Thestar.com Sat Sep 15, 2001 - Updated at 09:33 AM Sep. 15, 2001. 03:26 AM Hijackers set down roots, blended in, then attacked Nicolaas van Rijn STAFF REPORTER TERRORISTS: Mohammed Atta, left, and Marwan Al-Shehhi were part of a well-funded network. RELATED LINKS · The real bin Laden (The New Yorker, 1998) · Hunting bin Laden (PBS' Frontline) · Declassified security documents on Osama bin Laden (thesmokinggun.com) · FBI's Most Wanted - Usama bin Laden · U.S. Central Intelligence Agency · U.S. State Department's case against bin Laden · Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska · Terrorism Research Center Nineteen men, any one of whom could have been your next door neighbour. A support network of 50 to 100 others, aided by a well-funded organization that stretched across four continents. As an FBI task force of 7,000 agents and other investigators continue to press forward with the largest criminal investigation in American history, the stealthy face of the four terrorist cells that were involved in Tuesday's massive attack on the United States is gradually beginning to be revealed. They played soccer. Mowed their lawns. Some brought their families and lived on neat residential streets, leaving their garage doors open when they left home. They ate pizza, and a few occasionally went drinking at strip bars. They took their kids to school, waved at the neighbours, put out their trash, and drove SUVs and Plymouth Voyagers. ``If he was dangerous, he never showed it while living here,'' said Hank Habora, who lived across the street from one of the men in Vero Beach, Fla. ``But it kind of makes you nervous, thinking that they lived next door all that time.'' The men, all apparently from the Middle East. Their ages, all apparently in their 20s and 30s. And, after painstakingly thorough interviews with neighbours, store clerks and rental agents, the incredible fact that some of them had been in the United States for five years or more, hiding in plain sight as they trained at American flight schools for Tuesday's massive killing blow against New York's World Trade Center and Washington's Pentagon. ``These guys didn't just show up out of the dark on the morning they struck their blow against America,'' an FBI agent in the Miami field office said yesterday. ``They've been here, some of them for years, planning this, getting ready for this, polishing their flying skills. ``They demonstrated incredible discipline and patience, aided and abetted, in a sense, by the American way of life - open, free, democratic.'' The United States has singled out Saudi-born extremist Osama bin Laden as a chief suspect in the case and Secretary of State Colin Powell warned nations that if they harboured terrorists they could be at risk. ``Everything so far continues to point to bin Laden,'' said one U.S. official. ``Iraq doesn't seem to be panning out, and the same thing with Iran.'' The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said information gleaned from the early stages of the investigation indicated that at least some members of the four terrorist cells carefully set down roots in local communities, blending into the neighbourhood and impressing the people next door as ``just plain folk,'' as one woman said. ``Quiet, but friendly, and open - or so we thought.'' That's how bin Laden's terrorist cells typically operate, officials said, adding one of the hallmarks of bin Laden's plots is to place people in a community with orders to establish a local network and lay the groundwork for an attack that is never completely spelled out to them. Yesterday, the FBI released the names and some of the information it had compiled on the 19 hijackers involved in the attacks on the World Trade Centre's twin 100-storey towers and the massive concrete structure of the Pentagon. FBI Director Robert Mueller said his agency had a ``high level of confidence'' that most of the 19 names were real and not aliases. Aboard American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 bound from Boston's Logan airport to Los Angeles, and flown into the north tower of the World Trade Center with the loss of 92 passengers and crew: Satam Al Suqami, Waleed M. Alshehri, Wail Alshehri, Mohammed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari. Aboard American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 bound from Washington's Dulles airport to Los Angeles, flown into the Pentagon with the loss of 64 passengers and crew: Khalid Al-Midhar, Majed Moqed, Nawaq Alhamzi, Salem Alhamzi and Hani Hanjour, Aboard United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing 767 bound from Boston to Los Angeles, flown into the south tower of the World Trade Center with the loss of 65 passengers and crew: Marwan Al-Shehhi, Fayez Ahmed, Ahmed Alghamdi, Hamza Alghamdi, and Mohald Alshehri. Aboard United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 bound from Newark, N.J. - across the river from New York - to San Francisco, diverted to an unknown target in Washington and brought down by as-yet unknown means in rural Pennsylvania with the loss of 45 passengers and crew: Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed Alhaznawi, Ahmed Alnami and Ziad Jarrahi. American officials yesterday, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said they have linked four of the dead hijackers - Waleed Alshehri, Ahmed Alghamdi, Hamza Alghamdi and Saeed Alghamdi - to bin Laden's Al-Qaida network. _________________________________________________________________ There is no hard evidence yet that any of them crossed into the United States from Canada. But many American investigators are convinced of a Canadian connection, and say interviews with some residents of border areas in the northeast back them up. One, the owner of a gas station in tiny Jackman, Me., along a particularly isolated route linking Quebec city to western Maine, said he vividly recalls an encounter with four Arab men on Aug. 17. Having once worked in the Middle East, 46-year-old Raymond Stevens said he was able to converse briefly in Arabic with four men who said they were from Saudi Arabia. Three were in Western dress and one in ``more traditional dress,'' he said. Investigators have requested passenger manifests from two ferries operating between Yarmouth, N.S., and Maine. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien continues to insist that American investigators have not yet been able to demonstrate a Canadian link. Despite that, officials in New England maintain that several of the terrorists crossed into the U.S. from Canada using remote border crossings in Maine. At least one took a ferry to Maine from Nova Scotia, they say. And at least two of the hijackers crossed the border at Coburn Gore, Me., where a single immigration inspector usually takes care of everything that passes by on the two-lane road outside. _________________________________________________________________ It's a familiar pattern, a staple of spy literature, and so simple and effective that it invariably fails to trigger the suspicions of local authorities: Infiltrate a `sleeper' agent into the community, let him go about his daily business, becoming part of the scenery, while he trains for his role in a mission he may know nothing about. Bin Laden is a past master at the game. Before the 1998 U.S. embassy bombing in Kenya, bin Laden operatives married local women, collected information on potential targets, rented houses, and purchased equipment. Later, a commander sent from Afghanistan arrived in Kenya to oversee the last-minute procedures. According to the Boston Globe, Waleed Alshehri arrived in the United States in 1996, settling in Daytona Beach where he studied flying at Embry-Riddle Aeronautics University, a four-year institution considered to be a leader in training pilots. He graduated in 1997 with a degree in aeronautical science - and the skills to handle a commercial jetliner. And he didn't stand out. The university says its student body represents more than 100 nations, many of them in the Middle East. ``A very mild-mannered person, small in structure,'' is how 61-year-old Frank Richey, an Embry-Riddle professor who was interviewed by the FBI, remembers Alshehri. ``He seemed to be very friendly. He was probably one of the last persons I'd expect to do something like this. He didn't appear to be a religious fanatic at all.'' And he was motivated. ``He wanted to be a professional pilot,'' Richey added. ``I could tell he was well educated. He was an A or B student, and you don't get those types of grades here without being a quality student.'' His arrival, investigators say, shows that the planning to train suicide pilots began in 1996, if not earlier. Over the next five years, various numbers of the suicide pilots arrived in Florida to train for their kamikaze missions at the many flight schools there. They blended right in, some of them even sacrificing one of the strictest tenets of their Muslim faith - the one against consuming alcohol - as they became part of the community. Some knew one another and lived as neighbours in comfortable homes on quiet streets. Some brought their wives and children with them, took shopping trips to the mall in their Plymouth Voyagers, enrolled their children in local schools and played computer games with the local children. And, once in a while, a few of them would withdraw to the local bar, where they'd ring up hefty bar bills while ogling the strip dancers writhing on the poles onstage. Most of the Florida suspects, the men who went in for flight training, lived like college students in rented rooms and had little or no history of employment. A few brought their families with them and settled into quiet residential streets. None of them worked, but they could all, somehow, afford expensive flight training, some of it costing up to $25,000 (U.S.), and paid cash for other expenses, like renting single-engine airplanes for 90-minute training flights at $133 a pop. ``Somebody other than these guys was paying the bills,'' said a U.S. Justice Department source. One of the students, Abdulaziz Alomari - believed to be one of the four terrorist pilots who commandeered American Airlines Flight 77 for its fatal flight into the World Trade Center's North Tower - arrived in Vero Beach, Fla., in July, 2000 to study at FlightSafety International. Claiming to be a Saudi pilot Alomari signed a $1,400-a-month lease to rent one of the pastel stucco houses than line 57th Terrace, settling