The "signals" that were not heeded was the evidence of the systemic problems in the FBI that both Tobin and Crowley, among other whistleblowers, brought to the attention of congress.
10 May 1999 - over two years before 9/11
SENATOR GRASSLEY: The purpose of this hearing is to provide a much more real picture of what happened and, hopefully, why it happened. The motivation for the subcommittee's efforts is to continue to help restore public confidence in Federal law enforcement. It is my intention to examine some very basic and systemic problems uncovered in this investigation.
The goal is to have a constructive dialogue with the FBI to ensure similar problems are not repeated in the future. No one will be fingered as a scapegoat. However, if the FBI says today that its problems are of the past and it is now fixed, I will not buy that, and I warn the public not to buy it, either. There is a whole lot more to be done before the root causes of the problem are fixed. It is a systemic cultural problem that transcends any simplistic fix.
WILLIAM TOBIN: . . . . my first observation is that the outcome or practice of science for such public safety issues of such magnitude should not be dependent on a single individuals agenda, biases, idiosyncrasies or the strength of their personality which it clearly was in this case.
My second observation or suggestion is that scientists are not on an equal footing inside the law enforcement community in the strategic decision making process. There are a number of examples of that but basically scientists are, I won't say viewed as second class citizens but basically what happens inside the forensic community is if we collaborate or validate the prevailing theory, we walk on water.
If the science does not validate the prevailing theory, then the science is just basically ignored. There are some other issues, I think the third would be that if there is some fine tuning, additional fine tuning, I would suggest that we revert back to the way that FBI and NTSB have worked these cases in the past. That the FBI's interests can be preserved by the presence of a material scientist who is experienced in materials deformation and damage working along side the NTSB, whether it's rail, maritime or aircraft disasters, represent the FBI's interest in determining whether there is or could be potential criminal activity involved in the cause.
And then allow that contingent to ratchet up whatever additional support or FBI involvement that there should be. So, that would be my, basically that the -- I think part of the problem that occurred here was that with the process and the system being so singularly dependent upon a single individual, strong personality individual, that what I was seeing there in the first four to six weeks is what psychologists have found or concluded to be basically what was called group think.
GRASSLEY: You're a breath of fresh air, Mr. Tobin. You've been very helpful to us for not only appearing today but for our getting the necessary background that needs to be done to make this a valuable contribution to the process of constitutional oversight by the Congress.
I don't know how to thank you other then to say thank you. And obviously you set an example for a person who was trained to seek the truth, to work for an organization that is always supposed to seek the truth and let the truth determine guilt or innocence and I think you have lived up to that very well and in particularly you shine in this black hole of investigation that we had in regard of the TWA case. I thank you very much and I'll dismiss you at this point.
Whistleblower Tobin is an American hero - except to the "shootdown" tinfoil hats and you, a book author with a "suitcase bomb" theory, because Tobin's testimony as a metallurgy expertthat there was NO physical evidence of a missile or bomb scuttles both of those theories.
ALL of the material damage experts who have examined the wreckage agree with Tobin.