No evidence that Muslims hijacked planes on 9/11
By Elias Davidsson
10 January 2008 (revised 8 February 2008)
http://911blogger.com/news/2008-06-16/no-evidence-muslims-hijacked-planes-911-elias-davidsson
Abstract: The United States government has alleged that 19 individuals with Arab names, deemed fanatic Muslims, hijacked four passenger planes on 11 September 2001 and crashed them in a suicide-operation that killed approximately 3,000 people. In this Note, the author shows that there is no evidence that these individuals boarded any of these passenger planes. Absent such evidence for over six years, the official account of 9/11 must finally be exposed as a lie.
The US government alleges that nineteen individuals whose names and photographs have been released by the FBI1 and whom no one has seen since 11 September 2001, had booked seats on flights AA11, AA77 (American Airlines) UA93 and UA175 (United Airlines) for that same day, boarded onto those flights, hijacked the aircraft and deliberately crashed these aircraft with passengers and crew on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and on a field in Pennsylvania.
The accusations against these nineteen individuals were based, for the most part, on what were described as lucky discoveries made on 9/11 by the FBI.
The first was the discovery of two pieces of luggage allegedly owned by Mohammed Atta, the lead suspect, which were not loaded onto flight AA11 at Boston Logan airport. The reason why these bags were not loaded onto the aircraft was never disclosed. According to FBI Special Agent James M. Fitzgerald, who testified at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the connecting flight from Portland which brought Mohammed Atta and his alleged co-hijacker Abdul Aziz Alomari to Boston, had ‘arrived too late for the luggage to be loaded onto Flight 11’2 According to the 9/11 Commission, however, the flight arrived on time at approximately 6:45 A.M., one hour before the scheduled departure of Flight AA11.3 It has never been revealed who was responsible for the “mistake” that ensured that the bags would not be loaded onto the aircraft. The contents of the luggage enabled FBI agents, as claimed by them, to ‘swiftly unravel the mystery of who carried out the suicide attacks and what motivated them’.4
Among the items reportedly found in Atta’s bags were: a hand-held electronic flight computer, a simulator procedures manual for Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft, a slide-rule flight calculator, a copy of the Qur’an and a handwritten testament written in Arabic.5 According to later testimonies by former FBI agents, the luggage also contained the identities of all 19 suspects involved in the four hijackings, information on their plans, backgrounds, motives, al Qaeda connections and [a] folding knife and pepper spray.6 According to FBI Special Agent Fitzgerald, Abdul Aziz Alomari’s passport was also found in one the bags.7
1
FBI, Press Release, 27 September 2001. Available at
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/092701hjpic.htm
2
United States of America v Zacarias Moussaoui, U.S. District Court, Alexandria Division. Cross-
examination of FBI Special Agent James M. Fitzgerald. March 7, 2006, 10:00 A.M. Transcript p. 38.
Available at http://cryptome.org/usa-v-zm-030706-01.htm
3
9/11 Commission’s Staff Report of 26 August 2004 (declassified), p. 3. Available at
http://www.archives.gov/legislative/research/9-11/staff-report-sept2005.pdf
4
Michael Dorman, ‘Unravelling 9-11 was in the bags’, Newsday, 17 April 2006. Available at
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-
uslugg274705186apr17,0,6096142.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-print
5
FBI Affidavit, at http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/atta/resources/documents/fbiaffidavit1.htm
6
Michael Dorman, supra n. 4
7
United States of America v Zacarias Moussaoui, supra n. 2
p. 2
Other incriminating items were also swiftly found at other locations.
= The 9/11 Commission noted, for example, that a passport of one of the alleged hijackers was found near the World Trade Center where a ‘passer-by picked it up and gave it to a NYPD detective shortly before the ...towers collapsed’8. Numerous observers found it hard to believe that such a document could make it undamaged from the pocket of a dead suspect in the burning wreckage within the building to the street and be found miraculously within minutes.
= A Saudi Arabian driver’s license of Ahmad al-Ghamdi, another suspect, ‘was [also] recovered at the World Trade Center crash site’.
= A Toyota Corolla registered to alleged hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi was discovered at Washington’s Dulles Airport on 12 September. It contained a ‘four-page letter written in Arabic that was identical to the one recovered from the luggage of Mohammed Atta at Logan Airport’, a cashier’s check made out to a flight school in Phoenix, four drawings of the cockpit of a 757 jet, a box cutter-type knife, maps of Washington and New York, and a page with notes and phone numbers.9
= In a car rented by alleged hijacker Marwan Alshehhi and discovered at Boston’s Logan Airport, the FBI found an Arabic language flight manual, a pass giving access to restricted areas at the airport, documents containing a name on the passenger list of one of the flights, and the names of other suspects. The name of the flight school where Mohammed Atta and Alshehhi studied, Huffman Aviation, was also found in the car.10
= A number of documents purporting to identify the suspects of flight UA93 were reportedly found at that flight’s crash site, though no aircraft wreckage was seen there and no drop of blood.11 The incriminating items included the passport of alleged hijacker Al Ghamdi,12 alleged hijacker Alnami’s Florida Driver’s License13, his Saudi Arabian Youth Hostel Association ID card14, a visa page from alleged hijacker Ziad Jarrah’s passport15, and a business card of Jarrah’s uncle.16
At the Pentagon crash site, a “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Student Identity Card” is discovered with alleged hijacker Majed Moqed’s name on it.17
= On September 12, 2001, the FBI was notified by a hotel owner in Deerfield Beach, Florida, that he found a box cutter left in a room left by alleged hijacker Marwan Alshehhi and two unidentified men. The owner said to have found in a nearby trash a duffel bag containing Boeing 757 manuals, three illustrated martial arts books, an 8-inch stack of East Coast flight maps, a three-ring binder full of handwritten notes, an English-German dictionary, an airplane fuel tester, and a protractor.18
8
Susan Ginsburg (staff member of the Commission) at Public Hearing of the 9/11 Commission, 26
January 2004. Available at http://www.sacred-texts.com/ame/911/911tr/012604.htm
9
U.S. v. Moussaoui, supra n. 7, p. 39; Arizona Daily Star, 28 September 2001, Cox News Service, 21
October 2001.
10
Los Angeles Times, 13 September 2001
11
Robb Frederick, ‘The day that changed Amereica’, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 11 September 2002.
