Future 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta makes a short trip to Spain and Germany. On January 4, 2001, he flies from Miami, Florida, to Madrid, Spain. He has allegedly been in the US since June 3, 2000, learning to fly in Florida with fellow 9/11 hijacker Marwan Alshehhi. [Miami Herald, 9/22/2001] Spanish authorities will later say Atta meets Barakat Yarkas, head of a Spanish al-Qaeda cell, on the trip. After Yarkas is arrested in late 2001, an interview with him by a high court judge will indicate that “numerous lines to Sept. 11 principals passed through [him].” [Boston Globe, 8/4/2002] Atta also makes a brief visit to Hamburg, Germany, at this time. One college student acquiantance of his, an Egyptian named Nader el-Abd, will later recall seeing Atta at this time. “I asked him where he had been,” el-Abd will say. “He said he was looking for somewhere to do his PhD.” [Fouda and Fielding, 2003, pp. 133-134] Atta returns to the US on January 10 (see January 10, 2001). He will make a second trip to Spain in July of this year (see July 8-19, 2001).
January 10, 2001: Two Mohamed Attas Enter US through Miami, Florida, on the Same Day?
The Miami Herald will report: “INS documents, matched against an FBI alert given to German police, show two men named Mohamed Atta [arrive] in Miami on January 10, each offering different destination addresses to INS agents, one in Nokomis, near Venice, the other at a Coral Springs condo. He (they?) is admitted, despite having overstayed his previous visa by a month. The double entry could be a paperwork error, or confusion over a visa extension. It could be Atta arrived in Miami, flew to another country like the Bahamas, and returned the same day. Or it could be that two men somehow cleared immigration with the same name using the same passport number.” [Miami Herald, 9/22/2001] Officials will later call this a bureaucratic snafu, and insist that only one Atta entered the US on this date. [Associated Press, 10/28/2001] In addition, while Atta arrives on a tourist visa, he tells immigration inspectors that he is taking flying lessons in the US, which requires an M-1 student visa. [Washington Post, 10/28/2001] The fact that he had overstayed his visa by over a month on a previous visit also does not cause a problem. [Los Angeles Times, 9/27/2001] The INS will later defend its decision, but “immigration experts outside the agency dispute the INS position vigorously.” For instance, Stephen Yale-Loehr, co-author of a 20-volume treatise on immigration law, will assert: “They just don’t want to tell you they blew it. They should just admit they made a mistake.” [Washington Post, 10/28/2001]
January 11-18, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Alshehhi Takes Unexplained Trip to Morocco
Future 9/11 hijacker Marwan Alshehhi flies from the US to Casablanca, Morocco, and back, for reasons unknown. He is able to reenter the US without trouble, despite having overstayed his previous visa by about five weeks (see January 18, 2001). [Los Angeles Times, 9/27/2001; US Department of Justice, 5/20/2002] Mohamed Atta’s cell phone is used on January 2 to call the Moroccan embassy in Washington, DC. Abdelghani Mzoudi, a Hamburg associate, is also in Morocco at the same time as Alshehhi, but there is no documentation of them meeting there. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 17]
January 17, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Atta Wires Money from US to Bin Al-Shibh in Germany
Lead hijacker Mohamed Atta uses the name variant Mahmoud Elsayed to wire $1,500 to Ramzi bin al-Shibh in Germany. The money is wired from a Western Union office in Temple Terrace, near Tampa on Florida’s Gulf Coast. The 9/11 Commission will comment, “There is no known explanation for this transaction, which seems especially odd because bin al-Shibh had access to [hijacker Marwan] Alshehhi’s German account at the time.” [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 143 
; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/3/2006 ]
January 25-Early March, 2001: 9/11 Hijackers Atta and Alshehhi Move to Georgia and Attend Flight School
According to the FBI and 9/11 Commission, 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi move temporarily to Georgia on January 25, 2001, staying briefly in Norcross and Decatur, near Atlanta. The FBI will later say the hijackers remain in the Atlanta area during February and March. [US Congress, 9/26/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 229] According to several news reports, between late February and early March, Atta and Alshehhi twice visit the Advanced Aviation Flight Training School in nearby Lawrenceville. They pay $171 in total and on both occasions rent a small Piper Warrior plane for an hour. They are accompanied by an instructor on the first occasion, but fly alone the second time. According to the school’s owner Bruce Buell, the two are “well-dressed, polite and friendly.” Two days after 9/11 Chrissy Ross, a flight dispatcher at the school, will recognize Atta’s name when the identities of the suspected hijackers are made public. She calls the FBI, whose agents then come and take all the school’s records. [CNN, 9/26/2001; Associated Press, 10/19/2001; Associated Press, 10/19/2001] However, the FBI claims Atta and Alshehhi visit Advanced Aviation about a month earlier than news reports suggest, on January 31 and February 6. [US Congress, 9/26/2002]
February-April 2001: Hijacker Atta Possibly Has American Girlfriend; Several Witnesses Confirm Story, Though Supposed Girlfriend Later Denies the Connection
A man, possibly Mohamed Atta, stays for a time at the apartment of a 21-year-old blonde-haired pizza restaurant manager named Amanda Keller. Keller lives in the Sandpiper Apartments in Venice, Florida, the same complex in which Atta reportedly shared a (presumably) separate apartment with Marwan Alshehhi and four others months earlier (see (Mid-July 2000 – Early January 2001)). Stephanie Frederickson, a resident at the Sandpiper Apartments, later remembers Keller and Atta. She claims Keller moved in next door to her. She goes on to say, “Then one day in the middle of March she brought home Atta.” Her recollection of Atta mirrors that of others. She will call him “a really nasty guy,” and say that he “had no patience, and seemed mad at the world.” Charles Grapentine, the manager of the Sandpiper Apartments, later recalls seeing Atta at the complex for about three weeks in April, and confirms that he was living with Keller. Keller’s mother, Susan Payne, also meets Atta and later says, “I didn’t like him; he just seemed strange.” As well as his stay at the Sandpiper Apartments, the man, possibly Atta, briefly rents a home in North Port. Its owners, Tony and Vonnie LaConca, know him only as “Mohamed.” They will be questioned in the days after 9/11 by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), and describe him as 25 years old, “very polite,” “very handsome,” and with “beautiful, unblemished skin.” From talking with “Mohamed” and Keller, the couple learns he is training for a commercial pilot’s license at Huffman Aviation, the Venice flight school attended by Atta in 2000 (see July 6-December 19, 2000). The Sarasota Herald-Tribune will claim that Keller’s companion is not Mohamed Atta, but another man of Middle Eastern descent who also took flying lessons in Venice. But authorities will refuse to reveal the full name of this “unidentified fifth man,” and investigators are reportedly unable to find him. [Charlotte Sun, 9/14/2001; Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/23/2001; Hopsicker, 2004, pp. 57, 60-65 and 76] According to official accounts, plus the testimony of Huffman Aviation’s owner Rudi Dekkers, Atta left the Venice flight school around the end of 2000, months before “Mohamed” stays in the apartment of Keller. [US Congress, 3/19/2002; US Congress, 9/26/2002; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 17 ] Investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker later locates and interviews Amanda Keller, and she claims that the Middle Eastern man who was briefly her boyfriend was indeed Mohamed Atta (see March 2004). However, in 2006 she will retract this claim and say she lied to Hopsicker. She will say, “It was my bad for lying. I really didn’t think about it until after I did it.” [Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/10/2006] Keller, Charles Grapentine, and Stephanie Frederickson will all later allege that the FBI intimidated them after 9/11, and told them to keep quiet about what they knew (see (September 12, 2001-2002)).
