Ok, so who did they see and who did they talk to?
We have over 1,200 Somali's in Lewiston, Maine. Makes me wonder. Truly.
Posted on 03/06/2005 6:46:25 AM PST by fight_truth_decay
Michael Tuohey sobbed with grief after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He also felt guilt.
A U.S. Airways ticket agent at the time, Tuohey had handed boarding passes to Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz Alomari that morning as they rushed to make their flight at Portland International Jetport.
In the days after Atta and his fellow suicide hijackers killed close to 3,000 people at the World Trade Center, Tuohey held himself at least partly responsible.
He was suspicious of them, he said, but did nothing. Later, as he watched news reports of the towers crumbling, of people jumping from the skyscraper windows to avoid being burned alive, he blamed himself.
"In your mind you're saying, 'Why didn't you react? Why didn't you do something?' " Tuohey said during an interview at his home in Scarborough. "You just have that torturous thing pulling your mind apart."
Tuohey has found some peace in the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission, which determined that the FBI, CIA and other branches of the U.S. government bore a far greater responsibility for the attacks on the twin towers and Pentagon, that their lack of communication contributed to the inability to stop the attacks.
Tuohey is telling his story now because recently declassified material not included with the 9/11 Commission's public report uses his brief exchange with Atta to shed light on why the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 plot chose to fly from Portland rather than Boston.
Atta most likely wanted to avoid having all 10 hijackers arrive at Boston's Logan International Airport at roughly the same time, the report says. The information gleaned from Tuohey and released last month showed that Atta expected to be checked through to American Airlines Flight 11 and that he became angry when he was told he could not avoid checking in again in Boston.
Tuohey remembers that anger vividly.
"He looks at me and says, 'I thought there was one-step check-in. . . .They told me one-step check-in,' " Tuohey said. "I looked in this guy's eyes, and he just looked angry. I just got an uncomfortable feeling."
LAST-MINUTE CHECK-IN
Tuohey, 58, worked as a ticket agent for the airlines for more than 30 years, 18 of them in Portland. He retired last year
On Sept. 11, 2001, he showed up at 4:30 a.m. to get ready for the morning rush along with three others working the ticket counter.
"The busiest part of the day is the first two and a half hours. We had five or six flights between 6 a.m. and 7:30 a.m.," he said.
Tuohey was working the preferred customers line, where the frequent travelers and high-end fliers get quick service. The line was empty, so he told a colleague he planned to step out back for a cigarette break.
Then he spotted two young men come in and motioned them to his station.
"At first I was looking down at the computer. I said, 'You're cutting it close,' " he said, noting it was 5:40 and the flight left at 6 a.m. The men were flying first class to Los Angeles, making a connection in Boston.
"Got any bags?" Tuohey asked.
They hoisted two pieces of luggage toward the counter. Tuohey could not know at the time that the luggage contained a hand-held electronic flight computer, a simulator manual for Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft, and a handwritten document in Arabic titled "In the name of God 'all mighty,' Death Certificate."
Tuohey asked the standard security questions, which he'd asked thousands of travelers:
"Has anyone unknown to you asked you to carry an item on board the aircraft?"
No.
"Has any item you're carrying been out of your control since the time you packed them?"
No.
Tuohey then checked their driver's licenses, both issued in Florida.
"I look at the younger fellow first because he was a little taller. He just looked goofy."
Then his eyes locked on Atta.
"It just sent chills through you. You see his picture in the paper (now). You see more life in that picture than there is in flesh and blood," Tuohey said.
Then Tuohey went through an internal debate that still haunts him.
"I said to myself, 'If this guy doesn't look like an Arab terrorist, then nothing does.' Then I gave myself a mental slap, because in this day and age, it's not nice to say things like this," he said. "You've checked in hundreds of Arabs and Hindus and Sikhs, and you've never done that. I felt kind of embarrassed."
It wasn't just Atta's demeanor that caught Tuohey's attention.
"When I looked at their tickets, they had first-class, one-way tickets - $2,500 tickets. Very unusual," he said. "I guess they're not coming back. Maybe this is the end of their trip."
Then he told Atta, who was handling the transaction, that he would have to check in with the American Airlines ticket counter in Boston.
Atta objected.
"It looked like he was going to step forward," Tuohey said, "and he whipped around and said something to the kid in Arabic. I think he knew if he gave me a hard time, he was going to miss that flight."
Later, Atta and Alomari were seen at Logan asking directions to the American terminal.
WRESTLING WITH GUILT
In Portland, the men's baggage tickets and boarding passes had been generated at 5:43 a.m. Three hours later, one of the counter agents from United Airlines broke the news that a jet had crashed into the World Trade Center.
"Your jaw dropped," Tuohey said. "They gave me the American Airlines flight number, and my heart sank.."
He told a co-worker of his discomfort about Atta and Alomari. "I said, 'I checked in two guys for the flight, and I thought they were terrorists and now I feel bad for them.' "
A few minutes later, he learned about the second flight.
"I just knew. My gut told me there was something wrong with this guy. It was enervating. Your stomach tied up in a knot."
One of Tuohey's co-workers called the FBI, and Tuohey went home. His house was empty. His wife, a flight attendant, had been stranded elsewhere when all commercial aircraft were grounded.
He had been home, watching the news, for less than an hour when he was called back to work to speak with an FBI agent about the two men who had connected with the American flight via Portland.
Tuohey asked about the security camera behind his counter position, noting it would have caught the men's picture as they dealt with him. But he was told that camera was broken and had been out of service for some time.
As he watched the security video taken at the passenger screening area upstairs, he picked out the two men without a doubt. They were no longer wearing the coats and ties they had on when they approached the counter. Tuohey figures they must have taken them off on the way to screening and tucked them into their carry-ons.
Over the next couple of days, like millions of other Americans, Tuohey was riveted to the television news. Unlike the rest of the country, he was wracked by guilt at the thought he could have done something to stop it.
He contacted his company's employee assistance program, and for the first time in his life, he says, he sought out a counselor. It didn't help. He got better results when he called his mother, who helped ease his conscience.
Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood, whose detectives interviewed Tuohey after the attack, said he would have been surprised if anyone in Tuohey's position had taken action.
"At that point in time the, the United States of America was not under attack on our homeland," Chitwood said. "You can't beat yourself up to death. What was he going to report, and who was he going to report it to?"
A few weeks later, another investigator came by Tuohey's house and showed him a large number of pictures and asked him to point out the men he had waited on that day.
"I went right to Atta," Tuohey said. "It's like the skull on a poison bottle. There's no mistaking that face."
Alomari took longer because a large number of the photos were of young, similar-looking men, he said.
At the time of the attacks, Tuohey was reluctant to talk publicly about his interaction with the hijackers, worried his failure to act could make him the target of lawsuits.
During his initial interview with the FBI, he asked that his name be kept confidential.
"All these people just got killed. They're going to sue me," he reasoned.
Tuohey is mentioned in the first footnote of the 9/11 Commission report, though his name is misspelled. His interactions with Atta and Alomari received scant public attention in the months and years following the attack, although he recently recounted his story on CNN.
Tuohey worked for three more years at the U.S. Airways ticket counter before retiring. His experience did not fill him with suspicion, but he was not shy about asking questions. Twice his iniquiries led to arrests, not for airline security issues but for outstanding arrest warrants.
"I will never ignore my instincts again," he said vehemently.
INVESTIGATORS SCRAMBLED in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, to determine why the alleged mastermind of the plot and another of the hijackers rented a car in Boston and drove to Portland only to fly back to Boston the morning of the attacks.
THE 9/11 COMMISSION concluded the most "plausible theory" for the trip to Portland was so the hijackers would draw less attention at Boston's Logan Airport.
A BRIEF EXCHANGE between Mohamed Atta and a Portland Jetport ticket agent lends credence to that theory. According to recently declassified documents, Atta apparently had been led to believe[by whom?] he could receive a boarding pass for his connecting flight in Boston at check-in in Portland. [this is the sidebar of story in PressHerald].
Tuohey is retired from U.S. Airways -Portland, Maine-not still employed as indicated in the recent interview by Michael Smerconish, Philadelphia Daily News columnist/author of "Flying Blind ( FR /02/26/20050 and reported by WORLD NET DAILY)
In his report, Smerconish, .."points to the irony".
"While Michael Tuohey still second-guesses himself about his conduct on that day, the reality is that, had he taken action, he probably would have been punished by our government!"
Art Bell, talk radio host, aired an interview 03.06.05 with one of the editors of -POPULAR MECHANICS, Feb./ March-Debunking 9/11 conspiracies.
TheTorontoStar writes: "The magazine better known for articles about how to build your own radio recently assembled an investigative team to examine 16 of the most prevalent conspiracy theories that have sprung up around Sept. 11, 2001."
"A prime example of the disinformation: FOX News broadcast a live phone interview on that fateful day with a freelance videographer who said the plane that crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center "definitely did not look like a commercial plane." That statement has fuelled one of the most widely disseminated theories: "that the south tower was struck by a military cargo plane or a fuel tanker."
"However, when reached by Popular Mechanics, the freelancer in question admitted he had been in Brooklyn at the time, more than two miles southeast of the WTC, and that he didn't actually see the plane strike the south tower — he only heard the explosion."
Because of still more questions being posed by conspiracy theorists to PM after this article, the editors of PM said they may do a followup article. These conspiracy theories were said to be coming from the "Far Far Far Left" and the "Far Far Far Right", reports the PM editor on Bell's show.
Ok, so who did they see and who did they talk to?
We have over 1,200 Somali's in Lewiston, Maine. Makes me wonder. Truly.
Huh? What am I missing? There were NO terrorists on the flights??? I don't believe that Ted Olson could have been duped into believing that he wasn't actually talking to his wife, Barbara. Do you?
"The P.M. editor on Bell's show"
Who dat?
I have yet to see anyone from the far right espousing vonspiracy theories, hasn't it been pretty much only the Bush-hating Lefties?
Course not, logic dictates a family member knows to whom they speak; and that was the point brought out by PM.
I have been following this pretty closely, but either I forgot or I overlooked the part about there being "two" of them in Portland.
Coming from Florida, well that sounds like the man that had a wife and kids, wore suits to work, belonged to the PTA, etc. Well respected. Never know who you have living next door. They become citizens, have a family, good jobs, but when they get "The Call," it's all over.
"We assembled a team of reporters and researchers, including professional fact checkers and the editors of PM, and methodically analyzed all 16 conspiracy claims. We interviewed scores of engineers, aviation experts, military officials, eyewitnesses and members of the investigative teams who have held the wreckage of the attacks in their own hands. We pored over photography, maps, blueprints, aviation logs and transcripts. In every single instance, we found that the facts used by conspiracy theorists to support their fantasies were mistaken, misunderstood or deliberately falsified."
"Reasonable people are entitled to wish that our government had been better prepared and more alert. But those who peddle fantasies that this country encouraged, permitted or actually carried out the attacks are libeling the truth--and disgracing the memories of the thousands who died that day."-The Lies Are Out There by Jim Meigs (PM)
ASSAULT ON THE TRUTH: Three and a half
years after 9/11, conspiracy theorists
are trying to rewrite history.
Pictures of the two of them surfaced pretty quickly after 9-11.
Here is a brief note on their activities just before their murderous deeds.
OH YES! Now I remember exactly! Thank you so much!!!
I agree..and sorry I did not catch the PM editor's name (Bell show), as was in the car being a defensive driver.
However, I did drop PM a line requesting who the editor with Bell was; and who were the extreme Right wing groups he referenced siding with the extreme Left on this "bundle" of conspiracy theories.
Sometimes those comments are thrown out there with no source to who said them..just like me when I used "PM editor" and not his name.. ;)
Perhaps I will get an answer.
"I have yet to see anyone from the far right espousing vonspiracy theories, hasn't it been pretty much only the Bush-hating Lefties?"
Actually, it depends on how one defines 'far right'. If you define it as 'Bush-hating', you're on fairly firm ground.
That said and noting that you joined in '03, you missed the debates we had here on Free Republic right after 9/11 with the 'far right' notably Justin Romando. Justin now publishes a 'far right' website "antiwar.com" that's linked to "Lew Rockwell.com" and the "Mises institute". We also had a number of posters who posted every conspiracy theory imaginable about 9/11. Jim Robinson pretty much ran them off after about six months.
The essence of the 'far right' arguments (and rockwell and romando) is that government will always attempt to expand and that the easiest way for government to accomplish this objective is to create a war. They see a sinister conspiracy stretching from the civil war to 9/11 to expand government.
Yes, if you define 'far right' as including some libertarians, then there has been ample evidence of conspiracy mongering from the 'far right'.
BTW, IMHO, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the 'far right' and the 'far left'.
