The first thing to say is that the suddenness of the attacks overwhelmed all concerned, both in the air and on the ground. The seizures of the planes took place between 15 and 45 minutes after take-off. The planes crashed between 20 and 45 minutes after seizure. The attackers were eager to get it done. The planes were seized over the course of about an hour and a quarter. People on the ground became aware that hijackings underway over the course of an hour and thirteen minutes. (Even before being informed of the fourth hijacking, FAA’s Command Center ordered a nationwide “ground stop.” That is, everyone was ordered to get their planes on the ground as soon as possible and no more flights were allowed to take off.) The planes crashed over the course of an hour and seventeen minutes. This prevented an effective response.

What would have constituted an “effective response”? Shooting down the first three planes before they hit their targets. Fomenting revolts by cell-phone on the first three planes on the grounds that “you’re all going to die anyway.”

The second thing to say is that there was some confusion on the ground. Thus, AA 11 hit the World Trade Center at 8:46 AM. At 9:16 was AA HQ aware that AA 11 had hit the WTC.

At 9:20, FAA HQ informed the Boston Air Traffic Control (ATC) Center that AA 11 was still airborne. At 9:21, Boston ATC Center informed North American Air Defense Sector (NEADS) that AA 11 was still airborne and headed for Washington. Thus, between 8:56 and 9:05, a radar glitch left Indianapolis ATC Center blind to real position of AA 77. Indianapolis ATC assumed that the plane had crashed. Meanwhile, by 9:05, AA HQ had become aware that AA 77 had been hijacked. Between 9:05 and 9:10, AA 77 reappeared on Indianapolis radar headed east. However, observers had stopped looking for it because it was believed to have crashed and they did not notice it. It flew east for another 36 minutes undetected. Thus, only at 9:34 did the FAA informally—almost accidentally–advise NEADS that AA 77 was missing. At 9:36 NEADS was informed that there is a fast-moving, unidentified aircraft in-bound toward Washington. At 9:37 AA 77 hit the Pentagon.

The American Air Traffic Control system is not a battlefield management system. It does something else.

The third thing to say is that the federal bureaucracy appears to promote people based on their ability to follow established procedures, with a bias toward not getting people riled up. In the case of AA 11, the first plane seized, between 8:25 and 8:32 the Boston ATC Center notified the chain of command above that a plane had been hijacked. At 8:32, the FAA Command Center, Herndon, VA, informed FAA HQ of the hijacking. However, FAA HQ did not inform National Military Command Center (NMCC) as protocol required. On the other hand, between 8:34 and 8:38, the Boston ATC Center by-passed the established protocol and directly contacted NEADS. By 8:38, Boston ATC notified NEADS of hijacking.

Between 8:38 and 8:46, NEADS obtained approval from the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) to scramble the fighters. At 8:46, NEADS ordered fighter jets from Otis AFB to “scramble” (get in the air ASAP). This was the same moment that AA 11 hit the WTC North Tower. By 8:53, the NEAD jets from Otis were airborne.

There is a certain resemblance between the Boston ATC people bypassing procedure to directly contact NEADS and the improvised manhunt for al Qaeda terrorists already in the United States conducted in Summer 2001 by junior officers at CIA and FBI. Never buck anything up the line because someone will say “No.”

Back in the 1990s both the FBI and the Federal Aviation Authority became concerned about the possibility of terrorist attacks on US airlines. The chief concern of the security officials was that someone might buy a ticket, check luggage containing a time-bomb, and then not board the flight (allowing some anxious college student traveling stand-by to heave a sigh of relief and rush to take the seat suddenly made available). To address this problem, a Computer-Assisted-Passenger-Pre-Screening (CAPPS) system was created. The system cross-checked names of passengers against security “watch lists.” If a passenger name appeared on a “watch list,” the passenger’s checked luggage was held off the plane until the passenger had actually boarded the plane and could be screened for explosives. No supplementary examination of the passenger took place.

CAPPS formed the chief line of defense for the airlines on 11 September 2001.

Airlines and government security officials did not anticipate either suicide bombings or hijackers turning the planes themselves into cruise missiles. Was there any basis for anticipating such acts?

A dozen airliners were hijacked in the 1960s; 42 were hijacked in the 1970s; 24 were hijacked in the 1980s; 16 had been hijacked in the 1990s; and 6 were hijacked in 2000 or early 2001. It would have been easy to assume that this problem was well on its way to being controlled. Occasionally–once in 1987, once in 1988, and twice in 1994–there had been failed attempts to seize an airliner to use as a cruise missile against a building. In 1991 Shamil Besaev, a leader of the Chechen opposition to Russia, had hijacked a jet.

