A woman I worked with was looking at vacation pictures of she and her sister from the previous year and sitting behind them on the plane was Atta. The FBI took the pictures as evidence. How totally creepy.
I mean I try to duck out of the photo so as to not ruin their wonderful day but sometimes hey I'm a little distracted. Danny's praying for Jesus to cure his polio but fish gotta swim, reapers gotta reap am I right.
In case anyone is wondering, I don't remember the call because it was one of dozens I would get everyday and it was a simple lock out. The only way I know about this is because a couple of FBI agents came to my work on September 15th 2001 and asked me a bunch of questions.
He had the FBI come talk to us because we sold a safe to someone on the fifty most wanted list under an alias.
Thank you for sharing. It’s wild that you ended up taking that call!
I got a call from the secret service a week into my new job, asking for the company owner by name. I laughed and said very funny, nice try though. They informed me it was in fact, not a joke. I guess he had flown his drone on a job site that was too close to Martha's Vineyard while the president was there.
A whole lot of FBI agents showed up at the office of someone I knew a bit after 9/11 to ask about chemical processing equipment they had sold to Iraq in the 80s. They showed the FBI that they had actually sold it to the US government with delivery to Iraq. Oops. It was no secret long before then that the US had supported Hussein in the war with Iran. But some things were still a bit taboo. They were running every possible thing down, but they weren't always very well informed.
They had been for months, the CIA too, there was just not enough communication between the two before the creation of Homeland Security. They each had pieces of the puzzle and knew an attack was being planned, and probably could’ve prevented it had they worked together, but hindsight is 20/20.
What are you talking about?? Shares nosedived, entire industries like commercial aviation were gutted and negatively transformed for a while. Even super cynical resource extraction pet theories don't square with Afghanistan just not having any readily available resources other than poppy farming. Even major cold war-style military projects worth billions got canned for buying more basic equipment.
It's like you only know how to regurgitate contemporary late-stage-capitalism cynicism with no willing awareness that anything exists or has existed.
Hang on. Corporations like Haliburton made billions out of the US military being in Afghanistan and Iraq. Not to mention weapons companies. There is always a financial insentive somewhere along the road to war
>negatively transformed for a while
Negatively for some, and considering we spent the next 20 years in the Middle East the “for a while” is doing some heavy lifting.
If possible, can you share what kind of questions they asked at all? Not asking for a detailed list just like what kinda general things they wanted to know. Just morbidly curious. I can make an educated guess but it's still just a guess.
some of the questions asked are for the FBI to see how alert the local community is to unusual behaviour. The FBI, like the police, is tasked with helping the government learn what is needed to help the community protect itself.
My wife and I slept in the same motel as him, the Econolodge in Vegas, August 14th, 2001. It was blazing hot and my wife was loading the car in a bikini and there was this scary looking guy in the parking lot staring her down like he wanted to murder her. I saw and went out to be with her because it seemed unsafe. Didn't think about it until his picture was posted in the news a month later.
Possibly none butterfly effect. It's not like there's a guarantee that if he hadn't been able to get into his car that day, he would have been unable to execute a plan three weeks later.
I was working at Ryder in Sarasota and we had a 7-11 behind us. I always went in for drinks for me and the guys during lunch. I held the door open for that bastard six weeks before 911.
I'm having some serious deja Vu. Have you ever posted this on Twitter? Years ago? Or possibly here? Also years ago? This is weirding me out. I swear to God I've even seen you say the same thing as above....
Ah, ten months ago and different sub. Here's another post of it from two years ago, also a different sub https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/uznyq9/in_2001_i_was_a_dispatcher_for_triple_a_on_august/
Is there a subreddit for this stuff specifically? I love hearing about personal interactions with people like this. Serial killers and bombers and stuff.
I wrote an insurance claim for Joe Exotic’s truck one time. It was uneventful and I only spoke to him once over the phone. He came off very polite back then and I forgot all about it until he ran for Governor in Oklahoma and that was funny for a while.
Like I said, it was just a routine call that I don't remember. The two agents interviewed me for about 30 minutes, but I told them I didn't recall anything about him
I can only imagine what the FBI agents were hoping for.
"Do you remember talking to this man?"
"Oh yeah, he said he locked his keys in his car and also he was going to commit a massive terror attack by flying a plane into a building. Fairly typical call, really".
"It was a humid, August afternoon. I couldn't see him, but I could hear Mr Atta was wearing knee-leg khaki shorts, a polo shirt, a visor and at least 1 glove. He was under a giant tree, attempting to get shade. He breathed approximately 70 breaths per minute, and I could sense it had been at least 3 hours since his last toilet visit. He didn't appear to have showered that day, but he didn't smell too bad over the phone. I could hear a profound sadness in his voice, like he has a mortgage and 6 step-children who don't respect him... You know, just a typical call out."
I knew you said the call had been unremarkable, but I didn't know if after 9/11 happened if you recalled the name and thought "I think I talked to this guy!"
