ramifications will affect not just the careers of the Commissioners and their staff, but a deliberate attempt to suppress Able Danger might well result in criminal prosecution. It will also force a recalculation of the war in Iraq and its place in the war on terror. The involvement of Jamie Gorelick on the Commission will once again cause people to ask why such a conflict of interest was allowed to occur -- only this time, Congress won't be able to avoid the answers.

Congress needs to hold public hearings to get to the bottom of these questions. The deliberate deceptions of the 9/11 Commission this week has set off alarms about their motives and preconceptions which may have seriously perverted our knowledge of 9/11 and the forces which stood behind the attacks -- by far the most complicated and well-coordinated al-Qaeda operation, before or since.

Posted by Captain Ed at 07:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Mega-bump!

Bump - Intriguing post.

Thanks for posting.

Check out this article for Atta's May 30, 2000 trip to Prague by plane.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2091354/

SOURCE

A Motive For Berger's Bizarre Behavior?

This is a stunning revelation about the Clinton administration's role in preventing intelligence from passing from the military to law enforcement concerning the 9/11 hijackers:

"The Sept. 11 commission (search) did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell," said Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana. "Had we learned of it obviously it would've been a major focus of our investigation."

Hamilton's remarks Tuesday followed findings by Rep. Curt Weldon (search), R-Pa., vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, that made front-page news.

In June, Weldon displayed charts on the floor of the U.S. Senate showing that Able Danger identified the suspected terrorists in 1999. The unit repeatedly asked for the information to be forwarded to the FBI but apparently to no avail. Various news outlets picked up on the story this week.

Weldon told FOX News on Wednesday that staff members of the Sept. 11 commission were briefed at least once by officials on Able Danger, but that he does not believe the message was sent to the panel members themselves. He also said some phone calls made by military officials with Able Danger to the commission staff went unreturned.

"Why weren't they briefed? Was there some deliberate attempt at the staff level of the 9/11 commission to steer the commissioners away from Able Danger because of where it might lead?" Weldon asked. "Why was there no mention of Able Danger?"

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Sept. 11 commission looked into the matter during its investigation of government missteps leading to the attacks and chose not to include it in the final report.
{....]
According to Weldon, Able Danger identified Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi (search), Khalid al-Mihdar (search) and Nawaf al-Hazmi (search) as members of a cell Able Danger code-named "Brooklyn" because of some loose connections to New York City.
Weldon said that in September 2000, the unit recommended on three separate occasions that its information on the hijackers be given to the FBI "so they could bring that cell in and take out the terrorists." However, Weldon said Pentagon lawyers rejected the recommendation, arguing that Atta and the others were in the country legally so information on them could not be shared with law enforcement.

"Lawyers within the administration — and we're talking about the Clinton administration, not the Bush administration — said 'you can't do it,'" and put post-its over Atta's face, Weldon said. "They said they were concerned about the political fallout that occurred after Waco ... and the Branch Davidians."

Of course, the first thing that lept to my mind was that, if true, this could possibly have been the motive behind former Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy "docs in his socks" Berger's inexplicable actions in removing classified documents at the National Archives at about the same time as the 9/11 Commission was reviewing documents associated with terrorism.

I know this is a loose association on my part, but it seems to me that if anyone in the Clinton adminsitration knew about Able Danger, it would have been Mr. Berger as National Security Advisor. A revelation that he was behind the decision not to allow military intelligence to pass on information to law enforcement officials about a terror cell that included Atta and other 9/11 murderers provides the first, possibly significant motive for Berger's bizarre behavior in spring of 2004. It would have to be something sensational like this to have made the Clinton official do something that egregiously antithetical to his professional reputation. His actions in stuffing documents into his clothing were those of a person in a state of panic, or high emotion (e.g. fear).

One other point. Berger's sentencing after he pleaded guilty was postponed from this July to September. Isn't it interesting that this new information is coming out in August?

I, for one, would like a lot more information about precisely what Berger was up to when he was caught removing documents from the Archive, particularly in light of this new information.

Maybe I'm just paranoid, but I would really like to know what Berger knew about Able Danger; and if he wrote a memo, or signed off on one, that specifically related to Able Danger; and that prevented the dissemination of information that might have led to the arrest of the 9/11 hijackers before they could carry out their plans. And, could that memo--or copies--have been in the National Archives?

