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CNN Live At Daybreak

America Under Attack: New Leads Overnight

Aired September 13, 2001 - 07:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to start off this morning by talking about how the investigation is proceeding on a number of fronts. We go to Eileen O'Connor, who will help us understand what has transpired over the last 12 hours -- Eileen, a bunch of men taken into custody, some of them released. What do we know at this hour?

EILEEN O'CONNOR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we know, Paula, that German police have, in fact, brought in for questioning a woman and an airport worker in Hamburg. Now, federal law enforcement authorities here were led to Hamburg to investigate that city because of links with two suspected hijackers. One is Mohamed Atta. The other one is Marwan Alshehhi.

Now, both of those men police were led to, law enforcement officials were led to, through a car that was seized at Logan Airport. It was a Mitsubishi. It was rented, a rental car. But it was rented by Mohamed Atta. And inside that car was some very helpful information, a flight training manual and some documents.

And of course, Atta, in doing a cross check of his documents, it led him back -- them back to Florida and to a flight training school in Coral Springs, in Venice, at the airport in Venice and to an address in Cold Springs. Police have been to that address. They have searched that address. They have also spoken to the head of that flight school and to another man who was a landlord for these two men for a few weeks. And so authorities have linked that car and these suspected hijackers.

Again, also there is another linkage to another group of pilots. These were the men that went from Portland, Maine, and now police were led to them because of a car that they impounded in Portland, Maine. This led them to Adnan Bukhari and Amir Bukhari, and we have pictures of both of those men.

Now, they were living in Vero Beach, Florida, which is also -- and they indicated, their records indicated that they had attended a flight school in Vero Beach, Flight Safety International. This, as you see, is a picture of Adnan Bukhari.

His brother Amir (ph) lived across town. Now, next door to Adnan was a man named Ahmeri (ph) is the name we're getting, Al-Ahmeri, and we are, they are looking at him perhaps as another suspected hijacker or, perhaps, law enforcement sources are telling me, as a material witness. They are seeking that man. Now, these two brothers were, went to this Flight Safety International school and again, as I said, they were linked to this car rented in Portland.

Police believe that all these four men were the two sets of pilots that ended up flying those two flights out of Boston, the flights that actually went into the World Trade Center. Law enforcement authorities are looking at other flight schools in Florida and they are looking there because they believe that other pilots were, in fact, trained at other flight schools in Florida and are the ones that will be linked eventually to the Newark flight and to the Dulles flight.

Now, they started looking at flight schools obviously through those rental cars, but also because the authorities believed it took great skill to fly those planes into the World Trade Center towers and also great skill to maneuver into the Pentagon.

So right now they're back tracing all of these men's steps and they also have leads on some other steps that some of the other hijackers may have taken -- Paula?

ZAHN: All right, Eileen, you've described for us this morning the role that four of those pilots might play or the set of brothers and the other pilots. There is a theory being debated right now based on what Attorney General John Ashcroft said yesterday, that each one of these planes had anywhere from three to six people on broad involved with the hijacking. There is a theory that it's possible that a number of these men didn't even know each other and that they waited on board before they were given some sort of signal to commandeer the jet.

Can you provide any more information on that this morning?

O'CONNOR: Yes, I can. I've spoken to law enforcement investigators, some of the investigators, and they say they are looking increasingly at the likelihood that the two pilots would have known each other. But then when they got on board these planes that then there was another group of about three individuals who they did not know who came from other cells, they are calling them. And those individuals then, through some signal, either it was those individuals who gave a signal to the pilots through some overt action, at which point everyone knew that they should get up and start their jobs, that they had all been tasked to individual jobs.

They also, you know, Paula, are saying they do have leads. They know that two men traveled through Bar Harbor, Maine on the ferry from Nova Scotia. They're working with Canadian police on leads there. Law enforcement sources are also telling me that they believe there was a cell acting out of west of Boston for a year, looking into that. And again, you also have three people detained for questioning as material witnesses in Boston, hoping, they say, to get some leads through that -- Paula.

ZAHN: Well, given, Eileen, everything you're telling us this morning, does that indicate then that the FBI and other federal agents actually were tracking the movements of these folks even before this happened?

O'CONNOR: We are not sure of that. They're now looking backwards and saying, and what we do have from some sources is that there may have been some indications, according to "Time" magazine, that as early as June that the, that there were some indications of some kind of action. But it was so vague that they were not sure.

As you know, at that time, we do know that the U.S. embassies were put on a heightened state of alert around the world.

So again, these kinds of vague intelligence doesn't necessarily, it's not necessarily specific enough to have led them to these men earlier. But right now they are, of course, backtracking and they're picking up a lot of leads by looking at all of these men that they do know about and cross checking their backgrounds and their documentation. And also, Paula...

ZAHN: But I do think...

O'CONNOR: Paula, one thing we should point out, that Atta and Al-Shari (ph) possessed UAE passports. But we spoke to the United Arab Emirates, officials in the government there, and they say that they were not citizens of the UAE. Now, also in Vero Beach, those Bukhari brothers possessed documents that showed they were Saudis -- Paula.

ZAHN: All right, Eileen O'Connor, thanks for that welcome information. We'll be checking in with you a little bit later on this morning.

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