Shattering the myth of 19 Muslim hijackers
by Elias Davidsson (Chapter 2 of the book “Hijacking America’s Mind on 9/11“)
Introduction
The official account of 9/11 is based on a hijacking narrative according to which 19 individuals, whose names and photographs have been posted on the website of the FBI,1 boarded aircraft designated as flights AA11, UA175, AA77 and UA93 on the morning of September 11, 2001, hijacked those aircraft and crashed the aircraft in a suicide operation into symbolic landmarks in the United States.
According to the official account an aircraft designated as flight AA11 was flown into the North Tower of the WTC in New York; shortly thereafter an aircraft designated as flight UA175 was flown into the South Tower of the WTC. At 9:37 a.m. an aircraft designated as flight AA77 is said to have impacted the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. As for the fourth aircraft, designated as flight UA93, it is said to have crashed in an empty field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after the passengers had risen up against the alleged hijackers and attempted to retake control of the aircraft.It was later surmised that the aircraft was intended to crash on the White House or the Capitol.
Within hours of the operation, the FBI confiscated all known CCTV recordings and interviewed dozens of airline and airport employees who could provide information about what they had experienced on that morning before and during boarding. It must therefore be assumed that all available evidence about the boarding of the four aircraft is stored in the archives of the FBI.
The present chapter deals with one, and only one question, namely: were the individuals designated by the US government as the hijackers of 9/11 present at the scene of the crime? In other words, did they board the four aircraft that allegedly crashed with passengers on that day.
Shortly after the FBI released names and photographs of the alleged hijackers, questions about their identities began to emerge. The family of Hamza Alghamdi, one of the alleged hijackers, said the photo released by the FBI “has no resemblance to him at all”.2 CNN showed a picture of another alleged hijacker, identified as Saeed Alghamdi. That man, a pilot, was alive and working in Tunisia.3The photograph of a Saudi pilot by the name of Waleed Al Shehri was released by the FBI as one of the alleged hijackers: he protested his innocence from Casablanca, Morocco.4 Two people with the name of Abdulaziz Alomari presented themselves, surprised to see their names on the FBI list of suspected hijackers. One of them, a Saudi engineer, said he lost his passport while studying in Denver, Colorado, in 1995. Of the FBI list, he said: “The name is my name and the birth date is the same as mine. But I am not the one who bombed the World Trade Center in New York.”5 Another Abdulaziz Alomari was found working as a pilot with Saudi Airlines.6Salem Alhazmi, also listed by the FBI as an alleged hijacker, was indignant at being named as a suspect for a mass murder.He said he works in petrochemical plant in Yanbu (Saudi Arabia).7 Abdul Rahman Al–Haznawi, brother of another suspect, said “There is no similarity between the photo published [on Thursday] and my brother.” He said he does not believe his brother was involved in the crime: “He never had any such intention.”8Gaafar Allagany, the Saudi government’s chief spokesman in the United States, said in an interview in Washington that the hijackers probably stole the identities of legitimate Saudi pilots.9 The FBI disregarded these stories and maintained the names and photographs it originally posted on its website as those “believed to be the hijackers” of 9/11,10including those of living individuals. The 9/11 Commission did not address these conflicting identifications. The passive and tentative formulation used by the FBI in attributing the crime to particular perpetrators, remains the official position of the agency.
One basic goal of a criminal investigation is to identify the perpetrators. In order to prove that particular individuals could have hijacked an aircraft, it must be first demonstrated that they boarded that particular aircraft. In order to demonstrate this, the following five classes of evidence should have been produced by the US authorities in September 2001 or shortly thereafter:
1.Authenticated passenger lists (or flight manifests), listing the names of all the passengers and crew members, including those suspected of hijacking;
2.Authenticated boarding cards (or their detached coupons), on which the names of all the passengers and crew members figure, including those suspected of hijacking;
3.Authenticated security videos from the airports, which depict the passengers (and the alleged hijackers) arriving at the airport, in front of check-in counters, passing security checkpoints and boarding the aircraft;
4.Sworn testimonies of personnel who attended the boarding of the aircraft;
5.Formal identification of the bodies or bodily remains from the crash sites, including chain-of-custody reports.
It is, however, important to remember that even if such evidence had been produced and found reliable, it would not necessarily prove that these 19 individuals had perpetrated the crime attributed to them. They could have been innocent passengers on those flights, or patsies in a plot of which they knew nothing. If it is proved that they were present at the scene of the crime, they could in theory have perpetrated the crime.
The scope of this chapter is limited to examining whether the US government has produced the five classes of minimal evidence mentioned above and if so, whether that evidence is admissible, relevant and compelling. If such evidence does not exist or is deemed to lack credibility, it is likely that these individuals did not board the aircraft and that, consequently, no “Islamic hijackings” took place.
In theory, it is impossible to prove a negative. It is thus impossible to prove that the evidence in support of the official allegations does not exist in some hidden government safe.
In the present case, the US authorities claim that 19 named individuals boarded four aircraft on 9/11 and committed mass-murder. In law, the burden of proof lies with a party that levels accusations. The US government could not discharge its burden of proof, if it failed to produce clear and convincing evidence in support of its accusations. In the present chapter we go beyond demonstrating that there is a “reasonable doubt” as to the complicity of the 19 alleged hijackers, for we intend to show that the evidence produced by the US government does not even reach probable cause, a relatively easy test used in the United States to determine whether a search, or an arrest, is warranted.
1.No authenticated passenger lists
The primary source used by airlines after aircraft crashes to locate the next-of-kin of victims is the passenger list (also designated as the flight manifest). A passenger list is also a legal document proving – for insurance purposes – that particular individuals boarded an aircraft. This is why airlines are required to check the identities of passengers who board the aircraft. In order to serve as legal documents, passenger lists must be duly authenticated by those responsible for their accuracy.
With regard to the four 9/11 flights, American and United Airlines have consistently refused to demonstrate that they possess authenticated passenger lists of these flights. This refusal alone ought to have prompted serious questioning by the media and the 9/11 Commission.Surprisingly, neither corporate media nor the 9/11 Commission demanded the release of these documents.
Between September 11 and September 14, 2001, mainstream media published names of alleged hijackers and passengers, which were then deleted and replaced by other names. These irregularities are examined below.
Adding and deleting passengers’ names after the crashes
On September 13, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that ‘[b]etween three and six individuals on each of the hijacked airplanes were involved’ in the hijackings.11 Later at a press briefing, Ashcroft specified that there were exactly 18 “hijackers” – five on each of flights AA11 and UA175 and four on the others.12 On the same day FBI Director Robert Mueller also said that a “preliminary investigation indicated 18 hijackers were on the four planes — five on each of the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, and four each on the planes that crashed into the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania”.13A day later the number of alleged hijackers grew to 19.14
On September 14, 2001, the name of Mosear Caned (phonetic) was released by CNN as one of the suspected hijackers on “a list of names (…) that is supposed to be officially released by [the Justice Department] sometime later today”.15 His name disappeared a few hours later from the list of suspects and replaced with that of Hani Hanjour when CNN posted a new list of suspects released by the FBI16 . It was never explained where Caned’s name came from in the first place, who this person was supposed to be and why the name was later replaced by Hani Hanjour.17 No other passenger (or “hijacker”) had a name resembling Mosear Caned.
The Washington Post revealed that the original passenger lists did not include the name of Hani Hanjour, who was later named as the pilot of flight AA77. In its final edition of September 16, 2001 the paper explained that his name “was not on the American Airlines manifest for [flight 77] because he may not have had a ticket.”18For its information, the Washington Post relied almost exclusively on the FBI. This report would fit with the declaration by Attorney General Ashcroft of September 13, 2001 that only four “hijackers” had been on flight AA77.19 Counsel for American Airlines, in a letter to the 9/11 Commission of March 15, 2004, appears to confirm the absence of Hanjour, writing, “We have not been able to determine if Hani Hanjour checked in at the main ticket counter.“20 Yet Hanjour’s name appeared later on an unauthenticated but official passenger of flight AA77 released at the Moussaoui trial, indicating that the latter list did not reflect the original version of the passenger list.
