Nawaf Al-Hazmi - Selected For The 9/11 Plot

Selected For The 9/11 Plot

Osama bin Laden held Hazmi and Mihdhar in high respect, with their experience fighting during the 1990s in Bosnia and elsewhere. Al-Qaeda later referred to Hazmi as Mihdhar's "Second-in-command". When Bin Laden committed to the "planes operation" plot in spring 1999, Bin Laden personally selected Hazmi and Mihdhar to be involved in the plot as pilot hijackers. In addition to Hazmi and Mihdhar, two Yemenis were selected for a southeast Asia component of the plot, which was later scrapped for being too difficult to coordinate with the operations in the United States. Known as Rabi'ah al-Makki during the preparations, Hazmi had been so eager to participate in operations within the United States, he already had a US visa when Bin Laden selected him. Hazmi obtained a B-1/B-2 tourist visa on April 3, 1999 from the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, using a new passport he acquired a few weeks earlier. Hazmi's passport did have indicators of Al-Qaeda association, but immigration inspectors were not trained to look for those.

In the autumn of 1999, these four attended the Mes Aynak training camp in Afghanistan, which provided advanced training. Hazmi went with the two Yemenis, Tawfiq bin Attash (Khallad) and Abu Bara al Yemeni, to Karachi, Pakistan where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the plot's coordinator, instructed him on western culture, travel, as well as taught some basic English phrases. Mihdhar did not go with him to Karachi, but instead left for Yemen. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed then sent Hazmi and the other men to Malaysia for a meeting. Before leaving for Malaysia, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed doctored Hazmi's Saudi passport in order to conceal his travel to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and make it appear that Hazmi had come to Malaysia from Saudi Arabia via Dubai.

After the attacks, the Associated Press would re-publish a "bizarre" story by the Cody Enterprise that quoted witnesses stating that Nawaf entered the United States during the autumn of 1999, crossing along the Canadian border as one of two men delivering skylights to the local high school in Cody, Wyoming. Leaving the city 45 minutes later with the remaining cardboard boxes, the men allegedly asked "how to get to Florida."