"Justice" official: Many warning signs before 911

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

AP via CNN Online - June 1, 2002
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/06/01/attacks.chertoff.ap/index.html>


Justice official: Many warning signs before Sept. 11

HOLMDEL, New Jersey (AP) -- The Bush administration's top
anti-terrorism prosecutor said the United States had ample evidence
that a devastating terrorist attack on U.S. soil was likely long
before September 11.

Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff cited nearly a decade's
worth of hints that foreign terrorists were targeting Americans,
though he did not say there was specific information that could have
prevented the attacks.

"As of September 10th, each of us knew everything we needed to know
to tell us there was a possibility of what happened on September
11th," Chertoff said Friday during a commencement speech to Seton
Hall Law School graduates.

On Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller said there may have been
missed clues before the attacks and suggested that investigators
might have uncovered the plot if they had been more diligent about
pursuing leads.

Among the warning signs cited by Chertoff: the bombing of the trade
center in 1993; a mid-1990s plan in which an Islamic radical was
convicted of plotting to blow up jetliners, New York landmarks and
assassinate the pope and fly a small plane into a government
building; a death sentence pronounced on Americans by Osama bin Laden
in the late 1990s; and the failed millennium bombing plot at Los
Angeles International Airport.

"We knew the World Trade Center was a target," said Chertoff, who was
the U.S. attorney for New Jersey when the trade center was attacked
in 1993. "We knew an airplane could be used as a weapon."

He said he was not criticizing the country's preparedness, but wanted
to help better prepare for coming security challenges. And like other
top administration officials, Chertoff said the nation will never be
"100 percent safe."

"It is never going to happen," he said. "Every bridge, every mall is
not going to be 100 percent guarded. Although we must work to achieve
perfect security, we can only approach it, not attain it."

 
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