Sept. 11

Video shows hijackers set off detectors

WASHINGTON - Surveillance video from Washington Dulles International Airport the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, shows four of the five hijackers being pulled aside to undergo additional scrutiny after setting off metal detectors but then permitted to board the fateful flight that crashed into the Pentagon.

The video shows an airport screener hand-checking the baggage of one hijacker, Nawaf Alhamzi, for traces of explosives before letting him continue onto American Airlines Flight 77 with his brother, Salem.

The disclosure of the video comes one day before the release of the final report by the Sept. 11 commission, which is expected to include a detailed accounting of the events that day.

Details in the grainy video are difficult to distinguish. But an earlier report by the commission describing activities at Dulles is consistent with the men's procession through airport security as shown on the video.

No knives or other sharp objects are visible on the surveillance video. But investigators on the commission have said the hijackers at Dulles were thought to be carrying utility knives personally or in their luggage, which at the time could legally be carried aboard planes.

All 58 passengers - including the hijackers - and six crew members, along with 125 employees at the Pentagon, died when the flight crashed into the Pentagon at 9:39 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001.

The video shows hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Majed Moqed, each dressed conservatively in slacks and collared shirts, setting off metal detectors as they pass through security. Moqed set off a second alarm, and a screener checked him with a handheld metal detector.

Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhamzi had been known to be associated with al-Qaida since early 1999 by the National Security Agency and were put on a terrorism watch list on Aug. 24, 2001.

Only Hani Hanjour, thought to have been the hijacker who piloted Flight 77, did not set off a metal detector as he passed through Dulles security that morning, according to the video. Moments after Hanjour passed alone through the security checkpoint, wearing dark slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, the final two hijackers, the Alhamzi brothers, walked through the checkpoint.

Nawaf Alhamzi, described by investigators as the right-hand accomplice of hijacker-planner Mohammed Atta, set off two metal-detectors, and a screener manually checked him with a handheld device.

The Associated Press obtained the video from the Motley Rice law firm, which is representing some survivors' families who are suing the airlines and security industry over their actions in the Sept. 11 attacks.

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