Shaking Hands With Evil

[Bill Greenwood]

I have a friend who was just here visiting. He lives in Florida, and with all the news about 911 that has been in the media lately it reminded him of his personal touch with that.
In the year or two before the 911 attacks 15 years ago there were a lot of student pilots from various Arab countries taking lessons at U S flight schools particularly in Florida. I remember when I was at Flighlsafety at Vero Beach years before that that FS was doing contract training for the national airline of Saudi Arabia. Nobody thought much about it, except they were reputed to take short cuts with the training.

One day my friend went out to the local flight school to pick up his friend who was a CFI. Before they left the CFI said, "Let me introduce you to my current student, Mohammad." The student had very dark eyes sort of set back and didnt have anything to say but shook hands briefly.
The student was Mohammad Atta.
My friend didnt talk to him again or have any contact with any others with him and they moved on to another area and another school in the end. He did get his pilot license in the U S as well as take jet simulator time to learn to operate the nav systems and auto pilot. Others described Atta as unfriendly, sort of rude, didnt talk much to others outside of his group.
Atta was the pilot of the first plane to hit the world trade center.
Another airline pilot told my friend that he was on a flight out of Washington when the American Airlines plane passed near him headed into D C. That hijacker had actually applied to become a Saudi airline pilot but was not accepted which seems to have led to his becoming radicalized.

Atta was described as smart, the best pilot of his group. He could have likely become a real airline pilot for his country if that had been his focus.