What is wrong with you beltway cheerleaders? Who gives a damn which party knew? The fact of the matter is that the President and everyone else new about this real threat.
The pilots should have been armed or at least given access to weapons in the cockpits, sky marshals should have been put on as many GD flights as possible IMMEDIATELY!
What the hell are we paying billions to the FBI, CIA, NSA, AFT, the President and the rest of DC for?
This is an absolute outrage and f-ing heads ought to roll!
I question whether the Congress would have approved any such measure quickly enough to deploy them before the attacks occurred.
The standard operating procedure for hijackings was to not jeopardize the passengers' safety. If they declared that they had a bomb, there may have been little resistance from the sky marshall. I don't know if a sky marshall would have acted to force a plane into the ground to avoid hitting a populated area.
Can you point to another group of coordinated hijackings occurring in the same day? We got caught with our pants down. The final plane's hijack squad made the mistake of permitting the passengers to talk with family on the ground; it gave away their element of surprise that the plane wasn't going to land. I wouldn't count on them making those same allowances again (if they ever even attempted a plane attack again).
I posted earlier that I recall a denied request by the FBI to tap a suspected terrorist's lines. That terrorist had information regarding the suicide attack on his computer (located after he was dead or missing) and as someone else pointed out, even Bin Laden has stated that the hijackers weren't fully informed of the plans.
A forceful response with no kid gloves (can the "Islam is a religion of peace" nonsense and assess our enemy realistically) would go a long ways to ending future surprises.
The Japanese and Germans don't pose any threats to us today.