why did mohamed atta crash the plane

[23] He kept to himself to such an extent that he would often react to simple greetings with silence. Shave excess hair from the body and wear cologne. Bin al-Shibh was worried that Jarrah might even abandon the plan. While in the United States he traveled to Lawrenceville, Georgia, where he and Shehhi visited an LA Fitness Health Club. Follow the Newsweek live tweet of September 11, 2001 (based upon the new book On That Day) starting at 4:45 a.m. EST @Roadto911. Months later both he and Jarrah enrolled at flying schools in America. ''They said I'd hear back from them, which I never did.''. Some, like the 9/11 plot's ringleader, Mohamed Atta, flew in from Florida, checking into a motel in Wayne for a few days and then leaving and then returning days . Mohamed Atta, 33, Egypt Atta was quickly identified as the ringleader of the 9/11 attacks. After consulting with the other hijacker pilots about the flights they also booked on September 11, three days later Atta again visited aa.com and retrieved his reservations and paid for his flight for himself and A. al-Omari (one of his muscle men) using his VISA card. [8][29] Among other odd jobs to supplement his income, Atta sometimes worked at a cleaning company and sometimes bought and sold cars. Mohamed Atta had varied his name on documents, also using "Mehan Atta", "Mohammad El Amir", "Muhammad Atta", "Mohamed El Sayed", "Mohamed Elsayed", "Muhammad al-Amir", "Awag Al Sayyid Atta", and "Awad Al Sayad". [11] Atta was the only son; he had two older sisters who are both well-educated and successful in their careers one as a medical doctor and the other as a professor. Usually in these types of things you have your initial plan and you have a fallback plan. Given the vagaries of traveling on the East Coast, (it was a) tremendous risk to take. Mohammed Atta, (born September 1, 1968, Kafr al-Shaykh, Egyptdied September 11, 2001, New York, New York, U.S.), Egyptian militant Islamist and al-Qaeda operative who helped plot and lead the September 11 attacks. On December 29 and 30, Atta and Marwan went to the Opa-locka Airport where they practiced on a Boeing 727 simulator, and they obtained Boeing 767 simulator training from Pan Am International on December 31. Each day a new story will be published here. Atta had lived in Germany for approximately five years and also had a "strong record as a student". He said he later called Signature to arrange to retrieve the airplane and was told that they did pass through the company's offices, at least briefly, before renting a car to return to Venice. He also began teaching classes both at Al-Quds and at a Turkish mosque near the Harburg district. Atta returned to Hamburg in February 2000, and began inquiring about flight training in the United States. According to the interrogations of KSM and Ramzi Bin al-Shibh (his interlocutor in Germany), Mohammed Atta was worried about the communications, Atta's real concern being that Jarrah might be unable to break away from his wife, that it would just be too painful in the end for him to follow through with his suicide flight. In the Czech Republic, some intelligence officials say the source of the purported meeting was an Arab informant who approached the Czech intelligence service with his sighting of Atta only after Atta's photograph had appeared in newspapers all over the world. Evidently, he tried to deliver a message instructing the passengers and crew to stay put over the cabin's PA system, but pressed the wrong switch and thereby tipped off ATC that the flight had been hijacked. The 30million CSI-style probe has taken seven years. TERRORIST: Mohammed Atta's mum claims her son is still alive and in Guantanamo Bay . Ziad Jarrah should demonstrate that intelligence collection needs to be a holistic endeavor and is highly complicated. ET (approx.) A voice believed to be that of al Qaeda hijack leader Mohamed Atta urged passengers to . But more likely it is that the origination of his flight in Newark, delayed on the ground for 40 minutes, that made his flight more vulnerable. [83][84][85], Atta and al-Omari arrived early the next morning, at 5:40a.m., at the Portland International Jetport, where they left their rental car in the parking lot and boarded at 6:00a.m. Colgan Air (US Airways Express) BE-1900C flight to Logan International Airport in Boston. We will examine that 9/11 mystery in our next report. According to Bryant, Atta wanted to finance the purchase of a crop-duster. Atta took control of the plane and crashed it into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46a.m.[6] The crash led to the collapse of the skyscraper and the deaths of more than 1,600 people. Anyone can read what you share. Photocopy of Jarrah's passport, made by Rina Bernard when she rented out one of her apartments at 1816 Harding St. Jarrah was on board United Airlines flight 93 when it crashed in Pennsylvania. They instead traveled to Afghanistan over a two-week period in late November. She observed Muslim customs, taking taxis to and from the office so as not to come into close physical contact with men on buses. This call was apparently to confirm that the attacks were ready to begin. ''They were more concerned about being reimbursed for their rental car,'' he recalled. "Nothing they said or did raised any suspicions at all," he told the commission's investigators. The timing of the Afghanistan training was outlined on August 23, 2002, by a senior investigator. Following the real Mohamad Atta and his crash into the World Trade Center, his