On May 16, 2002 Rice held a press briefing; she insisted that no one could have envisioned the events of September 11. âI donât think anybody could have predicted that these peopleâ¦would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,â Rice said.
Yet she obviously wasn't aware of a 1999 report out of the NIC, an affiliate of the CIA, warning that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden might use hijacked airplanes to crash into the Pentagon, White House, or CIA headquarters.
On May 18, 2002, the Postâs Bob Woodward and Dan Eggen challenged Riceâs statement. After quoting Riceâs remark, they outlined some previous warnings:
WOODWARD AND EGGEN:
But a 1999 report prepared for the National Intelligence Council, an affiliate of the CIA, warned that terrorists associated with bin Laden might hijack an airplane and crash it into the Pentagon, White House or CIA headquarters.
The report recounts well-known case studies of similar plots, including a 1995 plan by al Qaeda operatives to hijack and crash a dozen U.S. airliners in the South Pacific and pilot a light aircraft into Langley.
âSuicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaidaâs 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,â the September 1999 report said.
Woodward and Eggen recounted case studies which they said were âwell-known.â But if these cases were well-known to some, they apparently werenât well-known to Rice.