In 1983 Hezbollah suicide bombers had attacked the American embassy, and the U.S. Marine and French barracks in Beirut. About fifty other suicide attacks followed.

Between 1987 and 2000 the Tamil Tigers carried out many perhaps as many as 175 suicide bombings.

Between July 1989 and December 2000 Hamas and Palestinian Jihad had carried out 28 suicide attacks directed against Israel. The attacks had killed 170 people. Between January and August 2001, Hamas and Palestinian Jihad had conducted 26 suicide attacks directed against Israel. The attacks had killed 52 people. So, a sudden spike in suicide attacks.

In Summer 2000, Chechen suicide attacks on Russian troops took place in the North Caucasus region. These were ordered by Shamil Basaev.

Most pertinently, Al Qaeda had used suicide bombers to attack the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 and the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000.

That amounts to a lot of disparate pieces of the jig-saw puzzle to put together.

Boston: American 11 and United 175. In Portland, Maine, boarding his connecting flight to Logan Airport, Mohamed Atta had been identified by CAPPS as subject to special security precautions: his checked luggage was held aside until it was confirmed that he had boarded the plane. (p. 4.) At Logan, three other members of his team were identified by CAPPS and the same restriction on loading luggage was applied. (p. 5.)

Washington Dulles: American 77. Three members of the hijacking team were selected by CAPPS; two others were picked out by a suspicious counter agent. All five had their checked luggage held off the plane until it was confirmed that they had boarded the plane. (pp. 5-6.)

Newark: United 93. One of the hijacking team members was selected by CAPPS. His checked bag was checked for explosives, then loaded on the plane when none were detected. (p. 7.)

The rising concern about terrorist attacks in Spring 2001 intersected a knowledge of Midhar’s travels in southeast Asia on the part of a CIA officer, called “John” by the Commission. On 15 May 2001 and in conjunction with a CIA superior, “John” milled through a lot of cables from early 2000 to discover what had become of Midhar. He figured out that Midhar had been in touch with Khallad, that Khallad was a “major league killer,” and that Midhar had come to the US over a year before.

The CIA superior dropped the issue at this point, but “John” contacted a CIA analyst, called “Dave” by the Commission, for help in analyzing what the cables might mean. “Dave” was involved in the investigation of the bombing of the Cole; one of his associates in this project was an FBI analyst, called “Jane” by the Commission.

“Dave” seems to have shared the concerns of “John” about Khallad with “Jane.” “Jane,” in turn, knew that Khallad had been in touch with Fahd al Quso, who had been interviewed by FBI agents from New York. “Dave” set up a meeting between himself, “Jane,” an FBI analyst detailed to the CIA’s Bin Ladin unit, called “Mary” by the Commission, and the agents. “John” gave “Dave” copies of the photos identified by the joint FBI/CIA source in Yemen as Midhar and Khallad to show to the FBI agents. The meeting, on 11 June 2001, was a disaster in the sense that “Jane” believed that she was not allowed to reveal any information about the reason the photos were taken (subjects linked to Middle Eastern terrorism) and “Dave” was barred from revealing CIA information to outsiders. (pp. 384-387.)

Undeterred when he learned of these failures to communicate, “John” persuaded “Mary” to review all the material herself. However, “John” had no authority to make this a real assignment, so he cozened her into doing it in her “spare time.” “Mary” agreed, but had no “spare time” until 24 July 2001.

In little snatches of time between 24 July and 22 August 2001 “Mary” discovered that the known jihadist Midhar had obtained a visa to come to the United States in January 2000, that he had listed New York as his destination, that the CIA had reported that Hazmi, another known jihadist, was flown to Los Angeles in January 2000, and that Midhar had come to the United States in January 2000, then left in June 2000, then re-entered the country on 4 July 2001. “Mary” and “Jane” conferred. “Mary” then got the CIA’s Bin Ladin unit to request that Midhar and Hazmi be placed on the State Department’s watchlist so that they would be spotted if they passed through Customs (24 August 2001).

“Jane” talked over the issues with “John” in an effort to decide whether the search for Midhari and Hazmi should be treated as an intelligence matter or as a criminal matter. This may have delayed the message being sent until 28 August 2001.

