US Airlines Deny Receiving Specific Warnings About al-Qaida Attack

US Airlines Deny Receiving Specific Warnings About al-Qaida Attack

Ananova
May 17, 2002
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_589692.html

American airlines and airports say they weren't warned before September 11 of any specific hijacking threat.

The Federal Aviation Administration says it warned airlines and airports that terrorists might be planning hijackings at the end of July.

But pilots' and flight attendants' unions say their members were never told.

Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, says the airlines were asked to "use caution".

The FAA declined to release copies of the classified warnings, which are sent to airline security directors or posted on a secure Web site.

In a written statement, American Airlines says it "received no specific information from the US government advising the carrier of potential terrorist hijacking in the United States in the months prior to September 11."

American says it receives FAA security information bulletins periodically, but they were "extremely general in nature and did not identify a specific threat or recommend any specific security enhancements".

Joe Hopkins, a spokesman for United Airlines, which lost two planes on September 11, said: "During 2001, there were no alerts or cautions that indicated a September 11th scenario was credible or possible."

Jeff Zack, a spokesman for the Association of Flight Attendants, says the group's members were not told anything before September 11. "If we're supposed to be looking for suspicious people, we should know we're supposed to be looking for them," he said.

Airline experts say the FAA should have tightened security after receiving the warnings. "With that threat escalating, why was it permissible to continue to take cutting tools on airplanes, and why did we have a flawed computer assisted passenger profiling system that didn't require a search of the passenger and carry-on articles?" former FAA security chief Billie Vincent said.

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