Montag, 12. Februar 2007

Hanjour - Part 2




The special treatment

Everyone of the "six men apparently formed the conspiracy's leadership" received a suspicious treatment by federal authorities which could also be interpreted as protection.

Let's start with Hanjour:

QUOTE
Instructors at a flying school in Phoenix, Arizona express concern to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials about the poor English and limited flying skills of one of their students, Hani Hanjour.(...) They believe his pilot's license may be fraudulent.(...) The FAA finds it is genuine - but school administrators tell Mr. Hanjour he will not qualify for an advanced certificate." BBC (5/17/02)


QUOTE
"Months before Hani Hanjour is believed to have flown an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon, managers at an Arizona flight school reported him at least five times to the FAA. (...) They reported him not because they feared he was a terrorist, but because his English and flying skills were so bad...they didn't think he should keep his pilot's license. " I couldn't believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills that he had." Peggy Chevrette, Arizona flight school manager."

Reacting to the alert in January 2001, an FAA inspector checked to ensure Hanjour's 1999 license was legitimate and even sat next to him in one of the Arizona classes.
But he didn't tell the FBI or take action to rescind Hanjour's license, FAA officials said.
"There was nothing about the pilot's actions to signal criminal intent at the time or that would have caused us to alert law enforcement," FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. CBS (05/10/02)


Let's break here: it is not the job of the FAA to check if someone has a 'criminal intent'. Their job is to check if a person is skilled to be a pilot. And these skills were in question and that's why the FAA was alarmed. Though, Hanjour had obvisously great defiticites in speaking English and in flying an airplane, the FAA only explains his license as legitim, without making further tests on Hanjour. Imagine, on your test for the driving-license you take someone's right to way, you don't stop at a stoplight, etc. and then you pass the test, because your instructor couldn't find any 'criminal intent' in your behaviour!

QUOTE
But one official said the inspector, John Anthony, did not suggest a translator and "did not observe any serious issue" with Hanjour's English, even though University of Arizona records show he failed his English classes with a 0.26 grade point average. Other Arizona flight schools he attended also questioned his abilities.

"He didn't do his homework, didn't attend on time and he would sort of come and go," said Duncan Hastie of Cockpit Resource Management.

Marilyn Ladner, the vice president of Pan Am Flight Academy in Miami – the company that owned JetTech before it closed in the aftermath of Sept. 11 – told CBS News, "We did everything we were supposed to do," in reporting Hanjour.

Hanjour attended flight schools with two other Pentagon hijackers. And in July last year, an Arizona FBI agent alerted Washington that a large number of Middle Eastern men were taking flying lessons, but he was ignored.
.....
Chevrette said Hanjour's English was so poor that it took him five hours to complete a section of a mock pilot's oral exam that is supposed to last just a couple of hours.

Chevrette said she contacted Anthony again when Hanjour began ground training for Boeing 737 jetliners and it became clear he didn't have the skills for the commercial pilot's license.

"I don't truly believe he should have had it and I questioned that," she said.
CBS (05/10/02)


QUOTE
Federal Aviation Administration records show he obtained a commercial pilot's license in April 1999, but how and where he did so remains a lingering question that FAA officials refuse to discuss. His limited flying abilities do afford an insight into one feature of the attacks: The conspiracy apparently did not include a surplus of skilled pilots. Source


We've already seen where Hanjour obtained his license, but why was the FBI so close-lipped about it three months later?

And Hanjour's English was so bad:

QUOTE
When the school's manager Peggy Chevrette told the local FAA supervisor that Hanjour's bad English and appalling flight skills could end up hurting himself or others, the jury heard the official suggested providing him with a translator -- in contravention of his own agency's rules. Source


QUOTE
They said that, with the benefit of hindsight, it appears that the FBI and the FAA could have responded more vigorously.

"From what I've heard, the school was clearly more alert than federal officials," Sabo said......

When Hanjour enrolled in January at Pan Am's Phoenix facility, Oberstar said, his instructor made a more critical assessment of his English.

The FAA began clamping down on U.S. flight schools in recent years to ensure that no one who cannot speak conversational English receives a flight certificate.

Oberstar and others said the Pan Am instructor questioned how Hanjour got a flight certificate with his English, felt it was inadequate to complete the firm's course and phoned the FAA. Oberstar said the instructor asked: "What do we do about this? We don't think we should continue a person in flight training whose English is so inadequate."

Pan Am officials were dissatisfied by the FAA inspector's response: suggesting he might know of an Arabic-speaking person who could assist him with his English, Oberstar and others said. That approach apparently didn't work. Hanjour "flunked out" in March, a company executive told legislators.

Oberstar said the FAA representative had no reason to believe that Hanjour was a terrorist. But, recalling that he held a subcommittee hearing a few years ago into a New York plane crash caused by the pilot's failure to understand instructions in English from air traffic controllers, he said Hanjour's language problem should have sounded "alarm bells" with the FAA.

Jerry Snyder, an FAA spokesman in Los Angeles, said he could not comment because the matter is under investigation. Source

The FAA clamped down flight schools to ensure that no one who cannot speak conversational English receives a flight certificate, but when they receive warnings from a flight school, they just made suggestions like providing with a translator, or asking for an arabic-speaking person! This was not incompetence - this was an explicit break of their own rules aka illegal!

Also note that
QUOTE
Hanjour obtained his pilot's license in April 1999, but it expired six months later because he did not complete a required medical exam. Source


Now let's look into the case of Mohammed Atta (alleged pilot of Flight 11) and Marwan Al-Shehhi (alleged pilot of Flight 175).

Atta and Alshehhi stall a small plane on a Miami International Airport runway. Not able to start the plane, they just walked away. Flight controllers had to guide the waiting passenger airliners around the stalled aircraft until it was moved away 35 minutes later.

QUOTE
On December 24th, 2000, Atta and Alshehhi rented a Warrior (N555HA) from Huffman Aviation for a flight. They landed in Miami when the engine from the aircraft stalled (shutoff) on the taxiway where they abandoned it. They called Huffman Aviation for taxi fare back to Venice but were denied by Huffman Aviation. One to two days later, Huffman received a phone call from the Miami FAA regarding the Warrior that had been unattended for a half-hour on the runway. Dekkers got in contact with Bob Martin, the Operations Manager of Huffman Aviation, who then contacted the FAA. Martin had several phone conversations with the FAA and upon their request sent all maintenance records on the Warrior to the FAA. Nothing else was reported back from the FAA to Huffman regarding the Warrior. Source

QUOTE
On one occasion, a flying school instructor testified last week, 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi stranded a small single-engined plane on a taxiway at the busy Miami International Airport -- forcing a large jet to take avoiding action.

Their transgression earned the flight school that rented them the plane a telling off from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) -- but no follow on action. Source


QUOTE
"Students do stupid things during their flight course, but this is quite stupid," Dekkers said. "They shut everything off like dumb ducks." Dekkers said the FAA told him the students would be fined. "But they can't do that any longer," he said.

The FAA did not immediately return calls for comment. Source
QUOTE
Daniel Pursell, Huffman's chief flight instructor, told the jury the FAA called him for details but did not interview the pilots.

"They might should have, but I don't think they did," Pursell said. Source


The Clearwater Airpark incident January/February 2001

QUOTE
Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi landed a single-engine plane at least twice at the Clearwater Airpark one night in January or February 2001, according to Daniel Pursell, chief instructor for a Venice flight school that rented planes to the pair. Source


QUOTE
It was a similar story when the pair decided to buzz a Florida airstrip to practice take-offs and landings after it was closed for the night. Source


QUOTE
A few months later, Atta and al-Shehhi landed a small plane at a Clearwater, Florida, airport after dark, breaking the airport's curfew. Pursell admonished them, but again, there was no investigation. Source


And I thought, the Al-Caida manuals claim not to behave in a way that could attract attentions!

QUOTE
Why the two men chose the small Clearwater airpark 75 miles north of Venice remains a mystery.

The incident, however, is another example of how closer scrutiny of Atta and the other 9/11 hijackers might have averted the 2001 disasters.

"What were we supposed to think?" said Pursell, 47. "At that time, no one had a clue."

After the landing, the police aide left a voice message with the Venice flight school, Huffman Aviation, complaining about the incident, Pursell said.

Neither the FBI nor the Federal Aviation Administration ever was notified about the incident, officials from both agencies said.

Clearwater police and city officials on Thursday said they did not know it took place, and city logs have no record of the illegal landings. Source


Smells like a cover-up! And note the explanation why it wasn't considered as something very important:

QUOTE
The reason the Clearwater flight is only now () becoming known, Pursell says, is because it was overshadowed by other Florida incidents involving the two men.

