Airlines in Sept. 11 Attacks Got No Specific Warnings

by Ina Paiva Cordle and Jay Weaver
The Miami Herald
May 17, 2002
http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/news/nation/3282968.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

American Airlines and United Airlines, which each lost two planes in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, said Thursday they were never warned of a specific hijacking threat, though the White House was told in August that Osama bin Laden's terrorists might hijack U.S. planes.

Federal regulators did not ask airlines to tighten security, and the FBI's regional office in Miami said it received no advisory from headquarters to check out any Middle Eastern students in flight schools before the attacks.

''American Airlines received no specific information from the U.S. government advising the carrier of a potential terrorist hijacking in the United States in the months prior to Sept. 11, 2001,'' the airline said. "American receives FAA security information bulletins periodically, but the bulletins were extremely general in nature and did not identify a specific threat or recommend any specific security enhancements.''

United said it, too, receives general security cautions from time to time but was not alerted to the specific danger.

''In 2001 there were no alerts or cautions that indicated a Sept. 11 scenario was credible or possible,'' said United spokesman Chris Brathwaite.

INTELLIGENCE REPORTS

Questions arise as White House officials confirmed that President Bush and his advisors were presented with intelligence in early August that terrorists associated with bin Laden might try to hijack U.S. planes, and the administration passed the warning to federal agencies.

At the end of July, the FAA warned airlines and airports that terrorists might be planning to carry out hijackings, said Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security advisor.

She said they were told that "there's no specific target, no credible information of attack to U.S. civil aviation interests, but terror groups are known to be planning and training for hijackings, and we ask you therefore to use caution.''

The warning followed other, more general warnings to airlines in June and July that cautioned against the possibility of an attack, especially abroad, Rice said.

At least one FAA alert warned that terrorists might hijack a plane so they could trade the passengers for Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, imprisoned for plotting to blow up New York landmarks, officials said.

''All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking,'' Rice said. "They were mostly worried that they might try to take a plane and use it for release of the blind sheik or some of their own people.''

One warning named Osama bin Laden and said his or other terrorist groups could hijack airplanes, a government official said Thursday.

The FAA declined to release copies of the classified warnings, which are sent to airline security directors or posted on a secure website.

The FAA did not order new security measures in response to the warnings, agency spokesman Scott Brenner said.

White House officials said the government did not ask airlines to tighten security because the threat seemed standard fare. ''Information about an Islamic terrorist seeking to hijack an airline is not news,'' press secretary Ari Fleischer said.

FAA Administrator Jane Garvey and other agency officials receive regular intelligence briefings and for years have been aware of threats made by bin Laden, Brenner said.

''This is a threat we've been watching intensely since 1998 when bin Laden made some very public statements,'' Brenner said. 'While we were watching these groups, we never had a credible hijacking threat. It was never, 'This group was going to do a hijacking.' ''

Meanwhile, FBI spokeswoman Judy Orihuela said the Miami office of the FBI has never seen a July memo sent from an Arizona field office to FBI headquarters that warned of a number of Arabs seeking aviation training at a U.S. flight school. The memo urged that all flight schools be checked to identify more possible Middle Eastern students.

'NOTHING SENT OUT'

''There was no memo that went out to the Miami field office,'' Orihuela said. "Nothing was sent out.''

The FBI in South Florida has a long-established Joint Terrorism Task Force -- an elite squad assigned to track possible espionage and terrorism cases.

Agents say they were never warned to check all flight schools in Florida.

''That Arizona memo would have been invaluable. With all the flight schools in Florida, we would have sat on these guys,'' said one federal investigator assigned to the hijacker detail after Sept. 11.

''Right after the hijackings we knew the [U.S.] government had a problem. Within hours of the attack we had names of the hijackers and that we needed to focus on flight schools,'' the investigator said. "It was clear how the information quickly flowed down that someone in Washington must have had previous knowledge. They sat on this and they blew it and it's finally coming out.''

The FBI is now facing sharp criticism for not acting on that memo before the terrorist assaults.

At least three of the 19 hijackers, Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Samir Jarrah, honed their flying skills at Venice, Fla., aviation schools.

And even if the airlines had been told of a hijacking threat prior to Sept. 11, the information never filtered down to the pilots who command their planes.

''We were not given any notice [of a hijacking threat],'' said Tom Frazer, an American Airlines captain and chairman of the Miami base for the Allied Pilots Association. ''And that continued on to what we call the Flight 63 incident from Paris to Miami,'' in which terrorism suspect Richard Reid was spotted trying to light explosives in his shoe.

DISSATISFACTION

''Notice had been given to the company [that terrorists could try to sneak explosives onboard, including in their shoes] well before that date and that information wasn't disseminated to the pilots,'' Frazer said. "To this day, we are still not certain they have set up a program and a means with which to get that information out to the pilots.''

This report was supplemented with material from The Associated Press.

© Copyright 2002 Knight Ridder.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal justice, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.