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

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.)

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

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

9/11 once again.

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

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.

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

"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?!

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

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.

Responsive re-Thuglickin'can Government?

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