Let me rephrase. It IS inactive. Did we give up on interacting with our community? Not hardly. Instead, we’ve moved to more interesting digs:
The material already in this blog will be ported over to the Groups blog in the next few days (right, Kevin, Matt?), and lots of new material will be added as well. Come see us and tell us what you think.
Posted on July 19th, 2008 by Black Max
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The 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were the first major attacks by al-Qaeda against the US, killing over 200 people. They foreshadowed 9/11 in several ways, not least because they could have and should have been prevented.
The 9/11 Timeline’s category on the embassy bombings can basically be divided into two parts, covering events before and after the attacks. The before section focuses in particular on two of the bombers who were under big-time surveillance by the US—Ali Mohamed and Wadih El-Hage—whereas the second section looks at the investigation and how the leads could have been exploited to prevent further attacks, including 9/11, but were not.
The surveillance and investigation of the future embassy bombers began no later than March 1991, when the FBI began investigating Wadih El-Hage, who would later be sentenced to life in prison for his role in the bombings. El-Hage had also agreed to supply weapons to the cell that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, but the FBI turned down a deal offered by one of the bombers, Mahmud Abouhalima, to get more information about El-Hage. The FBI began investigating El-Hage again in 1995, by which time he was already under CIA surveillance.
El-Hage was also linked to Ali Mohamed, a former Egyptian and US soldier, as well as an FBI and CIA asset. Mohamed set up the cell that would eventually carry out the bombing in Nairobi in 1993, although its immediate purpose then was to support attacks against US troops in neighbouring Somalia.
Despite being under surveillance by the US, which monitored calls between his US home and associates in the future bombing cell, Mohamed and another bin Laden operative named Anas al-Liby performed the initial surveillance of embassy targets in Africa and reported back to bin Laden. Al-Liby would later be linked to British intelligence and a plot by MI6 to assassinate Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi.
However, al-Qaeda began to loose its trust in Mohamed in the mid 1990s, because of his links to US intelligence. During the preparations for the Landmarks bombing trial he spoke to prosecutor Andrew McCarthy about the forthcoming trial and somehow obtained the list of co-conspirators and faxed it to El-Hage. Mohamed may also have been involved in the alleged transfer of the explosives used in the bombing from the US army.
Mohamed’s connections to radicals and US intelligence were first exposed by a Boston Globe article in February 1995 that called him “a shadowy individual described by defense attorneys as a key figure in the largest terrorism trial in US history.”
By April 1996, the US was well aware of the cell in Nairobi, and was monitoring several of its phone lines, including those of a charity front named Mercy International. US knowledge of the cell was heightened by a ferry accident in which al-Qaeda’s military commander was killed, and by a high-level al-Qaeda defector named Jamal al-Fadl, who provided the US with a wealth of information about bin Laden. One warning al-Fadl gave was that bin Laden may attack inside the US.
After bin Laden moved back from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996, the US was able to track his satellite phone usage, and intercepted his calls, at least 56 of which were placed to Kenya. Although the NSA attempted to prevent other agencies such as the CIA from having unrestricted access to intercepts it made, the intercepts indicated that El-Hage had travelled to Afghanistan to meet bin Laden, and the US was able to use them to discover al-Qaeda operatives all round the world.
By August 1997, the CIA and FBI had developed enough information to raid El-Hage’s house in Nairobi, although the FBI pulled out one of its agents from the raid “days before” it was to be conducted. The raid provided the US with a treasure trove of information, including about links to bin Laden, and El-Hage’s address book read like a who’s who of al-Qaeda.
One of the links uncovered was to a charity called the Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, which, according to a CIA informant, was plotting to bomb the US embassy in Nairobi. This warning was bang on the money and delivered nearly a year before the bombings, but, unfortunately, was not sufficiently exploited to prevent them. In addition, in his discussions with FBI agents, who were bugging his computer, Mohamed kept hinting there would be an attack in East Africa, although the FBI apparently failed to grasp this.
After a few people connected to the charity were arrested and El-Hage moved back to the US, where he was questioned before a grand jury, the US stopped monitoring the bombers. One of the plotters walked in to the US embassy in Nairobi, and confessed he and others were planning to bomb it, but this only led to a temporary increase in security. Requests for increased security by ambassador Prudence Bushnell went unheeded at the State Department.
