Last night the HC had a special about 9/11. According to them, when the FAA anounced that all commercial airline flights were to be grounded, an airplane at Newark (NJ) retruned to the reminal. It was a United Airline plane. anyway, when it reached the terminal 5 middle -eastern -looking men dashed off the plane-they were never caught. their baggage was searched, and inside, the police found material connecting them to A-Queda. Is this true? And, were there MORE suicide teams scheduled for that day?
Were these people ever apprehended, trying to leave the USA?
I have a feeling that if this were true, the History Channel (I assume that’s what HC stands for) would not be the first place we heard it from, and nor would the information come six years after the fact.
5 middle-eastern men rushed off a plane in an airport during probably the most heightened state of security the country had ever seen? And escaped? All of them?
My vote is for highly implausible, though not necessarily impossible.
But remember, at the time, we didn’t know ‘middle-eastern men’ were the culprits. We did assume, in 1995, that the Murrow building was bombed by foreign terrorists, until we found out otherwise.
It’s the first I’ve ever heard of it.
I’ve heard other stories about “Middle-Eastern men” and 9/11. One was that off-duty airline pilots could hitch a ride in the cockpit of other planes, and that there were those darned “Middle-Eastern men” sitting in that extra seat in the cockpits of other planes that day posing as pilots from other airlines.
Perhaps the program was talking about the case of Mohamed Jaweed Azmath and Syed Gul Mohamed Shah who were in the air on a flight from Newark to San Antonio at the time of the attacks. Their flight landed in St. Louis. They were arrested while on a train to San Antonio. In their baggage was found box cutters, cash and numerous passport photos.
They were only ever charged with credit card fraud and were eventually deported to India after a 16 month sentence here.
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/01/16/inv.terror.investigation/index.html
It was a repeat from a few years ago, so the info is “younger” than six years old.
That’s interesting, fiddlesticks. Were they ever connected to AQ?
Obviously the feds were never able to connect them to AQ or they would have been charged with more than credit card fraud. The credit card fraud conviction was likely enough to get them deported without any further proof of terrorism ties.
They seem to have pretty much disappeared into the mists…the majority of Google hits link back to articles written about their initial arrest, a few about their trial and conviction and precious few about their life back in India post deportation.
Sounds like the guys were crooks but not terrorists with unlucky items in their baggage (they did work at a newsstand so they had an plausible excuse why they had them). India isn’t Pakistan so if further evidence about ties to AQ was found since their deportation, I’m sure India wouldn’t have let them slide.
But I’m willing to guess both guys are on the airlines “watch list” anyhow.
Doesn’t sound implausible. Law enforcement wasn’t (and isn’t) prepared for such a day. Also, I’ve always thought it was unlikely that only three planes were meant to be used (Christians tend to be more obsessed with trilogies than Muslims); I’d be surprised if there weren’t a high failure rate for all types of suicide bombings (hey, who the heck wants to get dead, when it comes right down to it?), and the 9/11 thing is probably no exception. Also, with the chaos that I imagine was in airports at the time (I wasn’t in one - I was at home in NYC, with it’s own chaos), I can fully envision 5 or more people running out without being pursued. After all, your local cops (perhaps especially in the referenced area) aren’t exactly intelligence analysts.
But there were four:
Two to the World Trade Centers
One to presumably the White House but that was too hard to spot from a fast moving jet so it hit the Pentagon
One was foiled by passengers and crashed in rural Pennsylvania
I always wondered if there were more planned as well but the execution was foiled by circumstances but I never heard of anything.
I also heard the rumour that boxcutters or razors were found hidden, wedged in seats on planes that had landed that day but sure I never heard anything else about it so might just be UL.
K.S. Muhammed’s original plan was to use ten planes, but Bin Laden scaled it back to four.
Huh? Is there any evidence that the hijackers who hit the Pentagon did not intend to do so all along?
[Nitpick]Newark Liberty Airport has three terminals not 5 or more. They are labeled A, B and C. United domestic flying in and out of A. Cite[/nitpick]
So if the people “reporting” the story can’t even get the terminal numbering at Newark right, I call bullshit.
Only they know that but the Pentagon was a piss poor target compared to the White House (or the Capitol Building). Common sense would suggest that they would choose the White House or the Capitol over targeting a small section of the world’s largest office building that also happened to be under construction at the time. The Pentagon would never collapse like the World Trade Center Towers would so the initial strike was basically all they would get. OTOH, the same type of strike could decimate either the Capitol or the White House.
I am not the only one that has that opinion and it has consistently appeared in the media over the years. It makes too much sense. The analyses that I have seen came to the conclusion that the White House was much harder to spot from the air than originally thought because it really is just a giant house surrounded by lots of other buildings. The Washington monument could help locate it but that may not have been enough either in the heat of the moment. The terrorists supposedly had the Pentagon as a back-up target in case anything went wrong. The Pentagon is huge and bears the distinctive shape of its name and can be seen from attitude from many miles away.
If that’s true, it does raise some interesting questions, but those facts alone do not really suggest that there were more suicide bombers scheduled for that day.
Here’s another possibility–These men had AQ “links,” whatever that may mean, but were in no way involved with the attacks and had no knowledge of them. When they realized that something big was going down, they said “we’d better get the hell out of here before we get thrown in jail forever!”
I mean, the police found material “connecting them” to AQ…well what was the nature of that material and what was the nature of the connection? I mean, I took a look at the pile of mail on my desk. Could you infer that I’m “connected to” the Wall Street Journal and Washington Mutual Bank? I do have correspondence from both organizations in my possession. Happens to be unsolicited junk mail. Okay, so it’s not quite analagous, but I think you see what I’m getting at.
It depends on if you parse that as
when it reached the terminal, 5 middle -eastern -looking men dashed off the plane
or
when it reached the terminal 5, middle -eastern -looking men dashed off the plane
Since one would usually say “reached terminal [number] 5” and not “reached the terminal [number] 5”, i suspect it’s 5 men.
Incorrect parse of the sentence- it should read “It was a United Airline plane. anyway, when it reached the terminal comma 5 middle -eastern -looking men dashed off the plane-they were never caught.”
And looking back… maybe they didn’t want to hang around and get lynched…
ETA- Ack! Beaten to it!
Hell, I’m pretty sure I saw it before I left National Airport once, and that was in my rental car!