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It's amazing what could be said in the immediate aftermath, before Ari began telling the country on national television, people have to be careful about what they say.
There are a few other choice quotes from Sy in that article. It's interesting that although the administration released the names and pictures of the hijackers within 24 hours, Sy was writing that the intel community didn't really know who did it.
Also, if the official story is correct, then, as Sy reported, there had to be a big support network in this country for the 19 who actually pulled it off. The administration has rounded up thousands of Arab and Muslim men, some of whom were tortured in immigration detention facilities, and never made a single 9/11-related arrest, except for Moussaoui, who appears to have had no operational or support role in the attacks. But of course, since the entire bin Laden family was airlifted out of the country courtesy of George W. Bush, we'll never know if the cave dwelling evil doer had relatives helping here
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These investigators suspect that the suicide teams were simply lucky. "In your wildest dreams, do you think they thought they'd be able to pull off four hijackings?" the official asked. "Just taking out one jet and getting it into the ground would have been a success. These are not supermen." He explained that the most important advantage the hijackers had, aside from the element of surprise, was history: in the past, most hijackings had ended up safely on the ground at a Third World airport, so pilots had been trained to coöperate.
Another view, centered in the Pentagon and the C.I.A., credits the hijackers with years of advance planning and practice, and a deliberate after-the-fact disinformation campaign. "These guys were below everybody's radar—they're professionals," an official said. "There's no more than five or six in a cell. Three men will know the plan; three won't know. They've been 'sleeping' out there for years and years." One military planner told me that many of his colleagues believe that the terrorists "went to ground and pulled phone lines" well before September 11th—that is, concealed traces of their activities. It is widely believed that the terrorists had a support team, and the fact that the F.B.I. has been unable to track down fellow-conspirators who were left behind in the United States is seen as further evidence of careful planning. "Look," one person familiar with the investigation said. "If it were as simple and straightforward as a lucky one-off oddball operation, then the seeds of confusion would not have been sown as they were."
Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues that were uncovered about the terrorists' identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, "Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the F.B.I. to chase."
<by whom? why would they leave a trail of clues on purpose? --HR>
In interviews over the past two weeks, a number of intelligence officials have raised questions about Osama bin Laden's capabilities. "This guy sits in a cave in Afghanistan and he's running this operation?" one C.I.A. official asked. "It's so huge. He couldn't have done it alone." A senior military officer told me that because of the visas and other documentation needed to infiltrate team members into the United States a major foreign intelligence service might also have been involved. "To get somebody to fly an airplane—to kill himself," the official added, further suggests that "somebody paid his family a hell of a lot of money."
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