Originally posted by intrptr
reply to post by GoodOlDave
All they had were police reports of people who already committed their crimes
So.. there was no kind of even watch list before 9/11? I find that hard to believe. Especially after (94?) wtc bombing. There have always been lists
of people that should not even be allowed into the country, let alone free travel within and out.
That's right, there was. The State Department's terrorist TIPOFF list was created in 1987 and had some 100,000 names on it at the time. The glaring
flaw was that it was developed as an in-house database, and because airports used private security agencies at the time the information wasn't shared
with them. Before 9/11 the push was to crack down on drug smuggling, not terrorism.
The 9/11 Commission specifically mentioned this as being a gross deficiency that needed to be corrected. The result was the database was transferred
to the FBI's Terrorist Threat Integration Center and airport security was taken over by the TSA, both of which are under the direction of Homeland
Security.
This is part of the problem of denial about the watchers who also answer in kind and help to generate that background of white noise that
diffuses the issues. Of course, I would love to believe I am wrong on this and so many other questions I have that are still unresolved. Maybe in this
one instance it would help me to more believe what the commission has to say (about anything) if a document could be displayed that actually showed
the "watch only" list of these men in question. You know, "the keep an eye on these guys list" before 9/11? Any link will do.
I can't give you any links to what the lists looked like before 9/11 because the FBI's Terrorist Threat Integration Center took over the database in
2003. Before 2003 the TSA didn't even exist. Perhaps this graphic will help:
Airport Security before and after 9/11edit
on 8-11-2011 by GoodOlDave because: (no reason given)