ghost, like ashes left at Ground Zero, has arisen and entered the public consciousness again. Mr. Pursell, meanwhile, had already gotten a cellphone call from Mr. Atta and Mr. Shehhi. As it turned out, the employee said, a spark plug had needed tightening and the two pilots had probably flooded the engine. [26] While in Syria, he met Amal, a young Palestinian woman who worked for a planning bureau in the city. Many al-Qaeda members lived in this apartment at various times, including hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi, Zakariya Essabar, and others. [16], On August 4, Atta is believed to have been at Orlando International Airport waiting to pick up suspected "20th Hijacker" Mohammed al-Qahtani from Dubai, who ended up being held by immigration as "suspicious." "It is possible that he calculated that security would be less stringent in Portland, Maine, than it would be in Boston, said terrorism expert Steve Emerson. Abdulaziz al Omari (22), Saudi Arabia - Airport security guard. Practicing for his assignment, Ziad Jarrah took a check ride at Airborne Systems Flight School in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, on August 17. ", The other possibility is that Atta went to Portland for a final meeting with an unknown supporter. It turned out one of his accomplices, Mohamed Atta-- thought to be the ringleader of the entire four-jet attack that demolished the twin towers and part of the Pentagon-- stayed in the cheap Econo . The 9/11 Commission Report speculated that the now-convicted terrorist conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui was being trained as a possible replacement for Jarrah. Atta purchased cockpit videos for Boeing 747-200, Boeing 757-200, Airbus A320 and Boeing 767-300ER models via mail-order from Sporty's Pilot Shop in Batavia, Ohio, in November and December 2000.[16]. Bin al-Shibh later explained that they believed it would contribute to operational security for Atta to fly out of Prague instead of Hamburg, where he traveled from previously. . On June 28, Atta arrived at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas to meet with the three other pilots. [69], On June 27, Atta flew from Fort Lauderdale to Boston, Massachusetts, where he spent a day, and then continued to San Francisco for a short time, and from there to Las Vegas. [15][17], Atta also got engaged to a woman lined up by his father and her family in Cairo, at late 1999, after coming back from Germany the same year. That night and twice the next morning, he called Bashar Ahmad Ali Musleh, a Jordanian student in Hamburg who served as a liaison for bin al-Shibh. He provided the first official confirmation that Atta and two other pilots had been in Afghanistan, and he also provided the first dates of the training. Twenty-three minutes later, Atta flew that plane into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Flight controllers, according to airport records, guided the waiting passenger airliners around the stalled aircraft until it was towed away 35 minutes later. [66][67], Atta began flight training on July 6, 2000, and continued training nearly every day. [57], On March 22, 2000, Atta was still in Germany when he sent an e-mail to the Academy of Lakeland in Florida. . But Atta's night before 9-11 - which he spent in Portland, Main -- is a mystery that has puzzled terrorism experts for five years. "[111], In 2021, on the 20th anniversary of the attacks, Atta's mother was interviewed by a Spanish newspaper. They drove a rented Nissan to Portland, Maine, and arrived at the Comfort Inn Hotel at 5:43 p.m. At the time, Tyler Drumhiller was a top official at the CIA, responsible for all European Operations. In this series, Newsweek maps the road to 9/11 as it happened 20 years ago, day by day. "Might have just been doing surveillance detection just to see if somebody might have been following him up in that area, Drumhiller said. [80] [81], On September 10, 2001, Atta picked up al-Omari from the Milner Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, and the two drove their rented Nissan Altima to a Comfort Inn in South Portland, Maine. The two other "muscle men," intended to take over the plane, were also Saudi citizens: Abdulaziz al-Omari (A. al-Omari on the flight manifest) and Satam al-Suqami. On December 22, Atta and Shehhi applied to Eagle International for large jet and simulator training for McDonnell Douglas DC-9 and Boeing 737-300 models. Mohamed Atta, right, and Abdulaziz al-Omari are seen passing through security at the Portland Jetport on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Credit: Courtesy of Spectrum News Service It is a day no one . [94], On October 1, 2006, The Sunday Times released a video it had obtained "through a previously tested channel", purporting to show Mohamed Atta and Ziad Jarrah recording a martyrdom message six months earlier at a training camp in Afghanistan. Bin Laden sent them to see Atef to get a general overview of the mission, and then they were sent to Karachi to see Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to go over specifics. They continued to inquire about flight schools and personally visited some, including Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, which they visited on July 3, 2000. [90][6] The crash instantly killed all 92 people on-board, murdered hundreds more inside the building, and left at least 800 workers trapped in the upper floors of a burning quarter-mile high skyscraper. The two al-Shehri brothers selected seats 2A and 2B in first class. [42] He made