President Bush’s plan to visit a Sarasota, Florida, elementary school on September 11 is publicly announced. According to the Longboat Observer, numerous eyewitnesses see future 9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi in Longboat Key, which is near Sarasota, this evening. They appear to stay at a Holiday Inn very close to the place Bush will later stay. Atta is seen at the Holiday Inn bar, where he orders one drink, a rum and Coke. He is met by an unidentified male who motions he doesn’t speak English, and then they leave. [Longboat Observer, 11/21/2001] However, other witnesses will later recall seeing Atta and Alshehhi at a bar in Hollywood, Florida, this evening (see September 7, 2001). [Associated Press, 9/12/2001; St. Petersburg Times, 9/13/2001]
September 7, 2001: 9/11 Hijackers Atta and Alshehhi Allegedly Get Drunk in Florida Bar with Unidentified Man
Two future 9/11 hijackers drink alcohol with an unidentified man. Mohamed Atta spends time drinking with Marwan Alshehhi and a third man at Shuckums, a sports bar in Hollywood, Florida. Bartender Patricia Idrissi will later remember that the third man plays a video machine at one end of the restaurant while Atta and Alshehhi sit drinking and arguing. Alshehhi drinks rum and coke; Atta consumes five Stolichnaya vodkas with orange juice. When it comes to pay Atta complains about their $48 bill and argues with the manager. “You think I can’t pay my bill?” Atta shouts. “I am a pilot for American Airlines. I can pay my f_cking bill.” Then he reportedly peels out a note from a thick wad of $50 and $100 bills, leaving a $2 tip. [Associated Press, 9/12/2001; Observer, 9/16/2001] Atta, Alshehhi, and the third unidentified man came into Shuckums already drunk, according to Idrissi, who will tell the St. Petersburg Times, “They were wasted.” Idrissi directs the men to a nearby Chinese restaurant. Later they return and drink some more, each ordering about five drinks. [Associated Press, 9/12/2001; St. Petersburg Times, 9/13/2001] According to manager Tony Amos, “The guy Mohamed was drunk, his voice was slurred, and he had a thick accent.” [Associated Press, 9/12/2001] According to the London Observer, the men are drinking at Shuckums during the afternoon. [Observer, 9/16/2001] However, Amos will tell the Associated Press that they visit his bar on “Friday night.” [Associated Press, 9/12/2001] The account of the story will slowly change over time, and later articles will say Atta plays video games and drinks cranberry juice instead of vodka, and that Alshehhi is the one who argues over the bill and pays (see September 12, 2001 and After). [Washington Post, 9/16/2001] In 2011, the Miami Herald will note that the third man with Atta and Alshehhi is never identified. [Miami Herald, 5/5/2011] According to some witnesses, Atta and Alshehhi spend the evening of September 7 in Longboat Key, Florida. (see September 7, 2001). [Longboat Observer, 11/21/2001]
September 9, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Atta Is Witnessed Behaving Suspiciously at Boston’s Logan Airport
At Boston’s Logan Airport, during the morning, businesswoman Jan Shineman is checking in for Flight 11 to Los Angeles, when she notices a man resembling 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta behaving suspiciously. She later recalls him wearing “summery, holiday-type clothes… and he had no baggage, just a folder with a notebook.” She sees him again at the gate for Flight 11, “taking notes, watching the pilots in the cockpit through the window by the gate. They were running through their pre-flight checks.” She decides, “if he had boarded I would have told the captain about him, he was so odd and frightening.” [Guardian, 7/5/2002; Corbin, 2003, pp. 229] Atta will return to Logan Airport and board Flight 11 to Los Angeles on 9/11. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 1-2]
September 10, 2001: Likely Hijacker Associates in Florida Allegedly Predict American Bloodshed Tomorrow
In the Pink Pony strip club in Daytona Beach, Florida the night before the 9/11 attacks, three men make anti-American sentiments and talk of impending bloodshed. One says, “Wait ‘til tomorrow. America is going to see bloodshed.” These are not any of the hijackers, since they had all left Florida by this time, but it is suspected these men knew the hijackers. [Associated Press, 9/14/2001; MSNBC, 9/23/2001] Mohamed Atta is said to have regularly frequented the same bar (see Before September 11, 2001). However, in September 2002, the St. Petersburg Times will report, “Some other famous terrorist sightings never panned out, including that of the manager at a Daytona Beach strip club, who told the world he heard three men spewing anti-American venom and predicting bloodshed the night of Sept. 10. When his story seemed to change with each telling, law enforcement moved on.” [St. Petersburg Times, 9/1/2002]
September 10, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Atta Allegedly Visits the WTC to Enter Coordinates Into GPS Device; One Report Claims Mistaken Identity
