Air France in 1994 vs. F.A.A. for 9/11 -- Our Own Worst Enemy ?

[vets74]

This is a long posting. It has at least a couple of items that are not well known. A weak point at F.A.A. is identified. This weaknesses also may have led to a second airliner plot getting rolling on December 25, 2009. I worked at World Trade Center. North Tower. Got my FEMA "1391" number. Kinda take it personal.

These events start up on Christmas Eve, 1994. Al Qaeda updated the Palestinians' tactic of hijacking airliners. Four "Afghansi" veterans wearing Algerian uniforms commandeered an Airbus 300B2-C1 and its 232 crew and passengers. Their aim was to crash the Airbus into the Eiffel Tower.

Groupe d´Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN - "gee gun") and the pilots tricked the hijackers to land for a refueling stop in Marseilles, where the plane was retaken in a gun battle. (Yes, it's on YouTube.)

Air France 8969 was the top television and print story in the world, Christmas 1994.

Subsequently, in 1995, the American FAA and FBI sent a joint team to France to participate in lessons-learned exercises. F.A.A.'s Committee for Security and Counterterrorism participated and provided the direct oversight. Anthony Fainberg was the chairman of that committee.

Yep, son, we have met the enemy and he is us.
-- Walt Kelly, Pogo

Information has slowly dribbled out as to what went on between 1994 and 2001 with GIGN, Direction Générale des Services Extérieurs (DGSE), Air France, International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and FAA.

For example: the French secret services produced nine reports between September 2000 and August 2001 looking at the Al-Qaida threat to the United States, and knew it planned to hijack an aircraft.

According to Le Monde:

Hundreds of pages of notes and analyses of the General Directorate for External Security show that the Sauudi billionaire Osama Binladen and his organization, Al-Qaida, were infiltrated by French spies. According a person close to Pierre Brochand, current director of the DGSE, a cell had been devoted to Binladen since 1995. A note of January 5, 2001, transmitted to the chief of the CIA station in Paris provided an alert about "a project to hijack a plane".

-- April 17, 2007, translated to English

Air France changed security procedures immediately, two days after Christmas in 1994, to prevent handing any aircraft over to hijackers. The cockpits for their airliners were secured from seizure with metal bars and $200 in upgrades to locks. Later work made their airliners quite safe indeed. ICAO republished each of their bulletins. These standards were applied worldwide from Russia to Timbuktu except for the United States.

FAA's Committee for Security and Counterterrorism with Mr. Fainberg went the other way and had kick-out panels installed in the doors of the airliner cockpits. FAA anti-hijacking procedures also recommended to pilots that planes be turned over to would-be hijackers.

In America on 9/11 the hijackers were provided every convenience. The Al Qaeda M.O. puts a bonus on striking Christians at Christmas. Until the SEAL Team captured all of Binladen's records, as ordered by the President, it is not clear that the U.S. acting on its own had learned much more about them.

Still, the security and counterterrorism work of this Mr. Fainberg was not over. Come January of 2009, he published an unclassified unrestricted open-Internet article:

http://www.hsaj.org/?fullarticle=5.1.5">The Terrorist Threat to Inbound U.S. Passenger Flights: Inadequate Government Response
Homeland Security Affairs
The Journal of the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security

Copyright © 2009 by the author(s). Homeland Security Affairs is an academic journal available free of charge to individuals and institutions. Because the purpose of this publication is the widest possible dissemination of knowledge, copies of this journal and the articles contained herein may be printed or downloaded and redistributed for personal, research or educational purposes free of charge and without permission. Any commercial use of Homeland Security Affairs or the articles published herein is expressly prohibited without the written consent of the copyright holder. The copyright of all articles published in Homeland Security Affairs rests with the author(s) of the article. Homeland Security Affairs is the online journal of the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS).

This article contains an open invitation to Al Qaeda terrorists. It details FAA and Transportation Safety Administration procedures -- that flights from certain in-coming foreign airports do not make a specific type of check looking for bombs containing the bomb-making chemical known as PETN.

Surely in a sane world that information would have been stamped Top Secret. Or perhaps it was, just nobody cares.

Move ahead to less than a year after the article was ramped out on Google, we find that exactly this type of PETN bomb-mix attack was perpetrated against an airliner bound for Detroit, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 with 289 souls on board. Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan, on December 25, 2009.

In business the competition are rivals. The enemy is middle-management.
-- Harold Geneen

That was the "Underwear Bomber" event.

As a guess, this Mr. Fainberg retains his security clearances. At least he seems to be retired so his monthly checks will pop right in there to his bank account. When Coleen Rowley went to the mat trying to get access to the Zacarias Moussaoui laptop -- arguably to break the Mohammad Atta 9/11 plot -- the FBI HQ men who thwarted her were not punished. Two of them were promoted then retired later with cushy follow-ons.

Between Walt Kelly and Harold Geneen, applying their wisdom, you have to wonder.

