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From the Case File The Day the World Changed By all account, the investigation into the September 11, 2001, hijackings were a massive undertaking

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_{From the Case File The Day the World Changed}

• _{By all account, the investigation into the September 11, 2001, hijackings were a massive undertaking. Where did the investigation begin? What were the first questions that needed to be answered?}
• _{From the information available and provided here, what were the most significant successes and failures of the authorities in preventing and investigating the September 11 hijackings and related events?}
• _{What do you suppose were the biggest lessons learned by the authorities as a result of the investigations associated with the hijackings of September 11th?}

 

 

 

_Textbook:

 

_{Nineteen motivated men. A few box cutters. Four hijacked commercial airplanes. Sixty thousand gallons of jet fuel. Logistical and training support from the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Several hundred thousand dollars. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon, filled with people. On September 11, 2001, these ingredients came together to "create" a disaster of previously unseen proportions. The criminal investigation that followed was arguably the largest and most complex in history. The attacks of September 11 led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and to a massive reorganization of federal law enforcement agencies. Information uncovered led to investigations in numerous foreign countries and to war in Afghanistan. The global pursuit of terrorists since has led to war in Iraq and most recently to military operations in Syria. Given the magnitude of the event, summarizing it in just a few pages is difficult, to say the least, but any informed discussion of the future of U.S. criminal investigations would be incomplete without addressing it.} 

_{At 7:59 a.m. on September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 departed Boston Logan Airport on its way to Los Angeles with ninety-two people aboard. It was flown into the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:45 a.m. At 8:14 a.m. United Airlines Flight 175 left Boston Logan en route to Los Angeles with sixty-five people aboard. It was flown into the south tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m. At 8:10 a.m. American Flight 77 left Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C., for Los Angeles with sixty-four people aboard. It was flown into the Pentagon at 9:39 a.m. United Flight 93 left Newark International Airport to San Francisco at 8:01 a.m. with forty-four people aboard. It crashed into a cornfield in Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m. It is believed that it was headed for the White House or the U.S. Capitol before passengers attempted to take control of the aircraft from the hijackers. In total, more than 3,000 people, including sixty police officers, were killed on September 11.  Authorities knew even before the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center that at least three planes were under the control of hijackers. Passengers and crew on the planes had made phone calls to loved ones after the planes were hijacked. These calls described the hijackers as "Arab men" with knives One was said to have a red box strapped to his chest that was believed to be a bomb. In addition to the information gained from the frantic phone calls, it was also clear from communications received by some air traffic controllers that hijackings were in progress. As the planes crashed, one by one, the enormity of the situation became obvious to everyone. The first objective of investigators in the wake of the hijackings was to stop or interrupt any additional hijackings. Air travel on September 11 was ordered to a halt. Planes that were in the air were ordered to land, and planes on the ground were prohibited from taking off. All grounded planes were then searched and passenger flight manifests examined. Box cutters were found hidden on two other airplanes. Investigators believed at the time that indeed other hijackings had been planned. It appeared the hijackers had accomplices. Investigators discovered that two Middle Eastern men who had been on a flight from Newark to San Antonio had boarded an Amtrak train to San Antonio after their flight landed in St. Louis because of the hijackings. These men were detained in Texas, and the police found box cutters, a large quantity of cash, and hair dye in their possession. These men were later released without} 

_{nvestigations began on airport workers in an effort to identify who might have assisted in the terrorist plot.} 

 

_{The second objective was to determine the identities of the dead hijackers, so the passenger manifests from the hijacked planes were collected. From the information provided by passengers and crew before the planes crashed, investigators were confident that they already knew the hijackers were Middle Eastern men. Several Arab names appeared on the manifests for Flight 93, Flight 11, Flight 175, and Flight 72; investigators now had names of suspects.3 The airlines were also able to provide information to investigators about when and how these individuals had purchased their tickets: All were one-way tickets, several were purchased with the same credit card, and most were purchased shortly before the flights. The credit card records and flight manifests led investigators to addresses in Florida, New Jersey, and California. Investigations were conducted in each of these places on the suspected individuals. Meanwhile, it was discovered that a suitcase checked for Flight 11 at Boston Logan by Mohamed Atta, one of the individuals identified as a hijacker, had not made the flight. The suitcase was opened and numerous items of interest were found, including a suicide note, a copy of the Koran, an instructional video on flying commercial airliners, a fuel consumption calculator, a letter containing instructions to the hijackers in Arabic, and other personal belongings.} 

