The no fly list is a mystery to most travelers. Actually, it is one of the four watch lists totaling about 130,000 names that require the airlines either to re-screen a passenger or notify law enforcement or stop the passenger from boarding an aircraft.
We have learned that the lists are filled with errors, omissions and inaccurate information. More worrisome is that the information coming from our most elite intelligence services is often wrong. Another concern for the airlines, passengers and TSA is that the government agencies supplying the names are so distrustful of the airlines that they will not pass on certain names for fear that terrorists have penetrated the airline staffs and will be able to warn terrorists who are on the lists. This is especially a concern with Middle Eastern and other overseas carriers.
The poorly vetted contents of the government’s no fly list demonstrates that this last barrier to terrorists is not much of barrier at all. We learned, for example, the CIA and other intelligence agencies do not pass on all the names a terrorist might use for the list. Without all the names for an individual an airline is helpless to keep a terrorist off a flight because the terrorist can slip by on an alternative name. The lack of intelligence sharing among government agencies and the airlines that the 9/11 Commission concluded played a major role in preventing authorities from stopping the plot continues today.
More disturbing is the fact that the CIA is repeating the same intelligence practices that led to the 9/11 tragedy. The Agency relied on foreign intelligence services to penetrate Al Qaeda. Even though the CIA knew that two of the nineteen hijackers had attended an Al Qaeda meeting eighteen months before, it never gave their names to the airlines. These two men helped hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and fly it into the side of the Pentagon.
Evidence emerged earlier this year that the CIA is continuing to put air travelers at risk by allowing people who should not be allowed to fly to board airplanes.
Raed Mohammed Abdullah Ali is the real name of a young man with a Yemeni passport, which he used when he arrived in Auckland, New Zealand, in February 2006. The name appeared on his passport as Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali. Both names are well known to those who follow terrorism. Ali took flight training, roomed with Dulles 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour and was on the no-fly list when he flew into New Zealand aboard a commercial airline, using an alias known to the CIA and one that was included on the no-fly list. (Hanjour’s fellow hijackers were the two Saudis that the CIA had known about prior to 9/11.)Ali and his date of birth appeared on the no-fly list in February 2006 as:
Raed Mohammed Abdullah Ali 24-Sep-77
Raid Muhammad Abdalla Ali 24-Sep-77
Rami Muhammad Ali 24-Feb-76
Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali 24-Sep-77
In The 9/11 Commission Report, Ali rated thirteen citations. The report said he socialized with Hani Hanjour, who piloted American Airlines Flight 77. It further noted that the two men had mutual friends, shared the same religious views, met occasionally, and had trained to fly large passenger jets at the same flying school in Phoenix.
Some intelligence specialists were surprised that Ali was not detained after the 9/11 attacks. FBI agents interviewed him again and again, administering five different polygraph exams. Ali had no outstanding warrants and was not known to have committed any crime, but hundreds of other Saudis were detained who had not committed any crimes. So why was he allowed to leave the country and to fly even though he could take over a jetliner at any time? According to FBI agents and CIA officers who are familiar with the case, the United States released Ali so that he could be used to spy on Al Qaeda for the Saudi GID.
Remarkably, no one in the vast counterintelligence network of the post-9/11 world raised a serious objection to the idea that a close associate of the original 9/11 hijackers was on the move in early 2006. In February 2006, Ali was permitted to fly unchallenged into Auckland. Ali told officials in New Zealand that his occupation was “decorator.” He told Auckland immigration officials he wanted to study English, a language in which he was apparently already fluent. Instead, he traveled 335 miles south of Auckland to take more flight training. New Zealand, Australian, and US intelligence agencies worked on the operation. Only after top New Zealand government officials learned that Ali had lied to get into flight school did the government shut down the jointintelligence operation. As a face-saving device, the government told the press that Ali got into the country by using a variation of his name that was not on the no-fly list. That was false. Ali was permitted to travel because US authorities made specific arrangements with the airline to ignore his name.
“When you have someone who clearly has been a close associate of a terrorist who took a plane into the Pentagon, it’s clearly not useful to be providing them with pilot training in New Zealand,” Prime Minister Helen Clark told the local media. According to a veteran FBI official who urged the detention of Ali, “The amazing thing is the CIA convinced itself that by getting Ali tossed out of New Zealand, he would then be trusted and acceptable to Saudi intelligence and useful in Al Qaeda operations. For this tiny chance of success they put passengers at risk to enter into a partnership with Saudi intelligence.”
A CIA official who supported the operation says, “We are very aware Saudi GID is probably still penetrated by Al Qaeda. Hell, most of the insurgents in Iraq are being paid by GID. But we know if Raed was part of the original plot, someone in Al Qaeda will reach out for him, and we have a chance of making that connection.”
There are other examples of terrorists being allowed to repeatedly fly courtesy of Uncle Sam. The most puzzling is an American named Cleven Holt. His Islamic name is Issa Abdullah. Holt helped facilitate the Hezbollah Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut, according to his fellow Amal militiaman Fawaz Younis. In 1996, Secretary of Defense William Perry ordered all our troops in Bosnia on alert because Holt was in Bosnia and thought to be plotting against President Clinton and US troops during Clinton’s January 1996 visit. Neither his name nor any variation of it is on the no fly list. Those who have followed Holt’s bizarre career cannot understand why he is allowed to fly the world freely. This is especially true in Holt’s case because he was once arrested for trying to break into Air Force One.
From an intelligence point of view such operations may seem to make sense but from the point of view of airline managers and passengers the idea of allowing a known terrorist to fly is foolish and dangerous. If the government is going to use passengers as guinea pigs in their attempted intelligence experiments, we might as well get to board airplanes freely and treated not with suspicion – like walking barefoot through metal detectors – but treated us like the heroes we are expected to be: the real last lines of defense.
The Trentos are the co-authors of Unsafe At Any Altitude: Failed Terrorism Investigations, Scapegoating 9/11, and the Shocking Truth about Aviation Security Today published by Steerforth Press.
