PROBE OF BLIND SHEIK LED TO ATTA (Able Danger)

"Wonder if those two will be looking for new jobs."

Stock options, golden parachutes. The two will be multi-millionaires. But there was a high price to pay.Payment deferred.

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http://www.blackstone.com/news/press_releases%5C7_world_trade_oct_2000.pdf

BLACKSTONE ACQUIRES DEBT ON 7 WORLD TRADE CENTER
New York, NY – October 17, 2000: Blackstone Real Estate Advisors, the global real estate
investment and management arm of The Blackstone Group, L.P., announced today that it has
purchased, from Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, the participating mortgage
secured by 7 World Trade Center, a commercial office complex controlled by real estate
developer Larry Silverstein.

http://www.stonebridge-international.com/advisors.html

Roger C. Altman
Chairman, Evercore Partners Inc
Deputy Secretary of Treasury (1993-1995)

Assistant Secretary of Treasury (1977-1981)

Altman was Deputy Treasury Secretary under President Clinton from 1993 to 1995, his second tour of duty at the Treasury Department. From 1987 through 1992, Altman was Vice Chairman of The Blackstone Group, where he led that firm's merger advisory business.

I am sorry to be so illinformed, but what is the connection to MBNA and the Justice Department? What is the pertinent history of MBNA regarding islamofascism? Can you extend your statement of Louis Freeh. He seems to have been at odds with Clinton. Was he completely out of the loop or was part of the problem?

CIA net closes on bin Laden's dapper banker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/581561/posts

For the past three months the FBI have been piecing together Saiid’s relationships with the hijackers. On September 4 three of the team sent Saiid a Federal Express package with at least £12,950 left over from their £70,000 advance. The FBI found a Federal Express return receipt in a dustbin at the Comfort Inn in Portland, Maine, where Mohammed Atta, the hijackers’ leader, stayed the night before the hijacking.

The money was sent to Dubai where Saiid set up his operational base after arriving from Qatar in June.

So, the Comfort Inn manager says the FBI told her they found Atta's shirt in the motel dumpster and the London Times is saying the FBI said they found a Federal Express return receipt in a dustbin at the Comfort Inn,presumably in his room.

Why would Atta throw away a shirt in a dumpster that connects him to nothing and leave a receipt connecting him to al-aqaeda in a motel room?

I am sorry to be so illinformed, but what is the connection to MBNA and the Justice Department?

The only connection I know of is that both Kallstrom and Freeh were rewarded with lucrative jobs in a industry they had no past experience in.

Freeh looked the other way at Clinton's many high crimes and was rewarded well.

CIA net closes on bin Laden's dapper banker
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/581561/posts

CIA agents are narrowing the search for Osama bin Laden’s banker, who they fear may finance another September 11-style attack.

Sheikh Saiid, 33, a bon vivant who has funded al- Qaeda by £200 million a year, was thought to have flown to Afghanistan on the eve of the attacks in America.

Now intelligence reports have revealed that his taste for the finer things in life stopped him from joining bin Laden in a cave hideout.

The urgency for the CIA is that Saiid has contacts among weathy benefactors in the Gulf states as well as access to enough cash to finance another terrorist attack on his own, without bin Laden’s help.

The suave, immaculately dressed Saudi-born financier vanished a few hours before the hijacks began, boarding a business class flight from Dubai to Karachi.

Saiid had left his departure late but he knew the precise timings for the attacks and had to wait until the hijackers sent back the money they had not used in the United States.

The suspicion is that Saiid may have stayed in Pakistan until he felt it was safe enough to fly back to the Middle East. He may have returned through an airport such as Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, where security is not regarded as thorough Saiid is believed to have access to a number of passports under various aliases and has no shortage of rich contacts who could provide shelter. He is never photographed and was not one of the 22 named on the FBI’s most wanted list released last month.

He spent his time cultivating connections with mosques, businessmen and Muslim charities as well as setting up bogus companies and aid groups.

Unlike the zealots at the top of al-Qaeda, their banker argued that he had to adopt a more luxurious lifestyle to put his donors at ease.

Investigators in the Gulf who have followed his tracks say he always preferred to pay his bills in cash. Police in Dubai have revealed that he rented a sizeable appartment and that whenever he stayed in luxury hotels he booked suites.

Nor did he follow the al-Qaeda rules on hiring economy-class vehicles. Saiid is said to have had a preference for large, air-conditioned, American-made cars.

Intelligence agents want to question him in the hope of shutting down al-Qaeda’s financial empire and perhaps persuading him to betray bin Laden.

If anyone might be prepared to betray bin Laden for their own benefit then suggestions are that Saiid — also known as Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawasawi — could do it.

Intelligence agencies in Pakistan, the UAE and Ireland have revealed new details about Saiid’s operations and his role in the September 11 attacks.

He is believed to have helped to finance al-Qaeda in Africa, where it was behind the 1998 bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Soon after the US attacks, police in Dublin raided the offices of the Islamic Relief Agency, a Saudi-backed charity accused of fundraising for the embassy bombings in East Africa.

The office was run by Ibrahim Buisir, a Libyan whom the US suspects of being another bin Laden acolyte.

US investigators told USA Today that Saiid acquired Visa credit cards for three of the hijackers which the men used to pay for their airline tickets over the Internet. He also wired up to £70,000 to a branch of the SunTrust bank in Florida so that the men could pay for their living expenses, flight school tuition and airline tickets.

For the past three months the FBI have been piecing together Saiid’s relationships with the hijackers. On September 4 three of the team sent Saiid a Federal Express package with at least £12,950 left over from their £70,000 advance. The FBI found a Federal Express return receipt in a dustbin at the Comfort Inn in Portland, Maine, where Mohammed Atta, the hijackers’ leader, stayed the night before the hijacking.

The money was sent to Dubai where Saiid set up his operational base after arriving from Qatar in June.

Saiid did business through three of the hijackers: Atta, who piloted the first plane to crash into the World Trade Centre; Waleed al-Shehri who was on board; and Marwan al-Shehhi, who was at the controls of the second jet.

Shehhi had been calling the banker’s mobile telephone. The last contact came from the three men hours before they boarded their flight.

Intelligence sources believe that Saiid then contacted bin Laden to say the operation was underway before he hurriedly left Dubai.

On September 8, Saiid was captured on a security camera visiting a Federal Express office in Dubai, where he retrieved the package sent by Atta.

The hijack leader had addressed it to Almohtaram, which is Arabic for “The Respected One”. This was the title several of the terrorists had given Saiid.

CIA agents are narrowing the search for Osama bin Laden’s banker, who they fear may finance another September 11-style attack.

US investigators told USA Today that Saiid acquired Visa credit cards for three of the hijackers which the men used to pay for their airline tickets over the Internet. He also wired up to £70,000 to a branch of the SunTrust bank in Florida so that the men could pay for their living expenses, flight school tuition and airline tickets.

For the past three months the FBI have been piecing together Saiid’s relationships with the hijackers. On September 4 three of the team sent Saiid a Federal Express package with at least £12,950 left over from their £70,000 advance. The FBI found a Federal Express return receipt in a dustbin at the Comfort Inn in Portland, Maine, where Mohammed Atta, the hijackers’ leader, stayed the night before the hijacking.

The money was sent to Dubai where Saiid set up his operational base after arriving from Qatar in June.

Saiid did business through three of the hijackers: Atta, who piloted the first plane to crash into the World Trade Centre; Waleed al-Shehri who was on board; and Marwan al-Shehhi, who was at the controls of the second jet.

If we get hearings on Able Danger, maybe someone will ask why there is little mention of Sheikh Saiid,"Osama bin Laden's banker" in the 9/11 Commission Report.

More Chronology:

Annotated Timeline of the 9/11 Hijackers for Researchers
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/683026/posts

Some more details at above link.

CHRONOLOGY
1985—ATTA begins to study architecture in the Engineering department at Cairo University. According to his peers, he is an average student.

1990—ATTA joins the Engineers Syndicate, which is one of three professional associations controlled by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, although he later says that he was not a member of the Brotherhood.

1990—HANJOUR appears at the University of Arizona in Tucson for an eight-week English course. He had come to the USA to visit his brother Abulrahman, who was an automobile importer. At the end of the course, he returns to Saudi Arabia to manage the family’s lemon and date farm in Taif for at least five years. He did not travel abroad during this time, according to his brother. WP 9/30/01 and 10/15/01

1992—MOUSSAOUI arrives in Britain from France. He becomes attracted to events at the Fourth Feathers Centre, where an Islamic cleric, Abu Qatada, addressed an eager audience of young radicals (18 videos of his lectures will eventually be found in BINALSHIBH’s apartment). MOUSSAOUI lives on the top floor of a housing association block in Streatham and later in a ground-floor flat in Brixton, with a north African girlfriend who may have visited ATTA in Spain and has been sought by police since September 11. His brother, Abd-Samad Moussaoui, said: “He began to change when he went to Britain. It was there that he got drawn into an extremist group. All alone in London, he found friendships within the Islamic fundamentalist groups littered around London's mosques. I noticed a change in his attitude when he came back to France. He became racist, a black racist.” Link

October 1992—ATTA arrives in Germany shortly after receiving a bachelor’s degree in Cairo. He has a student visa to attend the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH) to study urban planning. For some reason, he claims to be from the United Arab Emirates when he registers. After disagreements with a host family, he lives in a student dormitory near campus. He has several Christian friends. His friends do not yet believe him to be a radical Muslim, even though he is given to saying things like “I’m more fundamental than the fundamentalists.” ATTA announces that he is troubled by what he sees as social injustice and the inequitable distribution of wealth in the world. Others remember him as someone “who wanted to promote harmony among the religions.” His fellow students at TUHH include MOTASSADEQ, who is studying electrical engineering. LAT 9/27/01, 1/27/02

December 1992—ATTA gets a part-time job at Plankontor, an urban planning consultancy in Ottensen, Hamburg.

1993—al-Qaeda acquires a private plane and sends a pilot to Airman Flight School in Oklahoma in the first instance of Osama bin Laden’s interest in aviation. Link

1993— MOUSSAOUI starts to attend classes at a London trade school, South Bank University.

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.

1994—A French investigating magistrate, Roger Leloire, is in London investigating the assassination of three French consular officials in Algeria and trying to find a match for an individual identified only as "Zacarias." MOUSSAOUI was doing a masters degree in business at South Bank University at the time.

December 1994—ATTA returns to Syria and makes contact with members of the committee of the project to revive old Aleppo.

About 1995—BINALSHIBH arrives in Germany, moves to Hamburg.

Mid-1990s—BAHAJI returns to Germany from Morocco to study electrical engineering in Hamburg. In the student housing where he lives, he meets ATTA and BINALSHIBH.

1995—MOUSSAOUI graduates from South Bank University with a Masters degree in International Business Studies.

August 1995—ATTA grows an Islamic-style beard before a three-month research trip to Egypt. He stops listening to music and listens only to recitations of the Koran on tape.

Mid-1990s—MOUSSAOUI is said to have formed strong ties with extremists Muslims in London. He attends the same mosque in Brixton, south London, as Richard REID, the future shoe bomber. REID arrives at Brixton Mosque around this time and goes by the name Abdel Rahim. A petty criminal with a string of convictions for street crime such as muggings, he is believed to have served time in several prisons, where he converted to Islam.

1996—ATTA begins attending the Al-Quds Mosque.

April 11, 1996 [the document is dated March 6, 1996]—ATTA signs his bizarre will at the Al-Quds mosque: “I don’t want any women to go to my grave at all during the funeral or any occasion thereafter…the person who will wash my body near the genitals must wear gloves on his hand.” MOTASSADEQ and MZOUDI are the two witnesses. CNN 11/29/01 Link

April 1996—JARRAH arrives in Greifswald, Germany with his cousin Salim. They live together in a dorm at the University of Greifswald for the next year-and-a-half. In Greifswald, according to German authorities, JARRAH is radicalized by Abdul Rahman al-Makadi, who runs a small Islamic study group [WSJ, 12/24/01]. JARRAH meets and begins to date a Turkish girl, Aysel Sengun, with whom he continues a relationship until the end of his life. CBC 10/1/01 Link

Late March 1996—HANJOUR returns to the USA with the announced goal of becoming a pilot (prior to September 11, Saudi pilots were required to be certified by the American FAA). He first stays in Miramar, Florida with a family that he had met in Tucson. His hosts remember him as mousy and gentle, with a weak personality and poor hygiene. HANJOUR had hoped to attend flight school in Florida, but he wasn't a good student and had trouble getting in. He leaves Florida after being accepted to a flight school in Oakland. SPT 10/2/01 Link

Late April 1996—HANJOUR arrives in northern California. Apparently at this time, he studies at an intensive ELS program on the campus of Holy Names College in Oakland—the same school that he would use as a pretext to gain entry to the US in December 2000. The school arranges for HANJOUR to stay with a host family. Link

September 8, 1996—HANJOUR enrolls at the Sierra Academy of Aeronautics in Oakland. He attends one 30-minute class and never returns. He is deterred by the school’s two-year regimen and $35,000 price tag.

October 1996—HANJOUR attends CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Arizona for the last three months of 1996. Then he "sort of disappeared," reappearing a year later at the end of 1997. HANJOUR pays $3800 by check and $1000 in cash for his instruction. LAT 9/27/01 He rents a house in Scottsdale with other Middle Eastern men.

February 1997—ESSABAR moves to Germany from Morocco.

Early 1997—AL-SHEHHI comes to Bonn, Germany on a military scholarship. There is a report that he came to Germany to escape a bullying half-brother who had forced him into a marriage that lasted only two weeks. Link According to witnesses, he was not a fanatic when he arrived. He receives free German lessons at the University of Bonn. He pays $255 a month to stay at a family’s guestroom.

July 1997—ATTA is laid off from Plankontor [LAT 11/27/02 says late 1996]

Mid-1997—JARRAH moves to Hamburg and boards in a house owned by a German woman. It is around this time that he starts attending Al-Quds. After a few months, he grows a beard and starts to keep a small prayer mat in his room.

September 1997—JARRAH begins to study aeronautical engineering and aircraft construction and design at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg, maintaining above-average grades in his two years there.

Fall 1997—ATTA leaves TUHH for a year until October 1998. He does not disappear entirely, as many accounts claim. He participates in multiple seminars in different parts of Germany during this time. The longest absence is about two months (probably August-September) in 1998, when it is believed that he made his first trip to Afghanistan for terrorist training and the bayat (“loyalty oath”) to Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. U.S. authorities have evidence that ATTA and several other hijackers met with senior Al Qaida leaders, most notably Ayman al-Zawahiri. Link

December 1997-- HANJOUR returns to CRM Airline Training Center in December 1997. He puts down a $100 deposit toward further training, but does not attend any classes. Afterwards, HANJOUR calls back numerous times to ask about further instruction. At least once HANJOUR says he is living in Florida, and that he is continuing with his training.

1997-98—There is a vague, unsubstantiated story in the Spanish press that ATTA appears in the Valencia-Tarragona area of Spain around this time among Arab students at the local medical school, or even is a student himself. The sighting is highly unlikely. Link

1998—DARKAZANLI first comes the attention of German investigators when they learn he has power of attorney over a German bank account opened by bin Laden's suspected financial chief, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim. Salim is later convicted in the USA for the African embassy bombings.

April 1998—According to the federal indictment, MOUSSAOUI trains at the Khalden terrorist training camp in Afghanistan at this time. Hamza ALGHAMDIis there at the same time, and the two allegedly become close associates. Link At some point he may have also gone to Chechnya. Link

Summer 1998—During his summer vacation, JARRAH works at a Volkswagen factory on the night shift along with ESSABAR. Around this time he starts to insist that his girlfriend Aysel wear a headscarf and stop listening to Western music.

Around mid-1998—HANJOUR approaches the Sawyer School of Aviation in Phoenix. He trains at Sawyer for about a year. Link

September 2, 1998—A Hani Saleh HANJOUR receives a traffic ticket in Mesa, AZ for driving with no insurance and an expired license plate. Link

October 1998—ATTA returns to the university with a “carefully shaved beard.” To his friends he appears much changed—serious and unsmiling. Presumably he and JARRAH meet around this time. By now ATTA is believed to be an operational commander in Al-Qaeda. He begins the hard work of forming a terror cell. He takes a part-time warehouse job for Hay Computing Service GmbH in the Hamburg suburb of Wentorf, packing computers for shipment. BINALSHIBH is a co-worker. There are also stories that ATTA holds a variety of other odd jobs, including work as a used-car dealer in an open-air car market. Link

October 31, 1998—ATTA, BAHAJI, and BINALSHIBH move into an apartment on 54 Marienstrasse in Hamburg. BAHAJI signs the lease and pays the rent each month. After they move out in 1999, ATTA pays the rent on the flat by bank transfer every month until September 2001; in the space on the paperwork for the reason for the transfer, he writes Beit al-Ansar, or “house of the followers.” No one seems to pick up on the reference to the original Beit-al-Ansar, which was the name of Osama Bin Laden’s guesthouse in Peshawar, Pakistan, where he began to train mujahedeen for the holy war in Afghanistan beginning in 1984. The FBI believes that ATTA and AL-SHEHHI, at least, had stayed at the Peshawar guesthouse at some point in 1999. During this time, ATTA abandons Western clothes and starts dressing in Islamic attire. At least six Arab students come for regular meetings there. Sometimes the visitors number as many as 20. The only request they make of their landlord is high-speed phone lines for their two computers. The men are seen ''in a circle on the floor, painting things on paper, which they put up on the wall.'' Later, they put up blinds on the windows. Link Link JARRAH is said to stay there intermittently.

At this time, in the wake of the embassy bombings in East Africa, the Marienstrasse apartment is under police surveillance by the German national Verfassungsschutz for an “extensive period,” according to Der Spiegel. The reason for the surveillance is the ongoing investigation of the known Al-Qaeda operative DARKAZANLI, whose ties to BAHAJI lead them to the Marienstrasse apartment, but no overt terrorist activity is observed, and the surveillance is discontinued.

January 1999--ATTA and MOTASSADEQ found the Islam Group at the university. In his application to the student government president, who opposed religious meetings on campus, ATTA wrote, “If I cannot pray, I cannot study.” The New York Times later reported that German police believe that the group served as a front for terror meetings. On September 11, ATTA was still listed as the “current school director” of the school’s “Islamic Working Group.” Link

Early 1999—AL-SHEHHI takes a trial course at the Albatros Air flight school in Bonn, Germany. He insists on flying over chemical plants, the defense ministry and other government buildings. SMH 10/11/01

Later in 1999—AL-SHEHHI moves to Hamburg and enrolls in TUHH. Presumably this is when he meets ATTA (through ATTA’s Islamic “prayer group,” according to investigators) and finds his way to Al-Quds, where he meets JARRAH, ESSABAR, and BINALSHIBH. Around this time, ATTA joins a gym in Hamburg.

