Saturday, May 18, 2002

1999 Study: Hijack - Suicides Possible
Two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, an analysis prepared for U.S. intelligence warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists could hijack an airliner and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon.

``Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,'' the September 1999 report said.

The Bush administration has asserted that no one in government had envisioned a suicide hijacking before it happened.

Meanwhile, court transcripts reviewed by The Associated Press show the government had other warning signs between 1999 and 2001 that bin Laden was sending members of his network to be trained as pilots and was considering airlines as a possible target.

That intelligence is in addition to information the FBI received in July 2001 from its Phoenix office that a large number of Arabs were training at U.S. flight schools and a briefing President Bush received in August of that year suggesting hijacking was one possible attack the al-Qaida might use against the United States.

The September 1999 report, entitled ``Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?'' described suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks the al-Qaida might seek for a 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan.

The report noted an al-Qaida-linked terrorist first arrested in the Philippines in 1995 and later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had suggested such a mission.

``Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters,'' the report said.

Bush administration officials have repeatedly said no one in government had imagined such an attack.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-1999-Warning.html

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