What does it take to get somebody out of government, away from security information, after he has participated in gross incompetence at best -- unlocking the cockpits after Christmas, 1994 -- and contributed to killing 3,000 people ?

[vets74]

1. M. Anthony Fainberg -- Promoted By George W. Bush

Word comes that this same Anthony Fainberg received a top-level promotion from the Bush after the 9/11 plot succeeded. His major prior claim to fame was serving as chairman for the F.A.A. Committee for Security and Counterterrorism that failed to implement the post-1994 airliner defense standards.

The new assignment from Bush was as the top manager to head the U.S. National Laboratories.

Fainberg's technical background goes to designing and building nuclear weapons. Recall Edward Teller for a flavor of that work environment. This is a tiny field with little crossover application. As with many from the field, he early on joined in with the Neocons and set about selling flavor-of-the-month paranoid fantasies.

Apparently, Fainberg had managed project teams. Nothing more. Helluva promotion.

His connections went to Hoover Institute, where his Ph.D. and high-level security clearances carried considerable weight. By the early-1990s, he had connected with Republican Party far-righties including the group that formed The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 1997. This group included Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol, James Bolton, and Donald Rumsfeld.

PNAC's the bunch that put out this call for clash-of-civilizations terror-based paranoia:

"The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."

This Mr. Fainberg and his committee at F.A.A. left the cockpits unlocked after the 1994 Air France 8969 attack (a.k.a., the Eiffel Tower plot) and continued policies that turned airliners over to would-be hijackers. Seems appalling that George W. Bush rewarded this Mr. Fainberg with the cushiest, highest-status, highest-paid management plum position in the whole of U.S. government science.

Well, they got their "new Pearl Harbor." Keeping F.A.A. from implementing the Air France and ICAO standards was essential for the success of this 9/11 attack. Otherwise it would be very difficult to carry out such any such large-scale plot, much less something involving airliners.

And btw: The irony of Katrina's "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." comment can be compared usefully with this series of events involving M. Anthony Fainberg. The very worst out of Katrina was that Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff had ordered his DHS crews to remove some of the relay antennas that the sheriffs' departments used for local communication. Chertoff had actively sabotaged local communications, so he could try to control everything personally.

Amazing example of an active personality disorder, yet Bush protected Chertoff for extreme personal loyalty to the president.

Mike Brown was in fact a straight-ahead hard worker -- a 100-hour-a-week kinda guy during emergencies -- so Brown was tagged to be the fall guy. The Fainbergs and the Chertoffs were what Bush and his gang chose for their top managers. At least "Brownie" came out of it on his feet -- he has a popular radio show out of Denver, Colorado, where he gets to discuss such as the Great 2011 Texas Drought.

[vets74]

2. As the names are being read -- with thanks to Google images

M. Anthony Fainberg today:



and this one:



Senior Advisor with an outfit called the International Center for Terrorism Studies. Their description:

Terrorism has been a permanent fixture in human history. It is evident that the beginning of the twenty-first century marks the beginning of a new age of terrorism. In contrast with older precedents, modern-day terrorism is widespread, institutionalized, technologically advanced,and global in its consequences. Raising the stakes of this challenge is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This alarming and dangerous trend increases the potential for "superterrorism"- biological, chemical, or nuclear violence - as well as the advent of information warfare and cyber-terrorism. As a member of the academic and research community, the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies has an intellectual obligation, as well as a moral and practical responsibility, to participate in the international effort to arrest the virus of terrorism. Accordingly, in 1998 the Institute established the International Center for Terrorism Studies to address the extensive issues surrounding the ever increasing anxiety of modern-day terrorism.

The International Center for Terrorism Studies (ICTS) is directed by Professor Yonah Alexander. Professor Alexander publishes numerous op-eds and articles and makes frequent appearances in international media.

ICTS is seeking interns: Application Information
PURPOSE AND SCOPE

There exists the need to educate policy-makers, and the public in general, on the nature and intensity of the terrorism threat in the twenty-first century. As a member of the academic and research community, the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies has an intellectual obligation, as well as a moral and practical responsibility, to participate in the international effort to arrest the virus of terrorism. The purpose of the International Center for Terrorism Studies (ICTS), therefore, is four-fold:

-- First, to monitor current and future threats of terrorism;

-- Second, to develop response strategies on governmental and non-governmental levels;

-- Third, to effect continual communication with policy-makers, academic institutions, business, media, and civic organizations; and

-- Fourth, to sponsor research programs on critical issues, particularly those relating enabling technologies with policy, and share the findings nationally and internationally.

Good luck with that.

This guy Fainberg is now working on "superterrorism." Consider what all he did for aviation safety and the PETN explosive threat. Now he's an insider for "superterrorism."

Is anybody managing the DCI operation so's to track performance for Americans ? FBI and CIA didn't perform this function for decades, so why should DCI do it now ? How far these people live from the war zones and Ground Zero and the north section of the Pentagon ?

