166. In unsworn May 2003 “testimony” to the Commission, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta stated, “I don’t think we ever thought of an aircraft being used as a missile. We had no information of that nature at all.”
167. FAA Administrator Jane Garvey said before the Commission, “I was not aware of any information about [airplanes] being used as weapons that was credible.”
168. The denials by Mr. Mineta and Ms. Garvey merely reiterated numerous Bush II Administration claims made since 9-11. For example, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice stated in May 2002, “All this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking.”
169. President Bush himself stated in a speech to NATO, “Never did anybody’s thought process about how to protect America (sic) did we ever think that the evildoers would fly not one, but four commercial aircraft into precious US targets – never.”
170. The foregoing denials of advance warnings made by Secretary Mineta, FAA Administrator Garvey, National Security Advisor Rice and President Bush are all deliberate lies and were patently false, and known to be false when made. A review of the record and of information that has come into the public domain from government sources and “mainstream” (corporate, mainly pro-Bush II Administration) media makes plain that the aforementioned officials could not reasonably have believed them to be true when they made them.

171. Sibel Edmonds, a former translator for the FBI, has stated that she saw documents prior to 9-11 that belie claims that the Bush II Administration had no knowledge of the possibility that terrorists might use hijacked airliners against buildings. Edmonds has been and continues to be harassed by the FBI, and has been threatened with jail if she reveals more of what she knows. Plaintiff alleges on information and belief that the Bush II Administration has resorted to a rarely-used “State Secrets” privilege to hide the fact that it lied, over and over again, to the American people.
172. Edmonds has stated that the claim by Condoleeza Rice that there was no information suggesting the possibility of an al-Qaeda attack using aircraft is an “outrageous lie.” Edmonds told the Commission “details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily.”
173. On July 6, 2004, a federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush, Reggie B. Walton, threw out Ms. Edmonds’ whistle-blower suit on “national security” grounds, accepting claims by Ashcroft and a senior FBI official that allowing publication of Edmonds’ claims could expose intelligence-gathering methods, and disrupt diplomatic relations with foreign governments. According to Edmonds, Judge Walton dismissed her lawsuit without hearing from her attorneys, although reportedly he met at least twice with government lawyers. Judge Walton himself admitted to some “consternation” that he was, as he admitted, dismissing a lawsuit solely on the say-so of the executive branch, before any of the facts could be heard, a “draconian” measure. So much for the avoidance of ex parte communications, the separation of powers, and the even-handedness and independence of the federal judiciary in post-9-11 America.

174. Historically, there have been many attacks using airplanes as weapons; an obvious example being the “kamikaze” strikes by Japanese pilots on Allied ships during World War II. In 1994, there were 0three separate attempts to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings. A disgruntled Federal Express worker tried to crash a DC-10 into a company building in Memphis, Tennessee, but was overpowered by the crew. Also in 1994, a lone pilot crashed a small plane onto the White House grounds, just missing President Clinton’s bedroom. That same year, an Air France flight was hijacked by a terrorist group said to be linked to al-Qaeda, with the aim of flying it into the Eiffel Tower. French Special Forces prevented the strike by storming the plane while it was refueling.
175. In January 1995, acclaimed 9-11 “mastermind” Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others reportedly were within weeks of carrying out a massive plot named “Operation Bojinka,” when Philippine authorities foiled them. This plot involved the simultaneous bombing of up to a dozen passenger airliners flying over the Pacific Ocean. Note that, in some variations of this plan, planes were to be hijacked and flown into “key structures” in the United States. According to a U.S. intelligence analysis shortly after the plot was uncovered, “The World Trade Center, the White House, the Pentagon, the Transamerica Tower, and the Sears Tower were among the prominent structures that had been identified in the plans that we had decoded.”
176. One would-be “Bojinka” pilot, Abdul Hakim Murad (who learned to fly in U.S. flight schools) confessed that his role was to crash a plane into CIA headquarters.
177. Details of Operation Bojinka were widely known within the U.S. government; Yet Khalid Shaikh Mohammed escaped capture, and later stated that the 9-11 attacks were essentially a refinement and resurrection of Operation Bojinka. In 1997 the intelligence agency of Qatar, where Mohammed had been hiding, told the U.S. that Mohammed was once again planning “to hijack some planes.” In June 2001, U.S. intelligence additionally learned that Mohammed was interested in “sending terrorists to the United States” and was planning to assist their activities there.

