9/11 hijacker Abdulaziz Alomari tests airline security while flying across the US. He boards USAir flight 608 from Las Vegas to New York City. Before the flight takes off, he tells a flight attendant that he is a pilot and wants to sit in the jumpseat (a spare seat in the cockpit) to observe the pilots for the whole flight. When asked for his pilot credentials, he says he is just a student pilot. Alomari is allowed in the cockpit, but only for a short while before take-off. The pilots get the impression he doesn’t know much about flying. Half way through the flight, he tries to get back into the cockpit by claiming that he’d lost a valuable pen while in there earlier, but he is not allowed back in. [Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, 2002, pp. 296-297] Although this story is not confirmed by other sources, several of the hijackers do fly to and from Las Vegas at this time (see May 24-August 14, 2001 and August 1, 2001). Apparently the hijackers repeatedly attempt to ride on jumpseats in the summer of 2001 and are sometimes successful, sometimes not (see Summer 2001). Some news stories after 9/11 will allege that the hijackers did use jumpseats on 9/11 (see November 23, 2001).
August 1, 2001: Moussaoui Supposedly Seen with Hijackers Atta and Alshehhi in Oklahoma
A hotel owner in Oklahoma City will later say that he sees Zacarias Moussaoui, Mohamed Atta, and Marwan Alshehhi together on or around this day. He will claim they come to his hotel late at night and ask for a room, but end up staying elsewhere. At the time, Moussaoui is living 28 miles away in Norman, Oklahoma (see February 23-June 2001). However, even though the US government will later struggle to find evidence directly connecting Moussaoui to any of the 9/11 hijackers, this account will not be cited by any US government officials or prosecutors. An article will later suggest this may be because of numerous reports and eyewitnesses claiming Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols stayed at the same hotel with a group of Middle Easterners in the weeks before the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. – 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). By highlighting this encounter, it might draw renewed attention to controversial Oklahoma City bombing theories. Atta and Alshehhi briefly visited an Oklahoma flight school in July 2000 (see July 2-3, 2000), before Moussaoui arrived in the US. On April 1, 2001, 9/11 hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi received a speeding ticket in Oklahoma (see April 1, 2001), but there have been no sightings of him with Moussaoui. [LA Weekly, 8/2/2002]
Link to Oklahoma City Bombing? – Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson will say of this meeting: “One of the things that’s evident right now in connection with this investigation, the motel in Oklahoma City where the April bombing against the Murrah building was planned and executed from, that same hotel figures in two of the 9/11 hijackers and Zacarias Moussaoui, who’s currently in jail. Those three guys tried to check into that motel. And there is another fellow in Oklahoma City that links them to the April bombing against the Murrah building.… I have spoken to the owner of the motel. After the 9/11 attack, he called the FBI. The FBI came out and interviewed him, as he identified Mohamed Atta, Marwan Alshehhi, and Zacarias Moussaoui. They came in. They said, ‘We’re looking for a room.’ He said: ‘I don’t have any room. What do you need it for?’ They said, ‘We’re going for flight training.’” [O’Reilly Factor, 5/7/2002]
Intriguingly Similar Sightings Nearby – Years later, a 2002 FBI document will be made public that reveals several employees at a flight school in Bethany, Oklahoma, saw Atta, Alshehhi, and hijacker Waleed Alshehri flying small aircraft several times from early 2001 until August 2001. Additionally, Moussaoui was said to use the same airport, although there will be no mentioned sightings of him with the others. Bethany is about five miles from Highway 40, which is where the hotel mentioned above is near. Additionally, the hotel is about 28 miles from Norman, Oklahoma (where Moussaoui is living) and Bethany is about 33 miles from Norman (see Early 2001-August 2001). [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 4/19/2002]
Early August 2001: Mass Casualty Exercise at the Pentagon Includes a Plane Hitting the Building
A mass casualty exercise, involving a practice evacuation, is held at the Pentagon. General Lance Lord, the assistant vice chief of staff of the Air Force who is one of the participants in the exercise, will later recall, “[It was] purely a coincidence, the scenario for that exercise included a plane hitting the building.” Lord will also say that on 9/11, “our assembly points were fresh in our minds” thanks to this practice. [Air Force Space Command News Service, 9/5/2002]
August 1, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Hanjour Pulled Over for Speeding; Possibly Using False Driver’s License
9/11 hijacker pilot Hani Hanjour is pulled over for speeding on South George Mason Drive in Arlington, Virginia, for going 50-55 miles per hour in a 30 mph zone. He is driving a Chevrolet van rented two days before from Borough Jeep Chrysler in Wayne, New Jersey. He has a Florida driver’s license that gives his address as Miramar, Florida, where he lived in the mid-1990s (see Spring 1996). [CNN, 9/26/2001; CNN, 1/9/2002; Washington Post, 1/9/2002; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006 
] However, according to the 9/11 Commission, he did not have a Florida driver’s license, although he did have a Florida ID card. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 32 ] Three weeks after the stop, Hanjour sends Arlington General District Court a money order for the $70 and $30 court costs. [Washington Post, 1/9/2002] Three other plot leaders are also stopped for speeding in the US (see April 1, 2001).
