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.Al-praying aloud, calling out to Allah as the other manMihdhar instead became thepiloted the small plane toward the landing strip.Sorbiadvised them to delay further lessons: We told them to recruiter for the muscle part ofgo to college and learn to speak English if they wanted tothe operation.In June 2000, hebecome pilots.They said they were. headed back to the Middle Eastfor an extended stay.On JuneTerry McDermott, Perfect Soldiers: The 9/11 Hijackers: Who10, 2001, he traveled to SaudiThey Were, Why They Did It (New York: HarperCollins, 2005),Arabia, where he finalized plansp.192.for the emigration of the finaltwelve members of the plot.Todo this, he traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Millennium Plots 191Afghanistan.Despite his suspicious activity, al-Mihdhar was able to return to theU.S.on July 4, 2001, on the Visa Express Program.In August 2001 he movedto Laurel, Maryland.On September 10, 2001, al-Mihdhar and two associates traveled to Herndon,Virginia, where they stayed at a Marriott Residence Inn, preparing for the mis-sion the next day.Early on the morning of September 11, al-Mihdhar and fourothers boarded American Airlines flight 77, where he provided much of the pro-tection for the hijacking team s pilot until the airliner crashed into the west wingof the Pentagon.See AlsoHazmi, Nawaf bin Muhammad Salim al-; Pentagon AttackSee DocumentDocument #1Suggested ReadingBob Graham, Intelligence Matters: The CIA, the FBI, Saudi Arabia, and the Failure of Amer-ica s War on Terror (New York: Random House, 2004); Terry McDermott, Perfect Soldiers:The 9/11 Hijackers: Who They Were, Why They Did It (New York: HarperCollins, 2005).Millennium PlotsLeaders of al-Qaeda planned for a series of terrorist operations to take place on oraround January 1, 2000.At least three plots surfaced during investigations in themonths and weeks before the millennium.Khalid Sheikh Mohammad has claimedcredit for planning and financing these plots, whose targets were in three differentplaces Amman, Jordan; Los Angeles, California; and, Aden, Yemen.Fortunately,none of the plots were carried out but the news clearly indicated that al-Qaeda sleadership was busy concocting plots to the detriment of the United States.Al-Qaeda operatives had planned to bomb the Radisson Hotel in Amman, along withChristian tourist sites in and around the city on January 1, 2000, hoping to kill asmany Americans as possible.Jordanian authorities, however, learned of the plotand raided the terrorists bomb factory, which was hidden in an upper-middle-classresidence.The terrorists had planned to use poisons and other improvised devicesto increase the casualties of their attacks, planning to disperse hydrogen cyanide ina downtown Amman movie theater.News of this plot reached American officialsin the middle of 1999.The terrorists also plotted to plant a large bomb at the Los Angeles Interna-tional Airport, a plan that originated in Canada among Muslim militants there.Ahmed Ressam tried to smuggle the explosives from Canada to the United Statesthrough the British Columbia Washington Ferry Entry Point.An alert U.S.Customs Officer, Diana Dean, suspicious of Ressam s nervousness, pulled himover and had begun to check the vehicle when Ressam made a break.Dean andfellow customs officers soon captured him, and an examination of his vehiclerevealed a large quantity of explosives and a map of the Los Angeles InternationalAirport.American authorities believed that Ressam would have received assistancefrom al-Qaeda members in the Los Angeles area, but no proof of this has surfaced.Finally, the terrorists planned a marine bombing intended to sink the destroyerUSS The Sullivans at its berth in the port of Aden, Yemen.Al-Qaeda operativesoverloaded a small boat with explosives, to the point of sinking, and nothing 192 Mohamed, Ali Abdel Saoudremained but to cancel the operation.Because of the covert nature of thisoperation and because of its failure American authorities did not learn aboutthis plot until much later, after the attack on the USS Cole.See AlsoQaeda, al-; Ressam, AhmedSuggested ReadingVernon Loeb, Planned Jan.2000 Attacks Failed or Were Thwarted; Plot Targeted U.S.,Jordan, American Warship, Official Says, Washington Post (December 24, 2000), p.A2.Mohamed, Ali Abdel Saoud (1952 )American authorities first began to understand Osama bin Laden s role in theIslamist movement after questioning Ali Mohamed.Until the mid-1990s,authorities believed bin Laden to be a secondary character acting mostly as a money man. Mohamed was a professional soldier and Islamist who then servedas a sergeant in the U.S.Army.Mohamed s entire career has been associated in one way or another with themilitary.He was born in 1952 in Kafr el-Sheikh, near Alexandria, Egypt.Hisfather was a professional soldier, and Mohamed followed in his footsteps.Heattended the Military Academy in Cairo and then enrolled in the University ofAlexandria, where he earned a master s degree in psychology in 1980.Hejoined the Egyptian Army as an officer in 1971, and his abilities as a linguistallowed him rapid promotion as an intelligence specialist in the Egyptian Spe-cial Forces.In that capacity Mohamed participated in the 1973 Yom KippurWar against Israel.In 1981 he underwent Green Beret training at Ft.Bragg,North Carolina.At the same time that his military career prospered, Mohamed became a mili-tant Islamist.Religious since childhood, he was attracted to the extremist Islamistside of Islam.His spiritual mentor was Abdel Rahman, and he made contact withelements in the Islamist extremist terrorist group Egyptian Islamic Jihad.Membersof this group and of Mohamed s military unit assassinated Egyptian PresidentAnwar Sadat in 1981.Although Mohamed approved of the assassination, he wasnot implicated in the plot because he was then stationed at Ft.Bragg
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