After the groundings, French officials demanded access to Montgomery’s software, and handed it over to a team of French engineers to analyze. The information had come from Dennis Montgomery, a little-known government contractor who claimed he had the ability to decode secret al-Qaida messages embedded in Al Jazeera broadcasts. Few knew exactly from where the bad information had originated, thanks to silos inside the intelligence sphere. In fact, no such plot existed to crash Air France 747s in the U.S., nor was there any credible intelligence that al-Qaida was planning a Christmas attack. After speaking with the French government, President Bush issued an order to ground certain flights worldwide, severely disrupting holiday travel.īut it turns out the intelligence was flawed. They had flight numbers, schedules and possible coordinates for the attacks. The agency shared the information with the White House. by hijacking a specific list of incoming international flights from France and other nations. Al-Qaida, the intelligence said, was planning to strike the U.S. In the winter of 2003, the CIA received a disturbing bit of information.
