Late August 2001: 9/11 Hijackers or Associates Reportedly Tell Motel Manager, ‘We Are on a Mission’

According to Paul Dragomir, the manager of the Longshore Motel in Hollywood, Florida, two individuals who may be Mohamed Atta and Ziad Jarrah rent a room in his motel. They sign in using apparent aliases, claiming to be computer engineers from Iran, and say they are down from Canada to find jobs. However, they leave the motel after a few hours because of a dispute over Internet access, which the motel cannot provide on a 24-hour basis. The Washington Post will write: “The need to be online at any moment suggests they were looking for Web pages or messages that would signal phases of the operation, experts say. Dragomir said he refunded their $175 in cash and they left. ‘They got very angry. One of the guys said, You don’t understand. We are here on a mission.’” [Washington Post, 10/5/2001] While the Post’s account will say that the motel manager recognizes Atta and Jarrah, other press accounts differ. According to the Chicago Tribune, Dragomir “said he was uncertain whether the pair had any connection to the Sept. 11 events, except for general physical descriptions.” [Chicago Tribune, 9/18/2001] And according to Wired Magazine, Dragomir “suggested that they were closely linked to the 19 hijackers, but that they were not among those men.” [Wired, 9/20/2001]