Questions arise on US authorities role in 9/11 attacks amid tragic anniversary

As the United States commemorates the victims of the New York terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, many details on the why and how of this horrific day still remain unclear even 22 years later.

According to the US Newsweek, a majority of Americans still have questions as to what exactly happened on that fateful day, on the perpetrators and the motives that led to it. It also recalls, that although a governmental commission was set up following the attacks that cost over 3,000 lives to examine what happened and which procedures failed to give way to such an event, namely the hijacking of commercial passenger planes, there have been no individual people held accountable from the then-US administration. Instead, the US military set off to the Middle East, invading Afghanistan and Iraq to find and punish the, as identified by them, sole perpetrators responsible for the attack. This military operation would eventually become America's longest war, destined to continue for over 20 years

"To examine U.S. policy in the Middle East that might have fueled the attacks became un-American. To suggest that Saudi Arabia, in promoting fundamentalist Islam and in supporting bin Laden, might have been partially responsible for 9/11, was a geopolitical no-no", the article clarifies.

It also points to the fact, that US intelligence agencies were repeatedly made aware of preparations for such an attack being carried out. "Though many, including many in the news media, questioned whether there was 'proof' that a man in a cave could be behind such a diabolical plot, once the airline passenger manifests became available, the intelligence agencies were able to see the abundance of information that they already possessed but never analyzed properly—two men had entered the United States in January 2000 and moved to San Diego and then found their way onto the flight that hit the Pentagon; four hijacker pilots attended various flight schools throughout America and had been awarded pilot's licenses by the Federal Aviation Administration; tens of thousands of dollars had moved from the Middle East; three of the four pilots were connected to a Hamburg cell known to German intelligence, Afghanistan was abuzz with chatter and terrorists were on the move expecting retaliation for something".

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) failed to follow up on an "abundance" of signs and warnings of such an attack. The administration of then-President Bush was not paying sufficient attention tot his matter, and the combination of those two factors would eventually make the execution of such a complex crime possible.

The article recalls, that "as early as 1995, when a plot was foiled in the Philippines, the CIA knew of plans to use airplanes in an attack. And though an August 6th President's Daily Brief [PDB] became infamous as the warning that was ignored, an item in the December 4, 1998 PDB titled 'Bin Laden preparing to hijack US aircraft and other attacks' said that the Al-Qaeda leader might 'implement plans to hijack US aircraft... and that members of the operational team had evaded security checks during a recent trial run at an unidentified New York airport' ".