Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented?

This is a possible AH about life before 9/11 instead of after-one which had the right events in place that would stop 9/11 from occuring i.e it being foiled by the CIA. Anyone know anyway this could have happened?
 
1.) Get '43 to listen to Richard Clarke in early 2001. To do that, I think you'll need to get Wolfowitz, Cheney and/or Rumsfeld and replace them with figure(s) that listen.
2.) Have '42 push harder with hunting down OBL. Perhaps use Seals versus cruise missiles? There was plenty of incentive for the US to hunt him down after the (Khobar Towers, USS Cole, US Embassy bombings).
 
Yes, obviously

BUT the specifics are difficult

I seem to remember reading soon afterwards that several OTHER aircraft were supposed to be hijacked too, but the hijackers were arrested trying to board

There was security, but it wasn't absolute

So, looking at intelligence? There must obviously have been communications from OBL and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that COULD have been intercepted by the NSA but wasn't. If they had gone on a heightened alert after the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud?
 
Yes, obviously

BUT the specifics are difficult

I seem to remember reading soon afterwards that several OTHER aircraft were supposed to be hijacked too, but the hijackers were arrested trying to board

There was security, but it wasn't absolute

So, looking at intelligence? There must obviously have been communications from OBL and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that COULD have been intercepted by the NSA but wasn't. If they had gone on a heightened alert after the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud?
Yes but the 9/11 and pentagon hijackers all made extremely close mistake that would have made them get arrested and they got extremely lucky
 
Personally, I think it could be prevented if one of the pilots knew there was something happening and fought back against the terrorists that were trying to board the cockpit. If one of the pilots had payed attention, and tackled one of the terrorists before they stabbed them and then have them call out to the other planes that there could be hijackers on board, then I think that it could be prevented.

Or, you can have a Flight 93 scenario, where people took notice and tackled the hijackers before they smashed the planes in the WTC. Then, I can see that it could be prevented.
 
My only source is the show "Looming Tower", but it claimed pretty strongly that the CIA withheld key information from the FBI at various times for fear that the Feds would move in too fast.
 
1.) Get '43 to listen to Richard Clarke in early 2001. To do that, I think you'll need to get Wolfowitz, Cheney and/or Rumsfeld and replace them with figure(s) that listen.
2.) Have '42 push harder with hunting down OBL. Perhaps use Seals versus cruise missiles? There was plenty of incentive for the US to hunt him down after the (Khobar Towers, USS Cole, US Embassy bombings).

They also could have gone after him for the first bombing of the twin towers in 1993.
 
This is a possible AH about life before 9/11 instead of after-one which had the right events in place that would stop 9/11 from occuring i.e it being foiled by the CIA. Anyone know anyway this could have happened?
If a kid just enforce the existing laws the hijackers would have been caught
 
1.) Get '43 to listen to Richard Clarke in early 2001. To do that, I think you'll need to get Wolfowitz, Cheney and/or Rumsfeld and replace them with figure(s) that listen.
2.) Have '42 push harder with hunting down OBL. Perhaps use Seals versus cruise missiles? There was plenty of incentive for the US to hunt him down after the (Khobar Towers, USS Cole, US Embassy bombings).

IMHO the cliche you sometimes hear around here that Bush allowed 9/11 to happen by being asleep at the switch/not taking Richard Clarke seriously is pretty silly. Remember, the hijackers entered the country, trained, and started conducting their final reconnaissance before Bush was even inaugurated, and that was with the people who supposedly took Bin Laden seriously in charge.

Clarke was saying that they needed to take Bin Laden more seriously, but he didn’t have any threads that would have led to Atta specifically and the planes plot. That was what was needed.

To the OP, yeah, it could certainly be derailed. The Hamburg Cell being uncovered in the 90s would have nipped it in the bud.
 
Some investigator somewhere stumbles across one of the details of the preparation. By itself the item makes no sense & its context does not either. The individual probes a bit further and and finds a bit more evidence pointing to a potential terrorist action. If, & no guarantees, a security or LE investigation kicks in, then the plot could be revealed or shut down by its organizers. This sort of thing could occur anywhere along the development of the plot.
 
If the FBI had investigated Zacarias Moussaoui and his connections more thoroughly after his arrest, then the plot might have been revealed and the attacks could have been thwarted.
On August 16, 2001, Moussaoui was arrested by Harry Samit of the FBI and INS agents in Minnesota and charged with an immigration violation.[21] Materials itemized when he was arrested included a laptop computer, two knives, flight manuals pertaining to Boeing's 747 aircraft, a flight simulator computer program, fighting gloves and shin guards, and a computer disk with information about crop dusting.[21]

Some agents worried that his flight training had violent intentions, so the Minnesota bureau tried to get permission (sending over 70 emails in a week) to search his laptop, but they were turned down.[22] FBI agent Coleen Rowley made an explicit request for permission to search Moussaoui's personal rooms. This request was first denied by her superior, Deputy General Counsel Marion "Spike" Bowman, and later rejected based upon FISA regulations (amended after 9/11 by the USA Patriot Act). Several further search attempts similarly failed.

Ahmed Ressam, the captured al-Qaeda Millennium Bomber, was at the time sharing information with the US authorities, in an effort to gain leniency in his sentencing. One person whom he was not asked about until after 9/11, but whom he was able to identify when asked as having trained with him at al-Qaeda's Khalden Camp in Afghanistan, was Moussaoui.[23] The 9/11 Commission Report opined that had Ressam been asked about Moussaoui, he would have broken the FBI's logjam.[23] Had that happened, the Report opined, the U.S. might conceivably have disrupted or derailed the September 11 attacks altogether.[23]
 
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