The Plot

The Golden Mosque’s dome pokes out from the tangle of a crowded street in Manila, where, in late 1994, a group of men in a drab apartment house aroused suspicions.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

A Philippino Muslim studies the Koran just before mid afternoon prayers at the Golden Mosque in Manila. Others find refuge from the tropical summer day in the breezy interior of the sanctuary -- Police investigators believe Al Qaeda terrorists mingled here in 1994-95 before they were nabbed with bomb materials and a plot to blow up U.S. airliners.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

A street vendor along Manila Bay shoulders buckets of cool soy custard. The bay is a short walk from the Malate, where terrorists lived while planning attacks on a dozen American airliners.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

In a sweltering Manila slum around the corner from the Josefa Apartments, a young girl soaks herself with a ladle of cool water. -- In 1995 Philippine police seized a computer plan and bomb materials from a room in the Josefa Apartments that was rented by middle-eastern men. The foiled plot was to blow up 12 U.S. jumbo jets over the Pacific.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

A patron sidesteps a dancer at the Cotton Club in Manila. The terrorists in the Josefa apartment paid considerable attention to the city’s nightlife, coming and going at all hours, not always alone.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

The Harburg train station, near where members of the Hamburg cell lived, was a 15-minute ride to central Hamburg, then a short walk to the city’s most radical Islamic mosques.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

The S-3 commuter train carries a sleepy laborer across the Elbe River to Wilhelmsburg, “The Forgotton Island.” Here, amid poor immigrant laborers, Mohamed Atta lived in a prewar housing project. Atta was known to take this route to a district of Hamburg where he attended several radical mosques.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

Mohamed Atta moved with several others into a flat in this building on an island in Hamburg’s Elbe River. Neighbors said they had no furniture, only mattresses.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

Helga Link recalls meeting Mohamed Atta at this project flat in Hamburg. During his first years in the German city, Atta appeared to be nothing more than an exceptionally disciplined university student. Neighbors said Atta and his roommates talked long into most nights.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

Aziz El Alaoui Sossy, vice president of the fundamentalist Al Quds mosque in Hamburg, blocks the mosque’s storefront entry.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

Sixteen-year-old Liana Santos Cerejo looks out at Marienstrasse 54, near the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg. In the winter of 1998, Mohamed Atta, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Said Bahaji moved into a neat, newly refurbished three-bedroom apartment there.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

View from the stairwell of the old red brick Urban Planning Department building on the campus of the Technical University Hamburg Harburg where Mohamed Atta studied.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

Grafitti stains the wall of an old row house in Greifswald, Germany. The Baltic Sea town in the former East Germany has a known following of skinheads and anti-semites. Griefswald is where Ziad Jarrah adopted radical Muslim views and hatched his involvement with the 911 terrorist plotters. He piloted the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

Hidden in a stand of trees known as Kummmerfeld or “Field of Sorrow” are 4 shipping containers set up by the German govt. in the village of Pinneberg as a refuge for asylum seekers. Yemen-born Ramzi Bin Al-Shibh lived here 2-yrs during a failed bid for asylum. He then moved to Marien- strasse 54 w/Atta. He would have been a 4th terrorist pilot, but repeated attempts for a U.S. visa were denied.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

Men and boys attend evening prayer services at an Islamic center in the San Diego area. Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, attended the center in 2000. While in San Diego, the men took one flight lesson and quit.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

Mohamed Atta stayed at this motel off the Las Vegas Strip for three days last summer. At least two other hijackers were in town at the same time, but it is unknown whether they met.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

In Las Vegas, Deanna Magar stands outside room 122 at the Econo Lodge Motel, one of 2 rooms terrorist Mohamed Atta rented for 3 days in the summer of 2001just weeks before the 911 terrorist attacks. Megar and her husband own the budget priced motel. When asked, she said they never rent out the 2 “Mohamed Rooms”, fearing anyone who might sensationalize their infamous history.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)

A 1994 view of the World Trade Center, from the cockpit of a 747 jumbo jet. The landmarks were easy to spot from the air and an appealing target to terrorists. According to police interrogations nearly a decade ago, it had been suggested to Ramzi Yousef, convicted of the first attack on the center, that many Jews worked in the towers and that he should consider them as a target.  (DON BARTLETTI / LAT)