Kerry fumbled the ball on terrorism

By Nancy Salvato
web posted September 13, 2004

In light of John Kerry recently spouting off about how he would
have handled the minutes after the Twin Tower attacks
differently than President George Bush, I think its time to look at
just how ineffective Kerry truly is when it comes to fighting
terror. It's too bad there wasn't a 9/11 commission set up to
investigate Kerry's actions before the travesty of New York. I
would contest that the wrong people have been investigated for
failure to prevent the largest act of terror on our soil – to date!

What most people don't know is that John Kerry was in a
position to prevent the terrorists from boarding their flights at
Logan airport. He had information that President George Bush,
Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and
Secretary of State Colin Powell did not have access to, in the
form of a letter from Brian Sullivan, a retired special agent with
the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), whose specialty was
risk-management charged with securing air traffic control
facilities throughout New England.

Four months prior to 9/11, Mr. Sullivan expressed to John
Kerry his contention that Logan Airport was very vulnerable to
terrorists. He thought that any terrorist could board and blow up
a plane without much difficulty. He believed this because
undercover operatives had proven that the security shields at
Logan were ineffective by breaching them with potentially deadly
weapons 10 times. He even suggested that more than one plane
could be taken down in a day.

In addition to the letter from Sullivan, John Kerry was given a
videotape depicting the broken security shields by Bogdan
Dzakov, a former FAA chief of the national airport security
covert Red Team.

It wasn't until 11 weeks after receiving this vital information that
Kerry forwarded his response to Brian Sullivan, on July 24,
2001. He told Mr. Sullivan that he passed the information on to
the Department of Transportation, even though he'd been told
that would be fruitless since they had already proven not willing
to take corrective action after countless warnings.[1] He didn't
bother with sending the letter and tape to the State Police or the
Massachusetts Port Authority and failed to find it important
enough to alert his Senate colleagues or the President of the
United States.

When it was realized that Mr. Sullivan's efforts were going
nowhere, Mr. Steve Elson, another sting agent, ex-Navy Seal,
and former Red Team member, "offered to fly to Washington at
his own expense to give Kerry a document-backed presentation
about the "facade of security" at Logan and other major
airports."[2]

Because he wasn't a constituent, he wasn't given any
consideration either. Elson advised Kerry that he was risking the
lives of his Massachusetts constituents by allowing them to board
planes at Logan. It turned out to be true. Many of the deaths that
resulted from 9/11 were the result of boarding American Airlines
Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 at Logan airport.
Had Kerry given the letter or the videotape the attention they
deserved, the enhanced security resulting from action taken
would have served to prevent the hijackings or at the very least
discouraged ringleader Mohamed Atta, "who monitored security
procedures at Logan weeks before the hijackings."[3]

His inexcusable failure did not stop Kerry from trying to take
credit for triggering an undercover probe of Logan security in
June 2001. His campaign ad in the fall of 2003 stated that he
"sounded the alarm on terrorism prior to 9/11", citing his book
The New War, despite his having dropped the ball. The truth of
the matter is that no investigation was ever conducted at Logan
and there's no evidence that he ever requested anything specific
from the GAO about Logan. This alleged probe, which Kerry
never followed up on, was never acknowledged by the General
Accounting Office who, incidentally, did test airport security at
two airports pre-9/11 - neither of which happened to be Logan.

John Kerry has proven his inability to fight the war on terror.
Given an opportunity to help prevent what occurred on that
fateful day three years ago on 9/11, he proved that he is not
proactive and is unable to formulate a plan of action given crucial
information that could affect the lives of countless Americans. On
the other hand, President George Bush has picked up the ball
and is still running with it. The choice is clear.

Footnotes:

1Kerry & Company's Homeland Insecurity
http:
//www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/5/27/101900.shtml

2, 3 The warning Kerry ignored
http://members.aol.com/viperash50/kerry911/911.html 

Nancy Salvato is a contractor with Prism Educational
Consulting. She serves as Educational Liaison for Illinois' 23rd
Senatorial District. She works nationally and locally furthering the
cause of Civic Education. Her writing is widely published on the
internet and occasionally in print venues such as the Washington
Times. Her opinions have been heard on select radio programs
across the nation. Additionally, her writing has been recognized
by the US Secretary of Education. Copyright © Nancy Salvato
2004

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