The Plot Comes Into Focus

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That month he enrolled in Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla. He was a weak student, according to Dale Davis, director of operations. The problem could have been a language barrier. Moussaoui spoke fair English, Davis said, but some of the school's instructors had problems communicating with him. He left the school after a heart-to-heart with Davis about his lack of progress. Investigators have noted that both Atta and Al-Shehhi visited Airman, though they didn't enroll.

How Did the Hijackers Hide Their Plans for So Long?
The hijackers achieved stealth by design and happenstance. For one thing, they lived quiet lives. They resided in low-rent, out-of-the-way neighborhoods and often wore the bland American uniform: khakis and polos. What was striking about many of them, in retrospect, is that there was nothing striking about them. "It amazes me how ordinary these guys looked, yet they ended up being involved in probably the greatest crime in American history," says Corey Moore, assistant manager of Gold's Gym in Greenbelt, Md., where five of the hijackers worked out.

At least some of the five were probably staying at the nearby Valencia Motel in Laurel, one of the cheapest motels on a rundown stretch of Route 1. Gail North, a former housekeeper at the motel, did notice that the men were exceedingly private and barely nodded when neighbors said hello. But they never did anything suspicious enough for her to speak up. When the manager at a nearby hotel refused a full refund to one hijacker when he checked out early, the man showed no emotion and didn't make a fuss.

In fact, those early reports that Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi got hammered at a bar and then haggled over the bill in the days before the attack turn out to be the exception, not the rule. (Atta was also given to long-sleeved silk shirts, whereas most of the other hijackers dressed conservatively--or, in the words of a former neighbor, "foreign preppy.") For the most part, they had learned American ways well after being here for so long: one of them, Hani Hanjour, who is believed to have piloted Flight 77 into the Pentagon, lived in the U.S. as long ago as 1990, when he took an English course in Arizona.

Their simple lives contrast sharply with the multimillion-dollar rumors surrounding Osama bin Laden. If they were doing his bidding, they weren't living large on his dime. Donna Cooper, 43, a waitress at the Denny's on South Federal Highway in Delray Beach, remembers Atta coming in several times to have a veggie cheese omelet and coffee. His friend Al-Shehhi had only Minute Maid orange juice. "I've constantly re-searched my brain to see if there was something I missed about them, something that I should have told somebody about," says Cooper. "I know there wasn't, but you can't stopping thinking about it."

In San Diego two of the hijackers lived on a shabby street with houses built between the 1920s and '50s. Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar, both of Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, stayed with a retired language teacher, Abdussattar Shaikh. The FBI has questioned Shaikh and searched his house. "There was always a series of cars driving up to the house late at night," says neighbor Dave Eckler, 52, a longtime resident of the area. "Sometimes they were nice cars. Sometimes they had darkened windows. They'd stay about 10 minutes." But the worst Eckler thought was that they were selling fake IDs.

The hijackers followed the same m.o. in Germany, where the terror plot may have been nurtured at two universities in Hamburg, which three of the four terror team leaders attended. On Friday German police issued arrest warrants for two suspects in connection with the attacks. Ramzi Binalshibh, from Yemen, and Said Bahaji, who was born in Germany, are charged with at least 5,000 counts of murder, suggesting a role in the Sept. 11 attacks. The men were both roommates of Atta.

For four months in 1997, Marwan Al-Shehhi lived in a small room while he attended classes at University of Bonn. The room has white wallpaper--hardly the "terrorist's lair" of which the local paper has written. The landlord says he and his wife "were shocked" when they heard from the police that the young man who shared their flat was one of the terrorists (Al- Shehhi was on Flight 175, which destroyed the south tower of the World Trade Center). Adds the landlord with a sigh: "I always prided myself on possessing not a little knowledge of character, but I never noticed anything unusual about him."

How Were the Terrorists Financed and Organized?
Accounts at Suntrust and Dime Bancorp surely form just the exposed layer of the terrorists' deeply buried finances. They may have employed a system of brokers called hawala, which means "in trust" in Hindi. It's essentially an IOU system based on mutual trust and little record keeping.