It is, of course, unlikely in the extreme that it still exists after his foray into the archives.

UPDATE: Here is a timeline that I have quickly put together:

2002 - 9/11 Commission set up by Congress

March, 2003 - 9/11 Commission begins first hearings. One of its members is Jamie Gorelick, the person most responsible for the legal firewall between FBI/CIA and sharing intelligence information

Fall, 2003 - Briefing given to four 9/11 staff members by defense intelligence officials during an overseas trip to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia

Oct, 2003 - Sandy Berger observed by Archives staff removing documents

March, 2004 -Madeleine Albright testifies before 9/11 Commission, and defends the Clinton administration's handling of Al-Qaeda and terrorism

April, 2004 - Condi Rice testifies before 9/11 Commission; states that there was serious problem in sharing intelligence information prior to 9/11

May, 2004 - Berger testifies before the 9/11 Commission; completely overshadowed by the fact that Richard Clark and George Tenet also testified on the same day (testimony is here)

July, 2004 - Berger steps down as an advisor to the Kerry campaign after it is revealed that he was being investigated for removing classified documents from the National Archive

July, 2004 - 9/11 Commission report issued without any mention of the Able Danger information

April, 2005 - Berger pleads guilty to removing classified documents

July, 2005 - Berger's sentencing is delayed to September, 2005.

August, 2005 -News breaks about the existence of Able Danger and its ID of 9/11 hijackers in 1999 and attempts to pass this information to law enforcement

UPDATE II: The Strata-Sphere has a good post about Able Danger, Jamie Gorelick and 9/11

UPDATE III: I was interested to discover that Jamie Gorelick was not only deputy attorney general of the United States under Clinton, a position she assumed in March 1994 and held until 1997; but from May 1993 until she joined the Justice Department, Gorelick also served as general counsel of the Department of Defense. These dates are not relevant except possibly to point out that Gorelick was familiar with and worked in the DoD. She is someone else that I have wished the press were more curious about.

UPDATE IV: The Jawa Report has more information to consider. Also, a commentor at Roger Simon's blog asks, what's the point if Berger has destroyed all evidence? Well, we don't know that is the case. There may be evidence to disprove my theory; and there may still be documentation out there to prove it--if anyone is willing to look. (10:30 pm)

UPDATE V: I notice that the first report I cited from Fox states that DoD personnel briefed 9/11 staffers in the "fall of 2003" on Able Danger. However, in the NY Times this AM (here) there was a second briefing given to 9/11 staffers on July 12, 2004. That should be added to the timeline.(9:59 am, 8/11/05)

- Diagnosed by Dr. Sanity @ 3:14 PM

I seem to smell the stench of the beast in the air.

Some are using the keyword Able Danger to follow this developing story, so I added this thread to that keyword list.

Atta had previously flown from somewhere in Germany to Prague on May 30, 2000. He returned to Bonn to obtain a visa. He then took an overnight bus to Prague, arriving in the early hours of the morning. Later in the day, he flew on to Newark. Odd that he didn't take a plane flight directly from Germany to the U.S.

Good. I need to digest this when I have time later.

Thanks, again!

I should note that Atta's bus trip occurred the night of June 1 - 2, 2000.

Prague Revisited
The evidence of an Iraq/al-Qaida connection hasn't gone away.
By Edward Jay Epstein
Updated Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2003, at 9:58 AM PT

Partners in crime?

This month, I went to Prague to meet with Czech officials who had directly handled the pre-9/11 expulsion of a senior Iraqi diplomat, a case that would became known as the Prague Connection. Because it goes to the heart of the issue of whether Saddam Hussein might have played a role in the attack on the World Trade Center, this controversy has continued to rage, without any satisfying conclusion, for more than two years.

The background: On April 21, 2001, the CIA's liaison officer at the U.S. Embassy in Prague was briefed by the Czech counterintelligence service (known by its Czech acronym, BIS) about an extraordinary development in a spy case that concerned both the United States and the Czech Republic. The subject of the briefing was Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the consul at Iraq's embassy in Prague.

The reason there had been joint Czech-American interest in the case traced back to the December 1998 when al-Ani's predecessor at the Iraq Embassy, Jabir Salim, defected from his post. In his debriefings, Salim said that he had been supplied with $150,000 by Baghdad to prepare a car-bombing of an American target, the Prague headquarters of Radio Free Europe. (This bombing never took place because Salim could not recruit a bomber.)

