Mike Kelly

Record Columnist, @MikeKellyColumn

The cramped, first-floor motel room on the noisy stretch of Route 46 in South Hackensack isn’t much to look at now. Just a double bed, a picture window, a dresser, a tiny bathroom. But in the coming months, this unlikely spot — Room 506 at the Congress Inn — may play a key role in helping to answer one of the most explosive questions that linger from the 9/11 attacks.

Just before that fateful day more than 15 years ago, two Saudi Arabian men who were part of the 9/11 hijacking team rented Room 506. They forked over $19 a night, then waited. Investigators say the two suicide-killers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — kept to themselves, offering no hints of the murderous scheme they were about to undertake.

But how did al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi arrive at the Congress Inn? How did two men who had never visited the United States and could not speak any more than a few words of English choose the Congress Inn — on a stretch of Route 46 in North Jersey? Who paid their tab?

A new lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan on behalf of the families of 850 people who perished in America’s deadliest terrorist attack on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and 1,500 more who were injured, may finally reveal those answers — and more.

Paradox of Kellyanne Conway: A smart political operative prone to rhetorical missteps

Kelly: Why my grandmother's death resonates in today's health care debate

Kelly: Chris Christie's obsession with guns

The lawsuit, which has been in the works for more than a decade, points a clear finger at the government of Saudi Arabia as playing a key role in financing the 9/11 attacks and also providing all manner of support, including false passports and lodging for the 19 hijackers — 15 of whom were Saudi citizens. The lodging support not only included safe houses that had been set up by Saudi citizens living in the U.S. — including some with links to the Saudi spy service — but also motels.

In addition to al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi renting a room at the Congress Inn in South Hackensack, the 9/11 plot ringleader, Mohamed Atta, stayed for a time at a motel in Wayne. Authorities say that as many as 11 other hijackers also stayed for varying lengths of time in a one-bedroom apartment on Union Avenue in Paterson. As with al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi at the Congress Inn — and Atta in the motel in Wayne — how did they know where to stay?

They were all strangers in what probably seemed a confusing and occasionally strange country. So it makes perfect sense that they were helped by people who already knew the landscape.

In the case of al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi, the 194-page lawsuit offers a compelling tale.

The story begins in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi arrived there more than a year before the attacks. The CIA had been tracking both men when they left the Middle East. Both had been known to the CIA as Islamist operatives who were members of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.

The CIA learned that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi met in Kuala Lumpur with leaders of the Southeast Asian contingent of bin Laden’s network. Then, with the CIA still tracking them, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi caught a flight to Bangkok, Thailand. From there, they caught another flight to Los Angeles.

And then, the CIA stopped following them.

In what surely is one of America’s most chilling and tragic intelligence failures, the CIA never alerted the FBI that two al-Qaida operatives had just arrived in Los Angeles. At the time, federal law prevented the CIA from conducting counterterrorism surveillance on U.S. soil. So-called “domestic intelligence” work was left to the FBI. But at the time, the FBI and CIA were barely cooperating.

Federal guidelines, established in the 1970s after revelations of abuses by the U.S. intelligence services, set up legal walls that blocked sharing of much spy data by the CIA and FBI. The net impact three decades later was that two Islamist killers were on the loose in America. But how did they manage to live?

Thanks to a previously classified 28-page congressional report and the additional investigative work of the 9/11 Commission, led by former N.J. Gov. Thomas Kean, we now know that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi had plenty of help when they walked off the commercial jetliner in Los Angeles.

In the ensuing months, they had a place to sleep, plenty of money, invitations to dinner — even contacts to take flying lessons, which they would need when they participated in the hijacking of four commercial jetliners on Sept. 11, 2001.

The lawsuit charges that a Saudi official “assisted” al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi “with transportation and housing, including arranging an apartment for the hijackers at the Avalon Westside apartments in Los Angeles.” This was hardly a coincidence — or so many U.S. investigators have claimed for years and now the lawsuit also alleges.

And the coincidences did not end there. The tales of Saudi citizens helping a variety of hijackers — most notably al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi — are chilling. At times, the lawsuit reads like a script for “Homeland.”

Efforts by U.S. officials to hold the Saudi government accountable — or at least force them to answer questions — were rigorously blocked by the Bush administration and the Saudis themselves, who hired U.S. lobbyists and other American allies. To his credit, Governor Kean and the staff of the 9/11 Commission fought hard to open up records. But it was a futile battle.

Congressional investigators ran into similar bureaucratic roadblocks. The most that Congress would produce was a 28-page report that sketched the outlines of possible Saudi links to the 9/11 attacks. But that report — at the behest of the Bush administration and later with the support of President Obama — was kept secret.

All that changed last summer. The report was declassified and made public. Then, Congress overwhelming passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which amends federal laws and allows U.S. citizens to file lawsuits against any nation that offers help to terrorists.

In the past, only nations that had been labeled as state sponsors of terrorism could be sued by U.S. victims of terrorism. This is how two New Jersey families — the Dukers of Teaneck and the Flatows of West Orange — won major judgments against Iran for its support of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad Palestinian terror groups, which orchestrated bombing attacks in Israel that killed Sara Duker and Alisa Flatow.

The new law allowed families to target other nations not on the official list of state sponsors of terrorism — namely Saudi Arabia. Amid much criticism from Republicans and Democrats, Obama vetoed the measure. But Congress — for the only time in Obama’s presidency — voted to override the veto.

So last week’s lawsuit was hardly a surprise. The real surprise is still to come, when this lawsuit finally becomes an open trial, with witnesses from the U.S. spy services and representatives of the Saudi government summoned to the witness box.

Perhaps then, the secrets of Room 506 at the Congress Inn in South Hackensack will finally come to light — secrets of two killers, on the loose with their warped jihadist theology, on a strip of Jersey roadway, waiting to unleash their evil plot.

It’s about time.

Fifteen years is too long to wait.

To contact Record columnist Mike Kelly:

Email: kelly@northjersey.com

Twitter: @MikeKellyColumn