the post's september 11, 2002 commemorative issue

8/4/2019 The Post's September 11, 2002 commemorative issue

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I N D E X ARTS & LIFE AL5

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EDITORIALS A19

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OPINION POLLMany Canadiansfeel no closer to Americans. A4

Comment, A18DIANE FRANCISThe covetous onesdespise America for its success. A6

RAYMOND DESOUZAThe root causeof suffering is evilin the world. A6

COMMENTARYEditorial, Andrew Coyne, Clement’scartoon. A19

ARTS & LIFEMusicians, writersstrive to catch theessence of Sept. 11.Page AL5

FINANCIALPOSTTerror slows butcannot stop themarkets. FP1. Watson, FP7

B Y J A N C I E N S K I

WASHINGTON • Citing reportsof increasing activity among al-Qaeda terrorists, U.S. ofcials putthe country on a heightened levelof alert yesterday just hours be-fore the rst anniversary of theSept. 11 attacks. As ghter jets patrolled the

skies over Washington and New York, Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S.Defence Secretary, took the rarestep of deploying Stinger anti-air-craft missiles around the Penta-gon and other military facilitiesin the U.S. capital.

Dick Cheney, the Vice-Presi-dent, cancelled a scheduled ap-pearance yesterday and was tak-en to the “cave,” the secret loca-

tion where he spent weeks hidingout after Sept. 11 to preser ve thechain of command in case of anattack on George W. Bush, thePresident.

Such precautions are based onfresh intelligence that warns of renewed terrorist activity, withmilitary bases and overseas em- bassies as possible targets.

“The threats we have heard re-cently remind us of the pattern of threats we heard prior to Sep-tember the 11th,” Mr. Bush saidafter stopping in at the AfghanEmbassy in Washington. “Wehave no specic threat to America but we’re taking everything seri-ously.”

Despite the heightened alert,Mr. Bush continued to make pub-

lic appearances and plans tospeak today at all three sites af-fected by last year’s attacks: thePentagon, the eld in Pennsylva-nia where a hijacked airlinercrashed, and the site of the WorldTrade Center in New York.

The warnings are a grim re-minder the United States is stillin the midst of a war against al-Qaeda and that, in addition tocommemorating the thousandsof deaths from last year, today’sanniversary carries the potentialfor renewed tragedy.

“It’s going to be a day of tears,and a day of prayer, a day of na-tional resolve,” Mr. Bush said.“This also needs to be a day in

which we conrm the values which make us unique and great.”

Today’s ceremonies will start at8:46 a.m., the time when the rstairliner dropped out of the clear

blue sky and smashed into the World Trade Center.

See ALERT on Page A14

The next front: Iraq, A10-A11

CHENEYIN HIDING; FIGHTER JETS PATROL NEW YORK, D.C.Bush says anniversary will be ‘a day of tears,and a day of prayer, a day of national resolve’

F or the 3,892 miles of our tripacross a wide swath of the

United States, it was music andmemories that sustained us, nei-ther of them in the main our own. National Post photographer

Kevin Van Paassen and I set outon August 29 to do what deputy editor Martin Newland called anaudit of America.

But from the moment we arrivedin Cut Bank, Montana, throughthe 11 other states we traversed enroute to Manhattan, we also triedto stop in places that were vari-ously important to one or anotherof the victims, or to the eventsthemselves, of last Sept. 11.

In the New Jersey suburb of Se-caucus (“A Town That Cares”), wefound the Plank Road Inn, whichturned out to be a dear littlesports bar with 10-cent chicken wings, because Steven Stroberthad met his wife Tara there.

In Kansas City, Missouri, wetracked down the River of LifeChurch because it had sent 45congregants to volunteer at thesite of the World Trade Center ru-ins last Christmas; we spent sev-eral hours with Annie Nelson’sparents in the little town of Stan- ley, North Dakota; we met Karen Juday’s best friend at the factory in Elkhart, Indiana, where they’d worked side by side for a decade.

See ROAD TRIP on Page A5

C H R I S T I E B L AT C H F O R Di n N e w Yo r k

Mike Moran advised bin Laden to ‘kissmy royal Irish ass’

Theremanas moral compass

B Y S H E L D O N A L B E RT S Deputy Ottawa Bureau Chief

OTTAWA • Paul Cellucci, the U.S.ambassador to Canada, yesterday chastised Canadian critics who

worry that increased military co-operation with American troopsthreatens Canada’s sovereignty.

He praised Canada’s ongoingmilitary contribution to the waron terrorism, but warned that the

biggest danger to Canadian sover-eignty is Ottawa’s continued fail-ure to increase defence spending.

“I think the issue on the Canadi-an side is that the same people

who worry about sovereignty when we talk about this, whereare they when it comes to makingsure that Canada has a capablemilitary? That is a sovereignty is-sue as well,” Mr. Cellucci said.

The envoy was speaking in aninterview on the eve of the an-niversary of the terrorist attacks.He also had high praise for thehelp that Canadians offered inthe aftermath of Sept. 11. See SOVEREIGNTY on Page A14

Celluccidefends

armylink

ROBERT F. BUKATY / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A man looks toward the Lower Manhattan skyline from Liberty State Park in Jersey City, N.J., yesterday. Allen Abel’s essay on New York anchors our special section, Pages NY1-NY20.

V OL .4 NO .2 68 W E D N ES D A Y, S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 0 2 w w w. n a t i o n a l p o s t . c o m

20-PAGE COMMEMORAT

‘These are my inheritances — shadows and memories,scraps and souvenirs, of the greatest home town

in all the world.’ By Allen Abel

A photographic ode to the people of New York 20-PAGE COMMEMORAT

A photographic ode to the people of New York

∆



Terrorist leader isheard but not seen,fuelling speculation

he is dead

B Y P E T E R G O O D S P E E D

Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda ter-rorist network has produced itsown grotesque home video tocommemorate the rst anniver-sary of last Sept. 11’s terror attackson New York and Washington.

Released on al-Jazeera televi-sion in Qatar, the video featuresan audio track of bin Laden gloat-ing over the terrorist attacks andpraising al-Qaeda hijackers who“changed the face of history”

when they ew airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pen-tagon.

But the fact bin Laden fails toappear in the video has fuelledspeculation he may be dead or se-riously wounded.

Editing additions that attemptto make the video look like a real-time documentary of the Sept. 11terrorist attacks have also castdoubts on its authenticity.

Nevertheless, U.S. ofcials andanti-terrorist experts say the

video, in which al-Qaeda bluntly lays claim to the murders of morethan 3,000 people, is the most

conclusive link yet between al-Qaeda network and the Sept. 11attacks.

Purportedly lmed in Kanda-har, Afghanistan, months beforethe hijackings took place, the video opens with a group of men, wearing turbans and full beards,reviewing ight cockpit manualsand maps in a room lled withcomputers. A crude sign in Ara- bic reading “Destruction to America” hangs on a wall.

None of the men can be identi-ed as the actual hijackers andin one close-up cutaway, whichmay have been re-enacted for

dramatic effect after the Sept. 11attacks, a hand is shown point-ing at the site of the Pentagon onone map.

The video also highlights the -nal lmed testament of one sui-cide hijacker who vows to destroy the United States.

In a chilling sequence, Abdulaz-iz Alomari, who ew aboard therst plane to crash into the WorldTrade Center, sits in front of thecamera, reading from a sheet of paper with his long black hairswathed in a black and whitechecked cloth.

“This is a message to all the in-dels and to America,” Alomarisays. “Leave the Arabian Peninsuladefeated and stop supporting thecoward Jews in Palestine or you will suffer the bitterness of defeatin the world and afterworld.

“We will get you,” he snarls. “We will humiliate you. We will neverstop following you.”

For some inexplicable reason apicture of the damaged, post-Sept. 11 Pentagon building has

been superimposed behind Alo-mari’s head in the video.

During his video statement, Alomari blesses the people whohelped him become a terrorist.

“May God reward all those whotrained me and made possiblethis glorious act, notably theghter Osama bin Laden,” hesays. “God protect him. May Godaccept our deeds.”

In another portion of the video, bin Laden issues a call for the release of jailed Islamic militants inthe Middle East, demanding free-dom for extremists jailed in Saudi

Arabia and Egypt. He also callsfor the release of Sheikh Omar

Abdurrahman, who is serving a life sentence in the United Statesfor his involvement in the 1993

World Trade Center bombing anda plot to blow up other New York

landmarks.The highlight of the video, how-

ever, is al-Qaeda’s bid to sanctify the 19 terrorists who hijackedfour passenger jets and usedthem to kill more than 3,000people last Sept. 11.

In the video, a voice — purport-edly that of bin Laden — praisesthe hijackers and introduces thefour terrorist ringleaders, as men’s

voices are heard singing Muslimhymns in the background.

“There aren’t enough words todescribe how great these men

were and how great their deeds were,” bin Laden says, as imagesof the leading hijackers appearsuperimposed on a landscape of clouds and mountains.

“When you talk about the inva-sion of New York and Washington,

you talk about the men whochanged the face of history and

went against the traitors,” binLaden says on the tape. “Thesegreat men have consolidated faithin the hearts of believers and un-dermined the plans of the cru-saders and their agents in the re-gion.” Al-Jazeera, the world’s rst all-

news Arabic satellite televisionchannel, says al-Qaeda contactsprovided it with the video onMonday — at the same time they gave the network lm footage of another interview it plans to airtomorrow with two leading al-Qaeda terrorist leaders who weredeeply involved in planning theSept. 11 attacks.

It’s not clear when the latest videoaired by al-Jazeera was made. U.S.terrorist experts say it is virtually impossible to determine whetherthe voice attributed to bin Ladenon the video is really his or when hemay have taped his comments.

The fact bin Laden does not ap-pear could just as easily bolsterarguments he is already dead orseriously wounded.

Bin Laden has not been seensince a December video was re-

leased showing him talking tofollowers while squatting in aeld somewhere in Afghanistan. All past videos of bin Laden

aired on al-Jazeera have shownthe terrorist leader delivering hismessage directly to the camera.

In the video al-Jazeera plans toair tomorrow, bin Laden’s aidesinsist their boss is alive. But atone point they refer to him in thepast tense.

One of al-Jazeera’s correspon-dents conducted the exclusive in-terview with the two top al-Qaeda

fugitives, Khalid Shaikh Mo-hammed and Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, last June in Karachi, Pak-istan. At the time, the men provided

the news network with details of the Sept. 11 attacks, saying they had started planning the attacksin 1999 and had originally in-tended to y the hijacked airlin-ers into several nuclear powergenerating stations.

Mohammed said four surveil- lance teams were sent to theUnited States to scout out the tar-gets before hijack leader Mo-hamed Atta and his 18 co-con-spirators arrived in the country inmid-2000.

Bin al-Shibh wanted to be the20th hijacker but he was refused

a visa to enter the United States.Ultimately, the nuclear targets were abandoned because the al-Qaeda operatives were con-cerned the damage might runout of control.

The terrorist also revealed thefourth hijacked plane, whichcrashed into a Pennsylvania farmeld, had originally been targetedto y into the U.S. Capitol build-ing in Washington. Al-Jazeera said all lm of the in-

terviews was conscated andedited by al-Qaeda and was re-turned to them on Monday, so itcould be broadcast the day afterthe anniversary of the Sept. 11terror attacks. Al-Jazeera has aired several al-

Qaeda videotapes since last year’sterrorist attacks and is widely re-

garded as the chief drop-off pointfor bin Laden’s videos.

Late yesterday, al-Jazeera broadcast what it called new video footage of bin Laden, but itis markedly similar to images al-ready shown by the broadcaster.

The video broadcast shows binLaden in a white headdress, ap-parently talking to an unseen au-dience. He was shown only inclose-up from the waist up.

Those images strongly resem- ble video footage aired on al- Jazeera at the end of September,2001. Bin Laden is dressed thesame way in both shots, whichare framed in exactly the same way.

Al-Jazeera presented the imagesshown yesterday as never shown before, without specifying whenthey were shot.

In the latest footage, bin Ladencalls for the liberation of Is- lamists imprisoned in the UnitedStates and Saudi Arabia.

The news network, which wasestablished in 1996, broadcastsfrom Doha, Qatar, in the PersianGulf but receives up to 70% of itsadvertising from Saudi Arabian businesses.

National Post, with les from news services

[email protected]

A2 ∆ NATIONAL POST, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2002

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‘Changed face of history,’

bin Laden gloats on tape

THE RESULTS ARE IN

Should Omar Khadr, theCanadian youth being held by U.S. forces in Afghanistan forhis suspected role in al-Qaeda, be given special treatment be-

cause of his age?

0 1 0

2 03 0 4 0 50 6 0 7 0 8 0 9 0

1 0 0 0 1 0

2 03 0 4 0 50 6 0 7 0 8 0 9 0

1 0 0

% 86%14%YES NO

9 /11 REMEMBERED

TODAY’S QUESTION

Would you support apre-emptive attack on Iraq

if sanctioned by theUnited Nations? Visit

www.nationalpost.com to cast your vote. We will send the re-sults to Bill Graham, the For-

eign Affairs Minister.

A L -J A Z EE R A B R O AD C A S T

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Abdulaziz Alomari, one of the World Trade Center hijackers, reads a statement with a damaged Pentagon superimposed in the video.

‘WE WILL GET YOU. WE

WILL HUMILIATE YOU.

WE WILL NEVER STOP

FOLLOWING YOU’

Abdulaziz Alomari

L O T T E R I E S Unofcial results for Sept. 10

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B Y G R A E M E H A M I LTO N

GAMBO, NFLD. • When the peo-ple of central Newfoundlandopened their homes and emptiedtheir pantries for thousands of airline passengers stranded lastSept. 11, they would not hear of

being compensated.But in the year since the planes

left, Newfoundlanders who won-dered whether they would everhear from their worldly newfriends have been surprised by gifts ranging from airplane ticketsto $84,000 in new computers fora school. Their generosity, it ap-pears, was contagious.

Gambo, a half-hour drive south-east of Gander International Air-port, welcomed about 800 of the6,600 people stranded when U.S.airspace was closed following theterrorist attacks. The local Salva-tion Army church took in the

biggest group, 196 passengers off United Airlines Flight 929 fromLondon to Chicago. Wycliffe Reid, an ofcer with the

Salvation Army, yesterday recalledrushing to the airport to helpprocess the passengers as they

were let off their planes. “Whatseemed a couple of hours earlier

like 1,000 miles away was right onour doorstep,” he said. After work-ing nearly 24 hours straight, he re-turned to Gambo to nd hischurch crammed with strangers.

Friendships between passen-gers and residents formed quick-

ly over the following days, and when their ight was cleared to leave, tears were shed.

Soon afterward, cheques startedarriving in the mail. “We wereamazed at what came in,” CaptainReid said, adding that the otherchurches in town have also re-ceived donations. “It was almostas if they couldn’t believe we weredoing all this for them.”

One day, a courier arrived with aparcel containing a plaque from

the passengers of Flight 929thanking the people of Gambo“for their outpouring of love andkindness.” The plaque now hangsat the entrance to the Salvation Army church.

The church has received$15,000 in donations so far and yesterday another two chequesarrived from grateful passengers.One passenger, the assistantmanager at a Honolulu hotel,arranged with United Airlines todonate a trip for two to Hawaii.

Since the Salvation Army doesnot sanction any form of gam- bling, a rafe was out of the ques-tion. Instead, the vacation wasgiven to a Salvation Army volun-teer, Rick Brown, the owner of the local SaveEasy grocery store.He, in turn, donated $2,000, which was used to replace thechurch’s old, out-of-tune piano.During a special anniversary service on Friday for volunteers, thenew Yamaha digital piano will beplayed for the rst time.

Mr. Brown, who leaves nextmonth for a week in Hawaii withhis wife, Lillian, said he and hisstaff thought nothing of workingthrough the night last year toprovide for the passengers. They donated bottled water, juice andenough potatoes for the folks atthe Lion’s Club to cook an army-sized Jiggs dinner, a traditionalNewfoundland meal of vegeta- bles and salt beef. In the store’s vans, they shuttled passengers onsightseeing tours up the coast.

“There were a lot of people who were very grateful for what we did,”he said. “It made us feel pretty goodto nd that people appreciated it.” A few passengers have returned

this week to say thanks in person,including a couple who met a year ago while stuck in Gamboand got married last weekend inDallas. They declined a requestfor an interview, saying they pre-ferred to spend the time privately with their Gambo friends. Anoth-er couple who met in Gambo, a woman from Colorado and a manfrom Sweden, recently wrote theSalvation Army to share the newsof their imminent wedding.

In Lewisporte, northwest of Gan-der, students are benetting fromthe gratitude of passengers who were billeted there last year. The315 students at Lewisporte MiddleSchool this month began using anew, 33-station computer lab pur-chased with an $84,000 donationfrom the New York-based Rocke-feller Foundation. A year ago, a stranded passenger

named Gordon approached EllisPope, the school’s vice-principal,to see if he could use the school’scomputers to run his small busi-ness. Mr. Pope said “sure,” and it was not until the passengers wereabout to leave that he learned the businessman was Gordon Con- way, president of the RockefellerFoundation, one of the largest

philanthropic organizations in the world. Six foundation staff return-ing home from a meeting in Italy had been stuck in Lewisporte, andas they were preparing to leave,Denise Gray-Felder, a foundation

vice-president, offered to pay backthe town for its generosity.

“They were, I think, slightly mortied that I was suggesting wecould somehow repay them,” Ms.Gray-Felder said yesterday. “They

were so completely surprised.” After a bit of arm-twisting, the

money was accepted.On another ight leaving Gan-

der for Atlanta after its passen-gers had been put up in Lewis-porte, Shirley Brooks-Jones andRobert Ferguson hatched a planto create a scholarship fund for

the town’s graduating high schoolstudents. Ms. Brooks-Jones, a re-tired Ohio State University ad-ministrator, was allowed to makean appeal for donations over theairplane’s public-address systemand before the ight landed, they had gathered $15,000 in pledges.The fund now stands atUS$50,000, and last June, 14graduates received $300 each fortheir post-secondary education.

Ms. Brooks-Jones attended theceremony to present the scholar-ships, and she is back in Lewis-porte this week for events sur-rounding the anniversary. She saidexperiencing the kindness of New-foundlanders last year and subse-quently working to give something

back has helped soften the blow all Americans felt last Sept. 11.

“It’s a positive kind of thing,” shesaid. “I’m sure if I didn’t have this,I would dwell on the horror.”

National Post [email protected]

B Y S T E WA RT B E LL

The RCMP believes that a “largenumber” of donors in the Muslim world are continuing to nancethe operations of Osama binLaden well after the Sept. 11 at-tacks, according to a Canadian in-telligence document obtained by the National Post . A report prepared by the RCMP’s

criminal intelligence branch seven weeks ago states that charities and business are funding the al-Qaedaterrorist leader responsible for theattacks one year ago today, andidenties Saudi Arabia as a key source of his money.

“During the war against Russia[in Afghanistan], bin Laden per-suaded Muslim clergymen to is-sue a religious edict making it le-gal for Muslims to offer their za-kat , alms given annually to thepoor, to the Arab ghters in the Afghan war,” the report says.

“It is believed that a large number of those donors are still givingmoney to bin Laden. In Saudi Ara- bia alone, individuals were donat-ing $1-[million] to $2-million amonth through mosques and oth-er fundraising avenues,” theRCMP said in the July 25 report.

Shortly after Sept. 11, Canadianauthorities ordered banks to freezethe assets of several Saudi charities, businesses and individuals butOttawa has never publicly madesuch a direct link between Saudi Arabia, Muslim donors and thecontinued movement of money tothe world’s most wanted terrorist.

The report’s ndings echo thoseof a United Nations study last week that said donations to al-Qaeda — which it estimated atUS$16-million a year — had con-tinued largely unabated and thatpart of the billions of dollars ow-ing through Islamic charities hadended up in the hands of al-Qaeda.

“According to the Financial In-telligence Branch of the RCMP,the main source of funding of al-Qaeda are charities, NGOs [non-governmental organizations]and commercial entities,” saysthe report by the RCMP intelli-gence analysts in Ottawa.

“The money is given by support-ers and is funnelled to al-Qaedathrough the Hawala, the interna-tional underground banking sys-tem. The same method is used totransfer money to the terrorists before an attack. This ensures thatthere is no paper trail which could link al-Qaeda to the attacks.”

Although 15 of the 19 hijackersthat struck in the United States were Saudi citizens, Saudis and

their government are highly sen-sitive to suggestions they haveplayed a role in al-Qaeda terror-ism, despite mounting evidence

of their involvement.Last month, hundreds of family members who lost loved ones inthe attacks led a $1-trillion law-suit against a list of Saudi chari-ties, banks and members of theroyal family, alleging they had -nanced al-Qaeda. Lawyers said yesterday the number of plain-tiffs has surpassed 3,000.

Senior Saudi ofcials reacted with anger, calling the allegations lies designed to malign theircountry, Arabs and the Muslimreligion. Some of the charities be-ing sued for allegedly funding al-Qaeda operated in Canada.

They include Benevolence In-ternational Canada, SAAR Foun-dation and two Saudi-based char-ities called the Muslim WorldLeague and the International Is- lamic Relief Organization.

The founder of Benevolence In-ternational has been linked by U.S.investigators to bin Laden, butFaisul Kutty, a spokesman for thegroup’s Canadian branch and a di-rector of the Council on AmericanIslamic Relations, has denied theorganization is tied to terrorism.

Canadian authorities are cur-rently detaining an Egyptian manarrested in Toronto who formerly worked for the International Is- lamic Relief Organization in Pak-istan. He is being held on thegrounds he is a member of theterrorist group al Jihad, the key member of bin Laden’s alliance.Canada alleged in federal court

that the Islamic relief organiza-tion “secretly funds terrorism.”

The law rm handling the 9/11class-action suit said severalCanadians had joined the suit, in-cluding Selena Dack Forsyth, themother of Arron Dack, a 39-year-old father of two and senior vice-president at Encompys who wason the 106th oor of the WorldTrade Center’s north tower whenit collapsed.

Last week, Canada imposed a visa requirement on Saudi citizens.

The RCMP report says therehave been reports al-Qaeda has been converting its assets intocommodities such as gold and dia-monds because of the internation-al crackdown on terror nancing.It adds the bin Laden networkseems to be working with rebels indiamond-rich Sierra Leone.

“Since the rebels in Sierra Leoneare heavily involved in the sale of diamonds, it is possible that al-Qaeda is using this route to -nance part of their operations, but nothing has been conrmed,”the RCMP said. “It is probably one of the many nancingschemes used by al-Qaeda.”

The report adds that Canada’sonly diamond mine, in the North- west Territories, has tight securi-ty measures in place, but it “re-mains a possibility” that so-calledconict diamonds from placessuch as Sierra Leone are being laundered in Canada.


9 / 1 1 R E M E M B E R E D A3NATIONAL POST, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2002

‘What seemed a couple of hours earlier like 1,000 miles away was right onour doorstep.… It was almost as if they couldn’t believe we were doing all this

for them.’ Capt. Wycliffe Reid of the Salvation Army in Gambo, Nd.

PETER REDMAN / NATIONAL POST

Rick Brown and his wife, Lillian, will take a trip to Hawaii that had been donated to the Salvation Army in Gambo, Nfld., by a grateful American following the terrorist attacks. Airline passengers stranded in Newfoundland last year have showered Gambo with gifts in return for the town’s generosity. Brown, a grocery store owner and Salvation Army volunteer, gave stranded passengers food and transportation, and then donated $2,000 to the church.

Passengers stranded last year return

Gambo’s kindness with computers, cash

NEWFOUNDLAND’SCONTAGIOUS GOODW

S A F E H A R B O U R

PETER REDMAN / NATIONAL POST

Donations from grateful Ameri-cans have made possible a newchurch piano, says Wycliffe Reidof Gambo’s Salvation Army.

R C M P R E P O R T

Saudi Arabia a key source of bin Laden’s

money, police say

Muslimdonors stillfundingal-Qaeda

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T H E R E S A T E D E S C O



U.S. REMEMBERS ITS FRIENDS

B Y D AV ID V I E N N E A U

OTTAWA • The Chrétien govern-ment’s determination to scorecheap political points has so se- verely damaged Canada’s rela-tionship with the United States it will take years to repair, says Bri-an Mulroney, the former primeminister.

“We’re going to get a cheap thrill back home in Canada by convinc-ing people how virile we are by kicking sand in the Americans’face and trying to humiliatethem,’’ he says in a 60-minuteGlobal Television special, to beaired tonight.

“If you do that, you go nowhere.”Mr. Mulroney, who led the To-

ries to two huge electoral victo-ries in 1984 and 1988, says any-one who believes Canada is anequal partner with the UnitedStates in world affairs needs a les-son in political reality. And, he warns, the United States alwaysremembers its friends.

“There’s a myth abroad that, forexample, at the G7 [Group of Sev-en Western industrialized na-tions] and elsewhere, that oncethe leaders sit down at the tablethat we’re all equal,’’ he says.

“If you have the Americans on your side, you can accomplish —

you can punch above your weightas a country Canada’s size. If the

Americans are either indifferentto you or hostile to you, interna-tionally you’re going to achievenothing.”

The show , Facing the Century

,hosted by Global National ’sKevin Newman, examines someof the military, political and eco-nomic issues facing Canada inthe 21st century, one year afterthe terrorist attacks on the

World Trade Center and thePentagon.

Mr. Mulroney never mentions Jean Chrétien by name. But it isclear he agrees with others whocriticized the Prime Minister fortaking too long to express hiscondolences to Americans afterthe events of Sept. 11 and for notoffering Canada’s immediate, un-qualied support.

Instead, Mr. Mulroney predictsBritain will be the big winner be-cause of Tony Blair’s actions. TheBritish Prime Minister offeredhis unabashed support to George

W. Bush, the U.S. President, im-mediately following the terroristattacks and he has never relentedin that resolve.

“Look what happened in thedays, in the hours after? Who

was sitting in the gallery whenthe President addressed Con-gress in the wake of the attack?”Mr. Mulroney says. “How come

we’re not there and some fellow

from overseas is — 6,000 milesaway? You explain that to me.”

Mr. Bush called Britain “a truefriend” of the United States and

went on to thank Mr. Blair for be-ing there in America’s time of

need. The President also thankeda number of other countries fortheir support. Absent from that

list was Canada.Mr. Mulroney, in a segment of

the exclusive interview that is nottelevised, says, “Blair pre-emptedthe role normally reserved for theprime minister of Canada.

“In terms of support and visi- bility, and so, in many ways, andnot malicious ways necessarily,

we’ll pay a price for that. Blair will be and the United Kingdom will be the beneciary of that. Iknow that, having heard it fromthe Americans at the highest

levels.“There’s no question about it.

It’s not that they’re going to pun-ish Canada, but they remember

who was there right at the begin-ning, instinctively.”

Mr. Mulroney is among a number of prominent Canadians in-terviewed in Global’s prime-timespecial, including John Manley,the Deputy Prime Minister;Frank McKenna, the former NewBrunswick premier; AndrewCoyne, National Post columnist;and writers Rick Salutin and Ge-off Pevere.

Mr. Mulroney remembers thecriticisms he faced from Mr.Chrétien and other Liberals be-cause of his warm relationships

with former U.S. presidentsRonald Reagan and George BushSr. He says friends know who tocall on in times of crisis, recallinghow Mr. Bush Sr., during theGulf War, sought his assistance in

building a coalition against Iraq.Global National

9 / 1 1 R E M E M B E R E D A4 NATIONAL POST, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2002

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B Y A D R I A N H U M P H R E Y S

The display of heart-wrenchingsympathy by Canadians toward Americans following the Sept. 11attacks on the United States didnot translate into a lasting close-ness felt toward our southernneighbours, a public opinion sur- vey suggests.

A sizeable majority of Canadianssurveyed said they feel no closer to Americans after the shockingevents of a year ago today, accord-ing to a National Post / Global Na-tional poll that also found Canadi-ans most often describe their rela-tionship with the U.S. in economicor competitive terms rather than in

warm, friendly terms. With 7% of Canadian respon-dents describing their feelings toward Americans after Sept. 11 as being less close and 30%as closer, both answers were overshadowed by the more than 62% saying theirfeelings remain unchanged.

“There was a tremendous, posi-tive sense of solidarity with the Americans over the disaster,” saidStephen Clarkson, a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto who specializes inCanada-U.S. relations.

“In Canadians expressing theirattitudes toward Americans, someof the respondents would be ex-pressing that reality. Then othersmight be basing it on the actions of the American government andmore recent news events,” Dr.Clarkson said. When asked to describe the cur-

rent relationship between thecountries, almost one-third of re-spondents said business partners;followed by unequal partners, at26%; and close friends, at 21%.

Most Canadians, however, feltthe country’s participation in the war on terrorism has translatedinto Canada having more inu-ence in the United States, accord-ing to the poll.

Dr. Clarkson said it is not a mis-placed feeling.

Mexico was the only country onthe mind of George W. Bush, theU.S. President, when he took ofce.The events of Sept. 11 changed that,he said.

“The Canadian reality has be-come much more important in Washington. We are no longer ir-relevant. Mr. Bush has had to learnquite a bit about where Canada ison the map and what its impor-tance is,” he said. “We sent troops,Mexico did not.”

This week’s meeting betweenMr. Bush and Jean Chrétien, thePrime Minister, in the lead-up tothe anniversary of the Sept. 11,may be a sign of that importance.

But if Canada has become moreinuential with U.S. political lead-ers, the country still does not make waves with the American people,the poll suggests. Americans overwhelmingly con-

sider Britain to be their closest ally. With almost 60% of Americanssurveyed choosing Britain, it farout-paced the 15% who pickedCanada, which was a distance sec-

ond choice.(Oddly, as the U.S. threatens togo to war with Iraq to topple Sad-dam Hussein, 0.5% of Americanssurveyed said Iraq was their clos-est ally.)

“The fact that some 60% of Americans consider Great Britaintheir closest ally is indicative of the total collapse of Canadiandiplomacy post-9/11,” said Rud- yard Grifths, executive directorof the Dominion Institute of Canada, an organization promot-ing knowledge of Canadian histo-ry and a sponsor of the poll.

“If it wasn’t so humiliating, wecould all enjoy the incredibleirony that Americans now overwhelmingly identify with theirformer colonial oppressor andmaster,” he said.

The favour with which Britain is viewed is thought to be enhanced by the strong role Tony Blair, theBritish Prime Minister, hasplayed in the U.S.-led war againstterrorism.

Relations between the UnitedStates and Britain have becomeparticularly cozy in the aftermathof the attacks. While Mr. Bush ne-glected to mention Canada in hisnation-rallying speech to Con-gress shortly after the attacks, heheaped praise upon Mr. Blair, who sat in the audience beside thePresident’s wife.

Mr. Grifths said the poll sug-gests Canada still has an opportu-nity to strengthen its ties.

“When 46% of Americans listshared values as an importantquality in a close ally, it is clear the basis exist to repair our relation-ship with the United States. Sup-porting military measures againstthe criminal regime in Iraq could

be an important rst step for Cana-da to show that our values and the

values of Americans are one andthe same,” he said.

Stuart Fischoff, professor of me-dia psychology at California StateUniversity in Los Angeles, said

Americans are very fond of Canadaand we should not feel slighted by the poll.

“Everyone likes Canada. You are

an invisible and inaudible friend —and that is often the highest praise when talking about a neighbour. You’re not a noisy neighbour. Thesame certainly cannot be said of Mexico,” he said.

“The reputation Canada has is asa place without any sharp edges —maybe there is something aboutthe Québécois, but most Ameri-cans wouldn’t know about that ei-ther,” he said.

Rick Mercer, a Canadian comedi-an who tours the United States in-terviewing people for his televisionshow Talking To Americans , said:“Americans always look kindly onCanada, they just don’t look hereoften enough.”

For most Americans, their en-counters with anything to do withCanada come when the television

weather reports shows a cold frontcoming across the Canadian bor-der, Dr. Clarkson said.

That may also be reected inthe poll. Americans were asked what the

rst thing they thought of was when thinking of Canada. The topanswer was neighbour, followed by the maple leaf. A spokesperson for the U.S. Em-

bassy in Ottawa declined to com-ment on the poll.

The poll surveyed 1,048 Canadi-ans and 600 Americans between

Aug. 8 and Aug. 15. It has a mar-gin of error of three percentagepoints for questions to Canadiansand four percentage points forthose to Americans, according toNavigator.

Facing the Century is a projectof the Dominion Institute, inpartnership with the National Post and the Global TelevisionNetwork and sponsored by theDonner Canadian Foundationand Navigator.


Essays by Allan Gotlieband Gordon Giffin, Page A18

Cool relationswill prove costly,Mulroneysays

P U B L I C O P I N I O N

C A N A D A A N D T H E U NI T E D S TAT E S

‘If you have the Americans on your side, you can punch above your weight.... If the Americans are either indifferent to you or hostile to you, internationally you’re going to achieve nothing.’ — Brian Mulroney , former prime minister

F A C I N G T H E C E N T U R Y

Watch Global Television’sSept. 11

commemorative special,Facing the Century

TONIGHT

FamilyClose friends

Business partnersUnequal partners

CompetitorsAdversaries

Much greater influence for Canada in the U.S.Somewhat greater influence

Neither greater nor less influenceSomewhat less influence

Much less influence

CloserLess close

About the same

I Since the events of Sept. 11, which of the following best describes how youfeel about Americans?

I Which of the following best describes the current relationship betweenCanada and the United States?

I What would you say Canada’s participation in the war on terrorism hastranslated into?

SOURCE: NAVIGATOR

DIPLOM AC Y

30.2%

21.1%32.6%

26%

15.4%38.8%

21.1% 16.8%

62.4%6.9%

5.4%

9.4%3.7%

6.6%

Sympathytoward U.S.did not last,poll finds

RYAN REMIORZ / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Brian Mulroney, left, the former prime minister who was criticized for his friendship with former U.S. pres-ident Ronald Reagan, right, says Canada will “pay a price” for its lack of support for the United States.

‘AN INVISIBLE AND

INAUDIBLE FRIEND’




Ladder No. 3 lost 12 of its complement of 33 men, ofcers and chiefs, all the dayshift, and most of the night shift too, on Sept. 11. Mike Moran, a reghter with Ladder 3 for 12 years, lost his big brother, battalion commander John Moran

We went to the Pennsylvaniaeld where United Airlines Flight93 had crashed after the passen-gers fought back. We didn’t donearly all we wanted to do, but wedid what time allowed.

But until yesterday, when wedropped off our silver truck at arental agency at LaGuardia Air-port on what was easily the mostharrowing leg of the trip, I stillhad not phoned Mike Moran,though we had been in the New York area for three days.

It was his voice we had come toknow, and need, on the road. We had listened to New Jersey’s

native son, Bruce Springsteen, be-cause he was overwhelmingly theguy for so many victims; we’d lis-tened to a best-of CD of the Grate-ful Dead for the Deadheads; wehad listened to a fabulous compi- lation of road music put together by a writer friend of mine, EricDuhatschek, and which includedNeil Young’s anthem, Let’s Roll .

But whenever we really neededinspiration, whether to stay awake or focused, it was the dou- ble disc from The Concert for NewYork City we played. We tried to be judicious about using it, andkept it as our big gun, but we loved one part of it.

The concert was a benet gigheld at Madison Square Garden last Oct. 20, the funds going tothe Robin Hood Fund for allthose affected by the terrorist at-tacks. More than 6,000 reght-ers, police ofcers and rescue workers attended as guests.

I’d watched it, live, on televisionin Toronto, dancing, and crying,in the dark of my own living room.

I saw Mr. Moran come on stageto introduce The Who. He talkedabout his brother, John, one of 343 members of the Fire Depart-ment of New York who had per-ished, and about the FDNY

football team that was so deci-mated, and then he’d said, “In thespirit of the Irish people, Osama bin Laden, you can kiss my royalIrish ass!” The thunder that greet-ed his remarks was a great roarthat rose and rose and became achant of, “USA! USA! USA!” And it was this, called “Spoken

Word, Mike Moran FDNY” on thesecond disc, that Mr. Van Paassenand I grew to know by heart.

I was afraid to phone; cold callsare the bread-and-butter of re-porters and salesmen both, butthey never get easier.

I tried Mr. Moran at home, gothis answering machine, and heardthe dear familiar voice of the man who was made in Rockaway Beach, the son of a reghter, the brother of a reghter, the cousinof seven or eight reghters. InRockaway, which is an idyllic beachfront part of the borough of Queens, when boys reach a certainage, someone brings home the ap-plication forms for the FDNY andthe New York Police Department,and the boys ll them out.

Mr. Van Paassen and I stopped by the re hall near our hotel, En-gine Co. 65, to ask where we couldnd Hook and Ladder Co. 3. A gorgeous young man — for every woman I know, reghters are theequivalent of Hooters girls, allphysically astonishing — directedus to 108 East 13th St. in the East Village in Lower Manhattan.

The reghters were just re-turning from a call when our cabpulled up; the big doors to the rehouse shut before we could getthere, and I went down an alley toring the buzzer. No one an-swered, because, as a man who works nearby and had stopped tosit on the bench before the sta-tion explained, “They were eatingpizza when they got called out.”He gured the men were probably just nishing their lunch.

Within a few minutes, thedoors rolled open, and the men were there.

Two women handed over a cardof sympathy, and when they hadsaid their goodbyes, I asked BillRantenstrauch if Mr. Moran wason duty, and if so, if I could talk tohim, and he went to fetch him.Soon, a huge bear of a man wasstanding in the doorway in hisshorts and FDNY T-shirt. He had big dimples in a lumpen, lovely face, and grave green eyes edgedin black such that it almost looked as though he were wear-ing eyeliner. He smiled warmly,

and we began to talk.Ladder No. 3 lost 12 of its com-

plement of 33 men, ofcers andchiefs, all the day shift, and mostof the night shift too, because,though these men were techni-cally off by the time the rst planehit the rst tower, many hadobligingly hung around the re-house because a cooking show

was being lmed and the crewneeded the hall to look busy.

Mr. Moran himself phoned his brother, a battalion commander with the Special Operations Com-mand, when he got off at 7 a.m.,to see if they could go home to-gether, but Sept. 11 was one of thefew mornings John Moran didn’thave to hurry home to look afterhis two children, and he was stay-ing late to do some paperwork.

By the time Mr. Moran gothome, the rst jet had torn intothe rst tower. But it didn’t lookso serious on television. Still, hephoned John, who he thought

would be home but wasn’t. Hephoned him again, when the sec-ond plane hit, and John Morantold his 38-year-old baby brotherto get his ass down to the WorldTrade Center. He could hear there radios going berserk in the

background. He told him there was a second plane.

“I know,” said John, “we’re righthere. The plane went right overour heads.”

“How bad is it?” Mr. Moranasked.

“Mike, it’s a f---ing catastrophe,”his brother said.

It took Mr. Moran forever tomake his way down from Queens.He tried, en route, to hitch rides

on other trucks, to no avail: They were already jam-packed withmen. By the time he made it to theLadder 3 house, the orders hadcome down to stay put; there wereenough reghters at the site.

He later learned, from the re-ghter who had driven his broth-er to the Twin Towers, about John’s last minutes.

As their truck came off the littleramp to the Twin Towers fromFDR Drive, the road was backedup with cars, whose terried dri- vers were stopped short by thedebris raining down upon them. John and a colleague had to getout of the re truck and order peo-ple to move ahead, so they couldget through. “There was a cab that wouldn’t move,” Mr. Moran said,“and my brother must havethought that maybe it was on pur-pose. The driver was an Arab. Hedragged the guy out of the cab,punched him, and took over thecab,” and moved it aside. John Moran was then only

about 100 yards from the southtower. The last thing he told thedriver was, “I’m going to make adifference in here.”

Mr. Moran had tried to switchshifts, so that he would work thatTuesday; neither of the men heasked to make the change couldoblige. Both were among thedozen men Ladder 3 lost. Mr.Moran took us over to a collage of their photos, including, as a kind-ness to him, one of John.

They were veterans like JoeMaloney, who’d been on the jobfor 20 years, and Jim Coyle, whohad only 10 months under his belt but all the promise in the

world, a skinny kid who was agreat athlete and had the knack.There was their great captain,Patrick Brown, a former Marine

who did two tours of Vietnam,had a black belt in karate (andtaught the blind), but was mostrecently obsessed with yoga.

Capt. Brown wanted his ashesspread in Central Park, from aspot where the city is at its mostglorious, but his remains werenot found for months. His menput a plaque in his memory by atree in the park, but city authori-ties later demanded it be moved.

“We didn’t,” said Mr. Moran with a rueful grin, “have a per-mit.” The plaque is now in the bighall where the trucks sit.

“Every re house has its own insti-tutional memory,” Mr. Moran said. When he rst arrived at Ladder

3 12 years ago from a rehouse inBrooklyn, he was inculcated inthe “3 truck way”: You get to thehouse before your shift; youcheck all the tools; you do thingsright. Ladder 3 has a storied his-tory — more winners of the

James Gordon Bennett medals,the department’s most presti-gious, and the only battleeldpromotion, in 1893, in the FDNY.

Fireghters, he said, aren’t likepolice (and he was a cop for two

years before he joined the FDNY, largely because the NYPD takes’em at 20, the FDNY at 21). Fire-ghters prefer the busiest halls,and so he loved Ladder 3. Com-pared to Brooklyn, where they answered a lot of calls but many in empty buildings, Mr. Moransaid, it hopped. “Everything inManhattan is occupied,” he said.

Since Sept. 11, four or ve newmen have transferred in to Lad-der 3. A couple of others have

been promoted, and moved on.One senior guy, he said, cou ldn’treturn, and has moved to a differ-ent house. Two others wereforced by age to retire. Two moresuffered such severe lung damagefrom the yellow cloud at GroundZero, they’re on lighter duties.

In the ordinary course, Mr.Moran said, “Two new guys a year

would be a lo t.”In a little glass case, the order

that came at 8:48.12 that morninghas been preserved. Fireghterscall it a ticket. “2nd alarm in WTC

lobby CMD [command] desk,” itreads. “Via Liberty Street.”

In another place, on another wall, is the blackboard, now lac-quered, which shows the last runof Ladder 3 that day: Capt.

Brown was the ofcer; MichaelCarroll the chauffeur; Steven Ol-son the OVM (outside vent man);Gerry Dewan the Irons, whichmeant he carried the tools; Jay Ogren the Can-Man (he was the

junior and carried the re extin-guisher); Tim McSweeney theRoof-Man, meaning he was theguy who normally would headstraight to the roof, which usually results in the greatest number of

lives saved. All perished.In May, Mr. Moran married his

girlfriend, Donna. “I knew I lovedmy girlfriend,” he said, “but I did-n’t realize how important it wasto have something bigger.” Hisgreen eyes lled with tears.

I asked him how it is that somany reghters appear to befrom another era, so sure is theirmoral compass, so strong thesense of family. “If you want to be agood family man,” he said, “this is agood job.” The shiftwork allows fora man to spend long hours athome. But he seemed puzzled by the question, as though it had notoccurred to him before.

On the eve of the anniversary of the day that shook his life, stolehis brother and friends, Mr.Moran had all the time in the

world for his two Canadian visi-tors. He was exactly as I imaginedhe would be, but innitely moregentle. I asked if he was still aslled with rage as he had been atthe concert, last October. “I’vekind of blacked the concert out,”he said. New York, he noted, yes-terday went on heightened ter-rorist alert, “and sometimes I

wonder why we haven’t donemore.” But it was clear that the

big anger was an aberration, andhas long ago leaked from him.

“Hey Mike,” cried one of his colleagues as he pulled out of the sta-tion, “you can kiss my royal Irishass!” Mike Moran just grinned.

He has volunteered to work to-day, and will be on duty at Ladder3 when the whole city falls silent.

National Post Christie Blatchford can be

contacted at [email protected]

C H R I S T I E B L AT C H F O R D

KEVIN VAN PAASSEN / NATIONAL POST

Mike Moran, a firefighter in Manhattan, had just got off shift when the planes hit the World Trade Center. By the time he returned to the fire station that day the orders were to stay put.

ROAD TRI P Continued from Page A1

‘I’m going to make a difference’

Catch up on previousinstalments from

Christie Blatchford at www.nationalpost.com/

ourflag

ONLINE

KEVIN VAN PAASSEN / NATIONAL POST

The duty roster of Ladder No. 3 company for Sept. 11, 2001, has been turned into a permanent memorial. All the firefighters perished.

‘ O U R F L A G W A S S T I L L T H E R E ’



I immigrated from the UnitedStates in the late 1960s, but in

many ways have never left.That’s why nothing could haveprevented me from coming to New York during the week commemo-rating the 9/11 tragedy. Like a shi- va, I had to be here to share thegrief, with plenty of Kleenex and lots of admiration and respect for agreat country.

I have learned that being Ameri-can is not something one displays, but this occasion warrants achange of voice for me.

I’ve never written about an inci-dent that took place last Sept. 11 inmy newsroom. A woman whom Idid not know, and haven’t seensince, said to a group of us who were watching the rst tower collapse: “Well, that’s what the Ameri-cans get for poking their noses into

everyone’s affairs.”If I hadn’t walked away to anothertelevision in the room, I would’ve just slugged her.

My anger wasn’t a knee-jerk reac-tion resulting from the Stars-and-Stripes childhood that every Amer-ican kid like me experienced: thepledge of allegiance every morn-ing, marching in my Brownie uni-form with my baby sister beside re-al soldiers in my town’s annualMemorial Day parade, squattingunder my school desk listening tosirens during the Cuban MissileCrisis or getting news that some-one I knew had been blown to bitsin Vietnam’s jungles or incineratedin the World Trade towers.

My anger toward this woman wasn’t because I was brainwashed.It was because she was.

Unfortunately, this mentality isall too prevalent in Canada andaround the world. Now it’s appar-ent that it has become institution-alized among radical Islamic sectsthat are violent.

To me, this type of anti-Ameri-canism — whether violent or not —is an ideology rooted in dishon-esty, envy and intolerance towarda country that’s far from perfect but possesses more good valuesand characteristics than do mostnations. So, you might ask, if America’s so great then why are Americans increasingly hatedaround the world?

The answer is quite simple:

Americans are the world’s “new Jews”.

This is not because the UnitedStates remains Israel’s mostfaithful ally.

It’s because Americans, like Jewsaround the world, are a successful“nation.” In fact, they are too darnsuccessful for the dispossessed orthe pathologically covetous. Andthose whom you envy, you alsohate. That’s why they are despised.

Both “nations” are similar. Jewsare scattered around the world,united by a religion as well as a setof values. Americans are in one ge-ographic location and are alsounited in their beliefs. Both “na-tions” consist of immigrants, ortheir descendants, who have learned to live with all other na-tionalities and to work hard toovercome dislocation and strife.

The result is that both “nations”have emerged to become success-ful, pluralistic, self condent andproud. Which makes the envious detest

them even more.Once targeted as enemies, Ameri-

cans, like Jews, are objectied.Their aws are exaggerated. They are blamed for everything that is wrong with the world. And, like the woman in my newsroom, they arenot sympathetic victims even when thousands of them are beingslaughtered by religious fanatics. As we know, this type of hatred

and envy eventually drove most Jews out of Europe, then the Arabnations, in 1948, when the State of Israel was founded. Then Jews were hated even more because

they turned a desert into the Mid-dle East’s only developed, educateddemocracy.

The attacks on 9/11 revealed howa similar, irrational hatred towardthe Americans has become nation-threatening.

There are even those who blamethe Americans, along with the Jews, for that old bigoted mantra,the “world-banking conspiracy.” Arab radicals, clerics and leadersspew this stuff and actually imag-ine the two are Great Satans whoare buying up the entire worldeconomy, exploiting all its poorpeople and are responsible for allhuman misery. It’s the American- Jewish Evil Empire.

I’m far from an apologist foreverything that America has done,or will do. I was a civil rights ac-tivist, objected to the Vietnam Warand came to Canada as a result of its 1960s politics. I’m also con-cerned about some actions taken by the government in Israel.

But both nations openly reportand debate such matters becausethey are transparent and enlight-ened societies. For that reasonalone, the demonization of both ismisplaced, even ruinous tomankind.

The “new Jews” are victims of in-tolerance and their victims should be remembered.

And that’s why I’m in New York.God bless America.

National Post

T he anniversary is upon us.Our mind’s eye turns again to

the scenes of savagery that explod-ed across the Manhattan skyline,searing images at once spectacu-

lar and sinister into our memory. Yet what most demands our atten-tion is what we cannot see. What we saw was a conagra-

tion that reduced to rubble theproud achievements of architec-ture and industry and scienceand economic freedom. That wecould watch on TV. What wecould not see was the spiritualdrama, an interior battle againstames too hot for any reghterto put out.

I learned a few days ago thatNew York reghters have anickname for the re they do bat-tle with. They call it the devil.

Man is made for happiness inthis world and eternal blessed-ness in the next, so we quite easi-

ly recognize and celebrate thegood among us. It’s our natureand our vocation. Therefore to-day’s memorials will celebrate,quite properly, the goodness of Sept. 11 — the last-minute testi-monials of love whispered intocellphones, the heroism of therescue workers, the sacricialcourage of the passengers whothwarted the hijackers in theskies over Pennsylvania. We are not so good at recogniz-

ing evil. It lives among us too, yet we are loathe to acknowledge it. We are not made for evil — it isnot our eternal vocation — and so

when it enters our lives, we try sohard to explain it away.

In the past year, there have beenmany such attempts to explainSept. 11, often under the guise of

looking for root causes. Theproblem with the search for rootcauses it that it goes too far, andnot far enough.

It goes too far in that it skipsover the actual evildoers, in thiscase the hijackers and their ac-complices. Root causes don’t y planes into buildings. Highly in-telligent, capable and disciplinedmen do, men who have freely chosen to do an evil thing.

The search also does not go farenough. The ultimate root causeof all suffering is evil in the world.

While it is alien to our contempo-rary chattering classes, theknowledge that evil exists in the

world is part of the common reli-gious patrimony of mankind.“The devil” is not just a nickname.

Jews and Christians used to beable to speak frankly of the mys-tery of evil in the world. We usedhave a shorthand expression for

what happens when peoplefreely choose to accede to thetemptations of that evil. We usedto call it sin. There are small sinsand there are serious sins andthen there are sins that staggerthe soul.

That’s what happened on Sept.11. A few dozen men around the

world decided to freely do some-thing horribly wicked and stag-geringly sinful.

In the at world of materialism,in which evil is a shorthand ex-pression for psychological angstand evil spirits are only symptomsof mental illness, the terrorists of Sept. 11 need to be understood.Such an approach produces fruit-

less natterings about better educa-tion or socioeconomic factors, as if poor kids need to be told that it is

wrong to obliterate ofce build-ings full of innocent workers. C.S.Lewis, the Oxford don, wrote per-ceptively that the greatest trick of the devil was to persuade peoplethat he didn’t exist.

The spiritual mystery of evil inthe world is not to be understood

but simply recognized. Recog-nized and fought. It is a battle thatis at the heart of every human life— it is, in fact, the adventure thatanimates all of human existence. Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenit-

syn, who saw more evil in the So- viet gulag than most men, wrotethat the line between good andevil runs through the heart of every man. On Sept. 11, a fewdozen hearts embraced that eviland erased the World Trade Cen-ter. The mystery of evil can be ig-nored, but it does not go away forour pretending that it is notthere. We ignore it at our peril.

On Easter Sunday, the Latinhymn for the Catholic Mass singsof good and evil, of the “mortalcombat” between life and death.Sept. 11 was one episode in thatcosmic mortal combat, with thehijackers using their own bodiesto bring death. The heroes gavetheir own bodies to save lives. It

was mortal and it was combat —something that should be famil-iar to every Jew who celebratesPassover and to every Christian

who looks upon a crucix.The mystery of evil is with us al-

ways. It is a fact of human exis-tence. And just as every re hasits root causes — faulty wiring,

lightning in a forest, several tonsof jet fuel slamming into a sky-scraper — one can trace the itin-erary of evil in the world.

