When my research assistant Daniel Taylor contacted John Fund and asked about the source of the fact that eight of the hijackers were registered in either Florida or Virginia, John Fund indicated that he obtained the fact from an interview with then-Assistant Attorney General Michael Cherthoff. Taylor then contacted the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, the Counterterrorism Section, and Voting Section, and no one knew about the claim. At the suggestion of these offices, Taylor filed a FOIA request. He also repeatedly called the Department of Homeland Security (Cherthoff is now Secretary of Homeland Security), but so far no has responded to Taylor. Taylor also contacted the former Virginia Secretary of the Board of Elections, Cameron Quinn. Quinn indicated that she was unable to confirm or deny that the September 11 hijackers were registered to vote in VA. She was familiar with the claim, and indicated that they looked into it while she was Secretary of the Board of Elections. However, they had a difficult time getting from federal officials the actual names of the hijackers, their Social Security numbers (which is how they usually look up registrations), or their actual voter registration numbers. As a result, she believes that her agency was never able to prove or disprove that any of the 9/11 hijackers registered to vote in Virginia. Taylor’s calls to the Florida Secretary of State have not yet been returned. [This note will be revised as more facts come in].

(Fund told me that the information came from an interview with Michael Chertoff, now Secretary of Homeland Security, while he was a Justice Department official. Fund suggested that Chertoff’s statement may have come from secret information. Two academics–Spencer Overton of George Washington University and Lorraine Minnite of Barnard–have been unable to confirm the “registered hijacker” claim with election officials.)

At least eight of the nineteen hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were actually able to register to vote in either Virginia or Florida while they made their deadly preparations for 9/11.

After 9/11, the Justice Department found that eight of the 19 hijackers were registered to vote.