Florida: terror's launching pad

Floridians who encountered the hijackers, many up close and personal, are left with haunting memories.

By THOMAS C. TOBIN
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 1, 2002 

Five days before Labor Day last year, Maria Siscar-Simpson opened her door to two skinny guys she had seen around her Delray Beach condo. 

Just kids, she thought at first. But, judging by the rude force with which they pulled on her door, she corrected herself: Men. 

They lived in the condo above hers. A rolled-up towel had fallen from their balcony onto a roof outside her back window. They wanted to get it now. They did not say please. 

Ms. Simpson pulled the door back and shouted, "No!" If they needed a towel, she could get them one. 

They looked confused. She told them again in English, Spanish, Italian. They shouted at her and pulled again, determined to get in. 

Thank God for Eddie the maintenance man, Ms. Simpson, 54, thinks today. Her pre-Sept. 11 hero. 

He shouted the men away. 

The Aug. 28, 2001, incident would have been forgotten by now had it not been for the mayhem that unfolded two weeks later in New York City and Washington, D.C., and a field in Pennsylvania.

Reinko: Very strange behavior around some towel, it looks a bit weird to make such a mess over some towel, so I do not have a clue either. I too have a few of those little strange details, up to this day I still do not know who made those photographs of me at the beginning of Summer 2001. Proceed quoting:

On that day, Sept. 11, Ahmad Al Haznawi and Ahmed Alnami -- the "kids" who tried to bully past Ms. Simpson -- were pushing through a different door. They stormed the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93 out of Newark. 

The two were among 14 hijackers who moved about Florida for months without detection before Sept. 11, some honing their flying skills at pilot schools, others joining gyms to bulk up and learn fighting tips, all of them plotting to the last detail a mass murder that would stand as one of history's most detestable acts. 

Across the southern third of the state, from Venice to Hollywood and up the east coast to Delray Beach and Lantana, the men left mostly mundane impressions on the people they encountered. Most were not worth a second thought until Sept. 12. 

Reinko: Very correct, I started asking myself some questions only on 14 and 15 September when more details emerged from hell. We quote on:

The second thoughts are what haunt Ms. Simpson almost a year later, causing sleeplessness, anxiety and an inability to watch or read Sept. 11 news reports. She also cannot bury the notion that accomplices still may be out there. 

"I sleep two, three hours a day; I didn't have that problem before," she said, reaching under her glasses to wipe away a tear. "I want it to go away, but it won't go away." 

Reinko: For myself speaking I sleep rather well, no lack of sleep is not one of my problems. Also I can rationalize things away by declaring 'The Americans asked for this just from behalf of that stupid war on drugs'. This simply is what you get when you act stupid. Quoting on from the long article:

As the anniversary of the attacks approaches this month, the remembrances of Floridians like Ms. Simpson will be more complicated than those of the New Yorkers and Washingtonians who witnessed the terrorists' final act. 

There, at the scenes of destruction, the date to remember is Sept. 11. 

In Florida, however, it could be any number of dates -- perhaps July 1, 2000, when Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, two leaders of the plot, began flying lessons in Venice. Perhaps it should be Aug. 29, 2001, a year ago last week, when Atta and two other hijackers purchased their Sept. 11 airline tickets on a computer at a Kinko's copy store in Hollywood. 

Reinko: Yes, the Kinko's detail is a bit stunning to me. I just started this website kinkytshirts one week before August 29 so this is all a bit 'coincidental'. May be you wonder why I linger on such a detail, but you can look at the 11 Sept stuff in more or less the following way:
It was also meant as some kind of 'punishment' for me, this was not the main reason of course but it was some important underlying current. Quoting on:

And while the primary emotion up North may be raw hatred for the terrorists, it is different for Floridians who saw them up close so shortly before the deed. Their horror is muddled by galling memories of well-dressed young men who paid their bills, carried briefcases and fooled everyone. 

"They were just great customers," said Brad Warrick, the Pompano Beach businessman who rented cars to Atta and al-Shehhi. For years, Warrick has conducted a quick "gut check" of everyone who walks through his door, declining to rent to those who give him a bad feeling. 

"Didn't have it with these guys," he said. 

