Mugshots: Mohammed Atta - Atta: Soldier of Terror | Forensic Files

Tonight on Mugshots, Muhammad Ada, soldier of terror. Muhammad said he was here as a
commercial airline pilot. This is the aircraft that they actually took the two flight lessons in.
He would look at you as if he was looking directly through you. There was no emotion in him at all.
He's a sophisticated guy. He speaks good English. She's got a technical background, post-graduate work in urban
preservation. That all fits with the top level of al-Qaeda. We track's deadly mission and we learn
new details about the man who plunged the world into war. Has the cultural skills and the
fanaticism and that makes him perfect for the task. [Music] September 10th, 2001.
Muhammad Ada checks into a Portland Main hotel with an accomplice. That evening, they visit a Walmart and
buy several $184 box cutters before returning to the hotel. At 5:30 the next morning, they are up
and driving to the Portland airport. They have a 610 plane to catch. It's a 5-minute ride from the comfort in to uh
the parking lot of the of the jetport. [Music] Meanwhile, in New York City, at the
World Trade Towers, the business day is just beginning. At Windows on the World,
the famous restaurant in the sky, it is time to prepare for power breakfasts and
lunches. At 5:45 a.m., Ada and Abdul Alamari pass through the security checkpoint. Ada
appears clean shaven and carries a leather carry-on bag. Apparently, they checked a couple bags
that were found in Boston. They would then go up the hallway, which takes you right into the security
checkpoint. There's only one security checkpoint in the airport. They transfer at Boston's Logan Airport
and at 7:59 are taking off on American Airlines flight 11 bound for Los Angeles.
Ada is in first class surrounded by four other terrorists who boarded in Boston.
There are 81 passengers and 11 crew members. No one could have imagined what Ada has
planned. Who was this man Muhammad Ada and what drove him to attack America? Muhammad Ada was born just outside of
Cairo, Egypt in 1968. He grew up in a middle-class neighborhood, raised as a Muslim, a
loving Muslim according to his father who was a lawyer. We are peaceful Muslims and we never
kill an innocent soul because the Quran says he who kills a soul without a soul is like killing all souls.
During the 1970s as a grew up Cairo was not peaceful. During Ada's teenage years, a blind radical shake, Omar Abdel
Rakman, and a prominent doctor, Aman al- Zawahiri, were the leaders of the two most radical Egyptian Islamic groups.
They had declared a holy war against the West, a jihad, and they were advocating
violence against anyone who embraced Israel or Western values. Otto was a man who was reasonably well
educated. He was a guy who was familiar with how the west works, but obviously also had that kind of burning uh sense
of injustice, outrage, whatever it was that was going on in his head uh and the fanatical uh Islamic approach to life
that said I'll die for the cause. Slowly, Ada became influenced by the two clerics, especially after Egypt's
president Anoir Sadat was assassinated in 1981. The killing was captured on television
for the world and Ada to see. Suddenly there were riots in Cairo streets. Shik Abdel Rakman and Alzawahhiri were
jailed. Ada got his indoctrination into fundamentalism from the fiery rhetoric of Alzawahiri.
We are here the real Islamic front against Zionism, communism and imperialism. Alzawahiri said poor
Muslims do not have representation in Muslim countries dominated by western trained leaders. He demanded respect.
They feel that they are the underdog. They are underdog by the international community and they are not even taking
the rights in their own countries. Hamdi Fouad is an Egyptian journalist who was standing near Sadat when he
died. He covered the shake and Islamic jihad writing about the Islamic movement from both Cairo and Washington.
You find that the people are not happy. The West is not giving a kind of respect
or support or help to the Muslims. Unbeknownst to his father, young Muhammad Ada apparently spent many
months alone in his room reading the Quran with the fanaticism of the radical teachers.
Soon he began communicating with other like-minded Muslims. Ada attended Cairo University where he
studied architecture from 1985 to 1991. He learned about the structure of skyscrapers, their stress points, and
vulnerabilities. Ada's father called his son a gentle person. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, a war was
being fought by the Soviet Union against a much smaller force known as the Mujahaden.
