I just read this, it's kind of odd. It's an exchange at the 9/11 Commission hearings between Commissioner Fielding and FBI agent Fitzgerland:
MR. FIELDING: Right. Thank you.
One of the other mysteries that we keep trying to understand is some action by Mr. Atta. He obviously was very involved in the planning, and yet he did something in a plan that had to have 100 percent success that day in order for the plan to go off -- he did something that didn't many any sense to somebody looking at it. He made his job more difficult from the outside, and that is he went up the night before to Boston, and then he and I guess it was al Omari, then decided to get on a plane in Portland, and then come back that morning to Boston. And, as it turned out, he almost missed the connection. His baggage didn't even make it -- which was helpful to the subsequent investigation. Is there any evidence or any indication of why he did that kind of bootleg that he went out of his way to go to Portland to come back to Boston, and basically put his plan, or at least his participation in the plan, at risk?
MR. FITZGERALD: The FBI doesn't know specifically why Mohamed Atta traveled to Portland, Maine. There is some reporting which indicates that Atta may have traveled to Portland in order to leave a, "smaller footprint" at Logan Airport, so there would be less Middle Eastern males of all about the same age and same size arriving at Logan Airport. He also could have perceived perhaps that security may have been easier for him to get through. That's speculation. What I can't tell you regarding that is on the day Atta booked his flight for Flight 11, he also booked that flight from Portland. So he had it in his head as far back from August of 2001 that he would travel from a different location, connect in Boston, and then fly on Flight 11. A tremendous amount of investigation has taken place to try to determine if there's something that we've missed -- specifically, cell phone records were looked at to try and determine if Atta traveled outside of Portland, Maine. Did he go there to meet someone? We didn't find any evidence of that. Looking at the cell site locations, the actual tower where the signal bounced off, didn't indicate that Atta traveled outside of Portland. Many other areas inside of Portland, Maine were canvassed, to include the international ferries, the bus lines traveling to Portland, the flight manifests for all flights with service to and from Portland for roughly about the week prior to September 11th. Hospitals were canvassed, local police departments were canvassed. All with negative results. So the best indication we have of why he did what he did is from that detainee reporting indicating that he probably did so to minimize the amount of people who would be arriving at Flight 11 at one time.
MR. FIELDING: I don't mean to -- I'd like to just follow up on that for one second, and I'm mindful of the time; smaller footprint, but did he not have to go through security again at Boston anyway?
MR. FITZGERALD: He did.
MR. FIELDING: So he would have. Anybody else have any other information about that?
And there's just one follow-up that is a loose end again. In Boston, there apparently was at the Park Inn in Newton, Mass., a room that was occupied by two of the hijackers, the other two. And on September 11th, after they had gotten on the airplane, apparently, somebody went to clean that particular room and they were stopped by a man described as a Middle Eastern male, who told the housekeeper that somebody was sleeping in the room. Has there ever been any tracking down of that information?
MR. FITZGERALD: I'm not familiar with that particular reporting regarding that happening in Boston. I do know that when the information was first tracked by the Boston field office, they were unsure of whether or not anyone occupied that specific room, the room concerning Wail and Waleed al Shehri.
MR. FIELDING: Right.
MR. FITZGERALD: The previous day we were, after the fact, of course, aware that al Omari left and then traveled to Portland, Maine with Atta, but not aware of anyone's preventing either cleaning or the FBI from going into any rooms at that time. But we can certainly check on that.
MR. FIELDING: This apparently was on September 11th -- on September 11th that that occurred. And I would appreciate it. And our staff can give you what information we have.
http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing12/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-06-16.htm#twoI have a couple of observations:
(1) They have no idea why Atta and Al Omari went to Portland and neither do I;
(2) Atta booked himself and Al Omari on the wrong connecting flight; he should have taken the earlier one with American, then there would have been no trouble at Boston;
(3) Who is the Middle Eastern guy in Boston? And why don't the FBI know about him?
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