why did mohamed atta crash the plane

Financial records and bank video show Atta and Al-Omari made two ATM withdrawals in Portland, and the men were reportedly spotted at an area Wal-Mart, as well as in the parking lot of a Pizza Hut restaurant. Although the marriage never happened, Atta's father mentioned they liked each other.[18]. It is not known where he stayed that night, but on the 29th he registered at the Econo Lodge at 1150 South Las Vegas Boulevard. Atta also claimed different nationalities, sometimes Egyptian and other times telling people he was from the United Arab Emirates. They checked out the next morning, and spent the next few days at an unknown location in Tarragona. On April 16, Atta was given a citation for not having a valid driver's license, and he began steps to get the license. Mr. Kraus said Mr. Atta and Mr. Shehhi told him they had not been aware that they needed to radio the tower for instructions. And so, we still don't know what he was doing there.". Mohamed Atta's Story. [32] Atta Sr. rejected media reports that stated his son was drinking wildly, and instead described his son as a quiet boy uninvolved with politics, shy and devoted to studying architecture. Ramzi bin al-Shibh was also there, teaching occasional classes, and became Atta's friend. Volker Hauth, who was traveling with Atta, described Amal as "attractive and self-confident. According to The Sunday Times, "American and German investigators have struggled to find evidence of Atta's whereabouts in January 2000 after he disappeared from Hamburg. [51] They met three or four times a week to discuss their anti-American feelings and to plot possible attacks. 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. [73], On the morning of July 9, Mohamed Atta rented a silver Hyundai Accent, which he booked from SIXT Rent-A-Car for July 9 to 16, and later extended to the 19th. At the Hamburg University of Technology, Atta studied under the guidance of the department chair, Dittmar Machule, who specialized in the Middle East. In August 2001, Atta traveled as a passenger on several "surveillance" flights, to establish in detail how the attacks could be carried out. That raises a larger issue, and that is: At any point did anybody in the U.S. knowingly help any of the 19 terrorists prepare for the attack? [75] Yosri Fouda, who interviewed bin al-Shibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) before the arrest, believes that Said Bahaji and KSM may have also been present at the meeting. "Might have just been doing surveillance detection just to see if somebody might have been following him up in that area, Drumhiller said. But, he agreed, it raised a host of questions, most notably one that remains unanswered: Why were the two novice pilots flying into a heavily trafficked airport on such a busy day? Several clues have been found to link their stay in Spain to Syrian-born Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas (Abu Dahdah), and Amer el Azizi, a Moroccan in Spain. Had Atta or any of these men been on international watchlists, their names would have been flagged upon making a domestic reservation. At this time, the pilots stopped responding to air traffic control, and the aircraft began deviating from the planned route. 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. A voice believed to be that of al Qaeda hijack leader Mohamed Atta urged passengers to . His nascent infatuation with her, begrudgingly realised, was the closest thing Atta knew to romance. The next winter, they moved into an apartment at Marienstrasse 54 in the borough of Harburg, near the Hamburg University of Technology,[50] at which they enrolled. [12], When Atta was ten, his family moved to the Cairo neighborhood of Abdeen, situated near the city center. 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]. [16] When Atta and Shehhi arrived in Florida, they initially stayed with Huffman's bookkeeper and his wife in a spare room of their house. Both enrolled at Jones Aviation in Sarasota and took training there for a brief time. Bryant said "the picture that came out in the newspaper, that's exactly what that man looked like. 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. As the five-year anniversary of 9/11 approaches, major questions about the terrorist attacks remain unanswered. Bouthayna and Mohamed married when she was 14, via an arranged marriage. The third hijacked plane, American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 that took off from Dulles Airport . In the first attack at 8.46am, American Airlines Flight 11, travelling from Boston to Los Angeles and piloted by plot leader Mohamed Atta, smashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre in . He spent two nights in Salou at the beachside Casablanca Playa Hotel, then spent the last two nights at the Hotel Residencia Montsant. 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. Readers may recall the shaving custom from the media coverage of 9/11. 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". 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. Just after 9:03 a.m., United 175 crashed into the World Trade Center's South Tower. On August 26, Saudi brothers Waleed and Wail al-Shehri also purchased tickets for the same flight. We will examine that 9/11 mystery in our next report. The Web . 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. ''Tower seemed to have no trouble taxiing around it at a busy time,'' the handwritten report reads. Atta flew to Spain on January 4, 2001, to coordinate with bin al-Shibh and returned to the United States on January 10. ", "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. [112], There are multiple, conflicting explanations for Atta's behavior and motivation. Shave excess hair from the body and wear cologne. The video, bearing the date of January 18, 2000, is of good resolution but contains no sound track. One of Atta's bags did not make it onto Flight 11, leaving . After Jarrah's team hijacked Flight 93, flight attendants and passengers started making phone calls from the back of the plane. Even for those who couldn't believe what they were seeing, that signaled a terrorist plot, with the possibility of more attacks to follow. identifies as one of the 19 hijackers, taxied a small private plane toward a runway when, unexpectedly, it stalled. 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. He harbored anger and resentment toward the U.S. for its policy in Islamic nations of the Middle East, with nothing inflaming his ire more than the Oslo Accords and the Gulf War in particular. [33], After coming to Hamburg in 1992, Atta grew more religiously fanatical and frequented the mosque with greater regularity. 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. 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 were among the first to enter the U.S. in May and . Mohamed Atta accepted and was in Germany two weeks later, in July. It was here that the Hamburg cell developed and acted more as a group. Atta began adhering to the strictest Islamic diet, frequenting the most conservative mosques, socializing seldom, and acting disdainfully towards the couple's unmarried daughter who had a young child. The 33-year-old grew up in a strict household in Egypt where he was made to study hard. 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. While in South Portland, they were seen making two ATM withdrawals and stopping at Wal-Mart. [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. He held interviews with the German news magazine Bild am Sonntag in late 2002, saying his son was alive and hiding in fear for his life, and that American Christians were responsible for the attacks. In the summer of 2001, Mohamed Atta, the operational leader of the 9/11 conspiracy, drove another conspirator, Ziah Jarrah, to Miami's main airport so that Mr. Jarrah could fly to Germany to visit . Bin al-Shibh was worried that Jarrah might even abandon the plan. In this series, Newsweek maps the road to 9/11 as it happened 20 years ago, day by day. Al-Omari chose 8G and al-Suqami chose 10B in Business Class. Likewise, Shehhi traveled from a different location, in his case via Brussels. [25] The invitation had been for a three-day visit, but Atta ended up staying several weeks that August, only to visit Aleppo yet again that December. In the end though, those international calls and Emails open a window to the falsehood of greater authority to intercept communications. Wail's ticket was purchased over the phone with a debit card. 2) Make sure you know all aspects of the plan well, and expect the . "[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. On April 3, Atta and Shehhi rented a postal box in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Ong provided information about lack of communication with the cockpit, lack of access to the cockpit, and passenger injuries. The alleged distortions of the IG report centered around excluding any evidence that Able Danger had identified and tracked Atta years before 9/11. My name is Mohamed Atta. Atta returned to Hamburg in February 2000, and began inquiring about flight training in the United States. Atta and Shehhi then moved into a small house nearby in Nokomis where they stayed for six months. Each day a new story will be published here. Sun 14 Oct 2001 11.31 EDT. The FBI found a 9/11 hijacker's airplane ticket floating to the ground only moments after the north tower collapsed. Footage shows the five hijackers who flew American Flight 77 into the Pentagon progressing through security checks at Washington's Dulles International Airport. USDA loan officer Johnelle Bryant said Atta visited her office and inquired about a loan to buy a plane. 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. [55], A video surfaced in October 2006. One of them came on Dec. 26 at Miami International Airport. By the time it took off, Mohammed Atta was just four minutes away from hitting the North Tower of the World Trade Center. A Pakistani businessman named Mohammed Atta had come to Prague from Saudi Arabia on May 31, 2000, with this second Atta possibly contributing to the confusion. The crash and fire kill 59 on the plane and 125 on the . On the morning of 9/11, Atta and Al-Omari drove to Portland International Jetport and boarded a 6 a.m. commuter flight to Boston's Logan International Airport. Once Atta's commuter flight landed in Boston, phone records show he took a call from another 9/11 hijacker, Marwan Al-Shehi. [96] Mahmoud Atta, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was subsequently deported from Venezuela to the United States, extradited to Israel, tried and sentenced to life in prison. While in the United States, Atta owned a red 1989 Pontiac Grand Prix. 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? Shave excess hair from the body and wear cologne. He assumed that they had already radioed the tower so he advised them to go to the offices of Signature, the private general aviation operator at the airport. 