178. Not only did the Bush II Administration have detailed forewarnings about probable attempts to use commercial airplanes as weapons to carry out mass-casualty attacks against U.S. landmarks, but astonishingly — given the ineptitude of the response to actual events on 9-11 — the government carried out exercises that were supposedly intended to enable it to counter attempts to carry out such attacks, and was carrying out such an exercise on the very morning of September 11, 2001.
179. Earlier, on October 24-26, 2000, Pentagon officials carried out a “detailed” emergency drill, based on the crashing of an airliner into the Pentagon. In other words, incredibly, in repeated statements Condoleeza Rice and other high government officials feigned surprise at the occurrence of a scenario identical to that against which the Pentagon had held detailed practice drills – the flying of an airplane into the Pentagon, obviously a target of great objective and symbolic value to potential terrorists or to enemies of the United States. Shortly after 9-11, the Enterprise caused to be “scrubbed” from the internet website of the Military District of Washington an article concerning the Pentagon’s exercise simulating the crash of an airplane into the Pentagon conducted on from October 24-26, 2000. However, a copy of that article was “mirrored” by researchers, and is annexed to this Complaint as Exhibit “A”. As may be seen from the article, attributed to Dennis Ryan of the Military District of Washington News Service, the “Pentagon Mass Casualties Exercise” of October 24-26, 2000 was conducted from the conference room of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Jake Burrell, identified as a member of the Pentagon Emergency Management Team, is quoted and said to have coordinated similar exercises for four years.
180. US Medicine magazine reported that in May 2001, “[Department of Defense] medical personnel had been trained” to respond to “an ersatz guided missile in the form of a hijacked 757 airliner” crashing into the Pentagon.

181. On June 1-2, 2001, NORAD sponsored a multi-agency planning exercise named “Amalgam Virgo 01,” which involved the hypothetical scenario of a cruise missile launched by “a rogue [government] or somebody” from a barge off the East Coast. None other than Osama bin Laden was pictured on the cover of the proposal for the exercise. The attacks of 9-11 occurred, of course, while the sun was in the astrological sign of Virgo, in the year “01.”
182. Prior to 9-11, a follow-up program to “Amalgam Virgo” was planned, to involve a simultaneous hijacking scenario.
183. Additionally, at some time prior to 9-11, NORAD conducted another drill, the complete details of which have not been made public, except that it involved a plane hijacked from a foreign airport slamming into a highly visible target within the United States.

184. Perhaps most astonishing of all is that, on the very morning of 9-11, “[John] Fulton and his team at the CIA were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building.” Fulton’s team was part of the National Reconnaissance Office, which “operates many of the nation’s spy satellites. It draws its personnel from the military and the CIA.” The simulation was to start at 9:00 A.M., just four miles from where one of the real hijacked planes had just taken off.
185. Also on 9-11, NORAD was conducting a periodic war game, this one known as “Vigilant Guardian.” Details have not been made public, but it is known that the scenario was supposed to test “an imaginary crisis to North American Air Defense outposts nationwide.” According to one NORAD employee, “everybody” at NORAD initially thought that the real hijackings on 9-11 were part of the exercise. If top-level U.S. government personnel, civilian and military, were complicit in the attacks, then having a war game in progress, involving a scenario very much like what actually transpired on 9-11, was an ingenious way to confound first responders, and delay an effective response to the attacks. If the U.S. government was not affirmatively complicit in the attacks, then the concurrent “Vigilant Guardian” and other exercises are among the impossible number of supposed 9-11 “coincidences,” and the torpor and ineffectiveness of the defense response to the hijackings on 9-11 is all the more astounding.
186. Further belying the claim that the defendants "never thought of an aircraft being used as a missile" are a litany of warnings of that nature, going back at least to 1996. In January 1996, U.S. intelligence received information concerning a planned suicide attack by individuals allegedly connected with al-Qaeda. They wanted to fly from Afghanistan to the U.S., and crash into the White House. In October 1996, an Iranian plot to hijack a Japanese plane over Israel and crash it into Tel Aviv was exposed.

187. On November 24, 1996, several Ethiopians took over a passenger airliner, and let it run out of fuel. Hijackers fought with the pilot as the hijackers tried to steer the plane into a resort on a Comoros Islands beach, but seconds before reaching the resort, the pilot was able to crash the plane into shallow waters about 500 yards short of the resort. 123 of 175 passengers and crewmembers died.
188. In August 1998, a CIA intelligence report asserted that Arab terrorists were planning to fly a bomb-laden aircraft from a foreign country into the World Trade Center. Later, other intelligence information connected this group to al-Qaeda.
189. In September 1998, information given to U.S. intelligence suggested that al-Qaeda’s next operation might involve crashing an aircraft loaded with explosives into a U.S. airport.
190. In November 1998, the U.S. learned that a Turkish group, cooperating with al-Qaeda, planned to crash an airplane packed with explosives into a famous tomb during a government ceremony. They were arrested before they could carry out the plot.
191. In 1999, an Egyptian pilot flew a passenger airliner into the ocean, killing everyone on board.118. In August 2001 – just weeks before 9-11 -- U.S. authorities learned of a plot to either bomb the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, or crash an airplane into it. Two people who were reportedly acting on instructions from Osama bin Laden met in October 2000 to discuss this plot.118. In July 2001, President Bush attended the G-8 Summit in Genoa, Italy. The Egyptian government warned that al-Qaeda planned to assassinate President Bush and other heads of state, using “an airplane stuffed with explosives.” U.S. intelligence also learned of this plan to attack the G-8 Summit from Russia and other sources. The Italian government surrounded the summit with antiaircraft guns, kept fighters in the air, and closed off local airspace to all planes. Reports of plans to attack the July 2001 G-8 Summit were taken so seriously that President Bush stayed overnight on an aircraft carrier offshore. The planned attack was not attempted; possibly because the plot was reported in the media before the summit began.

192. Numerous foreign governments warned the U.S. that it was likely to be attacked by airplanes used as weapons. In 1999, the British warned that al-Qaeda had plans to use “commercial aircraft” in “unconventional ways, possibly as flying bombs.”
193. In early August 2001 — the month preceding 9-11 — Britain gave a categorical warning that the U.S. should expect multiple airline hijackings. This warning was passed on to President Bush a short time later.
194. In June 2001, Germany warned that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and to use them as weapons to attack “American and Israeli symbols, which stand out.”
195. In August 2001, Russia’s President Putin warned the U.S. that suicide pilots were training for attacks on U.S. targets.
196. In late July 2001, “Egyptian Intelligence [learned] . . . from one of its operatives in Afghanistan that 20 al-Qaeda members had slipped into the U.S. and four of them had received flight training on Cessnas. To the Egyptians, pilots of small planes didn’t sound terribly alarming, but they passed on the message to the CIA anyway, fully expecting Washington to request information. The request never came.”
197. Around the end of August 2001, Egyptian intelligence followed up with a warning that al-Qaeda was in the advanced stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, probably within the U.S.
198. The government of Jordan passed on the message that a major attack, code named the “Big Wedding,” was planned inside the U.S., and that aircraft would be used. Later, “Big Wedding” was claimed to be al-Qaeda’s secret code name for the 9-11 attacks.

199. Reportedly, in mid-August 2001, the government of Israel warned that between 50 and 200 al-Qaeda terrorists had slipped into the U.S., and were planning an imminent, “major assault on the United States.” They said it was likely to be on a “large scale target.” The CIA has denied it received this warning.
200. On August 23, 2001, the government of Israel even gave the CIA a list of 19 terrorists within the U.S. who were about to stage an attack. This list is known to contain the names of at least four of the alleged hijackers of 9-11: Nawaf Alhamzi, Khalid Almihdhar, Marwan Alshehhi and Mohamed Atta.
201. Apparently, Israeli intelligence had for months prior to September 2001 monitored at least some of the alleged 9-11 hijackers. For example, beginning in December 2002, agents took up residence a few blocks from Marwan Alshehhi and Mohamed Atta, and observed them “around the clock.”