Continue Article

So when al-Ani replaced Salim at the Iraq Embassy in Prague in 1999, both the United States and the Czech Republic wanted him closely watched in case he had a similar assignment. The BIS handled the surveillance through its own full-time teams and its network of part-time "watchers" at hotels, restaurants, and other likely locations. Then, on April 8, 2001, a BIS watcher saw al-Ani meeting in a restaurant outside Prague with an Arab man in his 20s. This set off alarm bells because a BIS informant in the Arab community had provided information indicating that the person with whom al-Ani was meeting was a visiting "student" from Hamburg—and one who was potentially dangerous.

On my trip, I spoke to Jan Kavan, who in 2001 was foreign minister and coordinator of intelligence. According to Kavan—who to my knowledge has not spoken publicly about this episode before—al-Ani had previously been spotted taking photos of the headquarters of Radio Free Europe. In this context, the restaurant meeting suggested that al-Ani might be recruiting someone to resume the bombing plot. Adding to the tension, the BIS lost track of the "student." So Kavan decided to act: He ordered al-Ani out of the Czech Republic.

During the next 48 hours, as al-Ani prepared his hasty departure, the CIA liaison called both the BIS liaison and the Czech National Security Office for further details about the expulsion, which presumably he then passed on to the FBI and other relevant parties. Kavan's able deputy, Hynek Kmonicek, arranged for al-Ani to exit via Vienna, Austria. As far as Kavan was concerned, the al-Ani problem was, if not resolved, then in the hands of American intelligence

The issue re-emerged three days after the 9/11 attack when the CIA intelligence liaison was told by the BIS that the Hamburg "student" who had met with al-Ani on April 8 had been tentatively identified as the 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. Since al-Ani was an officer of Saddam Hussein's intelligence (and diplomatic) service, this identification raised the possibility that Saddam might have had a hand in the 9/11 attack. It could also be potentially embarrassing, as Kavan pointed out, "if American intelligence had failed before 9/11 to adequately appreciate the significance of the April meeting."

Kavan, in the newly created position of coordinator for intelligence, was in the center of the ensuing "crisis," as he termed it. He gave the FBI full access to the Czech side of the investigation. Two Czech-speaking FBI agents were allowed not only to sit in on the high-level task force evaluating the intelligence but to examine source material. If Atta was at the meeting, he could not have used his own passport to enter the Czech Republic, so the BIS assumed he had used a false identity and began checking through visa records for suspicious visitors in April, examining grainy videotapes from cameras at airports, bus stations, and game arcades. As the investigation was still in an early stage, the FBI had been asked to keep the identification of Atta secret, but within a week, the Prague connection was leaked to the press—from Washington. On Sept. 18, 2001, the Associated Press reported, "A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States has received information from a foreign intelligence service that Mohamed Atta, a hijacker aboard one of the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center, met earlier this year in Europe with an Iraqi intelligence agent." CBS then reported that Atta had been seen with al-Ani.

In Washington, the FBI moved to quiet the Prague connection by telling journalists that it had car rentals and records that put Atta in Virginia Beach, Va., and Florida close to, if not during, the period when he was supposed to be in Prague. The New York Times, citing information provided by "federal law enforcement officials," reported that Atta was in Virginia Beach on April 2, 2001, and by April 11, "Atta was back in Florida, renting a car." Newsweek reported that, "the FBI pointed out Atta was traveling at the time [in early April 2001] between Florida and Virginia Beach, Va.," adding, "The bureau had his rental car and hotel receipts." And intelligence expert James Bamford, after quoting FBI Director Robert Mueller as saying that the FBI "ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on," reported in USA Today, "The records revealed that Atta was in Virginia Beach during the time he supposedly met the Iraqi in Prague."

All these reports attributed to the FBI were, as it turns out, erroneous. There were no car rental records in Virginia, Florida, or anywhere else in April 2001 for Mohamed Atta, since he had not yet obtained his Florida license. His international license was at his father's home in Cairo, Egypt (where his roommate Marwan al-Shehhi picked it up in late April). Nor were there other records in the hands of the FBI that put Atta in the United States at the time. Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June 2002, "It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias" to "meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague." Clearly, it was not beyond the capabilities of the 9/11 hijackers to use aliases.

