SecurityDocs

On the morning of September 11, 2001, at 8:46 an airliner carrying 10,000 gallons of fuel crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. A few minutes later, at 9:03 a second plane hit the south tower. Both structures collapsed in less than 90 minutes. On the same morning, at 9:37 a third airliner slammed into the Pentagon and at 10:03 a fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania, its target never reached due to the heroic actions of passengers with knowledge of the previous attacks. The human death toll from these events amounted to nearly 2700 (9/11 Commission, 2004). Nineteen young Arab men, implementing the plans of Islamic extremists in Afghanistan, committed these acts of terrorism. Some had been in the United States for over a year and blended into the population. While four had training as pilots, the rest were not well educated and spoke English poorly. In small groups, they were able to carry knives, box cutters, Mace, or pepper spray onto the hijacked jetliners and convert them into deadly weapons (9/11 Commission, 2004). How were they organized and financed? How did the authorities fail to anticipate and prevent this tragedy? Those events highlight the inability of law enforcement and the intelligence community to effectively share information. The 9/11 Commission Report found that the United States, while having access to vast amounts of data and information, is ill equipped to process the data that it has.