December 31, 1999-January 2, 2000: Al-Qaeda Operative Cases Airplane Security

Al-Qaeda leader Khallad bin Attash, cases four flights to aquire basic information about how a hijacking might be conducted. Starting from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, he flies to Bangkok and then on to Hong Kong, before returning to Malaysia via Bangkok. He will later tell a CIA interrogator that he took a box cutter onto the plane but that security did not notice it. While in Malaysia he and fellow operative Abu Bara al-Taizi (a.k.a. Zohair Mohammed Said) initially stay with Jemaah Islamiyah leader Hambali and at the Endolite clinic, where Khallad receives a new prosthesis. Presumably, he shares what he learned at the al-Qaeda summit in Malaysia attended by two or three 9/11 hijackers that is held in Malaysia a few days later (see January 5-8, 2000). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 158-9]