June 1999—ATTA finishes his thesis and avoids shaking hands with his female professor. He dedicates it: My prayer and my sacrifice and my life and my death belong to Allah, the Master of the worlds.”

April 1999—HANJOUR has finally accumulated enough hours (250) to fly with an FAA examiner for his commercial pilot’s license. An Arab-American flight instructor signs off on his credentials. The license is awarded and issued later that year. The address on the license is a P.O. box in Saudi Arabia. According to his family, he returns to Saudi Arabia at this time but is unable to get a job as a pilot there. Humiliated, he spends his time online at an Internet café owned by his family, and listening to cassette tapes of militant Islamic preachers. He is not generally believed to have returned to the USA until December 2000. Link

April 1999 (some sources say summer 1999)— ATTA is seen by multiple witnesses at the Woodland Park Resort and Hotel in Mabalacat, Phillipines, on the outskirts of Clark Field. He has his first flying lessons on ultralights at the Angeles City Flying Club. He is accompanied by as many as 10 other Arabs, including AL-SHEHHI, according to some witnesses. There are ATTA sightings in the Philippines as far back as 1997. Link Link Immigration records show several trips to the Philippines in 1999 and 2000 by Saeed ALGHAMDI (though this is a very common Saudi name and may not be the same person), and one 2000 visit by AHMED/BANIHAMMAD.

Summer 1999--When his landlady moves to a new house in Hummelsbuettel, JARRAH follows her. This address is the one that would appear on JARRAH’s FAA pilot’s license. By the summer of 1999 he was spending some of his time in the city of Bochum with his girlfriend, who is a medical student at the university there.

Summer 1999—ATTA is again in Afghanistan around this time, according to investigators. Frontier Post (Pakistan) 11/11/2001

Late summer-to-fall 1999—ALNAMI returns to his hometown of Abha from a Saudi-government-sponsored religious summer camp and undergoes a rapid change into fundamentalism. He becomes a muezzin at the Abha mosque, and sometimes performs this function at the mosque in the nearby town of Khamis Mushayt. This is where he meets the AL-SHEHRI brothers. In the fall, he enters the highly-fundamentalist School of Islamic Law at King Khaled University. There he befriends fellow Abha native Saeed ALGHAMDI.

September 1, 1999—ESSABAR moves into the Marienstrasse apartment. He lives there for over a year.

September 1999—Though registered for the semester, JARRAH leaves after one class session. He tells his landlady that he is spending time with friends in nearby Harburg—which is the location of the Marienstrasse apartment. He tells fellow students that he wants to continue his studies in America, but he does not travel to the USA until late May 2000. Family members suspect that at this time he underwent terrorist training in Afghanistan.

October 5, 1999— The London-based Terrorism and Security Monitor reports that US intelligence sources are worried that terrorist Osama Bin Laden may be planning a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil. US sources are said "to be particularly concerned about some kind of attack on New York, and they have recommended stepped-up security at the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve. Link

Mid-October 1999—BAHAJI marries 21-year-old Nese Kul, a Turk, at the Al-Quds mosque. MOTASSADEQ, DARKAZANLI, ATTA, AL-SHEHHI, JARRAH, and ESSABAR also attend the ceremony. After the wedding, she starts veiling herself. Around this time, ATTA and AL-SHEHHI move into an apartment on the Wilhelmstrasse, around the corner from the Marienstrasse apartment. Probably this indicates that the attacks had been decided upon. By this time ATTA is on the German aliens register with three different identities. AJC 10/24/01

November 1999— Nawaq ALHAZMI (whose name is on the lease) and Khalid ALMIDHAR move into apartment 127 at Parkwood Apartments, a 175-unit apartment complex in the Clairemont, section of San Diego on Mount Ada Road near the mosque off Balboa Drive. Neighbors report them playing flight-simulator videogames late into the night. They are constantly on their cell phones. They drive a gray early-90s Toyota Camry, but are seen getting into limousines late at night. (Time 11/1/01) Link ALMIDHAR lists the same address the following spring. Allegedly Omar AL-BAYOUMI pays their rent. (Observer 10/28/01) ALMIDHAR comes and goes. The apartment manager never even learns his name. Witnesses said that a total of four men spent all their time together, and described how they played in the pool like children, but only when no one else was there. There does not appear to be any documentation on how the two of them entered the country. The Guardian 9/23/01 says that Nawaq ALHAZMI (along with Ahmed AGHAMDI) fought in Chechnya, but there is no other confirmation of this.

Late 1999—AL-HAZNAWI asks his father for permission to join the jihad in Chechnya, but is refused.

Late 1999—Wail AL-SHEHRI falls into a deep depression and takes a leave of absence from his teaching duties.

Late 1999-- during a trip to Bavaria in southern Germany, according to the German newspaper Bild, ATTA, AL-SHEHHI, and JARRAH all report their passports lost and receive new ones without suspicious stamps from Pakistan and Afghanistan. (or Iraq, suggests an Interior Ministry source) to make it easier to travel to the United States Link

Late 1999—French investigators inform MOUSSAOUI’s mother that her son’s name was found in the address book of a man who had died fighting for the Muslims in Bosnia. LAT 12/31/01

January 3, 2000—Commemorating the “night of power” in the Islamic month of Ramadan, there is an unsuccessful attempt to bomb the USS The Sullivans in Aden harbor, Yemen. It fails when the attack boat sinks in the harbor. CNN 12/20/01

January 5, 2000—ALMIDHAR and Nawaq ALHAZMI, (some sources say only ALHAZMI) attend an Al-Qaeda meeting (convened, no doubt, in response to the failed destroyer bombing) with Yazid SUFAAT and Riduan ISAMUDDIN, Fahad AL-QUSO (who is assigned to videotape the Cole bombing but fell asleep when the time came), and high-level figure Tawfiq BIN ATASH, in Malaysia. Their presence at the site of the meeting is recorded on surveillance video, and results in ALMIDHAR and ALHAZMI being put eventually on the FBI’s terrorist Watch List. The operation discussed is presumably the upcoming terrorist bombing of the USS Cole, which occurs October 12.—San Diego Union-Tribune, 9/15/01 BINALSHIBH is also said to have attended, but he is not identified until after September 11. Link Given that after the meeting, ALMIDHAR and ALHAZMI went almost directly to the USA and were soon showing up at flight schools, there is no doubt that the 9/11 plot was discussed and approved there.

January 15, 2000—ALMIDHAR (77-2) arrives in Los Angeles on a flight from Bangkok, Thailand. Nawaq ALHAZMI (77) arrives in Los Angeles on a flight from Hong Kong. They have B-2 tourist visas and Saudi passports in their own names. They give phony destinations, ALMIDHAR a Marriott in New York City, ALHAZMI a Sheraton in Los Angeles. ABDALLAH later takes them to the United Airlines ticket counter to help them obtain a refund on the unused portions of their Malaysia/Bangkok/Los Angeles tickets. ABDALLAH also calls flight schools in Florida to try to enroll them.

January 18, 2000—AL-SHEHHI obtains a U.S. tourist visa issued in Dubai, UAE. It is not clear if he obtains it in person or not.

Early 2000—According to German intelligence, between January and May 2000 ATTA visits pharmacies in Frankfurt am Main and purchases chemicals that could be used to make explosives, the German magazine Focus reported. Link

At some point in 2000—Nawaq ALHAZMI is supposed to have worked briefly at a gas station near San Diego. This is the only known instance of any of the hijackers having any kind of actual job in the USA. Except for this very brief moment, the hijackers live with no visible means of support. AJC 10/21/01

Also at some unspecified point in 2000, AL-HAZNAWI goes off to train (against his father’s wishes) at the Al-Farouk camp near Khost, Afghanistan.

March 22, 2000—The Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma receives an e-mail from ATTA asking for information about the school. Link

Spring 2000—At the Seqeley mosque in Khamis Mushayt, ALNAMI, Saeed ALGHAMDI, and the AL-SHEHRI brothers pledge to join the jihad. Shortly after that, they all disappear from Saudi Arabia. They travel to the Al-Farouk camp in Afghanistan for training. They or their friends brag about their decision on alsaha.com, a popular Saudi site.

“Spring 2000”—There are multiple dubious ATTA sightings in the USA. If true, they would require ATTA to have entered the USA well before his first known entry date in June. There are reports that ATTA and perhaps AL-SHEHHI were “regulars” at the Portland, ME, Public Library in the spring of 2000, and “frequently” use the public Internet terminals there. Boston Herald, 10/5/01 There is also a report on one website that ATTA and AL-SHEHHI are seen in Punta Gorda, FL as early as April 2000, training at a flight school called Professional Aviation, 30 miles from their future flight school in Venice. There is absolutely no other confirmation of this story. Link

April 2000—Nawaq ALHAZMI takes a 90-minute flight-training class in San Diego, accompanied by another person the flight instructor doesn’t recall. It is to have been the first of a series of lessons ending, ultimately, in a pilot’s license. But ALHAZMI never shows up again . (Bergen Record, 9/17/01)

May 2000—AL-SHEHHI’s bank account, managed (allegedly) by MOTASSADEQ, begins disbursing cash to ATTA and the other hijackers. The wire transfers from this account last through November 2000. Payments around this time include DM 5000 to BINALSHIBH, presumably to pay for his anticipated flight training in the USA.

May 2000—ALMIDHAR and Nawaq ALHAZMI appear at a San Diego flying club owned by Fereidoun "Fred" Sorbi. They immediately want to fly Boeings, but are told they must work their way up to large jets. They offer him extra money to teach them to fly multi-engine planes. Sorbi gives them introductory lessons in a Cessna or Piper. Each man takes an hour at the controls. ALMIDHAR prays loudly as his friend approaches landing. “This is not going to work out” Sorbi tells them. WP 9/30/01

May 17, 2000—BINALSHIBH makes his first application for a U.S. visa. The application is denied.

May 18, 2000—ATTA uses his new passport to obtain a U.S. tourist visa in Berlin Germany.

May 21,2000—A U.S. student visa is issued to JARRAH in Berlin. He apparently uses BUDIMAN’s address on the visa application.

Late May, 2000—A man calling himself “Hani” shows up with Nawaq ALHAZMI at Sorbi's flying club in San Diego. WP 9/30/01 If this is HANJOUR, this would be his only known appearance in the USA between spring 1999 and December 2000.

May 29, 2000—AL-SHEHHI arrives in the USA at Newark Airport.

May 30, 2000—ATTA flies into Prague in the Czech Republic before he travels to the USA for the first time. He is not allowed to leave the airport because he lacks a visa. He flies back to Germany. CSM 10/29/01 Link

June 2000—Around this time ALMIDHAR vanishes and does not reappear in America for a year. Link

June 1, 2000—In Germany, ATTA goes to a Czech consulate and obtains the proper visa.

June 2, 2000—According to Czech officials, ATTA arrives in Prague by bus (CSM 10/29/01)and stays there for 24 hours. According to Czech sources ATTA meets with Iraqi intelligence official AL-ANI in his one day in Prague. The source says that Czech officials believe that AL-ANI may have provided ATTA with fake passports for the hijackers WSJ 10/22/01

June 3, 2000—Arriving on a Czech Airlines flight from Prague, ATTA enters U.S. for the first time at Newark. He is given a temporary visitor’s visa until December 2, 2000. He rents a car.

June 4, 2000 or thereabouts—ATTA and another unnamed hijacker (almost certainly AL-SHEHHI) move into a room in Brooklyn, NY. Later in the month, they answer a “room for rent” ad and move to the Bronx. ATTA’s rental car receives a parking ticket while in Brooklyn. Link

June 15, 2000—BINALSHIBH applies a second time for a U.S. visa. The application is again denied.

June 27, 2000—JARRAH arrives in the U.S. for the first time at Atlanta, GA, on a flight from Munich. After September 11, at one of JARRAH’s addresses in Hamburg, police find a note saying “Morning will come. The victors will arrive. We pledge we will defeat you. The earth will shake beneath your feet.” During JARRAH’s time in America, he receives $2000 a month from his family in Lebanon as a stipend.

June 29, 2000---$9,985 is wired from the UAE into the ATTA-AL-SHEHHI joint account.

Late June 2000 (most sources say July, but given the dates they were in Florida, July is extremely unlikely)—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI tour the Airman Flight Training School in Norman, Oklahoma. Possibly they also tour another facility in Texas. They stay overnight at the nearby Sooner Inn before deciding for unknown reasons to train at another facility. LAT 9/27/01

July 2000—MOTASSADEQ travels to Karachi, Pakistan for what he later calls “a vacation,” leaving his wife and small child alone for several weeks. But, when asked, he is unable to recall exactly when he went there, how long he was there, where he stayed or what exactly he did. Link The Pakistanis later confirm that he had been in the country at this time and that there were "indications" that he had visited an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. While in Pakistan, MOTASSADEQ stays at the hotel in Karachi where BAHAJI and two others, believed to be ESSABAR and BINALSHIBH using aliases, stayed a year later after fleeing Germany. WP 11/28/01

July 1, 2000—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI tour Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida.

July 3, 2000---ATTA and AL-SHEHHI begin flying lessons on a Cessna 152 and Piper Seneca at Huffman Aviation with the cover story that they are cousins who want to be commercial pilots in the UAE. (Sometimes they tell people that they are a Saudi prince and his bodyguard).Combined, they pay nearly $40,000 for about 300 hours of flying time. AL-SHEHHI pays slightly more because ATTA does have some flying experience. The two men pay $1,000 a week each, using checks drawn from a Suntrust Bank branch in downtown Venice. They arrive with nothing but cash, according a bookkeeper at Huffman, Charlie Voss, who briefly rents the two men a room in his home, for which they paid about $250 in cash. "Then they went down to the bank and opened up an account. I probably recommended that bank to them; it was the same bank the company used." The SunTrust account will receive $109,440 in four wire transfers from the UAE. AL-SHEHHI opens a separate SunTrust account which eventually receives $100,000 in wire transfers.. Each of the four hijack teams has its own bank account. All of the bank cards for all four accounts use the same PIN.

Behind his back, two staff members called the flight student "the little terrorist." "If you had to characterize him, it would be this way: He tried to be intimidating, but he didn't have the stature," said one. "He had hate oozing from him. You did not want to be in his presence.” Rudi Dekkers, owner of Huffman Aviation: “My personal feeling was ATTA was an asshole, first-class, and AL-SHEHHI was a very nice, likable person.” Link

Their rudeness, especially to Voss’s wife, gets them kicked out after a week. ATTA and AL-SHEHHI move into a coral two-bedroom house in nearby Nokomis, near Sarasota, which is now a tourist attraction. The small house is about five miles from the Venice airport. They ask that the television not be hooked up. They pay $550 a month rent and they drive a 10-year-old car. Neither they nor any of the hijackers are known to have visited any mosque while in Florida. SPT 10/2/01, South Florida Sun-Sentinel 9/24/01

There are records online showing that ATTA and AL-SHEHHI both fly at Huffman on 7/6-8, 11-15, 17-18. ATTA flies on 7/19, but not AL-SHEHHI. Both fly 7/20. ATTA alone flies on 7/21-22. AL-SHEHHI flies on 7/23, but not ATTA. They both fly on 7/24-28. They both take 7/29 off from flying. They both fly every day from 7/30-8/3. AL-SHEHHI flies alone on 8/4. They both fly 8/6-7. ATTA alone flies on 8/8. ATTA/resources/documents/flightrecords.htm”> Link

Summer 2000— A 58-year-old Muslim woman from Finland later claimed that around this time ATTA strikes up an Internet friendship with her which lasts about a year. After September 11th, she posts a death notice in a Helsinki newspaper. Link Given ATTA’s absolute dead-seriousness at all times, it is hard to believe this report. Howver, she did use ATTA’s “El-Amir” name in the obituary when it had not been publicly disclosed until several days after the attacks.

July 26, 2000—BINALSHIBH wires an unspecified amount of money to AL-SHEHHI.

August 2000—JARRAH’s girlfriend Aysel Sengun visits JARRAH’s family in Lebanon, telling them that JARRAH was in America and was too busy with his studies to join her. During this month, JARRAH makes the first attempt to enroll BINALSHIBH in his flight school in Florida.

Augsut 7, 2000--$9,485 is wired from the UAE into the ATTA-AL-SHEHHI joint account. There are indications that the money ultimately came from Al-Qaeda supporters in India. Link

August 14-15, 2000—BINALSHIBH wires money from his account in Germany to that of a flight training school in Venice, Florida as a prepayment for flight lessons in the amount of $2,200 from his account at Citibank in Hamburg .

August 29, 2000—In view of their status as trainee pilots, Huffman Aviation applies to the INS for M-1 student visas for ATTA and AL-SHEHHI. Link

August 30, 2000---$19,485 is wired from the UAE into the ATTA-AL-SHEHHI joint account.

September 2000—ALMIDHAR/ALHAZMI are still living in the Parkwood Apartments. At the local mosque they meet AbdussATTAr Shaikh, a retired San Diego State University English professor and member of the local police commission, who lives in Lemon Grove in eastern San Diego County. Shaikh rents Nawaq ALHAZMI a room. Except for ALMIDHAR, Nawaq ALHAZMI appeared to have no friends at all. Nawaq ALHAZMI reads books on Islam and visits Arabic Internet sites. He follows a strict Muslim diet. He is never seen using a telephone. Both of them went out to make their phone calls. "He said he came here to learn English, but I didn't see him going to school very often. He told me he was taking English classes at a downtown language school." Nawaq ALHAZMI says he had applied for an extension on his student visa. He talks about eventually becoming a pilot. LAT 9/27/01 Shaikh helps ALHAZMI open an account at a Bank of America branch. Houston Chronicle 9/20/01

September 2000—From Saudi Arabia, HANJOUR spends $110 to apply for another ESL course at the same school he had attended in 1996.

September 6, 2000—MOUSSAOUI sets up an e-mail account with an ISP in Malaysia.

September 15, 2000—BINALSHIBH makes his third application for a U.S. visa.

September 18, 2000---$69,985 is wired from the UAE into the ATTA-AL-SHEHHI joint account.

September 25, 2000—BINALSHIBH wires an unspecified amount to AL-SHEHHI’s account.

