FAA missed chances to get 9/11 hijackers
CNN is reporting that steps could have been taken to stop the suicide hijackers of 9/11 if Zacarias Moussaoui had told investigators about his al Qaeda ties.
Robert J. Cammaroto of the Transportation Security Administration said the Federal Aviation Administration could have banned short-blade knives if they had known terrorists were planning to use them to overtake flight crews.
Cammaroto’s three-hour appearance in the death penalty proceeding was meant to bolster prosecutors’ arguments that airlines could have sufficiently tightened aviation security if Moussaoui, after he was arrested in August 2001, had told authorities about al Qaeda’s plan to hijack and crash planes into buildings.
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During testimony Wednesday morning, the jury heard how the FAA missed several opportunities to investigate three of the 9/11 hijacker-pilots or suspend their FAA-issued pilot licenses.
Mohamed Atta, from Egypt, and Marwan al-Shehhi, from United Arab Emirates — the pair who crashed Boeing 767s into the World Trade Center’s twin towers — were involved in two incidents of recklessness at Florida airports.
Atta and al-Shehhi, according to testimony, abandoned a small plane rented from their flight school, Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida, on a runway at Miami International Airport on December 26, 2000.
Daniel Pursell, Huffman’s chief flight instructor, told the jury the FAA called him for details but did not interview the pilots.
“They might should have, but I don’t think they did,” Pursell said.
A few months later, Atta and al-Shehhi landed a small plane at a Clearwater, Florida, airport after dark, breaking the airport’s curfew.
Pursell admonished them, but again, there was no investigation.
Around the same time in Phoenix, Arizona, Hani Hanjour, from Saudi Arabia, showed up for jet simulator training at JetTech.
Peggy Chevrette, the school’s general manager, told jurors Hanjour had a commercial pilot’s license but lacked the appropriate skills, arousing her suspicions.
Hanjour was not fluent in English, as U.S.-licensed pilots are required to be, she said. He had one-tenth the flying hours of a normal student, and paid $7,000 cash for the training in early 2001.
“He was insistent that he could finish the course,” Chevrette testified. The school permitted him to use the simulator.
“He didn’t want to do the takeoff and landing program. He just wanted to fly the simulator in the air,” she said.
Chevrette said she called the local FAA official assigned to her school and asked, based on his language deficiency alone, how Hanjour possibly qualified for a license.
The FAA official suggested the flight school get Hanjour a translator and told her Hanjour’s license was legitimate.
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