more on "War on Terra" saves few lives, expert says

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Hitchens, Ralph" <Ralph.Hitchens () hq doe gov>
Date: September 12, 2005 10:18:51 AM EDT
To: "'dave () farber net'" <dave () farber net>
Subject: RE: [IP] more on "War on Terra" saves few lives, expert says


Dave, for IP if you like.

Mr. Bray was right about one thing, even if Mr. Fairlie denies it.   
Only Tom Clancy (in "Debt of Honor," I believe, published in 1994)  
forecast the use of a commercial airliner in a suicide terrorist  
exploit.  Yes, there have been many airline hijackings in recent  
decades but to my knowledge no one in the intelligence community (in  
which I worked for most of the last 20 years) or anywhere else put  
forward a scenario that resembled Clancy's.

Had anyone done so, our counter-terrorism analysts would have had  
something to work with.  It's not likely that an airline pilot could  
be induced -- even at gunpoint -- to fly into a building, so al-Qaeda  
would need its own pilots.  Flying an airliner is not something you  
learn at your average flight school; you need to attend one of a  
relatively small number of major flight schools that provide training  
in large transport-category jets.  Nearly all the students at these  
schools work for airlines or large corporate operators, as the cost  
of this training is prohibitive.  The Phoenix FBI office had the  
right idea in its now-famous memo, but it was "too little, too  
late."  Had the Clancy scenario been taken seriously a few years  
earlier, I have no doubt that the relative handful of unaffiliated  
students of Middle Eastern origin could have been identified and  
investigated long before 9/11.

Scenario-based forecasting doesn't seem to be widely used in the  
Intelligence Community, from my experience.  It's a domain that  
places the highest value on inductive reasoning.

Ralph Hitchens


-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2005 5:08 PM
To: Ip Ip
Subject: [IP] more on "War on Terra" saves few lives, expert says




Begin forwarded message:

From: Tom Fairlie <tfairlie () frontiernet net>
Date: September 11, 2005 4:40:36 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: h_bray () globe com
Subject: Re: [IP] more on "War on Terra" saves few lives, expert says


>>  The "who could have dreamed up 9/11" canard has been
so overused that I'm surprised a sharp person like Mr. Bray would  
even use it--unless it was dishonestly used of course. We have had  
almost 700 hijackings since 1970, and the people paid to protect the  
U.S. have been working on this threat full time. The President even  
received specific intelligence warning him of such an attack only a  
month before.<<


-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/