Shoestring911

Did Training Exercises Prevent Andrews Air Force Base From Responding to the 9/11 Attacks?

2009-10-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

Why did airplanes fly around for an hour and a half without
interceptors being scrambled from Andrews [Air
Force Base] ... right next to the capital?

- Paul Hellyer, Canadian minister of national defense, 1963-1967

Many aircraft at a military base just outside Washington, DC, were taking part in training exercises around the time the terrorist attacks occurred on September 11, 2001, it has been revealed. But whether these exercises impaired the ability of the various units at the base to effectively respond to the attacks has never been properly investigated.

On September 11, FAA air traffic controller James Ampey was on duty in the control tower at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, near the District of Columbia border. He later told the 9/11 Commission that there was "an unusually high number of aircraft taking off and landing at Andrews that morning, because previously scheduled military exercises were under way." Ampey apparently did not tell the Commission what specific exercises these were, or the time period during which the aircraft were "taking off and landing" at the base. [1] However, other publicly available information offers minor clues about these exercises.

'GLOBAL GUARDIAN' EXERCISE
Journalist and author Dan Verton has described that, around the time of the Pentagon attack on 9/11 (9:37 a.m.), "civilian and military officials were boarding a militarized version of a Boeing 747, known as the E-4B National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC), at an airfield outside of the nation's capital. They were preparing to conduct a previously scheduled Defense Department exercise." [2] The airfield Verton referred to could well have been Andrews Air Force Base, as this is located only 10 miles from Washington. [3] Indeed, according to Miles Kara, who was a professional staff member of the 9/11 Commission, primary source information reveals that an E-4B took off from Andrews that morning, and was airborne at 9:27 a.m. [4] The exercise Verton referred to was likely "Global Guardian," which was "in full swing" when the attacks began, and for which three E-4Bs were launched. Global Guardian was an annual exercise run by the U.S. Strategic Command, to test its ability to fight a nuclear war. [5] Whether other aircraft taking off or landing at Andrews were also participating in Global Guardian is unknown.

NORAD EXERCISE ON 9/11
Another major exercise taking place on September 11 was "Vigilant Guardian." It seems less likely, however, that aircraft at Andrews would have participated in this.

The annual Vigilant Guardian exercise was being conducted by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), including its Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS). [6] Vigilant Guardian has been described as "an air defense exercise simulating an attack on the United States," and was scheduled to include a simulated hijacking during the morning of September 11. [7] However, the DC Air National Guard (DCANG), which is based at Andrews, was not part of the NORAD air defense force. [8] Furthermore, members of the DCANG had just returned from a major training exercise in Nevada. With only a few pilots available, 9/11 was reportedly a "light flying day" for the unit, which would indicate that it would not have participated in Vigilant Guardian or any other major exercises that morning. [9] And since Andrews was not one of NORAD's seven "alert" sites around the U.S., it seems unlikely that any of the other military organizations there would have been involved in a NORAD exercise. [10]

NUMEROUS ORGANIZATIONS AT ANDREWS
While only limited information is available indicating what exercises the planes at Andrews were involved in, we know that numerous military organizations are located at the base, in addition to the DCANG, some of which may have had air defense capabilities. And some of them could well have been participating in the exercises Ampey referred to.

Among more than 60 separate organizations located at Andrews Air Force Base are units from the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force Reserve, and Air National Guard. [11] These include Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 321, which flies the F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet, and Naval Air Facility, Washington, DC, which has numerous aircraft available, including the F/A-18 Hornet. [12] Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 321 at least appears to have had air defense capabilities that may have been able to provide protection against the attacks on September 11: At around 9:50 a.m. that morning, one of its officers called a friend who worked at NEADS, and said: "Dude, get us in the war. I've got wrench turners on our planes uploading weapons. What can we do?" [13]

Another unit at Andrews was the 1st Helicopter Squadron. Its primary mission was "to support [Department of Defense] contingency plans for transport of key government officials should a national emergency arise." It had around 200 members of staff, and possessed 19 twin-engine UH-1N "Huey" helicopters. Many of these helicopters reportedly flew throughout the day of September 11. [14] Whether the 1st Helicopter Squadron was involved in the training exercises that morning is unknown.

