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World Trade Center. In neither case could the information be corroborated.
In addition, an Algerian group hijacked an airliner in 1994, most likely intend-
ing to blow it up over Paris, but possibly to crash it into the Eiffel Tower.
14
In 1994, a private airplane had crashed onto the south lawn of the White
House. In early 1995,Abdul Hakim Murad--Ramzi Yousef 's accomplice in the
Manila airlines bombing plot--told Philippine authorities that he and Yousef
had discussed flying a plane into CIA headquarters.
15
Clarke had been concerned about the danger posed by aircraft since at least
the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. There he had tried to create an air defense plan
using assets from the Treasury Department, after the Defense Department
declined to contribute resources.The Secret Service continued to work on the
problem of airborne threats to the Washington region. In 1998, Clarke chaired
an exercise designed to highlight the inadequacy of the solution. This paper
exercise involved a scenario in which a group of terrorists commandeered a
Learjet on the ground in Atlanta, loaded it with explosives, and flew it toward
a target in Washington, D.C. Clarke asked officials from the Pentagon, Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA), and Secret Service what they could do about
the situation. Officials from the Pentagon said they could scramble aircraft from
Langley Air Force Base, but they would need to go to the President for rules
of engagement, and there was no mechanism to do so.There was no clear res-
olution of the problem at the exercise.
16
In late 1999, a great deal of discussion took place in the media about the
crash off the coast of Massachusetts of EgyptAir Flight 990, a Boeing 767.The
most plausible explanation that emerged was that one of the pilots had gone
berserk, seized the controls, and flown the aircraft into the sea. After the
1999­2000 millennium alerts, when the nation had relaxed, Clarke held a
meeting of his Counterterrorism Security Group devoted largely to the pos-
sibility of a possible airplane hijacking by al Qaeda.
17
In his testimony, Clarke commented that he thought that warning about the
possibility of a suicide hijacking would have been just one more speculative
theory among many, hard to spot since the volume of warnings of "al Qaeda
threats and other terrorist threats, was in the tens of thousands--probably hun-
dreds of thousands."
18
Yet the possibility was imaginable, and imagined. In early
August 1999, the FAA's Civil Aviation Security intelligence office summarized
the Bin Ladin hijacking threat. After a solid recitation of all the information
available on this topic, the paper identified a few principal scenarios, one of
which was a "suicide hijacking operation." The FAA analysts judged such an
operation unlikely, because "it does not offer an opportunity for dialogue to
achieve the key goal of obtaining Rahman and other key captive extremists.
. . . A suicide hijacking is assessed to be an option of last resort."
19
Analysts could have shed some light on what kind of "opportunity for dia-
logue" al Qaeda desired.
20
The CIA did not write any analytical assessments of
possible hijacking scenarios.
FORESIGHT--AND HINDSIGHT
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