acquaintances at al-Quds; some of whom visited him on occasion at Centrumshaus. In this field, we haven't yet any knowledge but we are ready to undergo an intensive training program (up to ATP and eventually higher)." ", "Staff Report "We Have Some Planes": The Four Flights a Chronology", National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, "The Aviation Security System and the 9/11 Attacks Staff Statement No. Wail al Shehri (28), Saudi Arabia - Elementary school teacher (brother of Waleed) Waleed al Shehri (22), Saudi Arabia - Student. [6] At 8:18am, flight attendants Betty Ong and Madeline Amy Sweeney began making phone calls to American Airlines to report what was happening. Atta's professor, Dittmar Machule, brought him along on an archaeological expedition to Aleppo in 1994. Skies, Plot Leader Met bin Laden", "Video of 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta posted by British news site", "FBI Informant Says Agents Missed Chance to Stop 9/11 Ringleader Mohammed Atta", "Flight Path Study American Airlines Flight 11", "Personal Stories Who Were They? The alleged distortions of the IG report centered around excluding any evidence that Able Danger had identified and tracked Atta years before 9/11. [30], By mid-1998, Atta was no longer eligible for university housing in Centrumshaus. [8] In his will, written in 1996, Atta gives his name as "Mohamed the son of Mohamed Elamir awad Elsayed". Had his conversations been monitored, the NSA would have heard the conversations of a husband and wife, talking about day-to-day life, in the German language, probably raising no suspicions. Statements entered at . And so, we still don't know what he was doing there.". There are two separate concourses in Terminal B; the south concourse is mainly used by US Airways and the north one is mostly used by American Airlines. The FBI also reported that "two middle-eastern men" were seen in the parking lot of a Pizza Hut, where Atta is known to have eaten that day. We went through the logs of ferries leaving Maine, and we went through the logs of airlines and anything associated with potential for a terrorist cell to support Atta. He criticized how the newfangled skyscrapers and other modernizing projects were disrupting the fabric of communities by blocking common streets and altering the skyline. A voice believed to be that of al Qaeda hijack leader Mohamed Atta urged passengers to . Mohamed Atta Flight Record. Unable to restart the engine, the two men shut the plane down, flipped off the lights and, by one account, walked off. Mohamed Atta, right, and Abdulaziz al-Omari pass through security at the Portland jetport ahead of a commuter flight to Boston on Sept. 11. Mohamed Atta is believed to have been the pilot of the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. . Said Bahaji, a German citizen, was a close friend of Mohammed Atta, the hijacker in control of American Airlines Flight 11 which was the first plane to strike the World Trade Center. The reservation was not used and canceled on August 9 with the reason "Family Medical Emergency". The Web . The investigator, Klaus Ulrich Kersten was the director of Germany's federal anticrime agency, the Bundeskriminalamt. In the end though, those international calls and Emails open a window to the falsehood of greater authority to intercept communications. [87], The connection between the two flights at Logan International Airport was within Terminal B, but the two gates were not connected within security. Although estimates range from 18 In late 1999, Atta, Shehhi, Jarrah, Bahaji, and bin al-Shibh decided to travel to Chechnya to fight against the Russians, but were convinced by Khalid al-Masri and Mohamedou Ould Salahi at the last minute to change their plans. of 20-25 sons of Mohamed bin Laden, who had 52-54 children in total.2 Originally an immigrant from Yemen, Muhamed bin Laden, by befriending the royal family, had established a major construction company and had amassed a fortune of some 2-3 billion dollars by the time of his death in a 1967 plane crash. [16] Atta traveled twice to Las Vegas on "surveillance flights" rehearsing how the 9/11 attacks would be carried out. While in the United States, Atta owned a red 1989 Pontiac Grand Prix. By early 1999, Atta had completed his thesis, and formally defended it in August 1999.[47]. He mentioned Al Qaeda and said the organization "could use memberships from Americans". A ticket staffer at Portland Airport reported becoming uneasy with the anger of Atta upon being told of the additional screening requirements in Boston, but that he did not act on his suspicions after becoming concerned that he was racially profiling Atta. Atta was at the controls when the 767 collided with the . Mohamed Atta is shown in this photo released Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2001, in a State of Florida Division of Motor Vehicles photograph. [107], Lt. Col. Shaffer's book also clearly indicates direct identification of the Brooklyn cell, and Mohamed Atta. Mohamed Atta, one of the key organizers among the 19 hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks, left behind a five-page handwritten document in Arabic that includes Islamic prayers . Newsweek is reconstructing the road to 9/11 as it was constructed 20 years ago, day by day. Footage shows the five hijackers who flew American Flight 77 into the Pentagon progressing through security checks at Washington's Dulles International Airport. Kersten said in an interview at the agency's headquarters in Wiesbaden that Atta was