Posted on 09/15/2001 8:36:15 AM PDT by t-shirt
They have plenty of fighter jets nearby.
There are atleast 20 military bases that could have gotten fighter jets there within 15 minutes.
But there are jets right in DC that are specifically there to defend the White House, Pentagon, Congress etc. that like you said could have been there in a minute.
Usually when I'm in DC I will see some fighter jets in the are during the day. From what I understand they keep some in the air nearby all the time.
Michigan Daily
HAMBURG, Germany (AP) — German investigators said yesterday that three hijackers aboard the planes in the U.S. terror attacks once lived in Hamburg and were part of an organization formed this year to destroy American targets.
German authorities, acting on tips from the FBI, also said that they had detained at least one man in connection with Tuesday’s attacks and were searching for another.
In France, special anti-terrorism prosecutors tried to find links with militant Islamic networks in their country, while police in Rome re-opened the case of a theft of uniforms and badges belonging to two American Airlines pilots in April.
Two of the men identified by Hamburg police as having perished in the attacks were Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, both from the United Arab Emirates. Both had earlier been named as former students of a Florida flight school and are suspected of having flown two of the hijacked jets.
The German authorities indicated that they’d made no immediate links to Osama bin Laden, identified yesterday as a prime suspect.
Brian Knowlton International
Herald Tribune Friday, September 14, 2001
A Sustained Fight Is Promised; N.Y. Toll of Missing Near 5,000
WASHINGTON President George W. Bush pledged Thursday to "lead the world to victory" over terrorism in an effort that the Pentagon's No. 2 official said would be a sustained military campaign rather than a single dramatic action.
With the toll of dead and missing nearing 5,000 after Tuesday's attacks in New York and Washington, Mr. Bush, his eyes moist, said that while "I weep and mourn for America," he was receiving "universal approval" from leaders abroad for a war against terrorism.
Mr. Bush spoke in a televised conference call with Governor George Pataki of New York and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York City, in which he announced that he would visit the devastated site of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan on Friday. Mr. Bush also declared Friday a national day of prayer and remembrance for victims of the attacks, in which hijacked jetliners destroyed the twin towers in New York and ripped a gaping hole in the Pentagon building.
In New York, weary and begrimed workers continued picking through the mountainous jumble of debris left by the collapse of the skyscrapers. Thousands of friends and relatives continued to maintain vigils of gut-wrenching uncertainty, still with no definite word on the fates of their loved ones.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said that the U.S. response would aim first at smashing those behind the attacks on Tuesday and then continue with "a global assault against terrorism in general."
"You don't do it with just a single military strike, no matter how dramatic," he said. "It's not just simply a matter of capturing people and holding them accountable, but removing the sanctuaries, removing the support systems, ending states who sponsor terrorism. And that's why it has to be a broad and sustained campaign."
Ari Fleischer, the presidential spokesman, was asked about Mr. Wolfowitz's use of the phrase "ending states." He did not retreat from that language, saying, "As the president said, the U.S. will use all our resources to conquer our enemies."
The Bush administration's intensive effort to build an international coalition to combat terrorism has already attracted strong declarations of support from a number of countries, but it was unclear at this early stage how such statements would translate into action. On Wednesday, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization formally agreed for the first time in its history to declare that the alliance's commitment to collective defense had been triggered, but European officials said Thursday that no one knew exactly what might be expected of them as a result. (Page 4)
In Germany on Thursday, senior officials echoed Mr. Bush's appeals for patience and appeared to be trying to cool war fever.
"I hope we all remain calm and do not now speak of a state of alarm. We do not face a war. We face the question of what is an appropriate response," Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping told German television.
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said, "Politics should not be dispensed with and will not be dispensed with." The United States won a declaration of support from Pakistan, a potentially critical ally because it borders Afghanistan, which has sheltered the Saudi militant, Osama bin Laden, whom American and allied officials have identified as a prime suspect in the attacks.
Pakistan's military leader, General Pervez Musharraf, pledged to Mr. Bush and the U.S. government "our fullest cooperation in the fight against terrorism."
Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States had "provided to the Pakistani government a specific list of things that we think would be useful for them to work on with us." He would not say whether the list included stationing U.S. troops in Pakistan, but gave an unmistakable hint that Pakistan was important because of Mr. bin Laden.
"When you look at the list of candidates" for possible complicity in the attacks, he said, "one resides in that region." Mr. Bush said he had had an "outpouring of support" in talks with world leaders, including President Jiang Zemin of China and President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
"There is universal approval of the statements I have made and I am confident there will be universal approval of the actions this government takes," he said.
"We have just seen the first war of the 21st century," Mr. Bush said, adding firmly, "Now that war has been declared on us, we will lead the world to victory."
Mr. Bush later went to a Washington hospital to visit victims of the plane that was crashed at the Pentagon. Defense officials there said the names of about 190 people, most of them army soldiers, were on the missing-persons list. The Pentagon resumed full operation Thursday.
Workers clearing debris there detected a signal of a flight data recorder from Flight 77, a fire official said. Authorities hope it may cast light on the path the plane followed before it hit the building.
Recorders from the three other planes have yet to be found.
In New York, Mr. Giuliani said that a missing-persons list had grown to 4,763 names.
Ninety-four bodies had been tagged, the mayor said, and 46 of them identified. Parts of 70 bodies had been recovered, he said, apologizing for having to make so "gruesome and horrible" an announcement.
Mr. Giuliani said that more than 2,000 families had registered with a New York emergency office, saying they were still unable to locate missing loved ones.
In addition to the casualties from the three hijacked airliners that struck the New York skyscrapers and the Pentagon, 45 people died when a fourth hijacked plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania.
Southern Manhattan Island was moving slowly to resume some imitation of normality.
The financial markets resumed limited operations, with bond trading again under way, but stock markets remained closed again Thursday in the most extended closing since World War II.
The nation's airports were reopening to commercial flights, but service was resuming at a wary and deliberate pace as airlines checked their security and implemented tough new measures. Most airports reopened at 11 a.m., eastern daylight time, but a few, including Reagan National Airport in Washington, remained closed.
Mr. Bush sought, in response to a reporter's question, to assure Americans of the safety of air travel. "If a family member asked whether they should fly," he said, "I say yes."
But the face of American air travel will be dramatically changed.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said that, in an extraordinary step, the elite army commando force known as the Delta Force might be mobilized to assist in air security. Private flights were banned again Thursday; no mail was being carried on commercial flights.
At airports, and in some U.S. cities, people found a new military presence that to many was unsettling. In central Washington, for example, military police in fatigues were stationed at several corners, and camouflage-painted Humvee vehicles were parked on streets where lobbyists and lawyers have their offices.
Mr. Bush enjoyed continued showings of extraordinary political and public support.
The House minority leader, Richard Gephardt, Democrat of Missouri, said political leaders were as unified now as they had been after Congress voted to commit the nation to the Gulf War. "This is a national crisis," he said.
And the Republican whip, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, said that he would drop his opposition to payment of U.S. back dues to the United Nations and expects Congress to act next week.
He said he would not "be obstructionist to the president" in a time of crisis.
Meanwhile, amid isolated outbreaks of anti-Arab or anti-Muslim violence or protest scattered across the country, both Mr. Bush and his father pleaded to the public to oppose and condemn such acts of hatred.
Police turned back 300 marchers - some waving American flags and shouting "USA! USA!" - as they tried to march on a mosque in a southwest Chicago suburb Wednesday.
President Bush noted, in his call to Mr. Pataki and Mr. Giuliani, that there are "thousands of Arab-Americans who live in New York City who love our flag just as much as we do" and exhorted Americans to treat "Arab-Americans and Muslims with the respect that they deserve."
His father, former President George Bush, said in a speech in Houston, "There will be a tendency in some quarters to lump in with the terrorists all those who believe in Islam. This we must strongly condemn."
Published Friday, September 14, 2001
New York Times Service
WASHINGTON -- The porous nature of the 5,525-mile U.S.-Canadian boundary got close scrutiny Thursday as FBI agents swept through Maine to investigate whether hijackers carrying out the terrorist attacks on Tuesday had entered this country from Canada.
