The 9/11 Commission
Report
From Chapter
1, section 1.1
[This excerpt of the report covers the introduction, and the boarding of all 4 aircraft by the 19 hijackers]
CHAPTER 1: WE HAVE SOME PLANES
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly
cloudless in the eastern United States. Millions of men
and women readied themselves for work. Some made their way
to the Twin Towers, the signature structures of the World
Trade Center complex in New York City. Others went to Arlington,
Virginia, to the Pentagon. Across the Potomac River, the
United States Congress was back in session. At the other
end of Pennsylvania Avenue, people began to line up for
a White House tour. In Sarasota, Florida, President George
W. Bush went for an early morning run.
For those heading to an airport, weather conditions could
not have been better for a safe and pleasant journey. Among
the travelers were Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al Omari,
who arrived at the airport in Portland, Maine.
1.1 INSIDE THE FOUR FLIGHTS
Boarding the Flights
Boston: American 11 and United 175. Atta and Omari
boarded a 6:00 A.M. flight from Portland to Bostons
Logan International Airport. When he checked in for his
flight to Boston, Atta was selected by a computerized prescreening
system known as CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening
System), created to identify passengers who should be subject
to special security measures. Under security rules in place
at the time, the only consequence of Attas selection
by CAPPS was that his checked bags
were held off the plane until it was confirmed that he had
boarded the aircraft. This did not hinder Attas plans.
Atta and Omari arrived in Boston at 6:45. Seven minutes
later, Atta apparently took a call from Marwan al Shehhi,
a longtime colleague who was at another terminal at Logan
Airport. They spoke for three minutes. It would be their
final conversation.
Between 6:45 and 7:40, Atta and Omari,
along with Satam al Suqami,Wail al Shehri, and Waleed al
Shehri, checked in and boarded American Airlines Flight
11, bound for Los Angeles. The flight was scheduled to depart
at 7:45.
In another Logan terminal, Shehhi, joined by Fayez Banihammad,
Mohand al Shehri, Ahmed al Ghamdi, and Hamza al Ghamdi,
checked in for United Airlines Flight 175, also bound for
Los Angeles. A couple of Shehhis colleagues were obviously
unused to travel; according to the United ticket agent,
they had trouble understanding the standard security questions,
and she had to go over them slowly until they gave the routine,
reassuring answers. Their flight was scheduled to depart
at 8:00.
The security checkpoints through which passengers, including
Atta and his colleagues, gained access to the American 11
gate were operated by Globe Security under a contract with
American Airlines. In a different terminal, the single checkpoint
through which passengers for United 175 passed was controlled
by United Airlines, which had contracted with Huntleigh
USA to perform the screening. In passing through these checkpoints,
each of the hijackers would have been screened by a walk-through
metal detector calibrated to detect items with at least
the metal content of a .22-caliber handgun. Anyone who might
have set off that detector would have been screened with
a hand wanda procedure requiring the screener to identify
the metal item or items that caused the alarm. In addition,
an X-ray machine would have screened the hijackers
carry-on belongings. The screening was in place to identify
and confiscate weapons and other items prohibited from being
carried onto a commercial flight. None of the checkpoint
supervisors recalled the hijackers or reported anything
suspicious regarding their screening.
While Atta had been selected by CAPPS in Portland, three
members of his hijacking teamSuqami,Wail al Shehri,
and Waleed al Shehriwere selected in Boston. Their
selection affected only the handling of their checked bags,
not their screening at the checkpoint. All five men cleared
the checkpoint and made their way to the gate for American
11. Atta, Omari, and Suqami took their seats in business
class (seats 8D, 8G, and 10B, respectively). The Shehri
brothers had adjacent seats in row 2 (Wail in 2A,Waleed
in 2B), in the firstclass cabin. They boarded American 11
between 7:31 and 7:40. The aircraft pushed back from the
gate at 7:40.
Shehhi and his team, none of whom had been selected by CAPPS,
boarded United 175 between 7:23 and 7:28 (Banihammad in
2A, Shehri in 2B, Shehhi in 6C, Hamza al Ghamdi in 9C, and
Ahmed al Ghamdi in 9D). Their aircraft pushed back from
the gate just before 8:00.