As the phone surveillance continued, it pointed to Mamoun Darkazanli, an associate of the Hamburg cell of 9/11 hijackers, as well as linking Mohamed, El-Hage and another operative named Ihab Ali Nawawi in the US. Communications intercepts also revealed a meeting attended by bin Laden in Afghanistan that may have had a connection to the bombings.
In February 1998, the Sudanese authorities offered the FBI their files on bin Laden, but the FBI rejected them, turning up its nose at a mine of information about bin Laden’s operations in Africa. Kenyan intelligence then warned the CIA of a plot to bomb the US embassy in Nairobi, but the CIA ignored it, although monitoring of the bombing cell recommenced in May.
On 26 May 1998, bin Laden held his only press conference, to talk about a recent fatwa and bringing the war “home to America”, and one of the embassy bombers, Mohamed al-Owhali, was photographed at the meeting. Bin Laden gave an interview to ABC soon after, sitting in front of a map of Africa. Islamic Jihad, headed by al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, also issued a statement threatening retaliation for the extraordinary rendition of its operatives from Albania to Egypt.
In the summer of 1998, MI6 began recruiting one of the bombers’ associates, L’Houssaine Kherchtou, while the NSA was busy listening to a surge of phone calls about the bombing, without actually warning anybody. US and Canadian intelligence also blew a chance to give a warning based on intercepts of al-Qaeda communications about the attacks relayed through Canada, and the NSA failed to act on communications intercepts between bin Laden, an al-Qaeda communications hub in Yemen, and the bombers in Africa.
The US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were bombed on 7 August 1998, and over 200 people were killed, although an attempted attack on a third embassy in Uganda failed.
The second part of the embassy bombings chapter, about what the investigation into the attacks discovered, will follow shortly.
Posted on July 7th, 2008 by Kevin Fenton
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This is a summary of the 9/11 Timeline category about Reda Hassaine, an Algerian mole who worked for Algerian, French and British intelligence services in London. He got close to leading radical Islamists well-connected in al-Qaeda and the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA), an Algerian militant group.
Hassaine’s first job was to travel from Algeria to London, on behalf of an Algerian security service, to take delivery of a broken fax from a supporter of the GIA. The fax had been used to communicate with many Algerian militants, and their numbers were still in its memory, which the Algerian government must have found useful. In 1995, Hassaine moved to London, where he helped the Algerian government monitor radicals, in particular at the Finsbury Park mosque run by Abu Hamza al-Masri.
Hassaine also managed to get himself hired by the French intelligence service Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, for which he did pretty much the same thing - monitor dangerous radicals in what the French called Londonistan. Two of the radicals he chanced across at this time were Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who frequented Abu Hamza’s Finsbury Park mosque, a key French surveillance target.
With French backing, Hassaine launched an extremist newsletter to enhance his standing, and was consulted about a plan to kidnap Abu Hamza before the 1998 World Cup. However, the French grew nervous about his Algerian government connections and fired him in late 1998.
Hassaine then started to work for the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch, which began showing a greater interest in Finsbury Park, and Abu Hamza was even arrested after a group he supported and funded murdered some British citizens in Yemen. However, he was released shortly afterwards.
Control of Hassaine was then passed to MI5, which appeared to be unconcerned about terrorism in Algeria, although it did attempt to recruit a senior GIA figure. MI5 was also not concerned when a group of veteran jihadis moved to Birmingham.
Hassaine learned that a special emissary was to travel from Londonistan to meet Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, and went to a prayer meeting where leading radical imam Abu Qatada was to bless the emissary. However, the militants had realised he was an informer and attacked him. He barely escaped with his life and his career as an informer was over. Reflecting on his time working for the British security services, he concluded they did not “give a shit” about the Islamist killers living freely in Londonistan.
Posted on June 19th, 2008 by Kevin Fenton
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I recently had a short letter published in the Journal of 9/11 Studies about the World Trade Center. It is entitled WTC Collapse Initiation Floors: What They Were And How Much Damage They Suffered and can be found here.
It begins:
Although much has been written about the collapses of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, one important aspect – the floors on which the collapses initiated – has received little attention. However, the floors on which the collapse began must be a key factor, as it would appear to be the events on these floors, rather than those of the other floors impacted by the airliners, that determined the buildings’ fate.
