Help me out here: living / dead hijackers

[Recursion]

OK, I do enjoy the dungeon but the closest I come to any *HOP theory is being a FLOP proponent.

But I'm also an avid wiki'er and I've been trying to harmonize all the different wiki articles on the hijackers, and I can't figure out which ones we believe we have the right identity for. Please play along with me for a thread and assume that 19 persons of southwest asian descent in fact hijacked 4 separate airplanes which then crashed in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

This Telegraph article lists al-Ghamdi, al-Omari, al-Nami, and al-Hamzi. As far as google can tell me it is not retracted, though the Telegraph does in later articles give his bio as a (dead) hijacker.

BBC also lists al-Shehri as a mis-identified hijacker (again, I can't find a retraction anywhere). And I have seen several references to FBI claims that the identities of some hijackers (presumably, these 5) are in doubt.

Now, my chief aim here is not speculation but documentation; I'm just trying to get the wiki account of official statements to accurately reflect what the official statements are. Is there, anywhere, an official accounting of which identities the FBI (or whoever) feels they are solid on and which ones they are not? Did BBC and Telegraph retract these claims anywhere? Is there a persuasive argument for "later mistaken identity" (eg, a man named Saeed al-Ghamdi is still alive, but is not the Saeed al-Ghamdi who participated in the attack)? Again, I'm not so much seeking "the Truth" here; I just can't even find what "the Spin" is because I don't see a unified list of who we do actually think was or was not on the plane that addresses any of these claims.

Any help is appreciated...

[mirandapriestly]

1. I would like to know the same thing

my understanding is: a few guys with the same name and same identity came forward and were upset they were accused of being 911 suicide hijackers. Then there was no mainstream news follow up on the specific individuals who had come forward, but there was an explanation that these guys had had their ID stolen by the "real" hijackers and were being misidentified. Lots of confusion, as with most 911 stuff. I would like to see those people come forward and say they are satisfied that it was not them who was being called a hijacker, then I will believe that it's been "settled"
There are a couple posters here who have encyclopedic hijacker knowledge that will show up so I'll keep this kicked.
I came across a story about a "terrorist" prior to 911 that was linked to the 93 bombing who had gone through customs with "a suitcase filled with other people's identification", now I am trying to find it again, because if that person was a "double agent" type (which some involved in 7-7 were and I suspect some from 911 were) then he got the id from intelligence agencies, if he was a "terrorist" then multiple IDs are something that terrorists have. So I'm looking for it...

Sorry to be no help whatsoever.

[Jazz2006]

2. Those stories you cite are 5 years old.

And were obviously written shortly after the events of September 11/01 (less than 2 weeks after the attacks, it appears)

Much investigation and research has occurred since then. Lots of it.

You can even find some of it here on these very forums. Use the search function, read a bit, and whatever you do, don't start thinking that investigation and evidence stopped after September 22, 2001 or whatever the date was on the old stories you posted. Better than that, go look at the in depth research that has been done outside of this forum by professionals in their fields (no, not the fake professionals like the self proclaimed "scholars" but even that is good for comparison to reality.

I'm assuming you're a progessive since you're here at DU, so you should be smart enough not to think that a vague five year old news story written shortly after cataclysmic events should be conclusive or even accurate, but maybe that's just me.

Let me put it this way: would you be equally willing to ignore and discount all of the investigation into election fraud that occurred less than two weeks after election date 2000 and instead just accept what you were told in the first 10 days and never question it?

[Recursion]

3. No, but I've found that media outlets with web archives...

...often retract stories that they find to be in error.

Google finds 14 references to Saeed al-Ghamdi on the site telegraph.co.uk (some of the listings seem to be dupes of the same article):

One on 9/14 calling him a dead hijacker
Five on 9/15 calling him a dead hijacker
One on 9/17 calling him a dead hijacker
One on 9/20 calling him a living victim of identity theft
Two on 9/23 calling him a living victim of identity theft
Four on 10/21 calling him a dead hijacker (these four are all the same article)

So, yes, you're right: all of the Telegraph's reporting on Saeed al-Ghamdi was done about 5 years ago. I'd like to know what their position of record is currently on the question.

Love the attitude, btw :)

[Ferry Fey]

4. Try Team8plus for info on alleged hijackers

Team8plus has indepth research on each of the alleged hijackers, including information that may suggest that identities were shared by more than one person.

http://www.team8plus.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewforum.php?23

[Generarth]

5. Waleed al-Shehri is the son of a Saudi Ambassador

There was an article in the Boston Globe about the two al-Shehris;

http://www.boston.com/news/packages/underattack/globe_stories/0915/Hijackers_may_have_taken_Saudi_identities+.shtml

And a Saudi newspaper editor yesterday said two of the hijackers, brothers Waleed and Wail al Shehri, were the sons of a Saudi diplomat, Ahmed al-Shehri.

