Khalid al-Mihdhar [also spelled "Midhdar"], and Nawaf al-Hazmi. After the proposed hijacking plot gained the approval of Bin Laden, Sheikh Mohammed and other senior al Qaeda members who were aware of the plot referred to it as the planes operation. Sheikh Mohammed estimated that it would take about two years to plan and execute.
7. Sheikh Mohammed said that he had to make his first major adjustment to his plan during the Spring and Summer of 1999 when he realized that [Walid] Bin Attash [(a.k.a. "Khallad")] and Abu Bara, who were both Yemenis, were unable to obtain U.S. visas. Sheikh Mohammed wanted these two operatives to be involved in the planes operation, as well as other Yemenis from Bin Laden's security detail, including al-Battar al-Yemeni. As a result, Sheikh Mohammed decided to split the planes operation into two parts to ensure that the Yemenis participated. The first part involved the United States. Sheikh Mohammed planned to send an as-yet undetermined number of operatives to the United States to hijack U.S.-flagged commercial airliners and crash them into targets within the United States. By mid-1999, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi. who already had U.S. visas, were already slated for that operation. The other part of the operation involved a smaller version of the Bojinka plot, and would involve
