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No prague meeting with atta and iraqi intelligence bureau { June 16 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/16/politics/16CND-REPORT.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/16/politics/16CND-REPORT.html
June 16, 2004
Original Plan for 9/11 Attacks Involved 10 Planes, Panel Says
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, June 16 — As horrendous as they were, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were only a small part of terrorist visions that foresaw using 10 hijacked airplanes to attack targets on both the East and West Coasts, including the United States Capitol and the White House, the staff of the independent commission investigating 9/11 reported today.
The staff also said in a companion report that it had found "no credible evidence" that Iraq and Al Qaeda terrorists cooperated in the attacks, a conclusion likely to fuel the debate over President Bush's decision to go to war to topple Saddam Hussein. Indeed, the commission staff said, Iraq apparently rejected Osama bin Laden's requests to provide space for training camps and help Al Qaeda acquire weapons.
Some of the 9/11 terrorist plans, the commission staff said, called for the hijacked jets to be crashed into the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, various nuclear power plants, and skyscrapers in California and Washington State, a captured leader of Al Qaeda, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has told interrogators.
Mr. Mohammed, who is believed to have originated the idea for the Sept. 11 attacks and whose nephew, Ramzi Yousef, was the mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was seized in Pakistan in March 2003 and is being held at an undisclosed location.
Mr. Mohammed has told his questioners that he planned to fly the 10th jet himself. But rather than crashing it into a target, he would have killed every male passenger on board, then contacted American news organizations and landed the craft at a United States airport. Then he would have made a speech denouncing Washington's Middle East policies and released all of the women and children on the plane.
Mr. bin Laden vetoed that element of the operation.
The reports, the 15th and 16th by the panel staff, were issued as the commission, meeting in Washington, began its last two days of public hearings. A final report is to be issued by July 26.
Today's interim report on the outline of the 9/11 plot offers new details and far more context than has previously been known. It says, for instance, that Zacarias Moussaoui, who has often been dubbed "the 20th hijacker" out of speculation that he was to have joined the 19 actual hijackers, was instead meant to participate in a "second wave" of attacks, an idea thwarted when he was arrested in August 2001 after his behavior at a Minnesota flying school aroused suspicion. Mr. Moussaoui is awaiting trial on charges connected to the 9/11 plotting.
Mr. Mohammed has told his questioners that he initially wanted to have 25 or 26 hijackers in place in the United States. Some candidates for the suicide missions withdrew under pressure from their families, while others could not get visas to enter the United States or encountered other obstacles, the report said.
The 9/11 conspirators and their leaders, while joined in their hatred of the United States, often argued among themselves over what targets to attack, and when, the staff of the bipartisan commission said. "Given the catastrophic results of the 9/11 attacks, it is tempting to depict the plot as a set plan executed to near perfection," the report said. "This would be a mistake."
For instance, Mr. bin Laden, Al Qaeda's top leader, initially pushed for a date of May 12, 2001, exactly seven months after terrorists attacked the American destroyer Cole in Yemen. Then, when he learned that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel would visit the White House in June or July, Mr. bin Laden pressed to amend the timetable.
"In both instances," the report notes, Mr. Mohammed "insisted that the hijacker teams were not yet ready."
In the fall of 2000, it appeared that the attacks might have to be scaled back because some of the would-be pilots were slow to master the complexities of flying, the report recounts, but "a young Saudi with special credentials" helped keep the plot on track.
He was Hani Hanjour, who had studied in the United States off and on since 1991 and had undergone enough flight training in Arizona to get his commercial pilot certificate in April 1999. After training at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan in 2000, he arrived in the United States late that same year. It was he who piloted the jet that crashed into the Pentagon.
The plot was also riven by personality clashes and, it seems, by at least one case of cold feet. 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 his girlfriend.
That Mr. Atta drove Mr. Jarrah to the airport was an "unusual circumstance suggesting that something may have been amiss," the report said. At the time, Khalid Mohammed was fretting to his fellow terrorists that if Mr. Jarrah "asks for a divorce, it is going to cost a lot of money," apparently an allusion to the costs of putting another hijacker in place.
