September 11 6am-7am

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early morning* morning* 6am-7am* 7am-8am* 8am-8:30am* 8:30am - 8:40am* 8:40 a.m. to 8:45 a.m.* 8:45 a.m. to 8:50 a.m.* 8:50 a.m.* |9am-10am 10:00-10:10* 10:05-10:10* 11am-midday* afternoon

Timeline

6:00 a.m. : Condoleezza Rice at White House Instead of in Florida with President Bush

in a template National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice arrives at her office at the White House. Rice will later recall that today is intended to be “a normal day, foreign visitors, several meetings.” Usually she or her deputy, Stephen Hadley , goes along on presidential trips to handle any national security questions that might come up, so one of them would have gone with President Bush the previous day for his two-day trip to Florida

But, as Rice will later recall, Bush’s trip is “such a short trip that we decided not to do that.” In their place, they have sent Navy Captain Deborah Loewer, the director of the White House Situation Room.

(6:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Two Hijackers Fly to Boston Airport

Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari’s flight from Portland to Boston takes off. Their plane, Colgan Air Flight 5930, is a 19-seat Beechcraft 1900 . Fellow passengers Vincent Meisner and Roger Quirion will later say Atta and Alomari board separately, keep quiet, and do not draw attention to themselves. Quirion, says: “They struck me as business travelers. They were sitting down, talking, seems like they were going over some paperwork.”

(6:00 a.m.) : Two Hours Before Attacks, Israeli Company Employees Receive Warnings

Two employees of Odigo, Inc. , an Israeli company, receive warnings of an imminent attack in New York City about two hours before the first plane hits the World Trade Center. Odigo has its headquarters two blocks from the WTC. The Odigo Research and Development offices where the warnings were received are located in Herzliyya , a suburb of Tel Aviv. Israeli security and the FBI were notified immediately after the 9/11 attacks began. The two employees claim not to know who sent the warnings. “Odigo service includes a feature called People Finder that allows users to seek out and contact others based on certain interests or demographics. Alex Diamandis [Odigo vice president of sales and marketing] said it was possible that the attack warning was broadcast to other Odigo members, but the company has not received reports of other recipients of the message.” Odigo claims the warning did not specifically mention the WTC, but the company refuses to divulge what was specified, claiming, “Providing more details would only lead to more conjecture.” However, a later newspaper report claims that the message declared “that some sort of attack was about to take place. The notes ended with an anti-Semitic slur. ‘The messages said something big was going to happen in a certain amount of time, and it did—almost to the minute,’ said Diamandis. He said the employees did not know the person who sent the message, but they traced it to a computer address and have given that information to the FBI.” , Two months later, it is reported that the FBI is still investigating the matter, but there have been no reports since.

(6:00 a.m.) September 11,2001: Bush Interview or Assassination Attempt?

President Bush has just spent the night at the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort on Longboat Key, Florida . He wakes up around 6:00 a.m. and is preparing for his morning jog.

A van occupied by men of Middle Eastern descent arrives at the Colony Beach Resort, stating they have a “poolside” interview with the president. They do not have an appointment and are turned away. Some question whether this was an assassination attempt modeled on the one used on Afghan leader Ahmed Massoud two days earlier

Longboat Key Fire Marshal Carroll Mooneyhan was reported to have overheard the conversation between the men and the Secret Service, but he later denies the report. The newspaper that reported this, the Longboat Observer , stands by its story. Witnesses recall seeing Mohamed Atta in the Longboat Key Holiday Inn a short distance from where Bush was staying as recently as September 7, the day Bush’s Sarasota appearance was publicly announced.

(6:20 a.m.-7:48 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Hijackers Arrive at Airports and Board Flights; Computer Screening Program Fails to Stop Them

All the alleged 9/11 hijackers reportedly check in at the airports from where they board Flights 11, 175, 77, and 93. Since 1998, the FAA has required air carriers to implement a program called the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS). This identifies those passengers who might be a security risk, based upon suspicious behavior such as buying one-way tickets or paying with cash. CAPPS also randomly assigns some passengers to receive additional security scrutiny. If a particular passenger has been designated as a “selectee,” this information is transmitted to the airport’s check-in counter, where a code is printed on their boarding pass. At the airport’s security checkpoints, selectees are subjected to additional security measures. Their baggage is to be screened for explosives or held off the plane until they have boarded. According to the 9/11 Commission, nine of the 19 hijackers are flagged by the CAPPS system before boarding Flights 11, 175, 77, and 93. In addition, Mohamed Atta was selected when he checked in at the airport in Portland, for his earlier connecting flight to Boston airport . All of the hijackers subsequently pass through security checkpoints before boarding their flights.