February 15, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Atta and Alshehhi Offered Jobs as Co-Pilots with New Florida Airline
Rudi Dekkers, who owns the Venice, Florida flight school attended by 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, sets up his own commuter airline called Florida Air (FLAIR), which flies out of Sarasota Bradenton International Airport. FLAIR, which also goes by the name Sunrise Airlines, will only be in service for a couple of months in 2001, and eventually has its operating authority revoked by the Department of Transportation. [Venice Gondolier Sun, 3/3/2001; Transportation, 2/14/2002, pp. 6963 ; Venice Gondolier Sun, 1/25/2003; St. Petersburg Times, 7/25/2004] Yet, at the same time as he is establishing FLAIR, Dekkers fails to pay his rent for Huffman Aviation flight school on time six months in a row, from February to July 2001, blaming this partly on tight cash flow. [Charlotte Sun, 9/13/2001] According to the 9/11 Commission, at some point in their flight training Rudi Dekkers offers Atta and Alshehhi jobs as co-pilots for FLAIR. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 38 ] Yet they are supposed to have completed training at Huffman Aviation two months earlier, in December 2000, after which Dekkers claims he never saw them again. [US Congress, 3/19/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 227; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 17 ] Considering he reportedly offers him a job with his airline, it seems odd that Dekkers later claims having much disliked Atta when he was at Huffman. He will say he thought Atta was “very arrogant,” and that “My personal feeling was Atta was an asshole first class… I just didn’t like the guy… Sometimes you have that impression from when you meet people in the field and that was my first impression.” [Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 10/21/2001; BBC, 12/12/2001]
February 15, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Atta and Pakistani Fighter Pilot Associate Denied Airplane Security Job Because of Criminal Record
According to a book by Jurgen Roth, described by Newsday as “one of Germany’s top investigative reporters,” on this day 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta applies for a job with Lufthansa Airlines at the Frankfurt, Germany, airport. The security post he applies for would give him access to secure areas of the busy international airport. However, when Lufthansa checks his criminal record they find that in 1995 he had been under investigation for petty drug crimes (see 1995), so his application is turned down. Three days later, an Iranian citizen dropping Atta’s name also applies for the same job, and is also turned down. On March 5, a third man applies, with Atta at his side. He tells Lufthansa that he has been a pilot in the Pakistani Air Force. Apparently both the Iranian and Pakistani are members of an Islamic study group with Atta at the Hamburg university they are all attending. While the name of the Pakistani pilot is not revealed in this account, a Pakistani Air Force pilot named Atif bin Mansour is known to have applied together with Atta for a room for a new Islamic study group in early 1999 (see Late 1998-August 10, 1999). After 9/11, Lufthansa Airlines will say they can neither confirm nor deny this account, because all such records for rejected applicants have been routinely deleted. [Roth, 2001, pp. 9f; Newsday, 1/24/2002] In 2007, it will be reported that French intelligence learned before 9/11 of a meeting in early 2000 in which al-Qaeda planned the hijacking of an airliner departing from Frankfurt, and one of the target airliners considered was Lufthansa (see Early 2000).
February 19-20, 2001: 9/11 Hijackers Atta and Alshehhi Make Unexplained Trip to Virginia
Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi make a brief trip to Virginia Beach, where they cash a check for $4,000 and rent a mailbox. Newsweek will later report that federal investigators believe Mohamed Atta visits Norfolk, Virginia, site of a huge US Navy base, at this time, stating, “The Feds believe that Atta was scoping out an aircraft carrier as a target.” However, the 9/11 Commission will comment, “We have found no explanation for these travels.” [Newsweek, 9/24/2001; Newsweek, 10/29/2001; 9/11 Commission, 6/16/2004, pp. 7; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 229, 523; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006 ] Atta and Alshehhi will return to Virginia Beach a few weeks later (see April 3-4, 2001 and around). The address of a Virginia post office box used by the future hijackers will be found in a raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Pakistan in 2002, but details beyond this are unknown (see May 16, 2002). [9/11 Commission, 12/4/2003 ]
February 21, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Atta’s Car Is Queried by Police in Georgia
A car registered to 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta is queried by police in DeKalb County, Georgia. This incident is added to the NCIC, a widely used nationwide police database. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001, pp. 126 ] Atta and hijacker Marwan Alshehhi are currently living in Georgia (see (January 25-Early March, 2001)).
