Flight School Canvass Weighed Pre-9/11?

ByABC News
May 6, 2002, 1:02 PM

— -- Canvass of Flight Schools Weighed Before 9/11?W A S H I N G T O N, May 3 Two months before the suicide hijackings, anFBI agent in Arizona alerted Washington headquarters that severalMiddle Easterners were training at a U.S. aviation school andrecommended contacting other schools nationwide where Arabs mightbe studying, law enforcement officials said.

The FBI sent the intelligence to its terrorism experts inWashington and New York for analysis and had begun discussingconducting a nationwide canvass of flight schools when the Sept. 11tragedies occurred, officials told The Associated Press.

ABCNEWS reported on the intelligence last February.

At least one leader of the 19 hijackers, Hani Hanjour, receivedflight training in Arizona in 2001 but his name had not surfaced inthe FBI intelligence from Arizona, the officials said.

None of the Middle Eastern men identified by the Arizonacounterterrorism agents or any information contained in their July2001 memo pointed to the suicide plot that leveled the World TradeCenter and killed thousands in New York, Washington andPennsylvania, officials said.

"None of the people identified by Phoenix are connected to theSept. 11 attacks," FBI Assistant Director John Collingwood saidThursday night.

"The Phoenix communication went to appropriate operationalagents and analysts but it did not lead to uncovering the impendingattacks," Collingwood said.

Officials said FBI counterterrorism agents in Phoenix had"suspicions" about why several Arab men were seeking airportoperations, security information and pilot training andrecommended, among other things, that the FBI begin alerting localagents when Middle Easterners sought visas for training at localaeronautical schools, officials said.

The FBI's concerns about the U.S. flight schools is the latestrevelation about information, much of it sketchy, that thegovernment possessed before Sept. 11 concerning the possibility ofterrorism in the skies. For example: