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SUBJECT
TO
CLASSIFICATION REVIEW
CHAPTER ONE"A
NEW
TYPE
OF
WAR"
1.1
Inside
the
Four Flights
Tuesday, September
11,2001,
dawned with exceptionally
fine
weather across
the
country.
1
In Florida, President Bush went for an early morning run. Tens of thousands
of
employees at the World Trade Center were waking up and heading to work.Thousands more were headed to work at the Pentagon, in Arlington,
Virginia,
or were
already
there.
Boarding
the
Flights
Boston:
American
11 and
United 175.
In Portland,
Maine, Mohammed
Atta and
Abdul
Aziz
al
Omari
got a
very early start, boarding
a flight
that
left
at
6:00 a.m.
from
Portland, Maine,
for
Boston's Logan International Airport.
2
3
The
Computer
Assisted
Passenger Pre-screening
System (CAPPS)
selected
Atta
for
special security procedures when
he
went through screening
in
Portland^
4
Under
the
CAPPS system
in use by the
airline
on
9/11, American's ticket agents were
to
mark
as
"selectees"
those passengers
who did not
provide correct responses
to the
required
security
questions, were identified by certain triggers
developed
by the FAA, withpossible
further
triggers added
by the
airline.!
"T
].or
were
chosenat
randbhibv
me airline's
computerized CAPPS
system.
The
only consequence
of
selection
was
that
Atta's
checked bags were held
off the
plane
until
it was confirmed that he had boarded the
aircraft.
6
This was no hindrance to
Atta's
plans.
Atta
and
Omari arrived
in
Boston
at
6:45. Seven minutes later,
at
6:52, Atta
apparently
took
a call from a longtime colleague who was at another terminal at Logan airport,
Marwan al
Shehhi. They talked
for
^hree minutes.
7
*..Whatever
theysaid,
it was their
final
conversation.
They decided to proceed with their long-planned operation.Between
6:45
9
and
7:40,
10
Atta, Omari,
Satam
al Suqami,WailalShehri,
and
T
Waleed
al
Shehri checked in for and boarded their
flight
that morning
from
Boston to Los
Angeles
on
American Airlines Flight
11.
The flight was
scheduled
to
depart
at
7:45.
u
In
another terminal, Shehhi, joined by Fayez Banihammad, Mohand al Shehri, Ahmed al
Ghamdi, and
Hamza
al
Ghamdi
checked
in at
Logan Airport's United Airlines ticketcounter for United's Flight 175, also headed to Los
Angeles.
12
A couple of
Shehhi's
colleagues were obviously unused
to
travel;
the
United ticket agent remembered that
they
had
trouble understanding the standard security questions and she had to go over them
Deleted:
'9/11
Closed
by
Statute
Deleted:Deleted:
SUBJECT TO CLASSIFICATION REVIEWChapter One,
Version061304
 
SUBJECT TO CLASSIFICATION REVIEWslowly until they gavetheroutine, reassuringanswers.
1314
l5
Their
flight
wasscheduledto depart at
8:00.
There,
was
only
one
checkpoint
through which
passengers
could have gained
access
to
the
American
11
gate,
through
which
Attaand his
colleagues
would
have
passed. Globe
Security
operated^]!
under a contract with American
Airlines/'""In
a
different
terminal of Logan airport, United 175 passengers had to go through one
checkpoint
toreach their
gate.
This checkpointwascontrolledbyUnited Airlines, whichhad contracted with Huntleigh USA to perform thescreening.
17
In
passing through these checkpoints eachof thehijackers would have been screenedby awalk-through metal detector calibratedtodetect items withametal contentof a 22-caliber handgun or more. Any of the hijackers who may have alarmed the walk-throughmagnetometer would have been screened with a hand wand metal detector—a procedure
requiring
the screener to
identify
the item or items that caused the alarm. In addition, anx-ray machine would have screened the hijackers' carry-on belongings in order to
identify
prohibited or restricted items. Restricted or prohibited items discovered during
the
walk through metal detector, hand wand, or x-ray screening would have beenconfiscated.
18
Neither the supervisors on duty at the checkpoints nor any of the screeners reportedobserving anything suspicious that morning. No records were kept to log individualswhomayhave alarmedthemagnetometer,or
from
whom
restricted
orprohibited itemswere confiscatedat thecheckpoints, unlesstheindividual possessedan
"illegal"
item
such as an
unlicensed
firearm.
19
CAPPS selected three more of the passengers headed for American
11.
Atta had alreadybeen selected
in
Portland. Suqami, Wail
al
Shehri,
and
T
Waleed
al Shehri were selected
in
Boston.
20
But,
as explained earlier, their selection only
affected
the handling of theirchecked
bags.
It
would have
had no
effect
on the way
they were screened
at the
checkpoint. All five men made their way to the
gate
for American
11.
Atta, Omari, and
Suqami
took their seatsinbusiness
class,
rows
8 and 10
(seats
8D, 8G and10Brespectively). The Shehri brothers had adjacent
seats
in row 2 (Wail in 2A, Waleed in
2B),
in the First Class cabin. They boarded American
11
between 7:31 and
7:40.
The
aircraft
pushed back
from
the gate at
7:40,
right
after
the
last
of the men boarded theplane.
21
Shehhi
and his team, none of whom had been selected byCAPPS,
22
boarded United 175
between
7:23
and
7:28
(Banihammad
in 2A, al
Shehri
in 2B, al
Shehhi
in 6C,
Hamza
alGhamdi in 9C and
Ahmed
al
Ghamdi
in
9D).
23
Their aircraft pushed back
from
the
gatejust
before
8:00.
Washington-Dulles: American77.Hundredsofmiles southwestofBoston,atDullesAirport
in the
Virginia suburbs
of
Washington,
D.C.,
five
more
men
were checking
in for
their early morning
flight.
At
7:15,
a
pair
of
them,
Khalid al Mihdhar and
Majed Moqed,
Deleted:
were
two
Deleted:
s
Deleted:
both
Deleted:
SUBJECT TO CLASSIFICATION REVIEWChapter One, Version 061304
 
SUBJECTTOCLASSIFICATION REVIEWcheckedin at theAmerican Airlines ticket counterforFlight77,boundfor LosAngeles.
Withinthenext
twenty
minutes.
Jhey would
be
followed
by
Hani
Hanj
our and two -
(Deleted;
T
brothers, Nawaf
al
Hazmi and Salem
al
Hazmi.
21
Hani
Hanj
our, Khalid alMihdharand
Majed
Moqed met the CAPPS criteria. The Hazmibrothers were both selected either because they provided inadequate identification
information
to the airline or because they triggered some other criterion, perhaps credit,
added
by the airline.
25
26
All
five of the hijackers passed through the Main Terminal's West security screeningcheckpoint for
which
United Airlines was the responsible air carrier and had contractedout the work to Argenbright security.
27
At
7:18,
Mihdhar and Moqed entered the securitycheckpoint.Mihdhar
and
Moqed placed
their
carry-on
bagson the
x-ray machine
beltand
proceededthrough the first magnetometer. Both set off the alarm. They were directed to a secondmagnetometer. Mihdhar did not alarm the second magnetometer and was permittedthrough the checkpoint. Moqed set it off. A screener wanded him. He passed thisinspection.
28
About
twenty minutes later, at 7:35, another passenger for Flight 77, Hani
Hanjour,
placed two carry-on bags on the x-ray belt in the Main Terminal West Checkpoint, andproceeded, without alarm, through the magnetometer. A short time later, Nawaf and
Salem
al Hazmi entered the same checkpoint. Salem al Hazmi
successfully
cleared themagnetometer and was permitted through the checkpoint.Nawaf al Hazmi set off the alarms for both the first and second magnetometers and wasthen hand-wanded before
being
passed.
In
addition,
his
shoulder-strap
carry-on bag was
swiped by an explosive trace detector and then passed. The video footage indicates thatNawaf al Hazmi was carrying an item in his back pocket that was clipped to the rim ofthe
pocket.
29
The
FAA's local
civil
aviation security
office
later investigated these security screeningoperations. The screeners recalled nothing out of the ordinary. They could not recall that
any
of the passengers they screened were CAPPSselectees.
30
We asked a screeningexpert to review the videotape of the hand-wanding. Our expert
found
the
screener's
work to have been "marginal at
best."
The screener should have
"resolved"
what set offthe alarm, and it was clear that he did
not.
31
At
7:50,
Majed
Moqed and Khalid al Mihdhar boarded the flight and were
seated
in 12A
and 12B in Coach.
Hani Hanjour,
assigned
to
seat
IB
(First Class),
soon
followed.
The
Hazmi brothers, sitting in 5E and 5F, joined Hanjour in the First Class cabin a few
minutes
after
him.
32
Newark: United 93. Between 7:03 and 7:39, Ziad Jarrah, Saeed al
Ghamdi,
Ahmed al
Nami, and
Ahmad
al
Haznawi checked
in at the
United Airlines ticket counter
for
FlightSUBJECT TO CLASSIFICATION REVIEW 3Chapter One, Version 061304
of 00

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