posted February 10, 2005 03:15 PM              

By ERIC LICHTBLAU, The New York Times

AP
The towers of New York's World Trade Center burn after two hijacked jets slammed into them on Sept. 11, 2001.

WASHINGTON (Feb. 10) - In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 commission.

But aviation officials were "lulled into a false sense of security," and "intelligence that indicated a real and growing threat leading up to 9/11 did not stimulate significant increases in security procedures," the commission report concluded.

The report discloses that the Federal Aviation Administration, despite being focused on risks of hijackings overseas, warned airports in the spring of 2001 that if "the intent of the hijacker is not to exchange hostages for prisoners, but to commit suicide in a spectacular explosion, a domestic hijacking would probably be preferable."

The report takes the F.A.A. to task for failing to pursue domestic security measures that could conceivably have altered the events of Sept. 11, 2001, like toughening airport screening procedures for weapons or expanding the use of on-flight air marshals. The report, completed last August, said officials appeared more concerned with reducing airline congestion, lessening delays, and easing airlines' financial woes than deterring a terrorist attack.

Talk About It


· Chat | Post Messages

The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system. The administration provided both the classified report and a declassified, 120-page version to the National Archives two weeks ago and, even with heavy redactions in some areas, the declassified version provides the firmest evidence to date about the warnings that aviation officials received concerning the threat of an attack on airliners and the failure to take steps to deter it.

Among other things, the report says that leaders of the F.A.A. received 52 intelligence reports from their security branch that mentioned Mr. bin Laden or Al Qaeda from April to Sept. 10, 2001. That represented half of all the intelligence summaries in that time.

Five of the intelligence reports specifically mentioned Al Qaeda's training or capability to conduct hijackings, the report said. Two mentioned suicide operations, although not connected to aviation, the report said.

A spokeswoman for the F.A.A., the agency that bears the brunt of the commission's criticism, said Wednesday that the agency was well aware of the threat posed by terrorists before Sept. 11 and took substantive steps to counter it, including the expanded use of explosives detection units.

"We had a lot of information about threats," said the spokeswoman, Laura J. Brown. "But we didn't have specific information about means or methods that would have enabled us to tailor any countermeasures."

She added: "After 9/11, the F.A..A. and the entire aviation community took bold steps to improve aviation security, such as fortifying cockpit doors on 6,000 airplanes, and those steps took hundreds of millions of dollars to implement."

More From The Times


· Two Issues Face Social Security
· Israelis and Palestinians Cautiously Optimistic
· Too Late for Katie, Town Tackles a Drug's Scourge


The report, like previous commission documents, finds no evidence that the government had specific warning of a domestic attack and says that the aviation industry considered the hijacking threat to be more worrisome overseas.

"The fact that the civil aviation system seems to have been lulled into a false sense of security is striking not only because of what happened on 9/11 but also in light of the intelligence assessments, including those conducted by the F.A.A.'s own security branch, that raised alarms about the growing terrorist threat to civil aviation throughout the 1990's and into the new century," the report said.

In its previous findings, including a final report last July that became a best-selling book, the 9/11 commission detailed the harrowing events aboard the four hijacked flights that crashed on Sept. 11 and the communications problems between civil aviation and military officials that hampered the response. But the new report goes further in revealing the scope and depth of intelligence collected by federal aviation officials about the threat of a terrorist attack.

The F.A.A. "had indeed considered the possibility that terrorists would hijack a plane and use it as a weapon," and in 2001 it distributed a CD-ROM presentation to airlines and airports that cited the possibility of a suicide hijacking, the report said. Previous commission documents have quoted the CD's reassurance that "fortunately, we have no indication that any group is currently thinking in that direction."

Advertisement Aviation officials amassed so much information about the growing threat posed by terrorists that they conducted classified briefings in mid-2001 for security officials at 19 of the nation's busiest airports to warn of the threat posed in particular by Mr. bin Laden, the report said.

Still, the 9/11 commission concluded that aviation officials did not direct adequate resources or attention to the problem.

"Throughout 2001, the senior leadership of the F.A.A. was focused on congestion and delays within the system and the ever-present issue of safety, but they were not as focused on security," the report said.

The F.A.A. did not see a need to increase the air marshal ranks because hijackings were seen as an overseas threat, and one aviation official told the commission said that airlines did not want to give up revenues by providing free seats to marshals.

