I noticed how you edited the article. Left something out (lets look at the paragraphs before your quote)?
"Al-Qa'ida members — including some who are US citizens — have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qa'ida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s.
A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks.
We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a xxxxxxxxxx service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and other US-held extremists.
Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives."
news.yahoo.com
So the President what was the President told about the threat of hijacking? That the CIA could not "corroborate" the "sensational" claim of an al Qaida hijacking, though the FBI found activity that suggested preparations of hijacking - as well as the bombing of Federal Buildings with explosives (like OKC-which Richard Clarke, in his book, claimed was possibly linked to al Qaida). Further, the CIA links hijacking planes to gain the release of a prisoner - this to me, implies hostages taken for ransom, not being rammed into buildings.
Maybe today, with the passage of the Patriot Act, the FBI could have done the things you advocated, but before that time, you couldn't just round up a bunch a arabs, throw them in jail, and search their belongings, because they were in flight school. Further, one of the hijackers (Zacarias Moussaoui) was captured before the attack - his computer was not searched (as a warrant was sought, but could not be obtained), and his capture did not deter the rest of the hijackers (other than one team of hijackers had 4 members instead of 5). |
