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by Jean Heller
The government has
long denied that two days after the 9/11 attacks, the three were allowed
to fly.
Times Staff Writer
Published June 9, 2004
The National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks, better known as the 9/11 Commission, sent a list of questions to
Tampa International Airport. It appears concerned with the handling of the
Tampa flight.
TAMPA - Two days after the Sept.
11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small
jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men
and left.
The men, one of them thought to
be a member of the Saudi royal family, were accompanied by a former FBI
agent and a former Tampa police officer on the flight to Lexington, Ky.
The Saudis then took another
flight out of the country. The two ex-officers returned to TIA a few hours
later on the same plane.
For nearly three years, White
House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight
never took place and have denied published reports and widespread Internet
speculation about its purpose.
But now, at the request of the
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, TIA officials have confirmed
that the flight did take place and have supplied details.
The odyssey of the small LearJet
35 is part of a larger controversy over the hasty exodus from the United
States in the days immediately after 9/11 of members of the Saudi royal
family and relatives of Osama bin Laden.
The terrorism panel, better known
as the 9/11 Commission, said in April that it knew of six chartered
flights with 142 people aboard, mostly Saudis, that left the United States
between Sept. 14 and 24, 2001. But it has said nothing about the Tampa
flight.
The commission's general counsel,
Daniel Marcus, asked TIA in a letter dated May 25 for any information
about "a chartered flight with six people, including a Saudi prince, that
flew from Tampa, Florida on or about Sept. 13, 2001." He asked for the
information no later than June 8.
TIA officials said they sent
their reply on Monday.
The airport used aircraft
tracking equipment normally assigned to a noise abatement program to
determine the identity of all aircraft entering TIA airspace on Sept. 13,
and found four records for the LearJet 35.
The plane first entered the
airspace from the south, possibly from the Fort Lauderdale area, sometime
after 3 p.m. and landed for the first time at 3:34 p.m. It took off at
4:37 p.m., headed north. It returned to Tampa at 8:23 p.m. and took off
again at 8:48 p.m., headed south.
Author Craig Unger, who first
disclosed the possibility of a post-9/11 Saudi airlift in his book House
of Bush, House of Saud, said in an interview that he believes the jet came
to Tampa a second time to drop off two former law enforcement agents from
Tampa who accompanied three young Saudis to Lexington for security
purposes.
The Saudis asked the Tampa Police
Department to escort the flight, but the department handed off the
assignment to Dan Grossi, a former member of the force, Unger said. Grossi
recruited Manuel Perez, a retired FBI agent, to accompany him. Both
described the flight to Unger as somewhat surreal.
"They got the approval
somewhere," Perez is quoted as telling Unger. "It must have come from the
highest levels of government."
While there is no manifest for
those aboard the Lear flight to Kentucky, Unger says the foreign nationals
left Lexington for London aboard a Boeing 727. That manifest lists eight
Saudis, two Sudan nationals, one Tunisian, one Philippine citizen, one
Egyptian and two British subjects.
Of those, three listed residences
on Normandy Trace Drive in Tampa, and all of them held Florida drivers'
licenses. They are Ahmad Al Hazmi, then 19, Fahad Al Zeid, then 20, and
Talal M. Al Mejrad, then 18, all male Saudis.
It is not known which, if any, is
a Saudi prince.
Perez, the former FBI agent on
the flight, could not be located this week, and Grossi declined to talk
about the experience.
"I'm over it," he said in a
telephone interview. "The White House, the FAA and the FBI all said the
flight didn't happen. Those are three agencies that are way over my head,
and that's why I'm done talking about it."
Grossi did say that Unger's
account of his participation in the flight is accurate.
The FAA is still not talking
about the flights, referring all questions to the FBI, which isn't
answering anything, either. Nor is the 9/11 Commission.
Unger's book criticizes the Bush
administration for allowing so many Saudis, including the relatives of bin
Laden, to leave the country without being questioned thoroughly about the
terrorist attacks.
Fifteen of the 19 men who
hijacked four airlines on Sept. 11 were Saudi, as is bin Laden.
The 9/11 Commission, which has
said the flights out of the United States were handled appropriately by
the FBI, appears concerned with the handling of the Tampa flight.
"What information, if any, do you
have about the screening by law enforcement personnel - including law
enforcement personnel affiliated with the airport facility - of
individuals on this flight?" the commission asked TIA.
The TIA Police Department said a
check of its records indicated no member of its force screened the Lear's
passengers.
Despite evidence that the flight
occurred, several new questions have arisen.
Raytheon Aircraft is the only
facility at TIA that services general aviation, which includes charter
flights. When appropriate, Raytheon collects landing fees from those
aircraft for TIA and reports to TIA on the flights.
According to airport records,
Raytheon collected landing fees from only two aircraft on Sept. 13, one of
them a Lear 35. But according to the record, the registration on the Lear
is 505RP, a tail number which, according to the latest federal records, is
assigned to a Cessna Citation based in Kalamazoo, Mich., and Oskar Rene
Poch.
Poch confirmed Tuesday that he
owns a Citation with that tail number and did before the terrorist
attacks.
"Somebody must have gotten the
registration number wrong in Tampa," he said.
TIA spokeswoman Brenda Geoghagan
said it is believed the Lear's Sept. 13 journey began in Fort Lauderdale,
possibly at a charter company called Hop-a-Jet Inc. The fact that the four
trips in and out of Tampa all carried the flight designation "HPJ32" lends
support to that idea.
But an official of Hop-a-Jet who
wouldn't identify himself said the company does not own an aircraft with
the registration number 505RP. Furthermore, he said, if that tail number
is assigned to a Cessna Citation, the company doesn't own any Citations,
either.
Most of the aircraft allowed to
fly in U.S. airspace on Sept. 13 were empty airliners being ferried from
the airports where they made quick landings on Sept. 11. The reopening of
the airspace included paid charter flights, but not private, nonrevenue
flights.
"Whether such a (LearJet) flight
would have been legal hinges on whether somebody paid for it," said FAA
spokesman William Shumann. "That's the key."
- Times researcher Kitty Bennett
contributed to this report.
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