The loss of more than 3,000 people to al-Qaeda terrorism on September 11, 2001, brought to many Americans the sudden recognition that their country was no longer leading a charmed life. But a number of the nation's security experts had seen it coming. In 1999, for example, a commission led by Senators Gary Hart and Warren B. Rudman examined U.S. security policies and, in a report published two years before the al-Qaeda attack, concluded, "There will...be a greater probability of [catastrophic terrorism] in the next millennium....Future terrorists will probably be even less hierarchically organized, and yet better networked, than they are today. Their diffuse nature will make them more anonymous, yet their ability to coordinate mass effects on a global basis will increase....The United States should assume that it will be a target of terrorist attacks against its homeland using weapons of mass destruction. The United States will be vulnerable to such strikes."

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