Saturday, May 18, 2002

F.B.I. Knew for Years About Terror Pilot Training
The F.B.I. had been aware for several years that Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network were training pilots in the United States and elsewhere around the world, according to court records and interviews at flight schools and with federal law enforcement officials.

The F.B.I. knew by 1996 of a specific threat that terrorists in Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden's network, might use a plane in a suicide attack against the headquarters of the C.I.A. or another large federal building in the Washington area, the law enforcement officials acknowledged.

But the officials said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had discounted the possibility of a suicide attack using planes, partly because it had largely failed to draw together evidence gathered piecemeal over the years that Al Qaeda pilots were training here.

Last week, the F.B.I. acknowledged the existence of a memorandum written last summer in which an agent in its Phoenix office urged his superiors to investigate Middle Eastern men who had enrolled at American flight schools and who might be connected to Mr. bin Laden.

However, the Phoenix memorandum was not the first warning that terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda had interest in learning to fly. In his 1996 confession, a Pakistani terrorist, Abdul Hakim Murad, said that he planned to use the training he received at flight schools in the United States to fly a plane into C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., or another federal building.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/18/politics/18FLIG.html?pagewanted=all&position=top

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