http://www.democrats.com/view2.cfm?id=7651

31-May-02

In a televised interview with actor James Woods on the "O'Reilly Factor" in February of 2002, Woods said he flew on a Boston to Los Angeles flight with four of the September 11th hijackers on August 1st, 2001. Not only was Woods convinced that the four men were terrorists because of their strange behavior during the flight, but he also stated that the flight crew filed a report with the FAA as a result of his complaint. Woods also said that it is preposterous for the White House to routinely suggest that most of the terrorists were unaware of their true mission on September 11th until that day -- and that they were part of some isolated hard-to-catch terrorist cells.

James Woods Interview Regarding August 1st Flight with Four of the 9-11 Hijackers Raises More Questions Regarding White House Blurring of Facts


By Catherine Arnie

According to actor James Woods, he was a passenger on a Boston to Los Angeles flight with four of the September 11th hijackers, in early August of 2001. Woods now contends the flight was a trial run by the terrorists that perpetrated the hijackings of September 11th, 2001.

In a February 2002, television interview with Woods, that was conducted by Bill O'Reilly of Fox TV's "O'Reilly Factor," Woods stated that he was on a first class passenger, on a flight from Boston to Los Angeles before the September 11th attacks and that he sat with four passengers who have all since been identified as September 11th hijackers. Woods claimed that he was so alarmed by the strange behavior of the four men during his flight, that he told a flight attendant and a co-pilot that he feared the men were going to hijack the plane. When O'Reilly asked Woods why he was so alarmed by the actions of the four passengers this was Wood's response:

Excerpt from James Woods interview on the O'Reilly factor
URL:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,45675,00.html

Woods:I was on a flight, without going into the details of what made me suspicious of these four men, although it would have been blatantly obvious to the most casual observer, I took it upon myself to go to the flight attendant and ask to speak to the pilot of the plane. The first officer came out. I reported to him that I felt that the four men, and I said, "Can you look over my shoulder and see who I'm talking about?" And he said, "Yeah." I said I think they're going to hijack this plane. I mean, everything they're doing, and I explained to him these details, which I've been asked to keep private, until whatever jurisdiction, you know -- whatever trials may take place, their behavior was such that I felt that they were going to hijack the plane.

I also said I'm very much aware of how serious it is to say on an American aircraft in flight the word hijack.

Although Woods stated in the interview that he did not personally contact the FBI until after September 11th, he maintains that a report was indeed filed by the flight crew of his August 1st, 2001, flight and that the report went directly to the FAA regarding the suspicious behavior of the four men for further investigation. Whether the FAA did anything with that report, or passed it on to U.S.intelligence sources is not known.

During the interview Woods insinuated that he had been cautioned by some government entity to remain guarded with information that might compromise national security and he seemed reluctant to respond in detail to some of O'Reilly's questions about the specifics of the particular hijackers identities and actions ( apparently somebody needs to tell Mueller and company that the horse is already out of the barn - obviously Woods had more on the ball than the FBI did in August ) Woods still managed, however, to disclose the below tid bits of information which would appear to fly in the face of the "seperate cells" excuse that many White House administration and Department of Justice officials have used over the course of the last few months. An excuse which Dick Cheney also attempted to use during a recent interview with Tim Russert on "Meet the Press," on May 19th, 2002.

On the topic of the seperate terrorist cells theory Woods offered the following:

Excerpt from James Woods interview on the O'Reilly factor
URL:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,45675,00.html

WOODS: So they came in ( Woods Referring to the FBI ) And I said, "Look, I'm dying to know, were these the guys? And he said, "Well, we've had 36,000 tips in one day. And there's two of us and we're going to be at your house all this morning. So you can do the math, but we can't tell you." You know, so since then, I have identified for sure two of them as two of the terrorists.

O'REILLY: Really?

WOODS: Who actually were not on Flight 11, but one was on flight 175 and one was on flight 77. And I've been told unofficially, not by the FBI, but by someone else in a -- actually a higher level of government, believe it or not, just through a coincidence, through a mutual friend, that all four of them were terrorists involved.

O'REILLY: That is -- so it was basically a rehearsal, what these guys were doing?

WOODS: Right. But what's significant about this is that it was a rehearsal with four men. And I can't say it as a fact that they were the four, but I've been led to believe without going into the details of how, that they were on different flights. So the notion that they were separate cells when -- and this is tricky territory, but I think in the Moussaoui trial, there's going to be some contention that, you know, he was a soldier and didn't know what was going to happen...

