Airline computers were by now starting to disgorge printouts of passenger manifests for the hijacked flights. “Although in our collective gut we knew al Qaeda was behind the attacks, we needed proof,” recalled CIA director George Tenet. “So CTC [the Agency’s Counterterrorism Center] requested passenger lists … the initial response from some part of the bureaucracy (which parts since mercifully forgotten) was that manifests could not be shared with CIA. There were privacy issues involved. Some gentle reasoning, and a few four-letter words later, the lists were sprung.”
The manifests satisfied Tenet “beyond a doubt” that al Qaeda was involved. For thousands of FBI agents, they opened the way to a massive investigation that was to last far into the future—but immediately bore fruit.
• • •
THE VERY FIRST LEAD was provided by the two flight attendants who phoned from Flight 11 in those last fraught minutes before the airplane hit the World Trade Center. Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney had between them provided the seat numbers of three of the five hijackers. “We could then go to the manifest,” FBI director Robert Mueller said later, “find out who was sitting in those seats, and immediately conduct an investigation of those individuals, as opposed to taking all the passengers on the plane and going through a process of elimination.”
The three passengers identified by the flight attendants were Satam al-Suqami and two brothers, Wail and Waleed al-Shehri, all Saudis. Among the Anglo, Russian, East European, and Latino names of the eighty-one passengers aboard Flight 11, two other names stood out: Moham—the computer had failed to complete the name “Mohamed”—Atta, and Abdul al-Omari.
A bright U.S. Airways employee in Portland, Maine, was already focusing on passengers Atta and Omari. On learning of the Trade Center crashes—two crashes at the same location in seventeen minutes had to be terrorism—security coordinator Diane Graney pulled the records to see if any passengers had left Portland for Boston that morning on the first leg of a longer journey. There were those two same names: Atta and Omari, booked to fly on to Los Angeles aboard American Flight 11.
Graney talked with the customer service representative who had checked in the two men. He remembered them, remembered that Omari had seemed not to know any English, that he had kept quiet and tagged along behind Atta. He remembered that, told he would have to check in again at Boston, Atta had “clenched his jaw … looked like he was about to get mad.” He remembered, too, that Atta had checked two bags. Graney called her manager, and together they called corporate security.
Before 6:00 A.M., it would emerge, a security camera at Portland airport had recorded the pair, Atta in a blue shirt and dark pants, Omari in lighter clothing, retrieving hand baggage from the X-ray machine at the security point. Nothing about their demeanor, nothing in the expressions on their faces, had betrayed what they were about to do.
It would be a long time before the pieces of the jigsaw would be found and seen to make sense. From Portland, it would be discovered, Atta had called two key fellow conspirators; Marwan al-Shehhi, a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, whose name appeared on the manifest of United Airlines Flight 175, the second plane hijacked; and a Lebanese man named Ziad Jarrah, who had flown on Flight 93, the fourth plane hijacked.
The Nissan rental car Atta had used, found where he had left it in the parking lot, contained a rental agreement in Atta’s name, maps of Boston and Maine, fingerprints and hairs—and a Chips Ahoy! cookie package. At other airports, however, and in other hotels and parking lots, there would be evidential treasure.
At Boston’s Logan Airport, where two of the hijacker teams had boarded their target airliners, the FBI found two cars, a blue Hyundai Accent and a white Mitsubishi Mirage. The Hyundai had been rented in the name of “Fayez Ahmed,” the two first names of Flight 175 hijacker Banihammad, from the United Arab Emirates. Phone records linked him, too, to Atta—they had spoken three times early on 9/11. Hotel stationery left in the Hyundai identified one of the Boston area hotels the hijackers had used, the Milner on South Charles Street. Banihammad had been ticketed for overstaying his time on a parking meter across the street from the hotel.
The white Mitsubishi at Logan was found rapidly, thanks to the man who had pulled up alongside and—as described earlier—reported the strange behavior of the three Arabs seated in it. The car had been rented by Flight 11 hijacker Wail al-Shehri, who had on the eve of the hijackings shared Room 433 at the Park Inn Motel near the airport with his brother Waleed and Satam al-Suqami. One of them, agents concluded, had slept in the bathtub.
