What We Know Now

By Daniel Eisenberg

As horrifying and deadly as it was, Sept. 11 apparently just might have been even worse. That was only one of the revelations about both the plot and the U.S. response to it that the independent commission investigating the attacks made public last week. Some of the information released by the commission had already been reported--or at least hinted at--in books and memoirs published since the attacks, but its extensive review of classified materials--including unprecedented access to interrogations of high-level al-Qaeda detainees--gives its findings greater sweep and credibility. So what new details have we learned? The most eye-opening nuggets can be divided into three main categories:

THE ORIGINAL PLOT WAS BIGGER AND BOLDER

When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed first floated the plan to Osama bin Laden in 1996, it proposed the hijacking of 10, not four, planes, on both the East and West coasts. In addition to the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and the Capitol or White House, possible targets included CIA and FBI headquarters, unidentified nuclear-power plants and the tallest buildings in California and Washington State. Mohammed hoped to pilot the 10th plane himself and land it after killing all the adult male passengers. He then planned to make a fiery, anti-American speech on the tarmac and release all the women and children.

Mohammed and a second captured al-Qaeda leader, Ramzi Binalshibh, told interrogators different stories about the role of Zacarias Moussaoui, a possible 20th hijacker, according to the commission. Mohammed said Moussaoui was supposed to participate in a second wave of attacks, on the West Coast, after Sept. 11, while Binalshibh believed that Moussaoui was to be part of the primary plot. There are also indications that Moussaoui was viewed as a possible replacement for Ziad Jarrah, the eventual pilot of United Airlines Flight 93, whom al-Qaeda officials feared might drop out. The operation ultimately cost only $400,000 to $500,000.

BIN LADEN WAS MORE INVOLVED

Bin Laden, it turns out, was more of a micromanager than he has often been portrayed as. The commission says bin Laden personally gave Mohammed the go-ahead to begin laying the groundwork for the attack at a meeting in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in early 1999. Over the following 12 to 18 months, bin Laden chose or accepted oaths from all 19 of the eventual hijackers and tapped Mohammed Atta to be the mission's leader. Throughout the planning stage, bin Laden was the one who scaled back the more ambitious proposals. The key sources of the new information are Mohammed and Binalshibh. Both were in a position to have extensive knowledge of the plot, but some details they gave U.S. interrogators remain largely uncorroborated.

Bin Laden, the detainees claimed, did not always get his way. As early as mid-2000, he was so incensed by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that he told Mohammed to go ahead with the mission right away. Twice more in 2001, bin Laden pushed in vain for the operation to start. In the end, he did assert ultimate authority in ordering the attacks, over the opposition of senior al-Qaeda officials and Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who were worried that a direct attack on the U.S. would provoke a war with the U.S. or trouble with Pakistan.

The commission dispels the idea that bin Laden is worth as much as $300 million. Though he did collect $1 million a year in inheritance until he was cut off in 1994, he relied on fund raising to support al-Qaeda's $30 million annual budget. None of that money apparently came from the Saudi government or the wife of its ambassador to Washington, as has been previously alleged.

U.S. COMMAND AND CONTROL BROKE DOWN

From almost the moment the first jet slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, the government's reaction to the day's events was so confused that it effectively eliminated any chance to fend off the subsequent attacks. The Federal Aviation Administration had difficulty tracking and alerting the military to the hijackings. Top brass did not learn about United Airlines Flight 175, or American Airlines Flight 77--which the FAA lost track of for 36 minutes as it turned toward the Pentagon--until around the time the planes crashed. They didn't learn about United Airlines Flight 93 until after it went down in Pennsylvania.

By the time the military received Vice President Dick Cheney's authorization to shoot down any hostile aircraft, at 10:31 a.m., the last of the hijacked planes had already crashed. The commission report says Cheney did first get the President's go-ahead over the phone but commissioners told TIME that formal documentation for that order is incomplete. However it came about, the commission also reveals that the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) never actually relayed Cheney's command to its pilots in the air, some of whom were seeking a jet, American Airlines Flight 11, that had earlier crashed into the World Trade Center. So pronounced was the state of confusion that Cheney told Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during a conference call at 10:39 a.m. that he believed the U.S. had "already taken a couple of aircraft out."

The 9/11 commission now faces its toughest job--coming up, in the middle of an election year, with a unanimous, bipartisan final report. One of the most contentious issues is expected to be the recommendation of how best to restructure the nation's domestic intelligence gathering. But all the members say they share the same goal--to make sure the U.S. is never again taken so much by surprise.

--Reported by Timothy J. Burger/Washington

With reporting by Timothy J. Burger/Washington