9/11 Documents Show Hijacking Warnings

Yahoo! News ^ | 4/9/04 | Curt Anderson - AP

[cwb]

Considering OBL took personal credit for the Mogadishu debacle, calling US troops "paper tigers"...and considering that he publicly declared war on the US in 1998, I'd say that Clinton has a lot more to answer for than Bush.

The document entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US" was neither a threat assessment, nor did it include actionable intelligence. According to Rice, it was simply an assessment of what OBL had already accomplished and what his ultimate goals were. There were no specifics, like dates or locations of when an attack would occur.

Heck, after the 1993 attack on the WTC we kind of knew that OBL wanted to hit us at home...not to mention the OKC bombing, were even Dick Clarke suspected a Mid-East connection. If Democrats are going to be outraged at the revelation that OBL wanted to hit the USA, than they need ask why after OBL declared war on us in 1998, more wasn't done to apprehend him...especially since it appears Clinton refused extradition on numerous occassions.

[Maria S]

"Attorney General Janet Reno insisted that they had no clear idea who had actually carried out the attack."


Wonder if Jamie Gorelick (that's not her REAL name, is it!?!), one of Reno's assistants, was there?

[reformedliberal]

They buried the lead, as usual:

" But in December 2000, the FBI and FAA issued a classified threat assessment that played down the possibility of a threat to domestic aviation from terror operatives known to be in the United States.

"Terrorist activity within the U.S. has focused primarily on fund-raising, recruiting new members and disseminating propaganda," that report says. "While international terrorists have conducted attacks on U.S. soil, these acts represent anomalies in their traditional targeting which focuses on U.S. interests overseas."

The congressional intelligence inquiry's report suggests that this mind-set, less than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, may have contributed to an overall U.S. view that there was a low probability of attacks on American soil, particularly using aircraft as weapons. "

The FBI is going to get the blame, after all these theatrics.

What worries me, after watching Ben Venista (whom I remember well from Watergate), is that they plan to attempt an impeachment of GWB in the 2nd term. They must have polls that show they will lose and they need to marginalize the Republicans (again) for another 30 years. It won't work, but they will put the country thru it in their quest for a return to power.

Hopefully, it will backfire so badly that we will not hear them for decades.

[Jorge]

9/11 Documents Show Hijacking Warnings

Wow, who'd have ever thought terrorists would hijack airplanes?
No wonder the Bush administration was caught off-guard! (sarcasm/off)

I'm still waiting to hear the NEW and SPECIFIC information that the Bush administration was supposed to act upon!
These liberals are idiots. I was sooo happy to see Condi Rice kick their sorry butts on Thursday.

[Maria S]

"Whether the Bush administration had enough information to take more aggressive action is at the heart of the dispute over the contents of an Aug. 6, 2001, intelligence briefing the White House was working to declassify at the urging of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks."

If the so-called "smoking gun" memo is the same one that Graham talks about in the following, I don't understand why the liberals are so excited to have it made public:


FLASHBACK: May 27, 2002 -- Graham: We Had Same Info as Bush
Human Events Online ^ | April 9, 2004 | David Freddoso

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1114601/posts
Posted on 04/09/2004 1:37:39 PM CDT by bigsky

[Editor's note: This article orginally appeared on the cover of the May 27, 2002, issue of HUMAN EVENTS.]

Sen. Bob Graham (D.-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told HUMAN EVENTS May 21 that his committee had received all the same terrorism intelligence prior to September 11 as the Bush administration.

"Yes, we had seen all the information," said Graham. "But we didn't see it on a single piece of paper, the way the President did."

Graham added that threats of hijacking in an August 6 memo to President Bush were based on very old intelligence that the committee had seen earlier. "The particular report that was in the President's Daily Briefing that day was about three years old," Graham said. "It was not a contemporary piece of information."

[tubebender]

During the Clinton administration there was a study about the lack of airport security with several recommendations. The airline industry lobbied algore and Daschles wife Linda and the regs were dropped. Can you research this Norm and post it...

[MamaLucci]

I'm all for a close examination of the lax state of airline security pre-911.
Perhaps we could have hearings and talk to Mr. Gore and Mrs. Daschle.

[goodnesswins]

THAT was my point....it was ONLY about hijackings of the "expected" type.

[cyncooper]

Congress already has conducted an investigation into the attacks and its final report includes a detailed timeline of the increasing threats U.S. officials picked up during the summer of 2001. It also includes some of the material from the PDB.

Look what a freeper found. Not only some of the material in the PDB, but the "explosive" headline that all the journalists were gasping over yesterday, saying they'd never heard it before.

