Newsweek: How the '20th Hijacker' Got Turned Away

[RamboLiberal]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3989726/

The young Saudi said he had arrived in Orlando to meet a friend. But when pressed for details by an alert immigration inspector, "his story fell apart," says one law-enforcement official. The inspector put the Saudi on a flight out of the country. That incident, in late August 2001, was fateful. The FBI has since concluded that the would-be visitor, who carries the common Saudi name of al-Qahtani, may well have been the elusive "20th hijacker" who was supposed to be aboard United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in the fields of Pennsylvania on the morning of 9/11.

The story of al-Qahtani is one of several new details of the 9/11 plot uncovered by the federal panel probing the terrorist attacks. Law-enforcement sources tell NEWSWEEK the story has some surprises. At the time the inspector turned al-Qahtani away, there was no sign he was connected to terrorism. But after 9/11, agents began looking into other Mideasterners who had tried to enter the United States in the preceding months and soon focused on the Orlando, Fla., incident. One item grabbed their attention: 9/11 ringleader Muhammad Atta was at the Orlando airport that same day and made a call on a pay phone to a Mideastern country—apparently concerned that his guest hadn't gotten off the airplane. A surveillance camera captured Atta making the call. Months later, a Saudi by the same name—al-Qahtani—was captured by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where investigators later ID'd him as the man in Orlando.

[Must_B_Free]

1. I thought Moussaoui was the 20th hijacker?

what ever happened to him anyway?

[Bertha Venation]

2. Media labeled him that because it was a convenient headline.

He wasn't the 20th hijacker.

I believe he's still imprisoned in Virginia, fighting for his rights, fighting against his own lawyers, etc.

[DUreader]

3. I've lost count, is this the 5th or 6th 20th hijacker?

[HereSince1628]

17. Well, this is the math the deficit spending is based on.

[A HERETIC I AM]

4. He is still in custody. His is doing things the Gov't doesn't like

in his attempts to defend himself. He wants to get statements from several Gitmo detainees. The feds don't want to allow him that. His biggest crime is that he is a complete moron. This is the guy (it was reported, if you will remember) that was caught because his flight instructor alerted authorities after he had supposedly been told by Moussauoi that he didn't need to learn how to land or take off a jetliner, just how to fly one.

There is the suggestion that there were dozens of such men, potential suicide pilots, in the US, learning how to fly commercial Aircraft.

[ret5hd]

6. ..."His biggest crime is that he is a complete moron...."

maybe, but i've had a bit of fun watching him make the feds jump thru quite a few hoops constructed by this "moron"...

I don't know, just talkin', but, have you heard the phrase "crazy like a fox"?

[A HERETIC I AM]

12. Agreed. Perhaps i should have said that he was a complete moron...

for the 2 seconds it took to utter his damning phrase

[Turbineguy]

13. These guys do their work

just by creating diversions and difficulties, sending investigators on wild and fruitless chases. I am always amazed how co-operative many of these guys become after capture.

[wellst0nev0ter]

15. Time Was All Over It

How the Moussaoui Case Crumbled
TIME in depth: A trial once described as a slam dunk is caught in a post—9/11 legal wrangle
By VIVECA NOVAK I WASHINGTON

. . . Nearly two years later, the government's case, which had been billed as a slam dunk, is a shambles. On Oct. 2, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said prosecutors could not seek the death penalty for Moussaoui and could not even allege that he had a link to the 9/11 conspiracy. She put those shackles on the government's case because it had denied the defendant, on national-security grounds, access to witnesses who were in a position to say whether he was part of the 9/11 gang—Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other key al-Qaeda figures the U.S. has captured. Prosecutors are appealing the decision, with their first briefs due this week. But if they lose, they may be stuck with a precedent that would allow defendants access to avowed terrorists, perhaps inspiring the government in the future to try all such cases in military tribunals. Unless Moussaoui's prosecutors yank the case into a tribunal, it would mean that they would have to pursue much reduced charges. Instead of proving Moussaoui to be an actor in a plot that murdered thousands, they would have to accuse him of simply being a me-too schemer whose efforts went nowhere.

. . .after the terrorist attacks, investigators discovered that Moussaoui, who had lived in London and had a master's degree from South Bank University, had recently been to Pakistan and Malaysia and had spent time at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. Moreover, in a notebook he had the German phone number and alias of Ramzi Binalshibh, a key orchestrator of the 9/11 attacks and, like the hijackers, had been wired funds by him.

But from the start, the government's case against Moussaoui was utterly circumstantial, and the connection between the hijackers and him was mainly inferred from their similar profiles. In fact, sources tell Time, the fbi has long believed that Moussaoui played no part in the 9/11 scheme and was only a minor player in al-Qaeda. Still, the Justice Department's December 2001 indictment laid out in chilling detail the 19 hijackers' activities in the months leading up to Sept. 11, alongside Moussaoui's doings over a similar time frame. Their tracks were roughly parallel, but direct contact between Moussaoui and the 19 was never alleged. The government charged him with being guilty, like them, of conspiring to commit terrorist acts, to destroy aircraft and to murder federal workers, and related offenses, "with the result that thousands of people died on Sept. 11, 2001."

MORE. . .

[jpak]

5. Yet another link between Saddam and 9/11

not

[leftofthedial]

7. And what about the 4 (or 7) of the 19 hijackers

whom the BBC and others have said are alive and well in the Middle East and elsewhere?

[TomNickell]

9. Identities are not certain...

As best I can tell the identities of the hijackers are not actually established terribly well. The actual hijackers might well have been in the country on false papers.

And the people currently alive might just have the same names.

[loudnclear]

8. OK, there have bee at least two "twentieth hijackers"

Will the real "twentieth hijacker" please step forward.

[missile_bender]

10. What ever happened to Occam's Razor? Just becuase the

authorities coulnd't understand what this guy was doing, he's probably the 20th hijacker? Is that the most reasonable or simple explanation? Please.

[yankeedem]

11. Is the 20th hijacker

Like the 5th Beatle?

[NIGHT TRIPPER]

14. anyone seen evidence that there were ANY hijackers?

Maybe I missed something.
Help me out here.

Where's the video surveillance tape of the boarding hijackers?
All we've heard are some second hand accounts of some Todd Beemer phone call--no tape of that either.
What about the black boxes?they always survive crashes.
Please someone point me in the right direction.

Anybody have Any links to any evidence(concrete evidence) of an actual hijacker?

Seems like we all just accepted (myself included) the media story that there were these certain hijackers.
I know they found some sort of papers or belongings in a car and a hotel room but that is not definite stuff because it could have been "placed" there.
Where's the evidence?
Help me find it .
Thanks.

[Zhade]

16. WTC 7 was demolished - according to THE OWNER OF THE LEASE.

Here's one thing that contradicts the Official Story: the man who signed a 99-year lease for the WTC plaza, six weeks before 9/11, stated in a PBS documentary that WTC 7 was demolished.

This directly contradicts the official FEMA report that "fire" and "damage from debris from WTC 1 and 2" caused the building to collapse.

This is huge. Here's the relevant sound clip from the PBS documentary "America Rebuilds":

http://VestigialConscience.com/PullIt.mp3

"In the documentary Silverstein makes the following statement;

I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, "We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it." And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."

This comes from http://www.prisonplanet.com/011704wtc7.html - yes, I realize Alex Jones is out there for some people, but this clip is the real thing. It's the owner of WTC 7 saying that the building was intentionally demolished.

Now, cynics out there who buy the Official Story, how do you explain THIS one?