Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11

by Mitchell Zuckoff

If the group of terrorists on United Flight 93 tried to follow the pattern of their collaborators aboard Flights 11, 175, and 77, they were clearly one hijacker short. A Saudi27 man who authorities later suspected was supposed to have been the twentieth hijacker had landed a month earlier at Florida’s Orlando International Airport, arriving on a flight from London. He landed with no return ticket28 or hotel reservations, carried $2,800 in cash and no credit cards, spoke no English, and claimed he didn’t know his next destination after he intended to spend six days in the United States. He grew angry when questioned by an alert immigrations inspector named José E. Melendez-Perez, who suspected that the man was trying to immigrate illegally. Melendez-Perez thought the Saudi fit the profile of a “hit man.”29 He consulted with supervisors, then forced the man onto a flight to Dubai, via London. Waiting in vain that day at the Orlando airport was Mohamed Atta.