Bush: 'We're At War'

Atta, 33, may have had a shadowy past. According to German authorities, he is suspected in the bombing of an Israeli bus in 1986, when he was only 18 or 19 years old. If true, he should have been denied immigration visas. Instead, he was able to move freely between Germany and the United States. He was clearly preparing for some sort of terrorist action for months. According to law-enforcement authorities, he may have begun casing Logan Airport in Boston more than six months ago. And, NEWSWEEK has learned, he was seen last winter in Norfolk, Va., where, the FBI believes, he may have been surveying the giant U.S. Navy base as a target. Already, say investigators, there are important links between the hijackers who attacked American targets last week and the plotters who tried to sink the USS Cole in Yemen last October.

Atta had plenty of cash. He wrote a $10,000 check to take flight lessons at one of Florida's many flight schools. (Because of its year-round good weather and proximity to the beach, Florida attracts many international flight students, especially from the Middle East; background checks are said to be minimal.) Last December, he and another man paid $1,500 for six hours in a Boeing 727 simulator. "Looking back at it, it was a little strange that all they wanted to do was turns," Henry George, who runs SimCenter, Inc., at Opa-Locka Airport, told The Miami Herald. "Most people who come here want to do takeoffs and landings."

At the time, Atta aroused no suspicion. When he turned in his rent-a-car in Pompano Beach, Fla., on Sept. 9, before heading north on his suicide mission, he reminded the dealer, Brad Warrick, that the car needed to be serviced. "The only thing out of the ordinary," Warrick recalled, "was that he was nice enough to let me know the car needed an oil change." Atta and several friends were regulars at a Venice bar called the 44th Aero Squadron, decorated in the motif of a bomber-squadron bunker, complete with sandbags. "I never had any problems with them," said the owner, Ken Schortzmann. They didn't want to be bothered, but didn't drink heavily and flirt with the waitresses, like some of the other flight students. Atta seemed to be the leader. "He had a fanny pack with a big roll of cash in it," said Schortzmann.

Last week Atta and two of his buddies seem to have gone out for a farewell bender at a seafood bar called Shuckums. Atta drank five Stoli-and-fruit-juices, while one of the others drank rum and Coke. For once, Atta and his friends became agitated, shouting curse words in Arabic, reportedly including a particularly blasphemous one that roughly translates as "F--k God." There was a squabble when the waitress tried to collect the $48 bill (her shift was ending and she wanted her tip). One of the Arabs became indignant. "I work for American Airlines. I'm a pilot," he said. "What makes you think I'd have a problem paying the bill?"

Although investigators now suspect that Atta may been the leader of his cell, it is not clear if and when he was, in effect, "triggered." The pattern of bin Laden's terrorism is to insert operatives into a country where they are "sleepers," burrowed deep into the local culture, leading normal lives while awaiting orders. Intelligence sources believe that one or two control agents run by bin Laden's Qaeda may have slipped into the United States in the last couple of weeks to activate the airliner plot. The idea of using suicide pilots may have been germinating for a very long time. One of the other pilot-hijackers on Flight 11, Waleed Alshehri, attended flight school in Florida in 1997. Last week FBI Director Robert Mueller told a news conference, "The fact that they received flight training in the U.S. is news." But maybe it shouldn't have been. Only last September an Orlando, Fla., cabdriver named Ihab Ali was indicted for refusing to answer questions about his ties to the bin Laden organization, including his "pilot training in Oklahoma," according to court papers. Indeed, the records of the terrorism trial in New York for the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa offer a wealth of information about bin Laden's use of U.S.-trained pilots. One of them, Essam Al-Ridi, who had been trained at a Texas flight school, was a key government witness, testifying that bin Laden's associates used him to try to buy a private jet to transport Stinger ground-to-air missiles from Pakistan to Sudan.

It is not known exactly how many of bin Laden's operatives are still on the loose. One of the most intriguing suspects may be Amer Mohammed Kamfar, 41. Last winter or fall, he showed up in Florida and took flight lessons at FlightSafety Academy. He rented a house in Vero Beach, where he had a wife, who dressed in the traditional chador, and several children. Kamfar, who called himself "John," "shopped at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of pizza," according to a neighbor. Two weeks ago he packed up his family and left the area. Last week Florida cops put out an all-points bulletin, warning that Kamfar may be toting an AK-47.