202. In the autumn of 1998, U.S. intelligence heard of an al-Qaeda plot that involved aircraft in the New York City and Washington, D.C. areas. At about the same time, Osama bin Laden declared a worldwide fatwa, a religious call to arms, against U.S. targets and American citizens anywhere in the world. By December 1998, a U.S. intelligence assessment stated, “Multiple reports indicate bin Laden is keenly interested in striking the U.S. on its own soil.” Later in December 1998, a Time Magazine cover story, entitled “The Hunt for Osama,” reported that intelligence sources had “evidence that bin Laden may be planning his boldest move yet – a strike on Washington or possibly New York City...”
203. In July 1999 an agent of Pakistan’s intelligence service, in the United States to buy illegal weapons for al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, pointed to the World Trade Center and stated, “Those towers are coming down.” An FBI informant recorded him saying this and similar threats against the World Trade Center on two other occasions. This information reached higher officials, including the office of Senator Bob Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
204. In September 1999, U.S. intelligence learned of a planned al-Qaeda attack in the United States, possibly against landmarks in California and New York City. Two months later, in December 1999, an al-Qaeda bomb attack on the Los Angeles International Airport was narrowly averted. Ahmed Ressam was arrested by an alert Washington State border guard, who noticed his nervousness. Documents found with Ressam led to co-conspirators in New York, Boston and Seattle. Enough people were arrested to prevent a series of “Y2K” attacks planned for December 31, 1999. National Security Council Chief of Counter terrorism Richard Clarke later said that, as a result, “I think a lot of the FBI leadership for the first time realized that . . . there probably were al-Qaeda people in the United States.”
205. In April 2000, a man walked into the FBI office in Newark, New Jersey, and claimed he had received hijacking training in an al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan. He also stated that he was supposed to meet five or six other individuals in the U.S. and participate in the hijacking of a 747. Pilots in the hijacking team would either fly the plane to Afghanistan or blow it up. This individual passed an FBI polygraph, but the FBI did not verify his story, or identify his contacts in the U.S.
206. Until just a few months before 9-11, U.S. officials were negotiating with the Taliban for rights to construct a pipeline across Afghani territory, and the U.S. was supplying financial aid to the Taliban regime. Late in July 2001, Wakil Ahmed Mattawakil, the foreign minister for the Taliban, tried to warn the U.S. that al-Qaeda was planning a “huge attack” on targets inside America. The attack was imminent, and would kill thousands. Muttawakil’s message was given to U.S. officials, although it remains a secret just how high within the Bush II Administration this warning went. Then, according to a CIA official, “There was something specific in early August that said to us that [Osama bin Laden] was determined in striking on U.S. soil.”
207. “Shortly before” 9-11, reportedly there was even an intercept of a conversation between Osama bin Laden and an associate, talking about an incident to take place in the U.S. on or about 9-11, and its implications.