Besides the blocked runway in Miami, Atta overstayed his previous visa but was allowed to reenter the United States in January. And in April, he was ticketed in Florida for driving without a license. Source

See also

And according to the Commission-Report, night-time-flights were not unusual for Atta and Alshehhi:

QUOTE
"After passing this test, Atta and Shehhi were able to sign out planes. They did so on a number of occasions, often returning at 2:00 and 3:00 A.M. after logging four or five hours of flying time." Commission Report (p.239) (PDF)


The Moussaoui-case

QUOTE
When a Twin Cities flight instructor phoned the FBI last August to alert the agency that a terrorist might be taking lessons to fly a jumbo jet, he did it in a dramatic way: "Do you realize how serious this is?" the instructor asked an FBI agent. "This man wants training on a 747. A 747 fully loaded with fuel could be used as a weapon!" The aviation student he was talking about was Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested the following day. Source


QUOTE
Courtroom stunned: FBI agent Harry Samit for instance, testified he had warned his bosses a stunning 70 times, after nabbing Moussaoui at a flight simulator school, that he could be a terrorist planning to hijack an airliner. Source


Finally, after 70 warnings, they arrested him, but the FBI Agents weren't allowed even to search his hard-drive!:

QUOTE
Top Justice Department and FBI officials turned down a request by Minneapolis FBI agents early last month for a special counterintelligence surveillance warrant on a suspected Islamic terrorist who officials now believe may have been part of the Sept. 11 plot to attack the World Trade Center and Pentagon, NEWSWEEK has learned.

..other law enforcement officials are equally insistent that a more aggressive probe of Moussaoui—when combined with other intelligence in the possession of U.S. agencies—might have yielded sufficient clues about the impending plot. “The question being asked here is if they put two and two together, they could have gotten a lot more information about the guy—if not stopped the hijacking,” said one investigator. Source


See also

The VISA-Express

Fifteen of the 19 Hijacker's Visa were issued by the U.S. consular office in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. All of them should have been denied.

QUOTE
If the U.S. State Department had followed the law, at least 15 of the 19 "dots" should have been denied visas - and likely wouldn't have been in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Six separate experts analyzed the simple, two-page forms (viewable only at NationalReview.com, starting today). All came to the same conclusion: Each of the 15 visa applications should have been denied on its face.

Even to the untrained eye, it's not hard to see why. Consider, for example, the U.S. destinations most of them listed. Only one of the 15 provided an actual address - and that was only because his first application was refused. The rest listed such not-so-specific locations as "California," "New York," "Hotel D.C.," and "Hotel."

One terrorist amazingly listed his U.S. destination as simply "No." But he still got a visa.


The experts - who scrutinized the applications of 14 of the 15 Saudis and one of the two from the United Arab Emirates - include four former consular officers, a current consular officer stationed in Latin America, and someone with extensive consular experience who is now a senior official at Consular Affairs (CA), the division within the State Department that oversees consulates and visa issuance.

All six strongly agreed that, even allowing for human error, no more than a handful of the visa applications should have managed to slip through the cracks.

Nikolai Wenzel, one of the former consular officers who analyzed the forms, declares that State's issuance of the visas "amounts to criminal negligence." Source


QUOTE
Hani Hanjour, who also was on the plane that hit the Pentagon, had only a slight delay in acquiring his visa. A consulate employee flagged Hanjour's first application, noting that Hanjour wanted to "visit" for three years, although the legal limit is two. When Hanjour returned two weeks later, he simply changed the form to read "one year".

Mowbray, who obtained the visas, said he was shocked by what he saw. "I mean, I really was expecting al Qaeda to have trained their operatives well, to beat the system," he said. "They didn't have to beat the system, the system was rigged in their favor from the get-go."

The State Department would not allow interviews with current consular affairs employees.
Source


The article also states:

QUOTE
At the very least, the CA executive points out, "The consular officers should not have ended the interview until the forms were completed." Which begs the question: Were 11 of the 15 terrorists whose applications were reviewed actually interviewed, as the State Department claims?

The answer to the question is 'No', as it turned out two weeks later that:

At least 13 of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were never interviewed by U.S. consular officials before being granted visas to enter the United States, according to a congressional report issued yesterday. The finding contradicts previous assurances from the State Department that most of them had been thoroughly screened.

None of 18 separate visa applications by 15 of the hijackers was completed properly, the report said. Thirteen of the 15, who were from Saudi Arabia or UAE, were never interviewed before being approved for a visa, the report found. Investigators were unable to review the applications for four other hijackers, including Atta, because they were destroyed. Source


Senators Jon Kyl and Pat Roberts conluded:

QUOTE
"the answer to the question - could 9/11 have been prevented - is yes, if State Department personnel had merely followed the law and not granted non-immigrant visas to 15 of the 19 hijackers in Saudi Arabia." Source


See also

Michael Springman, former visa officer at the U.S. consular office in Jiddah claims that he is "repeatedly told to issue visas to unqualified applicants." He turns them down, but is repeatedly overruled by superiors. Springmann loudly complains about the practice to numerous government offices, but no action is taken. He eventually is fired and the files he has kept on these applicants are destroyed.

QUOTE
In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. I complained bitterly at the time there.... I was met with silence. What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets.

The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake the State Department's faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later, in which 19 Americans died. FBI agents began to feel their investigation was being obstructed. Source


QUOTE
On another occasion, an unemployed refugee from Sudan showed up at the consulate. The person, Springmann said, had no good reason to go to the United States and only the most ephemeral ties to Saudi Arabia.

In other words, Springmann said, the Sudanese was the sort who would have no compelling reason to leave the United States once he arrived.

Springmann turned down the application but immediately encountered resistance. "I kept saying no," Springmann recalled. "But, again, the head of consular section gave him a visa. I asked why. He said national security reasons." ... He said the entire consular operation was run by the CIA. (AP, 07-17-02)


QUOTE
SPRINGMANN: According to "The Los Angeles Times," 15 of the 19 people who flew airplanes into buildings had got their visas at the CIA's consulate at Jetta (ph) where 15 to 20 of the people who worked there were Washington- based. Nearly everybody except myself and two other people worked for the CIA or the NSA or some other intelligence service.

GIBSON: So what do you think was going on? Was this just -- the CIA didn't quite know what their own people were up to? Had they morphed into something else?

SPRINGMANN: Well, I think they did know what they were doing. I think that...

GIBSON: You're not suggesting they knew what -- that they were going to go fly airplanes into buildings in the United States, do you?

SPRINGMANN: I don't think so, but, with the secrecy the CIA has got going for it and the protection it gets, anything is possible.

GIBSON: Well, I mean, you really think it's possible. Even the CIA could have had its fingers in a terrorism directed against the United States?

SPRINGMANN: Well, who knows? I've seen it suggested that it was one way of getting the Americans involved at bases not only in the Middle East but at bases surrounding Russia. Source


On October 1st 2001 it's reported, that the US Embassy in Jeddah tightens visa rules. Source

And to Hanjour's visa:
QUOTE
“Hani Hanjour, 29, entered the United States in December 2000 on an F-1 student visa. But he never attended the school he was admitted to in Oakland, Calif., to study English. The school did not notify authorities and, once in the country, Hanjour melted into obscurity, just another visa overstay, like Nawaf Alhazmi and Satam Al Suqami, who overstayed their B-1/B-2 visas. Source


Hani Hanjour was illegal in the country. Why did he not seek a proper visa?

QUOTE
“He never attended the ELS Language Center in Oakland, California, the stated destination on his second visa application of September 25, 2000. His records do not indicate the length of stay the primary immigration inspector gave him.”
Commission Report - Terrorist Travel PDF)


Under Surveillance

Atta under CIA-Surveillance: he and three other ringleader, Marwan Alshehhi, Khalid Almihdhar, and Nawaf Alhazmi were also under surveillance by a secret US Army intelligence program called Able Danger since early 2000. For more go here

See also this CNN TV CLIP

Hanjour had also an indirect connection to US-Intelligence.

And let's not forget the 'Phoenix-Memo' by FBI special agent Kenneth Williams, warning about suspect Middle Easterners training in Arizona flight schools:

Two of the supspects mentioned there, Ghassan al Sharbi and Abu Zubaida, had direct connections to Hanjour. Source

Last but not least, the FBI-Informant Aukai Collins monitored the Islamic and Arab communities in Phoenix between 1996 and 1999, and in his warnings Hanjour is mentioned: "They knew everything about the guy"

QUOTE
Collins said he believes Sept. 11 could have been prevented. Based on a deep cynicism developed during years working undercover with the FBI and the CIA, he thinks it impossible both agencies could be caught unaware by the attack. It's entirely possible, he says, that they knew very well what was coming -- and that they let it happen anyway.

For its part, the FBI has confirmed that Collins was an informant who provided valuable information on Muslim extremists -- but denies that he provided information that could have prevented Sept. 11. Source


Taking this all into consideration (and there's much more): If this is not protection, than protection has no meaning.

The living pilots

How was the identity of the alleged hijackers uncovered?
This was explained under oath during a hearing of the 9/11 commission by Robert Bonner, the head of Customs and Border Protection:

QUOTE
BONNER: On the morning of 9/11, through an evaluation of data -- by the way, this was the passing through manifest, which U.S. Customs was able to access from the airlines -- I would say, within about an hour of 9/11 U.S. Customs Office of Intelligence had identified the 19 probable hijackers as well as the complete list of the passengers on the aircraft.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Let me ask you briefly about your statement about the day on 9/11 which I found very interesting. You say that, on the morning of 9/11, through an evaluation of data related to the passenger manifest of the four terrorist hijacked aircraft, Customs Office of Intelligence was able to identify the likely terrorist hijackers within 45 minutes of the attack, Customs forwarded the passenger lists with the names of the victims and 19 probable hijackers to the FBI and the intelligence community. How are your people able to do that?

BONNER (...) by 11:00 a.m., I'd seen a sheet that essentially identified the 19 probable hijackers. And in fact, they turned out(...) to be the 19. Commission Hearing


Keep this, which was also confirmed by Richard Clarke, in mind, when it comes to the 'mysterious hijackers'. Why were they suspected when they've never been on the passenger manifests? And we will also see that left cars played an important role in (mis-)identifying the hijackers.

One of the first suspects was Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian pilot living in Britain.

QUOTE
U.S. authorities began extradition proceedings in a London court Friday against a British-based Algerian pilot suspected of being the flight instructor for four of the 19 hijackers who attacked U.S. landmarks Sept. 11.

Investigators consider the arrest a breakthrough in the search for living co-conspirators to the New York and Pentagon attacks.

"We believe he is by far the biggest find we have had so far. He is of crucial importance to us," an FBI source told the Times of London.

"What we say is that he was in fact a lead instructor for four of the pilots responsible for the hijackings," said the prosecutor, Arvinda Sambir. "He was in the background to facilitate training of these pilots. His job was to ensure the pilots were capable and trained." Source


QUOTE
Today, Raissi is being held in London on a U.S. extradition warrant, accused of training Hanjour and three other hijackers. British prosecutors have said that Raissi and Hanjour attended the same flight schools and that a computer seized in Raissi's apartment in England contained a video clip of the two men. During the past two summers, they were together at the Sawyer simulator, according to various employees who worked there after Fults had left. Source


QUOTE
One example, this man, Lotfi Raissi, entered the U.S. to begin flight training in 1996. He became a flight instructor. He's now being held in Britain. U.S. and British officials say Raissi made several trips between the U.S. and the U.K. He even flew with suspected hijacker pilot Hani Hanjour from Las Vegas to Phoenix on June 23 to oversee the flight simulator training of Hanjour and three other alleged hijack pilots. Source


He was arrested in Britain and later, in April 2002:

QUOTE
It turned out, the British court found, that the video showed Raissi with his cousin, not Mr. Hanjour, that Raissi had mistakenly filled in his air training logbook and had never flown with Hanjour, and that Raissi and the hijackers were not in Las Vegas at the same time. The US authorities never presented any phone records showing conversations between Raissi and Hanjour. Source


As the US delivered their evidence, it turned out they have none! Maybe this is the reason why they refused to deliver evidence in the trails against Mzoudi and Motassadeq? Notice also this telling statement from the same article:

QUOTE
Indeed, the difficulties of tracking down suspects and amassing sufficient evidence to convict them leads some experts to wonder whether it is worth it. "Is terrorism a crime or is it war?" asks Stephen Gale, a counterterrorism expert who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. "If you think someone is going to take out your electrical grid, in a criminal investigation you arrest him. In a war you shoot first and ask questions later," he points out.


Think of it! If they had shot Riassi first, there wouldn't have been a trial. So the US wouldn't be forced to deliver evidence. So the evidence wouldn't have turned out to be non-existant. So the official version would be until today: Raissi was a lead instructor of the hijackers... See also

The story of another suspect related to Hanjour became almost forgotten. Faisal M. Al Salmi was indicted for giving false statements to the FBI about his association with Hanjour. Al Salmi hired in April 20001 for a remedial flying course in Tempe, Arizona at Sunbird Aviation
One day Al Salmi appeared with a second man who later turned out to be of interest to the FBI. Asked about this second man, Oscar Casdorph
he did not recognize Hanjour from FBI pictures and does not know whether the second man...had a connection to any of the hijackers.

Casdorph said he only knew the second man's first name, but would not disclose it, at the FBI's request. Source

So it's not Hani Hanjour as the FBI would have no reason to not diclose his name. Unfortunately, we could not ask Casdorph for revealing this name as he is already dead. There's one thing Hanjour, Al Salmi and the unknown 'second man' have in common: their flying skills. Casdorph mentions the "poor flying skills" of Al Salmi and that "he did not feel comfortable flying with the second man and did not return calls when the man sought additional lessons."

Al Salmi denied any connections to Hanjour, and therefore was convicted and found guilty of making false statements in denying knowledge of Hanjour. Source

He was not convicted for 9/11, "he took a polygraph test that shows he was not involved in the Sept. 11 attacks." Source

There were also others suspected to be hijackers, like Adnan and Ameer Bukhari, both Saudi pilots. They "were believed to have been on of the two flights out of Boston." CNN

But when the FBI raided Adnan Bukhari’s house it turned out that he was alive. And that Ameer Bukhari "had died in an air collision above the St. Lucie County International Airport exactly a year before the attacks”. CNN

As the Bukhari's (who were misreported as brothers) were not on the passenger manifests. How did they became suspect within hours after the attacks? Here's the answer:

QUOTE
“Law enforcement sources also tell CNN that the Bukhari brothers were believed to have been on of the two flights out of Boston, one of those two flights that wound up slamming into the World Trade Center.
Also we can report to you that a car impounded in Portland, Maine, according to law enforcement authorities, was rented at Boston Logan Airport and driven to Portland, Maine.” (CNN, 9/12/01 3:00 p. m.)


QUOTE
"Evidence found in a rental car left in Portland, Maine, led investigators to two houses in Vero Beach, Florida. One had been rented by two brothers from Saudi Arabia." CNN


QUOTE
FedQUeral sources had initially identified the brothers as possible hijackers who had boarded one of the planes that originated in Boston. Their names had been tied to a car founded at an airport in Portland, Maine. But Bukhari's attorney said it appeared their identifications were stolen and said Bukhari had no role in the hijackings.

Information found in another rental car left in Boston's Logan Airport -- where two of the hijacked flights originated -- led investigators to two more men who were pilots: Mohammed Atta and Marwan Yousef Alshehhii. CNN


QUOTE
"U.S. authorities found this letter handwritten in Arabic in the suitcase of Mohamed Atta. It includes Islamic prayers, instructions for a last night of life, and a practical checklist of reminders for the final operation. The FBI released an untranslated copy of the letter; the British newspaper The Observer published this translation. Additional copies of this letter were found at the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 in Pennsylvania and at a Dulles International Airport parking lot in a car registered to one of the hijackers on American Flight 77. Source


That's another one, now we have three cars left with evidence at airports. One found at Washington’s Dulles Airport registered to Nawaf Alhazmi Source

Another is discovered at Boston’s Logan Airport, registered to Marwan Alshehhi Source

And the third, with 'evidence' suggesting the Bukharis as hijackers, is the one found in Portland, Maine. Registered to Mohammed Atta.

QUOTE
Before flying from Portland to Boston to carry out terror attacks on New York City, Mohamed Atta and Abdul Alomari rented a car at the Logan Airport Alamo and drove to Maine, police said. Source


QUOTE
Meanwhile, another investigator was interviewing a manager of Alamo Rent A Car at the jetport. A search of the company's computer records showed Atta had rented a blue Nissan Altima Sept. 9 in Boston and that it was due back Sept. 11 by 6 p.m. It was listed as overdue. Source


The cars full of evidence were pretty comfortable for the FBI's investigation - directly presented to them on a golden plate. And don't forget the found passports at the WTC and in Shanksville (not to mention the red bandana and the boxcutter 'Made in China') and at the Pentagon. And Atta's bags at the airport. An the 'confirmation-video' of Osama Bin Laden coincidentally found in Jalalabad. And Jarrah's returned love-letter. Or they just left a box cutter together with a credit card here or together with manuals there.

They left a Koran hereand a Koran there.
(And btw., it's obvious how 'box-cutter' and 'koran' became signal-words after the attacks, associated to brandmark the traumatized minds of the people with anti-islamism. Beeing a moslem + a boxcutter is all you need to go to prison, think of Ayub Ali Khan)

"Never in the history of modern warfare has so much been found so opportunely." Guradian

Also notice this comment from the same article:

QUOTE
Apart from the fact that the al-Qaida network seem to have a catastrophic way with lost property, isn't it strange that these most demonised and potent of terrorists seem unable to operate any weapons without a manual?


