Le cinéma américain: terroristes, assassins, bandits fourbes, intolérants, qui bafouent les femmes, etc. Tous les stéréotypes hollywoodiens existent et j’aurais détesté me retrouver dans un film qui aurait pu choquer ma famille, mes proches et d’une façon générale, les gens que je respecte. Khalid Abdalla (l’acteur égypto-britannique qui joue le terroriste – LIBANAIS ! – qui, avec 3 saoudiens, prend les commandes du Vol 93)
I think the recommendations of the agent are something that we should have more aggressively pursued. I do not believe that it gave a signpost of that which would happen on Sept. 11. He made a recommendation that we initiate a program to look at flight schools that was received at headquarters. It was not acted on by Sept. 11. I should say in passing that even if we had followed those suggestions at that time, it would have not given what we know since Sept. 11 had enabled us to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11. (…) I am not certain as to the highest-level individual who received it. I do not believe at this juncture that it went so high as the director of the F.B.I. But I am not certain how high it went in the hierarchy. (…) It was a monumental undertaking. There are more than 2,000 aviation academies in the United States. The latest figure I think I heard is something like 20,000 students attending them. And it was perceived that this would be a monumental undertaking without any specificity as to particular persons The individuals who are being investigated by that agent in Phoenix were not the individuals that were involved in the Sept. 11 attack. (…) So, do I wish we had more aggressively followed up on that suggestion at the time? Yes. Are we taking steps to address what the failings and weaknesses were prior to Sept. 11? Absolutely. Robert Mueller
Attorney General John Ashcroft and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, were told a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks that the F.B.I. had received a memorandum from its Phoenix office the previous July warning that Osama bin Laden’s followers could be training at American flight schools, government officials said today. But senior Bush administration officials said neither Mr. Ashcroft nor Mr. Mueller briefed President Bush and his national security staff until recently about the Phoenix memorandum. Nor did they tell Congressional leaders. The disclosure is certain to magnify criticism of the F.B.I.’s performance, including its failure to act on the memorandum before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The two men have not said publicly when they learned of the July 10 memorandum, but the officials said that within days of the attacks senior law enforcement officials grasped the document’s significance as a potentially important missed signal. Today, several F.B.I. and Justice Department officials said that in the chaotic days after the attacks, discussions between Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller were hurried and that their recollection of events were somewhat blurred by the frenetic pace of activity. Some officials said they recalled high-level discussions about how the hijackers had attended American flight schools, but one Justice Department official did not recall a briefing. New York Times
The once reactionary idea of profiling suspects by age, gender, religion, and ethnicity should have disappeared — but apparently not altogether when the 19 murderers of 3,000 innocents were uniformly young, male, Islamic, from the Arab world, and living stealthily in the United States. Victor Davis Hanson
The identity and motivations of the hijackers are quite clear, from their red headbands and body hair removal to their repeated incantations of « Allah Hu Akbar » (Allah is the greatest) and « B’ismullah » (in the name of Allah). (…) we have had plenty of warning in America. It was not just the 9/11 attacks and the foiled shoe-bomber attempt in 2001, and other escapades since. Before that, we had the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, the blowing up of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, the 1996 Khobar Towers attacks, « Black Hawk Down » in Somalia, and so on. Before that, Hezbollah–a group which works with al-Qaeda training its insurgents and which took part in the Khobar Towers attack–hijacked TWA Flight 847, torturing to death Navy diver Robert Stethem, and murdered 300 U.S. military and civilian personnel in Lebanon. (…) The question is: Will we take heed of them like the passengers on United 93 and go down fighting? Or will we « see no evil » and silently, willingly submit to the will of the Islamists who repeatedly tell us of their mission . . . until the West is dead? Debbie Schlussel
In summer 2001, when Phoenix FBI agent Kenneth Williams urged his superiors to investigate militant Muslim men whom he suspected of training in U.S. flight schools as part of al-Qaeda missions (…) Williams’ recommendation was rejected, FBI Director Robert Mueller later said, partly because of concerns that the plan could be viewed as discriminatory racial profiling. Mueller acknowledged that if Williams’ Phoenix profiling memo had been shared with the agency’s Minneapolis office, which had unsuccessfully sought a special intelligence warrant to search suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui’s laptop computer, the warrant might have been granted. If the FBI had taken Williams’ advice, the feeling of some Arabs and Muslims might have been hurt. But the Twin Towers might still be standing and 3,000 innocent people might be alive today. (…) Post-9/11, the belief that racial, religious and nationality profiling is never justified has become a dangerous bugaboo. It is unfortunate that loyal Muslims or Arabs might be burdened because of terrorists who share their race, nationality or religion. But any inconvenience is preferable to suffering a second mass terrorist attack on American soil. (…) I was compelled to write this book after watching ethnic activists, historians, and politicians repeatedly play the World War II internment card after the September 11 attacks. The Bush Administration’s critics have equated every reasonable measure to interrogate, track, detain, and deport potential terrorists with the « racist » and « unjustified” World War II internment policies of President Roosevelt. To make amends for this « shameful blot » on our history, both Japanese-American and Arab/Muslim-American activists argue against any and all uses of race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion in shaping current homeland security policies. Misguided guilt about the past continues to hamper our ability to prevent future terrorist attacks. Michelle Malkin
Cachez cette réalité que je ne saurai voir !