_{At about this same time, after hearing about the hijackers, an individual contacted the police and told them he had gotten into an argument with several Arab men in the parking lot at the Boston airport on the morning of September 11. He described the car they were driving as a white Mitsubishi. The police found the car in the airport parking garage. One of the items of interest seized from the car was a flight training manual written in Arabic. Another vehicle identified as belonging to the hijackers was seized from Dulles International Airport. Inside that vehicle the police found a Washington, D.C., area map. Written on the map was the first name and phone number of an individual named Mohamed Abdi. When authorities contacted Abdi, he could not explain why his name was in the possession of the hijackers, nor could investigators establish a link between Abdi and the hijackers. Also found in the car was a letter identical to the one found in Atta's suitcase. Days later, another copy of the same letter was found at the crash site of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania. A rental car believed to have been used by the hijackers was recovered from the Portland, Maine, airport (several hijackers had made a connecting flight in Boston). Most leads led investigators to Florida. Searches of the hijackers' residences, along with interviews with landlords and neighbors, led to the discovery that many of the suspected hijackers had been enrolled in flight schools in Florida and other places in the country. Investigators also learned the hijackers had lived low-profile lives; they did not stand out in any way.} 

_{Further investigation of visa and immigration records revealed that none of the hijackers had been born in America, nor were they American citizens. All had been in the United States either legally on student or business travel visas or illegally on expired visas or without visas. At least one had lived in the United States as far back as 1990, when he had taken an English class in Arizona, and another had attended flight school in the United States in 1997.} 

_{As the investigation progressed, investigators discovered that a man already in police custody was likely involved in the plot. Zacarias Moussaoui had been arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) on immigration charges on August 17, 2001, after an instructor at a flight school in Minnesota became suspicious of him. Reportedly, Moussaoui was only interested in learning how to turn an aircraft; he was not interested in takeoffs or landings. Investigators believed Moussaoui was supposed to have been the fifth hijacker aboard Flight 93, but in 2006 he had been convicted on several counts of conspiracy to aid terrorists and sentenced to life in prison without parole} 

_{With the hijackers identified, analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) realized they had possessed prior knowledge of several of these individuals and had actually been monitoring their foreign travels as far back as 2000. In the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Africa, in 1998, one of the terrorists - the man who drove the truck filled with explosives to the embassy - had been apprehended. Upon being questioned by the FBI, he had provided information about an al-Qaeda safe house in Yemen where the African embassy bombings had been planned. The CIA monitored the house and intercepted phone conversations that alerted agents to a January 2000 meeting of al-Qaeda terrorist operatives in Malaysia. Of the twelve individuals who had attended the meeting, two were identified as Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi. The CIA knew that when Almihdhar and Alhazmi left the meeting in Malaysia, they were headed for the United States. In an attempt to identify others who had supported the hijackers, the FBI sent a notice to all U.S. bankss requesting information on any transactions involving twenty-one individuals on the FBI suspect list, nineteen of whom were believed to be the actual hijackers. Also included on this list were numerous addresses associated with the names. No large cash transfers were uncovered, but later attempts to "follow the money" were more productive. Most of the money received by the hijackers while in the United States appeared to have had a single overseas source. In tracing the activities of each of the hijackers through credit card receipts, airline records, flight school records and enrollments, housing rental records, and immigration records, investigators were led to Hamburg, Germany, where Atta and several of the other hijackers had earlier shared an apartment and attended the same university. The investigation in Germany led authorities to believe that the hijacking plan was probably first discussed and planned at that time. From there, travel by several of these individuals to Afghanistan and Pakistan, among other places, was uncovered. Links between the hijackers and the al-Qaeda terrorist group led by Osama bin Laden became clear. In October 2001 the United States invaded Afghanistan in search of bin Laden and his associates. Nearly ten years later, on May 2, 2011, bin Laden was killed in Pakistan (discussed later). Early in the investigation, countless other leads, many of which were simply odd coincidences, were developed. Consider the following examples:} 

