9/11 Hijackers: The Passport Scam

As the bipartisan commission investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks races toward a May 27 deadline--a deadline it wants to extend--new details are emerging about some of its findings thus far. A commission staff report issued last week said that at least two--and possibly six more--of the 9/11 hijackers carried passports that had been "manipulated in a fraudulent manner." The commission declined to elaborate, but senior counterterrorism officials tell TIME the fraud was an example of al-Qaeda's clever tradecraft and attention to detail. The Saudi passports the hijackers carried were genuine, and so were the visas to the U.S. But investigators believe...

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