Fact check: 9/11 terrorists did not enter U.S. from Canada

Although it’s been mentioned twice recently (by GOP congressional candidates Steve Pearce and Tom Mullins), the idea that the 9/11 terrorists came across the northern border is a myth.

“As the 9/11 Commission reported in July 2004, all of the 9/11 terrorists arrived through major U.S. airports from outside North America. They entered the U.S. with documents issued to them by the U.S. Government,” Jennie Chen, counsellor for public affairs at the Embassy of Canada in Washington D.C., told The Independent in an e-mail.

There is not a single passage in the report that exonerates our northern neighbor, but another embassy staffer pointed us to the relevant passages in the report:

1. All of the 9/11 terrorists arrived in the U.S. from outside North America (pg 236, “From Pakistan, the operatives transited through the UAE en route to the U.S.”)
2. They flew to major U.S. airports (pg. 237, “The muscle hijackers began arriving in the U.S. in late April 2001. In most cases, they traveled in pairs on tourist visas and entered the U.S. in Orlando or Miami, Florida; Washington, DC; or New York.”).
3. They entered the U.S. with documents issued to them by the U.S. government (pg 235, “muscle hijackers obtained U.S. visas in Jeddah or Riyadh between Sept. and Nov. of 2000.)

Last year, Attorney General Janet Napolitano was criticized for alluding that the 9/11 terrorists came from Canada when she said:”Yes, Canada is not Mexico, it doesn’t have a drug war going on, it didn’t have 6,000 homicides that were drug-related last year,” she said. “Nonetheless, to the extent that terrorists have come into our country or suspected or known terrorists have entered our country across a border, it’s been across the Canadian border. There are real issues there.”

After a minor uproar, Napolitano was forced to clarify, saying, ”I know that the September 11th hijackers did not come through Canada to the United States.”

How did all this confusion begin? The Washington Post explained in a 2005 story:

The account was born in the first days after the attacks, when reporters and government investigators were scrambling to figure out how the conspirators had carried out the plot. Bernard Etzinger, a Canadian Embassy spokesman, says the “big bang” that started the legend can be traced to two Boston newspapers.

A Boston Globe story on Sept. 13 said investigators were “seeking evidence” that the hijackers came through Canada. The Boston Herald reported the same day that federal investigators believed “the terrorist suspects may have traveled . . . by boat” from Canada.

On Sept. 14, The Washington Post reported that an unnamed U.S. official had said two suspects “crossed the border from Canada with no known difficulty at a small border entry in Coburn Gore, Maine,” and that others may have come through other Maine ports. On Sept. 16, that report was repeated by the New York Post, which also declared that “terrorists bent on wreaking havoc in the United States” had found Canada “the path of least resistance.” On Sept. 19, the Christian Science Monitor referred to Canada as “a haven for terrorists.”

“It was just one of those things where everybody says, ‘We all knew that,’ and it becomes irrefutable,” Etzinger said.

In the weeks after the attacks, investigators established that all of the hijackers entered the United States from countries other than Canada, a finding that got the official stamp last summer with the release of the Sept. 11 commission report. But that has not stopped the story from spreading.