It is interesting to compare the collapse initiation floor in WTC1 to the central impact floors in terms of three of the main aspects thought to have influenced the collapse: impact damage, jet fuel spilled, and debris available to remove fire insulation.
Read the whole thing.
Posted on June 19th, 2008 by Kevin Fenton
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This is a summary of the 9/11 Timeline’s category about the CIA inspector general’s report into the agency’s failings before the September 11 attacks. You can find the full chapter here.
The investigation was a result of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into intelligence failures in the run-up to 9/11, and only dealt with some aspects of the CIA’s failings. The inspector general at the time was John Helgerson, who recused himself from part of the investigation concerning alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM). The reason for the recusal is unclear, but presumably Helgerson was somehow involved in KSM-related operations in the mid-1990s.
The report, which criticised the CIA’s defective analysis of al-Qaeda before 9/11, was first finished in June 2004, but not published at that time, possibly due to the upcoming elections. The CIA insisted it be rewritten, and a toned-down version was completed in June 2005.
The July 2005 version contained a long list of CIA officers whose poor performance should have been reviewed by accountability boards. The list includes former director George Tenet, former Deputy Director for Operations Jim Pavitt, former Counterterrorism Center Director Cofer Black, and apparently Alec Station managers Rich B and Tom Wilshire. However, CIA Director Porter Goss
decided not to bother with the accountability boards.
A few paragraphs summarising sections of the report were released for the 2006 Zacarias Moussaoui trial, but the rest of the report remained secret, until a campaign by senators and victims’ relatives had a law passed forcing the CIA to release a redacted executive summary.
The redacted executive summary was finally released in August 2007. Its release was criticized by CIA Director Michael Hayden and as well as former director Tenet, although the media took various approaches to it.
Posted on June 15th, 2008 by Kevin Fenton
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Wadih El-Hage was an al-Qaeda operative involved in the 1998 East African embassy bombings, as well as serving as Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary. He was under investigation and known to both the FBI and CIA for years before the attacks, and this surveillance represented a missed opportunity to save over 200 lives. He was arrested after the bombings and sentenced to life in prison.
El-Hage first came to the FBI’s attention in connection with the 1991 slaying of Mustafa Shalabi, an opponent of the “Blind Sheikh” in New York. The FBI also found he visited a radical Islamist murderer in prison and was connected to another murder, this time in Arizona, but did not take any action against him, apparently due to lack of evidence. The next year he opened a bank account in Vienna, Austria, presumably to help the Bosnian jihad, and was arrested for a traffic violation in Texas, together with a man connected to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. After the bombing, one of the arrested militants, Mahmud Abouhalima, told the FBI that El-Hage had supplied the group with weapons.
In late 1994, multi-agent Ali Mohamed, by then under surveillance by US intelligence as well as working for it, made a call from a phone registered to El-Hage, and then sent him a supposedly secret list of unindicted co-conspirators in the 1993 WTC bombing trial for passage to bin Laden. By autumn 1995, El-Hage was already under investigation by the CIA, which had dozens of files of material on him, and the FBI also began investigating him again.
By the spring of 1996, at the latest, US intelligence was fully aware of the al-Qaeda cell in Kenya that would carry out the bombing there over two years later, and knew it was communicating both with bin Laden’s base in Afghanistan and Ali Mohamed in the US. This awareness was heightened by the death of al-Qaeda military commander Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri in a ferry accident on Lake Victoria in East Africa–El-Hage arrived at the scene of the accident to check on al-Banshiri, and was recognized by a western investigator from video footage. Between late 1996 and the bombings, bin Laden’s satellite phone was used to make dozens of calls to the bombing cell in Kenya, and these calls were intercepted by the NSA. At least two of the calls are between El-Hage and Mohammed Atef, who had succeeded al-Banshiri as al-Qaeda’s military commander.
Bin Laden’s phone was also used for calls with the Kenyan branch of Mercy International, a charity front for al-Qaeda that was linked to El-Hage, and the US began to investigate the charity. In February 1997, El-Hage travelled to Afghanistan to meet bin Laden in person, and the US was aware of this trip thanks to intercepts of his calls. On his return, he faxed a report from Atef about the Taliban to numerous recipients in the US and Germany. The US intercepted this fax and was also able to discover al-Qaeda operatives around the world based on its monitoring of the Kenya cell.
