Originally Posted by MediaGuy

Actually I was referring to what seems to be a stupendous lack of reaction by everyone to first one then multiple hijackings. It seems everyone was reporting then waiting for everyone else in the chain of command, and on emergency reporting protocol, to respond or "give word" or "confirmation" - or worse they would "leave urgent messages" and wait for call backs. Jets were ordered to scramble, but left sitting on standby.

Many US government heads were not at their post, or on vacation, or at conferences overseas or on flights to these.

Virtually all of the US's state emergency managers, including the head of FEMA and all senior FEMA staff, were at a conference somewhere in Colorado or Montana. And to their credit they managed to establish communications with their delegated staff or management promptly and efficiently.

The same can't be said of the airlines involved, like American whose central operations communications systems were down (in different ways) for unexplained "technical issues", or the FAA, which United was unable to reach at crucial moments after hijackings had started (it might be the other way around, but you get my point).

Then there were the dozens of training exercises happening on the same day, some part of larger exercises, some "impromptu" and some just isolated/independant and thus entirely coincidental.

Some theories say that the exercises allowed these systems to be ready to deal with the situations that day - though from the results it's hard to see how - other theories say that the exercises confused military response as to the "real-world" status of the events - even though when word first reached military central command (one of those operating training exercises that day - and who wasn't?) it was explicitly stated "this is not a test, not an exercise", and one of the commanders who had scripted the exercise said "The hijacking isn't supposed to happen for an hour."

Nobody seems to know how many training exercises were taking place that day: Army, navy, Marine corps, reserves and National Guard were all in training exercises, as were the Washington DC Police and the Washington Air Battalion, and even FEMA, which was already in New York for an exercise they obviously cancelled when the first crash occurred.

And of all the jet fighters that were out or on their way to training runs, most weren't called back or even knew about what was happening until after it was over.

To say that these various agencies didn't expect it or couldn't have predicted it is believable because most investigations into Ben Laden and/or "Al Qaeda" were canned (budget cuts? FBI treading on NSA or CIA territory?) and warnings were stifled (disbelieved, dismissed, or not considered "current"?) at the higher levels of government and security agencies.

So let's say hindsight is 20/20 - these executive government levels and agencies didn't only have warnings they may or may not have acted on, some specifically targeting the WTC, but they *had* practiced and drilled and written internally about such events as a plane being flown into government buildings (I think the CIA were training for a plane flying into Langley on 9/11) or multiple planes being hijacked or being used as missiles - look up "Bojinka" for example, which was a foiled terrorist operation.

I don't know which is crazier or scarier - the theory that the system was so screwed up attacks like these could happen "by accident", or the theory that they were somehow deliberately facilitated.