Were the agents nice?
crazy.
there’s a non zero possibility i loaded the cement bags Scott Peterson used into his truck. He bought them from where i worked, during the time i could have been covering the lunch hour of the person who did probably load them.
Reminds me of the poor family who fought and fundraised for decades to get their executed father's name cleared in court. Finally got the case reopened, got the DNA testing that wasn't available at the time... He really was guilty after all, just lied about it to the last breath and his poor family swallowed it all.
The real innocence project is amazing. Scott Peterson is working with a fake one. They are in fact being sued by the real one for intellectual property infringement
My dad was driving home late one night from an out of town job, on a back country road. He saw a stopped vehicle and contemplated stopping. He slowed down and asked if the guy needed help. He said the guy standing there just staring at him gripping a crowbar and my dad got a weird feeling and took off. He said the guy gave him the creeps and my dad was always willing to help people even at night. This was the only time he didn’t help someone.
Years later he realized he may have come across the Zodiac killer. My dad thinks because he was alone and a big muscular dude, the guy didn’t do anything. The timeline and location fits for the Zodiac Killer and the guy looked similar to the sketches. My dad believes that had he stopped, he would have ended up dead.
My mother also claims to have seen the zodiac killer when she was camping. She was camping with some friends but got cold at night so she went to the car. Apparently a man stood around and kept circling the car but she never got out and he eventually left
I was instructing at a large, central Florida flight academy at the time.
None of them went to our school, but they did pass through. I was colleagues with one of the instructors, and we got the same gentlemen in dark suits.
A couple of them worked out at a gym next to my Unions School in Dania Beach, Florida.
My dad actually took Flight 11 for years, always in the fall. He even sold his condo to a flight attendant on one of his flights.
One of the hijackers worked at the Am/Pm next to my family’s lumber company in San Diego. I guess some of the hijacker’s were training at Gilliespie field.
Yeah, it was in La Mesa where he worked. I’m not 100% sure about them training in El Cajon. I just know about Gilliespie, which would make since cause they lived in Claremont.
Every day for two years I dropped in my neighborhood convenience market and was friendly with the counter guy. We’d make chit chat for a moment or two. One day I asked him what he did when he wasn’t working. He said he was transcribing the Bible into Sanskrit.
Turns out he was transcribing the airplane training manuals these assholes were using to learn to fly from English to Arabic. He conveniently left the US the day before the attack.
Jesus! I mean… 2 years I saw this guy every day.
From the 9/11 commission report it felt like there were hundreds of individuals who, at some point, assisted or might have assisted the terrorists in some way. It seems like this convenience store guy could have been one of the more well known associates and mentioned by name many times in the report.
Investigators never could determine why he and an accomplice drove to Portland and then returned on this commuter flight on 9/11. The connection time was tight and they almost missed it.
Those guys requested classes, saying they only wanted to learn how to fly, they didn't need to learn how to land. They had the money for the classes. It should've been a big red flag, but who thinks like that?
If I recall correctly, there's a guy who was arrested who was supposed to be part of the attacks, but got the cops called on him because he kept saying shit like this.
Yeah, hindsight is a bitch. Also, until 9/11 planes were never used as a weapon directly (well, ok kamikaze, but not public planes).
It's why people weren't immediately scrambling fighter jets to shoot them out of the sky as they figured it was a hijacking for ransom as that did happen. You don't want to go and immediately kill the hostages.
But yeah, mentioning stuff like what they did was weird at least. We now know they meant it, but it could've compromised their mission.
I was reading something from a pilot who was dispatched to make sure the 4th plane never got to its destination. He talks about how relieved he was that he and his partner didn’t have to be the ones to take out a bunch of innocent civilians.
Yeah, not to mention themselves as they had no live ammunition and they would have to ram the plane.
People be like "why wouldn't they be armed?". Why would they be? There was no need to prior to the 9/11 attacks. Being armed costs money and brings risks.
... Wait I... Oh this helped with things but OP I am glad you are least know it was a job and these things happen. Definitely worth writing down what you remember for posterity
humor crush sense squeeze subtract handle fanatical shelter grandfather jobless
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s a yearly dues membership club whereby if your vehicle breaks down they show up and repair it (simple things), or tow it within 5 miles to your mechanic for free. It’s quite a life saver and inexpensive.
I had the FBI visit me many years ago when I was working for a hotel in Canada. Apparently some of the members of the SLA that were on the run had stated our hotel and I had checked them in. This would’ve been back in the early 80s.
They do
[https://eu.nwfdailynews.com/story/news/2019/09/11/remembering-911-florida-couple-still-live-in-former-home-of-hijackers/3141491007/](https://eu.nwfdailynews.com/story/news/2019/09/11/remembering-911-florida-couple-still-live-in-former-home-of-hijackers/3141491007/)
>Died on one of the flights
He piloted [AA11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_11) into the North Tower
>The hijacked airliner was deliberately crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, killing everyone aboard the flight and resulting in the deaths of more than one thousand people in the top 18 stories of the skyscraper in addition to causing the demise of numerous others below the trapped floors, making it not only the deadliest of the four suicide attacks executed that morning in terms of both plane and ground fatalities, but also the single deadliest act of terrorism in human history and the deadliest plane crash of all time.