En sortant du film United 93 (actuellement sur les écrans français sous le titre Vol 93), comment ne pas être horrifié par la prétendue religion et les infâmes textes qui cautionnent de tels actes ?
Et comment ne pas être atterré par l’imbécillité de toutes ces belles âmes de gauche qui continuent à nous bassiner avec cette prétendue « religion d’amour de tolérance et de paix » et, alors que les 19 terroristes étaient tous musulmans et arabes, à récuser le profilage ?
Surtout qu’on a l’impression, comme le rappelait deux de nos derniers billets sur l’Affaire Rosenberg, que 50 ans après on retrouve la même impréparation des services de sécurité et la même difficulté de l’opinion (et tout particulièrement de nos élites) à prendre conscience, comme avant pour le communisme, de la gravité de la menace nazi-coraniste.
Ainsi, comme son prédécesseur sous le gouvernement Roosevelt 50 ans plus tôt, le FBI s’était à nouveau montré incapable de relier ensemble les renseignements collectés juste avant le 11/9, parlalysé qu’il était par la crainte d’être accusé de racisme.
D’où l’intérêt du pavé dans la mare qu’a jeté en 2004 la journaliste filipino-américaine Michelle Malkin (In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror). Et contre lequel s’est dûment déchainée la bien-pensance de gauche sans voir que si, comme plus tard pour la réaction populiste du sénateur Mc Carthy contre la subversion communiste, la décision d’interner les japonais-américains de la Côte ouest avait évidemment sa part d’hystérie et de sur-réaction, elle n’en répondait pas moins à des menaces réelles d’infiltration et d’espionnage de la part des services secrets japonais. Et surtout après le fiasco du 11 /9, qu’il était tout à fait irresponsable d’invoquer un tel précédent pour refuser tout profilage.
Racial profiling: A matter of survival
Michelle Malkin
Jewish World Review
August 20, 2004
When our national security is on the line, « racial profiling » — or more precisely, threat profiling based on race, religion or nationality — is justified. Targeted intelligence-gathering at mosques and in local Muslim communities, for example, makes perfect sense when we are at war with Islamic extremists.
Yet, last week, the FBI came under fire for questioning Muslims in Seattle about possible terrorist ties. Members of a local mosque complained to Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., who called for a congressional investigation of the FBI’s innocuous tactics. The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington accused the agency of « ethnic profiling. »
But where else are federal agents supposed to turn for help in uncovering terrorist plots by Islamic fanatics: Buddhist temples? Knights of Columbus meetings? Amish neighborhoods?
Some might argue that profiling is so offensive to fundamental American values that it ought to be prohibited, even if the prohibition jeopardizes our safety. Yet many of the ethnic activists and civil-liberties groups who object most strenuously to the use of racial, ethnic, religious and nationality classifications during war support the use of similar classifications to ensure « diversity » or « parity » in peacetime.
The civil-rights hypocrites have never met a « compelling government interest » for using racial, ethnicity or nationality classifications they didn’t like, except when that compelling interest happens to be the nation’s very survival.
Missed opportunities
Consider what happened in summer 2001, when Phoenix FBI agent Kenneth Williams urged his superiors to investigate militant Muslim men whom he suspected of training in U.S. flight schools as part of al-Qaeda missions.
Williams’ recommendation was rejected, FBI Director Robert Mueller later said, partly because of concerns that the plan could be viewed as discriminatory racial profiling.
Mueller acknowledged that if Williams’ Phoenix profiling memo had been shared with the agency’s Minneapolis office, which had unsuccessfully sought a special intelligence warrant to search suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui’s laptop computer, the warrant might have been granted.
If the FBI had taken Williams’ advice, the feeling of some Arabs and Muslims might have been hurt. But the Twin Towers might still be standing and 3,000 innocent people might be alive today.
Absolutists who oppose national-security profiling often invoke the World War II experience of Japanese-Americans. When asked whether the 12 Muslim chaplains serving in the armed forces should be vetted more carefully than military rabbis or priests, Sarah Eltantawi of the Muslim Public Affairs Council raised the specter of Japanese internment.
The analogy is ridiculous. The more extensive screening of 12 military officers is a far cry from the evacuation of 112,000 individuals on the West Coast. The targeted profiling of Muslims serving in sensitive positions is not a constitutional crisis.
Some argue that the dismissal of charges against Army Capt. James Yee, a former Muslim chaplain who ministered to enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was initially suspected of espionage, undermines the case for profiling of any kind. Not at all. As the Defense Department has acknowledged, the military’s 12 Muslim chaplains were trained by a radical Wahhabi school and were certified by a Muslim group founded by Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was charged in September 2003 with accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from Libya, a U.S.-designated sponsor of terrorism. These associations cannot be ignored.
Unfortunately, the Pentagon caved in to Eltantawi and her fellow travelers. Rather than focus exclusively on the 12 Muslim chaplains, it pressed forward with a review of all 2,800 military chaplains.
The refusal to be discriminating was, as Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., acknowledged, the « height of politically correct stupidity. »
Smoke-and-mirrors arguments
In the wake of 9/11, opponents of profiling have shifted away from arguing against it because it is « racist » and now claim that it endangers security because it is a drain on resources and damages relations with ethnic and religious minorities, thereby hampering intelligence-gathering. These assertions are cleverly fine-tuned to appeal to post-9/11 sensibilities, but they are unfounded and disingenuous. The fact that al-Qaeda is using some non-Arab recruits does not render profiling moot. As long as we have open borders, Osama bin Laden will continue to send Middle East terrorists here by land, sea and air. Profiling is just one discretionary investigative tool among many.
Post-9/11, the belief that racial, religious and nationality profiling is never justified has become a dangerous bugaboo. It is unfortunate that loyal Muslims or Arabs might be burdened because of terrorists who share their race, nationality or religion. But any inconvenience is preferable to suffering a second mass terrorist attack on American soil.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider « must reading. » Sign up for the daily JWR update. It’s free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Michelle Malkin is the author of, most recently, « In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror ».
Voir aussi:
« United 93 »: Movie of the Year
Debbie Schlussel
FrontPageMagazine.com
April 26, 2006
When previews for « United 93 » were shown in New York City moviehouses, the crowd whined, « Too soon! »
But « United 93 » is not arriving in theaters too soon. If anything, it is arriving too late.
It has been almost five years since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and most Americans have fallen back to sleep. They’ve forgotten who our enemy is: extremist Islam. They’ve forgotten why the Patriot Act was enacted. They’ve forgotten why it was necessary for the NSA to listen in on phone calls of Muslims in America to their friends overseas. They’ve forgotten why it is necessary that many Islamic charities allegedly funding hospitals and orphanages must be shut down (because as on 9/11, they fund acts and groups that continue to put people in hospitals and orphanages).
That’s why « United 93 » should be required movie viewing for all Americans who love freedom . . . while we still have it. This movie is the wake-up call that needs to be visited upon anyone who questions why our government responded the way it did when nearly 3,000 innocent Americans were murdered by Islamic terrorists.