Authorities on both sides have tightened security and inspections this week, causing huge traffic tie-ups.
At some crossing points between Michigan and Canada on Thursday, commercial traffic entering the United States waited nearly 15 hours. ``The backup is so extreme, it is impossible to estimate wait times,'' Canada's Customs and Revenue Agency announced.
Canadian authorities were inspecting every car that entered British Columbia on Thursday from Blaine, Wash. Identification like a birth certificate or a passport was required and every name and license plate was run through computers.
Members of Maine's congressional delegation said they had repeatedly urged federal law enforcement agencies to bolster protection on the Canadian border.
Associated Newspapers
Associated Newspapers Ltd., 15 September 2001
Armed guards on board planes, and isolated cockpits to protect pilots, could be introduced, Transport Secretary Stephen Byers says.
Mr Byers, who has met fellow EU transport ministers to agree common security procedures, says Israeli airline El Al had cockpits which could be isolated from the rest of the aircraft and security personnel on board.
He added: "This is a measure we will need to consider in the light of what happened (the terrorist attacks in America). This is a new form of terrorism and we need to respond to it in the appropriate way."
Mr Byers said: "What we need to do is to respond to the things we saw. We need to mourn the dead, we have to protect the living and we have to make sure our normal way of life is protected."
Mr Byers said the prospect of a suicidal terrorist, prepared to kill himself and all passengers, was a threat "our existing security measures had not taken into account".
A Pillar of Wall Street Is Struck by Tragedy
Diana B. Henriques and Jennifer 8. Lee New York Times
Service Friday, September 14, 2001
NEW YORK Until Tuesday, few people beyond the rarefied world of the government bond market had ever heard of the firm Cantor Fitzgerald LP, a 57-year-old institution that is an important piece of the backstage machinery of the Treasury market. But since the attack on the World Trade Center, the firm has emerged as a magnet for Wall Street's concern about the devastation and personal tragedy that the financial community has experienced. .
Of Cantor's more than 2,300 employees worldwide, about 1,000 worked at the company's headquarters on the 101st, 103d, 104th and 105th floors of 1 World Trade Center, the first tower to be hit in Tuesday's attack. Howard Lutnick, Cantor's chairman and chief executive, said at a meeting with employees' family members at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan on Wednesday that only about 270 had been accounted for.
Almost all of them had been on vacation or otherwise out of the building.
Among those still missing is William Meehan, the firm's well-known chief market strategist, who worked at the office in Darien, Connecticut, until late August.
At the Pierre, Mr. Lutnick addressed family members in a speech punctuated by sobs. His brother worked on the 103d floor, he told them. "While I look for your sons, daughters and husbands, I am also looking for my brother," he said.
He said he was walking into the building when the first plane hit, and he stayed by the door, grabbing people and asking them to call out their floor numbers as they rushed out. Ninety-one was the highest number he heard before the neighboring tower collapsed. Then he ran out.
Mr. Lutnick told the group that Cantor was determined to reopen its electronic trading service, eSpeed, which handles more than $200 billion in government securities transactions every day.
That system makes Cantor Fitzgerald a critical player in the nation's huge Treasury market, which helps establish benchmark interest rates for everything from home mortgages to business loans and which provides a low-risk haven for investors in turbulent times. The status of eSpeed was one factor that market officials weighed on Wednesday as they decided to reopen the government bond market, which had been closed since the attack.
But for the families of Cantor's New York employees - and in a larger sense, for everyone in the Wall Street family - the fate of the firm's employees loomed immeasurably larger than the sturdiness of the Treasury market. Hundreds of people attended the gathering at the Pierre, each wearing a name tag that bore the name of the wearer and that of a missing loved one.
Among the crowd was Barbara Weinberg. She had spent the day helping look for her 28-year-old niece, Shari Kandell, who joined Cantor only a few months ago. "I went to sleep and woke up this morning and realized it wasn't a dream," Ms. Weinberg said. Ms. Kandell's family recovered her car Wednesday morning from a commuter parking lot in Jersey City.
