Did everyone see this in todays Post dispatch? Atta visited NY days before attack to set coordinates, officials believe New York Daily News NEW YORK - The leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers visited the World Trade Center days before the attack to obtain coordinates for a navigation device, law enforcement officials now believe. Mohamed Atta, who led the 19 hijackers that morning, was in New York on Sept. 10 and perhaps Sept. 9, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation. The FBI found transactions that show Atta used a credit card in Manhattan the day before the planes crashed into the World Trade Center. Until recently, law enforcement officials could not figure out why he was there. New evidence has emerged that leads investigators to believe that Atta made a last-minute visit to double-check coordinates of the twin towers and plug them into a sophisticated Global Positioning System device bought by the hijackers, the source said. Investigators suspect Atta's trip to the trade center was necessary because, they believe, the hijackers were too inexperienced to handle the jumbo jets without help. They know the hijackers bought GPS devices in the months leading up to the attack. The FBI's New York office declined to comment on what the bureau knows about Atta's final hours. The unusual flight paths of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 - which traveled from Boston and into the twin towers - indicates the hijackers used the devices to guide them as they flew across the country toward what was about to become known as ground zero, the source said. Federal prosecutors say that on Aug. 25 - 17 days before the attack - one of Atta's co-conspirators, hijacker Ziad Jarrah, bought GPS components. Atta himself bought flight deck videos for jumbo jets and several unnamed items from Sporty's Pilot Shop in Ohio in November 2000. Sporty's owners said FBI agents investigating the attacks asked about a Garmin GPS III Pilot, a hand-held device that simplifies aeronautical navigation. And Zacarias Moussaoui, the alleged "20th hijacker" now indicted on terrorism charges in the Sept. 11 plot, also tried to buy a GPS receiver, prosecutors have said. With the coordinates of the twin towers entered as the desired destination, the devices would tell the hijackers when they were off course as they flew thousands of feet above the ground. Experts noted that the hijackers could have obtained coordinates of the towers from available maps, but visiting the site with the device would ensure that the specific data were pinpoint accurate. It's not clear how long Atta was in Manhattan before the attack. The source would not discuss the credit card transactions in the city except to say they took place in Manhattan. Published in A-section on Wednesday, May 22, 2002.