“Except for the place where they died, Bill Feehan and Mohamed Atta would seem to have had absolutely nothing in common. . . . As a lifelong firefighter who rose to become first deputy commissioner of the New York City Fire Department, Feehan was directly or indirectly responsible for saving thousands of lives. As a suicidal terrorist who flew American Airlines flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center; Atta murdered thousands, including Bill Feehan, who was helping a woman at the base of the North Tower when the building collapsed on him. Any suggestion of moral equivalence between the two men is repugnant. And yet, it must be said, both believed in the rightness of their causes with absolute certainty.” (Newsweek, Dec. 31, 2001/Jan. 7, 2002, p. 40)

Is there an “anatomy of a terrorist?” How is it that two wiggly baby boys could one day end up in the same place but for such different reasons? How could anyone come to believe the slaughter of innocents was the “right” thing to do? It would be a lot easier on most of us if we could believe that Mohamed Atta was totally insane, the victim of mad delusions. But could a truly crazy person work with the calm and careful purpose that Atta exhibited? Does it make more sense to assume that Mohamed Atta was simply evil? And if so, how did he get that way?

According to a description in Newsweek, based on interviews with family and others who knew him, Mohamed Atta would have seemed an unlikely candidate for terrorist action. Short and slim (in the highjacking of American Airlines, Flight 11 he was leader and pilot, the other four highjackers provided the brawn) he was considered a “mamma’s boy” by his father. Atta Sr. would complain to his wife that she was raising Mohamed as a girl. Even in his 20s he continued to sit in his mother’s lap from time to time. There was a further problem for a prospective highjacker: he absolutely hated flying! His sister, who was a doctor, had to provide medicine against cramps and vomiting every time he flew.

An interesting obsession of his, however, offered a premonition of the shocking way that he would choose to die. On the wall of Mohamed Atta’s apartment in Hamburg, Germany was a black-and-white poster of construction workers perched on a beam of the Empire State Building high above New York (taken back in 1930). According to his teachers and former classmates, Atta believed that high-rise buildings were a curse introduced into the Middle East from the West. In the Middle East the traditional method of construction has been one- or two-story houses with private courtyards. When this was done well it resulted in the kind of charming, bustling neighborhood life that tourists to the Middle East love to taste. The interior courtyards provided privacy, the beauty of the neighborhood provided dignity, and the whole fostered interaction and community.

In the 60s and 70s, however, Middle Eastern cities and towns became filled with impersonal and ugly apartment complexes. Atta’s own family moved into an 11th floor apartment in 1990, as he was graduating with an engineering degree from Cairo University. The building his own family lived in became for him a shabby symbol of Egypt’s embrace of Western ways. Secular Arabs had accepted the negative trappings of the modern world without attaining its wealth and freedom.

Atta began to study ways to reverse the situation and restore the old glories of Islam. A major opportunity came when his father decided to send him to engineering school at Hamburg Technical University in Germany. There he pursued a degree in urban-planning studies. His thesis was on the restoration of Aleppo, an ancient Syrian city, to its pure Islamic past– devoid of skyscrapers. He was awarded a B+ for the thesis.

But how did the mamma’s boy become a mass murderer? Atta’s progress from idealistic student to Islamic militant to terrorist seems to have been gradual. At first his goal was the improvement of urban life in the Middle East. Then in Cairo University he came under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, which aimed to create an Islamic state and limit Western influence in Egypt through non-violent means.

Mohamed Atta’s gathering resentments were probably sharpened by the anti-foreigner attitude in Germany, where Muslim immigrants often feel like second-class citizens. He found refuge in the mosques of Hamburg, where the mullahs have a lot more freedom to speak than they do in Egypt. Recruiting for the terrorist underground sometimes occurs in these mosques. Atta is believed to have been specifically recruited into al Qaeda by Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a German citizen of Syrian descent (reported in USA Today on June 19, 2002).

In 1995, Atta went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, searching for a deeper commitment to his faith. In 1997 he traveled to Afghanistan and enrolled in one of Osama bin Laden’s training camps for terrorists. Egyptians were given special treatment in these camps, so Atta would have quickly felt at home. The camps were designed to solidify beliefs, fan the flames of hatred, and then train people for specialized roles in the mission of terror. Atta himself was chosen for a leadership role and trained in the arts of bomb making and chemical weaponry. While he was not intimidating in appearance, he seems to have had a hard stare that made it difficult for people to cross him. Power is more than just a physical thing.

When he returned to Hamburg in 1998 he established an al Qaeda cell that included two roommates, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Samir Jarrah, who also participated in the suicide highjackings on September 11. All three came from middle-class families, were skilled in computers and were highly educated. Once set on his course, Atta made further preparation by getting flight training in Florida, examining potential targets in the US, and finally heading for Portland, Maine, where he was to board a connecting flight to Boston with one of his terrorist “muscle-men,” Abdulaziz Alomari. In Boston they were able to transfer without passing through further security and the rest is history. A “momma’s boy” who hated skyscrapers found a way to destroy one of the two most massive towers in the world, at the cost of thousands of human lives. And he did so in the name of God.

According to Newsweek, Mohamed Atta carefully planned out his final moves. In a document he titled “The Last Night” he wrote to himself, “Be happy, optimistic, calm, because you are heading for a deed God loves and will accept. It will be the day, God willing, you spend with the women of paradise.” And with regard to the last moment before impact, Atta wrote, “Either end your life while praying, seconds before the target, or make your last words: ‘There is no God but God, and Mohammad is His messenger.’” Was Atta’s vision the inevitable product of Islam or did he misunderstand the faith he served so fervently? Does the Qur’an itself contain the seeds of suicidal terrorism or is al Qaeda a blasphemous misinterpretation of Mohammed’s original intentions? To be continued.

When Mohamed Atta’s plane struck the north tower of the World Trade Center Bill Feehan was at his Brooklyn office. A 42-year veteran, he had held every imaginable job in the New York City Fire Department, from “proby” to acting commissioner. At 71 years of age he could have retired years before September 11. In fact, one of Feehan’s aides had sensed that he was about to call it quits. A memorial plaque for firefighters who died in the line of duty hung in the lobby of FDNY headquarters. It had room for 780 names. Over 136 years of existence the Fire Department had bid final farewell to 778 of its number. One day Feehan told a friend, “I want to be out of here before that plaque is full.” Little did he know at that moment that on a sunny day in September the list would grow by nearly 50%.

An aide called Feehan, “Hey boss! I think you better see this! A plane went into the World Trade Center.”

Feehan emerged from his office, looked out a west-facing window and saw the smoke swirling from the upper levels of the north tower. “Oh my God!” he said, “Let’s go!” He and his team raced across the Brooklyn Bridge to take charge of the fire companies responding to the tragedy. Although they did not know each other, Feehan was about to join Mohamed Atta in the rubble of the North Tower. They both arrived there by choice. Bill Feehan and Mohamed Atta met their deaths in the same place because one man chose to destroy and the other chose to save.