6:20 Alghamdi Brothers check in

Ahmed Alghamdi and Hamza Alghamdi check in at Logan Airport for Flight 175. See also 6:20 a.m. -6:53 a.m.[9/11 COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 2, 451; 9/11 COMMISSION, 8/26/2004, PP. 17-18, 89]

(6:20 a.m.-6:53 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Two Flight 175 Hijackers Check in at United Airlines Ticket Counter; Uncertainty Over Their Identities

Two of the Flight 175 hijackers approach a customer service representative,Gail Jawahir, at the United Airlines ticket counter at Logan Airport. The two appear unaccustomed to traveling. One tells Jawahir, that he needs a ticket, though upon examining his documents she finds he already has one. Both men have problems answering standard security questions, which Jawahir has to repeat very slowly until they give the routine, reassuring answers. There is conflicting evidence over their identities. Jawahir will place her encounter with the men at “shortly before 7 a.m.” Shown photos of the alleged hijackers after 9/11, she will indicate that one of the two she encountered resembled Mohand Alshehri, suggesting the two were Alshehri and Fayez Ahmed Banihammad, who checked in at 6:53 a.m. Yet she recalls the two having the same last name and having assigned seats on Row 9 of the plane, suggesting they were Ahmed Alghamdi and Hamza Alghamdi, who checked in at 6:20 a.m. [9/11 COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 2, 451; 9/11 COMMISSION, 8/26/2004, PP. 17-18, 89]

6:53 Alshehri and Banihammad check in

Ahmed Alghamdi and Hamza Alghamdi check in at Logan Airport for Flight 175. See also 6:20 a.m. -6:53 a.m.[9/11 COMMISSION, 7/24/2004, PP. 2, 451; 9/11 COMMISSION, 8/26/2004, PP. 17-18, 89]

(6:20 a.m.-7:27 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Flight 175 Hijackers Check In at Airport and Board Plane; None Selected for Additional Security Scrutiny

All five Flight 175 hijackers reportedly check in at Boston’s Logan Airport, pass through a security checkpoint, and board their plane during this period. [9/11 COMMISSION, 8/26/2004, PP. 89 ] The FAA has a program in place called CAPPS, which selects passengers for more thorough security screening based on suspicious behavior such as buying a one-way ticket or paying with cash (see (6:20 a.m.-7:48 a.m.) Although reports claim that between two and five of the Flight 175 hijackers have one-way tickets, none are selected by CAPPS. [WORLDNETDAILY, 4/24/2002; US CONGRESS, 9/26/2002;; ;

Two of them have problems answering security questions at the ticket counter (see (6:20 a.m.-6:53 a.m.)). At the security checkpoint, all five would pass through a walk-through metal detector, and an X-ray machine would screen their carry-on luggage. But Logan Airport has no video surveillance of its checkpoints (see 1991-2000), so there is no documentary evidence of exactly when they go through, or how they are processed. Jennifer Gore , the young supervisor overseeing the checkpoint, is later unable to recall seeing any of them. The Globe and Mail will explain, “[S]he was trained to look for metal bits in bags and in clothes, not people.”

(6:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001: NORAD on Alert for Emergency Exercises

in a template

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Lieutenant Colonel Dawne Deskins and other day shift employees at NEADS start their workday. NORAD is conducting a week-long, large-scale exercise called Vigilant Guardian. Deskins is regional mission crew chief for the Vigilant Guardian exercise.

Vigilant Guardian is described as “an exercise that would pose an imaginary crisis to North American Air Defense outposts nationwide”; as a “simulated air war”; and as “an air defense exercise simulating an attack on the United States.” According to the 9/11 Commission, it “postulated a bomber attack from the former Soviet Union.” Vigilant Guardian is described as being held annually, and is one of NORAD’s four major annual exercises. However, one report says it takes place semi-annually.

