They did not, however, know of plans to crash planes.
So it goes.
That’s not what ended up happening at all.
No, it’s not, but it certainly indicates that airport security should have been beefed up once the French informed the CIA.
OK, I understand tha many mistakes were made prior to 9-11, but a terrorist threat about a plane that was to be hijacked in Germany and flown to Afghanistan probably did not warrant a noticable increase in airport security in the states.
Actually, it does. There were a number of plots to hijack planes unearthed, including one to fly planes into buildings in France, so we knew that AQ was looking at that pretty closely. We also knew in the months leading up to 9/11 that AQ was planning something in the US. Put those two facts together, and it’s prudent to beef the security up at airports. Whether the efforts made would have been enough to stop 9/11 is another matter entirely, and impossible to answer.
This an interesting “FRONTLINE” episode: “The Man Who Knew”
This was an interesting Discovery Channel program: “The Man Who Predicted 9/11” The Man Who Predicted 9/11 (TV Movie 2005) - IMDb
It’s about Rick Rescorla, the director of security of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in 1993 when first Trade Center bombing occurred. At that time he and an old friend concluded that the people responsible for the bombing had been trying to topple the towers. They figured that they’d be back to finish the job and the next attack would be from the air. On 9/11 Rescorla died evacuating some people.
President Clinton has admitted turning down more than one convenient opportunity to get Bin Laden.
People complain bitterly about security now, after 9/11. Before 9/11, how many people would have considered it prudent?
As you bring up more reports which are obvious only with 20/20 hindsight, why not apply the same perspective to such hypothetical efforts? It wouldn’t be because a Democrat was president for most of the time between the two Trade Center attacks, would it?
People complained about it before, witness George Carlin’s rant on You Are All Diseased which came out, IIRC 1999 (It definately predates 9/11 as that was one of the first things I thought of that day.). However, the airports the hijackers departed from were all picked because of the lax security. In 1990, I went to the Nashville airport to pick my brother up, forgetting I had boxcutters in my back pocket until I got to security. The guards made me throw them away before I could proceed to meet my brother at the gate (according to at least one Doper here, in some countries you couldn’t meet your party at the gate before 9/11).
Uh, no. We can’t say for certain that if stronger measures had been taken it would been effective, since the terrorists could have changed their tactics. The plot reports, however, are an entirely different matter. As you point out, we’d already had one terrorist attack from AQ folks on our soil, and should have increased security then (but didn’t seem to), so when we got word of the hijack plots we definately should have increased security. If you’ll note, nowhere in this thread have I said that this Administration was solely to blame for the attacks on 9/11 occuring.