Postscript to 9/11

MIAMI, FLORIDA—9/11 has come and gone, but the nagging question as to whether it could have been prevented will remain for a long time yet.

Ten years after the fact, new information has been unearthed to the effect that FBI authorities found “troubling ties” between the hijackers and certain residents in an upscale gated community in southwest Florida, but this was never revealed to Congress, which had conducted a joint inquiry into the deadly 9/11 attacks on American soil.

Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen of the Miami Herald reported recently that just two weeks before 9/11, a Saudi family abruptly left their luxury home in Sarasota County in Florida leaving everything behind, such as three newly registered vehicles including a brand-new car on the driveway. This could open a fresh chapter in future investigations as the home was reportedly visited repeatedly by hijackers Mohamed Atta and Ziad Jarrah, masterminds of the 9/11 attacks.

The ownership of the house was traced to Saudi financier Essam Ghazzawi and his American-born wife Deborah. Their current whereabouts are unknown. Evidently there were friends to Atta and company.

In addition, three more of the future hijackers had lived much of the year in 2001 in Venice, a community outside Sarasota. Atta and another accomplice, Marwin al-Shehhi, had been learning how to fly on the edge of a runway at the Venice Municipal Airport. You may remember that there were reports saying the hijackers had asked questions including how to fly “without landing the plane.”

Such bizarre questions should have raised eyebrows of amazement in the flight school, but the future hijackers all obtained their pilot licenses with ease.

But, according to reporters Summers and Christensen, it was the gate records at the posh Sarasota community which revealed the “most telltale” information on the plotters and their connections in Florida.

Visitors were required by the gate to give their names and the residents they were visiting, as well as show their driver’s license. Their license plates were also photographed and kept on record.

It was discovered by FBI agents that Atta used variations of his name, but that his license plate was recorded. He and Jarrah were identified as the ones visiting the property of Ghazzawi at 4224 Escondido Circle where the alleged plots were being hatched.

A subsequent investigation by the intelligence agents found phone numbers that linked the Ghazzawi home and the hijackers. Again, this should have been looked into more intensely.

As the story unfolded, Atta flew the first plane that crashed into one of the New York twin towers on that fateful day in September.

But obviously, the results of the FBI’s earlier probe were never made public. Especially distressed was US Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, who co-chaired a congressional joint inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, which would also include trying to find out the “foreign support” of the hijackers, probably a veiled reference to Saudi Arabia. Graham added that he was “especially alert to terrorist information relating to Florida,” and he was upset about this omission, deliberate or otherwise.

Is this another case of intelligence failure? Mention has often been made in the media about too many intelligence agencies in the US bureaucracy going after the same thing. Turf battles are bound to emerge and eventually confuse the issues.

The grounds for suppressing the material, Graham theorized, were “protection of the Saudis from embarrassment, protection of the administration from political embarrassment… some of the unknowns, some of the secrets of 9/11.”

The secrets may not be buried for long. The bottom line is that, 9/11 is not finished yet. Just like all major investigations in history, this one will come back to haunt the American landscape. With this new chapter as well as subsequent ones that will surface, some of the secrets may be cleared up, probably to reveal yet other secrets and the real truth will never be known.

Belinda A. Aquino is professor emeritus at the University of Hawaii at Manoa where she was professor of Political Science and Asian Studies and founding director of the Center for Philippine Studies.