“Jane” asked the New York field office of the FBI to try to find Midhar and Hamzi if they were still in the United States; the agent bucked the request up the line to his supervisor; the supervisor immediately kicked it to an “intelligence” FBI agent (on one side of the “wall”), to the Cole investigators (on the other side of the “wall”), and to an FBI agent who had been hunting KSM (just in case it made a useful connection). (pp. 387-388.) NB: “It appears that no one informed the higher levels of management in either the FBI or CIA about the case.” (p. 389.) See what happened with the hijackings.

The Cole agents tried to follow up with “Jane” through direct communications in order to obtain more information, but she invoked the rules barring contact between “intelligence” and “criminal” investigators. This enraged the Cole investigators, who were obviously trying to by-pass the regulations in what is probably common practice, because it shut them out of the investigation.

The hunt for Midhar then fell to a single, greenhorn counter-intelligence agent in the New York field office. Unsurprisingly, he failed to catch up with them before 11 September 2001. (pp. 390-31.)

The FBI had treated the USS Cole bombing in August 2000 as a criminal case and had sent agents to Yemen to conduct the investigation. Here they had the assistance of the CIA. A joint FBI/CIA source described someone named “Khallad,” who had directed the bombing. Four months later (December 2000), another conspirator being interrogated mentioned knowing a man named Khallad, who was a senior agent of OBL. The same FBI agent seems to have been informed of both conversations and made the connection. He got a photo of the man believed to have directed the Cole attack and had the person identified by the captured conspirator as Khallad. This established a connection between the Cole attack and OBL.

Kicking the issue around in December 2000, the CIA’s Bin Ladin unit wondered if “Khallad” was Khalid al Midhar. In January 2001 a surveillance photo of Midhar taken in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000 was shown to the source who had identified “Khallad” as the leader of the Cole attack. The source denied that Midhar was “Khallad”; instead, “Khallad” was the other man in the photo. This meant that Midhar was in touch with an important subordinate of OBL and that Midhar had been in the United States for a year.

However, the FBI agent present for this interview spoke no foreign languages and had to depend on the accompanying CIA agent to conduct the interview.   The FBI agent merely received a report from which the identification of Khallad with Midhar had been omitted. Thus, in January 2000 the CIA had failed to inform the FBI that Midhar, a suspected terrorist, had departed from Bangkok for Los Angeles; in January 2001 the CIA failed to inform the FBI that Midhar had links to Islamic terrorists implicated in major terrorist attacks against the United States. (pp. 382- 384.)

At the end of June the CIA ordered its station chiefs to contact their liaison with host-nation services and to get disruption operations going. (pp. 370-371.) During July and August 2001 disruption operations were carried out in about twenty countries.

On 5 July 2001Clarke called in the security representatives from a bunch of domestic agencies for a security briefing from the CIA. The briefing was not particularly helpful. (pp. 371-372.) On 6 July 2001 the CIA informed Clarke that al Qaeda sources said that the next attack would be “spectacular” and unlike either the embassy bombings or the attack on the USS Cole. (p. 372.)

Then nothing happened. In mid-July 2001 CIA received reports that Bin Laden had been forced to postpone execution of, but had not abandoned, his operation. (pp. 372-373.) On 27 July 2001 Clarke told Rice that reports had stopped coming in, but that he believed that the attack would still come in the near future. (p. 373.)

On 1 August 2001 the Deputies Committee decided that it was legal for the CIA to kill Bin Laden or his henchmen. (p. 306.) On 4 August 2001 Bush wrote to Musharraf again to ask for his assistance against al Qaeda. (p. 299.) On 6 August 2001 President Bush received a Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) from the CIA which reviewed al Qaeda’s commitment to launch attacks against America and which stated that the FBI was investigating al Qaeda operations in the United States. (pp. 374-376.) Then everyone went on vacation for August.

On 4 September 2001 the Principals Committee met on al Qaeda for the first time. They approved the draft presidential directive on dealing with al Qaeda. (p. 308.) This directive established a new policy of giving the Taliban yet another “last chance,” then coercing them with covert aid to all sorts of anti-Taliban elements within Afghanistan, then working to overthrow them if they still would not play ball. (p. 299.) At the Principals Committee, “Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was skittish, cautioning about the implications of trying to kill an individual.” (p. 309.)

On 9 September 2001 two al Qaeda suicide bombers killed Ahmed Shah Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance.

On 10 September 2001 the Deputies Committee met to work out the last details of the policy approved by the Principals Committee a week before. (p. 299.) Hadley told Tenet to draft the documents authorizing these actions and also authorizing the use of lethal force against al Qaeda leaders. (p. 310.) The Americans had arrived at the decision for decisive action against al Qaeda: the gloves had come off.