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This strong strategic warning, however, was accompanied by a failure to learn clues about the specifics of the attack on the U.S. homeland, which led to a devastating failure of tactical warning. If policy makers listened to intelligence, they would know al Qaeda was coming, but they would not know when, where, or how.
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Sounds like exactly what happened.
I met a high-level intelligence guy a couple years ago who had retired down here from Arlington and became a client of mine briefly. We started talking about that day and how it happened. He was pretty clear that those in the loop at that time were concerned, and had been for a while, that airplanes were definately going to be a delivery system for something. Without getting specific he sort of hinted at a bio-terror possibility but was also very adamant that no one believed/thought the planes themselves would be the weapons. At least not big planes full of fuel which essentially became massive bombs.
Security for getting something deadly on an airliner was actually fairly strong according to him, security for allowing the planes themselves to become deadly simply wasn't a part of things. They had focused a lot on keeping small scale nukes/bio weapons out of the wrong hands, and certainly out of the country. (my interpretation of what he said) it was pretty apparent though that he, and i assume his colleagues, were totally taken by surprise as to how the attacks were carried out. They knew something was going to be attempted, but nothing like what happened.