Aviation companies blame FBI, CIA and terrorists for 9/11

[maddezmom]

Source: IHT

NEW YORK: Aviation companies sued by the families of Sept. 11 victims for failing to safeguard air travel are in turn blaming federal investigators — arguing the Federal Aviation Administration was not alerted that al-Qaida was poised to launch terrorist attacks.

In court documents filed this week in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, aviation companies are seeking to force five FBI employees to provide testimony that may help defend against claims the companies share blame in the attacks.

"The aviation parties anticipate that the FBI witnesses' testimony will demonstrate that the FBI had information before Sept. 11 indicating that al-Qaida may have been about to launch terrorist attacks on civil aviation, which it did not timely pass along to the Federal Aviation Administration," lawyers wrote.

The airlines and aviation companies are defending themselves against lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for injuries, fatalities, property damage and business losses related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

The companies in turn filed separate lawsuits against the CIA and the FBI last August to force terrorism investigators to tell whether the aviation industry was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks.



Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/30/america/Sept-11-Lawsuits.php

[Parche]

1. They Should Sue Cheney/CIA

They were the ones responsible............:hi:

[superconnected]

2. Bush held the manilla envelope in his hand, he says he didn't read it.

[seemslikeadream]

3. LIHOP

[BeHereNow]

5. Absolutely- how can anyone doubt it at this point?

WHY weren't the fighter jets scrambled and WHO ordered
them to stand down?
I think THAT is THE smoking gun.

BHN

[Peace Patriot]

16. Yes, I agree--and, if not the "smoking gun," at least the most raggedy thread of

this dreadful tapestry--that if you just pull it....

The name that pops out is Donald Rumsfeld--who drew all NORAD decisions into his own hands, six months before. And where was he during the critical hour, between the hit on the WTC and the hit on the Pentagon? "In a meeting," so he said, UNAWARE of what was taking place!

That is the most critical weakness in their story--they didn't even try to defend the Pentagon--let alone the country.

I think Rumsfeld is the evilist of this evil junta. It's hard to choose, I know, but he would be my candidate for Dr. Strangelove--the psychotic architect of the end of the human race. He may have been ousted for this reason. It certainly wasn't the war, which goes on and on and on, now funded by the Democrats. Nothing changed there. I suspect it was either insider investigators who finally got enough on him, on 9/11, to push him out, or, he's just so dirty on torture, spying, and other horrors, and on the CIA outings (treason), that his presence in the junta makes them all more vulnerable to being exposed, investigated and held accountable (--if we are ever able to elect a government that believes in accountability).

Rumsfeld is now busy trying to end democracy in South America, with many a dirty trick and instigated war. Notice his language in this op-ed* that he published five months ago in the Washington Post--urging "swift action" by the U.S. in support of "friends and allies" in South America. I think he means Bolivia, where Bush Junta-supported white separatists intend to split off their gas/oil rich provinces from the central government of Evo Morales --the first indigenous president of Bolivia (a largely indigenous country)--to deny benefit of those resources to the poor majority. The white separatists are holding an illegal vote about it (secession) next week.

Rumsfeld's M.O. is chaos, so that's what he is trying to do in South America, cause chaos. I believe that Rumsfeld was intimately involved in planning and instigating the near war between Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela, recently, has been involved in some of the dirtiest recent Bushite doings in South America, and now has Bolivia headed for civil war. His ultimate goal is to destabilize and topple the leftist governments of Venezuela and Ecuador (lots of oil, members of OPEC), who, along with Bolivia, are the leaders of the Bolivarian revolution--a peaceful, democratic, social justice revolution that has swept the continent. (Paraguay was the latest leftist victory--this last Sunday.) And I think that Oil War II: South America is more likely to be the bombshell thrown into the presidential election here, this fall, than an attack on Iran. Iran is well-defended, and China (which holds a good portion of our debt paper) gets a lot of its oil from Iran. It is a very, very unwise target, and the U.S. military knows this.

South America--which is newly united on issues like self-determination--is not well-defended, and is vulnerable to "divide and conquer" aggression. The Bushites probed this weakness with the almost war between Colombia and Ecuador/Venezuela (ten 500 lb. U.S. "smart bombs" and U.S. surveillance--and also possibly U.S. air craft and personnel--and the Colombia military, bombing and invading Ecuador, to take out a FARC guerrilla (and 24 other people) who had released 6 FARC hostages to the president of Venezuela, and was in negotiations with the presidents of France, Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, for more hostage releases, and appeared to be working for a peaceful settlement of the 40+ year Colombian civil war). President Chavez of Venezuela was able to prevent the Bush-instigiated war with Ecuador (and has been credited for that by the president of Brazil). So that was a bust for the Bushites, which they've tried to recoup with wild charges that the presidents of Venezuela and Ecuador are "terrorist-lovers."

Colombia--with $5.5 BILLION in Bush-U.S. military, and a fascist government that uses death squads to slaughter thousands of union leaders and other dissidents--remains a serious threat to peace and stability in the region. But what the Bushites are likely to do next is try to gain strategic ground at the southern end of the Bolivarian revolution, where--with Paraguay gone leftist--they have, literally, no strategic ground left. It's all leftist (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay). They want to create a fascist enclave in eastern Bolivia. Its legitimacy will be nil, but it sure ill stir up a shitstorm in South America.

------------

*"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

[Beam Me Up]

11. The question is, what was "IT" that they "LET" happen?

Ten floors a second straight down.

[Jacobin]

4. "You've covered your ass. Now, get out of here."

That was what Bush said to the guy who brought him the PDB with the headline on an imminent attack.

[Sam Ervin jret]

6. Goodie , Goodie, business lawyers using the law to try to pry open the CIA secrets to defend them

selves from regular folks.

Let's see if "outsourcing' our constitutional battle against the imperial president to these aviation lawyers will be any more effective than our "government" guys in congress.

I wish them luck getting info from this group of criminals even if it means the aviation Companies have to pay less to the plaintiffs. It was after all, not all their fault.

[fed-up]

7. cooperative research dot org US Air Security timeline

much more at link

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=complete_911_timeline_us_air_security

April 1, 2001-September 10, 2001: Nearly Half of FAA’s Daily Intelligence Summaries Mention Bin Laden or Al-Qaeda; No Action is Taken

In 2005 (see February 10, 2005), it will be revealed that of the FAA’s 105 daily intelligence summaries between these dates, 52 mention bin Laden, al-Qaeda, or both. Most of the mentions are “in regard to overseas threats.” None of the warnings specifically predict something similar to the 9/11 attacks, but five of them mention al-Qaeda’s training for hijackings and two reports concern suicide operations unconnected to aviation. One of the warnings mentions air defense measures being taken in Genoa, Italy, for the July 2001 G-8 summit to protect from a possible air attack by terrorists (see July 20-22, 2001). However, the New Jersey Star-Ledger is virtually the only newspaper in the US to report this fact. Despite all these warnings, the FAA fails to take any extra security measures. They do not expand the use of in-flight air marshals or tighten airport screening for weapons. A proposed rule to improve passenger screening and other security measures ordered by Congress in 1996 has held up and is still not in effect by 9/11. The 9/11 Commission’s report on these FAA warnings released in 2005 (see February 10, 2005) will conclude that FAA officials were more concerned with reducing airline congestion, lessening delays, and easing air carriers’ financial problems than preventing a hijacking. The FAA also makes no effort to expand its list of terror suspects, which includes only a dozen names by 9/11 (see April 24, 2000). The former head of the FAA’s civil aviation security branch later says he wasn’t even aware of TIPOFF, the government’s main watch list, which included the names of two 9/11 hijackers before 9/11. Nor is there any evidence that a senior FAA working group responsible for security ever meets in 2001 to discuss “the high threat period that summer.”
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Federal Aviation Administration, 9/11 Commission, US Congress, Al-Qaeda
Category Tags: Warning Signs, Key Warnings, Counterterrorism Policy/Politics, US Air Security

[downindixie]

8. Were their any air marshalls

on the hijacked planes on 9/11?

[jmowreader]

18. I didn't think there were any air marshals on 9/11

Wasn't the Air Marshal program invented after the terrorist attacks?

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. 
[link:www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules.html|Click
here] to review the message board rules.

[jmowreader]

19. Oh come on...

that guy has about three thousand links on his website and most of them go to Rense--who ain't the most credible guy on the internets.

[bluesmail]

10. Circular firing squad. They may just destroy themselves

keeping up with all the manufactured stories they've woven.

[Trajan]

12. While I would agree that there was insufficient warning given ...

They HAVE to admit the security of the cockpit doors was insufficient as well ...

They had knowledge that cockpit doors should be hardened to disallow entry into the cockpit area, and yet they refused to do it because it would have removed one row of seats, and therefore, one row's worth of ticket revenues ....

They bear at least some blame for that reason ....

[MadMaddie]

14. They have had 20 years to enforce the cockpit doors.

The FAA left if up to each airline to enforce if they wanted too. Of course the airlines were going to save money.....

The government and the industry are at fault.

[GetTheRightVote]

13. This sounds interesting, thank you for posting it, hmmmm

[tanyev]

15. Somebody knew enough to place an unusual amount of put options a couple days before 9/11.

Maybe this lawsuit will finally get to the bottom of that.

[Octafish]

17. FBI told to put a lid on it... and Dave Frasca.

From DUer MinstrelBoy:

According to Agent Rowley's 13 page memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Dave Frasca threw "up roadblocks and undermined Minneapolis' by now desperate efforts to obtain a FISA search warrant, long after the French Intelligence service provided information and probable cause became clear." (Rowley's memo to FBI, May 21, 2002, page 3) (see the following web site) http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020603/memo.html Not only did Dave Frasca not share the information about Moussaoui to other appropriate intelligence/law enforcement authorities, he also, according to Rowley "never disclosed to the Minneapolis agents that the Phoenix Division had, only three weeks earlier, warned of Al Qaeda operatives in flight schools seeking flight training for terrorists purposes!" (Rowley's memo to FBI, May 21, 2002 p. 3) It is of course impossible to believe that Dave Frasca on his own, is just sitting on this information and not doing anything with it, unless ordered to do so.

The Minneapolis agents even tried to do an end run around Dave Frasca and notified the CIA's Counter Terrorist Center. The end result was that FBI headquarters personal (Dave Frasca and unnamed higher ups) "actually chastised the Minneapolis agents for making the direct notification without their approval." (Rowley Report, p. 4) Going even further, Dave Frasca "undercut" the search warrant application by not adding information on Moussaoui's foreign power connections which he had promised Minneapolis agents would be included. He also made damaging changes to the text provided by Minneapolis agents thereby, according to one Minneapolis agent, "setting this up for failure." (Rowley Report p. 4)

Even after the World Trade Center was hit, Agent Rowley asked Dave Frasca if she could now obtain a criminal search warrant for Moussaoui's laptop and personal property, she was again refused because it was probably all a "coincidence". Agent Rowley was warned to "do nothing" because "we might ‘screw up' something else going on elsewhere in the country." (Rowley Report, p. 7) The words "do nothing" are interesting; even more revealing what's to ‘screw up' at that point, except another plane going into another building?

After, when Rowley talked to other FBI agents in other parts of the country, the first question was Why?—"Why would an FBI agent(s) deliberately sabotage a case?" Agent Rowley reports that jokes were made that FBI Headquarters personnel were "spies" or "moles" who were actually "working for Osama Bin Laden." (Rowley Report p. 7) Apparently no one mentioned that it could be the other way around i.e., Bin Laden working for the CIA/FBI. The notion that Bush cabinet members were urging the CIA/FBI chiefs to keep a lit on local FBI investigative actions to arrest or curtail terrorist plots was, at the time, an unthinkable thought. That after all, would not be a joke. It would be one of the most murderous, diabolical cover up committed against American citizens by an American President and cabinet.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOO208B.html

SOURCE: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1293947&mesg_id=1294543

[KJF]

20. The question is who was above Frasca

Frasca was not the most senior official at the FBI involved in the Moussaoui case. The more senior official was Tom Wilshire, a consultant to Michael Rolince (who himself got briefly involved in the Moussaoui case in September). Rolince was head of the FBI's International Terrorism Operations Section; Wilshire was a core CIA employee on loan to the FBI. Wilshire was also involved in most of the other failures related to the hijackers; for example, he blocked a cable telling the FBI that Pentagon hijacker Khalid Almihdhar had a US visa in January 2000.

Here is an e-mail from Wilshire to Frasca asking for an update on the Moussaoui case on 24 August:
http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/exhibits/defense/939.pdf
(scroll down, it's at the bottom).

He calls the field office that arrested Moussaoui the "Minneapolis Airplane IV crowd."