FAA Received 52 Bin Laden, Al Qaeda Warnings Before Attack

The committee-written best-seller, known colloquially as the 9/11 Commission Report turns out to have an interesting sequel. A classified report with a declassified version turned up at the National Archives two weeks ago, according to the New York Times, which is trying to get back into the business of scooping other news sources. It’s front page yesterday, relying on the declassified version of the sequel, ran the headline “9/11 Report Cites Many Warnings About Hijackings.” The FAA appears to have been more interested in keeping airlines financially afloat than keeping the skies safe.

Three plus years after the fact, it is important to remember the fat, lazy complacency of the first few months of the Bush administration. “It could never happen here” was the standard belief, and most Americans couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map with a gun held to their heads. The great national debate was over the Danny Almonte cheating scandal in the Little League World Series.

In that environment, one could understand that the FAA might not pay attention to a warning about potential terrorist attacks. Or two warnings, or maybe even three. But the NYT report says there were 52 such intelligence warnings naming either Usama bin Laden or Al Qaeda, more than half of all warnings from April to September 10, 2001. Worse, the news story says “The FAA ‘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.” In other words, the agency did know that the threat existed and warned airlines. But no one on September 11 said, “Mr. Atta, you can’t get on the plane with that box cutter.” World history would be much different had that single sentence been spoken. The greatest mistake America made in the aftermath was to say no one could have prevented the attack.

The report, in the NYT story, said, “officials [at the FAA] were more concerned with reducing airline congestion, lessening delays and easing airline financial woes than deterring a terrorist attack.” To be fair, a terrorist attack had a small chance of occurrence, with a huge cost if it did occur. These others had almost 100% probability of happening daily, and the mindset of the flying public was rather focused on those things. One can imagine the outcry over a news story that had the FAA worried about Fascislamic terrorists rather than fixing delays at Hartsfield and O’Hare.

No surprise that the Bush administration has fought release of this report for five months (making damn sure it came out after the elections in the US and Iraq). In the spring of 2001, the FAA was warned 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 [from the hijacker’s perspective].” Had this come out in October, it would most certainly have changed the impression of Mr. Bush as the great protector of America, and President Kerry would have taken the oath a few weeks ago.



© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.

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