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9/11 Personal Privacy

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February 27,2004 National commission On Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S. 7th Street NW Room 5125 Washington B.C. 20407

Attn: Hon. Lee H. Hamilton, Vice Chairman

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Dear Mr. Hamilton; I applaud your committee's serious and methodical approach to the investigation of the events of 9/11 and its causes, and I look forward with anticipation to learning of your conclusions. I have lived in New York City since 1951 and worked in the Financial Community from 1959 until 2001, so the attack was (to me) an assault on "my neighborhood." Indeed, I had interviewed for a job in the Twin Towers a year before and could very well have been a victim if I had taken it. I am indeed a fortunate New Yorker in that none of my co-workers, former coworkers, or friends perished that day. My purpose in writing today is to express to you the hope that your committee, in the interests of more fully serving the needs of history and of truth, will look into the following key questions - not always voiced in media comments about the catastrophe: 1) How could FOUR airliners be hijacked successfully when there had been none for ten years? 2) How did the FBI determine the hijackers' names? 3) How did the FBI determine which hijacker was on which plane? 4) How did the government determine that Al Qaeda was behind the attacks? 5) Is the discovery of Mohammed Atta's passport at the scene really believable? 6) What are the true details of the "pilot's radio" found at the Millennium Hotel? 7) What was the cause of the failure of Air force One's communications system 9/11? 8) What does it mean that 140 Saudi nationals were allowed to leave this country during the week following 9/11 when all flights were still grounded? My reasons for raising each of these questions, and offering them to you as fields for further study, are as follows.

1) With all the security screenings in place even prior to 9/11. it seems strange that four planes from three airports could be successfully hijacked. This has to be a concern of the highest order. Were baggage handlers, ticket agents, security personnel or other airline crew members involved in facilitating the passage of the hijackers through security (or around it)? What have the airlines and the airports told you about this? It was either a massive failure of security (caused by what?) or an inside job - with sinister implications for America's security. Did 19 Arabs with box-cutters simply breeze through security? An editorial in the New York Times Feb. 2, 2004, mentioned that "9 of the 19 hijackers were flagged for passenger screening but eventually allowed to board." Who was responsible for those boarding permissions? On what basis were they "flagged" and on what basis did they apparently satisfy the security/airline personnel? 2) How did the FBI arrive at the 19 names they assert were the hijackers? On September 14th the FBI released the names of 14 alleged hijackers, admitting that some of the men were known by several names. Thirteen days later (9-27-01) they released a revised list of 19 people "believed to be the hijackers of the four planes" and included photographs of each. The FBI went on to state "it should be noted that attempts to confirm the true identities of these individuals are still under way." To my knowledge there have never been any further clarification of those names. I hope your committee can find out WHERE the FBI got those names and how they confirmed that they were the guilty parties. The media has been so mesmerized by the legal troubles of Zacarias Moussaoui as the "20th hijacker" that no one seems concerned to verify how we arrived at the other 19 individuals. Indeed, there have been unsubstantiated reports from overseas that several of the named hijackers were alive and living overseas so could not have been involved in 9/11. The FBI needs to be more forthcoming in this matter, and I believe questioning by your committee is the proper venue for the truth to be established. Did the government have the names and plans ahead of time but lacked the date and flights? Or did they just pull these names (actual or fictional) out of a hat? Whoever the hijackers were they are dead now and cannot contradict the FBI, so the FBI could say anyone was a hijacker. History needs to be a little more precise than "we believe" it was so-and-so. After all, we did go to war over this attack; it would be nice to know we attacked the right organization in Afghanistan.

3) How did the FBI determine which hijacker was on which plane? A further mystery on this aspect, is that for over a year the CNN website listed the names of all the passengers and crew aboard all four flights - apparently provided by the airlines. However the list did not include any Arabic names - least of all did it list any of the FBI's 19 Arabs. If the airlines do not have a record of every passenger on each of the flights, how did the FBI determine which hijacker was on which flight? To add to the confusion , that same CNN site said there were 64 victims aboard Flight 77, but the web site lists 56 names (none Arabic); 45 killed on Flight 93 but only 33 names (none Arabic); 92 victims on Flight 11 but only 87 names (5 Arabic hijackers not listed would make this figure come out correct); and Flight 175 has 56 names and it is said 56 were killed. However, none of the 56 names are Arabic. This comes out to 257 victims but only 232 names. If you add in the unmentioned 19 Arabs, there are still 6 victims more than there are names for. It's two and a half years since these events; it would seem we would have a better handle on the victims' names and flights by now. Instead we are left with the government telling us that so-andso hijacker was on such and such a flight and "This is so because we say it is so." I trust the Kean Commission can do better than that. 4) How did the government determine that Al Qaeda was behind the attacks? This is perhaps the most fundamental question and remains unresolved years later. I repeat: we went to war in Afghanistan because the Taliban would not give up Osama bin Laden or his al Qaeda organization which we said was behind the attacks. The simplest, most basic question the administration has never addressed is: "How do we know?" Before the day was out we were being told it was done by Al Qaeda, yet no organization anywhere has ever claimed to have done it! From the theological standpoint of Al Qaeda or Hezbollah or Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade or Hamas, this was a fantastic "victory" over America. And no one has claimed to have done it? Bin Laden has passed up opportunities for taking the credit by saying only that killing innocent people is against Islamic teaching. The biggest terror attack attributed to Al Qaeda before 9/11 was the boat-bomb attack on the USS Cole overseas a year earlier. So how did they acquire the know-how and expertise to pull off this enormous crime here in America and get away with it? Our government has never said why they decided it was the work of Al Qaeda was it because they already knew the plot but were unable to stop it? On September 22, 2001 Secretary of State Powell appeared on "Meet The Press" and promised that the US would soon "put out a paper...that will describe clearly the evidence we have linking " Bin Laden to the attacks. No such paper has been released. Will the Kean Commission get to see that paper? Will the public?

