MItchell Zuckoff - Fall and Rise - The Story of 9/11

Meanwhile, both before and after the Hamburg group began flight school, sixteen other men who’d also pledged their lives to bin Laden and al-Qaeda entered the United States to play roles chosen for them in the Planes Operation. One, a twenty-nine-year-old Saudi named Hani Hanjour, had studied in the United States on and off for nearly a decade and had obtained a commercial pilot certificate in April 1999. While in Arizona, Hanjour fell in with a group of extremists, and by 2000 he was an al-Qaeda recruit in Afghanistan, where his flying and language skills, plus his firsthand knowledge of the United States, made him an ideal candidate in bin Laden’s eyes to join the Planes Operation as a fourth pilot.

Thirteen of the others were between twenty and twenty-eight years old, all from Saudi Arabia except for one, who hailed from the United Arab Emirates. A few had spent time in college, but most lacked higher education, jobs, or prospects. All but one were unmarried. Like the Hamburg group, they’d joined al-Qaeda originally intending to fight in Chechnya. Bin Laden handpicked them for the plot and asked them to swear loyalty for a suicide operation. Although they weren’t especially imposing, most no taller than five foot seven, he wanted them to serve as “muscle” for the men who were training to be pilots. Most returned home to Saudi Arabia to obtain U.S. visas, then returned to Afghanistan for training in close-quarters combat and knife killing skills. They began to arrive in the United States in April 2001, keeping to themselves and generally avoiding trouble.

The other two “muscle” group members originally were supposed to participate in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s ten-plane plot. Experienced jihadists who’d fought together in Bosnia, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar arrived in California on six-month tourist visas in January 2000, even before the Hamburg group began pilot training. The U.S. intelligence community identified Mihdhar as a member of al-Qaeda before he landed in the United States, and Hazmi had been described as a bin Laden associate. Yet neither was on a terrorist watchlist available to border agents. By contrast, other countries had both Mihdhar and Hazmi on watchlists. Once the two men reached the United States, the CIA withheld from the FBI crucial information about them and their movements. Compounded by what a later investigation would call “individual and systemic failings” by the FBI, the result was a series of missed opportunities.

Once in the United States, the two natives of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, insinuated themselves into the Muslim community of San Diego and received help from fellow Saudis. Originally viewed by bin Laden as potential pilots, neither Mihdhar nor Hazmi had the necessary English language skills. Aptitude and intelligence might have been lacking, too—their flight training stalled after they told an instructor they wanted to learn how to fly a plane but showed no interest in takeoffs or landings.

During the spring and summer of 2001, as part of their final preparations, Atta, Jarrah, and Shehhi took cross-country flights to observe the workings of crews and to determine whether they might smuggle weapons on board. Atta flew to Spain to brief an al-Qaeda planner about the plot, then returned to the United States. Jarrah and Hanjour sought training on how to fly a low-altitude pathway along the Hudson River that passed New York landmarks including the World Trade Center, and they rented small planes for practice flights. “Muscle” group members busied themselves training at gyms.

As months passed, bin Laden became frustrated, pressuring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to put the Planes Operation into motion. Bin Laden wanted it to be executed in May 2001, marking seven months since the bombing of the USS Cole , and then in June or July, when Israeli opposition party leader Ariel Sharon visited the White House. Each date passed as Atta hesitated to commit on timing until he felt absolutely ready.

Finally, in late August, Atta picked a day just weeks away: the second Tuesday in September. It’s a mystery whether he made a simple logistical choice, based on his expectation that it would be a light travel day, which meant fewer passengers to deal with; whether he saw propaganda value in a date that matched America’s 9-1-1 emergency telephone system; or whether he sought historical revenge by choosing the month and day of the start of the 1683 Battle of Vienna, a humiliating defeat for the Ottoman Empire against Christian forces that began a centuries-long decline of Islamic influence.

Whatever the trigger, Atta and his eighteen associates started buying flight tickets, some by using computers in public libraries. They kept enough money for expenses, then returned much of the rest to al-Qaeda operatives in the United Arab Emirates. All told, the entire plan cost less than half a million dollars.

The members of the Planes Operation broke into three groups of five and one group of four, each led by one of the four men who’d trained as a pilot: Atta, Shehhi, Hanjour, and Jarrah. By the second week of September, all had rented rooms at hotels or motels in or near Boston, Newark, and Washington, D.C.

Atta and the other pilots worked on final details, while some of the others focused on earthly desires. In Boston, “muscle” members Abdulaziz al-Omari and Satam al-Suqami paid for the company of two women from the Sweet Temptations escort service. One spent a hundred dollars on a prostitute two more times in a single day. In New Jersey, another paid twenty dollars for a private dance in the VIP room of a go-go bar, while another contented himself with a pornographic video.

On September 10, when everything and everyone was almost in place, Ziad Jarrah stepped outside a Days Inn in Newark, New Jersey, where he and three “muscle” men had checked in the previous day.

Jarrah’s thoughts wandered to his girlfriend in Germany, a medical student of Turkish heritage named Aysel Sengün. They’d dated for five years, they emailed or spoke by phone almost daily, and she’d visited him in Florida eight months earlier. Jarrah showed off his new skills as a pilot, flying her in a single-engine plane to Key West. They’d discussed a future together, but Sengün’s parents insisted that she marry a fellow Turk. When Jarrah asked for her father’s blessing, the elder Sengün threw Jarrah out of his house. They continued their relationship in secret, and weeks earlier, Jarrah had flown to Germany to see her. Over their years together, she’d watched as the happy-go-lucky man she met grew a beard and criticized her for being insufficiently devout, but more recently Sengün had been seeing what she thought was a return to his easygoing ways. She had no idea what he would do.

Jarrah left the Days Inn in a rented car and drove three miles to Elizabeth, New Jersey, to mail a letter he wrote that day to Sengün. He placed it in a package along with his private pilot’s license, his pilot logbook, and a postcard showing a photo of a beach.

In a mix of German and Arabic, the letter began with expressions of love and devotion to chabibi , or “darling.” Before signing it “Your man forever,” Jarrah wrote:

I will wait for you until you come to me. There comes a time for everyone to make a move… . You should be very proud of me. It’s an honor, and you will see the results, and everybody will be happy… .

While Jarrah mailed his package, Atta prepared to leave his room at the Boston hotel. Some items in his Travelpro luggage made sense for a devout Muslim who’d received a commercial pilot’s license nine months earlier: alongside a Koran and a prayer schedule, he packed videotaped lessons on how to fly two types of Boeing jets; a device for determining the effect of a plane’s weight on its range; an electronic flight computer; a procedure manual for flight simulators; and flight planning sheets. Anyone who knew what he had planned would also have noted that he packed a folding knife and a canister of “First Defense” pepper spray. Finally, tucked into the black suitcase was a four-page letter, handwritten in Arabic, that charted Atta’s physical and spiritual intentions.