Instant identification of hijackers

None of the accused hijackers names appear on any of the airline passenger lists, yet they were all identified within hours. The question is, if they used aliases, how did the FBI identify them so quickly? The New York Times reported on September 12 that FBI agents arrived at flight schools within hours of the attacks to gather biographies on the terrorists.

One possible answer is that they were already under surveillance, in which case either the FBI made a serious oops or they sat back and allowed it to happen. But also, they seem to have gotten some of the names wrong, so another possible answer is they used some watch list of likely suspects without having anything solid to link them to the attacks. A third possibility is that they had the list of suckers in their back pocket well before the attack was executed, pre-prepared as part of the overall plot. A fourth possibility is that a good number of the names were totally bogus, which fits in with the fact that some of the ones they identified were still living, and shocked to hear their names mentioned. Oops. Maybe they just figured if the wrong names got figured out, it would all get lost in the confusion. Which, when you think about it, it pretty much did. Bunch of Arab-sounding names...whatever...

Source: Marrs p. 22-23

Well, it seems pretty miraculous that they came up with these names instantly even though they weren't on any of the passenger lists. On the other hand I don't know how the FBI does what it does, so it's hard to say how weird something weird is. If it's a case of these guys were under surveillance, then it's possibly not that weird. It does indicate they had an inkling in advance, at the very least. Can't say it isn't somewhat suspicious, especially since we know the FBI was also busy squashing investigations about terrorist plots right and left. It might even be rather suspicious, but I try to be conservative in these judgements.

Bottom line, me, I give it: