It seemed impossible to pull off.
A four-pronged terrorist attack such as the one that shattered the country Sept. 11 required too many things to go right, said a senior defense official familiar with Pentagon counterterrorism planning and strategy.
In recent years, Pentagon officials had considered the possibility that a single hijacked plane — likely a small private jet — could be used as a guided missile, the official said. Another possibility envisioned was multiple airline hijackings meant to panic travelers and possibly cripple U.S. air traffic.
But the idea that terrorists could capture four fully fueled airliners with passengers on board and drive the planes into prominent targets within minutes of one another was not considered because of the many uncontrollable variables involved, the counterterrorism official said.
Delayed flights, bad weather and other unforeseen conditions — combined with routine military intelligence and security measures at airports across the country — were expected to make such attacks too tough for terrorists to manage.
The prevailing thinking was that terrorists would shy away from such large-scale efforts because of the risk of getting caught or simply failing.
“I don’t think they have another round in the chamber,” the official said. “I’m amazed they pulled off three out of four.”
Civilian terrorism experts, including some who for years have forecast attacks on U.S. targets, are equally stunned. The expected assault was a car bomb driven into a crowded theater or another bombing similar to those now common overseas.
“What’s scary about this is that these guys have become a hell of a lot more sophisticated than we’ve ever seen them,” said Donald Snow, a political science professor at the University of Alabama and former Army War College instructor.
Now that the unthinkable has happened, the best way to combat terrorism, the defense official said, is to “figure out who did it and retaliate violently and swiftly.”
Such an attack likely would include sending special forces or other ground combat units to capture those suspected of planning or financing the attack, a scenario similar to the failed Army mission in Somalia made famous in the book “Blackhawk Down.” That attempt to capture a Somali warlord in 1993 fell apart almost immediately and led to the deaths of 18 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of Somali rebels and civilians.
Hunting down terrorists also has been considered risky, the official said, because “the price has always been too high.”
In this case, however, the public likely would support such a mission, even if it risks the lives of American troops. If planned correctly, he said, “I don’t think it needs to be a long, drawn-out land campaign.”
Another terrorism expert said the key lies in forcing nations that host terrorist activities to give up people like Osama bin Laden, who may have masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks.
“Dead or alive,” said Yonah Alexander, an authority on terrorism and Middle Eastern affairs and a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington, Va. “We wasted a lot of time, frankly. No more playing games. You are either on our side or on the side of our adversaries.”