208. Denials to the contrary, for years prior to 9-11 government experts had considered the use of an airplane as a weapon to attack a national landmark. For example, in 1993, an expert panel commissioned by the Pentagon suggested that very possibility. The panel was not allowed to mention this in its published report. However, in 1994, one of the participants in the Pentagon study wrote in Futurist magazine, “Targets such as the World Trade Center not only provide the requisite casualties but, because of their symbolic nature, provide more bang for the buck. In order to maximize their odds for success, terrorist groups will likely consider mounting multiple, simultaneous operations with the aim of overtaking a government’s ability to respond, as well as demonstrating their professionalism and reach.”
209. The popular author Tom Clancy published a novel in 1994, in which terrorists tried to destroy the U.S. Capitol by crashing a radio-controlled airplane into it. In a Time magazine cover story the next year, Senator Sam Nunn referred to Clancy’s idea and said it was not “far-fetched.”
210. During every quadrennial Olympic games going back to 1972, security officials have specifically attempted to prevent terrorists from crashing airplanes into crowed stadiums. During the 1996 Olympic games held in Atlanta, Georgia, airplanes were banned from over flying Olympic venues, and helicopters and jets were deployed to intercept suspicious aircraft approaching too near. At the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia, six planes were kept in the sky at all times to intercept any aircraft. Officials considered al-Qaeda the foremost threat, and the idea of a “fully loaded, fueled airliner crashing into the opening ceremony” was one of their greatest fears.
211. In September 1999, a report by a group advising the president and U.S. intelligence on emerging threats contained the following ideas: “Al-Qaeda’s expected retaliation for the U.S. cruise missile attack . . . could take several forms of terrorist attack in the nation’s capital. Al-Qaeda could detonate a Chechen-type building-buster bomb at a federal building . . . Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaeda’s martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and Semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the White House. . . . Whatever form an attack may take, bin Laden will most likely retaliate in a spectacular way.” The Bush II Administration later claimed to have never heard of this publicly released report until after 9-11, even though the New York Times said the report was “widely shared within the government.” On the day that President George W. Bush received the briefing entitled “bin Laden to Strike in US” (August 6, 2001), he “broke off from work early and spent most of the day fishing.” In the moments that followed his learning of the attacks on the morning of 9-11 itself, the Commander-in-Chief also displayed astonishing nonchalance. Plaintiff asks: Was this because President Bush knew that the planned attacks had been co-opted if not indeed planned and carried out by members of the Enterprise, that they would inure to the advantage of the Enterprise, and would constitute the “catastrophic and catalyzing event for” for which the PNAC had expressed such fervent hope?
212. While many additional instances could be cited, from the foregoing it should be clear that government claims that the 9-11 attacks were not foreseen, and could not have been foreseen or prevented, were false and were known to be false when made. Not surprisingly, the Bush II Administration has refused to allow many of the findings of the Congressional inquiry into 9-11 to be made public, and has stubbornly — and, to date, successfully — prevented any genuine investigation into 9-11.
213. The Bush II Administration has even sought to have material already in the public domain “reclassified.” The Congressional inquiry was not allowed to reveal which warnings reached which officials. Its final report, released in July 2003, withheld 28 pages of critical information. Until it was leaked to the press in May 2002, the Bush II Administration withheld from the public the title of the CIA’s daily briefing to President Bush on August 6, 2001: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”

214. Given the number and the specificity of the warnings we now know to have reached the U.S. government prior to 9-11, the response of patriotic officials, mindful that their paramount duty is the protection of the U.S. population and U.S. territory, would have been to take decisive steps to prevent the hijacking of commercial airliners and the use of such planes as weapons to strike high-profile targets. But because the Enterprise affirmatively wished for a “new Pearl Harbor,” a “catastrophic and catalyzing event” that would “shock and awe” the public and Congress into giving the Bush II Administration and the Enterprise carte blanche to wage war for empire and for oil, precisely as advocated by Brzezinski and the Project for the New American Century in their polemics, the government did nothing to prevent the attacks or to thwart them as they unfolded on 9-11. The lack of special preventive measures has been admitted: Transportation Secretary Mineta was asked at the May 2003 hearing before the Commission, “Did this higher level of [terrorist] chatter...result in any action across the government? I take it your answer is no.” Mr. Mineta replied, “That’s correct.” Plaintiff asks: how is it that the officials, civilian and military, who permitted these attacks to occur, remain in their jobs (and, in some instances, have been promoted)? Unless the media and Congress have been corrupted or intimidated, unless nearly all Americans fear for their careers if not indeed their lives in posing the questions posed by this complaint, how could it be that to date, no one has been held to account for what, in the most indulgent possible view, involved (1) repeated warnings; (2) no preventive measures by those responsible, including many of the defendants here; (3) mass casualty attacks, precisely as predicted, with almost 3,000 deaths resulting; (4) an utterly impotent response on the day of the attacks itself; and (5) repeated lies by President Bush and other senior officials, claiming that the warnings had not happened?

215. On the day that President George W. Bush received the briefing entitled “bin Laden to Strike in US” (August 6, 2001), he “broke off from work early and spent most of the day fishing.” In the moments that followed his learning of the attacks on the morning of 9-11 itself, the Commander-in-Chief also displayed astonished nonchalance. Plaintiff asks: Was this because President Bush knew that the planned attacks had been co-opted if not indeed planned and carried out by members of the Enterprise, that they would inure to the advantage of the Enterprise, and would constitute the “catastrophic and catalyzing event” for which the PNAC had expressed such fervent hope?

RICO Complaint Part 9 here