No 9-11 Hijacker Entered U.S. Through Canada

The Tea Party candidate vying for Nevada's Senate seat was chastised earlier this week by Canada's ambassador to the United States for supposedly repeating an old canard that 9-11 hijackers entered the country through Canada.

In a letter (.pdf) sent to Republican candidate Sharron Angle on Monday , Ambassador Gary Doer said he wanted to correct the record.

"There have been no terrorist attacks on the United States coming from Canada," wrote Doer. "None of the 9/11 hijackers entered the United States from or through Canada. Extensive investigations by U.S. law enforcement authorities have established that all the hijackers entered the United States directly from third countries- not Canada- with visas issued by American diplomatic missions overseas."

Last Friday, Angle made a vague statement about terrorists crossing Canada's "porous" border into the United States. She did not, however, explicitly state whether she was referring to 9-11.

Via a transcript provided by the Las Vegas Sun's Jon Ralston:

"What we know is that our northern border is where the terrorists came through," Angle said. "That’s the most porous border that we have. We cannot allow terrorists; we cannot allow anyone to come across our border if we don’t know why they’re coming."

Whether or not Angle meant 9/11 hijackers had entered the United States via Canada to conduct the worst enemy attack on its soil, it's indeed important to set the record straight.

"The hijackers successfully entered the United States 33 of 34 times, with the first arriving on January 15, 2000, at Los Angeles International Airport," according to the 9-11 Commission report "9/11 and Terrorist Travel" (.pdf) released in August 2004. "All others entered through airports on the East Coast, including 11 entries through New York area airports and 12 through Florida airports."