Early August 2001: Counterterrorism ‘Tsar’ Clarke Investigates Security Protecting Wall Street Telecommunications
Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke and Paul Kurtz, a member of the White House counterterrorism team, visit New York, where they tour the facilities of the stock exchange and telecommunications company Verizon, and inquire about security precautions there. Clarke will later describe that, about a month before 9/11, he and Kurtz spend “two days literally crawling around Wall Street.” They visit the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and also go through the tunnels that carry the fiber optic cable to the Verizon and AT&T switches. (Verizon has a switching center for Wall Street located next to the World Trade Center.) Clarke and Kurtz ask about the security precautions that are in place to protect such a large concentration of critical communications equipment. According to Clarke, “What they told us was that after the 1993 attack against the World Trade Center they had diversified some of their routing capability.” Clarke will recall that he and Kurtz identify “several buildings that, were they taken out, would disconnect Wall Street from the world.” The two men also talk to stock market officials about the need for alternative sites and backup facilities. [Verton, 2003, pp. 157; Clarke, 2004, pp. 19-20]
Infrastructure Examined by Clarke Damaged on 9/11 – On September 11, damage to some of the telecommunications infrastructure Clarke and Kurtz inspect will severely hamper communications in the area surrounding the WTC, including the financial district (see (After 10:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001). The New York Times will describe: “The collapse of the World Trade Center crippled many of the connections that downtown Manhattan depended on, threatening crucial links for the police and emergency crews. Cellular sites were knocked out.… Fiber-optic transport equipment was crushed. Power failures cut off high-speed Internet service for many companies across the city.” Verizon’s switching center at 140 West Street will be badly damaged by falling debris and burst water pipes. AT&T officials will say “they are certain that they lost several pieces of sophisticated equipment in the basement of the World Trade Center that were used to transport data over fiber-optic cables.” [New York Times, 9/20/2001; General Accounting Office, 2/2003, pp. 91-92 ; Jenkins and Edwards-Winslow, 9/2003, pp. 33 ; 9/11 Commission, 2/25/2004 ] As journalist and author Dan Verton will note, “For Richard Clarke, the digital destruction that severed Wall Street from the world [on September 11] was a nightmare come true.” [Verton, 2003, pp. 157]
August 1-2, 2001: Hijackers Illegally Purchase Virginia Identity Cards
Hijackers Hani Hanjour and Khalid Almihdhar meet Luis Martinez-Flores, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, in a 7-Eleven parking lot in Falls Church, Virginia. Martinez-Flores is paid $100 cash to accompany the two to a local Department of Motor Vehicles office and sign forms attesting to their permanent residence in Virginia. Given new state identity cards, the cards are used the next day to get Virginia identity cards for several (five to seven) additional hijackers, including Abdulaziz Alomari, Ahmed Alghamdi, Majed Moqed, and Salem Alhazmi. [Arizona Daily Star, 9/28/2001; Washington Post, 9/30/2001; Wall Street Journal, 10/16/2001]
August 2, 2001: Former Turkish Spy Warns the CIA about the Planned 9/11 Attacks, but Is Ignored
Mehmet Eymur, a retired Turkish intelligence official, allegedly alerts the CIA to the imminent 9/11 attacks, but his warning is ignored. Eymur, the former head of the counterterrorism department of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization, will claim this in a book released in 2019. Eymur, who now lives in the US, has learned of the planned terrorist attacks from a Turkish drug dealer called Mustafa. He contacted the CIA yesterday and said he needed to have a meeting regarding an important issue, and the CIA agreed to see him at his home. Today, therefore, he is visited by two CIA officials. One of them is a woman he already knows; the other is a man he has never met before. Mustafa is waiting at a nearby hotel, at Eymur’s request, in case the CIA officials want to interview him. During his meeting with the CIA officials, Eymur passes on the information Mustafa has given to him. However, according to Eymur, they are uninterested in it. He will suggest in 2019 that the information might have prevented the 9/11 attacks, stating: “Forty days after the meeting, one of the deadliest terror attacks in the history of the United States occurred.… If Mustafa was taken seriously, maybe this incident would have been prevented.” American intelligence agencies contact Eymur after 9/11, the retired spy will write in his 2019 book, and he consequently puts the CIA and the FBI in touch with Mustafa. However, Mustafa will subsequently tell him that his meetings with the two agencies were unproductive due to language issues. [Demiroren News Agency, 6/14/2019]
