William Nelson

9/11 hijacker Marwan Alshehhi and another man, apparently hijacker Mohamed Atta, stop in Jacksonville, Florida. They land at an airfield in a small plane, and Alshehhi purchases about 11 liters of fuel with a credit card belonging to Huffman Aviation, a flight school he studies at around this time. Alshehhi leaves the airport in a courtesy car and then comes back in “an hour or two.” When this story is first reported in late 2004, the FBI will not say why Atta and Alshehhi landed here or where they went, although another of the hijackers, Ziad Jarrah, will stay in Jacksonville twice in 2001 (see January 22-26, 2001 and February 25-March 4, 2001). In 2004, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) will say that the hijackers’ time in Jacksonville never came up during the 9/11 Commission hearings, adding: “I want to know… why didn’t the September 11 Commission know about this. [The Commission] was given carte blanche authority to get any piece of intelligence to put together this jigsaw puzzle.” [First Coast News, 11/10/2004]