September 29, 2000—MOUSSAUOI contacts Airman Flight School in Norman, OK using his Malaysian e-mail account.

September 30, 2000—ESSABAR moves out of the Marienstrasse apartment.

October 2000—BUDIMAN comes to the U.S. He lives in Maryland. BELFAS, another Al-Quds attendee, is with him. After 9/11 he passes an FBI lie-detector test in which he denied any foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks.

October 2000—After sharing Nawaq ALHAZMI’s room for about a month, ALMIDHAR leaves, telling their host that he was returning to Saudi Arabia where he had a wife and children, according to Shaikh. The departure coincides with the Cole bombing.

October 2000— MOUSSAOUI allegedly meets with Sufaat in Malaysia at this time. MOUSSAOUI receives $35,000 cash (which he later declared when entering the US), along with letters from Infocus Tech, a Malaysian company, stating that MOUSSAOUI had been appointed Infocus Tech’s marketing consultant in the U.S., the U.K., and Europe, and that he would receive, among other things, an allowance of $2500 per month. Infocus Tech is a real Malaysian company, and have said that MOUSSAOUI never worked for them. At this time, MOUSSAOUI starts to e-mail Airman Flight School in Norman, OK—where ATTA and AL-SHEHHI had visited in July—under the name “zuluman tangotango.”

October 2000—At the American consulate in Jeddah (where 10 hijackers would get their visas) HANJOUR obtains a student visa.

October 12, 2000— At Huffman Aviation, fellow flight student Anne Greaves sees the inseparable ATTA and AL-SHEHHI hugging and dancing in the computer room. At the time, she figures they had gotten some good news by e-mail. Later, she realizes that the men had been celebrating the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in the Middle East. This was the only time she ever saw them happy—possibly the only time anyone has ever seen ATTA happy. Link Link If the FBI had mounted any kind of investigation, they would have been led to ALMIDHAR’s brother-in-law, whose phone number was called not only by ALMIDHAR but also by Bin Laden. For the atrocious and ultimately disastrous Cole investigation by the FBI, see Link

October 25, 2000—BINALSHIBH makes his fourth and final application for a U.S. visa. He puts BUDIMAN’s Maryland address on the application but it is still denied, again.

November, 2000— JARRAH enrolls at the Florida Flight Training Center in Venice, FL. Thorsten Beirman, who flew with JARRAH, recalls: "He was not at all an aggressive person but when flying he seemed to change and he would brook no other opinions. I didn't feel safe and I decided that I would never fly with him again". JARRAH also tries to enroll BINALSHIBH at the school.

November 2000—HANJOUR’s ESL class on the campus of Holy Names College begins, with no sign of HANJOUR. When the school calls its representative in Saudi Arabia who had handled his application, the person doesn’t know what became of him.

November 2000—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI finish their pilot training at Huffman, according to Rudi Dekkers, the owner. They receive their pilot’s licenses the following month, but their training at Huffman ends this month. Link

November 5, 2000—The embassy of the UAE reports AL-SHEHHI missing with the Hamburg police. Shortly afterwards, his older brother comes to Hamburg to look for him unsuccessfully. Also that day, ATTA purchases flight-deck videos for Boeing 747 and 757 aircraft in a pilot store in Ohio. At some point he also buys life-size training posters of the cockpit of a Boeing 747 for $39.95 each. Link

Between November 27 and December 27, 2000—AL-HAZNAWI returns to Saudi Arabia for Ramadan. He begins to talk to two distant cousins about the Jihad—Ahmed and Hamza ALGHAMDI.

December, 2000—JARRAH returns to Afghanistan at this time.

December 2000—ALNAMI, Saeed ALGHAMDI, and the AL-SHEHRI brothers return from Afghanistan and boast about their training experiences in Afghanistan.

December 2, 2000—BINALSHIBH travels to London, England, possibly to meet MOUSSAOUI.

Around December 6, 2000—ATTA purchases more flight deck videos, this time for the Boeing 767 and the Airbus A320. Around this time, ATTA and other hijackers purchase an undisclosed number of global-positioning devices known as GPS-3s from Tropic-Aero, an aviation-supply shop in Fort Lauderdale.

December 8, 2000—HANJOUR arrives in Cincinnati from Saudi Arabia. He is readmitted to the USA on an F-1 student visa on the pretense of the ESL course that he never attended. HANJOUR is therefore in illegal status from the moment he sets foot on American soil this time.

December 9. 2000— MOUSSAOUI flies from London to Pakistan, and presumably travels from there to Afghanistan for terror training, etc. He remains until February.

December 12, 2000—ESSABAR makes his first attempt for a U.S. visa. It is denied. He also makes a bank transfer of 1,200 marks, about $560, to Binalshibh, presumably for his future American flight lessons. LAT 10/20/01

December 21, 2000—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI receive their pilot’s licenses.

December 23, 2000—BAHAJI asks Azzam Publications of London to send him their newsletter.

Late December 2000—Witnesses later alleged that AL-SHEHHI throws a party with six or seven Arab friends at the Woodland Park Resort Hotel in Mabalacat, the Philippines. Link

December 27, 2000 [some sources say 26]—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI fly a small rented private plane from Huffman Aviation to Miami International Airport. After a mechanical problem, they abandon the plane on a busy runway. An airport incident report indicates that the Piper Cherokee stalled at 5:45 p.m. and is removed from the taxiway by 6:20 p.m.

December 29-30, 2000—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI train 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 that of a 767. They seem more interested in simply flying the plane and doing turns than in takeoffs or landings. CT 9/17/01 The simulator has the topography of New York City stored in it. “It’s an absolute possibility that (the terrorists) went out and rented a simulator and practiced running into the World Trade Center. What we used to do when we had a couple of spare minutes in our training session, we’d aim the airplane between the towers, or under the Golden Gate Bridge,” a former commercial pilot said. “San Francisco, London, L.A. and Hong Kong –- they’re all replicated.” The two men knew enough, a trainer said, to steer an airplane into a building. LAT 9/27/01

January 2001—HANJOUR enrolls in yet another flight school, a Pan Am International facility called JetTech, at Deer Valley Airport in Phoenix. .HANJOUR’s English is so bad that the FAA is called (a total of three times in January and February) for advice. The instructors can’t believe he has a pilot’s license.

January 2001—Waleed AL-SHEHRI quits his teaching job and supposedly takes his brother Wail AL-SHEHRI to see an Islamic “holy man” to cure Wail’s unspecified “mental illness.” They are never seen in Saudi Arabia again. They do not appear again until they fly to America at the end of April. They are almost certainly in Afghanistan at this time.

January 2001—The CIA learns that ALMIDHAR was involved in the planning of the USS Cole bombing. However, his name is not put on an immigration watchlist until the end of August, when he is in already in the U.S.

January 4, 2001—ATTA flies to Madrid from Miami.

January 10, 2001 --ATTA returns to the U.S. at Miami and is sent to secondary inspection because he acknowledged being in flight training but did not have required trainee visa, and because he had overstayed his previous visa. After a 57-minute delay featuring questioning and a check of the Interagency Border Information System (IBIS) database, the second inspector clears ATTA into the country as a tourist, pending application for change to trainee status. Link

January 11, 2001—AL-SHEHHI travels from Florida to Casablanca, Morocco.

January 18,2001—AL-SHEHHI returns to New York from Casablanca, despite having overstayed his previous visa by five weeks.

January 28, 2001—ESSABAR makes his second and final attempt for a U.S. visa. It is again denied.

January 30, 2001—Flying west from Pakistan, JARRAH is detained and questioned in Dubai while he was changing planes after a two-month visit to Afghanistan. The detention was because his name figured on a "watch list" of suspected terrorists requested by the United States. An “unnamed” American intelligence agency requested the detention. But because he has a valid U.S. visa, they let him go. The CIA says that the U.S. was not informed about this incident until after September 11. Link, Link From Dubai he takes a KLM flight to Amsterdam and then returns briefly to Hamburg.

February 1, 2001—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI rent a single-engine Piper Warrior from a Gwinett County, GA flight school, Advanced Aviation, adjacent to Briscoe Field in Lawrenceville. Around this time, they also join an L.A. Fitness Center in Decatur, Georgia. Link

There are possible sightings of ATTA and JARRAH in the Jacksonville, FL area at some point, according to the FBI. LAT 3/10/02

February 2001, approximately—A man believed to be HANJOUR shows up at the San Diego Zoo with a briefcase containing cash and documents in Arabic. The case, apparently misplaced, is taken to the lost and found, according to officials at the zoo and FBI. A document identifying the apparent owner is found inside and a zoo official uses the public address system to reunite the owner with the case. A zoo security officer later told the FBI that she thought the man's name could have been Hani HANJOUR. She identified a photo of HANJOUR, shown to her by the FBI, as the man who picked up the case. LAT 10/5/01

February through May, 2001—At various times during this period, ATTA and AL-SHEHHI are seen together in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, VA. There are vague stories that they took or investigated flight lessons in the area at this time with a man who left the area after September 11. .ATTA and AL-SHEHHI cash two checks at a SunTrust Bank branch in the Hilltop area of Virginia Beach. One check is for $8,000 and the other is for $10,000. They apparently stay at the oceanfront Colonial Inn Hotel. It is also believed that they visit the naval base in the area to examine possible targets. Link

February 2001—Hamza ALGHAMDI, at the urging of AL-HAZNAWI, joins the jihad and disappears from Saudi Arabia. Around this time, Ahmed ALGHAMDIalso disappears, using the Red Crescent society to help pay for his trip to Afghanistan.

February 7, 2001—MOUSSAOUI flies from Pakistan to London, England.

Around February 10-15, 2001—JARRAH returns to Lebanon for the last time to be with his father during open-heart surgery.

February 15, 2001—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI take another flight check ride at Advanced Aviation in Georgia.

Around February 20-25, 2001—JARRAH returns to Florida from Germany PBP 10/15/01 The FBI contends that, not long after he returns to the USA, JARRAH flies to Las Vegas to meet with Lotfi Raissi, the Algerian pilot who helps train the hijackers. http://www.sptimes.com/News/101401/Worldandnation/He_seemed_like_such_a.shtml

Mid-to-late February 2001—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI, now apparently established on the east coast of Florida, inquire with several other men about crop-dusting planes at South Florida Crop Care in Belle Glade. They pester employees at South Florida Crop Care for vital statistics about crop dusting planes. Dressed in collared shirts and Bermuda shorts, as if they had just walked off a golf course, ATTA and several other Middle Eastern men arrive the first time in a small plane. They want to know how much fuel the airplane held, and if it was hard to fly. They want to sit in the cockpit. They claim to be in flight school. At one point ATTA apparently walks into a U.S. Department of Agriculture office in Florida and asks about a loan to buy a crop-duster plane. The $500,000 plane that intrigues ATTA — an Air Tractor AT-502 — has a range of about 500 miles. Employees tell ATTA that the department does not offer such loans, and refer him to a local private lender. ATTA visits the bank and makes further inquiries about a crop-duster loan, but there is no record that he applied for one. South Florida Sun-Sentinel 9/24/01, Detroit News 9/25/01

February 22, 2001—MOUSSAOUI e-mails Airman Flight School announcing that he would be arriving in America the next day.

February 23, 2001—MOUSSAOUI flies from London to Chicago, arriving in the USA for the first time. He declares at least $35,000 cash on his Customs declaration. He takes a connecting flight to Oklahoma City and opens a bank account there at Arvest Bank in Norman. He deposits approximately $32,000 in cash. In America MOUSSAOUI behaves suspiciously from the start. He does not divulge his real name and uses pseudonyms.

February 26, 2001—MOUSSAOUI enrolls in the Airman Flight School in Norman, OK. The enrollment process, normally ten minutes long, takes two hours because of MOUSSAOUI’s reluctance “to reveal anything about himself.” MOUSSAOUI rents a second-floor apartment in a house close to the school for $300 a month. He drives an old Dodge Aries.

Late February 2001— ATTA, AL-SHEHHI and an instructor fly from Advanced Aviation in Lawrenceville, GA to Martin Campbell Airport in the mining town of Copperhill, TN, about 60 miles away.

February 28, 2001—The last Muslim tenants suddenly move out of 54 Marienstrasse.. ATTA and AL-SHEHHI will soon arrive to clean the place out. Link

March 1, 2001—MOUSSAOUI undergoes his physical at Airman. Around this time he also makes acquaintances at the local Norman mosque, though he berates most of them as “not religious enough.”

Early March 2001—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI again fly from Gwinett County, GA to Copperhill, TN—this time without an instructor. ATTA starts grilling a pilot he sees there. ATTA asks about Boliden Intertrade, which produced sulfuric acid and sulfur dioxide until 2000, and also asks about the dam on the Hiwassee River, which runs between two nuclear plants.. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/548138/posts

ATTA asks: "So tell me about this factory I just flew over," referring to a former copper processing plant nearby, with dozens of round steel tanks and flanked by towering smokestacks. At the time, hundreds of rail tanker cars were parked near the plant. The plant's owners, Intertrade Holdings Inc., had recently stopped storing sulfuric acid and other hazardous chemicals in the tanks in preparation for closing the plant's acid manufacturing operation. "He was just persistent about the chemical company…I told him the tanks were empty. He came back and said 'Don't tell me that. What about all the ... tanker cars?' This guy was just arrogant." ATTA also asks about the Ocoee River, about three miles from the plant. The Ocoee is a tributary of the Tennessee River, a major water source in the Southeast. A dam across the Ocoee near the plant forms a reservoir. to Several weeks later a man resembling ATTA drives to the airport in an expensive-looking sports car, this time asking about buying a plane. After a brief discussion he gets back in the car and leaves. Link

March 2001—HANJOUR flunks out of Pan Am International. Around this timeHANJOUR’s final phone call to his family informs them that he is in the UAE , where he went to be a pilot.

Early March—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI come back to South Florida Crop Care in Belle Glade asking similar questions to those they asked before. Again, they want to sit inside the crop-duster. They ask: “How much does it haul? How hard is it to fly?”

March 11, 2001, ATTA and AL-SHEHHI return to Germany and clear out the Marienstrasse apartment.

Approximately mid-March 2001—According to Al-Jazeera, AL-HAZNAWI‘s “martyrdom” video is recorded in Kandahar, Afghanistan at this time. “It is high time we kill Americans in their home, “ he says in the video, in which his image is superimposed over a still photo of the Tower Two explosion. The video, entitled “The Wills of the New York and Washington Battle Martyrs,” is released on April 15, 2002.

Also approximately mid-March, 2001—HANJOUR, Nawaq ALHAZMI, Ahmed ALGHAMDIand MOQED stay at the Fairfield Motor Inn in Fairfield, CT for four days. They meet with Eyad ALRABABAH, a Jordanian national living in Bridgeport, CT. It is believed that he supplies them with information on how to obtain fraudulent Virginia drivers’ licenses. For what they did with this information, see August 1-2. Link

Sometime in March 2001-- AL-SHEHHI and ATTA are seen at a highrise apartment on 130 Jameson Avenue in Toronto at this time, according to ”about a dozen” residents of the building later interviewed by the RCMP. http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSattack0112/20_torontolink_sun.html ATTA is seen at a print shop, Best Copy Printing, on Charles St. W in downtown Toronto, with Al-Qaeda operative Nabil Al-Marabh, whose uncle lives in the Jameson Ave. building and allegedly owns the shop. The print shop’s specialty, says the RCMP, is the production of fake IDs. A newspaper report says that forensic officers have found similarities between documents left behind by the hijackers and paper stock, laminates, and ink seized from the shop. The RCMP later discovered dozens of identification cards in various stages of assembly during raids at three Toronto addresses (the Jameson address and 190 Woolner Ave) and one in nearby Mississauga (121 Agnes St.). A stack of tightly controlled Canadian IMM-1000 forms, which are issued to landed immigrants to enter Canada, is also found. Link Link Neighbors later tell the RCMP there was a large picture of bin Laden on the wall in the shop. Toronto Sun 10/21/01

March-April, 2001—Malek Mohamed SEIF would later admit to the FBI that he attended the same mosque and Phoenix flight school as HANJOUR at this time. HANJOUR goes back the Sawyer School in Phoenix, AZ for more training, paying $200 a month for unlimited use of a flight simulator. A Saudi national, Faisal al-Salmi, who trained with him, is convicted in Phoenix on February 15, 2002 of lying to the FBI about the case.

Sometime in March 2001—HANJOUR and Salem ALHAZMI rent two rooms on the top floor of a building at 486 Union Avenue in Paterson, NJ. Up to six of the hijackers live there at one point or another. Saeed ALGHAMDI was known to stay there, as was Nawaq ALHAZMI. Neighbors remember ATTA as a “frequent visitor.” The room has no furniture. One of them has to ask a neighbor how to screw in a lightbulb. (WP 9/30/01) HANJOUR pays the rent each month in cash. In Fort Lee, N.J., Nawaq ALHAZMI and Salem ALHAZMI, maintain a box in a Mail Boxes Etc. store in the Linwood Plaza Mall.

March 25, 2001—BAHAJI’s wife gives birth to a son. BAHAJI posts a guard over his wife to prevent any hospital staff from seeing her and insists that she wear gloves whenever she handles the baby. BAHAJI also forbids her from photographing the child because he says it is against the Koran. LAT 9/22/01

April 1, 2001—Nawaq ALHAZMI is ticketed for speeding and not wearing a seat belt while driving east on Interstate 40 in western Oklahoma towards the Oklahoma City area. The officer involved recorded that ALHAZMI has a valid California driver’s license. He was driving the same blue Toyota that would be left in the Dulles parking lot on September 11th. It is believed that he was on his way to meet MOUSSAOUI. Link

April 8, 2001—ATTA flies from Virginia Beach, VA to Prague, apparently using a false passport. Michael Isikoff’s later debunking story concedes that car-rental records definitely indicate that ATTA was in Virginia Beach at this time. Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross says that a meeting took place between ATTA and Iraqi intelligence agent Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir AL-ANI in Prague. There are reports that this was the third or fourth meeting between ATTA and Al-Ani. Some sources later alleged that ATTA obtains anthrax from AL-ANI at this meeting. Czech intelligence officials have also indicated that, previously, AL-ANI also met with ALMIDHAR at some point. Link Newsweek 10/15/01 claims that this meeting was not with AL-ANI but with the more senior Farouk Hijazi, the Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, who was called back to Baghdad before September 11. LinkLater, the story was officially debunked by Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff on 4/28/02, though the first stories quoting “unnamed officials” saying that the meetings never took place appeared around 12/17/01. William Safire has refuted the Isikoff story pooh-poohing the Iraq/anthrax connection in two different columns. Link Link

According to Edward Jay Epstein, Al-Ani was not (as the New York Times called him) an "Iraqi Agent," he was an Iraqi case officer, that is, an intermediary between an agent and the state intelligence service controlling the agent. Epstein also claims that ATTA did not meet him at the Iraq consul, but at a discreet location in Prague. Link

Another unverified source says that senior U.S. intelligence sources say that in the spring of 2001, Marwan AL-SHEHRI and Ziad JARRAH met with known Iraqi intelligence agents “outside the United States.” David Rose, “Focus Special: The Terrorism Crisis: The Iraqi Connection,” The Observer, November 11, 2001.

