New York Post
September 14, 2001 -- MIAMI - Three men spewed anti-American sentiments in a bar and talked of impending bloodshed the night before the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, a Daytona Beach strip-club manager interviewed by the FBI said yesterday.
"They were talking about what a bad place America is. They said ‘Wait 'til tomorrow. America is going to see bloodshed,' " said John Kap, manager of the Pink Pony and Red Eyed Jack's Sports Bar. Kap said they made the claims to a bartender and a patron.
Federal agents were investigating on several fronts in Florida yesterday after searching homes and rental car documents and poring over flight school student records.
Kap said he told FBI investigators the men in his bar spent $200 to $300 apiece on lap dances and drinks, paying with credit cards. Kap said he gave the FBI credit card receipts, photocopied driver's licenses, a business card left by one man and a copy of the Koran that was left at the bar.
The FBI asked him not to reveal the men's names publicly, Kap said. He said they lived in three central Florida communities between Daytona Beach and Orlando.
While investigators pieced together evidence, two former Florida flight school students were identified by German authorities as terrorists aboard the two planes that smashed into the World Trade Center.
Hamburg investigators said Mohamed Atta, 33, and Marwan al-Shehhi, 23, had studied at the Technical University in Hamburg and had passports from the United Arab Emirates. Both men received pilot training at Huffman Aviation, a flight school in Venice, Fla., where FBI investigators are examining student records.
FBI investigators learned that Atta and al-Shehhi also took two three-hour courses at SimCenter Inc. in Opa-Locka, said Brian George, son of flight school owner Henry George.
"We were completely stunned and shocked," Brian George said yesterday. "My father said that if he didn't have a family to support he would stop teaching tomorrow. To think that someone would take what he taught them and turn it into a weapon."
Both men trained on a Boeing 727 full-motion simulator, he said.
The FBI issued a bulletin for authorities to look out for a silver 1996 Plymouth and its possible driver, Amer Kamfar, a flight engineer who listed a Saudi Airlines post office box as his address and lived in Vero Beach.
Agents were questioning Saudi flight engineer Adnan Bukhari, 41, whom a county sheriff's official said was cooperating with FBI inquiries. Bukhari was a student at Flight Safety, which trains commercial jet crews.
"It looks like he had an association with someone else involved," said a neighbor, Wendy Harp.
Agents searched four Vero Beach homes, including Bukhari's and the house next door, where another Flight Safety student, Abdulrahman Alomari, lived with his wife and four children.
I've got to comment and run but having been involved in thousands of investigations myself, I am very troubled at the evidence that is being "handed to" law enforcement.
It could be to rub our noses in the simplicity and effectiveness of this terrorist act, but I am still very concerned.
Leaving business cards, talking openly about anti-American sentiment and forecasting a bloody outcome the next day ape the actions of a small-time gang-banger bragging about a planned crime.
This was a well-planned, coordinated terrorist act perpetrated by professionals/zealots. Leaving flight plans written in Arabic in a vehicle outside an airport was intentional. It just doesn't make sense to me.