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| Home Front: WoT |
| PC Allowed Atta to Board |
| 2005-08-17 |
| EFL Just as the morning rush at the ticket counter had subsided on Sept. 11, 2001, Tuohey was about to step outside for a cigarette when he spotted two men dressed in jackets and ties who looked a little lost. Tuohey told me, "I thought, 'If these guys don't look like Arab terrorists, who does?'" Then he added, "I mentally slapped myself, thinking, 'I have to be politically correct.' " He checked them in for a flight from Portland to Boston. "One had a palpable contempt in his eyes and the other a goofy smile." Tuohey asked the "stupid questions" required at the time and for ID. "I got a visceral reaction, a gut reaction, but didn't know where to go with that," he told me. The passengers checked two bags, held two one-way, first-class tickets connecting on American Airlines in Boston to Los Angeles. "These guys paid big bucks, $2,400 in cash. I thought I better treat 'em right," Tuohey told me. He couldn't do much since the security regulations, which had been tightened to level 3 after the bombing of the USS Cole six months before, had been loosened to level 2. "So I couldn't set them up for extra security as you could do with young Arab males prior to that time," Tuohey said. Tuohey did put "extra green tags" on their bags. In accordance with the CAPS computer program then in effect, that was a flag not to put the bags on the plane until the passenger had actually boarded. The two passengers checked in only 17 minutes before flight departure time - they showed up at 5:43 a.m. for a 6 a.m. flight. They gave Tuohey a difficult time, insisting on one-step check-in. That meant that the agent in Portland would give them boarding passes for both flights so that they wouldn't have to go to the ticket counter in Boston. "I didn't like giving boarding passes for another airline in another city," said Tuohey, calling himself "a dinosaur in the business." So he held back the connecting flight boarding pass when it came out of the machine. The elder of the two men, supposed Sept. 11 mastermind Mohammed Atta, kept repeating, "They told us one-step check-in." Tuohey remembers saying firmly to the terrorists, "You're running late. Get to the gate." "Atta stared at me with a dead stare. There's more life in this picture than there was in his eyes," related Tuohey as he pointed to a newspaper photo. "Finally, he said something in Arabic to the kid with him - Abdulaziz Alomari - and they turned around real quick and headed for the gate." In retrospect, Tuohey thinks it was probably something like "I'm the leader of the gang, and I have to get to Boston." At home that evening, watching TV news from New York, Tuohey said, "It sunk in." He emotionally described his pain as "the feeling in your stomach when someone you love deeply leaves you." Tuohey told me that he felt responsible not only for the events of Sept. 11 and the loss of lives but for the death of the American Airlines agent, Ana Zanni, who checked in Atta in Boston and has since taken her own life. "Zanni never would have come in contact with them had I done my job and issued both boarding passes in one step," said Tuohey, who had never met Zanni. "I've always hated political correctness. It grates on me," he told me. "Had it not been for political correctness ... ." |
| Posted by:Bobby |
| #6 ...the death of the American Airlines agent, Ana Zanni, who checked in Atta in Boston and has since taken her own life. I never heard of this, and Google's got nothin'. Anybody hear of this before? |
| Posted by: Angie Schultz 2005-08-17 12:53 |
| #5 I'm still cheesed that our government's failures and blindnesses left prevention of Sept. 11 up to a civilian airline counter clerk at 5:45 on a Tuesday morning. This plot was hatched and planned and practiced for years, right on our own soil. That's not what we pay our taxes for. |
| Posted by: Seafarious 2005-08-17 12:34 |
| #4 In a complete turn around, how many of you do not give the olive-skinned bearded fellows a second look at the Airport now? |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2005-08-17 12:13 |
| #3 That poor bastard is going to have to live with that for the rest of his life - and I really admire his courage in coming forward and saying what he did. |
| Posted by: Tony (UK) 2005-08-17 10:56 |
| #2 A big thank you to the DCExaminer for printing a story that the Wapo and NYTimes would never let out of the copy room. |
| Posted by: mhw 2005-08-17 10:12 |
| #1 "I've always hated political correctness. It grates on me," he told me. "Had it not been for political correctness ... ." So why do it then? Look at what it cost. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2005-08-17 10:03 |