April 2002: CIA Promotes False Hijacker ‘Superman’ Theory

CIA Deputy Director for Operations James Pavitt says of the hijackers: “The terror cells that we’re going up against are typically small and all terrorist personnel… were carefully screened. The number of personnel who know vital information, targets, timing, the exact methods to be used had to be smaller still.… Against that degree of control, that kind of compartmentalization, that depth of discipline and fanaticism, I personally doubt—and I draw again upon my thirty years of experience in this business—that anything short of one of the knowledgeable inner-circle personnel or hijackers turning himself in to us would have given us sufficient foreknowledge to have prevented [9/11].” An FBI official calls this “the superman scenario.”
[New Yorker, 5/27/2002] The media repeats this notion. For instance, later in the year, the Chicago Tribune will comment, “The operational discipline surrounding Sept. 11 was so professional, and impenetrable, that intercepted telephone conversations, or even well-placed spies, might not have made a difference.”
[Chicago Tribune, 9/5/2002] But even in the same article that quotes Pavitt, a senior FBI official states that serious and potentially fatal errors were made by the hijackers. The article also notes that the hijackers did not maintain tight compartmentalization and discipline. [New Yorker, 5/27/2002] Eventually, more and more details will come out proving the “superman” notion false. The hijackers even told vital details of their plot to complete strangers (see April-May 2000; Late April-Mid-May 2000).