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One clue that the alleged terrorists are not everything they seem comes from the rather deep gulf between the stereotype and the reality. We have already seen, in the case of Ziad Jarrah, a young man who has no commitment to Islam, suddenly converted into a fiendish hijacker. As far as religion goes, almost every hijacker has displayed the same troubling discrepancy, as we shall see. At the same time, Jarrah earnestly wished to become an aeronautical engineer. If Islam (or "Muslim fanatics") did not divert him from his chosen course in life, who did? Perhaps no one.

Another puzzle is presented by Hani Hanjour, a small, shy lad who, throughout his teens in Saudi Arabia, wanted nothing more than to be a flight attendant. Despite the fact that Hanjour displayed little interest in his flying lessons, abandoning courses that he did not flunk outright, he was the alleged pilot of American Airlines Flight 77 which crashed into the Pentagon.

In 1998, Hanjour received a one-hour lesson after which, in the words of manager Wes Fults, "He had only the barest understanding of what the instruments were there to do." Yet by April 1999, by means that FAA officials refuse to discuss, Hanjour had obtained a commercial pilots license, capping several years of trying. In April of 1996 he attended a 30-minute class at the Sierra Academy of Aeronautics in Oakland California, never to return. The next month finds him in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he signed up for lessons at CRM Flight Cockpit Resource Management. Hanjour left after three months with no certificate. He returned one year later, stayed only a few weeks, then left again. Over the next three years, Hanjour called the Scottsdale School seeking re-admision but was rebuffed as having no pilot potential. In 1998 Hanjour enrolled at Sawyer Aviation in Phoenix, Arizona. He attended a handful of sessions on the flight simulator, then disappeared once again. ( Goldstein et al., 2001)

In August of 2001, Hanjour arrived at the Freeway Airport in Bowie, Maryland. His attempt to get himself checked out in a single-engine plane ended once more in failure. Owing to his general incompetence, officials at Bowie refused to rent an aircraft to him. (Goldstein et al., 2001) In view of the fact that Hanjour could not manage to fly single-engine aircraft, it seems amazing that Hanjour piloted the Boeing passenger liner that hit the Pentagon right on target.

The other major discrepancy between stereotype and reality in the case of the alleged 19 (or 20) hijackers is religion. Perhaps Hanjour was the most religious of the lot, having been rather devout, according to his older brother, throughout his youth. Hanjour was never observed flouting the rules of Islam openly, as several of his better-known colleagues were. Some of the other alleged hijackers were observed drinking alcohol and engaging in sexually promiscuous behaviour.

Hani Hanjour was supposedly the pilot on Flight 77.

He was just over 5 ft tall - very intimidating. He wasn't on the manifest because he probably didn't have a ticket (see below) It looks like he tried desperately to be a pilot for a few years but was just useless at it.

I don't think he was on that flight, he's just an add on to prove the Arab-pilot theory that was so quickly lapped up by the public. Of the five supposed hijackers on that flight he was the only pilot.

Hanjour's family has denied his involvement in the operation.

Hani Hanjour wasn't on the flight manifest - they think he didn't have a ticket?

• How did he get on the plane?
• How do they know he was on the plane - another magic passport jumps out of the plane?

Yet on this link it says:

Could we possibly get our facts straight here?

- a very unlikely hijacker

We see that Mr Hanjour was stopped for speeding:

Three weeks before the Sept 11th attacks - crack-suicide-lunatic Hani decides to pay his speeding ticket to the evil infidel government of the United States. Does this really sound like the actions of someone who is going to die horribly, and kill hundreds of people in a few weeks time?

Mr. Jarrah, for one, maintained at least one secular, personal interest outside the Hamburg circle. He spent time in Bochum, Germany, two hours away, where, according to his uncle, Jamal Jarrah, he shared an apartment with a Turkish girlfriend, Aysel Sengun. She didn't appear to be a strict Muslim, her former neighbors say. A medical student, Ms. Sengun had long dark hair and favored jeans and heels. She is now in a German witness-protection program.

In late 1999, Messrs. Atta, Jarrah and al-Shehhi prepared to move. Within a span of two months, each man separately reported his passport as lost and obtained a new one, German intelligence officials say. That would have allowed them to apply for U.S. visas without revealing past trips to countries that would raise suspicions, such as Iraq, Iran or Afghanistan.

In December, Mr. Jarrah told a friend he was leaving to fulfill a dream of studying in the U.S. "He thought America was great," recalls the friend, Michael Gotzman. Mr. Jarrah promised to keep in touch. But when his friend asked for a U.S. postal or e-mail address, Mr. Jarrah brushed him off. ...

Training in the Phoenix area, according to CRM's president, Duncan K. M. Hastie.

He was reclusive, his English poor. As the months wore on, he didn't display much aptitude in the cockpit, Mr. Hastie says. But Mr. Hanjour didn't give up. By 1998, he had approached another Phoenix flight center, the Sawyer School of Aviation, former employees recall. Mr. Hanjour paid $300 to join the "Sim Club," providing him open access to Sawyer's flight simulator.

The following year, the Sim Club had another member: Lotfi Raissi. British prosecutors late last month accused Mr. Raissi, an Algerian, of having provided pilot training to four of the 19 hijackers. In addition to Mr. Hanjour, Ziad Jarrah also trained on Sawyer's simulator, says the school's former chief flight instructor Sylvia Stinson. She and the simulator's manager at the time, Wes Fults, say they recall Mr. Raissi teaching others, but they don't remember him with any of the 19.

In May 2000, Alhazmi and Almihdhar arrived at Sorbi's Flying Club, a small school 20 miles north of San Diego, and announced that they wanted to learn to fly Boeing airliners. [Washington Post, 9/30/01] They were there with someone named "Hani" - presumably hijacker Hani Hanjour - but only the two of them went up in an airplane. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 9/28/01] Instructor Rick Garza says the dream to fly big jets is the goal of practically every student who comes to the school, but what he noticed as unusual was their lack of any basic understanding of aircraft. Once, he asked Almihdhar to draw the aircraft. "He drew the wings on backwards," he said. Both spoke English poorly, but Almihdhar in particular seemed impossible to communicate with. Rather than following the instructions he was given, he would vaguely reply, "Very good. Very nice." [Chicago Tribune, 9/30/01]

The two offered extra money to Garza if he would teach them to fly multi-engine Boeing planes, but Garza had to decline. [Washington Post, 9/30/01] "I told them they had to learn a lot of other things first... It was like Dumb and Dumber. I mean, they were clueless. It was clear to me they weren't going to make it as pilots." [Observer,

10/7/01]

In the spring of 2000, Hanjour had asked to enroll in the CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Ariz., for advanced training, said the center's attorney, Gerald Chilton Jr. Hanjour had attended the school for three months in late 1996 and again in December 1997 but never finished coursework for a license to fly a single-engine aircraft, Chilton said.

When Hanjour reapplied to the center last year, "We declined to provide training to him because we didn't think he was a good enough student when he was there in 1996 and 1997" Chilton said. Newsday.com

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