Posted by: Alex | http:// | Mon Sep 15 07:39:12 2003

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Posted by: mitch | http:// | Mon Sep 15 15:49:39 2003

Let's guess...

1. They were expecting traditional hijackings (hostage-taking), not kamikaze missions, on the basis of intelligence from an AQ defector. This may have been a strategic deception by Osama. (see the story of "Max", "The Cell", Chapter 8)

2. Ashcroft, because someone in his security detail saw the FBI "Phoenix memo" in July; but the Pentagon officials are a red herring (there's always a security risk somewhere, e.g. in Macedonia at that time).

3. One of AQ's Saudi financiers.

4. Yes. The "living hijackers" are just people with the same names.

5. "Quite possibly". They may have had confederates among the luggage handlers.

6. Before 9/11, everyone thought that you negotiated with hijackers, which is not NORAD's job. Once they had crashed a few planes, the fighters were scrambled.

7. Bush's ensemble assumed it was an accident and were waiting for more details until the second plane hit, at which point they knew it was an attack. After that, they wound things up in about fi

Posted by: mitch | http:// | Mon Sep 15 15:50:26 2003

..five minutes.

8. The hijackers crashed the plane *because* the passengers were storming the cockpit, to avoid capture and interrogation.

9. He was back-up, and also a candidate for a second-wave attack using anthrax-loaded cropdusters.

10. The WTC black boxes were incinerated by jet fuel. The explosions of Flights 77 and 93 were relatively muffled and didn't burn as hot.

11. Because Wolfowitz and Perle are Laurie Mylroie fans.

12. Because flaming wreckage fell on it, damaged it, and set it on fire.

13. The article answers this question itself.

14. "[Somewhere] out of nuclear blast range of downtown Washington DC". (Bruce Sterling)

15. Again, the article answers this one, and there's nothing sinister there.

16. The ISI did not have operational control of 9/11, but was enough of an AQ ally to have frustrated previous American attempts to get OBL. The rumor linking the sacked ISI chief to Atta is just Indian disinformation. Daniel Pearl was a Mossad agent trying to penetrate

Posted by: mitch | http:// | Mon Sep 15 15:51:28 2003

.. AQ ally Al Fuqra, which *is* run by the ISI.

17. An AQ sleeper with a few grams of Iraqi anthrax supplied via Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which was entirely used up in the anthrax letters.

18. The trail went cold, as the article says.

19. Information on how AQ was funded by Saudi protection money, paid to keep terrorism out of the kingdom. (The Prince Turki who died in mid-2002 was not the intelligence chief, who is currently ambassador to London.)

20. Somewhere in Pashtunistan.

Posted by: mitch | http:// | Thu Sep 25 10:53:53 2003

And as a postscript: I would guess that the 20 questions started life with this entry at the subliminally influential Xymphora blog, but mutated a little on their way into the mass media (there's an expression that people don't use any more). http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2003_06_01_xymphora_archive.html#105618137689004288