Accounts by participants vary on whether 9/11 is the second, third, or fourth day of the exercise. Vigilant Guardian is a command post exercise, and in at least some previous years was conducted in conjunction with Stratcom’s Global Guardian exercise and a US Space Command exercise called Apollo Guardian . All of NORAD is participating in Vigilant Guardian on 9/11. Vanity Fair reports that the “day’s exercise” (presumably Vigilant Guardian) is “designed to run a range of scenarios, including a ‘traditional’ simulated hijack in which politically motivated perpetrators commandeer an aircraft, land on a Cuba-like island, and seek asylum.” However, at NEADS, most of the dozen or so staff on the operations floor have no idea what the exercise is going to entail and are ready for anything.

NORAD is currently running a real-world operation named Operation Northern Vigilance . It may also be conducting a field training exercise calling Amalgam Warrior on this morning . NORAD is thus fully staffed and alert, and senior officers are manning stations throughout the US. The entire chain of command will be in place and ready when the first hijacking is reported. An article later says, “In retrospect, the exercise would prove to be a serendipitous enabler of a rapid military response to terrorist attacks on September 11.”

Colonel Robert Marr, in charge of NEADS, will say: “We had the fighters with a little more gas on board. A few more weapons on board.” However, Deskins and other NORAD officials later are initially confused about whether the 9/11 attacks are real or part of the exercise

Early Morning September 11, 2001: Medic Is Studying Medical Emergency Disaster Plan for Plane Crash at Pentagon

Sergeant Matt Rosenberg, an army medic at the Pentagon, is studying “a new medical emergency disaster plan based on the unlikely scenario of an airplane crashing into the place.” [WASHINGTON POST, 9/16/2001] The day before, Rosenberg later recalls in an interview with the Office of Medical History, he called the FBI with questions about who would have medical jurisdiction if such an event were to take place.

“Believe it or not, the day prior to the incident, I was just on the phone with the FBI, and we were talking ‘so who has command should this happen, who has the medical jurisdiction, who does this, who does that,’ and we talked about it and talked about it, and he helped me out a lot. And then the next day, during the incident, I actually found him. He was out there on the incident that day.”

[OFFICE OF MEDICAL HISTORY, 9/2004, PP. 9]

(6:31 a.m.) September 11, 2001: President Bush Goes Jogging

President Bush goes for a four-mile jog around the golf course at the Colony Beach and Tennis Resort.

6:45 a.m. September 11, 2001: Hijacker’s Connecting Flight Arrives in Boston

Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari’s Portland-Boston flight arrives on time at Logan Airport. They cross a parking lot on their way to the departure terminal for Flight 11, and are observed asking for directions. The other three Flight 11 hijackers arrive at Logan in a rented car around this same time <ref>9/11 Commission August 2004 Staff report,26 August 2004,Page 5

(6:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Ziad Jarrah Makes Final Phone Call to Girlfriend in Germany

About an hour before boarding Flight 93, Ziad Jarrah phones his girlfriend, Aysel Senguen, who is currently recovering from a minor operation in a hospital in Germany, where she lives. [LOS ANGELES TIMES, 10/23/2001; OBSERVER, 8/22/2004] Senguen will later recount, “[H]e was very brief. He said he loved me three times. I asked what was up. He hung up shortly afterwards.… It was so short and rather strange him saying that repeatedly.” GUARDIAN, 11/20/2002] Some accounts say Jarrah makes this call from his hotel, the Days Inn in Newark. Other accounts claim he makes it from a payphone at the airport, although he does not actually check in there until later on, at 7:39 a.m. [PBS, 1/17/2002; OBSERVER, 8/22/2004; SUNDAY HERALD (GLASGOW), 8/22/2004; 9/11 COMMISSION, 8/26/2004, PP. 35 ]

(6:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Hijackers Cause Trouble at Logan Airport; Have Flight Training Manuals in Car

Flight 11 hijackers Waleed Alshehri, Wail Alshehri, and Satam Al Suqami arrive at Logan Airport in a rental car, which they park in the airport’s central parking lot. [9/11 COMMISSION, 8/26/2004, PP. 5 ] According to the News of the World, a man who arrives at Logan at “about 6:30 a.m.” for an early flight, has an argument with several Middle Eastern men over a parking space, before moving on. Some early press reports say his confrontation is with five men. [DAILY TELEGRAPH, 9/13/2001; ABC NEWS, 9/14/2001; NEWS OF THE WORLD, 9/16/2001] However, the 9/11 Commission will later describe the incident differently. It says there are just three Middle Eastern men, and the man ends up parked next to them. One of them opens his car door to get out then spends time “fiddling with his things,” thus trapping the man in his car. Eventually he has to force his way out, but the Middle Eastern men are completely unresponsive to him, saying nothing. The man will report the incident to authorities after hearing of the attacks. However, whether he identifies the men as Flight 11 hijackers is unstated. The hijackers’ car, which is associated with either Wail or Waleed Alshehri, will be found in the lot later in the day of 9/11. [9/11 COMMISSION, 8/26/2004, PP. 85 ] Inside the car, a Mitsubishi sedan rented from National Rental Car, are found Arabic-language flight training manuals. [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 9/12/2001; BOSTON HERALD, 9/12/2001; DAILY TELEGRAPH, 9/13/2001]