Throughout the day, executives at other Wall Street firms - even those with their own losses to count - called friends in the news media, seeking information about Cantor and passing along information gathered from colleagues and clients. It seemed that this small company had suddenly become the mascot for an entire industry.
Stuart Schwartz, an executive with Hoenig Co., a market research firm in Rye Brook, spoke to a client whose daughter had been talking with a friend at Cantor at the moment of Tuesday's dreadful impact. "The person said they were told to go to the roof - that there was no evacuation route down the stairs," Mr. Schwartz said. "They were above the fire - maybe they hoped for rescue from the roof, a helicopter rescue."
Cantor Fitzgerald employees might well have recalled a similar escape plan after the 1993 basement bombing, he added.
Some Cantor employees in Los Angeles and London were engaged in a conference call with colleagues in New York when the attack occurred. They listened in horror to the sounds of alarm and panic, and then the line went dead.
"I'm still hopeful," Lisa Hord said Wednesday morning by telephone. Her husband, Montgomery, called her immediately after the attack, she said. "He said there was smoke, and he was getting out," she said. "That's the last I heard."
Friends of John Perconti, a young equity trader at Cantor, said he was also among the missing. One friend, who rents a home in Hoboken, New Jersey, from Mr. Perconti, echoed what had become a familiar story: a phone call to Cantor that ended with the words "something happened" - and then silence.
Lloyd Rosenberg, 31, joined Cantor after graduating from high school and worked his way up from delivery boy to bond broker, said his mother, Michele, on Tuesday. "They saw he was an ambitious worker," she said. "They gave him a chance on the desk."
Mr. Rosenberg, who is the father of three girls under age 6, "never leaves his desk," she said.
She last spoke with her son at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday. It was a pleasant 10-minute conversation, she said.
"He said, 'Bye, Ma. I got to go now.' I said, 'Maybe this week, let's have lunch.'"
Bella Bhukhan, 24, who worked in Cantor's human resources office on the 104th floor, commuted by train from Union, New Jersey, with her sister, Nisha, who worked in the other tower. "She went her way, I went my way," Nisha Bhukhan said on Tuesday.
"I was about to go upstairs in the elevator when I felt trembling, and I just ran for the best exit," she said.
When she reached safety, Ms. Bhukhan added, "the first person I called was my sister."
But she was unable to find her sister and spent Tuesday moving from hospitals to makeshift morgues.
"I want my baby sister back," Ms. Bhukhan said.
Also please add this article to your FBI/CIA "forewarning or foreknowledge" lists.
David Shippers Speaks Out!!
News/Current Events News
Posted on 09/13/2001 17:07:20 PDT by DataPro01
David Shippers, former House legal counsel for the impeachment investigation and author of Sell Out, was interviewed by Quinn on his radio show this AM. Shippers had some very interesting things to say....some examples, Shippers claims that he contacted the Justice Dept weeks agon with warnings that a large terrorist strike involving southern Manhattan was imimnent. He was ignored. He also states that our best Middle Eastern terrorist expert, an FBI agent, has yet to be consulted. Essentially, Shippers is stating that when all is said and done the American public will find that the authorities had lots of information on a potential strike yet did nothing...and that the quick arrests are because of this fact...and the brave actions of flight attendants who phoned in the seat numbers of the terrorists before they were killed. I think this information needs to be heard and discussed...and have been urging national news shows to interview Shippers ASAP. Shippers interview with Quinn can be heard archived at www.warroom.com/archives the Wed 9/12 show. 1 Posted on 09/13/2001 17:07:20 PDT by DataPro01 [
Also please add this article to your FBI/CIA "forewarning or foreknowledge" lists.
David Shippers Speaks Out!!
