Reply #124: Like Moussaoui case, we'd never know of BOJINKA if not for lucky cop.

[Octafish]

The FBI would never have brought in Moussaoui, were it not for Democratic Congressmen Oberstar and Sabo in Washington in response to pleadings from Minneapolis flight school instructors.

In BOJINKA, a Philippine police woman heard an explosion and found suspicious activity in an apartment. She went in and busted an Al Qaeda cell and found laptops loaded with information about hijackiing 11 jumbo jets over th Pacific and crashing them into targets along the West Coast. Otherwise, they might never have been busted.

Tee time for the BFEE:

Did Bush Know?

Warning Signs of 9-11 and Intelligence Failures

by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
MediaMatters

EXCERPT...

Post-Bojinka Intelligence Gathering

And indeed, the surveillance of flight schools is exactly what subsequently occurred, indicating that the threat posed by Project Bojinka was not dismissed—rather, it was taken seriously and used as the basis for intensive intelligence gathering. As Garcia testifies, in meetings with “certain U.S. authorities… they have confirmed to me that indeed, many things were done in response” to the findings of Project Bojinka.<13> The Washington Post, noting the plans outlined in Project Bojinka, reported that: “Since 1996, the FBI had been developing evidence that international terrorists were using flight schools to learn to fly jumbo jets.” This evidence began to accumulate shortly after the FBI learned of Project Bojinka. “A foiled plot in Manila to blow up U.S. airliners and later court testimony by an associate of bin Laden had touched off FBI inquiries at several schools, officials say.”<14> It should be noted that this report indicates that Al-Qaeda’s plans for Project Bojinka were considered by U.S. intelligence to be a credible threat, and thus “touched off” further investigations.

Early in the same year, U.S. officials had identified crop-dusters and suicide flights as potential terrorist weapons. Elaborate steps were adopted to prevent an attack from the air during the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. U.S. aircraft were deployed to intercept suspicious aircraft in the skies over Olympic venues, while agents monitored crop-duster flights within hundreds of miles of downtown Atlanta. According to Woody Johnson, head of the FBI’s Atlanta office at the time, law enforcement agents fanned out to regional airports throughout northern Georgia “to make sure nobody hijacked a small aircraft and tried to attack one of the venues.” From 6th July to 11th August, when the Games ended, the FAA had banned all aviation within a one-mile radius of the Olympic Village where athletes were resident. Aircraft were also ordered to stay at least three miles away from other sites, beginning three hours before each event until three hours after each event ended.<15> These extensive measures in 1996, in response to the general threat of a possible terrorist attack, should be duly noted—there is a stark contrast between these measures and the almost total lack of preventive measures in response to warnings of the 11th September attacks.

By 1999, the Federal Aviation Administration’s annual report on Criminal Acts Against Aviation noted the threat posed by bin Laden, recalling that a radical Muslim leader living in British exile had warned in August 1998 that bin Laden “would bring down an airliner, or hijack an airliner to humiliate the United States.” The 2000 edition of the annual report, published early in 2001, reiterated concerns that although bin Laden “is not known to have attacked civil aviation, he has both the motivation and the wherewithal to do so… Bin Laden’s anti-Western and anti-American attitudes make him and his followers a significant threat to civil aviation, particularly to U.S. civil aviation.”<16>

Meanwhile, the surveillance of Al-Qaeda operatives on U.S. soil continued. Between 2000 and 2001, the CIA had made the FBI aware of the names of about 100 suspected members of bin Laden’s terrorist network thought to be headed to, or already in, the United States. A 23rd August 2001 cable specifically referred to Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi, who were allegedly aboard the hijacked airplane that crashed into the Pentagon.<17>

CONTINUED...

http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq36.html

Who could imagine using hijackings in the unconventional sense, eh Condi?