I actually thought I'd said the FBI and the CIA should have known: but anyway, even if they did know (the intercepted phone calls suggest they did know something big was going to happen), that doesn't implicate the head of the administration.

To answer your questions:

1. who has the most to benefit from the attacks? Certainly at the time al Qaeda thought they did, in an assessment that this would force the US to bow to pressure and remove US bases from Saudi soil. I think this was misguided: even if planes kept falling into buildings, I think that the administration would not have bowed to terrorism, or been perceived as doing so. In an interview with GQ magazine, of all things, when he was in Sudan, bin Laden demonstrated that he was very out of touch with political reality in the US - he thought he might be able to rely upon the former Confederate states to rise up against their Yankee oppressors. To be fair, I doubt the average US citizen knows whether Yeman or Morocco is in the Maghreb, but still, the US has made it clear for a long time that it doesn't do public deals with terrorists.

Oil companies did not overall benefit from the attacks. I would like to see a comparison of their shares overall, before and after the attacks. I'd think they have taken a fall like the rest of the global market. One oil company now can build a pipeline through Afghanistan. That is the sole benefit I can see.

2. Demonstrably, zealots with cardboard cutters, basic flight skills, and mobile phones. What else do you need?

I kind of think you're missing the big picture. Oil is important. Lots of people makes lots of money out of it. But its not as important to oil men as Mecca and Medina are to fundamentalist suicidal Muslims.

We are in Dar al Harb, the area of the infidels. Mecca and Medina are the centre of Dar al Islam, the lands of the faithful. And within those lands are Christian soldiers, in large numbers, from the United States. Allah help us, some of them are even women, in uniforms, and worse, Jews.

In Saudi Arabia, its not as if you can hold a street rally to protest the presence of US troops (and I firmly believe that if you could, this would not have happened, because people could express their opposition and release their anger in non-violent ways).

So how do you show your strong condemnation of crusader occupation of the heart of the Dar al Islam? You blow up embassies, the USS Cole, the WTC.

To me, this makes a lot more sense than oilmen risking their lives and comfortable lifestyles if they were caught, and willing to end the lives of up to 20,000 people, for a pipeline.