The Eleventh Day

had left their personal belongings in the vehicle. There was clothing—T-shirts, pants, shorts, belts, socks, and briefs. There were toiletries—Nivea cream, Dry Idea deodorant, Dr. Scholl’s foot powder, Breath Remedy tongue spray, and Kleenex tissues. There was a broken pair of sunglasses, a hairbrush, an electric razor, no fewer than three alarm clocks, a compact disk entitled The Holy Qur’an, and worry beads.

As well as the bric-a-brac of daily life, though, there was also investigative treasure: fragments of torn paper relating to Flight 77, which, reassembled, revealed handwritten notes; a receipt for a driver’s license issued to Hazmi in San Diego, banking information for him and fellow Saudi Hani Hanjour—another Flight 77 suspect—and a doctor’s prescription written for Hazmi’s Saudi comrade Khalid al-Mihdhar. There were mailbox receipts; a flyer for a library in Alexandria, Virginia; addresses in Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Arizona; and a hand-drawn map pointing to an address in a suburb of San Diego.

Also, and this was a key to a whole world of information that would keep agents swarming across the country for months, here were the first traces of the suspects’ involvement in aviation: Hanjour’s ID card for the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Phoenix; a receipt from Caldwell Flight Academy in Fairfield, New Jersey; and four color diagrams of the instrument panels in a Boeing 757, the type of airliner that Nawaf al-Hazmi and his brother Salem, Hanjour, Mihdhar, and Majed Moqed—yet another Saudi—had boarded on 9/11.

There would be much more. Two duffel bags left at the Ayah Islamic Center in Laurel, Maryland—apparently by Hazmi and Mihdhar—contained pilot logbooks, evidence that they had attended a flight school as early as 2000, receipts for aviation headsets, and a chart kit. In the rental car at Portland Airport there was an Arabic-language flight manual and the name of another flight school, Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida. Boeing 757 manuals would also be found at a motel the terrorists had used in Florida.

Even as news of the attacks was breaking, people at Huffman Aviation remembered their encounters with Atta and Shehhi. “Everybody was gathered around the hotel lobby television,” said Mark Mikarts, a former Huffman instructor who had taught the pair, “and lo and behold there’s Mohamed Atta’s picture and Marwan al-Shehhi’s picture up on the TV screen. I felt myself just pooling into a puddle … I was speechless, aghast. I just could not believe that these were the people I had sat next to, had given primary instruction to.”

In southern England, former Huffman student pilot Ann Greaves recognized Atta’s picture the moment it was shown on television. “It was the sort of face that once you’d seen it you would never forget it,” she remembered. “His bearing was that of someone very much in command.”

Rudi Dekkers, the Dutchman who ran Huffman, was soon besieged by journalists from around the world. He said he had assumed Atta and Shehhi had been at the school, like his many other foreign students, just to get their pilot’s licenses. There had been no reason to inquire about their longer term plans.

BY MIDNIGHT on September 11, agents had evidence that appeared to dispel any doubt as to the suspects’ guilt and what their purpose had been—in Mohamed Atta’s luggage. Atta and Omari had checked two suitcases when they arrived at Portland Airport, a green one and a black pull-along. When they made their connection to American 11 at Boston, however, the suitcases did not. The baggage reached the plane too late to be loaded. Atta, already on board and waiting for takeoff, had apparently been concerned about the bags—a flight attendant, presumably at his behest, had asked ground staff whether the bags safely made the transfer. If Atta did worry that the suitcases would be found later and searched, he worried with good reason.

Atta’s pull-along bag turned out to be a window on his life—and on the nature of the 9/11 attacks. It contained his Egyptian passport and ID, which revealed his full name, a report card from the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University, and an addressed envelope indicating that he had lived in Germany. There were videotapes of Boeing 747 and 757 operating procedures, flight simulator information, and a flight computer in a case. A copy of the Qur’an, a prayer schedule, and Atta’s will—written and signed when he was only twenty-seven—revealed him to be intensely religious.

