Author: Reuters
Publication: Yahoo News
Date: June 6, 2002
URL: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=578&e=4&cid=578&u=/nm/20020607/ts_nm/attack_atta_dc_1
The suspected ringleader of the
Sept. 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, applied for a U.S. government loan to
buy a small airplane more than a year before the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites), according to a federal employee
who rejected his application.
In an interview aired on Thursday
on ABC's "World News Tonight," Johnell Bryant, the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(news - web sites) loan officer in Homestead, Florida, spoke of her horror
at seeing Atta's picture in the news after the Sept. 11 attacks.
"He wanted to finance a twin-engine,
six-passenger aircraft and remove the seats. And he said he was an engineer,
and he wanted to build a chemical tank that would fit inside the aircraft
and take up every available square inch of the aircraft except for where
the pilot would be sitting," Bryant told ABC.
Her story was corroborated by law
enforcement officials, who said it was backed up captured Osama bin Laden
(news - web sites) lieutenant Abu Zabaydah, ABC said.
Zabaydah told interrogators the
original plan for Sept. 11 was to use small planes packed with explosives,
but when Atta did not get the money, bin Laden decided that hijacked passenger
jets should be used instead, the report said.
After Sept. 11, Bryant told the
FBI (news - web sites) about her May 2000 encounter with Atta in which
he sought a $650,000 loan to secure a small plane, ABC said.
Bryant rejected Atta's loan request
but spent more than an hour with him and said he asked about U.S. landmarks
and spoke of bin Laden and the Saudi-born extremist's al Qaeda network,
ABC reported.
"He said this man would someday
be known as the world's greatest leader," Bryant said.
She also told ABC that Atta offered
to buy an aerial photograph of Washington on her office wall.
"He pulled out a wad of cash ...
and started throwing money on my desk. He wanted that picture really bad.
He asked about the Pentagon and the White House and I pointed them out,"
Bryant said.
Bryant said Atta also asked her
about security at the World Trade Center and what she knew of Chicago,
Seattle and Los Angeles, and showed particular interest in the open-topped
Texas Stadium, home of the National Football League's Dallas Cowboys, in
Irving, Texas.
She told ABC it did not occur to
her to report the encounter, saying she thought she was just helping a
new immigrant learn about the country.
"How could I have known. Should
I have picked up the telephone and called someone? You can't ask me that
more often than I have asked myself that. Nobody can. It's something that
will probably be with me all of my life," Bryant said.