Credit card receipts later discovered by the FBI apparently show that alleged lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta is in Manhattan on this day. According to FBI agents, he visits the observation deck on the 107th floor of the south WTC tower. CNN will report, “Officials speculate Atta may have been in New York… to program the towers’ location into a global positioning system.” A global positioning system (GPS) uses satellite technology to pinpoint any location on Earth. According to the FBI, Atta bought himself such a device, costing about $500, by mail order. [ABC News, 5/22/2002; CNN, 5/22/2002] Investigators will reportedly consider this trip necessary, “because they believe the hijackers were too inexperienced to handle the jumbo jets without help.” [New York Daily News, 5/22/2002] BBC reporter Jane Corbin points out that Atta was also witnessed at Boston’s Logan Airport the previous morning (see September 9, 2001), where he could have entered start-point co-ordinates for his 9/11 flight into the GPS device. [Corbin, 2003, pp. 230] However, there is no mention of Atta’s New York visit in the 9/11 Commission Report. According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Atta spent the previous night at the Milner Hotel in Boston, and then shortly after noon on this day is in Boston where he picks up Abdulaziz Alomari and drives to Portland, Maine. [US Congress, 9/26/2002] The 200-mile journey from Boston to New York takes approximately four hours by car. [MIT, 5/25/2006] So if Mueller’s account is correct, it seems difficult to comprehend Atta having time to travel to New York, go up the WTC, make purchases on his credit card, and then return to Boston, all in the space of one morning. An article in the New York Post will in fact claim that the person in Manhattan was “a distinguished renal and gene specialist at Johns Hopkins University Hospital” in Baltimore, Maryland. This man, who is also called Mohamed Atta, happened to have visited New York in the days before 9/11, “for a whirlwind weekend with his new bride.” The article claims that it had erroneously been reported that alleged hijacker Mohamed Atta “was casing the Twin Towers days before Sept. 11—even after the FBI concluded it was just the kidney doctor, who had planned to take his wife to Windows on the World for dinner in the North Tower.” [New York Post, 5/28/2002]
September 10, 2001: 9/11 Hijackers Atta and Alomari Make Mysterious Trip to Portland, Maine
9/11 hijackers Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari arrive in Portland, Maine, where they spend the night. In October 2001, the FBI will release detailed information and photographs of the two hijackers in the town in an apparent attempt to find out from the public more about what they were doing there. According to the FBI, the pair leave Boston in the afternoon in a blue Nissan Altima and drive to South Portland, where they check into a Comfort Inn around 5:45 p.m. They are caught on security cameras visiting a gas station, two ATMs, and shopping at a Wal-Mart. The next morning they fly back to Boston, where they board the airplane they will hijack. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 9/28/2001; Boston Herald, 10/5/2001; Portland Press Herald, 10/5/2001; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 11/12/2001] In September 2002, the New York Times speculates, “There have been many theories [for going to Portland]: that they made contact with a confederate in Portland who gave them the final go-ahead, or more likely, that by arriving on a connecting flight, they would avoid the security check in Boston. None of those explanations seems entirely satisfactory, given the risk….” [New York Times, 9/11/2002] The 9/11 Commission will later speculate that the most “plausible theory” is that the hijackers make the trip so as to help avoid suspicion that might be created from all ten hijackers departing on Boston flights arriving in the Boston airport at roughly the same time. [Washington Post, 2/13/2005]
September 10, 2001: NSA Monitors Call as 9/11 Mastermind KSM Gives 9/11 Hijacker Atta Final Approval to Launch Attacks
9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta calls 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) in Afghanistan. KSM gives final approval to Atta to launch the attacks. The specifics of the conversation haven’t been released. [Independent, 9/15/2002] Unnamed intelligence officials later tell Knight Ridder Newspapers that the call is monitored by the NSA, but only translated after the 9/11 attacks. KSM, “using coded language, [gives] Atta final approval” for the attacks. [Knight Ridder, 9/9/2002] NSA monitored other calls between KSM and Atta in the summer of 2001 but did not share the information about this with other agencies (see Summer 2001). Additionally, it will later be revealed that an FBI squad built an antenna in the Indian Ocean some time before 9/11 with the specific purpose of listening in on KSM’s phone calls, so they may have learned about this call to Atta on their own (see Before September 11, 2001).
Before September 11, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Atta Allegedly E-mails US Defense Contractor Employees
At some point, a man later believed to be 9/11 hijacker Marwan Alshehhi buys a pilot’s headset from Eastern Avionics, a vendor at the Charlotte County Airport in Punta Gorda, Florida (see (2000-August 2001)). Subsequently, in the months leading up to 9/11, the salesperson receives e-mails, which may have been sent by hijacker Mohamed Atta as part of a mass mailing. Some are in Arabic, and appear to express Muslim concerns, with one including a photo taken in the Middle East of a dead child. After 9/11, the FBI will take hold of all these e-mails. The local sheriff will point out that there are some other people’s e-mail addresses that can be gleaned from the messages, although the FBI never publicly reveals the identities of these individuals. [Charlotte Sun, 9/21/2001; Charlotte Sun, 10/2/2001; NBC 2 (Fort Myers), 4/24/2002] Investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker, who later obtains copies of the e-mails, will report that some of the 40 or so addresses Atta sent to belong to employees of US defense contractors. [Atta, 4/24/2002; Hopsicker, 2004, pp. 104-105]
Before September 11, 2001: 9/11 Hijackers Drink Alcohol and Watch Strip Shows, Especially towards Eve of Attacks
A number of the 9/11 hijackers apparently drink alcohol heavily in bars, sleep with prostitutes, and watch strip shows in the US in the months and especially the days leading up to 9/11. 
In late February 2001, hijacker Ziad Jarrah frequents a strip club in Jacksonville, Florida (see February 25-March 4, 2001). In July 2001, hijackers Hamza Alghamdi and Marwan Alshehhi make two purchases of “pornographic video and sex toys” from a Florida store (see July 4-27, 2001). Some hijackers, including possibly Satam Al Suqami and Waleed and Wail Alshehri, sleep with prostitutes in the days before 9/11 (see September 7-11, 2001). On September 10, three hijacker associates spend $200 to $300 apiece on lap dances and drinks in the Pink Pony, a Daytona Beach, Florida, strip club. While the hijackers have left Florida by this time, Mohamed Atta is reported to have visited the same strip club, and these men appear to have foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks (see September 10, 2001). [Boston Herald, 10/10/2001] Alshehhi and Atta are seen entering the Hollywood, Florida, sports bar Shuckums already drunk. They proceed to drink even more hard alcohol there (see September 7, 2001). Atta and Alshehhi are seen at Sunrise 251, a bar in Palm Beach, Florida. They spend $1,000 in 45 minutes on Krug and Perrier-Jouet champagne. Atta is with a tall busty brunette in her late twenties; Alshehhi is with a shortish blonde. Both women are known locally as regular companions of high-rollers. [Daily Mail, 9/16/2001] A stripper at the Olympic Garden Topless Cabaret in Las Vegas, Nevada, will later recall Alshehhi being “cheap,” paying only $20 for a lap dance. [Cox News Service, 10/16/2001] Several hijackers reportedly patronize the Nardone’s Go-Go Bar in Elizabeth, New Jersey. They are even seen there on the weekend before 9/11. [Boston Herald, 10/10/2001; Wall Street Journal, 10/16/2001] Majed Moqed visits a porn shop on three occasions and rents a porn video. The mayor of Paterson, New Jersey, will later say of the six hijackers who stay there, “Nobody ever saw them at mosques, but they liked the go-go clubs.” [Newsday, 9/23/2001; Newsweek, 10/15/2001] Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar often frequent Cheetah’s, a nude bar in San Diego. [Los Angeles Times, 9/1/2002] Alshehhi is possibly seen in the Cheetah nightclub in Pompado Beach, Florida, on July 1, 2001. Six dancers who work there will later claim to have seen him. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001, pp. 173 
] Hamza Alghamdi watches a porn video on either the afternoon of September 9 or on September 10. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001, pp. 272 ; Wall Street Journal, 10/16/2001]
Temple University, Philadelphia, professor Mahmoud Mustafa Ayoub will later comment: “It is incomprehensible that a person could drink and go to a strip bar one night, then kill themselves the next day in the name of Islam.… People who would kill themselves for their faith would come from very strict Islamic ideology. Something here does not add up.” [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 9/16/2001]
September 11, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Atta’s ‘Wife’ Attempts to Clear His Driving Record in Florida
9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta’s “wife” attempts to clear Atta’s driving record. On April 26, 2001, Atta was issued a citation for driving without a license (see April 26, 2001). Because he failed to show up for a hearing, an arrest warrant was issued for him on June 4, 2001 (see June 4, 2001). According to an FBI report on hijacker activities after 9/11, “A woman claiming to be Atta’s wife arrived at Broward County Courthouse on September 11, 2001 and attempted to clear his record.” [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 4/19/2002] There will be no known reports of Atta having a wife, although he may have gotten engaged once (see October 1999). A search of article databases shows that Atta’s name is first mentioned in the media on September 12. [Knight Ridder Newspapers, 9/12/2001] The FBI makes no further mention of who this woman may be or what her motive may be, and this incident will not be reported by the media.
