1. The Plane-Bomb Attacks of the World Trade Center

The World Trade Center was attacked by two hijacked Boeing 767 airliners. Both came from Boston.

The South Tower was hit by United Airlines Flight 175, After it had veered from its course and turned off its transponders at 8:43 AM, there were no communication from it whatsoever. No may day calls from the pilots. No cell phone calls received from any crew or passenger. No flight recorders, bodies or any other evidence ever recovered from the debris. So, other than its route which was observed on radar, we know nothing whatsoever about what happened on Flight 175 during its entire hijacked flight.

The World Trade Center North Tower was hit by American Airlines Flight 11. After it turned off its transponders at 8:14 AM, two of its flight attendants, Betty Ong and Madeline Amy Sweeney, managed to call American Airlines ground controllers over their cell phones. Ong's conversation was recorded, Sweeney's was not. Ong, who was in the first class compartment, was the only witness to the assault on the cockpit. She said four men come from first-class seats, killed a passenger seated behind them, and used a chemical weapon on her, "some sort of spray" that made her eyes burn and made it difficult for her to breathe. Madeline Amy Sweeney, the flight attendant in the rear compartment, said that the pilots, another flight attendant and a passenger had been killed. The initial secret FAA memo, summarizing what had been reported by Sweeney, said the passenger had been "shot." Subsequently. the FAA changed "shot" to "stabbed" explaining that there had been a "miscommunication" and that the controller who spoke to Sweeney could said he could not recall her mentioning a passenger "shot." Since the call was not recorded, the issue cannot be further resolved.

No other crew member or passenger was heard from on this flight. Nor was any other evidence, including flight recorders, bodies or weapons, recovered from the debris.

What is unknown about the attack itself on the World Trade Center is how the ten hijackers seized control of both planes so quickly that not one of the 4 pilots in supposedly locked cockpits sounded a "May Day" warning over the open radio links with ground controllers and what weapons, tools and other equipment the hijackers brought aboard the plane. On flight 175, they could have had any weapon, guns, gas, bombs or knives. On flight 11, the only reports— Ong and Sweeney— cite chemical and stabbing weapons. (The reports of plastic knives and box-cutters are functional fictoids.

2) The Plane Bomb Attack on the Pentagon

The Pentagon was hit by a Boeing 757, American Airlines Flight 77, which that had departed from Dulles International airport in Virginia en route to Los Angeles at 8:20 AM. After it turned off its transponders at 9:02 AM, there was no word from the pilots or crew. Shortly before it crashed at about 9:30 AM, a single passenger, Barbara Olsen, seated in the rear cabin, used her cell phone to twice call her husband, Theodore Olsen, the Solicitor General of the United states. She told him that the plane had been hijacked, all the passengers were in the back of the plane and that the hijackers in this section had knives and cardboard cutters (or box cutters).

All we know is that the hijackers in the rear compartment had knives and possibly box-cutters. What is unknown about this flight is how the hijackers took control of the flight. We do not know how they got entry to the cockpit, what weapons they used to subdue or kill the two pilots, or what happened to the four flight attendants, one of whom had been specially trained to counter hijackers.

3) The Shanksville Crash

A Boeing 757, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania at about 10:30 AM. It took off at 8:41 AM from Newark and headed for San Francisco. At 9:28 AM, a ground controller heard someone speaking in broken English announce over the planes loudspeakers that there was a bomb on the plane and it was returning to the airport. The plane then turned off its transponders and changed directions, heading eastward. After losing an engine, and flying 7 miles upside down, it crashed. Both the flight recorder and cockpit recorder, which contained the last 30 minutes of sounds in the cockpit were recovered, as well as the bodies, from the wreckage. The FBI, which took over the investigation from the NTSB, has not released any of the information from the flight recorder, cockpit recorder or autopsies.

No word was received from the pilots. One flight attendant and three passengers made cell phone calls describing the hijackers. They reported that one hijacker had a "bomb strapped on" and that other hijacker were armed with knives. They also reported that the hijackers had stabbed at least one passenger.

