The Global Shift on 9/11 One of the reasons that many government officials were slow to act in response to the hijackings that began the terror attacks of 9/11 was that they expected the hijackers to follow a set pattern. Up until that moment in time, hijackers, at least those who had taken American hostages on American planes, had had some sort of political bargaining in mind. Thus, they would demand political asylum in Cuba the release of political prisoners being held in American prisons, a ransom to be paid to some foreign political party, or airtime during which they could broadcast their grievances against the United States. What American officials did not realize was that while they were looking in one direction, the world had moved in another. They were no longer facing hijackers with an agenda based on political bargaining but terrorists who had an entirely different plan in mind.