One of the key supporters of the Mujahedin was a rich Saudi Arabian, Osama bin Laden. came from this very
opulent wealthy background and yet he lived this aesthetic lifestyle often sleeping in caves. Gave freely of his
own fortune. Uh brought in earthmoving equipment from his own construction company to be building hospitals and
clinics often bring bringing huge underground bunkers to to conceal them during during the conflict. bought
ammunition and weapons and really won the agilation of the Afghan freedom fighters.
[Applause] Ada was a teenager during the days of Bin Laden's fight with Russia and from
the safety of his middle class life, Ada decided he wanted to be a part of the fight. Ironically, at the time, the
United States was helping them with weapons and training. Gene Weaten was one of the American trainers. The
Congress in 1985 approved over $300 million in financial aid to the Mojahedin. And this was to flow through Pakistan.
the Pakistani government was going to support it because of the threat to their border and because we were
furnishing them with a multi-billion dollar aid package including F-16 fighter planes.
This is when Osama bin Laden really became a leader. He was an inspirational figure. He was agilated by his
followers. They came to see him as being this very special person, very pious person who was able with very remarkable
persuasive rhetoric to frame this conflict in such a way that what they were doing was a noble mission uh that
was decreed in the in the Quran. The mujahaden defeated Russia. Muhammad Ada admired the victories of the Islamic
fighters. He saw pictures of Osama bin Laden riding with the Mujahaden. For some Americans, the radicalization
of young Arabs like Muhammad Ada was worrisome. Gene Weaten, who had taught Osama's warriors in the craft of terror,
was one. The trade craft is teaching people to blow things up and kill people. And to
do that, you've got to have the ability to get false passports, move funds around the world, get people trained and
move them from one place to the other. And once you train a cadre of young revolutionaries,
the adrenaline in these people's blood and the the thrill of the thing and just the expertise in it makes them not want
to go home and run the equivalent of a 7-Eleven store. They want to continue their trade. You've taught them to be
international criminals. In 1992, Ada left Cairo and moved to Germany where he settled in Hamburg and
enrolled in a technical school. He used an alias Muhammad LM Near and took an apartment in a residential
neighborhood, slipping silently into the sophisticated life of a European city. Hamburg police had no reason to be
suspicious of Ada, even though the young student traveled often and spent many months away from his apartment.
[Music] Meanwhile, the radical shake Abdel Rakman also left Cairo. He moved to America where he established a mosque in
Jersey City, New Jersey. In 1993, Abdel Rakman led a group that included former Mujahedin fighters against America.
[Music] It was a truck bomb at the World Trade Towers. Six died, but the buildings
stood tall. Shake Abdel Rakman's men had hoped to bring down the towers. They had other
plans that also failed. The target sites were the Lincoln Tunnel, the Holland Tunnel, the United
Nations, the Federal Building at 26 Federal Plaza, which houses the FBI. They included physical surveillance and
uh reconnaissance of these targets. They included acquiring a safe house which in
the last few days ultimately became a bomb factory. [Music] In the summer of 1994,
according to German authorities, Muhammad Ada and a cell of young Arab terrorists were developing a plan which
would enable Ada to finish what the shake had begun. [Music] In the winter of 1994,
Muhammad Ada made his pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden's father had helped
rebuild the high holy place for Islamic believers. Ada's mentor, Aman Al- Zawahiri, had now
joined forces with Osama bin Laden. While thousands of worshippers, including Ada, flocked to Saudi Arabia,
5,000 American soldiers who had fought in the Gulf War, were also there. A fact which infuriated Bin Laden.
