Washington 'warned of hijack risk to Pentagon'

The American Government was warned eight years ago that the Pentagon and White House were vulnerable to attack from hijacked jets, a military adviser has claimed.

Dr Marvin Cetron said he prepared a 250-page report for the US intelligence agencies in 1993 which detailed his concerns but it was ignored.

‘‘I said look, you’ve got a major problem here with aircraft, they could hit the White House or the Pentagon it’s a simple matter of coming in and making a left turn at the Washington Monument and running directly into the White House, or a right turn and going into the Pentagon,’’ Dr Cetron said.

He added: ‘‘They understood and they ignored it, they took it out of the final draft.’’

‘‘I think the reason they didn’t want that published is because they felt they couldn’t do anything about it. It would scare people and the flying public, which it probably would have, and therefore why worry about it out of sight, out of mind.’’

Republican Senator Wayne Allard, a member of the US administration’s armed forces committee, told Newsnight he was part of various hearings where the suggestion of possible attacks from hijacked jets were made.

He said the warnings were similar to the events on Tuesday which saw four planes hijacked to deadly effect, but not exactly the same.

He added: ‘‘Obviously it’s hard to evaluate the likelihood of something like that happening and I think it’s a shock to all of us, even though we talked about various scenarios that terrorists may use to cripple the United States in some way.’’

Asked how clear were the warnings he got while sitting on the intelligence committee he replied: ‘‘They weren’t clear, they were just speculations. They were suggestions of what could happen.

‘‘Then you’re faced with what is the likelihood - what’s a reasonable approach to try and defend yourself.’’