O'REILLY: Right.

WOODS: ...until he stepped on the plane and then decided in a fit of good conscience not to be a terrorist anymore. In fact, the fact that these two people were identified by myself and other people, and were on the Boston-L.A. flight, and ended up dying on two other flights of the four flights on September 11 shows that they were...

O'Reilly either doesn't let Woods finish his statement above, or the interview was edited prior to broadcast, perhaps to eliminate further comments by Woods about how coordinated he believed the hijackers were in advance of the September 11th attacks? In any event Woods never finishes the above sentence during the duration of the interview.

Conversely, On May 19th, 2002, when Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," supposedly, in an effort to discount widespread allegations by the media and the American public that the Bush administration had not only received warnings about the hijackings which took place on September 11th, but that they had deliberately chosen to keep those warnings a secret from the public, he insisted that according to White House intelligence sources that even many of the hijackers themselves didn't realize that they were on suicide missions because so few of the terrorist operatives were privy to the grand scheme of the plan.

The old "seperate cells" AKA "Out of the loop" excuse, eh, Dick?

This is what Cheney stated in an excerpt from that interview, when Russert asked him if the administration could issue any concrete warnings regarding "recent terrorist chatter on the lines," preceding Cheney's May 19th interview. Warnings which were supposedly similar in nature to what U.S. intelligence picked up in the months pre-9/11.

Excerpt from Dick Cheney interview on "Meet the Press"
http://www.msnbc.com/news/754033.asp

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Sure, but again, it's non-specific or but what happens when it comes in, we try to get something that's actionable in it, a name, you know, of somebody we can go after; a location, a mode of attack. And you never get, you know, Here are the plans. The number of people who actually know the details of an operation, I think, is exceedingly small. I mean, there's some indication, for example, that even some of the hijackers on September 11 did not know until they got on the airplane that it was a suicide mission. And if you have got people even carrying out the assignment who don't know the full scope of the operation, you can imagine how limited is the circle that has accurate knowledge of what, where, when, and how difficult it is to acquire that information in advance of the attack.

Dick Cheney and others in the Bush administration have widely held, publicly, that the terrorist attacks of September 11th, were very guarded affairs wherein even some of the perpetrators of the attacks themselves were kept in the dark right up until the day of the attacks. It has also been parroted numerous times by Bush spokespeople that only top Al Queda operatives knew in advance, the where, the when and the how, of not only what would occur during the attacks, but also about when they would take place.

The fact however, that James Woods flew on, what he maintains was a rehearsal flight for the attacks, in August of 2001, with four of the nineteen hijackers ( who were each later identified as perpetrators on seperate September 11th flights ) would seem to discount this seperate cell theory that has been widely foisted on the American Public by Dick Cheney and other White House officials.

In addition, in light of the upcoming criminal trial against the so called "20th hijacker," Zacarias Moussaoui, ( who was aprehended pre-911 and is the subject of the now infamous FBI whistleblower "Phoenix memo" ) a person could surmise that by insisting that the individual hijackers were all blind soldiers in the attacks against America, that the Cheney/Bush administration may be knowingly, or unknowingly, adding credence to the Massouis defense team's claims, that Moussaoui did not know that he was slated to partake in a particular criminal terrorist mission against the United States.

As law biding American citizens lose more and more of their rights under a revamped FBI, that plans to focus mainly on domestic surveilance activities and in many instances may very well cross the line and delve into freedom of expression issues instead of valid displays of suspicious activity by potential criminals... is the fact that the Bush administration appears to be wittingly, or unwittingly, aiding Moussaoui's lawyers with a line of defense really a prudent move on the part of White House officials in their apparently pathetic effort to deflect blame and cover their butts?

In this writer's opinion, Woods story is yet one more example in a long string of apparent fabrications coming out of this current administration regarding forewarnings about the September 11th attacks.

If we are to believe the ridiculous contention that the buck stopped at the FBI, the CIA, the FAA and the INS and that the Bush administration had no prior knowledge that a terrorist attack was forthcoming in the months preceding 9-11... Then the public deserves to know how a character actor ( regardless of how well acclaimed ) could apparently spot a terrorist plot, over the course of a three or four hour flight, when thousands of so called tax payer funded Intelligence agencies and operatives could not!

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