One of Oprah's guests today was Michael Tuohey, an employee of US AIR who checked in Mohammed Atta and one of the other hijackers on the morning of Sept. 11.
A 37-year employee of US Air, Touhey said he's recently started to see Atta's face staring at him from cabs that pass by on the street or even at his local mall, that even though he knows it's not him, Atta looks as real to him today as it did on Sept. 11.
Two ticket agents checked in Atta that day, Touhey and a woman with American Airlines in Boston. Touhey said the woman has already committed suicide, and he didn't seem far from it on the show. (No warning by Atta's name at all, BTW, you idiots at ABC. Nothing. ID checked out. Ticket checked out. Nothing to tell this broken man he shouldn't send Atta on his way.)
Link to his story: http://www2.oprah.com/...
Touhey said Atta and the other hijacker had $2,500 first-class tickets from Maine to Boston and that Atta really gave him the creeps, like no one ever had before in all his 37 years.
But Atta had ID and a ticket and answered all the security questions correctly. There were no other security procedures in place in the pre-911 world.
The only thing Touhey could do was not give Atta and the other hijacker their boarding passed for the American Airlines flight they were scheduled to catch in Boston, which meant they'd have to check in with another ticket agent, one more chance for someone to do... well, the guy didn't say what. It was just the only thing he could do, absent any heightened security alerts. And there were none in place on Sept. 11. No heightened alerts to the airlines.
Still, unlike Mr I'm-not-responsible-for-anything, AKA George Bush, Touhey feels a terrible sense of guilt, that surely he could have done something and prevented all those deaths. (Geez, maybe if Mr.-I'm-on-vacation-all-the-friggin-time, AKA George Bush, had done something after reading his PDB, Bin Laden Determined to Strike US, like issued some security warnings or even some new procedures for the airlines...
But anyway... Touhey said he heard about the first plane hitting the towers and wondered about Atta. When the second plane hit, he knew.
He watched people jumping from the burning towers and felt a horrible sense of guilt and responsibility.
He heard later that the ticket agent in Boston who checked Atta in, later committed suicide, and even blames himself for her death. If he hadn't withheld the boarding passes in Maine, Atta wouldn't have had to check in in Boston. That woman who killed herself would have never seen Atta on that day.
(And I hope if she's the one ABC implied ignored a security warning about Atta and she did kill herself over 911, that her family sues the hell out of ABC.)
Amazing how ordinary Americans are obviously tortured by the idea that they could have done something, anything, to change what happened on that day, and our president struts around with wreaths and pouty looks, claiming to be the Security President, using 911 at every opportunity, even to start a phony war on terror in Iraq and obviously feels nothing.
No guilt at all.
Amazing.