Word: fbi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Could 9/11 have been prevented? In four crucial cases, mishandled intelligence, bureaucratic tangles and legal hurdles blinded the CIA and the FBI to clues right in front of them. Individually, none of these was a smoking gun. But combined they were a four-alarm fire. --By Mitch Frank...
...intelligence community could have analyzed attacks al-Qaeda might attempt with planes and determined that recruiting qualified pilots was a major obstacle. FBI agents could have monitored aviation schools for possible Islamic extremists. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) could have hardened cockpits and banned all blades from airplanes, as it did after 9/11...
...FBI analysts detailed to the CIA ask the INS for information on al-Midhar and al-Hazmi. On Aug. 22, the INS tells them al-Midhar returned to the U.S. in July. The CIA puts al-Midhar and al-Hazmi on the TIPOFF watch list and asks the FBI to look for them. The FBI assigns one agent, with no counterterrorism experience, to track down al-Midhar. Only on 9/11, in the hours before the attacks, does he ask the Los Angeles field office for help. Earlier, a New York FBI agent involved in the Cole criminal investigation asks colleagues...
...several points the CIA could have asked the FBI to trace the two hijackers' activities in the U.S., which would have led to 9/11 pilot Hani Hanjour, who was training with al-Hazmi. The State Department could have put them on the TIPOFF list much earlier. The FAA could have put them on its no-fly list, keeping them off domestic flights...
...Phoenix FBI agent Kenneth Williams sends a memo to two units at FBI headquarters in Washington and to the New York field office describing 10 foreign students at aviation schools who are under investigation for ties to Sunni extremists. Williams theorizes that bin Laden could be systematically sending students to study aviation in the U.S. and recommends that agents compile a list of such schools, establish contacts with them, discuss his theory with the rest of the intelligence community and obtain background information on foreign students applying to flight schools...