In 1977, they writing books and making movies about hijacking blimps and using them to kill civilians. So what else is new?
Posted on 05/17/2002 7:56:44 PM PDT by PhiKapMom
1999 Study Said Hijack-Suicides Possible
WASHINGTON (AP) - Two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, an analysis prepared for U.S. intelligence warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists could hijack an airliner and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon.
``Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,'' the September 1999 report said.
The Bush administration has asserted that no one in government had envisioned a suicide hijacking before it happened.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said the administration was aware of the report prepared by the Library of Congress for the National Intelligence Council, which advises the president and U.S. intelligence on emerging threats. He said the document did not contain direct intelligence pointing toward a specific plot but rather included assessments about how terrorists might strike.
``What it shows is that this information that was out there did not raise enough alarm with anybody,'' Fleischer acknowledged.
Also Friday, new information emerged about a memo from the FBI's Phoenix office last July warning headquarters that a large number of Arabs were training at a U.S. flight school. The memo urged that all flight schools nationwide be checked, but the FBI failed to act on the idea before Sept. 11.
Government officials said Friday that two of the more than half dozen names the FBI Phoenix office identified in the memo were determined by the CIA after Sept. 11 to have links to bin Laden's al-Qaida.
Officials said the CIA was not shown the memo before Sept. 11 and even if it had, it did not have the intelligence linking the two men to al-Qaida until after the attacks. The FBI checked the names before Sept. 11 but found no bin Laden ties, the officials added.
Former CIA Deputy Director John Gannon, who was chairman of the National Intelligence Council when the 1999 report was written, said officials long have known a suicide hijacking was a threat.
``If you ask anybody could terrorists convert a plane into a missile, nobody would have ruled that out,'' he said.
Democrats and some Republicans in Congress raised the volume of their calls to investigate what the government knew before Sept. 11.
``I think we're going to learn a lot about what the government knew,'' Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said during an appearance in New York. She said she was unaware of the report created in 1999 during her husband's administration.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary and Finance committees, demanded the CIA inspector general investigate the report, which he called ``one of the most alarming indicators and warning signs of the terrorist plot of Sept. 11.''
Meanwhile, court transcripts reviewed by The Associated Press show the government had other warning signs between 1999 and 2001 that bin Laden was sending members of his network to be trained as pilots and was considering airlines as a possible target.
The court records show the FBI has known since at least 1999 that Ihab Mohammed Ali, who was arrested in Orlando, Fla., and later named as an unindicted coconspirator in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa, had been sent for pilot training in Norman, Okla., before working as a pilot for bin Laden.
He eventually crashed a plane owned by bin Laden in Sudan that prosecutors alleged was used to transport al-Qaida members and weapons. Ali remains in custody in New York.
In February 2001, federal prosecutors told a court they gained information in September 2000 from an associate of Ali's, Moroccan citizen L'Houssaine Kherchtou, that Kherchtou was trained as an al-Qaida pilot in Kenya and attended a meeting in 1993 where an al-Qaida official was briefing Ali on Western air traffic control procedures.
``He (Kherchtou) observed an Egyptian person who was not a pilot debriefing a friend of his, Ihab Ali, about how air traffic control works and what people say over the air traffic control system,'' then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald told a New York court.
``And it was his belief that there might have been a plan to send a pilot to Saudi Arabia or someone familiar with that to monitor the air traffic communications so they could possibly attack an airplane perhaps belonging to an Egyptian president or something in Saudi Arabia.''
That intelligence is in addition to information the FBI received in July 2001 from its Phoenix office that a large number of Arabs were training at U.S. flight schools and a briefing President Bush received in August of that year suggesting hijacking was one possible attack the al-Qaida might use against the United States.
The September 1999 report, entitled ``Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?'' described suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks the al-Qaida might seek for a 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan.
The report noted an al-Qaida-linked terrorist first arrested in the Philippines in 1995 and later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had suggested such a mission.
``Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters,'' the report said.
Bush administration officials have repeatedly said no one in government had imagined such an attack.
``I don't think anybody could have predicted that ... they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,'' National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday.
The report was written by the Federal Research Division, an arm of the Library of Congress that provides research for federal agencies.
``This information was out there, certainly to those who study the in-depth subject of terrorism and al-Qaida,'' said Robert L. Worden, the agency's chief.
``We knew it was an insightful report,'' he said. ``Then after Sept. 11 we said, 'My gosh, that was in there.'''
Gannon said the 1999 report was part of a broader effort by his council to identify the full range of attack options of U.S. enemies.
``It became such a rich threat environment that it was almost too much for Congress and the administration to absorb,'' Gannon said. ``They couldn't prioritize what was the most significant threat.''
05/17/02 20:58 EDT
Wouldn't surprise me if the DNC talking point papers on attack on Pres Bush came right out of ms. clinton's office!
It is time to connect the dots for some of our less cerebral friends from the left.
Bush and Co were working on plans for the elimination of the Taliban. There were a couple of problems though.
1. Clinton and the military staff had made no effort to update the cold war organizational structure of the military. Hence the top down (out of cycle) review of the DOD. I feel sure this review was in response to the initial threat analysis provided by his national security team. The necessary changes took time and could not be accomplished prior to 9/11. If they could have been, then the action plan that was delevered to Bush on 9/9 would have been there months sooner.
2. Bush accelerated production of new generation of weapons systems (halted by Clinton) which are now being used to route out the enemy. Had Clinton not halted development, these weapons systems would have been operational in time to be part of a proactive move against Ben Laden. Even given those problems (and against all odds), the Bush National Security Team almost had a mechanism in place before 9/11.
But now comes the really troubling part.
Today we know the Airlines were notified of general threats and intel committees of both houses of Congress briefed on the same issue. The only thing we don't know is who else knew of the President's plan to take on and take out Osama and Co.? There are indications that the attack dates were moved up. Were any of the intellegence committees briefed in this? We know that a few Dems are hard wired into radical Islamic groups. Dissemination of information like this among those groups could have worked its way to one or more of the participants and could have changed the time table for the attack. It appears that the President was moving quickly to eliminate the threat. Who gave away the plan?
If anyone had taken action on this particular senario the ACLU would have blocked it and it would have disturbed out policy with the Islamic world.
War On Terrorism
All data are from nationwide surveys of Americans 18 & older.
| Polls listed chronologically. |
|
. |
|
. |
| CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. May 16, 2002. N=598 adults nationwide. MoE ± 4. | ||||||
. |
||||||
| "First, how much confidence do you have in the Bush Administration to protect its citizens from future terrorist attacks: a great deal, fair amount, not very much, or none at all?" | ||||||
| Great Deal |
Fair Amount |
Not Very Much |
None At All |
No Opinion |
||
| % | % | % | % | % | ||
| 5/16/02 | 38 | 37 | 16 | 7 | 2 | |
. |
||||||
| "Overall, how much do you blame each of the following for the September 11th terrorist attacks: a great deal, a moderate amount, only a little, or not at all? How about [see below]?" | ||||||
| Great Deal |
Moderate Amount |
Only a Little |
Not At All |
No Opinion |
||
| % | % | % | % | % | ||
| The Bush Administration | ||||||
| 7 | 22 | 26 | 43 | 2 | ||
. |
||||||
| The Federal Bureau of Investigation, or FBI | ||||||
| 16 | 29 | 24 | 27 | 4 | ||
. |
||||||
| The Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA | ||||||
| 19 | 30 | 27 | 18 | 6 | ||
. |
||||||
| "As you may know, the Bush Administration said today that it was aware before September 11th that Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization had plans to hijack U.S. airplanes. However, the Administration was not aware that the airplanes would be used to blow up buildings, and they were not aware of a specific date or location of attack. Has this made you feel less favorably toward President Bush, or has it not affected your opinion of him?" | ||||||
| Less Favorably |
Not Affected Opinion |
More Favorably (vol.) |
No Opinion |
|||
| % | % | % | % | |||
| 5/16/02 | 32 | 66 | 1 | 1 | ||
. |
||||||
| "Do you think the Bush Administration did or did not act on the information available to them in a proper way?" | ||||||
| Did | Did Not |
No Opinion |
||||
| % | % | % | ||||
| 5/16/02 | 41 | 52 | 7 | |||
. |
||||||
| "Do you think the Bush Administration did or did not give airlines as much warning about hijacking threats as was possible?" | ||||||
| Did | Did Not |
No Opinion |
||||
| % | % | % | ||||
| 5/16/02 | 29 | 58 | 13 | |||
. |
||||||
| "Do you think the Bush Administration should or should not have discussed the fact before now that it had this information prior to September 11th?" | ||||||
| Should | Should Not |
No Opinion |
||||
| % | % | % | ||||
| 5/16/02 | 68 | 29 | 3 | |||
. |
||||||
| "Which comes closer to your view: no one could have predicted the attacks of September 11th, or the government should have been able to predict the attacks of September 11th given the information available to it?" | ||||||
| % | ||||||
| No one could have predicted | 58 | |||||
| Should have been able to predict | 38 | |||||
| No opinion | 4 | |||||
. |
||||||
| "Finally, do you think there should or should not be a congressional investigation into the fact that the Bush Administration did not release this information sooner?" | ||||||
| Should | Should Not |
No Opinion |
||||
| % | % | % | ||||
| 5/16/02 | 43 | 55 | 2 | |||
|
|
||||||
In 1977, they writing books and making movies about hijacking blimps and using them to kill civilians. So what else is new?
That shouldn't be too hard to connect the dots on who has been leaking!
Permanent House Committee on Intelligence
Porter J. Goss, R - Florida, Chairman Republicans
Doug Bereuter, Nebraska
Michael N. Castle, Delaware
Sherwood L. Boehlert, New York
Jim Gibbons, Nevada
Ray LaHood, Illinois
Randy "Duke" Cunningham, California
Peter Hoekstra, Michigan
Richard Burr, North Carolina
Saxby Chambliss, Georgia
Terry Everett, Alabama
J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois, Ex Officio
DemocRATS
Nancy Pelosi, California, Ranking Democrat
Sanford D. Bishop, Georgia
New York Jane Harman, California
Gary A. Condit, California
Tim Roemer, Indiana
Silvestre Reyes, Texas
Leonard L. Boswell, Iowa
Collin C. Peterson, Minnesota
Bud Cramer, Alabama
Terry Everett, Alabama
Richard A. Gephardt, Missouri, Ex Officio
U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence - Members
The level of ignorance all around is demonstrated by the bolded words. Explosives were not required when airliners just taking off and full of fuel were flown into buildings. I am a nurse, not an aeronautics engineer or a CIA agent, this much is obvious to me at this point. Hello?
1st discussion I had heard of an Airplane bomb.
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It's all politics and attempted spin. The only thing I can do is present my own observations. I can't stop various demogogues from distorting the situation. Neither can I stop people from believing the distortions.
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