MESSAGE
| DATE | 2002-05-03 |
| FROM | Michael Richardson
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] Notes On Sept 11, 2001
|
-----Original Message-----
From: mlr52-at-mycouponmagic.com [mailto:mlr52-at-mycouponmagic.com]
Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 6:39 AM
To: mrichardson-at-abc.state.ny.us
Subject: Look what I just found on iWon.com!
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iWon News
FBI Warned of Training Before 11th
540);> Email this Story
05/03/2002 1:57 AM EDT
By JOHN SOLOMON
WASHINGTON (AP) - Two months before the suicide hijackings, an FBI agent in
Arizona alerted Washington headquarters that several Middle Easterners were
training at a U.S. aviation school and recommended contacting other schools
nationwide where Arabs might be studying, law enforcement officials said.
The FBI sent the intelligence to its terrorism experts in Washington and New
York for analysis and had begun discussing conducting a nationwide canvass
of flight schools when the Sept. 11 tragedies occurred, officials told The
Associated Press.
At least one leader of the 19 hijackers, Hani Hanjour, received flight
training in Arizona in 2001 but his name had not surfaced in the FBI
intelligence from Arizona, the officials said.
None of the Middle Eastern men identified by the Arizona counterterrorism
agents or any information contained in their July 2001 memo pointed to the
suicide plot that leveled the World Trade Center and killed thousands in New
York, Washington and Pennsylvania, officials said.
"None of the people identified by Phoenix are connected to the Sept. 11
attacks," FBI Assistant Director John Collingwood said Thursday night.
"The Phoenix communication went to appropriate operational agents and
analysts but it did not lead to uncovering the impending attacks,"
Collingwood said.
Officials said FBI counterterrorism agents in Phoenix had "suspicions" about
why several Arab men were seeking airport operations, security information
and pilot training and recommended, among other things, that the FBI begin
alerting local agents when Middle Easterners sought visas for training at
local aeronautical schools, officials said.
The FBI's concerns about the U.S. flight schools is the latest revelation
about information, much of it sketchy, that the government possessed before
Sept. 11 concerning the possibility of terrorism in the skies. For example:
-AP reported last month that Filipino authorities alerted the FBI as early
as 1995 that several Middle Eastern pilots were training at American flight
schools and at least one had proposed hijacking a commercial jet and
crashing it into federal buildings.
-A month after the 2001 memo from Arizona to FBI headquarters, FBI agents in
Minnesota arrested a French citizen of Moroccan descent, Zacarias Moussaoui,
after a flight school instructor became suspicious of his desire to learn to
fly a commercial jet.
Moussaoui has since emerged as the single most important defendant in the
post-Sept. 11 terrorism investigation, charged with conspiring with the
hijackers and Osama bin Laden to kill thousands of Americans. Prosecutors
are seeking the death penalty.
-About the same time as the Phoenix memo and Moussaoui's arrest, U.S.
intelligence issued a late summer warning that there was heightened risk of
a terrorist attack on Americans, possibly even on U.S. soil, officials have
said.
Law enforcement officials said in retrospect the FBI believes it should have
accelerated the suggested check of U.S. flight schools after Moussaoui's
arrest but does not believe it would have led to the hijackers.
FBI officials said a supervisory agent in Arizona wrote a several-page memo
to FBI headquarters in July 2001 laying out information his counterterrorism
team had developed in an unrelated investigation. A portion of the memo
dealt with an Arizona flight school, officials said.
The memo indicated agents were suspicious about why several nonresident Arab
men were seeking training at a commercial aeronautical school in Prescott,
Ariz.
Collingwood said the men "were enrolled in various aspects of civil aviation
engineering, airport operations and pilot training." The agents were
particularly concerned that some were attempting to learn about airport
security operations, officials said.
The Phoenix memo urged FBI headquarters to assemble a list of U.S. aviation
academies and to instruct field offices across the country to "liaison" with
their local schools where other Middle Easterners might be training,
officials said.
The information was shared with intelligence analysts who monitored
terrorist threats and was even sent to the FBI office in New York that had
the most experience with terrorism cases, officials said.
After the suicide attacks, the FBI quickly descended upon flight schools
nationwide, identifying academies in Florida, Arizona and elsewhere where
the leaders of the 19 hijackers trained.
Hanjour, believed to have piloted the jetliner that crashed into the
Pentagon, trained at a flight academy in Phoenix between January and March
2001, the government has said in court documents.
Some witnesses have also said they believe another hijacker, Ziad Samir
Jarrah, trained on an Arizona flight simulator in the months before the
attacks. But the FBI has no evidence that either man was connected to the
Prescott school identified in the July 2001 memo, officials said.
The FBI also investigated whether an Algerian pilot who spent time in
Arizona may have helped train the hijackers before leaving the United States
before the attacks.
That man, Lotfi Raissi, was later apprehended in Britain, but U.S. officials
failed to persuade a court there to extradite him to the United States. Law
enforcement officials say their suspicions about his connections to the
hijackers have since fizzled.
An Arizona businessman who assisted U.S. intelligence said he alerted the
FBI in the mid-1990s that one or more Middle Eastern pilots were training or
working in his state and appeared suspicious.
Harry Ellen said he told an FBI agent in Phoenix in late 1996 or early 1997
that he met an Algerian pilot and several Middle Eastern men at an Arizona
mosque. Ellen assisted U.S. intelligence during the 1990s but later had a
falling out over his business and personal dealings in Asia and the Middle
East.
"I brought this to the attention of an agent in the local FBI whom I knew,"
Ellen said. "They did not seem particularly interested in the presence of
these people. I stressed it was very odd that the Algerian man was involved
in aviation."
"One of the other men I believe was probably Mr. Raissi, although he would
have been thinner and younger at the time," Ellen said.
Law enforcement officials said that while Ellen helped the FBI, agents in
Arizona have no record or recollection of him providing information about
pilots.
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