Cached at
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2263&Itemid=107
12
Moussaoui trial exhibit PA00108, at
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/PA00108.html
13
Moussaoui trial exhibit PA00110, at
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/PA00110.html
14
Moussaoui trial exhibit PA00102, at
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/PA00102.html
15
Moussaoui trial exhibit PA00105.08, at
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/PA00105-08.html
16
Moussaoui trial exhibit GX-PA00109, at http://www.rcfp.org/moussaoui/
17
9/11 Commission Final Report, p. 132
18
Miami Herald, 16 September 2001; Associated Press, 16 September 2001.
p. 3
And to complete the picture, the night before 9/11, after making predictions that an attack on America would be carried the next day, some of the alleged hijackers were reported to have left in a bar a business card ... and a copy of the Qur’an.19
The amount and nature of all of that incriminating evidence suggested to an unidentified former high-level intelligence official that “whatever trail was left was left deliberately – for the FBI to chase.”20
Such suspicion is, of course, warranted. But it is important to keep in mind that the discovery of these items does not, by itself, prove that their alleged owners actually boarded any particular aircraft, hijacked those aircraft and crashed the aircraft at the known sites. The findings merely represent circumstantial evidence.
In order to prove that the suspects actually boarded the aircraft and died at the known crash sites, at least three types of evidence could and should have been produced: Authenticated passenger lists, identification of the suspects as they boarded the aircraft and identification of their bodily remains from the crash sites.
1. No authenticated passenger lists
Airline passenger lists are essential documents required for insurance purposes. This is why it is important for each airline to meticulously document and check the identities of passengers who board passenger airliners. Yet, as will be shown, the US authorities have not only failed to produce authenticated passenger lists, but have - by producing contradictory reports – admitted that such lists do not exist.
= On 13 September 2001 Attorney General John Ashcroft said that ‘between three and six individuals on each of the hijacked airplanes were involved’ in the hijackings.21
= On the same day FBI Director Robert Mueller 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’.22
= A day later the number grew to 19. 23
= Initially, the name of Mosear Caned (ph) was released by CNN as one of the suspected hijackers.24 His name disappeared a few hours later from the list of suspects when CNN posted a new list of suspects released by the FBI 25. It was never explained why Caned’s name had appeared in the first place and why it was then removed.26
= Two other names, Adnan and Ameer Bukhari, whose names had also apparently figured on the original passenger list, disappeared and were replaced by other names.27
= A fourth person, Amer Kamfar, was also named as an initial suspect hijacker.28 His name also disappeared from the subsequent lists of suspect hijackers.
The Washington Post revealed that the original passenger lists did not include the name of Khalid Al Mihdhar who later appeared as one of the alleged hijackers. In its Final Edition of 16 September 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.’29 After that date ‘reports began emerging saying that al-Mihdhar was still alive.’30
19
Associated Press, 14 September 2001
20
New Yorker, 8 October 2001
21
‘FBI: Early probe results show 18 hijackers took part’, CNN, 13 September 2001. Available at
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/13/investigation.terrorism/
22
Ibid.
23
FBI Press Release of 14 September 2001. Available at
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=372&Itemid=107
24
Kelli Arena, CNN, 14 September 2001, 10:11 ET. Available at
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/14/bn.01.html
25
‘FBI list of suspected hijackers’, CNN, 14 September 2001, 2:00 PM, EDT. Available at
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/14/fbi.document/
26
Xymphora, ‘Analysis of the Mosear Caned mystery’. Available at
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1993&Itemid=107
27
Mike Fish, ‘Fla. flight schools may have trained hijackers’, CNN, 14 September 2001. Available at
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/13/flight.schools/
28
Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amer_Kamfar
p. 4
On 12 September 2001, various newspapers published partial passenger lists of the crashed flights.
= These reports included Jude Larsson, 31, and his wife, Natalie, 24, as passengers aboard flight AA11.31 Yet on September 18, 2001, the Honolulu Star Bulletin reported that the newspaper had received an email from Jude, apparently alive, notifying of the mistake.32 According to the paper, “a person claiming to be with the airlines” called Jude’s father, a person described as a “known sculptor” in his community, and informed him that his son and daughter-in-law had been passengers on flight AA11. The names of Jude and Natalie Larson then disappeared from publicized passenger lists. More bizarre is that the names of Jude and Natalie Larson, whose names are not anymore officially listed as flight AA11 victims, are still listed as dead on the National Obituary Archive.33
The aforementioned fluctuations in the number and names of the alleged hijackers (and two passengers) suggest that their identification was not based on the original passenger lists.
While printouts purporting to be copies of passenger lists from 9/11 were presented as exhibits at the Moussaoui trial and posted in May 2006 on the internet34, these printouts contain no authentication and were not accompanied by chain-of-custody reports. These lists were released discreetly, without comments or indication as to their source, suggesting that the US authorities did not relish having questions being asked about these lists’ authenticity.
While the names of all passengers, crew and suspected hijackers were publicized shortly after 9/11 in the media, the FBI and the airlines have consistently refused and continue to refuse to release the authentic, original, passenger lists and flight manifests, of the four 9/11 flights, if such lists exist at all.35
As the names of all victims and alleged hijackers have been publicized within days after 9/11, privacy considerations cannot explain the refusal to simply confirm – by releasing the original, authentic, documents – what has been publicly asserted since 9/11. The only plausible explanation for this refusal is that the release of the authentic passenger lists (if they at all exist) would undermine the official account on 9/11 and raise questions about official complicity in the crime.
2. No testimonies of aircraft boarding
A second category of evidence to prove that particular individuals have boarded a particular airplane at a particular gate and a specific time, is eyewitness testimony and security video recordings.
Did anyone witness the boarding of the aircraft?
29
Khalid Al-Mihdhar, Washington Post, 16 September 2001, p. A06 (no author indicated)
30
Wikipedia: Khalid Al-Mihdhar. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_al-Mihdhar
31
CBS, 12 September 2001, http://election.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/12/national/main310935.shtml;
The Honolulu Star Bulletin, 12 September 2001: http://starbulletin.com/2001/09/12/news/story1.html;
Washington Post, 13 September 2001, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18970-2001Sep12;
CNN (undated), http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/AA11.victims.html.
32
Honolulu Star Bulletin, 18 September 2001, http://starbulletin.com/2001/09/18/news/story5.html
33
National Obituary Archive: http://www.arrangeonline.com/Obituary/obituary.asp?ObituaryID=64182329;
http://www.nationalobituaryarchive.com/donation/donation.asp?ObituaryID=64182329;
http://www.cemeteryonline.com/ctz/0Mem/20010911/AA11-2001.htm
34
http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/evidence/passengers.html
35
The refusal to release the original passenger lists, has typically taken an evasive form, illustrated in an
exchange of emails between this author and American Airlines. See
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2329&Itemid=107
p.5
According to the 9/11 Commission, ten of the nineteen suspects were selected on 9/11 at the airports by the automated CAPPS system for ‘additional security scrutiny’.36 Yet no one of those who handled the selectees, 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 the 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.”37
= 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.”38
= As 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.”39 According to an undated FBI report, the ‘FBI collected 14 knives or portions of knives at the Flight 93 crash site.’40 Yet no screener is known to have mentioned coming across a single knife that morning.41
To sum this paragraph, no airport security employee has testified to have actually seen any of the alleged hijackers.
Airline personnel traditionally see off passengers as they board onto aircraft in order to tear off the stub of their boarding cards. Under the circumstances of 9/11, one would have expected to see, hear and read international media interview airline employees under headlines such as “I was the last to see the passengers alive”. Yet no such interview is known to have taken place.
The 9/11 Commission does not even mention the existence of any deposition or testimony by airline personnel that witnessed the boarding of the aircraft. And even the identities of these employees remains secret: As a response to this author’s request to interview American Airlines employees who saw off passengers of flight AA77, the airline responded that their identities cannot be revealed for privacy reasons.42
The absence of testimonies regarding the boarding process can, perhaps, be explained by a number of anomalies. It was discovered in 2003 by independent investigator Gerard Holmgren and ascertained by the present author that according to the BTS database of the US Department of Transportation (DoT), flight AA11 and flight AA77 were not scheduled to fly at all on 11 September 2001 but were scheduled to fly on the preceding and subsequent days.43 After Holmgren’s discovery was publicized on the internet, the DoT hastily added the records for AA11 and AA77 flights on the 9/11, fraudulently manipulating official records to correspond with the official account on the crime. Another discovered anomaly is that according to the BTS database the aircraft, which reportedly crashed on the Pentagon (flight
36
Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Official
Government Edition. Available at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/index.html, Chapter I, Note 2, p. 451.
37
Ibid. Chapter I, p. 2. In support of this statement, the Commission refers to interviews with six named
individuals.
38
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.
39
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.
40
Ibid. Note 82, p. 457
41
Staff Statement No. 3 to the 9/11 Commission made at the 7th Public Hearing, 26-27 January 2004, pp.
9-10. Available at
http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/staff_statement_3.pdf
42
Exchange of emails between the author and American Airlines, supra n. 35. See letter from American
Airlines to the author dated 1 December 2005.
43
Gerard Holmgren, ‘Evidence that Flights AA 11 and AA 77 Did Not Exist on September 11, 2001’, 13
November 2003. Available at http://www.serendipity.li/wot/aa_flts/aa_flts.htm
p.6
AA77, tail number N644AA), did not depart at all from Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C. as officially reported.44 A third anomaly is that flight AA11 was initially reported in the media to have departed from Gate number 26, while this particular flight usually had departed from Gate 32.45 The 9/11 Commission claimed, however, that the flight had departed from Gate number 32. No explanation has been given for these contradictory reports. Testimonies by eyewitnesses would have easily resolved these inconsistencies. The absence or suppression of such testimonies suggests, therefore, that what happened at boarding time is a closely held secret, the revelation of which might help solve the mystery surrounding 9/11.
As no person has testified to have witnessed the boarding process, did perhaps security cameras document it? Apparently none of the three airports from where the 9/11 aircraft reportedly departed had surveillance cameras above the boarding gates. Thus, there exists neither eyewitness testimony nor a visual documentation of the boarding process. This means in plain language that the families of those who had booked flights with one of the 9/11 flights and of the crew of these flights have been prevented from knowing what happened to their loved ones once they arrived at the three airports on the morning of 9/11.
Whether they boarded any aircraft, and if so, which, remains uncertain.
Yet public opinion remains convinced that surveillance videos of the boarding process had been shown on TV networks. In fact, what has been shown around the world was not the boarding process of any of the four aircraft but two video recordings, one of which is said to be from Portland airport and the other from Dulles Airport. The Portland video purports to show alleged hijackers Atta and Alomari before they board onto a connecting flight to Boston. Even if this video is authentic and if it actually shows these individuals, it does not show what they did after they arrived in Boston.
The other security video recording is said to be from the screening checkpoint at Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C., from where flight AA77 allegedly departed.
According to all known sources, Logan Airport, Boston, did not have any surveillance cameras on 9/11, neither at the security checkpoints nor above the boarding gates.46 No one is known to dispute this fact. According to the 9/11 Commission’s staff, the Newark International Airport, from which flight UA93 reportedly departed, did not either have such equipment47. But this claim has been contradicted by Michael Taylor, president of American International Security Corporation who claims that security cameras had been installed at that airport.48 The video recording that has been shown widely purports to show 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 under the Freedom Of Information Act.49 This video recording can be found on various sites on the Internet.50 Jay Kolar, who published a critical analysis of this recording,51 pointed out that it does not show the date and time of recording or the camera number. Security videos typically record such identifying information automatically. He also pointed
44
The Flight Path Study – American Airlines Flight 77 by the NTSB, 19 February 2002,
http://www.ntsb.gov/info/Flight_%20Path_%20Study_AA77.pdf
45
Ewing2001, Flight 11 – The Twin Flight, http://911wideopen.com/mirror/twin11-1/twin-11-mod.htm
46
Staff Statement No. 3, supra n. 41. p. 18
47
Staff Statement No. 3, supra n. 41. p. 35
48
Doug Hanchett and Robin Washington, ‘Logan lacks video cameras’, Boston Herald, 29 September
2001.
49
Nick Grimm, ‘Commission report finalised as 9/11 airport video released’, ABC.net.au, 22 July 2004.
Available at http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2004/s1159804.htm
50
The video can be viewed here: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/hijackers_video.html
51
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), pp. 7-10
p.7
out further anomalies, such as the unusually bright lighting (which suggest that the recording was not made in the morning) and the fact that a human operator had manipulated the camera in order to zoom on particular subjects (indicating foreknowledge of those subjects). His conclusion is that someone deliberately decided to film certain persons passing a security checkpoint at a certain time in order to produce “evidence”. The released recording does not show any passengers pass through the security checkpoint. Aside from the dubious source of this recording, it does not show who boarded the aircraft but only a few individuals who passed some security checkpoint at an unknown time.
3. No boarding passes
To ensure that all checked-in passengers actually board the aircraft, airline personnel usually tear a stub of the boarding pass and count these stubs. These stubs carry the names of the passengers.
The 9/11 Commission Staff report,52 which mentions specifically that Mohammed Atta received a “boarding pass” at Portland airport, does not mention at all boarding passes in connection with flights AA11, AA77, UA175 and UA93, as if such documents did not exist. The Staff report does not explain how the airlines checked who boarded the aircraft.
4. No positive identification of the alleged hijackers’ bodily remains
According to the official account, the 19 hijackers died in the crashes at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and at the crash site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Yet, there is no positive proof that they did. There is no indication that a proper chain of custody53 between the crash sites and the final disposition of bodily remains had been established by the FBI, as required in criminal cases. The 9/11 Commission did not refer to any such documentation.
Unidentified officials spoken to by The Times (U.K.) in October 2001 expected that the bodies of the 9/11 suspects would be identified ‘by a process of elimination’54. They did not explain why they did not expect a positive identification of these bodies.
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
52
Staff Report, supra n. 3
53
In practical terms, a chain of custody is the documentation and testimony that proves that the evidence has not been altered or tampered with in any way since it was obtained. This is necessary both to assure its admissibility in a judicial proceeding and its probative value in any preceding investigation. “Proving chain of custody is necessary to ‘lay a foundation’ for the evidence in question, by showing the absence of alteration, substitution, or change of condition. Specifically, foundation testimony for tangible evidence requires that exhibits be identified as being in substantially the same condition as they were at the time the evidence was seized, and that the exhibit has remained in that condition through an unbroken chain of custody. For example, suppose that in a prosecution for possession of illegal narcotics, police sergeant A recovers drugs from the defendant; A gives police officer B the drugs; B then gives the drugs to police scientist C, who conducts an analysis of the drugs; C gives the drugs to police detective D, who brings the drugs to court. The testimony of A, B, C, and D constitute a "chain of custody" for the drugs, and the prosecution would need to offer testimony by each person in the chain to establish both the condition and identification of the evidence, unless the defendant stipulated as to the chain of custody in order to save time.” (Free Online Law Dictionary, http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Chain+of+custody )
54
Damian Whitworth, ‘Hijackers' bodies set Bush grisly ethical question’, The Times (U.K.), 6 October
2001
p.8
family members over there.’55 He did neither 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 United States where the alleged hijackers had lived. While the AFIP announced to have 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 to be the terrorists’.56 Somerset County coroner Wallace Miller said that the “death certificates [for the suspected hijackers] will list each as 'John Doe'”.57
As for the remains of the suspects who allegedly flew AA11 and UA175 into the Twin Towers, a spokeswoman for the New York Medical Examiner’s Office, where the identification of the WTC victims took place, said to have received from the FBI in February 2003 “profiles of all 10 hijackers ...so their remains could be separated from those of victims.” She added: “No names were attached to these profiles. We matched them, and we have matched two of those profiles to remains that we have.”58 No explanation was given where and how the FBI secured the “profiles” of these 10 individuals, why it took so long to hand them for identification and why they could not be identified by name.
The lack of positive identification of the alleged hijackers’ bodily remains, compounded by the lack of an established chain of custody of these remains, means that the US authorities have failed to prove that the alleged hijackers died on 9/11 at the known crash sites.
5. Conclusion
As shown above, the US authorities have failed to prove that the 19 individuals accused of the mass murder of 9/11 had boarded the aircraft, which they allegedly used to commit the crime.
No authenticated, original, passenger lists, bearing their names, have been released; no one is known to have seen them board the aircraft; no video recordings documented their boarding; no boarding pass stub is know to exist, which would document their boarding; and there is no proof that the alleged hijackers actually died at the known crash sites.
In the months following 9/11, reports appeared in mainstream media that at least five of the alleged hijackers were actually living in various Arab countries.59 These reports led to speculation that the identities of some of the hijackers were in doubt. Typical of such reports is an Associated Press dispatch of 3 November 2001, which states: “The FBI released the names and photos of the hijackers in late September. The names were those listed on the planes’ passenger manifests and investigators were certain those were the names the hijackers used when they entered the United States. But questions remained about whether they were the hijackers’ true identities. The FBI has not disclosed which names were in doubt and [FBI Director] Mueller provided no new information on the hijackers’ identities beyond his
55
Ibid.
56
‘Remains Of Nine Sept. 11 Hijackers Held’, CBS, 17 August 2002. Available at
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/08/17/attack/main519033.shtml, mirrored at
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2264&Itemid=107; Tom
Gibb, ‘FBI ends site work, says no bomb used’, Post-Gazette News, 25 September 2001. Available at
http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010925scene0925p2.asp
57
Tom Gibb, Flight 93 remains yield no evidence, Post-Gazette News, 20 December 2001. Cached at
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1060&Itemid=107
58
‘Remains of 9/11 hijackers identified’, BBC, 28 February 2003
59
A collection of articles from mainstream media on the “living hijackers” is posted on
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=10&id=97&It
emid=107
p. 9
statement to reporters.” The 9/11 Commission did neither address at all these doubts nor the reports about the “living hijackers”.
On September 14, 2001, the FBI released the names of the 19 individuals “who have been identified as hijackers aboard the four airliners that crashed on September 11, 2001”.60
On September 27, 2001, the FBI released photographs of these 19 individuals. Withdrawing from its unqualified statement of September 14, the new press release said these were photographs the FBI merely “believed to be the hijackers of the four airliners”.61
Yet for most names no birth date, birthplace or specific residence is given despite the apparent availability of such data on visa application forms and other documentation possessed by the FBI.
The FBI webpage provides the following caveat: “It should be noted that attempts to confirm the true identities of these individuals are still under way.” This statement, issued on September 27, 2001, still applies today, in 2008, because the webpage has not been updated since it was initially posted and remains, therefore, the US government’s official designation of the alleged hijackers. Accordingly, a significant difference exists between the official position of the US government, as reflected by the website of the FBI, regarding the identities of the alleged perpetrators of the crime committed on 9/11 and the popularized version parroted by politicians and the media about the guilt of 19 Muslims for the mass murder of 9/11. The 9/11 Commission has studiously avoided the question of the alleged hijackers’ identities.
More than six years have elapsed since the events of 9/11. The U.S. government had in those years sufficient time to prove the identities of the persons who allegedly boarded and crashed airplanes on 9/11. If the official account on 9/11 were true, the U.S. government, more than anyone else, would have had a vested interest to produce compelling evidence in order to prove to the world, once and for all, who committed the crime. No one has better access to incriminating evidence on 9/11 as the U.S. government and its agencies. As more and more
people suspect the U.S. government of having either allowed the crime of 9/11 to take place or actually orchestrated the crime, one would have expected the U.S. government to trumpet its incriminating evidence in order to quash such suspicions. Yet, surprisingly, the U.S. government has not attempted to prove its case. On the contrary, it has maintained a low profile regarding the actual events of 9/11, preferring to focus on other alleged threats by Al Qaeda. The most plausible explanation for this surprising conduct is that the U.S. government is unable to prove its allegations for the simple reason that these allegations are lies.
Some people may wonder why the U.S. government has not simply faked all necessary evidence, such as “authentic passenger lists”, fake testimonies and fake boarding passes, in order to prove its allegations. One can only conjecture why this has not been done. Perhaps the U.S. government found that involving a larger number of individuals in fraudulent activities by manufacturing fake evidence would be riskier than simply avoid mentioning these issues in the first place: Until now the U.S. government could rely on mass media to ask no questions about the lack of evidence.
The crime of 9/11 has served to justify two wars of aggression by the United States, an indefinite and global “war on terror”, and numerous, serious, violations of international law.
The continuous reliance on the official account regarding 9/11 threatens international peace and security. The above account should prompt all those who are concerned by human rights violations and the threat to international peace and security, to join in demanding the full truth on the events of 9/11.