On August 21, 1997, the FBI, CIA and Kenyan police raided El-Hage’s home in Kenya and confiscated a wealth of material, although the FBI prevented one of its agents going on the raid. The confiscated evidence mentions a new policy of “activism” for al-Qaeda in Kenya, as well as “engineers” that were soon to arrive, and showed El-Hage frequently travelled to Tanzania, the site of the second embassy bombing a year later. When the US examined El-Hage’s address book, they found it contained contact details for militant financiers, Ali Mohamed in the US, Canada-based extremists, and Mamoun Darkazanli, a member of the Hamburg cell so prominent in the 9/11 operation, who was then investigated by the US.
Upon his return to the US, El-Hage was questioned before a grand jury and by investigators. He gave them information that was useful to the intelligence community and then moved back to Texas. Despite the fact that the whole of the Nairobi cell had not been rolled up and the US intelligence community knew other cell members and important documentation had still not been found, they stopped monitoring the cell. Neither did the US do anything when they intercepted US calls between El-Hage, Ali Mohamed, and Ali Nawawi, another US-based al-Qaeda operative, about the FBI’s interest in El-Hage. In addition, the US rejected an offer of co-operation from Sudanese intelligence that would have provided intelligence on several of the bombers, including El-Hage.
The US recommenced monitoring the bombing cell in May 1998, but this was not enough to stop the bombings, which took place on 7 August 1998. El-Hage was arrested shortly after, possibly partly thanks to a mole in al-Qaeda. He was sentenced to life in prison in October 2001.
A search of El-Hage’s belongings revealed a link between al-Qaeda and the Holy Land Foundation, a Texas-based charity known for its support of Hamas, as well as other suspect organizations.
Finally, bin Laden took credit for the “instigation” of the embassy bombings, and on 10 September 2001 a schoolchild who lived near Holy Land’s Texas base predicted World War III would start tomorrow.
This is a summary of the 9/11 Timeline’s Wadih El-Hage category, you can read the full category here.
Posted on June 15th, 2008 by Kevin Fenton
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This is a summary of the final third of the 9/11 Timeline’s Mohamed Atta chapter. A summary of the first part, detailing his time in Germany and arrival in the US, can be found here. A summary of the second part, about his first few months in the US, can be found here.
A warrant was issued for Atta’s arrest in early June 2001, after he failed to show up in court on a charge of driving without a licence, but police apparently failed to notice the warrant when he was pulled over for speeding a few weeks later and when they queried his car in early August. Between June and August he also made several calls to plot facilitator Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi in the United Arab Emirates, and obtained an ID card in New Jersey, at least according to FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Atta should have met plot coordinator Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Malaysia in June, but failed to show, and they then decided to meet in Spain. Bizarrely, FBI manager John O’Neill flew to Spain around the same time as Atta, and his movements there roughly mirrored those of Atta and his associates. Atta, purchased knives at Zurich airport on the way to Spain, met bin al-Shibh and possibly others in Madrid and Catalonia, and discussed crashing a plane into a nuclear plant. Evidence linking Atta to a Spanish al-Qaeda cell was found after 9/11.
Upon returning to the US, Atta was seen in Oklahoma with Zacarias Moussaoui, whose belongings contained evidence linking him to Atta and ten other hijackers. The FBI had these belongings in their possession after Moussaoui was arrested in mid-August, but headquarters prevented the arresting agents from searching them.
Atta was also seen at Orlando airport waiting for an associate who was refused entry to the US, and flew to Las Vegas to meet some of the other hijackers. He rented a single-engine plane at an airport in Palm Beach, although Rudi Dekkers, owner of Huffman Aviation, where Atta first studied aviation in the US, was facing a number of legal suits by this time, and received visas for Atta and Alshehhi several months after 9/11.
Atta then received US$ 100,000 from Pakistan and was seen purchasing money orders on Florida’s Gulf coast. Atta drove thousands of miles in rental cars around this time, and trips between his base north of Miami and the Gulf coast could certainly account for the miles. The hijackers made a series of deposits to their bank accounts around this time, possibly the money Atta received from Pakistan and then changed into money orders. This money may have come from Saeed Sheikh, an associate of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Atta also received a small sum from Egypt around his birthday, rather more from al-Qaeda member and alleged associate Nabil al-Marabh, and possibly more through the United Arab Emirates.
Towards the end of August, Atta informed bin al-Shibh of the approximate date of the attack, and then the exact date. Atta and the other hijackers also bought their 9/11 tickets around this time, although Atta was still wanted for his driving offence.