But just because Atta could have been in Prague did not mean that he met al-Ani there on April 8, 2001. Eyewitness identification can often be mistaken. It was known, however, that Atta had business in Prague prior to the 9/11 attack. Kmonicek, the deputy foreign minister, had found a paper trail of passport records showing that Atta had applied for a visa to visit the Czech Republic on May 26, 2000 in Bonn, Germany. Atta must have had business there, since he could have transited through the Czech Republic on Czech Air without a visa.

Atta's business appeared to be extremely time sensitive and specific to May 30. When Atta learned in Hamburg that his Czech visa would not be ready until May 31, he nevertheless flew on May 30 to the Prague International Airport, where he would not be allowed to go beyond the transit lounge. Although a large part of this area is surveiled by cameras, he managed to spend all but a few minutes out of their range. After some six hours, he then caught a flight back to Hamburg. From this visaless round trip, Czech intelligence inferred that Atta had a meeting on May 30 that could not wait, even a day—and that whoever arranged it was probably familiar with the transit lounge's surveillance. Finally, the BIS determined that the Prague connection was not limited to a single appointment since Atta returned to Prague by bus on June 2 (now with visa BONN200005260024), and, after a brief wait in the bus station, disappeared for nearly 20 hours before catching a flight to the United States.

The Czechs reviewing these visits in retrospect further assumed that Atta's business in Prague was somehow related to his activities in the United States, given that large sums of laundered funds began to flow to the 9/11 conspiracy in June 2000, after Atta left Prague. Even more ominous, if the BIS's subsequent identification of Atta in Prague was accurate, then some part of the mechanism behind the activities of hijacker-terrorists may have been based in Prague at least until mid April 2001.

Czech intelligence services could not solve this puzzle without access to crucial information about Atta's movements in the United States, Germany, and other countries in which the plot unfolded, but it soon became clear that such cooperation would not be forthcoming. Even after al-Ani was taken prisoner by U.S. forces in Iraq in July 2003 and presumably questioned about Atta, no report was furnished to the Czech side of the investigation. "It was anything but a two-way street," a top Czech government official overseeing the case explained. "The FBI wanted complete control. The FBI agents provided us with nothing from their side of the investigation."

Without those missing pieces—including cell phone logs, credit card charges, and interrogation records in the FBI's possession—the jigsaw puzzle remains incomplete.

Edward Jay Epstein is the author of The Big Picture: The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood.

The Admin Moderator has created a special category using "Atta."

Either Atta or Able Danger will work for reference.

From 1994 to 1998 Atta was first a fellow and later a tutor in the Carl-Duisburg Society.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/683026/posts

"1994—ATTA applies for a fellowship in development policy with the Carl-Duisburg Society, an organization dedicated to development issues. ATTA will attend many seminars within Germany for the next several years, owing to this fellowship. Also during this year, he goes on a student trip to Istanbul, Turkey. Later this year, he travels to Aleppo, Syria for several weeks to research what would become his thesis, the conflict between Islam and modernity as reflected in the planning of historical cities. ATTA then takes six months off from Plankontor to make pilgrimage, and sends his Christian friends a postcard from Mecca"

Sandy Burglar DESTROYED documents, by his own admission, and probaly changed quite a few....we may NEVER know what he destroyed, but I never thought it had to do with the Millenium bomber only.

If Burglar gets a light sentence, we need to MARCH on DC! Gorelick must face the music also.