Czech intelligence sources reported that al-Ani had been under surveillance because he had been observed apparently “casing” the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty headquarters in Prague. Czech authorities believed the site had been selected for attack by terrorists. Patrick E. Tyler with John Tagliabue, “Czechs Confirm Iraqi Agent Met With Terror Ringleader,” The New York Times, October 27, 2001.

The intelligence sources further report that ATTA and al-Ani embraced upon meeting at Prague’s Ruzyne airport, and that ATTA’s may have visited the Czech capitol on four occasions. Daniel McGrory, “Hijacker ‘Given Flask by Iraqi Agent’,” The Times (London), October 27, 2001.

April 9, 2001—ATTA returns to the USA.

April 12, 2001-- Using a Mail Boxes Etc. address in Hollywood, AL-SHEHHI gets his Florida driver’s license. Link

April 13, 2001—JARRAH re-enters the U.S. Details are not known.

April 20, 2001—ATTA meets three Arabic-speaking men in Hamburg. Karl-Heinz Horst, a German taxi driver who recognized ATTA's face from television reports after Sept. 11, says he had driven the three passengers about 400 miles, from Fuerth, in southern Germany, to Hamburg in the north. During the long ride, one of the passengers says in English that he was a war veteran from Afghanistan. ATTA meet the taxi in Hamburg and pays the $500 bill in cash. At some point there is another ATTA meeting with EL-ATTAR in Neu-Ulm after which he takes a taxi all the way back to Hamburg in the middle of the night, paying with $700 cash. ATTAR later denies this story.

Around April 18, 2001—AL-SHEHHI flies to Amsterdam, Holland.

April 22, 2001—AL-ANI is expelled from the Czech Republic for “conduct incompatible with his diplomatic status.”

April 23, 2001—JARRAH rents an efficiency apartment at the Bernard Apartments at 1816 Harding in Hollywood, Florida. JARRAH mostly paid on time, every week, in cash ($165). Chicago Tribune 9/17/01

April 26, 2001—ATTA, driving a red 1986 Pontiac reportedly plastered with Arabic language stickers, is stopped for reckless driving in the 6800 block of Inverrary Boulevard.in Fort Lauderdale. He either did not have or did not show a driver's license, but nevertheless escaped with a warning, and a requirement that he appear in court at the end of May with a valid license. He gave his address as apartment 122 at 10001 West Atlantic Blvd. in Coral Springs. South Florida Sun-Sentinel 9/15/01

Between April 23, 2001 and June 29, 2001—The original belief was that the thirteen “assistants” to the pilot—Edward Jay Epstein calls them “the Jeddah thirteen” because all but one of them received their visas at the American consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia—arrive in the USA for the first time: ALNAMI, AL-SUQAMI, MOQED, the ALSHEHRI brothers, Ahmed ALGHAMDI, Fayez AHMED/BANIHAMMAD, Salem ALHAZMI, Hamza ALGHAMDI, Mohand AL-SHEHRI, Saeed ALGHAMDI, and ALOMARI. But the sightings of Ahmed ALGHAMDIand MOQED in Connecticut in mid-March conflict with this belief. The government eventually admitted that six of this group entered the U.S. without any record of their entry. To list the ones we know about: Mohand AL-SHEHRI, Waleed AL-SHEHRI, Hamza ALGHAMDI, and ALNAMI enter the U.S. sometime in May; Saeed ALGHAMDI, ALOMARI, and Salem ALHAZMI enter the U.S. sometime in June

April 28, 2001— A German-speaking Arab man pays in advance for a room for Waleed AL-SHEHRI at the Bimini Motel on Ocean Drive, State Road A1A in Hollywood, FL. Walid AL-SHEHRI’s drivers’ license uses the motel’s address (the Age 9/17/01) Other source says that Walid AL-SHEHRI actually moved in on this date. Link

May 2001—MOTASSADEQ visits the Stade nuclear plant near Hamburg. Link

May 2001—MOUSSAOUI joins a student gym at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK this month.

May 1, 2001— Waleed ALSHEHRI enters the U.S. on a tourist visa.

May 2, 2001—AL-SHEHHI arrives at Miami International Airport on May 2 after approximately two weeks in Amsterdam, according to the Boston Globe. He is given permission to stay in the USA until November 2. He gives ATTA’s 10001 W. Atlantic Blvd. address as his destination. Link

May 2, 2001—Six days after ATTA’s ticket. JARRAH obtains a Florida drivers’ license. So does ATTA the same day., though he never shows for the court appearance related to his April 26 ticket. AL-SHEHHI also gets a Florida drivers’ license around this time, listing a Mailboxes Etc. address. At some unspecified point this summer, ATTA and ALOMARI also get New Jersey drivers’ licenses. Some of the hijackers are also believed to somehow have North Carolina drivers licenses. Link In addition, all 19 hijackers have Social Security numbers, 13 of them legally. Link

We know that ALMIDHAR and Nawaq ALHAZMI received their SS#s in San Diego with the assistance of Mohdar ABDALLAH.

May 4, 2001— Waleed AL-SHEHRI gets his Florida driver’s license, and a duplicate the next day. Link

May 6, 2001—JARRAH walks into the U.S. 1 Fitness Center off the Federal Highway in Dania, outside Fort Lauderdale, FL. He signs up for private lessons with instructor Bert Rodriguez. He presents himself as a businessman who travels often and wants to be able to “control somebody if he got into a fistfight.” He trains for about 2 months, 2 or 3 times a week, an hour-to-and hour-and-a-half a day. Rodriguez concludes that JARRAH lacks ”toughness.” LAT 9/27/01

May 12, 2001—JARRAH registers a red 1990 Mitsubishi Eclipse.

May 13, 2001—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI move into a shabby, $600-a-month apartment at 1808 Jackson Street in Hollywood, FL.

May 23, 2001—MOUSSAOUI has nearly 57 hours of flying time, but still cannot fly solo and would have to pay more to continue at Airman. Looking for another option, he contacts an office of the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Miami, FL by e-mail. He says he wants to “pilot one of these Big Bird…After all we are in AMERICA, and everything is possble.” [sic]

May 24, 2001, morning—AL-SHEHHI takes a United Airlines flight from JFK Airport in New York. He travels first-class to San Francisco, where he boards a flight to Las Vegas. He rents a car from Enterprise. He spends the night at a Travelodge. LVR-J 10/31/01 http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Oct-31-Wed-2001/news/17340538.html The same source reported that JARRAH is also in Las Vegas around this time. LVR-J 9/28/01

May 25 and 26, 2001—As the new hijackers arrive from Saudi Arabia, it is apparently entrusted to AL-SHEHHI to arrange housing. Through the spring and summer, he makes scores of cellphone calls to rental agents, motels, apartments, car-rental desks and the Palm Beach driver's-license office. On the two dates in question, while he is in Las Vegas, nearly 20 calls are placed from his cellphone to various real-estate owners and agents in and around Hollywood, Fla. Link

May 25, 2001—AL-SHEHHI moves to a room at the St. Louis Manor at 2000 Paradise Road. He is visited by at least one Middle Eastern man while he is there.

May 27, 2001—AL-SHEHHI checks out of the hotel and returns the rental car. Then for some reason he takes a flight back to San Francisco and from there flies first-class back to JFK. LVRJ 10/31/01

May 28, 2001— Mohand AL-SHEHRI, Hamza ALGHAMDI, and ALNAMI enter the U.S. on a flight from London using tourist visas.

May 28, 2001—ATTA’s court appearance for his April traffic stop is scheduled for 8:45 a.m. at the Broward County West Satellite Courthouse on Pine Island Road in Plantation. He does not show up. South Florida Sun-Sentinel 9/15/01

Around May 28, 2001—Waleed AL-SHEHRI leaves the Bimini Motel. (Orlando Sentinel 9/15/01) along with one other hijacker, allegedly.

May 29, 2001—MOUSSAOUI leaves the Airman Flight School without obtaining a pilot’s license. Witnesses report him “piling everything he owns into a white Ford Taurus” but apparently he remains in the Norman area until August. Link He vacates the room he has been staying in, but stays in Oklahoma City for two more months. MOUSSAOUI moves into an apartment with Mukarram ALI and Hussein al-ATTAS, both of whom were later detained by the FBI because of their contacts with MOUSSAOUI. (WP, 12/12/01).

May 31, 2001— AL-SHEHHI purchases a one-month membership Gold’s Gym in Hollywood, FL. But he only works out once in early June. AL-SHEHHI uses an alias and pays by credit card when signing up for the $70 membership. Link

June 2001—Ahmed AL-HAZNAWI (93), having obtained a tourist visa in Saudi Arabia, enters the U.S. (Florida, presumably) on an unknown date in June 2001.

June 2001—AL-SHEHHI and ATTA join a Jim Woolard’s World Gym in Delray Beach, and Wail M. AL-SHEHRI, Waleed M. AL-SHEHRI and Satam al-SUQAMI join another location at the corner of Hypoluxo Road and Congress Avenue in Boynton Beach. ATTA catches people's attention by wearing dress shirts and jeans while jerking weights around like a novice. ATTA is also a member at L.A. Fitness on University Drive in Coral Springs and works out at the upscale gym for about two months. All pay $60 cash for short-term memberships that last through July and August. Link Link

Around this time AHMED/BANIHAMMAD, Saeed ALGHAMDI, Hamza ALGHAMDI, Waleed ALSHEHRI, JARRAH, SUQAMI, Mohand ALSHEHRI (175), Ahmed ALNAMI (93) and Ahmed AL-HAZNAWI (93) each open a Florida SunTrust bank account with a cash deposit. At some point ALOMARI and ATTA rent two safety deposit boxes at a Miami Bank of America branch. The Age, 9/20/01.

Early June—AL-SHEHHI and Saeed ALGHAMDI arrive at the Pelican Properties office of real estate agent Gloria Irish (whose husband Michael Irish is an editor at The Sun, a tabloid published by American Media) in Delray Beach, FL. They say that they need two apartments. “AL-SHEHHI, she said, did all the talking, and ALGHAMDI glared at her, making her uncomfortable.” AL-SHEHHI tells Mrs. Irish he was visiting the U.S. for pilot training. He and his friend were looking for three-month rentals “near a gym.” Within a couple of days, she finds the two visitors apartments in separate Delray Beach country-club communities. The men secure the properties with $6,000 in cash and even walk Mrs. Irish to the bank to deposit it. “The hijackers often operated in complementary pairs: the jarring brusqueness of one canceled out by the affability of his partner..” notes a reporter. While apartment hunting, a glowering Alghamdi never speaks to Mrs. Irish, who concluded he was "a creep." The genial AL-SHEHHI apologizes that his friend doesn't speak English. "He was just the friendliest guy," Mrs. Irish says. He would greet her, she remembers, with a big smile and a warm, "Good morning, Gloria." (WP, 10/15/01).

Sometime in June 2001—Nawaq ALHAZMI and HANJOUR reportedly rent a sedan from Borough Jeep Eagle Chrysler Plymouth in Wayne, N.J for $35 a day. This is the first of three vehicles rented by one or both of them this summer. One of the three is driven 1000 miles. They pay with a combination of cash, personal checks, and a MasterCard. The identification ALHAZMI uses is a Florida drivers’ license with a nonexistent address on Lindell Avenue in Delray Beach. HANJOUR reportedly signs the rental contract as “Hani Saleh Hassan.” Link Link

Also sometime in June—Nawaq ALHAZMI buys a one-way ticket at Apollo Travel in Paterson from New York to Miami. LAT 11/23/01

June 4, 2001—A warrant is issued for ATTA’s arrest for failure to appear in court, related to the 4/26 traffic stop.

Around June 8, 2001—As arranged by Gloria Irish, Ahmed ALNAMI and Saeed ALGHAMDI rent Apartment 1504 at the Delray Racquet Club condominiums, 755 Dotterel Road, Delray Beach, FL. One neighbor recalled that the men often went swimming between 10 and 11 p.m., wearing swimsuits and carrying their briefcases to the pool. Hamza ALGHAMDImoves into a $900-a-month fifth-floor apartment in the same complex.

“It could not be determined whether Irish ever told the two men that her husband was editor of the Sun…there is no indication whether Irish or [future anthrax fatality] Stevens ever crossed paths with ATTA.” (WP, 10/15/01) At one apartment complex in Delray Beach, Fla., two neighbors said they regularly heard odd, late-night "banging noises" coming from one of the suspects' apartments. "Like a hammer hitting metal," Randy Ferris recalled, "but you can't very well call the police for that. Believe me, I wish I had." Chicago Tribune, 9/17/01 Link

Around this time, there is at least one report that ATTA and AL-SHEHHI further their pilot instruction at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University near their new environs. But Embry-Riddle has never publicly confirmed or denied that the two hijackers had been at the school. (The Age, Australia, 9/14/01)

June 12, 2001—AL-SHEHHI moves into a gated community in Delray Beach called the Hamlet Country Club, another rental arranged by Gloria Irish. Witnesses believe ATTA came along too. (ATTA is apparently there so much that neighbors believed they were living in the same apartment). The parking places for their cars--the red Pontiac and a Toyota--are next to hers, she said. On his rental application, AL-SHEHHI, when asked his permanent residence, writes: "NONE. I'm wandering." LAT 9/27/01

June 13, 2001—ATTA moves into the Tara Garden condo at 10001 W. Atlantic Blvd. in Coral Springs, FL. This month he makes several phone calls to a Madrid telephone number.

June 19, 2001— AL-SHEHHI, having reported his first Florida driver’s license lost, receives a duplicate license.

June 20, 2001—MOUSSAOUI buys flight deck plans for the Boeing 747, Models 400 and 200, from the Ohio Pilot Store.

June 21, 2001—Waleed AL-SHEHRI moves into Room B-308 of the Homing Inn on Federal Highway in Boynton Beach, FL, along with, it is believed, Wail AL-SHEHRI and AL-SUQAMI. The latter two would use the motel as their drivers’ license address. Link

June 22, 2001—JARRAH leaves the Hollywood apartment and moves into another flat attached to a private home at 4641 Bouganvilla in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea for $200 a week. His roommate is AL-HAZNAWI . PBP 10/15/01 The landlord, Charles Lisa, notices that the “skinny and frail” AL-HAZNAWI has what appears to be an “infected gash” on his left leg. He directs the two men to nearby Holy Cross Hospital for treatment. Link

June 22 or 23, 2001, most likely—JARRAH accompanies AL-HAZNAWI to the emergency room of Holy Cross Hospital at 4725 N. Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale, FL, on an unspecified evening in June. They both used their own names, not aliases. AL-HAZNAWI had to be treated for a black lesion on his leg. Dr. Christos Tsonas cleaned the wound and prescribed the antibiotic Keflex. AL-HAZNAWI tells Tsonas a dark lesion he had on his leg had developed after bumping into a suitcase two months earlier. It later occurred to Tsonas that the lesion was consistent with cutaneous anthrax and he reported this information to the FBI in October 2001. The New York Times story that broke these details also mentioned that Holy Cross is “relatively near” the American Media building, where the first anthrax cases would be discovered. See Link

Summer 2001— For much of the summer, a group of four of the hijackers rent scooters by the hour from AAA Car Rental in Ft. Lauderdale. They killed time tooling up and down the city's famous beaches. Link

Summer 2001—At some point this summer, HANJOUR is spotted with another man on a regular flight from Washington to California, undoubtedly as a dry run for Flight 77. HANJOUR+washington+california+summer&hl=en&ie=UTF8”> Link

June 23, 2001—HANJOUR reportedly trains at the Sawyer School of Aviation in Phoenix. According to the FBI, an Algerian pilot named Lotfi Riassi helps train him, though they later back away from this story Link

June 25, 2001—AL-HAWSAWI opens a checking account at a Standard Chartered Bank branch in Dubai, UAE, with a cash deposit. The same day, Fayez AHMED/BANIHAMMAD (175) has a savings account and a checking account opened for him at the same Standard Chartered Bank branch. The MOUSSAOUI indictment is not clear on whether AHMED/BANIHAMMAD opens the account in person, or if he’s already in the USA and AL-HAWSAWI is using a power of attorney.

June 27, 2001, approximately—JARRAH travels to Las Vegas around this time. On the car rental form at Payless Car Rental, he lists Circus Circus, 2880 Las Vegas Blvd., as his destination hotel.

June 27, 2001—Hamza ALGHAMDI, living at the Delray Beach Racquet Club, gets his Florida driver’s license; later, he receives two duplicates, the latest in August.

June 28, 2001— ATTA flies into McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. He rents a Chevrolet Malibu from an Alamo Rent-a-Car. It is not known where he stays this first night.

June 29, 2001—The tall, slim ALOMARI and the apelike Salem ALHAZMI arrive together at Kennedy Airport on a Swissair flight from London. It is believed that ALOMARI stays at ATTA’s Coral Springs condominium. They are the final two hijackers to arrive in the USA. NYT 11/6/01

June 29, 2001—Ever frugal, ATTA moves into Room 122 at the Econo Lodge at 1150 S. Las Vegas Blvd. Making sure he gets the 10% AAA discount, ATTA pays $49.50 a night in cash. He uses his Florida drivers’ license as ID. Investigators believe that he met with HANJOUR, AL-SHEHHI, and JARRAH in this trip. Several change planes in Denver during this and the next Vegas trip. http://www.thedenverchannel.com/den/news/stories/news-101732420011016-071016.html There are some reports that AL-SHEHHI visits the Olympic Garden strip club at 1531 Las Vegas Blvd. during this trip. They order a takeout “The Works” pizza without ham from Hungry Howie’s pizza parlor at Vegas and Buffalo Drives. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/536870/posts http://extratv.warnerbros.com/reframe.html?http://extratv.warnerbros.com/dailynews/extra/10_01/10_19a.html They meet at least once at a Starbucks at 1340 E. Flamingo Road, near UNLV. Most interesting, several hijackers visit the Cyber Zone store at 4440 S. Maryland Parkway. A Cyber Zone employee told the Review-Journal he believed JARRAH and ATTA visited the store. The employee said he believed ATTA used computers to visit Web sites. Employees of the West Charleston Library have told the FBI that terrorists who visited Las Vegas may also have visited the library, though the FBI doubts it. LVRJ 10/10/01 There is one report in the Las Vegas Sun 9/20/01 that one of ATTA’s two Vegas car rentals this summer is returned with more than 1000 miles on it.