In early September, Atta is reported to have met bin al-Shibh in Spain again, possibly travelling there under one of his many aliases, returned money to al-Hawsawi in the UAE, and been seen in Sarasota the day Bush announced he would visit the school there on 9/11. He also got completely drunk, not for the first time, behaved suspiciously at Logan airport, and took a trip to Portland on 10 September. There is also a story that he visited the WTC on this day, although this may be a case of confusion with another man named Mohamed Atta.
Atta also received final approval for the attacks from alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a call that was monitored by the NSA. At some point before 9/11, he emailed defense contractor employees.
After 9/11, former President Bill Clinton said Atta and Alshehhi had large credit card debts, and some of their cars were found. Atta’s father said his son had been framed, the authenticity of a note possibly written by Atta was disputed, and, in the spirit of enlightenment that prevailed after 9/11, an Arabic waiter was arrested because he had served Atta lunch. The famous Prague connection saga also began.
Finally, little video footage of the hijackers collected by the FBI was released, an author wrote a book saying Atta was hooked on drink and drugs, and an investigation into a German company connected to the Hamburg cell and Syrian intelligence was halted.
Posted on June 9th, 2008 by Kevin Fenton
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The Collapse of Fortress Bush: The Crisis of Authority in American Government, by Alasdair Roberts. 2008 New York University Press
I’m not starting this new category with a sensationalistic, partisan book — there are plenty of those out there, and I like some of them 
This book has obviously been given a dramatic title by its publisher to try to take advantage of the wave of books criticizing the Bush administration. Likewise, the cover photo — a stern Bush laying down the law from a podium while enormous engines of war loom over him — adds to the sense that this is another scathing indictment of all things Bush.
But readers hungry for red meat will instead come away from this book with an uncomfortable taste of tofu and granola. Roberts is a public administration professor at Syracuse University, and the author of a 2006 book, Blacked Out, about governmental secrecy, which I intend to find and read ASAP. He is sober, thoughtful, deliberate, and, as befits his position, more concerned with an examination of process than he is in calling for this or that specific outcome. I don’t agree with some of his fundamental suppositions — he argues, for example, that because of bureaucratic inertia, Democratic resistance, and its own incompetence, the Bush administration has actually made very few depredations against Americans’ fundamental Constitutional rights and protections. Certainly Bush and Cheney have accomplished far less than they intended to, but Roberts seems to believe that the inroads the Bush administration has made into civil liberties, for example, are minimal and most likely temporary. I hope he’s right, but I fear he is not. Nevertheless, while I could and would argue with him, I respect his views and grant that he makes a solid case for his positions.
Roberts gave enough factual information in the book to make it useful for our purposes in the Commons — as with other books like this, I spent a lot of time poring over the footnotes and jotting down source information. Because of the fact-based nature of the site, few of Roberts’s observations and opinions will make it into entries. In his final chapter, he writes, “The central challenge … is not simply to restrain presidential authority, but to decide what powers the president must have and in what way that authority should be regulated.” Roberts argues that Bush has not merely overstepped his authority as president, but has rarely shown any inkling of foresight in exercising that authority. Instead of preparing alternate plans for unforeseen outcomes, the Bush administration marches confidently into a situation — the occupation of Iraq, for example, or its response to Hurricane Katrina — cocksure that everything will go just as they have planned. When, inevitably, events and people do not perform as scripted, the administration responds with little more than denials, slogans, and insults.
If I remember rightly, Roberts never uses the word “neoconservative” in his book. It is not in his index. But I would observe that the Bush administration’s failure to consider the possibility that things might not go as they believe is a hallmark of neocon thinking. It will happen because we say it will happen, they assert, and if you think otherwise, you’re a Neville Chamberlain-type appeaser who secretly dreams of shoveling babies into furnaces. Hence the neocons’ latest position: Iraq will be fine once the US overthrows a few more governments in that region. Iraq isn’t a failure, they say, it’s just a beginning. In his book The Dead Zone, Stephen King used a metaphor that I believe is apt. You go to the state fair and get sick from a bad hot dog. “Here, sonny boy,” they say. “We’ll help you out: have another hot dog.”