60
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/091401hj.htm (emphasis added)
61
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/092701hjpic.htm (emphasis added)
==============
By Elias Davidsson
10 January 2008 (revised 8 February 2008)
http://911blogger.com/news/2008-06-16/no-evidence-muslims-hijacked-planes-911-elias-davidsson
Abstract: The United States government has alleged that 19 individuals with Arab names, deemed fanatic Muslims, hijacked four passenger planes on 11 September 2001 and crashed them in a suicide-operation that killed approximately 3,000 people. In this Note, the author shows that there is no evidence that these individuals boarded any of these passenger planes. Absent such evidence for over six years, the official account of 9/11 must finally be exposed as a lie.
The US government alleges that nineteen individuals whose names and photographs have been released by the FBI1 and whom no one has seen since 11 September 2001, had booked seats on flights AA11, AA77 (American Airlines) UA93 and UA175 (United Airlines) for that same day, boarded onto those flights, hijacked the aircraft and deliberately crashed these aircraft with passengers and crew on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and on a field in Pennsylvania.
The accusations against these nineteen individuals were based, for the most part, on what were described as lucky discoveries made on 9/11 by the FBI.
The first was the discovery of two pieces of luggage allegedly owned by Mohammed Atta, the lead suspect, which were not loaded onto flight AA11 at Boston Logan airport. The reason why these bags were not loaded onto the aircraft was never disclosed. According to FBI Special Agent James M. Fitzgerald, who testified at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the connecting flight from Portland which brought Mohammed Atta and his alleged co-hijacker Abdul Aziz Alomari to Boston, had ‘arrived too late for the luggage to be loaded onto Flight 11’2 According to the 9/11 Commission, however, the flight arrived on time at approximately 6:45 A.M., one hour before the scheduled departure of Flight AA11.3 It has never been revealed who was responsible for the “mistake” that ensured that the bags would not be loaded onto the aircraft. The contents of the luggage enabled FBI agents, as claimed by them, to ‘swiftly unravel the mystery of who carried out the suicide attacks and what motivated them’.4
Among the items reportedly found in Atta’s bags were: a hand-held electronic flight computer, a simulator procedures manual for Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft, a slide-rule flight calculator, a copy of the Qur’an and a handwritten testament written in Arabic.5 According to later testimonies by former FBI agents, the luggage also contained the identities of all 19 suspects involved in the four hijackings, information on their plans, backgrounds, motives, al Qaeda connections and [a] folding knife and pepper spray.6 According to FBI Special Agent Fitzgerald, Abdul Aziz Alomari’s passport was also found in one the bags.7
1
FBI, Press Release, 27 September 2001. Available at
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/092701hjpic.htm
2
United States of America v Zacarias Moussaoui, U.S. District Court, Alexandria Division. Cross-
examination of FBI Special Agent James M. Fitzgerald. March 7, 2006, 10:00 A.M. Transcript p. 38.
Available at http://cryptome.org/usa-v-zm-030706-01.htm
3
9/11 Commission’s Staff Report of 26 August 2004 (declassified), p. 3. Available at
http://www.archives.gov/legislative/research/9-11/staff-report-sept2005.pdf
4
Michael Dorman, ‘Unravelling 9-11 was in the bags’, Newsday, 17 April 2006. Available at
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-
uslugg274705186apr17,0,6096142.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-print
5
FBI Affidavit, at http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/atta/resources/documents/fbiaffidavit1.htm
6
Michael Dorman, supra n. 4
7
United States of America v Zacarias Moussaoui, supra n. 2
p. 2
Other incriminating items were also swiftly found at other locations.
= The 9/11 Commission noted, for example, that a passport of one of the alleged hijackers was found near the World Trade Center where a ‘passer-by picked it up and gave it to a NYPD detective shortly before the ...towers collapsed’8. Numerous observers found it hard to believe that such a document could make it undamaged from the pocket of a dead suspect in the burning wreckage within the building to the street and be found miraculously within minutes.
= A Saudi Arabian driver’s license of Ahmad al-Ghamdi, another suspect, ‘was [also] recovered at the World Trade Center crash site’.
= A Toyota Corolla registered to alleged hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi was discovered at Washington’s Dulles Airport on 12 September. It contained a ‘four-page letter written in Arabic that was identical to the one recovered from the luggage of Mohammed Atta at Logan Airport’, a cashier’s check made out to a flight school in Phoenix, four drawings of the cockpit of a 757 jet, a box cutter-type knife, maps of Washington and New York, and a page with notes and phone numbers.9
= In a car rented by alleged hijacker Marwan Alshehhi and discovered at Boston’s Logan Airport, the FBI found an Arabic language flight manual, a pass giving access to restricted areas at the airport, documents containing a name on the passenger list of one of the flights, and the names of other suspects. The name of the flight school where Mohammed Atta and Alshehhi studied, Huffman Aviation, was also found in the car.10
= A number of documents purporting to identify the suspects of flight UA93 were reportedly found at that flight’s crash site, though no aircraft wreckage was seen there and no drop of blood.11 The incriminating items included the passport of alleged hijacker Al Ghamdi,12 alleged hijacker Alnami’s Florida Driver’s License13, his Saudi Arabian Youth Hostel Association ID card14, a visa page from alleged hijacker Ziad Jarrah’s passport15, and a business card of Jarrah’s uncle.16
At the Pentagon crash site, a “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Student Identity Card” is discovered with alleged hijacker Majed Moqed’s name on it.17
= On September 12, 2001, the FBI was notified by a hotel owner in Deerfield Beach, Florida, that he found a box cutter left in a room left by alleged hijacker Marwan Alshehhi and two unidentified men. The owner said to have found in a nearby trash a duffel bag containing Boeing 757 manuals, three illustrated martial arts books, an 8-inch stack of East Coast flight maps, a three-ring binder full of handwritten notes, an English-German dictionary, an airplane fuel tester, and a protractor.18
8
Susan Ginsburg (staff member of the Commission) at Public Hearing of the 9/11 Commission, 26
January 2004. Available at http://www.sacred-texts.com/ame/911/911tr/012604.htm
9
U.S. v. Moussaoui, supra n. 7, p. 39; Arizona Daily Star, 28 September 2001, Cox News Service, 21
October 2001.
10
Los Angeles Times, 13 September 2001
11
Robb Frederick, ‘The day that changed Amereica’, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 11 September 2002.
Cached at
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2263&Itemid=107
12
Moussaoui trial exhibit PA00108, at
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/PA00108.html
13
Moussaoui trial exhibit PA00110, at
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/PA00110.html
14
Moussaoui trial exhibit PA00102, at
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/PA00102.html
15
Moussaoui trial exhibit PA00105.08, at
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/prosecution/PA00105-08.html
16
Moussaoui trial exhibit GX-PA00109, at http://www.rcfp.org/moussaoui/
17
9/11 Commission Final Report, p. 132
18
Miami Herald, 16 September 2001; Associated Press, 16 September 2001.
p. 3
And to complete the picture, the night before 9/11, after making predictions that an attack on America would be carried the next day, some of the alleged hijackers were reported to have left in a bar a business card ... and a copy of the Qur’an.19
The amount and nature of all of that incriminating evidence suggested to an unidentified former high-level intelligence official that “whatever trail was left was left deliberately – for the FBI to chase.”20
Such suspicion is, of course, warranted. But it is important to keep in mind that the discovery of these items does not, by itself, prove that their alleged owners actually boarded any particular aircraft, hijacked those aircraft and crashed the aircraft at the known sites. The findings merely represent circumstantial evidence.
