arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)
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1999 Report Warned of Suicide Hijack by ap(posted by Guido) Friday May 17, 2002 at 09:48 PM |
WASHINGTON (AP) — Exactly two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal report warned the executive branch that Osama bin Laden's terrorists might hijack an airliner and dive bomb it into the Pentagon or other government building. ``Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,'' the September 1999 report said.
"The report, entitled the ``Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?,'' described the suicide hijacking as one of several possible retribution attacks al-Qaida might seek for the 1998 U.S. airstrike against bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan"
"The report noted that an al-Qaida-linked terrorist first arrested in the Philippines in 1995 and later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing had suggested such a suicide jetliner mission.
``Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters,'' author Rex Hudson wrote in a report prepared for the National Intelligence Council and shared with other federal agencies.
The intelligence council is attached to the CIA and is made up of a dozen senior intelligence officers who assist the U.S. intelligence community in analysis of threats and priorities."