QUOTE
"The attacks were probably well planned, but they didn't do a good job covering their tracks," one federal agent said. Source


Giving all these 'golden plates', what would Columbo say on that? Don't know, but here's what the Miami Herald said:

QUOTE
“In the end, they left a curiously obvious trail—from martial arts manuals, maps, a Koran, Internet and credit card fingerprints. Maybe they were sloppy, maybe they did not care, maybe it was a gesture of contempt of a culture they considered weak and corrupt.” Source


But maybe it's just that what it looks like: planted evidence. And you don't have to be Columbo to figure that out:

QUOTE
„Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues that were uncovered about the terrorists' identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, "Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the F.B.I. to chase.“ Source


And we've just seen the proof for his statement in the case of the Bukharis. How could it be that the FBI revealed the names of the 19 hijackers five days later and furthermore "through an evaluation of data related to the passenger manifest of the four terrorist hijacked aircraft, Customs Office of Intelligence was able to identify the likely terrorist hijackers within 45 minutes of the attack" , but weeks later it's stated:

QUOTE
On Friday (<28.>) Robert Mueller, the FBI's director, was forced to release photos of the suspected suicide hijackers and beg citizens to help his agents identify them. One hijacker, he was sure, was linked to the bin Laden network, but he wouldn't give his name. Mueller admitted that he wasn't clear about the identities of many of the rest. Guardian


The article also notes:

QUOTE
The Germans and others at the Nato meeting on Wednesday were convinced the US would arrive with a bulging dossier on bin Laden's complicity. They got so little that a desperate Lord Robertson was reduced to covering America's back by wondering aloud whether 'it is necessary for an ally to produce evidence?'


My answer would be a simple 'yes, of course'. What would be your's?

Let's go back, there was also another commercial pilot suspected to be a hijacker: Ameer Taiyb Kamfar

QUOTE
"Amer Kamfar, also suspected by the FBI of being among the World Trade Center hijackers, had both allegedly trained at the Vero Beach pilot school Flight Safety Academy" Source


QUOTE
Thursday night, police in Florida were searching for Kamfar, who was reported to be at large and armed with an AK-47 assault rifle. Source


But he's not listed on the passengers-manifest. Where does his name come from?

Kamfar was linked to the hijacker Alomari:

QUOTE
“Kamfar, 41, lived at the same Vero Beach address as Abdulrahman Alomari, who is listed in FAA records as having worked in flight operations for the Saudi airline and who was sitting next to Atta in the business section of American Airlines Flight 11, according to the passenger manifest.” Source


Kamfar was also linked to Adnan Bukhari:

QUOTE
Two alleged associates of the hijackers, Adnan Bukhari and Amer Kamfar, attended flight schools in Florida and had the Saudi Arabian Airlines post office box in the Saudi city of Jeddah, listed as their home addresses on their commercial pilots' licenses. Source


And Bukhari has links to Al Omari, too:

QUOTE
Bukhari helped Al Omari to rent the house next door. Source

QUOTE
“Bukhari lived in one house and Abdul Rahman Alomari, 38, in the other.”
(Sun-Sentinel, 9/14/01)

But then:
QUOTE
“However, the FBI did say it no longer was looking for Amer Taiyb Kamfar, who lived at the same Vero Beach address as Abdul Rahman Alomari, identified as Abdulaziz Alomari on the list of suspected hijackers. The alert for Kamfar, put out to all law enforcement agencies on Wednesday, had described him as armed and extremely dangerous. FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said she couldn't comment on why the bulletin was rescinded.” (Palm Beach Post, 9/15/01)


Do you see a pattern here? We have four pilots, three of them suspected to be hijacker, one to be the 'lead instructor'. One turned out to be already dead. A second, Raissi, has been convicted with false evidence. And we have Adnan Bukhari and Kamfar, both linked to Al Omari, furthermore they've found links to Bukhari in the car rented by Atta and Al Omari. But their links turned to dust:

QUOTE
In the interview with the FBI on September 12 Adnan Bukhari of course didn’t have to prove anymore that he wasn’t aboard an airplane on 911 but he had to answer tough questions about his close friendship to the hijacker Abdul Rahman Al Omari.
But he had luck and once again was able to present a convincing proof of his innocence:
“Just as the questions began, Bukhari's cell phone rang.
It was Alomari.
Bukhari turned to his attorney: "You're never going to believe who this is."
Bukhari handed the phone to the FBI agent.
"I think from that they started to realize I had nothing to do with it and it was just a mistake with the names." (Palm Beach Post, 9/21/01)


This means, we have now FOUR men, three of them falsely suspected to be the pilots, one to be the 'lead instructor'.

And since then the hijacker on Atta's side is named as Abdulaziz Alomari , and not as Abdul Rahman Al-Omari. Just a name-confusion it's said here.

But why is it, that
QUOTE
in the Justice Department list of hijackers released yesterday, Alomari's first name is spelled Abdulaziz. Federal investigators said they could not explain the discrepancy between the American Airlines passenger list and their list. Hijackers may have taken Saudi identities


Furthermore, how could the car have contained evidence linking to Bukhari, when he has only links to the Saudi Airlines Pilot Abdul Rahman Al-Omari and not to Abdulaziz Alomari?

And the confusion expands:

QUOTE
“Abdul Aziz al-Omari [Photo No. 4] was identified as one of the hijackers and the pilot who crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Another man with the same name is an electrical engineer in Saudi Arabia. He lived in Denver after earning a degree from the University of Colorado in 1993. Coincidence? Consider this oddity. ABC News has reported that his Denver apartment was broken into and his passport and other documents stolen in 1995. In September 2001 he told the Telegraph, ‘I couldn't believe it when the FBI put me on their list. They gave my name and my date of birth, but I am not a suicide bomber. I am here. I am alive. I have no idea how to fly a plane. I had nothing to do with this.’” (Insight the News, 7/7/03)
Sounds like stolen identity. Remember when Bukhari's attorney said "it appeared their identifications were stolen". Do you see a pattern here?

To summarize the mysterious four hijackers:

-Lofti Raissi: from "biggest breakthrough", "cruical importance" , a "in fact lead instructor" to verdict of not guilty (and who should have better been "shot first")

-Ameer Bukhari: from a hijacker pilot to dead since a year

-Adnan Bukhari: from a hijacker pilot to still alive, then from ties to the hijackers to "helping authorities".

-Ameer Taiyb Kamfar: from a hijacker pilot to still alive, then from armed with an AK47 to innocent person.

What evidence do we have that Hanjour was even on Flight 77?

First, he's on the passenger list, published in it's originally form in 2005. ZIP-File

But Ashcroft said on Sept.14 :"And American Airlines 77, Dulles to Los Angeles, four hijackers. That is our preliminary." Source

So maybe they had to that time no clue, that there were five hijackers. But in the first published list of the hijackers by the FBI from the same day (Sept.14), there were five hijackers. But Hanjour was missing. Instead, another hijacker was suspected to be on board of Flight 77 : Mosear Caned (note this is phonetic spelling). Here's the transcript of the CNN-Report from 09/14/01.

There are several names misspelled, but all other names are similiar to the FBI-list of the nineteen hijackers published four hours later. All out of one: "Mosear Caned" does not sound anything like "Hani Hanjour. (See for comparison this blog) How could 'Caned' occur on the CNN-list when he wasn't on the passenger-list? And why was his name never mentioned again? And how is it possible that within four hours out from nowhere Hanjour apeared and replaced Caned, who disappeared into nowhere? Maybe this could be the reason:

QUOTE
"His name [Hani Hanjour] was not on the American Airlines manifest for the flight because he may not have had a ticket." Washington Post


But later it's revealed that Hanjour purchased a ticket in cash on August 31, at Advanced Travel Service.

QUOTE
“Hanjour and Moqed initially asked for two first class seats on a morning flight to Los Angeles, California. The agent told them a ticket cost $2,220 from Newark and $1,842 from Washington Dulles; they went with the Dulles flight. But they changed their mind and bought only one ticket--for Hanjour, requesting a front aisle seat; he got 1B. For identification, Hanjour presented a Virginia driver's license with a Falls Church address.” Source


But the confusion doesn't stop, because according to the Commission Hanjour only had a Virginia ID, but not a Virginia driver’s licence. 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 32

If we believe the Commission Report, then he used a faked license. From the investigation we know that several of the hijackers used faked ID cards. But why should he use a faked license, as he obviously didn't want to hide his identity? This only results in more risk. Or does someone else used his identity to purchase the ticket? We don't know, maybe the Commission Report is just wrong on that. But if you want to look closer into the possibility that Hanjour and the other hijackers/pilots had doppelgänger (doubles), start here for Hanjour and here for the others. It's worth it!

