Reply #42: This is the third time I've changed my mind about this

[Kevin Fenton]

and I'm sure I'm getting closer every time (on this issue, I'm not so sure about, for example, how come the hijackers weren't caught and I constantly flip-flop on whether Hanjour was on American 77, so I can't be getting any closer there either), although whether I'm actually there yet is another question. So this is my best guess - I find that when writing I (I guess other people do to) sometimes leave out some nuances that would better reflect my real position. However, I am fairly confident I'm barking up the right tree.

What I mean by the towers being a liability is that they were indefensible - there was no guarantee another suicide bomber would come along and get the bombing right this time. There was no policy, no measure, no set of measures that could definitively prevent a bomber from setting off another bomb in the towers (except banning vehicles from approaching the towers, which would have been somewhat problematic). A successful repeat would have had catastrophic results - if Yousef had been successful, it would have been a much, much bigger event than 9/11, because of the far higher casulties (even if only the North Tower fell) and the far greater loss of data (which wasn't backed up off-site in 1993). 9/11 was probably the second biggest event of my life (I mean world event, after the end of the cold war - not losing my virginity), can you imagine a much bigger event than 9/11? I have great difficulty doing so. The powers-that-be must have been aware of the possibility of a repeat and they must have done something about it. I can't see anything else, so this pushes me in the direction of explosives planted after the 1993 bombing and I see confirmation for this position in the obvious nature of the fall, the problems with the elevator company, the "foreplay" explosions and the various other funny goings-on on 9/11.