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TWENTY-SEVEN

IN THE UNITED STATES, MEANWHILE, THE TERRORISTS HAD CONTINUED to move toward their goal. On July 4, as Americans celebrated the holiday and security officials fretted, Khalid al-Mihdhar had flown back into JFK Airport—unchallenged. It should not have been that way.

The CIA had identified Mihdhar as a prime suspect eighteen months earlier—it was to emerge after 9/11—when the Saudi flew to join fellow terrorists in Kuala Lumpur. While he was on his way there, during a stopover in Dubai, the local intelligence service broke into his hotel room at the request of the CIA. His passport, which was copied, had given the Agency two superb leads. It now knew not only Mihdhar’s full identity but also the fact that he had a valid entry visa for the United States.

Even so, and although the CIA firmly believed he and his companions in Kuala Lumpur were terrorists, it had not placed Mihdhar on the TIPOFF list of known and suspected terrorists. And it had withheld what it knew from the FBI. The CIA’s handling of its intelligence on Mihdhar—and the almost identical information on the companion with whom he arrived in the States, Nawaf al-Hazmi—had allowed the first of the 9/11 operatives to enter the States under their own names and live openly in California in the months that followed.

The CIA’s action—or failure to take appropriate action—had also allowed Mihdhar to depart freely in mid-2000, when he returned to the Middle East for an extended period. Then in summer 2001, and because the CIA continued to withhold what it knew about him from U.S. Immigration, he had easily obtained yet another entry visa to get back into the country.

So it was, on July 4, that Mihdhar was able to breeze back into America and join his accomplices as they made final preparations for the 9/11 operation. His return brought the hijackers’ numbers up to nineteen, the full complement of those who were to attack on 9/11. Had the CIA’s performance been merely an appalling blunder, as it would later claim? Or, as another theory holds it, does the Agency’s explanation hide an even more disquieting intelligence truth? That possibility will be considered later.

The team was now divided into two groups, north and south. Mihdhar made the short trip to Paterson, New Jersey, where Hazmi, Hanjour, and three of the muscle hijackers were already based. Six of them lived there, crammed into a one-bedroom apartment, during this phase of the operation. The other operatives settled in Florida, mostly around Fort Lauderdale. There are clues to how some of them spent their private time.

Hazmi had earlier been trawling the Internet for a bride. Some Muslims hold that marriage is obligatory under Islam—being married is seen as a central statement of one’s faith. Even Atta, who behaved as though he loathed everything about women, had told his first German hosts that it was difficult for him to be unmarried at the age of twenty-four. Then, he had said he expected to return to Egypt and marry and have children there. When he stayed on in Germany, however, and a fellow student looked for a suitable wife for him, Atta turned out not to be interested.

None of this means that he was not heterosexual. Sexual self-denial can be a feature of the committed jihadi life. One al Qaeda operative, it was recently reported, recommended that his comrades take injections to promote impotence—as he did himself—to avoid being distracted by the female sex.

Marriage had continued to be a goal for Hazmi, though, even when he was in the United States and launched on a mission in which he knew he was going to die. KSM encouraged the aspiration, promising a $700-a-month stipend should he succeed. The hijacker-to-be even advertised for a wife on muslimmarriage.com, letting it be known that he was open to taking a Mexican bride—apparently hoping that a Hispanic woman would at least somewhat fit the bill.

Hazmi apparently lost interest, however, when only one person responded to the post, an Egyptian