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Instructors at a flying school in Phoenix, Arizona express concern to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) officials about the poor English and limited flying skills of one of their students, Hani Hanjour.(...) They believe his pilot's license may be fraudulent.(...) The FAA finds it is genuine - but school administrators tell Mr. Hanjour he will not qualify for an advanced certificate." BBC (5/17/02)

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"Months before Hani Hanjour is believed to have flown an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon, managers at an Arizona flight school reported him at least five times to the FAA. (...) They reported him not because they feared he was a terrorist, but because his English and flying skills were so bad...they didn't think he should keep his pilot's license. " I couldn't believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills that he had." Peggy Chevrette, Arizona flight school manager."

Reacting to the alert in January 2001, an FAA inspector checked to ensure Hanjour's 1999 license was legitimate and even sat next to him in one of the Arizona classes.
But he didn't tell the FBI or take action to rescind Hanjour's license, FAA officials said.
"There was nothing about the pilot's actions to signal criminal intent at the time or that would have caused us to alert law enforcement," FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. CBS (05/10/02)

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But one official said the inspector, John Anthony, did not suggest a translator and "did not observe any serious issue" with Hanjour's English, even though University of Arizona records show he failed his English classes with a 0.26 grade point average. Other Arizona flight schools he attended also questioned his abilities.

"He didn't do his homework, didn't attend on time and he would sort of come and go," said Duncan Hastie of Cockpit Resource Management.

Marilyn Ladner, the vice president of Pan Am Flight Academy in Miami – the company that owned JetTech before it closed in the aftermath of Sept. 11 – told CBS News, "We did everything we were supposed to do," in reporting Hanjour.

Hanjour attended flight schools with two other Pentagon hijackers. And in July last year, an Arizona FBI agent alerted Washington that a large number of Middle Eastern men were taking flying lessons, but he was ignored.
.....
Chevrette said Hanjour's English was so poor that it took him five hours to complete a section of a mock pilot's oral exam that is supposed to last just a couple of hours.

Chevrette said she contacted Anthony again when Hanjour began ground training for Boeing 737 jetliners and it became clear he didn't have the skills for the commercial pilot's license.

"I don't truly believe he should have had it and I questioned that," she said.
CBS (05/10/02)

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Federal Aviation Administration records show he obtained a commercial pilot's license in April 1999, but how and where he did so remains a lingering question that FAA officials refuse to discuss. His limited flying abilities do afford an insight into one feature of the attacks: The conspiracy apparently did not include a surplus of skilled pilots. Source

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When the school's manager Peggy Chevrette told the local FAA supervisor that Hanjour's bad English and appalling flight skills could end up hurting himself or others, the jury heard the official suggested providing him with a translator -- in contravention of his own agency's rules. Source

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They said that, with the benefit of hindsight, it appears that the FBI and the FAA could have responded more vigorously.

"From what I've heard, the school was clearly more alert than federal officials," Sabo said......

When Hanjour enrolled in January at Pan Am's Phoenix facility, Oberstar said, his instructor made a more critical assessment of his English.

The FAA began clamping down on U.S. flight schools in recent years to ensure that no one who cannot speak conversational English receives a flight certificate.

Oberstar and others said the Pan Am instructor questioned how Hanjour got a flight certificate with his English, felt it was inadequate to complete the firm's course and phoned the FAA. Oberstar said the instructor asked: "What do we do about this? We don't think we should continue a person in flight training whose English is so inadequate."

Pan Am officials were dissatisfied by the FAA inspector's response: suggesting he might know of an Arabic-speaking person who could assist him with his English, Oberstar and others said. That approach apparently didn't work. Hanjour "flunked out" in March, a company executive told legislators.

Oberstar said the FAA representative had no reason to believe that Hanjour was a terrorist. But, recalling that he held a subcommittee hearing a few years ago into a New York plane crash caused by the pilot's failure to understand instructions in English from air traffic controllers, he said Hanjour's language problem should have sounded "alarm bells" with the FAA.

Jerry Snyder, an FAA spokesman in Los Angeles, said he could not comment because the matter is under investigation. Source

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Hanjour obtained his pilot's license in April 1999, but it expired six months later because he did not complete a required medical exam. Source

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On December 24th, 2000, Atta and Alshehhi rented a Warrior (N555HA) from Huffman Aviation for a flight. They landed in Miami when the engine from the aircraft stalled (shutoff) on the taxiway where they abandoned it. They called Huffman Aviation for taxi fare back to Venice but were denied by Huffman Aviation. One to two days later, Huffman received a phone call from the Miami FAA regarding the Warrior that had been unattended for a half-hour on the runway. Dekkers got in contact with Bob Martin, the Operations Manager of Huffman Aviation, who then contacted the FAA. Martin had several phone conversations with the FAA and upon their request sent all maintenance records on the Warrior to the FAA. Nothing else was reported back from the FAA to Huffman regarding the Warrior. Source

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On one occasion, a flying school instructor testified last week, 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi stranded a small single-engined plane on a taxiway at the busy Miami International Airport -- forcing a large jet to take avoiding action.

