Compare and Contrast
Sep 12th, 2006 at 10:51 am by Susie
The American Airlines ticket agent who checked in Mohammed Atta on 9/11 later committed suicide - unlike the man in charge who, being briefed on the potential threat, told his briefer, “Okay, you’ve covered your ass.”
That’s because one of those people lacks a conscience:
Touhey said Atta and the other hijacker had $2,500 first-class tickets from Maine to Boston and that Atta really gave him the creeps, like no one ever had before in all his 37 years.
But Atta had ID and a ticket and answered all the security questions correctly. There were no other security procedures in place in the pre-911 world.
The only thing Touhey could do was not give Atta and the other hijacker their boarding passed for the American Airlines flight they were scheduled to catch in Boston, which meant they’d have to check in with another ticket agent, one more chance for someone to do… well, the guy didn’t say what. It was just the only thing he could do, absent any heightened security alerts. And there were none in place on Sept. 11. No heightened alerts to the airlines.
Still, unlike Mr I’m-not-responsible-for-anything, AKA George Bush, Touhey feels a terrible sense of guilt, that surely he could have done something and prevented all those deaths. (Geez, maybe if Mr.-I’m-on-vacation-all-the-friggin-time, AKA George Bush, had done something after reading his PDB, Bin Laden Determined to Strike US, like issued some security warnings or even some new procedures for the airlines…
But anyway… Touhey said he heard about the first plane hitting the towers and wondered about Atta. When the second plane hit, he knew.
He watched people jumping from the burning towers and felt a horrible sense of guilt and responsibility.
He heard later that the ticket agent in Boston who checked Atta in later committed suicide, and even blames himself for her death. If he hadn’t withheld the boarding passes in Maine, Atta wouldn’t have had to check in in Boston. That woman who killed herself would have never seen Atta on that day.
(And I hope if she’s the one ABC implied ignored a security warning about Atta and she did kill herself over 911, that her family sues the hell out of ABC.)
Amazing how ordinary Americans are obviously tortured by the idea that they could have done something, anything, to change what happened on that day, and our president struts around with wreaths and pouty looks, claiming to be the Security President, using 911 at every opportunity, even to start a phony war on terror in Iraq and obviously feels nothing.
Guilt and remorse are for the “little people”,
not for fascistic ubermenschen like Bush and Cheney.
I’ve been seeing that “okay, you’ve covered your ass” quote around. Do you have a link to it? I’d like to use it.
Found it, thank you.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/19/AR2006061901211_pf.html
Why in the world would anyone expect shrub Bush to feel any sense of guilt. The man is a sociopath.(manifestly)
Gug
“US Air” not “American,” right?
Ah, never mind. I remain confused about the American Airlines complaint about the ABC 9/11 show, though.
Gug,
You beat me to it. George Bush is a classic sociopath who believes that the rules that apply to others don’t apply to him, and feels no remorse for any of his actions whatsoever. Just a miserable excuse for a human being, while that ticket agent (if the story is true), was probably a decent caring person.
Steve Jung
Just to quibble a bit — I think he feels gratitude. 9/11 gave him a second term that he likely would not have had otherwise.
>
Well, you are right and you won’t get any argument from me on that. You just took it one step further than Steve and I did. I am wondering about him….I was taught that evil people do not “get their just return,” so I don’t expect anything bad to come to shrub. I do wonder if a person can really continue to walk around, a total failure in everything he has *ever* done, a man who has damaged his nation and the world, possibly irreversibly, and still thrive. Could he descend into alcoholic wasteland, become like the man he had tortured, totally mad? It could be interesting to see. Whatever bad comes to him, short of assassination or assassination attempt, I won’t feel any sorrow for.
Gug
They portrayed an American Airlines clerk simply ignoring a system warning and passing him through. Never happened - there wasn’t one thing they could have legally done to stop him.
I personally hope that Bush lives to a ripe, old, old, old age without a trace of dementia or alzheimer’s or anything else to shield him from the contempt of succeeding generations who will be paying the price for his incompetence. I want his to witness being judged by history (as he claims to want) as the worst president ever, as the incompetent and corrupt narcissist that he is.
SomeCallMeTim
I was too but I think I understand now.
I did not see the movie but it seems it portrays the airline and the ticket agents as careless when in fact they followed the then current proceedures to the letter.
.
FOR CHRISSAKES IT WAS U.S. AIR — NOT AMERICAN AIRLINES!
Can’t anyone get this right? And if we don’t get it right, how can we expect THEM to?
I hope this thread ends up as an exhibit in American Airways libel suit against Disney/ABC.
Well Mark, if you’re going to get all up on your high horse, it was US Air Express, the commuter airline affiliated with US Air, which flew Atta from Portland ME to Boston. From there he boarded an AA flight.
Mark, read the damn story. Touhey was the US Air agent at Portland, Maine who denied Atta and the other hijacker the boarding pass for their leg on AA from Logan. So they had to again check in at the AA gate at Logan. Hope you’re never a juror!
“Exhibit in AA’s libel suit”? Good luck.
Atta did board AA flight 11. He boarded it in Portland, and reboarded it in Boston.
The other three flight hijacked were American 77 (Dulles), United 175 (Boston) and United 93 (Newark).
No US Air planes weere hijacked.
Small correction - boarded US Air express in Portland - but did not hijack it..
Fast Pete: It was the US Air counter that handled Atta.
The line “OK, you’ve covered your ass,” is from the 1% Doctrine. But is that quote sourced? How does Ron Suskind know that’s what W said?