One apparent "failure" of the plot has been known since the day of the attacks: the Boeing 757 designated United Flight 93, which took off from Newark, crashed in a field in southwestern Pennsylvania, apparently after its hijackers struggled with the doomed passengers. (That plane is believed to have been piloted by Mr. Jarrah, who got over his case of cold feet and said good-bye to his girlfriend, and his life.)
There has been conjecture ever since that the hijackers on Flight 93 meant to crash the plane into a high-profile Washington target — the White House, perhaps, or the Capitol. Another jet, hijacked after it took off from Dulles Airport, near Washington, crashed into the Pentagon, while two jetliners that were hijacked after taking off from Boston were flown into the World Trade Center, destroying the Twin Towers.
Mr. Mohammed has told interrogators that "the U.S. Capitol was indeed on the preliminary target list" that he originally developed with Al Qaeda's top leader, Mr. bin Laden, and other terrorist ringleaders as early as the spring of 1999.
"That preliminary list also included the White House, the Pentagon and the World Trade Center," said the staff of the commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Mr. Mohammed "claims that while everyone agreed on the Capitol, he wanted to hit the World Trade Center, whereas bin Laden favored the Pentagon and the White House."
Among Mr. bin Laden and his confederates, the Capitol was "the perceived source of U.S. policy in support of Israel," while the White House was considered "a political symbol."
Mr. bin Laden expressed his target preferences in the summer of 2001 to Mr. Atta, who was destined to fly a jetliner into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Had he not been able to hit the tower, Mr. Atta was determined to crash the jet he was flying into the streets of Manhattan, the report says.
Mr. Atta said he thought the White House would be too difficult a target, though it was not clear why. Better to hit the Capitol, Mr. Atta reportedly argued. "Atta selected a date after the first week of September so that the United States Congress would be in session," the report states.
In the weeks leading up to the attacks, the terrorists who were assigned to be "the muscle" in the hijackings, to stave off any resistance from passengers or crews, trained in gyms to prepare for their missions, which they are believed to have carried out with the help of box-cutter knives (most of the men were between 5 feet 5 inches and 5 feet 7 inches tall). The plotters had also studied airline schedules and had observed while on typical flights that cockpit doors were often open a quarter-hour or so after takeoff — making that the best time for hijacking.
The commission staff said it was aware of reports that Iraq and Al Qaeda had contacts while Mr. bin Laden was in Afghanistan, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." The staff noted that "two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq."
The panel also said it had uncovered no evidence of an April 2001 meeting in Prague between Mr. Atta and a member of the Iraqi intelligence bureau, as Czech intelligence officials had said.
As have previous staff reports on the Sept. 11 carnage, this one reveals some tantalizing "what ifs."
On April 1, 2001, as they were driving from Arizona toward the East Coast, Mr. Hanjour and Salem al-Hazmi, a confederate in the hijacking of the Pentagon-bound jet, were stopped in Oklahoma for speeding.
And on June 30, Salem al-Hazmi was riding with his brother, Nawaf, and Abdulaziz al-Omari when Nawaf was involved in a minor accident on the George Washington Bridge. Nawaf al-Hazmi was also aboard the plane that hit the Pentagon, while Mr. al-Omari was on one of the planes that flew into the World Trade Center.
Finally, the once reluctant Jarrah Ziad Jarrah got a speeding ticket on Sept. 9 as he headed north through Maryland on Interstate 95, toward his team's staging point for the hijacking of the plane that left Newark and crashed in Pennsylvania.
There is no suggestion in the report that the police officers should have sensed that the people involved in those traffic incidents were up to something. On the other hand, the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was brought to justice in part because he was stopped for a traffic infraction.
Some pieces of the 9/11 puzzle may never quite fit. The commission staff reminded its readers of the previously known — but never explained — side trip by car that Mr. Atta and Mr. Omari took from Boston to Portland, Me., just before Sept. 11.
In the early morning of Sept. 11, they boarded a commuter flight from Portland to Boston. They made it to Boston barely in time to get on the plane that Mr. Atta would steer into the Trade Center.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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