- WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Two years
before hijackers seized control of four U.S. jets and crashed three of
them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a federal report raised
the specter of such an attack.
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- That report, ordered by the CIA during the Clinton administration
and prepared by the Library of Congress, is just one of several reports,
memos and observations that lawmakers and others are pointing to as they
question whether the government missed several clues before September 11
that could have foretold the devastating and deadly hijackings.
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- "Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes
a Terrorist and Why" referenced bin Laden's terrorist network, al
Qaeda, and its potential involvement in a plot similar to the events of
September 11.
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- President Bush on Friday spent a second day defending
his administration, denouncing what he called "second-guessing"
and saying he had no clear indication that terrorists would hijack four
airliners and crash them last fall.
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- "We've got to look back on what happened and try
to figure out how to do better," said House Minority Leader Richard
Gephardt, defending calls for a congressional inquiry into what was known
before September 11 about possible terrorist attacks.
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- Rep. Porter Goss, the chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee, said there was no need for any congressional inquiry because
intelligence panels have already been reviewing the events leading up to
the attacks. To date, he said, nothing has emerged to suggest that anyone
in the government could have predicted them.
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- Concerning reaction from overseas, Spain's foreign minister
said Saturday the European Union should not become involved in "internal
debates" in the United States over what the White House might have
known about terrorist threats before the September 11 attacks.
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- "The main thing is to prevent" future attacks,
said Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique, speaking on behalf of the E.U.
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- Philippines raised concern about hijackings
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- The White House on Wednesday revealed that Bush received
a CIA analysis August 6 that raised the possibility of a jet hijacking
involving Osama bin Laden.
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- But Bush administration officials said that report lacked
specifics, such as where and when, and that it wasn't even fathomable at
that time that terrorists would essentially turn jets into huge, fuel-laden
missiles, crashing them into buildings.
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- But other reports show that very possibility was considered
by some intelligence experts and investigators before September 11.
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- As early as 1998, intelligence sources told Time magazine
they had evidence that bin Laden might be planning a strike on New York
or Washington in retaliation for a U.S. missile strike against al Qaeda
camps in Afghanistan and a factory suspected of making chemical weapons
components in Sudan. Those strikes came days after two U.S. embassies were
bombed in Africa.
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- Also, Philippine investigators said that in 1995, they
told the FBI about a terrorist plot to hijack commercial planes and slam
them into the Pentagon, the CIA headquarters and other buildings. Philippine
authorities say they learned of that plot after a small fire in a Manila
apartment, which turned out to be the hideout of Ramzi Yousef, who was
later convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
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- Then, in September 1999, came the "Sociology and
Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why" report.
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- FBI agent drew attention to flight schools
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- White House press secretary Ari Fleischer Friday downplayed
the significance of that 1999 report, saying it did not reflect intelligence
information but amounted to a "psychological and sociological evaluation
of terrorism."
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- He said the administration only learned of it Friday
morning, and he pointedly noted that the same report was available to Congress.
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- There were other memos and events from last summer, however,
that some lawmakers say could have pointed to a pending terrorist attack
had the information been properly analyzed.
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- In July, an FBI agent in Arizona wrote a memo questioning
what the agent thought was a large number of Arabs taking flight lessons
in the United States. That memo also specifically questioned whether bin
Laden was behind that effort.
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- "This memo was very consequential and should have
been analyzed at the highest levels of the intelligence community,"
said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, and a member of the Senate Intelligence
Committee. "Sadly it was not."
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- In August, authorities arrested Zacarias Moussaoui because
he had aroused suspicions at a Minnesota flight school. He was arrested
on an immigration violation, but later was indicted for his alleged involvement
in the September 11 attacks.
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- Thursday, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice
outlined a series of threats U.S. intelligence gathered over the spring
and summer and talked about security directives issued at that time. She
said, however, "the overwhelming bulk of the evidence was that this
was an attack that was likely to take place overseas."
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- Still, the U.S. government took some of the threats seriously
enough to alert the Federal Aviation Administration, which in turn notified
airlines.
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