In order to prove that the suspects actually boarded the aircraft and died at the known crash sites, at least three types of evidence could and should have been produced: Authenticated passenger lists, identification of the suspects as they boarded the aircraft and identification of their bodily remains from the crash sites.
1. No authenticated passenger lists
Airline passenger lists are essential documents required for insurance purposes. This is why it is important for each airline to meticulously document and check the identities of passengers who board passenger airliners. Yet, as will be shown, the US authorities have not only failed to produce authenticated passenger lists, but have - by producing contradictory reports – admitted that such lists do not exist.
= On 13 September 2001 Attorney General John Ashcroft said that ‘between three and six individuals on each of the hijacked airplanes were involved’ in the hijackings.21
= On the same day FBI Director Robert Mueller 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’.22
= A day later the number grew to 19. 23
= Initially, the name of Mosear Caned (ph) was released by CNN as one of the suspected hijackers.24 His name disappeared a few hours later from the list of suspects when CNN posted a new list of suspects released by the FBI 25. It was never explained why Caned’s name had appeared in the first place and why it was then removed.26
= Two other names, Adnan and Ameer Bukhari, whose names had also apparently figured on the original passenger list, disappeared and were replaced by other names.27
= A fourth person, Amer Kamfar, was also named as an initial suspect hijacker.28 His name also disappeared from the subsequent lists of suspect hijackers.
The Washington Post revealed that the original passenger lists did not include the name of Khalid Al Mihdhar who later appeared as one of the alleged hijackers. In its Final Edition of 16 September 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.’29 After that date ‘reports began emerging saying that al-Mihdhar was still alive.’30
19
Associated Press, 14 September 2001
20
New Yorker, 8 October 2001
21
‘FBI: Early probe results show 18 hijackers took part’, CNN, 13 September 2001. Available at
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/13/investigation.terrorism/
22
Ibid.
23
FBI Press Release of 14 September 2001. Available at
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=372&Itemid=107
24
Kelli Arena, CNN, 14 September 2001, 10:11 ET. Available at
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/14/bn.01.html
25
‘FBI list of suspected hijackers’, CNN, 14 September 2001, 2:00 PM, EDT. Available at
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/14/fbi.document/
26
Xymphora, ‘Analysis of the Mosear Caned mystery’. Available at
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1993&Itemid=107
27
Mike Fish, ‘Fla. flight schools may have trained hijackers’, CNN, 14 September 2001. Available at
http://edition.cnn.com/2001/US/09/13/flight.schools/
28
Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amer_Kamfar
p. 4
On 12 September 2001, various newspapers published partial passenger lists of the crashed flights.
= These reports included Jude Larsson, 31, and his wife, Natalie, 24, as passengers aboard flight AA11.31 Yet on September 18, 2001, the Honolulu Star Bulletin reported that the newspaper had received an email from Jude, apparently alive, notifying of the mistake.32 According to the paper, “a person claiming to be with the airlines” called Jude’s father, a person described as a “known sculptor” in his community, and informed him that his son and daughter-in-law had been passengers on flight AA11. The names of Jude and Natalie Larson then disappeared from publicized passenger lists. More bizarre is that the names of Jude and Natalie Larson, whose names are not anymore officially listed as flight AA11 victims, are still listed as dead on the National Obituary Archive.33
The aforementioned fluctuations in the number and names of the alleged hijackers (and two passengers) suggest that their identification was not based on the original passenger lists.
While printouts purporting to be copies of passenger lists from 9/11 were presented as exhibits at the Moussaoui trial and posted in May 2006 on the internet34, these printouts contain no authentication and were not accompanied by chain-of-custody reports. These lists were released discreetly, without comments or indication as to their source, suggesting that the US authorities did not relish having questions being asked about these lists’ authenticity.
While the names of all passengers, crew and suspected hijackers were publicized shortly after 9/11 in the media, the FBI and the airlines have consistently refused and continue to refuse to release the authentic, original, passenger lists and flight manifests, of the four 9/11 flights, if such lists exist at all.35
As the names of all victims and alleged hijackers have been publicized within days after 9/11, privacy considerations cannot explain the refusal to simply confirm – by releasing the original, authentic, documents – what has been publicly asserted since 9/11. The only plausible explanation for this refusal is that the release of the authentic passenger lists (if they at all exist) would undermine the official account on 9/11 and raise questions about official complicity in the crime.
2. No testimonies of aircraft boarding
A second category of evidence to prove that particular individuals have boarded a particular airplane at a particular gate and a specific time, is eyewitness testimony and security video recordings.
Did anyone witness the boarding of the aircraft?
29
Khalid Al-Mihdhar, Washington Post, 16 September 2001, p. A06 (no author indicated)
30
Wikipedia: Khalid Al-Mihdhar. Available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_al-Mihdhar
31
CBS, 12 September 2001, http://election.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/12/national/main310935.shtml;
The Honolulu Star Bulletin, 12 September 2001: http://starbulletin.com/2001/09/12/news/story1.html;
Washington Post, 13 September 2001, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18970-2001Sep12;
CNN (undated), http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/AA11.victims.html.
32
Honolulu Star Bulletin, 18 September 2001, http://starbulletin.com/2001/09/18/news/story5.html
33
National Obituary Archive: http://www.arrangeonline.com/Obituary/obituary.asp?ObituaryID=64182329;
http://www.nationalobituaryarchive.com/donation/donation.asp?ObituaryID=64182329;
http://www.cemeteryonline.com/ctz/0Mem/20010911/AA11-2001.htm
34
http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/evidence/passengers.html
35
The refusal to release the original passenger lists, has typically taken an evasive form, illustrated in an
exchange of emails between this author and American Airlines. See
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2329&Itemid=107
p.5
According to the 9/11 Commission, ten of the nineteen suspects were selected on 9/11 at the airports by the automated CAPPS system for ‘additional security scrutiny’.36 Yet no one of those who handled the selectees, 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 the 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.”37
= 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.”38
= As 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.”39 According to an undated FBI report, the ‘FBI collected 14 knives or portions of knives at the Flight 93 crash site.’40 Yet no screener is known to have mentioned coming across a single knife that morning.41
To sum this paragraph, no airport security employee has testified to have actually seen any of the alleged hijackers.
Airline personnel traditionally see off passengers as they board onto aircraft in order to tear off the stub of their boarding cards. Under the circumstances of 9/11, one would have expected to see, hear and read international media interview airline employees under headlines such as “I was the last to see the passengers alive”. Yet no such interview is known to have taken place.
The 9/11 Commission does not even mention the existence of any deposition or testimony by airline personnel that witnessed the boarding of the aircraft. And even the identities of these employees remains secret: As a response to this author’s request to interview American Airlines employees who saw off passengers of flight AA77, the airline responded that their identities cannot be revealed for privacy reasons.42
The absence of testimonies regarding the boarding process can, perhaps, be explained by a number of anomalies. It was discovered in 2003 by independent investigator Gerard Holmgren and ascertained by the present author that according to the BTS database of the US Department of Transportation (DoT), flight AA11 and flight AA77 were not scheduled to fly at all on 11 September 2001 but were scheduled to fly on the preceding and subsequent days.43 After Holmgren’s discovery was publicized on the internet, the DoT hastily added the records for AA11 and AA77 flights on the 9/11, fraudulently manipulating official records to correspond with the official account on the crime. Another discovered anomaly is that according to the BTS database the aircraft, which reportedly crashed on the Pentagon (flight
36
Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Official
Government Edition. Available at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/911/index.html, Chapter I, Note 2, p. 451.
37
Ibid. Chapter I, p. 2. In support of this statement, the Commission refers to interviews with six named
individuals.
38
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.
39
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.
40
Ibid. Note 82, p. 457
41
Staff Statement No. 3 to the 9/11 Commission made at the 7th Public Hearing, 26-27 January 2004, pp.
9-10. Available at
http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/staff_statement_3.pdf
42
Exchange of emails between the author and American Airlines, supra n. 35. See letter from American
Airlines to the author dated 1 December 2005.
43
Gerard Holmgren, ‘Evidence that Flights AA 11 and AA 77 Did Not Exist on September 11, 2001’, 13
November 2003. Available at http://www.serendipity.li/wot/aa_flts/aa_flts.htm
p.6
AA77, tail number N644AA), did not depart at all from Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C. as officially reported.44 A third anomaly is that flight AA11 was initially reported in the media to have departed from Gate number 26, while this particular flight usually had departed from Gate 32.45 The 9/11 Commission claimed, however, that the flight had departed from Gate number 32. No explanation has been given for these contradictory reports. Testimonies by eyewitnesses would have easily resolved these inconsistencies. The absence or suppression of such testimonies suggests, therefore, that what happened at boarding time is a closely held secret, the revelation of which might help solve the mystery surrounding 9/11.
As no person has testified to have witnessed the boarding process, did perhaps security cameras document it? Apparently none of the three airports from where the 9/11 aircraft reportedly departed had surveillance cameras above the boarding gates. Thus, there exists neither eyewitness testimony nor a visual documentation of the boarding process. This means in plain language that the families of those who had booked flights with one of the 9/11 flights and of the crew of these flights have been prevented from knowing what happened to their loved ones once they arrived at the three airports on the morning of 9/11.
Whether they boarded any aircraft, and if so, which, remains uncertain.
Yet public opinion remains convinced that surveillance videos of the boarding process had been shown on TV networks. In fact, what has been shown around the world was not the boarding process of any of the four aircraft but two video recordings, one of which is said to be from Portland airport and the other from Dulles Airport. The Portland video purports to show alleged hijackers Atta and Alomari before they board onto a connecting flight to Boston. Even if this video is authentic and if it actually shows these individuals, it does not show what they did after they arrived in Boston.
The other security video recording is said to be from the screening checkpoint at Dulles Airport, Washington, D.C., from where flight AA77 allegedly departed.
According to all known sources, Logan Airport, Boston, did not have any surveillance cameras on 9/11, neither at the security checkpoints nor above the boarding gates.46 No one is known to dispute this fact. According to the 9/11 Commission’s staff, the Newark International Airport, from which flight UA93 reportedly departed, did not either have such equipment47. But this claim has been contradicted by Michael Taylor, president of American International Security Corporation who claims that security cameras had been installed at that airport.48 The video recording that has been shown widely purports to show 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 under the Freedom Of Information Act.49 This video recording can be found on various sites on the Internet.50 Jay Kolar, who published a critical analysis of this recording,51 pointed out that it does not show the date and time of recording or the camera number. Security videos typically record such identifying information automatically. He also pointed
44
The Flight Path Study – American Airlines Flight 77 by the NTSB, 19 February 2002,
http://www.ntsb.gov/info/Flight_%20Path_%20Study_AA77.pdf
45
Ewing2001, Flight 11 – The Twin Flight, http://911wideopen.com/mirror/twin11-1/twin-11-mod.htm
46
Staff Statement No. 3, supra n. 41. p. 18
47
Staff Statement No. 3, supra n. 41. p. 35
48
Doug Hanchett and Robin Washington, ‘Logan lacks video cameras’, Boston Herald, 29 September
2001.
49
Nick Grimm, ‘Commission report finalised as 9/11 airport video released’, ABC.net.au, 22 July 2004.
Available at http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2004/s1159804.htm
50
The video can be viewed here: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/hijackers_video.html
51
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), pp. 7-10
p.7
out further anomalies, such as the unusually bright lighting (which suggest that the recording was not made in the morning) and the fact that a human operator had manipulated the camera in order to zoom on particular subjects (indicating foreknowledge of those subjects). His conclusion is that someone deliberately decided to film certain persons passing a security checkpoint at a certain time in order to produce “evidence”. The released recording does not show any passengers pass through the security checkpoint. Aside from the dubious source of this recording, it does not show who boarded the aircraft but only a few individuals who passed some security checkpoint at an unknown time.
3. No boarding passes
To ensure that all checked-in passengers actually board the aircraft, airline personnel usually tear a stub of the boarding pass and count these stubs. These stubs carry the names of the passengers.
The 9/11 Commission Staff report,52 which mentions specifically that Mohammed Atta received a “boarding pass” at Portland airport, does not mention at all boarding passes in connection with flights AA11, AA77, UA175 and UA93, as if such documents did not exist. The Staff report does not explain how the airlines checked who boarded the aircraft.
4. No positive identification of the alleged hijackers’ bodily remains
According to the official account, the 19 hijackers died in the crashes at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and at the crash site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Yet, there is no positive proof that they did. There is no indication that a proper chain of custody53 between the crash sites and the final disposition of bodily remains had been established by the FBI, as required in criminal cases. The 9/11 Commission did not refer to any such documentation.
Unidentified officials spoken to by The Times (U.K.) in October 2001 expected that the bodies of the 9/11 suspects would be identified ‘by a process of elimination’54. They did not explain why they did not expect a positive identification of these bodies.