According to CNN on September 14, 2001, “[f]ederal sources initially identified [Adnan] Bukhari and Ameer Bukhari as possible hijackers who boarded one of the planes that originated in Boston.” (emphasis added). Yet, a few hours later, CNN issued the following correction: “Based on information from multiple law enforcement sources, CNN reported that Adnan Bukhari and Ameer Bukhari of Vero Beach Florida, were suspected to be two of the pilots who crashed planes into the World Trade Center. CNN later learned that Adnan Bukhari is still in Florida, where he was questioned by the FBI…Ameer Bukhari died in a small plane crash” on September 11, 2000. These names disappeared from later published but unauthenticated passenger lists and replaced by new names.The above facts were attributed to “federal sources”, most probably the FBI.This means that the FBI either suspected these individuals to have been pilots who had crashed planes into the WTC, because their names were listed on the original versions of the passenger lists, or was simply inventing the names of suspects.
On the very day of 9/11, the FBI, “which has been combing the passenger manifests of all four planes, was already focused on [Amer] Kamfar” as a suspected hijacker.21 On the morning of September 12, eight FBI agents arrived at the door of Kamfar’s neighbor, Henry Habora in Vero Beach, Florida, waiving a photograph of Kamfar, and asked Habora if he knew him.22If the FBI suspected Kamfar to have been one of the hijackers and informed the media about its suspicion, it could only credibly do so if it had found Kamfar’s name on the original passenger list. Yet that name disappeared from computer print-outs released later that purported to represent passenger lists and was replaced by another name.
According to Terry Tyksinski, a veteran flight attendant with United Airlines, a customer service supervisor told her that he had observed two passengers leave flight UA93 after hearing an announcement that there would be a five-minute delay in the plane pushing back from the gate. The two first-class passengers were reportedly of dark complexion, “kind of black, not black.” According to Tyksinski, the supervisor noted their names and was subsequently interviewed twice by the FBI.23 No other accounts, including the 9/11 Commission Report, mention this incident. We could not find any FBI document related to this incident. As these individuals presumably checked in with a ticket, their names should have been found on the original passenger list of Flight 93. This fact further strengthens the hypothesis that the computer print-outs released later as “passenger lists” are fake.
According to a report by American Airlines to the 9/11 Commission dated March 15, 2004, “some passengers” had boarded AA11 “after the aircraft had pushed back from the gate.” I could not find out who these passengers were, whether they were listed on any version of the passenger lists, and particularly how they could board the aircraft after push-back.24
On 12 September 2001, various newspapers published partial passenger lists of the crashed flights. These reports included the names of Jude Larson, 31, and his wife, Natalie, 24, as passengers aboard flight AA11.25As example thereof, here is an excerpt from a news report published by the Honolulu Star Bulletin on September 12, 2001:
“Also among the confirmed dead was Jude Larson, the 31-year old son of Maui artist Curtis Larson, who was aboard American’s hijacked Flight 11. Jude Larson and his wife Natalie were en route to the University of California at Los Angeles, where he was attending college…Larson’s wife Natalie, whose family lives in Boston, was a rising fashion model and had been to Italy four times in the last 18 months to work for Gucci.”26
A person presented as a friend of Jude’s father, Steve Jocelyn of Lahaina, told the Honolulu Advertiser on September 12, 2001 that Jude “was an amazing guy, a cool kid. He was a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky guy with a good heart.”27 He said that Jude visited Maui often, was working as a horticulturist in Washington State but decided to enter medical school a few years ago. A week later, the same newspaper reported that it had been “unable to confirm the identity of (…) Steve Jocelyn,” and was unable to locate him.28
On September 18, 2001, the Honolulu Star Bulletin reported that the newspaper had received an email from Jude, giving notice that he and his wife were alive.29 According to the paper, “a person claiming to be with the airlines” had called Jude’s father and told him that his son and daughter-in-law had been passengers on flight AA11.30 The Honolulu Advertiser of September 20, 2001, which published a detailed report on this apparent hoax, wrote that Curtis Larson, a “sculptor and jewelry maker” now claimed he had been duped, but that it was Curtis Larson who initially told reporters, that “his son was in medical school at UCLA, that his daughter-in-law was pregnant and that the couple had visited her family in Boston.” According to Jude, the report continued, his real name is not Larson but Olsen. He also said he is 30, not 31, years old, that he does not study in Los Angeles but works as a landscaper in Olympia, Washington State, and that his wife is not pregnant.31 The names of Jude and Natalie Larson then disappeared from publicized passenger lists. Assuming that a prestigious news agency, such as Associated Press, would check with American Airlines and the FBI whether the Larsons were passengers on flight AA11 before releasing its story, it would follow that the Larsons were listed on the original passenger list of flight AA11 but later had to be removed from the official list of dead passengers, or their names changed.
The story becomes even more bizarre. The names and photographs of Jude and Natalie Larson, no longer officially listed as flight AA11 victims, in 2011 were still listed on the National Obituary Archive list of those who died on 9/11. Jude Larson’s obituary includes his photograph:
Jude Larson, 31, of Los Angeles, CA, died Sept. 11, 2001, a victim of the coordinated terrorist attacks against the United States in New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Jude was a student at the University of California at Los Angeles. He and his wife, Natalie, were returning from visiting her family near Boston. Natalie Larson, four months pregnant, a fashion model who had modeled in Italy.32
Natalie Larson’s obituary, which does not include a photograph, reads:
Natalie Larson of Los Angeles, CA, died Sept. 11, 2001, a victim of the coordinated terrorist attacks against the United States in New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. Natalie and her husband, Jude, were returning from visiting her family near Boston. Natalie was four months pregnant and was a fashion model who had modeled in Italy.33
According to the webpage of the National Obituary Archive, the list “is based on authoritative sources, The Associated Press and funeral home records”.34In order to include an obituary, the managers of the Archive say they request submitters to ask their “funeral director to submit the obituary.”35 Submitters are required to supply documentation of the death which is reviewed by the Archive’s staff.It is not known who supplied the above information to the National Obituary Archive, or when this was submitted.36
Another website dedicated to the victims of 9/11 includes the following photograph, said to be Natalie Larson (Los Angeles), Jude’s wife. The photograph is credited to the Associated Press and to the Boston Herald.37 Yet the file containing the photograph is entitled lasden_natalie.jpg. Natalie Lasden wasanother passenger on flight AA11.
Various attempts were made to provide an innocuous explanation for this story.38 David Hoff, news editor of the Maui News in Hawai’i, said the paper was trying “to make every local connection” it could: “When it appeared we had a local resident who lost his son and daughter-in-law, it was something that we went with.”39 Kelly Tunney, director of corporate communications for Associated Press, said, “We picked [the story] up from the papers (sic) and didn’t follow our own stringent guidelines in this case”.40 Lynn Shue, a friend of Curtis Larson said, “He has been on medication and has a penchant for exaggerating…I can’t believe he brought it all on himself.”41Natalie Olsen, contacted in Olympia, confirmed the couple were alive but declined comment further.42 Jude Olsen acknowledged that Curtis Larson was his father, denied studying medicine and said he saw Maui for the first time in the summer of 2001, “when he surprised his father during his first visit to Hawai’i.”43
The original source for the Larson story – Curtis Larson – described as a “well-known local artist” in his community, apparently cannot be located.
Curious discrepancies in names
According to the Boston Globe, one of the passengers on flight AA11, suspected to have been a hijacker and sitting next to Mohamed Atta, was Abdulrahman Alomari.In the Justice Department list of hijackers released on September 14, 2001, Alomari’s first name is spelled Abdulaziz. Federal investigators “said they could not explain the discrepancy between the American Airlines passenger list and their list.”44 The name Abdulrahman Alomari was also mentioned by the Washington Post on September 14, 2001, as one of the “five hijackers who took over American Airlines flight 11 (…) according to a source familiar with FBI’s list of the hijackers.”45
As early as September 12, 2001, NBC displayed a photograph of Mohamed Atta and mentioned his name, but no other suspects.46 On the late afternoon of September 13, 2001, various American TV networks displayed photographs of „Mohamed Atta” and „Marwan al-Shehhi”, designated as suspects in the mass-murder of 9/11. Surprisingly, ABC News (September 13, 2001, 7:02 p.m. EST of that day) captioned Atta’s photograph with the name „Amanullah Atta Mohammed“.47It was not explained from where „Amanullah” was gleaned. Was there another person impersonating Mohamed Atta, using Amanullah as first name?
