Joseph Farah

The failure of government

Sat Oct 20 02:32:00 2001


http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24996

The failure of government
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com


During the Watergate investigation into Nixon administration corruption, a
familiar question to witnesses was: "What did the president know and when
did he know it?"

A good variation on that question more than a month after the Sept. 11
terrorist attack is: "What did the government know and when did it know it?"

There's a growing body of evidence that those entrusted and paid by the
people to know about threats indeed had some warning, but failed to pass it
on to the public.

For instance, according to a report in the London Telegraph, Israeli
intelligence agents traveled to Washington in August to warn the FBI and
Central Intelligence Agency that large-scale terrorist attacks on highly
visible targets on the American mainland were imminent. The Israelis warned
that as many as 200 terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden and Iraq were
preparing a big operation.

Now that may not seem like enough information to have prevented the attacks.
But that's not all the information that was available to our intelligence
agencies - not by a long shot.

The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies also knew that two of the
hijackers were in the country, according to the Los Angeles Times. They were
on a terrorist watch list. But the airlines were not notified.

In addition, the FBI and CIA were well aware of bin Laden's plans to hijack
U.S. airliners. The plot was uncovered six years earlier in the Philippines
when police found detailed information on a laptop computer belonging to a
bin Laden operative, Ramsi Youssef. The plan called for hijacking U.S.
airliners and crashing them into U.S. buildings including the World Trade
Center and Pentagon.

In case the FBI and CIA had just forgotten about Project Bojinka, which I
sincerely doubt, they should have received a reminder with the 1999
publication of Yossef Bodansky's book, "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War
on America," in which he spells it out. The original plan called for the
hijacking of 11 airliners at once.

In other words, had the FBI and CIA simply added two plus two, the threat of
hijackings would have been obvious.

But there was even more.

The FBI had several terrorists under surveillance, according to the Oct. 1
issue of Newsweek. They intercepted communications just prior to Sept. 11
that suggested something very big was about to happen.

Still, there were more clues.

Zacarias Moussaoui was arrested after flight trainers tipped off the feds
that he wanted to learn how to fly a 747 but wasn't interested in takeoffs
or landings. Zacarias was traveling on a French passport. When contacted,
the French government reported that he was a suspected terrorist.

There were even more reasons to be on high alert - and specifically to be
thinking about the threat of dramatic hijackings.

The question then is: Were they ignored? And, if so, why?

But there is evidence that the threat wasn't ignored - at least not
entirely.

A day after the attack, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Mayor
Willie Brown was called eight hours before the hijackings and warned by his
security staff not to travel.

On Sept. 27, the London Times reported that Salman Rushdie got a similar
warning about avoiding U.S. and Canadian airliners. That warning, said
Rushdie, came from no less authority than the Federal Aviation
Administration.

Now, you're probably wondering why Willie Brown and Salman Rushdie are more
important to the U.S. government than you and me and Barbara Olson. I'm
wondering the same thing.

These selective warnings - and I have no doubt there were many more we have
not yet heard about - suggest strongly that the FBI, CIA and other federal
agencies had the information, knew something big was up, something that
involved terrorist attacks on airliners, but failed to disclose the
information to the airlines and the flying public in general.

I think heads should roll at the FBI and CIA. I think there ought to be an
investigation into what the FAA knew and when it knew it. I think, once
again, the federal government has neglected its main responsibility under
the Constitution - protecting the American people from attack.

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Don't miss Joseph Farah's exclusive report "Jihad in America" in the
November issue of Whistleblower magazine, WorldNetDaily's monthly offline
publication. Order your subscription now.

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Joseph Farah is editor and chief executive officer of WorldNetDaily.com and
writes a daily column.

• When our Founding Fathers established a "republic," — APFN, Sat Oct 20 02:38