FBI failed to find suspects named before hijackings According to this Sept. 25, 2001 Guardian article, if accurate, Atta's purchase of chemicals was in Germany...why wasn't he watched the same way in the USA???
"....German newspapers have reported that Mohammed Atta, who was probably piloting one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Centre, had been under surveillance by US intelligence agents last year. Atta, 33, who studied in Hamburg for eight years, is reported to have come to the attention of intelligence officers after he bought huge quantities of chemicals. According to Focus magazine, he was suspected of buying them in order to make explosives. It said the US agents who are believed to have watched Atta between January and May 2000 did not inform the German authorities about their investigation.
http://www.sierratimes.com/03/03/20/gaddy.htm "...German Public Television ARD, on November 23, 2001 said the American FBI had monitored Atta's movements for several months in 2000, when he traveled several times from Hamburg to Frankfurt and bought large quantities of chemicals potentially usable in making explosives. Even our close allies the British questioned inactions concerning Atta by saying in a BBC broadcast on November 26, 2001, "The evidence ... reinforces concerns that the international intelligence community may have known more about Atta before September 11 than was previously thought, but had failed to act."
Most damning of our governments inabilities to protect us from acts such as those on September 11th is the fact Atta was allowed to enter this country in January 2001 even though he was in violation of his visa status. Atta, when landing in Miami from Madrid on 10 January 2001, declared to immigration officials he was entering the US to attend flight training, although he only possessed a tourist visa. For a foreign national to attend school in America an M-1 visa is required. The executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association told the Washington Post, "Nine times out of 10, they would have told him to go back and file for that status overseas. You're not supposed to come in as a visitor for pleasure and go to work or school."
Why would US immigration officials allow this policy to be circumvented by a foreign national who had previously been under FBI surveillance for stockpiling bomb-making materials?
Atta would make several trips to Europe in the spring and summer of 2001, each time being allowed back into the US by customs and immigration officials. The Observer of UK notes that Atta "was under surveillance between January and May in 2001 after he was reportedly observed buying large quantities of chemicals in Frankfurt, apparently for the production of explosives and for biological warfare.