next door to another Saudi student, Adnan Zakaria Bukhari, and just a few kilometres from Amer Mohammed Kamfar, another friend. Neighbours watched the men come home each day dressed in the signature white shirts and gold-and-black epaulets that identified them as FlightSafety trainees. They had large, beautiful families, according to the neighbours. And while they didn't often engage in lengthy conversations, they were friendly, offering a wave and a hello as they came and went. And they didn't seem in the least mysterious. ``They weren't hiding anything,'' said Ray DeFossez, a truck driver who lives across the street from the Bukharis and Alomaris, recalling that they usually left their garage doors open when they left home. ``They were just regular people, didn't make a lot of noise,'' said another neighbour, Hank Habora. ``From their trash, you could see that they shopped at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of pizza.'' _________________________________________________________________ Some of the terrorists arrived in the United States after spending time in Germany. On Thursday, German police raided an apartment in Hamburg, where Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi studied electronics and construction engineering at university and occupied a second-floor apartment where groups of 20 men met regularly into the night. As a young student, Atta wore stylish black jeans and hung out near the Cinemaxx multiplex at Sharky's Billiard Bar in a Hamburg suburb. While studying he also worked as a car salesman to make ends meet. After graduating with a master's degree in urban renewal in 1999, Atta stayed in Hamburg, becoming more religious and attending an Islamic study group. But in Kay Nehm, chief federal prosecutor, said Atta and Al-Shehhi formed a terrorist cell to launch ``spectacular attacks'' on American institutions. Atta died on American Airlines Flight 11; Al-Shehhi was killed on United Airlines Flight 175, both of which slammed into the World Trade Centre's twin towers. ``It's highly likely that the clues needed to solve this mystery lie in student circles in Germany,'' Nehm told a press conference. Both Atta and Al-Shehhi had the necessary training to at least steer the big Boeing jets that slammed into the World Trade Centre. Both men had lived and trained at American flight schools. FBI investigators learned that Atta and Al-Shehhi also took two three-hour courses at SimCenter Inc. in Opa-locka, said Brian George, son of flight school owner Henry George. ``We were completely stunned and shocked,'' Brian George said Thursday. Both men trained on a Boeing 727 full-motion simulator, he said. Both had commercial pilot licences. _________________________________________________________________ When the time came, the terrorist cells cleared out quickly. About two weeks ago the family of Amer Mohammed Kamfar - a wife who wore a traditional chador, the full-length traditional garment; four children and possibly an infant - disappeared in a flash. They discarded much of their clothing and other belongings in the trash. Then a van pulled up to the house, honked, and the family got in and drove off. Police are still looking for Kamfar, who did not board the hijacked jets. Another rushed off to Rooms to Go, a furniture store in Vero Beach, and as news of the kamikaze attacks was breaking on a television in the showroom, bought a $1,795 living room set and ordered it shipped to Saudi Arabia immediately. Later arrested by the FBI, Bukhari insisted he was not involved, and, according to two sources, passed an FBI-administered polygraph test showing ``no deception.'' _________________________________________________________________ On the night of Sept. 7 - three days before the attacks on New York city and Washington - Atta, Al-Shehhi and an unidentified man repaired to Shuckums, a sports bar in Hollywood, Fla.. While Atta played video games the other two had about five drinks each and then argued about the $48 bill. Manger Tony Amos recalled this week that, when he inquired whether they could not afford their bill, Al-Shehhi ``looked at me with an arrogant look.'' ``He pulled out a wad of cash,'' Amos said, ``and put it on the bar table and said `There is no money issue. I am an airline pilot.' '' At the Pink Pony and Red Eyed Jack's Sports Bar in Daytona Beach, manager John Kap called FBI after Tuesday's terrorist attacks and told agents about the anti-American invective spewed by three men in his bar just the night before. Agents on Wednesday took credit card receipts, copies of the men's drivers licenses and a Qur'an left at the bar, Kap said. He declined to identify the three men, but said that all three had central Florida addresses and spent a few hundred dollars on lap dances and drinks between 11 p.m. on Monday and about 2 a.m. on Tuesday, hours before the attacks. ``They were talking about what a bad place America is,'' Kap recalled. ``There were a lot of anti-American things being said,'' he added. ``At one point, one of the gentlemen said, `Wait until tomorrow, America is going to see bloodshed.' '' He now wishes he'd taken them seriously. _________________________________________________________________ With files from Star wire services