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A Second Strike?
CBSNEWS ^ | Friday, September 21, 2001

Posted on 09/20/2001 10:16:07 PM PDT by JohnHuang2

A Second Strike?
  • Authorities Move To Ease Fears About Rumors Of Saturday Attack
  • Man Arrested In Chicago Being Held On Knife Charge
  • Investigators: Some Hijackers Used Fake ID's, True Names Unknown

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20, 2001
AP
The wreckage of the World Trade Center
(CBS) Reports are circulating that the terrorist hijackers and some accomplices were planning another action this Saturday, but officials say that although they don't totally discount the possibility they have no firm evidence that is the case.

The concern was prompted by the fact that a couple of the dead hijackers and a very small number of people on the watch list had booked flights for that date.

Florida Democrat Senator Bob Graham said Wednesday, last week's attacks were "part of a larger plan with other terrorism acts, not necessarily hijacking of airplanes."

Graham, also the chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, said "those acts were going to occur in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world."

Mohamed Atta
Of all the hijackers, Atta appears to have traveled the most extensively. Investigators believe that if the terrorist cell had a leader, this was likely the man. A native of Egypt, Atta lived and traveled extensively in Italy and Germany where he obtained a master's degree from a Hamburg technical school in 1999. Last year, he got his pilot's license in Venice, Fla., and in January, he reportedly traveled from Miami to Madrid, then back to Germany, before returning to the U.S. in July. While in Hamburg, neighbors say he often met with a group of seven or other eight men.

to learn more about the hijackers.
He said the terrorism plans could have included such acts as "putting a chemical in a city's water system, or blowing up a bridge in a major urban centre."

A man on the FBI list of people wanted for questioning in the terrorism investigation was captured outside Chicago, the FBI said Thursday.

Nabil Al-Marabh 34, was arrested Wednesday night in suburban Justice by police and FBI agents, FBI spokeswoman Mary Muha said. She said he was being held on a warrant issued in Boston in March, charging assault with a knife.

Federal agents had been looking for him since at least Monday. That day, they raided a Detroit house with Al-Marabh's name on the mailbox and arrested three men after discovering false visas, passports and other ID, as well as what appeared to be a diagram of an airport flight line.

Officials say first indications are he was not involved in the attack, but they want to make sure, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.

In other developments, officials now confirm "several of the hijackers apparently had false identifications" and their true names are still not known. Some of the identification appears reportedly was stolen from law-abiding Saudi Arabian citizens.

There is no evidence thus far that the 19 dead hijackers ever met as a group. Agents, instead, have found they clustered together in four and five man teams around Boston, Newark and Washington just before the hijackings.

Meanwhile, federal investigators believe that some of the pilots and co-pilots of the four hijacked aircraft last week were murdered before the planes crashed. But investigators will not disclose what leads them to that conclusion.

FBI technicians have also recovered fragments of conversations from within one of the doomed cockpits — much of it is described however as "a jumbled mixture of grunts and screams."

Officials say reconstructing details of how the planes were taken over is important not from an evidentiary standpoint, but a preventive one.

They confirm, for example, that the bodies of two stewardesses from United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, were found with their hands bound. And they theorize the pilots from that flight and others may have left their cockpit seats when they saw stewardesses being slashed with box knives.

U.S. officials have already confirmed they believe hijacker Muhammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Europe early this year. Atta, 33, is believed to have been the cell leader of the 19 hijackers, although investigators have no concrete proof of that thus far. Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri denied his country was involved.

Ashcroft has directed the head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to revise its regulations to allow longer detentions of aliens, including those taken into custody during the investigation.

He said new rules will allow suspected illegal immigrants to be detained for 48 hours, instead of 24 hours, added that a new anti-terrorism task force will have links to every major U.S. city. Some 200 people are wanted for questioning, the FBI said. Seventy-five people are in custody for immigration violations. Four have been arrested as material witnesses.

Ayub Ali Khan and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath were plucked from a train in Texas after their flight landed prematurely following Tuesday's attack. Zacarias Moussaoui — perhaps the most promising suspect — was arrested before the attacks last month when he tried to get flight simulator training in Minnesota. Little is known about the fourth man, Albador Alhazmi, a radiologist in San Antonio.

Pilot training is a central theme of the massive investigation into Tuesday's attacks. Several of the 19 hijackers whose names were released by the FBI Friday were pilots and had gone to aviation schools in Florida.

Besides Atta, the hijackers who were believed to be pilots included Hani Hajour, who was on the flight that crashed into the Pentagon; Wail Alshehri and Abdulaziz Alomari, who were on one of the Boston flights; Marwan Al-Shehhi, hijacking on United Flight 175 out of Boston and Ziad Jarrahi, who flew on United Flight 93 out of Newark, N.J., which crashed in a field 80 miles from Pittsburgh.