« United 93 » is vivid, it is terrifying, and it is real.
And while all Americans should see this film, there are special groups who need to see it more than others:
• Assorted ACLU-style lawyers and activists: They need to suffer through this movie and remind themselves of those whose memories they are blaspheming with their endless lawsuits on behalf of the compatriots of their murderers.
• The giant piñata of kowtowing federal « law enforcement » bureaucrats, like FBI Director Robert Mueller, Homeland Security lawyer and Islamist outreach figure Daniel Sutherland, and various local fed sachems like U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy III, Michigan FBI Special Agent in Charge Daniel Roberts, and his ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) counterpart, Brian Moskowitz. All of these individuals have, instead, repeatedly broken bread with, kowtowed to, and even given awards to Sunni and Shia Islamists who openly support and even fund terrorism.
• FAA brass: The stars of this film are really the memories of the fallen heroes of Flight 93 (Jeremy Glick, Todd Beamer, Thomas Burnett, and many others) who bravely fought back. But on of the biggest stars of this film is Ben Sliney. He is not an actor at all, but was Chief of Air Traffic Control Operations at the FAA’s Command Center on 9/11. He plays himself, and demonstrates his heroic behavior amidst the chaos. Sliney did the best he could while his FAA superiors repeatedly refused to give approval for F-16 fighters to engage the hijacked planes. Has the FAA bureaucracy changed enough from that day? Since the agency is still supremely worried about profiling of Arabs and Muslims rather than aviation safety, apparently not.
• Most Hollywood directors and writers, who could learn a thing or two from this movie’s director/writer Paul Greengrass, who did not make editorial comment. He stuck strictly the 9/11 commission reports and recounting of relatives and ground crews.
Perhaps that is why the hijab-wearing woman I saw and her Muslim male companion walked out of the film with big frowns on their faces. This movie is not PC. It sticks to the story as it happened.
And the identity and motivations of the hijackers are quite clear, from their red headbands and body hair removal to their repeated incantations of « Allah Hu Akbar » (Allah is the greatest) and « B’ismullah » (in the name of Allah).
In many ways, what happened on United Flight 93 is a microcosmic view of the war we are fighting against Islamic terrorism all over the world, but especially on our own soil.
The passengers on the flight knew that if they did not fight the Islamic terrorists on board, they would probably meet their deaths. They spoke with family and friends on the ground who were watching live TV coverage of the events that had already occurred that morning. They knew that two planes already flew into the World Trade Center and that there was an explosion near the Pentagon.
They realized that their Islamic hijackers were on a suicide mission. And they decided to pursue an effort in the remote chance that they might save themselves, but knowing they would likely go down fighting, as they did. You can’t help but agree with a male passenger’s shout of « You bastard! » as he joined the other men on the plane in stabbing one of their hijackers with forks and knives.
Even though it is only the fourth month of the year, I’m confident in proclaiming « United 93 » the Movie of the Year. It’s a good bet that Hollywood will not produce such an important and provocative film in the remaining eight months.
It is coincidental that this movie comes out the same week both sides rested their case in the last phase of the Zacarias Moussaoui trial. While the United 93 passengers had barely a warning–perhaps less than an hour, we have had plenty of warning in America. It was not just the 9/11 attacks and the foiled shoe-bomber attempt in 2001, and other escapades since. Before that, we had the attack on the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, the blowing up of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, the 1996 Khobar Towers attacks, « Black Hawk Down » in Somalia, and so on. Before that, Hezbollah–a group which works with al-Qaeda training its insurgents and which took part in the Khobar Towers attack–hijacked TWA Flight 847, torturing to death Navy diver Robert Stethem, and murdered 300 U.S. military and civilian personnel in Lebanon.
Yes, we have had the warnings. Plenty of them. And unlike in Hollywood, in real life, Jack Bauer does not usually save the day.
The question is: Will we take heed of them like the passengers on United 93 and go down fighting? Or will we « see no evil » and silently, willingly submit to the will of the Islamists who repeatedly tell us of their mission . . . until the West is dead?
