Findings of the 9-11 Commission distressed many in the government and law enforcement agencies this week, with media attention quickly turning to allegations more could have been done to prevent the tragedies. Some were alarmed at revelations the CIA had information about Al-Qaeda’s plan to use airplanes as weapons as early as 1995. More troubling, the twenty-first century disaster had been predicted as far back as the sixteenth century.

The question has been raised amidst the report: Could intelligence from Nostradamus have prevented 9-11?

Some, and not just stoners, are saying yes. Michel Nostradamus first released his information on the disasters in the sixteenth century, in his usual reporting style of quatrains and vague language. Still, little confusion could come from the prophetic announcement that “The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude, / Fire approaches the great new city / Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up / When they want to have verification from the Normans.” The Commission interviewed several experts on the sixteenth century seer and what exactly the government knew at the time of the prophecy.

“I’m extremely dismayed,” said some senator on the panel, “to think we had this information nearly five hundred years ago and still couldn’t respond appropriately.”

Interviewed by the Commission was Nostradamus expert Professor Paul Fischer, from New York University’s Humanities Department. In fact, Fischer is regarded by some not so much an expert on Nostradamus as one of the few people who knew anything about Nostradamus’ work and had Sunday off to testify.

“There are numerous reasons why the ‘Nostradamus intelligence’ proved insufficient to react to the Al-Qaeda problem,” said Fischer, before the Commission. “For one, the language of the prophecy is non-specific and did not really offer a date the attacks would happen. Secondly, a probable one-hundred year lapse came between the announcement of the prophecy and its translation into English, and even then there is no exact record for when it came to the attention of anyone in America. And thirdly, the United States would not come into existence as a government for another hundred years after that, and at the time did not have a bureau of intelligence. But if this Commission is determined to find someone of the era to blame, let’s just say King of England Charles II for the sake of getting this whole thing done with.”

The Commission then proposed Charles II be called upon to publicly testify to what he knew about terrorism during his administration, or reign, and faced minor embarrassment when a Senate page informed them the Merry Monarch has been deceased since 1685.

Speaking on a condition of detailed notoriety, Sen. Bill Willey expressed dismay at the Commission’s exoneration of Charles II and pre-revolutionary intelligence groups.

“Frankly, I’m not convinced all was done to prevent the horrors of September eleven,” said Sen. Willey, on Larry King Live. “The world around us changed in ways we never could have imagined on that dark day. It seems inconceivable someone could not have seen it coming and taken the Al-Qaeda threat seriously.”