Posted on 09/12/2001 7:56:09 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
Sept. 12 — One day into what promises to be the biggest criminal investigation ever, authorities have determined that at least a dozen terrorists took part in the assault on America, including pilots who were trained in the United States, Attorney General John Ashcroft said Wednesday. Meanwhile, FBI agents fanned out in Florida, Massachusetts and elsewhere to question associates and obtain evidence about who was behind the plot to commandeer four airliners and use them as flying bombs.“THE FOUR PLANES were hijacked by between three and six individuals per plane, using knives and box cutters, and in some cases making bomb threats,” said Ashcroft, speaking at a news conference in Washington. “A number of the suspected hijackers were trained as pilots in the United States.”
Ashcroft’s comment means that a minimum of 12 people — and maximum of 24 — were involved in the attacks.
Agents fanned out across the country in a massive effort to learn everything possible about the suspects and to prevent their associates from vanishing, FBI Director Robert Mueller said at the briefing.
Mueller disputed reports that associates of the suspected terrorists had been arrested, but allowed that some individuals had been detained and questioned.
Among the conflicting reports was an account published by the Boston Globe that three people were taken into custody Wednesday during a police raid on a Boston hotel.
Guests were ordered to evacuate the 36-story Westin Hotel in Boston’s Back Bay section, according to a guest leaving the hotel who declined to give his name. As a large crowd gathered outside, one person was taken out of the hotel and put in a van.
“SWAT teams were all around holding machine guns,” said R.J. Ryan, who was among hundreds of onlookers. “They put somebody in the van. Then they started moving everybody.”
The Boston Globe said three people were arrested in the raid after they had been linked to a credit card used to purchase tickets for hijackers who took over the flights that later crashed into the World Trade Center, both of which originated in Boston.
It said it was not known whether they were considered suspects in the bombing.
Media outlets also reported that a train that had passed through Boston was halted, evacuated and searched Wednesday in Providence, R.I. One man wearing a green turban was led away in handcuffs.
Col. Richard Sullivan, the Providence police chief, said later that the man did not appear to have any connection with the terrorist acts. But he was charged with a weapons violation for carrying a knife, Sullivan said. He remained in custody on Wednesday afternoon.
NBC News also reported that two people believed to be connected to the attacks had been arrested in Portsmouth, Va. No details on their relationship to the case were immediately available. Earlier in the day, law enforcement officials who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity said people were being arrested as material witnesses if they declined to answer questions or otherwise cooperate.
CLUES FOUND AT LOGAN AIRPORT
Within hours of Tuesday’s devastating attacks, investigators launched a massive manhunt for the perpetrators. They quickly uncovered their first leads at Boston’s Logan airport.
U.S. intelligence sources told MSNBC.com that FBI agents had located a car that apparently carried some of the terrorists to the airport, where the two hijacked flights that destroyed the World Trade Center originated.
Video from surveillance cameras showed that five men, all apparently of Arabic origin, left the rented car in an airport garage, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Flight manuals in Arabic and paperwork were found in the vehicle.
The Boston Herald, quoting a source close to the investigation, said the FBI had obtained a warrant to further search the Mitsubishi sedan rented from National Car Rental.
Intelligence officials also said that the FBI has determined that at least two of the suspected terrorists were carrying passports from the United Arab Emirates, the tiny Arabian Gulf sheikdom known as a major banking and commerce center. The Herald reported that the two were brothers and that one was a trained pilot.
In addition to the five men from the car, authorities said two men apparently flew to Logan International Airport from Portland, Maine, to rendezvous with the rest of the group.
Portland police Chief Michael Chitwood said the FBI had asked his department to focus on the men, who left Portland on a 6 a.m. US Air flight and arrived in Boston at 6:30 a.m.
He did not identify the men, but said investigators had been able to obtain photos of them from airport security cameras.
The Associated Press quoted unidentified federal authorities as saying that at least one group of hijackers is believed to have crossed from Canada and had ties to Osama bin Laden, the America-hating Saudi dissident believed to be hiding in Afghanistan. Those officials said they were investigating whether four separate terrorist “cells” were involved in the attacks.
In addition to the action in the Northeast, agents were searching a number of locations in Florida, where at least three of the terrorism suspects were believed to have been living in recent months.
Law enforcement sources told MSNBC.com that one of the trails agents were following in Florida was that of Ali Muhammed al-Darmaki, one of the U.S.-trained pilots believed to have perpetrated and died in Tuesday’s attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said al-Darmaki had attended Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, though he never completed his training because of bad grades. It was not known how far he got in the course.
A second student, who like al-Darmaki was originally from the Middle East, did not show up for classes on Tuesday, the sources said.
University spokeswoman Lisa Ledewitz said one out of every four commercial airline pilots was trained at Embry-Riddle. Students train in single-engine planes and until last December the school used a Boeing 737 simulator.
Ledewitz said all international students who enroll in the pilot program have to receive prior approval from the U.S. State Department.
Sources also told NBC that the name of one passenger obtained from the flight manifests — Mohammed Atta — drew the immediate attention of the FBI because of suspected links to a terrorist organization. He and a third man, Marwan al Shehhi, also underwent flight training in Florida, the sources said.
Atta’s former residence near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was among the locations where FBI agents were searching for clues on Wednesday, the sources said.
Agents carted away eight to 10 boxes of records from a flying school in Venice, Fla., where the 33-year-old Atta and al Shehhi, 23, took lessons to obtain their commercial flight rating.
A bookkeeper at the school told NBC News that the men, who said they were cousins from Hamburg, Germany, graduated in January. The men kept to themselves and did not mingle with other students, the bookkeeper said.
Atta and Shehhi lived briefly with a local couple, Charles and Drew Voss, but Drew Voss told NBC that she kicked them out after about a week because they were rude.
She said the men also told her they were German, with Atta saying his name was Otto.
In Coral Springs, FBI agents visited an apartment complex that Atta listed as his last address with the state motor vehicle agency.
The FBI in Miami issued a national bulletin for law enforcement agencies to look out for two cars. Records with the Florida Division of Motor Vehicles show that one of the vehicles the FBI was pursuing — a 1989 red Pontiac — was registered to Atta.
Another search warrant was executed Tuesday night in the Davie area of Broward County, west of Fort Lauderdale, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported without providing details.
Terrorism experts, both in and outside the U.S. government, remained confident that the clues obtained in the United States eventually would lead to Osama bin Laden.
Bin Laden has strong family ties and a group of supporters in Boston and those connections are now being closely scrutinized, said Robert Fitzpatrick, the former second-in-command at the FBI’s Boston office.
One of bin Laden’s brothers set up scholarship funds at Harvard, while another relative owns six condominiums in an expensive complex in the Charlestown section of Boston. Two bin Laden associates once worked as Boston cab drivers, including one who was jailed in Jordan on charges of plotting to blow up a hotel full of Americans and Israelis.
Investigators are interviewing drivers from Boston Cab Co., where the two known associates of bin Laden once worked, to see if they had ties to baggage handlers, who in turn may have supplied weapons to the hijackers, Fitzpatrick said.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that the United States had intercepted messages of congratulation exchanged by bin Laden supporters after the attacks.
Government officials were unhappy that Hatch made the news public, but they confirmed for NBC News that the National Security Agency had intercepted electronic communications from members of bin Laden’s organization. Similar intercepts were reported after the 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania — a crime that the Saudi is believed to have orchestrated.
On Wednesday, bin Laden congratulated the people who carried out the attacks, but denied that he was involved, Palestinian journalist Jamal Ismail said. He said he spoke with a bin Laden aide early Wednesday by satellite telephone.
A Pakistani newspaper also reported that bin Laden had denied responsibility for the attacks.
“The terrorist act is the action of some American group. I have nothing to do with it,” the newspaper Khabrain quoted bin Laden as saying, through “sources close to the Taliban.”
But terrorism experts said the complex and precise nature of the attack — hijackings, multiple airplane crashes into the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon, and another jet taken and crashed in Pennsylvania — is a strong indication that bin Laden is behind the terror.
U.S. intelligence officials said many of bin Laden’s reported terrorist schemes have involved multiple strikes over multiple days, including a planned attempt to disrupt U.S. millennium celebrations. Algerian native Ahmed Ressam was caught shortly after he entered the United States from Canada and convicted of trying to plant explosives on targets in Los Angeles. He offered prosecutors evidence of a bin Laden link in the case.
A terror strike in Yemen succeeded in October 2000 when a boat filled with explosives rammed the USS Cole, killing 17 sailors. That attack was also reportedly linked to bin Laden.
When U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were blown up in 1998 — again allegedly by associates of bin Laden — U.S. intelligence reported that other blasts were planned for the same time in Uganda and Albania. Some 224 people died in the embassy attacks. In response, the Clinton administration used cruise missiles to destroy the site believed to be bin Laden’s camp in Afghanistan, as well as a chemical factory in Sudan. Bin Laden escaped.
Intelligence officials have described other attempted attacks by al-Qaeda, including a January 1995 effort to plant bombs on 11 U.S. jetliners flying over the Pacific.
For Education And Disscussion Only. Not For Commercial Use.
. . . at least two of the suspected terrorists were carrying passports from the United Arab Emirates. . . .
. . . the 33-year-old Atta and al Shehhi, 23. . . .
In favor of ethnic/national profiling (Arab male non-citizens)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.