© MMI, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press and Reuters Limited contributed to this report.


For Education And Discussion Only. Not For Commercial Use.



TOPICS: News/Current Events
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1 posted on 09/20/2001 10:16:07 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
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To: JohnHuang2
If they knew their next act of terrorism would totally destroy their home-country-families---they wouldn't do that---again!
2 posted on 09/20/2001 10:39:20 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: JohnHuang2
While I certainly wouldn't suggest letting our guard down, I don't think they will be any second strike until after the US takes some military action, allowing the terrorists to claim the new strike as retaliation for the US attack.
3 posted on 09/20/2001 10:43:15 PM PDT by The_Expatriate
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To: f.Christian
Don't be too sure. These fanatics will sacrifice anyone to get their desired worldwide jihad moving. They were counting on an over reaction of the clintonesque kneejerk variety. They miscalculated.
4 posted on 09/20/2001 10:45:02 PM PDT by MHGinTN
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To: MHGinTN
Syllables: an-ni-hi-late

Part of Speech transitive verb

Pronunciation E nai E let

Inflected Forms annihilated, annihilating, annihilates

Definition 1. to destroy completely; reduce to ruin.

Synonyms wreck (3) , eradicate (1) , obliterate (2) , exterminate

Crossref. Syn. blot out , consume , abolish , blast , end

Similar Words desolate , liquidate , eliminate , destroy , efface , decimate , kill , ruin , massacre

Definition 2. to abolish; make null.

Synonyms undo (2) , nullify (1,2) , abrogate (1,2) Crossref. Syn. abolish

Similar Words rescind , invalidate , void , abate , annul

Definition 3. (informal) to defeat decisively; overwhelm.

Synonyms rout1 (2) , massacre (2) , trounce (2) , thrash (3)

Similar Words wreck , beat , trample , humble , conquer

Related Words upset , raze , demolish , break , abrogate , blot out , shatter , butcher , remove

Derived Forms annihilation, n. ; annihilator, n.

5 posted on 09/20/2001 10:51:05 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: MHGinTN
Syllables: Khar-toum (Khar-tum)

Part of Speech noun

Pronunciation kar tum

Definition 1. the capital of Sudan.

Did you ever see the movie?

6 posted on 09/20/2001 11:00:07 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: The_Expatriate
Yes, that is the 'ratcheting up' approach and is meant to blame US for the escalation. I think Bush's speech tonight has served notice that the game will be played by our rules from here on and we attack the opposition team supporters as well as the opposition team.
7 posted on 09/20/2001 11:02:37 PM PDT by MHGinTN
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To: f.Christian
Saw the movie and have seen other movies that deal with the Sudan ... 'Awrence'
8 posted on 09/20/2001 11:05:12 PM PDT by MHGinTN
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To: MHGinTN
GEORGE W. BUSH'S

NOT SO ALL-OUT WAR ©... So Far(link)!!

by Norman Liebmann

9 posted on 09/20/2001 11:06:25 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: MHGinTN
An initial temporary slaughter is followed by a smashing defeat--VICTORY!
10 posted on 09/20/2001 11:08:43 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: f.Christian
Yes, but would you want no teets for tad? That's genocide, ol' man.
11 posted on 09/20/2001 11:11:24 PM PDT by MHGinTN
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To: MHGinTN
Plane bombing America was a big miscalculation--trap...esp the Pentagon!
12 posted on 09/20/2001 11:15:31 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: f.Christian
I appreciate your perspective from out in the Pacific! It hurt even there I see. Wir sind zu viel.
13 posted on 09/20/2001 11:18:38 PM PDT by MHGinTN
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To: MHGinTN
"If we lose this war it will be because our leader is too civilized to fight on the Arabs' terms. That is a vanity that has already cost the Israelis dearly. Being a Yale man, Bush is determined to execute a gentleman's war with a gentlemanly number of casualties, giving our enemy the time to lock and load his weapons of mass destruction. At this time America can no more afford Bush's chivalry than it can afford his compassion."

"The advantages of going on offense are unarguable. It is the inevitable choice of the winner of the opening coin toss at any football game. A defensive posture is all Bush can manifest. Nothing can render us more vulnerable than to ordain that America must adopt a preventive posture in a holy war and fight by the code of chivalry.?

14 posted on 09/20/2001 11:45:30 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: JohnHuang2
Some of these hijackers were using stolen ID. In one case, the ID was that of a Saudi Arabian man who was a pilot and had died in a mid-air collision while training with the U.S. military in Florida a year ago. He was NOT a zealot, and his family has been shocked, not only by the attack in New York but the fact his name has been smeared.

Smells like something Saddam Hussein would come up with. Or his murderous, raping son, who is now heading up Iragi Intelligence.