Part of the um evil genius of Osama bin Laden is the uh focusing solely on America. To have one enemy as the cause
of everything helps concentrate the attention of your followers and gives us zeal to destroy them. And if we get rid
of them, our problems will be solved. This photo taken along the Nile shows Ada at age 13 with his sister. He had
two successful sisters, one was a doctor and the other a school teacher. His father assumed young Muhammad would soon
join the family in Cairo's middle class. What he failed to understand was that his son was now listening to Bin Laden
and Alzawahiri. Muhammad Ata fits in with a higher level recruit in the sense he comes from
Egypt. Most of the top level leadership of al-Qaeda is Egyptian and uh he uh he's a you know sophisticated guy. He
speaks good English. He's you know got a technical background. I mean he's you know post-graduate work in urban
preservation that all fits with the top level of al-Qaeda. [Applause] Ada had vanished from Hamburg during the
summer of 1997 and is thought to have spent time in Bin Laden's Afghan training camps.
And when he came back, he was reported to be a changed man. He was distant, seemed more into himself, grew a beard
at that time. He was clean shaven before. Um, and seemed to be marching to a different
drummer. It was apparently a transforming experience for him. In the spring of 1999,
Marwan al-Shei and Zead Jara, two of Ada's classmates, opened an Islamic study center in Hamburg where they
studied the Quran. More than 40 local people joined them. But what the German police and the
innocent students did not know was that Alshahhei, Jara, and Ada were already planning to launch an attack against
America. I have the sense that Ada was very entrepreneurial and I think he had a team and he was prepared to do any one
of a number of ideas, work them out if the opportunity arose. In December of 1999, Al- Shahi, Jara,
and Ada reported their passports stolen. They submitted false information to German officials and within weeks were
issued new travel permits that they used to fool American immigration authorities.
According to police, Ada arrived in Miami in April 2000 and systematically began putting pieces of the attack
together. In May, he went to Delray Beach to inquire about purchasing a crop dusting
plane. Shortly after that at Huffman Aviation, Ada and Al Shahhei paid $40,000 in cash for flight instructions.
My first impression from Ata was I didn't like him at all. I didn't like his expression. I tried to speak in
German to him and he didn't answer me in German. I just didn't like the person at
all. I'll see he was a likable person. But when they were going to uh to get the instruction, I heard from the
instructors that Ata were a was a real hole. uh they didn't like the way he was uh uh taking uh instruction. Um so they
complained to the chief flight instructor. The chief flight instructor said to Ata in a meeting, "If you don't
change your behavior, we're going to kick you out." Ata's group moved around South Florida.
They never stayed at one location for more than a few weeks. A fireman, Steve Kona, had a small house to rent and
ended up leasing it to them. These are the two right here that that rented my property, Muhammad Ata and his cousin.
Well, this is the uh living room. It's only about a thousand square foot house. Of course, they have the kitchen here.
They have separate bedrooms. I talked to a she twice. Um a Thai I never talked to. I seen them, but um we
never made eye contact or anything like that. And it was usually when I was mowing the grass here and um they would
drive up I assume from school. Um and they'd get out of the car and of course I would wave he'd wave back and and uh
they'd go in a house sometimes. Uh he'd say, "Hi, how you doing?" And I'd say, "Fine, how are you?" And just small talk
like that. It was the same story where they ate breakfast at a nearby Denny's. Actually, they were very very pleasant
to me. Said yes, said thank you. Um Ada was the only one that ate. Alihi only had coffee. Ota had a veggie cheese
omelette and some orange juice. But uh other than that, I really didn't bother. And most people you don't bother
in the morning for breakfast. And basically, they spoke among themselves to each other, but very quietly. You
wouldn't have even known they were talking because I couldn't tell you if it was in a foreign language or an
American. But every time I approached the table, they would stop talking. At this shopping mall in Buon Beach,
Gene Waldorf encountered a when he showed up to buy money orders. The reason I think that I remember him
the most was his eyes. When he would look at you as if he was looking directly through you, there was no
emotion in him at all. Nancy Adams had an apartment not far from Ada. Muhammad said he was here as a
commercial airline pilot. I talk a lot to my neighbors. I'm always outside. And one night, it was late at night and they
had two other people that came in a different vehicle and came through, went in for like 5 minutes and came right
back out and then they left. Their flight lessons continued by day and according to investigators, the
meetings occurred at night, out of sight. They were being taught on small planes,
but they were secretly studying manuals to operate giant jetliners. And what was most disturbing was what
was overlooked by the American trainers. Ada and the others were not interested in learning how to land.
Muhammad Ada and Marwan al-Sihi were part of what American intelligence officials call sleeper cells. Ada was
said to be receiving instructions from Osama bin Laden's Afghan headquarters hidden in the snowcapped mountains.
They're here. They take their orders from one or two individuals who know the operation of the sleeper cells as well
as the other cells. and they might be given their orders uh by somebody outside the country as well as somebody
inside the country. We shouldn't think of it as you know an operation that has a top and and a bottom a pyramid
structure where power descends the pyramid. It's a combination of that hard model as well as these spontaneous
groups that get together, believe strongly in a cause, and plot something out. While Muhammad Ada was plotting in
Florida, the Justice Department released this capture terror handbook. According to the al-Qaeda operations
manual, Ada and his cell members were never to call attention to themselves. They were permitted to wear Western
clothes and they were allowed to be with Western women who did not have to keep their faces covered. If a Muslim is in a
combat or godless area, he is not obligated to have a different appearance from those around him. The Muslim man
may prefer or even be obligated to look like them, provided his action brings a religious benefit of preaching to them,
learning their secrets, and informing Muslims, preventing their harm, or some other beneficial goal.
Allah permitted everything in pursuit of the holy war. Up next on Mugshots, Muhammad Ada convenes a secret meeting
in Las Vegas where the 9/11 assassins get their final orders. [Music] During the summer of 2000, San Diego was
headquarters to a number of Muhammad Ada's cell members. [Music] Hani Honour, a Saudi Arabian with a
commercial pilot's license. Naaf Alhazmi, another Saudi Arabian, and Khaled Al- Midar from Yemen.
Al-Hazmi and Al-Madar had previously been videotaped meeting one of the alleged planners of the October 2000
bombing of the USS Cole. But despite being on the FBI's watch list, the two still slipped into the
United States. The San Diego sale obtained student visas, post office boxes, ATM and credit
cards, email accounts, and bank accounts in the Lemon Grove branch of the Bank of
America. They spoke little English, but did not stand out in San Diego's increasingly
diverse landscape with one of the nation's largest Middle Eastern communities. They lived close to
mosques, first in a large Claremont apartment complex and then at the Lemong Grove apartment complex, home of a
prominent Muslim leader. Ever since I've moved in here, there's been Middle Eastern people living in the
house. So I, and I'm not don't want to say prejudice, they all look alike to me. I mean, they, you know, typically
dress the same, have the same haircuts, have the same beards. So I didn't ever think much of it. Denise and MNA Adar
and their friend Debbie Forner live next door to Ada's men. The guy I remember didn't have the
mustache. They were not suspicious. They never bothered anyone. Never caused any
uproars to where we needed to call the police. But they did try and blend in very well.
They didn't make themselves, you know, like outcasts or wellknown. And they didn't draw attention to themselves.
[Music] At Montgomery Field, Alhazmi and Al-Midar took flying lessons. They had called from the Middle East to arrange
for six lessons at Sorby's flying club with instructor Rick Garza. This is the aircraft that they actually
took the two flight lessons in. As you can see, it's uh very basic. They had problems uh understanding how these
flight controls here worked. And I typically would have one sitting in the pilot seat. I would sit in the right
side as an instructor. And then the other gentleman would sit in the back seat. Khalif was in the back and he was
praying when uh Nwaf was actually uh following me and I was trying to teach him how to land an aircraft. That was
about the only thing unusual. Um and then the last flight they just wanted to fly to an airport and fly back. They
didn't want to do the maneuvers that we had planned and uh certainly I won't allow somebody to uh direct how their
flight training should go. So I told them we got to quit guys. After just two lessons, the wouldbe
pilots were dismissed. Also at this time, some of the terrorists were cited at the local
Islamic center of San Diego. I I don't know much about how terrorist cells conduct their business, but I'm sure
that they probably have some kind of um uh teaching or indoctrination that occurs. What I can tell you very
confidently is that uh if those things occur, they did not occur at the Islamic Center.
