Surveillance video cameras caught two hijackers at several businesses around Portland, Maine, the day before their World Trade Center death plunge, leaving investigators to wonder just how much time the terrorists spent in the waterfront city.
``We don't know what they were doing there. Maybe the hijackers wanted to come in from all different locations,'' a source close to the FBI probe said yesterday. ``Did they have a confederate somewhere up there? We don't know.''
New video images were released by the Boston FBI office yesterday of hijackers Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari at a gas station, a bank machine and a Wal-Mart in South Portland the night before the deadly Sept. 11 attacks. Charles Prouty, special agent-in-charge of the Boston office, appealed to the public to provide any details of the terrorists' movements in Maine.
``We know they were here for a 12-hour period on Monday, September 10,'' Prouty said. ``We want to get more specifics on what they did and who they talked to.''
According to the FBI, the pair left Boston in the afternoon on Sept. 10 in a 2001 blue Nissan Altima and drove to South Portland, where they checked into a Comfort Inn around 5:45 p.m. Around 8 p.m., they were spotted by witnesses eating in a Pizza Hut and about a half-hour later they were photographed at a nearby bank machine. Ten minutes later, they were caught on tape at another bank machine.
Around 9:15 p.m. a surveillance camera caught the pair on tape at the Jetport Gas Station in South Portland. Seven minutes later, Atta was photographed entering a Wal-Mart in nearby Scarborough. He spent about 20 minutes there, the FBI said.
Wal-Mart spokesman Tom Williams declined comment on what Atta might have purchased at the store or any interaction he had with employees. Williams said the Arkansas-based company is assisting the FBI.
``We have visited with the FBI and we have talked to them and we will assist in any way we can,'' Williams said.
Atta is seen in some of the newly released pictures sporting a distinctive half-black and half-white shirt that Prouty hopes will jog some locals' memories. Anyone with information should call the Boston FBI at (617) 742-5533.
Spruce Whited, director of security for the Portland Public Library, said Atta and possibly a second hijacker were regulars at the library last year and frequently used public Internet terminals. He said four other employees recognize Atta as a library patron after seeing his picture shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Whited said federal authorities have not inquired about the library sightings.
``I remember seeing (Atta) in the spring of 2000,'' he said. ``I have a vague memory of a second one who turned out to be (Atta's) cousin.
``It was a nondescript experience until I saw his photograph, then I knew I recognized him,'' Whited said of his encounters with Atta. ``He didn't do anything that stood out. We just recognized him as someone who had been in the library several times.''
The two hijackers checked out of the Comfort Inn at 5:33 a.m. on the day of the attacks and parked the blue Altima on level one in the parking lot of the Portland International Jetport at 5:40 a.m. Three minutes later they checked in at the US Airways counter and were spotted on videotape passing through security two minutes later. The plane left for Boston at 6 a.m.
The pair were among the hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11 that slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, officials say. Atta, an Egyptian national, is a pilot who is believed to have been at the controls.
In other developments:
The month before the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks, the CIA received information suggesting accused terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden was increasingly determined to strike on U.S. soil. In the days since, the FBI has linked the hijackers to bin Laden's network through phone intercepts, money transfers and training camps.
German banking authorities named an Indonesian man as a suspected link to bin Laden in Hamburg. A list obtained by Reuters yesterday and distributed by Germany's banking oversight agency names dozens in Germany, the United States and the Middle East as possible attack accomplices.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said authorities are pursuing some 260,000 leads and tips, including 24,000 that came in last week. He said FBI lab and forensic experts are examining some 3,000 pieces of evidence collected from the four crash sites and other places.
France's environmental minister said a chemical plant blast last month in Toulouse that killed 29 people is now being investigated as possibly connected to terrorists. An Islamic fundamentalist was among those found dead at the scene, French officials said.
A U.S. Treasury official said the government is planning to freeze the assets of many more people and organizations suspected of terrorist activities or support. President Bush already has frozen assets of 27 such groups and people.
The Washington Post reported that investigators are following an electronic trail left behind by the hijackers who used computers to book airline tickets, learn about the aerial application of pesticides and exchange scores of e-mails. During the past three weeks, the paper reported, federal agents have visited libraries from Florida to Virginia where they have examined log-in sheets and seized computers.
Herald wire services contributed to this report.
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