Unsafe at Any Altitude, Hanover, NH: Steerforth, 2007, 1–, 43–).
44 Corolla/personal belongings/?investigative treasure/involvement in aviation: “Nawaf al-Hazmi,” FBI summary, 4/19/02, www.scribd.com, Warrant Issued on Vehicle IDJT2AE92E9J3137546, 9/13/01, “FBI 302s of Interest,” B17, T7, CF, Criminal Complaint, U.S. v. Mohamed Abdi, Case No. 01–1053-M, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, 9/23/01, MFR 04016253, 10/16/03, San Diego to Ottawa et al., 4/11/02, Leads from Hijackers’ Cars, INTELWIRE, “Ali Ahmad Mesdaq,” 1/28/02, FBI Document re PENTTBOM, INTELWIRE. Also recovered, at Newark Airport, was a red Mitsubishi Galant rented by Ziad Jarrah. Jarrah, a Lebanese citizen, is believed to have led the hijack team on United Flight 93. Though the car contained far less evidence than did Hazmi’s, agents did recover a speeding ticket Jarrah had incurred in the early hours of September 10. In a trash can at Newark’s Days Inn, meanwhile, the FBI found the used Spirit Airlines ticketing that had brought Jarrah and Saudis Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Nami, and Ahmad al-Haznawi from Fort Lauderdale to Newark on September 7. Other evidence aside, the joint travel before 9/11 indicated that the four men shared a common purpose (Ziad Jarrah summary, Prepared by UA93 Investigative Team, FBI, 4/19/02, www.scribd.com, Evidence Inspected at FBI HQ 5/14/04, “Breeder Documents,” B8, T7, CF, Longman, 101).
45 duffel bags: MFR 04017509, 11/5/03, “Hijackers Timeline [redacted],” 11/14/03, INTELWIRE, San Diego Union-Tribune, 9/3/02;
46 Portland car: Evidence Inspected at FBI HQ, 5/14/04, “Breeder Documents,” B8, T5, CF;
47 manuals: “Ziad Jarrah,” FBI summary, www.scribd.com;
48 “Everybody was gathered”: int. Mark Mikarts;
49 “It was the sort”/“His bearing”: Birmingham Post (U.K.), 9/25/01, Jane Corbin, The Base, London: Pocket, 2003, 162;
50 Dekkers: transcript of interview of Rudi Dekkers, ibid., News- Press (Fort Myers, FL), 9/13/01.
51 Atta luggage: Review of Investigation Conducted by the FBI of Atta’s Suitcases at Boston, 2/10/04, “Detainee Reports,” B53, T5, CF, FBI 302 of [redacted] DePasquale, 9/17/01, “Atta Luggage,” B18, T7, CF, Recovered Identification Documents, “Breeder Documents,” B8, T5, CF. Also in Atta’s bag were a folding knife and some First Defense pepper spray. Omari’s bag contained an Arabic-to-English dictionary, English grammar books, his Saudi passport, and a bank checkbook (Recovered Identification Documents, “Breeder Docs.— Entire Contents,” B8, T5, CF, MFR of Review of Investigation by the FBI of Atta’s suitcases at Boston, 2/10/04, “Detainee Reports,” B53, T5, CF).
52 document in luggage/at Dulles/at 93 site: “Synopsis of Captioned Investigation as of 11/4/01,” PENTTBOM, Major Case 182, 11/5/01, authors’ collection. The document has been variously referred to as having five, four, and three pages. The first report, by Bob Woodward in The Washington Post, had it as five. A 2006 study, by Professor Hans Kippenberg and Professor Tilman Seidensticker, suggests that a fifth page was recovered but not published. CBS News, which reported on a copy of the Dulles Airport document, said it was “similar but not identical to the document found in Atta’s luggage, and parts of a document found in the Pennsylvania wreckage” (Woodward: WP, 9/28/01; four: eds. Hans Kippenberg & Tilman Seidensticker, The 9/11 Handbook, London: Equinox, 2006, 1–, Observer [London], 9/30/01; three: “PENTTBOM, Major case 182, Summary of Captioned Investigation as of 11/4/01,” FBI document, 11/5/01; CBS News: “Translated Text: Hijackers’ How-To,” www.cbsnews.com, 10/1/01).