Dr. Abdin said the Quran he reads does not advocate violence. We as Muslim Americans do not agree with these kind
of acts in any way, shape, or form. They are not part of Islam. They're not part
of our religion. They're not part of what we believe in at all. [Music] On at least two occasions, Muhammad Ada
held meetings in Las Vegas. The hijackers met off the strip in a section of Vegas known for its strip clubs. Only
four pilots of the 9/11 plot came to these meetings. Investigators now believe that at least
some of the remaining 15 hijackers never knew they were going on suicide missions.
I think the screwing around with crop dusters tells us that there was something else he may have had in mind.
And I don't think at this point we'll ever know precisely what it was, but he clearly had some idea relating to that
that might have been plan B or maybe plan A that was abandoned. Uh my sense is that uh he and his unit were
relatively free agents that they had uh the task uh they had the support but the
precise working out of it was very much in his hands. cells uh from the international scene have been operating
in this country as well as domestically. In the United States um you know we have
another name for it we call leaderless resistance have small phantom-like groups that get together and uh discuss
and then when they get big they split apart and these cells know that if they get too big and they develop a pyramid
type of structure that can be penetrated by intelligence agencies and by law enforcement. So, uh, this is a, uh, very
skillful operation meant, uh, to be able to carry out, uh, very serious acts such
as an act of terrorism. From Muhammad Ada's scribbled notes and some documents left behind,
criminologists have pieced together Ada's thinking. In the early part of this letter of
instructions, he basically is almost describing the need to anoint themselves in preparation for a ritual death. What
he's particularly concerned about appropriately is that there will be anxiety when on the plane just before
the act occurs, and the anxiety will betray the hijackers. You must not show any signs of
nervousness or stress and be joyful, happy, cheerful and calm because you are about to carry out an action that Allah
loves and that pleases him. Then there will follow the day when with Allah's permission you will be the with the
nymphs in paradise. Accordingly, smile in the face of adversity, young man, for you are departing to the eternal
paradise. Muhammad Ada's holy war was ready, but before the attack on September 11th,
there would be a need for Ada to return to Hamburg. Coming up next on Mugshots, an FBI
listening post in Eastern Europe picks up a coded signal. In the spring of 2001, Muhammad Ada had
his sleeper cells in place. One group moved into northern New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from the World
Trade Towers. Ada and his fellow true believers mingled. They attended soccer games in
public parks, went to mosques like this one in Jersey City, which had been the home to his Egyptian mentor, Shik Abdel
Rakman. Another crew went to the Washington area. Ada and his men posed as tourists,
checking out potential targets. Several of them rented rooms in Laurel, Maryland, just 20 minutes from the White
House and the Pentagon. They all had a instructions and they lived by them. The sleeper cells are made up of
individuals who are committed to a particular cause. These are highly committed individuals to their cause
which unfortunately is not ours and they would give up their life uh for uh what
they believe in. The fact that 15 out of 19 of them were Saudis suggests that they were from the
inner circle. uh the fact there's an Egyptian involved Muhammad Ata also Egyptians are very much part of the
inner circle al-Qaeda al-Qaeda members would complain that Egyptians got preferential treatment most of the top
level leadership of al-Qaeda is Egyptian I mean these people were the best trained most of them spoke pretty good
English they were not uh you know the sort of low-level recruits that we've seen in other al-Qaeda operations
in late Maya was in the air again and returned to Hamburg, Germany. In his room at 54 Marian Strasa, Ada
wrote the final pages of his war plan. Pray all night and insist on victory. After that, later that you start the
happy life and the infinite prosperity with the prophet's disciples and martyrs.
None of Ada's neighbors noticed anything suspicious. There was nothing special about them.
They had many guests and they left their shoes outside the door. Some of them were dressed in Islamic
clothes. Others were dressed like us. It was very strange. It was the same thing at the university.
I met Ada. I met him in the classroom. I talked with him. He was a man with strong convictions, but he seemed
normal. He also financed his own education. In the summer of 2001 in Budapest, Hungary, where the FBI keeps a special
squad watching European and Middle Eastern terrorists, intelligence had picked up word of a big operation.