15 posted on 09/21/2001 12:23:57 AM PDT by goody2shooz
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To: goody2shooz
They, too, will make a nice barbeque..
16 posted on 09/21/2001 12:28:40 AM PDT by SurferDoc
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To: f.Christian
Norm, if the stakes weren't our very existence, it would be a clever piece. Please see the thread I posted today, It is Time to Declare War. You know, Bush, as always, made excellent statements immediately after the crisis. Followed by his Defense establishment, Wolfowitz and Rumsfield. Then you could see Powell working away day after day. Somehow the language of force got watered down. Apologies were made. A war declaration wasn't asked for. I agree with you that a powerful offense smashing the aggressors would have staved off the next round of terror. So now we are passively waiting for the next move. Ironically, we the citizens are being given our own national police force for homeland defense. Will it protect us from the terrorists or protect the government from us?
17 posted on 09/21/2001 12:30:45 AM PDT by The Westerner
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To: The Westerner, rebeckie
bttt
18 posted on 09/21/2001 9:43:53 AM PDT by f.Christian
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To: The Westerner, Victoria Delsoul, Travis McGee, Iron Jack, Jim Robinson, BKO
There is a glaring contradiction and a theme of naivete in your comments:

So now we are passively waiting for the next move. Ironically, we the citizens are being given our own national police force for homeland defense. Will it protect us from the terrorists or protect the government from us? Posted by The Westerner

A force for home defense is the antithesis of waiting passively for the next move! Has it not yet sunk in that when we strike with our military overseas, the terrorists will activate a cell of fanatics to respond here in our homeland? Do you know where the cells are? Where they will strike? Have you a national network with which to seek out and apprehend these fanatical murderers? ... I didn't think so. But you imply the formation of a home defense system with which seeking, protecting, and apprehending may be accomplished, under the leadership of a central organization, is more to be feared than the unseen terrorists!

Listen up, those of you of a liberatarian mindset: we the people are the sovereigns. When we agree to have public roads and parks, we cede some of our sovereignty to a central authority for oversight. But with free elections, we the people retain longrange control over that central authority. History tells us that many restrictive measures were instituted during WWII, but mostly we have seen the erasing of those measures. I don't fear the restrictive measures as much as I fear the laxity of the people, that the sovereign responsibility will not be exercised and our stewardship met by voting in large numbers and with interest in the maintenance of our sovereignty when the crisis and urgency is over.

If an American wants to focus on what needs attending by we the people, look at the tendency to elect liars and thieves, at the willingness of we the people to allow the sycophantic media to misdirect and outright lie to US when the truth is available but squelched, of greedy measures like clinton and gore utilized for their party's monetary gain but which left US more vulnerable than ever to the horrendous acts of terrorists!

Vigilance isn't something a sovereign people can exercise for intermittent times yet ignore for longer periods of self-indulgence. You want to fear the INS or BATF, get active in elections EVERY time the ballot boxes open, to establish responsive, honest representatives with fidelity to we the people instead of their damn leftist parties.

Was security lax at airports? Sure it was; the people running the airlines had figured out how to buy off the gore loyalty to the people that would have cost the airlines money if they had been instituting stiffer security measures. Are the terrorists enemies of our nation more capable of hiding their intentions from our intel? Sure they are; the clinton administration sold technology to anyone able to stuff the election coffers of the criminal enterprise democrat party. And we can cite examples of pubby complicity also ... it is the pubby Senate that wouldn't exercise their responsibility to have the whole damn dirty truth out in the open during a sham impeachment trial that kept the criminal deviant clinton in office!

You want to suspect? Suspect the American people of becoming too damn distracted with the bread and circuses to exercise their duty as the sovereigns of this nation, in electing honest, responsive, patriotic governmental representatives! Tough words? Damn right! But I tell the truth. We are the ones ultimately responsible for our weakened, inattentive state of existence. Now we must take strong measures, but we must have better memories, to continue our vigilance when the storm passes, and we exercise that vigilance through free elections ... or we will fall prey again to PC socialists who will sell our sovereignty like al gore, biill clinton, trent lott, dick gephardt, hillary clinton, and a host of others have done right before our glazed-over eyes.

You ask, "Will it protect us from the terrorists or protect the government from us?" I tell you of a truth, the government cannot avoid our oversight, if we will but exercise it openly ... like when the voting booths open up for the sovereigns to express their will and the political campaigns leading up to the elections. In a Republic, we are the sovereigns, if we can keep it.

19 posted on 09/21/2001 10:36:25 AM PDT by MHGinTN
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To: JohnHuang2,Nuke'm Glowing,Dan Day,LarryLied, LoneGreenEyeshade, justshutupandtakeit
(PING))))))
20 posted on 09/21/2001 10:40:51 AM PDT by MHGinTN
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