On September 22, 2001, T.A. Badger of Associated Press reported that one of the alleged hijackers whom he named Ziad Jarrahi (with a final “i”) had been seen in San Antonio, California, in mid-June 2001.48 Who was the Jarrahi who was repeatedly49mentioned by the American media? Was he another person, distinct from Ziad Jarrah (without final “i”) who is alleged to have piloted flight UA93? Perhaps, if we believe the testimony of Charles Lisa, the landlord of an apartment he rented to a certain Jarrahi and who told The Miami Herald that this Jarrahi and his friend Alhaznawi had “German passports.”50 Ziad Jarrah, who had studied in Hamburg (Germany) was, however, a Lebanese citizen and is not known to have obtained a German passport. Was Jarrahi perhaps the assumed name of an unidentified German citizen whose role was to impersonate Ziad Jarrah? According to Elizabeth Neuffer in a detailed report on Ziad Jarrah and his family printed in the Boston Globe of September 25, 2001 “FBI agents, reviewing flight manifests, found a Ziad Jarrahi – the ‘i’ in the last name a possible misspelling – on United Airlines Flight 93.”51 Yet, the computer print-outs released later as passenger lists spelled his name without final “i”. Elizabeth Neuffer, incidentally, died on May 9, 2003 in Iraq in what was reported as a car accident.
The aforementioned fluctuations in the number and names of the alleged hijackers could not have occurred if these various statements had been based on authentic passenger lists.
Releasing bogus passenger lists five years later
In 2006 a seven-page set of faxes, purporting to represent the original passenger lists, was published in a book by Terry McDermott.52 These released images, of which one page is shown below, were of bad quality and do not appear to be authentic copies of the original passenger lists (or flight manifests): (1) The published lists appear to have been pasted together from various computer print-outs;53 (2) The lists are not authenticated by any airline or law-enforcement official; (3) It is not clear when the lists were printed out;(4) Ziad Jarrah’s name is spelled correctly on the list of flight UA93, whereas as described above, the FBI referred to him initially as Jarrahi;54(5) The name of Hani Hanjour appears on the AA77 list, whereas the Washington Post reported that his name did not appear on the original American Airlines list for the flight (see above); (6) The list does not include names originally claimed as suspected hijackers; (7) Neither the FBI nor the airlines have been willing to confirm that these lists represent true copies of the original passenger lists (or flight manifests)
Illustration of a released, non-authenticated, passenger list from flight UA93
The FBI, responding on April 4, 2007 to my FOIA request for the release of the original passenger lists, wrote that the requested passenger lists of flights AA11, AA77, UA93 and UA175 were “available publicly through the internet at the US Department of Justice website”.55 The website to which the FBI referred, contains numerous exhibits, produced at the Moussaoui trial. An examination of Exhibit P200054, to which the FBI provided a link, revealed that it does not display the passenger lists released in McDermott’s book and mentioned above, but graphic layouts of the seating arrangements.56In its response to me, the FBI did not engage in a direct lie. It merely attempted to mislead me into believing that authentic passenger lists were “available publicly”, and thereby avoid to admit in writing that it will not release a copy of the original passenger lists.
What lists did Bonner and Clarke see?
Robert Bonner, former Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and former Commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection, testified before the 9/11 Commission, that
On the morning of 9/11, through an evaluation of data — by the way, this was the passing through manifest, which US Customs was able to access from the airlines — I would say, within about an hour of 9/11 US Customs Office of Intelligence had identified the 19 probable hijackers as well as the complete list of the passengers on the aircraft.57
This observation piqued the curiosity of Commissioner Ben-Veniste, who a short while later asked Bonner, “How are your people able to[identify the 19 probable hijackers within about an hour]?” Here is what Bonner answered:
Well, it was pretty simple actually. We were able to pull from the airlines the passenger manifest for each of the four flights. We ran the manifest through the TECS/IBIS system. This is essentially the lookout system that both US Customs and INS use but it’s maintained by Customs. We ran it through the system. Two of the passengers on those aircraft were hits for having been entered on the watchlist in August of 2001. That was al Mihdhar and I forget the other one’s name but they were the two people that had gone to Singapore that the CIA had identified. But they actually were put on the watchlist in August of 2001 by the FBI. So they hit on those two.
Just using those two hits and taking a look at some other basic data about the flight manifest, both in terms of — I don’t want to go into a lot of detail — but where they were seated, where they purchased their tickets, you could do just a quick link analysis and essentially, I remember I was at Secret Service headquarters, as I said, but I would say whether it was 45 minutes, I don’t know but my recollection is that certainly by 11:00 a.m., I’d seen a sheet that essentially identified the 19 probable hijackers. And in fact, they turned out to be, based upon further follow-up in detailed investigation, to be the 19.58
Ben-Veniste then asked: “Was this more than looking at the two who were hits and then checking out the other Arab names?”
Bonner:
It was partly that, by the way, but it was more than that. No, it was seat location, ticket purchase information. Again, I am on public record here. I don’t want to go into exact details since we use some of this information in terms of targeting today for potential terrorists. We actually use, as I was saying, advance passenger information to identify beyond just who’s on the watch list by biography to try to do a more intelligent job as to who, as the combined immigration inspection and Customs inspection, Customs and Border Protection who would you ask a few questions to as they’re arriving in the United States.
So you’re doing more than just looking at a watch list. You’re looking at a lot of data and trying to figure out who to look at, just as in the same way we’re looking at what cargo to look at by examining a multitude of factors. That is, to some extent, strategic intelligence driven. So it was looking at a bunch of relational data. Obviously, more refinement of that occurred later but it was — it didn’t take a lot to do, just sort of what I’d say a rudimentary link analysis to identify essentially all 19.59
The question arises why Robert Bonner, who mentioned in his testimony that on 9/11 he had “not been confirmed yet as Commissioner of Customs”,60 was able to obtain the flight manifests on the morning of 9/11.Furthermore, it must be remembered that, according to official reports, both the Federal Aviation Administration and the US Military did not know for many hours how many and which aircraft had been “hijacked”. Bonner did not actually say that he personally carried out the research he described: He used the plural “we”: “We were able to pull from the airlines the passenger manifest for each of the four flights”; “We ran the manifest…”, “We ran it through the system”, etc.
He said that “by 11:00 a.m.” he had personally “seen a sheet that essentially identified the 19 probable hijackers”(emphasis added). Apart from the fact that a “sheet” listing the 19 “probable hijackers” could not have constituted an original flight manifest, only a compilation based on other documents, he did not say who handed him that “sheet” and who compiled it. That “sheet” was, furthermore,never released.
Richard Clarke, who served under both President Clinton and George W. Bush as National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, said that he was informed by Dale Watson, counterterrorism chief at FBI, on the morning of 9/11 through a secure telephone line that, “We got the passenger manifests from the airlines. We recognize some names, Dick. They’re al Qaeda.”Clarke: “I was stunned, not that the attack was al Qaeda but that there were al Qaeda operatives on board aircraft using names that FBI knew were al Qaeda.”61 The documents on which Robert Bonner and Dale Watson based their statements, were never released.
The above accounts by Robert Bonner and Richard Clarke make it imperative that they should testify under oath from where and on what statutory basis they obtained the “passenger lists” so early on 9/11, explain how they could identify the names of 19 alleged hijackers, and indicating what became of these lists. Their unverified statements cannot supplant the release of authenticated passenger lists.
FBI and airlines’ refusal to release authentic lists
I attempted in 2004 to obtain authenticated passenger manifests for the two American Airlines flights of 9/11. Karen Temmerman, Customer Relations, American Airlines, wrote to me on September 9, 2004:
At the time of the incidents we released the actual passenger manifests to the appropriate government agencies who in turn released certain information to the media. These lists were published in many major periodicals and are now considered public record. At this time we are not in a position to release further information or to republish what the government agencies provided to the media.62
The airline did not explain why it was not in a position, at this time, to confirm what had already been for a long time in the public domain.
