Norad had run drills for several years of planes being used as weapons against the World Trade Center and other U.S. high-profile buildings, and "numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft". In other words, drills using REAL AIRCRAFT simulating terrorist attacks crashing jets into buildings, including the twin towers, were run. See also official military website showing 2000 military drill, using miniatures, involving a plane crashing into the Pentagon.

Indeed, a former Los Angeles police department investigator, whose newsletter is read by 45 members of congress, both the house and senate intelligence committees, and professors at more than 40 universities around the world, claims that he obtained an on-the-record confirmation from NORAD that ON 9/11, NORAD and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were conducting a joint, live-fly, hijack exercise which involved government-operated aircraft POSING AS HIJACKED AIRLINERS.

On September 11th, the government also happened to be running a simulation of a plane crashing into a building.

In addition, a December 9, 2001 Toronto Star article reprinted here, stated that "Operation Northern Vigilance is called off. Any simulated information, what's known as an 'inject,' is purged from the screens". This indicates that there were false radar blips inserted onto air traffic controllers' screens as part of the war game exercises.

Moreover, there are indications that some of the major war games previously scheduled for October 2001 were MOVED UP to September 11th by persons unknown (first paragraph).

Interestingly, Vice President Cheney was apparently in charge of ALL of the war games and coordinated the government's "response" to the attacks. See this CNN article; and this previously-cited essay.

And while the government has consistently stated that it did not know where the aircraft were before they struck, this short video clip of the Secretary of Transportation's testimony before the 9/11 Commission shows that Cheney monitored flight 77 for many miles as it approached the Pentagon. How could one of the most heavily-defended buildings in the world have been succesfully attacked, when the Vice President of the United States, in charge of counter-terrorism on 9/11, watched it approach from many miles away?

Additionally, this diagram shows that the hijacked planes flew over numerous military bases on 9/11 before crashing. See also this essay about the war games; this essay regarding the stand down of the military; and see this war game proposal created before 9/11 revolving around Bin Laden and including "live-fly exercises" involving real planes, later confirmed by this official Department of Defense website.

Which scenario is more likely from a strictly logistical perspective:

(1) An outsider sitting in a cave defeating the air defense system of the sole military superpower; or

(2) Someone like Cheney -- who on 9/11 apparently had full control over all defense, war game and counter-terrorism powers -- rigging and gaming the system?

Remember that for the attacks to have succeeded, it was necessary that actions be taken in the middle of the war games and the actual attacks which would thwart the normal military response. For example, Cheney watched flight 77 approach the Pentagon from many miles out, but instructed the military to do nothing (as shown in the testimony of the Secretary of Transportation, linked above). Could Bin Laden have done that?

Fighter jets were also sent far off-course over the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the attacks (testimony of Senator Mark Dayton), so as to neutralize their ability to intercept the hijacked airliners. Could Osama Bin Laden and his sent-from-the-cave band of followers have exercised this degree of control over the military? Obviously not.

And air traffic controllers claim they were still tracking what they thought were hijacked planes long after all 4 of the real planes had crashed. This implies that false radar blips remained on their screens after all 4 planes went down, long after the military claims they purged the phantom war-game-related radar signals. Could Bin Laden have interfered with the full purging of false radar blips inserted as part of the war games? In other words, could Bin Laden have overriden the purging process so that some false blips remained and confused air traffic controllers? The answer is clear.

Therefore, it is statistically much more likely that Cheney and/or other high-level U.S. government and military officials pulled the 9/11 trigger than that Bin Laden did it. At the very least, they took affirmative steps to guarantee that the hijackers' attacks succeeded.