If so, there were knives capable of stabbing and a bomb on flight 93— a bomb and knives. What we do not know from these communications was how the four hijackers got the bomb, knives and what even other weapons they have had past security at Newark Airport, broke into the cockpit, took control of the plane and subdued the crew of seven. We also do not know who among the hijackers flew and navigated the plane or what was its planned target. Nor do we know whether cause of the plane's loss of an engine and crash proceeded from the actions of passengers, the failings of the hijacker pilot, the detonation of the bomb or some other factor . The best evidence of what happened is cockpit the voice recordings, the flight recordings and forensic autopsies, but this data has been suppressed by the FBI.

4) The Proximate Perpetrators of the Airliner Piracy of September 11th

The FBI was able to identify from passenger records the ten likely hijackers of the planes commandeered on September 11th. Eight of the ten hijackers who attacked the twin towers of the World Trade Center had arrived in America only a few months before the attack, between April 23, 2001 and June 29th, 2001, from the Arabian peninsula, and, according to their visa paperwork, had never before been in the United States. Their Saudi and Emirate passports were not on any intelligence watch list, and the names on their passports-- Fayez Ahmed, Ahmed Al- Ghamdi, Hamza Al-Ghamdi, Abdulaziz Alomari, Satam Al-Suqami,Waleed, Mohand Al-Shehr Al-Shehri and Wail Al-shehri— were virtual ciphers to US intelligence services both before and after the attack. They all moved to Florida, where they got driver licenses with photo Ids, opened bank accounts, and lived in motels until the first week in September when they flew to Boston.

The other two hijackers, Mohamed Atta, an Egyptian, and Marwan Al-Shehhi, who had an Emirate passport, had more visible traces. They had been living in Florida since June 2000 in close collaboration. They shared an apartment, a joint bank account in which substantial sums were transferred from the United Arab Emirates were deposited and trained together as pilots of light aircraft at Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida. They also traveled together to airports in Florida and Georgia to scout the availability of crop-dusters and other light planes. Atta also made multiple trips to Europe in April and July 2001, including a trip to the Czech Republic where he was observed meeting an Iraqi intelligence officer. On September 10th, Atta and Al- Shehhi joined the other hijackers were in Boston.

But only eight of the hijackers went through the security checkpoint at Logan airport in Boston on September 11th. The other two, Atta and Alomari, drove in a rented car from Boston to Portland, and went through the security check point there. Atta left behind a suitcase of Atta's containing instructions for the mission, reminding the hijackers to check their "knife" and "tools."

All five hijackers in the Pentagon attack had Saudi Arabian passports. Two, Salem Al-Hamzi, and Majed Moqed, had no traces. Two, Al-Midhar and Al-Hamzi, were on the terrorist watch list because of a trip they had made to Malaysia. They had also lived in the San Diego area for more than 18 months. The other member of the group, Hani Hasan Hanjour, had trained as a pilot in the United States in 1996, applied for a pilot job on Arab airlines, and took flight lessons in the winter of 2001 in Arizona. On September 11th, they passed through security at Dulles International Airport.

Three of the hijackers that crashed in Pennsylvania, Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed Alnami and Ahmed Alhaznawi had Saudi Arabian passports, and no traceable records. The fourth man, Ziad Samir Jarrah, had a Lebanese passport, had arrived in Florida on July 25, 2001, and used credit card to purchase global positioning electronic gear and a Manual for a Boeing 757.

On September, these four hijackers passed through security at Newark Airport.

The close proximity of the purchase of their tickets, their financial transactions and other movements leave no doubt that these 19 men were part of an orchestrated conspiracy. What is not known is: how the conspiracy was organized, how or where the 19 hijackers were recruited, when it was set in motion, how many others conspirators provided them with logistical support and intelligence, who commanded them and what was their order of battle.

Two-thirds of the hijackers' identities were little more than names on passports from provinces in the Arabian peninsula where identity-theft is common. Their physical identifiers vanished in the crashes. So it even be cannot established that the true identities of 13 of the hijackers correspond to the names and information on their documents. And, in any case, we do not know where or how they were trained and prepared for the mission. They might have been pilots, navigators, forced entry specialists and commandos for all that is known. So narratives supplied by the media about which of the 19 hijackers piloted the planes, navigated and masterminded the mission can be no more than speculation.

