In an article entitled, Officials to probe use of aviation contractors , Gary Stoller of USA Today reported that the Inspector General of the Department of Transportation is "launching an investigation into the federal government's use of thousands of private companies to inspect and certify airlines' planes and aircraft alterations."

http://www.usatoday.com/money/biztravel/2003-03-09-swissair_x.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/money/biztravel/2003-02-16-swissair-investigation_x.htm

From the CTSB Report issued in March of '03:

quote:
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Because the IFEN wires in the STA 383 area were routed separately and not along existing wire bundles, it is less likely that the IFEN wires could be in contact with aircraft wires within the localized area where the fire most likely started; therefore, the more likely candidate wires for this type of scenario would be the other wires in the bundle of four IFEN PSU cables and the 16 AWG control wire.
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The IG of the Department of Transportation claims that they are investigating the issues surrounding the IFEN (entertainment system). It has been nearly 1 year since the CTSB issued its final report and as far as we can tell absolutely nothing appears to have happened. Gary Stoller's articles certainly should have encouraged some scrutiny regarding this tragedy. No indictments have been issued towards those individuals who hastily and carelessly installed the IFEN. Obvious problems were ignored. This article might give some idea of why there has been no action from the IG's office. Btw, this is not meant to support or write-off any particular presidential candidate.

From an article entitled; --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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DAY OF INFAMY 2001
Official: Kerry failed
to act on pre-9/11 tip
3rd agent to say he warned security lapses made Boston airport ripe for 'jihad' attack

Posted: March 19, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Paul Sperry
� 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

WASHINGTON � A third federal aviation-security agent, one still with the government, has stepped forward to say he also warned Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry about security lapses at Boston's Logan International Airport before the 9-11 hijackings there.

Earlier this week, two former FAA agents said the Democratic presidential hopeful failed to take effective action after they gave him a prophetic warning that his home airport was vulnerable to multiple hijackings.

Brian Sullivan, a retired special agent from the Boston area, advised Kerry in a May 7, 2001, letter (page 1, page 2) that Logan was ripe for a "jihad" suicide operation possibly involving "a coordinated attack." He cited serious breaches at Logan security checkpoints exposed by an undercover investigation he and another former agent helped a Boston TV news station conduct.

Sullivan says he had a copy of the undercover videotape hand-delivered to Kerry's office.

It turns out the person who delivered it was a senior FAA agent in Washington who's now with the Transportation Security Administration. The agent, Bogdan Dzakovic, headed covert testing of airport security across the country before TSA took over aviation security from FAA after 9-11.

In an exclusive interview, he says he gave the tape to Jamie Wise, a Kerry staffer at the time.

After the office visit, "I received no feedback from anyone there," Dzakovic told WorldNetDaily.

Kerry boasts in campaign ads he "sounded the alarm on terrorism years before 9-11."

But he waited three months to reply to Sullivan's letter. And his July 24, 2001, letter, a copy of which was obtained by WorldNetDaily, merely offers to pass Sullivan's warning on to the Transportation Department's inspector general � even though Sullivan had made it clear in his letter that going to his old agency was a dead end. He and other agents, including Dzakovic, had complained about security lapses for years and got nowhere.

"The DOT OIG has become an ineffective overseer of the FAA," Sullivan told Kerry.


He suggested Kerry show the tape to peers on committees with FAA oversight. He even volunteered to testify before them.

Yet the correspondence stopped there. Kerry never followed up with him.

"He just did the Washington shuffle," said Sullivan, who thinks Kerry had a chance to prevent the Boston hijackings.

Another former agent, Steve Elson, who set up the TV sting at Logan, tried to follow up with Kerry, but was told by Wise he wasn't a constituent. (Elson, formerly of the elite Red Team that did covert testing, was a Houston field agent at the time.)

He came unglued, warning the staffer that if Kerry didn't act soon he'd risk the lives of planeloads of his actual constituents.

"What would the senator say if a large plane filled with holiday travelers took off from Logan at Thanksgiving for somewhere in California and went � boom � spattering men, women, children and babies all over the landscape at a couple of hundred knots?" demanded Elson, an ex-Navy SEAL.