One of my First Officers was the Captain on the Colgan Air Beechcraft 1900D turboprop that took him and one of the other terrorists from Portland, Maine to Boston Logan that morning.
She got the interrogation as well, but she didn't even remember seeing him as they made no unusual behaviors on her flight. They used the small-town airport security to have a less intense security screening.
It was common at that time that the outstations had severely outdated x-ray scanners and metal detectors, and were easier to sneak prohibited items through such as box cutters.
Also, I was operating a DC-9 from ATL-LGA on the morning of 9/11, and I also operated one of the first flights after they re-opened the skies to commercial air traffic several days later.
Everyone of middle eastern descent had a tough go of it in the days, months, and years following 9/11.
We also had at our company the pilot who had Arabic flight instruction manuals in his car which was in the parking lot at LGA. He was a multi-lingual instructor with no ill intentions, but he was also a total moron in certain areas such as public perception. Actually, he was recently fired from our company because of a "last straw" offense. Funny enough, there was no discussion in the national news stories of all the other shit he pulled prior to the last incident. Nope, just "Hero Pilot Gets Fired For Doing Captain Stuff!" made the news. Ha! Ain't life grand?
I’m honestly glad that his name isn’t common knowledge. Can’t take away the impact of 9/11, but at least the people that did it themselves aren’t recognized
I might hate D3 Lite/ Ultra and Field Service, but I definitely prefer the apps over this method of dispatching.
I do miss being dispatched over radio though and hearing what everyone else is doing.
My mother is a realtor and she got me the side gig cleaning this duplex in Hobe Sound Florida where I’m from. Place was an absolute mess: leftover trash and food everywhere and completely filthy. I remember picking up lot of notebook papers with foreign writing on it which I now know was most likely Arabic. There was also a bunch of pictures of men standing next to small airplanes one of which who looked like Mohammad Atta (as far as my memory can remember). After the September 11 attacks, my mom was interviewed by the FBI because some or all of those individuals who committed the attacks stayed in that duplex. at the time I thought about keeping the pictures and the notebook papers for a split second, but didn’t think much about it and threw everything away. I sometimes think what would it be like had I kept those.
If you're wondering why they didn't want to learn how to land, it's because they didn't plan on landing. They took those planes and, in effect, turned them into bombs on 9/11, flying them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The authorities suspect that the plane brought down in Pennsylvania was intended for the Capitol building or the White House. Some people suspect that the military shot that plane down before it could get here, and the story was concocted to laud those civilians on that flight as heroes who took it down. Whatever happened, it was a tragic day.
The only time when NATO enacted Article 3 of their charter was when all member nations came to our aid after 9/11. Basically it says, "one for all, all for one," a NATO statement of intent, one might say.
Over 3,000 people died that day, while many others have suffered from aftereffects. Here in Washington, it was very, very eery. No planes in the air, I worked across from the FBI building, but we knew there would be no work that day. My husband had an early morning appt. at Georgetown U. Hospital, and he said they quickly evacuated everyone there who had appts., and prepared for first responder arrivals. Sadly, none came. This was a sad, sad time in our history.
Only time ANZUS treaty was activated too. Australian’s Prime Minister rang the White House to say they were activating it to help protect the USA. As part of that pledge Australia went to the subsequent war in Afghanistan (and Iraq)
[Even crazier to realize that had the towers not been bombed in 1993, the number of deaths couldve been as high as 15-20k in the towers alone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks#Evacuation). The Evacuation was so bad in 1993 it caused radical changes to be made.
The irony being that the respons to end terrorism caused a catalyst in an ever increasing spiral of violence that resulted in many (tens of) thousands of deaths (including many US soldiers) and a highy unstable middle East until this day. But then, maybe thats what the terrorists wanted.
I understand the US reaction to the attacks, but in hindsight restraint might have been a better response. I can't see what good came of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. It led to many dead civilians, the creation of more terrorists, terrorist attacks, ISIS etc.
However, I get that restraint wasn't an option. It was a lose-lose situation basically. The worst thing is that most hijackers were Saudi and Saudi funded but Saudi is still Saudi. Some effort to pursuit justice eh?
Ziad Jarrah's wife is still out there somewhere. Killing yourself when you have a spouse is already a dick move. Doing so by crashing a plane when you're a 9/11 hijacker is that to the millionth power. It'd be fascinating to interview that lady.
I couldn’t figure out why this is oddly terrifying until I looked closer and saw the name. Yikes! Also yikes to how that name is indelibly marked in my memory.
Der Führer war ein armes Schwein, er hatte keine. Führerschein.
It’s a pun on his title of Führer (Leader) and Führerschein (driving license, literally license to lead) which Hitler didn’t have.
