In Peter Dale Scott's latest piece entitled, "JFK, Watergate, 9/11: Recurring Patterns in America's Deep Events", I get a mention.

Newsday, April 17, 2006. The belated airing of the Flagg story in 2006 has aroused suspicions that it was invented to allay the many earlier questions raised about how the FBI learned the names of the alleged hijackers so quickly (see next section). FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Commonwealth Club of California on April 19, 2002 that "The hijackers also left no paper trail. In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper - either here in the U.S. or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere - that mentioned any aspect of the September 11th plot" (http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/speeches/speech041902.htm). But CNN had reported on September 28, 2001, that "among [Atta's] belongings they also found the names and phone numbers of possible associates;" (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP...28/ltm.01.html); and that this "information compliments the release of photos of the suspected hijackers" (http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/28/ltm.15.html). I am grateful to Jon Gold for bringing these matters to my attention.

In any case, other official allegations point precisely to other instances of a paper trail left by the hijackers. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (532n188), the FBI found an Express Mail receipt in Nawaf al-Hazmi^s car at Dulles Airport, which led to a package addressed to Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi. As if this was not enough, Atta also is said to have left a FedEx waybill for another package which, the federal indictment of Moussaoui strongly implied, was collected by al-Hawsawi (www.usdoj.gov/ag/moussaouiindictment.htm, items 88, 92). The details are given in Newsweek, November 19, 2001: "The paper trail that first led investigators into Ahmed's shadowy financial world began at the bottom of a motel trash can. On the night of Sept. 10, Atta hunkered down in room 233 at the Comfort Inn in Portland, Maine. The next morning he would take a flight to Boston's Logan airport. At the motel, Atta tore up a FedEx Air Waybill and threw it away. Days later, federal agents searching the motel found the receipt, from a package mailed in Florida, where Atta and several other hijackers had lived until days before the bombing. It was addressed to "Almohtaram," Arabic for "The Respected One" -- the honorific the terrorists gave to Ahmed. Investigators believe they sealed the connection when they got hold of the video of Ahmed picking up the package."