Two Hijackers were Under Watch, Cole Suspects: ReportTwo men suspected of hijacking the airliner that slammed into the Pentagon were under surveillance prior to Tuesday's attacks because of their alleged associations with Osama bin Laden and the USS Cole bombing, sources said.One of the suspects, Khalid Al-Midhar, was seen on a surveillance tape from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, meeting with a man that U.S. officials suspect played a hand in the USS Cole's bombing last October. Al-Midhar frequently visited Salem Alhamzi and his brother Nawaq in the brothers' San Diego, California, apartment complex, neighbors said. Both Al-Midhar and Alhamzi were both on an FBI watch list, according to intelligence sources. Government documents released about the suspected hijackers indicate all three men joined Hani Hanjour, another suspected hijacker, in Phoenix, Arizona. Hanjour received flight training at CRM Cockpit Resource Management in Scottsdale, Arizona. All four are believed to have been aboard American Airlines Flight 77, the hijacked jet that slammed into the Pentagon. Meanwhile, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has detained 25 individuals on possible immigration violations, the Justice Department said Saturday, as investigators searched for those behind Tuesday's terrorist attacks and worked to prevent future ones. Law enforcement sources said authorities were still operating under the assumption that additional attacks had been thwarted and new assaults remained a possibility. But Attorney General John Ashcroft said he was pleased, overall, with the investigation's progress. "We are making the kinds of contacts and developing the information that allow us to describe this as proceeding with reasonable success," Ashcroft said Saturday from Camp David, before meeting with President Bush. Only one person -- first detained Thursday at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport for allegedly possessing a false pilot's license -- has been charged in connection with the investigation. An arrest warrant has been issued in New York for a second material witness in Tuesday's terrorist attacks, the Justice Department announced Saturday. The person was not in custody and was not identified, and the person's whereabouts were unknown. Law enforcement officials said Friday they have issued at least 35 search warrants and hundreds of subpoenas, while interviewing hundreds more. A total of 12,000 photos have been taken of all the crimes scenes, officials said, and more than 5,200 calls have been phoned into the FBI's hot line. The investigation -- the largest in U.S. history -- involves 4,000 special FBI agents and more than 3,000 support personnel. |
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