The Washington Post refers to hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar when it later reports, “In November 1999, two Saudi Arabian men moved into a ground-floor apartment at the Parkwood Apartments, a town house complex near a busy commercial strip in San Diego .” [Washington Post, 9/30/01] Alhazmi's name is on the apartment lease beginning in November 1999. [Washington Post, 10/01] The Los Angeles Times similarly notes, “A man by [the name Alhazmi] moved to the Parkwood Apartments in San Diego in 1999, according to manager Holly Ratchford.” [Los Angeles Times, 9/15/01] Some reports even have them visiting the US as early as 1996. [Wall Street Journal, 9/17/01; Las Vegas Review Journal, 10/26/01] However, FBI Director Mueller has stated the two hijackers did not arrive in the US until the middle of January 2000, after an important meeting in Malaysia. While some news reports mention that the hijackers first arrive in late 1999 [Los Angeles Times, 9/1/02; Los Angeles Times, 11/24/02] , over time, mentions of the lease beginning in 1999 will slowly fade from media accounts.
And what about Johnelle Bryant...
According to Bryant, who has worked at the government agency for 16 years, Atta arrived in her office sometime between the end of April and the middle of May 2000, inquiring about a loan to finance an aircraft.
Then there is this:
The FBI also told the owners of the Norman flight school in 1999 that the FBI knew then of other pilots who had visited the Norman flight school that the FBI also knew were training for airplane attacks on public buildings including Mohammed Atta as well as Bin Laden’s own personal pilot.
Atta was known to have aliases and false passports:
Spanish police last February arrested Algerians Khaled Madani, 33, and Moussa Laour, 36, on suspicion of furnishing phony passports to, among others, al Qaeda operatives Ramzi Binalshibh and Mohamed Atta. According to a February 29 Associated Press dispatch, Binalshibh revealed Madani's identity to interrogators at the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Joanelle Bryant's testimony is of course very relevant and should have been hard to discount. If it is true Atta was certainly in the US before the official timeline. However, since AD was closed down in May - June 2000, and Ms Bryant saw Atta in April/May 2000 it would have been just on the edge for AD to have caught Atta in the US (unless he hadn't been in the country for much longer than that).
I feel that the fact that AD had him pinpointed even outside the US strengthens their case. And it also puts a lie to the "multiple Atta theory". That "theory" has been discussed and discounted previously here on FR. (Can be found among the AD threads.)
I fully agree with you on the question of false passports. I am greatful for the reference to the Spanish connection, but even without that it seems ludicrous to discount the possibility that Atta and other AQ operators used false identities to travel in and out of the US. Also, Mark Steyn wrote about the bus trips between Canada and the US - no checks at all. So it would have been easy to fly into Canada on a false passport (less stringent checks than the US) and then take a bus across the border.
And anyway, pre-911 2001 it was all too easy to get hold of a false passport - and I'm not sure it has changed all that much since. Here is a "cute" story about Belgian passport forgery: How to Fake a Passport