Posted on 06/03/2002 1:07:58 PM PDT by Kermit
Question:
In response to questions about the advance warning President Bush received from the CIA concerning a possible hijacking plot, his press spokesman Ari Fleischer (identified by the New York Times as the anonymous “senior administration official) replied in his daily press briefing on May 15th, 2002: "The administration, based on hijackings, notified the appropriate agencies and, I think, that's one of the reasons that you saw that the people who committed the 9-11 attacks used box cutters and plastic knives to get around America's system of protecting against hijackings."
What is the evidence that the hijackers who took over the Boeing 767s that crashed into the World Trade Center “used box cutters and plastic knives?”
Answer:
There is zero evidence of box-cutters on either plane that hit the World Trade Center. Not a single flight crew member or passenger on American Airlines Flight 11 or United Airlines Flight 175 reported seeing box-cutters or plastics knives. Nor were they mentioned in the FAA executive summary on any of the hijacked plane.(LINK FAA MEMO.) Only on American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon, was there a near-mention by one passenger that the hijackers in the back of the plane had knives and "card-board cutters," and even that passenger to claim to see what weapons were actually used to hijack the plane. The claim by administration officials that plastic knives were used to hijack the planes is pure invention. (See Fictoid #9)
Since unlike guns, metal knives and bombs, it was legal for airline passengers on September 11th 2001 to carry aboard box-cutters and plastic knives, the claim that they used such devices to commandeer the planes that destroyed the World Trade Center is a functional fictoid. Not only does it serve to shield the airlines, airports and airport screeners from massive liability from the victims at the World Trade Center, it protects the Bush Administration by diverting attention away from concern that airport security at three Federally-supervised airports was dangerously lax.
Collateral Question:
Since CBS News quoted press briefer Ari Fleischer verbatim, why did the New York Times identify him anonymously as a “senior administration spokesman?”
The problem here is, this guy (the article writer) is trying to 'excuse' the terrorists.
Why would the FBI need to release very detail of their interviews with these screeners?
Might the screener vidoe photograph records shown box cutters?
1.About an estimated 30,000 terrorists went through Osama Bin Ladens training camps in afghanistan. And who knows how many in camps around the world.
2.We know for a fact that Bin Laden was planning to use airplanes as missiles since as early as 1995, but it was most probably on his mind much earlier. So for the last decade or so Bin Laden and associates were probably looking for possible candidates among the many tens of thousands of people who were available to him.
3.Now 99% of the people who went through his camps were probably incompetent idiots, but it is feasible to say that 19 of them were smart, strong, and committed to something on the 9/11 scale.
Conclusion:The terrorists were training for over a decade on hand to hand combat. Out of tens of thousands people, the top 20 were picked. To avoid blowing the whole operation, they ignored using bombs or guns, and concentrated soley on small knives and hand to hand combat. Kill about 5 people of the strongest men on aboard to set an example, and the rest will remain complacent thinking they will be allright when they land.
Why would anyone believe anything the govt has to say anymore. Over and over again the govt has been proven to be a bunch of dim bulb, pathological liars.
I have two boxcutters at work that are imprinted with the logo of the airline that handed them out to customers. Bet they don't do that anymore.
Dave in Eugene
Cell phones don't work too well at 30,000 feet.
---max
That is indeed part of the problem. Another part, I think, is the general attitude of our society that all violence is evil, resistance is futile, trust your govt "professionals" to handle everything, etc. It took the knowledge that death was inevitable to get a few men on one flight to resist. IMHO Jeffrey Snyder has it right in his essay "Nation of Cowards" (written in 1993); resistence to assault should be the norm not the exception.
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