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arriving for the first time, and still others may have been returning after prior
visits to the camps. According to KSM, Bin Ladin would travel to the camps
to deliver lectures and meet the trainees personally. If Bin Ladin believed a
trainee held promise for a special operation, that trainee would be invited to
the al Qaeda leader's compound at Tarnak Farms for further meetings.
103
KSM claims that Bin Ladin could assess new trainees very quickly, in about
ten minutes, and that many of the 9/11 hijackers were selected in this manner.
Bin Ladin, assisted by Atef, personally chose all the future muscle hijackers for
the planes operation, primarily between the summer of 2000 and April 2001.
Upon choosing a trainee, Bin Ladin would ask him to swear loyalty for a sui-
cide operation. After the selection and oath-swearing, the operative would be
sent to KSM for training and the filming of a martyrdom video, a function
KSM supervised as head of al Qaeda's media committee.
104
KSM sent the muscle hijacker recruits on to Saudi Arabia to obtain U.S.
visas. He gave them money (about $2,000 each) and instructed them to return
to Afghanistan for more training after obtaining the visas. At this early stage,
the operatives were not told details about the operation.The majority of the
Saudi muscle hijackers obtained U.S. visas in Jeddah or Riyadh between Sep-
tember and November of 2000.
105
KSM told potential hijackers to acquire new "clean" passports in their home
countries before applying for a U.S. visa. This was to avoid raising suspicion
about previous travel to countries where al Qaeda operated. Fourteen of the
19 hijackers, including nine Saudi muscle hijackers, obtained new passports.
Some of these passports were then likely doctored by the al Qaeda passport
division in Kandahar, which would add or erase entry and exit stamps to cre-
ate "false trails" in the passports.
106
In addition to the operatives who eventually participated in the 9/11 attacks
as muscle hijackers, Bin Ladin apparently selected at least nine other Saudis
who, for various reasons, did not end up taking part in the operation:
Mohamed Mani Ahmad al Kahtani, Khalid Saeed Ahmad al Zahrani, Ali Abd
al Rahman al Faqasi al Ghamdi, Saeed al Baluchi, Qutaybah al Najdi, Zuhair
al Thubaiti, Saeed Abdullah Saeed al Ghamdi, Saud al Rashid, and Mushabib
al Hamlan. A tenth individual, a Tunisian with Canadian citizenship named
Abderraouf Jdey, may have been a candidate to participate in 9/11, or he may
have been a candidate for a later attack.These candidate hijackers either backed
out, had trouble obtaining needed travel documents, or were removed from the
operation by the al Qaeda leadership. Khallad believes KSM wanted between
four and six operatives per plane. KSM states that al Qaeda had originally
planned to use 25 or 26 hijackers but ended up with only the 19.
107
Final Training and Deployment to the United States
Having acquired U.S. visas in Saudi Arabia, the muscle hijackers returned to
Afghanistan for special training in late 2000 to early 2001.The training report-
edly was conducted at the al Matar complex by Abu Turab al Jordani, one of
THE ATTACK LOOMS
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