Volker Hauth, who was traveling with Atta, described Amal as "attractive and self-confident. He is now with God. Financial records and bank video show Atta and Al-Omari made two ATM withdrawals in Portland, and the men were reportedly spotted at an area Wal-Mart, as well as in the parking lot of a Pizza Hut restaurant. [38] The instructions in his last will and testament reflect both Sunni funeral practices along with some more puritanical demands from Salafism, including asking people not "to weep and cry" and to generally refrain from showing emotion. [16] When Atta and Shehhi arrived in Florida, they initially stayed with Huffman's bookkeeper and his wife in a spare room of their house. WASHINGTON - The tape of Betty Ong's voice yesterday, alive and urgent yet amazingly calm, describing through the background buzz how a group of hijackers had stabbed two . Then at 8:50pm, he checked into the Hotel Diana Cazadora in Barajas, a town near the airport. USDA loan officer Johnelle Bryant said Atta visited her office and inquired about a loan to buy a plane. American Airlines Flight 11: Mohamed Atta, Egypt (33) - Tactical leader of 9/11 plot and pilot. [8][29] Among other odd jobs to supplement his income, Atta sometimes worked at a cleaning company and sometimes bought and sold cars. The two al-Shehri brothers selected seats 2A and 2B in first class. Statements entered at . He was among the highest-scoring students; by his senior year, he was admitted to an exclusive architecture program. He was let go from the firm in 1997, however, because its business had declined and "his draughtsmanship was not needed" after it bought a CAD system. In the end though, those international calls and Emails open a window to the falsehood of greater authority to intercept communications. The next day, he received a five-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa from the United States embassy in Berlin. The hour-long tape places him in Afghanistan at a decisive moment in the development of the conspiracy when he was given operational command. The third hijacked plane, American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 that took off from Dulles Airport . It had been overlooked that there would still be a security screen to pass in Boston because of this distinct detail of the terminal's arrangement. Al-Omari chose 8G and al-Suqami chose 10B in Business Class. of 20-25 sons of Mohamed bin Laden, who had 52-54 children in total.2 Originally an immigrant from Yemen, Muhamed bin Laden, by befriending the royal family, had established a major construction company and had amassed a fortune of some 2-3 billion dollars by the time of his death in a 1967 plane crash. He asked about the Pentagon and the White House. They were on a suicide flight. Here he presented an AAA membership for a discount, and paid cash for the $49.50/night room. Just stay quiet, and you'll be okay. "He wanted to finance a twin-engine, six-passenger aircraft and remove the seats," Bryant told ABC's World News Tonight. [16], On August 4, Atta is believed to have been at Orlando International Airport waiting to pick up suspected "20th Hijacker" Mohammed al-Qahtani from Dubai, who ended up being held by immigration as "suspicious." So why did UA Flight 93 prove to be the only plane that failed to reach its intended target, retaken by its passengers and forced to crash? While in the United States he traveled to Lawrenceville, Georgia, where he and Shehhi visited an LA Fitness Health Club. Timeline September 11, 2001. Mr. Pursell, meanwhile, said the two men never explained why they chose to fly to Miami or apologized for the costs incurred by the school. By early 1993, Atta had moved into university housing with two roommates, in Centrumshaus. [42] He made acquaintances at al-Quds; some of whom visited him on occasion at Centrumshaus. The night before, Atta went to Portland, Maine, a trip that has mystified terrorism experts for five years. On September 11 we'll live tweet the events of the day, minute by minute, starting at 4:45 a.m. EST, @RoadTo911. Atta, an Egyptian, and Omari, a Saudi, held $2,400 first-class tickets to fly from Portland to Boston to Los Angeles. [1][2][3][4][5] Having just turned 33 at the time of the attacks, he was the oldest of the 19 hijackers who took part in the mission. Mohammed Atta, (born September 1, 1968, Kafr al-Shaykh, Egyptdied September 11, 2001, New York, New York, U.S.), Egyptian militant Islamist and al-Qaeda operative who helped plot and lead the September 11 attacks. ", The other possibility is that Atta went to Portland for a final meeting with an unknown supporter. That night and twice the next morning, he called Bashar Ahmad Ali Musleh, a Jordanian student in Hamburg who served as a liaison for bin al-Shibh. "These guys looked like they might have been on business travel," Tuohey said. Turning toward New York. Atta, who piloted the first plane into the world trade center, flew to Las Vegas on June 28, rented a car, then spent . He stayed there until 1998. It was here that the Hamburg cell developed and acted more as a group. He researched the history of the urban landscape in relation to the general theme of conflict between Arab and modern civilization. He had vacationed often as a child (and would continue to take vacations with his wife while he was in the United States) and was the best English speaker and student of the four. It's Easy to Get Knives and Razors Onto a Plane, the Hijackers Found, The FBI's Radical Fundamentalist Unit Ignored This Radical Fundamentalist. One of them came on Dec. 26 at Miami International Airport. Waleed purchased his ticket online with his debit card. Many al-Qaeda members lived in this apartment at various times, including hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi, Zakariya Essabar, and others. "[98], In the months following the September 11 attacks, officials at the Czech Interior Ministry asserted that Atta made a trip to Prague on April 8, 2001, to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent named Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. [8], Atta was born on September 1, 1968, in Kafr el-Sheikh, located in the Nile Delta region of Egypt (then a part of the United Arab Republic). [35][36] He was also angry and bitter at the elite in his native Egypt, who he believed hoarded power for themselves, as well as at the Egyptian government, that cracked down on the dissident Muslim Brotherhood. According to the interrogations of KSM and Ramzi Bin al-Shibh (his interlocutor in