WASHINGTON — A secret intelligence report prepared for President Bill Clinton in December 1998 reported on a suspected plot by Osama bin Laden to hijack at U.S. airliner in an effort to force the United States to release imprisoned conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center attacks.
The one-page declassified version of the President's Daily Brief (PDB) dated Dec. 4, 1998, contains chilling information the CIA had gleaned from several sources indicating that al-Qaida was working with U.S.-based operatives of its deadly ally, the Eqyptian group Gama at al-Islamiyya, in the purported hijack plot.
The PDB shows that the intelligence community and the White House were aware of al-Qaida's interest in hijacking U.S. airliners long before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The day the PDB was prepared, then-CIA director George Tenet said in a memo to the intelligence community that "we are at war," and that no resources should be spared to defeat the terrorists.
You need the photo of the freeper protesting the Clintoon with the sign saying, "If Osama bin Laden was an intern, Clinton would have nailed him!"
11/01/1999 is when the Egyptian Air Liner went down off our coast:
Egyptian Airliner Crashes in Ocean Off U.S.
217 Feared Dead After Boeing 767 Disappears Suddenly From Radar Screens on Flight to Cairo
By Brian Knowlton International Herald Tribune
WASHINGTON - An EgyptAir passenger jet en route to Cairo from New York with 217 persons aboard crashed within an hour of takeoff early Sunday, and authorities later found bodies and floating debris in oil-covered Atlantic waters 65 miles south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts.
An extensive search operation was immediately launched, but there appeared to be scant hope of survivors. The Boeing 767-300ER was flying at an altitude of 33,000 feet (about 10,000 meters) when it vanished from radar screens and reportedly plunged rapidly into the ocean.
Six ships were on the scene or on their way for what the Coast Guard termed a search-and-rescue operation. Seven planes flew patterns over the area, aided by clear skies. Seas in the area were moderate.
''The initial report was we had found seats, seat cushions, the flotation devices on the aircraft, life rafts and some other small parts that are not identifiable,'' Rear Admiral Richard Larrabee of the Coast Guard said in a briefing in Boston.
President Bill Clinton, who spoke to reporters as he left church in Washington, said that there was no evidence of foul play. ''I think it's better,'' he added, ''if people draw no conclusions until we know something.'' He later telephoned President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to offer his condolences.
In Cairo, Transport Minister Ibrahim Dimeiri also said there was no immediate indication of terrorism. But he added, ''Contact with the plane was cut suddenly, which indicates that something happened suddenly.''
Mr. Clinton was to leave later to take part in Middle East peace negotiations in Oslo. He was scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel and Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader. Mr. Mubarak was not involved in the session.
EgyptAir said the passengers included 62 Egyptians, two Sudanese, three Syrians and one Chilean. There was no record of the nationality of others.
But the State Department said, ''There is reason to believe that a large number of Americans citizens were on board,'' and one Egyptian report said that most of them were Americans.
In addition to a cabin crew of five pilots, needed on the long flight, there were 10 flight attendants. The 199 passengers included two infants, EgyptAir said. No names were immediately released while families were being notified.
EgyptAir said no Egyptian government officials were known to be on board.
Authorities were arranging to bring family members to New York from Cairo and elsewhere, and the Red Cross and local agencies were working to provide accommodations, information and counseling.
Officials at a televised briefing in New York said that Flight 990 left John F. Kennedy International Airport at 1:19 A.M. local time. About 50 to 55 minutes later, after reaching an altitude of 33,000 feet, it suddenly disappeared.
Jim Hall, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the flight's last radio communication with air-traffic controllers in New York came at 1:47 A.M., and was described as routine.
The plane, according to one radar's reading, began an unexplained descent from 33,000 at about 1:50 A.M., Mr. Hall said. About 36 seconds later, the airplane had descended to 19,100 feet, a rapid rate of descent that would have brought it down in little more than a minute.
There were no known distress calls, which appeared to point to a sudden, catastrophic incident rather than a slow-developing mechanical problem. Michael Goldfarb, a former Federal Aviation Administration chief of staff, called the crash ''baffling.''
''It is highly unusual for an aircraft at altitude to break up or to crash,'' he said on CNN. ''It does lead you to think of something like terrorism or like a bomb, but it's so early, we're just going to have to wait.''
The Associated Press reported that on Sept. 24 the Federal Aviation Administration issued a caution to several U.S. agencies that it had received a letter warning that an explosive device ''would soon be used on a flight departing from either Los Angeles airport or New York's JFK airport.''
The circular said the informant ''identified himself as Luciano Porcari,'' the name of a man who hijacked an Iberian Boeing 727 over Spain on March 14, 1977, before being arrested. The FAA letter said the caution was in effect through Oct. 30. But Robert Kelly, aviation director of the New York/New Jersey Port Authority, cautioned reporters against speculating on the cause of the crash. ''It is very early and very preliminary,'' he said. The Port Authority operates New York airports.
Flight 990 originated in Los Angeles at 4:53 P.M. Saturday. That was more than four hours after its scheduled departure, a delay apparently due to a late arrival caused by the need to change a flat tire. A routine maintenance check in Los Angeles found no problem.
Of the 33 passengers on the flight to New York, one got off the plane there. CNN reported that that man was an EgyptAir employee. Normally, passengers on international flights are not allowed to get off during a domestic leg of a flight in the United States.
Mohammed Fahim Rayan, chairman of EgyptAir, said that the plane, on its incoming flight to the United States from Egypt, had been diverted from Kennedy airport to Newark, New Jersey, because of fog. But no problems were reported at any point, he said.
The plane was a 10-year-old Boeing 767-300ER, a long-range model popular on trans-Atlantic flights and with an excellent safety record. Its three captains were highly experienced, averaging nearly 13,000 hours of in-flight experience each, Mr. Rayan said. Despite some apparent parallels to the July 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, New York - both planes had left New York, reached altitude, then suddenly disappeared from radar screens before crashing into the Atlantic - aviation experts cautioned against drawing any conclusions.
After a $20 million investigation that involved retrieving thousands of pieces of the Boeing 747-100 from the ocean floor and reassembling them in a Long Island aircraft hangar, authorities finally dismissed theories that a bomb or a missile had downed the plane. They concluded that a wayward spark had probably ignited fumes in the centerwing fuel tank, provoking the crash, which killed 230.
The 767, however, has a different fuel-tank configuration.
On Sunday, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Bureau of Investigation immediately sent investigators to the scene. FBI participation is standard procedure.
The navy said it would send to the area the Grapple, a search-and-rescue vessel that took part in the recovery of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane off Massachusetts last summer, as well as TWA Flight 800 and Swissair Flight 111. The Swissair plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD11, crashed off Nova Scotia in1998.