Search for Terrorists Casts Wide Net

By Stephen M. Silverman

09/13/2001 at 11:03 AM EDT

The massive search to uncover the terrorist plot stretched from Miami to Boston to Portland, Maine and on to Canada and Germany, say reports. At least one hijacker on each of the four planes in Tuesday's terrorist attacks was trained at a U.S. flight school, the Justice Department has said. Overall, 50 people may have been involved in the hijackers' well-financed operation. "Both cash and credit cards were used" by the hijackers "to purchase tickets, hotel rooms and other things," Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said Wednesday. U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said that 12 to 24 hijackers commandeered the four planes, and a government official said another two dozen or so are believed to have assisted them. About 40 of the men have reportedly been accounted for, including those killed in the suicide attacks, but 10 remain at large, the Los Angeles Times reported. By Wednesday, authorities had detained at least a half dozen people in Massachusetts and Florida on unrelated local warrants and immigration charges and were questioning them about their possible ties to the hijackers who commandeered four commercial American aircraft. A Venice, Fla., man said FBI agents told him that two men who stayed in his home while training at a local flight school were involved in the attacks. Charlie Voss, a former employee at Huffman Aviation in Venice said the FBI told him one of men was named Mohammed Atta. A student at Huffman Aviation identified the second man as Marwan Alshehhi. Citing federal authorities, the Miami Herald reported Thursday that Atta was one of four suspects who died on American Airlines Flight 11, the first jetliner to crash into the World Trade Center.