by Joseph Carlson
Over the next few weeks I'll be giving my impressions of the 9/11 Commission Report that was published almost 15 years ago. This thing is really comprehensive. The committee involved interviewed thousands of people and had several hearings to get to the bottom of what really happened when those planes hit the World Trade Center on September 1st 2001.
The thing I find fascinating about the incident in the beginning is the fact that really, there was no preparation that any agency in the States that showed anyone using the planes as weapons. All the scenarios that were in place showed that a plane would be used to transport hostages or just be taken somewhere and landed.
Also, there were so many agencies involved in the beginning of the incident, especially when the reports started coming in that it took a long time for the flight controllers to call NORAD, for those agencies to have their superiors involved. This in itself costed lives. The thing I find most peculiar, reading the beginning chapters was how much back and forth there was between the Vice President and these agencies. Specifically when it came to shooting the planes down.
All in all, it's amazing what we don't know. There of course has been a lot of coverage about this over the last fifteen years but again, the thing I find fascinating is that we really didn't know what we didn't know. It's so easy with hindsight to say that we should have done this or that, but in the end we really didn't have any idea of the magnitude of this.
So let me know in the comments below if you think any of this could have been avoided, or if you've read the book let me know what you think of it.