The Federal Aviation Administration received repeated warnings in the months before Sept. 11, 2001, that al Qaeda hoped to attack airlines, according to a previously undisclosed report by the commission that investigated the terrorist attacks.

The report detailed 52 such warnings to FAA leaders between April 1 and Sept. 10, 2001, about the terrorist organization and its leader, Osama bin Laden.

The commission report, written last August, said five security warnings mentioned al Qaeda's training for hijackings and two reports concerned suicide operations not connected to aviation. None of the warnings specified what would happen on Sept. 11.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency received intelligence from other agencies, which it passed on to airlines and airports. But "we had no specific information about means or methods that would have enabled us to tailor any countermeasures," she said.

Brown also said the FAA was in the process of tightening security at the time of the attacks. "We were spending $100 million a year to deploy explosive-detection equipment at the airports," she said. The agency was also close to issuing a regulation that would have set higher standards for screeners and given it direct control over the screening workforce.

Many similar problems with aviation security were detailed in the Sept. 11 report released last summer. Al Felzenberg, former spokesman for the commission, said the government only recently completed a declassification review of the 120 pages of additional material, parts of which have been redacted.

The unclassified version, which was reported by the New York Times, was made available by the National Archives yesterday.

According to the report:

� Aviation officials were "lulled into a false sense of security" and "intelligence that indicated a real and growing threat leading up to 9/11 did not stimulate significant increases in security procedures."

� Of the FAA's 105 daily intelligence summaries between April 1 and Sept. 10, 2001, 52 mentioned bin Laden, al Qaeda or both, "mostly in regard to overseas threats."

� The FAA did not expand the use of air marshals or tighten airport screening for weapons. It said FAA officials were more concerned with reducing airline congestion, lessening delays and easing air carriers' financial problems than thwarting a terrorist attack.

Information in this report was available to members of the Sept. 11 commission when they issued their public report last summer. That report also criticized FAA operations.

By Amy Joyce
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 11, 2005; Page A01

Under the pseudonym of Sarcastic Journalist, Rachel Mosteller wrote this entry on her personal Web log one day last April:

"I really hate my place of employment. Seriously. Okay, first off. They have these stupid little awards that are supposed to boost company morale. So you go and do something 'spectacular' (most likely, you're doing your JOB) and then someone says 'Why golly, that was spectacular.' then they sign your name on some paper, they bring you chocolate and some balloons.

"Okay two people in the newsroom just got it. FOR DOING THEIR JOB."

This post, like all entries in Mosteller's online diary, did not name her company or the writer. It did not name co-workers or bosses. It did not say where the company was based. But apparently, Mosteller's supervisors and co-workers at the Durham (N.C.) Herald-Sun were well aware of her Web log.

The day after that posting, she was fired.

Bill Stagg, managing editor of the Herald-Sun, said he could not comment on a personnel matter. But Mosteller, 25, said the blog was one of the reasons she was given for losing her job, and she is still in shock. "Considering I treated the blog as a smoke break, I didn't think of it as a problem."

There are 8 million personal Web logs -- or blogs -- in the United States, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. People write blogs to talk about their day, family outings, dates gone awry and, of course, work. But what might feel like a very personal entry about a dismal workday can mean something quite different to a boss who needs only a search engine to read it.

"We all complain about work and our bosses. And the ethos of the blogosphere is to be chatty and sometimes catty and crude," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew project. "Even in an era of casual Fridays, that is not what companies want to be portrayed by the world."

Even if workers write the blog anonymously, an employer may be able to take the position that blogging "is inconsistent with the business mission," said Jonathan A. Segal, an employment attorney in Philadelphia.

Usually the blogger has little protection. "In most states," said Gregg M. Lemley, a St. Louis labor lawyer, "if an employer doesn't like what you're talking about, they can simply terminate you."

HOUSTON � Late last year, Republican leaders in Washington caused a stir, even among some allies, when they tried to protect House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas by revoking an ethics rule that would force him to step down if indicted.

Now, Republican leaders in Texas are pushing a measure that watchdogs call a junior version of the Washington effort.

A bill filed this week by a veteran state GOP lawmaker would give the Texas Ethics Commission � whose members were appointed by the three top elected officials in the state, all Republicans � the power to quash the prosecution of a politician.

Critics call it a brazen attempt to protect GOP leaders who might become entangled in an ongoing criminal investigation into whether illegal fundraising paved the party's rise to power in the state.

Texans for Public Justice, an organization that tries to combat the influence of money in politics, labeled the measure the "Politician Protection Act." Director Craig McDonald said the bill created a "special criminal justice process for politicians."

State Rep. Mary Denny, who filed the bill, said in an interview Thursday that she was attempting to add oversight, not remove it. She said it never occurred to her that the legislation could be used to protect Republican leaders who might become targets of the fundraising investigation.

Denny, a ranch owner from Aubrey, near Dallas, is serving her seventh two-year term in the state House and is the chairwoman of the House Elections Committee.

She said the bill was intended to provide an additional layer of oversight when allegations of campaign law violations were levied at the local level � in city council races, for instance. Prosecutors often don't have time to vigorously pursue these types of complaints, she said, allowing them to fall by the wayside.

"They have murderers and robbers and rapists. Even the hot-check writers are going to come up higher on a priority list," she said. "And yet to that candidate, it is very important�. All I'm trying to do is give all candidates the opportunity to have their complaints looked at."

The bill would create an investigative arm of the Ethics Commission, which would be authorized to conduct investigations into alleged criminal conduct under the state Election Code.

But the bill doesn't stop there.

It also says that a district attorney, including the one in Austin who is overseeing the fundraising investigation, would be prohibited from continuing such an inquiry if the Ethics Commission did not agree that charges were warranted. Denny said she believed district attorneys would welcome input from people who specialized in election law.

"Why would they want to pursue something when there is no wrongdoing?" she asked.

Sarah Woelk, general counsel of the Ethics Commission, said she was prohibited by law from taking a position on any proposed legislation. But she said the commission did not request the legislation.

"I had not heard anything about it," she said.

Republicans, long the minority in Texas, swept to power in 2002 and now control every statewide office, both houses of the Legislature and the governor's mansion. The following year, at DeLay's request, the Legislature drew new maps of Texas congressional districts. The maps gave the GOP a six-seat swing in the state congressional delegation last year, helping cement the party's control of Congress.

Travis County Dist. Atty. Ronnie Earle and a series of grand juries have spent two years investigating whether political and business organizations with ties to DeLay illegally financed the campaigns of 22 Republican House candidates in 2002. State law bans corporate contributions to legislative candidates.

Three of DeLay's aides have been indicted and charged with money laundering and unlawfully accepting and soliciting corporate contributions. Republicans have widely criticized the investigation, calling it a witch hunt and pointing out that Earle is a Democrat.

In November, in an act of loyalty to a man known as "the Hammer," Republicans in Congress threw out an internal party rule that would have forced DeLay to resign his leadership post if he were indicted. Under pressure, the GOP later reversed course, changing another rule instead that made it easier to block congressional ethics investigations.

"This seems to be part of the pattern," McDonald said.

Among the politicians who appoint people to the Texas Ethics Commission are state House Speaker Tom Craddick, who appoints two of the eight members, Woelk said. Craddick, a Republican from Midland, is at least a peripheral target of the fundraising investigation. His appointees could, in theory, play a role in determining whether legal action against him could proceed.

"This is a slap in the face to the public," Earle said Thursday.

Craddick's office said he had not read the legislation and would not comment.

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