Operations in Hollywood, Florida
It is clear that Hollywood was the core of operations for the future hijackers and their collaborators. All of the hijackers of three of the four aircraft that were commandeered on September 11 lived in Hollywood or its immediate environs in the months leading up to the hijackings. These included all of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston, which crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower (the "North Tower Plane"), who lived in Hollywood itself. They were Mohamed Atta (the pilot), Abdulaziz al Omari, Waleed al Shehri, Wail al Shehri and Satam al Suqami.
Two of the four hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark, which crashed in Pennsylvania (the "Pennsylvania Plane"), Ziad Jarrah (the pilot) and Ahmed al Nami, also lived in Hollywood. Two of the five hijackers of United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston, which crashed into the World Trade Center's South Tower (the "South Tower Plane" and, collectively with the North Tower Plane, the "World Trade Center Planes"), Marwan al Shehhi (the pilot) and Mohand al Shehri, lived in Hollywood as well. The two remaining hijackers on those planes, Fayez Banihammad and Hamza al Ghamdi on the South Tower Plane, and Saeed al Ghamdi and Ahmed al Haznawi in the Pennsylvania plane, lived in Delray Beach.
Khaled al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, overall leaders of the hijackers and hijackers of the Pentagon Plane, had addresses in both Bergen County, New Jersey and in Hollywood and Delray Beach, respectively. Many of the above future hijackers had Hollywood addresses interspersed with or within hundreds yards of the members of the Israeli DEA Groups, as shown on Map 2.
Timing of Operations of Both Groups in the Hollywood Area
Hijacker Timelines
The Commission has in its possession two "hijackers timelines" which appear to trace the future hijackers' movements in the periods leading up to September 11. They were compiled by the FBI and are dated November 14 and December 5, 2003. The FBI has confirmed that it prepared, edited and declassified the hijackers timelines for the Commission, and that any decision to release them would be the Commission's alone. Thus far, however, the Commission has declined to release them.
There are, nevertheless, a number of hijacker timelines, prepared by individuals or groups, that are generally available. One of those timelines, entitled the Annotated Timeline of the 9/11 Hijackers for Researchers, dated May 13, 2002 (the "Hijacker Timeline"), represents that it has been compiled from public sources and is used as a reference here. It is available at FreeRepublic.com. The Hijacker Timeline, though dated in a number of respects (it was issued a year and a half before the FBI's hijackers timelines), appears generally consistent with publicly available U.S. government reports on the hijackers' movements, including information from the FBI's hijackers timelines to the extent discernable from citations in the Commission's footnotes, the Commission's Staff Statements, the Joint Committee Report, other governmental reports, and accounts in the established press.
Israeli DEA Groups
As to the timing of the operations of the Israelis in Florida, the Israeli DEA Group led by Hanan Sarfaty was stopped in Tampa on March 1, 2001 as noted above, and at that time provided their Hollywood-area addresses to DEA agents. Sarfaty said that he had arrived in the United States "approximately" one year earlier but, as noted above, refused to state what he had been doing since that time (or for the two prior years since he had left the army). Another group based in the Hollywood area, led by Peer Segalovitz, was stopped on May 3, 2001, and provided their addresses. Segalovitz had arrived in the United States on January 17, 2001.
Future Hijackers
As to the hijackers, a number of them had lived in the Hollywood area or elsewhere in Florida well before 2000/2001. Hani Hanjour, the pilot of the Pentagon Plane and a member of the New Jersey hijacker group, had lived in the Hollywood area for a time in 1996 (in Miramar, a few miles southwest of Hollywood (see Map 1)). Saeed al Ghamdi had lived in Daytona Beach for several years in the 1990s, and Waleed al Shehri had taken flight lessons there in 1997. Mohamed Atta had also lived in Daytona Beach in the mid-1990s.
In mid-2000, the leaders of the Florida hijackers arrived in Florida to prepare for the hijackings, and were followed in 2001 by their subordinates. Thus, Mohamed Atta, Marwan al Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah arrived between May and June 2000. All of them attended flight school in Venice, Florida, not far from Fort Myers where the Hollywood Israeli DEA Groups were later found operating. Although the Israeli DEA Groups were questioned in Fort Myers by DEA agents a few months after the hijackers had left for Hollywood, the reactive nature of the DEA Report makes it difficult to track the timing of the Israeli Groups' movements except when they were spying on the DEA or to the extent they disclosed their movements, as they sometimes did, to DEA or INS agents or other law enforcement authorities.
Atta and al Shehhi were in the Hollywood area by the end of December 2000, when they took flight training courses in Opa-Locka, about 15 miles southwest of Hollywood. Ziad Jarrah took flight training courses the following month (in January 2001) in Virginia Gardens, about 20 miles south of Hollywood (see Map 1).
Atta and al Shehhi settled permanently on the east coast of Florida, somewhere in the Hollywood area, in mid to late February 2001. They procured a mailbox address on Sheridan Street in Hollywood some time early in the year. Ziad Jarrah returned to Hollywood from abroad in April. The pilots' subordinates arrived in the area at various dates between March and June.