On Novmber 29, 2005, I tried again to obtain the passenger list of AA77 from American Airlines.63 The first response by Sean Bentel from the airline was to send me a typed list that consisted of nothing more than the first and last names of 53 passengers from that flight. The list did not contain Arab names. Asking again the airline for “something more authentic”, Sean Bentel responded that ”the names I sent you are accurate…There may have been a formatting problem.” In turn I wrote that the problem was not the formatting of the data:
What I am asking is a replica of the original passenger list (either a scan of the original, or at least a document faithfully reflecting the contents of that list)…[namely] the list of the paying passengers who boarded AA77. Can I take it that the list you sent me faithfully reflects the names of the paying passengers who boarded AA77?
Within hours Sean Bentel answered in the most laconic manner: “Mr. Davidsson, Names of terrorists were redacted. Sean Bentel.” Asked in return “[w]hy can’t you sent me a facsimile copy of the passenger lists, including the names of the terrorists”, Sean Bental answered, “This is the information we have for public release.” This was the end of this exchange.
I asked United Airlines on October 21, 2004, why the original flight manifests have not yet been publicized and whether United Airlines had provided some media with a copy of the original flight manifests. The airline answered that “[a]ll matters pertaining to the September 11th terrorist attacks are under the investigation of the US Federal Authorities. Please contact the FBI.” That was it.
Numerous individuals have attempted without success to obtain authentic passenger lists from the airlines, among them Thomas R. Olmsted, M.D. He wrote, for example: “I attempted on three occasions to obtain a final passenger list from American Airlines. They refuse to give a list and in fact won’t even verify that they gave the first list to CNN.Since the list is in the public domain, I find it curious that they would not take ownership nor provide a current, ‘correct list’.”64 I requested through FOIA in February 2012 from the FBI form-302, serial 7134, which contains “flight manifests for hijacked flights” and “information related to manifests.”65 The request was denied.
As mentioned already above, the FBI did not outright refuse to release passenger lists. It instead referred to a website which included a graphical layout of seating arrangements inside the aircraft with names of passengers and alleged hijackers.By this conduct, the FBI nevertheless demonstrated its unwillingness to demonstrate the existence of genuine, original, and authentic passenger lists.
No plausible reason for secrecy
As the names of all victims and alleged hijackers were publicized within days after 9/11, I could not identify any plausible reason for the refusal of the airlines and the FBI to confirm information that already exists in the public domain by releasing the original documents or certified copies thereof. Authenticated passenger lists were not provided to the Congressional Joint Inquiry of 2002 or the 9/11 Commission and were not presented as evidence in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. It must therefore be presumed that no authenticated passenger lists for the four 9/11 flights exist or that whatever lists the airlines and the FBI possess do not correspond with the official allegations.
No legal proof that Muslim terrorists boarded the 9/11 aircraft
To sum up this section: No authenticated passenger lists of flights AA11, UA175, AA77 and UA93 have ever been produced by the airlines or the FBI.It is therefore not possible to confirm the names, let alone the identities, of the persons (including those of alleged hijackers) who checked in and boarded these flights.66
2.No authenticated boarding passes
To ensure that all checked-in passengers actually boarded the aircraft, in 2001 American Airlines used boarding cards with a stub to be torn-off at the gate by airline employees.. These stubs normally include passengers’ names and seat numbers. A report by the 9/11 Commission staff67 mentions specifically that Mohammed Atta received a boarding pass at Portland airport from where he reportedly flew on the morning of 9/11 to Logan Airport, Boston. The report surprisingly does not mention anyone the handing-out or the handling of boarding passes for flights AA11, AA77, UA175 and UA93, the so-called “death flights”. In footnote 62 to Chapter I of its Final Report, the 9/11 Commission mentions having received “copies of electronic boarding passes for United 93”, whatever the term “copies of electronic boarding passes” means, and in footnote 74 it refers to “copies of boarding passes for United 93”.
The only mention of boarding cards in connection with one of the 9/11 flights is a third-hand account presented in a book by Tom Murphy:
Terri Rizzuto is the United Airlines station manager at Newark Airport, from where Flight UA93 departed. Some time after hearing that this plane had crashed, she speaks on the phone with the FBI, which is requesting the plane’s manifest and its Passenger Name Record (PNR). After arranging permission to release these, she goes to gate 17, from where Flight 93 had departed, in order to talk to her staff there. Approaching the gate, an unnamed supervisor hands her four boarding passes. Rizzuto: „What are these?” Supervisor: „The men, who did this maybe”. Rizzuto: „What? How do you know?” The supervisor pointed to one of the unnamed gate agents who had boarded the passengers onto the flight. When Rizzuto asks the gate agent again: “How do you know?” he replies: “They were too well-dressed. Too well-dressed for that early in the morning. And their muscles rippled below their suits…Yes, and their eyes.”68
This report was not corroborated elsewhere. Ms. Rizzuto was interviewed by unnamed FBI special agents on September 11, 200169and again on December 6, 200170 . In none of the FBI interviews- released in 2009 together with 9/11 Commission documents- did she mention the above episode. According to an FBI document dated September 11, 2001, Ms. Rizzuto provided to an unnamed FBI agent “38 airline boarding passes used by passengers to board United Airlines flight 93 on 9/11/2001 at Gate 17 of terminal A at Newark International Airport.”71 The document lists the names of these 38 individuals and includesthe names of the four alleged hijackers. The document does not include an explanation from where Ms. Rizzuto obtained these “boarding passes”, which were later described by the 9/11 Commission as “electronic” boarding passes. These boarding passes were not submitted as evidence in the Moussaoui trial. The aforementioned FBI document states that the documents provided by Ms. Rizzuto “are being maintained as evidence at the Newark office of the FBI.”
On March 21, 2012, it was pointed out to me that a file posted on the website 911myths.com contains photocopies of a fax depicting boarding cards from flight UA93. The file appears to have been created on December 15, 2011 and, according to the website, was obtained from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), where the documents from the 9/11 Commission are stored.72 The fax and the copies of the boarding cards do not carry any authentication and are not accompanied by a chain-of-custody report. It is not clear who was the sender and the recipient of the fax. The circumstances of their sudden, belated and discreet release and the lack of authentication inspires the same lack of confidence in their authenticity as the computer print-outs of passenger lists referred to above.
3.No one saw the hijackers at the security checkpoints and at the boarding gates
(a) Security personnel
According to the 9/11 Commission, ten of the 19 suspected hijackers were selected on 9/11 at the airports by the automated Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS) for “additional security scrutiny”.73Yet none of those who handled the selected passengers, or any of the numerous airline or airport security employees interviewed by the FBI or the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on or after 9/11 is known to have seen these suspects. As for flights AA11 and UA175, which reportedly left from Logan Airport, Boston, the 9/11 Commission found that “[n]one of the [security] checkpoint supervisors recalled the hijackers or reported anything suspicious regarding their screening.”74
As for flight AA77, which reportedly left from Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C.,the 9/11 Commission wrote that “[w]hen the local civil aviation security office of the FAA later investigated these security screening operations, the screeners recalled nothing out of the ordinary. They could not recall that any of the passengers they screened were CAPPS selectees.”75As for flight UA93, which reportedly left from New Jersey International Airport, the 9/11 Commission indicated that the “FAA interviewed the screeners later; none recalled anything unusual or suspicious.”76According to an undated FBI report, the ‘FBI collected 14 knives or portions of knives at the Flight 93 crash site.’77Yet no screener is known to have mentioned coming across a single knife that morning.78 To sum up this sub-section, no airport security employee has testified to have actually seen any of the alleged hijackers.