Reached by the Globe in New Delhi, where he is third secretary of the Saudi embassy, Ahmed al-Shehri equivocated when asked if the two hijackers were his sons.

''I have no idea. Maybe,'' said al-Shehri, who worked as an attache at the Saudi embassy in Washington until 1996. ''How do I know? We have a half-million Shehris in Saudi Arabia.''

Waleed definitely is a son - his address history brings up 10530 Mereworth Lane in Fairfax, which was one of his father's (Ahmed Al-Shehri) addresses while he was at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

Owners of 10530 Mereworth Lane
01/03/2002 $425,000 CHI DONG Y
12/02/1999 $342,000 SIM THIAM S
09/17/1991 $348,770 SCHENKEL CHRYSTEEN G

edit - added quote from Globe.

[Brainster]

6. Good Article in Der Spiegel

Here's a pretty convincing debunking of the "they're alive" story:

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,265160-2,00.html

But there is one wrinkle. The BBC journalist responsible for the story only recalls this supposed sensation after having been told the date on which the story aired. "No, we did not have any videotape or photographs of the individuals in question at that time," he says, and tells us that the report was based on articles in Arab newspapers, such as the Arab News, an English-language Saudi newspaper.

The operator at the call center has the number for the Arab News on speed dial. We make a call to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. A few seconds later, Managing Editor John Bradley is on the line. When we tell Bradley our story, he snorts and says: "That's ridiculous! People here stopped talking about that a long time ago."

Bradley tells us that at the time his reporters did not speak directly with the so-called "survivors," but instead combined reports from other Arab papers. These reports, says Bradley, appeared at a time when the only public information about the attackers was a list of names that had been published by the FBI on September 14th. The FBI did not release photographs until four days after the cited reports, on September 27th.

The photographs quickly resolved the nonsense about surviving terrorists. According to Bradley, "all of this is attributable to the chaos that prevailed during the first few days following the attack. What we're dealing with are coincidentally identical names." In Saudi Arabia, says Bradley, the names of two of the allegedly surviving attackers, Said al-Ghamdi and Walid al-Shari, are "as common as John Smith in the United States or Great Britain."

[Recursion]

7. Yes, thanks, I had seen that

Though I don't know if it debunks Telegraph's report any more than Telegraph debunks the claim that they were on the planes. Saeed al-Ghamdi is a very common name, sure; I was looking for some indication that the FBI feels confident that
(and in the next two sections, let "Saeed al-Ghamdi" stand for any of the five names in question)
A) Someone actually named Saeed al-Ghamdi was on the plane
B) Of the legion Saeed al-Ghamdi's out there, they know which one it is
C) And that, in general, the identities of the hijackers are now established (the last statement I've seen from the FBI, admittedly from 2002, suggests that at that point they did not have full confidence in that)

Furthermore, I am now curious if the Telegraph and/or the BBC still maintain any of these propositions:
A) Their sources spoke to a man actually named Saeed al-Ghamdi
B) In mid-September 2001, the FBI thought that the Saeed al-Ghamdi on the plane was the Saeed al-Ghamdi their sources spoke to (if such a person exists)
C) The FBI still thinks that the Saeed al-Ghamdi who was on the plane was the Saeed al-Ghamdi their sources spoke to.

But then again I guess expecting a correction from a media outlet today is probably hopelessly naive :)

[wildbilln864]

8. interesting...

..!

[John Q. Citizen]

9. The Der Spiegel article is

good, if you like journalists who quote Daniel Pipes, the famous Neo-con, on his take about conspiracy theories.

Personally, I thought the article was an opinion piece, not serious journalism.

For instance, the author apparently hasn't read the House Committees investigation on Assassination's report. He is still under the impression that Oswald acted alone.

He claims that operation North Woods was a "failed conspiracy," not that it was being seriously considered and vigerously pushed all the way up the chain of command until Kennedy refused to sign off on it.

I could go on, but you should get my point by now.

As to whether the FBI, the CIA, etc have an actual finalized list of hijacker identities or not, I'm not sure.

[Recursion]

10. And I just want to clarify...

...I'm not trying to find out "the Truth" here; I just can't seem to get a handle on what the FBI actually publicly says it knows about the people that hijacked the planes.