Word: hamburg
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...past couple of weeks has taken place overseas. From its sprawling Special Information and Operations Center in Washington, the FBI coordinates the work of its 56 domestic and more than 30 foreign offices, which have rarely been busier. About 15 German-speaking FBI agents are in Berlin and Hamburg assisting roughly 400 members of German law enforcement working the case. This close cooperation with overseas investigators has produced some of the best leads so far. For example, foreign law-enforcement agencies have given U.S. officials access to prisoners connected with al-Qaeda. Some of these inmates have identified certain hijackers...
...tell his thesis adviser that he was going to Aleppo, Syria, to work on his thesis. (It explored the conflict between Islam and modernity as reflected in the city's planning, and it won high marks when completed in August 1999.) Atta was away from his job at a Hamburg consultancy for months in 1995; he reportedly said he had gone on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Co-workers recall him condemning terrorist attacks on tourists in Egypt. But he also bemoaned Western influence--specifically, the rise of skyscrapers--in Arab cities...
From mid-1997 to October 1998, Atta seems to have disappeared from Hamburg entirely. He told his thesis adviser that he was gone for family reasons, but it's clear that he underwent profound changes during this time. He returned to school with the bushy beard favored by fundamentalists. He was more serious. Hauth, who left the university at the end of 1995 and lost contact with Atta, told the London Observer his friend could laugh at jokes about Arab dictators. But Chrilla Wendt, who knew Atta after he returned, said she couldn't remember him smiling...
...June 29, Atta traveled to Las Vegas, where he stayed in a cheap room, with the DO NOT DISTURB SIGN constantly dangling from the door. While in town, investigators told the Associated Press, he met with two other hijackers, Salem Alhazmi and Hani Hanjour. His Hamburg pals Al-Shehhi and Jarrah were also there, which suggests a planning session. Four of the five men were on separate flights on Sept. 11, and one theory is that the four leaders of the four hijacked planes were there to work out final details...
These newly uncovered fund transfers may be the latest evidence that Atta was a major recipient of bin Laden's elaborate financial pipeline. U.S. investigators said last week that they suspect Atta was a key conduit between the Sept. 11 hijackers and Mamoun Darkazanli, the Syrian businessman based in Hamburg who reputedly controlled a German bank account held by a man U.S. investigators believe was bin Laden's chief of finance...