Sweeps Find Box-Cutters On Two More Airliners

By Don Phillips and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 22, 2001; Page A01

Federal investigators found box-cutter knives on at least two airplanes during sweeps conducted in the aftermath of the deadly Sept. 11 hijackings, including two stuffed into seat cushions on a flight out of Boston and one found in a trash bin of an Atlanta jetliner headed for Brussels, government officials said yesterday.

Officials said the discoveries provide the strongest indication yet that other hijackings may have been planned on Sept. 11, when terrorists commandeered four jetliners with box-cutters and other knives before crashing them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania. Thousands of people are missing and presumed dead.

Investigators cautioned that they have not determined how the knives came to be on the planes and have not ruled out innocent explanations.

FBI and Federal Aviation Administration investigators are combing passenger manifests in search of suspects who may have been planning a hijacking that was somehow averted. They are also investigating the possibility that the knives were not left by failed hijackers, but were planted by accomplices who worked for airlines or at airports.

"At this point, there's no way to know for sure what it means," said one senior government official. "We're not ruling anything in or out."

Aviation sources said investigators were also looking into two more knives found on two other planes due to fly that day. But the circumstances surrounding those discoveries were unclear last night.

Sources provided specific information about airlines and flights on which box-cutters were found, but those details could not be confirmed with airline representatives.

The FBI knows from witness accounts of cell phone calls from the hijacked airliners that the terrorists used box-cutters and other knives to take control of the four aircraft.

Two men detained on a train in Fort Worth -- who had gotten off a Newark flight that was grounded in St. Louis -- had box-cutters in their possession, and one of the specialized knives was also found in a parking garage at Logan Airport in Boston after the attacks.

In the days after the attack, with U.S. air traffic at a standstill, the FAA and FBI swarmed over thousands of aircraft that had landed safely or never got off the ground.

Yesterday, officials detailed some of their findings for the first time. On one flight that originated in Boston, they said, two box-cutters were found under adjoining seat cushions. On another flight bound for Brussels from Atlanta, officials said, a box-cutter knife was found in a trash bin.

Since the Justice Department launched the largest criminal investigation in its history, some evidence has emerged that the 19 hijackers identified by the FBI may have had accomplices with ties to the airline industry.

A bag left behind by Mohamed Atta, one of the alleged hijackers on a Boston flight that crashed into the World Trade Center, included airline uniforms and a video about commercial aircraft, FBI documents show. Two of three men arrested in Detroit this week in connection with the case had previously worked as dishwashers for SkyChef, an airline food service, at the Detroit airport, officials said.

Yesterday, prosecutors disclosed the arrest in Chicago of a Yemeni man, Nageeb Abdul Jabar Mohamed Al-Hadi, who had Lufthansa crew uniforms and three illegal passports in his baggage. Officials believe he may have been a Lufthansa employee, according to a court document unsealed yesterday.

At least seven of the hijackers have been identified as trained pilots, and dozens of other pilots are being sought for questioning by the FBI.

A government official also confirmed yesterday that the FBI is investigating "clear indications" that some of the suspected hijackers took practice runs aboard commercial flights in the weeks before Sept. 11. The trips were taken by people using the same names as some of the alleged hijackers, the official said.

In other developments yesterday:

・The Justice Department provided the first information about 80 foreign nationals it has rounded up in connection with the Sept. 11 strikes, releasing documents that show they include numerous Middle Easterners who arrived on visitors' visas as well as two Pakistanis who sneaked over the Mexican border shortly before the attack.

・British anti-terrorist police announced that they had arrested three men and one woman for questioning in connection with the attacks, and French police said they had arrested seven people in an investigation into alleged plans to attack U.S. targets in that country. The German government yesterday issued international arrest warrants for two suspected accomplices in the U.S. terror plot.

・The FBI is investigating whether some of the hijackers received training in military exchange programs for foreign officers at the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida, a spokesman for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said.

In the documents released yesterday, the Justice Department provided the nationalities and alleged infractions of 33 of the 80 people who are being held on immigration charges, but withheld their names for privacy reasons. In addition, U.S. authorities have arrested at least six people as material witnesses in the case.

A U.S. official said it may eventually be determined that some of the people had no connection to the attacks. However, "there's a belief we have some very probable terrorists in the group," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The 33 included six Jordanians and six Egyptians, as well as citizens of Israel, Iran, India, Saudi Arabia and other countries. Most entered the United States legally on temporary visas for work or tourism and stayed longer than they were allowed, according to the documents.

But the list included some unusual cases: a pair of Pakistanis who sneaked across the Mexican border near Brownsville, Tex., on Aug. 24, less than three weeks before the terrorist attack; two Egyptians who crossed the border illegally near Laredo, Texas, on Sept. 14; and a Syrian who crossed the Canadian border without a visa on Sept. 8.

The FBI has drawn up a list of over 240 people it is seeking to question in the hijackings of the four jets. It was unclear how many of the 80 detained on immigration infractions are on that list.

The ease with which so many on the list overstayed the time limits on their visas revived criticism of U.S. immigration policy. In recent years, an increased number of foreign visitors -- at least 2.5 million, by official estimates -- have stayed here after their visas expired.

"For the past five or 10 years, we have de-emphasized the enforcement part of the immigration service," said Benedict Ferro, former district director of the Baltimore office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

A Justice official, however, said that it is difficult to weed out people planning to settle in the United States from the more than 30 million visitors who arrive each year. He noted that a 1996 law stiffened the penalties for those found to have overstayed their visas, barring them from returning to the United States for as long as 10 years if their infractions are discovered.

Among the 80 detainees is a Yemeni gas station employee in suburban San Diego, who was flown to New York for questioning about his ties to some of the hijackers, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

FBI agents wanted to talk to Omer Bakarbashat, 26, about their suspicions that he coached at least two of the hijackers in English usage and how to use the Internet, and funneled them money, the newspaper said.

The FBI's wide-ranging investigation extends to U.S. military installations, private flight academies and driving schools. On Monday, Nelson asked the Pentagon to confirm or refute reports that two of the terrorists were listed at a housing facility for foreign military officers at a Pensacola, Fla., naval base.

Yesterday, the senator's office "was informed that the FBI could neither say 'yes' or 'no' " because the bureau was still "investigating any connection to the military facility," according to Nelson's spokesman, Dan McLaughlin.

The FBI told Nelson's staff that the investigation was complicated by the hijackers' use of common Arabic names and the possibility that some stole the identities of innocent people.

Two men identified as hijackers by the FBI -- Saaed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi -- share the names of men previously listed at bachelor officers' quarters on the base. Two other hijackers have names similar to individuals who also were listed in public records as using the same address.

Officials said the FBI was also checking why several men detained in the Midwest had recently obtained or sought licenses to drive trucks.

"It's raised some eyebrows," one federal investigator said. "It's something we're looking into, and it's certainly got people thinking, 'What's the reason for this?' "

Nabil Almarabh, 34, who was arrested Wednesday in Chicago on a probation violation charge, last year secured a chauffeur's license in Michigan that would allow him to haul hazardous materials.

While searching for Almarabh -- who has been under investigation for alleged financial dealings with associates of Osama bin Laden, the presumed mastermind of the terrorist assaults -- FBI agents searched his former Detroit apartment and arrested three men for possession of false documents.

In detaining Ahmed Hannan, Karim Koubriti and Farouk Ali-Haimoud, authorities also found a day planner that contained notes in Arabic about a U.S. air base in Turkey and a Jordanian airport. Two of the three, Hannan and Koubriti, had recently taken a truck-driving course.

Yesterday, a federal magistrate in Detroit ordered all three held without bond.

In an interview, Joseph LaBarge, president of the U.S. Truck Driver Training School in Detroit, said FBI agents interviewed him about Hannan and Koubriti, who in July enrolled in a four-week course on driving tractor-trailers.

The search for the terrorists' accomplices also led to arrests abroad. In Britain, four people -- two men and one woman in London, and one man in Birmingham -- were detained yesterday, police said.

"They were arrested in connection with the World Trade Center terrorist attack and are being questioned by anti-terrorist branch officers," a spokesman for Scotland Yard told the Associated Press. The British media said the FBI steered Scotland Yard to the four.

In Germany, the government issued warrants for two men who shared an apartment in Hamburg with three men believed to be hijackers.

Ramzi Mohamed Abdullah Binalshibh, 29, from Yemen, and Said Bahaji, 26, a German citizen of Moroccan heritage, are being sought on charges of murder and membership in a terrorist group.

Binalshibh and Bahaji, along with Mohamed Atta, 33, who investigators believe was at the controls of the first plane to strike the World Trade Center, rented an apartment on Merien Street in Hamburg on Dec. 1, 1998, according to a real estate agent who rented the flat to them.

In France, police detained seven people in connection with an investigation into alleged plans to attack U.S. targets in that country.

The seven, whose names were not released, were arrested in the Val d'Oise region north of Paris and the Essonne region south of the city. They were being questioned by counterintelligence agents, police told Reuters news service on condition of anonymity.

The arrests were linked to Djamel Begal, a French-Algerian who was arrested in Dubai in July. Begal informed intelligence services there about alleged plans to attack the U.S. Embassy in Paris and other U.S. targets, police officials have said.

Staff writers Mary Beth Sheridan, Peter Finn, Lena H. Sun, David Fallis, George Lardner Jr., T.R. Reid, John Mintz, Allan Lengel, DeNeen L. Brown and Justin Blum contributed to this report.