The significance of all that, however, paled beside that of another document. Seventeen days after the attacks, the FBI released four pages of Arabic script that had also been found in Atta’s bag. Further copies were recovered, moreover, one in the car Hazmi abandoned at Dulles Airport, another—apparently a remnant—at the United 93 crash scene in Pennsylvania. Neither the 9/11 Commission Report nor a Commission staff document— released later—even mentions the find. An obscure footnote lists the various other contents of the retrieved baggage, but not the document.

The omission is extraordinary, unconscionable, for the telltale pages were important evidence. Scholars who have translated and analyzed them have described them as nothing less than a “Spiritual Manual” or “Handbook” for the 9/11 attacks. Intensely religious in tone from beginning to end, the document is a mix of counsel, comfort, inspiration, and practical instruction—complex in many ways, replete with references obscure to the non-Muslim Westerner—but its thrust is clear. The pages offered the hijackers detailed advice on how to prepare for the attacks—and for death.

The manual opens with instructions for its readers’ “Last Night,” a time to stay awake, to meditate, pray, renew the “mutual pledge to die,” to contemplate “the eternal blessing God has prepared for the believers, especially for the martyrs.”

As physical preparation, readers were reminded of the importance of “shaving off excess hair from the body and perfuming oneself” and “Performing the greater ritual ablution [washing thoroughly].” The manual urged the old custom of nafth—spitting—to bring protection. Readers were to spit on “the suitcase, the clothing, the knife … equipment … ID … tdh [probably an abbreviation of tadh-kira, ticket] … passport … all your papers.” “Each one of you must sharpen his knife.”

The car journey to the “m” [the abbreviation, probably, of matar, airport] was to include further prayers, the prayer for travel, the prayer for arriving. Then the prayer: “O God, protect us from them … O God, we throw you against their throats and we seek refuge in you from their evil … Those who are enchanted by Western civilization are people who have drunk their love and reverence with cold water … Therefore do not fear them; but fear you Me, if you are believers” [Qur’an 3:175].

The “Spiritual Manual,” apparently written to steel the resolve of the hijackers for the 9/11 attack

.

Readers were to recite repeatedly the first part of the Islamic creed, la ilaha illa llah—“There is no god but God.” Care was to be taken, however, to appear to be silent, to ensure that “nobody takes notice.” “Don’t show signs of confusion or tension, but be happy, cheerful, bright and confident, because you carry out an action that God loves and approves … Smile in the face of death, young man, for you will soon enter the eternal abode.

“When you board the ‘t’ [the abbreviation, probably, for ta’ira airplane],” the manual continued, “proceed with the prayer … and consider that it is a raid on the path [of God] … When the ‘t’ begins to move slightly and heads for the ‘q’ [perhaps standing for the Arabic word for ‘takeoff position,’ or perhaps for Qiblah, the direction of Mecca, toward which the planes did point once diverted], recite the prayer of travel because you are traveling to God the Most High, for you are traveling to Allah … This is the moment of the encounter of the two camps. Recite prayers … ‘Our Lord, pour out upon us patience, and make firm our feet, and give us aid against the people of the unbelievers.’

“Pray for victory, assistance and the hitting of the target for yourself and for all your brothers, and don’t be afraid. And ask God to grant you martyrdom … In close combat, strike firmly like heroes who do not wish to return to this world. Exclaim loudly Allahu akbar, because the exclaiming of Allahu akbar strikes fear into the unbelievers’ hearts … the heavenly virgins are calling you, saying, ‘O friend of God, come!’

“And when God grants any of you a slaughter,” the text counseled, “you should dedicate it to your father and mother.”

Those to be killed were the passengers and crews of the airliners. The Arabic word used for “slaughter” in the text is dhabaha—the word used for the cutting of an animal’s throat.

“If everything has come off well, each of you is to pat his apartment brother on the shoulder. And in the m [airport] and in the t [plane] and in the k [perhaps the abbreviation for kabina—cockpit] (each of you)