The man detained on Sept. 11 has a name similar to a man who used the name Khalid S. Aldiribi, 32 in Birmingham. The detained man's lawyer, Drewry C. Hutcheson Jr., said his client apparently once lived in Birmingham but denied any connection with the attacks.

Hutcheson said he and his client, Khalid al Draibi, want to meet with government lawyers soon.

''We would like for them to know who he is and that they have no further need to worry about him,'' Hutcheson said in a telephone interview from Alexandria, Va.

But the FBI is also investigating whether those involved in the attacks used false identification.

The detained man was stopped in Manassas, Va., about 15 miles from Dulles, when he was spotted driving with a flat tire and later was cited for giving false information about his citizenship. The jetliner that struck the Pentagon left Dulles that morning.

Workers at a Birmingham-area pilot school, Bessemer Aviation, said Aldiribi trained there in 1998 and 1999 but washed out because of his refusal to follow instructions and his difficulty speaking English. He paid for lessons in cash, they said.

Agents investigating Aldiribi have taken records from Bessemer Aviation and Yellow Cab, a Birmingham taxi service where he worked from about June 1998 through October 1999.

Craig Dahle, an FBI spokesman, declined to comment on the investigation.

Hutcheson said his client was driving a white Lincoln Town Car when stopped near Dulles. Aldiribi was driving the same color and model vehicle when he received a ticket in Alabama on Labor Day, police said.

In Birmingham, two former acquaintances of Aldiribi, both speaking on condition of anonymity, said he frequently was seen with large amounts of cash. Once he claimed to have $20,000 given to him by a bank robber, they said, and other times he said he was being sent money from his father overseas.

The Birmingham News reported that court records show the man used at least 10 different names during a string of more than three dozen traffic violations and other minor scrapes with the law beginning in 1995.

A name similar to Aldiribi's - Khalid S. Ardiribi - was on an FBI list of 21 names sent to banks Wednesday seeking information about their financial transactions. The list mostly included the names of 19 Middle Eastern men previously identified by the FBI as the suspected hijackers in the attacks on New York and Washington.

The FBI list gave Ardiribi's birthdate as Dec. 3, 1968. A north Alabama police chief who ticketed Aldiribi on Labor Day said his driver's license listed the same birthdate: Dec. 3, 1968.

Court records identify the man detained on the day of the attacks as Khalid S.S. al Daraibi. They also list an alias of Khalid S.S. Aldiribi - the same name known in Birmingham.

Hutcheson said he was unaware of the FBI list of 21 names and knew of no connection between his client and Dulles airport.

Agents traced the man held in Virginia back to Alabama because he was carrying a traffic ticket from the north Alabama town of Guin at the time he was detained. Guin police said his driver's license listed a Glendale, Colo., address.