The F.A.A. also made no concerted effort to expand their list of terror suspects, which included a dozen names on Sept. 11, the report said. The former head of the F.A.A.'s civil aviation security branch said he was not aware of the government's main watch list, called Tipoff, which included the names of two hijackers who were living in the San Diego area, the report said.

Nor was there evidence that a senior F.A.A. working group on security had ever met in 2001 to discuss "the high threat period that summer," the report said.

Jane F. Garvey, the F.A.A. administrator at the time, told the commission "that she was aware of the heightened threat during the summer of 2001," the report said. But several other senior agency officials "were basically unaware of the threat," as were senior airline operations officials and veteran pilots, the report said.

The classified version of the commission report quotes extensively from circulars prepared by the F.A.A. about the threat of terrorism, but many of those references have been blacked out in the declassified version, officials said.

Several former commissioners and staff members said they were upset and disappointed by the administration's refusal to release the full report publicly.

posted February 10, 2005 03:51 PM            

Thursday, Feb. 10, 2005 12:42 p.m. EST
FAA Warned of bin Laden Hijacking in 1998

The press is ballyhooing a report in today's New York Times that suggests that the Federal Aviation Administration received its first clear set of warnings of a 9/11-style attack during the early months of the Bush administration.

But in fact, intelligence naming Osama bin Laden - and even identifying the airports he might use to hijack airliners - was passed on to the FAA as early as 1998 - where the information languished during the final two years of President Clinton's second term.

Sourcing a newly declassified section of the 9/11 Commission report, the Times said Thursday:
"Leaders of the FAA received 52 intelligence reports from their security branch that mentioned Mr. Bin Laden or Al Qaida from April to Sept. 2001. That represented half of all the intelligence summaries in that time."

The paper continued: "Five of the intelligence reports specifically mentioned Al Qaeda's training or capability to conduct hijackings, the report said. Two mentioned suicide operations, although not connected to aviation."

"Aviation officials amassed so much information about the growing threat posed by terrorists that they conducted classified briefings in mid-2001 for security officials at 19 of the nation's busiest airports to warn of the threat posed in particular by Mr. bin Laden."

Repeatedly referencing President Bush's first year in office, the Times even noted that the White House had fought to keep the FAA warnings classified, leaving readers to surmise that the Bush administration was trying to cover up its failure to act.

Nowhere in the Times report, however, was the Clinton-era intelligence even hinted at, though it was first reported three years ago by the Times' sister publication, the Boston Globe:

"The Federal Aviation Administration warned the nation's airports and airlines in late 1998 about a possible terrorist hijacking 'at a metropolitan airport in the Eastern United States' and urged a 'high degree of vigilance' against threats to US civil aviation from Osama bin Laden's terrorist network," the Globe revealed in May 2002.

New documents, the paper said, "appear to show that US intelligence agencies communicated to the FAA specific concerns about threats, including hijackings, to domestic airliners dating back to the Clinton administration."

One FAA official cited by the Globe acknowledged privately that a warning involving a "metropolitan airport" in the Eastern United States effectively applied to fewer than 20 airfields.

Two out of three of the 1998 FAA circulars obtained by the Globe specifically warned about hijacking plans by Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

In an Oct. 8, 1998 advisory, airports and airlines were instructed to maintain a "high degree of alertness" based on statements made by bin Laden and other Islamic leaders. It also cited intelligence gathered in the wake of President Clinton's cruise missile attacks against suspected al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan and Sudan.

Bin Laden, the circular states, had praised Ramzi Yousef, who was arrested in a failed 1995 plot to blow up airliners over the Pacific, which later became the blueprint for the 9/11 attacks.

The Clinton-era circular warned that "militants had been mobilized to strike a significant US or Israeli target, to include bringing down or hijacking aircraft."

The document also noted that "one of the incarcerated suspects in the bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi that he received aircraft hijack training. ... The arrest and pending extradition of [the] bin Laden cadre raises the possibility of a US airliner being hijacked in an effort to demand the release of incarcerated members."

An advisory issued two months later was equally specific, warning, "The FAA has received information that unidentified individuals, who are associated with a terrorist organization, may be planning a hijacking at a metropolitan airport in the Eastern United States."

posted February 10, 2005 04:01 PM            

One would have thought that after getting reports of plans to hijack aircraft in Eastern US cities...reports coming in 1998..and with the Algore report fresh in Commander Corruption's mind...he would have taken action to remove the threat...then.

Of course, we now know Commander Corruption was otherwise occupied with something...in the oval office. Something about an intern,cuban cigars and knee-pads.