Nothing, Farmer indicates, could be further from the truth: President George W. Bush and other officials were mostly irrelevant during the hijackings; instead, it was the ground-level commanders who made operational decisions in an ad hoc fashion.
The White House had long hoped to avoid just such a discussion of Mr. Bush's actions before the hijackings, fearing it would draw attention to the first months of his presidency rather than the period after Sept. 11 when he took military action against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Today, Mr. Mueller acknowledged repeatedly that the F.B.I. had failed to perceive warning signs that might have thwarted the hijackings, saying it was an analytical failure that would be fixed by hiring hundreds of new analysts, linguists and information technology experts.
In a hijacking situation, it is very easy to assign blame and responsibility.
Stansted has been used previously for resolving hijackings, partly because it is easy to isolate planes.
I just wish Wright had given us something, even a chapter, on the hijackings themselves; as it is, he takes us right up to the moment, and then straight to the burning towers.
Regarding the Sept. 11 attacks, the document said the hijackings showed "how it is possible to carry out highly destructive attacks in enemy territory, with destabilizing effects, without the use of technologically advanced weapons".
Before the hijackings on Sept. 11, it had hoped to issue those rules this month.
Police attempting to negotiate with him turned down an offer of an elite military unit trained by US special forces to handle hijackings and hostage situations, it has emerged.
Another had tried on Tuesday while wearing an American Airlines crew uniform to board a flight to Los Angeles around the time of the hijackings, and became infuriated when it was canceled because of the attacks at the World Trade Center.
