Newly unveiled court papers show that at least three eyewitnesses saw and reported 9/11 al-Qaeda hijackers testing out airport security in the months leading up to the attacks, the NY Post reported on Sunday.
The hijackers were seen in May 2001 at Boston's Logan Airport, the same airport that al-Qaeda ringleader Mohamed Atta and two other men boarded a plane from on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
"They saw something and said something - but were ignored," said the Post.
At one point, while Atta was videotaping and canvassing a security checkpoint, an American Airlines official confronted the hijacker. The official then alerted security, but Atta was never questioned or flagged as a threat.
"I'm convinced that had action been taken after the sighting of Atta, the 9/11 attacks, at least at Logan, could have been deterred," said Brian Sullivan, a former FAA special agent. Sullivan warned of security holes at Logan in the summer of 2001.
The eyewitness revelations were recently revealed as part of the discovery in a settled 9/11 wrongful-death suit, said the Post. Although the case was settled in 2011 and no documents were ever revealed in court, lawyers working the case recently decided to release the documents, despite federal objections.
Seventeen-year American Airlines technician Stephen J. Wallace was another witness who alerted Logan authorities about the suspicious activity of two Middle Eastern men. After the attacks, he went on to ID one of the men as Atta.
"One was videotaping and taking still photos of the flight board and the checkpoint from about 25 feet away, while the other was talking loudly in Arabic on a cellphone. The behavior went on for about 45 minutes," reported the Post.
The behavior disturbed Wallace so much that he approached the hijackers and asked them if they had any prohibited items in their bags. Wallace claims that one of the men then called him a "nasty" name in Arabic before nervously packing up their bags and hurrying to another checkpoint.
Before they entered the other checkpoint, Wallace reportedly alerted several authorities, specifically saying, "These two clowns are up to something. They've been taking videos and pictures down at the main checkpoint."
Authorities failed to follow up and the men boarded an American flight to Washington, DC.
The third eyewitness was Theresa Spagnuolo, an American Airlines passenger screener, who also said she observed Atta videotaping the main security checkpoint in May 2001. Spagnuolo also reported the activity to her supervisor, but was told because it was "a public area," nothing could be done about it.
Just months before the suspicious sightings, federal authorities had advised airlines, including American, that terrorists typically conduct surveillance before initiating an attack, and that such activity should raise red flags, according to the NY Post.
