Then, nearly three years later, comes a National Post article that reports that agents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) interogated a known Al Qaeda operative who had told them a member of Al Qaeda who had been rejected from the 911 team had carried a bomb aboard that very flight, back in November of 2001.
Why does this make any difference at all? To be honest, I'm not sure. But if I had lost family or friends in that plane crash, I'd much prefer to know why they had died.
Read the National Post article at Canada.com.
Read CNN.com's original coverage of the crash at CNN.com.
From Canada.com:
Montreal man downed U.S. Plane, CSIS told
'Farouk the Tunisian' involved, al-Qaeda say, but officials insist crash was accidental
Stewart Bell
National Post
Friday, August 27, 2004
A captured al-Qaeda operative has told Canadian intelligence investigators that a Montreal man who trained in Afghanistan alongside the 9/11 hijackers was responsible for the crash of an American Airlines flight in New York three years ago.
Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents were told during five days of interviews with the source that Abderraouf Jdey, a Canadian citizen also known as Farouk the Tunisian, had downed the plane with explosives on Nov. 12, 2001.
The source claimed Jdey had used his Canadian passport to board Flight 587 and "conducted a suicide mission" with a small bomb similar to the one used by convicted shoe bomber Richard Reid, a "Top Secret" Canadian government report says.
But officials said it was unlikely Jdey was actually involved in the crash, which killed 265 people and is considered accidental. The fact that al-Qaeda attributed the crash to Jdey, however, suggests they were expecting him to attack a plane.
"We have seen no evidence of anything other than an accident here," said Ted Lopatkiewicz, spokesman for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. "There has been no evidence found, from what I can tell -- at least that's been relayed to us -- that there was any criminality involved here. It appears, at least the evidence we have, is that a vertical fin came off, not that there was any kind of event in the cabin."
Jdey, 39, came to Canada from Tunisia in 1991 and became a citizen in 1995. Shortly after getting his Canadian passport, he left for Afghanistan and trained with some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, according to the 9/11 commission in the United States.
He recorded a "martyrdom" video, but was dropped from the 9/11 mission after returning to Canada in the summer of 2001. The planner of the World Trade Center attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, claims Jdey was recruited for a "second wave" of suicide attacks.
The FBI issued an alert seeking Jdey's whereabouts in 2002. John Ashcroft, the U.S. Attorney-General, told a news conference in May that Jdey was one of seven al-Qaeda associates "sought in connection with the possible terrorist threats in the United States."
The information on Jdey's alleged role in the plane crash is contained in a memo on captured Canadian al-Qaeda operative Mohammed Mansour Jabarah. The Canadian government memo was written in May, 2002, and was based on information provided by a "source of unknown reliability."
Jabarah is a 22-year-old from St. Catharines who allegedly joined al-Qaeda and convinced Osama bin Laden to give him a terror assignment. He was tasked with overseeing a suicide-bombing operation in Southeast Asia, but was caught and has since pleaded guilty in the United States.
The report, which was sent to the Philippine National Police intelligence directorate, recounts what Jabarah said he was told about the U.S. plane crash by Abu Abdelrahman, a Saudi al-Qaeda member who was working for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
"In discussions, Abu Abdelrahman mentioned AL QAIDA was responsible for the assassination of Massoud, the Northern Alliance leader," the report says. "According to the source, Abu Abdelrahman added that the 12 November 2001 plane crash (btb American Airlines flight 587) in Queens, New York was not an accident as reported in the press but was actually an AL QAIDA operation.
"Abu Abdelrahman informed Jabarah that Farouk the Tunisian conducted a suicide mission on the aeroplane using a shoe bomb of the type used by Richard Reid .... 'Farouk the Tunisian' was identified from newspaper photographs as being identical to Abderraouf Jdey, a Canadian citizen who had resided in Montreal."
Jabarah was initially suspect of the claim about Jdey, but he later believed it after he saw the same information on a "mujahedin Web site," the report says.
© National Post 2004
From CNN.com:
Feds eye engines in air crash
November 12, 2001 Posted: 10:07 p.m. EST (0307 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Investigators suspect a catastrophic engine event as the likely cause of an airline crash Monday in New York that likley claimed the lives of everyone on board, a Transportation Department official told CNN.
Investigators have not definitively ruled out terrorism in the crash American Airlines flight 587, but think some sort of engine failure caused the disaster, the official said.
Officials said the flight, which crashed in Rockaway, a Queens neighborhood, carried 260 people - 246 ticketed passengers, nine crewmembers and five unticketed infants sitting on their parents' lap. At least six to eight people in Rockaway also have been reported missing immediately following the crash, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said.
By late Monday, searchers had recovered 265 "relatively intact bodies," police said.
The flight was an Airbus A300-600. The jet was propelled by General Electric engines that have been the subject of past National Transportation Safety Board recommendations. (More on Airbus)
Last December, the agency recommended that the Federal Aviation Administration require airlines with the same GE engines as those on flight 587 to review repairs made on cracked engine blades. That recommendation followed an incident in which an engine erupted and caught fire during maintenance on a U.S. Airways plane.
A year earlier, the NTSB recommended that airlines with Airbus A300s improve their engines' fire detection system. An engine on an American Airlines flight that caught fire on takeoff from Puerto Rico prompted that recommendation.
This June, the FAA issued an airworthiness directive, telling airlines to examine specific parts of the GE engine.
A GE spokesman told CNN the company complied with the directive, but could find nothing to change.
New York Gov. George Pataki said there were "inconclusive" reports the pilot dumped fuel into Jamaica Bay, an indication he may have known of a problem on board.
Officials said the Coast Guard had found no evidence of a fuel slick in the waters off John F. Kennedy Airport, which would indicate flight 587's pilot deliberately dumped fuel from the aircraft as it headed toward earth.
Just before the crash, the Airbus broke up in mid-air. A sizable portion of the vertical stabilizer from the tail section landed in Jamaica Bay, while most of the fuselage plunged into Rockaway. One engine landed at a gas station, while other engine pieces crushed a boat parked in the driveway of a home that caught fire.
Giuliani said the fuselage destroyed up to six houses and severely damaged another six.
Pataki said the main crash site suggested the plane dropped at a steep angle, if not vertically.
"It's clear that the plane did come down very much in a straight level, which was horrible for that particular site, but minimized what could have happened had the plane glided across the Rockaways," he said.
The cockpit voice recorder from American Airlines Flight 587 has been recovered and was flown to Washington for analysis, the National Transportation and Safety Board said.
Investigators are still searching for the flight data recorder that will give information about how the different systems, including the engines, were performing.
The plane was en route to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. American Airlines said the plane was carrying 251 passengers and nine crewmembers. (Timeline)
The plane had not been delayed by mechanical problems, said American Airlines Chairman Don Carty.
"It was delayed at the gate, as so many airplanes are since the (September) 11th, largely to ensure that the security arrangements were fulfilled," he said. "And they were."
Witnesses: Explosion and fireball
Moments after the plane took off, witnesses said they saw what appeared to be an explosion. Parts of the plane began breaking away and wreckage was found in at least four locations, Giuliani said.
"I was in my kitchen ...and I saw the plane hit the house behind my house," an eyewitness told CNN. "It was so low, I was ducking almost. Then (there were) huge fireballs, and I jumped out of the ... window of my house.
"It was like a bomb exploded." (Full story)
Monday's crash site in Rockaway was home to many New York city firefighters and police officers killed in the attack on the World Trade Center, which prompted an emotional response from the mayor. (Full story)
"Oh my God," said Giuliani, who had recently been in Rockaway to attend the funerals of 10 firefighters from the trade center tragedy.
"The consequences so far are catastrophic," Giuliani said. The fatalities, he said, likely would surpass the 230 killed in the July 1996 crash of TWA flight 800.
In Washington, President Bush said, "I too want to express my heartfelt sympathies for the citizens of New York, those on the airplane, those whose houses were damaged, and those who were hurt on the ground."
Earlier, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said there had been no unusual communications with the cockpit. Asked if there were any indications of terrorism, Fleischer said "We have not ruled anything in; we have not ruled anything out."
Latest developments
• As part of the increased post-September 11 security environment, the Pentagon ordered additional combat air patrols over the United States and its coastlines after Flight 587 crashed.
• There is "no indication" of what caused Flight 587 to crash, American Airlines chairman and CEO said Monday. Donald Carty said the crash came at a "difficult time" for the airline and the nation -- two months after four jets, including two American Airlines planes, were hijacked and crashed by terrorists.
• Carty said the last maintenance "A-check" on the plane was performed Sunday. A heavier maintenance check was done October 3, and the jet last underwent a major overhaul in December 1999. Another overhaul was scheduled for July 2002.
• All three New York-area airports -- Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark -- closed after the crash. They later reopened to accept incoming flights, and LaGuardia and Newark also began allowing departures.
• All of New York's bridges and tunnels were closed after the crash, but they were later reopened to outbound traffic.
• A senior FBI official said there had been no intelligence gathered and no threats made, "nothing to indicate this was an act of terrorism."
• Armed F-15 Eagles were already airborne over New York at the time of the crash and fighters were flying Combat Air Patrol (CAP) over Washington, senior defense officials said. News of the crash sparked the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to scramble jets already on "strip alert" at a number of other bases around the country. (Full story)
• The United Nations went into a partial lockdown after the crash. The U.N. Security Council's president issued a statement expressing shock at the news of the crash and offering "heartfelt sympathies to the people of the United States and families of those who lost their lives." (Full story)
• The Empire State Building was evacuated as a security precaution.
• About 200 family members of passengers on the plane were waiting at the Las Americas International Airport in Santo Domingo, said Dominican customs official Evelyn Aredondo. "People are watching TV, waiting to hear something," she said. "They are very upset."
• American Airlines set up a telephone number for family members to call for information. The number is 1-800-245-0999.
© 2003 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.
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