Fireghters exist because thereis re in the world, and it willare up, more or less regardlessof whatever specic combinationof root causes may be cobbled to-gether on any given day. And

when the devil comes, they goand ght it.

Evil, too, exists in the world. And when the devil comes, thereis no time to explain it away. It istime to ght. To the death.

National Post


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The U.S.is hated for itssuccess

F ATH ER R AY M O N D J.D E S O U Z A

i n N e w Yo r k

D I A N E F R A N C I Sin New York

Mystery of evil cannot

be ignored

The line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.On Sept. 11, a few dozen hearts embraced that evil and erased the World Trade

Center. Evil does not go away, and we ignore it at our own peril

C O M M E N T

KRISTEN BROCHMANN / THE NEW YORK TIMES

When hijackers flew airplanes into the World Trade Center’s twin towers, the world witnessed an act of evil that staggered the soul.

IN CLASSROOMS AND O

B Y G I L L I A N C O S G R O V E A N D M A L C O L M K E L LY

TO R O N TO • A hush will fallacross Bay Street at 8:46 thismorning as corporate Toronto ob-

serves a moment of silence for vic-tims of the terrorist attacks in New York a year ago.

The silent vigil will mirror mem-orial ceremonies planned forGround Zero in Manhattan, at themoment the rst plane smashedinto the north tower of the WorldTrade Center.

Many corporations — especially those that lost one of their own — will observe another moment of silence at 10:29 a.m., the momentthe second tower collapsed.

Many of the Canadian victims of 9/11 were from Toronto or had ex-tensive Toronto connections, andevents are scheduled in the city.

Ofcial ceremonies begin at 9:30a.m. at Nathan Phillips Square where police, re and emergency

services and the Toronto TransitCommission will participate in aceremony that also includes JamesBartleman, the Lieutenant-Gover-nor, Ernie Eves, the Premier, andMel Lastman, the Mayor.

Public, separate and privateschools will also observe Sept. 11 with ceremonies and activities. And TTC vehicles will stop for amoment’s silence at 10:05 a.m., thetime the rst tower collapsed. At the Bank of Montreal, staff

members plan to lay a wreath onthe trading room oor. It will bean emotional moment for colleagues of David Barkway, the for-mer managing director of capitalmarkets at BMO Nesbitt Burns, who perished that day. In honourof the golf enthusiast, a puttinggreen called Barky’s Way was in-stalled on the terrace outside thetrading room.

“This rst anniversary of Sept. 11 will not and cannot be like any oth-er normal business day, certainly not for people like us, whose liveshave been etched one way or an-other by what we saw and heardand felt one year ago,” Tony Com-per, Bank of Montreal chairmanand CEO, told employees. When searching for a respectful

way to commemorate Sept. 11,staff at Royal Bank FinancialGroup turned to their colleagues atRBC Capital Markets in New York(situated directly across the streetfrom Ground Zero) for ideas.

In the end, Royal Bank opted fora “less is more” approach and therecognition that individual emo-tions have to be respected. At Toronto schools, most of the

cermonies have been left for individual schools to plan. Prayer services will be held in each of theToronto Catholic District SchoolBoard’s schools, said Emmy Milne,a communications supervisor.

The Toronto District SchoolBoard considered not holding any ofcial ceremonies and leavingthe choice of how to mark the oc-casion to individual parents, but“the senior staff and principalsfelt there was a need for theschool system to respond to theday in a sense that we needed toso something purposeful that would demonstrate a respect andconsideration for the day itself,for those who sacriced their lives,” said David Reid, director of education.

Private schools will also be hold-ing ceremonies in their own ways. At Branksome Hall, an all-girlsprivate school, an assembly willcommemorate those who were lostand look toward the future “and what [the students] can do to in-crease the sense of respect for eachother’s differences,” said theschool’s Nancy Smith.

National Post

TORONTOPAYS TRIBU TO 9/11 DEA

Visit canada.com/sept11 forstories on where people

were when they heard the

news, an interactivechronology of the attack,photo galleries, newspaper front pages from the day

after and a discussion forum on how Sept. 11

changed lives.

ONLINE

D AY O F R E M EM B R



cbc.ca

CBC RadioLoss & Legacy:Reflections of September 11

we remember a day we can’t forgetCBC Televisionand CBC NewsworldRemembering September 11

Today

A nine-and-a-half hour specialdedicated to helping Canadiansunderstand and share their views.A day of contemplation.

Peter Mansbridge anchors full-daycoverage, commemorating the tragicevents of a year ago and exploring,from a distinctly Canadian perspective,the endless issues left in their wake.




TOMORROW POST 9/11For the most comprehensive coverage of today’s events in New Yorkand around the world, don’t miss Thursday’s National Post.

The presence of three of the hijackers and others involved in the plot at a wedding in Hamburg, Germany, in October, 1999, has led investigators tobelieve the plan to attack the United States had essentially been formed by then.

B Y R I C H A R D B E R N S T E I N

On Nov. 29, 1999, a31-year-old archi-tecture student inGermany namedMohamed Atta,

unknown to the world but already determined to strike an unforget-table blow against those he be-

lieved to be his enemies, boardedTurkish Airlines Flight 1662 fromIstanbul to Karachi, Pakistan. Atta took at least a couple of days

to reach his nal destination: atraining camp in Afghanistan run by al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden’ssprawling, international terroristorganization.

There, investigators say, Atta was accorded the greatest honoura soldier in the international Is- lamic army can receive: an audi-ence with bin Laden himself. Atta’s visit with bin Laden,

which has not been disclosed pre- viously, is among the latest dis-coveries by U.S. investigators try-ing to reconstruct the hijackingplot that brought so much deathand havoc to the United States.

The investigators believe Atta was accompanied by other lead-ers of the plot and they talked to bin Laden about undertaking aterrorist operation.

The new information, much of it gleaned from interviews withal-Qaeda members captured in Afghanistan and Pakistan, pro- vides the strongest evidencethat bin Laden personally sup-ported the 19 men who carriedout the deadliest foreign attackon U.S. soil.

Over the past year, investigatorshave reached other conclusionsas well. They have identied sev-eral gures aside from the hijack-ers who seemed to form apenumbra of support for the ter-rorist network, serving as re-cruiters, messengers and han-dlers of the $500,000 to$600,000 needed to carry outthe attacks. Atta himself hasemerged as an even more impor-tant organizer than was previous- ly known, a gure who might nothave created the plot, but whotook early command of it and was viewed, in the words of one of theother hijackers, as “the boss.”

Foreign intelligence ofcials alsosay one of the most importantsupporters, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who lived with Atta in Hamburgand accompanied him to Afghani-stan, was present at a criticalmeeting in early 2000 in Malay-sia, which was attended by twoother al-Qaeda operatives who later formed the core of one of thehijacking teams. Bin al-Shibh’spresence at the meeting is the ear- liest known link between Atta’sHamburg team, which includedthree of the suicide-hijacker pilots, trained mainly in Florida,and the men who commandeeredthe fourth plane, who trained inCalifornia and Arizona.

In addition, U.S. law enforcementofcials have become increasingly condent that a 37-year-oldKuwaiti, Khalid Shaik Moham-med, was one of the plot’s centralplanners. Interviews with al-Qae-da prisoners, including AbuZubaydah, the highest-ranking op-erative in custody, have conrmedsuspicions about Mohammed, whom investigators believe is anuncle of Ramzi Yousef, the convict-ed mastermind of the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

This new information, disclosed by ofcials as the anniversary ap-proached, helps ll in signicantgaps in the narrative of what hap-pened that Tuesday, helping ex-plain a diabolical plot that in-

volved years of planning andtraining across three continents yet required nothing more to exe-cute than 19 driven and suicidalmen, a half million dollars and ahandful of knives.

In the days after the attacks, gov-ernment investigators quickly de-termined many details of the plot,including the identities of the hijackers and their itineraries from

several points around the globe toights schools in Florida, Califor-nia and Arizona, and then to theirtargets in the United States.

But much else about Sept. 11 re-mained mysterious. Investigators were sure from the beginningthat bin Laden and al-Qaeda were ultimately behind it, butthey did not know who exercisedpractical control, when and where the plot was hatched orhow al-Qaeda recruited andmaintained contact with thekillers. Even now, they have notlled in all the gaps.

“There are many aspects of theplot that we’ll never know unless you get a participant to tell you when it began and how it was puttogether,” said one senior U.S.

law-enforcement ofcial.But in the year since Sept. 11, investigators have pored over cell-phone records, ight manifests,nancial receipts and interviews with captured al-Qaeda membersto develop a richer picture of theplot, particularly how it came to-gether overseas.

One general conclusion that can be drawn is this: The attacks last year were the deadly outgrowth of a series of terrorist efforts that be-gan with the truck bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and afoiled plot two years later in thePhilippines, where terroristsschemed to blow up a dozen U.S.airliners as they crossed the Pacic.

The investigation in this sensehas not turned up evidence thatthe same groups were responsible for all those plots, but ratherthat there is a kind of interlockingterrorist directorate, with onegroup taking the baton from an-other, and one group’s goals be-coming those of the next group.

The form of terrorism thatstruck on Sept. 11 involves a stillshadowy and uid network of people and groups, and it clearly shows that since the mid-1990s,many parts of that network havegravitated toward al-Qaeda. Theattack on the United States, withthree separate groups of youngmen from scattered places com-ing together, was the culminationof that process.

In October, 1999, at the radicalal-Quds mosque in Hamburg,Germany, several men attendedthe wedding of Said Bahaji, aGerman-born Muslim of Moroc-can descent, who is believed tohave been in charge of logisticsfor the local cell of al-Qaeda.Looking back, investigators see itas a gathering of the most impor-tant of the Sept. 11 terrorist teams just as the plotting began.

Among the men at the wedding were Atta, who was from a mid-dle-class family in Egypt; Ziad Jarrahi, who had left his nativeLebanon in April, 1996, to fulll adream of studying aeronauticalengineering in Europe; and Mar- wan al-Shehhi, a citizen of theUnited Arab Emirates who, alsoarriving in Germany in 1996,seems to have been almost insep-arable from Atta. Investigators believe the men were at the con-trols of three of the four planesthat were commandeered.

