911 . Hear me out on this . I absolutely do not believe that 911 was an inside job ! !!!. That is , I do not believe the United States government deliberately planned and executed the attacks . I do suspect however that the federal government was very well aware that something really big was in the works , at least several months before it happened . I suspect that specifically the NSA , maybe FBI and maybe also the Office of the Vice President was aware of at least the following 1 AlQaeda , at the direction of Osama bin Laden , was actively preparing to launch an unprecedented level attack , on United States soil 2 The attack would occur in at least one very significant city in the east coast 3 The attack involved the hijacking of airplanes 4 The attack would occur at some undefined time between July and October of 2001 The CIA Director George Tenet and also Richard Clarke CIA desk agent responsible for international terrorism operations and OBL specialist are on record stating they had intelligence they attempted to provide to the NSA and Condi Rice specifically that identified every point above . The intelligence was fluid the date range changed a couple times in 2001 but the rest was pretty consistent . They both have stated on the public record that they attempted on multiple occasions to bring this up to the NSA and every time they did they were stonewalled . The negatives to this theory it ' s possible the NSA legitimately did not consider any of this actionable it ' s also possible this is the CIA trying to cover its ' own ass after the fact and claim they had this information and did the best they could , but those other guys are to blame . The positives the majority of this intelligence was completely consistent , at least according to the CIA sources . Bringing it up to the NSA in 2001 could have potentially nailed down specifics , but nobody seemed interested which seems like wildly misplaced priorities to me under the best of all worlds interpretation . The NSA was already engaged in covert domestic surveillance at this point . Just a few years ago at that time the government had taken a beating in the media over the subject of the socalled clipper chip . We have leaks well after 911 and from the FBI but the reasoning doesn ' t seem exclusive to them that major changes in domestic surveillance could be unacceptable to the American public absent a Pearl Harbor type event . The PATRIOT Act was introduced to Congress pretty rapidly after 911 and passed almost unopposed , which even then was rare for Congress almost like a draft bill already existed . I am highly suspicious that certain federal entities were engaged in knowntobe illegal domestic surveillance and were waiting for a Pearl Harbor level event to introduce a bill to begin the process of normalizing this activity . Their recalcitrance in the face of CIA reports if we assume those reports are true may very well have been the consequence of some intelligence agencies deliberately sitting on their hands and not doing their utmost to stop this event . I don ' t think it ' s provable , there may be other reasons events played out like they did , but call me suspicious .