June 29, 2001—Using the Dotterel Road address in Delray Beach, ALNAMI gets a Florida driver’s license. Link

July, 2001—Sometime this month, someone named Mohamed ATTA uses a bad credit card at the Government Printing Office in Washington to try to purchase the official Air Force magazine, giving an address in Egypt. ATTA26.html”>Link

July 2001—There is an “unsubstantiated report” according to USNWR in their 5/6/02 issue that two unspecified hijackers met in an Oklahoma City motel with MOUSSAOUI.

July 1, 2001—ATTA departs from Las Vegas. He flies first to Newark and goes to Paterson, NJ, where he buys his July 7 ticket from Florida to Madrid from Apollo International Travel on Main Street, paying $550 cash for a one-way fare. SPT 10/18/01 Within two days he is back in Florida.

Around this time, says the LA Times, ATTA, AL-SHEHHI and HANJOUR—all make brief, separate, trips abroad. The only one whose itinerary is publicly known (mostly) is ATTA’s Madrid trip.. LAT9/27/01

July 3, 2001—Both Wail AL-SHEHRI and al-SUQAMI receive Florida driver’s licenses using the Homing Inn address. Link

July 4, 2001—ALHAZMI (77-5) and ALMIDHAR (77-2) arrive at LAX on B-1 business visa after a flights from abroad. ALMIDHAR is on Saudi Arabia Airlines Flight 53 from Riyadh. Both use different Saudi passports than they used before. They arrive together. AL-HAZMI give “Marriott in New York City” as his destination. ALMIDHAR leaves the address portion of his I-94 incomplete, yet the business visa ALMIDHAR obtained at the consulate in Jedda allows him to stay in the country until October 3.Time, 11/1/01.

July 5, 2001—ATTA is stopped again for speeding, in Delray Beach, FL. He now had the Florida driver's license, and the policeman's computer check did not reveal that a bench warrant was outstanding for ATTA for failure to appear in court related to his April 26 speeding ticket.

July 7, 2001—ATTA boards a Swissair jet at Miami International Airport, bound for Madrid.

July 8, 2001, morning—Rather than flying non-stop from Miami to Spain, ATTA goes out of his way to change planes in Zurich. According to the Swiss Federal Police, during his 2 1/2-hour layover in Zurich, ATTA withdraws about $1,000 in Swiss francs from an airport cash machine. ATTA's purchases at the airport--two Swiss Army knives and some chocolate--are paid for with a credit card, not with cash. Swiss francs would have been useless in Spain, raising the possibility that ATTA may have given the money to someone he met at the Zurich airport. At least one of the other hijackers, Salem ALHAZMI, flies from Zurich to New York a few days before ATTA stopped there. Link According to at least one source, AL-SHEHHI is with ATTA. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-worldtrade-suspectprofiles.story There was an early incorrect report that he and AL-SHEHHI spent the night at a hotel in the Zurich area but this does not appear to be correct—the stopover in Zurich was only for a few hours at most.

July 8, 2001, afternoon—ATTA flies into Barajas Airport in Madrid. He rents a car that he’d previously reserved over the Internet.. According to one report in a Spanish newspaper, ATTA meets AL-SHEHHI and they spend the night at the Diana Cazadora, a three-star hotel about 500 metres - five minutes by car - from Barajas airport on the Barcelona road. ATTA and his colleague have dinner together and then allegedly drink vodka for a time in the hotel bar. Link Some believe that ATTA’s trip to Spain was prompted by the June 22 arrest of Mohammed Bensakhria, chief of a terror cell in Frankfurt, Germany. Bensakhria had been hiding in Spain since a Christmas plot to bomb a Strasbourg, France, market was exposed and thwarted. Spanish police believed that the trip had to have been vitally important if ATTA took time off from his planning for the 9/11 attacks to come to a meeting that had to be held face-to-face for maximum security. LAT 11/23/01 Apparently BINALSHIBH was in Spain at this time, also, so there was undoubtedly some 9/11 discussion. Link

There is also one report that ATTA makes a side journey to Rome on this trip. Italian security sources have reported that Iraq made use of its Rome embassy to foster and cultivate Hussein’s partnership with al-Qaeda. Habib Faris Abdullah al-Mamouri, a general in the Iraqi secret service, and from 1982 to 1990 a member of the “Special Operations Branch,” (M-8) charged with developing links with Islamist militants in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Gulf states, was stationed in Rome as an “instructor” for Iraqi diplomats. Al-Mamouri supposedly met with ATTA in Hamburg and Prague in addition to July’s visit in Rome. Al-Mamouri has not been seen in Rome since July, shortly after he last met ATTA. [Daniel McGrory, “Hijacker ‘Given Flask by Iraqi Agent’,” The Times (London), October 27, 2001.]

July 10-11, 2001—MOUSSAOUI makes credit card payments to the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Miami for a simulator course in commercial flight training.

July 12, 2001—In a one-page interview in Pravda entitled “The Dollar and America Will Fall Down on August 19,” Russian economist Tatyana Koryagina predicts an “attack” on American financial institutions by unnamed “international” groups with “mystical and religious components” on August 19. “The U.S. has been chosen as the object of financial attack because the financial center of the planet is located there. The effect will be maximal. The strike waves of economic crisis will spread over the planet instantly, and will remind us of the blast of a huge nuclear bomb. Some fluctuation in this date is possible. Serious forces are acting against those who are now preparing the attack on the United States. August, with very high probability, will bring the financial catastrophe to the U.S.... The last 10 days of August have especial importance from a religious-sensible point of view.” Link

Mid-July 2001—An FBI agent in Arizona writes a multi-page memo to FBI headquarters laying out information developed by his counterterrorism team has developed in an unrelated investigation, pointing out that a number of Middle Eastern nationals were training at Arizona flight schools. WP 5/3/02

July 14, 2001—It is believed that ATTA goes to the town of Tarragona, and tries unsuccessfully to visit Jague Cristian Homarin, an Algerian held in federal prison there on murder charges, officials said.. Link There is also a sighting at Port Aventura theme park inTarragona per La Vanguardia.

July 16, 2001—A Spanish newspaper has reported an uncorroborated sighting that ATTA met with Wail and Waleed AL-SHEHRI on this day. Link

July 17. 2001 –ATTA drives to the town of Salou. He stays at the Hotel Casablanca Playa for $32 a night. He meets another man, and a woman. According to Spanish newspaper accounts, the woman is believed to be a former girlfriend of MOUSSAOUI. Link He spends one night at the Casablanca Playa, and then checks out and moves to another hotel in the same town. Some believe he is meeting with alleged Al-Qaeda financier Ahmed Brahim at his luxury flat at Paseo Maritimo in the Barcelona area, which Brahim sells immediately after ATTA’s visit. Link

July 17, 2001—The INS approves ATTA’s student visa. The visa is not delivered to Huffman Aviation until March 11, 2002, long after the attacks. Link

July 18, 2001—Fayez AHMED/BANIHAMMAD gives power of attorney to Mustafa Ahmed AL-HAWSAWI for AHMED/BANIHAMMAD’s Standard Chartered Bank accounts in the UAE. On the same day, AL-HAWSAWI picks up AHMED/BANIHAMMAD (175)’s Visa and ATM cards in the UAE. Shortly after, AL-HAWSAWI ships them to Fayez AHMED/BANIHAMMAD in Florida.[apparently—the MOUSSAOUI indictment is a little unclear on this] Time Magazine has reported that the hijackers' credit cards are through the Dime Savings Bank of New York.. Link

July 18, 2001— ATTA spends his last night in Spain in Room 15 at a different hotel, the Montsant Hotel in Salou, where he pays the bill ($27) with his Visa card and registers under his own name and uses his own Egyptian passport. He leaves and returns to the hotel several times during the evening. Link

Italian anti-terrorist police have mentioned that Ben Khemais, from the terrorist cell in Milan, Italy, travels to Spain at about the same time ATTA was there. ATTA+taxi+Hamburg&hl=en”> Link

July 19, 2001— ATTA returns his rental car with 2000 kilometers (1250 miles) on it. The mileage would have been enough for the trip to Salou plus an additional trip to the coastal cities of Alicante and Valencia, which have active Al-Qaeda cells at the time. ATTA uses a public Internet terminal at Madrid Airport to send e-mails before he boards the plane to Atlanta. ATTA arrives at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta and is given permission to stay until November 2, 2001.

Starting sometime around the latter half of July, 2001—Per James Lester, an employee of South Florida Crop Care in Belle Glade, ATTA was among the Arab men who in groups of two or three visited the crop dusting firm nearly every weekend for six or eight weeks before the attacks. ATTA is a persistent questioner and "I recognized him because he stayed on my feet all the time. I just about had to push him away from me," Lester said. Link

July and August 2001—ATTA repeatedly visits the Shipping Post, a mom-and-pop mailing business in Punta Gorda, Fla., to obtain money orders in amounts of $100 to $200, according to the owner. Link

Late July 2001—ATTA receives two calls from a number in Madrid. Link

July 25, 2001—JARRAH flies from the U.S. to Germany.

“June or July” 2001—There are two witnesses from TUHH in Hamburg, Germany who say that they saw ATTA and AL-SHEHHI at this time in the ground-floor workshops of the architecture department on at least two occasions with a scale model, measuring about 3’ square, of what appeared to be the Pentagon. After September 11, it was discovered that TUHH’s library—a short distance from the workshop in question—was missing between 60 and 80 slides of the World Trade Center and the Sears Tower in Chicago. This tantalizing report is difficult to work into the timeline except in early June or, more likely, late July, coinciding with JARRAH’s visit. Link

July 26, 2001—SUQAMI and Waleed and Wail AL-SHEHRI move out of the Homing Inn. South Florida Sun Sentinel 9/28/01

Late July, 2001-- MOQED is seen at the Adult Lingerie Center, an adult video store in Beltsville, MD. He visits two more times, all between 10:30 PM and 1:30 AM, for about ten minutes each time. Newsday 9/23//01

The latter part of July, 2001— Nawaq ALHAZMI rents a minivan (presumably the one they used to drive to Virginia to obtain the phony licenses, see August 1-2) for $60 a day.

July 29-August 2, 2001—From public telephones in Norman, OK, MOUSSAOUI makes several phone calls to a number in Duesseldorf, Germany.

July 29, 2001—HANJOUR leaves the Sawyer School. Link

July 30-31, 2001—BINALSHIBH, using the name “Ahad Sabet,” receives two wire transfers, totaling approximately $15,000, from “Hashim Abdulrahim” in the UAE.(MOUSSAOUI indictment)

August 1, 2001—Actor James Woods, taking American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston’s Logan airport to Los Angeles, reports four extremely suspicious Middle-Eastern men in the first-class section. They had no carry-on luggage and sat rigidly in their seats, and would not even look at the female flight attendants. They ate or drank nothing, and spoke to each other only in whispers. Woods mentioned his suspicions of a hijacking to the flight crew, and an FAA report was filed. Of the four he saw, he later identified one as one of the Flight 175 hijackers, and one as a Flight 77 hijacker. The other two were not 9/11 hijackers, but were positively identified as “terrorist-involved.” See Actor Woods Fingered 9/11 Kamikaze Terrorists. This was apparently one of several “dry runs.”

August 2001—The Israeli Mossad advises the FBI and CIA that as many as 200 Islamists are slipping into the USA for a “major assault” on a “large-scale target” which would be “very vulnerable.” USA Today 9/20/01

August 1-3, 2001—BINALSHIBH, as “Ahad Sabet,” wires approximately $14,000 in money orders to MOUSSAOUI in Oklahoma from train stations in Duesseldorf and Hamburg. By this time, BINALSHIBH was now presumably passing the torch to his “understudy” (as The Independent called him) MOUSSAOUI.

August 1, 2001—AHMED/BANIHAMMAD’s Visa card used for the first time, in Florida.

August 1, 2001—Following ALRABABAH’s advice, HANJOUR and ALMIDHAR arrive in a minivan at the parking lot of a 7-11 store in Falls Church, VA. There, they ask Luis Martinez-Flores, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, if he will co-sign their residency forms to allow them to obtain Virginia drivers’ licenses for $100, which ALMIDHAR withdraws from an ATM. He agrees and they travel with Martinez-Flores to the Virginia DMV Express office at the nearby Springfield Mall and they use Martinez-Flores’s 5913 Leesburg Pike #8 address in Falls Church as their own. 5913 Leesburg is the apartment building that abuts the 7-11. Link

Link

August 2. 2001—Ahmed ALGHAMDIpays $100 to one Herbert Villalobos to fraudulently obtain a Virginia drivers’ license, in the same process as the day before, as does ALOMARI. Link ALOMARI and Ahmed ALGHAMDIi accompany Villalobos to a lawyer's office in Virginia and Villalobos signs an affidavit certifying that they live in Virginia. Link Another person, Kenys Galicia of Falls Church, is involved in the fraud. Link According to another source, other hijackers receive their Virginia licenses that day, namely MOQED, and Salem ALHAZMI, after the others, as “Virginia residents,” vouch for them. The WP 9/30/01 says that as many as seven hijackers received licenses that day. All of the Flight 77 hijackers get Virginia licenses except Nawaq ALHAZMI.

Sometime in August 2001-- Nawaq ALHAZMI and HANJOUR reportedly rent another vehicle from Borough Jeep Eagle Chrysler Plymouth in Wayne, N.J. This is the third vehicle rented by them this summer, one minivan (presumably the one they used to drive to Virginia to obtain the phony licenses) for $60 a day and two cars for $35 a day. One of them is driven 1000 miles. They pay with a combination of cash, personal checks, and a MasterCard. Link

August 2, 2001—Satam Al SUQAMI, Waleed M. ALSHEHRI, and Wail ALSHEHRI move into at the Panther motel on 715 S. Ocean Blvd. in Deerfield Beach, FL.. Link

August 3, 2001—MOUSSAOUI buys two knives in Oklahoma City, OK.

August 4, 2001—JARRAH returns to the U.S.

August 6, 2001—ATTA rents a white Ford Escort from Warrick’s Rent-a-Car in Pompano Beach, FL. Link

August 6, 2001—In the financial markets, trading begins on September 30 put options, showing the first sign of unusually-large volume in puts on UAL Corp, the parent company of United Airlines. Reuters, 9/20/01

August 6, 2001—From Britain, “SHAKUR” calls DAHDAH YARKAS and tells him cryptically, “in one month I may see you…I have prepared some threads and other things that you will like.”

August 9, 2001—AL-SHEHHI’s student visa is approved by the INS. It is sent to Huffman Aviation in March.

August 9-10, 2001—MOUSSAOUI is driven from Oklahoma to Minnesota by his roommate AL-ATTAS. He registers to take commercial flying lessons at the Pan Am International Flight School in Eagan, MN. On the 10th, MOUSSAOUI pays approximately $6300 in cash for the lessons.

August 10, 2001—Satam Al SUQAMI, Waleed M. ALSHEHRI, and Wail ALSHEHRI move out of the Panther motel. South Florida Sun-Sentinel 9/24/01.

August 13, 2001—ATTA is said to have checked out of the Hamlet Country Club apartment. ATTA returns the rental car with 254 miles on it and flies from Florida to Las Vegas again. He stays at the same Econo Lodge, but has to go out and buy incense at a store because his room smells. This visit he is remembered being accompanied by another man and a woman. The FBI believes that all four pilots are present, plus Nawaq ALHAZMI (77-4) and ALMIDHAR. It is believed that at this meeting they finalized the details of the ATTAck. Nawaq ALHAZMI is remembered in the lobby of the Days Inn at 4155 Koval Lane, near East Flamingo Road. He tells his a Days Inn employee that he is taking a trip to Los Angeles, and asks for information on Days Inn properties in the area, including Whittier. He appears to be waiting for someone. ALHAZMI’s name does not appear on the hotel register. Three of the hijackers eat at the Strip Sandwich Shop at 603 Las Vegas Blvd, ordering sandwiches with white bread on the side and building their own. LVRJ 10/26/01.

August 13, 2001—MOUSSAOUI begins flying lessons at the Pan Am International Flight School. He is looking for simulator training on the Boeing 747 Model 400 without having a pilot’s license, which arouses suspicion. (WP 9/23/01) Almost from the first moment of his training at Pan Am, employees wonder to each other if MOUSSAOUI is a hijacker.

August 14, 2001—ATTA, ALHAZMI (77-4) and HANJOUR (77-1) depart from Las Vegas. ATTA flies to Houston, and presumably from there to Florida.

Second week of August, 2001(date ref. WP 10/9/01)— ALMIDHAR, ALHAZMI and HANJOUR travel briefly to Maryland, the staging area for 77. HANJOUR, always an uncertain pilot, shows up at flight school at Freeway Airport in Bowie, Md. The goal is apparently a final “check flight” of the same type that ATTA and JARRAH are documented taking around this time. Three times, he attempts to rent a plane. Each time, a different instructor takes him on a test flight and deems him incompetent to fly alone. "We have a level of standards that we hold all our pilots to, and he couldn't meet it," said the manager of the flight school later. HANJOUR could not handle basic air maneuvers—landings are a particular problem—a even though HANJOUR has 600 hours in the air and a pilot’s license. HANJOUR pays the $400 bill in cash, and eventually gives the Valencia Motel as his address. Link And yet, says the instructor, “There’s no doubt in my mind that once that jet got going, he could have pointed that plane at a building and hit it.” Newsday, 9/23/01

August 15, 2001—ATTA, carrying a briefcase, and AL-SHEHHI rent a blue Chevy Corsica from Warrick’s Rent-A-Car in Pompano Beach, FL. Characteristically, ATTA asks for the cheapest car on the lot.

August 15, 2001—Suspicions finally get the better of the instructors at Pan Am and they call the FBI about MOUSSAOUI.

