A Pretext for War Read Online Free PDF

blocked their paths, they would zigzag across floors to other emergency stairwells. By the time they reached the sixties, Claire McIntyre was exhausted. “I was thinking: ‘How much more to go?’” she said.
     
     
    Sixty miles to the south, at Washington’s Dulles International Airport, American Airlines Flight 77 bound for Los Angeles was getting ready to board. At 7:18, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi faced their final security hurdle. Having evaded the CIA, NSA, FBI, INS, State Department, and assorted other intelligence and security organizations with barely a drop of sweat, they now simply needed to get through airport security and they were home free to carry out their deadly suicide mission.
    Their hand luggage likely contained such things as a shiny silver Leatherman utility pocket knife—a spring-action tool-style device that opens up at the center into miniature pliers and has an assortment of blades, wire cutters, screwdrivers, and other attachments fitted into it. Because it had a blade of less than four inches, it would have been permitted, whether in their bag or on their person. They also may have had razor-sharp box cutters, which would have been forbidden unless the blades were removed. Another item they likely carried were aerosol cans containing Mace or pepper spray—also prohibited. Finally, at least one of them probably had some sort of square- or rectangle-shaped object and a number of colored wires, which, when attached, would look like a bomb.
    But the Mace may have been camouflaged as hair spray; the box cutter may have been empty, with the small, slim blade easily hidden elsewhere; and the phony bomb could have simply been an innocent-looking box with some wires packed separately. At the time, security was haphazard at best. There had not been an airline hijacking or bombing in the United States for more than a decade, and most of the people who operated the security checkpoints were low-paid contract workers with minimal experience.
    Alhazmi placed his carry-on bag on the conveyor belt and walked through the arched magnetometer. Suddenly, there was a deep electronic buzz. A security official directed him to walk through another, secondary magnetometer. Again the alarm went off. Finally, a guard asked him to stretch out his arms and passed a metal-detecting wand around his body. Not discovering any guns or long knives, the security official allowed Alhazmi to pass. Then his hand luggage was swiped by an explosives trace detector and found to be harmless. Like the four other members of the team, he successfully evaded the final check.
    At 8:16, the wide-body jet began to taxi away from the terminal. “American 77, Dulles tower,” said the controller. “Runway three zero, taxi into position and hold. You’ll be holding for landing traffic one left and for wake turbulence spacing behind the DC-10.” Among the sixty-four people on board was Barbara Olson, a cable-TV talk-show regular who turned bashing the Clintons into a professional blood sport. Her husband was Theodore Olson, the Bush administration’s solicitor general. Also on board were Khalid Almihdhar, Nawaf Alhazmi, Hani Hanjour, and two others from the Valencia Motel in Laurel, Maryland, near the headquarters for the National Security Agency.
    As American Flight 77 nosed skyward, Danielle O’Brien, an air traffic controller in the Dulles tower, passed them on to another controller at a different frequency. “American 77, contact Washington center one two zero point six five,” she said. Then she added, “Good luck.” Later, she thought how odd that was. “I usually say ‘Good day’ as I ask an aircraft to switch to another frequency, or ‘Have a nice flight.’ But never ‘Good luck.’”
    At 8:56, just as the fighter pilots took off from Otis Air National Guard Base and controllers were becoming very worried about United Flight 175 from Boston, an air traffic controller in Indianapolis was getting the same kind of