The early years
1968	Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta is born (he gives his birthdate as September 1), in Kafr el Sheikh, a city on the Nile delta in Egypt to a middle class, educated family. His father is a lawyer and he hastwo sisters (also educated, one is now a professor and the other is a doctor).The family moves to Abdeen in Cairo where Atta grows up and attends the Mustafa Kamal Middle School. Those who knew him as a young boy describe him as calm, quiet and shy with few friends. His father, Mohammed El Amir says "in his behaviour, my son was almost like an angel".
1985–90	Atta studies architecture in the Engineering Faculty at Cairo University. According to his peers, he is an average student. In 1990, Atta joins the Engineers Syndicate, which is one of three professional associations controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, although he later says that he was not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
1992	Atta obtains a visa to study in Hamburg at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH). He enrols in a degree in urban planning in the faculty of engineering. Two months after his arrival, Atta secures a part-time job at Plankontor, an urban planning consultancy in Ottensen, Hamburg.
1993	Atta befriends Volker Hauth.
1994	Ralph Bodenstein joins Mohamed Atta and Volker Hauth in a project sponsored by the German government, writing a report on the renovation work being undertaken by the Egyptian government on the old city gates. The subsequent report is deemed excellent. The same year, Atta goes on a student trip to Istanbul. Atta and Volker Hauth go to Aleppo, Syria on a field trip for several weeks to research what would become his thesis, the conflict between Islam and modernity as reflected in the planning of historical cities. Atta takes six months off from Plankontor to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, sending them a postcard from the holy city.
December 1994	Mohamed Atta returns to Syria and makes contact with members in the committee of the project to revive old Aleppo.
August 1995	Atta grows a distinctive beard shortly before he takes a three-month trip to Egypt with Volker Hauth and Ralph Bodenstein in order to conduct research for their project.
11 April 1996	Atta writes his last will and testament, which is witnessed by two Arab men who attend Friday prayers with Atta at the mosque.
1997	Atta leaves Plankontor and drops out of university for 15 months. From mid-1997 to October 1998, Atta seems to disappear from Hamburg, telling his thesis advisor that he was gone for family reasons. Investigators speculate that this is when Atta went to Afghanistan for training with Al Qaeda.
1998	Atta returns to the university with a "carefully shaved beard". He shares an apartment at 54 Marienstrasse with Marwan Al-Shehhi (believed to have piloted the second plane to crash into the World Trade Centre) and Ziad Jarrah (one of the men on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania). Neighbours note frequent visitors, many shoes by the door, and prayers being recited loudly in Arabic. Al-Shehhi is a language student at the university, but rarely attends classes. Jarrah studies aeronautical engineering. During this time Atta abandons his Western style of dress.
1999
January	University officials give Atta permission to create an Islamic student group.
June	Atta starts going through his thesis with his professor's assistant, Chrilla Wendt, who says he had now developed a thick bushy beard. He presents his thesis and avoids shaking the hand of his female assessor.
Late 1999	A German news item says that Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah report their passports had been stolen. The German Interior Ministry says this may have been a plan to clear any record of travel to Afghanistan.
2000
May 18	CNN reports that Atta uses his new passport in Berlin to obtain a tourist visa for the United States.
June 2	According to Czech officials, Mohamed Atta arrives in Prague by bus and stays there for 24 hours.
June 3	Atta arrives in Newark, New Jersey aboard a Czech Airlines flight from Prague with a six month tourist visa for the US. He has shaved off his beard, has begun to wear western style clothing again and appears to have a large amount of money at his disposal.
June–July	Atta and several other men tour the Airman flight school in Norman, Oklahoma.
July–December 21	Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi enrol in flying lessons in Venice, Florida at Huffman Aviation, saying that they are cousins who want to be commercial pilots in the United Arab Emirates. They pay some US $40 000 for about 300 hours of flying time.
December 21	Atta and Al-Shehhi get their pilot licenses. Around this time, Atta and other hijackers purchase global-positioning devices known as GPS-3s from Tropic-Aero, an aviation-supply shop in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
December 27	Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi abandon their broken-down small private plane on a taxiway at Miami International Airport.
December 29–30	Atta and Al-Shehhi train for three hours each at a cost of $1500, on the Boeing 727 simulator belonging to Simcenter Inc. at Opa-Locka Airport outside Miami. Each spends about 90 minutes per day on the simulator which has controls similar to a 767 See a simulator similar to the one used by Atta (Requires RealPlayer.)