Their transgression earned the flight school that rented them the plane a telling off from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) -- but no follow on action. Source

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"Students do stupid things during their flight course, but this is quite stupid," Dekkers said. "They shut everything off like dumb ducks." Dekkers said the FAA told him the students would be fined. "But they can't do that any longer," he said.

The FAA did not immediately return calls for comment. Source

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Daniel Pursell, Huffman's chief flight instructor, told the jury the FAA called him for details but did not interview the pilots.

"They might should have, but I don't think they did," Pursell said. Source

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Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi landed a single-engine plane at least twice at the Clearwater Airpark one night in January or February 2001, according to Daniel Pursell, chief instructor for a Venice flight school that rented planes to the pair. Source

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It was a similar story when the pair decided to buzz a Florida airstrip to practice take-offs and landings after it was closed for the night. Source

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A few months later, Atta and al-Shehhi landed a small plane at a Clearwater, Florida, airport after dark, breaking the airport's curfew. Pursell admonished them, but again, there was no investigation. Source

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Why the two men chose the small Clearwater airpark 75 miles north of Venice remains a mystery.

The incident, however, is another example of how closer scrutiny of Atta and the other 9/11 hijackers might have averted the 2001 disasters.

"What were we supposed to think?" said Pursell, 47. "At that time, no one had a clue."

After the landing, the police aide left a voice message with the Venice flight school, Huffman Aviation, complaining about the incident, Pursell said.

Neither the FBI nor the Federal Aviation Administration ever was notified about the incident, officials from both agencies said.

Clearwater police and city officials on Thursday said they did not know it took place, and city logs have no record of the illegal landings. Source

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The reason the Clearwater flight is only now (<Moussaoui-Trial>) becoming known, Pursell says, is because it was overshadowed by other Florida incidents involving the two men.

Besides the blocked runway in Miami, Atta overstayed his previous visa but was allowed to reenter the United States in January. And in April, he was ticketed in Florida for driving without a license. Source

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"After passing this test, Atta and Shehhi were able to sign out planes. They did so on a number of occasions, often returning at 2:00 and 3:00 A.M. after logging four or five hours of flying time." Commission Report (p.239) (PDF)

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When a Twin Cities flight instructor phoned the FBI last August to alert the agency that a terrorist might be taking lessons to fly a jumbo jet, he did it in a dramatic way: "Do you realize how serious this is?" the instructor asked an FBI agent. "This man wants training on a 747. A 747 fully loaded with fuel could be used as a weapon!" The aviation student he was talking about was Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested the following day. Source

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Courtroom stunned: FBI agent Harry Samit for instance, testified he had warned his bosses a stunning 70 times, after nabbing Moussaoui at a flight simulator school, that he could be a terrorist planning to hijack an airliner. Source

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Top Justice Department and FBI officials turned down a request by Minneapolis FBI agents early last month for a special counterintelligence surveillance warrant on a suspected Islamic terrorist who officials now believe may have been part of the Sept. 11 plot to attack the World Trade Center and Pentagon, NEWSWEEK has learned.

..other law enforcement officials are equally insistent that a more aggressive probe of Moussaoui—when combined with other intelligence in the possession of U.S. agencies—might have yielded sufficient clues about the impending plot. “The question being asked here is if they put two and two together, they could have gotten a lot more information about the guy—if not stopped the hijacking,” said one investigator. Source

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If the U.S. State Department had followed the law, at least 15 of the 19 "dots" should have been denied visas - and likely wouldn't have been in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Six separate experts analyzed the simple, two-page forms (viewable only at NationalReview.com, starting today). All came to the same conclusion: Each of the 15 visa applications should have been denied on its face.

Even to the untrained eye, it's not hard to see why. Consider, for example, the U.S. destinations most of them listed. Only one of the 15 provided an actual address - and that was only because his first application was refused. The rest listed such not-so-specific locations as "California," "New York," "Hotel D.C.," and "Hotel."

One terrorist amazingly listed his U.S. destination as simply "No." But he still got a visa.

The experts - who scrutinized the applications of 14 of the 15 Saudis and one of the two from the United Arab Emirates - include four former consular officers, a current consular officer stationed in Latin America, and someone with extensive consular experience who is now a senior official at Consular Affairs (CA), the division within the State Department that oversees consulates and visa issuance.

