On March 12, 2009, a man kidnapped his 5-year-old daughter, hijacked a small plane, and flew around of the city of Goiania for two hours before crashing into the parking lot of a shopping mall, killing himself and the girl. The crash "highlighted a vulnerability to potential terrorist actions," then-Ambassador Clifford Sobel wrote in a memo.

Brazilian authorities considered shooting down the plane, which had no flight plan and was viewed as a threat, according to the March 28, 2009, report. Air defense authorities followed the country's shootdown procedure, illustrating "the extreme caution with which a possible shootdown is approached, the broad understanding of the shootdown policy among air traffic controllers and the fact that the procedures are executed as written," Sobel said.

However, the procedure wasn't fast enough: The plane went down while the decision went up the chain of command.

"The deliberate approach to a shootdown decision highlighted a vulnerability to potential terrorist actions given that a decision would not have been made in time to stop the pilot had he been able to crash into his target or another building, including in Brasilia," Sobel said in the memo.