this is an interesting read
The New York Post - March 15, 2004
THE WARNING KERRY IGNORED
By PAUL SPERRY
March 15, 2004 -- SEN. John Kerry boasts how he "sounded the alarm on
terrorism years before 9/ 11," referring to his 1997 book "The New War."
Too bad he didn't blast it when it really counted - four months before
the hijackings, when he was hand-delivered evidence of serious security
breaches at Logan International Airport, with specific warnings that
terrorists could exploit them.
Former FAA security officials say the Massachusetts senator had the power
to prevent at least the Boston hijackings and save the World Trade Center
and thousands of lives, yet he failed to take effective action after they
gave him a prophetic warning that his state's main airport was vulnerable
to multiple hijackings.
"He just did the Pontius Pilate thing and passed the buck" on back
through the federal bureaucracy, said Brian Sullivan, a retired FAA special
agent from the Boston area who in May 2001 personally warned Kerry that
Logan was ripe for a "jihad" suicide operation possibly involving "a
coordinated attack."
Rewind to May 6, 2001. That night, a Boston TV station (Fox-25) aired
reporter Deborah Sherman's story on an undercover investigation at Logan
that Sullivan and another retired agent helped set up. In nine of 10
tries, a crew got knives and other weapons through security checkpoints -
including the very ones the 9/11 hijackers would later exploit.
The next day, Sullivan fired off a two-page letter to Kerry highlighting
the systemic failures.
"With the concept of jihad, do you think it would be difficult for a
determined terrorist to get on a plane and destroy himself and all other
passengers?" he warned. "Think what the result would be of a coordinated
attack which took down several domestic flights on the same day. With our
current screening, this is more than possible. It is almost likely."
The toll from such an attack would be economic, as well as human, he
predicted with chilling accuracy.
Sullivan followed up by having the undercover videotape hand-delivered to
Kerry's office.
More than 11 weeks later, Kerry finally replied to his well-informed and
anxious constituent. "I have forwarded your tape to the Department of
Transportation's Office of Inspector General [DOT OIG]," he said in a
brief July 24, 2001, letter, a copy of which I've obtained.
Yet Sullivan had made it clear in his letter that going to his old agency
was a dead end. He and other agents had complained about security lapses
for years and got nowhere. "The DOT OIG has become an ineffective
overseer of the FAA," he told Kerry. Sullivan suggested he show the tape to
peers on committees with FAA oversight. He even volunteered to testify
before them.
But he never heard from Kerry again.
At that point, Steve Elson, the other agent who'd teamed up on the TV
sting, decided to take a crack at the junior senator. A fiery ex-Navy
Seal, Elson spent three years as part of an elite FAA unit called the Red
Team, which did covert testing of airport security across the country,
before retiring as a field agent in Houston. He offered to fly to
Washington at his own expense to give Kerry a document-backed
presentation about the "facade of security" at Logan and other major airports.
But a Kerry aide said not to bother. "You're not a constituent," Elson
was told just a few weeks before the hijackings. He went ballistic, warning
that if Kerry didn't act soon he'd risk the lives of planeloads of his
actual constituents. That warning now looks like prophecy: At least 82
Kerry constituents were murdered aboard American Airlines Flight 11 and
United Airlines Flight 175.
"Enhanced security would have prevented the hijackings, virtually without
question," Elson now insists. If nothing else, it might have discouraged
ringleader Mohamed Atta, who monitored security procedures at Logan weeks
before the hijackings.
Yet the warnings apparently did stick in Kerry's mind: In the days after
9/11, Kerry told the Boston Globe that he'd triggered an undercover probe
of Logan security by the General Accounting Office in June 2001. But he
wrote Sullivan no such thing in his July letter, stating only that he
passed his warning and tape on to Transportation, not GAO. And GAO,
though it is the investigative arm of Congress, didn't seem to know what the
senator was talking about. The agency had tested security at two airports
before 9/11, but neither one was Logan. And Kerry confessed he didn't
know the outcome of the probe he says he triggered.
Some follow-up, senator.
Sullivan and Elson, joined by aviation-security experts David Forbes and
Andrew Thomas, want to see Kerry hauled before the 9/11 Commission to
answer questions about what he knew about Logan's lapses, and
specifically what he did about them, before that fateful day. It's a reasonable
request - especially since Kerry has complained that President Bush will only
give the panel an hour of his time.
Where was Kerry's sense of urgency? Where was his leadership? These are
fair questions to ask of someone vying for Bush's job. "We don't have to
wait for a tragedy to occur to act," Sullivan urged Kerry in his letter.
But tragically, that's exactly what happened - at both ends of Pennsylvania
Avenue, and on both sides of the aisle.
Paul Sperry is a Washington investigative reporter and author of "Crude
Politics."
The New York Post - March 15, 2004
THE WARNING KERRY IGNORED
By PAUL SPERRY
March 15, 2004 -- SEN. John Kerry boasts how he "sounded the alarm on
terrorism years before 9/ 11," referring to his 1997 book "The New War."
Too bad he didn't blast it when it really counted - four months before
the hijackings, when he was hand-delivered evidence of serious security
breaches at Logan International Airport, with specific warnings that
terrorists could exploit them.
Former FAA security officials say the Massachusetts senator had the power
to prevent at least the Boston hijackings and save the World Trade Center
and thousands of lives, yet he failed to take effective action after they
gave him a prophetic warning that his state's main airport was vulnerable
to multiple hijackings.
"He just did the Pontius Pilate thing and passed the buck" on back
through the federal bureaucracy, said Brian Sullivan, a retired FAA special
agent from the Boston area who in May 2001 personally warned Kerry that
Logan was ripe for a "jihad" suicide operation possibly involving "a
coordinated attack."
Rewind to May 6, 2001. That night, a Boston TV station (Fox-25) aired
reporter Deborah Sherman's story on an undercover investigation at Logan
that Sullivan and another retired agent helped set up. In nine of 10
tries, a crew got knives and other weapons through security checkpoints -
including the very ones the 9/11 hijackers would later exploit.
The next day, Sullivan fired off a two-page letter to Kerry highlighting
the systemic failures.
"With the concept of jihad, do you think it would be difficult for a
determined terrorist to get on a plane and destroy himself and all other
passengers?" he warned. "Think what the result would be of a coordinated
attack which took down several domestic flights on the same day. With our
current screening, this is more than possible. It is almost likely."
The toll from such an attack would be economic, as well as human, he
predicted with chilling accuracy.
Sullivan followed up by having the undercover videotape hand-delivered to
Kerry's office.
More than 11 weeks later, Kerry finally replied to his well-informed and
anxious constituent. "I have forwarded your tape to the Department of
Transportation's Office of Inspector General [DOT OIG]," he said in a
brief July 24, 2001, letter, a copy of which I've obtained.
Yet Sullivan had made it clear in his letter that going to his old agency
was a dead end. He and other agents had complained about security lapses
for years and got nowhere. "The DOT OIG has become an ineffective
overseer of the FAA," he told Kerry. Sullivan suggested he show the tape to
peers on committees with FAA oversight. He even volunteered to testify
before them.
But he never heard from Kerry again.
At that point, Steve Elson, the other agent who'd teamed up on the TV
sting, decided to take a crack at the junior senator. A fiery ex-Navy
Seal, Elson spent three years as part of an elite FAA unit called the Red
Team, which did covert testing of airport security across the country,
before retiring as a field agent in Houston. He offered to fly to
Washington at his own expense to give Kerry a document-backed
presentation about the "facade of security" at Logan and other major airports.
But a Kerry aide said not to bother. "You're not a constituent," Elson
was told just a few weeks before the hijackings. He went ballistic, warning
that if Kerry didn't act soon he'd risk the lives of planeloads of his
actual constituents. That warning now looks like prophecy: At least 82
Kerry constituents were murdered aboard American Airlines Flight 11 and
United Airlines Flight 175.
"Enhanced security would have prevented the hijackings, virtually without
question," Elson now insists. If nothing else, it might have discouraged
ringleader Mohamed Atta, who monitored security procedures at Logan weeks
before the hijackings.
Yet the warnings apparently did stick in Kerry's mind: In the days after
9/11, Kerry told the Boston Globe that he'd triggered an undercover probe
of Logan security by the General Accounting Office in June 2001. But he
wrote Sullivan no such thing in his July letter, stating only that he
passed his warning and tape on to Transportation, not GAO. And GAO,
though it is the investigative arm of Congress, didn't seem to know what the
senator was talking about. The agency had tested security at two airports
before 9/11, but neither one was Logan. And Kerry confessed he didn't
know the outcome of the probe he says he triggered.
Some follow-up, senator.
Sullivan and Elson, joined by aviation-security experts David Forbes and
Andrew Thomas, want to see Kerry hauled before the 9/11 Commission to
answer questions about what he knew about Logan's lapses, and
specifically what he did about them, before that fateful day. It's a reasonable
request - especially since Kerry has complained that President Bush will only
give the panel an hour of his time.
Where was Kerry's sense of urgency? Where was his leadership? These are
fair questions to ask of someone vying for Bush's job. "We don't have to
wait for a tragedy to occur to act," Sullivan urged Kerry in his letter.
But tragically, that's exactly what happened - at both ends of Pennsylvania
Avenue, and on both sides of the aisle.
Paul Sperry is a Washington investigative reporter and author of "Crude
Politics."
