Posted on 07/22/2004 10:47:47 PM PDT by FairOpinion
Key points • Terrorists thought to have targeted at least two US flights in dry-run attacks • 9/11 Commission warns attack worse than Twin Towers 'probable' • Cameras caught 9/11 terrorists setting off security alarms prior to hijacking
Key quote "Every expert with whom we spoke told us an attack of even greater magnitude is now possible and even probable. We do not have the luxury of time" - Tom Kean, chairman 9/11 commission
Story in full DEVASTATING new evidence has emerged that terrorists are preparing another attack on the United States, with air marshals and flight crews reporting a series of dry runs for attacks on aircraft in mid-air.
At least two flights are thought to have been targeted so far by groups of Middle Eastern men who appear to be forming a plan of attack.
On one flight an air marshal reportedly broke into an onboard toilet to find that a mirror had been removed and that a Middle Eastern man was trying to break through a wall to the cockpit.
One air marshal told the Washington Times newspaper yesterday: "No doubt these are dry runs for a terrorist attack."
The revelation came on the day a major US report into the 11 September attacks warned that another attack was likely.
The commission recommended an overhaul of the country’s intelligence services to prevent al-Qaeda launching more deadly plots against America.
Warning that an attack "of even greater magnitude" than the one that killed almost 3,000 people in 2001 was "probable", the commission accused the Clinton and Bush administrations of failing to have sufficient imagination to have envisaged al-Qaeda’s lethal plot.
Tom Kean, the chairman of the commission, said: "Every expert with whom we spoke told us an attack of even greater magnitude is now possible and even probable. We do not have the luxury of time.
"We must prepare and we must act. The al-Qaeda network and its affiliates are sophisticated, patient, disciplined and lethal."
Airline staff and passengers have catalogued repeated incidents that suggest new attacks are in preparation.
"It’s happening and it’s a sad state of affairs," one pilot said.
On one flight last month, 14 Syrian men on a flight between Detroit and Los Angeles boarded the flight, sitting apart. They pretended to be strangers, according to those on board, but once airborne they started filing in and out of the plane’s toilets. When the plane was about to land, the men shot up to different toilets, arousing the suspicions of air crew, passengers and air marshals.
However, air marshals who monitored the incident said there was no "legal basis on which to take enforcement action".
In another incident, the Washington Times revealed, a flight attendant reported a passenger using a long lens to take photographs of the cockpit door.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that Islamic militants had found a new way to circumvent security systems at airports. Instead of trying to take bombs onto aircraft, they would place the components on board, which they can then assemble in mid-flight.
Security sources told newspapers that the tactic had already been tried out, again in dry-run form, on flights between the Middle East, North Africa and western Europe.
As early as November, the FBI was warning that "terrorists are considering the use of improvised explosive devices assembled on board to hijack an aircraft".
Security agencies around the globe are now trying to track down the militants that have been trained to carry out such attacks.
The activities are a terrifying echo of the meticulous planning of the hijackers involved in the 11 September plot, which was comprehensively detailed in yesterday’s report by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
The 567-page final report issued by the ten-member commission pointed to "deep institutional failings" and missed opportunities to thwart the hijackings carried out by al-Qaeda operatives.
"Terrorism was not the overriding national-security concern for the US government under either the Clinton or the pre-9/11 Bush administrations," the report said.
It said that on at least nine occasions, chances were missed that might have led to the uncovering of the plot.
Overnight, US television networks broadcast a newly released surveillance video from Washington’s Dulles International Airport on the morning of the attacks that investigators view as one of the missed opportunities.
The video shows five hijackers passing through security checkpoints. Four of them repeatedly set off alarms but were quickly cleared to board the flight that later crashed into the Pentagon. It was not clear what set the alarms off.
The commission was sweeping in its recommendations for change.
It proposed the appointment of a national intelligence director and the creation of a national counter-terrorism centre to better co-ordinate and share information about future terrorist threats.
"The national intelligence director should oversee national intelligence centres to provide all-source analysis and plan intelligence operations for the whole government on major problems," the report said.
The commission also said the US government must do more domestically to guard against future terrorist attacks, including measures such as setting national standards for issuing drivers’ licences and other identification, improving "no-fly" and other terrorist-watch lists and using more biometric identifiers to screen travellers at ports and borders.
Other recommendations included declassifying intelligence spending, upgrading the computer technology used by US intelligence and reorganising congressional oversight.
Given new warnings about al-Qaeda’s desire to strike again on a mass scale, James Thompson, commission member, said all US leaders would be wise to take the commission’s findings to heart.
"If it happens and we haven’t moved, then the American people are entitled to make very fundamental judgments about that," he said.
The commission’s vice-chairman, Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman, appealed for political unity at the heights of America’s power. A "shift in mindset and organisation" within the US intelligence apparatus and a smoother transition between presidencies were also necessary, he said, to ensure "that this nation does not lower its guard every four or eight years".
"The US government has access to vast amounts of information but it has a weak process, a weak system of processing and using that information," Mr Hamilton said. "Need to share must replace need to know."
However, it will be months if not years before such recommendations can be implemented. Yet many terrorism experts fear that al-Qaeda is planning a terrorist attack in the next four months, in the run-up to the November presidential elections.
"They [the 11 September hijackers] penetrated the defences of the most powerful nation in the world," Mr Kean said. "They inflicted unbearable trauma on our people, and at the same time they turned international order upsidedown."
