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THREE OF THE
alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers licenses and car
registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.—known as the
“Cradle of U.S. Navy Aviation,” according to a high-ranking U.S. Navy
source.
Another of the alleged hijackers
may have been trained in strategy and tactics at the Air War College in
Montgomery, Ala., said another high-ranking Pentagon official. The fifth
man may have received language instruction at Lackland Air Force Base in
San Antonio, Tex. Both were former Saudi Air Force pilots who had come to
the United States, according to the Pentagon source.
But there are slight discrepancies between the military
training records and the official FBI list of suspected hijackers—either
in the spellings of their names or with their birthdates. One military
source said it is possible that the hijackers may have stolen the
identities of the foreign nationals who studied at the U.S.
installations. |
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The five men were on a list of 19 people identified as hijackers by
the FBI on Friday. The three foreign nationals training in Pensacola
appear to be Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmad Alnami, who were among the four men
who allegedly commandeered United Airlines Flight 93. That flight crashed
into rural Pennsylvania. The third man who may have trained in Pensacola,
Ahmed Alghamdi, allegedly helped highjack United Airlines Flight 75, which
hit the south tower of the World Trade Center. |
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 Military records show that the
three used as their address 10 Radford Boulevard, a base roadway on which
residences for foreign-military flight trainees are located. In March
1997, Saeed Alghamdi listed the address to register a 1998 Oldsmobile;
five months later he used it again to register a second vehicle, a late
model Buick. Drivers licenses thought to have been issued to the other two
suspects in 1996 and 1998 list the barracks as their residences.
NEWSWEEK visited the base early Saturday morning,
where military police confirmed that the address housed foreign military
flight trainees but denied access past front barricades. Officials at the
base confirmed that the FBI is investigating the three students.
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It is not unusual for foreign
nationals to train at U.S. military facilities. A former Navy pilot told
NEWSWEEK that during his years on the base, “we always, always, always
trained other countries’ pilots. When I was there two decades ago, it was
Iranians. The shah was in power. Whoever the country du jour is,
that’s whose pilots we train.”
Candidates
begin with “an officer’s equivalent of boot camp,” he said. “Then they
would put them through flight training.” The U.S. has a long-standing
agreement with Saudi Arabia—a key ally in the 1990-91 gulf war—to train
pilots for its National Guard. Candidates are trained in air combat on
several Army and Navy bases. Training is paid for by Saudi Arabia.
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© 2001 Newsweek,
Inc.
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