[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 12]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 17967]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



              CHILLING INDICATORS OF THE TERRORIST ATTACK

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                           HON. CLIFF STEARNS

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 25, 2001

  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, in the events that have followed the tragic 
attack on our Nation, we have seen a flurry of activity in both 
responding to the attack, and attempting to uncover the network, 
financing, and planning behind the attack. Though I believe our law 
enforcement and intelligence agencies understand and are closing the 
apparent gaps that may have aided the terrorist's ability to launch the 
attack on September 11, there is a recent piece in the September 21 
edition of Washington Times that gave me pause.
  The Inside the Beltway column titled ``Signs in Cyberspace'' alleged 
that indications of the impending attack might have existed in certain 
registered domain names, recently expired, on the Internet. Some of the 
domain names quoted in the article were:
  worldtradetowerattack.com;
  nycterroriststrike.com;
  pearlharborinmanhattan.com; and
  terroristattack2001.
  It is indeed chilling that no one appears to have taken notice until 
it was too late. Mr. Speaker, I am hopeful that our federal agencies, 
along with Congress, continue to take a hard look at where our 
intelligence system failed and make the difficult and necessary 
decisions.

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