in Afghanistan from late 1999 until early 2000,[53][54] and that there was evidence that Atta met with Osama bin Laden there. identifies as one of the 19 hijackers, taxied a small private plane toward a runway when, unexpectedly, it stalled. It is only Jarrah's connection to Bin al-Shibh and others that would have connected him to any plot, including his attendance at the al Quds mosque in Hamburg. They were on a suicide flight. Atta flew Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. He is now with God. He left Prague the next day, flying on Czech Airlines to Newark, New Jersey, U.S. The couple explained at dinner that they ran an exchange program and invited Atta to continue his studies in Germany; they also offered him room and board at their home in the city. The timing of the incident also apparently came near the end of the time Mr. Atta and Mr. Shehhi spent in Venice and the start of the months they spent in South Florida before the attacks. Atta and Shehhi then moved into a small house nearby in Nokomis where they stayed for six months. [39], On August 1, 1995, Atta returned to Egypt for three months of study. The will was signed by el-Motassadeq and a second person at the mosque. Instead, he went to Central Office & Travel in Pompano Beach to purchase a ticket for a flight to Newark, leaving on the evening of August 7 and schedule to return in the evening on August 9. [10] His father, Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta, was a lawyer, educated in both sharia and civil law. Dekkers has written a book, "Guilty By Association," about his experience with Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, the two hijackers whose act of terrorism left nearly 3,000 people dead. [103] Shaffer largely based his allegations on the recollections of Navy Captain, Scott Phillpott,[104] who later recanted his recollection, telling investigators that he was "convinced that Atta was not on the chart that we had." In Germany, he enrolled in the urban planning graduate program at the Hamburg University of Technology. Atta confirmed that all the muscle hijackers had arrived in the United States, without any problems, but said that he needed five to six more weeks to work out details. A passenger revolt kept Flight 93 from hitting the Capitol. He insisted that she write his name as ATTA, that he originally was from Egypt but had moved to Afghanistan, that he was an engineer and that his dream was to go to a flight school. The night before, Atta went to Portland, Maine, a trip that has mystified terrorism experts for five years. 2) Make sure you know all aspects of the plan well, and expect the . - 9:03 a.m. (Photo By U.S. Navy/Getty Images). [8], Atta was born on September 1, 1968, in Kafr el-Sheikh, located in the Nile Delta region of Egypt (then a part of the United Arab Republic). Bin al-Shibh would not discuss this meeting with Fouda. The leader of the nineteen was Mohamed Atta, and they were divided into four groups, one for each plane, each with a pilot who served as group leader: Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Ziad Samir Jarrah . [59] After obtaining his visa, Atta took a bus on June 2 from Hamburg to Prague where he stayed overnight before traveling on to the United States the next day. ; Azrbaycanca; Catal; etina; Dansk; Deutsch; Espaol; ; Franais; ; Hausa; Bahasa Indonesia; Italiano; . By this view, Atta's political and religious beliefs affected the method of his suicide and his choice of target, but they were not the underlying causes of his behavior. On November 29, 1999, Mohamed Atta boarded Turkish Airlines Flight TK1662 from Hamburg to Istanbul, where he changed to flight TK1056 to Karachi, Pakistan. ''I told them to forget it. The same day, he booked a one-way first-class ticket via the Internet on America West Flight 244 from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to Las Vegas. 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, who is thought to have flown American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center AP "I said, specifically, 'These two clowns are up to . Protection against purely domestic hijackers primarily was lodged with check-in personnel at the airport counter, then with security screeners, and finally with attendants at the gate. Bin al-Shibh passed along bin Laden's list of targets; bin Laden wanted the United States Capitol, the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center to be attacked, as they were deemed "symbols of America." [19] In 1992, his father had overheard a German couple who were visiting Egypt's capital. Some, like the 9/11 plot's ringleader, Mohamed Atta, flew in from Florida, checking into the King's Inn Motel in Wayne for a few days and then leaving and then returning days later. He stayed there until 1998. Bryant said "the picture that came out in the newspaper, that's exactly what that man looked like. His travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan were also signs of radicalization, both of which were masked in the passports he used to enter the United States. Atta and Amal appeared to be attracted to each other, but Atta soon decided that "she had a quite different orientation and that the emancipation of the young lady did not fit." By the time it took off, Mohammed Atta was just four minutes away from hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center. And that may have been what he was doing. "[113] In turn, political scientist Robert Pape has claimed that Atta was motivated by his commitment to the political cause, that