Could 9/11 Have Been 10/2?

The operation carried out by by al-Qaeda to attack the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon and the Capitol in Washington with hijacked airplanes could have turned out very differently if the hijackers had planned to carry out the attacks on this date in 2001 - October 2, which might have been their originally chosen date.  Assuming this is true, if the terrorist commandos had stuck with this date, the plot might have been discovered in time once the FBI got suspicious, which might even have led October 2 to become a day of celebrating a foiled terrorist plot, like November 5 in the U.K.

Here is how al-Qaeda supposedly chose the date for their attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. The decision was made to hijack the four planes and crash them into their intended targets on a Tuesday, because Tuesdays had the most on-time airline departures and the least number of airline passengers. The former point was essential to coordinating the attacks and timing them with the start of the work day, while the latter point was said to be important to al-Qaeda because they believed that a small number of passengers would be easy to overcome in hijacking the planes - and easy to keep in line once the planes were commandeered. The period between Labor Day and Thanksgiving was seen to be a particularly slow period for the airline industry - again, benefiting the hijackers. The plotters, according to this narrative,  thus chose Tuesday, October 2, 2001 as the date on which to carry out the attack.  This choice would have been made some time in August 2001.

When Zacarias Moussaoui, an al-Qaeda commando, was arrested in Minnesota on August 16 in his attempt to take flying lessons to prepare for the attacks, the FBI started an investigation of his intentions. At this point, the story goes, hijack ringleader Mohamed Atta realized that an earlier date had to be chosen quickly before the plot was discovered. So the date of the attack was moved up to September 11, 2001 - the Tuesday of the first full work week after the Labor Day holiday. Tuesday, September 4 apparently would see more airline travel than usual owing to the fact the it was the day after Labor Day and thus the start of the work week, and so would have been ruled out.

The PBS series "Frontline" reported that the hijackers chose a Tuesday for the reasons given above.  I don't remember where I heard that October 2 was the original attack date, and I can't find anything to corroborate this information, so, to be honest, I don't know how accurate it is.  But suppose that October 2 was the intended attack date and the FBI found out about it before Atta had a chance to plan around another date. Suppose the hijackers had all been caught. History would have been quite different, and October 2 would be a day of celebration.

Sobering . . .