Hijackers Left Trail Of Clues Across County

Car left at airport key lead to San Diego cell

by Kelly Thornton
The San Diego Union-Tribune
September 30, 2001

It was a Navy blue Toyota Corolla, a 1988 four-door model with well more than 100,000 miles on the odometer.

A Clairemont couple sold it for $3,000 to an acquaintance from the Islamic Center of San Diego.

About 19 months later, the new owner would abandon the Corolla at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., the departure point of the American Airlines jetliner that crashed into the Pentagon.

That Corolla, traced by the FBI to a Lemon Grove address, would be the first clue that San Diego County was a primary staging area for the terrorist attacks that killed more than 6,000.

The discovery of that car, registered to hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi, would raise questions that FBI officials in San Diego still are trying to answer: When did the hijackers arrive in San Diego? What did they do? Who helped them? What's next? The car would lead investigators to three men who apparently participated fully in a society they despised, attending San Diego colleges and flight schools, playing soccer, studying English, seeking girlfriends, praying five times a day -- and going to strip bars.

"Drinking, smoking, sex -- everything they're supposed to be against, that's what they were doing," a federal law enforcement source said. "Women are supposed to be these sacred items covered up from head to toe, yet these guys are getting lap dances. We're going to have an act of mass murder, but we're going to practice the sins of the infidels first?"

The hijackers with San Diego ties were identified by the FBI as Hani Hanjoor, 29, Nawaf Alhazmi, age unknown, and Khalid al-Midhar, 26. Their ages, hometowns and spellings of their names vary. They were from the Middle East.

For at least two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, Hanjoor, Alhazmi and al-Midhar hopscotched between American cities and a few international spots, spending the bulk of their time -- most or all of 2000 -- in San Diego County.

They obtained student visas, post office boxes, ATM and credit cards, e-mail accounts and bank accounts, including one at the Lemon Grove Bank of America branch.

Although they spoke little English, they did not stand out in San Diego's increasingly diverse landscape with one of the nation's largest Middle Eastern communities. They lived close to mosques, first at a large Clairemont apartment complex and then at the Lemon Grove home of a prominent Muslim leader.

They were at once secretive and open. The men avoided strangers and communicated discreetly, going online at public libraries and using cellular telephones, often stepping outside to avoid being overheard.

They showed little fear of being discovered. Alhazmi's address and phone number were listed in a San Diego telephone book. Alhazmi and al-Midhar insisted on learning to fly Boeing jets before learning how to fly at all.

Neighbors, acquaintances, housemates and flight instructors said the men were sometimes cordial, but more often withdrawn and private, even dull and apparently dimwitted. They never expressed anti-American sentiment or showed any inclination toward violence.

None of the hijackers, including members of the San Diego cell, had a criminal record. It appears the FBI started looking for al-Midhar and Alhazmi a month before the attacks, after their names were added to a terrorist watch list. The pair had been seen on a surveillance videotape meeting in Malaysia with one of the suspects in the Oct. 12, 2000, terrorist bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen.

A check of immigration records by federal agents showed the pair had entered the country two months before the attacks through Los Angeles International Airport.

It was too late.

America's Finest City

Hijackers arrived in the United States alone or in pairs as long as 10 years ago or as recently as two years ago, occasionally traveling for clandestine meetings in places such as Las Vegas.

Of those in the San Diego cell, Hanjoor was a loner, while Alhazmi and al-Midhar traveled and lived together.

Hanjoor lived in the Phoenix area off and on since 1991, training to be a pilot in 1996 and 1997. He was licensed as a commercial pilot in 1999. When he tried to enroll at a flight school again in January 2000, he was rejected because he was considered a mediocre student.

That may be when Hanjoor made his way to San Diego. About the same time, Alhazmi and al-Midhar rented a unit in the Parkwood Apartments in Clairemont. It was furnished with little more than a television.

The men bought the Corolla and obtained a $360 six-month auto insurance policy in February 2000 from Huggy Bear Insurance on El Cajon Boulevard in City Heights.

Their apartment, on Mount Ada Road, was close to a community college, a mosque and Clairemont Mesa strip clubs. Credit card records indicate the men spent money at Cheetahs and Dancers, both adult entertainment spots with nude or partially clad female dancers. Employees said they recognized the men from FBI photos.

Also nearby is Montgomery Field, where Alhazmi and al-Midhar took six flying lessons in May 2000. Instructors ended the training because the two did not have enough ability.

The men had called from the Middle East to arrange lessons at Sorbi's Flying Club, said instructor Rick Garza. The pair wanted to skip over single- and twin-engine planes and learn to fly Boeing jet aircraft.

"I told them it's not happening, their English was terrible," Garza said. "I told the FBI they seemed like 'Dumb and Dumber.' "

Garza said al-Midhar and Alhazmi were accompanied to Sorbi's one day by two other men who also wanted to learn to fly. Garza said one of the men resembled Ahmed Alghamdi, whom the FBI has identified as one of the men who hijacked United Flight 175 and slammed it into the World Trade Center.

Alghamdi looks familiar to other people, too. A San Diego limo driver said that when he looked at FBI photos of the 19 suspected hijackers, he was struck by the resemblance between Alghamdi and a man he chauffeured for five days in August 1998.

Driver Fritz Herrmann knew his passenger as "Bandar," and took him to meetings in parking lots, to airports and to a grocery store in Clairemont. The man appeared to carry a lot of cash, and often returned to his Scripps Ranch apartment to get more.

The Parkwood apartment of al-Midhar and Alhazmi was near the Islamic Center of San Diego, where they met the people who sold them the Corolla, and their next landlord, Abdussattar Shaikh.

Shaikh, a retired educator and Muslim leader, invited them to share his five-bedroom Lemon Grove house, as he has with many students -- including two others who later would be arrested as material witnesses in the terrorist attacks.

"He was very good to me," Shaikh said of Alhazmi, whom he became fond of during a stay from September to December 2000. "He didn't talk much, but he was peaceful. Never in my life would I think he would do such a thing."

While living there, Alhazmi and al-Midhar may have been visited by Hanjoor and Mohamed Atta, said Marna Adair, Shaikh's neighbor. Atta is suspected of being the hijackers' ringleader.

Atta was memorable because he was more extroverted, Adair said. She recalled that a man she believed to be Atta sometimes played basketball with others in Shaikh's driveway. He once helped Adair's husband with yard work.

"This guy just seemed to be a little more outgoing and more willing to say, 'Hi,' or, 'Bye,' or whatever than the other ones were," said Adair, who picked Atta out of photos shown by the FBI.

Federal law enforcement sources said the FBI has not been able to place Atta in San Diego. Shaikh did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

Al-Midhar stayed with Shaikh for a month, saying he was returning to Saudi Arabia to be with his wife and baby.

A month after Alhazmi left, he called Shaikh to say he was training to be a pilot in Arizona. That was the last time Shaikh heard from him.

Goodbye, San Diego

Details about what happened after the trio left San Diego are sketchy, but it seems they were mobile in 2001, traveling to Las Vegas, New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland. They may have gone to Arizona for more flight training, as Alhazmi said.

Authorities have evidence that Algerian pilot Lotfi Raissi, 27, helped train the San Diego hijackers in Arizona in June, including a flight from Arizona to Las Vegas. Raissi has been detained in London.

The San Diego cell apparently had at least one rendezvous with other hijackers in Las Vegas. Hanjoor and Alhazmi visited Las Vegas at the same time as Atta on at least one occasion in August.

Whether any of them ever returned to San Diego is unclear. A few months before the hijacking crashes at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania, a San Diego Zoo employee found a briefcase containing money and Arabic documents and identification, possibly containing Hanjoor's name, zoo officials said.

The briefcase was turned in to the lost-and-found office at the zoo, and it was claimed the same day by one or two Middle Eastern men. The FBI is investigating.

The hijackers made suburban Maryland hotels their base in the final weeks before the attacks. Al-Midhar and Alhazmi booked their tickets online Aug. 25 for the Sept. 11 Flight 77 out of Dulles.

They bought weeklong memberships at a Gold's Gym, and hotel neighbors would catch glimpses of the men sitting silently on blankets on the floor of their room.

Most mornings, the five men who hijacked Flight 77 piled into the blue Toyota Corolla and drove off, taking their luggage along, The Washington Post reported. When they returned they brought grocery bags and stayed in for the night.

The aftermath

Other hijackings may have been planned for Sept. 11. Box-cutting tools like those used by hijackers were found on airliners that were grounded shortly after the attacks, including an American Airlines plane that was scheduled to fly from San Diego to New York.

The FBI found the Corolla at Dulles the day after the attacks. Inside were a cashier's check made out to a flight school in Phoenix; four drawings of the cockpit of a 757 jet; a box-cutter-type knife, like the ones used in all of the hijackings; and maps of Washington and New York.

There was a piece of paper with the name and phone number of a San Diego resident who eventually was arrested as a material witness. In all, four Middle Eastern men have been arrested in San Diego as material witnesses. Three were students enrolled in San Diego State University or Grossmont College. Which man's name was in the Corolla has not been revealed.

Omer Bakarbashat, Osama "Sam" Awadallah, Mohdar Abdallah and Yazeed Al-Salmi were taken to New York to testify before a grand jury.

Several of the jailed men were roommates. They met each other and at least one hijacker at local mosques or at a La Mesa gas station where some worked. Two of the men who later were jailed and two hijackers rented a room from Shaikh at various times in the last two years.

The lawyer for three of the jailed men said they are innocent victims snared in a witch hunt for Middle Easterners. The men were acquainted with Alhazmi and were unaware of any terrorist plots, said attorney Randall Hamud.

Family and friends rallied to the defense of the jailed men, saying they are loyal to America. Awadallah is well-liked, bright and extremely religious, and his worst fault is incessant proselytizing, said one of his teachers at Grossmont College.

"He was very amiable with a good sense of humor," said the instructor from the school's English as a Second Language department. "We teased him about his fanaticism and he took it good naturedly."

In the days after the terrorist attacks, Awadallah, a Palestinian who did not hide his hatred for Israel, approached his Jewish teacher and assured her that Islam does not condone the actions of the terrorists.

"He did express a lot of pro-Islam sentiment, but never anti-American sentiment," the teacher said. "To the contrary, he was happy to be here."

Copyright 2001 The San Diego Union-Tribune

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