The banality of evil
The terrorists hung out, did laundry. Then they murdered
The chipped paint, scuffed doors, and shattered windows of the Valencia Motel in Laurel, Md., leave little doubt about what this place is--a $280-a-week crash pad for illicit lovers or locals down on their luck. Just steps from an adult bookstore, it seems an unlikely spot for five neatly dressed Muslims to have nourished their fanatical contempt for promiscuous Western ways. Yet here, crammed into the dingy living room and galley kitchen of Room 343, at least five terrorists did their best to blend into the strip mall scenery of Route 1. They hung out at the pizzeria, munched chocolate-chip cookies from the Giant supermarket, buffed up on weight machines at Gold's Gym. Here, too, they put the finishing touches on their plan to commandeer a fully fueled Boeing 757 and ram it full throttle into the Pentagon.
Suburban Maryland is just one of the many nondescript locales being scoured by FBI agents trying to unravel the complex network that helped support and finance the worst terrorist attack in American history. The terror cell that camped out here in the days leading up to September 11 offers some clues about how the operation worked. Its members had loose ties to each other, shared addresses here and elsewhere, attended flight school, and traveled freely. Dressing and acting as Americans--even engaging in behavior they professed to abhor, like watching adult videos--they lived unnoticed, sometimes for years. "They just looked like five good guys," says neighbor Gail North, "but they turned out to be the worst."
"There is going to be a bombing." Officials say that six of the terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center ended up in Maryland--all five hijackers from American Airlines Flight 77 and another believed to have piloted the plane that crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside. Two of the men, Salem Al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Midhar, were on the FBI's watch list weeks before the attack, suspected of having ties to Osama bin Laden. Al-Midhar was seen at a meeting in Malaysia last year with one of the organizers of the deadly attack on the USS Cole. No one knows for sure why the hijackers chose to stay in Laurel. But sources note that the city is home to Muslim cleric Moataz Al-Hallak, a teacher at a local Islamic school who testified three times before a grand jury investigating bin Laden and the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. According to Al-Hallak's lawyer, the FBI said it had information that the cleric said "there is going to be a bombing, and I do not want to be there." But in a three-hour interview with a federal prosecutor, Al-Hallak denied recognizing any of the 19 hijackers and said he had no connection to the attacks.
In the days leading up to the attacks, the hijackers of Flight 77 shopped, did laundry, practiced their piloting skills, and worked out. At a mall in Greenbelt, the five of them bought day passes or weekly memberships to Gold's Gym and lifted weights for about an hour and half most days. "They weren't on the masculine side," said Gene LaMott, CEO of Gold's Gym International Inc. "They looked like students from the university." K. J. S. Soni, the owner of the Luggage N Things store at the mall, remembers hijacker Hani Hanjour coming into his shop and trying to bargain for a $12.95 black leather wallet; he wanted it for $7. Investigators were also trying to determine whether the hijackers bought the box cutters they used in the attack at the mall's hardware store.
"He never came back." Some 10 miles southeast, at Freeway Airport in Bowie, Hanjour was trying in vain to pass his solo test so he could rent a small plane. Flight instructor Marcel Bernard said Hanjour, who had a pilot's license, took three runs with instructors over the Chesapeake Bay in August; the instructors were underwhelmed. "[They] were not satisfied with his skills, and they made it clear he would have to do a little more flying with an instructor before being checked out," says Bernard. "He never came back again."
The FBI has plenty of clues, but they're looking for many more. Over 4,000 FBI agents, 3,000 support personnel, and 500 other law enforcement officials are following more than 51,747 leads across the globe, hunting down accomplices who may have provided the hijackers with money, guidance, safe houses, computers, and other support. Agents are questioning scores of people believed to have links to the hijackers or their associates. They're working from a "watch list" of more than 200 people--many of them of them trained pilots--suspected of being associates or material witnesses with knowledge of the crimes. By week's end, federal authorities had arrested 80 people for immigration violations in connection with the attacks.
Some of the more long-term implications of the attacks may already be seen. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced drastic new measures to allow authorities to arrest foreigners suspected of being terrorists and order them deported without evidence. In a change that has alarmed civil rights advocates, new rules took effect that permit the Immigration and Naturalization Service to hold illegal immigrants for 48 hours, instead of one day, before authorities decide whether to charge them. Illegal aliens could also be detained for an unlimited time in "extraordinary circumstances." And Ashcroft is seeking greater wiretapping authority and the elimination of the statute of limitations for terrorist acts.
Officials may need these weapons for the threats that may lie ahead. Investigators are working under the presumption that there are more terrorist cells active in the country, intent on further destruction. The fear is of new waves of assault against government buildings, high-profile corporations, movie studios, even celebrities. Ashcroft says investigators are "not ruling out" evidence that terrorists planned hijackings of other flights on September 11 and afterward. Officials say the hijackers practiced for months, making dry runs on the same flights they later turned into deadly missiles.