(b) Boarding gate personnel
Normally there would have been airline employees tearing off the stubs of passengers’ boarding cards and observing the boarding of the four aircraft at the departure gates. Under the circumstances of 9/11, one could have expected to read interviews with some of these airline employees, under headlines such as “I was the last person to see the passengers alive” or “I saw TV commentator Barbara Olson board the doomed flight.”79Yet no such interview is known to have taken place. The 9/11 Commission does not mention the existence of any deposition or testimony by airline personnel who witnessed the boarding of the aircraft. As a response to my request to interview American Airlines gate agents of flight AA77, the airline responded that their identities cannot be revealed for privacy reasons.80 Among the documents from 9/11 released in 2009, two FBI 302-forms were discovered which contain interviews with Liset Frometa (conducted on September 11, 2001)81 and Maria Jackson (conducted on September 22, 2001)82, who testified to have worked at gate 32 for flight AA11, and one FBI 302-form recording an interview with an unidentified female employee of American Airlines who testified on September 11, 2001 to have “worked the gate for AA flight 11” on 9/11.83 The 302-form does not indicate at which gate number she worked. Neither of these ladies recalled any of the alleged hijackers. Maria Jackson was shown a “photo spread of subjects” but did not recognize anyone from the photo spread.The 302-form records her saying that she “took the tickets for [Flight 11] from AA Flight Attendant Karen Martin and brought them to ticket lift and deposited them in the safe.” These documents were never released as evidence.
(c) The testimony of Marsha L. Smith
Marsha L. Smith, an American Airlines employee, told FBI on September 11, 200184that she was assigned by the airlines as the “standby stewardess for Flight 11” and was “called to monitor the gate while loading and if the population in coach class was over 70 people then she would be added to the flight crew.” She said that when she arrived at the gate “most of the people were already on the plane.” She stated she did not observe anything suspicious and apparently she was not presented with photographs. According to the 302-form, she did not mention the gate number, the exact time she arrived at the gate, nor who else was at the gate.
(d) The testimony of Manuel Carreiro
Manuel Carreiro, a customer service representative for United Airlines at Logan Airport, told the FBI on September 11, 2001, that an unnamed man with dark olive skin approached him and presented a “certificate” that he was unfamiliar with. He said he did not see this individual with anyone else.He then sent him to see Gail Jawahir (see below).85 Carreiro was again interviewed by the FBI on September 28, 2001.86 On that occasion he reportedly said that “suspected terrorists Hamzah (sic) and Ahmed Alghamdi checked in for flight 175” and that “one of the men” hadpresented to him a “certificate” that he was unfamiliar with. Carreiro was shown by the FBI agent a photo lineup of twelve individuals believed to have been involved in the events. After reviewing the photo lineup, he said that the photograph of Abdul Alomari resembled the man he talked to on 9/11. According to the FBI, however, Alomari did not fly with United Airlines.
(e) The testimony of Gail Jawahir
Gail Jawahir, a customer service representative at the United Airlines ticket counter at Boston’s Logan Airport was interviewed three times by the FBI. In the first interview, conducted on September 11, 2001,87she said that “shortly before 7:00 a.m. (…) two well dressed Arabic males approached her ticket counter. (…) Subject #1 indicated that he wished to purchase a ticket.” She “observed that Subject #1 had a United Airlines envelope with a UA itinerary in hand.” She informed the person that he did not need to buy a ticket, for he already had one.Manuel Carreiro to whom she sent them, sent the men back to her.She said they had problems answering standard security questions.She was then asked if she would recognize the names of the passengers from the UA manifest for flight 175 and answered that she would be able to do so, because they had the same last name. Jawahir “was shown a [flight] manifest and immediately indicated that Hamed Alghamdi and Hamza Alghamdi were the two Mid Eastern individuals who checked in with her at the ticket counter.“She added that she ”was positive that those were the names utilized by the two men.“. On September 25, 2001, Jawahir was shown by an FBI agent a photograph of a passenger on flight 175 but did not recognize it as either one of the two males she had checked in.88 Interviewed again by the FBI on September 28, 2001, she said she had checked in Hamza and Ahmed Alghamdi into Flight 175.89But when shown a photo lineup of twelve individuals believed to have been involved in the 9/11 events, she commented that the photo of Mohand Alshehri resembled one of the men she had checked in and that the photo of Saeed Alghamdi looked like the second man she had checked in.90According to the 9/11 Commission, however, she suggested that the two may have been Mohand Alshehri and Fayez Ahmed Banihammad.91 Jawahir did not board the passengers. Her testimonies were contradictory. Why was she repeatedly interviewed?
(f) The testimony of Janet Padilla
According to Janet Padilla, described in a FBI document as a Regional Reservations Manager located in Chicago, Illinois, and interviewed sometime on September 11, 2001, Gail Jawahir (in Newark International Airport) had earlier in the day checked in Fayez Ahmed, Mohald Alshehri, Ahmed Alghamdi for flight UA175.92In this FBI document the name(s) of the person(s) who allegedly checked-in Marwan Alshehhi for flight UA175 as well as the name(s) of the person(s) who checked-in Ahmed Alnami, Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed Alhaznawi and Ziad Jarrah for flight UA93, are redacted.It is not known why the names of these employees were redacted while Gail Jawahir is mentioned. As she was working in Chicago, Ill., Ms. Padilla’s testimony was no eyewitness to the check-in by Gail Jawahir.
(h) Secret identities of boarding gate employees
Remarkably, in a letter dated March 15, 2004 from Condon & Forsyth LLP, representing American Airlines, to the 9/11 Commission, the names of most of the 28 agents who worked at that airline’s check-in counters at Logan and Dulles airports on 9/11 are listed, but the names of the agents who boarded passengers onto the aircraft at the respective gates are redacted.93 No explanation was provided for this redaction.
4.No authenticated CCTV of the hijackers at the departure gates
Apparently none of the three airports from where the 9/11 aircraft reportedly departed (Boston Logan, Newark International and Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C.) had surveillance cameras above the boarding gates. There exists neither eyewitness testimony nor a visual documentation of the boarding process.
The Boston Herald reported a few weeks after 9/11:
In perhaps the most stunning example of Massport’s lax security safeguards, Logan International Airport is missing a basic tool found not only in virtually every other airport, but in most 7-Elevens…. While Massport does employ cameras in parking garages, ramp areas and on Logan’s roadways to monitor traffic, there are none to be found in the terminals, gate areas or concourses. “You have names (of hijackers), but the FBI has said it hasn’t been able to match the faces of those who were on the flights,” said Charles Slepian, a New York security consultant.94
Logan officials acknowledged this ‘deficiency’. This is significant because two of the 9/11 flights originated from Logan airport.95
According to the 9/11 Commission’s staff, Newark International Airport, from which flight UA93 reportedly departed, did not have such equipment.96 According to the 9/11 Commission’s Final Report, “there is no documentary evidence to indicate when the hijackers passed through the [security] checkpoint[s], what alarms may have been triggered or what security procedures were administered.”97
Yet public opinion remains convinced that surveillance videos of the suspected hijackers have been shown on television. Indeed, something was shown around the world on television, but not the boarding process of any of the four aircraft. What was shown were two short video clips of people passing a security checkpoint, one reportedly from the Portland (Maine) Jetport and the other from Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C.
The video from Portland Jetport purports to show suspected hijackers Atta and Alomari passing the security checkpoint before they board a flight to Boston on the morning of September 11, 2001. Its authenticity has been disputed for two reasons: (1) Michael Tuohey, who checked in Atta and Alomari at the Portland Jetport, said on CNN that during check-in they „had on ties and jackets”. Shown the security video, he discovered that „they both have like open collar. They have like dress shirts with open collar.” No one could explain what happened to their jackets.98 (2) The security video displays two different recording times, as shown below.99
According to Kenneth R. Anderson, the pilot of Colgan Air flight 5930 from Portland, Maine to Logan Airport, Boston, on the morning of 9/11, he also served there as the flight attendant.He said he remembered two Arabic or Mid-Eastern males who were passengers on that flight.They were the last to board the aircraft and the last to exit the aircraft and sat in the last row of the plane. He described one of the individuals as wearing glasses,100 yet neither Abdulaziz Alomari nor Mohamed Atta wore glasses. Anderson also said that one of themwas 5’9” and the other 5’11” tall. According to an FAA certified copy of Atta’s airman file, Atta’s height was 5’7”.101 No information is available on Alomari’s height.
