As the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaches each year, a profound sense of disbelief persists regarding how the United States could have been caught so unprepared for Osama bin Laden’s audacious plan to hijack commercial airliners and use them as weapons against iconic American targets. Despite years of intelligence gathering on al-Qaeda and its affiliates, the catastrophic events unfolded with devastating efficiency, claiming nearly 3,000 lives and reshaping global security. This lingering incredulity is amplified by earlier plots that bore striking similarities to 9/11, suggesting that warning signs were present but not fully heeded or connected in time. The roots of this vulnerability trace back to the mid-1990s, when terrorist networks were already experimenting with aviation-based attacks, yet systemic failures in intelligence sharing and analysis allowed threats to evolve unchecked.

In 1995, the discovery of the Bojinka plot in the Philippines exposed a chilling blueprint for mass-casualty terrorism that foreshadowed the horrors of 9/11. Orchestrated by Ramzi Yousef—the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing—and his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the multi-phase scheme aimed to detonate bombs aboard 11 U.S.-bound airliners over the Pacific Ocean, assassinate Pope John Paul II during his visit to Manila, and even crash a hijacked plane into CIA headquarters or other U.S. landmarks. The plot was thwarted by chance when a fire in the conspirators’ apartment led Philippine authorities to uncover laptops and chemicals detailing the operation, prompting Yousef’s eventual capture in Pakistan by Pakistani intelligence and his handover to U.S. officials—not his death, as some misconceptions suggest. This revelation provided the CIA and FBI with critical insights into al-Qaeda’s ambitions, including the use of aircraft as bombs, yet it did not fully galvanize preventive measures against future iterations.

The connection between the Bojinka plot and 9/11 becomes even more poignant when considering Osama bin Laden’s role in fostering the al-Qaeda network that linked these efforts. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a key Bojinka architect, later rose as bin Laden’s operational chief and refined the airplane hijacking concept into the 9/11 attacks, proposing it directly to bin Laden in 1996. Despite intelligence awareness of these figures and their ties—evident from Yousef’s arrest and interrogations—the U.S. failed to disrupt the evolving threat comprehensively, hampered by interagency rivalries and overlooked dots. On this anniversary, reflecting on Bojinka underscores how prior knowledge of bin Laden’s orbit and aviation terrorism could have prompted stronger defenses, making the 2001 unpreparedness a haunting reminder of missed opportunities in the fight against extremism.