Hijackers' Roommate Arrested
— -- Hijackers’ Alleged Roommate Indicted
July 2 — An alleged roommate of two of the Sept. 11 hijackers who crashed a plane into the Pentagon was indicted today for visa fraud.
FBI agents and State Department officials took Rasmi Al Shannaq into custody last week for overstaying his visa and possible visa fraud.
Sources told ABCNEWS that Al Shannaq admitted he had roomed with two of the hijackers, Hani Hanjour and Nawaq Al Hazmi, in Northern Virginia for two months last summer. Both men, government officials say, were on American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon, and Hanjour is believed to have been the pilot.
Today's indictment accuses Al Shannaq, a Jordanian national, of knowingly obtaining a fraudulent nonimmigrant visa from the U.S. Embassy in Doha, Qatar, in October 2000. The indictment does not mention anything about a possible connection to Hanjour and Al Hazmi.
Al Shannaq's initial court appearance is scheduled before the federal magistrate on July 8. Sources have said FBI investigators want to know if Al Shannaq had any association with the Sept. 11 hijackers, and believe he may have been in a position to know a lot more about the hijackers than anyone they've talked to so far.
— Pierre Thomas and Beverley Lumpkin, ABCNEWS
Experts: Suicide Pilots a Threat Despite Security
W A S H I N G T O N, July 2 — Despite post-Sept. 11 security improvements,the White House and other landmarks remain vulnerable to a suicidepilot carrying a private planeload of explosives, experts say.
Three recent incidents showed how easily private planes canenter restricted zones:
Over the weekend, Air Force jets scrambled twice to intercepttwo private planes that inadvertently entered the restricted airspace around Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland wherePresident Bush was staying.
Less than two weeks earlier, an errant private pilot flew intothe restricted area around the Washington Monument, which put theaircraft as near as four miles to the White House.
In February, a 15-year-old boy stole an airplane from a flightschool at the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport inFlorida and smashed it into the 28th floor of a downtown Tampaoffice building, killing himself.
Private planes remain barred from Ronald Reagan WashingtonNational Airport across the Potomac River from the capital, and theWashington Monument restrictions prohibit them from flying lowerthan 18,000 feet within a 15-mile radius of the monument.
And over the July Fourth holiday, the Federal AviationAdministration has banned planes from flying near the Statue ofLiberty, Mount Rushmore and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
"Unfortunately, we're still vulnerable," said John Mica,R-Fla., chairman of the House Transportation aviation subcommittee."It's impossible to regulate the hundreds of thousands of privateplanes that take off daily. We're going to have to do a better jobof looking for bad guys."
More than 200,000 of the 215,000 planes flying in the UnitedStates are small private planes, known as general aviationaircraft, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
A spokesman for the group, Warren Morningstar, said most are toosmall to do much damage. A fully loaded Cessna 172, the mostpopular small plane, weighs 2,400 pounds, as much as a small carand cannot carry a substantial payload, he said.
Private planes still pose a danger, said Paul Hudson, executivedirector of the advocacy group Aviation Consumer Action Project.
"Even a small plane could carry several hundred pounds (ofexplosives) and could do significant damage to a building like theWhite House," Hudson said.
Additionally, Air Force F-16s are not certain remedies for adetermined intruder. They didn't catch up with the pilot whostrayed over Washington until he was over Fredericksburg, Va., morethan 50 miles to the south.
"It's easy to look at timelines after the event and say it tookthem a long time to get there," said Army Maj. Barry Venable, aspokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command. "Anairplane is flying already; you have to catch up to it."
Since the incident over Washington, which resulted in partialevacuation of the White House, NORAD has shifted some planes toenable a quicker response to a violations of restricted airspace,Mica said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the response time hasbeen reduced through better coordination between the DefenseDepartment and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Former Transportation Department Inspector General Mary Schiavosaid private aircraft should have tracking devices and equipmentthat prevents an unauthorized pilot from taking off.
"We don't know as a country how to begin to address the problemof general aviation," said Schiavo, now a lawyer representingvictims of airplane crashes. "You're going to have to control theaircraft. Eventually, we're going to have to require more expensiveand sophisticated equipment on the plane."
— The Associated Press
Health Problems Persist From Handling Irradiated Mail, Report Says
W A S H I N G T O N, July 2 — Congressional employees were still reportinghealth problems such as headaches and nausea months after thePostal Service began irradiating all mail following the anthraxscare, according to a report being released today.
The General Counsel of the congressional Office of Compliancealso said it had found low levels of irritant chemical byproductscaused by irradiation in House and Senate mail rooms.
"While we do not believe these chemical irritants arelife-threatening, we believe further study is essential todetermine the effects of extended exposure to irradiated mail,"said the report prepared by General Counsel Gary Green.
The report also recommended precautionary steps such as limitingthe time employees spend handling mail.
Mail delivery to the Capitol and congressional office buildingswas suspended shortly after an anthrax-tainted letter was found inthe office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, S.D., and tracesturned up in some 15 other offices.
Since January, when deliveries were resumed, all mail bound forCongress and federal agencies is first irradiated at postalfacilities outside of Washington.
But almost immediately, postal workers and mail handlers atfederal and congressional offices began complaining about multiplesymptoms, including headaches, nausea and rashes, that appearedlinked to exposure to irradiated mail.
The general counsel said the office received 215 paper responsesin February and March from congressional staff saying they orothers in their office were experiencing symptoms. Half said theygot headaches while handling mail, one-third complained of itchingskin, 23 percent had burning and red eyes and 21 percent nausea.
The office contacted 148 of these people by phone in theMarch-April period, and of these, 72 percent said they still wereexperiencing symptoms.
In another telephone follow-up in May, 55 percent of 168 peoplereported continuing ill health, although of these 61 percent saidthe symptoms were better.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who requested the investigation,said health effects were unknown when large-scale irradiationbegan. In retrospect, he said, the office of the Senate sergeant atarms and the Legislative Mail Task Force "may have been too quickto conclude irradiated mail was harmless, and they may not havetaken employees' health concerns seriously enough."
The report's authors cautioned the study was not scientificallyvalid because only those with health problems responded, and theyhad not established any definitive cause, or causes, of thesymptoms.
But "we believe these symptoms are not insignificant, both interms of the number of complaints and in the effect on employeehealth and work performance," they said.
It noted the Postal Service believed there had been a problemwith some "overdoses" of irradiation, a common practice indisinfecting food and medical devices, at the beginning of theprocess, but the problem had been corrected.
— The Associated Press
Phone Threat Prompts Evacuation of L.A. Building
L O S A N G E L E S, July 2 — A phone threat warning that a plane wouldstrike the city's second-tallest skyscraper prompted a voluntaryevacuation that included employees of a company that lost workersin the Sept. 11 attacks.
The call was traced by the FBI and Monday's threat was found tobe without merit, said FBI spokeswoman Laura Bosley. Bosleydeclined to disclose the caller's name.
The 62-story Aon Center notified the 70 companies that employapproximately 3,200 people in the building about the voluntaryevacuation.
Aon Corp., the building's largest tenant, with 833 workers,closed its offices for the day, said Aon Center General ManagerPeter Anastassiou.
Aon, an insurance brokerage firm, lost 175 employees in theattack on the World Trade Center in New York.
The threat was called in to KABC-TV in Los Angeles suggestingthe station train its camera on the "First Interstate building"because an aircraft would fly into it. Aon Center also is known asthe First Interstate Tower.
—The Associated Press