Posted on 03/28/2002 9:10:04 PM PST by knak
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:50:11 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Intelligence officials have said Atta was meeting with suspected members of bin Laden’s organization at a hotel in Salou, Spain July 17 and 18 and at other locations around Spain. He returned to the U.S. on July 19.
At some point in the summer, Atta and al-Shehhi checked into a hotel in Zurich. They bought knives and box-cutters used in the hijackings, according to the Swiss newspaper SonntagsBlick.
Former counter-terrorism official Johnson theorized why they were there:
“If you’re going to Switzerland you’ll be talking about financial activities,” he said.
Important time line. Atta was in Prague in April 2001 and met with the Iraqi intelligence officer.
In the summer of 2001 he was in Zurich. It is highly probable a transfer of anthrax was made at that time.
The letter that sent to Chile was confirmed to have come from Switzerland.
An Urban Myth on the Iraqi connection. LOL. You missed Chile and Zurich. Justin, Where is Carmen Sandiego?
There are many Arabs in Switzerland
(and lots of everything else)
and some of them are Swiss Citizens.
They have their 'sleeper' problem too.
He flew to Zurich on July 8 from Miami on a Swissair flight, withdrawing SFr1,700 ($1,050, £711) from a bank cash dispenser. He used a credit card to pay SFr56 for two pocket knives and chocolate at an airport duty-free shop.
From the Sun-Sentinel
On July 9, Atta flew from Miami to Madrid. He spent 11 days in Europe before returning to the U.S. Spanish intelligence officials said his rental car had more than 1,200 miles on it, the Spanish newspaperEl Mundo reported.
Some of them. Here's the information I've collected, from a variety of news articles. (The articles are often unclear on when the tickets were reserved vs. when they were paid for.)
On 8/25/2001, Atta set up an American Airlines frequent flyer account (#6H26L04).
On 8/28, Atta booked one-way tickets for himself and apparently also for Abdulaziz Alomari on AA flight #11 for 9/11. He paid with a Visa card, used his frequent flyer account, and gave the phone number 915-815-3004. This was on the American Airlines web site. He is said to have paid $4600 for the first-class ticket(s) (just his, or his and Alomari's, I don't know which).
On 8/29, Ahmed Alghamdi and Hamza Alghamdi purchased adjacent business class seats for $1760 each on United #175, also on the web. Mohad Alshehri bought a $4500 first-class ticket (on the same date, I think) for his flight. Fayez Banihammad also reserved his ticket on that date.
On the morning of 9/11, Atta and Alomari bought their tickets in Portland, ME, 17 minutes before the flight left. (They flew to Boston to catch the flight that they hijacked.) Some reports indicate that they bought tickets for Portland-Boston-LA, rather than just Portland-Boston; it's not clear how this squares with the reported 8/28 Visa purchase. Possibly Atta had guaranteed the 8/28 purchase with a Visa card, but paid cash instead at the airport? Or maybe the last-minute 9/11 purchase was really just for the initial Portland-Boston leg.)
One word comes to mind. Zoolander. Tell me it ain't so. Bin Laden's brother has a swiss lawyer and the brother gets a trademark label for "Hitler" wear in Switzerland. Jeezzzus. Quick get me the movie rights.
Atta was all over the place. He traveled for thousands of miles in rental cars both in the U.S. and in Europe in the months before the attack.
Ingenuously, I ask this question:
How do we know?
I,
too,
have travelled thousands of miles,
but I do not believe anyone would know
when
and where
I have been
unless I told them.
Thanks very much for the information.
I'm trying to reconcile all this. Both the arrival and the departure are interesting.
The U.S. to Europe: The reports that you quoted have Atta flying from Miami to Zurich on July 8, and from Miami to Madrid on July 9. Another report I found has him traveling to Spain on July 7. [It may be that one or two of the dates are in error, but, even so, there's the seeming discrepancy between Zurich and Madrid. I'll assume that the dates are all, in fact, correct. It turns out that it's all consistent.]
I looked up Swissair flights on-line. At least with their current schedule, you can book a flight from Miami to Madrid, but it stops in Zurich on the way. Also, some of the flights from Miami to Zurich leave in the late afternoon in Miami, arriving the next day in Zurich.
So it looks like Atta probably left Miami on July 7, arriving in Zurich on July 8. He would have gone on to Madrid on the next day, July 9.
Europe to the U.S.: The reports on his itinerary have him leaving Europe for the U.S. on either July 19 or July 20. But he is said to have visited Tarragona Prison (in Spain, very near the resort he stayed at) on July 21, attempting to see one of the prisoners. I can't reconcile this discrepancy. Maybe one of the dates is just wrong.
Another question: Did he take a trip to Rome that July? There are reports suggesting that. If so, when would this have been? I would think he would have gone from Zurich to Rome to Madrid if he wanted to visit all three, but the timing doesn't work for that. Maybe he drove his rental car from Spain to Rome and back again.
Given the incompetence of the INS I doubt even that.
Well, we don't know if they ever drove to Canada, for instance. But apparently the FBI and various reporters have traced down credit-card ticket purchases and the like. The flights to and from Europe that we know about appear to be fairly well-documented.
You can choose to disbelieve everything either as disinformation or due to official incompetence, but that's a pointless exercise.
Most of the raw data we have is probably close to being true (although some of it is undoubtedly wrong due to disinformation or error). Some of it may be wrong due to systematic misinterpretation. And much of the data we'd like to have is simply missing, unfortunately.
Purchasing tickets two weeks prior, they were relying on a long-range weather forecast. The odds would doubtless be strongly in favor of good visibility in the Northeast quarter at this time of year.
Clear skies would have been an absolutely essential ingredient in their plan. Any overcast or storm clouds would have endangered the mission.
I'm inclined to discount the idea that 9/11 was a date certain from the outset of planning. Instead, they had a timeframe and a launch window...and the 9/11 date was circumstantial.
I thought that originally, but too many things point the opposite way, that the date was determined and was essentially set in stone. Tickets were purchased two weeks in advance. The saudi-binladin-group.com domain name (which I would guess was used for communication of some sort) had been registered on 9/11/2000, it expired on 9/11/2001, and it had not been renewed. The anthrax letters were dated 09-11, and there's evidence that these were prepared before the attack. Some reports say that box cutters were hidden in advance on the planes, which involves yet more organization. The sheer amount of coordination involved was quite large; Mohamed Atta drove for thousands of miles in summer of 2001 for some purpose, probably organization and set-up. It appears that there may have been plans to hijack more than four airplanes, but the remaining hijackings were thwarted by the fast decision to ground all air traffic; if true, this implies even more people are more coordination.
If the 9/11 attack had been canceled, it couldn't easily have been rescheduled to, say, 9/12 or 9/13; far too many people were involved, as well as too much preparation. They'd be starting over, nearly from scratch, and probably looking at a delay until spring (since winter weather is too unreliable). So I think the 9/11 date was decided on well in advance and wasn't easily changeable. [If something unusual had happened, such as a massive early snowstorm on the East Coast, it might have been canceled until Spring, but I think it would have taken something of that magnitude.]
Seems to me that it would have been imprudent to set a date certain so far in advance. Instead, initial planning could have aimed at "sometime in September" and preparations proceeded on that basis.
Once all the pre-planning and preparations were in place, the final date of 9/11 could have been a function of the weather forecast. I agree that, once final preparations were set in train (e.g., on 8/28), a one or two-day delay would have been impractical.
Was there ever any confirmation of the rumors that these particular flights were heavily over-booked, presumably so as to reduce the number of passengers who would have to be controlled by the hijackers? I assume pre-planning would have focussed on a Tue-Wed-Thu timeframe, because of a.) somewhat lighter load factors and b.) high office occupancy at the WTC and Pentagon/Capitol/White House offices.
We also know that the hijackers "cased" these particular flights and routes in some detail. Presumably, they (or their accomplices) would have done the same for the WTC. And we do have the one plumber involved in the Memphis case who was known to have had a WTC pass immediately prior to the event.
The psychology of these people is very strange.
Remember all that weird discussion in the Bin Laden tape about dreams and such.
I have a hunch that the date 9/11,
not just because of its emergency call connotations,
had some important mystical significance to these people.
Maybe someone had a 'prophetic' dream in which those numbers occured,
maybe it is involved in some mystical initiation ceremony, maybe...
I don't think this is far out,
from what I know about such people,
(and I know a little)
I think it is a strong possibility.
that the date 09/11/2001 refers to some verse in the Koran.
I don't think the numbers on the letters,
so clearly and prominently printed,
refer just to the date of the attack.
They have some other significance
known only to these twisted mystics.
I feel certain about that,
I cannot prove it,
but I know it in my bones.
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