2001
January 4	Airline records show that Atta flies into Madrid from Miami.
January 10	Atta returns to the USA even though his visa has expired. He is detained briefly at the airport but is cleared into the country as a tourist.
February	Atta and Al-Shehhi rent a single-engine Piper Warrior from a Gwinnett County, Georgia flight school.
February–March	Atta and several other men inquire at South Florida Crop Care about crop-dusting planes.
April	Czech Interior Minister, Stanislav Gross says a meeting between Atta and Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir Al-Ani, an Iraqi intelligence agent took place in Prague, several weeks before Al-Ani was expelled from the country April 22, 2001, for conduct incompatible with his diplomatic status. There are reports that this was possibly the third or fourth meeting between Atta and Al-Ani.
April 26	Atta is stopped in Broward County, Florida, for a traffic violation and is given a citation for driving without a license.
May 2	Atta gets a Florida drivers license
May 13–June 13	Atta and Al-Shehhi live in Jackson Street, Hollywood, Florida.
mid-June	Atta and Al-Shehhi move into a Tara Gardens condo in Coral Springs.
June 29–July 1	Atta travels to Las Vegas, Nevada and stays at the Econo Lodge. Investigators say that Atta met with two other hijackers, Salem Alhazmi and Hani Hanjour during this trip and that both Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah were also in Las Vegas. Four of these five men were on separate flights on September 11, leading investigators to believe that the meetings in Vegas took place in order to finalise the details of the attack.
June 4	A warrant is issued for Atta's arrest due to his no-show at his hearing for his traffic offence.
June 27	Atta flies from Fort Lauderdale to Boston.
July 1	Atta flies from Boston to NY.
July 3	Atta flies from Newark to Fort Lauderdale
July 7	Spanish Police say that according to airline records, Atta flies into Madrid, where he rents a car and then checks into a seaside hotel about 375 miles away, near Barcelona. He visits Spain extensively, logging more than 1200 miles in a rented car, and intelligence officials believe there were meetings with suspected members of bin Laden's network (who were recently arrested in Spain on charges unrelated to September 11). Hotel records confirm that Atta spends his last night at the Monstsant Hostal in Salou, where he pays with visa and registers under his own name. There are also reports that Atta went to a prison in southern Spain, where he asked to visit an Algerian being held on murder charges. the Guardian reports that this trip included a brief visit to Switzerland.
July 19	Atta departs Madrid and enters the US for the last time.
August	Atta and several other men ask about crop-dusting planes at an airstrip in Belle Glade, Florida. They want to know how much fuel and chemicals the planes can carry and whether special skills are needed to pilot them. They also approach South Florida Crop Care again, where Atta leaves an impression of being "real persistent".
August 6–13	Atta and Al-Shehhi rent a white Ford Escort from Warrick's Rent-a-Car, Pompano Beach Read the rental car documents.
August 13–14	Mohammed Atta goes to Las Vegas and stays in the Econo Lodge. Both Hani Hanjour and Nawaf Alhazami are also in Las Vegas at this time.
August 14	Atta flies from Las Vegas to Houston.
August 15–19	Atta and Al-Shehhi rent a blue Chevy Corsica from Warrick's Rent-A-Car, in Pompano Beach, Florida, and return it with almost 3,000 miles logged Read the rental car documents.
August 16–19	Atta rents a single engine, four seater Piper Archer from the Palm Beach County Airport at Lantana for three consecutive days of flying.
August 23	Atta's drivers license is suspended indefinitely when he fails to appear in traffic court.
August 28	Atta flies from Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale. He buys two tickets for American Airlines Flight 11 on the Internet, for himself and Al-Omari.
September 4	Security cameras capture a white Mitsubishi sedan casing a parking lot at Logan International Airport in Boston several times within the space of a few days.
September 7	Atta goes to Shuckum's Oyster Bar and Grill in Hollywood, Florida with Marwan Al-Shehhi. According to bar staff, Atta spends almost 4 hours at the pinball machine drinking cranberry juice, while Al-Shehhi drinks alcohol with an unidentified male companion.
September 10	Atta and another alleged hijacker, Abdul Aziz Al-Omari, check into the Comfort Inn in South Portland, Maine. They are caught on security cameras visiting a gas station, two ATMs and shopping at a Wal-Mart in Scarborough.
September 11	The last picture of Atta is taken around 5:45am at the airport in Portland, Maine, as he passes through security before boarding a flight to Boston. At 7:59am, American Airlines Flight 11 departs Boston for Los Angeles, with Atta and Al-Omari on board. At 8:45am the plane strikes the northern tower of the World Trade Centre.

Sources: CNN www.cnn.com Time Magazine www.time.com/time/ The Guardian Unlimited www.guardian.co.uk Associated Press www.ap.org/ Sun-Sentinel News www.sun-sentinel.com/ Miami Herald www.miami.com/herald/ New York Times www.nytimes.com/ FBI www.fbi.gov

Timeline

The early years

1999

2000

2001

Sources: