Major Failures
Charles Johnson
Tue Sep 24, 2002 at 10:57 am PDT • Views: 167
More evidence of major intelligence failures before September 11:
WASHINGTON (AP) - A Minneapolis FBI supervisor said in a pre-Sept. 11 conversation with headquarters that he wanted to prevent suspicious student pilot Zacarias Moussaoui from flying a plane into the World Trade Center, a congressional investigator testified Tuesday.
The supervisor said he had no reason to believe Moussaoui was planning such an attack, but made the remark in a frustrated attempt to convince headquarters that a special search warrant was needed to search Moussaoui’s computer, investigator Eleanor Hill told a House-Senate committee investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
Moussaoui is now accused of conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers to commit terrorism, and Hill outlined the Minneapolis FBI’s office’s repeated and unsuccessful efforts to convince headquarters that he was a possible terrorist.
The supervisor told the committee staff he was “trying to get people at FBI headquarters ‘spun up’ because he was trying to make sure that Moussaoui ‘did not take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center,’” Hill testified.
Hill said the headquarters agent responded, “That’s not going to happen. We don’t know he’s a terrorist. You don’t have enough to show he is a terrorist.”
Frank says: