T7 B7 Letters From Citizens Fdr- 4-19-04 Ippolito Letter- Kerry Contributed To 9-11- Logan Security

H Kean CHAIR

Date:

'H Hamilton VICE CHAIR bard Ben- Veniste

TO:

TEAM

cOeland IF. Fielding

FROM: Dianna Campagna

ie S. Gorelick « Gorton

The attached correspondence from

i Lehman

is being forwarded to you for information and consideration. A copy has

othyJ. Roemer

also heen sent to Team(s)

» R. Thompson

have any questions, please call me on 33 1 -4082. Thank you.

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for their information. If you

pD. Zelikow XmVE DIRECTOR

TEL (202) 331-4060 FAX (202) 296-5545 www.9-llcommission.gov

I hope that you have or plan to interview the persons named in this article. appears that they contributed to the failure to stop the attack of September 11th. Dominic Ippolito

The Warning Kerry ignorea If he'd listened to expert pleas, Twin Towers might still stand

investigation at Logan that Sullivan and another retired agent helped set up. In nine of 10 tries, l--'? PAUL a crew got knives and other JEJL SPERRY weapons through security ^jPHKS* PMHMBL checkpoints — including the EN. John Kerry boasts how very ones the 9/11 hijackers he "sounded the alarm on would later exploit. The next day, Sullivan fired off terrorism years before 9/ 11," referring to his 1997 a two-page letter to Kerry highbook "The New War." Too bad lighting the systemic failures. "With the concept of jihad, do he didn't blast it when it really counted — four months before you think it would be difficult for a determined terrorist to get the hijackings, when he was on plane and destroy himself hand-delivered evidence of seri- and a all other passengers?" he ous security breaches at Logan warned. "Think what the result International Airport, with spe- would be of a coordinated attack cific warnings that terrorists which took down several domescould exploit them. tic flights on the same day. With Former FAA security officials our current screening, this is say the Massachusetts senator more than possible. It is almost had the power to prevent at likely." The toll from such an atleast the Boston hijackings and tack would be economic, as well save the World Trade Center as human, he predicted with and thousands of lives, yet he chilling accuracy. failed to take effective action Sullivan followed up by having after they gave him a prophetic the undercover videotape handwarning that his state's main air- delivered to Kerry's office. port was vulnerable to multiple More than 11 weeks later, hijackings. Kerry finally replied to his well"He just did the Pontius Pilate informed and anxious constituthing and passed the buck" on ent. "I have forwarded your tape back through the federal bu- to the Department of Transporreaucracy, said Brian Sullivan, a tation's Office of Inspector Genretired FAA special agent from eral [DOT DIG]," he said in a the Boston area who in May 2001 brief July 24, 2001, letter, a copy personally warned Kerry that of which I've obtained. Logan was ripe for a "jihad" suiYet Sullivan had made it clear cide operation possibly involv- in his letter that going to his old ing "a coordinated attack." agency was a dead end. He and Rewind to May 6, 2001. That other agents had complained night, a Boston TV station (Fox- about security lapses for years 25) aired reporter Deborah Sher- and got nowhere. "The DOT man's story on an undercover OIG has become an ineffective

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No security: Specific information that terrorists could target planes like this one taking off from Boston's Logan Airport, was disregarded. EPA overseer of the FAA," he told Kerry. Sullivan suggested he show the tape to peers on committees with FAA oversight. He even volunteered to testify before them. But he never heard from Kerry again. At that point, Steve Elson, the other agent who'd teamed up on the TV sting, decided to take a crack at the junior senator. A fiery ex-Navy Seal, Elson spent three years as part of an elite FAA unit called the Red Team, which did covert testing of airport security across the country, before retiring as a field agent in Houston. He offered to fly to Washington at his own expense to give Kerry a document-backed presentation about the "facade of security" at

Logan and other major airports. But a Kerry aide said not to bother. "You're not a constituent," Elson was told just a few weeks before the hijackings. He went ballistic, warning that if Kerry didn't act soon he'd risk the lives of planeloads of his actual constituents. That warning now looks like prophecy: At least 82 Kerry constituents were, murdered aboard American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175. "Enhanced security would have prevented the hijackings, virtually without question," Elson now insists. If nothing else, it might have discouraged ringleader Mohamed Atta, who monitored security procedures at Logan weeks before the hijackings.

Yet the warnings apparently did stick in Kerry's mind: In the days after 9/11, Kerry told the Boston Globe that he'd triggered an undercover probe of Logan security by the General Accounting Office in June 2001. But he wrote Sullivan no such thing in his July letter, stating only that he passed his warning and tape on to Transportation, not GAO. And GAO, though it is the investigative arm of Congress, didn't seem to know what the senator was talking about. The agency had tested security at two airports before 9/11, but neither one was Logan. And Kerry confessed he didn't know the outcome of the probe he says he triggered. Some follow-up, senator. Sullivan and Elson, joined by aviation-security experts David Forbes and Andrew Thomas, want to see Kerry hauled before the 9/11 Commission to answer questions about what he knew about Logan's lapses, and specifically what he did about them, before that fateful day. It's a reasonable request — especially since Kerry has complained that President Bush will only give the panel an hour of his time. Where was Kerry's sense of urgency? Where was his leadership? These are fair questions to ask of someone vying for Bush's job. "We don't have to wait for a tragedy to occur to act," Sullivan urged Kerry hi his letter. But tragically, that's exactly what happened — at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and on both sides of the aisle. Paul Sperry is a Washington investigative reporter and author of "Crude Politics."