Besides the passenger-list we have the recordings of the security-camera from Dulles Airport. It was first (mis-)reported that this man would be Hanjour, which he obviously not is.

In the Moussaoui trial it was stated that this man is Hanjour.

Indeed, he does match much better than the first one. But the footage-quality is too bad to make a decision in either way. The more important point is: why is there no data/time-branding on the video?

QUOTE
First ask yourself where you ever viewed airport security camera footage completely devoid of camera identification numbers, and without any date:time clocks. Just this single terminal at Dulles Airport has well over 100 such cameras, every one of them with an individual camera ident number and date:time clock of its own.

On-film data is essential of course, because it would be extremely difficult to track a target around the airport without these basic tools, and absolutely impossible to sort out the precise time and date of an event that occured more than two years before, which is exactly what the 9-11 Commission now claims to have done. Clever, huh?

Those 'experts' who might wish to claim that the ident numbers and date:time clocks were edited out of every single frame for extra clarity, had best forget it. I have personally examined every available frame blown up over twenty times, and there is not a trace of editing. No matter where or when this footage was filmed, what you see is what you get. Source


Fact is, even if a better footage quality would reveal that this man is Hanjour, it would prove nothing without data/time and therefore it's worthless. Even with a time/date-stamp but without better quality it wouldn't prove Hanjours presence. (The whole video is available here.)

And as third, we have the autopsy. And as we all know, all passengers had been identified through DNA-Examination. That's what is told, but in reality none of the hijackers has been identified until today. Read this from Pentagon-Research about the autopsy-report (have fixed the broken pdf-link):

QUOTE
The most interesting thing about this report is the total absence of Arab names. Some people have suggested that the hijackers were not considered "passengers". We will look at the real reason they are not there. You can view Flight 77's press release passenger manifest (the official one is restricted by the FBI) here for comparison. Again no Arab names.

The reason there are no Arab names on the autopsy is because they were never positively identified.

"The remains of the five hijackers have been identified through a process of exclusion, as they did not match DNA samples contributed by family members of all 183 victims who died at the site.

The hijackers' remains will be turned over to the FBI and held as evidence, FBI spokesman Chris Murray said. After the investigation is concluded, the State Department will decide what is to be done with the remains." (Source for the two paragraphs above.)

"Some remains for each of the terrorists were recovered, as evidenced by five unique postmortem profiles that did not match any antemortem material provided by victims’ families. No identifiable remains for five of the victims known to have been killed in the attack were recovered." (Source - This PDF is worth reading to understand all of the other speculation that went into identifying the bodies.)

So what we have here is 5 names on the list of people who were known to be missing from the Pentagon (4 Pentagon employees and one infant from Flight 77) that had no remains left to be identified. Then we have 5 sets of remains that didn't match the post-mortem DNA samples of the family members. So therefore those remains must be the hijackers. No positive ID required. Have you noticed yet that not ONE single aspect of this entire incident is straightforward and how it should be?

So why have they not produced positive identifications for the "hijackers"? They published their names so they know who they are........right? They should then be able to locate the family members to get DNA samples and produce a positive identification. They could still do it because according to the top statement the FBI still has the remains. But they won't. The only report American citizens get from the FBI is right here. They didn't even confirm if the five non-matching remains were Arab.


In fact, no positive identification is NO identification. The hijackers of Flight 93 were also not positive identified but passed through the "process of elimination". "The death certificates will list each as 'John Doe'." Source

So, even that Hanjour was actually on board of Flight 77 is questionable. My conclusion is, as he never turned out to be alive after Sept. 11, that he died on that day. And when he was on Flight 77, then he died not as pilot. As a patsy.

And before we finally come to the end: remember the book "Masterminds of Terror" by Nick Fielding and Yosri Fouda? In it, they claim that Atta wired thousands of dollars back to Ramzi Binalshib in Pakistan. Because Atta, who was responsible for the financing of the operation in the US, said that they didn't need it anymore because they were in the final preparation. (no source as I have the book only in german language).

Well, we began with a statement of flight-instructor Bernard, we end with an (indirect) statement of him. As we know it's said that Hanjour visited Bernard's flight school for 'final preparation' on his suicide mission.

QUOTE
"The two last spoke on the phone a few weeks before the attacks, when Hanjour complained about an $80 no-show charge." Source


Either Hanjour was not part of Atta's operation, or he believed that even the ticket to paradise has to be paid with money!

Hanjour - Part 1

In the first part we take a look into Loose Change's claims regarding Hanjour flight skills, the maneuver of Flight 77 and the debunking of it made by Screw Loose Change. In the second part we will take a deeper look into Hanjour and his special treatment by agencies and four falsely alleged hijacker pilots.


Hanjour's flying skills

From Loose Change:

However, when Hanjour went on three test runs in the second week of August

He had trouble controlling and landing a single engine Cessna 172.


Who says this? It’s not in the video. Hanjour did have a commercial instrument-rated pilot license. Had he flown a 172 before? How about a little research, guys? Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if takeoffs and landings were what he practiced the least on the ol’ flight simulator.

Yes, Loose Change doesn't provide the source, so I do: Source

" And consensus was , he was very quiet, " " average, or below average piloting skills, "
" English was very poor " " so, that's about the best description I can get, give you "

Now THAT was an earth-shattering inteview.

A minute and 8 seconds to hear that Hanjour was a nice guy who was instrument-rated but who wasn’t a great Cessna pilot? How hurting can you be for filler? How about at least telling us that Hanjour wasn’t able to rent the Cessna?

From the Greenbelt (Maryland) Gazette:


QUOTE
The standard evaluation consists of one-to-one-and-a-half-hour flights east over the Chesapeake Bay area. Hanjour paid $400 cash and provided a valid pilot's license from Arizona, Bernard said. He failed because he showed problems landing the airplane and the flight instructor had to help him, Bernard said. But Hanjour's problems were nothing unusual, Bernard said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that once (Flight 77) got going, he could have pointed that plane at a building and hit it.” Gazette (Greenbelt), 9/21/2001


Well, to say "he could have pointed that plane at a building and hit it" is an oversimplification of what actually happened. But we will go into the maneuver of Flight 77 later. And it's also important to note that Bernard didn't instruct Hanjour personaly, but two of his employess have, the insturctors Baxter and Conner.

But let's look at Hani Hanjour's flying skills in a chronological timeline:

September 96 - Academy of Aeronautics

According to Hanjour's brother, Yasser, Hanis intention to visit flight schools in the USA was because he wanted to become a pilot for the Saudi national airline.

The Saudi carrier required Saudi pilots to be FAA-certified in the United States. (This, Saudi officials point out, explains why so many Saudis were in US flight schools. Since Sept. 11, the Saudi regulation has been changed.) Source

After being rejected by a Saudi flight school, Hanjour returned to the United States to pursue flight training in 1996. Source

QUOTE
While in Oakland, he enrolled at the Sierra Academy of Aeronautics. He attended a 30-minute class on Sept. 8 and never came back. Dan Shaffer, the academy's vice president for flight operations, speculated that Hanjour was intimidated by the school's two-year training regimen and $35,000 price tag. Source


At the end of this period, Hanjour enrolls on a rigorous one-year flight training program at the renowned Sierra Academy of Aeronautics, in Oakland. However, he only attends the 30-minute orientation class, on September 8, and then never returns. CBS 5 (San Francisco), 10/10/2001San Francisco Chronicle, 10/10/2001Associated Press, 10/11/2001Associated Press, 5/10/2002

End of 96 - CRM Airline Training Center Scottsdale, Arizona

QUOTE
Certainly, Hanjour's own piloting skills were shaky. He took lessons at a Scottsdale, Ariz., flight school four years ago, but eventually was asked to leave by instructors who said his skills were poor and his manner difficult. Source


QUOTE
For someone suspected of steering a jetliner into the Pentagon, the 29-year-old man who used the name Hani Hanjour sure convinced a lot of people he barely knew how to fly.

Hanjour attended CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Ariz. Duncan Hastie, the owner of CRM, said Hanjour attended the school the last three months of 1996. Then Hanjour "sort of disappeared," he said, returning in December 1997.

Hastie said Hanjour wasn't much of a pilot.

"One of the first accomplishments of someone in flight school is to fly a plane without an instructor," Hastie said. "It is a confidence-building procedure. He managed to do that. That is like being able to pull a car out and drive down the street. It is not driving on the freeway."

Hastie said that three months normally would be enough to earn a private pilot's certificate, but Hanjour "did not accomplish that at my school."

After Hanjour last took classes at the school, he called back numerous times to ask about further instruction. At least once, Hastie recalled, Hanjour said he was living in Florida. He told Hastie he had continued with his training.

"He was a pain in the rear," Hastie said. "We didn't want him back at our school because he was not serious about becoming a good pilot." Source


QUOTE
During three months of instruction in late 1996, Duncan K.M. Hastie, CRM's owner, found Hanjour a "weak student" who "was wasting our resources." Hanjour left, then returned in December 1997 - a year later - and stayed only a few weeks. Over the next three years, Hanjour called Hastie about twice a year, asking to come back for more instruction.

"I would recognize his voice," Hastie said. "He was always talking about wanting more training. Yes, he wanted to be an airline pilot. That was his stated goal. That's why I didn't allow him to come back. I thought, 'You're never going to make it.' Source


QUOTE
In the spring of 2000, Hanjour had asked to enroll in the CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Ariz., for advanced training, said the center's attorney, Gerald Chilton Jr. Hanjour had attended the school for three months in late 1996 and again in December 1997 but never finished coursework for a license to fly a single-engine aircraft, Chilton said.

When Hanjour reapplied to the center last year, "We declined to provide training to him because we didn't think he was a good enough student when he was there in 1996 and 1997," Chilton said. Newsday (12/23/01)


QUOTE
He also was trained for a few months at a private school in Scottsdale, Ariz., in 1996, but did not finish the course because instructors felt he was not capable.Source


January 1998 - Arizona Aviation Mesa, Arizona

QUOTE
In January 1998, hijacker Hani Hanjour and his friend Bandar Al Hazmi, who are now renting an apartment together in Phoenix, Arizona, train together at Arizona Aviation flight school. Hanjour supposedly receives his commercial pilot rating while there. US Congress, 9/26/2002


1998 - Sawyer School of Aviation Phoenix, Arizona

QUOTE
Over five years, Hanjour hopscotched among flight schools and airplane rental companies, but his instructors regarded him as a poor student, even in the weeks before the attacks.

Wes Fults, the former manager of the flight simulator at Sawyer School of Aviation in Phoenix, gave Hanjour a one-hour orientation lesson when he arrived as a new member of the school's "sim club" in 1998. "Mr. Hanjour was, if not dour, to some degree furtive. He never looked happy," Fults recalled. "He had only the barest understanding what the instruments were there to do"

.... In 1998, he joined the simulator club at Sawyer, a small Phoenix school known locally as a flight school of last resort. "It was a commonly held truth that, if you failed anywhere else, go to Sawyer Aviation. They had good instructors," said Fults, the former simulator manager there.

Sawyer's simulator is in a closet-sized room that students and pilots alike use to practice the basics of instrument flight. Fults remembers Hanjour as "a neophyte. ... The impression I got is he came and, like a lot of guys, got overwhelmed with the instruments." He used the simulator perhaps three or four more times, Fults said, then "disappeared like a fog." Washington Post, 10/15/2001


April 1999 - Sunbird Flight Services Tempe, Arizona

QUOTE
Agency records show that Hanjour was certified as an "Airplane Multi-Engine Land/Commercial Pilot" on April 15, 1999, by Daryl Strong , a designated pilot examiner in Tempe, Ariz. It was the last of three certifications Hanjour obtained from private examiners.

Strong, 71, said his flight logs confirm that he conducted a check ride with Mr. Hanjour in 1999 in a twin-engine Piper Apache but that he remembers nothing remarkable about him. Source


Sunbird Flight Services residents at Chandler Municipal Airport. After he got his license,
QUOTE
"Hanjour reportedly applied to the civil aviation school in Jeddah after returning home, but was rejected."Commission Report


So Hanjour went to the United States in 1999 and received his certificate, but came home and still couldn't land a job with the airline. Source

In a CBC-Article, dealing with Hanjour's license, it's written that one of Hanjour's instructors, an Arab-American man, came under pressure by the FBI. He told agents that Hanjour was "a very average pilot, maybe struggling a little bit." The instructor added, "Maybe his English wasn't very good." Source

But this instructor remains unkmown, also his company and the time when he trained Hanjour (it's only stated that it was before he got his license, April 15. 99).

Dezember 2000 - Arizona Aviation Phoenix, Arizona

QUOTE
Hazmi and Hanjour left San Diego almost immediately and drove to Arizona. Settling in Mesa, Hanjour began refresher training at his old school, Arizona Aviation. He wanted to train on multi-engine planes, but had difficulties because his English was not good enough. The instructor advised him to discontinue but Hanjour said he could not go home without completing the training. Commission Report


January/February 2001 - Jet Tech International Phoenix, Arizona

QUOTE
"Staff members characterized Mr. Hanjour as polite, meek and very quiet. But most of all, the former employee said, they considered him a very bad pilot.

"I'm still to this day amazed that he could have flown into the Pentagon," the former employee said. "He could not fly at all." -New York Times (5/04/02)


QUOTE
Instructors at a flying school in Phoenix, Arizona express concern to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials about the poor English and limited flying skills of one of their students, Hani Hanjour.

They believe his pilot's license may be fraudulent.

The FAA finds it is genuine - but school administrators tell Mr. Hanjour he will not qualify for an advanced certificate." BBC (5/17/02)


QUOTE
"Months before Hani Hanjour is believed to have flown an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon, managers at an Arizona flight school reported him at least five times to the FAA.

They reported him not because they feared he was a terrorist, but because his English and flying skills were so bad...they didn't think he should keep his pilot's license.

" I couldn't believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills that he had." Peggy Chevrette, Arizona flight school manager."CBS News (5/10/02)


Jet Tech has closed in the meantime and was owned by Pan Am International Flight Academy.

Early 2001 - Pan Am Intern. Flight Academy Mesa, Arizona

QUOTE
In early 2001, he started training on a Boeing 737 simulator at Pan Am International Flight Academy in Mesa. An instructor there found his work well below standard and discouraged him from continuing. Commission Report


April 2001 - Air Fleet Trainings System Teterboro, New Jersey

QUOTE
Hanjour, too, requested to fly the Hudson Corridor about this same time, at Air Fleet Training Systems in Teterboro, New Jersey, where he started receiving ground instruction soon after settling in the area with Hazmi. Hanjour flew the Hudson Corridor, but his instructor declined a second request because of what he considered Hanjour's poor piloting skills. Commission Report


June/Juli 2001 - Caldwell Flight Academy Fairfield, New Jersey

QUOTE
Shortly thereafter, Hanjour switched to Caldwell Flight Academy in Fairfield, New Jersey, where he rented small aircraft on several occasions during June and July. In one such instance on July 20, Hanjour-likely accompanied by Hazmi-rented a plane from Caldwell and took a practice flight from Fairfield to Gaithersburg, Maryland, a route that would have allowed them to fly near Washington, D.C. Other evidence suggests that Hanjour may even have returned to Arizona for flight simulator training earlier in June. Commission Report


But Cooperative Research notes:


QUOTE
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Caldwell’s owner will confirm that several suspects sought by the FBI, reportedly including Mohamed Atta, had rented planes from him, though when they did so is unstated. A search of the Lexis Nexus database indicates there are no media accounts of any witnesses recalling Hanjour or any of the other hijackers attending these schools. Source


August 2001 - Freeway Aviation Bowie, Maryland

QUOTE
Hanjour, always an uncertain pilot, showed up at flight school in Bowie, Md. Three times, he attempted to rent a plane. Each time, a different instructor took him on a test flight and deemed him incompetent to fly alone.

"We have a level of standards that we hold all our pilots to, and he couldn't meet it," said the manager of the flight school.

Hanjour could not handle basic air maneuvers, the manager said. Hanjour was also reluctant to provide his address, a standard part of the plane rental application. Source


QUOTE
That plot was in high gear by the second week of August, when Hanjour arrived in the Washington area for what appears to have been his final preparation - this time, at Freeway Airport in Bowie, Md. Instructors once again questioned his competence. After three sessions in a single-engine plane, the school decided Hanjour was not ready to rent a plane by himself. Cape Cod Times (10/21/02)


QUOTE
"Instructors at the school told Bernard that after three times in the air, they still felt he was unable to fly solo and that Hanjour seemed disappointed.

Hanjour had 600 hours listed in his log book, Bernard said, and instructors were surprised he was not able to fly better with the amount of experience he had." Source


QUOTE
„However, when Baxter and fellow instructor Ben Conner took the slender, soft-spoken Hanjour on three test runs during the second week of August, they found he had trouble controlling and landing the single-engine Cessna 172. Even though Hanjour showed a federal pilot's license and a log book cataloging 600 hours of flying experience, chief flight instructor Marcel Bernard declined to rent him a plane without more lessons.“ Source


August 2001 - Congressional Air Charters Gaithersburg, Maryland

According to a footnote in the 9/11 Commission Report, some time in August 2001 Hanjour successfully conducts a challenging certification flight supervised by an instructor at Congressional Air Charters of Gaithersburg, Maryland, landing at a small airport with a difficult approach.” The instructor thinks that “Hanjour may have had training from a military pilot because he used a terrain recognition system for navigation.” 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 248 and 531

Cooperative Research states that
QUOTE
"besides the 9/11 Commission Report, no other evidence exists of Hanjour passing this certification flight. A search of the Lexis Nexus database indicates there are no mentions of Hanjour attending this school, or any witnesses recalling him there." Source


According to the 'Chronology of Events for Hijackers, 8/16/01 - 9/11/01, Hani Hanjour' from the Moussaoui-Trial, Hanjour took this lesson on the 20th of August at 15.00h and paid in cash.

