as a bin Laden associate. Yet neither was on a terrorist watchlist available to border agents. By contrast, other countries had both Mihdhar and Hazmi on watchlists. Once the two men reached the United States, the CIA withheld from the FBI crucial information about them and their movements. Compounded by what a later investigation would call “individual and systemic failings” by the FBI, the result was a series of missed opportunities.
Once in the United States, the two natives of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, insinuated themselves into the Muslim community of San Diego and received help from fellow Saudis. Originally viewed by bin Laden as potential pilots, neither Mihdhar nor Hazmi had the necessary English language skills. Aptitude and intelligence might have been lacking, too—their flight training stalled after they told an instructor they wanted to learn how to fly a plane but showed no interest in takeoffs or landings.
During the spring and summer of 2001, as part of their final preparations, Atta, Jarrah, and Shehhi took cross-country flights to observe the workings of crews and to determine whether they might smuggle weapons on board. Atta flew to Spain to brief an al-Qaeda planner about the plot, then returned to the United States. Jarrah and Hanjour sought training on how to fly a low-altitude pathway along the Hudson River that passed New York landmarks including the World Trade Center, and they rented small planes for practice flights. “Muscle” group members busied themselves training at gyms.
As months passed, bin Laden became frustrated, pressuring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to put the Planes Operation into motion. Bin Laden wanted it to be executed in May 2001, marking seven months since the bombing of the USS Cole, and then in June or July, when Israeli opposition party leader Ariel Sharon visited the White House. Each date passed as Atta hesitated to commit on timing until he felt absolutely ready.
Finally, in late August, Atta picked a day just weeks away: the second Tuesday in September. It’s a mystery whether he made a simple logistical choice, based on his expectation that it would be a light travel day, which meant fewer passengers to deal with; whether he saw propaganda value in a date that matched America’s 9-1-1 emergency telephone system; or whether he sought historical revenge by choosing the month and day of the start of the 1683 Battle of Vienna, a humiliating defeat for the Ottoman Empire against Christian forces that began a centuries-long decline of Islamic influence.
Whatever the trigger, Atta and his eighteen associates started buying flight tickets, some by using computers in public libraries. They kept enough money for expenses, then returned much of the rest to al-Qaeda operatives in the United Arab Emirates. All told, the entire plan cost less than half a million dollars.
The members of the Planes Operation broke into three groups of five and one group of four, each led by one of the four men who’d trained as a pilot: Atta, Shehhi, Hanjour, and Jarrah. By the second week of September, all had rented rooms at hotels or motels in or near Boston, Newark, and Washington, D.C.
Atta and the other pilots worked on final details, while some of the others focused on earthly desires. In Boston, “muscle” members Abdulaziz al-Omari and Satam al-Suqami paid for the company of two women from the Sweet Temptations escort service. One spent a hundred dollars on a prostitute two more times in a single day. In New Jersey, another paid twenty dollars for a private dance in the VIP room of a go-go bar, while another contented himself with a pornographic video.
On September 10, when everything and everyone was almost in place, Ziad Jarrah stepped outside a Days Inn in Newark, New Jersey, where he and three “muscle” men had checked in the previous day.
Jarrah’s thoughts wandered to his girlfriend in Germany, a medical student of Turkish heritage named Aysel Sengün. They’d dated for five years, they emailed or spoke by phone almost daily, and she’d visited him in Florida eight months earlier. Jarrah showed off his new skills as a pilot, flying her in a single-engine plane to Key West. They’d discussed a future together, but Sengün’s parents insisted that she marry a fellow Turk. When Jarrah asked for her father’s blessing, the elder Sengün threw Jarrah out of his house. They continued their relationship in secret, and weeks earlier, Jarrah had flown to Germany to see her. Over their years together, she’d watched as the happy-go-lucky man she met grew a beard and criticized her for being insufficiently devout, but more recently Sengün had been seeing what she thought was a return to his easygoing ways. She had no idea what he would do.
Jarrah left the Days Inn in a rented car and drove three miles to Elizabeth, New Jersey, to mail a letter he wrote that day to Sengün. He placed it in a package along with his private pilot’s license, his pilot logbook, and a postcard showing a photo of a beach.
In a mix of German and Arabic, the letter began with expressions of love and devotion to chabibi, or “darling.” Before signing it “Your man forever,” Jarrah wrote:
I will wait for you until you come to me. There comes a time for everyone to make a move… . You should be very proud of me. It’s an honor, and you will see the results, and everybody will be happy… .
While Jarrah mailed his package, Atta prepared to leave his room at the Boston hotel. Some items in his Travelpro luggage made sense for a devout Muslim who’d received a commercial pilot’s license nine months earlier: alongside a Koran and a prayer schedule, he packed videotaped lessons on how to fly two types of Boeing jets; a device for determining the effect of a plane’s weight on its range; an electronic flight computer; a procedure manual for flight simulators; and flight planning sheets. Anyone who knew what he had planned would also have noted that he packed a folding knife and a canister of “First Defense” pepper spray. Finally, tucked into the black suitcase was a four-page letter, handwritten in Arabic, that charted Atta’s physical and spiritual intentions.
Divided into three sections, the letter provided detailed instructions and exhortations on the subjects of martyrdom and mass murder. It covered demeanor and grooming, battle tactics, and the promise of eternal life in the company of “nymphs.” After formal invocations, “In the name of Allah, the most merciful, the most compassionate,” the first section addressed Atta’s situation at that very moment. Titled “The Last Night,” it began:
1 Embrace the will to die and renew allegiance. -Shave the extra body hair and wear cologne. -Pray.
2 Familiarize yourself with the plan well from every aspect, and anticipate the reaction and resistance from the enemy.
3 Read the Al-Tawbah [Repentance], the Anfal chapters [in the Quran], and reflect on their meaning and what Allah has prepared for the believers and the martyrs in Paradise.
Near the end of the first section, it offered this direction:
1 13. Examine your weapon before departure, and it was said before the departure, “Each of you must sharpen his blade and go out and wound his sacrifice.”
Among the nineteen men with plans to wreak havoc in the next twenty-four hours, at least two others, one in New Jersey and the other outside Washington, had copies of the same letter.
Atta left the Milner Hotel and drove a rented blue Nissan Altima to a cheap hotel in the Boston suburb of Newton. There he picked up the man believed to have written, or at least copied, the instruction letter: Abdulaziz al-Omari, the same young Saudi who days earlier had ordered prostitutes like delivery pizza.
Atta and Omari headed toward Interstate 95 for a two-hour drive to Portland, Maine, a trip that could best be described as the first arc of a circular route. They held tickets for a commuter flight that would bring them back to Boston. The flight was scheduled to leave Portland at six o’clock the following morning, September 11.
