Chip Minemyer: Former FBI investigator from Johnstown tracked cell phone data during 9/11 probe

Sep. 4—When terrorists hijacked four airplanes and used them as weapons on Sept. 11, 2001, Johnstown native Vince Pankoke was part of a Miami FBI team chasing drug traffickers in South America.

The unit was soon called into a different service, using skills developed to track the illegal activities of drug cartels to help build — through cell phone activity — a profile of the terrorist network that launched the attacks.

The team's work linked the 9/11 terrorists — many of whom lived and learned to fly airplanes in southern Florida — with terror cells in Germany, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, he said.

"Of course, the 19 hijackers were dead," Pankoke said. "But there was much to be learned.

"We needed to find out who carried out the attacks, and make sure it didn't happen again."

The mission was to determine whether there were other terror cells that 9/11 hijackers had been working with, he said, if there were additional collaborators in the United States and who else might have been involved.

And most importantly, he said: "Were there other attacks that were about to happen?"

The 21st anniversary of the 9/11 attacks will be commemorated over the Sept. 11 weekend at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville as well as in New York City and at the Pentagon.

Pankoke, a University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown graduate and former Richland Township investigator, has been in the spotlight this year after heading up a team that sought to determine who was responsible for the death of Anne Frank at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust in 1944.

Pankoke will return to his hometown region on Nov. 11, to serve as the featured speaker for the group Wings For Our Heroes — which provides outdoor activities for first responders who have suffered disabilities — at Whispering Hollow Estates in Pleasantville.

Now retired in Florida, Pankoke recalled the important role of his cellphone crew in helping explain how the 9/11 attacks were carried out.

"People didn't realize back then the amount of information we could access from looking at cellphone records," he said.

"That's despite the fact that the ability to have all of your personal information on your phone — banking and all of that — wasn't a thing yet."

He said even in 2001, the FBI could determine from phone data and calling patterns where individuals lived, who their family members and friends were, where they worked, and where they went for entertainment or to shop.

Under veteran FBI official Robert Casey, who was put in charge of the 9/11 investigation, the drug squad had the freedom to "hand-pick a team of experts to become the cellphone exploitation team," Pankoke said.

Soon, information was flowing in, as FBI agents subpoenaed cellphone records and cross-referenced calling patterns to pinpoint key spots and potential terror collaborators.

Pankoke said it was quickly learned that terror cells operated much like the drug cartels. A call would be placed from an individual in the United States to a terror cell, which would route that call on to another cell. Call data helped investigators identify the "Hamburg Cell" in Germany, determined to be a hub for al-Qaida and the 9/11 attacks.

Terrorists with ties to Hamburg included 9/11 terror leader Mohamed Atta, who oversaw the operation and flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, and Ziad Jarrah, who piloted the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 before it crashed near Shanksville after the passengers fought back.

Phone records also showed the terrorists' movement in South Florida, trips to Las Vegas, where they did their banking — even activity involving escort services.

Evidence emerged that the initial plan may have been to carry out the attacks on July 4. That concept was generated in part from interviews with an escort in Florida, and signs of "calls for sex" — "a flurry of activity" — in the days before the Independence Day holiday, Pankoke said.

Pankoke said an escort service worker who pleaded with agents to protect her identity, told FBI agents that one of the men later identified as a hijacker had been with her and told her: "This is probably going to be the last time I see you."

The theory was that the terrorists decided they weren't ready, perhaps that they needed more flight training, so the attacks were pushed back to September.

Agents also received and explored "thousands of calls per day" about "suspicious" people — individuals who "looked Muslim" or who were believed to be speaking arabic.

"Most of the calls were not helpful," Pankoke said. "But about the time you don't take one of those calls seriously, you risk passing something over."

He said an important lesson from the 9/11 probe was that greater collaboration was needed between the criminal investigators of the FBI and the intelligence agents of the CIA — what Pankoke called "seeing through the wall." The experience led to the formation of the National Counterterrorism Center near D.C. — among many recommendations in the 9/11 Commission Report, issued in July 2004.

"The effort was unprecedented, probably since World War II, when the FBI had to be on full alert," he said of the overall 9/11 investigation.

Tracking and stopping terrorists remains a key duty of those federal agencies, Pankoke said.

"You can't say, 'Well, all of these years have gone by without another successful attack, more than 20 years now,' " he said. "You can't rest on that. You have to remain vigilant. I guarantee you there's another (Osama) bin Laden out there trying to plan something."

And he fears that the general public can also lose focus on the messages of 9/11 — including that threats continue at home and around the world.

"There's a new generation now," he said. "They're looking back at 9/11 and thinking, 'That happened 21 years ago. That was before I was born.' But we have to keep talking about this, and that's why the memorials are so important."

Pankoke added: "I think 9/11, it's like the Holocaust. Only by continually looking back at that situation can we remind people of what is possible."

Chip Minemyer is the editor and general manager of The Tribune-Democrat and TribDem.com, GM of The Times-News of Cumberland, Md., and CNHI regional editor for Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia and North Carolina. He can be reached at 814-532-5091. Follow him on Twitter @MinemyerChip.