Sept. 11 Kin Hear Final Words

Family members who lost relatives on the four planes that were hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001, gathered for a closed-door briefing on Friday to hear

The briefing comes amid anger from some victims' kin over reports of a possible warning in 2000 about an impending al Qaeda attack. The head of the FBI's Newark office on Friday denied mishandling a man who told agents he had been trained as a hijacker for Osama bin Laden.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center, into the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. Not counting the 19 hijackers, 246 passengers and crew members aboard the planes were killed.

Justice Department letters sent to family members said they would be able to listen to tapes of cell phone calls from the flights, including calls made by American Airlines Flight 11 flight attendants

It was not immediately clear what other taped phone calls investigators possess, or if the family members would hear all of the tapes the government has. The briefing was scheduled to begin at 12:30 p.m. and last about two hours.

Among those arriving at the hotel Friday morning was Sandy Dahl. Her late husband, Capt. Jason Dahl, was the co-pilot of United Flight 93, which was bound from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco when it was hijacked.

The plane crashed in a western Pennsylvania field after passengers were believed to have fought with the hijackers.

"It is tough, but I'm hungry for the information," said Dahl, who chairs the board of Families of Flight 93. "I need to know. I need to know everything that can be known."

Family members had asked for access to the phone calls and other evidence after some of it was revealed during recent hearings of the independent commission investigating the attacks.

"We are here to make sure today that we learn the truth," Dahl said. "We're also here joining together to remind the nation that this was a victory, this was a victory on 9/11. Our loved ones were the only thing that didn't go completely wrong."

Security was tight outside the meeting site, a hotel about five miles north of Princeton. NBC News reported that family members attending the briefing session would be required to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

Prosecutors in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in the United States as part of the Sept. 11 conspiracy, were to conduct the briefing. The material being presented is part of the evidence gathered during the federal investigation into Moussaoui's alleged role in the hijackings, the letter to relatives said.

Ong's tape was played in public in January at a hearing of the Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

"The cockpit is not answering their phone," Ong told the American Airlines operations center. "There's somebody stabbed in business class, and we can't breathe in business. Um, I think there is some Mace or something. We can't breathe."

Some relatives are upset that authorities didn't act more forcefully when a man told the FBI in 2000 that he'd been trained as a hijacker for bin Laden.

In April 2000, the man, a British Muslim, went to the FBI's Newark, New Jersey, office and told agents of plans to hijack U.S. airliners, according to the report of a Senate-House committee that studied the attacks.

The committee's December 2002 report said the "walk in" told the FBI that he had learned hijacking techniques and received arms training in a Pakistani camp and that he was to meet five or six people in the United States.

The man was identified Thursday as Niaz Khan, a Briton of Pakistani descent, by The Wall Street Journal and NBC both of which interviewed him.

Khan, 30, said in the media interviews that Islamic radicals lured him into their group in London with the promise of paying his gambling debts.

"First they say, 'I can help you,'" he told NBC in broken English. He said two men invited him into a car and began by asking if he'd heard of bin Laden.

He said he was taught hijacking basics along with about 30 others in Pakistan, learning how to smuggle weapons through airport security and techniques to overpower passengers and crew.

He said he flew into New York to meet a contact but got cold feet, gambled away the money his handlers had given him and, in fear, turned himself in and confessed.

Although Khan passed polygraph testing, the bureau was unable to verify any aspect of his story or identify his contacts in the United States, the report said. After his claims were investigated, he was turned over to British authorities and eventually freed.

Victims' families said the episode was another example of lapses by authorities who might have foiled the plot if they had been more vigilant.

"Another brand of negligence," said Patty Casazza, whose husband, John, died in the World Trade Center. "How many warnings do you have to have until news of a hijacking is to be deemed credible?"

But Joseph Billy Jr., the agent in charge of the Newark office, said the man's claims were taken seriously.

"An investigation was done on this matter when he came to us," Billy told The Associated Press. "Nothing was discounted. We spent several weeks with him around the clock trying to verify the information that he gave us."

The FBI shared information with other agencies and turned the man over to British authorities, Billy said.

"None of the information that he gave us was ever able to be confirmed or denied," Billy said.