I got a question
If "in the months leading up to the strikes…the U.S. intelligence community [was] in a state of near panic that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent," exactly what was the intelligence failure?
Suicide Hijacking Idea Was Ignored
Instead, panel says, pre-9/11 focus was on finding explosives. Tape of a flight attendant's last call from a doomed jet is made public.
By Greg Miller
Times Staff Writer
January 28, 2004
WASHINGTON — Federal aviation authorities had considered suicide hijackings a potential threat as early as 1998, but discounted that likelihood and focused security efforts instead on detecting explosives and other concerns, according to an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
Even in the months leading up to the strikes on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, with the U.S. intelligence community in a state of near panic that an Al Qaeda attack was imminent, aviation officials did little to step up security or tighten screening procedures, the panel said in a preliminary report Tuesday.
