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American Morning

America Under Attack: Boston's Logan Airport May Yield Clues About Terrorists

Aired September 12, 2001 - 09:00   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to take you live to Logan Airport. That is where two of the hijacked planes came from.

We're going to turn it over to our Bill Delaney, who's live at command center.

Bill, can you tell us what is happening right now within the center?

BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thank you, Kyra.

Hundreds of federal, state, and local police led by FBI are fanning out in the Boston area to try to determine how these hijackers could have gotten on the two planes that left Boston yesterday and ended up crashing into the World Trade Center. The question: Was there some kind of a terrorist cell here in Boston that enabled these hijackers to lay the groundwork for what they did?

A security expert I spoke to here, Kyra, said, in many ways, Boston is an ideal place for that sort of thing. It is a small city, but a major city, and importantly, it's near an international border, Canada.

We know before the millennium an Algerian was arrested on the Vermont border. This Algerian was found to have ties to another Algerian who tried, at that time, to cross into Washington share for a terrorist action in Seattle. So we've seen that sort of thing before.

Also, we don't know if Arabs were involved in this, but if they were, there is a sizable Arab community here in Boston; it's a place one could obtain some anonymity, the security source said to me.

There are reports here, Kyra, this morning, of several suspects being looked at who may have been involved in this hijacking. The "Boston Herald" newspaper is reporting two brothers may have been involved, both carrying United Arab Emirates passports, one of them a trained pilot.

Also, importantly, Kyra, a rented car was taken from a central parking garage here at Logan Airport yesterday. Now this rented car reportedly contained Arab-language training manuals for flying a commercial aircraft. The authorities focused on this car because a passenger who left here on a flight from Boston yesterday, when he arrived at his destination and found out about the terrorist actions, realized that he had had an altercation with several Arab men in the central parking garage. He called authorities, and they are looking at this vehicle.

I should also mention that, earlier this year, the FBI did determine that in the late '90s there were two Arab men here with ties to the Osama bin Laden organization. They left suddenly, in the late '90s, but one of them, a man named Basam Konj (ph) had lived here for some 15 years, working as a cab driver. He was subsequently killed in Lebanon, in an attack on the Lebanese army, financed, security sources believe, by Osama bin Laden.

The other Arab, Real Hajabi (ph), also was a cab driver here in Boston. He is in jail in Jordan for involvement in a plan to blow-up a hotel in Jordan that contained mostly American and Israeli tourists, at the time of the millennium.

So there have been traces of people tied to Osama bin Laden, if indeed Osama bin Laden was involved in this, in the past here in Boston, and hundreds of federal, state, and local investigators now are trying to sort out how those two hijackers got on those planes here yesterday.

Back to you.

PHILLIPS: Our Bill Delaney, thank you very much. Those are definitely riveting details. We'll continue to follow-up with you.

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