5.) Is the discovery of Mohammed Atta's passport at Ground Zero really believable? On September 16,2001 at 4 PM CNN carried a report stating that the New York Police Department had recovered the singed passport of lead hijacker Mohammed Atta among the tons of papers and debris littering Vesey Street on the north side of Ground Zero, near the remains of Tower One. Does this sound reasonable? does it even sound possible? Did Atta toss it out the plane's window at the last second as he plowed into Tower One at 500 miles an hour? Where would the wind at 1,000 feet up on a Fall day (not to mention the suction effect of the rushing plane) carry such a flimsy piece of paper? If it was on his person it would have burned up in the fireball and been pulverized in the collapse of the tower. If it was not on his person how did he board the plane in Boston without it? (Now we're back to question #1 above). A more reasonable explanation would seem to be that his passport was not on his person on September 11th. So did he drop it in the street as his "calling card" during a pre-9/11 "casing" of the target? If so how does one account for the fact it was reported to be "singed?" The more likely explanation would be that it was counterfeited and planted by someone to more securely incriminate Atta in the attacks. Your committee might wish to determine who might have had a vested interest in such an action - such a transparent action - but apparently a successful one since the finding of the passport was a one day story and it has gone off the media's radar. 6) What are the true details about the Millennium "Pilot's" Radio? Late in the day of 9/11 the staff of the Millennium Hotel (directly across Church St from the Twin Towers) went through all the hotel's rooms looking for victims and to make a damage assessment. In a room rented by an Egyptian student, Abdullah Higazy, they found an airline pilot's radio. Original reports were that they found it in the safe in that room. Later that changed to lying on a desk and then to lying on a table in that room. When Higazy returned weeks later to claim his possessions he was arrested. He claimed the radio was not his and had no idea how it got into his room. After being interrogated incommunicado for several weeks, he was brought to court January 17, 2002, and freed. Why? According to the New York Times report "another pilot, an American, had come forward to claim it was his." This unnamed "American" picked up his radio and left the court. For some reason The Times has neglected to mention the name of the American, both in the article 1-18-02 and several subsequent articles. Who is this mysterious "American pilot?" Why is he nameless? How did he prove the radio was his? Why was it found in Higazy's room and yet Higazy was not charged with theft? Does this "pilot" work for an airline? or does he work for the government? or is he an American working for a foreign government? But mostly we need to know what KIND of "pilot's radio" this was. Was it for talking from one plane to another? or from the plane to the ground? Was it for both? These questions would merely be crossing the "t's" and dotting the "i's" were it not for the possible sinister nature of a pilot's radio.

The technology exists to take over a hi-jacked plane by radio and control it from the ground (to bring it to a secure airport where the hijackers could be arrested or killed) so it is not beyond the realm of possibility that this could have been a radio used to make sure the hijackers did in fact crash their planes into the WTC by overriding anything the hijackers might have wished to do otherwise ~ seeing a tall building rushing at you at 500 miles an hour would cause most humans to instinctively try to avoid the onrushing danger. Since no one had ever tried this tactic who could know that Atta and friends might not "chicken out" at the last moment and do something less dramatic with their airplanes (crashing into the Hudson or flying to Canada or Mexico etc. to be held for ransom). It is at least conceivable that Al Qaeda would have wanted some insurance that the towers would be hit. Indeed, the second plane only hit its target at an angle ~ was this poor control or did he "chicken out" but not soon enough? 7) What caused the communications failure aboard Air Force One? The New York Daily News reported on Oct 25, 2002: "While President Bush was aboard Air Force One on September 11, 2001, he was unable to monitor TV news coverage, hold video conferences or receive key data from people on the ground, according to a new report...It was when Bush landed at a Nebraska Air force base that he was able to use sophisticated equipment to assess the situation and give orders" according to the article in Business Week that the News was quoting. It is troubling to think with all the billions we spend on defense and intelligence that at a particularly critical moment our President was electronically "blind-folded" and gagged. Yet there seems to have been no major investigation. The News went on to report the President had ordered that another $50 million be spent to upgrade the equipment on the four presidential planes. But if you haven't determined what went wrong, how can you fix it? Was this just a very embarrassing failure or might it have been something more sinister? America needs to know. 8) The Special flights For 140 Saudis Right After 9/11. The New York Times reported last Fall (9-4-03) that the White House had approved the "hasty departure" of some 140 "influential Saudis, including relatives of Osama Bin Laden, from the United States in the days after September 11, 2001, when most flights were still grounded." The Times referred to an article in Vanity Fair describing how private planes picked up Saudis from ten cities. Senator Charles Schumer wrote to the White House charging the Saudis appeared to have gotten "a free pass" despite their possible knowledge about the attacks. What are the facts concerning these questions? I would hope the Kean Commission will examine them all, to one degree or the other. I presume you have at least addressed some of them already, but perhaps this letter will cause you to return to one or more in greater detail and from a different perspective. Thank you for your time in reading this, and thank you for the time you have patriotically given to this important investigation. Sincerely yours,

Richard J TDonahue