Airlines ticket counter for Flight 77, bound for Los Angeles.Within the next
20 minutes, they would be followed by Hani Hanjour and two brothers, Nawaf
al Hazmi and Salem al Hazmi.
line's customer service representative at the check-in counter. He did so
because one of the brothers did not have photo identification nor could he
understand English, and because the agent found both of the passengers to
be suspicious.The only consequence of their selection was that their checked
bags were held off the plane until it was confirmed that they had boarded
the aircraft.
contracted out the work to Argenbright Security.
as they were screened. At 7:18, Mihdhar and Moqed entered the security
checkpoint.
and they were directed to a second metal detector. Mihdhar did not trigger the
alarm and was permitted through the checkpoint. After Moqed set it off, a
screener wanded him. He passed this inspection.
checkpoint, and proceeded, without alarm, through the metal detector. A short
time later, Nawaf and Salem al Hazmi entered the same checkpoint. Salem al
Hazmi cleared the metal detector and was permitted through; Nawaf al Hazmi
set off the alarms for both the first and second metal detectors and was then
hand-wanded before being passed. In addition, his over-the-shoulder carry-on
bag was swiped by an explosive trace detector and then passed. The video
footage indicates that he was carrying an unidentified item in his back pocket,
clipped to its rim.
screeners recalled nothing out of the ordinary.They could not recall that any
of the passengers they screened were CAPPS selectees. We asked a screening
expert to review the videotape of the hand-wanding, and he found the qual-
ity of the screener's work to have been "marginal at best." The screener should
have "resolved" what set off the alarm; and in the case of both Moqed and
Hazmi, it was clear that he did not.