The Madness of Flight 23

Remember Flight 23?

Ed Ballinger's story highlights the critical role of airline dispatchers...
(snip)
...Kirk is adamant that Ballinger did save the passengers and crew of United Flight 23, which on Sept. 11 was about to depart from Newark, N.J., to Los Angeles. Kirk believes Flight 23 was going to be commandeered. Thanks to Ballinger's quick call, the flight crew told passengers it had a mechanical problem and immediately returned to the gate.

Later, Ballinger was told six men initially wouldn't get off the plane. Later, when they did, they disappeared into the crowd, never to return. Later, authorities checked their luggage and found copies of the Qu'ran and al-Qaida instruction sheets.

Okay, got that? When they ground the plane, six men wouldn't get off. Why would real hijackers just hang around after the other passengers got off? Wouldn't they try to escape right away? Also, why didn't the authorities arrest these guys, or at least detain them? Instead they got away. How incredibly lame.

Then "Later, authorities checked their luggage and found copies of the Qu'ran and al-Qaida instruction sheets." How conveeenient.

Does this story make ANY sense?

But another way to look at this story is that, really, the authorities had just as much information on these men as on any of the "19 hijackers" on the four crashed 9/11 flights. Why didn't the authorities have nice passport-style pictures of these men on flight 23 and track down their recent histories and presumed flight training? Why didn't they ever catch these putative Al Qaeda operatives? Why wasn't this Al Qaeda cell mentioned in the 9/1 commission report?

And were all SIX men Arab hijackers? That seems like a lot. Were some of the six Al Qaeda and some of them Special Agents that were placed on the flight as part of a hijacking drill? Were the men "allowed" to leave, rather than escaping?