View source for Waleed al-Shehri arrives early

The FBI and other agencies have provided detaied timelines for most of the hijackers, showing when they applied for visas, received them, and first entered the US.  However a number of 9/11 researchers have questioned these accounts, pointing to press and other reports that place some hijackers in the country at an earlier date.  [[Waleed al-Shehri]], for instance, isn't supposed to be in the US until 2001, however here's what CooperativeResearch say about apparent sightings in 1999 or even earlier:

<div class="boilerplate metadata" id="" style="{{divstyleamber}}"><center><b></b></center>Diane and John Albritton later say they call the CIA and police several times this year to report suspicious activity at a neighbor’s home, but authorities fail to respond. [New York Daily News, 9/15/2001; MSNBC, 9/23/2001] 

A man named Waleed Alshehri, allegedly one of the 9/11 hijackers, is renting the house on Orrin Street in Vienna, Virginia, at the time (three blocks from a CIA facility). [Associated Press, 9/15/2001] He makes his neighbors nervous. “There were always people coming and going,” said Diane Albritton. “Arabic people. Some of them never uttered a word; I don’t know if they spoke English. But they looked very focused. We thought they might be dealing drugs, or illegal immigrants.” [New York Times, 9/15/2001] 

A man named Ahmed Alghamdi, allegedly another one of the hijackers, lived at the same address until July 2000. [WorldNetDaily, 9/14/2001; Fox News, 6/6/2002] Shortly after 9/11, it was reported that Waleed Alshehri lived with Ahmed Alghamdi in Florida for seven months in 1997. [Daily Telegraph, 9/20/2001] 

Albritton says they observed a van parked outside the home at all hours of the day and night. A Middle Eastern man appeared to be monitoring a scanner or radio inside the van. Another neighbor says, “We thought it was a drug house. All the cars parked on the street were new BMWs, new Mercedes. People were always walking around out front with cell phones.” There were frequent wild parties, numerous complaints to authorities, and even a police report about a woman shooting a gun into the air during a party. [WorldNetDaily, 9/14/2001] Other neighbors also called the police about the house. [Associated Press, 9/14/2001] 

“Critics say [the case] could have made a difference [in stopping 9/11] had it been handled differently.” Standard procedures require the CIA to notify the FBI of such domestic information. However, FBI officials have not been able to find any record that the CIA shared the information. [Fox News, 6/6/2002] FBI Director Mueller has said “the hijackers did all they could to stay below our radar.” [US Congress, 5/8/2002] Although Fox News, based on information from the CIA and FBI, will still be reporting that these two men are the hijackers of the same name in the summer of 2002, the 9/11 Commission will say that these two hijackers first entered the US in the spring of 2001 (see April 23-June 29, 2001). [Fox News, 6/6/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 527-8]<br>http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=waleed_m._alshehri</div>

This sounds definitive enough, although the site concedes the possibility of error later when they write "A man named Waleed Alshehri lived with a man named Ahmed Alghamdi in Virginia and Florida between 1997 and 2000. However, it is not clear whether they were the hijackers or just people with the same name (see 1999)".  So are these the same people?

One reason to doubt that these are the hijackers comes from their reported ages.  Ahmed al-Ghamdi applied for a US visa with a birth date of 2nd July 1979, for example, while Waleed al-Shehri's visa application gives a birth date of 20th December 1978  [[:image:Hijacker True Name Usage 2001.pdf|(Source)]].  This would put them in the house from around the age of 17 or 18, which seems a little young.  It's still possible as students, perhaps, but then further accounts place al-Shehri in the country even earlier:

{{divbox|amber||Saeed Alghamdi, one of the four listed as hijacking United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Stony Creek Township, Pennsylvania, appears to have resided in the United States for about eight years, longer than any of the other suspected terrorists.

Public records show that the 38-year old Alghamdi attained a Florida driver's license in January 1993.

Computer records indicate that Alghamdi began living at an apartment complex on Dunn avenue in Daytona Beach in about 1996. The 200-unit complex is located a few blocks away from the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which trained at least one of the other terrorists, Waleed Alshehri in 1997. Alshehri and Alghamdi appeared to live at the same address at about the same time. Alshehri has been in the United States since at least 1994, when he got a Social Security number and a Florida driver's license, records show.<br>[http://www.boston.com/news/packages/underattack/globe_stories/0915/Several_among_hijackers_linked_by_pilot_skills+.shtml Boston Globe]}}

If this is the same al-Shehri, and the 20th December 1978 birth date is correct, then that's claiming he got a social security number and a Florida driver's licence when he was 15/ 16.  Which seems unlikely.  Note also that while one account says Ahmed al-Ghamdi lived with al-Sheri, this one says it was Saeed al-Ghamdi, clear evidence of confusion and a good reason not to take these reports as literally true.

As it happens, though, the identification of Waleed al-Shehri as attending Embry-Riddle tells us this is not the same individual as the hijacker.  There is a Saudi pilot called Waleed Ahmed al-Shehri, son of a Saudi diplomat Ahmed al-Shehri, but the FBI-named hijacker was Waleed Mohammed al-Shehri, son of Mohammed al-Shehri, and not a pilot at all.  [[Waleed al-Shehri still alive|Read more on the differences here.]]

You don't have to take our word for it, of course.  As we write, searching for Waleed al-Shehri at Intelius.com] brings up the following:

[[Image:Waleed al-Shehri Background Check.gif]]

There's a Waleed al-Shehri who lived in both Vienna and Daytona Beach, then, but he's Waleed Ahmed al-Shehri.  And he's 33 as we write (10th July 2007), which would put his birth date around 1974, making him around 20 when he first got a driver's licence: that's a better fit than Waleed Mohammed al-Shehri's 1979 date.

Another report offers an extra detail:

[[Image:Waleed al-Shehri Background Check 2.gif]]

Looks like it's his diplomat father listed as the relative, more confirmation that Waleed Ahmed al-Shehri the pilot is not the same person as Waleed Mohammed al-Shehri the 9/11 hijacker, and so the accounts of an al-Shehri living at this address don't in themselves show that the hijacker arrived earlier than the FBI have claimed.