Cab drivers, jumbo jets. To achieve this kind of sophistication, the hijackers had to have received money from accomplices still alive. And tracking down these operatives is the FBI's highest priority. One key suspect, officials say, is Habib Zacarias Moussaoui, a French Moroccan who has been held by U.S. authorities since August, when he aroused suspicion at a Minnesota flight school where he reportedly wanted to learn to steer jumbo jets but not to land them. Moussaoui is believed to have had contact with an Algerian terrorist who took part in a 1995 bombing campaign in Paris. He is also suspected of being a high-ranking operative of bin Laden.
Last week, police arrested a San Diego man suspected of giving money to two of the Flight 77 hijackers and helping them use the Internet. The suspect, Omer Bakarbashat, is believed to be a Yemeni national living here on an expired student visa and working at a Texaco station. Officials said he met or lived in San Diego with al-Midhar, Al-Hamzi, and Hanjour.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, local police and FBI agents arrested a Kuwaiti liquor store clerk believed to have links to two alleged hijackers--Ahmed Alghamdi and Satam al-Suqami--and to bin Laden's network. The suspect, Nabil Al-Marabh, was being held on a warrant for an assault with a knife. Authorities say Al-Marabh may also be associated with a former Boston cabbie, Raed M. Hijazi, who is being tried in Jordan for allegedly conspiring to attack holy sites during the millennium celebrations.
The "foreign minister." The FBI has not yet determined whether three North African immigrants arrested last week in Detroit--charged with possessing phony immigration documents and airport diagrams--are connected to the terror investigation. Although the men were found at Al-Marabh's residence, they claimed they did not know him. Police found two ID badges for an airline catering service, in the names of Karim Koubri and Ahmed Hannan. According to court documents, the search also turned up phony documents and a day planner with Arabic notations relating to an American base in Turkey and an American "foreign minister," as well as an "Alia Airport," with handwritten airport and runway sketches. Officials said the documents may have been connected to an aborted attack last year on a U.S. military base in Turkey. All three men are of Arab origin, and all hold chauffeur's licenses. Al-Marabh has a commercial driver's license and is certified in Michigan to transport hazardous materials, such as dynamite and radioactive waste. Ashcroft cautioned, however, "I think it would be far too early to indicate this is some sort of major breakthrough in the case."
Whether they were stealing Social Security numbers or getting fake drivers' licenses, the hijackers and their associates made effective use of the Internet, and investigators have seized hundreds of unencrypted E-mails. Many of them were recovered from computers in public libraries, in English and Arabic, discussing the hijackings at least a month in advance. Sources also say that the terrorists have been using encrypted messages over the telephone and the Internet to deceive intelligence authorities.
One of the more intriguing developments in the case is the arrest of a radiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, who is respected by colleagues and well liked by neighbors. Law enforcement officials aren't saying exactly why they have detained the doctor, Al-Badr Al-Hazmi, although they were reportedly investigating whether the doctor's credit card was used to buy an airplane ticket for one of the hijackers. Al-Hazmi was last seen at 5 p.m. the day before the terrorist attacks. "No one saw any unusual behavior then," says Gerald Dodd III, chairman of the radiology department. Al-Hazmi lived with his wife and two daughters in a rented three-bedroom unit in a gated community of modest duplex townhouses. He drove a minivan. But he aroused suspicions when he didn't show up for work the next day. FBI agents later copied university records and took several computers.
Authorities have knocked down reports of some association between Al-Hazmi and two key suspects, Ayub Ali Khan and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, who were apprehended in Fort Worth on an Amtrak train that was bound for San Antonio. The pair were found without legal identification and were carrying thousands of dollars in cash, hair dye, and box cutters such as those used in the hijackings. Investigators believe that the pair, who provided a Jersey City, N.J., address, had intended to hijack another flight. Khan, a licensed pilot, had a deportation order on file before he was taken into custody. Both from India, Khan and Azmath were aboard TWA Flight 679 from Newark, N.J., to San Antonio on September 11, but they were grounded in St. Louis after the attacks. "They made me nervous," said one TWA passenger who sat next to the men on the plane. She said they stared at the airport television's coverage of the attacks "with these very blank faces," then disappeared.
Complicating the probe is the fact that the suspects may not be who documents say they are. Although FBI Director Robert Mueller said authorities were "highly confident" of the identities of several of the hijackers, officials now say that many of them may have been operating under stolen identities. One of the hijackers on Flight 77 used the name of Salem Alhamzi, for instance, but Saudi officials say a Salem Alhamzi matching the photograph has never been to the United States and had his passport stolen on a trip to Cairo. Another of the hijackers on Flight 77 used at least three aliases. Gaafar Allagany of the Saudi Embassy in Washington said any Saudi would know the names the investigators are using are inadequate: "In Saudi Arabia, you cannot begin an investigation until you have the four names--your name, your father's name, your grandfather's name, your family name. I could produce 200,000 Al-Shehris and Al-Gamdis."