Roberts may fail to perceive some of the fundamental approaches used by the Bush administration, particularly of Dick Cheney’s office. Or he may not choose to write about them, choosing instead to focus on the actual policy processes. But he has written a book worthy of careful study and thoughtful consideration by readers on both sides of the partisan divide. Both will find things with which they agree, and, if they are honest, will find things that give them pause.
Posted on June 7th, 2008 by Black Max
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This is a summary of the second third of the 9/11 Timeline’s Mohamed Atta chapter. A summary of the first part, detailing his time in Germany and arrival in the US, can be found here. A summary of the third part will be added later.
After entering the US and hooking up with Marwan Alshehhi, Atta went to check out a flight school in Oklahoma later attended by Zacarias Moussaoui. However, the two subsequently moved to Venice, Florida, and started flying lessons at Huffman Aviation. They rented a room from the school’s bookkeeper, but were thrown out after a week.
Atta and the other two hijackers living in Florida opened bank accounts, although the FBI seemingly does not want you to know about all of them, and received a series of bank transfers, in particular from Ali Abdul Aziz Ali in the United Arab Emirates, one of which allegedly led to a suspicious activity report. Most of the hijackers were profiled as high risk banking customers by a British banking compliance company due to their terrorism ties, but it is unclear whether this group included Atta, who wired money from the US to an associate named Ramri bin al-Shibh in Germany using a name variant.
While studying in Venice they frequented the local bars. They also rented a house in nearby Nokomis, but were rarely seen there, perhaps because they were actually staying in the Sandpiper Apartments in Venice at this time. In the second half of 2000 they passed flying tests and applied for student visas, although there is a dispute about exactly when this happened.
In the autumn of 2000, Atta is also said to have visited fellow hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi, who associated with a Saudi informer named Omar al-Bayoumi and FBI informer Abdussattar Shaikh, in San Diego. At some point Atta also spent time in Punta Gorda, and was seen at the local airport there with some of the other hijackers, although this is only known from media reports and the FBI has not made a statement on it.
At some point while he was in the US, Atta stayed in Wayne, New Jersey, and he is first said to have gone there around September 2000. This apparently led the army’s Able Danger data mining team to link Atta to other hijackers and a chart mapping al-Qaeda is said to have been produced with Atta on it. The CIA is also reported to have had an operation at the same airport as was used by Huffman Aviation, and there is also a claim that Israeli intelligence was aware of the hijackers.
In late September, Atta and Alshehhi moved to another flying school, but were kicked out for having bad attitudes. Returning to Huffman, they aroused suspicion in a fellow student. Atta also purchased flight deck videos from a shop also used by Nawaf Alhazmi and Zacarias Moussaoui, and he and Alshehhi managed to stall a plane on the runway at Miami International Airport, after which they abandoned it there, but the FAA took no action. Atta and Alshehhi caused trouble at a Florida airport by using it after it closed for the night, and took three lessons on jet simulators shortly after Christmas. The FBI says that these three lessons are the only time they used such simulators, although al-Qaeda appears to think otherwise.
Whilst in North America, Atta and Alshehhi travelled to Toronto, where they were seen at a photocopying shop owned by a relative of a US-based al-Qaeda operative, Nabil al-Marabh, as well as in the building where al-Marah lived.
Atta travelled to Spain at the start of 2001. Records of his return to the US indicate that two Mohamed Attas entered the US on the same day, although officials later called this a snafu. Alshehhi also took a trip outside the US-to Morocoo, and Atta’s phone was used to call the Moroccan embassy at this time.
After returning to the US, Atta and Alshehhi moved to Georgia, although a Florida woman later claimed Atta remained in Florida, that she was his girlfriend, and that they had a wild weekend in Key West. Atta and Alshehhi were offered jobs as pilots for a start-up Florida airline run by Huffman Aviation owner Rudi Dekkers, and there are reports Atta applied for a job with Lufthansa in February 2001.
Atta and Alshehhi left Georgia briefly to make an unexplained trip to Virginia, but soon returned to Georgia, where Atta’s car was queried by police. The two pilots then went to Tennessee, where Atta was extremely curious about a chemical plant, before returning to Florida, where Atta and some of the other hijackers showed an interest in cropdusters.
At the end of 2000 and beginning of 2001, the FBI in Florida investigated a terrorist cell – run by two informers – that planned to blow up Mount Rushmore. One of the people investigated by the FBI at this time was Adnan El Shukrijumah, an al-Qaeda operative linked to associates of the “Blind Sheikh” who was seen with Atta in Miami in May.