I almost forgot. A central part of the 'far right' conspiracy theories seems to be that 'the jews did it'. Raimondo was pretty big on seeing a Zionist conspriacy behind 9/11. Also a part of the 'far right', the Buchanites also like to see the war on terror as being orchestrated by the "Jewish Lobby".
Thanks for the ping!
Please pause a moment and reflect back, by taking the following multiple choice test:
1. In 1972 at the Munich Olympics, athletes were kidnapped and massacred by:
a. Olga Corbett
b. Sitting Bull
c. Arnold Schwarzenegger
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
2. In 1979, the U.S. embassy in Iran was taken over by:
a. Lost Norwegians
b. Elvis
c. A tour bus full of 80-year-old women
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
3. During the 1980's a number of Americans were kidnapped in Lebanon by:
a. John Dillinger
b. The King of Sweden
c. The Boy Scouts
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
4. In 1983, the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut was blown up by:
a. A pizza delivery boy
b. Pee Wee Herman
c. Geraldo Rivera
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
5. In 1985 the cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked and a 70-year old, American passenger, wheel-chair, bound was thrown overboard into the ocean to drown by:
a. The Smurfs
b. Davy Jones
c. The Little Mermaid
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
6. In 1985 TWA flight 847 was hijacked at Athens, and a U.S. Navy diver was murdered by:
a. Captain Kid
b. Charles Lindberg
c. Mother Teresa
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
7. In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was bombed by:
a. Scooby Doo
b. The Tooth Fairy
c. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
8. In 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed the first time by:
a. Richard Simmons
b. Grandma Moses
c. Michael Jordan
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
9. In 1998, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by:
a. Mr. Rogers
b. Hillary, to distract attention from Bill's women problems
c. The World Wrestling Federation
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
10. On 9/11/01, four airliners were hijacked; were used as missiles to take out the World Trade Centers and of the remaining two, one crashed into the US Pentagon and the other was diverted and crashed by the passengers and destroyed while thousands of people were killed by:
a. Bugs Bunny, Wiley E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd
b. The Supreme Court of Florida
c. Mr. Bean and some wacky friends
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
11. In 2002 the United States began a war in Afghanistan against:
a. Enron
b. The Lutheran Church
c. The NFL
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
12. In 2002 reporter Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by:
a. Bonny and Clyde
b. Captain Kangaroo
c. Dick C. and Dubya
d. Muslim male extremists mostly between the ages of 17 and 40
13.Since 1999 the Center of Peace and Hope in Christ for Afghanistan, a Christian group making the Bible available to the people of Aghanistan in their own languages, has received death threats from:
a. girl scouts
b. Hindu and Sikh taxi drivers
c. Coptic Christians
d. Muslim male extremist mostly between the ages of 17 and 40.
Nope, no patterns anywhere to justify profiling!
So, to ensure we Americans never offend anyone, particularly fanatics intent on killing us, airport security screeners will no longer be allowed to profile certain people. They must conduct random searches of 80-year-old women, little kids, airline pilots with proper identification, secret agents who are members of the President's security detail, 85-year old Congressmen with metal hips, and Medal of Honor winning and former Governor Joe Foss, but leave Muslim Males between the ages 17 and 40 alone because of profiling.
Let's send this to as many people as we can so that the Gloria Allreds and other dunder-headed attorneys along with Federal Justices that want to thwart common sense, feel doubly ashamed of themselves - if they have any such sense.
As the writer of the award winning story "Forrest Gump" so aptly put it, "Stupid is as stupid does."
Come on people wake up!!!
Keep this going. Pass it on to everyone in your address book. Our Country and our troops need our support!
Here is another story that fits into the terrorists' future plans which may have been thwarted by US intelligence.
Atta and another Middle Easterner (perhaps it was the same younger man with Atta in Portland) rented a plane at a local airport near Atlanta. They flew up over North Georgia and circled over North Carolina near the Ga border. They then landed at the No Ga town's airport and asked questions about an old abandoned chemical plant and posed the question "what would happen if the dam broke" (the town has a nearby lake made by a TVA dam). The airport personnel told them the chemical plant had been closed many years ago, but still has guards there. He gave a brief history of the TVA dams to the two men. They then refueled and flew back to the airport where they'd rented the plane.
Now, who knows WHAT information was relayed back to bin Laden or others. We all hope that nothing happens to any TVA dams, but it's still a concern.
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