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Five years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, investigators are still looking into the government's response to determine why aviation and military officials' accounts of their performancethat day don't match recorded accounts by other government officials of the events as they unfolded.
Members of the government's 9/11 Commission, which investigated the attacks and the response, requested the investigations.
The Defense Department inspector general will soon release a report on whether the military's testimony to thecommission was "knowingly false," said Lt. Col. Brian Maka, a Pentagon spokesman.
TheTransportation Department inspector general is finishing a report on whether Federal Aviation Administration officials misspoke in their testimony, said David Barnes, the inspector general's spokesman.
The FAA and defense officials have corrected some information originally given to the 9/11 Commission, such as the exact times the FAA notified the military of the hijackings, and the military's assertion that it was tracking one of the planes and intended to intercept it when, in fact, the plane had already crashed.
Five years after the deadliest enemy attack ever on the United States, questions linger about the terror plot that toppled New York's World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon and ignited the ongoing war on terrorism.
The killing of nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001, is not a "cold case."
But it also is not a closed case, and despite the huge body of evidence collected, unanswered questions remain. Among them:
*Who did the airliner hijackers meet as they spent months in the U.S. planning -- and traveling to places such as Las Vegas and Los Angeles?
*What was the ultimate source of money for the terrorist operation?
*What was the Washington target of United Flight 93, which crashed near Shanksville, Pa.?
*What motivated 19 relatively well-off Arab men, all Muslims, to become such horrific suicide bombers?
Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the national September 11 commission, says motivation was the "big question" the panel could not answer.
"We were never able to answer why the 19 were willing to kill themselves. What was the motivation? I am talking in a very personal way," Mr. Hamilton, a Democrat who represented Indiana's 9th District in the House for 34 years, said in an interview wih The Washington Times.
"What was the motivation for each one of these hijackers? I think the question of motivation was opaque to us. We just could not nail it. They were dead, of course."
He said investigators guessed at a religious motive or a political grievance against the West, or more specifically the United States.