Before September 11, 2001: British Actor Michael Caine Works on a Novel with a Plot Resembling the 9/11 Attacks

Oscar-winning British actor Michael Caine starts writing a thriller novel in which terrorists deliberately crash a plane into a skyscraper in London, England, but he will stop working on it in response to the 9/11 attacks. [BBC Radio 4, 9/29/2010; BBC, 9/29/2010; Daily Telegraph, 9/30/2010] Caine is well known for starring in many movies, such as Alfie, The Cider House Rules, and The Dark Knight. [Daily Mail, 11/9/2007; Independent, 10/3/2011] The actor, who has never written a novel before, will later recall that his book is going to be a thriller about terrorism. “It’s the sort of thing I read all the time,” he will say. The storyline includes “an airplane crash into a skyscraper in the City [of London],” he will add. However, Caine stops writing the novel when terrorists crash planes into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. “Then it did it in real life,” he will say. “So I stopped. I was quite stunned by that and I never wrote it again.” Caine will claim that he got the idea for his novel from a documentary he saw on television. “I was watching all the programs about terrorism because I was writing this book,” he will say. In the documentary, “the chief constable of Manila in the Philippines… had arrested this man who’d overstayed his visa. And it was [future 9/11 hijacker] Mohamed Atta. And [the chief constable] held up a picture, a drawing he’d found in Atta’s luggage of an airplane going into the Sears Tower in Chicago.” When he saw this, Caine thought, “Well, what a great idea that is.” Therefore, he will say, “I used it.” [BBC Radio 4, 9/29/2010; BBC, 9/29/2010; Daily Telegraph, 9/30/2010] Caine is apparently referring to the interrogation of Abdul Hakim Murad—not Atta—by Colonel Rodolfo Mendoza of the Philippine National Police in 1995. Murad told Mendoza about a plan to fly planes into buildings in the United States. These buildings reportedly included the Sears Tower and the WTC (see February-Early May 1995). [CNN, 9/18/2001; Lance, 2003, pp. 278-280; BBC, 6/15/2003; 9/11 Commission, 3/15/2004 ]