At 5:33 on the morning of September 11th 2001, lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta, and his co-conspirator, Abdulaziz al-Omari, checked out of room 232 of the Comfort Inn in Portland, Maine. Their operation, two and a half years in the planning, had entered its final phase.
They placed their baggage into their rented Nissan Altima and drove to Portland International Jetport, arriving at around 5:45. This gave them just enough time to catch the 6:00 commuter flight to Boston’s Logan airport, from where they would later board the 7:45 departure, Flight 11, to Los Angeles.
This connecting flight to Boston was the last leg of a rather circuitous journey for Atta, which saw him fly from Baltimore to Boston on the 9th, and having collected Omari, drive from Boston to Portland on the 10th. There appears to have been no good reason for the two men to have left Boston, and their decision to do so exposed them to potential delays that could have jeopardised their participation in the mission.
Having arrived at the airport, Atta tried to check two items of baggage onto the 19-seat commuter flight to Boston. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, he…
QUOTE
…was selected by a computerized prescreening system known as CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System), created to identify passengers who should be subject to special security measures. Under security rules in place at the time, the only consequence of Atta's selection by CAPPS was that his checked bags were held off the plane until it was confirmed that he had boarded the aircraft.
These measures, designed to establish that selectees with a high terrorism ‘risk score’ were not carrying explosives, ‘reflected the FAA’s view that non-suicide bombing was the most substantial risk to domestic aircraft.’
As the events unfolded, Atta’s bags remained in Boston’s Logan Airport; they hadn’t made it on to Flight 11. They were discovered later that day and conveniently found to contain what former FBI agent Warren Flagg described as ‘the Rosetta stone of the investigation’.
FBI agent James K Lechner lists the bags’ contents in an affidavit filed on September 12th. They included:
QUOTE
numerous documents, including a letter of recommendation and education-related documentation, bearing the names “Mohamed Mohamed Elamir Awad Elsayed” and “Mohamed Mohamed Elamir Awad Elsayed Atta”; a hand-held electronic flight computer; a simulator procedures manual for Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft; two videotapes relating to “air tours” of the Boeing 757 and 747 aircraft; a slide-rule flight calculator; a copy of the Koran.
One of the documents found was described by Bob Woodward of the Washington Post as ‘a cross between a chilling spiritual exhortation aimed at the hijackers and an operational mission checklist’. In it, the hijackers were reminded to bring ‘knives, your will, IDs, your passport… [and] to make sure that nobody is following you.’ Remarkably, ‘[t]he FBI found another copy of essentially the same document in the wreckage of United Flight 93… [which] suggest[s] the document was shared among at least some of the hijackers.’
Less widely reported, is the equally remarkable claim made by both Flagg and an unnamed former federal prosecutor that the second bag contained the identities of all 19 hijackers.
Lechner’s affidavit also contained a reference to the discovery of ‘a handwritten document in Arabic’; it was Atta’s will.
It is reasonable to assume that this will, although dated 1996, was still applicable as of September 11th. Having encouraged the other hijackers to bring their wills, it seems improbable that Atta himself would have been carrying one that had been superseded. Because of this, and in the context of the events that were about to unfold, both Atta’s instructions and the fact that he planned for the document travel with him seem incongruous. Could he have reasonably expected either his will or his body to have been recovered?
This is just one of a great many question arising from the above.
It would also be interesting to learn why Atta and Omari travelled from Boston to Portland on September 10th? Why did they catch a connecting flight back to Boston early on September 11th giving themselves little room for manoeuvre should they encounter any unforeseen delays?
Why did Atta (and at least one other hijacker who boarded Flight 93) carry operationally sensitive material with him on the morning of September 11th? Why did Atta carry his will with him and why did he instruct the other hijackers to do so? Why does Atta’s will contain instructions for the preparation and internment of his body?
Why were all these materials contained in checked-in baggage (and, therefore, inaccessible once loaded) as opposed to hand-held, carry-on baggage? Why did Atta’s bag not make it onto Flight 11?
And finally, did Atta himself make it aboard Flight 11?
This last question is not as outlandish as it first appears when you consider that Atta was selected for CAPPS screening, and that anyone thus selected was required to board their flight before their baggage was loaded. Further, one of the flight attendants aboard Flight 11, Madeline Amy Sweeney, managed to call ground staff at Boston whilst the hijacking was in progress. According to a BBC report, Sweeney ‘spotted only four’ hijackers and ‘the seat numbers she gave were different from those registered in the hijackers’ names’.
To my mind, those who planned and executed the attacks on 9/11 should have left nothing to chance. But, if the ‘official’ story is to be believed, then they clearly did. What’s more, they took unnecessary risks, none more inexplicable than those taken in the hours before the operation began.
Of course, it is always possible that the ‘official’ story is not accurate…
Source.