So far, the answer is latter, and that is why « United 93 » is a necessary and vital film. And it is also well done.
***
I note that two pro-homicide bombing/terrorism movies I’ve reviewed over the last year, « Paradise Now, » and « The War Within, » both turn the screen to white upon impact of their deadly targets. But « United 93 » ends with a black screen. Unlike the aims of those two films, « United 93 » shows us there is nothing pure white about the murder of innocent civilians. It is simply dark and evil.
Voir enfin:
TRACES OF TERROR: THE F.B.I. MEMO; ASHCROFT LEARNED OF AGENT’S ALERT JUST AFTER 9/11
David Johnston and Don Van Natta jr.
NYT
MAY 21, 2002
Attorney General John Ashcroft and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, were told a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks that the F.B.I. had received a memorandum from its Phoenix office the previous July warning that Osama bin Laden’s followers could be training at American flight schools, government officials said today.
But senior Bush administration officials said neither Mr. Ashcroft nor Mr. Mueller briefed President Bush and his national security staff until recently about the Phoenix memorandum. Nor did they tell Congressional leaders.
The disclosure is certain to magnify criticism of the F.B.I.’s performance, including its failure to act on the memorandum before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The two men have not said publicly when they learned of the July 10 memorandum, but the officials said that within days of the attacks senior law enforcement officials grasped the document’s significance as a potentially important missed signal.
Today, several F.B.I. and Justice Department officials said that in the chaotic days after the attacks, discussions between Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller were hurried and that their recollection of events were somewhat blurred by the frenetic pace of activity. Some officials said they recalled high-level discussions about how the hijackers had attended American flight schools, but one Justice Department official did not recall a briefing
Spokesmen for Mr. Mueller and Mr. Ashcroft would not discuss the issue today. A senior Justice Department official said, »The attorney general was not briefed in any detail or with any specificity about the document known as the Phoenix memo until about a month ago. »
Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, who was traveling today with the president in Miami, said, »We have nothing that indicates the president had seen or even heard about this memo prior to a few weeks ago. »
Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said last Thursday that the president had not heard about the memorandum before the hijackings and had only recently learned of it. »I personally became aware of it just recently, » Ms. Rice said, adding that she had asked Mr. Mueller and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, to review the matter.
The Phoenix memorandum, written by Kenneth Williams, an agent in Phoenix, was sent to F.B.I. headquarters as an electronic computer message on July 10. It was reviewed by midlevel supervisors, who headed the agency’s bin Laden and Islamic extremist counterterrorism units.
But the officials said the memorandum was never sent to top F.B.I. managers, including Thomas J. Pickard, who was acting director in the summer of 2001 before Mr. Mueller took over early in September. Other senior officials were unaware of the memorandum before Sept. 11, including Michael Rolince, who managed the bureau’s international terrorism unit, and Dale Watson, his superior, the officials said.
The issue of when top officials knew of the Phoenix memorandum is emerging as a main focus in Congressional inquiries getting under way. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has asked the F.B.I. to identify anyone at the agency who knew about the memorandum before the attacks.
But lawmakers also want to know when Bush administration officials learned about the memorandum after the attacks. Some lawmakers have asked whether administration officials were told about it soon after the attacks, but were slow to disclose it.
Several lawmakers, including Richard C. Shelby, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have already singled out the F.B.I. for blunt criticism after Mr. Williams’s memorandum came to light several weeks ago.
The Phoenix memorandum is one of two documents under heavy scrutiny by Congressional investigators. The other is a daily intelligence report, shown to Mr. Bush on Aug. 6. The report mentions the threat of Qaeda members’ carrying out hijackings in the United States. The White House has refused to produce the document, and administration officials have said that the information was too vague to act on.
Mr. Mueller has acknowledged that the bureau’s failure to evaluate the Phoenix memorandum fully was an analytical failure that the F.B.I. has tried to correct.
»It is a very worthwhile process and a process we are undertaking to change what we do in response to that instance and others where perhaps we did not have the analytical capability, » Mr. Mueller said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on May 8.
»We did not have the people who were looking at the broader picture to put the pieces in place, » he said, adding that nothing in the memorandum would have enabled the F.B.I. to thwart the attacks.