What is not known includes:

1) How many people other than the 19 hijackers were involved in the conspiracy. Atta and Alomari side trip to Portland, Maine presumably had a purpose in furthering their mission, such as picking up weapons that had been smuggled past the security screening. Did they had accomplices at this or other airports?

2) Where the conspiracy was planned.

Some of the 19 hijackers knew each other prior to the attack. Atta, al-Shehhi and Jarrah had common associations in Hamburg, Germany. They attended the same mosque, had friends in common and were photographed at a wedding reception. But this association does not necessarily mean that the conspiracy originated with them or in Hamburg. Any one of them could have recruited anywhere by another party and then recommended that others from his mosque be recruited. Nor was their geographic scope limited to Germany. Atta made multiple trips to the Czech Republic— one in June 2000, just prior to coming to America, and one in April, 2001. He also made trips to Spain and Switzerland. Al-Midhar and Al-Hamzi, who were not connected with the Hamburg trio, made trips to Malaysia and Thailand before coming to the United States in January 2000. And no one knows where the 13 from the Arabian peninsula might have been before traveling to the United States in the Spring and Summer of 2001. So the planning could have taken place anywhere.

3) When the conspiracy was set in motion.

A number of hijackers had shown interest in piloting planes many years prior to the attack— Hanjour, for example-- had begun pilot training five years earlier— but that interest might have preceded the plot, and, indeed, the planners of the conspiracy might have sought men with pilot training (rather than vice versa).

In June 2000, after Atta went to Prague, Atta and Al-Shehhi received substantial sums of money in the United States, and began inquiries at airports in Florida, Georgia and elsewhere about the availability of aircraft. But these were crop-dusters, not airliners, which suggests that they might have been involved in a different conspiracy involving the use of crop-dusters in the South.

It can be reasonably assumed that the airliner conspiracy was underway in June 2001, when the contingent from Jeddah began arriving in Florida. But how much earlier it began is unknown.

4) The source of the hijackers' financing

Atta and Al-Shehhi began receiving money from an anonymous money-changer in the United arab emirates on June 29, 2000, less than a month after Atta's two trips to Prague. This wire transfers, amounting to about $45,000, paid for their living expenses in Florida, flight school, small plane rentals and scouting crop-duster availability. The source of this money has never been identified. It could have been relatives, friends or co-conspirators, involved in plot involving light aircraft, placing pilots in the airlines or the September 11th attack.

On June 25, 2001, someone under the name of Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, used cash to open an account at the Standard Chartered Bank in Dubai. This account was then used to transfer over $40,000 in funds to a the Arabian peninsula hijackers who had arrived in the United States that Spring and Summer. This money was used to pay for their motel rooms, travel and other expenses in preparation for the September attack. The unused balance of the money was then returned by Atta and others hijackers to the Dubai account just before they departed for the suicide mission, clearly indicating that "Mustafa Ahmed" was the proximate financial source for the attack.
What is not known is the true identity of "Mustafa Ahmed," who closed the account and disappeared.

5) Why Atta made multiple trips to the Czech Republic

Atta went to the Czech Republic, twice, from Germany just before coming to the United States on May 30th, when he had an entry problem at the airport, and June 2, 2000, when he stayed less than a day. His two trips suggest that he there was an urgent reason for him to pass through the Czech before proceeding to the United States, but, other than entering or exiting the country, there is no record of who he saw there.

In the first week of April 2001 he returned to the Czech Republic for another short trip . On April 8th, while meeting with Ahmed Khali Ibrahim Samir al-Ani in Prague, he was survielled by the Czech Intelligence Service (BIS.) Al-Ani was the Counsel of the Iraq Embassy to the Czech Republic. He also had been identified by the BIS as an officer of the Iraq Intelligence Service stationed at the Iraq Embassy in Prague, where he worked as a case officer, controlling individuals recruited as agents, as the BIS had presumably learned because, a year earlier, his predecessor in the Iraq embassy, Jabir Salim, and told of an Iraqi operation against Radio Free Europe. At the time, the BIS suspected that al-Ani's meeting with Atta might be connected to the plot it had learned about from Salim, but its surveillance did not cover the content of the meeting . So the liaison between Atta and Al-ani remains a mystery.

It is not known why Atta made these trips to the Czech Republic.