Reinko: Yes, they fooled everyone so perfectly. They drank alcohol, they did a lot of internet surfing and chatting, they even shaved some body parts. Could it be they had some kind of 'role model' and acted more or less like that role model? Quote on:

At the Panther Motel in nearby Deerfield Beach, August is a time when many Arabs come to vacation, said innkeeper Richard Surma, who rented rooms to two groups of the hijackers in the weeks before the attacks. The last of them checked out Sept. 9. 

"I'm looking so close, eye to eye. I see that they're young and talking, and they look like they're trying to make it like students would be," he said. "And just two days later they're dead." 

Even Ms. Simpson, despite her run-in with Al Haznawi and Alnami, remembers them at other moments around her complex when they somehow seemed softer than the stoic faces she later identified in FBI mug shots. 

"If I would have seen someone that hard looking," she said, "I would have run the other way."

As she viewed their pictures last week, it was the first time she had seen them since January, when the FBI stopped in for one of many followup interviews. 

"My, my, my, here we are," Ms. Simpson said, studying the dead men who still invade her dreams. "Creepy." 

Reinko; Oh yes it always has to be pure evil and nothing else. Dream invading evil. Why not throw in some statistics and try to estimate how many people die year in year out from the daily influx of one billion US$ to America? How many die from international money markets working not properly? Better dream a bit of that my dear Ms. Simpson. Quote on:

What is publicly known about the terrorists in Florida sounds substantial, yet it covers only a fraction of the time they spent in the state. 

Court documents in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged 20th hijacker, outline how the three main leaders in Florida -- Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah -- arrived here in the summer of 2000. Interviews and media accounts fill many of the gaps left by the FBI, which last week declined requests to update the investigation. 

Atta, al-Shehhi and Jarrah had attended Technical University in Hamburg, Germany, in the late 1990s. They had been roommates there, participating together in an Islamic student group that smited Western ways. Atta had signed a "will" in 1996, pledging to die in a "holy war" against the infidels. 

The federal indictment against Moussaoui tells how more than $114,000 from the United Arab Emirates was funneled that summer to Atta and al-Shehhi through SunTrust bank accounts in Florida. Much more would come later from the al-Qaida terrorist network, according to investigators who put the cost of the operation at nearly $500,000. 

The indictment says Atta and al-Shehhi took flying lessons from July to December at Huffman Aviation, a flight school in Venice. 

Reinko: To me it brings a lot of relief to find out that flying lessons were started in July 2000 already. So I can wash my hands in innocence. Quote on:

Jarrah emerged that summer in Venice as well, taking piloting classes at a neighboring flight school. 

When Atta and al-Shehhi got their commercial pilots licenses in December 2000, Florida was exhaling after the close election that put George W. Bush in the White House. 

A few days later, Atta and al-Shehhi moved over to Florida's east coast, in Opa-Locka, where each paid $1,500 cash for three hours in a Boeing 727 simulator. 

In the spring and summer of 2001, eight additional hijackers arrived in the United States and settled in Florida. Nine opened SunTrust bank accounts. Three others arrived in San Diego, rounding out the five-man team based in California. 

That spring and summer, the Florida contingent made itself at home in South Florida, renting apartments and condos, attending gyms, going to restaurants. They seemed to concentrate heavily in Hollywood and Delray Beach. 

The plot was well under way. 

Reinko: Ah, Spring and Summer 2001 eight additional hijackers did set in. Fine, again I would like to wash hands in innocence. Why not, you ask for this? Quoting on:

For those who did stumble across them and knew it, the encounters with Atta and al-Shehhi appear to be the most memorable. 

"My hands," Atta grumbled rudely one day. "They're itching and they're burning." 

Gregg Chatterton recites the words, using a slight Middle Eastern accent to imitate the serious, square-jawed Egyptian. The co-owner of an independent pharmacy along Atlantic Avenue in downtown Delray Beach, Chatterton approached Atta and al-Shehhi one afternoon in early August 2001 after they spent a suspiciously long time in the skin cream aisle. 

He asked what happened to make Atta's hands raw, but the patient was evasive. The pharmacist handed him a 1-ounce tube of Acid Mantle, priced at $5.49, to replenish the natural acid content in his hands. Chatterton began walking away when Atta, who stood 5 feet 8, slapped an intimidating hand against the druggist's chest. It stopped him cold. 

"My friend," Atta barked, motioning to al-Shehhi. "He's got a cough." 

The friendlier al-Shehhi planned a violent death in less than a month. He would be told to praise Allah and hold out his chest as the plane hit the World Trade Center's south tower, creating the fireball that would land on every front page in the world. Until then, however, he wanted something that would get him through the night. 

Chatterton gave him a bottle of Robitussin DM. 

The incident ensured that he would remember the pair when the FBI came calling a few weeks later. "When somebody touches you like that," he said of Atta, "you remember that customer." 

By his count, Chatterton has told that story to reporters 112 times. It has given rise to the theory that Atta irritated his hands while handling anthrax. 

Reinko: With the recent findings around the anthrax used (not military quality, no coating and so on) this remains a puzzling detail. Also the loan (or subsidy) of 650 thousand US$ Atta did ask for 'refining' crop dusters remains of interest. 
Again I have to emphasize that things could have been different, very different. Quote on: 

Atta's inflammation is only one of the hijacker puzzles that remain unresolved. 

Rudi Dekkers, president of Huffman Aviation Venice, cannot understand why Atta and al- Shehhi took the trouble to get their commercial pilot licenses. 

"You don't need a license to fly an airplane into a building," he said. 

When the pair trained at Huffman in summer and fall of 2000, they seemed no different than scores of foreign students who flock to Florida flight schools every year, Dekkers said. 

"I wish we could have seen something -- I wish," he said. "I do think every time when I see them that I would like to kill them myself." 

Reinko: Again, things could have gone differently, very differently. Quote on:

Warrick, too, is stumped by the hijackers' ways. When al-Shehhi returned the rental car for the last time Sept. 9, he asked that the charge be removed from Atta's credit card and placed on his. 

"If you're going on a suicide mission, who cares who pays for what?" he asked. 

He wondered why they didn't just dump the car at the airport, and why Atta would be so attentive as to call from Venice when the maintenance service light went on. 

It mirrored how most of the men dutifully reported their address changes to the Florida Division of Motor Vehicles. 

Warrick said the FBI explained that the men kept their noses clean to the end, in case the plot was aborted and they had to fade back into the South Florida landscape. 

Reinko: But if the hijackers had some kind of 'role model' and this role model is rather friendly and polite in nature and they imitated the role model in all ways possible, than all this 'strange behaviors' make suddenly some sense. To us it looks rather strange that a bunch of guys would imitate some role model in every detail, but this is not without precedent. The revolution in Iran went exactly that way (but there was some 'positive role model'; the Khomeiny figure). 

And what about this 'keeping noses clean to the end'? Suppose that if their theoretical 'role model' did start some new website under the name of kinkytshirts dot nl, wouldn't it be handy if they could approach this website under some completely different name as we have for example ylcos dot com? Does this make some sense to you? Quoting on:

The FBI also had answers for Maria Siscar-Simpson, the Delray Beach woman who fended Al Haznawi and Alnami off at her door. 

The men knocked three more times that day, but she never answered again. 

Agents told her the towel on her roof probably contained clothing with something important to their mission, perhaps a confirmation number from the Sept. 11 airline tickets they had purchased that day. They found evidence, she said, that the men had lowered themselves on guy wires to retrieve the towel that evening. 

In the two weeks before Labor Day last year, the 14 Florida-based hijackers started moving on. 

From Aug. 26 to 29, 10 of them booked flights on three planes that, two weeks later, would knife into the World Trade Center and plunge to the earth in Pennsylvania. The San Diego contingent would take care of the Pentagon. 

On Sept. 8, Atta, al-Shehhi and one other man enjoyed a final night out at Shuckums, an oyster bar on Hollywood's cosmopolitan Young Circle. Atta reportedly played video games, sipped cranberry juice and munched on spicy chicken wings. Al-Shehhi downed five screwdrivers. 

Reinko: Five screwdrivers, a lot of internetting (Atta went often to something named like CyberZone), even watching some porn movies, shaving of body hair, open blouses, ylcos dot com; all in all is that my old life from Summer 2001 or the life of the hijackers?

But there is always so much more; private lessons, regards to the professor, the times I was shouted at but I did not understand, the photographs took, Annie her legs vaporized, the major is two inches smaller definitely, and so on and so on.

Now we are at the end of this part 20c, why do journalists constantly avoid the real questions and why do they answer jokes like 'What would happen if all pension funds sold all their stocks in the same split second'? This beats me, I do not know and you have to go to some place else to find the answers to that.