Mr Kean said the US was "faced with one of the greatest security challenges in our long history".
If the government doesn't give a shi$, then why should we?
These rEligion of piece folks have been singled out way too much and it is wrong. /SARC ...[the government must WANT us to be blown to he!! since they release every single one they catch.]
so much for preemption.
I don't get it. You can be arrested for joking at the check-in counter, "Gee, you think I have a bomb in my wallet?" You can be arrested for refusing to take off your shoes or allow yourself to be searched in security.
Another thing you are not supposed to do is stand up in the plane (no, not even to go to the bathroom) within 30 minutes of landing time.
What those 14 'musicians' did was at least against that rule. Of course, on the plane you don't have burly security men, all you have to enforce rules are stewardesses. So what does the rule really mean? What will happen if they break the rule and all 14 of them jump up just before landing?
Musicians or no musicians, THAT'S what those guys were doing: testing.
Furthermore, they were doing the equivalent of a 'bomb joke' on the airplane -- if not actually building a bomb, they were doing things that airlines have been warned might indicate a bomb-making threat in progress. What did they find happened to them? NOTHING.
What's to prevent others in their group from doing the real thing next time? I'm afraid the answer is: NOTHING.
That chick from New York is a glutton for punishment, I guess. I don't think we should be listening to such voices of 'sweet reason' (read PC) anymore. "NEVER AGAIN!"
Several people on this thread, and you are one of them, have little ability to make distinctions or to understand subleties of difference.
I have NEVER suggested that we ignore suspicious behavior. Quite the contrary. In several posts on this thread I have tried to make quite clear that we should all be careful and alert and report suspicious behavior to the authorities. Yet I am continually attacked as if I had been saying just the opposite.
What I have said, and still say is that once a person has made his or her suspicions known to authorities, the authorities have the job of investigating and making a determination. You and others seem to beleive that someone's allegation of "suspicious" behavior should be sufficient reason to detain and lock up people forwho knows how long. That is unreasonable and unworkable.
Similarly, there have been some, although I don't know if you fall into thai category that are calling for vigilante action against people who act suspicious in the vigilante's mind. What's wrong with that is that it is also unfeasible and unworkable. Worse, anyone pulling a stunt like this on an aircraft would be sued by his victim and prosecuted by the state, and righfully so. What kind of irresponsible person would encourage someone to commit unjustified battery on another? I know emotions run high over this issue, but we are supposed to be sane adults.
Right here is where I want to clear the air about direct action. Once there is a hijacking in progress, of course people can and should take matters into their own hands. But that has never been the thrust of the discussion on this thread. What has been proposed here is preemptive action against "towelheads", "ragheads" etc. acting suspiciously.
If you are aligning yourself withg that position, then God help you.
Thanks for the info.
Still, nobody has explained their actions and why they were not unusual.
They went into bathrooms almost at the same time, they gestured to eachother, they came out with less stuff than they came into the bathroom with. They all got up at the end of the flight in clear violation of the rules.
Nor has anybody explained the nice guy outside the plane turning into a menacing man on the plane who did not give a nice look to the observor like off the plane.
Reporting suspicious activity is NOT vigilante action. If you think so, YOU are stupid.
For this reason, I propose the following: Air Club for Men (and Women).
Taking a cue from the wealthy,[who no longer fly the regular airlines, but who belong to private air consortiums, for which they pay a membership fee, then a "flight fee" when they pick up the Red Phone to put their order in for a Lear Jet Taxi Service], I propose an Air Club, similar to Costco, that one can join, and then be given Air Privileges. One cannot simply buy tickets, but must be vetted prior to joining. I would be willing to pay some premium just to fly this way. It would not be the Red Phone Jet Club, but would be like a Buying Club that vets its members.
One more catastrophe, and the airlines as we know them are finished.
!!!!!!!!
Bttt
NO.
See my prescrition on Post 210.
Until I can fly this way, the airlines won't have my business.
Obviously these Syrians have NO BUSINESS being in MY country.
NO.
But our fellow citizens are as we speak.....
I'd rather be embarrassed than dead.
You REALLY need to learn to read.
Your seeming inability to do so makes your posts pitiful.
Of course, reporting suspicious activity is not vigilante action and I defy you to point out one case where I said it was.
Putting words in anothers mouth that were never spoken is a form of lying.
You, madam, stand as a confessed liar.
No, I'm not, but you're a jackass.
The whole thread is about reporting suspicious activity and your comments are that people are being hysterical for doing so, and then you accused people on the thread of being vigilantes. I did not see one post that suggested killing for suspicious activity.
Your posts continue to baffle. Where does this stuff come from?
You obviously have not read or understood a single word of mine. Where on earth do you come up with this nonsensical "killing for suspicious activity"?
Not in any of my posts, that's for certain.
And another thing you have never found in a single one of my posts is a suggestion that people should not report suspicious activity. You invented that too.
I do think that some suspicious activity that has been reported has turned out to be innocent, but I explicitly said, in one of the earliest posts on this thread, that if we err we should err on the side of survival.
If you want to pick a fight, you ought to at least be honest.
I'm done with you.
And the no reason to detain them did not include their lack of visas as it seems their's were all expired...
This caviler attitude is why America is such a ripe target. Syria is at war with us and is sending troops into Iraq to kill our men. Why are they also sending Koran singers to play music in casino's? Does it not seem just a little strange to you? That is like a Vice Cop that works as a hooker on the side.
Clue, get one before it gets you.
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