But even if the video recording from Portland were authentic,102 in the sense of depicting two persons resembling and purporting to be Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari, it does not prove what these persons did after they arrived in Boston.
„Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari” at Portland Jetport on September 11, 2001
The other security video recording purports to depict the alleged hijackers of flight AA77 pass through the security checkpoint at Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C. This recording was not voluntarily released by the US government, but was forced out in 2004 by the Motley Rice law firm representing some survivors’ families, under the Freedom Of Information Act.103 Zacarias Moussaoui was induced by the government and his defense lawyers to “agree to the authenticity” of that security videotape “without any further foundation.”104This video recording was released as an exhibit in his Moussaoui trial but is cumbersome to download from that source.105 It is however available on various websites.106 According to the Final Report of the 9/11 Commission, the video “recorded all passengers, including the hijackers, as they were screened.”107Yet none of the released versions of this recording shows any of the over 50 “passengers” from flight AA77, some of whom were well known nationally.
Jay Kolar, who published a critical analysis of this video recording,108 made an important point: He pointed out that the recording lacks a camera identification number and a time stamp (date:time clock). Joe Vialls, who also analyzed this video recording in 2004, wrote, “Just this single terminal at Dulles Airport has well over 100 such cameras, everyone of them with an individual camera identification number and date-time clock of its own.”109 He elaborated the point: “On-film data [such as camera number and date-time stamp] is essential of course, because it would be extremely difficult to track a target around the airport without these basic tools, and absolutely impossible to sort out the precise time and date of an event that occurred more than two years before, which is exactly what the 9-11 Commission now claims to have done.” According to Vialls, the video recording could not have been made on the morning of 9/11 because the light suggests that it had been made around noon.He urges viewers to “play back a full size copy [of the video recording]…and freeze-frame at the appropriate points”, pointing out the “footprint size shadow underneath the cab, and the brilliant sunshine streaming in through the open doors. On a full-screen picture you can even see the minuscule short [near vertical] shadows of the people standing outside the doors.”
A strange story about the Dulles security video, suggesting that it was fabricated before 9/11, was told by airport security manager Ed Nelson of Dulles Airport, to authors Susan and Joseph Trento. Nelson said that shortly after arriving at the airport on the morning of 9/11, FBI agents confiscated a security tape from a checkpoint through which he believed the alleged hijackers had passed before boarding the plane. He then described the scene and expressed his surprise that the FBI agents could already at that time pick out on the security tape “the hijackers” from hundreds of others passengers:
They pulled the tape right away…. They brought me to look at it. They went right to the first hijacker on the tape and identified him. They knew who the hijackers were out of hundreds of people going through the checkpoints. They would go ‘roll and stop it’ and showed me each of the hijackers…. It boggles my mind that they had already had the hijackers identified…. Both metal detectors were open at that time, and lots of traffic was moving through. So picking people out is hard…. I wanted to know how they had that kind of information. So fast. It didn’t make sense to me.”110
Aside from the dubious source of this recording and the likelihood that it was made before 9/11, it does not show who boarded an aircraft but provides only blurred images of individuals who pass a security checkpoint at an unknown time and location.
5.No positive identification of the hijackers’ bodily remains
According to the official account, the 19 alleged hijackers died in the crashes at the WTC, the Pentagon and at the crash site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The Pittsburgh Tribune of September 13, 2001 – two days after the events – reported that the
remains from the main crash site [of flight UA93] have been taken a makeshift morgue at the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory near the Somerset County Airport. State police escorted a tractor-trailer truck into the back of the armory late yesterday evening, according to a resident who lives nearby. The lights were turned off briefly as the truck was directed to the rear of the armory. A short time later, the lights were turned on as the police cars and the truck left, said the man who declined to be identified.111
Unidentified officials spoken to by The Times (U.K.) in October 2001 said they expected that the bodies of the 9/11 suspects would be identified ‘by a process of elimination’112.They did not explain why they did not expect the bodies to be positively identified, one by one.
Chris Kelly, spokesman of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), where the identification of the victims’ remains from flights AA77 and UA93 took place, said that the authorities were reluctant to consider releasing the hijackers’ bodies: “We are not quite sure what will happen to them, we doubt very much we are going to be making an effort to reach family members over there.”113 Neither did he explain why no efforts would be made to locate the families of the alleged hijackers, nor why AFIP could not use comparison DNA samples from known locations in the US where the alleged hijackers had lived. According to Llonald Mixell, landlord of one of the alleged hijackers, Alomari, in Vero Beach, Florida, the FBI “searched the Omari home [and] agents left a list of materials seized, including hair samples and air conditioning filters.”114 There were more such samples available from the alleged hijackers’ hotel rooms and cars they had left at the airports. Yet, according to Dr. Jerry Spencer, a former chief medical examiner for AFIP, cited by CBS News, “the terrorists are usually not in our possession in the United States like this”,115 implying that no DNA comparison samples were available to identify their remains. According to Jeff Killeen, spokesman for the FBI field office in Pittsburgh, “there haven’t been any friends or family members to try to claim the remains of [the hijackers].”116 Yet the family of alleged hijacker Ziad Jarrah in Lebanon was reported as early as September 16, 2001, to be “ready to cooperate with the authorities.”117 The US authorities did not respond to this offer of cooperation.
In mid-August 2002, a news report on the victims’ remains noted that the DNA of the alleged hijackers still had not been checked, because “little attention has been paid to the terrorists’ remains.”118 While the AFIP announced it had positively identified the human remains of all “innocent” passengers and crew from the flights, they did not identify the remains of any of the alleged hijackers. Kelly said later: “The remains that didn’t match any of the samples were ruled [by default] to be the terrorists”.119 Tom Gibb, of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, wrote, perhaps with tongue in cheek, that “air pirates have been identified as Ziad Jarrah, Ahmed Al Haznawi, Saeed Al Ghamdi and Ahmed Al Nami – but not so positively identified that officials will list the names in official records.” Somerset County coroner Wallace Miller said that the “death certificates [for the suspected hijackers] will list each as ‘John Doe'”.120 Under a ruling issued on October 11, 2001 by a Somerset County judge, everyone who died aboard flight UA93 “except the terrorists” will get death certificates. At the “insistence of the FBI, the terrorists won’t be getting them because investigators aren’t sure of their identities.”121
The AFIP was at the time a joint entity of the three military departments, subject to the authority, direction, and control of the Secretary of Defense.
In a letter from the AFIP dated June 20, 2003 to Thomas R. Olmsted, MD, of Harahan, LA,in response to his FOIA request of April 3, 2002, where he requested copies of the final list of bodies identified by the AFIP at the Pentagon crash of flight 77 on September 11, 2001, Bonnie S. Short responded: “Attached file contains the names of the 58 victims of AA flight 77 that were identified here at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology”.122 The list did not include any Arabic names.
According to the AFIP, bodily remains from virtually all passengers of flight AA77, which allegedly crashed at the Pentagon, could be identified, despite the impact of the aircraft crash and the ensuing fire. Yet representatives of the Department of Justice and the FBI told the staff of the 9/11 Commission that the contents of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) for that flight “were destroyed by the intense heat it had been subjected to.”123 Such devices are, however, constructed to resist far greater impact and temperatures than human DNA.
Among documents transmitted to the 9/11 Commission and released in 2009, one document contains the claim by the FBI that DNA profiles of Ziad Jarrah provided to the FBI by the German Federal Police (BKA) from the apartment of his fiancée in Germany „matched the sample of one of the sets of unknown human remains”.124 The aforementioned FBI document was not signed, dated or otherwise authenticated. The US authorities have not relied on this document to claim that Ziad Jarrah’s remains had been identified.
At this point, it might be useful to point out that at the reported crash site of flight UA93, no bodies or blood were sighted by eyewitnesses.