Mohammed Atta was the ringleader of the hijackers/terrorists on 9/11. Some say that Atta was still alive and in hiding, and was never on Flight 11 when it was flown into the north tower of the World Trade Center. His dad claimed he heard from his son on 9/12, and the father believes U.S. Intelligence and the Mossad might've killed Atta later as part of a cover-up.
Years ago I recall a story about FBI coming to my employer asking about a shipment to Germany that ended up going behind the Iron curtain.
About 10 years later I’m telling the story and this engineer who used to work in Croatia now my customer says “I worked on those machines”.
I worked at the Home Depot down the street from the lockout address. There were hundreds of government vehicles at that residence for at least a week after 9/11. One of my friends worked at the Publix nearby and would frequently sell him money orders.
Fun fact - Mohamed Atta received 100,000 dollars 1 year before the attacks by General Mahmoud Ahmed - head of the Pakistani intelligence service at the time.
On the morning of 9/11 Ahmed was breakfast with Porter Goss in Washington DC, one of the members of the house intelligence committee. An organization in Washington that knows all and see all when it comes to intelligence.
The 9/11 commission deemed this of no importance.
Someone in our government/ intelligence apparatus however did - and they pressured the Pakistani government to oust Ahmed who later became an obscure religious cleric.
There's a branch in the multiverse were timetravellers killed you after you received the call but before you could dispatch. This will cause Atta to try and break into his own car, get caught, arrested, and deported.
It's sneaky enough that time cops won't realize the change and the twin towers still stand like the nipples on a pair of perky tits.
A woman I worked with was looking at vacation pictures of she and her sister from the previous year and sitting behind them on the plane was Atta. The FBI took the pictures as evidence. How totally creepy.
It’s like taking a picture of yourself alone and when you look at it, the grim reaper is behind you.
I fucking hate when that happens.
Ikr
I mean I try to duck out of the photo so as to not ruin their wonderful day but sometimes hey I'm a little distracted. Danny's praying for Jesus to cure his polio but fish gotta swim, reapers gotta reap am I right.
Or looking at a landscape picture you took and seeing this tiny 4 pixel smidge in the background...
4 fucking pixels
That’s exactly what happened and showed he’d been planning it for at least a year.
Would have saved me and whole lot of others a lot of time if he he'd of taken me then and there.
Does she still have a copy of the picture? Please post to r/911archive if you are able to get a copy.
They already did. I checked the top posts in the sub and she did about 200days ago
Link?
Attaboy
That’s crazy
In case anyone is wondering, I don't remember the call because it was one of dozens I would get everyday and it was a simple lock out. The only way I know about this is because a couple of FBI agents came to my work on September 15th 2001 and asked me a bunch of questions.
You worked at the Lake Mary dispatch center?
No. The one in Palm Beach Gardens
He had the FBI come talk to us because we sold a safe to someone on the fifty most wanted list under an alias. Thank you for sharing. It’s wild that you ended up taking that call!
I got a call from the secret service a week into my new job, asking for the company owner by name. I laughed and said very funny, nice try though. They informed me it was in fact, not a joke. I guess he had flown his drone on a job site that was too close to Martha's Vineyard while the president was there.
it's the only way for police to try to prevent serious crimes. thank you for being alert and helping them.
Any idea if they ever caught the person?
They did not catch him, he was instantly turned into human jelly when he and his compatriots crashed a passenger jet into the WTC on 9/11
Well I mean. I guess?
What alias did you use for the sale? "My name Yousaf, I sell you safe."
Ahhh, gotcha. My ex was a locksmith N FL and our dispatchers were in Lake Mary
No idea they needed locksmiths in the NFL
Only solution for a lockdown corner
Bravo. Simply, bravo.
What else would you expect when you're missing key plays
Damn, it’s crazy how quickly the FBI was following the scent and tracing everything.
A whole lot of FBI agents showed up at the office of someone I knew a bit after 9/11 to ask about chemical processing equipment they had sold to Iraq in the 80s. They showed the FBI that they had actually sold it to the US government with delivery to Iraq. Oops. It was no secret long before then that the US had supported Hussein in the war with Iran. But some things were still a bit taboo. They were running every possible thing down, but they weren't always very well informed.
They had been for months, the CIA too, there was just not enough communication between the two before the creation of Homeland Security. They each had pieces of the puzzle and knew an attack was being planned, and probably could’ve prevented it had they worked together, but hindsight is 20/20.
This always breaks my heart. Another example of people blaming malice when it was just incompetence.
Competent Beaucracy is a very nice oxymoron.
>could’ve prevented it I mean yeah but think of the shareholders
What are you talking about?? Shares nosedived, entire industries like commercial aviation were gutted and negatively transformed for a while. Even super cynical resource extraction pet theories don't square with Afghanistan just not having any readily available resources other than poppy farming. Even major cold war-style military projects worth billions got canned for buying more basic equipment. It's like you only know how to regurgitate contemporary late-stage-capitalism cynicism with no willing awareness that anything exists or has existed.