QUOTE
A man who answered the phone at Congressional Air Charters of Gaithersburg declined to give his name and said the company no longer gives flight instruction. On July 20, 2001, Hanjour - likely accompanied by Nawaf al-Hazmi, another member of the Flight 77 team - completed a 'challenging certification flight' supervised by an instructor from Congressional, according to the report of the 9/11 Commission. Source


The Commission-Report's statement contradicts all others. And as we've seen there's no evidence that this certification flight ever happened. The Commission-report quotes an anonymous instructor who thinks that Hanjour had "training from a military pilot". As there's no way that Hanjour could improve his skills in a few days more than in five years before, there are only two possibilities: this story is complete fraud, or it is true but then the instructor is obviously not talking about the same Hanjour.

Summed up:

September 1996 Aeronautic Academy: He attended a 30-minute class on Sept. 8 and never came back.

End of 1996 CRM: skills were poor - barely knew how to fly. - wasn't much of a pilot. - pain in the rear - not serious about becoming a good pilot - a pretty weak student - wasting our resources - he was not capable

January 1998 Arizona Aviation: supposedly receives his commercial pilot rating while there.

1998 Saywer School: only the barest understanding what the instruments were there to do - got overwhelmed with the instruments.

before April 1999 Anonymous instructor/flight school - very average pilot, maybe struggling a little bit

April 1999 Sunbird Flight Service - nothing remarkable

Dezember 2000 Arizona Aviation: instructor advised him to discontinue

January/February 2001 Jet Tech: a very bad pilot. - He could not fly at all.-express concern to Federal Aviation Administration - not qualify for an advanced certificate - flying skills were so bad...they didn't think he should keep his pilot's license. " I couldn't believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills that he had.

Early 2001 Pan Am International: An instructor there found his work well below standard and discouraged him from continuing.

April 2001 Air Fleet Trainings: poor piloting skills.

June/Juli 2001 Caldwell: still in question that he ever been there

August 2001 Freeway Aviation: incompetent to fly alone. - could not handle basic air maneuvers - was not ready to rent a plane by himself. - unable to fly solo - instructors were surprised he was not able to fly better with the amount of experience

August 01 Congressional Air Charters: challenging certification flight - with a difficult approach - training from a military pilot - still in question that he ever been there

So if we take Bernard's 'average, low-average' as a 'neutral' reference point, than we have only three sources certifying Hanjour better skills. An anonymous instructor from an anonymous flight school (see April 1999), an anonymous instructor from Congressional Air Charters (a company which no longer gives flight instructions), who thought Hanjour had been trained by a military pilot (see August 2001), and Daryl Strong, who signed Hanjours multi-engine license and is a private contractor to the FAA. A FAA spokesman said:

QUOTE
"Designees have a financial interest in certifying as many people as possible, Awsumb argued. "They receive between $200 and $300 for each flight check," she said. "If they get a reputation for being tough, they won't get any business." Source


This may explain very well why Strong "remembered nothing remarkable". On the other side we have testimonies from seven different flight-schools certifying Hanjour's low-average/poor flight skills.

Besides flying an airplane, Hanjour wasn't even competent enough to pass a driving test.

QUOTE
"After being fined for speeding the day before Hanjour fails a test to obtain a Virginia driver’s license. Hanjour already has an Arizona driving license and an international driving license. According to the Virginia police, Hanjour also has a Florida driver’s license, although the 9/11 Commission will dispute this." Source


Despite of all the reports of Hanjour's weak piloting skills, the Commission-Report concludes:

QUOTE
"Among the five hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 77, Hani Hanjour was the sole individual who FAA records show completed flight training and received FAA pilot certification. Hanjour received his commercial multi-engine pilot certificate from the FAA in March 1999. He received extensive flight training in the United States including flight simulator training, and was perhaps the most experienced and highly trained pilot among the 9/11 hijackers." Commission Report


and state that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed assigned the Pentagon target specifically to Hanjour because he was “the operation’s most experienced pilot.” 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 530

If he was the best, how worse the others had to be! But the Commission-Report is wrong, at least Mohamed Atta (Flight 11) had better skills than Hanjour.

The Maneuver

9:38. Arlington, Virginia.

Hani Hanjour allegedly executes a 330 degree turn at 530 MPH


The 9/11 Commission says it was 330 degrees, most other sources I’ve seen say it was 270.

Hanjour first overflew the Pentagon at 7,000 feet. The turnaround may have been due, not to great skill, but to inexperience.


Let's start with a statement from General Schwarzkopf regarding the Pentagon-Maneuver, made in the evening of 9/11. This rare clip contains also some interesting footage of the Pentagon: WMV 18mB
Here are other reports:

QUOTE
"But just as the plane seemed to be on a suicide mission into the White House, the unidentified pilot executed a pivot so tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver."

"Aviation sources said the plane was flown with extraordinary skill, making it highly likely that a trained pilot was at the helm, possibly one of the hijackers." Washington Post (9/12/01)


QUOTE
But on the morning of Sept. 11, as Flight 77 veered off its course to Los Angeles and streaked toward Washington and the Pentagon, Hanjour is thought to have been the one who executed what a top aviation source called "a nice, coordinated turn." Washington Post (09/30/01)


QUOTE
"Q: How could terrorists fly these? Were they trained?

A: Whoever flew at least three of the death planes seemed very skilled. Investigators are impressed that they were schooled enough to turn off flight transponders -- which provide tower control with flight ID, altitude and location. Investigators are particularly impressed with the pilot who slammed into the Pentagon and, just before impact, performed a tightly banked 270-degree turn at low altitude with almost military precision." Detroit News (09/13/01)


QUOTE
"New radar evidence obtained by CBS News strongly suggests that the hijacked jetliner which crashed into the Pentagon hit its intended target."

"But the jet, flying at more than 400 mph, was too fast and too high when it neared the Pentagon at 9:35. The hijacker-pilots were then forced to execute a difficult high-speed descending turn."

"Radar shows Flight 77 did a downward spiral, turning almost a complete circle and dropping the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes." CBS (9/21/01)


QUOTE
"To pull off the coordinated aerial attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Tuesday, the hijackers must have been extremely knowledgeable and capable aviators, a flight expert said.

By seizing four planes, diverting them from scheduled flight paths and managing to crash two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon, they must have had plenty of skill and training.

It was not known how the hijackers slipped through airport security checkpoints with their weapons.

There are no indications that any of the airline crews activated a four-digit code alerting ground controllers that a hijacking was in progress." CNN (9/12/01)


QUOTE
"The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane," says O'Brien. "You don't fly a 757 in that manner. It's unsafe." ABC (10/24/01)


Loose Change used this quote, but without the 'it's unsafe' comment at the end. That's why Screw Loose Change claims that this statement - as a whole - debunks by itself the point here made by Loose Change. But let's look closer: experienced air traffic controllers, which have monitored the radar, thought to that time it was a military plane. The 757-statement is an interpretation made afterwards, when it was announced that Flight 77 crashed at the Pentagon. At the moment he's talking of none of them had thought that it could be a 757. And that's the point here! And this becomes absolute clear if we follow his statement:

QUOTE
"And it went six, five, four. And I had it in my mouth to say, three, and all of a sudden the plane turned away. In the room, it was almost a sense of relief. This must be a fighter. This must be one of our guys sent in, scrambled to patrol our capital, and to protect our president, and we sat back in our chairs and breathed for just a second," says O'Brien.
But the plane continued to turn right until it had made a 360-degree maneuver."


QUOTE
After the attacks, for example, aviation experts concluded that the final maneuvers of American Airlines Flight 77 -- a tight turn followed by a steep, accurate descent into the Pentagon -- was the work of "a great talent . . . virtually a textbook turn and landing," the law enforcement official said. Washington Post, (9/10/2002)


Markus Kirschneck, from the pilots-association "Cockpit":
QUOTE
"The Pentagon-Maneuver was one of the most difficult maneuvers you could do with a passengers-jet at all." Source (in German)


And from Webster Tarpleys book: 9/11 Synthetic Terror:

QUOTE
In a CNN interview on September 15, 2001, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak commented about the 9/11 events. His testimony is of interest because he spent his military career as a fighter pilot in the Egyptian Air Force. Mubarak was also one of the world leaders who had tried to warn the US government about what was coming in the summer of 2001. Mubarak said first of all that he found the US government’s official version, which was then taking shape, technically implausible. Mubarak: “Not any intelligence in the world could have the capability in the world to say they are going to use commercial planes with passengers on board to crash the towers, to crash the Pentagon, those who did that should have flown in the area for a long time, for example. The Pentagon is not very high, a pilot could come straight to the Pentagon like this to hit, he should have flown a lot in this area to know the obstacles which could meet him when
he is flying very low with a big commercial plane to hit the Pentagon in a special place. Somebody has studied this very well, someone has flown in this area very much.”

