Originally Posted by Bart
As for the authorities themselves, I don't think anyone would have connected the dots even if one entire team of terrorists were to be successfully intercepted and detained. We never had such a multi-faceted attack before, and the timelines suggest that there would be no basis for authorities to act quickly.
I think this is a good assumption. Unfortunately, it appears that nobody bothered to think these kinds of scenarios through, or if they did, they never bothered to communicate it to anyone who mattered. If you read the 9/11 report, it's clear that nobody who could have made a difference had ever even considered one plane being hijacked like this, let alone four.
Of course, we did have all of the "dots" that this type of attack was in the works, and even that some of these people were up to something (even if we didn't know what that something was) no good. Unfortunately, we didn't connect those dots or keep a close enough eye on the people we knew were dangerous.