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FBI Believes Plotters Planned to Seize Six Airliners for Attack
Wednesday September 19, 2001
By Paul Kelso and Nick Hopkins in New York,
John Hooper in Hamburg
and Richard Norton-Taylor

Agents believe San Antonio was a centre of the conspiracy

The Guardian
The FBI is increasingly certain that up to six planes were intended to take part in last week's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

As the largest investigation in criminal history entered its second week, the bureau said it was considering whether a fifth suicide hijacking was foiled by the cancellation of a flight from Boston to Los Angeles.

American Airlines flight 43 was cancelled at the last minute last Tuesday because of technical problems. The FBI is using passenger lists in a bid to track down passengers with Arab names who did not fly on when commercial flights resumed last week.

There is also growing evidence that a sixth attack was planned, and that a cell of terrorists was intending to hijack a flight due to leave San Antonio last weekend.

Investigators in the city yesterday seized a doctor, Albader Alhazmi, 34, a Saudi-born national, who worked at the University of Texas health science centre. He did not turn up for work last Tuesday and is on a 180-name FBI watchlist of people suspected of having links with the 19 hijackers.

It is suspected that he may have provided technical or financial assistance to one or more of the four groups that launched the suicide attacks.

Dr Alhazmi's name also appeared on a passenger list for a United Airlines flight due to leave San Antonio for San Diego via Denver on Saturday. Investigators believe he may have been due to meet two men who were seized in Fort Worth, Texas, last Wednesday on an Amtrak train that was bound for San Antonio.

Ayub Ali Khan, 51, and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, 47, were arrested in a routine drug search and are being held as material witnesses. They were found with box-cutters, hair dye and $20,000 in cash.

Two of the hijackers who died last week in the crash in Pennsylvania have been traced to addresses in San Antonio.
(More: The Guardian News Source)

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