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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alan Brezin who wrote (1251)	9/24/2001 3:12:49 PM
From: $Mogul	Respond to of 281500

Hijackers May Have Planned Chemical Attack The FBI (news - web sites) has ordered all crop-dusting planes to stay on the ground because of a new discovery about one of the hijackers. NewsCenter 5's Gail Huff said that during the weekend before the Sept. 11 hijackings, Mohammed Atta, one of the alleged hijackers, visited an airstrip in Florida and asked to rent a crop-dusting plane. Atta wanted to know how many gallons of chemical the planes could hold. "He was very persistent about how much the airplane could hold, how fast it could go and what kind of range it had," South Florida Crop Care pilot Willie Lee said. Lee said that Atta, and a dozen other men, repeatedly visited the airfield armed with cameras. They tried to photograph the interior of the planes. At one point they were ordered away from the planes. "They kept trying to get in the airplanes and there was nobody there but the ground crew, and he said that he just had to run him away from the airplane because he kept trying to get up on the wing and wanted to get in the cockpit," Lee said. Officials fear that the terrorists would use the crop-dusters to launch some kind of chemical or biological attack. "Things like anthrax spores are easily transported, easily put into a solution that could be dispensed out of a crop-duster," U.S. Navy (news - web sites) Commander Ward Carroll said. Huff said that investigators have also issued warnings to the trucking industry to watch for suspicious activity involving the hauling of chemicals or hazardous materials. In another development, President George W. Bush (news - web sites) is slated to sign an executive order Monday identifying terrorist groups and their operatives around the world. The order will freeze all their assets in the United States. Without money, hijackers will not be able to operate, Huff said. Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) still has not been located. The Taliban claims he is "missing".