His warning now looks like prophecy: At least 82 Kerry constituents were murdered aboard American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175.

Elson says he also dealt with Gregg Rothschild, Kerry's legislative director at the time. Attempts to reach him were unsuccessful.

Dzakovic laments the lack of attention to their warnings.

"We could have fed fish at the aquarium and accomplished just as much," he said.

Sullivan is perhaps the most frustrated. His two-page warning to Kerry four months before the Logan hijackings was eerily prescient.

"With the concept of jihad, do you think it would be difficult for a determined terrorist to get on a plane and destroy himself and all other passengers?" he wrote. "Think what the result would be of a coordinated attack which took down several domestic flights on the same day. With our current screening, this is more than possible. It is almost likely."

The toll from such an attack would be economic, as well as human, he predicted with chilling accuracy.

And the Logan security failures he highlighted in the letter included breaches at the very checkpoints the hijackers would later exploit.

The undercover investigation by Fox affiliate WFXT in Boston showed crews penetrating security checkpoints at Logan with knives and other weapons in nine of 10 tries.

Elson says the crew, led by reporter Deborah Sherman, walked through with Leatherman tools concealed in fanny packs. The Leatherman is a fancy utility knife. The 9-11 hijackers used utility knives. Sherman says she also had no luck getting Kerry to act on the video he apparently saw.

"It was always being 'reviewed' every time I called," she said. "There was no comment or action taken on the senator's part other than passing the tape along to someone else."

Sullivan � a registered independent who's also critical of Bush's handling of aviation security, both before and since 9-11 � thinks Kerry could have saved the Twin Towers, which were toppled by the Boston jetliners, and thousands of lives.

"John Kerry should have � and could have � prevented 9-11," he said.

How? "He could have taken direct action to address the concerns we had identified by visiting Logan and the MassPort authorities at Logan or the Massachusetts State Police," he said.

If that didn't work to bring about corrective action, he could have applied political pressure by having Sullivan and other agents testify before Congress, he says.

"Enhanced security would have prevented the hijackings, virtually without question," Elson agreed. If nothing else, it might have discouraged ringleader Mohamed Atta, who monitored security procedures at Logan weeks before the hijackings.

Phone calls to Kerry's campaign were not returned.

Right after 9-11, he told the Boston Globe that he'd triggered an undercover probe of Logan security by the General Accounting Office in June 2001, based on the TV report.

Only, he wrote Sullivan no such thing in his July letter, stating only that he passed his warning and the tape on to Transportation, not GAO.

And GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, did not test security at Logan. (Kerry confessed he didn't know the outcome of the probe he says he initiated.)

GAO spokesman Jeff Nelligan says there is no evidence Kerry requested anything specific with regard to Logan, although he says GAO had communications with "a number of interested members and staff, including Sen. John Kerry's office" about airport screener testing work in 2001.

He would not elaborate.

Sullivan and Elson, joined by aviation-security experts David Forbes and Andrew Thomas, want to see Kerry called before the 9-11 Commission, as well as President Bush, to answer questions about what he knew about Logan's lapses, and specifically what he did about them, before that fateful day. They also recommend GAO and Transportation officials testify to sort out discrepancies in Kerry's story.

Calls to the panel were not immediately returned.

"We don't have to wait for a tragedy to occur to act," Sullivan urged Kerry in his letter.

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Paul Sperry is Washington bureau chief for WorldNetDaily and author of "Crude Politics."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37642

In other words our frustration about the (in)actions of the IG of the DOT in regards to swissair 111 maybe due to the their lack of ability to oversee the FAA-

"The DOT OIG has become an ineffective overseer of the FAA," Sullivan told Kerry.

"The DOT OIG has become an ineffective overseer of the FAA," Sullivan told Kerry. IMHO, this fact is far worse than anything Kerry did. The article doesn't address that point however. We count on our government to protect us from terrorists, or thugs that with callous disregard for human life, install a dangerous entertainment system in the name of making a profit. That alone is disturbing enough, but let's not allow them to sweep their failures and thus our horrible losses under the carpet. Write to your congressman.

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