Posted on 09/12/2001 8:09:27 AM PDT by Michael Rivero
It's been about 24 hours since the attacks against the Pentagon and the World Trade Towers. There has been a lot of news reporting, some of it accurate, and some of it wildly speculative.
But there is one item conspicuously absent from the news reportage.
There has not been a single report that any armed hijacker was arrested on the way TO an airplane yesterday morning.
Think about that.
We are being told that four teams of at least three armed hijackers each got past all the security at three modern airports, and not one of them was detected.
A 100% success rate? For terrorists operating in a strange country far from any support? That is a bit hard to accept.
Reports that did escape from the aircraft following the hijacking reported that the hijackers succeeded in wresting control of the aircraft using only knives, possibly as small as ordinary supermarket carton cutters. So, along with a 100% sucess rate at getting past all that security, add to that miracle the fact that all four hijacking teams managed to select aircraft that did not have a sky marshall on them (which according to a recent Discovery Channel Wings program are still being used on flights).
100% success evading modern airport security. 100% success rate choosing flights without sky marshalls. Pretty damned hard to do for a group of terrorists.
But far easier for a nation-state with the intelligence resources of a nation-state to pull off.
T H E N E W Y O R K T I M E S
* * * * *
Thursday October 28, 1993 Page A1
"Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart
Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast"
By Ralph Blumenthal
Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building
a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center,
and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting
harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after
the blast.
The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb
and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by
an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer,
Emad Salem, should be used, the informer said.
The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of
hours of tape recordings that Mr. Salem secretly made of his
talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as
being in a far better position than previously known to foil
the February 26th bombing of New York City's tallest towers.
The explosion left six people dead, more than a thousand people
injured, and damages in excess of half-a-billion dollars.
Four men are now on trial in Manhattan Federal Court
[on charges of involvement] in that attack.
Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian Army officer, was used
by the Government [of the United States] to penetrate a circle
of Muslim extremists who are now charged in two bombing cases:
the World Trade Center attack, and a foiled plot to destroy
the United Nations, the Hudson River tunnels, and other
New York City landmarks. He is the crucial witness in the
second bombing case, but his work for the Government was
erratic, and for months before the World Trade Center blast,
he was feuding with th F.B.I.
Supervisor `Messed It Up'
After the bombing, he resumed his undercover work. In an
undated transcript of a conversation from that period,
Mr. Salem recounts a talk he had had earlier with an agent
about an unnamed F.B.I. supervisor who, he said,
"came and messed it up."
"He requested to meet me in the hotel,"
Mr. Salem says of the supervisor.
"He requested to make me to testify, and if he didn't
push for that, we'll be going building the bomb with
a phony powder, and grabbing the people who was
involved in it. But since you, we didn't do that."
The transcript quotes Mr. Salem as saying that he wanted to
complain to F.B.I. Headquarters in Washington about the
Bureau's failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded by
an agent identified as John Anticev.
Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev had told him,
"He said, I don't think that the New York people would
like the things out of the New York Office to go to
Washington, D.C."
Another agent, identified as Nancy Floyd, does not dispute
Mr. Salem's account, but rather, appears to agree with it,
saying of the `New York people':
"Well, of course not, because they don't want to
get their butts chewed."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
While I agree with your general point, I would make the statement that in the past those who have done terrorism against the US have been living here. The initial part of the hijacking, that is getting on the plane, is simplicity itself. Time and again it has been shown on TV and in magazines what a sieve airport security is. I do think that cockpit security, as the Israelis have, however, might have avoided some of this.
If only a few passengers on each hijacked plane yesterday had been armed, the results could not possibly have been any worse -- and in all likelihood the endings would have been at least a bit happier (perhaps crashing, but avoiding the intended targets, as with the plane in Pennsylvania).
You didn't read what I wrote. They acheived 100% success rate getting past airport security and 100% success rate knowing which planes were not going to have sky marshalls.
Having that kind of ability takes the resources of a nation state, not a fringe group.
"TRADE CENTER TOWERS and PENTAGON BOMBED"
Hijacked commercial planes used as weapons of mass destruction against American civilian and military populations. This 'Act of War' should be met by a Congressional declaration of 'war', not against terrorism, but against 'terrorists', and their known accomplices. If this means global conflict, so be it. "Freedom is not free", and those that deny it to others shall not have it for themselves, IMHO.
Three weeks ago, and they went through my camera bag in fine detail.
I agree 100%. If a few passengers had been armed, even if he terrorists were armed, this may have been thwarted.
How would your seven year old son know that the plane he was on did not carry a sky marshall and that therefore he would be able to use his knife without getting shot?
The people who planned yesterday's attack hit four for four picking planes without sky marshalls.
Or do you mean nation-state as in the United States?
Or do you mean nation-state as in the United States?"
I mean nation-state as in nation-state; having the intelligence assets in place needed to bypass airport security with 100% success and the ability know which flights did or did not have sky marshalls.
And which nation state are you suggesting pulled this off?
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