COULD IT HAPPEN AGAIN?

摘要

Looking back on it now, it is difficult to choose the pre- cise moment when U.S. government officials―hobbled by old-fashioned rules, saddled with ancient computers that could not talk to one another and riven by silly bureaucratic rivalries―missed their best chance to thwart the plot by 19 hijackers to take over four airplanes, turn them into flying missiles and kill almost 3,000 Was it in early 1999, when the National Security Agency, eavesdropping on a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East, first learned (but kept bin Laden? Or was it in March 2000, when the CIA heard from its spies overseas (but did not tell the FBI) that Alhazmi had flown to Los Angeles a few weeks before? Then there was the bungled meeting between the CIA and the FBI in June 2001, when the CIA hinted at Alhazrni's role but would not put everything it knew on the table. Washington may have had one more chance to change history in late August 2001, when FBI headquarters finally heard that Alhazmi and other bin Laden operatives were loose in the U.S. But against the advice of detectives in the field, agents at FBI headquarters assigned the case a low priority, and nearly two weeks passed before the bureau asked its Los Angeles field office to track down the suspects. That last e-mail was dated Sept. 11, 2001.