Retired FAA whistleblowers warn another 9/11 could happen again

After years of investigating aviation security, retired federal investigators and 9/11 whistleblowers argue terrorism threats are very real and unless greater security measures are implemented, another similar terrorist attack could happen again.

One of them, a former U.S. Air Marshall and Federal Aviation Administration security (Red Team) leader, Bogdan Dzakovic, was responsible for determining how effective U.S. aviation security was in preventing terrorist attacks. Prior to 9/11, they uncovered a crisis.

FAA Red Teams were established after the 1998 Pam Am bombing. At the time, it was considered the greatest terrorist attack committed against American civilians.

On Dec. 21, 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 left Frankfurt, Germany, with a stop in London before heading to the U.S. Forty minutes into the flight, it blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 people on board, including 190 Americans and 11 Scots on the ground, were killed.

The mastermind was a Libyan intelligence officer who planted a bomb in luggage that went undetected. The plane exploded at 30,000 feet, raining debris over 845 square miles, “creating the largest-ever crime scene,” the FBI says. A decades-long investigation led to the prosecution and conviction of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi. In 2001, he was sentenced to life in prison only to be released eight years later.

Five years before Pan Am, a Hezbollah suicide bomber drove a truck full of explosives into U.S. Marine barracks, killing 241 on Oct. 23, 1983. A similar attack against the U.S. Embassy in Beirut occurred on April 18, 1983, killing 17 Americans, including eight CIA officers.

After the 1979 Iranian Revolution that held 66 Americans hostage for 444 days, the 1980s and 1990s were marked by a pattern of Islamic terrorist attacks. They increasingly involved suicide bombers and plane hijackers with a motivation to cause mass casualties, Dzakovic told The Center Square in an exclusive interview. After Pan Am, the major terrorist attacks that motivated him to “think like a terrorist” and realize the U.S. was a prime target were the 1994 Air France hijacking and the 1995 Bojinka Plot, he said.

On Dec. 24, 1994, four members of the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria hijacked Air France Flight 8969 departing Algiers intent on flying it into the Eiffel Tower. The plane landed in Marseilles with the hijackers believing it was to refuel but special forces stormed the plane and killed them.

In January 1995, a fire in a Manila apartment led to authorities uncovering a massive terrorist plot after they found bombmaking materials and a laptop. Laptop files showed plans to plant bombs on 11 U.S. airplanes to simultaneously blow them up over the Pacific Ocean. The masterminds were Kuwaiti born Pakistanis Ramzi Yousef and his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Yousef had so far evaded authorities after orchestrating the Sept. 26, 1993, World Trade Center bombing, which killed six and wounded hundreds more. He was later found and convicted in 1997 and sentenced to life in prison. Mohammed, the former head of propaganda for al-Qaeda and mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, is currently detained at Guantanamo Bay.

Islamic terrorism patterns entering the aviation field “should have been a major eye-opener to U.S. federal law enforcement, security, and intelligence agencies,” Dzakovic said.

In 1999, he began working with Steve Elson, a retired Vietnam-era Navy SEAL and FAA Special Agent, and Brian Sullivan, a retired Vietnam-era Army lieutenant colonel and FAA Special Agent, to identify aviation vulnerabilities to thwart terrorist attacks. Elson and Sullivan had already been sounding the alarm about a crisis in aviation security. Sullivan repeatedly warned about vulnerabilities at Logan International Airport in Boston, contacting state and federal authorities who ignored his warnings, he said.

For years, Dzakovic’s Red Teams tested airport security smuggling inert weapons and mock bombs onto commercial flights, with a success rate of 95%. Published reports detailed findings, concluding U.S. airports and airplanes were vulnerable to an attack.

Dzakovic, Sullivan and Elson urged the FAA to strengthen airport security, luggage screening and checkpoints and fortify cockpit doors, to no avail. They brought the same concerns to other federal agencies, Congress and President George W. Bush to no avail.

Their worst fear came true on 9/11. For Sullivan, this hit close to home. Ten of the terrorists boarded two planes after getting through security with box cutters at Logan Airport – the very airport Sullivan warned had failed security tests. They hijacked the planes and flew them into the Twin Towers, killing nearly 3,000.

While Elson and Sullivan retired, Dzakovic filed a formal whistleblower disclosure with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, stating the “FAA executed its civil aviation security mission in a manner that was a substantial and specific danger to public safety." He submitted more than 500 pages of documentation. One year later, the OSC agreed with his assessment.

Dzakovic also testified before the 9/11 Commission about the FAA refusing to implement security measures after Red Teams successfully placed inert explosive device components in luggage that made it onto commercial aircraft 31 times. None of the evidence he presented was included in the commission’s report, he said.

“What happened on 9/11 was not a failure in the system, it was a system designed for failure,” he told The Center Square.

“The terror threat is real and ongoing, especially in light of the U.S. conflict with Iran,” Sullivan told The Center Square. Citing the Airline Pilots Association who warned last year that “aviation remains a primary target for terrorists who are constantly probing for weaknesses,” he said U.S. leaders “need to get serious about the vulnerabilities in our aviation security system before our adversaries take advantage of them again.”

Their 9/11 whistleblower story is told in the award-winning documentary, “Please Remove Your Shoes” and in Dzakovic’s book, “Fortress of Deceit: The Story of a 9/11 Whistleblower.”