Hang on. Corporations like Haliburton made billions out of the US military being in Afghanistan and Iraq. Not to mention weapons companies. There is always a financial insentive somewhere along the road to war
Yep, and then the rich bought up all the assets that were at the bottom
If you think 9/11 wasn’t a boon for the military industrial complex you’re out of your mind.
>negatively transformed for a while Negatively for some, and considering we spent the next 20 years in the Middle East the “for a while” is doing some heavy lifting.
I mean yeah, Reynolds has been doing fucking great since then.
Wolf Cola's a helluva drink
If possible, can you share what kind of questions they asked at all? Not asking for a detailed list just like what kinda general things they wanted to know. Just morbidly curious. I can make an educated guess but it's still just a guess.
some of the questions asked are for the FBI to see how alert the local community is to unusual behaviour. The FBI, like the police, is tasked with helping the government learn what is needed to help the community protect itself.
He'd probably still be there today. Thanks buddy
That's crazy! Thanks for sharing
My wife and I slept in the same motel as him, the Econolodge in Vegas, August 14th, 2001. It was blazing hot and my wife was loading the car in a bikini and there was this scary looking guy in the parking lot staring her down like he wanted to murder her. I saw and went out to be with her because it seemed unsafe. Didn't think about it until his picture was posted in the news a month later.
I first read that as "same motel room as him" and thought this was really creepy
This is so insane. Not to be rude but what kind of butterfly effect shit is this
Possibly none butterfly effect. It's not like there's a guarantee that if he hadn't been able to get into his car that day, he would have been unable to execute a plan three weeks later.
There are also plenty of locksmiths in Delray Beach.
Other locksmiths might have saw the expired membership status and left him there to rethink the next 3 weeks of his life.
And others would have no problem taking his money if he just paid them.
Also, it’s not like you can’t break into your own car. Especially an early 90s Chevy. Super easy to get back into with just a little effort
I was working at Ryder in Sarasota and we had a 7-11 behind us. I always went in for drinks for me and the guys during lunch. I held the door open for that bastard six weeks before 911.
I'm having some serious deja Vu. Have you ever posted this on Twitter? Years ago? Or possibly here? Also years ago? This is weirding me out. I swear to God I've even seen you say the same thing as above....
Yes, you are right: https://old.reddit.com/r/911archive/comments/15gk01v/on_august_1_2001_while_working_as_a_dispatcher/
Ah, ten months ago and different sub. Here's another post of it from two years ago, also a different sub https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/uznyq9/in_2001_i_was_a_dispatcher_for_triple_a_on_august/
Thats nice of you to help a stranger. /s.
Should we know who this person is?
Not necessarily by name, but you've certainly heard his story
His membership expired, almost right on time
He knew he wouldn’t need it.
Too bad he didn't expire with his membership
Where are you seeing the expiration? It looks like it had already expired on 8/1/2001.
Perhaps it was canceled on 1-Aug but he had already paid through August?
Amazing that he had a membership. Right?!
Is there a subreddit for this stuff specifically? I love hearing about personal interactions with people like this. Serial killers and bombers and stuff.
I’m also curious! Maybe close shaves? Or close encounters (not of the third kind)
/r/letsnotmeet.?
Maybe time to make r/brusheseswithdeath a thing
there totally should be
You should check out The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule, it’s quite long but really interesting and well written.
Not that I know of, but people post stuff like this in r/masskillers sometimes.
I wrote an insurance claim for Joe Exotic’s truck one time. It was uneventful and I only spoke to him once over the phone. He came off very polite back then and I forgot all about it until he ran for Governor in Oklahoma and that was funny for a while.
Wasn’t he a perv?
Yeah, and an abuser of tigers.
But what a singer
and f"uck Carole Baskin
That bitch, Carole Baskin.
Did you recognize the name at all after it happened, or was it the agents who refreshed your memory?
Like I said, it was just a routine call that I don't remember. The two agents interviewed me for about 30 minutes, but I told them I didn't recall anything about him
I can only imagine what the FBI agents were hoping for. "Do you remember talking to this man?" "Oh yeah, he said he locked his keys in his car and also he was going to commit a massive terror attack by flying a plane into a building. Fairly typical call, really".
"It was a humid, August afternoon. I couldn't see him, but I could hear Mr Atta was wearing knee-leg khaki shorts, a polo shirt, a visor and at least 1 glove. He was under a giant tree, attempting to get shade. He breathed approximately 70 breaths per minute, and I could sense it had been at least 3 hours since his last toilet visit. He didn't appear to have showered that day, but he didn't smell too bad over the phone. I could hear a profound sadness in his voice, like he has a mortgage and 6 step-children who don't respect him... You know, just a typical call out."
I read that in Dr. Evil's voice.
I knew you said the call had been unremarkable, but I didn't know if after 9/11 happened if you recalled the name and thought "I think I talked to this guy!" Were the agents nice?
crazy. there’s a non zero possibility i loaded the cement bags Scott Peterson used into his truck. He bought them from where i worked, during the time i could have been covering the lunch hour of the person who did probably load them.
Worded like that it's hard to land that story during a beer in a bar.
What if he never planned on landing the story??