All six strongly agreed that, even allowing for human error, no more than a handful of the visa applications should have managed to slip through the cracks.

Nikolai Wenzel, one of the former consular officers who analyzed the forms, declares that State's issuance of the visas "amounts to criminal negligence." Source

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Hani Hanjour, who also was on the plane that hit the Pentagon, had only a slight delay in acquiring his visa. A consulate employee flagged Hanjour's first application, noting that Hanjour wanted to "visit" for three years, although the legal limit is two. When Hanjour returned two weeks later, he simply changed the form to read "one year".

Mowbray, who obtained the visas, said he was shocked by what he saw. "I mean, I really was expecting al Qaeda to have trained their operatives well, to beat the system," he said. "They didn't have to beat the system, the system was rigged in their favor from the get-go."

The State Department would not allow interviews with current consular affairs employees. Source

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At the very least, the CA executive points out, "The consular officers should not have ended the interview until the forms were completed." Which begs the question: Were 11 of the 15 terrorists whose applications were reviewed actually interviewed, as the State Department claims?

The answer to the question is 'No', as it turned out two weeks later that:

At least 13 of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were never interviewed by U.S. consular officials before being granted visas to enter the United States, according to a congressional report issued yesterday. The finding contradicts previous assurances from the State Department that most of them had been thoroughly screened.

None of 18 separate visa applications by 15 of the hijackers was completed properly, the report said. Thirteen of the 15, who were from Saudi Arabia or UAE, were never interviewed before being approved for a visa, the report found. Investigators were unable to review the applications for four other hijackers, including Atta, because they were destroyed. Source

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"the answer to the question - could 9/11 have been prevented - is yes, if State Department personnel had merely followed the law and not granted non-immigrant visas to 15 of the 19 hijackers in Saudi Arabia." Source

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In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. I complained bitterly at the time there.... I was met with silence. What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets.

The attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake the State Department's faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on American barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later, in which 19 Americans died. FBI agents began to feel their investigation was being obstructed. Source

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On another occasion, an unemployed refugee from Sudan showed up at the consulate. The person, Springmann said, had no good reason to go to the United States and only the most ephemeral ties to Saudi Arabia.

In other words, Springmann said, the Sudanese was the sort who would have no compelling reason to leave the United States once he arrived.

Springmann turned down the application but immediately encountered resistance. "I kept saying no," Springmann recalled. "But, again, the head of consular section gave him a visa. I asked why. He said national security reasons." ... He said the entire consular operation was run by the CIA. (AP, 07-17-02)

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SPRINGMANN: According to "The Los Angeles Times," 15 of the 19 people who flew airplanes into buildings had got their visas at the CIA's consulate at Jetta (ph) where 15 to 20 of the people who worked there were Washington- based. Nearly everybody except myself and two other people worked for the CIA or the NSA or some other intelligence service.

GIBSON: So what do you think was going on? Was this just -- the CIA didn't quite know what their own people were up to? Had they morphed into something else?

SPRINGMANN: Well, I think they did know what they were doing. I think that...

GIBSON: You're not suggesting they knew what -- that they were going to go fly airplanes into buildings in the United States, do you?

SPRINGMANN: I don't think so, but, with the secrecy the CIA has got going for it and the protection it gets, anything is possible.

GIBSON: Well, I mean, you really think it's possible. Even the CIA could have had its fingers in a terrorism directed against the United States?

SPRINGMANN: Well, who knows? I've seen it suggested that it was one way of getting the Americans involved at bases not only in the Middle East but at bases surrounding Russia. Source

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“Hani Hanjour, 29, entered the United States in December 2000 on an F-1 student visa. But he never attended the school he was admitted to in Oakland, Calif., to study English. The school did not notify authorities and, once in the country, Hanjour melted into obscurity, just another visa overstay, like Nawaf Alhazmi and Satam Al Suqami, who overstayed their B-1/B-2 visas. Source

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“He never attended the ELS Language Center in Oakland, California, the stated destination on his second visa application of September 25, 2000. His records do not indicate the length of stay the primary immigration inspector gave him.”
(Commission Report - Terrorist Travel PDF)

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Collins said he believes Sept. 11 could have been prevented. Based on a deep cynicism developed during years working undercover with the FBI and the CIA, he thinks it impossible both agencies could be caught unaware by the attack. It's entirely possible, he says, that they knew very well what was coming -- and that they let it happen anyway.

For its part, the FBI has confirmed that Collins was an informant who provided valuable information on Muslim extremists -- but denies that he provided information that could have prevented Sept. 11. Source