An update on this story: “Mystery Flight,” from Newsweek, with thanks to Mediawatch.
It’s part of the routine for air travel since 9/11. Fifteen minutes after KLM Flight 685 took off from Amsterdam for Mexico City on April 8, Mexican authorities forwarded the names of all the passengers to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The reason: the flight was scheduled to pass through U.S. airspace after making a long swing over Canada. The information was then passed on to the U.S. National Targeting Center, based at a secret address in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. That’s when the routine became extraordinary: by the time the Boeing 747 had finished its three-hour crossing of the Atlantic, Homeland Security screeners were on high alert. The names of two Saudi passengers aboard the KLM flight had begun producing “hits” on the screening center’s lists of 70,000 suspect foreigners….
Some counterterrorism officials worry that the Saudi brothers could be living double lives. One of the Saudis lived in the United States for at least 14 years and took an engineering degree at Arizona State University. A former neighbor of his in Tempe remembers him as “really nice.” But another former Arizona neighbor recalls that a day or two after 9/11, the normally self-contained Saudi was behaving oddly. “He was wearing a wide grin. He said, ‘Hi, Neighbor, isn’t it a great day?’ It seemed inappropriate.” Other intelligence officials say if the two were indeed part of a Qaeda operation, it is no surprise their destination was Mexico City. U.S. officials fear that Latin America, and more particularly Mexico-with its porous U.S. border-may become a staging ground for Al Qaeda. The big question is, wherever the next threat comes from, will authorities be able to spot it in time?…
Read it all.