he was psychologically normal, and that he was "not readily characterized as depressed, not unable to enjoy life, not detached from friends and society. [34] His friends in Germany described him as an intelligent man in whom religious convictions and political motives held equal sway. Some say it was the makeup of Jarrah's team, that he had only three instead of four muscle men (because the 20th hijacker and his fourth was denied entry into the U.S.). His mother, 79, at the time denied her son's involvement in the attacks and that she feels he is in Afghanistan. ''Tower seemed to have no trouble taxiing around it at a busy time,'' the handwritten report reads. The Mossad killed him. This piece of information was passed on to the FBI as "unevaluated raw intelligence". Atta also started and led a prayer group, which Ahmed Maklat and Mounir El Motassadeq joined. That aircraft hit the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. United Flight 175, also from Boston, hit the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. "One of the things we did at the White House was push the FBI to focus on Portland to determine whether or not there were people there that they might have met with, Cressey said. [73][74] After bin al-Shibh returned to Germany on July 16, 2001, Atta had three more days in Spain. Drumhiller said it could have been "to make the final arrangements, to sort of close out everything they were doing to wrap up their time in the states.". This photo taken 12 September 2001 shows the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Shanksville, PA. Why was Ziad Jarrah's plane the only one that failed to hit its target? "They conformed to all the guidelines of checking in." The only problem, Tuohey said, came when he told Atta that, after arriving in Boston, Atta and Omari would have to check in once again before transferring to American Airlines Flight 11. Almost all of these points discuss spiritual preparation, such as prayer and citing religious scripture. [73][74] He drove east out of Madrid towards the Mediterranean beach area of Tarragona. So, did Mohammed Atta go to Portland because of security issues? You may have heard about recently. [16], Atta continued with flight training that included solo flights and simulator time. The third hijacked plane, American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 that took off from Dulles Airport . [91] The angle at which Atta crashed into the North Tower severed all means of escape from Floor 92 or higher, ensuring that no one on those floors was able to make it out alive before the building collapsed 102 minutes later at 10:28 A.M.[92], Because the flight from Portland to Boston had been delayed,[93] his bags did not make it onto Flight 11. This document is divided into three sections; the first is a fifteen point list providing detailed instructions for the last night of a martyr's life, the second gives instructions for travelling to the plane and the third from the time between boarding the plane and martyrdom. He would soon post a note forbidding pilots from flying into Miami International. At 8:26 a.m., Flight 11 makes . The 33-year-old grew up in a strict household in Egypt where he was made to study hard. He spoke again seconds after that first transmission, still unaware that his voice was being heard on the ground: "Nobody move, everything will be OK. Mr. Kraus noted that the two men had been trained on smaller, ''uncontrolled'' airports that operate without flight towers. As his father insisted that he go abroad for graduate studies, Atta, to this end, entered a German-language program at the Goethe Institute in Cairo. As the five-year anniversary of 9/11 approaches, major questions about the terrorist attacks remain unanswered. Passengers must leave the secured area, go outdoors, cross a covered roadway, and enter another building before going through security once again. Atta flew to Spain on January 4, 2001, to coordinate with bin al-Shibh and returned to the United States on January 10. Other hijackers traveled to Las Vegas at different times in the summer of 2001. The crash and fire kill 59 on the plane and 125 on the . Atta flew Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. The Washington Post quoted a United States Air Force official who explained, "discrepancies in their biographical data, such as birth dates 20 years off, indicate we are probably not talking about the same people. ''A guy said, 'Hey, some of your pilots are down here and they left the plane on the causeway,' '' Mr. Kraus recalled. After he graduated in 1990 with an architecture degree,[15] he joined the Engineers Syndicate, an organization under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood. [70], In July 2001, Atta again left for Spain in order to meet with bin al-Shibh for the last time. At 2:12 p.m. on August 25, Mohammed Atta logged into his Travelocity account. Officials at Signature did not respond to several telephone requests to find out whether anyone at the company remembered Mr. Atta or Mr. Shehhi. But none of them were so flagged. They checked out the next morning, and spent the next few days at an unknown location in Tarragona. On Sept. 12, 2001, investigators combed over the field near Shanksville, Pa., where United Flight 93 crashed a day earlier. This claim has been disputed; Terry McDermott has argued that it is unusual for someone to go on pilgrimage so soon after the first time and to spend three months there (more than Hajj requires).

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