FAA Alerted on Qaeda in '98, 9/11 Panel Said (WH releases more of report)

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: F.A.A. Alerted on Qaeda in '98, 9/11 Panel Said
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: September 14, 2005


WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 - American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses.

Federal Aviation Administration officials were also warned in 2001 in a report prepared for the agency that airport screeners' ability to detect possible weapons had "declined significantly" in recent years, but little was done to remedy the problem, the Sept. 11 commission found.

The White House and many members of the commission, which has completed its official work, have been battling for more than a year over the release of the commission's report on aviation failures, which was completed in August 2004.

A heavily redacted version was released by the Bush administration in January, but commission members complained that the deleted material contained information critical to the public's understanding of what went wrong on Sept. 11. In response, the administration prepared a new public version of the report, which was posted Tuesday on the National Archives Web site.

While the new version still blacks out numerous references to particular shortcomings in aviation security, it restores dozens of other portions of the report that the administration had been considered too sensitive for public release....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/politics/14terror.html?hp&ex=1126670400&en=5bc807ff8787b4c3&ei=5094&partner=homepage

(Note that graphic accompanies article.)

[halobeam]

1. more like too sensitive for their damn election.

F them. Just F them. I'm going to bed, nite 'all.

[sabra]

2. NYT: F.A.A. Alerted on Qaeda in '98, 9/11 Panel Said

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/politics/14terror.html?ei=5088&en=de70410b170860e3&ex=1284350400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

F.A.A. Alerted on Qaeda in '98, 9/11 Panel Said

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 - American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses.

Federal Aviation Administration officials were also warned in 2001 in a report prepared for the agency that airport screeners' ability to detect possible weapons had "declined significantly" in recent years, but little was done to remedy the problem, the Sept. 11 commission found.

The White House and many members of the commission, which has completed its official work, have been battling for more than a year over the release of the commission's report on aviation failures, which was completed in August 2004.

A heavily redacted version was released by the Bush administration in January, but commission members complained that the deleted material contained information critical to the public's understanding of what went wrong on Sept. 11. In response, the administration prepared a new public version of the report, which was posted Tuesday on the National Archives Web site.

Unbelievable... actually with the Bush admin...

[bribri16]

12. Bush's numbers are in the toilet. This is an attempt to blame Clinton for

9/11 once again.

[bemildred]

3. Sounds like a "non-traditional hijacking". nt

[Maccagirl]

4. Wasn't this in the August 6,2001 memo?

They'll STILL spin it to make Clinton look "weak on terror"-just watch.

[mallard]

9. Re: more timely evidence.......

We've been hijacked.

So much effort's going into reinforcing images of suicidal Arabs carrying out a dedicated attack - for all the benefits it's brought the Muslim world.

These 'leaks' keep suggesting incompetence and mismanagement but not intent to use the attacks forpolitical gain, level the Bill of Rights and so on.

The Homer Simpson excuse still looks better than ........ an unsolved crime.

[phiddle]

5. This CAN'T be right!

Kindasleezy said that "no one had imagined flying airplanes into buildings".

[StrafingMoose]

6. Anyone also thinks this is just wrong:

"The newly disclosed material follows the basic outline of what was already known about aviation failings, namely that the F.A.A. had ample reason to suspect that Al Qaeda might try to hijack a plane yet did little to deter it"

Sure, FAA has spooks all over the world, FAA has its personal "NSA", FAA can wiretap people in the USA, FAA also can analyse suspicious wires in financial data and then should alert the CIA, DoD, FBI and the White House... riiiiiiiight :sarcasm:

I don't see much of that there: http://www.faa.gov/about/mission/

OK, they were 'alerted', by WHO?!

[ET Awful]

7. Which raises the question . . .

If republicans hadn't hindered the recommendations of the commission headed by Al Gore from being carried out, would those additional security measures have "remedied the problem?"

In fact, the FAA lobbied AGAINST the recommendations of the Gore Commission. . . http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=4532

[MercutioATC]

14. Where do you see that the FAA lobbied against anything?

The FAA is a government agency...it doesn't lobby. There's no mention of the FAA having a problem with the commission's findings that I can see in this article.

[Supersedeas]

8. here's the heavily redacted version...here is the public version

Responsive re-Thuglickin'can Government?

[Roland99]

10. IMO, adds more to the LIHOP theory

[sabra]

11. no doubt

[Roland99]

13. Kindasleazy Lies before the 9/11 Commission:

KEAN: Did you ever see or hear from the FBI, from the CIA, from any other intelligence agency, any memos or discussions or anything else between the time you got into office and 9/11 that talked about using planes as bombs?

RICE: I think that concern about what I might have known or we might have known was provoked by some statements that I made in a press conference. I was in a press conference to try and describe the August 6 memo, which I’ve talked about here in my opening remarks and which I talked about with you in the private session.

And I said, at one point, that this was a historical memo, that it was — it was not based on new threat information. And I said, “No one could have imagined them taking a plane, slamming it into the Pentagon” — I’m paraphrasing now — “into the World Trade Center, using planes as a missile.”

As I said to you in the private session, I probably should have said, “I could not have imagined,” because within two days, people started to come to me and say, “Oh, but there were these reports in 1998 and 1999. The intelligence community did look at information about this.”

To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Chairman, this kind of analysis about the use of airplanes as weapons actually was never briefed to us.

Hmm...weren't briefed? Then why was that information redacted? Fucking LIARS!