Anthony Summers - The Eleventh Day

47 traffic policeman/Hazmi featured, etc.:“Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE. The previous occasions Hamzi had come to the notice of the police are reported on p. 324.

48 Shuckums: Time , 9/24/01, Hopsicker, 81–, Newsweek , 9/24/01, St. Petersburg Times , 9/1/02. FBI agents who looked into the Shuckums story evidently thought it occurred on September 6. Atta could not have been there on the 7th, as some press reports had it, as he flew from Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore that day (“Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE).

49 Atta/Jarrah sold cars/headed north:ibid., Stipulation, 3/1/06 & Exhibit OG0020.2, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui , Chronology of Events for Hijackers, Ziad Jarrah chronology, 3/20/02, “03009470 ACS Download Documents, Packet 6,” CF, Staff Statement 16, CO. A story would emerge that Atta and Shehhi were at the Holiday Inn at Longboat Key that day, in west Florida and not far from where President Bush would arrive on the eve of 9/11. The authors interviewed Darlene Sievers and Mark Bean, hotel workers who thought they saw them there, but the record indicates that they were mistaken ( Longboat Observer , 11/21/01, ints. Darlene Sievers, Mark Bean).

50 Sweet Temptations:MFR 04020636, 2/2/04, “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE;

51 “the most”/twice: Boston Herald , 10/10/01, 10/11/01;

52 $100 apiece: BG , 10/10/01, The Independent (U.K.), 10/11/01;

53 porn video:“Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, WSJ , 10/16/01;

54 paid dancer: NYT , 9/27/01, 10/28/01;

55 Panther Motel/found:“Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, St. Petersburg Times , 9/1/02;

56 Jarrah ticket: NY Daily News , 1/9/02, Ziad Jarrah chronology, 3/20/02, “03009470 ACS Download Documents, Packet 6,” CF;

57 Jarrah called:Ziad Jarrah chronology, 3/20/02;

58 $2,000:Fisk, The Great War , 1051;

59 sister’s wedding/suit: LAT , 10/23/01.

60 Jarrah package:Stipulation, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui , letter reproduced at http://en.wikepedia.org—Arabic & Turkish translated for the authors by Hans Kippenberg & Tilman Seidensticker, “The Fifth Estate: The Story of Ziad Jarrah,” 10/10/01, www.cbc.ca. Jarrah’s mind was evidently on his girlfriend, Aysel, a great deal during his last days alive. He called more than usual, she would remember, four times between the Thursday of the week before 9/11 and the morning of the strikes. He appears to have made the final call when he was already at Newark Airport preparing to board United Flight 93. As fate would have it, according to Sengün, she had to cut the call short because it was a busy moment in the hospital where she was working. There had been nothing out of the ordinary about the call, she would remember—Jarrah had said he loved her. Sengün has not given interviews and it is thought German authorities placed her under some form of witness protection (Sengün sworn statement to police in Germany, 9/15/01, in authors’ collection).

61 told later/she would hope: LAT , 1/27/03.

62 Mihdhar packet:Stipulation, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui , 3/1/06, Bamford, Shadow Factory , 81. One FBI document suggests Mihdhar’s letter to his wife was in fact sent not by Mihdhar but by Hazmi. This is clearly in error, not least because—unlike Mihdhar—Hazmi had no wife. As reported earlier, he had been attempting and failing to find himself a wife;

63 Atta had told/called father:CR, 249;

64 KSM to Pakistan:Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Charge Sheet,” 4/15/08, www.findlaw.com;

65 told disperse/alert:Bergen, OBL I Know , 307–, Fouda & Fielding, 141;

66 “big plan”/“far”/“My mother”:bin Ladens & Sasson, 279–;

67 Najwa asked/condition/ring:ibid., 281–, 312. The children allowed to leave were two-year-old Nour, a boy, four-year-old Rukhaiya, a girl, and Abdul Rahman, a son born in 1978. In the spring of 2002, the Saudi-owned journal was to publish an interview supposedly given by one of bin Laden’s wives, identified only as “A.S.” Before 9/11, according to her purported interview, bin Laden “came to the house, gave me a telephone, and told me to call my family and tell them we were going somewhere else and that there would be no news of me for a long time.” There is much accompanying detail, including a reference to the interviewee’s “sons.” The authenticity of the interview is dubious. Though the initials match those of Amal al-Sadah, a seventeen-year-old Yemeni bin Laden married in late 2000 or early 2001, she has reportedly borne him only a daughter. She could hardly have given birth to sons by early 2002 (Nour et al.: bin Ladens & Sasson, 282; “A.S.”: BBC, AP, 3/13/02);

68 “soft-spoken”:bin Ladens & Sasson, 8;

69 Najwa prayed:ibid., 282.

Part VI: TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

CHAPTER 29

1

Fuller search/“Sheraton”:

FBI IG, CR, 271–, 539n84–85, Fenton, 312;

2

tracks all over:

Newsweek

, 6/10/06, Lance,

Triple Cross

, 349–, CR, 539n85;

3

Moussaoui detention/agents begged/blocked/Samit shared/​Harry/​Permission:

FBI IG, Kiser to Samit, 9/10/01, Exhibit 334,

U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui

, ABC News, 3/20/06;

4

Ashcroft turned down/not increased:

Staff Statement 9, CO,

Newsweek

, 5/27/02, Benjamin & Simon, 348;

5

“very docile”:

NYT

, 6/2/02.

6

“The Big Wedding”/“aircraft”:

John Cooley, a renowned Middle East specialist, reported in 2002 that the “Big Wedding” warning came in “late summer,” and referred to an attack within the United States involving airplanes. CNN, reporting earlier, referred to a Jordanian warning “a few days” before 9/11—but suggested that it related to a coming attack not in the United States but on resort hotels in Jordan. According to CIA director Tenet, “a source we were jointly running with a Middle Eastern country” went to his foreign handler on September 10 to say “something big” was about to happen. He was ignored (“Wedding”: Cooley, 229,

International Herald Tribune

, 5/21/02, CNN, 11/19/01; “something big”: Tenet, 160).

7

France passed:

Le Figaro

, 11/1/01;

8

Feinstein/“One of”/“Despite”:

Late Edition

, CNN, 7/1/01, Statement of Dianne Feinstein, 5/17/01, http://feinstein.senate.gov,

Newsweek

, 5/27/02, MSNBC, 9/28/06.

9

Massoud assassinated/​“journalists’ ”:

CR, 214,

Time

, 8/12/02, Burke,

Al-Qaeda

, 197. After 9/11, when U.S. strikes on Afghanistan had routed Taliban and al Qaeda forces,

Wall Street Journal

reporter Alan Cullison made remarkable discoveries on a computer that had belonged to the terrorists. The hard drive contained a letter, apparently crafted by Ayman al-Zawahiri, purporting to be the “journalists’ ” request for the Massoud interview (