9/11 was different. People cooperated because that was protocol at the time for a plane hijacking. Nobody expected them to use the plane as a weapon with no regard to their own lives. This was an unprecedented attack.
"Before the September 11, 2001 attacks, most hijackings involved the plane landing at a certain destination, followed by the hijackers making negotiable demands. Pilots and flight attendants were trained to adopt the "Common Strategy" tactic, which was approved by the FAA. It taught crew members to comply with the hijackers' demands, get the plane to land safely and then let the security forces handle the situation. Crew members advised passengers to sit quietly in order to increase their chances of survival. They were also trained not to make any 'heroic' moves that could endanger themselves or other people. The FAA realized that the longer a hijacking persisted, the more likely it would end peacefully with the hijackers reaching their goal.[12] The September 11 attacks presented an unprecedented threat because it involved suicide hijackers who could fly an aircraft and use it to delibrately crash the airplane into buildings for the sole purpose to cause massive casualties with no warning, no demands or negotiations, and no regard for human life. The "Common Strategy" approach was not designed to handle suicide hijackings, and the hijackers were able to exploit a weakness in the civil aviation security system. Since then, the "Common Strategy" policy in the USA and the rest of the world to deal with airplane hijackings has no longer been used."
There was also a change in protocol after the Columbine High School massacre. In that attack the two were able to shoot victims while the police were outside setting up a perimeter. Now as a direct result of that attack police actively charge an active shooter, this is called Immediate Action Rapid Deployment. This is said to have saved dozens of lives in Virgina Tech alone.
"Nobody expected them to use the plane as a weapon"
Nobody ... except for Tom Clancy and every single person who read _Debt of Honor_, wherein a plane is used as a suicide weapon flown into the US capital building.
> Nobody ... except for Tom Clancy and every single person who read _Debt of Honor_, wherein a plane is used as a suicide weapon flown into the US capital building.
Which is almost how Samuel Byck planned to assassinate Richard Nixon. The difference is that Byck planned to fly into the White House. (No, they're not the same building. Many people are confused on this point.)
He utterly failed in his attempt to hijack the airliner (hint: don't attempt a hijacking while the plane is still on the ground unless you know how to get a plane airborne), however, and Byck killed himself before the police got to him.
Anyway, movie-plot threats only very rarely come to pass. There are thousands of potential threats of this nature for every attempt, and the ratio of attempts to successful attempts is probably fairly high as well. It isn't worthwhile to try to protect against these kinds of threats.
I followed the Yousef trial and only heard about the blowing up airliners over the ocean part. I've never found a reference pre-9/11 about crashing them and believe these details were filled-in only afterwards.
No doubt keeping everyone else in the dark helped keep us safer. /s
“Then the ultimate assault on the so-called ‘infidels’: a plane flown by a suicide bomber was to nose-dive and crash into the American headquarters of the CIA, creating carnage.”
In any case, you really believe that the government talking more about Bojinka would have prevented 9/11?
The only reference is the Australian Advertiser in 1995. It is followed by this:
"While this first mention may be obscure from a United States point of view, the Bojinka planes as weapons plot will be mentioned in other media outlets in the years to come."
And a claim by the CNN correspondent that "We've done stories on it..."
All without citations to back up those claims. Every other reference to this detail at historycommons and everywhere I looked 11 years ago is post-9/11.
Here's what Bush said: "Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale."
Notice the "massive" out there. They could envision 10 airliners being blown up over the Pacific, but... Condi couldn't even foresee:
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that ... they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile..."
So apprently they were as ignorant as I was?
These groups were already well known to return to old methods (Bojinka itself was inspired by a mid-air bomb planted on a Tokyo flight earlier in the 90s, planned by KSM himself). My view, if your not going to do anything to mitigate against these techniques, the least you could do is publically warn us, IMO.
A few black kids beat a few white folks, a blond disappears from a cruise ship, and it's non-stop news coverage. Maybe folks would think a little bit after hearing more about Bojinka and a congressman or the FAA would wonder about cockpit intrusion and hijack policies. At least no one would be able to say "nobody could have foreseen"
Good points I guess, I just have a hard time believing publicizing these claims more would have had much of an effect on policy. I'll just point out the irony of your username and leave it at that :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_hijacking
"Before the September 11, 2001 attacks, most hijackings involved the plane landing at a certain destination, followed by the hijackers making negotiable demands. Pilots and flight attendants were trained to adopt the "Common Strategy" tactic, which was approved by the FAA. It taught crew members to comply with the hijackers' demands, get the plane to land safely and then let the security forces handle the situation. Crew members advised passengers to sit quietly in order to increase their chances of survival. They were also trained not to make any 'heroic' moves that could endanger themselves or other people. The FAA realized that the longer a hijacking persisted, the more likely it would end peacefully with the hijackers reaching their goal.[12] The September 11 attacks presented an unprecedented threat because it involved suicide hijackers who could fly an aircraft and use it to delibrately crash the airplane into buildings for the sole purpose to cause massive casualties with no warning, no demands or negotiations, and no regard for human life. The "Common Strategy" approach was not designed to handle suicide hijackings, and the hijackers were able to exploit a weakness in the civil aviation security system. Since then, the "Common Strategy" policy in the USA and the rest of the world to deal with airplane hijackings has no longer been used."
There was also a change in protocol after the Columbine High School massacre. In that attack the two were able to shoot victims while the police were outside setting up a perimeter. Now as a direct result of that attack police actively charge an active shooter, this is called Immediate Action Rapid Deployment. This is said to have saved dozens of lives in Virgina Tech alone.