The FBI is struggling to reconstruct how the hijack operation was masterminded
Duncan Campbell
The four planes that were to change the way Americans live their lives set off within 12 minutes of each other from three different airports, all of which were on Wednesday examining their security procedures and wondering how four teams of hijackers could have evaded all checks.
Two of the flights, United Airlines flight 175 and American Airlines flight 11 both Boeing 767s left Boston’s Logan International airport bound for Los Angeles.
“Everything seemed normal when they left,” said Joseph Lawless, the public safety director of the Massachusetts port authority. “We don’t know how the hijackers accomplished what they did. We consider ourselves as secure, if not more secure, than any other airport in the United States.”
But one traveller had noted something odd. He had got into an argument with a group of men he later described as Arabs as they parked their car. When news of the attacks came in, he led the police to their rented car. Flight instructions in Arabic were found inside the vehicle.
But by now, flight 11, with 92 people aboard, and flight 175, with 65 people, were already bound for the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.
“Don’t do anything foolish, you’re not going to get hurt,” one of the hijackers told John Ogonowski, the pilot of flight 11. “We have more planes.” According to an air traffic controller, it had been possible for ground control to hear what was going on: “One of the pilots keyed their mikes so the conversation between the pilot and the person in the cockpit could be heard.”
US Attorney General John Ashcroft told a press conference this week that the hijack teams appeared to have consisted of between three and six people each, and that the pilots in the teams had been trained in the US.
The FBI has even taken the chairs the suspects may have used while waiting to board the flights as part of its forensic investigation.
The hijackers perhaps came together from different parts of the US. In Florida, law enforcement officials said they had identified a person suspected of being a hijacker and a possible associate of Osama bin Laden on the passenger manifest of one of the four downed planes.
The two planes were tracked on radar as they quickly left their flight path. While the planes should have been heading west, pictures from the American air traffic control system’s radar screen indicated that they were pointing south heading directly for New York.
Part of the investigation will examine why the pilots were not challenged and asked why they had changed their routes. In the crowded skies of north-east America, planes are restricted to very tightly controlled lanes.
When the first plane entered New York’s airspace, it should have appeared obvious that something was wrong, because the only other aircraft flying so low and so near Manhattan were helicopters used by police, radio and television stations for traffic reports, and for pleasure flights.
Even when the second flight entered New York airspace, it apparently was not challenged about leaving its flight path.
The Federal Aviation Authority would not comment this week on flight control operations or any possible contact between air controllers in New York, Washington or the Pittsburgh area with the planes. But one aviation expert speculated that the planes may have turned off their transponders, which interact with radar giving controllers vital information about a particular aircraft.
An FAA representative said regulators were working with airport officials around the country to determine if additional security measures were needed before American airports and airlines resume their operations.
Meanwhile two separate teams of hijackers had taken control of two other planes, one out of Dulles International airport near Washington, which was headed for the Pentagon, and another hijacked flight from Newark, apparently headed for Camp David.
It was from the fourth plane, United Airlines flight 93, that crashed south-east of Pittsburgh, that at least four passengers used cellphones to call for help from the emergency services or to say farewell to relatives. One of the callers threatened to take action against the attackers. “We’re being hijacked!” one man told dispatchers who answered emergency lines before the plane crashed in western Pennsylvania.
Another man called his mother to tell her that three men had hijacked the plane. He said he loved her. Then the phone went dead. The Boeing 757 slammed into a field 128km south-east of Pittsburgh. Rescue crews reached the scene shortly after 10am. There had been 45 people on board.
By this time the secret service had alerted the White House that the hijackers may have been headed for Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. Fearing that the White House might be a target, the secret service diverted Air Force One, carrying President George Bush who had been in Florida, to Louisiana and then Nebraska.
The White House revealed on Wednesday night that it had “credible information” that Air Force One may have been one of the intended targets, and that flight 93, which hit the Pentagon, was headed for the White House. A representative said this information was partly responsible for the decision to delay Bush’s return to Washington.
As the investigations began, the jigsaw of what happened on Tuesday was slowly being pieced together.
“Clearly, there were two failures of security at Logan airport,” said Senator John Kerry. “It’s not just Logan. If you have four hijackings in one day, you have a national problem.”
Two private companies, Globe Aviation Services Corporation of Irving, Texas, and Huntleigh USA Corporation of St Louis, operate security checkpoints for American and United flights at Logan. People who answered the telephone at both companies’ headquarters refused to comment.
In 1999 airlines at Logan and the port authority were fined a total of $178000 for at least 136 security violations in the previous two years.