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March 6, 2002
Six years before suicide hijackers attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the FBI was alerted that Middle Eastern pilots were training at U.S. flight schools and that at least one had proposed dive-bombing a jetliner into a federal building, according to documents and interviews with Filipino and U.S. authorities.
The information came from police interrogations of Abdul Hakim Murad and a computer seized from Ramzi Yousef, two men arrested after a chemical fire at a Manila apartment tipped authorities to a terrorist plot linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.
Murad and Yousef were convicted in the United States and sentenced to life in prison for a plot to blow up 12 U.S.-bound airliners flying out of Asia.
Filipino police and intelligence officers, along with several secret police reports reviewed by the Associated Press, say Murad's intentions were much broader and included suicide hijackings like those that occurred on Sept. 11.
"Murad's idea is that he will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger, then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters," one Filipino police report from 1995 said.
"There will be no bomb or any explosive that he will use in its execution. It is a suicidal mission that he is very much willing to execute," it said.
Filipino authorities told AP they shared the information immediately with FBI agents in Manila in 1995 and ultimately concluded that U.S. authorities focused too much on the bombing plot and not enough on the possibility of suicide hijackings.
"We shared that with the FBI," said Robert Delfin, chief of intelligence command for the Philippine National Police. "They may have mislooked (sic) and didn't appreciate the info coming from the Philippine police."
Murad, who later claimed he was tortured during his interrogations, detailed to Filipino authorities how he crisscrossed the United States with a Pakistani friend, attending flight schools in New York, Texas, California and North Carolina on his way to earning a commercial pilot's license.
He also identified to Filipino police approximately 10 other Middle Eastern men who met him at the flight schools or were getting similar training.
One was a Middle Eastern flight instructor who came to the United States for more training; another a former soldier in the United Arab Emirates. Others came from Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
None of the pilots match the names of the 19 hijackers from Sept. 11, but Filipino police's investigation of Murad and Yousef uncovered information pointing to a Muslim cleric from Malaysia who has emerged in the past few months as a key figure in last year's suicide hijackings.
Authorities in Malaysia have said they believe the cleric, who goes by the name Hambali, met with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in 2000 and may be a central figure in southeast Asian terrorist groups with links to bin Laden. Authorities are seeking Hambali's arrest.
FBI and other law enforcement officials involved in the Murad investigation, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said American authorities were focused mostly on the plot to detonate bombs on airliners because it was developed and imminent when the men were arrested.
The officials said the FBI interviewed people at the flight schools identified by Filipino police but did not develop evidence that any of the Middle Easterners other than Murad were directly plotting terrorism.
Delfin said when he saw the Sept. 11 attacks on television, Murad's words immediately came to mind.
"This is it, this was what Murad was saying," Delfin said he remarked to other intelligence officials.
Murad told authorities he discussed the suicide hijacking idea with Yousef just a few months before their arrest and had not yet developed a specific plan, although they discussed targets like the CIA building and the Pentagon in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. The Pentagon was struck Sept. 11.