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Lowry: The CIA's record leading up to Sept. 11 was one of failure By Rich Lowry Article Last Updated: 08/25/2007 09:07:06 AM MDT The new report from the CIA's inspector general about the spy agency's pre-9/11 failings could be titled, ''What We Did During Our Holiday From History.'' The stretch between the end of the Cold War and the Sept. 11 attacks was supposed to be a shiny new era of globalized peace and prosperity, to which an intelligence service was considered quaintly irrelevant. The CIA conformed to the zeitgeist by remaining quaintly irrelevant. George Tenet presided over the agency,...

The passengers aboard Delta Airlines Flight 1824 flying out of Orlando International Airport last Thursday at 7:15 a.m. heard the following statement over the intercom as they were preparing to taxi onto the runway on their way to Atlanta, Georgia: Ladies and gentlemen, we have been informed that there is "a credible security risk with this aircraft" and we are returning to the terminal.

9 September 2007: The passengers aboard Delta Airlines Flight 1824 flying out of Orlando International Airport last Thursday at 7:15 a.m. heard the following statement over the intercom as they were preparing to taxi onto the runway on their way to Atlanta, Georgia:

If you rely on official government statements and the major media, the entire incident involving Flight 1824 was "benign" and was never a security risk. It involved 12 people, all of Middle Eastern origin, reportedly carrying suspicious items in their luggage. "It was all benign," said Dave Couvertier, the FBI agent from the Tampa, Florida Orlando FBI office. Hardly Benign: What really happened: The Northeast Intelligence Network initially received information about Flight 1824 from a trusted federal source early Thursday, who described an incident that could hardly be considered benign by any standards. According to the information developed during the...

"Credible Security Risk" Those are the words of the pilot on Delta Flight 1824 out of OIA, after it pulled back from the gate Friday morning to take off for Atlanta. Nine Middle Eastern passengers, six males and three females, had been denied access to the plane when TSA screeners found they were carrying an array of suspicious items ranging from hydrogen peroxide, which can be used to make bombs, to wires and Vaseline bottles taped together. Perhaps most disturbing, what one TSA worker tells me were the first positive tests for SEMTEX ever reported by security at OIA. SEMTEX...