What means was there to transport photocopies made in Europe to the U.S. days before 9/11? (Remember, in one of his videotapes last year, bin Laden said he learned about the date of the planned attacks the Thursday before, i.e., Sept. 6th, which just happens to be the day the short selling of the stocks started.) Could they have been transported by Iraqi diplomatic pouch?
I've never read anything that definitive on the short selling. The last article on this I saw said that authorities had been unable to trace down any such transactions and basically relegated the whole thing to the status of rumor. Do you recall the source for the stock market transaction information?
Could they have been transported by Iraqi diplomatic pouch?
As I understand it, diplomatic pouches aren't subject to any kind of customs search, security inspection, or the like. If that's true, it's a natural way to have brought in anthrax (as well as potentially other types of contraband).
The information I've seen is that Atta went to Spain in July, and that that was the last known trip to Europe by any of the hijackers. I don't know if al-Shehhi accompanied him.
There's some confusion over this trip, though. Atta flew to Spain on July 7, 2001. He rented a car and visited Salou, a resort town in northeastern Spain, on the Mediterranean. Atta is said to have returned to the U.S. on July 19. But, on July 21, somebody by the name of Mohamed Atta tried to visit a prisoner in Tarragona Prison (which is near Salou, at least going by its name).
So, first of all, can the dates be reconciled? Secondly, what was Atta doing at this prison?
One report suggested that false identities are involved, that, in fact, the people whose names we know (Atta, etc.) were using assumed identities. This could explain the date discrepancy perhaps, but it seems like a far-fetched explanation of that. I think the major argument for assumed identities is that so many of the hijackers appear to have been not very Islamic -- many drank alcohol, Jarrah had lived with his girlfriend in Germany, etc. Some have argued that this means that the people whose histories we've read about aren't the same people as the hijackers who went under their names. However, this isn't believable given some of their well-documented un-Islamic activities in the period immediately preceding 9/11. Several of the hijackers were also in touch with their families and friends in the days before 9/11. I think this is more likely to mean that the hijackers weren't so much Islamic extremists as agents of Iraq or Iran or some alliance (which may include al-Qaeda as one member, but which is a loose political alliance, not a tightly-knit group with a monolitihic fundamentalist ideology). (One might even refer to this alliance as an "axis of evil," if one were so inclined.)
In any case, the Spanish prison connection may be of interest.