August 2, 2001: Federal Reserve Governors Encourage Banks to Review Suspicious Activity Reports, Possibly Due to Heightened Terrorist Threat
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors issues a non-routine supervisory letter to Federal Reserve banks, emphasizing the need to continue monitoring suspicious activity reports (SARs). The letter gives no explanation why it has been sent out at this particular time, but states, “Reserve banks must continue to conduct a thorough and timely review of all material SARs filed by supervised financial institutions in their districts.” It adds, “A periodic, comprehensive review of SARs will assist Reserve banks in identifying suspicious or suspected criminal activity occurring at or through supervised financial institutions; provide the information necessary to assess the procedures and controls used by the reporting institutions to identify, monitor, and report violations and suspicious illicit activities; and assist in the assessment of the adequacy of anti-money laundering programs.” [Spillenkothen, 8/2/2001] While the letter does not say if there are specific reasons why the banks should currently be watching for suspicious activities, William Bergman, an economist who works at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago from 1990 to 2004, will later point out, “Intelligence warnings on terrorism were rising significantly in mid-2001.” He will therefore question whether, “with terrorism and its financing already recognized as an important element of the national money laundering strategy,” this letter is “related to these warnings.” He will also point out, “negotiations between the Taliban and representatives of the United States over energy production issues in Afghanistan ended on August 2, 2001” (see August 2, 2001), and that, “Four days later, President Bush received a ‘PDB’—a presidential daily brief—with a headline warning that bin Laden was ‘determined to strike in US,’ and the body text of the PDB referred to ‘patterns of suspicious activity’” (see August 6, 2001). [Sanders Research Associates, 1/4/2006] When, in December 2003, Bergman asks the Board of Governors staff why it issued the August 2 letter, and if the letter was related to intelligence about heightened terrorist threats, he will receive no reply and subsequently be told he has “committed an egregious breach of protocol in calling the Board staff and asking the question.” [Veteran Affairs Whistleblowers Coalition, 5/14/2006] Also around this time, between June and August 2001, there is an unexplained surge in the amount of US currency in circulation (see June-August 2001). [Sanders Research Associates, 9/16/2005]
August 2, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Hanjour Fails Driving Test
After being fined for speeding the day before (see August 1, 2001), 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour fails a test to obtain a Virginia driver’s license. Hanjour already has an Arizona driving license and an international driving license. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 32, 44 ] According to the Virginia police, Hanjour also has a Florida driver’s license, although the 9/11 Commission will dispute this (see August 1, 2001).
August 2, 2001: US Official Secretly Meets Taliban Ambassador in Last Attempt to Secure Pipeline Deal
Christina Rocca, Director of Asian Affairs at the State Department, secretly meets the Taliban ambassador in Islamabad, apparently in a last ditch attempt to secure a pipeline deal. Rocca was previously in charge of contacts with Islamic guerrilla groups at the CIA, and oversaw the delivery of Stinger missiles to Afghan mujaheddin in the 1980s. [Irish Times, 11/19/2001; Brisard and Dasquie, 2002, pp. 45; Salon, 2/8/2002] Around the same time, US embassy officials in Islamabad hold secret talks with Taliban security chief Hameed Rasoli. [Washington Post, 10/29/2001]