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. Turning toward New York. [79], On August 23, Atta's driver license was revoked in absentia after he failed to show up in traffic court to answer the earlier citation for driving without a license. [3] Immediately after returning to Germany, Atta, al-Shehhi, and Jarrah reported their passports stolen, possibly to discard travel visas to Afghanistan. [16] Also in 1990, Atta's family moved into the eleventh floor of an apartment building in the Egyptian city of Giza. At 2:12 p.m. on August 25, Mohammed Atta logged into his Travelocity account. [38] Even before bin al-Shibh had arrived, Atta, Shehhi, and Jarrah were sent to the House of Ghamdi near bin Laden's home in Kandahar, where he was waiting to meet them. Just stay quiet." ''I told them to forget it. . The men who planned and carried out the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings staked out the White House before deciding that their targets should be the Pentagon, the World Trade Center and the U.S . 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. [26] While in Syria, he met Amal, a young Palestinian woman who worked for a planning bureau in the city. So why did UA Flight 93 prove to be the only plane that failed to reach its intended target, retaken by its passengers and forced to crash? [59][60], From July 13 to 16, Atta stayed at the Hotel Sant Jordi in Tarragona. On June 28, Atta arrived at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas to meet with the three other pilots. [34] His friends in Germany described him as an intelligent man in whom religious convictions and political motives held equal sway. Bin Laden asked them to pledge loyalty and commit to suicide missions, which Atta and the other three Hamburg men all accepted. [73][74] After bin al-Shibh returned to Germany on July 16, 2001, Atta had three more days in Spain. Ramzi bin al-Shibh is also identified in the video. "[98], In the months following the September 11 attacks, officials at the Czech Interior Ministry asserted that Atta made a trip to Prague on April 8, 2001, to meet with an Iraqi intelligence agent named Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani. The report suggests that incident was an inconvenience but did not result in major delays. before the crash, the . Jan 28, 2004 at 3:00 am. [8][29] Among other odd jobs to supplement his income, Atta sometimes worked at a cleaning company and sometimes bought and sold cars. There was some confusion regarding who Mohamed Atta was, and cases of mistaken identity. He said he wanted to visit the World Trade Center and asked Bryant about the security there. He rented a Chevrolet Malibu from an Alamo Rent A Car agency. [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. LA Times Archives, Tracking the Flights Hijacked on 9/11, Last edited on 21 February 2023, at 21:12, [mmmd elmi wd essj.jed t], Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, "On Path to the U.S. But Atta's night before 9-11 which he spent in Portland, Main -- is a mystery that has puzzled terrorism experts for five years. Lip readers have failed to decipher it. Although estimates range from 18 There, Atta and bin al-Shibh held a meeting to complete the planning of the attacks. Having little else to do, he mostly studied at home and easily excelled in school. A well-connected Saudi family hosted visits from 9/11 terrorists at their Sarasota, Fla., home, including Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, who were the hijackers in the cockpit of the plane which . 1) Making an oath to die and renew your intentions. Atta's professor, Dittmar Machule, brought him along on an archaeological expedition to Aleppo in 1994. In mid-1998, Atta worked alongside Shehhi, bin al-Shibh, and Belfas, at a warehouse, packing computers in crates for shipping. We will high-jack airliners and crash them into specific targets. The family had few relatives on the father's side and kept their distance from Bouthayna's family. That month, Atta and Shehhi stayed in hotels and rented rooms in New York City on a short-term basis. Of the four hijacker pilots, Jarrah was the most westernized, coming from a Lebanese secular background and Christian schooling before moving to Germany for university studies. Mr. Pursell said that because the airport was secured, the two men could not have simply left undetected. 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. And they then took action, eventually making their way into the cockpit, forcing the plane down. They instead traveled to Afghanistan over a two-week period in late November. 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. [48] When he returned in spring 1998, after disappearing for several months, he had grown a thick long beard, and "seemed more serious and aloof" than before to those who knew him. On the morning of September 11, Atta boarded American Airlines Flight 11, which he and his team then hijacked. ''They said I'd hear back from them, which I never did.''. During that period, his roommates grew annoyed with him. [97] After 9/11, there also were reports stating that Mohamed Atta had attended International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. But none of them were so flagged. He stayed there until 1998. This included the construction of high-rise buildings in Cairo and other ancient cities in the region. The 30million CSI-style probe has taken seven years. 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 . During his time in the United States, Jarrah left five times to visit his wife in Germany and he constantly communicated with her, both over the phone and in email. . At 8:26 a.m., Flight 11 makes . The day has now come for us to carry out our plan. 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. [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. At 7:59a.m., the plane departed from Boston to Los Angeles International Airport, carrying 81 passengers.[86]. [35][36] He was also angry and bitter at the elite in his native Egypt, who he believed hoarded power for themselves, as well as at the Egyptian government, that cracked down on the dissident Muslim Brotherhood.

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