As for the remains of the suspects who allegedly hijacked flights AA11 and UA175, a spokeswoman for the New York Medical Examiner’s Office, where the identification of the victims from the WTC took place, said she had received from the FBI in February 2003 profiles of all ten hijackers who allegedly died at the WTC, so “their remains could be separated from those of victims.” She added, however: “No names were attached to these profiles. We matched them, and we have matched two of those profiles to remains that we have.”125 It was not indicated from where these “remains” had been brought. Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky, professor of forensics at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice commented that this discovery is “extremely significant”. He added: “This is the first confirmation that these individuals were on those planes.”126
In 2005, the number of matched samples from New York increased to three.127Robert Shaler’s forensic unit in New York City could not, however, identify the three by name. In an essay entitled „Who They Were”, Shaler set down his inside account of the identification effort: “No names, just a K code, which is how the FBI designates ‘knowns,’ or specimens it knows the origins of,” he wrote, adding, “we had no direct knowledge of how the FBI obtained the terrorists’ DNA.”128 His statement was echoed in 2009 by his deputy, Howard Baum, in a Newsweek interview: “We had no idea where the profiles came from or how they were developed.”129
It was not revealed from where and how the FBI secured the “profiles” of the ten individuals, designated as “hijackers”, why it took so long to submit them for identification and why they could not be identified by name. The FBI had, according to its own records, collected numerous hair samples from cars, hotel rooms and apartments used by the suspects, from which DNA profiles could have been extracted to permit at least the positive identification of some of these individuals. The lack of identification could not, therefore, be imputed to the lack of comparison samples.
The lack of positive identification of the alleged hijackers’ bodily remains, compounded by the absence of chain of custody reports regarding these remains, means that the US authorities have not so far proved that the alleged hijackers died on September 11, 2001 at the known crash sites.
6.Conclusions
The United States government, through its agencies and particularly the FBI,confiscated immediately after the events all available documentation regarding the boarding of the aircraft.Dozens ofwitnesses from the airlines and the respective airports were interviewed by the FBI.All existing evidence regarding the boarding of the four 9/11 flights must therefore be in the hands of the US authorities.
A government what was innocent of mass-murder would be expected not only to seek the truth about this crime, but show particular zeal in doing so, including by presenting the most incriminating evidence it possesses. It would do so both to satisfy a legitimate expectation of its population (and in the case of 9/11 of the world community) and to dispel any existing suspicions of its own complicity.
On the base of evidence provided in this chapter, the following inescapable and unassailable conclusions impose themselves:
•Due to the lack of concrete and verifiable evidence that the 19 alleged hijackers boarded the four aircraft, it is unconscionable and slanderous to accuse these individuals of participation in the mass-murder. Such accusations constitute a grievous attack on their dignity and that of their families.
•By consistently refusing to confirm through authenticated documents that the 19 alleged hijackers had boarded the four aircraft, the US government manifests its bad faith and justifies charges that it is lying to its population and to the international community about the events of 9/11.
•By providing me with a deceptive reply regarding the passenger lists (see above), the FBI manifested its attempt to conceal their absence.
•By ignoring the numerous and glaring contradictions regarding the identities of the alleged hijackers, the 9/11 Commission manifested its intent to maintain the official myth of 19 Muslim terrorists.
•By refusing to allow interviews with personnel who were responsible for passengers boarding the four aircraft of 9/11130, the airlines manifested their intent to conceal evidence about the circumstances of the aircraft boarding.
Endnotes
1 “The FBI releases 19 photographs…”, supra n. 36
2 Caryle Murphy and David B. Ottaway, “Some Light Shed on Saudi Suspects”, The Washington Post, September 25, 2001, #1061
3 “Hijack ‘suspects’ alive and well”, BBC,September 23, 2001, #231
4 Ibid.
5 Nick Hopkins, “False Identities Mislead FBI”, The Guardian, September 21, 2001, #538
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Jamal Khashoggi and Badr Al-Nayyef, “Hanjour family denies Hani’s involvementin crime”, Arab News, October 1, 2001, #100
9 Kevin Cullen and Anthony Shahid, “Hijackers may have taken Saudi identities”, Boston Globe, September 15, 2001, #950
10 “The FBI releases 19 photographs…”, supra n. 36
11 “FBI: Early probe results show 18 hijackers took part”, CNN, September 13, 2001, #45
12 Department of Justice, Briefing by Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller, September 13, 2001, Transcript, #464
13 Ibid.
14 “FBI Announces List of 19 Hijackers”, supra n. 33
15 Kelli Arena (transcript), CNN, September 14, 2001, #66
16 “FBI list of suspected hijackers”, CNN, September 14, 2001, 2:00 PM, #67
17 Xymphora, “Mosear Caned”, June 14, 2005, #1062
18“Four Planes, Four Coordinated Teams”, Washington Post, 16.9.2001, #80.Indeed, the only name missing from a report compiled by G. Bartulevicz (American Airlines) on September 11, 2001 about American Airlines bookings of the alleged hijackers, is that of Hani Hanjour, #150
19 Department of Justice, Briefing, September 13, 2001, supra n.
20 Condon & Forsyth LLP, Letter to Mr. John Raidt, 9/11 Commission, March 15, 2004, on behalf of American Airlines, in response to February 3, 2004 requests, p. 11, #318
21 Naftali Bendavid et al, “Officials scour US for clues”, Chicago Tribune, September 13, 2001, #523
22 Ibid.
23 Jere Longman, Among the Heroes: The True Story of United 93 (Harpers Collins Publisher,New York, 2002)p. xiii-xiv
24 Staff Report of the 9/11 Commission (“The Four Flights”), 26 August 2004, Note 31
25 “Partial list of terror victims”, CBS, September 12, 2001, #814; Rod Antone and Helen Altonn, “At least 2 from isles killed in attacks”, The Honolulu Star Bulletin, September 12, 2001, #46; “American Airlines Partial Passenger List”, The Washington Post, September 13, 2001, #815
26 Rod Antone and Helen Altonn, supra n.
27 Christine Snyder, “Five from Hawai’i may be victims”, Honolulu Advertiser, September 12, 2001, #822
28 Timothy Hurley, “Maui man says misinformation led to false report of son’s death”, Honolulu Advertiser, September 20, 2001, #824
29 Gary T. Kubota, “Maui man discovers son still alive”, Honolulu Star Bulletin, September 18, 2001, #1063
30 According to Anand Vaishnav (“Pair believed dead very much alive”), Boston Globe,September 19, 2001, the father was told that Jude and Natalie had been on flight United Airlines 175, #821
31 Timothy Hurley, supra n.
32 “Jude Larson”, National Obituary Archive, #580 (emphasis added)
33 “Natalie Larson”, National Obituary Archive, #581 (emphasis added)
34 “List of 9/11 victims”, National Obituary Archive, as of June 26, 2012, #1064
35 “Adding an Obituary”, National Obituary Archive, #1065
36 I sent a request for clarification to the editor of the National Obituary Archive on February2, 2012. There was no response
37 “Photographs of AA11 victims”, myfriendsphotos.tripod.com, #1066
38Anand Vaishnav, “Pair believed…”, supra n. 80
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Timothy Hurley, supra n.
44 Kevin Cullen and Anthony Shahid, supra n. 9
45 Dan Eggen and Peter Slevin, “Armed men held at NYC airports”, Washington Post, September 14, 2001, #955
46September 11 Television Archive, <http://archive.org/details/sept_11_tv_archive>
47Ibid.
48 T.A. Badger, “San Antonio rental agent says he recognized hijacker”, Associated Press, September 22, 2001, #1076
49 Andres Viglucci and Manny Garcia, “Hijack plotters used S. Florida as a cradle for conspiracy”, The Miami Herald, September 15, 2001, #777; Nicolaas van Rijn, “Hijackers set down roots, blended in, then attacked”, The Toronto Star, 15 September 2001, #81
50 Andres Viglucci and Manny Garcia, Ibid.
51 Elizabeth Neuffer, “Hijack suspect live a life, or a lie”, Boston Globe, September 25, 2001, #902
52Passenger Lists : Victims Lists, Passenger Manifests, and the Alleged Hijackers , 9-11 Research (undated), #1075
53See example of a non-authenticated passenger list on #872
54 See Elizabeth Neuffer, supra n.
55Letter in my possession, #94
56 See the first pages of chapters 7-10
57 Statement of Robert C. Bonner to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon The United States, January 26, 2004, #1077
58 Ibid.
59Ibid.
