Mercury News | 05/03/2002 | FBI agent warned last July that Middle Easterners training at U.S. flight schools

I don't think this is a Great Moment, but the headline is unclear. Translated from the Headlinese, the agent warned headquarters that "several Middle Easterners were training at a U.S. aviation school and recommended contacting other schools nationwide where Arabs might be studying." There was talk about maybe checking up on them, but nothing came of it.

This will obviously excite the conspiracy nuts, but never attribute to villainy what can be best explained by incompetence. Even that's not fair; there's a lot of information out there, and most of it never gets the attention it needs. Eventually, there will be a thriving underground of McKinneyists, parallel to the nuts who think FDR knew about Pearl Harbor ahead of time. Some of them will probably be the same people.