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To: carranza2 who wrote (104602)	9/13/2001 11:44:20 AM
From: Kenneth V. McNutt	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Well said Ken

To: carranza2 who wrote (104602)	9/13/2001 3:00:53 PM
From: arun gera	Read Replies (6) \| Respond to of 152472

>>I'm thoroughly unconvinced, and think that the intellectual authors of this crime are Saddam and bin Laden.>> This had to be a military operation planned by professional,sophisticated intelligence agencies. There are very few agencies in the third world countries who would have the sophistication and intelligence gathering, Maybe, 5 countries. Some indications of the levels of sophistication used: 1. No intelligence was leaked out, although the operation would have involved as many as 500 individuals (in my opinion) over the last two years. Therefore, the operation must have been broken down into so many pieces that only a few people knew the end game, that is that the planes wil be crashed into the targets. 2. The planners must have studied the flight paths and operating procedures of the individual airlines to carry out the operation. They probably also studied which flights are typically on-time. They also would have taken into account how the Airlines are monitored by control towers and emergency response systems in Airlines. 3. The planners knew exactly how much training was required for the pilots and where to get it. 4. Hundreds of terrorists and their supporters were mobilized with appropriate legal papers to move across countries at the appropriate times. 5. Appropriate staffing. Hundreds of individuals must have been psychologically screened for their resolve, potential, ability to keep secrets, willingness to die and to check whether they were undercover agents of various counterintelligence operations. Then after the successful screening, many months of indoctrination and training must have been required. 6. Bringing down the World Trade Center was not an obviously easy task. The operation seemed to have been designed to succeed. It is quite likely, in my opinion, that the planners had complete blue prints of the World Trade center. The size of the airliners required,the ability of jet fuel to melt the steel structures, the approximate height at which the aircraft should hit, was probably practiced in computer simulations and/or models. 7. The operation was planned in tremendous coordination. So at least one or more rehearsals must have taken place. That is the groups of terrorist would have booked tickets on the same flights, probably same seats, and also observed the pilots and flight crews. Other associates of terrorists must have practiced smuggling exactly the same weapons through the same X-Ray machines at the various airports. The planners probably had access to the same machines and knew how to spoof them. 8. Possibly the terrorist pilots used flight simulators over the terrain that the hijacked planes would follow. 9. The final leg of the operation required some kind of dispatch operator communicating over secure communication channels or through code. 10. The whole incident was planned to attract world attention, and was also an attempt to show that what little military hardware (but sophisticated intelligence) is required to breach the defenses of the most critical US institutions. 11. The fact that the terrorists used knives was intentional and I don't think it was done to just avoid detection of guns and more sophisticated weapons. It was made to prove that hardware required is minimal. I don't think Bin Laden is interested in proving that. It was as if to make a point that Missile Shield program will do nothing for the US (maybe under the fear that it might actually protect the US, who knows?). Fundamentalists in rage do not try to prove such points. And biological weapons and nuclear weapons were not used purposely, because the implied terror of potential use in the future is worse than the actual impact of their use currently. 12. Such planning cannot be carried out over such a long period of time by foot soldiers in hills of Afghanistan. It can be only carried out by salaried professionals in comfortable and secure offices, who can draft and re-draft the plan over cups of coffees and strategic meetings, with access to experts on various scientific and military exprts to guide them. Several riskier scenarios (risky to the the terrorist operation , I mean), were probably eliminated. Maybe some potential candidates for the operation were also eliminated when their resolve broke down. 13. Bin Laden is being projected as the fall guy and surely some of the foot soldiers were used from his forces. The scariest thing is that Bin Laden has been made the fall guy for several years and a whole media image has been crafted for him. Sixty Minutes has interviewed him. His name has been linked again and again to media reports. Such media projections do not happen by accident (remember how VCs peddled dot-com stocks?). That is what scares me most. Arun The masterminds have to be from a sophisticated Intelligence Agency.