Bart -- Interesting comments and I agree with your assessment of "dumb luck" playing a big part in these types of operations -- ie: "The Fog of War." The bad guys had the time, place, and element of surprise completely under their control, so they could afford to have all sorts of practice runs and be very cautious. I think a lot of this cautiousness had to do with the huge investment OBL made in these guys, in terms of cost, training, and time. I'm not sure he had thought through the communications required to plan for all contingencies. For example, what would have been their contingency plan if one or more of the groups had not made their flights for one reason or another? Because of compartmentalized security, I'm not sure anyone on a particular hijacking team knew about the others, let alone be able to communicate with them. Would they have aborted the entire attack? Who knows? Maybe one of their success criteria was just to attempt a hijacking? I'm thinking like a J-3 or J-5 guy here, so perhaps I'm giving them too much credit for wringing out every possible thing that could go wrong with the operation and developing contingency plans. All of this would required centralized control of the operation, which I suspect didn't exist after OBL said "go." Some of the flights left late. Did the success of the attack, including the element of surprise, hinge on on-time departures of all four flights? Who knows? If the good guys had apprehended one of the teams, would they have assumed that there were more teams that day? How would we have reacted? I haven't seen anything come out of the War Colleges yet, but that's where some deep thinking and analysis needs to occur.