Ada was not on any FBI watch list. So, he was able to visit an Iraqi spy in nearby Prague
and travel freely to Spain, making the final preparations for war. Once again, Ada, in the seclusion of his
European base, consults Osama bin Laden's manual of holy war. He tells his cell members that in order
to remain hidden, they are permitted to act like non-Muslims. We thought that only a 17, 18, or 22
year old somewhere in the Middle East with no future could strap himself or herself with explosives and blow
themselves up. We now know that it could be a family man. It could be somebody with roots even in the community.
[Music] In northern New Jersey, Laurel, Maryland, San Diego, California, and Southern Florida, Muhammad Ata's
assassins awaited his call. Coming up next on Mugshots, a suicide note is being written by the man from
Cairo who has said goodbye to his sister and is about to begin a mad journey he believes will lead him to paradise.
August 2001, Muhammad Ada returns to America for the final time. He inspects his targets in Washington. He isn't
intimidated by the heavily guarded government buildings. He believes he has a foolproof plan. The cell which will
attack the Pentagon is set up in nearby Laurel, Maryland. No one in Laurel suspects them, not even the woman who
cleans their room. Muhammad Ada was in the room. Hani Honjour, this one here. But we had no clues. No
clues whatsoever, you know, of knowing that this is what they were going to do. Ada had distributed Bin Laden's Holy War
handbook. He told the cell members to act like the people they lived with. And so the men in Laurel went to Gold's gym.
These individuals carried big wads of cash with them. Uh all of them paid with cash and they had a lot of money on
them. Obviously, uh my assistant general manager when he sold them the 3-week passes realized they had extra cash on
them, asked them if they would like to upgrade to a six-month membership. They explicitly told them that we're not
going to be here that long. The individuals that uh were in our facility were these were these five here.
1 2 3 4 five. And then also another thing that uh comes to mind is my assistant general manager asked one of
the individuals after they signed up just from a customer service standpoint, oh by the way that's an interesting
name. What does that name mean? The individual said his name meant warrior. These are not insane individuals in
their culture. Uh these people are perfectly sane. A matter of fact, they're recruited uh for their ability
to think in their mind's eye rationally. uh people with any kind of mental deficiency are quickly removed from
these cells. When you think about it, a mentally ill person couldn't be predicted
and so that person could give up the operation. According to the FBI, there were at
least 20 terrorists scattered around the country. In September, Ada was back in Florida. A
neighbor remembers that he sought medical help one day complaining about a rash on his hands. Later, she would
wonder if he was involved with anthrax. At a nearby gym, Ada's men signed up for
lessons in hand-to-hand combat. He didn't want to just learn forms. He didn't want to throw kicks in the air.
He wanted to really understand, you know, about fighting, period. He didn't look at all like our stereotypical
picture of a terrorist. you know, he had lighter skin than I did, you know, light
eyes, short cropped hair, so uh it wasn't something that was an obvious giveaway.
On September 10th, Muhammad Ada and Alamari flew to Boston, rented a car, and then drove to Portland, Maine. By
dawn, the suicide note he had begun in Germany was finished. [Music] Coming up next on Mugshots, the final
act of Muhammad Ada, the assassin who had hid in plain sight. At 8:46 a.m. on September 11th, Muhammad
Ada fulfilled his mission, slamming a 767 into the World Trade Center. Everybody back around the corner. Back
around the corner. 18 minutes later, his accompllices hit the other tower. Oh my god.
Why? to the right. [Music] [Applause] [Music] In the aftermath of the September 11th
attacks, investigators began tracing the steps of Muhammad Ada to learn what they
could of his motives. There were three or four FBI agents and they were talking to my people to obtain
some documents. Uh they were happy to learn that we had copies of passports in our files, copies of INS paperwork. They
talked briefly to me 15 20 minutes um professional. Uh they asked me if we had more students from the Middle East and
we told them we have a few here and there. Everywhere the FBI went, they discovered
angry and confused people who had opened their homes and hearts to Ada and his fellow terrorists.