 

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_{• Khalid S. S. Al Draibi was stopped by police ten miles north of Dulles International Airport twelve hours after the planes crashed in New York and Washington. He was driving on the highway with a completely flat tire.} 

_{When his car was searched, flight training manuals were found. Further investigation revealed that since he had arrived in the United States in 1997, he had used ten variations of his name, three social security numbers,} 

_{and driver's licenses from five different states. After intensive investigation, his only charge was for lying on a visa application. He was deported.} 

_{• Investigators discovered that two of the hijackers had used credit cards belonging to Dr. Al Badr Al-Hazmi, a radiologist who lived in Texas, for various purchases. Interestingly, Al-Hazmi had been missing from work} 

_{on September 11 without explanation. It was eventually determined that he was a victim of theft and had no connection to the hijackers.} 

_{• Ahmed Badawi, a travel agent in Orlando who had sold plane tickets to several of the hijackers, wired money on their behalf, and cashed their checks, was also identified as a possible accomplice, but he was also} 

_{eventually released without charges.} 

_{• Nabil al-Marabh was arrested September 30, 2001, in Chicago, where he was working as a clerk in a liquor store. The FBI believed that in the 1990s al-Marabh had stayed at a home in Pakistan known to be used by} 

_{terrorists. In addition, authorities discovered that he had lied about his relationship with a man sentenced to death in Jordan for plotting to blow up a hotel on New Year's Day in 2000. At the time he was arrested by the FBI, al-Marabh had in his possession $22,000 in cash and gems worth $25,000. It was determined that he had entered the United States illegally at a crossing near Niagara Falls on June 27, 2001. He was deported} 

_{without further prosecution.} 

_{• In 2002 federal agents began investigating a fraudulent scheme whereby foreign (primarily Middle Eastern) students hired other people to take their Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exams, which are} 

_{often required of international students for admission into U.S. colleges and universities. Agents conducted a search of a Virginia address where the suspected leader of the scheme, Fahad Alhajri, lived, and they found flight manuals, flight school catalogs, a diagram of a plane striking the World Trade Center, a postcard with aerial pictures of the Pentagon, photos of people inside the World Trade Center, and a Rolodex of oil refineries. After extensive investigation, investigators came to the conclusion that Alhajri was not involved in the September 11 plot.} 

_{Once associations were made between the hijackers and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist group, the investigation into September 11 went global. As the result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and raids of suspected terrorist hideouts in Afghanistan and Pakistan, many leaders and planners in the al-Qaeda group have been apprehended or killed, including, of course, Osama bin Laden. From interrogations conducted of suspected al-Qaeda operatives from 2002 to 2006, the CIA learned the name of an individual who was serving as bin Laden's personal courier. Through wiretaps, surveillance, and other intelligence, the courier was eventually tracked to a large compound in Pakistan in 2010. The CIA reasoned that it was the sort of place where bin Laden might live. The CIA watched the three-story house from a neighboring residence. The compound had no Internet or phone service, and the occupants of the house buried their garbage in the yard. As investigators were reasonably certain that bin Laden was in the compound, on May 2, 2011, a U.S. Navy SEAL team descended on the compound from helicopters, found bin Laden inside, and shot and killed him. The courier and several others were also killed during the raid. The identity of bin Laden was initially confirmed by one of his wives in the compound when she called him by name during the raid. Positive identification was later made by comparing DNA from the body to that previously collected from one of bin Laden's sisters.} 