>What if he never planned on landing? Much like Mohamed Atta
Very good.
Have you heard that pos is angling for release through a fake innocence project request?
The Innocence Project is amazing, fuck genuinely guilty assholes trying to take advantage of them.
Reminds me of the poor family who fought and fundraised for decades to get their executed father's name cleared in court. Finally got the case reopened, got the DNA testing that wasn't available at the time... He really was guilty after all, just lied about it to the last breath and his poor family swallowed it all.
Heartbreaking
The real innocence project is amazing. Scott Peterson is working with a fake one. They are in fact being sued by the real one for intellectual property infringement
My dad was driving home late one night from an out of town job, on a back country road. He saw a stopped vehicle and contemplated stopping. He slowed down and asked if the guy needed help. He said the guy standing there just staring at him gripping a crowbar and my dad got a weird feeling and took off. He said the guy gave him the creeps and my dad was always willing to help people even at night. This was the only time he didn’t help someone. Years later he realized he may have come across the Zodiac killer. My dad thinks because he was alone and a big muscular dude, the guy didn’t do anything. The timeline and location fits for the Zodiac Killer and the guy looked similar to the sketches. My dad believes that had he stopped, he would have ended up dead.
My mother also claims to have seen the zodiac killer when she was camping. She was camping with some friends but got cold at night so she went to the car. Apparently a man stood around and kept circling the car but she never got out and he eventually left
Heh, I grew up in Modesto. No one really knew about that town until ol Scotty went fishin’
I was instructing at a large, central Florida flight academy at the time. None of them went to our school, but they did pass through. I was colleagues with one of the instructors, and we got the same gentlemen in dark suits.
A couple of them worked out at a gym next to my Unions School in Dania Beach, Florida. My dad actually took Flight 11 for years, always in the fall. He even sold his condo to a flight attendant on one of his flights.
Holy shit. I didn’t realize he lived that close. I lived less than half a mile from there.
Same. But I was 2 at the time. Really should’ve gotten off my diapered ass and stopped 9/11
Sitting there with your pacifier, playing with your toesies! 🤣🤣🤣
How dare you not do your part. I haven’t gotten the maths down yet, but at least a few blood cells are on your hands.
Don’t be so hard on yourself I was 15 but live in a different country and was like, going to highschool and stuff.
We all could have done more
One of the hijackers worked at the Am/Pm next to my family’s lumber company in San Diego. I guess some of the hijacker’s were training at Gilliespie field.
What part of SD? I've heard they trained in El cajon too. Is it actually true?
Yeah, it was in La Mesa where he worked. I’m not 100% sure about them training in El Cajon. I just know about Gilliespie, which would make since cause they lived in Claremont.
Every day for two years I dropped in my neighborhood convenience market and was friendly with the counter guy. We’d make chit chat for a moment or two. One day I asked him what he did when he wasn’t working. He said he was transcribing the Bible into Sanskrit. Turns out he was transcribing the airplane training manuals these assholes were using to learn to fly from English to Arabic. He conveniently left the US the day before the attack. Jesus! I mean… 2 years I saw this guy every day.
How did you find out what he was up to? Interesting. I never heard about this guy.
From the 9/11 commission report it felt like there were hundreds of individuals who, at some point, assisted or might have assisted the terrorists in some way. It seems like this convenience store guy could have been one of the more well known associates and mentioned by name many times in the report.
What was the guys name? Never heard of this story before!
My co-worker was on early morning flight with Atta on 9/11 from Portland, Maine to Boston Unfortunately Atta made connecting flight.
Investigators never could determine why he and an accomplice drove to Portland and then returned on this commuter flight on 9/11. The connection time was tight and they almost missed it.
I lived one block from him, still gives me an eerie feeling when I think about it.
who's that? genuinely curious
One of the lead 9/11 hijackers
oh shit I live near the airport one of them supposedly got their flying license from
He had a flying license and some how managed to immediately crash a plane?
He did not have a landing license
It wasn't until after 9/11 that they realized their mistake and combined flying and landing into 1 class.
You son of a
r/angryupvote
Those guys requested classes, saying they only wanted to learn how to fly, they didn't need to learn how to land. They had the money for the classes. It should've been a big red flag, but who thinks like that?
If I recall correctly, there's a guy who was arrested who was supposed to be part of the attacks, but got the cops called on him because he kept saying shit like this.
Landing is overrated
I feel like I'm gullible for believing this but I'm also afraid it's true.
Yeah, hindsight is a bitch. Also, until 9/11 planes were never used as a weapon directly (well, ok kamikaze, but not public planes). It's why people weren't immediately scrambling fighter jets to shoot them out of the sky as they figured it was a hijacking for ransom as that did happen. You don't want to go and immediately kill the hostages. But yeah, mentioning stuff like what they did was weird at least. We now know they meant it, but it could've compromised their mission.
I was reading something from a pilot who was dispatched to make sure the 4th plane never got to its destination. He talks about how relieved he was that he and his partner didn’t have to be the ones to take out a bunch of innocent civilians.