Others were at the ceremony as well, men from several coun-tries who, investigators believe,

were part of the plot’s networkof support. Among them, for example, was a

300-pound German of Moroccanancestry named Mohammed Hei-dar Zammar, who is believed tohave recruited for al-Qaedaamong the young radical Muslims

who prayed at the al-Quds mos-que. Another was bin al-Shibh of

Yemen, the Atta roommate who would probably have been amongthe suicide-hijackers, except hisrepeated applications for visas tothe United States were rejected.

In fact, the men almost surely knew one another for a year or so

before the Bahaji wedding, which was when Atta, bin al-Shibh andBahaji signed a lease for an apart-ment at 54 Marienstrasse, a nar-

row, sloping street in a working-class suburb of Hamburg. Accord-ing to the investigators, it was

when the men became roommatesthat the plan to take some actiontogether in the service of Islamicholy war began to be formed.

“For us, the decisive moment isthe move into the Marienstrasse54,” Kay Nehm, Germany’s gener-al prosecutor, said in a recentGerman television interview.“This is when there were inten-sive discussions concentrating onthe question of what can be done.The hate was there, the hateagainst the U.S., the hate againstinternational Judaism. Those

were the discussion topics, andthen they say, ‘Actually, we have todo something.’ ”

In forming a terrorist cell inHamburg, Atta and company

were doing what radical youngMuslims were doing across the

globe, participating in a move-ment whose chief backer and in-spiration was the renegade Saudimillionaire bin Laden.

In February, 1998, bin Laden hadissued a well-publicized

fatwa, or

Muslim religious order, calling onall Muslims to “comply with God’sorder to kill the Americans andplunder their money whereverand whenever they nd it.”

Then, in August, 1998, al-Qaedasucceeded in simultaneous truck bombings of the U.S. embassiesin Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam,killing 250 people, including 11 Americans, events that no doubtelectried the members of al-Qaeda cells in other countries.

In addition, Hamburg, andspecically the al-Quds mosque,

were important centres for re-cruitment into the radical Muslimcause. And because there are nostrong signs that Atta, al-Shehhior Jarrahi were Islamic radicals before they arrived in Germany asstudents, it seems safe to assumethey were recruited into the cause locally, possibly by Zammar.

“The typical pattern of recruit-ment is that the recruiters nd you,” said Magnus Ranstorp, anexpert in terrorism at the Centerfor the Study of Terrorism andPolitical Violence, at The Univer-sity of St. Andrews in Scotland.“They are talent spotters. You goto a radical mosque, they notice you.” The rst litmus test, Mr.Ranstorp said, is a show of reli-gious devotion, specically a will-ingness to regularly attend morn-ing prayers, held at 5 a.m.

“Then they conduct backgroundchecks. Then comes the test for

psychological strength — com-mitment is not enough.”

The presence of all these men atthe wedding of Bahaji has led in-

vestigators to believe the plan toattack the United States had es-sentially been formed by then, a

little under two years before Sept.11, 2001. A videotape of the wed-ding obtained by German of-cials shows bin al-Shibh speakingof the “danger” posed by Jews,and then he recited a paean toholy war, or jihad, against thesupposed enemies of Islam.

Soon after the wedding of Baha- ji, who ed Germany after Sept.11, the men in the Hamburg cell

began to take concrete steps toput a plan into effect. Most im-portant, according to German in-

vestigators, all three of the Ham- burg hijackers plus bin al-Shibhand Bahaji went to Afghanistanfor training at an al-Qaeda camp.

Klaus Ulrich Kersten, director of Germany’s federal anti-crimeagency, the Bundeskriminalamt,said the men were all in Afghani-stan from late 1999 to early 2000.

In going to Afghanistan, themembers of the Hamburg cell en-tered into a culture of holy warthat was already well established.The Muslim men who journeyedto Afghanistan to join al-Qaeda

went through a similar, demand-ing program of basic military training. Then, those who showedexceptional promise were singledout for special missions, including

what were called martyrdom op-erations, such as the 1998 Africanembassy bombings, or the attackson the United States.

That pattern seems to have been broken in at least a minor way in connection with the Ham- burg group, which arrived in Afghanistan together and was allowed to stay together. Did Attaand company already know pre-cisely what mission they wouldundertake? Or did the specic

plan to hijack airliners and usethem to attack targets in theUnited States come from the al-Qaeda leadership itself?

Mohammed, the Kuwaiti whomsome investigators now see as oneof the main planners of Sept. 11, isa man with a past that connectshim to other efforts to inict max-imum harm on the United States.

In 1995, he was in Manila,Philippines, where he was closeto Ramzi Yousef, the mastermindof the 1993 World Trade Centerattack and a man who was plan-ning, before he was forced to es-cape the Philippines, to blow up adozen U.S. airliners over the Pa-cic on the same day. Among the notes found in

Yousef’s computer after his sud-den ight from the Philippines

was the outline of a plan to hijacka U.S. airliner and crash it intothe headquarters of the CIA. Yousef was captured a few

weeks after he left the Philip-pines, but Mohammed has re-mained at large and, while thereare no signs that he and Yousef

were members of al-Qaeda atthat time, investigators believeMohammed became an impor-tant gure in al-Qaeda later.

Some investigators think Attaand other mid-level al-Qaedamembers could have devised theplot and taken it to senior leadersfor approval. But most U.S. andGerman investigators believe theplan originated with Mohammedor others in Afghanistan and Atta

became involved after he con- veyed a message that he wantedto carry out a terrorist attack.

If that assumption is true, theseinvestigators say, Atta and his as-sociates went to Afghanistan fortraining by al-Qaeda, which pre-sented them a plan inspired both

by the 1993 World Trade Centerattack and Yousef’s scheme of us-ing a hijacked airliner to attackthe CIA.

Continued on next page

The hijackers’ long

PORTLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Hijackers Mohamed Atta, right, and Abdulaziz Alomari were captured on tape on Sept. 11, 2001, by a security camera at the airport in Portland,Me., where they caught an early-morning commuter flight to Logan Airport in Boston. There, they boarded United Airlines Flight 11.

‘You will see. In America,

something is going to happen.’



9 / 1 1 R E M E M B E R E D A9NATIONAL POST, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2002

Investigators found that members of both the Florida and California terrorist teams were in Las Vegas in August, 2001. They believe nal plans may have been

co-ordinated then, including which ights would be hijacked

ourney to infamy ‘TIER 1’ LEADERS A designation used by the military todenote the three most senior leaders after bin Laden

MustafaMuhammadFadhil EgyptianOperationalplanner

FahidMuhammadAlly Msalam KenyanOperationalplanner

Muhsin MusaMatwalliAtwah EgyptianOperationalplanner

Riyadh theFacilitator,a.k.a AbuHaythamYemeniLogistics

Abu Zubairal-Haili Saudi

Operations

Abu Jafar al-Jaziri AlgerianFinances andlogistics

Abu Salih al-YamaniYemeniPlanning andlogistics

Abu Hafs theMauritanian MauritanianReligiousindoctrination

Saad binLaden SaudiOne of bin Laden’ssons

Amin ul-Haq AfghanBodyguard to binLaden

MustafaAhmed al-Hawsawi SaudiFinance

Midhat Mursi EgyptianWeapons research

Intelligence officials say al-Qaeda has become less hierarchical than it was before its haven in Afghanistan was disrupted by U.S. military strikes and the defeat of the Taliban. Here is the status of some major al-Qaeda leaders and operatives, according to U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources.

L E A D E R S AT L A R G E O R S TAT U S U N K N O W N

C A P T U R E DAT L A R G E O R S TAT U S U N K N O W N

B E L I E V E D K I L L E D

Osama bin Laden SaudiHead of al-Qaeda

Abu Zubaydah EgyptianOperations chief

Muhammad Atef EgyptianMilitary commander

Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi Libyan Training campleader

Tariq Anwaral-SayyidAhmad Egyptian Trainer

MuhammadSalah Egyptian Trainer

SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES

THE STATUS OF AL-QAEDA’S LEADERS

Ayman al-Zawahiri Egyptian Top deputy to binLaden

Khalid ShaikhMohammed KuwaitiChief of operations

Saif al-Adel EgyptianChief of security forleadership

AbdullahAhmedAbdullah EgyptianOperationalplanner

Anas al-Libi LibyanOperationalplanner

FazulAbdullahMuhammadComoros Islander Operationalplanner

The investigators think senioral-Qaeda leaders then deemed Atta and the others up to the joband entrusted it to them.

“We know that the initial deci-sion to carry out a terrorist act

came from Afghanistan, morespecically from the top al-Qaeda leadership,” the German investi-gator, Mr. Kersten, said. “We believe, too, that there were thenfurther phases, when the plans were made more precise, not only in Germany and involving many other people.” Atta himself was a near-perfect

person to carry out the plot. Hehad no record of terrorist activi-ties and so he would not be undersuspicion by Western intelligenceagencies. He was well-educatedand spoke both German and Eng- lish uently, enabling him to op-erate without difculty in theUnited States. And he was a grim- ly determined man, disciplined,reliable and not likely to inch.

In recent weeks, U.S. ofcialssay, some al-Qaeda members be-ing interrogated in GuantanamoBay, Cuba, and elsewhere haveconrmed that Atta and some of his associates met with bin Laden while they were in Afghanistan.That would have been consistent with the standard practice in al-Qaeda camps where an audience with bin Laden was regarded as ahigh honour reserved for thoseselected for important missions. When the Hamburg men re-

turned to Germany toward theend of February, 2000, they be-gan sending e-mail messages toask for information from 31 ightschools in the United States.

Kay Nehm, the German prose-cutor, described a conversation in which al-Shehhi mentioned the World Trade Center to a Ham- burg librarian, in April or May,2000, and boasted: “There will be thousands of dead. You will allthink of me.”

“You will see,” the prosecutorquoted al-Shehhi as saying. “In America, something is going tohappen. There will be many peo-ple killed.”

Two months after the weddingin Hamburg and halfway aroundthe world, a group of seven oreight Muslim militants got to-gether in Kuala Lumpur, Malay-sia, at the apartment of a localsupporter of al-Qaeda. The CIA, which had learned of the meetingin advance, tipped off Malaysianintelligence, which secretly pho-tographed it. Two of the men pho-tographed, Khalid Almidhar andNawaq Alhazmi, would later beamong the 19 hijackers.

Malaysian intelligence had no listening devices planted at themeeting, so it is not clear what itsmain purpose was. The mainitem on the agenda may have been the plans for an attack on aU.S. naval vessel. One of the menpresent in Kuala Lumpur was lat-er implicated in the attack onUSS Cole, which took place in Oc-tober, 2000.