“Late summer” (mid-to-late-August?) 2001—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI go to Huber Drugs in Delray Beach, FL, where the owner Greg Chatterton later identified them as frequent customers. ATTA seeks treatment for “palms that appeared to be reddened from a chemical burn or raw from construction work.” Link Chatterton asks if he had been working with solvents or dipping his hands into chemicals such as ammonia or chlorine, which ATTA denied. When asked what he did for a living, ATTA replies that he was in computer work. ATTA is given a tube of Acid Mantle, a cream which restores acidity to skin that’s been exposed to too much base, such as ammonia. ATTA pays $5.49 for it. AL-SHEHHI complains of chest congestion and a cough and is given Robitussin and urged to seek medical treatment at Urgi-Med, a nearby walk-in clinic. Within a day or two, AL-SHEHHI returns with a prescription for an antibiotic, which Chatterton said he filled. Chatterton could not recall which drug was prescribed, only that it was not for Ciproflaxin, later famous as the anti-anthrax drug of choice. The FBI perused the store’s records, which are not computerized, and concluded that AL-SHEHHI must have used an alias. “That’s why they came here,” said Chatterton later. “Think about it—you go to a small-town pharmacy, not part of a computer bank” which would archive prescription records. Urgi-Med at first confirmed to a reporter that “at least one hijacking suspect” had been treated at the clinic, but a manager for the clinic later called the reporter back and said that clinic officials would have no comment on the matter.

August 16, 2001 (The Observer 9/16/01 says 8/19/01)—ATTA rents a single engine, four seat Piper Archer for $88 an hour from the Palm Beach County Airport at Lantana for three consecutive days of flying, four hours a day. Each day he has a different passenger. Aug. 19, an instructor at Palm Beach County Airport in Lantana hears ATTA speaking in Arabic over the airplane's radio. The instructor, who speaks Arabic himself, believes Mr. ATTA intended to turn on the craft's intercom to talk to his passenger. Instead, Mr. ATTA keys the plane's radio. He exclaims, "God is Great!" Link

August 16, 2001—At flight school., MOUSSAOUI is interviewed by the FBI. When they question his presence in the USA, he says he is simply interested in learning to fly. He tells them that, upon competing training, he “intended to engage in sightseeing in New York City and Washington." He insists that he is a successful salesman, but when they ask what company, he can’t recall the name (Infocus Tech) of the firm he works for. He is then placed under arrest for visa irregularities. He is found with: two knives; one pair of binoculars; flight manuals for the Boeing 747 Model 400; a flight simulator computer program; fighting gloves and shin guards; a piece of paper referring to a handheld Global Positioning System receiver and a camcorder; software that could be used to view pilot procedures for the Boeing 747 Model 400; a notebook listing two German telephone numbers, including the Duesseldorf number that MOUSSAOUI called on July 29th; a manual for a crop-duster; the name “Ahad Sabet,” and a laptop computer (see August 18-20). Letters indicating that MOUSSAOUI is a marketing consultant in the United States for Infocus Tech; a computer disk containing information on the aerial application of pesticides; a handheld aviation radio. For three weeks, Moussaoui, 33, sits in jail in Minnesota with "no-one coming near him", according to the administrator of the jail. ABC News 9/24/01 NYT 5/11/02 and Link

FBI Director Robert Mueller has said that the news media incorrectly have reported MOUSSAOUI's interest in learning to handle airplanes at a time when he was taking flight training. Mueller said Moussaoui wanted to learn how to take off and land, but not fly. "Newspapers have it the other way," Mueller noted. LinkLink Shortly after, the FBI asks the French intelligence services for information on MOUSSAOUI. NYT 10/7/01.

August 17, 2001—JARRAH takes a “check ride” at a flight school in Fort Lauderdale.

August 18-20, 2001—The FBI’s field agents in Minnesota urgently seek a search warrant to examine MOUSSAOUI’s laptop computer. According to the Washington Post, “during often heated debates…officials at headquarters opposed the request, arguing that investigators could not show probable cause that a crime had been committed.” The request is denied.

August 19, 2001—ATTA is finally put on the Watch List for Terrorists around this time.

Mid-August 2001—JARRAH tells Bert Rodriguez that he has to leave on a business trip. Rodriguez never sees him again.

August 21, 2001—The CIA informs the INS of its concerns regarding Nawaq ALHAZMI and ALMIDHAR. Link

August 22, 2001—In Miami, JARRAH buys an antenna for a GPS and schematics for Boeing 757 cockpit-instrument diagrams. Link

August 22, 2001—Fayez AHMED/BANIHAMMAD (175) uses his Visa card in Florida to obtain approximately $4900 in cash, which had been deposited into his Standard Chartered Bank account in the UAE the day before.

August 22, 2001—Nawaq ALHAZMI (possibly with HANJOUR) rents a sedan from Borough Jeep-Chrysler, the third and final time they’ve used Borough this summer.

August 23, 2001—ATTA’s driver’s license is suspended indefinitely as a consequence of his failure to appear in traffic court.

August 23, 2001—ALMIDHAR and NawaqALHAZMI are put on the FBI terrorist watch list to prevent them from entering the country—only twenty months after they were recorded plotting the Cole bombing, and when they had already been in the country for a month and a half. The FBI has no idea where they are. The San Diego FBI office is not notified of the two hijackers’ change in status until September 13. Another official said the FBI did check out the information and concluded the man was no longer in the country. Link

August 23, 2001—Multiple hijackers are in Room 343 at the Valencia Motel in Laurel, MD, where they stay from Aug. 23 to Sept. 11.HANJOUR, ALMIDHAR and ALHAZMI join two others there. They would open the door only a crack to pass out dirty towels and receive clean ones. LAT 9/27/01 For a weekly rate of $280 plus tax, they have a kitchenette, a tiny living area and one bedroom. Their pressed khakis and button-down shirts make them stand out from other tenants, a crew mostly down on its luck. “We thought they were gay, five men living together,” says one neighbor. They drive off every day with large stand-up wheeled bags and carry-on luggage, then return and leave again with more luggage. Link They drive the blue Toyota later found in the Dulles parking lot, along with an unidentified white car. ATTA is also seen there around late August. There is a possibility that around this time, two of the hijackers visit the Al-Qaeda-connected cleric Moataz Al-Hallak at the Crestleigh Gardens apartment complex, also in Laurel. See Link

August 24, 2001— The vice president of Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma later told The Boston Globe that FBI agents interviewed him about MOUSSAOUI around this date. Link

August 25, 2001—Using cash, ALMIDHAR and MOQED buy tickets for AA Flight 77, from Dulles International in Virginia, to Los Angeles, on September 11th, 2001. Salem ALHAZMI books his Flight 77 ticket on Travelocity.com, using an address on Linwood Plaza in Fort Lee, NJ., paying with a Visa Card. He then buys a second reservation on Travelocity as a backup, using a Wayne, NJ address. Link

August 25, 2001, approximately—ATTA sends two wire transfers of around $2000 back to the UAE from a branch of Mail Boxes Etc., and from a Giant supermarket in Laurel, MD. Two more wire transfers would be sent from Boston via Western Union.

Late August, 2001—AL-SHEEHI and Mohand AL-SHEHRI (who signed his name on the sign-in sheet) appear at the Delray Beach Public Library late one afternoon requesting Internet access.The two appear to be in their early 20s, “good-looking” men dressed in casual clothes. The men seem edgy and use the computers for about an hour. “They kept staring at the computers and then staring at me,” said a female employee. They leave shortly after a third Middle Eastern man arrives and speaks to them. It is believed that there were downloading a “significant” amount of information on crop dusters. Link

August 26, 2001 AL-SHEHHI moves into room 12 at the Panther Motel, paying $500 in advance. He gives his address as 9387 Sheridan Ct., #F266 in Hollywood, FL. [This is the address of the Mailboxes Etc. store that most of them have been using]. He is driving a blue Chevy. Panther Motel owner Richard Surma is so impressed by Marwan AL-SHEHHI's manners that he allows him to have a friend stay overnight, despite rules barring that. Another source says that Fayez AHMED/BANIHAMMAD was the person staying with him. Link<./a>

Meanwhile, three other hijackers are staying at the Crystal Cay Motel, also in Deerfield Beach. After spending months together in flight schools and apartments, ATTA and AL-SHEHHI appear to have parted company around Labor Day. AL-SHEHHI drives the three to and from the Crystal Cay Motel, where they had an upstairs corner room. Rooms at the pale yellow, two-story building with a faded white shingle roof rent for about $45 a night. Nearly every day, AL-SHEHHI comes by in a car to pick up the three men. Sometimes he drives a red car, sometimes a black one. Once, he brings the three back from grocery shopping. Despite having a telephone in their room, the men regularly uses the pay phone in front of the motel. AL-SHEHHI is a few blocks north, at the Panther Motel. They spend their days out, evenings closeted in the room.

August 26, 2001—Waleed AL-SHEHRI and Wail AL-SHEHRI make reservations on AA Flight 11, from Logan Airport in Boston, to Los Angeles on September 11th, 2001. The contact number they use is in Florida.

August 27, 2001—Around this time, according to one source, an article in the London Telegraph 9/23/01 ( Link , Saddam Hussein suddenly moves his wife Sadija and his “other wife” to Tikrit, far from Baghdad.

August 27, 2001—In Spain, BARAKAT-YARKAS receives a call from “SHAKUR” in England. In another call recorded by Spanish police, “SHAKUR” says, in the police’s translation: “We’ve entered the field of aviation. We’ve even cut the throat of the bird.” Another translation of the Arabic might be “We are going to cut the throat of the eagle.” LAT 11/23/01

August 27, 2001—Allegedly, the CIA sends a message coded “IMMEDIATE” (the second-highest priority) to the FBI, Justice Department, and Customs warning that ALMIDHAR and ALHAZMI are in the country. The FBI later claims that it took “aggressive action” in response to the warning. The LA Times later pointed out that the FBI’s “aggressive action” did not include checking California drivers’ license records or VISA card records (the VISA cards are used the same day to buy Flight 77 tickets), on both of which the two were listed under their own names. ALHAZMI was listed in the 2001 San Diego phone book.

August 27, 2001--JARRAH registers at the Pin-Del Motel at 9060 Washington Ave. in Laurel, Maryland. The Pin-Del Motel is about a mile from the Valencia Motel. JARRAH pays $132 for three nights in advance with a Visa card. He uses a Florida address and drivers’ license.

August 27, 2001—Reservations for electronic, one-way tickets are made for Fayez AHMED/BANIHAMMAD and Mohand AL-SHEHRI for UA Flight 175, from Logan Airport in Boston to Los Angeles for September 11th, 2001, listing the same Florida contact number that Waleed AL-SHEHRI and Wail AL-SHEHRI used. Nawaq ALHAZMI and Salem ALHAZMI book flights on AA Flight 77. Mohand AL-SHEHRI and Fayez Rashid Ahmed Hassan al- Qadi BANIHAMMAD buy tickets for United Flight 175 on Sept. 11. They use a Delray Beach Mail Boxes Etc. address. Link ALMIDHAR, Moqed, Nawaq ALHAZMI, Salem ALHAZMI buy tickets for the Pentagon-bound plane through the online travel agency Travelocity and giving a Mail Boxes Etc. address in New Jersey, according to CNN. Link

August 28-- Hamza ALGHAMDIand Ahmed ALGHAMDI, using another Mail Boxes Etc. address in Delray Beach, buy their tickets for Flight 175. Link

August 28, 2001—ATTA flies from Baltimore to Fort Lauderdale. He reserves two tickets for American Airlines Flight 11 on the American Airlines website, using the same frequent flyer number., for himself and for ALOMARI. ALOMARI gives a Mail Boxes Etc. address in Hollywood. That same day, AL-SHEHHI buys a ticket for Flight 175 and AL-SUQAMI buys a ticket with cash for AA Flight 11. Some of the hijackers use the pay-per-use public Internet terminals in the Kinko’s in Hollywood, FL to buy their tickets through (Wired 9/20/01) Travelocity.com around this time. Also, around this time, ATTA reserves a ticket on an October 13 flight from BWI to San Francisco, presumably as a backup.

August 28, 2001—JARRAH checks out of the Pin Del Motel. (Palm Beach Post, 10/15/01) He returns to Florida.

August 29, 2001—ATTA and AL-SHEHHI return to Warrick-Rent-A-Car, having put 1915 miles on the Corsica. http://www.webcom.com/hrin/magazine/la-ATTA.html Having exceeded the rental contract’s mileage limits, he protests when Warrick charges him an extra $61.80, but pays it eventually. Link

The Corsica is apparently having some problems, so they exchange it for a white Ford Escort, to be returned Sept. 9. The actual car rental documents are downloadable at ATTA/resources/documents/rentacar1.htm”> Link

August 29, 2001—Ahmed ALGHAMDIand Hamza ALGHAMDIreserve electronic one-way tickets for UA Flight 175. AL-HAZNAWI purchases a ticket on United Airlines Flight 93, from Newark International Airport to San Francisco, scheduled for September 11th, 2001.

August 31, 2001—CNN has reported that on this date HANJOUR buys his ticket in person accompanied by MOQED who “did all the talking.” The buy is made at ATS Travel in Totowa, NJ, only two miles down the road from the Paterson apartment. None of the hijackers had done business with ATS before. MOQED requests an aisle seat as far forward as possible on Flight 77, and HANJOUR is given seat 1B, directly behind the cockpit. HANJOUR tries to pay with his Visa card, but it is rejected. HANJOUR and MOQED go to the Hudson Union Bank branch a few blocks away. They return to the travel agency and pay $1800 cash for HANJOUR’s ticket. The agent tells them that the flight from Dulles is $400 cheaper than the Newark flight. For ID, HANJOUR uses the Virginia drivers’ license with Martinez-Flores’s Falls Church address that he had fraudulently obtained earlier in the month. Link Link

August 30, 2001—ATTA buys a box-cutter.

August 30, 2001, noon—According to the manager, JARRAH and ATTA rent a room at the Longshore Motel in Hollywood, FL, paying $175 cash in advance for the week. The Florida motel manager is puzzled by his guests' insistence upon 24-hour Internet access in their room. "They were very agitated and they said, 'You're wasting our time. We are here on a mission,'" When asked “What kind of mission is that? A Mission of Islam?' They “kind of paused” and said, 'No, no, no, we want to stay out of that.'" [PBS] Dragomir solves the problem by running a wire from the office to their rooms, which are not themselves equipped with phones. When, worried about huge phone bills, Dragomir asks them to work out of the office instead, they become angry and insulting, demanding their money back. (Palm Beach Post, 10/15/01) Dragomir takes two calls for the men from a woman who says she is calling from Canada. They drive a Honda Civic, which “was registered to the wife of a man in Thornhill, who said he and his friend had traveled to Florida in search of a job. Both are computer programmers, which is why they had the laptops.” National Post , 9/18/01

August 31, 2001 (approximately)—The residents of 486 Park Avenue in Paterson, including HANJOUR, Nawaq and Salem ALHAZMI, leave around this time. They depart in Nawaq ALHAZMI’s blue Toyota Corolla with California plates, the same car later discovered in the Dulles parking lot on September 11.

September 1, 2001--Nawaq ALHAZMI checks into the Pin-Del Motel. He rents Room 7 for $42.90 a night. As identification, he uses a phony New York drivers’ license listing 161 Lexington Avenue (a hotel where he’d never stayed) as his address. Newsday 9/23/01

The same day, according to CNN, Nawaq ALHAZMI returns the sedan to Borough Jeep-Chrysler in Wayne, NJ CNN, 9/26/01

September 1, 2001— British authorities later released a document indicating, among other things, that Bin Laden had warned around this time that he was about to launch a major attack on America. The British document, based on telephone intercepts and information gleaned from interrogations in Europe since the attacks in New York and Washington, reveals that orders were sent to a number of the network's key operatives to return to Afghanistan by September 10. Link

September 1, 2001--BAHAJI goes to his wife’s stepfather and asks to have DM 1000 to fly to Pakistan, where he will be taking a new “internship.” He gives his father-in-law power of attorney over his affairs in the event he didn’t return. He obtains visas for travel to Pakistan from the consulate.

September 1, 2001—ATTA goes to the American Airlines ticket counter at LaGuardia Airport in New York and purchases a ticket for an American Eagle flight from New York to Portland, ME that day. He also pays $1300 cash for an advance ticket for a one-way flight from Boston to Los Angeles on American Airlines Flight 11 on September 11th. When asked if he is coming back, says “No.” See Hijack Boss was in NY

There are stories that ATTA, AL-SHEHHI, and unspecified other hijackers are seen at Harry’s Bar in the Helmsley New York Hotel on East 42nd Street in ManhATTAn around this time. Link

By Sept. 2, All five of the 77 crew temporarily join a nearby Gold's Gym on Greenbelt Road.. Making conversation, a gym employee asked the meanings of their names. The 5’4” HANJOUR says his given name, Hani, means “warrior.” warrior. It really means “content.” Each of the men pays cash to work out at the gym during the week of Sept. 2 and signs the guest register with their own names. ALMIDHAR, MOQED, and HANJOUR buy weekly memberships for $30 apiece on September 2. Each returned several times, sometimes accompanied by one of the ALHAZMIs, who paid $10 daily memberships. None visited after September 6. They work out in groups, always with weights or resistance machines. (WP 9/18/01 and Link

September 3, 2001—According to the MOUSSAOUI indictment, ATTA, AL-SHEHHI, and Waleed ALSHEHRI wire $15,000 to “Mustafa Ahmed’s” account in Sharjah, UAE. They are returning unspent cash from the approximately $500,000 with which Al-Qaeda financed the operation. In the days preceding September 11, four separate payments were sent to the United Arab Emirates by the alleged hijackers. All four were made through Western Union Financial Services Inc. agents in the U.S., according to law enforcement officials. Link But according to Time magazine, in the 10 days leading up to the Sept. 11 hijackings, ATTA receives at least two wire transfers of cash from Egypt through a small Florida money-wiring business. Link

September 3, 2001—Abandoning his wife and six-month-old child, BAHAJI takes Turkish Airways from Hamburg to Istanbul and from there to Karachi, Pakistan. He spends one night at the Embassy Hotel in Karachi (from which he makes several calls to Hamburg) and is last reported in Quetta, on the Afghanistan border. Pakistani authorities report that he traveled with two Arab men with European passports. They are Abdellah Hosayni, a Belgian citizen of Algerian descent, and Ammar Moula, of Moroccan origin but travelling on a French passport. None of them show any signs of familiarity with each other until they are safely outside Karachi's Quaid-e-Azam airport. Link Other reports place him in Bahrain. The same day, BINALSHIBH, using the name “Ahad Sabet,” receives approximately $1500 by wire transfer from “Hashim Ahmed” in the UAE.