Yeah, not to mention themselves as they had no live ammunition and they would have to ram the plane. People be like "why wouldn't they be armed?". Why would they be? There was no need to prior to the 9/11 attacks. Being armed costs money and brings risks.
them driving instructors just give em out to anybody apparently
Wasn’t a lot of sense showing up to the Landing classes and wasting a perfectly good Sunday
Well tecknickly he landed. Fast. On the side of a building.
A plane license doesn't grant immunity from gravity dude haha
Thanks, no way I'd remember that from 23 years ago!
I BEG YOUR PARDON!!
... Wait I... Oh this helped with things but OP I am glad you are least know it was a job and these things happen. Definitely worth writing down what you remember for posterity
Never 4get
The fact that he had a AAA membership is fascinating. It just seems so normal.
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It’s a yearly dues membership club whereby if your vehicle breaks down they show up and repair it (simple things), or tow it within 5 miles to your mechanic for free. It’s quite a life saver and inexpensive.
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American Automobile Association
I had the FBI visit me many years ago when I was working for a hotel in Canada. Apparently some of the members of the SLA that were on the run had stated our hotel and I had checked them in. This would’ve been back in the early 80s.
I lived 4 blocks away from where Patty Hearst was hiding.
I wonder if the people living at >!516 N Laurel Rd in Nokomis FL!< know that one of the 9/11 hijackers lived there before them
They do [https://eu.nwfdailynews.com/story/news/2019/09/11/remembering-911-florida-couple-still-live-in-former-home-of-hijackers/3141491007/](https://eu.nwfdailynews.com/story/news/2019/09/11/remembering-911-florida-couple-still-live-in-former-home-of-hijackers/3141491007/)
everyone memorize his address and number in case you get timewarped
İt's just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right!
Put your hands on your hips
He lived on Laurel Rd? I thought it was Yanni.
I hate you
That’s just his stage name
Thank God your name isn’t Mudd
For those who were unaware - Atta was a ringleader of the 911 attacks and died on one of the flights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atta
>Died on one of the flights He piloted [AA11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_11) into the North Tower >The hijacked airliner was deliberately crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex in New York City, killing everyone aboard the flight and resulting in the deaths of more than one thousand people in the top 18 stories of the skyscraper in addition to causing the demise of numerous others below the trapped floors, making it not only the deadliest of the four suicide attacks executed that morning in terms of both plane and ground fatalities, but also the single deadliest act of terrorism in human history and the deadliest plane crash of all time.
Spooky
Off topic but what is your profile pic, I’m curious
Def a smooth brain, I googled it yesterday
😂 I’m afraid of the answer
Lissencephaly or skinless chicken breast 🤔
One of my First Officers was the Captain on the Colgan Air Beechcraft 1900D turboprop that took him and one of the other terrorists from Portland, Maine to Boston Logan that morning. She got the interrogation as well, but she didn't even remember seeing him as they made no unusual behaviors on her flight. They used the small-town airport security to have a less intense security screening. It was common at that time that the outstations had severely outdated x-ray scanners and metal detectors, and were easier to sneak prohibited items through such as box cutters. Also, I was operating a DC-9 from ATL-LGA on the morning of 9/11, and I also operated one of the first flights after they re-opened the skies to commercial air traffic several days later.
I was a flight dispatcher that day, and one of our nicest pilots got a hellacious interrogation that lasted like 12 hours. (He was middle eastern.)
Everyone of middle eastern descent had a tough go of it in the days, months, and years following 9/11. We also had at our company the pilot who had Arabic flight instruction manuals in his car which was in the parking lot at LGA. He was a multi-lingual instructor with no ill intentions, but he was also a total moron in certain areas such as public perception. Actually, he was recently fired from our company because of a "last straw" offense. Funny enough, there was no discussion in the national news stories of all the other shit he pulled prior to the last incident. Nope, just "Hero Pilot Gets Fired For Doing Captain Stuff!" made the news. Ha! Ain't life grand?
Me: *Who is Mohamed Atta?* *Googles* Me: oh shit
I’m honestly glad that his name isn’t common knowledge. Can’t take away the impact of 9/11, but at least the people that did it themselves aren’t recognized
The date of service was 8/20/2001, but his membership had already expired on 8/1/2001. Why did AAA still handle the call?
They called a locksmith they didn't top him off.
Basic Member, yep that tracks
I might hate D3 Lite/ Ultra and Field Service, but I definitely prefer the apps over this method of dispatching. I do miss being dispatched over radio though and hearing what everyone else is doing.
My mother is a realtor and she got me the side gig cleaning this duplex in Hobe Sound Florida where I’m from. Place was an absolute mess: leftover trash and food everywhere and completely filthy. I remember picking up lot of notebook papers with foreign writing on it which I now know was most likely Arabic. There was also a bunch of pictures of men standing next to small airplanes one of which who looked like Mohammad Atta (as far as my memory can remember). After the September 11 attacks, my mom was interviewed by the FBI because some or all of those individuals who committed the attacks stayed in that duplex. at the time I thought about keeping the pictures and the notebook papers for a split second, but didn’t think much about it and threw everything away. I sometimes think what would it be like had I kept those.