The same PDB headline that was reported on page A1 of the Washington Post on Sunday May 19, 2002.

Aug. Memo Focused On Attacks in U.S. Lack of Fresh Information Frustrated Bush (2002/PDB)

Excerpt:

The top-secret briefing memo presented to President Bush on Aug. 6 carried the headline, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," and was primarily focused on recounting al Qaeda's past efforts to attack and infiltrate the United States, senior administration officials said.

~snip~

[P.O.E.]

Misleading, as usual for the press.

[kevao]

including a 1998 plot to fly an explosives-laden plane from a foreign country into the World Trade Center

So what did Bill Clinton & Co. do with this information?

[Mo1]

"Attorney General Janet Reno insisted that they had no clear idea who had actually carried out the attack."

Wonder if Jamie Gorelick (that's not her REAL name, is it!?!), one of Reno's assistants, was there?

And who's idea it was to try those terrorists through a Grand Jury and the Courts?

[NormsRevenge]

who's idea it was to try those terrorists through a Grand Jury and the Courts?

Good question.

One of the claims made as to why one hand didn't know what the other one was holding on to or doing during "investigations" of terrorism was that grand juries were used and thus, any evidence/info was not then shareable between agencies, hence blocking any likelihood that connections could have been made about things like threats and the fact that quite a few foreign Middle Eastern fellows were enrolled in flight schools, some who were already on watch lists, if I recall correctly.

Treating terrorism as a "law enforcement" issue sure didn't get the job done then and it won't if Kerry gets in.

[NormsRevenge]

Thanks for the ~snip. ;-)

[dalebert]

All the warnings were for outside the US. Only speculation about what might be done here. I remember because my nephew was out of the country a lot and there were almos weekly warnings for overseas.

[Mo1]

One of the claims made as to why one hand didn't know what the other one was holding on to or doing during "investigations" of terrorism was that grand juries were used and thus, any evidence/info was not then shareable between agencies, hence blocking any likelihood that connections could have been made about things like threats and the fact that quite a few foreign Middle Eastern fellows were enrolled in flight schools, some who were already on watch lists, if I recall correctly.

PBS interview with James Woolsey

We didn't know what the investigation was turning up, because the investigation was all being done by law enforcement. Pursuant to Rule 6E of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, anything that's obtained pursuant to a grand jury subpoena can't be shared outside the prosecutor's team. There are some limited circumstances in which they could share it, let's say, with a state or local prosecutor, but not with the intelligence community. So all that information was bottled up inside the law enforcement community for at least a couple years until the trials took place. ...

[Mo1]

The top-secret briefing memo presented to President Bush on Aug. 6 carried the headline, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,"

Ummmmmmmmmmmm .. Didn't Ben Vesti claim the title of the memo was never release before Thursday's hearing with Condi?

[stylin19a]

no...only that now anybody wanting to hijack a plane were absolutley sure that the pilots were not armed.
(nevermind that no ariline ever used this regulation in it's almost 40 years of existence)(and nevermind that hijackers couldn't be sure no Air Marshal was aboard...or could they? )
_____
On May 9th,2002, Condoleezza Rice told reporters that, around June 22, 2001, the FAA was increasingly "concerned of threats to U.S. citizens such as airline hijackings and, therefore, issued an information circular." She said the circular "goes out [to] the private carriers from law enforcement saying that we have a concern."
_____
Why would the FAA rescind a law allowing pilots to be armed when the FAA supposedly received a briefing of potential terrorist hijacking attempts ?

[XHogPilot]

To: info@9-11Commission.gov
Subject: Urgent Note to 9-11 Commission: North Korea says standoff with US at "brink of nuclear war"

Body:
North Korea says standoff with US at "brink of nuclear war"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1114807/posts
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040409/1/3jdy5.html


Urgent note to the 9-11 commission: We have a terrorist threat warning! What do you suggest?

[an amused spectator]

All right, before 9/11, what was the purpose of hijacking an airliner? In almost every instance, it was to hold a number of people hostage, and the belief was, that either through negotiations, or guile, the perpetrator could either release the airplane and its hostages, or could be overcome and forced to surrender, if not taken out by a sharpshooter.

Google "accommodate, negotiate, and do not escalate"

Why didn't Gore's White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security address the outmoded policy?

Actually, if you think about it, Todd Beamer and his fellow passengers could have been prosecuted for their actions if they had done the same thing on September 10, 2001, and taken the aircraft back.

Even more to the point - has the old policy actually been rescinded?