Hijacker Visited Crop-Duster Airfield

W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 24 -- The man believed to have flown a hijacked passenger airliner into the North Tower of the World Trade Center also wanted to get behind the controls of a crop-dusting plane, raising fears that terrorists may have been planning a chemical or biological attack.

Mohamed Atta, a suspected ringleader in the recent terror attacks in New York and Washington, made repeated visits to a crop-dusting airfield in Florida, according to Willie Lee, the chief pilot and general manager of South Florida Crop Care in Belle Glade.

Lee identified Atta to the FBI, telling agents the suspected hijacker came to the airfield as recently as the Saturday before the Sept. 11 attacks, asking questions about the capabilities of crop-dusters, including how big a load of chemicals they could carry.

Atta was "very persistent about wanting to know how much the airplane will haul, how fast it will go, what kind of range it has," Lee told ABCNEWS.

"The guy kept trying to get in the airplane," Lee added, saying his ground crew chief had to order Atta away from one of the planes at one point because he kept trying to climb onto the wing and into the cockpit.

Lee said Atta and as many as 12 or 15 other men appearing to be of Middle Eastern descent visited the airfield in groups of two or three on several weekends prior to the attacks, often taking pictures of the aircraft.

• Crop-Dusters Grounded

"The FBI assesses the use of this type of aircraft to distribute chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction as potential threats to Americans," Attorney General John Ashcroft said during a congressional hearing on proposed anti-terrorism legislation today. "[But,] we have no clear indication of the time or place of such attacks."

Ashcroft said information about crop-dusting had been downloaded off the Internet by associates of the hijackers. And ABCNEWS has confirmed a manual for a crop-duster was found among the belongings of Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been detained since August and is now under arrest as a material witness.

"Things like anthrax are easily transported, easily put into a solution that could be dispensed out of a crop-duster," says author and U.S. Navy Cmdr. Ward Carroll.

Fearing terrorists planned or may still plan to do just that, federal authorities grounded all crop-dusters — which can carry as much as 500 gallons of solution — on Sunday. The nationwide ban on agricultural flights ends at 12:05 a.m. local time on Tuesday.