News/Current Events News
Posted on 09/13/2001 17:07:20 PDT by DataPro01
David Shippers, former House legal counsel for the impeachment investigation and author of Sell Out, was interviewed by Quinn on his radio show this AM. Shippers had some very interesting things to say....some examples, Shippers claims that he contacted the Justice Dept weeks agon with warnings that a large terrorist strike involving southern Manhattan was imimnent. He was ignored. He also states that our best Middle Eastern terrorist expert, an FBI agent, has yet to be consulted. Essentially, Shippers is stating that when all is said and done the American public will find that the authorities had lots of information on a potential strike yet did nothing...and that the quick arrests are because of this fact...and the brave actions of flight attendants who phoned in the seat numbers of the terrorists before they were killed. I think this information needs to be heard and discussed...and have been urging national news shows to interview Shippers ASAP. Shippers interview with Quinn can be heard archived at www.warroom.com/archives the Wed 9/12 show. 1 Posted on 09/13/2001 17:07:20 PDT by DataPro01 [
Hijackers believed to have had helpers in Florida
MANNY GARCIA, DANIEL de VISE AND ANDRES VIGLUCCI aviglucci@herald.com
The five Florida men suspected as hijackers in Tuesday's terrorist attacks may have received help from local associates who provided cash and other support as they prepared for the deadly assaults, federal investigators believe.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A law enforcement source familiar with the investigation said agents believe at least 12 people in South Florida might have been involved in the plot. That includes the five hijacking suspects, all of whom died in Tuesday's crashes.
The FBI on Thursday released from questioning one man whom agents had flown from Vero Beach to Miami. Adnan Bukhari insisted he was not involved in the plot and passed an FBI-administered polygraph test showing ``no deception,'' two sources familiar with the investigation said.
But the investigators broadened the scope of the probe to anyone possibly connected to the suspects, questioning other local pilots and flight students of Middle Eastern origin who might have known the five men.
After three days of frenetic work, investigators have developed this picture: Most of the Florida suspects lived like college students and had little or no history of employment -- yet could somehow afford expensive flight training, some of it costing as much as $25,000, and paid for many expenses in cash.
``Somebody other than these guys was paying the bills,'' said a U.S. Justice Department source familiar with the probe.
The investigators also searched a Deerfield Beach motel where two central suspects in the probe, Mohamed Atta, 33, and Marwan Alshehhi, 23, may have lodged as recently as Monday night.
More details about Atta and Alshehhi emerged from German police, who said the two had been students at a university in Hamburg before coming to the United States sometime in the past year.
Police searched a Hamburg apartment they said had been rented until February by Atta, Alshehhi and an unidentified third man. In connection with their investigation, the Hamburg police also took into custody a Moroccan man who worked at the city's international airport. They declined to disclose his name. They also were looking for another man believed to have been involved in the attacks.
The German police described Atta and Alshehhi as citizens of the United Arab Emirates who had been enrolled in the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, where Atta founded an Islamic student group.
``It's highly likely that the clues needed to solve this mystery lie in student circles in Germany,'' the country's top prosecutor, Kay Nehm, said at a press conference.
Late Thursday, German federal investigators shut down the campus computer network, searched a room rented by the Islamic student group that Atta founded, and were combing through the group's computer.
In addition, FBI agents are studying records that tie at least two of the Florida suspects to Saudi Arabian Airlines and FlightSafety International, a flight-training school in Vero Beach. The link: One suspect said he was an engineer for the Saudi airline, and a second gave an airline post-office box as an address. Agents reportedly are interviewing three Saudi Arabian flight engineers studying for pilot licenses.
ON PAPER TRAIL
The investigators pored through financial records Thursday, searching for leads that might ferret out the suspected hijackers' funding source. They were building exhaustive financial profiles of the suspected hijackers and everyone possibly connected to them. Among the records being subpoenaed: cellular phone call lists, credit card invoices, apartment rental receipts, checking account records, vehicle ownership, mail drop rental contracts and searches of the mailboxes themselves.
``We're retracing where they lived and how they lived,'' said a federal source.
They were also racing to find additional people connected to the suspects who may have had flight training but were not on Tuesday's fatal flights.
Investigators say Atta and Alshehhi had the necessary training to at least steer the airplanes that slammed into the World Trade Center in New York on Tuesday. Both men had lived and trained at flight schools together up and down the state. Both had commercial pilot licenses.
