[Black Jade]

The irony of Echelon is that it is making it more difficult for the CIA and other US government agencies to claim "plausible deniability." They were really on the spot when this came out: U.S. attack: Report: Echelon engaged months in advance: "THE U.S. NATIONAL Security Agency (NSA) engaged the so-called Echelon communications monitoring network, following on warnings of possible terrorist attacks, as long as three months ago, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) newspaper reported.
Western and Middle East intelligence services had received warnings more than six months ago that terrorists were planning attacks using hijacked airplanes against 'prominent symbols of American and Israeli culture' in the United States and elsewhere, the FAZ said Wednesday, citing 'information available to this newspaper.'"

A comprehensive eavesdropping system like this exists, and we are expected to believe that the FBI & CIA had absolutely no clues that 9-11 was going to happen?

[tex-oma]

....we are expected to believe that the FBI & CIA had absolutely no clues that 9-11 was going to happen?

What?? You got a problem with that?

LOL....

[OKCSubmariner]

Another quote from the article excerpt you posted in reply #9:

"Richard Tomlinson, a former employee of the U.K. intelligence service MI6, told the FAZ that a terrorist organization large enough to pull off Tuesday's attack should have been obvious to secret services. Tomlinson spoke of an "obvious total failure" of intelligence, the paper said."

This was NOT a failure to gather and analyze intelligence IMO.

It was either a failure to communicate intelligence to and/or receive intelligence by the decision makers OR the decision makers (Bush,Blair,etc)got the information and were either incompetent (politically correct socialist thinking and protect the Saudi business deals?) or they let it happen on purpose to unite the world in a war on terrorism, a world which they did not think would go along unless there were a cataclismic event like 9/11 (Pearl Harbor/Roosevelt scenario).

[mindprism.com]

A comprehensive eavesdropping system like this exists, and we are expected to believe that the FBI & CIA had absolutely no clues that 9-11 was going to happen?

Whatever clues they fail to act on, are, by retroactive definition, not serious enough, non-specific, or "lacked sufficient detail to enable further investigation".

It's a lot like the Red Queen: "When I use a word, it means what I want it to mean, no more, no less"