Dick Durbin: “On July 10, 2001, an FBI agent in the Phoenix field office sent a memo to FBI headquarters and to two agents on the…”

“On July 10, 2001, an FBI agent in the Phoenix field office sent a memo to FBI headquarters and to two agents on the international terrorism squads in the New York field office advising of the ``possibility of a coordinated effort by Osama bin Laden'' to send students to the U.S. to attend civil aviation schools--the famous Phoenix memo. This Phoenix memo went into the system and virtually disappeared. On its face, this memo was fair warning. This memo was a flare that went off, climbed into the sky, and flashed a warning of danger, and no one noticed. This was July 10, 2001. The Phoenix memo went forward, and it disappeared in the sky without even notification. The notice was there. Something needed to be done, but no one responded within the FBI or in the other appropriate agencies. As we learned, the Phoenix memo was not an alert about suicide pilots. We learned the author was more concerned about a Pan Am 103 scenario. The fact is, whether they are talking about the Phoenix memo or what led up to the intelligence investigation involving Zacarias Moussaoui, we did not have a sharing of information among agencies that might have protected America and the 3,000 victims on September 11. For well over two years, I have urged that we do something profound and historic. I thought about the Manhattan Project. That was a project, if you recall, that dates back to the attack on Pearl Harbor.…”