WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- There was ample evidence prior to Sept. 11, 2001, that terrorists were considering the use of airplanes as weapons to attack the United States, investigators told a Congressional panel Wednesday. The committee is examining the intelligence failures that failed to stop the attacks, which killed about 3,000 people.
A joint intelligence committee -- formed by House and Senate members -- heard testimony from the lead investigator into the failure by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement to anticipate and prevent the simultaneous hijackings of four planes by skilled terrorists. The committee also heard from two representatives of victims' families. It was the first public meeting of a panel that has been meeting in secret for months.
Eleanor Hill, the senior staffer in charge of leading the investigation, detailed a series of warnings that had been noted by intelligence and law enforcement sources that al Qaida and Osama bin Laden had a serious interest in a major attack on American territory.
But Hill also noted that the context of much of these warnings didn't necessarily lend itself to specific or immediate action because the sources were not always credible or the reports were vague.
"While one could not, as a result (of this context), give too much credence to some individual reports, the totality of this information in this body of reporting clearly reiterated a consistent and critically important theme: Osama bin Laden's intent to launch terrorist attacks inside the United States," Hill told the panel.
She also detailed the specific content of some internal intelligence briefings, although the Bush administration has forbidden the panel from releasing the identity of the officials who actually received the briefings, which have since been declassified.
"A briefing prepared for senior government officials at the beginning of July 2001 contained the following language," Hill said. "'Based on a review of all-source reporting over the last five months, we believe that (Osama bin Laden) will launch a significant terrorist attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.'"
On May 17 of this year, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told a reporter: "I don't think anybody could have predicted these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center ... that they would try and use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile."
Hill's investigation on behalf of Congress appears to have found that this wasn't the case, at least not in general terms.
"We ... asked the question: Did the intelligence community have any information in its possession prior to Sept. 11, 2001, indicating that terrorists were contemplating using airplanes as a weapon?" she said. "Based upon our review to date of the requested information, we believe that the intelligence committee was aware of the potential for this type of a terrorist attack, but did not produce any specific assessments of the likelihood that terrorists would use airplanes as a weapon."
One such indication was an unidentified source, who arrived at the FBI's Newark field office, and told of a plot by al Qaida to hijack a 747 and fly it to Afghanistan. The source claimed to have been trained in hijacking and small arms combat at an Afghan or Pakistani training camp.
Upon his return to the U.S., he was told to link up with five or six other plotters. Their instruction was to "use all necessary force to take control of the plane, because there would be pilots among the hijackers."
"Although the individual passed an FBI polygraph, the FBI was never able to verify any aspect of his story or identify his contact in the United States," Hill's report says.
Despite finding dozens of instances where the U.S. intelligence community failed to "connect the dots" of reports that could have forewarned of an attack, Hill emphatically places the blame for the acts on the terrorists, and the credit for succeeding in the operation on the hatred of the United States and the terrorists' competence, much more than any failure by intelligence or law enforcement agencies.
"The (intelligence) community made mistakes prior to Sept. 11 and the problems that led to those mistakes need to be addressed and fixed," she said.
"On the other hand, the vengeance and inhumanity that we saw that day were not afterthoughts for Osama bin Laden and others like him. The responsibility for (the attacks) remains squarely on the shoulders of the terrorists who planned and participated in the attacks."