Excerpts from 9/11 Commission report:
Atta and Omari boarded a 6:00 A.M. flight from Portland to Boston’s Logan International Airport.1 When he checked in for his flight to Boston,Atta was selected by a computerized prescreening system known as CAPPS (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System), created to identify passengers who should be subject to special security measures. Under security rules in place at the time, the only consequence of Atta’s selection by CAPPS was that his checked bags were held off the plane until it was confirmed that he had boarded the aircraft. This did not hinder Atta’s plans.2 Atta and Omari arrived in Boston at 6:45. Seven minutes later,Atta apparently took a call from Marwan al Shehhi, a longtime colleague who was at another terminal at Logan Airport.They spoke for three minutes.3 It would be their final conversation.
While Atta had been selected by CAPPS in Portland, three members of his hijacking team—Suqami,Wail al Shehri, and Waleed al Shehri—were selected in Boston.Their selection affected only the handling of their checked bags, not their screening at the checkpoint. All five men cleared the checkpoint and made their way to the gate for American 11.
Very simple yet eloquently put, Susie. (Surfed on in from Atrios, btw)
Barton Gellman quoting from Ron Suskind’s “One Percent Solution” in his review of 6/20/06:
The book’s opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush’s Texas ranch during the scary sunner of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president’s attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.” Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: “ALL RIGHT. YOU’VE COVERED YOUR ASS, NOW.”
As if the guy who approved 100% of executions as governor and used 9/11 to buffaloe our country into a war with an unrelated country might actually have a concience.
Karl Rove knows that 9/11 is the gift that keeps on giving.
Bush could have prevented 911.
After 911 he could have went after the terrorists with the rest of the world.
Instead he did want he wanted - create more terrorists so that he could maximize the fear factor.
Dictator Bush is the worst leader in the history of the world.
Bush cut spending on the levey in New Orlens (to fight the Bush Iraq war for 2 more hours) and then he stayed on vacation for 4 more days after the Katrina hit.
Too bad the far righ rebushicans are too concerned about their special interests and simply do not care about doing what is right, what is fair and what needs to be done.
Stay and Pay is not a plan.
[...] Suburban Guerrilla » Compare and Contrast did this get added to the tool for 9/11? (tags: 9/11) [...]
… “Just to quibble a bit — I think he feels gratitude. 9/11 gave him a second term that he likely would not have had otherwise.” …
Diebold and Ken Blackwell gave him a second term that he likely would not have had otherwise.
Did he kill himself the way Gary Webb did? Shoot himself twice or more in the head?
Hey Folks,
Just curious about this…One thread here says that Atta had a ticket and an ID. That is what you needed to board in ‘01. Why does his name or those of any hijackers not appear on an official passenger list? Why? How in God’s name did he get on that plane and be assigned a seat and not show up on a passenger list?
Help me on this….G man
Oh, please. The ticket agent committed suicide because he/she was mentally ill.
Glenn - the names DID appear on the passenger lists. They just didn’t appear on lists published in newspapers.
All the terrorists boarded either with their own ID or a fake ID.
In all the blather about the 9/11 anniversery,there has not been any talk of the Pentagon “crash/survivors,etc, What gives? From the few pictures available it seemed like too little wreckage for an aircraft the size of 767(a wide body)or 757(narrow body). Either one would have made a much bigger crash scene than we saw and typically in the worst crash/fire scenarios the large central mass of each engine remains.
Meanwhile, Brendan Nyhan uses this post (cited by Avedon while guest-blogging at Eschaton) as a pretext to take a swipe at Atrios himself (who of course is employed by Media Matters, the outfit that ran rings round Nyhan’s own timid “Spinsanity” as a media critic).
I too,as Mr Goldstrom has pointed out,have wondered why this simian in the WH rarely or never mentions the Pennsylvania crash or the pentagon crash.I find this very troubling although i cannot pinpoint the reason why.Me thinks they are hiding something,just my opinion of course.
Re: abc’s "path" not taken
here’s another "truth" from the movie as well:
http://susiemadrak.com/2006...
capps II has never been implemented, and certainly was not in place on september 11, 2001.
Hey Maez…still curious or dumb or both! Why would they release “special” passenger lists that don’t confirm their story? What is the point of that?
What am I missing here? Glenn
Talk About Whipping Boy…
Why not leave this ticket agent (who checked Atta Mohammed in) alone? The suicide probably had nothing to do with anything except the state of her own mind, which took many years to develop.
No ordinary citizen has the power to stop terrorism. As a country, we might be able to do something simply by being a bit nicer, and electing decent politicians.
Why do you think one was a supervisor and the other a lowly worker?
The American people would not accept Bush as president before 9 11 his poll numbers at time were in thirties,i still smell a rat in all his good fortune.He was selected but not accepted before 9 11.First time steel and concrete buildings fall from fire,one a plane never touched.I do not trust this goverment.
There is no proof any AA agent committed suicide. I KNEW the agent that checked in Atta. I am checking our friends now to see the veracity of this claim. I’ll report ASAP. If it happened, it was recent and not close to 9-11.
[...] Some of you likely recall that Susie ran a post on September 12, 2006 about about the ticket agent who checked in Mohammed Atta in Boston on September 11, 2001. The post stated that the ticket agent later killed himself. We learn from William Beutler of Blog P.I. that, quite fortunately, this is not true and that the ticket agent is alive. Earlier today, Beutler received the following email from American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner. William, [...]