Nikki Lauda, a legendary Formula One race driver, was a pilot and the founder of his
own airline. He was asked by Jauch: “Is it easy to learn, we’ve seen that a video was
found in a car near the Boston airport, and people think that the car belonged to a
kidnapper, who had used it to bone up in advance on what the inside of a cockpit looks like. Is it so simple, for example, to learn that with the help of a computer simulator?”
Lauda judged that “these gentlemen were properly trained to fly a plane like that.” In
particular, he stressed that “you have to know exactly what the turning radius of a planelike that is, if I am trying to hit the World Trade Center. That means, these had to be fully trained 767 or 757 pilots, because otherwise they would have missed. It certainly could not be the case that some half-trained pilot tries it somehow, because then he will not hit it. That’s not so easy, coming out of a curve….If he’s coming out of a curve, then he has to know precisely the turning radius that derives from the speed of the plane in order to be able to calculate it, so that he will hit right there.”
Jauch asked which was harder to hit, the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. Lauda:“Well, what impressed me is the organization of this whole operation, since without good weather it would have not been possible at all, because then you can’t see anything. These were visual flights, using VFR [visual flight rules] as we call them. And so the World Trade Center is relatively easy to find, because it is stands out so tall…. The Pentagon is another matter again, because it is a building that is relatively flat. That means, they had to be trained well enough that they had flown around in the air in the New York area, I would speculate, so they could see the scene from above of where the building is located and how you could best reach it.” To hit a flat building like the Pentagon is “an even more difficult case” than the World Trade Center.
Lauda: “That means, to fly downwards out of a curve, and still hit the building in its core, I would have to be the best trained of all. I would speculate that a normal airline pilot would have a hard time with that, because you are simply not prepared for things like that. That means, they must have had some super-training to have been able to handle an airliner so precisely.”

In the days after 9/11, a private group of US military and civilian pilots held a seminar to evaluate this crucial feature of the official story – could the hijackers have flown the planes with the requisite accuracy? After 72 hours of deliberation and discussion, they issued a press release summarizing their findings: “The so-called terrorist attack was in fact a superbly executed military operation carried out against the USA, requiring the utmost professional military skill in command, communications and control. It was flawless in timing, in the choice of selected aircraft to be used as guided missiles and in the coordinated delivery of those missiles to their pre-selected targets.”

One of the organizers of the seminar, retired Colonel Donn Grandpre, said that it would be impossible for novices to have taken control of the four aircraft and orchestrated such a complicated operation, which obviously had as a prerequisite military precision of the highest order. The seminar concluded that it was likely that the hijackers were not the ones in control of the aircraft.
One participant in the seminar was a US Air Force officer who flew over 100 sorties
during the Vietnam war. This experienced combat pilot concluded that “Those birds
either had a crack fighter pilot in the left seat, or they were being maneuvered by remote control.”
Another spokesman for the group was identified as Captain Kent Hill (USAF retired),
who was reportedly a friend of Chic Burlingame, the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Hill recalled that the US had already carried out multiple flights of an unmanned aircraft, similar in size to a Boeing 737, between Edwards Air Force base in California across the Pacific to South Australia. Hill said this plane had flown on a preprogrammed flight path under the supervision of a pilot in an outside station.
Source (PDF)


But others disagree that much skill is needed to perform the maneuvers the hijackers made:

QUOTE
"It doesn't take that much skill; just enough knowledge to home in on a radio station in New York or Washington, and the needle (zeroes) right in," said McNicol, referring to the automatic direction finder that steers an aircraft. "You don't have to know anything about flying, other than the wings have to be level to fly straight." McNicol noted that the suspects, some of whom attended flight schools in Florida and Arizona, "probably got all the information they needed [there]." (...)

A pilot with only a couple of hundred hours experience could have pulled off the operation, concurred Richard Theokas, chairman of the flight training department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. "You just need to know how to fly straight and level and keep on target," Theokas said. "These guys allowed others to take off, and they didn't have to land it." Source


But here's the talk of 'fly straight and keep on target' which wasn't the case with Flight 77 (and also Flight 175, aiming at the WTC in a curve). This is the same false asumption Bernard made when he talked of "he could have pointed that plane at a building and hit it." and not of a 330 degree turn and dropping the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes.

Hitting a target directly is the easy maneuver, hitting as it was executed at the Pentagon, is the hard one.

So, if this maneuver was due to 'incompetence', why was he competent enough to perform a 330 degree turn (hard one), but not competent enough to hit it directly (easy one)? And if he was so incompetent, would he have recognized early enough to see that he was too high/fast to hit it directly and then make a loop in this accuracy?

But, from the dutch TV we have the following clip showing us in a simulator, how easy it is to hit the Pentagon, even under the actaul conditions (rapid descending and flying in a curve): Youtube

However, this experiment doesn't proof that Hanjour had the capabilities to do the maneuver. First, though it's said that the pilot from the experiment is comparable with Hanjour, i.e.experience only on small planes and simulators, we don't know what his actual skills are. Was he also described as a "poor pilot", "overhelmed with the instruments", and "advised to discontinue"? That he has experience only on small planes and simulators like Hanjour, does this in any way affect the skills of Hanjour?

Second, as it's the easier way to hit it direct on, I think we can asume that the decision to hit it from a curve was made relatively spontaneously. The pilot from the experiment knew before he started that he had to perform such a maneuver. So he had time to think of, to calculate when would be the best moment to perform, etc. And of course, he had not be afraid of being shot down or passengers revolting or to get nervous about going to die in a few minutes.

Third, the experiment excluded real-scenario items like flying level to the ground including hitting light poles, g-forces, etc making the whole maneuver more difficult.

Let's look into another aspect of the maneuver-scenario:

QUOTE
"The steep turn was so smooth, the sources say, it's clear there was no fight for control going on. And the complex maneuver suggests the hijackers had better flying skills than many investigators first believed." Source


The question is 'Why was there no fight going on'? Though this question might at first occur unreasonable, let's not forget the official version in the case of Flight 93: Passengers knew that they were on a suicide mission so they made the decision to strike back. Let's compare this with Flight 77.

At least ten of the 59 passengers had a military background and 21 of them were involved in government/defense related work, including Korea-, Vietnam-, and Gulf-war veterans. Which means that we can assume that they wouldn't go into death without resistance. ( compilation of infos about the passengers )

There were two cell-phone calls from flight 77. The first from flight attendant Renee May at 9:12, the second from Barbara Olsen at 9:16. This means they phoned AFTER the second plane hit the WTC.

QUOTE
"'Unlike the earlier flights, the Flight 77 hijackers were reported by a passenger to have box cutters. At some point between 9:16 and 9:26, Barbara Olson called her husband, Ted Olson, the solicitor general of the United States. She reported that the flight had been hijacked, and the hijackers had knives and box cutters. She further indicated that the hijackers were not aware of her phone call, and that they had put all the passengers in the back of the plane. About a minute into the conversation, the call was cut off. Solicitor General Olson tried unsuccessfully to reach Attorney General John Ashcroft. Shortly after the first call, Barbara Olson reached her husband again. She reported that the pilot had announced that the flight had been hijacked, and she asked her husband what she should tell the captain to do. Ted Olson asked for her location and she replied that the aircraft was then flying over houses.

Another passenger told her they were traveling northeast. The Solicitor General then informed his wife of the two previous hijackings and crashes. She did not display signs of panic and did not indicate any awareness of an impending crash. At that point, the second call was cut off." Commission Report


QUOTE
"Herded to the back of the plane by hijackers armed with knives and box-cutters, the passengers and crew members of American Airlines Flight 77 -- including the wife of Solicitor General Theodore Olson -- were ordered to call relatives to say they were about to die." Washington Post (09/12/01)


So the passengers of flight 77 were aware that they were not dealing with a normal hijacking. They were aware that they were going to die.

I think it's safe to say that every normal person would have fight for survival, and certainly the passengers (not to forget the crew!) with military background would have fought back! Many of them were confrontated with live-threating situations before! Against maximum FOUR hjackers with BOXCUTTERS!

Bottom Line: Loose Change is backed up by the facts. Screw Loose Change has not debunked Loose Change.