September 11, 2001, the day that changed America forever. On this day, 3,000 Americans including civilians, police officers, firefighters and paramedics were innocently murdered by the al-Qaeda terrorist. Commercial airline planes were used as missiles and flew into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in the nation's capital, and into an open field in Pennsylvania. Since America is the most technologically advanced nation in the world, as well as having the largest, strongest, and most advanced military, it is difficult to understand how these horrific acts of terrorism could have occurred on American soil. After the World Trade Center bombings in 1993 and the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Building, you would think that we would have learned from those intelligence failures and improved on them. The cause of the intelligence failures of 9/11? Communication errors? Or simply the inability to put it all together? I believe that 9/11 could have been avoided if certain actions and policies had been followed and implemented. Many people believe that there has been a lack of intelligence gathered across agencies and that the information they have has not been shared with each other. Beyond that, people believe that no actions have been taken in the departments to further strengthen counter-terrorism. None of these hypotheses turned out to be true. In 1993, a truck bomb exploded in the World Trade Center garage, killing six people. This attack is the first major attack on American soil. The investigation led the FBI to locate Omar Abdel Raham and another group planning to bomb the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the United Nations, and other sites (Reno). After the investigation made it clear that there was a connection between these... halfway through the document... a traffic came in indicating that there would be an attack on 9/11 (PBS). They didn't know the time, place or what type of attack it would be. This information wasn't even translated and released until September 12, the day after the attacks. Our government and agencies would have slowed down the reaction and felt comfortable. They spent too much time focusing on terrorism on the seas without realizing that they were here planning attacks and using our resources in our own backyard. September 11th was a big wake-up call for everyone, citizens and government. Agencies like the CIA and FBI need to let go of their egos and understand that we all have to work together and that we are all a team. The resources and tools available to agencies were too slow and relaxed. If this had not been the case, the terrorist attacks of September 11th could have been avoided.