DID EXERCISES AFFECT THE EMERGENCY RESPONSE?
It is essential to investigate whether the training exercises impaired the organizations at Andrews in their ability to respond to the 9/11 attacks. Were any of them delayed or otherwise hindered as a result of their participation in an exercise? Were assets, such as aircraft and personnel, which could otherwise have been utilized in the response to the attacks, unavailable because they were being used in an exercise? Were military and civilian air traffic controllers in the Washington area perhaps confused about flights in their region because of the exercises taking place?

In a news report published on the day of 9/11, Knight Ridder stated, "Air defense around Washington, DC, is provided mainly by fighter planes from Andrews Air Force Base." [15] Indeed, the DC Air National Guard is known as the "Capital Guardians." [16] According to a 9/11 Commission memorandum, "Many planes were scrambled out of Andrews" throughout the day of September 11. [17] And yet the first fighter jet to take off from there in response to the attacks was an unarmed DCANG F-16, which took off at 10:38 a.m., more than 30 minutes after the attacks had come to an end. [18] Might fighter jets have been able to respond earlier on, only the emergency responses of units at Andrews were somehow delayed by the training exercises?

AIR GUARD HINDERED BY TRAINING MISSION AND RECENT EXERCISE
As mentioned above, it seems unlikely that the DC Air National Guard would have been involved in a major training exercise on September 11. However, other circumstances seem to have significantly reduced its ability to respond to the attacks.

Three days earlier, on September 8, members of the DCANG returned from a major exercise in Nevada, called "Red Flag." Most of its fighter pilots, who flew commercial planes in their civilian lives and were involved with the unit on only a part-time basis, were consequently away, either back at their airline jobs or on leave, according to different accounts. The unit reportedly had just seven pilots available on 9/11. [19] At least three of these were inexperienced, junior pilots. [20] And of the seven pilots, three had taken off shortly before the first attack in New York occurred, for a routine training mission around 200 miles away from base, over North Carolina. They did not arrive back at Andrews until after the attacks had ended. [21]

While discussing the 9/11 attacks, in 2004, Paul Hellyer, a former Canadian minister of national defense, posed the question, "Why did airplanes fly around for an hour and a half without interceptors being scrambled from Andrews [Air Force Base] … right next to the capital?" He said: "With a quick-reaction alert they should have been in the air in five minutes or 10 minutes. If not, as a minister of national defense, which in the United States would be the secretary of defense, I would want to say, 'Why not?'" [22]

His questions are as pertinent today as they were five years ago.

NOTES
[1] "Memorandum for the Record: Visit to Reagan National Airport Control Tower in Alexandria, VA and Andrews Air Force Base Control Tower." 9/11 Commission, July 28, 2003.
[2] Dan Verton, Black Ice: The Invisible Threat of Cyber-Terrorism. Emeryville, CA: McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2003, pp. 143-144.
[3] "Andrews AFB, Maryland." GlobalSecurity.org, March 3, 2002.
[4] Miles Kara, "9/11: The Mystery Plane; Not so Mysterious." 9/11 Revisited, June 30, 2009.
[5] Joe Dejka, "Inside StratCom on Sept. 11 Offutt Exercise Took Real-Life Twist." Omaha World-Herald, February 27, 2002; Joe Dejka, "When Bush Arrived, Offutt Sensed History in the Making." Omaha World-Herald, September 8, 2002.
[6] William B. Scott, "Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks." Aviation Week & Space Technology, June 3, 2002; William M. Arkin, Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World. Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2005, p. 545.
[7] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America: Sept. 11 Alters Face of Air Defense Mission. Tyndall Air Force Base, FL: 1st Air Force, 2003, p. 122; Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes." Vanity Fair, August 2006.
[8] William B. Scott, "F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93." Aviation Week & Space Technology, September 9, 2002; Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 76.
[9] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Major David McNulty, Chief of Intelligence, 121st Fighter Squadron, Air National Guard, Andrews Air Force Base." 9/11 Commission, March 11, 2004.
[10] Pat McKenna, "FANGs Bared." Airman, December 1999.
[11] "Andrews Air Force Base: Welcome." DCMilitary.com, Summer 2001; "Andrews AFB, Maryland."
[12] "Andrews Air Force Base: Tenant Units." DCMilitary.com, February 9, 2001; "Andrews Air Force Base: Partner Units." DCMilitary.com, Summer 2001.
[13] Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11. New York: Free Press, 2008, p. 188.
[14] "Capital Flying." Air Force Magazine, January 2001; "Andrews Air Force Base: Andrews Units." DCMilitary.com, Summer 2001; "Memorandum for the Record: Visit to Reagan National Airport Control Tower in Alexandria, VA and Andrews Air Force Base Control Tower."
[15] Steve Goldstein, "Focus of Training for Terrorist Attacks has Been Chemical, Biological Warfare." Knight Ridder, September 11, 2001.
[16] Steve Vogel, "Flights of Vigilance Over the Capital." Washington Post, April 8, 2002; William B. Scott, "F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93."
[17] "Memorandum for the Record: Visit to Reagan National Airport Control Tower in Alexandria, VA and Andrews Air Force Base Control Tower."
[18] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 44; Miles Kara, "Relevant Andrews Transmissions." 9/11 Commission, February 17-18, 2004; Steve Vogel, The Pentagon: A History. New York: Random House, 2007, p. 446.
[19] Steve Vogel, "Flights of Vigilance Over the Capital"; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of Major Billy Hutchison, 113th Fighter Wing Air National Guard, Andrews Air Force Base." 9/11 Commission, February 27, 2004; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Major David McNulty"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 156.
[20] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of Major Billy Hutchison"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 236-237. These pilots were Eric Haagenson, Lou Campbell, and Heather Penney Garcia.
[21] "Memorandum for the Record: Visit to Reagan National Airport Control Tower in Alexandria, VA and Andrews Air Force Base Control Tower"; Miles Kara, "Relevant Andrews Transmissions"; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Major John Daniel Caine, USAF, Supervisor of Flying at 121st Squadron, 113th Wing, Andrews Air Force Base on September 11, 2001." 9/11 Commission, March 8, 2004.
[22] "Paul Hellyer, Former Defence Minister of Canada Questions the Lack of Fighter Response on 9/11 and Comments on the Shallowness of the 9/11 Investigation." Connect the Dots, May 27, 2004.