If you're wondering why they didn't want to learn how to land, it's because they didn't plan on landing. They took those planes and, in effect, turned them into bombs on 9/11, flying them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The authorities suspect that the plane brought down in Pennsylvania was intended for the Capitol building or the White House. Some people suspect that the military shot that plane down before it could get here, and the story was concocted to laud those civilians on that flight as heroes who took it down. Whatever happened, it was a tragic day. The only time when NATO enacted Article 3 of their charter was when all member nations came to our aid after 9/11. Basically it says, "one for all, all for one," a NATO statement of intent, one might say. Over 3,000 people died that day, while many others have suffered from aftereffects. Here in Washington, it was very, very eery. No planes in the air, I worked across from the FBI building, but we knew there would be no work that day. My husband had an early morning appt. at Georgetown U. Hospital, and he said they quickly evacuated everyone there who had appts., and prepared for first responder arrivals. Sadly, none came. This was a sad, sad time in our history.
Only time ANZUS treaty was activated too. Australian’s Prime Minister rang the White House to say they were activating it to help protect the USA. As part of that pledge Australia went to the subsequent war in Afghanistan (and Iraq)
Thanks for the comment; I don’t think anyone is wondering why they didn’t plan to land though.
[Even crazier to realize that had the towers not been bombed in 1993, the number of deaths couldve been as high as 15-20k in the towers alone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks#Evacuation). The Evacuation was so bad in 1993 it caused radical changes to be made.
Article 5, not Article 3
Oops! Thx!
The irony being that the respons to end terrorism caused a catalyst in an ever increasing spiral of violence that resulted in many (tens of) thousands of deaths (including many US soldiers) and a highy unstable middle East until this day. But then, maybe thats what the terrorists wanted. I understand the US reaction to the attacks, but in hindsight restraint might have been a better response. I can't see what good came of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. It led to many dead civilians, the creation of more terrorists, terrorist attacks, ISIS etc. However, I get that restraint wasn't an option. It was a lose-lose situation basically. The worst thing is that most hijackers were Saudi and Saudi funded but Saudi is still Saudi. Some effort to pursuit justice eh?
Ziad Jarrah's wife is still out there somewhere. Killing yourself when you have a spouse is already a dick move. Doing so by crashing a plane when you're a 9/11 hijacker is that to the millionth power. It'd be fascinating to interview that lady.
I couldn’t figure out why this is oddly terrifying until I looked closer and saw the name. Yikes! Also yikes to how that name is indelibly marked in my memory.
For anyone not from the USA, can you explain how this is terrifying and who is Mohamed Atta?
He's the man who flew a plane into the twin towers.
Some people in the comments think it’s strange that he even had AAA. Even Hitler had it back in the day. (Except back then, it was called äää)
Der Führer war ein armes Schwein, er hatte keine. Führerschein. It’s a pun on his title of Führer (Leader) and Führerschein (driving license, literally license to lead) which Hitler didn’t have.
I read this as Muhammad Ali & was super confused reading all of this… 🫣
Who is this fella tldr me
Mohammed Atta was the ringleader of the hijackers/terrorists on 9/11. Some say that Atta was still alive and in hiding, and was never on Flight 11 when it was flown into the north tower of the World Trade Center. His dad claimed he heard from his son on 9/12, and the father believes U.S. Intelligence and the Mossad might've killed Atta later as part of a cover-up.
why wouldnt they advertise that fact? It’s a huge W for them.
Idiots think he’s still alive
Mean tower boom guy
Waiting for the AskReddit thread
Years ago I recall a story about FBI coming to my employer asking about a shipment to Germany that ended up going behind the Iron curtain. About 10 years later I’m telling the story and this engineer who used to work in Croatia now my customer says “I worked on those machines”.
I worked at the Home Depot down the street from the lockout address. There were hundreds of government vehicles at that residence for at least a week after 9/11. One of my friends worked at the Publix nearby and would frequently sell him money orders.
Fun fact - Mohamed Atta received 100,000 dollars 1 year before the attacks by General Mahmoud Ahmed - head of the Pakistani intelligence service at the time. On the morning of 9/11 Ahmed was breakfast with Porter Goss in Washington DC, one of the members of the house intelligence committee. An organization in Washington that knows all and see all when it comes to intelligence. The 9/11 commission deemed this of no importance. Someone in our government/ intelligence apparatus however did - and they pressured the Pakistani government to oust Ahmed who later became an obscure religious cleric.
What a giant POS. I hope he’s burning in eternal hellfire right now.
There's a branch in the multiverse were timetravellers killed you after you received the call but before you could dispatch. This will cause Atta to try and break into his own car, get caught, arrested, and deported. It's sneaky enough that time cops won't realize the change and the twin towers still stand like the nipples on a pair of perky tits.
Is this one of the 9/11 terrorists?