September 4-7, 2001—Around this time, a Frankfurt, Germany banker receives inquiries from French banks on the costs of borrowing extremely-high stakes—millions of shares—in Munich Re, an international reinsurance company, but he does not receive an order. Volume in Munich Re shares increases sharply (30 percent) at that time. The stock declines 16 percent in trading before the attacks. Munich Re’s reinsurance losses from September 11 are $910 million.

September 4, 2001—JARRAH receives $700 from his family in addition to his regular monthly stipend of $2,000. According to his uncle, Jammal JARRAH, he only told his family it was for "fun". He had earlier asked his family to urgently wire him $2,000 on top of his monthly stipend of $2,000, according to his uncle, Jamal JARRAH. Link

September 4, 2001—ATTA sends a FedEx package from Florida to the UAE.

September 5, 2001—Sakher “Rocky” Hammad, who works for Magic Plumbing and Heating on 93rd Street in Brooklyn, is known to have done work on the sprinkler system in the World Trade Center, and when arrested he has a photo ID WTC visitor’s pass for this date. The identity of the tenant who hired him is not known. On 2/5/02, Hammad is one of five Arab men arrested in connection with the fiery murder of Tennessee drivers’ license examiner Katherine Smith several days earlier. Hammad also spent time in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn in 2000. Link “The sprinkler system had turned on and had started to do something, but it wasn't doing its job as it should, so there was water sloshing down the stairways.” Link

September 5, 2001—BINALSHIBH flies to Madrid, Spain and has not been seen again. The New York Post speculated that he had fled to Afghanistan. ZAMMAR also disappeared around this time and is believed to be in Morocco.

September 5, 2001—Khalid ALMIDHAR uses a Daytona Beach address to book a reservation over the American Airlines Web site, using his frequent-flier number, which he had established the day before, according to FBI documents. MIDHAR(77-2) and MOQUED(77-3) attempt to buy tickets online, but their card fails to go through because of a mismatched mailing address on the Visa card. They drive to BWI airport , about a 20-minute drive from the Valencia motel, and pay cash for their one-way tickets. In spite of ALMIDHAR’s name being on the terrorist watch list, there is no problem. Link

September 5, 2001—JARRAH and AL-HAZNAWI visit Passage Tours on Commercial Boulevard on Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, a few blocks from their apartment on Bougainvilla Street. They buy one-way tickets on a Sept. 7 flight to Newark. They buy box-cutter knives with blades under the four-inch maximum that can be carried onto a plane before September 11. Across the street at Mile High Travel, Saeed ALGHAMDI and ALNAMI pay cash for 9/7 tickets to Newark. PBP 10/15/01

September 5-6, 2001—French intelligence informs the Americans about MOUSSAOUI’s al-Qaeda links in a bilateral meeting of intelligence agents in Paris.

September 6, 2001—ESSABAR flees Germany by unknown means. He and BAHAJI are last seen together in the camps in Afghanistan in late September. Link

September 6, 2001—Approximately $8,055 is wired from Fayez AHMED/BANIHAMMAD’s (175) Florida SunTrust account to the Standard Chartered Bank account over which AL-HAWSAWI had power of attorney.

September 6, 2001—Trading begins on October 30 puts, again showing unusually-high activity in put options on UAL Corp. On September 6-7 The Chicago Board Options Exchange sells 4,744 put options on UAL versus 396 call options. There is also sudden high volatility on American Airlines. Reuters 9/20/01 The brokerage Morgan Stanley, the largest single WTC tenant, has seen on average 27 put options a day purchased on it; in the five days before the attacks, 2,157 are sold.

September 6, 2001—At New Utrecht High School in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, a freshman, the son of Pakistani immigrants, points out the window to the twin towers of the WTC and says, “Do you see those two buildings? They won’t be standing there next week.” Link

September 6, 2001—Security cameras capture a white Mitsubishi Mirage sedan rented from an Alamo agency near the airport entering a parking garage at Logan International Airport in Boston. It stays there from 2:15 PM to 4 PM. The same car appears there multiple times in the next several days. At first the assumption was that the hijackers were casing the ariport. (On September 11, investigators later find a "ramp pass" to enter restricted areas of the airport in the car.) But they could just be picking up other hijackers as they arrive. Link

September 7, 2001—At a wedding in Todi, Italy, Jean-Marie Benjamin, 55, a priest with multiple contacts in the Muslim world, especially Iraq, ( Link) explains informally to a judge and several politicians that he had been told that a terrorist team was preparing an attack, with hijacked airplanes, on US and British population centers. Link

September 7, 2001—AL-SUQAMI(11) and ALOMARI (11) fly from Florida to Boston.

September 7, 2001— Hamza ALGHAMDI(175-2) and Mohand ALSHEHRI (175-5) travel from Fort Lauderdale to Newark on Spirit Airlines. They paid a travel agent (Mile High Travel in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea) $139.75 in cash each for one-way tickets.

September 7, 2001—About 10:30 a.m., all five of the 77 team (HANJOUR, ALMIDHAR and ALHAZMI and two others) leave the Valencia for good. The San Diego crew stays intact right onto their aircraft.

September 7, 2001 (some sources say September 8, but most specifically mention Friday, which was 9/7) Link )—ATTA goes to Shuckum’s Oyster Bar and Grill in Hollywood, FL., with AL-SHEHHI. According to bar staff, ATTA spends almost four hours playing video Trivial Pursuit and drinking cranberry juice, (earlier sources Link said that ATTA had five Vodka and orange juices –“They were wasted” said the bartender--Time, Link while AL-SHEHHI drinks rum and cokes with an still-unidentified third male. AL-SHEHHI sends his food back to the kitchen. After they dispute the bill and the waitress thinks they don’t have the money, ATTA, miffed, says, “You think I can’t pay? I’m a pilot for American Airlines. I can pay my fucking bill.”

September 8, 2001—Facing international sanctions, the top banking authorities of Oman and the UAE hold a news conference to announce that they would enact laws to combat money laundering by the end of the year. LAT 1/21/02

September 8, 2001—In Dubai, UAE, an Arab male retrieves the FedEx package sent by ATTA from Florida on 9/4.

September 7 or 8, 2001—Nawaq and possibly Salem ALHAZMI reportedly shop at the Champs and Macy’s stores in the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne, NJ, this weekend. Link

September 8, 2001, morning—ATTA visits South Florida Crop Care in Belle Glade for the last time. Link Later in the day, ATTA wires $2800, then $5000, to “Mustafa Ahmed” in the UAE.

September 8, 2001, evening—Germany's daily 'Bild' reported on October 16, quoting FBI information, ATTA and Al- Shehhi meet at Harry's Bar at the four-star Helmsley Hotel in Manhattan, four kilometers (2.5 miles) from the WTC. As the story goes, ATTA and AL-SHEHHI meet two other men at the bar "at a small table next to the piano" and stay for several hours, the paper said. ATTA pays for drinks with a credit card while AL-SHEHHI pays in cash. ATTAcks/16suspects.html+ATTA+Helmsley&hl=en”> Link

September 8, 2001—As they prepare to strike, the hijackers split up and stay in moderately priced hotels in Boston. At around 8 p.m., Fayez AHMED/BANIHAMMAD, having left the Panther Motel and flown up from Florida, shows up at the Milner Hotel on the edge of Boston's downtown theater district. Accompanied by another man, AHMED/BANIHAMMAD asks a hotel employee to fill out a registration card for him, explaining that his English is poor. Link

Waleed ALSHEHRI and Wail ALSHEHRI stay in room 432 at the Park Inn in Newton, MA; two others spend Sept. 9 and 10 at the Milner Hotel in Boston; Ahmed ALGHAMDIand Hamza ALGHAMDI stay at the Day's Hotel in Brighton; two others are at the upscale Charles Hotel in Cambridge.

September 8-9—The three unknown current residents of HANJOUR’s old apartment in San Diego suddenly move out. Link

September 9, 2001—Just after midnight, JARRAH receives a speeding ticket for driving 90 mph in a 65 mph zone on Interstate 95. JARRAH is driving a rental car at that time. Link JARRAH makes his final phone call to his family. He confirms receipt of the money sent on the 4th. The family reports he was cheerful and normal and said he'd see them Sept. 22 for a family wedding.

September 9, 2001—Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Massoud is assassinated by two al-Qaeda operatives pretending to be Arab journalists.

September 9, 2001—Foreign intelligence officials intercept a telephone call on between Osama bin Laden and his adoptive mother Al-Kalifa in Syria, according to a report by NBC. "In two days, you're going to hear big news, and you're not going to hear from me for a while," says bin Laden. AJC 10/2/01 Link

September 9, 2001—The owner, Richard Surma, notices that AL-SHEHHI, another tenant, (AHMED/BANIHAMMAD, presumably) and one other visitor who was constantly with them, have left the Panther Motel. AL-SHEHHI shaves his goatee before he departs, leaving only a mustache. AL-SHEHHI then returns the rental Corsica to Warrick’s for good., with an additional 1,035 miles on it. Link AL-SHEHHI flies to Boston. After they leave, owner Surma, cleaning out the rooms at the Panther, finds a tote bag in the trash. It is packed with aeronautical maps of the entire East Coast, martial arts books, a protractor, an English-German dictionary, Boeing 757 flight manuals, books from a flight school, and computer printouts with a detailed list of airline flights and times. A maid, cleaning the room, finds a box cutter. --Chicago Tribune 9/17/01

In Boston, AL-SHEHHI rents the room next to AHMED/BANIHAMMAD at the Milner. He makes a call from the room to Western Union, which authorities believe was one final attempt to refund unneeded cash to their contact in the United Arab Emirates. At some point in the day AL-SHEHHI wires $5400 to “Mustafa Ahmad” in the UAE. Link

September 9, 2001—Waleed AL-SHEHRI (11) wires $5000 to “Ahamad Mustafa” in the UAE. At some point in the day Wail and Waleed AL-SHEHRI order a call girl and pay her $180 for a 20-minute session.

September 9, 2001, 8:27 AM—The white Mistubishi appears at Logan airport again, remaining until 9:13 AM. Boston Globe 9/23/01

September 9, 2001— ATTA arrives in Boston. At Logan Airport, he watches that day’s American Airlines Flight 11 as it prepares for departure. He stands there at the gate with no luggage or briefcase, only a folder. A passenger remembers: “When I was actually boarding the airplane, he was standing at the gate counter writing on a card…the only thing he could see of the airplane was the pilots and the front of the airplane.” Link The same witness had seen him at curbside, asking “strange” questions. Later, he meets up with ALOMARI. They rent a blue 2001 Nissan Altima with Massachusetts license 3335VI at an Alamo Rent-a-Car in Boston at around 6 PM. They spend the night in a Boston hotel.

September 9, 2001, 4:15 PM—The white Mitsubishi returns to Logan again. It leaves at 5:39 PM.

September 10, 2001—There are 4,526 put options bought on UAL versus 748 call options. For American Airlines, the number of puts is 60 times the daily average.

September 10, 2001, afternoon—One of the Flight 93 hijackers goes to Nardone’s, a go-go bar on Route 1 in Elizabeth, NJ., about two miles from Newark International Airport. He has one beer and pays $20 to watch a dancer in the private VIP room. Link

September 10, 2001, 4:25 PM—The white Mitsubishi returns to Logan again. It leaves at 5:05 PM.

September 10, 2001—ATTA and ALOMARI drive 100 miles north to Portland, ME in the afternoon. At a toll booth at Exit 13 of the Massachusetts Turnpike, ATTA “boils over in anger” when the operator demands that he pay the $3.10 toll. He speeds away without paying, and the toll taker writes down their tag number.

September 10, 2001—Hamza ALGHAMDIchecks into the Days Hotel in Boston's Brighton neighborhood. He is signed in as "Ghamdi." ATTA+taxi+Hamburg&hl=en”> Link

September 10—Sometime today, JARRAH writes a farewell letter to his girlfriend. "You should be very proud, because it is an honor and in the end you will see that everyone will be happy." According to Der Spiegel, the four-page letter is dated Sept. 10. Because of a mistake in the address, the package was returned to the United States and fell into the hands of the FBI.

September 10, 2001, 6:59 PM—A message is posted to a Yahoo financial message board reads “to the deapest part called the center of the earth by this wekend north east region will be destroyed new providance soon to fall apart.” Link

September 10, 2001—ATTA and ALOMARI arrive in Maine and check in to the Comfort Inn in South Portland, about a mile from the Portland International Jetport, at about 5:45 PM.
Sometime between 8:00 pm and 9:00 pm, ATTA and ALOMARI are seen at Pizza Hut, 415 Maine Mall Road, South Portland, Maine, for approximately fifteen (15) minutes. This is apparently their last meal on earth.
8:31 PM --ATTA and ALOMARI make a cash withdrawal at a Key Bank drive-up ATM, 445 Gorham Road, South Portland.
8:41 PM—they are next recorded at a Fast Green ATM, located in the parking lot of a Pizzeria Uno restaurant, 280 Maine Mall Road, South Portland. They leave the account almost empty.
9:15 PM—They buy gasoline for their car at the Jetport Gas Station on 446 Western, Avenue, South Portland.
9:22 PM—ATTA enters a Wal-Mart on 451 Payne Road in Scarborough and spends twenty minutes there. ATTAck/investigation/ausport10042001.htm http://www.webdesk.com/terrorists-in-maine/”> Link
Others believe ATTA viewed the Portland flight as a final test run for the plan to carry small knives onto planes.

September 10, 2001—AL-SHEHHI, AHMED/BANIHAMMAD, Mohand ALSHEHRI, and AL-SUQAMI price prostitutes, but found their prices too high.

Two of ATTA's bags, bearing his name tags, don't make the transfer. http://www.suntimes.com/terror/stories/cst-nws-hijack16s1.html According to Der Spiegel, the FBI examines the bags and finds, among other things, a videotape on how to fly a Boeing 757 and 747.and airline uniforms. The immediate speculation is that the hijackers or some of their associates used the uniforms to gain access to areas of Logan Airport that would normally be secure. The FBI also wonders whether the uniforms were connected to an April 2001 break-in at the Hotel Nazionale in central Rome, in which two American Airlines pilots said they were robbed of their uniforms, badges, and airport access badges. An unidentified third vehicle, rented from a local Dollar Rent a Car franchise, is also found at Logan. Previously, investigators had identified two cars rented from the Boston office of Alamo Rent a Car. Link

September 10, 2001—At the Pink Pony Nude Theater in Daytona Beach, FL, a man with a Middle-Eastern accent sitting with two other men says “Tomorrow America will see bloodshed.” They leave a Koran behind at the strip club. Orlando Sentinel, 9/14/01

In NawaqALZHAMI’s car at Dulles, police find a cashier’s check made out to a flight school in Phoenix., four drawings of the cockpit of a Boeing 757, a box cutter, a map of Washington, and a handwritten note with the name “Mohumed” and ABDI’s northern Virginai phone number. ABDI had entered the USA as a Somali refugee on an I-94 visa. He had formerly worked for Caterair, an airline caterer at National Airport. When ABDI is picked up a few days later, on his person was a newspaper article about Ahmed Ressam’;s 1999 attempt to smuggle explosives across the border. (Human Events, 10/15/01) There was apparently another handwritten note saying “OSAMA 5895316,” AWADALLAH’s first name and old phone number on it (CNN 2/18/02)

September 11, 2001, just after midnight—Outside Newark International Airport, three men park a red Mitsubishi Galant at the entrance to the Airport Marriott hotel while two of them check in. The third man drives the car to a nearby Days Inn. All three were later positively identified as Flight 93 hijackers. One of the men in the Marriott is JARRAH, who paid $450 in cash for two no-smoking rooms, each with a double bed. The one with him is probably his roommate AL-HAZNAWI, though this is just a guess. The rooms JARRAH chooses have a clear view of the New York skyline. Link Link AL-HAZNAWI's final bank statement, opened after Sept. 11 by his former landlord, showed that he left behind just $14. Link

At some point on the evening of the 10th, all of the hijackers, as required, read the “Instructions for the final night,” which were found in multiple places after the attacks, including in the wreckage of Flight 93. There are 16 in all. They begin:
1. Renew your convenant with God.
2. Know all aspects of the plan well and expect reaction and resistance from the enemy.
Instruction No 3 is to read the ninth sura of the Koran. This sura, usually known as al-Tawba (penitence) or al-Bara'at (immunity), is the only one among the 114 suras in the Koran which does not begin with the words: "In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful." Some have suggested that this is because of the stern injunctions it contains: "When the sacred months have passed away, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush” Link According to Bin Laden on the captured video, the “soldiers” knew that this was a martyrdom operation, but were not told until just before they boarded the plane. Clearly the four pilots, plus Nawaq ALHAZMI and ALMIDHAR, knew all. “Be calm and resolute, young man,” says ATTA’s letter to the hijackers, “For you will soon be going to paradise.” Link

September 11, 2001—In the UAE, approximately $16,348 is depositied into AL-HAWSAWI’s Standard Chartered Bank account. Then, at 9:22 AM local time, AL-HAWSAWI moves approximately $6534 from the $8,055 in Fayez AHMED/BANIHAMMAD’s (175) Standard Chartered Bank account into his own account, using a check dated September 10, 2001 and signed by Fayez AHMED/BANIHAMMAD; AL-HAWSAWI then withdraws approximately $1361, nearly all the remaining balance in AHMED/BANIHAMMAD’s account, by ATM cash withdrawal. Later that day, AL-HAWSAWI left the UAE for Karachi, Pakistan.

5:30 AM—ATTA and ALOMARI check out of the Comfort Inn, putting the $135 charge on ATTA’s Visa card. They leave an airline timetable on their room. After driving less than a mile to the airport, they park their Nissan and enter the airport. They drive the short distance to the Portland International Jetport and leave the Nissan there. Police find the “final night” instructions, plusemaps of New England and Boston, facial tissues, a toothpick, and an empty bag of Chips Ahoy crumpled in the ashtray. Link
5:40 AM—ATTA and ALOMARI enter Portland International Jetport Airport parking lot. They park on the first floor directly across from the airport entrance.
5:43—ATTA and ALOMARI check in at the U.S. Airways counter.
5:53 AM—The final pictures of ATTA and ALOMARI are taken by the security cameras at the airport in Portland, as they pass through security before boarding a flight to Boston. Each carries a shoulder bag. ATTA and ALOMARI board separately, keep quiet and don't draw attention to themselves. Link However, once on the plane, they are described as “joined at the hip.” The Age, 9/17/01. The witness believed that they were business travelers, as it seemed that they were going over paperwork.
6:00 AM—ATTA and ALOMARI depart on their Colgan Air flight to Boston.
6:30 AM—The Colgan Air flight arrives at Logan Airport. ATTA and ALOMARI apparently clear another security checkpoint. At Logan, the pair sit by themselves in the waiting area by Gate 11, leaning forward in their seats and talking quietly, other passengers recall. ATTA is in seat 8A, next to ALOMARI, and across the aisle from David Angell and his wife Lynn. Link AL-SUQAMI is in 10B. The AL-SHEHRI brothers are in 2A and 2B.

