"Further up the thread a bit, Teribus reminded us of the diligence of a Customs official in uncovering the 'Super Gun' affair, and Strick told of the perceptive border guard who foiled the Millenium bomb plot.
Nobody had told those people what to expect when they clocked into work that day; they were just 'doing their job'. A job, incidentally, that would have been in extreme jeopardy were it to be suggested they had been inattentive in any way, if the items concerned had have evaded detection at that point. If your mind is on your job, you look for everything. If you are someone with appropriate authority, you tighten airport security, and employ a few more G men. And most of all, you keep on top of the situation. This is not what is known as 20/20 hindsight. It is common-sense. And if it hadn't been an ongoing policy of successive US administrations, well then, none of them had their eyes on the ball, and they all are truly to blame."

I have quoted the above passage from Jim McCallan's posting. A rather interesting point was made regarding airport security procedures in the US was reported in an article in a UK newspaper yesterday. It has to do with a long standing directive aimed not at combating terror, or increasing airport/aircraft security, but to avoid possible accusations of "racial profiling". Apparently, as reported if there are say 200 people waiting to go through security checks prior to boarding an aircraft, security staff are only allowed to question, in what is described as second stage security checks, two people of "arabic" appearance. Which means that with this rule in place, the attacks would still have succeeded (five hijackers for each aircraft). That rule, as reported, is still in place to this day. Possibly because to rescind it would be viewed as too great an attack on one's civil liberties, one's human rights. That to me is strange, taking into account the threat warnings - I'd have questioned them all, still would question them all today.

As to prevention. One measure that could be put in place to ensure that no such attack as 9/11 could ever be repeated is to actually programme civilian aircraft as cruise missiles in the following manner. The flight programme of every aircraft is modified so that in the event of an attempted hijack situation the pilot/co-pilot activates a control on the aircraft's automatic pilot which cannot be over-ridden, alternatively this could be activated from the ground. The aircraft is then programmed to fly a course clear of all air-lanes and centres of population to a military air-field for a fully automatic "hands-off" landing. As aircraft proceed on their journeys the programme is updated to alter which air base the aircraft will be diverted to. The technology exists to do this, has done for years (BEA conducted it's first fully automatic take-off and landing flights back in the 1960's).