Hijackers Alive And Well

Officials said they reached that conclusion after assembling information from the flights' passenger lists; pay telephone records; phoned reports from passengers aboard the hijacked flights and evidence taken from the rental car found at Logan Airport. NYT

FBI Director Robert Mueller said Friday investigators have established the true identities of all 19 of the Sept. 11 hijackers and have found places outside the United States where the plot was hatched. ...

We at this point definitely know the 19 hijackers who were responsible, Mueller said.

The FBI has confirmed that the hijackers' names released in late September are the true identities of all 19 men, said a law enforcement source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The names were those listed on the planes' passenger manifests and investigators were certain that those were the names the hijackers used when they entered the United States. But questions remained about whether they were the hijackers' true identities, partly because some of their names are common in the Arab world and some of the hijackers fraudulently obtained state identification cards before the hijackings.

Investigators now believe the names released on Sept. 28 are the hijackers' real names.

MR. MUELLER: I know I said at the outset that I had a high level of confidence on the identities of the hijackers. We have several hijackers whose identities were those of the names on the manifests. We have several others that are still in question. So it's ... the investigation is ongoing, and I am not certain as to several of the others.

(November 21, 2001) The remains of five people killed in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon were damaged beyond identification in the massive explosion and fire after a hijacked airliner crashed into the building's west side, officials said. Investigators have identified remains of 184 people who were aboard American Airlines Flight 77 or inside the Pentagon, including those of the five hijackers, but they say it is impossible to match what is left with the five missing people. Brenda Lynch, of Manassas, learned that investigators had determined there are no identifiable remains of her husband, James T. Lynch, a civilian electronics technician who worked in the Navy's command center, an office that lost 26 workers.

No remains were recovered from two other victims who were working at the Pentagon: Ronald John Hemenway, a Navy electronics technician who was a native of Kansas City, Kan., and Rhonda Rasmussen, of Woodbridge, an Army civilian budget analyst. The fifth unidentified victim was a passenger on the hijacked plane. A spokesman for the FBI declined to disclose the name of the victim. For Golinski, it was a long wait. She had been staying close to home for two months, hoping for word on her son.

"It took them an inordinately long period of time to come to this conclusion," she said. "All we heard was that he was missing. That's all we heard until Friday."

The remains of the five hijackers have been identified through a process of exclusion, as they did not match DNA samples contributed by family members of all 183 victims who died at the site.

The hijackers' remains will be turned over to the FBI and held as evidence, FBI spokesman Chris Murray said. After the investigation is concluded, the State Department will decide what is to be done with the remains.

(December 15 2001) Dover Air Force Base morticians have isolated the remains they think are the five hijackers in the Pentagon attack and will keep them as evidence for the FBI, a base spokesman said Friday.

Genetic information from the five does not match any DNA samples on file at the Pentagon or obtained from family members of the crash victims, he said.

The remains were flown to Dover from the crash scene in the days following the attack.

Maj. Jon Anderson said the hijackers' remains were identified through a process of elimination.

By connecting the dots left by previous media reports, it becomes clear that there is much more to these two than has been officially acknowledged. The truth is that the case of Alhazmi and Almihdhar has been a tremendous embarrassment to the Bush Administration - and it could prove even more embarrassing if the media starts asking real questions.

Saeed Alghamdi, Mohald Alshehri, Abdulaziz Alomari, Waleed Alshehri and Ahmed Alnami have either been exempted from involvement in these attacks or their identities are being seriously questioned. As for others such as Amer Kamfar and Adnan and Amer Bukhari, their names have ceased being mentioned as possible suspects, one of whom had died approximately two years ago.