60 Ibid.
61 Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies, (FreePress, 2004), p. 13
62 Email communication to the author from Karen Temmermann,American Airlines, September 9, 2004
63 Exchange of letters between Elias Davidsson and American Airlines regarding 9/11, November 2005, #926
64 Thomas R. Olmsted, supra n.
65 “How did the FBI identify the hijackers”, report (undated). 9/11 Commission documents, Team 5, Box 62
66 Passengers can and do sometimes board onto airplanes under assumed names.
67 Staff Report of the 9/11 Commission (“The Four Flights”), supra n. 74
68 Tom Murphy, Reclaiming the Sky, (AMACOM Books, 2007),p. 72-73
69 FBI NK-745. September 11, 2001. In this report Ms. Rizzuto merely provides names of employees who were working at Newark International Airport on 9/11. #NK-745
70 FBI 302-90747. December 6, 2001.In this report Ms. Rizzuto provides “a general understanding of the boarding procedures that were in place on 09-11-2001 for UAL Flight 93.” She does not provide the time of the check-ins.
71 FBI NK-744. September 11, 2001. List of 38 boarding passes and 40 flight coupons provided to an agent by Ms. Rizzuto. #NK-744
72 Images of boarding passes, allegedly from Flight UA93, as faxed by United Airlines, #904
73 Final Report of the 9/11 Commission, Note 2 to Chapter I,p. 451
74 Ibid. Chapter I, p. 2.In support of this statement, the Commission refers to interviews with six named individuals
75 Ibid. Chapter I, p. 3.In support of this statement, the Commission refers to an interview made on April 12, 2004 with Tim Jackson, a person whose role is not indicated
76 Ibid. Chapter I. p. 4.In support of this statement, the Commission refers to an unreleased FAA report, “United Airlines Flight 93, September 11, 2001, Executive Report,” of Jan. 30, 2002
77 Ibid. Note 82, p. 457
78 Staff Statement No. 3 to the 9/11 Commission made at the 7th Public Hearing, 26-27 January 2004, p. 9-10
79 Barbara Olson, a passenger on Flight AA77, was a known, conservative, television commentator who appeared on CNN, Fox News Channel and other media outlets (Source: Wikipedia)
80 Exchange of emails between myself and American Airlines, supra n. 112. See letter from American Airlines to me dated 1 December 2005. On May 25, 2009, I discovered on the internet a declassified FBI document relating an interview with an unnamed American Airlines employee who advised she had “worked the gate for AA Flight 11” at Logan airport on 9/11. The interview, in the form of an FBI document, was apparently taken by an unidentified Massachusetts State Trooper and summarized in the document three days later. According to the interview, the employee “boarded the passengers” for Flight AA11 but “did not observe any suspicious people or notice anything out of the ordinary.”From the interview it appears that she was the only employee boarding the passengers. She does not mention the gate number from which the passengers left.
81 FBI 302-522. September 11, 2001. Interview with Lisa Frometa, Logan Airport
82 FBI 302-18941. September 22, 2001. Interview with Maria Jackson, Logan Airport
83 FBI 302-1805. September 11, 2001. Interview with unidentified employee of American Airlines, Logan Airport
84 FBI 302-37123.September 11, 2001. Interview with Marsha L Smith, Logan Airport
85 FBI 302-1169. September 11, 2001. Interview with Manuel Carreiro, Logan Airport
86 FBI 302-29690. September 28, 2001. Interview with Manuel Carreiro, Logan Airport
87 FBI 302-19081.September 11, 2001. Interview with Gail Jawahir, Logan Airport
88 FBI 302-37858.September 25, 2001. Interview with Gail Jawahir, Logan Airport
89 FBI 302-29693.September 28, 2001. Interview with Gail Jawahir, Logan Airport
90 Ibid.
91 9/11 Commission, 27 July 2004, p. 2, 451;Staff Report August 26, 2004, p. 17-18, 89
92 FBI302-51589. September 11, 2001. Interview with Janet Padilla
93Letter from Condon & Forsyth, supra n.
94 Doug Hanchett and Robin Washington, “Logan lacks video cameras”, The Boston Herald, September 29, 2001
95 Staff Statement No. 3, supra n. 77. p. 18
96 Ibid. p. 35
97 9/11 Commission’s Final Report, p. 4
98 See Paula Zahn Now, CNN, March 2, 2006
99 Rachel Gordon et al, “Security high but inconsistent at US airports”, San Francisco Gate Com, September 20, 2001, #1067
100 FBI 302-23367. September 11, 2001. Interview with Kenneth R. Anderson
101 Airman Records for Alleged 911 Hijacker Mohamed Atta, Federal Aviation Administration, #1068
102 Mohamed Atta’s father emphatically denies that the video depicts his son. Betsy Hiel, “Hijacking suspect’s father says son ‘hates bin Laden’, isn’t terrorist”, Tribune-Review, September 25, 2001, #545
103 Nick Grimm, “Commission report finalized as 9/11 airport video released”, ABC.net.au, 22 July 2004, #87
104 Supplemental Stipulation between the United States of Amereica and Zacarias Moussaoui, Government Exhibit ST00002, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division (undated), #1135.Zacarias Moussaoui was not in a position to know the truth of the factual allegations he stipulated.A sane person or a person not subject to pressure would not stipulate factual allegations that would facilitate his/her conviction
105 United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Criminal No. 01-455-A, Prosecution Trial Exhibits
106 See“9/11 hijackers at Dulles Airport”, #1069
107 9/11 Commission’s Final Report, p. 3
108 Jay Kolar, “What we now know about the alleged 9-11 hijackers”, in The Hidden History of 9-11-2001, Research in Political Economy, Vol. 23, 3-45, Elsevier Ltd. (2006), p. 7-10
109Joe Vialls,“Clueless 9-11 Commission Cheats American Public”, July 23, 2004, #1070
110 Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Unsafe at any Altitude: Failed Terrorism Investigations, Scapegoating 9/11, and the Shocking Truth about Aviation Security Today, (Steerforth Press, October 2006), p. 37
111Robin Acton and Richard Gazarik, “Human remains recovered in Somerset”, Tribune-Review (Pittsburgh), September 13, 2001, #386
112Damian Whitworth, “Hijackers’ bodies set Bush grisly ethical question”, The Times (U.K.), October 6, 2001, #92
113 Ibid.
114 Amy Goldstein and Peter Finn, “Hijack Suspects’ Profile: Polite and Purposeful”, Washington Post, September 14, 2001, #68
115 Brian Dakss, “Remains of 9 Sept. 11 hijackers held”, CBS News, August 17, 2002, #526
116 Jonathan Wald, “Remains of 2 Sept. 11 hijackers identified”, CNN, February 27, 2003, #1071
117Robert Fisk, “Stunned into disbelief as their ‘normal’ son is blamed”, The Independent, September 16, 2001, #1072
118 “What to do with hijackers’ remains?“, Associated Press, 16 August 2002, #52
119Brian Dakss, supra n. ; Tom Gibb, “FBI ends site work, says no bomb used”, Post-Gazette, September 25, 2001, #238
120Tom Gibb, “Flight 93 remains yield no evidence”, Post-Gazette, December 20,2001, #73 (emphasis added)
121 Tom Gibb, “Judge OKs certificates of death in Flight 93”, Post-Gazette, October 12, 2001, #762
122 Thomas R. Olmsted, “Autopsy: No Arabs On Flight 77”, June 9, 2003, Physics 911, #1073
123MFR 04020027. May 13, 2004. Briefing by Department of Justice and FBI to staff members of the 9/11 Commission
124 “How did the FBI identify the hijackers”, supra n.
125 “Remains of 9/11 hijackers identified”, BBC, 28 February 2003, #53
126 Jonathan Wald, “Remains of two Sept.11 hijackers identified”, CNN, February 27, 2003, #56
127 Paul D. Colford, “9/11 parts split by good and evil”, NY Daily News, October 12, 2005, #1078
128 Ibid.
129 Eve Conant, “Nineteen hijackers died on 9/11”, Newsweek, January 12, 2009, #716
130 Media interviews were allowed with various airline and airport personnel, but not with those who boarded the passengers.
