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These guys entered under one visa, then applied for a change of status. All within reasonable standards for the system. People sometimes change their mind, or situations arise that requires a change on plans. The INS provides for procedures to address such things, and these people used those procedures to their advantage.

Is that indicative of a broken system? Not so much as it is indicative of this country's heritage of freedom.

It was much simpler and less likely to attract unwanted scrutiny for the terrorists to exist within our laws, and guarantee themselves the ability to go about their deed, than to risk the possibility of detention by the INS.

The pure fact of the matter is that the INS had no reasong to think that these guys were any more dangerous than any other foreign visitor to the US prior to 9/11.

Wait, now. You said that they would have done this from Canada if not from the US. Why didn't they? Because they could do it from here, including going to flight school. That shows that we have a serious immigration problem when Mohammed Atta strolls through INS and Customs despite the fact that he's on a terrorist watchlist. La Migra are the ones who watch people coming into the country, so an immigration problem becomes a national security failure. No immigration problem? Not much of one. We just have a few million people who don't belong here, voting in our elections, and every now and then killing a few thousand of us at a pop. Oh, and we can't deport them because some Senator has managed to get passed some cockamamie laws which entirely nullify all the regulations concerning immigration by making deportation a matter for civil courts. If we could deport them, we don't know where to find most of the ones who came here legally and local LE is told to ignore the ones they see every day who are obviously illegals. What does it take to get you to see that something's wrong, Luis? I'm not a bright guy like you and I can see that something just ain't working like it's supposed to.