by Qutb » Wed Sep 14, 2005 9:33 am
<!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/politics/14terror.html?ex=1127361600&en=9cc11d3f1e1b0052&ei=5070&emc=eta1" target="top">New York Times</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--><br><br>By ERIC LICHTBLAU<br>Published: September 14, 2005<br><br>WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 - American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses.<br><br>Federal Aviation Administration officials were also warned in 2001 in a report prepared for the agency that airport screeners' ability to detect possible weapons had "declined significantly" in recent years, but little was done to remedy the problem, the Sept. 11 commission found. <br><br>The White House and many members of the commission, which has completed its official work, have been battling for more than a year over the release of the commission's report on aviation failures, which was completed in August 2004.<br><br>A heavily redacted version was released by the Bush administration in January, but commission members complained that the deleted material contained information critical to the public's understanding of what went wrong on Sept. 11. In response, the administration prepared a new public version of the report, which was posted Tuesday on the National Archives Web site.<br><br>While the new version still blacks out numerous references to particular shortcomings in aviation security, it restores dozens of other portions of the report that the administration had been considered too sensitive for public release. <br><br>The newly disclosed material follows the basic outline of what was already known about aviation failings, namely that the F.A.A. had ample reason to suspect that Al Qaeda might try to hijack a plane yet did little to deter it. But it also adds significant details about the nature and specificity of aviation warnings over the years, security lapses by the government and the airlines, and turf battles between federal agencies.<br><br>more <p><!--EZCODE FONT START--><span style="color:black;font-family:century gothic;font-size:x-small;"><!--EZCODE BOLD START--><strong>Qutb means "axis," "pole," "the center," which contains the periphery or is present in it. The qutb is a spiritual being, or function, which can reside in a human being or several human beings or a moment. It is the elusive mystery of how the divine gets delegated into the manifest world and obviously cannot be defined.</strong><!--EZCODE BOLD END--></span><!--EZCODE FONT END--><br><br></p><i></i>
