🚨 HERO -- This is an American Badass: The Inspector Who Sent the 20th Hijacker Home Jose Melendez-Perez did his job. On August 4, 2001, that took courage. He was an immigration inspector at Orlando International Airport and a retired Army soldier - 26 years in uniform, two tours in Vietnam. His job that night was to decide whether a foreign traveler should be allowed into the United States. The traveler was Mohammed al-Qahtani, a 26-year-old Saudi. He had a tourist visa, a one-way ticket, no hotel, little money, and a story that kept changing. He would not tell Melendez-Perez who was picking him up. When he was placed under oath, he stopped talking. Another inspector warned Melendez-Perez he would get in trouble for turning a Saudi away. Melendez-Perez said he could not do the work with dignity if nationality decided who got in. He refused him entry anyway. Al-Qahtani was almost certainly the intended 20th hijacker - the extra man for United Flight 93, the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field after the passengers fought back. The other three hijacked jets that morning each carried five men. Flight 93 carried four. Al-Qahtani had trained in Afghanistan and sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda. 9/11 Commission staff later said he was likely the only Islamic terrorist denied entry into the United States before the attacks. Waiting at that same airport was Mohamed Atta. Atta was the tactical leader of the September 11 plot. Eight weeks later he flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. He had come to Orlando to pick up “the friend who is coming as a tourist.” He waited all day. Then al-Qahtani was put on a plane out of the country. Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste later told Melendez-Perez that stopping him “may well have contributed to saving the Capitol or the White House.” Before September 11, inspectors already knew the unofficial rule. A Saudi passport got gentler handling than the law required. If you delayed one of those travelers, or sent him home, the complaint did not stay at the airport. It could become a letter from a member of Congress to the agency. Supervisors feared those letters. They feared standing behind an inspector who said no. Melendez-Perez said that out loud. The 9/11 Commission wrote it down and never named who sent the letters. (RAIR is fighting to uncover this) The same pressure existed overseas. Visa officers were pushed to keep Saudis moving into the United States. At American airports, a line inspector learned that pressing a Saudi traveler too hard was a career risk. Melendez-Perez pressed anyway. The special treatment did not stop on September 11. After the attacks, the Saudi embassy asked the U.S. government to help get members of the Saudi royal family - and relatives of Osama bin Laden - out of the country. White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke passed that request to the FBI. A private Boeing 727 was hired for the job. The jet, Ryan International Flight 441, left Boston at 2:05 a.m. on September 20. Besides the crew, 26 passengers were on board. Most were members of the bin Laden family. The pilots at first refused to take them. They were paid extra and flew the route anyway. FBI agents questioned most of the people on board. They detained no one. Al-Qahtani was later captured in Afghanistan, sent to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, and released after officials concluded he had been tortured (BOO-HOO). His lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, is now chief counsel to New York City’s mayor. The men in the plot were Muslims. They trained, entered the country, and murdered nearly 3,000 people in the name of Allah. Officials still treated the Saudi passport and the fear of being called hostile to Islam as the thing that had to be managed. Question the traveler too hard, and you were the problem. Say the threat out loud, and you were the bigot. That pressure was already on inspectors before the first plane hit. It was still there when the bin Laden family got a night flight home. It is still there when the man who came to kill Americans is spoken of as a victim, and the inspector who stopped him is a footnote. One HERO inspector. One refusal. Jose Melendez-Perez. He did the job they hoped he would not do. SEE THE REPORT HERE: rairfoundation.com/american-…