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CIVIL AVIATION SECURITY:
PRELUDE
TO
9-11Executive Summary
The
story
of how
terrorists
on
September
11,
2001 were able
to
hijack four U.S. civilianjetliners
and use
them
as
weapons
of
mass destruction against
the
American homelandbegins with fundamental questions about the status of the civil aviation security systemthat
was
supposed
to
stop them.
• How did the
U.S. civil aviation security system evolve
to
achieve
its
status
as of
September
11,2001?• Who was
responsible
for
setting, implementing
and
enforcing aviation securitypolicies and procedures?
•
What
did
civil aviation authorities perceive
to be the
security threat
to
commercialaviation, its vulnerabilities to terrorism and the consequences of a successfulattack? And what did they do about it?
•
Precisely what security measures were
the
hijackers required
to
defeat
in
order
to
execute their crime on September
11,
2001?
Pivotal
Incidents
and
Aviation Security
From
the
inception
of the
U.S. civil aviation system
in the
1920's
up to the
modern era,two
forms
of attack against U.S. commercial
aircraft
have remained the most urgent andconsequential
—
air
piracy, most commonly referred
to as
hijacking,
and
sabotage,
primarily in the
form
of
bombing.
The
national system
for
protecting passengers,
aircraft
and
airports
from
attack
was
neithercreated nor developed by policy makers in anticipation of criminal and terroristintentions, but rather in reaction to
major
incidents—a
phenomenon observed bynumerous public aviation commissions
and
commentators
over
the
past
25
years.
As
threats manifested themselves through successful
attacks,
including
headline,
watersheddisasters,
new
defensive measures
and
approaches were implemented
by
policy makers
seeking
to
solve
the
prevailing
"security
problem"
of the
time.
• The1955 bombingof aUnited
flight
for thepurposeof
insurance
fraud
The sabotage of this
flight
after
take-off
from
Denver,
Colorado,
killing 44, gave rise tolimits
on the
value
of
passenger insurance policies.
The
attack
was
followed three years
later
by the
hijacking
of a Cuban airliner en route
from
Havana to
Miami
1
and a series of
midair
collisions." These incidents together with "the approaching introduction
of jet
airliners spurred Congress to create an independent Federal Aviation Administration
(F
AA), extending
the
agency power
to
oversee both
the
"safety
and
security"
of
civilianaviation, as well as to
"promote"
the aviation industry.
3
In
these
early
years,
the primary
focus
of air commerce regulators was on issues of "operational safety," while the thrustDRAFT FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY DRAFT1
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