David Hagberg (hagflan@aol.com) the author of numerous fast-paced international thrillers, appeared on Monday night's program. Eerily, he described events similar to 9/11 in Joshua's Hammer(1), which he wrote in 1998 and featured Ossama bin Laden as a character. "All the signs were there," Hagberg said. Instead of waging war, he suggested one effective way to reduce terrorism would be for the US to launch a marketing campaign to convince the Islamic world that Americans are a friendly people.

"The first thing that passed into my mind was sabotage," said Hagberg when asked about the Columbia Shuttle disaster. "I could think of a thousand ways it could happen," but one way he delineated was via a plastic explosive hidden in the landing gear door that would be triggered by a pressure switch.

Hagberg speculated that within 25 years, humans at birth will have a small interface chip placed behind the ear. "It will be hard wired and the wires will grow biologically into the circuitry of your brain," he said. Thereafter it would allow people to connect up with a database similar to the Internet where they could access information.

1. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0812544390/ctoc