Atta travelled to Virginia again in April, and also reportedly visited Wayne and Fairfield in New Jersey at some point in the spring or summer of 2001.
Returning to Florida, Atta was ticketed for driving without a licence, and then obtained and got a Florida driver’s licence - from which the famous “evil-looking Atta” photo comes.
In May, Atta received money from an associate named Mounir El Motassadeq in Germany, visited a drug rehabilitation clinic, and started working out at gyms. Money was deposited on his account, as well as the accounts of some of the other hijackers, who started making trips to Las Vegas, and he had a ’great time’ riding scooters up and down Florida’s beaches.
He is also said to have been seen in Germany plotting the WTC attack, and the NSA intercepted calls between him and alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, but kept the information to itself.
To be continued…
Posted on May 30th, 2008 by Kevin Fenton
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This is a summary of the first part of the 9/11 Timeline’s Mohamed Atta chapter. Summaries of the second and third parts of the chapter will be added later.
Atta, the alleged pilot of the first plane to hit the World Trade Center on 9/11 and mastermind of the attacks, grew up in a middle-class family in Cairo, Egypt. While at university there, is said to have joined an organisation linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is generally regarded as a hardline Islamist organization. Atta seems to have maintained ties with the Brotherhood even after moving to Germany, where he studied in Hamburg.
In addition to studying at university in Germany, Atta reportedly got involved in petty drug crimes, as well as a minor fraud scheme, and, for some reason, registered with the authorities as a national of the United Arab Emirates under a name variant.
By 1995, Atta had met Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was later said to play a role in the 9/11 plot, possibly at the Al Quds mosque, where Atta made his will and which was under surveillance by the authorities, who had an informer inside it.
Around 1997-8, Atta was reported to be studying medicine in Spain and also training at an air force base in Alabama. Although these reports are unconfirmed, Atta did disappear from Hamburg for several months at this time, and there were several connections between an al-Qaeda cell in Spain, where Atta allegedly met Millennium bomber Ahmed Ressam, and the “Hamburg Cell” of Atta, bin al-Shibh and two other alleged hijacker pilots, Marwan Alshehhi and Ziad Jarrah.
For much of his time in Hamburg, Atta lived at an address on Marienstrasse, which he shared with a Pakistani fighter pilot and which was under surveillance by the CIA and the German authorities, who intercepted phone calls mentioning Atta’s name. Although Atta warned a student away from Islamist extremism, at the same time he is said to have been regularly meeting alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Hamburg.
In 1999, Atta and some associates travelled to Holland, where one of them received cash from unnamed Saudi financiers, and the FBI conducted a nuclear-related investigation into a US person who was connected to Alshehhi and, possibly, one of Atta’s sisters.
The Hamburg cell downloaded flight training software in October 1999, and Atta and Alshehhi were allegedly seen taking flying lessons in the Philippines in April and December 1999. Atta also reportedly got engaged in Egypt and unsuccessfully applied for a US green card, in October 1999.
He then travelled to Afghanistan, using a route known to the authorities, met some of the other hijackers there and made a martyr’s statement. He returned to Germany in February, again using the same route known to the authorities, and reported his passport lost upon arrival.
Around this time Atta is said to have been identified as an al-Qaeda operative by the army’s Able Danger programme, possibly through a connection to the “Blind Sheikh’s” translator or his son, Adnan El Shukrijumah, one of several links between the Blind Sheikh and the 9/11 hijackers.
Atta began emailing US flight schools, one of which, Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida, had just been taken over by an owner with a “checkered history”.
Although Atta is said to have arrived in the US on 3 June 2000, there is evidence to suggest he may have paid the US an earlier visit, possibly using an alias or name variant. For example, before his arrival in June he is said to have become a member of a wholesale club, possibly rented rooms in Brooklyn, visited a library in Portland, where he would return on the eve of 9/11, and attempted to obtain a government loan to convert a cropduster.
Shortly before his “official” departure from Germany, Atta paid a $650 taxi bill, and a namesake was deported from the Czech Republic shortly before Atta himself arrived there, which would later play a role in the “Prague Connection” story.
To be continued…
Posted on May 17th, 2008 by Kevin Fenton
Filed under: Current Information | 2 Comments »