But it is possible that the emerg-ing plans for an assault on U.S.territory were also discussed. American ofcials have said they are not certain that bin al-Shibh was there, but in recent interviews, foreign investigators, whohave seen the photographs of theKuala Lumpur meeting, say they are convinced he was. Credit-card records also indicate bin al-

The signs also are strong that justafter the Kuala Lumpur meeting, Almidhar and Alhazmi had be-come part of the Sept. 11 plan. A few weeks later, in January,

2000, the two men became the

rst of the suicide-hijackers to land in the United States, arriv-ing in Los Angeles on a ightfrom Bangkok. Within weeks,the two of them registered at aight school in San Diego and began learning to y, althoughthey showed very little aptitudefor it and were soon dropped by the ight instructor. Why did the plot involve two

separate groups, one that pre-pared in California and one inFlorida, where Atta, al-Shehhiand Jarrahi arrived a few months later? One possibility is that Almidhar and Alhazmi were bet-ter known within al-Qaeda thanany of the young men from Ham- burg. Intelligence ofcials say Almidhar’s father-in-law ran asafe house in Yemen that relayedmessages between al-Qaeda leaders and operatives.

Al-Qaeda leaders may have wanted the hijackers to enterfrom two separate tracks foradded security, and it is possiblethat Almidhar and Alhazmi weresupposed to keep an eye on Attafrom enough of a distance so asnot to arouse the suspicion of U.S. law enforcement authorities,and to report on him to al-Qaedaheadquarters in Afghanistan. At some point, Almidhar and

Alhazmi were joined by HaniHanjour, a 29-year-old memberof a well-off Saudi family. Han- jour is believed to have been thepilot of United Flight 77, which was hijacked after taking off fromDulles Airport and was used tocrash into the Pentagon. He had been in the United States since1996, when he attended a yingschool in Scottsdale, Ariz. De-spite a poor record as a student,he was able to get a commercialpilot’s licence in 1999. Almidhar and Alhazmi settled

in San Diego, attending activitiesat the local Islamic Center. Almidhar also travelled exten-sively outside the United States, but Alhazmi seems to have stayedput. He even advertised for a wifeon an Arab-language Internetdating service and received tworeplies — an odd thing for a manon a suicide mission to do.

The members of the Hamburggroup arrived in the United Statesseveral months after the Malaysiangroup. Al-Shehhi was rst, arrivingin Newark, N.J., on May 29. Attacame on June 3, also throughNewark, but in another of the un-resolved mysteries in the case, hearrived via Prague, where he tookconsiderable trouble to go. He rst went to Prague via airplane, but was turned away because he didnot have a valid visa. He went backto Germany on the rst ight, ob-tained a visa in Bonn and then re-turned to Prague by bus. He stayed just one night and left for the Unit-ed States the next day.

Several weeks later, on June 27, Jarrahi arrived in Atlanta on aight from Munich. Within a few weeks of their ar-

rival, all three undertook the rsttask of the plot: they took ying lessons at various academies, get-ting their licences around the endof 2000. After learning to y small planes, all the men paid fortime on a simulator, learning the

Boeing passenger jets.Then, in the rst half of 2001, all

three members of the Hamburgcontingent travelled several timesoutside the United States. Early in January, for example, Attamade a short trip to Spain. Hemade a second trip to Spain in Ju-

ly, going via Zurich where, ac-cording to one government docu-ment, he bought a knife. Bin al-Shibh was there at the same time,according to the Spanish police. Aside from whatever role he

played in planning the attacks, bin al-Shibh was apparently theoperation’s co-ordinator and pay-

master. Shortly after Atta and al-Shehhi arrived in Florida, bin al-Shibh wired approximately $115,000 to their accounts at theSun Trust Bank there. According to ofcials of the

Czech Interior Ministry, Attamade another trip to Prague in

April, 2001. While he was there,the Czechs said, he met with anIraqi intelligence agent named

Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al- Ani. But some U.S. investigatorsdoubt this account. Those who be-

lieve he did go to Prague and meetal-Ani note that the Czech Interi-or Minister, Stanislav Gross, hasreafrmed it several times.

Those who are skeptical say noU.S. immigration records show

Republic, some intelligence of-cials say the source of the allegedmeeting was an Arab informant who approached the Czech intelli-gence service with his sighting of Atta only after Atta’s photographhad appeared in newspapersaround the world. It is possiblethe informant mistook anotherman for Atta, and many investiga-tors now lean to the conclusionthat the meeting never took place.

When Atta returned to Floridafrom Spain on July 19, the plotswung into its nal phase. Overthe next several weeks, 13 men, all

of them Saudi Arabians, enteredthe country, all on valid visas, to join Atta, the three other pilotsand Alhazmi and Almidhar.

The 13 men came to providemuscle for the plot, helping exe-cute the hijackings and keepingpassengers and crew at bay whilethe newly trained pilots ew theplanes to their targets. It seems likely that the Saudis were amongthe legions of young Muslim men who went to Afghanistan in re-sponse to the call to make holy war against the enemies of Islam.

In previous al-Qaeda operations— most important, the 1998 African embassy bombings —those entrusted on missions werechosen from among the recruits

lieve that Zubaydah, who ran thetraining camps before his captureand who is the highest-rankingal-Qaeda leader under interroga-tion, may have played a role in se-

lecting them.

At about this time, one othermysterious gure entered the pic-ture, a French-Moroccan Muslimnamed Zacarias Moussaoui. He

was arrested in August in Min-nesota after instructors at a ightschool reported to the FBI that he

was behaving suspiciously. Feder-al prosecutors say Moussaoui al-so received money transfers from

bin al-Shibh, and they contendhe was to have been the 20th hi-

jacker, the replacement for bin al-Shibh, who had been unable toget into the United States.

But investigators concede it isalso possible Moussaoui wastraining for a separate mission.

In the nal few weeks before theattacks, the 19 men busied them-selves with practical details. Many of the Saudis opened bank ac-counts at the Sun Trust Bank. They got driver’s licences, satisfying theairlines’ requirement that all pas-sengers show government-issuedphoto IDs before boarding a plane.

Several of the men obtained Vir-ginia identication cards via a

black market that operated out of a parking lot in Arlington, Va. Tomaintain discipline and to stay ingood condition, most of the mengot temporary memberships inhealth clubs in Florida.

Then, over the course of thesummer, the various teams wentto separate locations on the EastCoast. One group took up resi-dence at motels in Laurel, Md.,not far from Dulles International

Airport, where one of the fourplanes was hijacked. Several oth-er men rented an apartment inPaterson, N.J., just across the riv-er from Manhattan, where they

would have had distant views of their main target, the WorldTrade Center. Others, including

Atta, continued to live in Florida. Airline, rental car and cellphone

records show that Atta was furi-ously busy. He rented cars oftenand put thousands of miles onthem. U.S. ofcials say he alsomade regular trips from Floridato Newark, presumably to meet

with the group in Paterson.Because some of those living in

Paterson had come across thecountry from California, it may have been on one these trips thatthe Florida group and the Califor-nia group began to co-ordinatetheir plans. The FBI has also no-ticed spikes in cellphone use at

what seem to be key points in theplan — for example, just after thearrest of Moussaoui and just be-fore the men began, in late Au-gust, to buy tickets for the ightsthey would hijack.

Investigators found that members of both the Florida and Cali-fornia teams were in Las Vegas in

August. They believe nal plansmay have been co-ordinated then,including, quite possibly, whatights to hijack and which teammembers would be on which ight. As Sept. 11 neared, the teams

were geographically in place. Themen who hijacked American Air-

lines 77 from Dulles airport wereinstalled in Laurel; those whoseized United Airlines 93 wereplaced at hotels near Newark;and most of the 10 men who hi-

jacked two planes at Boston’s Lo-

In one of the most mysteriousaspects of the plot, Atta and one of the Saudi recruits, Abdulaziz Alo-mari, drove to Portland, Me., onthe night of Sept. 10. The two menstayed in a motel in Portland and

took an early morning commuteright to Boston the next day.In doing so, they took a risk. They

did not have much time to makethe connection from their com-muter ight to United AirlinesFlight 11, the ight they comman-deered. Indeed, the connection

was so close that, had the com-muter ight been at all late, they

would have missed the very ightthey intended to hijack, even astheir confederates coming fromdowntown Boston were already assembled at Logan Airport.

There have been many theoriesof this: that they made contact

with a confederate in Portland who gave them the nal go-ahead,or more likely, that by arriving on aconnecting ight, they wouldavoid the security check in Boston.None of those explanations seemsentirely satisfactory, given the riskand especially given that only Attaand Alomari, who were on thesame hijack team, took the stepsthey did. Whatever their motiva-tion, it apparently did not apply tothe three other teams.

Perhaps the best explanation isthat Atta saw arriving on a con-necting ight in Boston as a kindof insurance policy. Assuming se-curity procedures were less rig-orous at a smaller airport, hemay have believed he and Alo-mari had a better chance of get-ting their knives through thecheckpoint than in Boston. That

would mean that, even if all theother team members failed intheir assigned tasks, at least Attaand one confederate would suc-ceed in theirs.

It was perhaps a nal measureof Atta’s determination and fa-naticism. If the plot succeeded inhijacking only one plane and y-ing it to its target, he wanted to besure it was the plane he was on.

On the last night, the suicide-hijackers were supposed to readsome handwritten instructionsthat Atta had distributed to them.The instructions told the men toshave excess hair from their bod-ies, to read certain passages of theKoran and to remember that themost beautiful virgins, “the

women of paradise,” awaited themartyrs of Islam. “When the con-frontation begins,” the instruc-tions continued, “strike likechampions who do not want to go

back to this world.”The men who waited to strike

and to die were near the end of a long journey. Atta had gone fromCairo to Hamburg to Afghanistanto the Czech Republic, to Switzer-

land to Spain and, of course, tothe United States. Others camefrom Saudi Arabia, Yemen,Lebanon, the United Arab Re-public; they had passed throughMalaysia, Thailand and states of the Persian Gulf on their way to

what would come to be calledGround Zero.

There the complex plot to murder Americans in fullment of Osama bin Laden’s fatwa would take itsterrible toll of thousands of unsus-pecting men and women who gotup on Sept. 11 to go to work or totravel on airplanes and who died

before the morning was over.The New York Times,

with les from Douglas Frantz,

‘Strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world’

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mohamed Atta, who piloted one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, may not have created the terrorist plot, but in the words of one of the other hijackers, he was viewed as “the boss.”

the post's september 11, 2002 commemorative issue

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