Activities of Both Groups in Oklahoma
Oklahoma City and Norman (about 15 miles south of Oklahoma City) were also an important locus of activity for the future hijackers. Mohamed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi had toured the Airman Flight School in Norman at the end of June 2000. Zacarias Moussaoui, a suspected potential hijacker, moved to Norman in February 2001 to take flight lessons at Airman. In May Moussaoui had considered joining the future hijackers in Hollywood and inquired about flying lessons at the Pan Am International Flight School in Miami. In August 2001, however, he left for the Pan Am flight school in Minnesota, where he raised suspicions and was arrested.
Five other individuals on the May 2002 FBI Suspect List lived in Norman, including at least two roommates of Moussaoui, Hussein Alattas and Mukkaram Ali. Nawaf al Hazmi had also been in Oklahoma. He was, as the Commission and the Committees know, an important leader of the hijackers and an attendee at meetings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (see below). On April 1, 2001 al Hazmi was stopped for speeding on Interstate 40 in western Oklahoma, apparently headed for Oklahoma City and Moussaoui in Norman.
The Israeli DEA Groups were also active in Oklahoma City during the spring of 2001. On March 28, 2001, the day following a DEA midnight raid near Dallas (described further below), an Israeli DEA Group on their way to Oklahoma City arrived at DFW Airport from Frankfurt. In a scene reminiscent of the keystone cops, and under clandestine DEA and INS surveillance, they tried to avoid being detected as a group and followed. The three arriving Israelis were Yoni Engel, Yotam Dagai and Or Alroei. Alroei was an associate of Michael Calmanovic. Engel was a former Israeli company commander.
The three Israelis were traveling with an American, Eli Rabinovitz. After clearing customs they met with an unidentified woman on the curb and then temporarily split up. Rabinovitz stayed with the woman while Engel, Dagai and Alroei walked down the sidewalk to the next terminal. A van with California plates and registered in the name of a used car auction house pulled up to the curb and, as Dagai ducked into the second terminal, Engel and Alroei got in, and it quickly left. The van returned in a few minutes. Dagai emerged from the terminal and climbed in. The van sped away again, only to return a third time to pick up Rabinovitz before finally leaving the airport.
On April 4, Engel, Dagai and Alroei were next questioned in St. Louis, where the headquarters of Amdocs, the Israeli communications software company, are located. They had visited Oklahoma City at the same time (between April 1 and April 4) Nawaf al Hazmi was there presumably to meet with Moussaoui. They told INS agents that they had traveled to Dallas from New York City and not, as the DEA and INS knew, on a flight from Frankfurt.
On April 30, 2001, an Air Force alert was issued from Tinker Air Force Base, in Oklahoma City, concerning a "possible intelligence collection effort being conducted by Israeli Art Students." On May 17, four Israelis were reported in the Midwest City area (between Oklahoma City and Norman). They stated they were there to promote Israeli art. They were charged with visa violations, and were booked into the Oklahoma City jail at the instance of the INS. Bond was initially set at $25,000 each. All four requested voluntary departure from the United States.
Dallas: A Probable Training Area for the Israeli DEA Groups
An unusually large number of Israeli DEA Group members were located in Irving, Texas (near Dallas), an area that does not appear to have been frequented by the future hijackers or by many FBI suspects (see Exhibit B). Texas, however, and in particular Dallas and Irving, appears to have been an important staging area and training ground for the Israeli DEA Groups, given the presence there of (a) key liaisons between senior recruiting personnel in Israel and the Israeli DEA Groups in the United States, (b) DEA and INS surveillance of Israeli DEA Group arrivals at DFW Airport, (c) the considerable telecommunications sophistication and expertise of DEA Group associates in Dallas and (d) large numbers of Israeli DEA Group personnel, many of whom were expelled from the United States after a midnight raid conducted by the DEA and the INS.
As we have seen, Tomer Ben Dor, stopped by the INS and the DEA at the DFW Airport in May 2001, worked for an Israeli wiretapping company and had with him a computer program referring to "DEA Groups." He was traveling with Marina Glikman and Zeev Miller, both computer programmers for an Israeli software company. They were both vague and inconsistent about their travel plans. Michal Gal, who had an address in Edgewater, New Jersey, the base of the Israeli New Jersey Group and not far from the headquarters of Mr. Ben Dor's company, had a relationship with Amdocs, another telecommunications company.
Michael Calmanovic and Itay Simon, both of Dallas and Los Angeles, were the principal links between the Israeli operation in the United States and five Israeli DEA Group recruiters in Israel. The DEA and INS conducted a midnight raid on the Israeli DEA Groups' apartment complex in Irving on the night of March 26-27, 2001, and expelled 13 of their members from the United States on March 31, 2001. Their transportation out of the country was arranged by the Israeli Embassy.
Exhibit B lists the names of members of the Israeli DEA Groups and of the future hijackers and FBI suspects located in Hollywood, Florida (see again Maps 1 and 2); in Hudson and Bergen Counties, New Jersey (Map 3); in Oklahoma City/Norman, Oklahoma; in San Diego; in Los Angeles; and in Dallas; all during the period leading up to September 11. The map of the United States attached as Map 4 shows all of these locations, and illustrates as well the presence of both groups during the period in Wichita, Kansas; Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky; Atlanta, Georgia; Tampa and Venice/Fort Myers, Florida, and Arlington/Fredericksburg, Virginia.