Free Republic

At least three eyewitnesses spotted al Qaeda hijackers casing the security checkpoints at Boston’s Logan Airport months before the 9/11 attacks. They saw something and said something — but were ignored, newly unveiled court papers reveal. One of the witnesses, an American Airlines official, actually confronted hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta after watching him videotape and test a security checkpoint in May 2001 — four months before he boarded the American Airlines flight that crashed into the World Trade Center. The witness alerted security, but authorities never questioned the belligerent Egyptian national or flagged him as a threat.

Federal Aviation Administration received repeated warnings in the months prior to September 11, 2001, about al Qaeda and its desire to attack airlines, according to a previously undisclosed report by the commission that investigated the terror attacks. The report by the 9/11 commission detailed 52 such warnings given to FAA leaders from April to September 10, 2001, about the radical Islamic terrorist group and its leader, Osama bin Laden. The commission report, written last August, said five security warnings mentioned al Qaeda's training for hijackings and two reports concerned suicide operations not connected to aviation. However, none of the warnings...