Could 9/11 have been prevented? In four crucial cases, mishandled intelligence, bureaucratic tangles and legal hurdles blinded the CIA and the FBI to clues right in front of them. Individually, none of these was a smoking gun. But combined they were a four-alarm fire. --By Mitch Frank
1 JAN. 7, 1995 -- OPERATION BOJINKA
THE CLUE
In Manila, Philippine police bust a cadre of al-Qaeda members plotting to blow up 12 airplanes, a scheme they called Operation Bojinka (Serbo-Croatian for explosion). On a test run, the co-conspirators had planted a small bomb on a Philippine Airlines flight that killed one passenger....