State: Atta checked out crop-dusters at Fla. airport

BELLE GLADE -- The first visit came in February, when three Middle Eastern men drove through the sugar-cane fields to the single-runway Belle Glade State Municipal Airport to ask about crop-dusters.

How many gallons of fuel can the planes hold? the group's leader asked. How many gallons of chemicals? How fast are they? Are they difficult to fly?

Over the next seven months, the casually dressed man returned to Belle Glade at least once, and other groups of Middle Eastern men visited many more times to quiz the airport staff about the intricacies of crop-dusters. The men often had video or still cameras, taking pictures of the aircraft and attempting to photograph the interiors.

An airport employee has since identified the first group's leader: He was Mohamed Atta, the suspected terrorist who crashed hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center.

The news that Atta had shown an intense interest in crop-dusters coincided with a Federal Aviation Administration directive Sunday that grounded all crop-dusters around the country.

Kathleen Bergen, an FAA spokeswoman, would not explain the specifics behind the decision. "It's national security," she said.

Bioterrorism experts have frequently cited crop-dusters as potential vehicles to disperse deadly biological and chemical agents. The experts have said that if terrorists acquired a crop-dusting plane, they could stage a surprise attack on a large urban area because the small planes can fly below the FAA's radar coverage.

In Belle Glade, local crop-dusters recounted Sunday what Atta asked about and speculated on how one of their planes could be used for a terrorist mission.

"Atta wanted to know how to fly it, how to crank it, how much it would haul," said James Lester, 50, who maintains and loads a 502 Air Tractor crop-duster with as much as 500 gallons of insecticide and fertilizer.

Lester said that Atta, 33, visited the small airstrip here with several groups of men as recently as last month.

J.D. "Will" Lee, 62, a pilot and owner of a gleaming yellow and blue crop-duster, added: "Not until after that bombing did I get to thinking that if you fill that aircraft with 500 gallons of gasoline -- plus 200 gallons of kerosene (used by the turboprop engine) -- that would have made one hell of a bomb."

The two men said they also realized the plane could have been loaded with some kind of biological warfare compound like anthrax or a lethal chemical.

The airport is about an hour's drive from Delray Beach, the coastal community where Atta and other alleged hijackers are thought to have lived.

Lee and Lester said that right after the attacks on New York and Washington, they met at a cafe in Belle Glade.

"We got to talking about how odd it was for that many Arabic people to come by," Lee said.

They called local police, who contacted the FBI.

Lee and Lester said they were interviewed by an FBI team on Tuesday and again on Wednesday. On Friday, Belle Glade police and FBI agents put a 24-hour armed guard on the Belle Glade Municipal Airport -- home to about 15 light aircraft, including eight crop-dusters.

Belle Glade police said the FBI was at the airport on Sunday, too.

The FBI declined to comment on any phase of the investigation on Sunday.

"The FBI showed me his (Atta's) photo," said Lester, who remembered at least two encounters with Atta -- once in March when he drove up in a green van with two other people, and again in August when he flew into the airport in a single-engine Cessna.

"The reason why I recognized him was because he was always walking behind me, being real persistent in asking those questions.

"It just amazes me now," said Lester, shaking his head.

Both Lester and Lee said that several other groups of Middle Eastern men had arrived at their small trailer within the past six to eight weeks to ask similar questions about their crop-duster.

The men seeking information arrived in cars and vans, and sometimes in light aircraft, to check out the crop-dusters. Lee said they described themselves as flight students.

Lee said he told Atta several times that it takes considerable skill to fly crop-dusters.

"They would never have been able to fly this thing," Lee said. "Without an expert pilot it would have never gotten off the ground with a full load. I told them when they asked how hard it was to fly, I said they wouldn't be able to do it."

James Callen, executive director of the National Agricultural Aviation Association, said the nation's 4,000 crop-dusting planes, which are also used to combat fires and mosquitoes, commonly hold 300 to 800 gallons of chemicals. Crop-duster pilots must obtain small-plane commercial licenses and special training for agricultural aviation, he said.

Callen said there have been no confirmed reports of stolen planes or chemicals in recent weeks.

The idea that terrorists could use crop-dusters for biochemical attacks has been raised several times since the Sept. 11 hijackings.

The FAA's order is the second time in the last two weeks that the agency had specifically restricted any flights by crop-dusters. On Sept. 16, the FAA briefly grounded those kind of planes after allowing most other commercial flights to resume. Bergen, the FAA spokeswoman, said the restriction would be lifted today.

Appearing on CBS' Face the Nation on Sunday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked about a Time magazine story saying that U.S. law enforcement officials had found manuals on the operation of crop-dusting equipment while searching the belongings of Zacarias Moussaoui. The manuals showed "how to operate crop-dusting equipment that could be used to spray fast-killing toxins into the air," Time said.

Moussaoui was arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota on Aug. 17 after a flight school instructor became suspicious about his request to learn how to steer a commercial jetliner -- but not how to land one.

On Face the Nation, Rumsfeld did not confirm whether the crop-dusting manual had been found, but noted the threat of chemical or biological weapons was real because several countries suspected of harboring or sponsoring terrorism have tried to develop such weapons.

These countries, Rumsfeld said, "have very active chemical and biological warfare programs and we know that they are in close contacts with terrorist networks around the world."

- Information from the Washington Post and Knight Ridder Newspapers was used in this report.

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