Posted on 03/17/2004 6:34:19 AM PST by conservativecorner
Alert JYB reader James G. sends in this bombshell:
SEN. John Kerry boasts how he "sounded the alarm on terrorism years before 9/ 11," referring to his 1997 book "The New War." Too bad he didn't blast it when it really counted - four months before the hijackings, when he was hand-delivered evidence of serious security breaches at Logan International Airport, with specific warnings that terrorists could exploit them. Former FAA security officials say the Massachusetts senator had the power to prevent at least the Boston hijackings and save the World Trade Center and thousands of lives, yet he failed to take effective action after they gave him a prophetic warning that his state's main airport was vulnerable to multiple hijackings. "He just did the Pontius Pilate thing and passed the buck" on back through the federal bureaucracy, said Brian Sullivan, a retired FAA special agent from the Boston area who in May 2001 personally warned Kerry that Logan was ripe for a "jihad" suicide operation possibly involving "a coordinated attack."
Hoo-boy. These guys had the scoop, passed it Senatory Kerry, who passed it to the circular file.
Rewind to May 6, 2001. That night, a Boston TV station (Fox-25) aired reporter Deborah Sherman's story on an undercover investigation at Logan that Sullivan and another retired agent helped set up. In nine of 10 tries, a crew got knives and other weapons through security checkpoints - including the very ones the 9/11 hijackers would later exploit. The next day, Sullivan fired off a two-page letter to Kerry highlighting the systemic failures.
"With the concept of jihad, do you think it would be difficult for a determined terrorist to get on a plane and destroy himself and all other passengers?" he warned. "Think what the result would be of a coordinated attack which took down several domestic flights on the same day. With our current screening, this is more than possible. It is almost likely." The toll from such an attack would be economic, as well as human, he predicted with chilling accuracy.
Sullivan followed up by having the undercover videotape hand-delivered to Kerry's office.
More than 11 weeks later, Kerry finally replied to his well-informed and anxious constituent. "I have forwarded your tape to the Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General [DOT OIG]," he said in a brief July 24, 2001, letter, a copy of which I've obtained.
Yet Sullivan had made it clear in his letter that going to his old agency was a dead end. He and other agents had complained about security lapses for years and got nowhere. "The DOT OIG has become an ineffective overseer of the FAA," he told Kerry. Sullivan suggested he show the tape to peers on committees with FAA oversight. He even volunteered to testify before them.
But he never heard from Kerry again.
Read the whole thing. It's a shocker from one end to the other.
And so much for Kerry playing offense in the war. He can't even play defense.
UPDATE: John Kerry on the topic of airport security from November 4, 2001:
...Airport security is as clear an issue of national security as you'll find, and it requires a force that takes its responsibilities seriously. Security must be the only bottom line, protecting citizens - not profit margins - the only objective. We know from history there are some things only the government can do - maintaining security is one of them.
...The only way we can guarantee the highest quality security at our nation's airports is if we have direct federal accountability. To keep terrorists off airplanes requires close coordination between intelligence communities and federal and state law enforcement agencies. Airport security personnel must be a full partner in that network.
...Ensuring homeland security requires more than words - it takes actions, commitment and leadership. We know what it takes to make America's airports not just safer, but as safe as they can be. The only question remaining is whether politics - the politics of ideological rigidity and delay - will be allowed to trump the security needs of our nation.
Kerry should have entitled the pompous letter Note To Self and CC'ed Al Gore.
This story needs to be widely cirulated.
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