Critical to the success of the 9/11 attacks was the element of surprise, which was emphasized by key White House and Pentagon officials. [1]

The element of surprise, as the 9/11 Commission pointed out, rested on two factors:

• Hijacked planes were used as weapons – a departure from predictable, traditional hijackings; [2]
• The attacks originated, unpredictably, from within the country, rather than from outside. [3]

The military had trained for the possibility of hijacked planes used as weapons, including hijacked planes originating within the country. Professor John Arquilla, a Special Operations expert at the Naval Postgraduate School, stated in 2002 that “the idea of such an attack [using hijacked airliners for suicide attacks against major buildings] was well known, had been wargamed as a possibility in exercises before Sept. 11, 2001, and previous airline attacks had been attempted.” [4]

Multiple training drills using planes as weapons had taken place before September 11, 2001:

• In October 2000, a military exercise had created a scenario of a simulated passenger plane crashing into the Pentagon. The exercise was coordinated by the Defense Protective Services Police and the Pentagon’s Command Emergency Response Team. [5]
• US Medicine reported that two health clinics housed within the Pentagon trained for a hijacked airplane to hit the Pentagon in May 2001. “Though the Department of Defense had no capability in place to protect the Pentagon from an ersatz guided missile in the form of a hijacked 757 airliner, DoD medical personnel trained for exactly that scenario in May.” [6]
• The Department of Transportation in Washington held an exercise on August 31, 2001, which Ellen Engleman, the administrator of the department’s Research and Special Projects Administration, described thus:

  “Ironically, fortuitously, take your choice, 12 days prior to the incident on September 11th, we were going through a tabletop exercise. It was actually much more than a tabletop … in preparation for the Olympic … which was a full intermodal exercise … Part of the scenario, interestingly enough, involved a potentially highjacked plane and someone calling on a cell phone, among other aspects of the scenario that were very strange when twelve days later, as you know, we had the actual event.” [7]

• One such operation involved planes originating from inside the United States. According to USA Today:

  “In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating … hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties … .[O]ne operation, planned in July 2001 and conducted later, involved planes from airports in Utah and Washington state that were hijacked.” [8]

• The operation involving multiple hijacking drills using planes from inside the United States was Amalgam Virgo 2002, planned for 1500 people in July 2001 and scheduled for operation in June 2002. [9]

Any new investigation should ask why the highest responsible officials denied that such preparation had preceded the attacks on 9/11, and why, given that preparation, no effective actions were taken to stop the hijacked planes from reaching their targets.