Although virtually no one now believes the early allegation that Moussaoui was the "20th hijacker," he was clearly wired into al Qaeda -- and the same part of al Qaeda that was patiently and relentlessly marching toward September 11.
Moussaoui came to the attention of the FBI and was arrested in August 2001, but bureaucratic obstacles delayed a search of his laptop computer, despite anxious efforts by FBI agents on the scene.
No one linked Moussaoui to Ihab Ali, despite the fact that the FBI had investigated Ali's attendance at the school less than a year earlier. In fact, Ali's flight records had been introduced in the embassy bombing trial in April 2001 -- only four months before Moussaoui was arrested.
SPHINX TRADING CO.
The Airman Flight School was not the only location visited by Mohammed Atta that also turns up in the Ali Mohamed story.
At least nine hijackers lived in New Jersey, at various times, between summer 2000 and 9/11. Several witnesses reported -- to both the news media and the FBI -- seeing Atta and Shehhi in Jersey City, New Jersey, in the neighborhood of the al-Salaam Mosque, mainly during the summer of 2000.[19]
Ali Mohamed and many of his terrorist trainees visited the mosque several times in 1989, meeting with members of the nascent New York terror cell. It later became notorious as the home base for Omar Abdel Rahman during the 1990s.
The mosque was located at 2824 Kennedy Ave., Jersey City, the address for the third floor. On the second floor of the building was an Afghanistan "refugees assistance" office used by members of the cell. Mohamed used the office as a distribution node for his terrorist training manuals.[20]
On the ground floor of the same building, with the address 2828 Kennedy Ave., is a business called Sphinx Trading Co., an overseas money transfer, check-cashing and private mailbox service with branches in New Jersey and Cairo, Egypt.
Various terrorist training materials written by Ali Mohamed advise undercover operatives to keep a post office box away from their home, in a location used by others of their nationality, for communication with fellow operatives.[21]
At minimum, two Ali Mohamed-trained members of the New York cell -- El Sayyid Nosair and Siddig Ali Siddig -- are confirmed to have kept mailboxes at Sphinx Trading during the 1990s, as did the blind Sheikh himself.[22]
A decade later, the mailboxes were still being used by al Qaeda-linked terrorists.
Testifying in a sealed proceeding in 2002, a New Jersey policeman said the FBI told him that "several of the hijackers involved in the September 11th event also had mailboxes at that location."[23]
Police searched the office of a New Jersey businessman whose name appeared on the Sphinx Trading Co. incorporation papers and found the names and phone numbers of several hijackers among his papers. The businessman eventually admitted having sold fake identification cards to two of the hijackers.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