Germany), Mohammed Atta was worried about the communications, Atta's real concern being that Jarrah might be unable to break away from his wife, that it would just be too painful in the end for him to follow through with his suicide flight. The date for the planes operation is set. Mohamed Atta, right, and Abdulaziz al-Omari are seen passing through security at the Portland Jetport on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Credit: Courtesy of Spectrum News Service It is a day no one . Bin Laden sent them to see Atef to get a general overview of the mission, and then they were sent to Karachi to see Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to go over specifics. "They conformed to all the guidelines of checking in." The only problem, Tuohey said, came when he told Atta that, after arriving in Boston, Atta and Omari would have to check in once again before transferring to American Airlines Flight 11. Jarrah, a Lebanese citizen, would go on to pilot United Airlines Flight 93, intended to hit the U.S. Capitol Building. They may have helped arrange and host the meeting in Tarragona. In the summer of 2001, Mohamed Atta, the operational leader of the 9/11 conspiracy, drove another conspirator, Ziah Jarrah, to Miami's main airport so that Mr. Jarrah could fly to Germany to visit . One former flight instructor said a Federal Aviation Administration official placed an angry call on Dec. 27, threatening to investigate the maintenance record of the plane as well as the two pilots. Although estimates range from 18 The 30million CSI-style probe has taken seven years. The same day, he booked a one-way first-class ticket via the Internet on America West Flight 244 from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to Las Vegas. In the spring of 2000, Atta entered the United States and enrolled in an aviation school in Venice, Fla. On Sept. 10, 2001, Atta picked up another 9/11 terrorist, Abdul-Azzia Al-Omari, at the Milner Hotel in Boston. There, Atta and bin al-Shibh held a meeting to complete the planning of the attacks. The 33-year-old grew up in a strict household in Egypt where he was made to study hard. Drumhiller said it could have been "to make the final arrangements, to sort of close out everything they were doing to wrap up their time in the states.". This document is divided into three sections; the first is a fifteen point list providing detailed instructions for the last night of a martyr's life, the second gives instructions for travelling to the plane and the third from the time between boarding the plane and martyrdom. [60][61], On June 6, 2002, ABC's World News Tonight broadcast an interview with Johnelle Bryant, former loan officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in south Florida, who told about her encounter with Mohamed Atta. In the aftermath of the attack, law enforcement agents discovered a four-page document in Mohamed Atta's baggage. Usually in these types of things you have your initial plan and you have a fallback plan. Other hijackers traveled to Las Vegas at different times in the summer of 2001. [3] After they arrived, they were selected by Al Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef as suitable candidates for the "planes operation" plot. Bin Laden asked them to pledge loyalty and commit to suicide missions, which Atta and the other three Hamburg men all accepted. On August 6, Atta booked a flight on Spirit Airlines from Fort Lauderdale to Newark, leaving on August 7 and returning on August 9. Had Atta or any of these men been on international watchlists, their names would have been flagged upon making a domestic reservation. [15][17], Atta also got engaged to a woman lined up by his father and her family in Cairo, at late 1999, after coming back from Germany the same year. In late 1999, Atta, Shehhi, Jarrah, Bahaji, and bin al-Shibh decided to travel to Chechnya to fight against the Russians, but were convinced by Khalid al-Masri and Mohamedou Ould Salahi at the last minute to change their plans. He said they wanted advice on trying to restart the plane. [8] In his will, written in 1996, Atta gives his name as "Mohamed the son of Mohamed Elamir awad Elsayed". Bin al-Shibh was worried that Jarrah might even abandon the plan. [58], On May 17, Atta applied for a United States visa. He held interviews with the German news magazine Bild am Sonntag in late 2002, saying his son was alive and hiding in fear for his life, and that American Christians were responsible for the attacks. Bin Laden also asked that other operatives not be informed of the specific data until the last minute. Atta and Amal appeared to be attracted to each other, but Atta soon decided that "she had a quite different orientation and that the emancipation of the young lady did not fit." Although the marriage never happened, Atta's father mentioned they liked each other.[18]. At 2:12 p.m. on August 25, Mohammed Atta logged into his . A spokesman for the F.A.A. In November 2000, Atta earned his instrument rating, and then a commercial pilot's license in December from the Federal Aviation Administration. A voice believed to be that of al Qaeda hijack leader Mohamed Atta urged passengers to . As it turned out, the employee said, a spark plug had needed tightening and the two pilots had probably flooded the engine. Thirty minutes later, Marwan al-Shehhi hit the South Tower. [115], Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta, Mohamed Atta's first announcement, heard by ATC at 08:23, Mohamed Atta's second announcement at 08:33, sfn error: no target: CITEREFWright2006 (. Air traffic controller Danielle O'Brien was at the Dulles Tower outside Washington, D.C., that morning. The 9/11 Commission obtained details about the meeting, based on interrogations of bin al-Shibh in the weeks after his arrest in September 2002. refused to comment on whether any official investigation had ever been started against the two men, citing the criminal investigation into the hijackings. They were all well-educated, had experience of living in western society, along with some English skills, and would be able to obtain visas. He spent two nights in Salou at the beachside Casablanca Playa Hotel, then spent the last two nights at the Hotel Residencia Montsant. [77] On July 19, Atta returned to the United States, flying on Delta Air Lines from Madrid to Fort Lauderdale, via Atlanta. We went through the logs of ferries leaving Maine, and we went through the logs of airlines and anything associated with potential for a terrorist cell to support Atta.
