- FBI investigators have officially concluded that 11 of
the 19 terrorists who hijacked the aircraft on 11 September did not know
they were on a suicide mission, Whitehall intelligence sources said last
night.
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- Unlike the eight 'lead' attackers, who were all trained
pilots, they did not leave messages for friends and family indicating they
knew their lives were over. None of them had copies of the instructions
for prayer and contemplation on the eve of the attacks and for 'opening
your chest to God' at the moment of immolation, which FBI agents discovered
in the luggage of Mohamed Atta, the man believed to be the hijackers'
leader,
who flew the first plane to destruction in New York.
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- It is understood the FBI has found evidence suggesting
the 11 men expected to take part in 'conventional' hijackings - with the
planes flown to distant airports, and the passengers and crew taken hostage
while the hijackers presented demands. Items found among the 11 men's
possessions
suggest they had been preparing themselves for incarceration. One source
said: 'It looks as if they expected they might be going to prison, not
paradise.'
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- The FBI analysis concludes the 11 may have believed the
purpose of the hijackings was to free the perpetrators of previous
extremist
terrorist attacks on the United States, such as the first World Trade
Centre
bombing in 1993.
-
- Other clues suggest the purpose for the 11 was to provide
'muscle': to overwhelm the passengers and crew. They had arrived in the
US only recently and had not had pilot training.
-
- Atta's final instructions, with their pleas for divine
forgiveness, indicate that even the most fanatical fundamentalist had to
make considerable psychological preparations before setting off to cause
thousands of civilian deaths. Selecting those ready to carry out such a
mission would not have been easy.
-
- By keeping a majority of the hijackers in the dark as
to their real purpose, these problems were avoided, the sources
said.
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- Western intelligence services say the FBI's conclusions
help to explain why, despite strong indications that Osama bin Laden's
al-Qaida network was planning a spectacular atrocity, the West remained
ignorant about its scale, location and detail.
-
- 'Of course it is inescapable that this was a terrible
intelligence failure,' one Whitehall source said. 'But the FBI analysis
at least puts it into context. The terrorists' security was extraordinarily
tight. They were employing intelligence organisations' most basic
principle:
the need to know.'
-
- At the same time, Western security chiefs say another
suicide hijacking of a passenger aircraft would be far more difficult:
assuming their fate to be death, passengers would probably deal swiftly
with an attempt.
-
- However, sources say they do fear other types of airborne
attack, such as with hired executive jets. It is thought al-Qaida has up
to 50 trained pilots who could mount attacks of this kind.
-
- Meanwhile, it emerged last night that MI6 has advised
the FBI to carry out blood tests of the numerous suspects now in US custody
in connection with the hijackings to ascertain whether they have come into
contact with biological terrorist materials.
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- The advice stems from MI6's experience in 1993, when
Kanatjan Alibekov, the former head of the Soviet biological weapons
research
programme, defected to Britain. When Alibekov first approached the West
in Paris, his bona fides were doubted. His claims to have worked on a
variety
of biological weapons were eventually verified by checking his blood for
antibodies. Alibekov - who now lives in the US under the name Ken Alibek
researching cures for life-threatening diseases - was found to be carrying
antigens to all the agents he claimed to have used.
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- Exposure to even a small quantity of an agent such as
anthrax - too small to cause symptoms - would leave antibodies in the
blood.
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