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_{Many other operatives were captured or killed prior to bin Laden. For example, on September 11, 2002, authorities in Pakistan captured Ramzi Binalshibh in a raid conducted by the FBI, CIA, and Pakistani police. Binalshibh was known by authorities to have been instrumental in the planning of the September 11 hijackings. It is believed that he shared an apartment with Atta in Hamburg, wired money to Moussaoui and hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi when they were in the United States, and attended the January 2000 meeting in Malaysia mentioned earlier. Binalshibh had attempted to obtain a visa for entry into the United States four times between May and October 2000. In all likelihood, Binalshibh was to have been the twentieth hijacker. But with Binalshibh unable to gain entry into the United States, Moussaoui may have been designated to take his place; however, as noted, Moussaoui was unable to participate because he had been arrested on immigration charges in August 2001.In Yemen in October 2002, a U.S. Predator drone (an unmanned aerial aircraft) operated by the CIA fired a missile at a car in which Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi was an occupant, killing him and five others who were in the car. Al-Harethi was known to be Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant in Yemen.} 

_{In addition to the ongoing arrests of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists and commanders overseas, arrests were also made in the United States. For example, based on information uncovered as a result of the arrest of al-Marabh in Chicago, the police were led to a previous address of his in Detroit. Police raided the apartment in which he had used to live and arrested several men. A search of the apartment revealed maps of the Detroit International Airport and security passes for the airport. The men arrested were eventually charged with conspiring to aid terrorists. In September 2002 the FBI arrested six men who allegedly composed a terrorist cell in New York State. They were charged with supporting bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. In October 2002 six additional U.S.citizens were arrested and accused of traveling to Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, for purposes of joining the al-Qaeda fight against America. In December 2002 FBI agents raided a software firm in Boston because of suspicion that its owners were funneling money to terrorists while doing business with sensitive U.S. agencies, including the FBI, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the IRS. In 2006 seven men were arrested and charged with conspiring with al-Qaeda to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower and an FBI building in Florida. In addition to these high profile, well-publicized arrests, a multitude of other people in the United States have been arrested for immigration violations and deported.} 

_{Since 2001 there have been several other terrorist incidents in the United States, including the following:} 

_{In 2009 a Nigerian man on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit attempted to set off an explosion with materials concealed in his underwear.} 

_{• In 2009 a U.S. Army major shot and killed thirteen people and wounded more than thirty others at Fort Hood in Texas (the U.S. government has not officially defined this as an act of terrorism).} 

_{• In 2010 a bomb was ignited in a car parked in New York's Times Square, but it failed to detonate.} 

_{• In 2013 two perpetrators with radical ties placed bombs at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured nearly 200 others (see Chapter 9).} 

_{• In 2013 a gunman targeting Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers opened fire at Los Angeles International Airport. . In 2015 a Pakistani national couple who spoke of jihad killed fourteen people in San Bernardino.} 

_{In 2016 forty-nine patrons at an Orlando nightclub were shot and killed by a person who swore alliance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a group originally aligned with the goals of al-Qaeda but now largely independent (see below).} 

 

_{The rest of the world has experienced hundreds of terrorist acts since 2001, and many of these have led to the deaths of Americans, such as the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which the U.S. ambassador and three others were killed. In 2015, 128 people were killed by terrorist gunfire and blasts in six locations around Paris. ISIS claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in Belgium in 2016 that killed thirty-two people. Also in 2016 an individual used a truck to run over people celebrating in Nice, France. Over eighty-five people were killed in this attack; ISIS claimed responsibility for this attack as well, although a link between the group and the perpetrator has not been confirmed. In 2017 twenty-three people were killed as the result of a suicide bomber at a concert in Manchester, England. In June 2017 seven people were killed in an attack on London Bridge, for which ISIS has claimed responsibility. Other overseas terrorist attacks include the following:} 

_{• In 2002 bombings in nightclubs in Bali killed over 200 people.} 

_{• The 2004 bombing of a train in Madrid, Spain, killed 191.} 

_{• London bus and train bombings killed fifty-two people in 2005. . In 2006 car bombs in Egypt killed eighty-eight.} 

_{• Car bombs in Algeria killed over sixty people in 2007.} 

_{No doubt, terrorism is alive and well in the world, as is the war against it.}