FAA Comments to Chapter 11-9/11 Commission Final Report

Page 6
Several paragraphs of this page refer to instances of plans for aircraft to be
used as missiles, however, what is missing is the intelligence community's
assessment of those instances. FAA has already indicated to the
Commission which reports had been received by FAA, and how the FAA
tracked the intelligence and law enforcement communities' follow-up
actions in each case. The summary developed by the Transportation Security
Intelligence Service, dated October 22, 2002, that details the information has
been provided to the Commission. No information was developed in the
course of these follow-up actions that led the intelligence community nor
FAA to believe the use of aircraft as missiles was a likely scenario.

Page 7, paragraph 4
The assessment that FAA completed in August of 1999 was based upon
cable traffic and other information from the CIA and other elements of the
intelligence community. The FAA analyst who prepared the report
discussed his insights with analysts in other agencies, including the CIA.
While a copy of his assessment may not have been shared with the CIA after
its completion, there was in fact collaboration between FAA and the CIA
during the development of the FAA assessment, and CIA was privy to, and ,,
did not dispute, the findings of that assessment.

^4>fiWr Page 9, paragraph 4

It is inaccurate to describe FAA's response to threats to aviation as merely
reactive to specific, credible threats. As FAA's files (now Transportation
Security Administration/Intelligence files) indicate, numerous warnings
were provided to the industry to keep the air carriers and airports aware of
the threat environment even when specific and credible information was not
available. This was done so that an appropriate level of attention was
maintained in the application of security measures which were required to be
in place every day. FAA also looked to the future and identified new
security measures when terrorist groups appeared to be establishing
themselves in a new geographic region or when they began to evidence a
new capability or modus operandi. FAA participated in government-wide
work groups that convened regularly to identify emerging threats and
capabilities. And in fact, FAA was largely responsible for the intelligence
community's decision to develop the 1995 National Intelligence Estimate
referenced on page 5 of this chapter, precisely because FAA wanted as much
forward-looking information as possible for use in applying new or adjusted
security measures for the aviation industry.

Page 14, first paragraph

This is a simplistic, misleading collection of statements. Serious analysis
had been undertaken of the likelihood of suicide hijackers, based on the solid
intelligence summary which was referenced earlier in this chapter on page 8.
Without an assessment from anywhere in the intelligence community that
such an attack was likely and in fact a threat, it would have been extremely
difficult for the FAA to spend taxpayer dollars on an unsubstantiated
problem, and in fact potentially divert resources from other more likely and
immediate threats. Additionally, the changes described in this section as
"modest" are far from that. For example, there were serious safety and
financial implications associated with hardening cockpit doors. Hardly a
modest change when no such threat was articulated prior to September 11.
Following September 11, the cost of hardening cockpit doors was over $240
million, impacting a fleet of over 6,000 aircraft.

The second paragraph is similarly not accurate because the FAA was
scanning the environment, proactively identifying the most dangerous
threats, and putting them on the agenda. It was these precise efforts by FAA
that had proven successful in thwarting the Asia-Pacific plot in 1995, and in
establishing a level of security for US aviation that was effective and a
model for the rest of the world. What is true is that the specific threat that
we witnessed so horribly on September 11 was not visible in the
environment of data available from the law enforcement and intelligence
communities.