Unpolished agents hid in plain sight

Orange County Register ^ | September 23, 2001 | Tim Golden, Michael Moss, Jim Yardley (New York Times)

[WillaJohns]

After 11 days of intensive investigation, a collective portrait has begun to emerge of the men who guided three planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed a fourth in a field in Pennsylvania.

It is sketchy and incomplete, but its disparate pieces show a group of seemingly well-educated young men who slipped into the United States and settled into bland suburban lives while they gained just enough training as pilots to take control of a passenger jet in midair.

[Slyfox]

While U.S. officials have blamed Osama bin Laden for the attacks, they are still struggling to connect him directly to the plot.

Why struggle? Charles Manson is sitting in prison today. It can be done.

[IncPen]

The fruits of a tolerant society...

[FITZ]

Interesting article. It amazes me how they did their recruiting, they must have to brainwash them pretty good first with the religion before they pop the big question to do a suicide mission. It's like they were all tapped into something very diabolical and it's all they existed on.

[WillaJohns]

It's like they were all tapped into something very diabolical and it's all they existed on.

I think what you've mentioned is what is so shocking to all of us, even beyond the huge loss of innocent citizens--the insanity of the suicidal terrorists. One suicidal murdering terrorist you can understand--he's a nut. But three and four on each plane, all suicidal mass murderers, it is just incomprehensible.

And the fact that there are probably hundreds more like them, living in our country, perhaps our neighbors, perhaps their children go to the same schools our children go to........ it just doesn't compute. It's irrational in what used to be a rational world.