Pre-September 11th Threats and Warnings of Flying Airplanes Into Buildings

"Earlier Hijackings Offered Signals That Were Missed," The New York Times, October 2, 2001

Over and over since September 11 aviation and security officials have said there were shocked that terrorist had hijacked airliners and crashed them into landmark buildings . . . In 1994, two jetliners were hijacked by people who wanted to crash them into buildings, one of them by an Islamic militant group. And the 2000 edition of the F.A.A.'s annual report on Criminal Acts Against Aviation, published this year, said that although Osama bin Laden "is not known to have attacked civil aviation, he has both the motivation and the wherewithal to do so," adding, "bin Laden's anti-Western and anti-American attitudes make him and his followers a significant threat to civil aviation, particularly to U.S. civil aviation."

"Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why: The 1999 Government Report on Profiling Terrorists," by Rex A. Hudson and the Staff of the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress (page 15)
Al-Qaiida's expected retaliation for the U.S. cruise missile attack against al-Qaida's training facilities in Afghanistan on August 20, 1998, could take several forms of terrorists attack in the nation's capital . . . Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and Semtex)) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the White House. Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters.

"Columbine Killer Envisioned Crashing Plane in NYC" (CNN.com, December 6, 2001)
One of the two teen-age gunmen who killed 12 other students and a teacher before killing themselves in a 1999 attack on Columbine High School described their plan in detail in his journals, and said that if they could not get out of the country after the attack, they would hijack a plane and crash it into New York City.

Operation Bojinka - Wikipedia Entry
The Bojinka Plot was a planned large-scale terrorist attack on airliners in 1995. The term can refer to the "airline bombing plot" alone, or that combined with the "Pope assassination plot" and the "CIA plane crash plot". The first refers to a plot to destroy 11 airliners on January 21 and January 22, 1995, the second refers to a plan to kill Pope John Paul II on January 15, 1995, and the third refers to a plan to crash a plane into the CIA headquarters in Fairfax County, Virginia and other buildings. Operation Bojinka was prevented on January 6 and January 7, 1995, but some lessons learned were apparently used by the planners of the September 11 attacks.

"The Assassination of Richard Nixon"
Inspired by news reports of the February 17, 1974 actions of Robert K. Preston (who buzzed the White House with a stolen helicopter) Bicke plans to hijack an aircraft and crash it into the White House.

Oak Ridge, TN, Nuclear Facility - Wikipedia Entry
November 10, 1972: Three men hijack an airplane flying from Birmingham to Cuba with $10 million and 10 parachutes. The co-pilot is wounded; they threaten to crash the plane into one of the Oak Ridge nuclear installations; at McCoy Air Force Base, Orlando, the FBI shoots out the tires; the plane finally lands on a foam-covered runway in Havana; two are sentenced in Cuba to 20 years, one to 15 years.