Washington Dulles: American 77. Hundreds of miles
southwest of Boston, at Dulles International Airport in
the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., five more men
were preparing to take their early morning flight. At 7:15,
a pair of them, Khalid al Mihdhar and Majed Moqed, checked
in at the American Airlines ticket counter for Flight 77,
bound for Los Angeles.Within the next 20 minutes, they would
be followed by Hani Hanjour and two brothers, Nawaf al Hazmi
and Salem al Hazmi.
Hani Hanjour, Khalid al Mihdhar, and Majed Moqed were flagged
by CAPPS. The Hazmi brothers were also selected for extra
scrutiny by the airlines customer service representative
at the check-in counter. He did so because one of the brothers
did not have photo identification nor could he understand
English, and because the agent found both of the passengers
to be suspicious. The only consequence of their selection
was that their checked bags were held off the plane until
it was confirmed that they had boarded the aircraft.
All five hijackers passed through the Main Terminals
west security screening checkpoint; United Airlines, which
was the responsible air carrier, had contracted out the
work to Argenbright Security. The checkpoint featured closed-circuit
television that recorded all passengers, including the hijackers,
as they were screened. At 7:18, Mihdhar and Moqed entered
the security checkpoint.
Mihdhar and Moqed placed their carry-on bags on the belt
of the X-ray machine and proceeded through the first metal
detector. Both set off the alarm, and they were directed
to a second metal detector. Mihdhar did not trigger the
alarm and was permitted through the checkpoint. After Moqed
set it off, a screener wanded him. He passed this inspection.
About 20 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 Terminals west checkpoint, and proceeded,
without alarm, through the metal detector. A short time
later, Nawaf and Salem al Hazmi entered the same checkpoint.
Salem al Hazmi cleared the metal detector and was permitted
through; Nawaf al Hazmi set off the alarms for both the
first and second metal detectors and was then hand-wanded
before being passed. In addition, his over-the-shoulder
carry-on bag was swiped by an explosive trace detector and
then passed. The video footage indicates that he was carrying
an unidentified item in his back pocket, clipped to its
rim.
When the local civil aviation security office of the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) later investigated these security
screening operations, the screeners recalled nothing out
of the ordinary. They could not recall that any of the passengers
they screened were CAPPS selectees.We asked a screening
expert to review the videotape of the hand-wanding, and
he found the quality of the screeners work to have
been marginal at best. The screener should have
resolved what set off the alarm; and in the
case of both Moqed and
Hazmi, it was clear that he did not.
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 1B (first class), soon followed. The Hazmi brothers,
sitting in 5E and 5F, joined Hanjour in the first-class
cabin.
Newark: United 93. Between 7:03 and 7:39, Saeed al
Ghamdi, Ahmed al Nami, Ahmad al Haznawi, and Ziad Jarrah
checked in at the United Airlines ticket counter for Flight
93, going to Los Angeles.Two checked bags; two did not.
Haznawi was selected by CAPPS. His checked bag was screened
for explosives and then loaded on the plane.
The four men passed through the security checkpoint, owned
by United Airlines and operated under contract by Argenbright
Security. Like the checkpoints in Boston, it lacked closed-circuit
television surveillance so there is no documentary evidence
to indicate when the hijackers passed through the
checkpoint, what alarms may have been triggered, or what
security procedures were administered. The FAA interviewed
the screeners later; none recalled anything unusual or suspicious.
The four men boarded the plane between 7:39 and 7:48. All
four had seats in the first-class cabin; their plane had
no business-class section. Jarrah was in seat 1B, closest
to the cockpit; Nami was in 3C, Ghamdi in 3D, and Haznawi
in 6B.
The 19 men were aboard four transcontinental flights. They
were planning to hijack these planes and turn them into
large guided missiles, loaded with up to 11,400 gallons
of jet fuel. By 8:00 A.M. on the morning of Tuesday, September
11, 2001,they had defeated all the security layers that
Americas civil aviation security system then had in
place to prevent a hijacking.