u/Fast_Grass_5178

Hypothetically, I’ve always wondered about this alternate scenario. We know that at least two of the hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were already on a watch list around the time they entered the US. Which brings me to this, what if authorities had become suspicious of Mohamed Atta specifically?

Atta had multiple encounters that, in hindsight, seem alarming such as flight training, visa/travel patterns, cash payments, reports of aggressive behavior, etc. Imagine if he had been detained by local police, questioned by the FBI, denied boarding, arrested on an immigration issue, or even just pulled into a deeper investigation sometime in summer 2001.

Do you think the entire plot would have collapsed without him? Or would someone else have taken over as operational leader and the attacks still happened anyway?

I’m also curious how much Atta personally knew compared to the other hijackers. If he had been arrested and interrogated, could investigators realistically have uncovered the full plot in time? Or was the intelligence failure too fragmented at that point for one arrest to stop everything?

Interested to hear perspectives from people who are more aware of the timeline and the organization of Al-Qaeda leading up to 9/11.

Source: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/sept11/911report.pdf

9/11 Commission Report— Covers the planning of the attacks, Atta’s role, intelligence failures, and the watchlist issues involving al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi.

(Posting this as a “what if” post as it is Wednesday)

Hypothetically, I’ve always wondered about this alternate scenario. We know that at least two of the hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were already on a watch list around the time they entered the US. Which brings me to this, what if authorities had become suspicious of Mohamed Atta specifically?

Atta had multiple encounters that, in hindsight, seem alarming such as flight training, visa/travel patterns, cash payments, reports of aggressive behavior, etc. Imagine if he had been detained by local police, questioned by the FBI, denied boarding, arrested on an immigration issue, or even just pulled into a deeper investigation sometime in summer 2001.

Do you think the entire plot would have collapsed without him? Or would someone else have taken over as operational leader and the attacks still happened anyway?

I’m also curious how much Atta personally knew compared to the other hijackers. If he had been arrested and interrogated, could investigators realistically have uncovered the full plot in time? Or was the intelligence failure too fragmented at that point for one arrest to stop everything?

Interested to hear perspectives from people who are more aware of the timeline and the organization of Al-Qaeda leading up to 9/11.

Source: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/sept11/911report.pdf

9/11 Commission Report— Covers the planning of the attacks, Atta’s role, intelligence failures, and the watchlist issues involving al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi.