|
Pilots boxcutters { September 18 2001 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/specials/attacked/A46946-2001Sep17.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/specials/attacked/A46946-2001Sep17.html
FBI Questions Men Suspected Of Planning Other Hijackings
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 18, 2001; Page A01
The FBI is investigating whether some people detained as part of the probe into last Tuesday's terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center may have been planning other hijackings that went awry, according to law enforcement officials.
The examination includes, but is not limited to, five foreign-born men being questioned by the FBI in New York, all of whom were detained or arrested under circumstances that authorities consider suspicious. In each case, there were some similarities to the attacks that the FBI said were committed by 19 suicide hijackers who commandeered four aircraft.
Two men taken off a train in Texas were found with box cutters like those used by some of the hijackers. Another was carrying a pilot's jacket and suspicious photographs. A fourth tried to breach security at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Thursday with a false pilot's license in his sock, authorities said.
A fifth man, Habib Zacarias Moussaoui, had been held by immigration officials in Minnesota since Aug. 17 after he tried to get commercial jetliner training at a flight academy near Minneapolis despite a lack of experience or skills. He reportedly was interested in learning how to steer airliners, but not how to land.
U.S. officials stress that their investigation is in its early stages and it is unclear what roles, if any, the various detainees may have played. But FBI officials said that nothing is being ruled out and that some of the circumstances surrounding the detainees are troubling.
"We are dedicating substantial resources to that very question: Was there more to this plot?" said one senior U.S. government official.
Robert M. Blitzer, a former FBI counterterrorism official, said the question of whether other attacks were in the works would be central to any investigation like the one now underway. He said that reports of the circumstances surrounding several of those in FBI custody point to the possibility that other hijackings were planned.
"It sounds like you might have had two or three more teams here, that had other targets in mind," Blitzer said. "That wouldn't surprise me at all. Four got through, but maybe two didn't. That's a pretty good percentage."
As the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history ended its first week, authorities announced yesterday that 49 people have been detained for possible immigration violations. Others have been arrested on warrants, sealed by federal courts, that name them as material witnesses.
One law enforcement official in New Jersey said yesterday that investigators are working under the presumption that the two men arrested with box cutters in Texas -- Ayub Ali Khan and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath -- had intended to hijack another plane. The men, who listed addresses in Jersey City, were brought to New York for questioning.
FBI investigators and Justice Department prosecutors are particularly interested in whether other hijackings were planned for Sept. 11 or the days after that, and in whether a similar threat still exists, officials said. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said yesterday that "associates of the hijackers that have ties to terrorist organizations may be a continuing presence in the United States."
Added one source: "What we're trying to determine is who are the associates and what part did they play in the attack. Although they may have had box cutters and other things, it doesn't necessarily make them culpable. But it's a good indication they may be associated with the attacks."
Vice President Cheney said on Sunday that initial reports last Tuesday morning indicated that as many as six planes might have been hijacked. He said officials do not yet know if aircraft other than the four that crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania countryside were targeted for hijackings that were not carried out.
"I don't know. We know there were four, of course," Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I don't think until we've completed our investigation, looked at all the ties and relationships, we'll be able to say that there were no other plans for additional planes."
Administration officials declined to elaborate yesterday but suggested they did not know of another specific case.
One of the men receiving particular attention from authorities is Moussaoui, 33, who has been identified by French authorities as an associate of Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, considered the prime suspect behind the attacks, which may have killed more than 5,000 people.
Moussaoui was arrested Aug. 17 for illegally entering the United States, according to Sgt. Jim Mordall of the Sherburne County Sheriff's Office in Elk River, Minn. Officials at the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minn., became suspicious after Moussaoui, who had only a student license, sought training time on a flight simulator for commercial jetliners, sources said.
Moussaoui previously tried to obtain a private pilot's license at a flight school in Norman, Okla., but abruptly quit the program in May after school officials voiced concerns about his skills.
Dale Davis, director of operations at Airman Flight School in Norman, said yesterday that the school allows capable students to fly solo in small planes after logging a minimum of 38 hours flight time. But Davis said Moussaoui was unable to fly solo after logging 57 hours.
"I told him I had some concerns about his training," Davis said.
Davis said the school agreed to sponsor Moussaoui for a visa to enter the country after he paid the school a deposit for its program. Moussaoui secured a visa in London, Davis said, and entered the country on a French passport.
Davis said that Moussaoui first contacted the school by e-mail from London a year ago, inquiring about the professional pilot's course that costs $20,000. Later, he scaled back to the private pilot's course. He enrolled Feb. 26 and stayed in the school dorm for a few days before renting an apartment.
Davis said that Moussaoui could have continued with the program but that additional instruction would have cost him more than the $5,000 he had already paid. Moussaoui did not return to the school after the Memorial Day weekend.
Azmath and Khan were detained on Wednesday on an Amtrak train in Forth Worth, carrying $5,000 in cash, hair dye and box cutters, the same type of weapon used by some of the hijackers.
The pair had boarded a flight from Newark to San Antonio around the time of the attacks Tuesday morning. Their flight was forced to land in St. Louis when all U.S. flights were grounded after the attacks. Then they boarded the train for Texas.
After two days of questioning in Texas, the men were transported east for further FBI interviews on the hijacking. FBI agents and police also searched the Jersey City apartment the two men had shared, located in the same neighborhood where some of the conspirators who plotted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing lived.
Also in U.S. custody is an unidentified man who was detained by Canadian immigration authorities in Toronto last Tuesday, when his flight to an unidentified U.S. destination was diverted after the attacks. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the man had "materials of interest, including photos and a flight jacket." He is in New York being questioned by the FBI, officials said.
One of the photos shows the man dressed in a flight jacket against a fake backdrop of the World Trade Center, and he had a Palestinian Authority travel document identifying him as an aircraft maintenance engineer at the Gaza airport, according to Canadian press reports.
The Toronto Star reported yesterday that the man was on a KLM flight from Amsterdam to Detroit and that a second man with maps and directions to the World Trade Center was also turned over to the FBI on Sunday. Canadian officials did not return telephone calls yesterday. The FBI declined to comment.
Staff writers Robert Pierre, Lois Romano, Susan Schmidt and Cheryl W. Thompson contributed to this report.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
|
|