53 Commission not mention: Congress’s Joint Inquiry report on the attacks did cite a statement by FBI director Mueller including the fact that a “three-page letter handwritten in Arabic” had been found, and stating that it contained “instructions on how to prepare for a mission applicable, but not specific, to the September 11 operation” (JI, Report, 142–, Statement of Robert Mueller, 9/25/02, www.fas.org).
54 “Spiritual Manual”/“Handbook”/“mutual pledge”: all from the translation in eds. Kippenberg & Seidensticker, 11–. There have been several translations and commentaries of the document the FBI released. The authors of this book have relied primarily on the 2006 book The 9/11 Handbook, by Hans Kippenberg, professor of Comparative Religious Studies at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, and Tilman Seidensticker, professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. There have been other commentaries of note—by Professor Kanan Makiya of Brandeis University and Hassan Mneimneh, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan, and David Cook, an associate professor at Rice University. In their book Masterminds of Terror, Al Jazeera’s Yosri Fouda and The Sunday Times’s Nick Fielding reported Fouda’s 2002 interview of self-confessed 9/11 conspirator Ramzi Binalshibh—which offered confirmation that the “Spiritual Manual” is authentic. All the sources mentioned treat the document as having been written for the 9/11 hijackers. The translators of the version used by CBS News in 2001, however, stated in a note that the document did “not in any way sound like instructions to a hijacker or a terrorist.” In the context of its content and circumstances of discovery, however, the document can only be pertinent to 9/11 (Kanan Makiya & Hassan Mneimneh, “Manual for a Raid,” NY Review of Books, 1/17/02, Yosri Fouda & Nick Fielding, Masterminds of Terror, Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2003, 141–, Juan Cole, “Al Qaeda’s Doomsday Document and Psychological Manipulation,” 4/9/03, www.juancole.com, David Cook, Understanding Jihad, Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 2005, 195–, “Translated Text: Hijackers How-To,” 10/1/01, www.cbsnews.com).
55 manual: FBI press release, 9/28/01, www.fbi.gov;
56 re “q”/Qiblah: Fouda & Fielding, 147;
57 “To those who”: corr. Hans Kippenberg, 2010. Some, pointing to anomalies in the document, have raised the possibility that the hijackers’ manual might be a forgery. Professor Kippenberg, however, who has conducted the most in-depth analysis, cites a skein of persuasive evidence to the contrary (anomalies: e.g., Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilization, London: Fourth Estate, 2005, 1039–;
58 evidence: Kippenberg, 4–).
59 “We believe”: Telegraph (U.K.), 9/13/01, int. of Jamal Ismael for Palladin InVision, 2006, supplied to author, WP, 12/9/01, Peter L. Bergen, The Osama bin Laden I Know, New York: Free Press, 2006, 312;
60 “I would like”/Taliban accepted: CNN, 9/17/01;
61 “As a Muslim”: Daily Ummat (Karachi), 9/28/01, www.justresponse.net;
62 “Whenever we kill”/“As concerns”: ed. Bruce Lawrence, Messages to the World, London: Verso, 2005, 106–.
63 On the eve: The night before the attacks, according to a CBS News report citing Pakistani intelligence sources, bin Laden entered a military hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, for kidney dialysis. This report appears to have been unfounded. There was an oft-repeated story that he required dialysis, but the best evidence is that he did not. Al Qaeda operatives’ accounts, moreover, place bin Laden at a camp in Afghanistan the following morning, September 11 (CBS news, 1/28/02, and see notes for Ch. 30, pp. 548–49);
64 call to mother/“In two days”/“I would never”: NYT, 10/2/01, MSNBC, 10/1/01, Mail on Sunday (U.K.), 12/23/01.
65 “I asked Osama”: Mir quoted in Georgie Anne Geyer, “Reporting on Terrorist Can Be Deadly,” http://sentinelsource.com, 6/28/09, but see Bergen, OBL I Know, 319, corr. Peter Bergen, 2010. The only other post-9/11 interview bin Laden gave was for television, with Taysir Alluni of Al Jazeera. Alluni was later arrested in his home country, Spain, on charges of supporting al Qaeda, and not released until 2005. Only in 2007, on an audiotape that a U.S. official judged authentic at the time would bin Laden clearly admit responsibility for 9/11. The voice believed to be his on the tape said, “The events of Manhattan were retaliation against the American-Israeli alliance’s aggression against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, and I am the only one responsible for it. The Afghan people and government knew nothing about it. America knows that” (Alluni: ed. Lawrence, 106–, 139–; 2007 tape: msnbc.com, 11/29/07).
