9/11 Panel Questions Two Hijackers' Help
The FBI long has contended that not a single al-Qaida operative in the United States collaborated with the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet the commission investigating the attacks has identified two Muslim men who may have had advance knowledge of the plot. The commission found that two hijackers got substantial help from Mohdar Abdullah and Anwar Aulaqi after settling in California in 2000. The bipartisan panel created by Congress said it cannot discount the possibility the men knew the hijackers’ plans. Abdullah, who recently was deported to Yemen, helped the hijackers get driver’s licenses. He bragged, while in U.S. custody after the hijackings, that he had known the attacks were coming. Aulaqi, a cleric who left the United States shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, introduced the two hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, to other people who helped provide living arrangements in this country. Full Story