9/11 Memory Hole: Terrorists Still Taking Flying Lessons

"GAO report finds ‘weaknesses’ in flight school security" by Bobby Caina Calvan  |  Globe Staff, July 18, 2012

WASHINGTON — A government report released Wednesday indicates federal authorities are struggling to close gaps exposed by the terrorists who learned to fly in the United States before striking on Sept. 11, 2001....

Related: Terrorists Still Taking Flight Training in U.S.

The title of the transportation security subpanel of the House Committee on Homeland Security hearing was provocative: “A Decade After 9/11 Could American Flight Schools Still Unknowingly Be Training Terrorists?”

The terrorists who commandeered the four US commercial jetliners on Sept. 11, 2001, including two that took off from Logan International Airport and slammed into the World Trade Center towers, learned to fly at schools in Florida, Minnesota, and Arizona....

Representative Bennie G. Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, said the government needs to widen its net to include not only foreigners but US citizens with nefarious intent.

Don't worry, scum, the NSA is on the case.

“The last individual to fly a plane into a building and kill innocent civilians in this country was not a foreign national or Islamist extremist,” Thompson said. “It was a United States citizen with an extremist and violent ideology regarding the Internal Revenue Service.”

Thompson was referring to the 2010 incident in Texas in which a 53-year-old man flew his plane into a seven-story building housing an IRS office.

Related: Stack Attack

Other members were particularly troubled by the admission from Homeland Security officials that despite rules put in place after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, people on the government’s no-fly list are not being screened out from enrolling in flight schools.

Why bother when that is not what happened down there?

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"Bill tightens flight school screening" by Bobby Caina Calvan  |  Globe Staff, July 20, 2012

WASHINGTON — “We cannot allow loopholes exploited by the 9/11 hijackers to be exploited again,” Representative Bennie G. Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, said in a statement, noting that the terrorists who hijacked four commercial airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, received training from US flight schools.

“Everyone, including US citizens, should be vetted against the ‘no-fly’ list before beginning flight training. It’s common sense, straightforward policy to close a security gap that inexplicably persists over a decade after 9/11,” he said.

Don't worry, Bennie. I'll never get on a plane again.

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Nothing about the Israeli Mossad shadowing the hijackers -- if they were Arab at all.