Two comrades, Hamza and Ahmed al-Ghamdi—members of the same Saudi tribe but apparently not brothers—had stayed first at the upmarket Charles Hotel, just behind the John F. Kennedy School of Government, found it too pricey, and moved to a Days Inn. The Ghamdis were truly parsimonious. They tipped the driver of the cab that took them to the airport, on the way to hijack Flight 175, just 15 cents.
The contents of the cars at the airports and the hotel rooms, and the contacts the hijackers made, revealed an unexpected side of the Arabs—unexpected, that is, in supposed Muslim zealots. Muslims living according to their religious tenets are forbidden to engage in zināa—premarital sex or adultery. Even masturbation is harām—forbidden—except in certain circumstances. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some of the future hijackers respected these rules. In one of the rooms they had used at a seaside motel in Florida, a witness was to recall, two of the men draped towels over pictures on the wall of women in bathing suits. These were all young men, however—most of them in their twenties—and probably knew they were soon to die.
English-language reading the hijackers left behind ranged from what the FBI inventory calls “romance-type” books to an old copy of Penthouse, found under a bed. Among the toiletries found in one of the cars were a dozen Trojan condoms. It would turn out that several of the terrorists had sought out prostitutes in their last days alive.
Many other, evidentially significant, clues came out of Boston. From tracking the phone records, it early on began to look as though Atta had headed the operation in the field. In both Portland and Boston, agents got started on a key element in the case—the money trail. A FedEx bill in a trash can, calls to the United Arab Emirates, calls to Western Union, an attempt to send money from a TravelX office—all were clues that contributed to understanding how the 9/11 attacks had been funded. Much of the money had come through two key contacts in the Emirates and—faithful to the Muslim precept that prohibits squandering wealth—the men about to die were returning what was left over.
There were ominous indications, too, that the hijackers had had associates in the United States. Agents puzzled over a strange incident involving a hotel room the hijackers had used. “A maid at the Park Inn,” an FBI report noted, advised “that an Arabic male answered the door of the room at approximately 11:00 a.m. on the morning of 9/11/01. The man asked her to come back later to clean because someone in the room was sleeping.” Who was the unknown Arab still in a hijacker’s room more than two hours after the hijackers had carried out their mission and gone to their deaths? And if there was a second man in the room, who was he? Were fellow terrorists, “sleepers,” at large in the United States?
In one of the hijackers’ cars, agents found a piece of paper with a name and a phone number, 589-5316, and—scrawled on a map in yellow highlighter—a second name and two numbers, 703–519–1947 and 703–514–1947. The names related to men who could be traced—leading to manhunts, arrests, and protracted investigations.
Washington’s Dulles Airport, where the five American 77 hijackers had boarded, was replete with clues. Security camera pictures, and a detailed account by a security guard, seemed to indicate that several of the terrorists had reconnoitered a secure area of the airport the evening before the attacks. They may, too, have had the use of an electronic pass—another indication that the hijackers may have had accomplices.
There were major finds in the blue, California-registered Toyota Corolla fou
nd parked at Dulles. The vehicle was registered to Flight 77 hijack suspect Nawaf al-Hazmi, yet another Saudi, and he (and perhaps another man) had left their personal belongings in the vehicle. There was clothing—T-shirts, pants, shorts, belts, socks, and briefs. There were toiletries—Nivea cream, Dry Idea deodorant, Dr. Scholl’s foot powder, Breath Remedy tongue spray, and Kleenex tissues. There was a broken pair of sunglasses, a hairbrush, an electric razor, no fewer than three alarm clocks, a compact disk entitled The Holy Qur’an, and worry beads.
As well as the bric-a-brac of daily life, though, there was also investigative treasure: fragments of torn paper relating to Flight 77, which, reassembled, revealed handwritten notes; a receipt for a driver’s license issued to Hazmi in San Diego, banking information for him and fellow Saudi Hani Hanjour—another Flight 77 suspect—and a doctor’s prescription written for Hazmi’s Saudi comrade Khalid al-Mihdhar. There were mailbox receipts; a flyer for a library in Alexandria, Virginia; addresses in Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Arizona; and a hand-drawn map pointing to an address in a suburb of San Diego.
Also, and this was a key to a whole world of information that would keep agents swarming across the country for months, here were the first traces of the suspects’ involvement in aviation: Hanjour’s ID card for the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Phoenix; a receipt from Caldwell Flight Academy in Fairfield, New Jersey; and four color diagrams of the instrument panels in a Boeing 757, the type of airliner that Nawaf al-Hazmi and his brother Salem, Hanjour, Mihdhar, and Majed Moqed—yet another Saudi—had boarded on 9/11.
There would be much more. Two duffel bags left at the Ayah Islamic Center in Laurel, Maryland—apparently by Hazmi and Mihdhar—contained pilot logbooks, evidence that they had attended a flight school as early as 2000, receipts for aviation headsets, and a chart kit. In the rental car at Portland Airport there was an Arabic-language flight manual and the name of another flight school, Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida. Boeing 757 manuals would also be found at a motel the terrorists had used in Florida.
Even as news of the attacks was breaking, people at Huffman Aviation remembered their encounters with Atta and Shehhi. “Everybody was gathered around the hotel lobby television,” said Mark Mikarts, a former Huffman instructor who had taught the pair, “and lo and behold there’s Mohamed Atta’s picture and Marwan al-Shehhi’s picture up on the TV screen. I felt myself just pooling into a puddle … I was speechless, aghast. I just could not believe that these were the people I had sat next to, had given primary instruction to.”
In southern England, former Huffman student pilot Ann Greaves recognized Atta’s picture the moment it was shown on television. “It was the sort of face that once you’d seen it you would never forget it,” she remembered. “His bearing was that of someone very much in command.”
Rudi Dekkers, the Dutchman who ran Huffman, was soon besieged by journalists from around the world. He said he had assumed Atta and Shehhi had been at the school, like his many other foreign students, just to get their pilot’s licenses. There had been no reason to inquire about their longer term plans.
BY MIDNIGHT on September 11, agents had evidence that appeared to dispel any doubt as to the suspects’ guilt and what their purpose had been—in Mohamed Atta’s luggage. Atta and Omari had checked two suitcases when they arrived at Portland Airport, a green one and a black pull-along. When they made their connection to American 11 at Boston, however, the suitcases did not. The baggage reached the plane too late to be loaded. Atta, already on board and waiting for takeoff, had apparently been concerned about the bags—a flight attendant, presumably at his behest, had asked ground staff whether the bags safely made the transfer. If Atta did worry that the suitcases would be found later and searched, he worried with good reason.
Atta’s pull-along bag turned out to be a window on his life—and on the nature of the 9/11 attacks. It contained his Egyptian passport and ID, which revealed his full name, a report card from the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University, and an addressed envelope indicating that he had lived in Germany. There were videotapes of Boeing 747 and 757 operating procedures, flight simulator information, and a flight computer in a case. A copy of the Qur’an, a prayer schedule, and Atta’s will—written and signed when he was only twenty-seven—revealed him to be intensely religious.
The significance of all that, however, paled beside that of another document. Seventeen days after the attacks, the FBI released four pages of Arabic script that had also been found in Atta’s bag. Further copies were recovered, moreover, one in the car Hazmi abandoned at Dulles Airport, another—apparently a remnant—at the United 93 crash scene in Pennsylvania. Neither the 9/11 Commission Report nor a Commission staff document—released later—even mentions the find. An obscure footnote lists the various other contents of the retrieved baggage, but not the document.
The omission is extraordinary, unconscionable, for the telltale pages were important evidence. Scholars who have translated and analyzed them have described them as nothing less than a “Spiritual Manual” or “Handbook” for the 9/11 attacks. Intensely religious in tone from beginning to end, the document is a mix of counsel, comfort, inspiration, and practical instruction—complex in many ways, replete with references obscure to the non-Muslim Westerner—but its thrust is clear. The pages offered the hijackers detailed advice on how to prepare for the attacks—and for death.