It upsets me for one. I mean, it is the United States of America. I am an American. So, they did not not just did
they did not just terrorize New York, they terrorized America. This is on, you know, home soil here.
I'm 45 years old. I pretend to have a little bit of experience in life. And you look people straight in the eyes,
you can mostly tell if they're bad people or good people. Now, that didn't I didn't like Ata from the first second.
Was that a signal that he was a bad person? Well, that's tough. It's tough. Maybe next time I'm going to think
immediately somebody is bad. But that's bad too if I think like that. The majority of Muslims in the United
States were shocked and condemned the attacks. Iman Sherzad, spiritual leader of a Queen's mosque, has led protests
against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. And for that reason, he had been careful
to keep men like Muhammad Ada away from his nightly prayer sessions. Uh I'm not so much in fear but I have
genuine concerns for myself and my families and we must be prepared that this thing could happen anyway in any
time in any country. We have to be careful and we have to start taking some precautionary
measures. He said those who we trust, those we know that they're not terrorists, we
should work with them, sit with them and to have some common understanding of to
prevent this from happening again. They were very polite with me personally and then to know that they're going to
attack us couple months so down the road, that really upsets me. You know, I could never in my heart look someone in
the face knowing I'm going to harm you later on. I just couldn't do it. This is precisely the kind of person a terrorist
cell needs as its leader. Uh the precisely the kind of guy you're looking for. If you take some truly ignorant
person off the streets of Cairo and you try to send them to do this sort of mission, it's hopeless because he simply
doesn't have the cultural skills to do it. Anata has the cultural skills and the fanaticism and that makes him
perfect for the task. Why did they choose Portland, Maine? And did they have a connection here in Portland,
Maine? Obviously, the FBI is concerned about it, too, because they've done a kind of a historical release of
information that you never get from them. Why Portland, Maine? But nobody really knows, and the guys that know are
dead. Suicide note was recovered from a suitcase in Boston. He offered no apologies for the casualties, nor did he
leave a message for his family. Wrote, "You did indeed wish for death before you encountered it.
Now you have seen it with your own eyes. Remember Allah. Remember what he said. In Allah you can trust."
I was in the building probably when the second plane built. What was the atmosphere like in that
left in America gripped with fear heard that people were jumping out of windows.
Did you see anything? I heard that when I was in the street. I started moving towards the water.
The frightening part is that the 9/11 terrorist attack uh sent a signal to the United States that we could take down
many people in one small area. The next attack might be some small town across the United States just to, you know, say
we're here. We could strike at any time, any place. And so this is the the threat
of the enemy within. For Harvey Kushner and the other terrorist profilers we spoke with, Ada
was the operational mastermind of the attacks. Muhammad Ada, the gentle boy from the Cairo streets, will always be
remembered as the true believer with the cold eyes and the lust for death. What troubles the profilers and the civilians
alike is the disturbing fact that there may be many other Muhammad Adas among us.
[Music] How you doing? [Music] [Music] Turn [Music] [Music] right. [Music] Hey, hey, hey.

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Brief Summary

Muhammad Ada's life and planning leading to the 9/11 attacks are examined, revealing his radicalization and operational strategies.

Key points

The Rise of Muhammad Ada. Muhammad Ada, a seemingly ordinary man, becomes a key figure in the 9/11 attacks.
The Training of Terrorists. American trainers overlooked crucial signs while teaching potential terrorists to fly.
Secret Meetings in Las Vegas. Muhammad Ada convenes a secret meeting in Las Vegas where the 9/11 assassins get their final orders.
The Calm Before the Storm. As September 11th approached, Ada's sleeper cells awaited his call, ready for action.
Muhammad Ada's Final Preparations. In August 2001, Muhammad Ada returned to America to finalize his plans for the attacks.
The Attack on September 11th. At 8:46 a.m., Muhammad Ada fulfilled his mission, crashing a plane into the World Trade Center.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

We are peaceful Muslims and we never kill an innocent soul.

Muhammad Ada's father's perspective on Islam.

3:33WatchJul 28, 2014

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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