Atta, of Coral Springs, and three other Florida suspects -- Waleed Al Shehri, 25, Abdulatif al-Omari, 31, and Wail M. Al Shehri, 28 -- were passengers on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to hit the trade center.
Alshehhi, of Hollywood, was on United Airlines Flight 175, the second aircraft to strike the center.
A Vero Beach man, Amer Mohammed Kamfar, was being sought by the FBI for questioning.
MOTEL SEARCHED
A tip led agents to a Deerfield Beach motel, where Atta and Alshehhi may have stayed Monday. Federal agents and crime-scene specialists from the Broward Sheriff's Office converged on the Panther Motel, 715 South A1A, Thursday afternoon.
FBI agents walked the transient beach neighborhood, showing photos of four Arab men who, they said, could have been in the area on Monday.
Joe Carroll, 33, a neighbor, said two of the photos were of Atta and Alshehhi. Agents were asking hoteliers if any of the men -- or anyone with an Arabic name -- had stayed at their properties between August 23 and September 10.
The owners of the Panther, Diane and Richard Surma, would not answer reporters' questions.
Another tip took investigators to Daytona Beach, where three men who appeared to be Middle Eastern criticized the United States hours before the attack in a conversation with fellow patrons at a sports and nude bar, bragging, ``America is going to see blood, just wait until tomorrow.''
Pink Pony owner John Kap said he dismissed the Monday-night incident as beery bar banter -- until he heard the news about the jet attacks the following morning.
FBI officials wouldn't comment on the tip, but Kap said he turned over individual credit card receipts for each of the men, their driver license information, a Koran the men left behind and a business card one of the men slipped to a woman working at the bar.
Kap refused to name the men or indicate where they lived, but he said the FBI told him the information ``was one of the most substantial leads they had.''
Kap said the three men had stopped by the bar -- a sports bar and adjoining strip club -- about 10 p.m. They sat at the bar, racking up tabs of $40 to $80, and slipped back to watch the dancers writhing on the poles.
Herald staff writers Lisa Arthur, Erika Bolstad, Alfonso Chardy, Lesley Clark, Wanda J. DeMarzo, Larry Lebowitz, Phil Long, Curtis Morgan and Jay Weaver contributed to this report.
`Strange that all they wanted to do was turns,' instructor recalls
Published Friday, September 14, 2001
Miami Herald
By DAVID KIDWELL, JENNIFER BABSON AND MANNY GARCIA
dkidwell@herald.com
Two men under federal scrutiny in the terrorist jet hijackings spent several hours practicing turns in a Miami-area commercial flight simulator nine months before the attacks.
Aviation experts -- including a crestfallen flight instructor who helped them improve their pilot skills -- agreed Thursday it probably was all the training they needed.
``Looking back on it, it was a little strange that all they wanted to do was turns,'' said Henry George, 56, a former Eastern Airlines pilot who runs Simcenter Inc. at Opa-locka Airport. ``Most people who come here want to do takeoffs and landings.''
Once a huge airliner is airborne, it isn't too difficult for anyone with basic pilot training to steer, aviators say. Onboard computers are designed to keep the plane stable and on course.
George said he feels betrayed that his skills as a pilot could have been used by the the men under investigation to hone theirs.
``They told me they just wanted to get the feel for the controls,'' George said. ``They said the company they were applying to work for required the training. I try to treat everyone the same. They were qualified, licensed pilots. I didn't think twice about it.
``Now I have to live this for the rest of my life.''
Federal authorities say the two men, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, had the training needed to pilot the two Boeing 767s that hit the World Trade Center towers. Both were on the passenger manifests. The homes and acquaintances of both have been the targets of federal search warrants and interrogations since Tuesday.
George said the two men paid him $1,500 for a total of six hours in a Boeing 727 simulator on Dec. 29 and 30. Each spent about 90 minutes per day in the simulator -- which has controls similar to a 767.
He said both men showed him their flying credentials -- although a pilot's license is not required to use the simulator.
George said they were serious and professional.
