With regard to the laptop, there are three possible answers.
1. FBI HQ did not want the filed office rooting around in the computer for fear that sensitive information might be leaked to the press and alert Moussaouis confederates to a breach of their security (effective counter-terrorism dictates that the terrorists believe they have not been compromised).
2. Clinton holdovers at FBI HQ could not make up their mind as to whether Moussaouis should be treated as a terrorist, a criminal, or potential democrat presidential candidate. Sometimes stupid decisions are a result of stupidity, not conspiracy.
3. Disinformation. The terrorists know that the FBI has Moussaouis laptop. Make them think no one has looked at it. Remember Desert Storm? Stormin' Norman played the press like a violin and got them to report all kinds of disniformation to Saddam and his generals. You don't think the FBI can do it, too?
One of my favorite Quotes is from Winston Churchill regarding the allied breaking of the Enigma code. "In war, the truth must be protected by a bodyguard of lies." He allowed a british city to be bombed to protect that secret.
As for all the warnings, you have to remember that prior to 9/11 all terrorist threats to aircraft were thought to be hijackings for hostages and demands. In spite of "imminent" warnings, this was a well know type of threat. Unless you have information as to place, time, and suspect, there is little you can do except keep a careful watch for the tools of the trade--guns and bombs. Box cutters were not on the list of preferred terrorist tools at that time.
No one thought that the hijackers would use box-cutters to take control of the planes and turn them into kamakazi bombers (fictional novels notwithstanding).
Warning governmetn officials not to fly commercial when there are heightened hijack threats is not unusual. It is very common when flying oversease (military personnel are often warned not to fly in uniform, to pack their dog tags and ID in their check baggage, and to get a civilian passport). Hijackers have shown a propensity towards executing military/US govt personnel they find on the planes they hijacked in the past.
Another problem is that, thanks to holywood, people think this country's intelligence agencies are more powerful and capable than they are. And all the intelligence gathering tools in the world are useless if you don't have good people to go through it. Computers only report, they can't interperate. Like the FBI under Clinton, the CIA was politicized. It has also suffered from years of abuse and budget cuts and artificial restrictions imposed by democrat administrations, and witch-hunts.
The bottom line is that it is easier to believe in conspiracies, than to believe that we aren't all-powerful. People screw up, lie about it, blame others. It happens in government just like it does in the home.
9/11 was a surprise because we expected an old-fashioned style hi-jacking. And it took an hour to scramble the F-16 because it probably took the guys responsible for scrambling 45 minutes to grasp what was really happening and pick up the phone.
The terrorists hit us with a move we had never seen before, had no reason to expect, and caught us with our pants down. We knew their tactics, they knew we knew, so they changed them in a dramatic way.
Hmmmmm...sorry but your possible answers make no sense to me.
By the arrest of Moussaoui the other cells had to assume that that the FBI will scan the laptop, because this would be the normal procedure in such a case.
And as far as i remember there was no press release that the search warrant for the laptop was refused, so the cells could not know if the laptop was searched or not.
And remember that the FBIHQ told the field officers not to do any further investigation on Moussaoui, who was already identified as well-connected to the islamist scene by the french intelligence!
Some weeks ago, the phoenix memo by FBI agent Ken Williams has also been ignored.
"As for all the warnings, you have to remember that prior to 9/11 all terrorist threats to aircraft were thought to be hijackings for hostages and demands"
And why the G8 summit in Geneva was then protected by SAM?
Remember, it was already clear that:
-AQ already had plans to attack the US (WTC, Sears Tower, CIAHQ) with kamikaze aircraft (Murad interrogation in 1995)
-AQ was hot for WTC after the 1993 bombing ("Next time we will do better")
-There was precise intelligence warnings from around the world that AQ was planning something with hijacked aircrafts late 2001
-The phoenix memo titled "Osama bin Laden supporters attending civil aviation universities/colleges in Arizona" & Moussaouis arrest
You don´t have to have an Einstein to connect the dots, because the dots are already connected.
It was a clear picture.
And so it is a mystery to me, why on that tragic day it took one hour to scramble F16. There are clear directives by the FAA and the military for aircraft-highjackings and in every case in the last decades they were followed: Scramble within 10 minutes.
But not on that very day with 4! simultaneous highjackings. With all the clues this is remarkable to me and so the quote of an defense official "I don't think any of us envisioned an internal air threat by big aircraft.I don't know of anybody that ever thought through that" is a bad joke.