Bizarre Details of the 9/11 Attacks

in this Sunday Herald Article from 9/16/01.
Like this:

Last week's attacks on the US involved at least 50 terrorists, including 19 hijackers, most of whom have distinctive tribal names from Saudi Arabia. A few others appear to be Yemeni. Among them were seven pilots, most of whom trained in Florida. At least another 50 people are wanted for questioning.

50 terrorists? Whatever happened to them? Then this:

Atta, Marawan, Waleed Alsheri, Aabdul Alomari and Walid Al Shehri all bought one-way tickets at Logan Airport. Waleed and Walid are believed to be brothers who fought together in Afghanistan. Many of the other hijackers also appear to be related. Two had employee passes, thought to come from a robbery in Italy where American Airlines staff had a pilot's uniform, passes and badges stolen.

But the airline uniforms? Weird. Another old article says Mohamed Atta had airline uniforms in his luggage that never made it on the plane. Sure sounds like some sort of planted evidence-- some sort of cheap spy trick. And this:

Flight 11 was bin Laden's blueprint hijacking. It worked like a dream. On board were Mohammad Atta, Walid Al Shehri, Aabdul Alomari, Satam Sugami and Waleed Alsheri. Piloted by John Ogonowski and Tom McGuinness, the aircraft received clearance for take-off to Los Angeles at 7.45am on Tuesday. Among the 92 passengers on board were Berry Berenson, the actress and widow of actor Anthony Perkins, and David Angell, executive producer of Frasier and former writer of Cheers. The hijackers struck at 8.10am at 10,000ft, seizing three air stewardesses and dragging one, screaming, to the end of the plane.

Atta and his team tried to break into the cockpit but the pilots had barricaded themselves in. The hijackers threatened to start killing passengers and crew unless the controls were handed over to them.

And there is more. Either this article is completely full of mistakes (Walid Al Shehri and Waleed Alsheri are really two different people?), or the story changed a lot from the first week. I suspect some of this story they may have simply made up-- like the description of the hijacking. It is completely different from any other description of the hijackings I've seen. It also begs the question-- if this barricading of the pilots really happened, why didn't the pilots alert Air Traffic Control of a hijacking? But no 9/11 pilot alerted ATC of a hijacking.

And many of the hijackers bought one-way tickets at the last minute? Moreover, they only checked out of their hotel in Portland at 5:33am to catch a 5:45am flight-- which they only barely caught. This hardly sounds like the hijackings were well planned and the work of mastermind criminals.

Oh yeah, this article also says Atta bought a GPS device, and set the coordinates by visiting the WTC before the attacks, to help him steer the plane to the WTC. This certainly SOUNDS good, but how realistic is it to use a portable GPS device on a plane? They don't know how to use the plane's navigation system but they can program and use a portable GPS system?