EDITORIAL: In reflecting on 9/11, we must be vigilant

They came here first. They came here again and again. And we might never know why.

But life here — indeed, life everywhere — will never be the same. And the past remains a warning, especially on this 13th anniversary of 9/11.

The Las Vegas connection to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, likely will remain a mystery forever. The al-Qaida operatives who flew hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field made multiple trips to the valley in the months and weeks before they murdered thousands of innocents — and killed themselves — in the worst act of terrorism ever committed against the United States.

Mohamed Atta, Hani Hanjour, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Samir Jarrah were all but invisible during their trips to Southern Nevada, staying in spartan accommodations, avoiding casinos and places with security cameras, and doing nothing to attract unwanted attention. Beyond records of motel stays, rental car use and an account at an Internet cafe, they left little trace of their visits and no evidence of why they were here.

The massive investigation into the attacks made no conclusions. “The trips to Vegas did not make any sense. We tried our best to figure it out,” Dale Watson, the FBI’s former assistant director for counterterrorism who led the criminal investigation into the attacks, told the Review-Journal in 2011.

But their counter-surveillance measures, such as switching motels, suggest the jihadists were working, leaving two possible scenarios: They were planning the final details of the 9/11 attacks, or they were scouting Las Vegas for potential targets.

“They could have been doing both things,” Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie said in 2011.

Not long after the attacks, Spanish authorities seized videotapes from al-Qaida associates that included footage of Las Vegas casinos, and those tapes were part of a subsequent terrorism prosecution in Detroit. In late 2003, several international flights were canceled after authorities learned al-Qaida was planning to blow up or crash a hijacked jetliner in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve as part of an attack that targeted additional cities.

Las Vegas has always been on al-Qaida’s radar. Last month, the group’s Arabian Peninsula affiliate made it official when it published a call to lone-wolf jihadists to attack the city.

Sept. 11 is a day for remembrance and reflection, and it is a day for vigilance. This country’s expansive anti-terrorism operations — military and civilian — have grown at a huge cost to our liberties and treasuries, and they have succeeded in preventing another large-scale attack on American soil. But the burden of preventing terrorism falls on everyone. The country cannot possibly afford to place police, in uniform or in plain clothes, in every public place all the time. Whether evil presents itself in the form of a suicide bomber or religious fanatics backed by a terrorist network, how much damage is done and how many lives are lost can be determined by the response of civilians, unarmed and out of uniform. The heroes of United Flight 93 taught us as much on 9/11.

Las Vegas is an incredibly safe place for visitors. Let’s pray it stays that way.