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
52
Staff Report, supra n. 3
53
In practical terms, a chain of custody is the documentation and testimony that proves that the evidence has not been altered or tampered with in any way since it was obtained. This is necessary both to assure its admissibility in a judicial proceeding and its probative value in any preceding investigation. “Proving chain of custody is necessary to ‘lay a foundation’ for the evidence in question, by showing the absence of alteration, substitution, or change of condition. Specifically, foundation testimony for tangible evidence requires that exhibits be identified as being in substantially the same condition as they were at the time the evidence was seized, and that the exhibit has remained in that condition through an unbroken chain of custody. For example, suppose that in a prosecution for possession of illegal narcotics, police sergeant A recovers drugs from the defendant; A gives police officer B the drugs; B then gives the drugs to police scientist C, who conducts an analysis of the drugs; C gives the drugs to police detective D, who brings the drugs to court. The testimony of A, B, C, and D constitute a "chain of custody" for the drugs, and the prosecution would need to offer testimony by each person in the chain to establish both the condition and identification of the evidence, unless the defendant stipulated as to the chain of custody in order to save time.” (Free Online Law Dictionary, http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Chain+of+custody )
54
Damian Whitworth, ‘Hijackers' bodies set Bush grisly ethical question’, The Times (U.K.), 6 October
2001
p.8
family members over there.’55 He did neither 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 United States where the alleged hijackers had lived. While the AFIP announced to have 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 to be the terrorists’.56 Somerset County coroner Wallace Miller said that the “death certificates [for the suspected hijackers] will list each as 'John Doe'”.57
As for the remains of the suspects who allegedly flew AA11 and UA175 into the Twin Towers, a spokeswoman for the New York Medical Examiner’s Office, where the identification of the WTC victims took place, said to have received from the FBI in February 2003 “profiles of all 10 hijackers ...so their remains could be separated from those of victims.” She added: “No names were attached to these profiles. We matched them, and we have matched two of those profiles to remains that we have.”58 No explanation was given where and how the FBI secured the “profiles” of these 10 individuals, why it took so long to hand them for identification and why they could not be identified by name.
The lack of positive identification of the alleged hijackers’ bodily remains, compounded by the lack of an established chain of custody of these remains, means that the US authorities have failed to prove that the alleged hijackers died on 9/11 at the known crash sites.
5. Conclusion
As shown above, the US authorities have failed to prove that the 19 individuals accused of the mass murder of 9/11 had boarded the aircraft, which they allegedly used to commit the crime.
No authenticated, original, passenger lists, bearing their names, have been released; no one is known to have seen them board the aircraft; no video recordings documented their boarding; no boarding pass stub is know to exist, which would document their boarding; and there is no proof that the alleged hijackers actually died at the known crash sites.
In the months following 9/11, reports appeared in mainstream media that at least five of the alleged hijackers were actually living in various Arab countries.59 These reports led to speculation that the identities of some of the hijackers were in doubt. Typical of such reports is an Associated Press dispatch of 3 November 2001, which states: “The FBI released the names and photos of the hijackers in late September. The names were those listed on the planes’ passenger manifests and investigators were certain those were the names the hijackers used when they entered the United States. But questions remained about whether they were the hijackers’ true identities. The FBI has not disclosed which names were in doubt and [FBI Director] Mueller provided no new information on the hijackers’ identities beyond his
55
Ibid.
56
‘Remains Of Nine Sept. 11 Hijackers Held’, CBS, 17 August 2002. Available at
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/08/17/attack/main519033.shtml, mirrored at
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2264&Itemid=107; Tom
Gibb, ‘FBI ends site work, says no bomb used’, Post-Gazette News, 25 September 2001. Available at
http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010925scene0925p2.asp
57
Tom Gibb, Flight 93 remains yield no evidence, Post-Gazette News, 20 December 2001. Cached at
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1060&Itemid=107
58
‘Remains of 9/11 hijackers identified’, BBC, 28 February 2003
59
A collection of articles from mainstream media on the “living hijackers” is posted on
http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=10&id=97&It
emid=107
p. 9
statement to reporters.” The 9/11 Commission did neither address at all these doubts nor the reports about the “living hijackers”.
On September 14, 2001, the FBI released the names of the 19 individuals “who have been identified as hijackers aboard the four airliners that crashed on September 11, 2001”.60
On September 27, 2001, the FBI released photographs of these 19 individuals. Withdrawing from its unqualified statement of September 14, the new press release said these were photographs the FBI merely “believed to be the hijackers of the four airliners”.61
Yet for most names no birth date, birthplace or specific residence is given despite the apparent availability of such data on visa application forms and other documentation possessed by the FBI.
The FBI webpage provides the following caveat: “It should be noted that attempts to confirm the true identities of these individuals are still under way.” This statement, issued on September 27, 2001, still applies today, in 2008, because the webpage has not been updated since it was initially posted and remains, therefore, the US government’s official designation of the alleged hijackers. Accordingly, a significant difference exists between the official position of the US government, as reflected by the website of the FBI, regarding the identities of the alleged perpetrators of the crime committed on 9/11 and the popularized version parroted by politicians and the media about the guilt of 19 Muslims for the mass murder of 9/11. The 9/11 Commission has studiously avoided the question of the alleged hijackers’ identities.
More than six years have elapsed since the events of 9/11. The U.S. government had in those years sufficient time to prove the identities of the persons who allegedly boarded and crashed airplanes on 9/11. If the official account on 9/11 were true, the U.S. government, more than anyone else, would have had a vested interest to produce compelling evidence in order to prove to the world, once and for all, who committed the crime. No one has better access to incriminating evidence on 9/11 as the U.S. government and its agencies. As more and more
people suspect the U.S. government of having either allowed the crime of 9/11 to take place or actually orchestrated the crime, one would have expected the U.S. government to trumpet its incriminating evidence in order to quash such suspicions. Yet, surprisingly, the U.S. government has not attempted to prove its case. On the contrary, it has maintained a low profile regarding the actual events of 9/11, preferring to focus on other alleged threats by Al Qaeda. The most plausible explanation for this surprising conduct is that the U.S. government is unable to prove its allegations for the simple reason that these allegations are lies.
Some people may wonder why the U.S. government has not simply faked all necessary evidence, such as “authentic passenger lists”, fake testimonies and fake boarding passes, in order to prove its allegations. One can only conjecture why this has not been done. Perhaps the U.S. government found that involving a larger number of individuals in fraudulent activities by manufacturing fake evidence would be riskier than simply avoid mentioning these issues in the first place: Until now the U.S. government could rely on mass media to ask no questions about the lack of evidence.
The crime of 9/11 has served to justify two wars of aggression by the United States, an indefinite and global “war on terror”, and numerous, serious, violations of international law.
The continuous reliance on the official account regarding 9/11 threatens international peace and security. The above account should prompt all those who are concerned by human rights violations and the threat to international peace and security, to join in demanding the full truth on the events of 9/11.
60
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/091401hj.htm (emphasis added)
61
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel01/092701hjpic.htm (emphasis added)
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