Old WND story from 2002 - never been able to ignore this coincidence, since I first saw the story:

The Federal Aviation Administration rescinded a rule allowing commercial airline pilots to be armed the same month it received a classified briefing that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network may be planning hijackings of U.S. airliners.

As WorldNetDaily reported Thursday, an FAA spokesman confirmed that its armed-pilot rule, which was adopted in 1961 in response to the Cuban missile crisis, was repealed in July 2001 – just two months before the Sept. 11 attacks – because in 40 years' time, not a single U.S. airline took advantage of it.