After checking out the Valencia, Nawaq and Salem ALHAZMI board 77 together, checking in at the coach line rather than the first-class line. One of them shows a Massachusetts drivers’ license. Link

As Flight 11 is in line for takeoff, ATTA calls AL-SHEHHI, further back on the tarmac on UA 175, on his cellphone for the last time. The conversation lasts less than a minute, and is believed to have been a final confirmation that the plot was a go. AL-SHEHHI is in seat 6C. Ahmed ALGHAMDIis in 9D. AHMED/BANIHAMMAD is in 2A. Hamza AGHAMDI is in 9C.

JARRAH calls his girlfriend from the airport hotel in Newark. ALMIDHAR’s seat on 77 is 12B. Salem ALHAZMI 5E. Nawaq ALHAZMI 5F. HANJOUR is in 1B. MOQED 12A.

7:59 AM—AA Flight 11, a Boeing 767, departs Logan Airport with 81 passengers and 11 crew.

8:14 AM—UA Flight 175, a Boeing 767, departs Logan Airport with 56 passengers and 9 crew.

Approximately from 8:15-8:20 AM— Using box-cutters and small knives, ATTA and his team seize control of Flight 11. According to flight attendant Madeline Amy Sweeney, four attackers had cut the throat of a passenger in business class, killing him. They also stabbed the two flight attendants in First Class, including Karen Martin (who was given oxygen by the other flight attendants) and a pilot, she said. Flight attendant Betty Ong reported that two men in the eighth row [ATTA and ALOMARI] killed a man sitting behind them.. Ong also stated that the hijackers had sprayed something in her face—mace, presumably—that made her eyes burn and made breathing difficult. Three of the hijackers had been sitting in business class themselves and one [this could only be ATTA] spoke very good English.

That Sweeney mentioned four hijackers rather than five supports the theory that they used topographical cues to decide on when to make their move. It has been theorized that Flight 11 had the easiest navigation to the target, as its original route took it straight west, across the Hudson River valley. Following the river would have given ATTA a straight line of navigation to New York City, so for this reason the plane was seized early in the flight, since the landmark of the Hudson would be impossible to miss as long as the plane continued to the west. The hijackers didn’t need to keep the original pilots around after the climbout period. The fifth hijacker, therefore, would be needed to watch for the Hudson valley during the seizure period. Almost certainly this function was performed by one of the AL-SHEHRI brothers sitting in 2A. The dry runs the terrorists took during the summer would have been necessary to allow them to familiarize themselves with the topography.

The hijackers get into the cockpit, presumably, by drawing one of the flight crew out with their attacks on the flight attendants. Possibly by accident, someone keys the microphone so that their conversations could be heard by flight control in Nashua, NH. ATTA is heard saying, “Don’t do anything foolish. You’re not going to get hurt.” ATTA is also heard to say, “We have more planes, we have other planes.” It is possible that one of the hijackers falsely mentions to one of the American pilots an intention of heading toward LaGuardia or JFK airports in New York City.

Both cell phone calls reported that most of the coach passengers had no idea that anything was wrong.

8:20 AM—AA Flight 77 departs Dulles Airport.

Around 8:25 AM—Flight 11 makes a sharp right turn over Albany, NY. Its transponder is turned off.

Approximately 8:32 AM--Flight 175 is seized. 175 traveled a more southeasterly route, passing within easy visual range of the WTC towers. By this theory, the plane would have been seized the moment the towers became visible, as the towers themselves would have been the only necessary landmark. Again, this would have required the hijackers to have taken the flight previously, and to have sat in a window seat on the left side of the plane. On September 11, AHMED/BANIHAMMAD in 2A would have been the one to give the signal. The one call from 175 that we know of mentioned that men with knives were stabbing flight attendants in an attempt to force the crew to unlock the cockpit doors.

Around this time, multiple bomb threats are called in to the Boston and Cleveland Air-Traffic Control centers, which happen to be the ones handling the three flights currently in the air.

8:36 AM—Flight 175, now piloted by AL-SHEHHI, makes its first turn toward New Jersey. Shortly after, its transponders are turned off.

8:40 AM—FAA informs NORAD that Flight 11 has been hijacked.

8:42 AM—UA Flight 93—UA Flight 93 Departs Newark Airport with 38 passengers and 7 crew..

8:43 AM—FAA informs NORAD that Flight 175 has also been hijacked.

8:45 AM—Flight 11 crashes into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It is believed that all of the hijackers congregated in the cockpit at the final stages of the flight to shout their “Allahu akbars” together.

8:55 AM—Flight 77 suddenly turns to the east. Flight 77’s transponder is turned off just after it crosses the Ohio River, so this is probably the landmark the hijackers used. Barbara Olson’s phone call indicated that the hijackers had herded the passengers to the rear of the jet.

9:02 AM—Flight 175 crashes into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.

9:05 AM—Flight 77 appears as an unidentified blip on radar over West Virginia.

9:24 AM—FAA informs NORAD that Flight 77 has also been hijacked.

Approximately 9:30—Flight 93 is seized. Flight 93’s nearly 180-degree turn just before Cleveland indicates that the hijackers may have used the sighting of Lake Erie as a landmark and a signal to seize the plane. The route the hijackers took strongly suggests that its intended target was in Washington, DC. Link
The Flight 93 hijackers put on red bandannas just before they take over the plane. The headbands are a signature of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, who are known for wearing them during their machine-gun massacres on Coptic Christians and tourists at Luxor and elsewhere. It is not known whether any of the other three hijacker teams did this, but it is likely. The hijacker who is entrusted with guarding the passengers at the back of the plane wears a red box strapped to his waist, and claims to the passengers that it is a bomb. At least one passenger is murdered, along with the pilots.

9:37 AM—Ground controllers in Cleveland hear someone in broken English announce to the Flight 93 passengers that there was a bomb on board and that the plane was returning to the airport. The plane makes a sharp turn to the southeast at this time. The transponder is turned off at this time.

Freeper chris in nj says that the CVR tapes from Flight 93 “are an incredible amount of evidence against the 20th hijacker.” Link

9:30 AM—The “leader” of the Flight 77 hijackers, possibly ALMIDHAR, tells the Flight 77 passengers to call home because they are all about to die.

9:38 AM—Flight 77 crashes just short of the Pentagon.

10:03 AM—After an uprising by the passengers, Flight 93 crashes in Shanksville, PA.

There was an early theory that the hijackers had obtained access to the “jump seats” in the cockpits of the planes, but there is no hint of this in any of the recent accounts of the contents of the Flight 93 CVR. Link

Bin Laden tunes in to the radio to hear American news broadcasts of the event. "They were overjoyed when the first plane hit the building," he said on a video later obtained by American forces, talking about others listening with him that day. "So I said to them: Be patient." He said, "At the end of the newscast, they reported that a plane just hit the World Trade Center." "Allah be praised," replied one of the other men in the videotape. "After a little while, they announced that another plane had hit the World Trade Center," bin Laden recalled. "The brothers who heard the news were overjoyed by it." Bin Laden also mentions on the same video that “one group of people did not know the other,” but this was not essentially true.

Another flight out of Newark Airport that day, American Airlines Flight 43 to Los Angeles, is forced to land in St. Louis when the FAA grounds all commerical air traffic. Two passengers on this flight, Ayub Ali KHAN and Mohammed Jaweed AZMATH, board a train for San Antonio, but they are taken off the train by the FBI. They have boxcutters, disguises, and large amounts of cash with them. Khan and Azmath had lived at 6 Tonnele Ave., Jersey City, a four-story building with rooftop views of lower Manhattan, for about 2 1/2 years. Link It has been theorized that the two were part of a hijack team that lost its nerve. Given the very significant differences in age and ethnicity, and the apparent lack of contact that the two men had with the hijackers or their immediate associates—and also given the apparently wide circle in the American Muslim community who knew about the plot—one wonders if this was not an unofficial, “unsanctioned” hijacking.

MOUSSAOUI is seen cheering as he watches television pictures of the destruction from his secure unit. Shortly afterwards the FBI connects him with the attacks via BINALSHIBH. Finally, the FBI gets around to searching MOUSSAOUI’s computer, and find that it contains information about "dispersal of chemicals" as well as about crop-duster planes. MOUSSAOUI’s former roommate AL-ATTAS is arrested

September 13, 2001—The Visa card connected to AL-HAWSAWI’s account is used to make six ATM withdrawals in Karachi, Pakistan.

September 14, 2001—The Islamic prayer room at TUHH is shut down and the computer seized by German police.

September 16, 2001-- In India, Saudi diplomat Ahmed Alshehri, based in Bombay, denies he was the father of hijacker Waleed M. ALSHEHRI. Reports from a Saudi newspaper editor say that both Waleed and Wail ALSHEHRI were Ahmed's sons.

Around September 20—ATTAR leaves Germany for Sudan, where he lives openly.

November 9, 2001—A video is recorded in Afghanistan on which Osama Bin Laden names many of the hijackers, including Nawaq ALHAZMI, Salem ALHAZMI, and Wail ALSHEHRI, along with JARRAH and ATTA, and commends them to Allah. He mentions the AL-SHEHRI family name seven times, and the ALHAZMI and ALGHAMDI family names multiple times. He acknowledges that ATTA ran the operation: "Not everybody knew (...inaudible...). Mohammad (ATTA) from the Egyptian family (meaning the al-Qaida Egyptian group), was in charge of the group," bin Laden said on the tape.The tape is found in Jalalabad a week or two later.CBS News 12/20/01

November 16, 2001—BINALSHIBH’s suicide video is discovered in the rubble of Mohammed Atef’s house in Kabul. He and four others are seen on the tape wearing red cloth knotted around their heads, as the hijackers of Flight 93 (and likely the others) did.

December 9, 2001—SUFAAT is arrested as he returns to Malaysia from Afghanistan.

December 11, 2001—MOUSSAOUI is indicted by the Justice Department. BINALSHIBH is named in the indictment.

December 18, 2001—The Czech government issues a rather oddly-worded debunking of the story of ATTA’s visit to AL-ANI in April 2001, saying that that “there were no documents showing that ATTA visited Prague at any time this year, although he had visited twice in 2000.” Link

December 21, 2001—The U.S. government releases the November 9 Bin Laden tape. Link

December 22, 2001—Richard Reid attempts to blow up AA Flight 63.

January 17, 2002—The U.S. Government releases a portion of the BINALSHIBH tape found in Afghanistan on November 16.

February 14, 2002-- Sameer Mohammed Ahmed al-Hada, a brother-in-law of ALMIDHAR, blows himself up after being cornered by security forces in a suburb of San’a, Yemen.

March 11, 2002—Exactly six months after the attacks, Huffman Aviation receives paperwork from the INS announcing that student visas had been approved for ATTA and AL-SHEHHI.

March 13, 2002— It is revealed that the FAA is still sending e-mails toJARRAH at the apartment in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. Link

March 29, 2002— The white 1995 Ford Escort and 1996 faded-blue Chevrolet Corsica from Warrick Rent-a-Car. that were driven by ATTA are put up for sale, attracting offers up to $250,000. Link

Ah, so it was just a gut reaction. So no pondering.

Thanks.

Shermy,

You were usually on the anthrax threads. Do you remember a freeper, Badabing? Or Tadabing? He was usually on the anthrax threads too.

There was a thread, last year? About the Comfort Inn in Maine.

A woman came onto that thread claiming to be an owner or manager of the Comfort Inn.

She was a little freaked by some agents investigation them.

She also private freep mailed me, Tadabing and I think a few other freepers on that thread.

I just checked my freeper links and the thread I thought it was, was pulled.

Any of this ringing a bell?

I remember that poster. post on the most recent anthrax thread where alot of the FR anthrax experts are, they will know:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1457633/posts

Charles Schumer enjoyed a nice donation from Blackstone. And Kuschner. And Silverstein....

Thanks Oceanview!!!!

Thanks for all the links.

I haven't had time to read trough them all, but I couldn't find this (Abu Nidal, September 11 and Saddam The terrorist network may be closer knit than we think) in your list.

It provides a link not between Iraq and Atta, but between Ziad Jarrah (plane 4 hijacker), his great uncle, and Iraq. According to the article and articles published in the German magazine Der Spiegel the elder Jarrah was run by the East German secret police, STASI.

The East Germans had a lot of connections both with Iraq and Arab/Islamic terror organizations. Here are few quotations from "The Stasi Files" by Anthony Glees published by Simon & Schuster, 2003 (A Glees is a professor of Contemporary History, and one of the last researchers to gain access to the Stasi archives in Berlin before the German government reclassified key parts of it as secret in 2002):

p 215: It is important to recall that in a key interview in Die Welt in April 1990, a leading member of the East German regime, Alexander Schalk-Golodowski, admitted that the GDR had channeled arms to the Middle East to the tune of DM 650 million by 1989 (19). The chief recipient of these weapons had been groups in Iraq, Jordan and Egypt [.......] He added that Stasi had used a "technical engineering company" to conceal the GDR's lethal trade in arms.

Then follows an interesting discussion about two former Stasi agents, Erich Schwager and Edgar Uher, where the former was an expert in chemical and radiation protection - in other words WMD "and his knowledge of chemical weaponry, strongly suggest that he was at the time deeply involved in the secret arms trade, selling East German weapons to Arab and Latin American terrorist groups from his London base and possibly to the IRA as well." (p. 216)

Today Schwager and Uher are involved with two companies MZ-B (sales of motorcycle parts) and Moha who undertakes "industrial engineering" and was established 1986 by a MK Hadeed and is based in Amman, Jordan.

Professor Glees is careful to point out that there is nothing to indicate that the company based in the Middle East has anything to do with Schwager's previous activities, however he finds it "breathtaking that, at the time of writing, Schwager had not been called to account for his activities in the 1980s. (p. 217)

Further on p 217: The Stasi involvement with terrorism, in particular Middle Eastern and Islamic terrorism, was not known about before February 1990. (23) [.......] By June 1990 the arrest of Susanne Albrecht, who had murdered the banker Jûrgen Ponto, showed an even more chilling aspect of the Stasi's links with international terrorism: in 1977 the Stasi had arranged for her to find refuge in South Yemen.

(I will come back to first statement in this paragraph since this has bearing on the Able Danger affair, I believe.)

p. 219: Further evidence of the Stasi's interest in promoting Arab terrorism, especially in Iraq and the Lebanon, emerged from a further 1990 interview. (26).

References

19: Gesamtdeutsches Institut/Bundesanstalt für gesamtdeutsches Aufgaben, Dokumentation, vol. 3, p.37.

23: Ibid. vol 4, pp. 24-9.

26: Ibid. vol 4, pp. 65-8.

Some points to make:

I have not been able to find any link between Schwager / Uher and Jarrah or MK Hadeed. However, Assem Omar Jarrah's activities are interesting, and the suspicions are certainly strengthened in the light of Schalk-Golodowski's statement regarding GDR's arms trade and how it was concealed. Not data mining, but there seems to be a pattern.

Then I would like to take issue with the statement that Stasi's involvement with terrorism was not known before 1990. Some people did know it. Claire Sterling wrote a book about in 1981, and Bill Casey and the people he brought with him to the CIA did know about it. However, others also at the CIA had made a career of denying this connection, and of course the State Department was totally opposed to any link between the terror organizations and Soviet Russia and its allies.

I have posted a number of posts on FR both re Bill Casey and Sterling's "Terror Network" and also Senator D'Amato quoting Ms Sterling in the US Senate regarding the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, another issue where Bill Casey and "the old CIA" had very different views.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/1991_cr/s911105-gates2.htm

Of course after the fall of the Berlin wall and all that followed it has been shown conclusively that Casey / Sterling were right and the naysayers were wrong. However, these facts have come to earth slowly, slowly and the whole issue about the Soviet Union's use of terror to destabilize the West is now thought of as an academic, historical question. Thus, many people (politicians, academics, operatives within the intelligence community) have never seen the need to reassess their views on things.

And that is why the Iraq / Al Queda connection is so dangerous. And it may become even worse if it is shown that not only is it a "Muslim thing" but that it can also be traced back to the non-acknowledged activities by the Soviet Union and its proxies.

Definitely, the evidence regarding the Gorelick wall points to a cover up to protect the Clinton's from unwarranted investigations, but I would like to make the point that this is not the only agenda that was (and is) played out. There are many careers riding on the outcome of this affair. (And not only careers, but the balance between State and DOD.)

I pointed out in a one of my first comments on the Able Danger affair that this is dangerous ground and it appears that people have already lost their positions (or more) due to the conflict regarding the Iraq - al Quaeda connection.

(See this link and post #68 and compare with this:

Pentagon challenges Rockefeller on Feith hit

Fury over Pentagon cell that briefed White House on Iraq's 'imaginary' al-Qaeda links

All I can say is cudos to LtCol Schaffer for joining this battle which is promising to be long and bloody.

"Definitely, the evidence regarding the Gorelick wall points to a cover up to protect the Clinton's from unwarranted investigations, but I would like to make the point that this is not the only agenda that was (and is) played out. There are many careers riding on the outcome of this affair. (And not only careers, but the balance between State and DOD.)"

Yes, I certainly agree and have also argued on other threads that there are loads and loads of careerists in State, CIA, and other intel agencies (and Clintonlite political appointees who are holdovers or who burrowed into civil service positions) who desperately want a lot of failures of the past decade to be covered up and/or forgotten. The vicious public salvos from Joe Wilson, Richard Clarke et al are just the most visible aspect of the war that's going on within both government and media -- a war for control of past, present and future. The people like Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame who remain burrowed into the bureaucracies cannot allow Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Goss to succeed.... no matter what the cost to accurate intel or our national security, there are many many lib dinosaurs who are trying to have the last word. They must be vanquished NOW.

They must be vanquished NOW.

Agree wholeheartedly.

Sorry I forgot to "ping" you, but you found my post anyway.

:-)

found Atta by linkages not to immigration issues but to the mosque system,"

THAT is why no one would touch this information, because it linked terror to the Religion of Peace, and well we can't have that.

...... especially after.... well after reading the new Iraqi Constipatution.