(6:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Israeli Company Given Two Hours’ Notice of Attack

“Approximately two hours prior to the first attack,” at least two workers at Odigo, an Israeli-owned instant messaging company, receive messages warning of the attack. Odigo’s US headquarters are located two blocks from the WTC. The source of the warning is unknown.

(6:45 a.m.-7:40 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Three Flight 11 Hijackers Selected for Additional Screening When They Pass through Airport Security

During this period, all five Flight 11 hijackers check in at Logan Airport and board their plane. The FAA has a program in place called the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS), which is designed to identify those passengers most likely requiring additional scrutiny by airport security (see (6:20 a.m.-7:48 a.m.). Ticket records will show that CAPPS selects three of the Flight 11 hijackers at Logan: Since Waleed Alshehri checks no bags his selection has no consequences; Wail Alshehri and Satam Al Suqami have their bags scanned for explosives, but are not stopped. All five hijackers would need to pass through a security checkpoint to reach the departure gate for their flight. Each would have been screened as they walked through a metal detector calibrated to detect items with at least the metal content of a small-caliber handgun. If they’d set this off, they would have been screened with a handheld metal detector. An X-ray machine would have screened their carry-on luggage. However, Logan Airport has no video surveillance of its security checkpoints (see 1991-2000), so there is no documentary evidence of exactly when they pass through them, or if alarms are triggered. According to the 9/11 Commission, none of the checkpoint supervisors later recall seeing any of the Flights 11 hijackers, or report anything suspicious having occurred. However, a WorldNetDaily article will claim that some Logan staff members recall seeing Mohamed Atta (see (6:50 a.m.-7:40 a.m.). The Boston Globe will later comment, “aviation specialists have said it is unlikely that more rigorous attention to existing rules would have thwarted the 10 hijackers who boarded two jets at Logan on Sept. 11. At the time, the knives and box-cutters they were carrying were permitted.” [BOSTON GLOBE, 10/17/2001]

6:47 a.m. September 11, 2001: WTC Building 7 Alarm Not Operating

According to later reports, the alarm system in WTC 7 is placed on “TEST” status for a period due to last eight hours. This ordinarily happens during maintenance or other testing, and any alarms received from the building are generally ignored.

(6:50 a.m.-7:40 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Mohamed Atta Observed at Logan Airport Running Late for Plane?

[1] According to an article on WorldNetDaily, Mohamed Atta almost misses Flight 11 and has to rush to the departure gate at Boston’s Logan Airport. The article is based on the account of an unnamed American Airlines employee at Logan, and claims Atta is running late because his connecting flight from Portland was delayed However, the 9/11 Commission claims that this plane was “on time,” and says Atta is observed at Logan with Abdulaziz Alomari, asking for directions in a parking lot

The employee says that at the baggage check-in, when asked security questions, Atta claims he does not speak English. A supervisor is called for, who just sends him towards the departure gate, as it is close to his plane’s take-off time. Atta rushes through the security checkpoint, then down to the gate, where he shows up perspiring. The employee comments, “The nitwit. You know, they’d been planning it for five years, and he’s running late for the flight.” American Airlines will refuse to comment on this account, saying all American employees have been ordered not to speak to the press. . 

6:52 a.m.-6:55 a.m. September 11, 2001: Call Placed from Payphone at Logan to Atta’s Cell Phone

A three-minute call is made from a payphone at Logan Airport, in the gate area from where Flight 175 will later depart, to Mohamed Atta’s cell phone. The 9/11 Commission will report, “We presume Shehhi [i.e., Marwan Alshehhi ] made the call, but we cannot be sure.” According to the commission, this is Atta and Alshehhi’s final conversation. According to other reports, though, they later speak again briefly by cellphone while waiting for their planes to take off

Timeline links

September 8 September 9 September 10 September 11