THE video footage acquired by the Associated Press newsagency at Dulles Airport shows hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Majed Moqed, each dressed in trousers and collared shirts, setting off metal detectors as they pass through security around 7:18am.

Some of the hijackers who crashed a jetliner into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, twice set off alarms as they passed through airport metal detectors, but security screeners did not appear to question them about knives they were apparently carrying, according to a newly disclosed surveillance video.

The mastermind of the September 11 attacks has told US interrogators that he first discussed the plot with Osama bin Laden in 1996, according to interrogation reports.

PRIOR to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the CIA failed to act on intelligence it had about hijackers, the FBI was unable to track al-Qaida in the United States, and key National Security Agency communications intercepts never were circulated, an American congressional investigation has concluded.