The memorandum remains classified, and much of its contents are unknown. But officials have confirmed that it expressed concern that Mr. bin Laden and other groups could be using the flight schools to prepare for terror attacks. It urged F.B.I. officials to check the visas of foreigners at American aviation academies. But no action was taken before Sept. 11.
The memorandum was sent to counterterrorism offices in two cities — one copy went to John O’Neill, then the top counterterrorism agent in the F.B.I.’s New York office. Mr. O’Neill retired from the F.B.I. in late August. He had just begun a job as the security chief of the World Trade Center when he was killed in the attacks.
Usually, internal investigative proposals that involve agencywide resources are reviewed by high F.B.I. officials. But in this case F.B.I. officials have said that officials who read the memorandum were distracted by other cases, a plot against American interests in France and the investigation of the attack in October 2000 on the destroyer Cole.
Two or three days after the attacks, Dale Watson, who was then assistant director for counterterrorism, brought the memorandum to the attention of Mr. Pickard, who had returned to his job as deputy director after a stint as acting director, officials said.
Mr. Pickard and several other agents then briefed Mr. Mueller and Mr. Ashcroft on its existence, the officials said.
The Phoenix agent’s memorandum was not based on intelligence but on concerns and recommendations based on »conjecture and assumptions, » said a senior official who has read it.
»There appeared to be a lot of Middle Eastern guys taking flying lessons in the Phoenix area, » the official said. »This was just a good investigator taking a look at something. It was pure hunch. »
For that reason, the official speculated that the memorandum had not set off strong alarms among other law enforcement officials who had reviewed it at the bureau.
Officials at the Central Intelligence Agency have said that they did not receive a copy of the memorandum until several weeks ago. But F.B.I. officials have said that the names of Middle Eastern men in the Phoenix area who were identified in the memorandum, were referred to the C.I.A. in the summer of 2001.
F.B.I. officials have said that the C.I.A. reported back that none of the men appeared to be connected to Al Qaeda.
Intelligence officials, however, have said that two or three of the men have recently been linked to the Qaeda network. These men remain at large, the officials said.
Uncertainty Surrounds Memo
Following are comments from President Bush’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, about how the administration and the bureau handled a memorandum by an F.B.I. agent warning that Osama bin Laden’s followers could be training at flight schools. Ms. Rice’s statements came from a White House news briefing last Thursday, and Mr. Mueller’s came from testimony on May 8 to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
From Ms. Rice
As you might imagine, a lot of things are prepared within agencies. They’re distributed internally, they’re worked on internally. It’s unusual that anything like that would get to the president. He doesn’t recall seeing anything. I don’t recall seeing anything of this kind.
Neither the president nor I have recollection of ever hearing about the Phoenix memo in the time prior to Sept. 11. We’ve asked F.B.I., C.I.A., our own people to go back and see whether or not it’s possible that it somehow came to him. I personally became aware of it just recently.
From Mr. Mueller
ABOUT THE AGENT’S MEMO — I think the recommendations of the agent are something that we should have more aggressively pursued. I do not believe that it gave a signpost of that which would happen on Sept. 11.
He made a recommendation that we initiate a program to look at flight schools that was received at headquarters. It was not acted on by Sept. 11. I should say in passing that even if we had followed those suggestions at that time, it would have not given what we know since Sept. 11 had enabled us to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11.
WHO SAW THE MEMO — I am not certain as to the highest-level individual who received it. I do not believe at this juncture that it went so high as the director of the F.B.I. But I am not certain how high it went in the hierarchy.
ON CHECKING ALL FLIGHT SCHOOLS — It was a monumental undertaking. There are more than 2,000 aviation academies in the United States. The latest figure I think I heard is something like 20,000 students attending them. And it was perceived that this would be a monumental undertaking without any specificity as to particular persons.
The individuals who are being investigated by that agent in Phoenix were not the individuals that were involved in the Sept. 11 attack.
REGRETS ABOUT NOT DOING MORE — So, do I wish we had more aggressively followed up on that suggestion at the time? Yes. Are we taking steps to address what the failings and weaknesses were prior to Sept. 11? Absolutely.