https://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/U-S-overlooked-hijackers-pasts-1065826.php
U.S. overlooked hijackers' pasts
Terrorists used Saudi Arabia's reputation here to get visas
By KEVIN CULLEN AND SHELLEY MURPHY, THE BOSTON GLOBE
Published 10:00 pm PDT, Thursday, September 13, 2001
A Port Authority police officer escorts a man in handcuffs to a police car at LaGuardia Airport. The airport was closed while authorities checked a package.
Photo: / Associated Press
Investigators say the planning of the suicide hijackings of American commercial airliners by Islamic extremists began at least five years ago, and that the men who commandeered two Boston flights began casing Logan Airport at least six months ago, law enforcement sources say.
The FBI also has evidence suggesting that at least five of the 10 men who hijacked the planes from Boston and plowed them into the World Trade Center exploited the good reputation of the United States' staunchest Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, to gain entry to the country and access to aeronautics training in Florida -- training they used to kill thousands of Americans in the worst act of terrorism in U.S. history.
At least one of the Boston hijackers, Mohamed Atta, was able to enter the United States despite having been implicated in a 1986 bus bombing in Israel, according to federal sources.
Some of the hijackers who became kamikaze pilots after commandeering two Boston-to-Los Angeles flights on Tuesday had pilots licenses indicating they were sponsored or employed by Saudi Arabian Airlines, which is owned by the Saudi government, investigators said. Others were listed on public records as being employed by Saudi Arabian Airlines.
Atta carried a Saudi passport, while two others, Waleed Alshehhi and Marwan Alshehhi, had been living in Saudi Arabia before they arrived in Florida last year to attend flight school, law enforcement and other sources said.
Two alleged associates of the hijackers, Adnan Bukhari and Amer Kamfar, attended flight schools in Florida and had the Saudi Arabian Airlines post office box in the Saudi city of Jeddah, listed as their home addresses on their commercial pilots' licenses.
Bukhari, 41, who lived in Vero Beach, Fla., was taken into custody by FBI agents on Tuesday, law enforcement sources said. He released after the FBI concluded he wasn't involved in the hijackings, according to federal law enforcement sources. Police in Florida identified Bukhari as a flight engineer for the Saudi airline.
Last night, police in Florida were searching for Kamfar, who was reported to be armed with an AK-47 assault rifle. Kamfar, 41, lived at the same Vero Beach address as Abdulrahman Alomari, who is listed in FAA records as having worked in flight operations for the Saudi airline and who was sitting next to Atta in the business section of American Airlines Flight 11, the first jet to hit the World Trade Center, according to the passenger manifest.
FBI Director Robert Mueller yesterday said five hijackers were on Flight 11. Sources identified them as Atta, Alomari, Waleed Alshehhi, Wail Alshehhi, and Satam Al Suqami. Mueller said there were also five hijackers on United Airlines Flight 175, the second Boeing 767 to hit the trade center. Sources identified them as Fayez Ahmed, Ahmed Alghamdi, Hamza Alghamdi, Marwan Alshehhi, and Mohaid Alshehhi.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said there were four hijackers on each of the other jets that crashed Tuesday, one into the Pentagon, the other into the woods in Pennsylvania.
Investigators say that at least half of the 10 Boston hijackers had received extensive training at flight schools in Florida and were capable of taking over the controls of the two jets.
Waleed Alshehhi graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautics University in Daytona Beach, Fla., in 1997, and law enforcement sources yesterday said investigators believe his arrival at the school the previous year shows that the planning to train suicide pilots began at least in 1996.
Over the next five years, various numbers of the suicide pilots arrived in Florida to train at the many flight schools there. Law enforcement sources said that the Boston hijackers, apparently led by Atta, began casing Logan Airport at least six months and perhaps even a year ago.
Flight instructors said Saudis and other Arabs with the imprimatur of the Saudi national airline who seek permission to enter the United States to take flying lessons do not face the same degree of scrutiny from the State Department when seeking a visa as do Arabs from countries less friendly to Washington.
In fact, some flight schools, including some of those attended by the hijackers, have exemptions that allow the schools to unilaterally issue paperwork that students can present at U.S. embassies and consulates so they can obtain visas with only perfunctory background checks, flight instructors said.
Chuck Clapper, who owns Lantana Air, an air-charter company in Lantana, Fla., said that several Florida flight schools have contracts with Saudi Arabian Airlines, and that some have exemptions that allow them to send students paperwork that are then virtually rubber-stamped by officials who issue visas.
A State Department spokesman disputed claims that visas are rubber-stamped, saying that all foreign students get a background check.
That does not explain how Atta, 33, and his cousin, Marwan Alshehhi, 23, got visas. Yesterday German police said the two hijackers had been linked to Islamic extremists when they studied at the Technical University in Hamburg and should have been denied visas as a result. Atta was also suspected of involvement in the 1986 terrorist attack in Israel.
Tom Quinn, the head of American sales and marketing for Saudi Arabian Airlines, said that "there are indications that some of these people may have been employees of the airline and were here for training."
Quinn said that the airline had "quite a few" employees attend Embry-Riddle, a prestigious flight school.
There was growing sentiment that Saudi-born, anti-American terrorist Osama bin Laden orchestrated the attack.
"Everything so far continues to point to bin Laden," said one U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Iraq doesn't seem to be panning out, and the same thing with Iran."
The official said that information gleaned from the early stages of the investigation indicated that at least some of the four known terrorist cells carefully set down roots in communities, which resembles past terror attacks connected to bin Laden and his group.
One of the hallmarks of past bin Laden plots, according to U.S. officials and court documents, is to place people in a community with orders to establish a local network and lay the groundwork for an attack that is never completely spelled out to them.
Prior to the 1998 bombing against the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, for example, bin Laden operatives married local women, collected information on potential targets, rented houses and purchased equipment. Later, a commander sent from Afghanistan arrived in Kenya to oversee the last-minute procedures.
Meanwhile, an FBI-led task force of investigators continued to fan across the Boston area, searching for clues and people believed to have assisted the hijackers in this area. Hundreds of tips, and the hijackers' indifference to incriminating evidence left behind in hotels and rental cars, has left investigators busy.
"The attacks were probably well-planned, but they didn't do a good job covering their tracks," said one federal agent.