WTF Is It Now?!?

"I guess nothing short of a copy of Mohamed Atta's Travelocity itinerary would have stirred the F.B.I. from its stupor. It couldn't call a few flight schools? I always thought F.B.I. agents were paid to lose sleep over imprecise but alarming details and lucky hunches. Even a month later, when they got Moussaoui, who told flight instructors he didn't need to know how to land, they didn't connect those darned dots.

"The F.B.I. has known for years that American flight schools were breeding grounds for Al Qaeda pilot-wannabes. And the idea of planes as weapons was nothing new. In 1994, an American crashed his Cessna 150 at the White House — and Islamic militants were thwarted trying to slam a plane into the Eiffel Tower." - - - Maureen Dowd in the NY Times