This has to reflect well on Rudy Giuliani:
Three decades before Al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center with planes, a secret presidential panel warned that Islamic terrorists might blow up U.S. jetliners or contaminate cities with radioactive “dirty bombs.”
The Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism, formed by President Richard Nixon, even asked the advice of a young prosecutor named Rudy Giuliani.
Giuliani testified in 1976 that the Justice Department, where he was a top official, “must take a more active position in combating terrorism,” according to once-classified documents unearthed by The Associated Press and released yesterday.
Giuliani urged easing legal restrictions on domestic intelligence – an action not taken until the Patriot Act was signed into law weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacks.
“Mr. Giuliani noted that … there was difficulty in collecting domestic intelligence unless there was some indication that there had been a violation of law,” the file states.
The panel found that another major problem involved a lack of communication between key agencies, said one ex-official.
“The FBI and CIA were not talking enough,” Lewis Hoffacker, a committee chairman, told the Daily News. He invoked a complaint made decades later by the 9/11 commission.
The special panel was formed by Nixon after the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, where 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian terrorists. Members met for five years and developed scenarios involving attacks on Americans, but ultimately their influence waned and the panel dissolved.