A cell is formed
While the members of classic terrorist cells may live and train together for years, the groups that hijacked airliners on September 11 were less formally structured or were more circumspect, apparently joining up only shortly before the attacks. Although the terrorists of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, entered the United States as early as 1991, they appear to have coalesced only in late August in Laurel, Md., 23 miles north of Washington, D.C. One reason for this might be the presence there of Muslim cleric Moataz Al-Hallak, who was questioned by a grand jury investigating Osama bin Laden and the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa.
Suspected terrorists
Khalid Al-Midhar
Born 05/16/1975
Spotted in Malaysia in January 2000, with a man tied to the USS Cole attack. He later entered the U.S. with a Saudi passport and a B-1 visa for business travel, and took basic flying lessons.
Feb.-Sept. 2000 Rented room in San Diego
Feb. 28, 2000 Bought 1988 Toyota with Nawaq.
May 2000 Took lessons at Sorbi's Flying Club in San Diego.
June 29, 2001 Arrived in Los Angeles on a Saudi passport
Aug. 23, 2001 Placed on watch list.
Aug. 23-Sept. 11, 2001 May have stayed at the Valencia Motel in Laurel, Md.
Aug. 25-28, 2001 All hijackers booked tickets, some via the Internet.
Sept. 5, 2001 Paid for ticket in Baltimore
Sept. 2001 Gold's Gym
Sept. 11, 2001 Boarded Flight 77.
Nawaq Alhamzi
Born 08/09/1976
May have entered and left the U.S. at least twice between 1999 and 2001. Bought a 1988 Toyota in San Diego with Al-Midhar and in May 2000, he took introductory flight lessons with him.
Jan. 2000 Entered United States in Los Angeles on a tourist visa.
Feb. 2000 Rented room in San Diego with Al-Midhar
Feb. 28, 2000 Bought car with Al-Midhar in San Diego.
May 2000 Took flying lessons in San Diego with Al-Midhar.
June 25, 2001 Issued Florida driver's license.
June 29, 2001 Arrived in L.A. with Al-Midhar.
Aug. 23, 2001 Placed on watch list.
Aug. 25, 2001 Booked two plane tickets via Internet.
August 2001 Valencia Motel
Sept. 1 Stayed at Pin-Del Motel, Laurel, Md. Ziad Jarrahi, a hijacker on United Flight 93, had stayed at the same motel.
Sept. 2001 Gold's Gym
Sept. 11 Boarded Flight 77.
Salem Alhamzi
Born 02/02/1981
Arrived from Zurich in June with a Saudi passport and a tourist visa. Like Nawaq, possibly his brother, he used an address in Fort Lee, N.J., and may have lived in New York.
June 29, 2001 Arrived at JFK Airport in New York on Saudi passport.
Aug. 25-28, 2001 Booked plane ticket using same Fort Lee, N.J. address as his brother.
Aug. 2001 Valencia Motel
Sept. 2-6 Worked out with fellow hijackers at Gold's Gym in Greenbelt, Md.
Sept. 11 Boarded Flight 77.
Majed Moqed
Born 06/18/1977
Little is known about his entry into the U.S., but he may have rented a room at a Laurel, Md., motel on August 23. Two weeks later he worked out with the others at a nearby gym.
Aug. 25-28 Booked plane ticket using same frequent-flier number as Al-Midhar.
Aug. 2001 Valencia Motel
Sept. 2001 Gold's Gym
Sept. 5, 2001 Paid for ticket in cash in Baltimore.
Sept. 11, 2001 Boarded Flight 77.
Hani Hanjour
Born 08/30/1972
Apparently the most accomplished pilot in the group, he held an expired commercial license issued by the FAA. In August he flew over the Washington, D.C., area several times.
1996-1997 Took pilot's lessons in Arizona
April 1999 Obtained pilot's license
Dec. 2000 Arrived at Cincinnati from Paris on a student visa. He was to attend a school in Oakland, Calif., but never showed up.
Aug. 2001 Flew over Washington, D.C. area several times in small private plane with flight instructors from Freeway Airport in Bowie, Md. Described as a lousy pilot but had 600 hours of flight time.
Aug. 2001 Booked tickets
Aug. 2001 Valencia Motel
Sept. 2001 Gold's Gym
Sept. 11, 2001 Boarded Flight 77.
Note: The names of the hijackers appear as provided by the FBI. Their names and birth dates may not be their real ones.
Reporting by Douglas Pasternak with Sheila Thalhimer, Nancy Bentrup, Alexa Keefe, Monica Ekman, Carol Hook, Mark Madden, Ann Wakefield, Anne Bradley, Carmen Harris; Stephen Rountree--USN&WR
With SUSAN HEADDEN, ANGIE CANNON, MARIANNE LAVELLE, EDWARD T. POUND, CHITRA RAGAVAN, KIT R. ROANE, DOUGLAS PASTERNAK, MICHAEL SCHAFFER, CAROL FLAKE CHAPMAN and THE U.S. NEWS LIBRARY
This story appears in the October 1, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.