[Trueblackman]

Conservative and Republicans it is time for us to get in the game and start forcing hands on this.

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[DoughtyOne]

I like what you've said here and would go one step further.

The Republicans control the House. How the hell did this commission get legs at this time in an election year.

The House leadership is about as impotent as any group of people I have ever seen.

[farmfriend]

A well deserved bump and ping.

[jwalsh07]

I'm of a bipartisan frame of mind here.

I would march every member of the Congress who had a seat up there and ask them why they did not declare war on Al Qa'ida when they declared war on us in 1996 and 1999.

[theFIRMbss]

>why is it that we as Conservatives and Republicans have not demanded that both Senators John Kerry and Teddy Kennedy appear

Maybe we should ask
Bill and Hillary to speak.
Especially Bill . . .

[Howlin]

What Did John Kerry Know and When Did He Know It?

March 21, 2004

---

by Joe Mariani

---

Presidential hopeful John Kerry has more guts than most people gave him credit for, after all. It takes unbelievable audacity to attack President Bush for "stonewalling" the 9/11 terrorist attack investigation, when Kerry was personally warned by an FAA agent about the possibility of a terrorist hijacking at Boston's Logan International Airport only months before... and did nothing.

In a letter to Senator John Kerry on 7 May 2001, retired FAA Special Agent Brian Sullivan wrote that the FAA needed to change its focus from hijackings for hostages (the usual purpose until 9/11) to encompass the possibility of terrorists taking over airliners for other, more deadly purposes. "While the FAA has focused on screening for handguns, new threats have emerged, such as chemical and biological weapons," Sullivan wrote. "Do you really think a screener could detect a bottle of liquid explosive, a small battery and a detonator in your carry-on baggage?" Sullivan continued, "And 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? The answers to these questions are obvious."

The night before, a local tv station had broadcast a report concerning security vulnerabilities at Logan Airport featuring Sullivan and another former FAA Special Agent named Steve Elson. The two had waltzed in and out through airport security multiple times with a variety of weapons and gadgets. Many times, their bags weren't even opened, even when "suspicious items" were inside. Agent Sullivan sent Kerry a video of the report following his letter. In a chilling prophecy, he encouraged the Senator to "[t]hink what the result would be of a coordinated attack which took down several domestic flights on the same day." In the last week of July, Kerry's office finally sent Sullivan a reply saying that the video had been forwarded to the Department of Transportation. Less than two months later, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were hijacked after taking off from the same Logan International Airport and flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in NYC, killing thousands.

Was this the famous "alarm" John Kerry claims to have "sounded... on terrorism years before 9/11" in his television commercials -- sending a video to the DoT mere months beforehand? Anyone with money for postage could have done as much. Isn't it possible that a Senator with a direct warning from a former FAA agent could -- and should -- have done much more? While it's true that few people would immediately leap into action on a warning alone, most people lack the hypocritical arrogance to criticise others for not doing so when they hadn't themselves.

Kerry has recently attacked President Bush for daring to spend time campaigning for his own re-election instead of answering questions before the 9/11 commission. "If the President of the United States can find time to go to a rodeo, he can spend more than one hour before the commission," Kerry said. Why is more than an hour necessary? It comes as no surprise that the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (as it's formally known) would be used as yet another political attack on President Bush before too long. Senator Kerry apparently needs to be reminded that he's able to find plenty of time to do everything except the job he's still drawing a hefty paycheck to do, having missed 64% of the Senate roll calls last year. Some might consider that "being AWOL", and call for a minute-by-minute account of his activities while taking money from the public he supposedly serves. Perhaps the Senator can furnish dental records to go along with that.

When will Kerry take his seat before the Commission to answer for his deliberate disregard of vital information concerning the lack of airport security in his very own Senatorial district, at the very airport from which half of the 9/11 attacks were launched?

[fight_truth_decay]

Enters this opinion piece:

THE WARNING KERRY IGNORED
By PAUL SPERRY

NY POST

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."

http://nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/20808.htm

[Howlin]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1097852/posts

THE WARNING KERRY IGNORED

[Willie Green]

why is it that we as Conservatives and Republicans have not demanded that both Senators John Kerry and Teddy Kennedy appear publicly before the 9-11 commission as well

Well I'll give you a bttt for a good idea,
despite the fact that I can't stomach a public appearance by either of those two idiots.

[Jim_Curtis]

No one has benefited from plane crashes as much as John Kerry and the Democrats in general.

Kerry scooped up a rich wife due to a plane crash. I don't know where Teddy was at the time.

Kerry would have lost to Wellstone in the 2004 Dem primaries and inside polls showed Wellstone losing to Coleman for the senate. Teddy was in Minnesota when Wellstone's plane crashed.

Kerry wouldn't get any mileage out of the "JFK" initials if junior hadn't went down in a plane crash, Teddy was the nearest person from where the plane went down.

9/11 speaks for itself. Kerry buried critical reports regarding security at Logan. Not sure where Teddy was on that day.

John Ashcroft lost his senate seat because of a "ghost candidate" gimmick due to a plane crash which allowed the Dems to take the majority. Not sure where Teddy was on that day.

No, I'm not saying they caused these "accidents"...good heavens, not that!

[Syncro]

BUMP

For an excellent thread.

Some of this documented information should be excerpted for a Bush Campaign Ad.

[HitmanLV]

I don't think the fact that the planes were out of Logan speaks specifically to Kerry's responsibility over the matter.

[Quix]

I AGREE!

[nanared11]

I find it hard to believe I spent 5 minutes getting into this "discussion" board. What a group of crybaby RRRRRRRR. I cannot even pretend surprise, however, that when the entire country wants to hear from Dr. Rice, immediately, every ignorant, cowtown, wanna-be, finds 100 democrats to question. If I were interested enough to play "why don't we", we'd be here forever and you are all just too narrow-minded and ignorant. Let's start with "why is GDimwit in the Whitehouse to begin with?" Because he, as pimp for the gigantic big business corps whores, BOUGHT his way in. Everyone with an IQ higher than their shoe size knows that. So take you ridiculous whining someplace else. November will show you just what real Americans want and it won't be the dimwit you people defied our Constitution to stick in there. What GOOD has this man done?? NONE!!!!

[CyberAnt]

At Rush's website he had an article about how Gore stopped the airport/airline improvements - to get campaign donations.

[justshutupandtakeit]

This can be used I am sure but you will have to admit so far just letting these Lying SoBs run their mouths is highly productive and blowing up in their faces big time.

And Senators don't control these matters in the last analysis. They can urge, demand or throw hissy fits but the ultimate actions must be sanctioned by the executive. So it comes down to Bush or Clinton on the federal side and no doubt you will find more absurdities coming from Clinton.

But I think just keeping the spotlight on Clarke's lies and inadvertent revelations (OKC suspicions and Al Queda/Iraq ties) is the most productive line of questioning. It has to be kept simple or the truth can too easily be talked around.

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

BTTT