The manual opens with instructions for its readers’ “Last Night,” a time to stay awake, to meditate, pray, renew the “mutual pledge to die,” to contemplate “the eternal blessing God has prepared for the believers, especially for the martyrs.”
As physical preparation, readers were reminded of the importance of “shaving off excess hair from the body and perfuming oneself” and “Performing the greater ritual ablution [washing thoroughly].” The manual urged the old custom of nafth—spitting—to bring protection. Readers were to spit on “the suitcase, the clothing, the knife … equipment … ID … tdh [probably an abbreviation of tadh-kira, ticket] … passport … all your papers.” “Each one of you must sharpen his knife.”
The car journey to the “m” [the abbreviation, probably, of matar, airport] was to include further prayers, the prayer for travel, the prayer for arriving. Then the prayer: “O God, protect us from them … O God, we throw you against their throats and we seek refuge in you from their evil … Those who are enchanted by Western civilization are people who have drunk their love and reverence with cold water … Therefore do not fear them; but fear you Me, if you are believers” [Qur’an 3:175].
The “Spiritual Manual,” apparently written to steel the resolve of the hijackers for the 9/11 attack.
Readers were to recite repeatedly the first part of the Islamic creed, lā ilāha illā llāh—“There is no god but God.” Care was to be taken, however, to appear to be silent, to ensure that “nobody takes notice.” “Don’t show signs of confusion or tension, but be happy, cheerful, bright and confident, because you carry out an action that God loves and approves … Smile in the face of death, young man, for you will soon enter the eternal abode.
“When you board the ‘t’ [the abbreviation, probably, for tā’ira airplane],” the manual continued, “proceed with the prayer … and consider that it is a raid on the path [of God] … When the ‘t’ begins to move slightly and heads for the ‘q’ [perhaps standing for the Arabic word for ‘takeoff position,’ or perhaps for Qiblah, the direction of Mecca, toward which the planes did point once diverted], recite the prayer of travel because you are traveling to God the Most High, for you are traveling to Allah … This is the moment of the encounter of the two camps. Recite prayers … ‘Our Lord, pour out upon us patience, and make firm our feet, and give us aid against the people of the unbelievers.’
“Pray for victory, assistance and the hitting of the target for yourself and for all your brothers, and don’t be afraid. And ask God to grant you martyrdom … In close combat, strike firmly like heroes who do not wis
h to return to this world. Exclaim loudly Allāhu akbar, because the exclaiming of Allāhu akbar strikes fear into the unbelievers’ hearts … the heavenly virgins are calling you, saying, ‘O friend of God, come!’
“And when God grants any of you a slaughter,” the text counseled, “you should dedicate it to your father and mother.”
Those to be killed were the passengers and crews of the airliners. The Arabic word used for “slaughter” in the text is dhabaha—the word used for the cutting of an animal’s throat.
“If everything has come off well, each of you is to pat his apartment brother on the shoulder. And in the m [airport] and in the t [plane] and in the k [perhaps the abbreviation for kābīna—cockpit] (each of you) should remind him that this operation is for the sake of God.…
“When the true promise and zero hour approaches,” the manual’s readers were told, “tear open your clothing and bare your chest, welcoming death on the path of God. Always mind God, either by ending with the ritual prayer—if this is possible—starting it seconds before the target, or let your last words be, ‘There is no God but God, and Muhammed is his Prophet.’ After that, God willing, the meeting in the highest Paradise will follow.”
So powerful is this document, so revelatory of the planning for the 9/11 hijackings—and the religious mind-set that drove them—it seems incomprehensible that the official U.S. account did not mention it at all. Professor Hans Kippenberg, coauthor of the most thorough study of the hijackers’ manual, has a theory.
“To those who investigated the events of September 11,” said Kippenberg, who is professor of Comparative Religious Studies at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany,