MUGSHOTS: MASTERMIND OF TERROR: MOHAMED ATTA (TV)
Summary
One in this series of biographies that chronicle the subject's criminal record and/or legal woes. This episode, which originally aired under the subtitle "Soldier of Terror," focuses on Mohamed Atta, who is believed to have masterminded the airplane hijackings that sparked the attacks of September 11, 2001. The program opens with a still frame from a videotape shot on September 10, 2001, by a surveillance camera at the airport in Portland, Maine. In the still, Atta and another man are passing through security to board a plane. Next, a still is shown from a security camera at a Wal-Mart store, where the men apparently purchased the box cutters used in the hijackings. These clips are intercut with translated video footage in which Atta's father in Cairo, Egypt, insists that his son was not a militant Muslim and could not have been responsible for the attacks. Other sources, however, indicate that the elder Atta did not know his son so well as he thought. Former counsel for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jack Blum discusses the "burning sense of outrage and injustice" that surfaced in Atta in the years that followed the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
Sadat's murder alerted Atta to the existence of fundamentalist Muslims, the program argues, and he became deeply involved in the fundamentalist movement. At the same time that Atta's interests were being piqued, the Russian conflict with the Afghan Mujahideen was erupting into full-fledged war, explains George Washington University professor of Middle East studies Jerrold Post. Around 1992, Atta moved to Hamburg, Germany, and in 1993 the first attack on the World Trade Center -- a bombing that did less damage than its perpetrators intended -- brought the name of Osama bin Laden to the attention of terrorism experts. Peter Bergen, author of the book "Holy War, Inc.," states that Atta had fallen in with bin Laden at this point and had become completely obsessed with the al Qaeda leader's anti-American cause. The program jumps ahead to May of 2000, when Atta moved to Florida to take flying lessons. Through interviews with his flying instructor, the waitress at his favorite Denny's restaurant, and a fireman who acted as his landlord, a portrait of Atta as a mild-mannered and quiet person emerges. Terrorist profiler Harvey Kushner argues that, in fact, it was during this period that Atta plotted the attacks of September 11. The program concludes by showing footage of the attacks as the narrator reads from Atta's suicide note. Commercials deleted.
Details
- NETWORK: Court TV
- DATE: January 13, 2002 10:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:45:31
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:69302
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Crime and criminals; September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001; War on Terrorism, 2001 -
- SERIES RUN: Court TV - TV series, 2000-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Anthony Horn … Executive Producer
- John Parsons Peditto … Executive Producer, Writer
- Angel Annussek … Senior Producer
- Christopher Trent … Producer
- Burt Kearns … Producer
- Susan Cingali … Producer
- Scott Rayow … Narrator
- Mohamed Atta
- Atta, Mohamed el Amir
- Peter Bergen
- bin Laden, Osama
- Jack Blum
- Harvey Kushner
- Jerrold Post
- Anwar el- Sadat