``I can't describe the pain we feel,'' George said in his tiny hangar office at Opa-locka Airport. ``I helped these people. I sat there with them and answered their questions and participated in perfecting their skills.
``I don't know how I can live my life with this,'' he said. ``I can only hope I'll get over it. I mean, people are comparing this to Pearl Harbor -- how would you feel?''
George said he called the FBI on Wednesday after he recognized Atta's name from news reports.
Hundreds of agents have been scouring the Florida landscape, trying to retrace the steps of the suspected hijackers and their acquaintances.
Administrators at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach confirmed Thursday that Waleed Al Shehri, another passenger on the same flight as Atta, attained a B.A. in aeronautical science in 1997. The degree is considered a stepping stone to landing a commercial flying job.
The FBI has interviewed flight school owners in Palm Beach County who said Atta and a companion had requested ``low wing'' airplanes to rent as recently as last month.
The requests were for single-engine planes with wings attached below the fuselage. Some speculated that while the flight controls in no way resemble commercial jets, a low wing would provide a more clear line of sight in a turn.
``All the Boeings are low wings,'' said Joe Kemper, president of Kemper Aviation at Palm Beach County Park Airport in Lantana. ``That's the only thing I could think of that might have made a difference. Visibility might be closer to the same in a turn.''
Chuck Clapper, a retired USAir pilot and owner of Lantana Air, was also interviewed by the FBI on Wednesday.
``I may have rented them a plane for a day or two, but that would be worthless to them if they had any simulator time,'' Clapper said. ``For what they did, a couple hours in a commercial jet simulator would have been more than enough.''
Said Kemper: ``They could have gone to CompUSA and picked up a Microsoft flight simulator program and learned enough from that. All they did was steer.''
FBI agents are also examining that computer program, which includes a simulated path over Lower Manhattan.
Mario Guerrier, director of Miami-Dade Community College's aviation school at Homestead, said even limited simulator training would be sufficient to steer an airliner.
``It's like teaching someone to crash a car; it did not require an incredible amount of discipline to achieve that,'' Guerrier said. ``To take off or land, that's where it requires a great deal of proficiency.''
Facts too Irrefuteable???
WE ALL had a clear, strong warning that Tuesday's destruction was in the works just less than two years ago when a fully-loaded airliner leaving Kennedy airport in the early hours of October 31, 1999 had the cockpit taken over by an unscheduled pilot who crashed the plane into the sea screaming it was for the glory of Allah. President Clinton and his state department minions immediately assured Americans that it was not an act of terrorism. The final report said the pilot was depressed and suicidal - acting on his own.
Now, who was stupid enough to believe this liar and his gang and NOT take precautionary actions to prevent cockpit takeover by Islamic fundamentalist extremists?
answer: America.
I was disgusted. I sounded the warning on November 1 - knowing even then that it was a terrorist act. For the next two years I have been telling everyone that flight 990 was downed by terrorism and they got away with it and will do it again and again.... I have been told to put on my tin foil hat and watch out for black helicopters and that I was consumed with paranoia about Osama bin Laden and needed to get a life. Such is the defamation people who expose Clinton's lies were subject to.
Now we are told to be quiet and united - not to speak ill of anyone because we are all suffering.
I will not be quiet! WE have traitors in our midst and still working within the government at all levels!
FIRE all of the investigators who signed on to the report concluding that EgyptAir 990's fate was in the hands of a lone renegade pilot. These investigators have blood on their hands. That's just a start in the war against terrorism right here in our own country.
When our President said that terrorists will be brought to justice and the people who harbor them, I wonder if that would include Bill and Hillary, two people who never knew a terrorist they didn't like and succeeded in destroying security not just at the White House but also in the entire nation.
Clinton surely is an oily snake. He has a problem at home with the Lewinski situation, decides to indiscriminately bomb a country with Muslims in it and makes a fellow terrorist mad who then retaliates by sending his own men over here to kill as many Americans as they can. And then he has the audacity to show up on a street in New York City sharing his "condolences" with weeping women, in front of many cameras.
It would be nice if we could capture and bring to justice as many of these terrorists as possible, including those born and bred on our own land.
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