Where Was U.S. Intelligence? Haberly, formerly stationed on the East German border to track and translate Russian and East German communications, said many signs foretold the devastation at the World Trade Center on Tuesday.

"You can even look at some of the things said at the (World Conference Against Racism) last week in Durban, to point out that we no longer should be focused on Cold War enemies and instead should be focused on those who are most antagonistic towards the United States, and that is the Middle East," Haberly said.

Retired General Wesley Clark, former supreme NATO commander, told CNN that the attacks were not exactly out of the blue.

"We've known for some time that some group has been planning this," he said, adding that "obviously, we didn't do enough" to prepare for such an attack.

"It takes an incredibly diverse, skilled and robust organization with a lot of money to track these types of threats," said Don Ulsch, of the Ulsch Group, a security consultancy organization in Lancaster, Massachusetts.