[vets74]

3. "The Assault" -- French film recreates 1994 suicide-hijacking and GIGN response

This was where the French fries country stopped al-Qaeda. The four Afghansi veterans tried to fireball the Eiffel Tower on Christmas eve.

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This is the real thing.

There's a movie trailer if you like a sound track:

<object><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7Ye2CUd2XW0?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="520" height="340"></object>

Recall all the George Bush and Dick Cheney talk about how cowardly the French are ???

Julien Leclercq's film premiered on March 9, 2011.

The L’Assaut Movie poster has premiered. The movie poster for the Julien Leclerq film is obviously from the last third of the film when Air France Flight 8969 is raided. L’Assaut / The Assault (2011) stars Vincent Elbaz, Mélanie Bernier, Grégori Derangère, and Aymen Saidi. L’Assaut‘s plot synopsis: “On Christmas Eve 1994 four armed men from the Islamic terrorist group GIA hijacked Air France Flight 8969 in Algiers. When they landed in Marseille the plane was raided by highly trained French forces and all four kidnappers killed.”

Four heavily armed Afghansi veterans boarded Flight 8969 in Algeria carrying 20 sticks of dynamite. Seven years later the 9/11 suicide-hijackers and their handlers learned from the mistakes, from this Christmas Eve 1994 attack, that had allowed France’s G.I.G.N. to retake the plane.

Time magazine covered this suicide-hijacking event in detail on January 9, 1995.

The hostage drama began on Christmas Eve as Air France Flight 8969 prepared for a scheduled 11:15 a.m. departure for Paris. Most of the 227 passengers had settled into their seats in an almost festive mood, as they looked forward to joining family and friends for the holidays. The boarding of four armed men in blue uniforms with Air Algerie identification badges caused no alarm. Explaining they were security agents, the men proceeded to check the passengers’ passports. Then they suddenly closed and locked the doors. “I knew it was a hostage taking when they shouted, ‘Allah is great!’ ” recalled a 40-year-old Algerian-born mechanic now living in France. “I thought of my children back in France, and I became afraid. Three men entered the cockpit, the fourth covered us with his Kalashnikov. No one budged. Then the waiting started.”

For two of the travelers, the wait was over all too soon. One traveler, an Algerian policeman identified during the passport check, was ordered by the hijackers to the front of the plane. Passengers heard him plead, “Don’t kill . me, I have a wife and child!” The terrorists shot him in the head and dumped him outside onto a baggage cart, where he lay in agony for some time. The second victim was Bui Giang To, 48, a commercial attache at the Vietnamese embassy in Algiers. “They asked the Vietnamese man sitting in the rear to come forward,” recounted one of the passengers. “Poor guy — we saw him come back to get his leather jacket. Then we heard the shot.”

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,163487,00.html">Anatomy of a Hijack - by THOMAS SANCTON -- Time Magazine, U.S. Edition, January 9, 1995

Eventually the A300 Air France Flight 8969 was allowed to take off from Houari Boumedienne Airport, Algiers, Algeria. It flew to Marseille, where the team from Groupe d'Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN) staged an armed intervention.

That action is what you see in the first video, above.

The four suicide-hijackers were Afghansi veterans of Osama Binladen's jihadi army.

America’s F.A.A. learned, too.

But then F.A.A.’s Committee on Security and Counterterrorism decided not to issue changes to bring American practice in line with international I.C.A.O. standards. Air France eliminated the possibility of taking over it's airliners but installing bars and fancy $200 locks to seal off the cockpits.

F.A.A. did nothing.

Even when the infamous Presidential Daily Brief dated August 6, 2001, stated that "hijack a U.S. airliner" was on the table, nothing was done. Bush went golfing and his government, generally, dialed down counterterrorism to no heat at all.

Lawrence Wright built a solid time line around Richard Clarke and the F.B.I.’s John O’Neill for what was going right in the American government prior to 9/11.

http://web.archive.org/web/20020609130252/http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020114fa_FACT1">New Yorker time line

This film, "L'Assaut" puts the lie to most of what has been done in America to cover up incompetence related to 9/11. Only a Governor of Texas, or an alcoholic ex-Governor, could miss the point.

IMDb entry for "The Assault."

Wikipedia entry for L'Assaut.

So when does this film get release in the United Kingdom, Australia or in America ???

When do a pack of aggressive film_school/internet_dweebs cut an English language voice-over ??

[vets74]

4. Full length video ::: GIGN retakes Airbus 300 guns-and-grenades battle on runway

This is the full version :::

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The GIGN crew got to the plane with one bullet proof vest for the two guys who went up the ramp. They went at it ASAP.

The one guy lost use of his shoulder. He's an instructor today. Got hit with bullets, his gun exploding when a bullet hit the magazine, and a grenade.

Could somebody please PhotoShop the image of George Bush in there... walking through with his golf clubs ???