Bobcats Over Washington on 9/11: What Were Two Mystery Aircraft Doing Overhead at the Time of the Pentagon Attack?

2009-09-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

Two military aircraft were flying at high altitude near the Pentagon around the time it was hit on 9/11, but the identities of these aircraft and what they were doing over the Pentagon are unknown.

The planes had the call signs "Bobcat 14" and "Bobcat 17." A partial transcript of air traffic controller communications reveals they were communicating with the control tower at Washington's Reagan National Airport, which is less than a mile from the Pentagon, between at least 9:31 a.m. and 9:40 a.m. on September 11. [1] (The attack on the Pentagon took place at 9:37 a.m. [2]) Radar data has shown that the two aircraft flew "in trail" (in single file, with one directly behind the other) at an altitude of 21,000 feet, and were overhead in the few minutes before the Pentagon was hit. [3]

LAUNCHED FROM DOVER AIR BASE
It would seem essential to establish the exact identities of these aircraft and find out what they were doing in the vicinity of the Pentagon at such a critical time. Yet, eight years after the attacks took place, we still do not have this information. (The fact that these aircraft were near the Pentagon at the time it was hit is itself virtually unknown.)

According to a 9/11 Commission memorandum, "flight strips and other information" indicate that the two aircraft, Bobcat 14 and Bobcat 17, "originated out of Dover Air Force Base in Delaware." The memorandum added, "It is possible, but not confirmed, that they were Air Force corporate passenger jets." When questioned by the 9/11 Commission, Bob Lazar, the acting operations manager at Reagan Airport on September 11, said he "did not remember any aircraft with the call sign 'Bobcat' that hung out over the National airspace" that day. All he could say was that he did remember two aircraft "coming from the north, but he did not think that they entered National's airspace." [4]

OTHER AIRCRAFT NEAR THE PENTAGON
Furthermore, there were at least two other military aircraft near the Pentagon at the time it was hit. A C-130 cargo plane that took off from Andrews Air Force Base, which is 10 miles from the Pentagon, was airborne by 9:33 a.m., and was seen by numerous witnesses above the Pentagon just after the attack there. [5] Its pilot reportedly witnessed the explosion from the Pentagon crash. [6]

And television news reporters described a "white jet" plane that was "circling the White House" a few minutes after the Pentagon was hit. [7] (The White House is about three miles from the Pentagon.) Two government sources familiar with the incident later told CNN that the plane was a military aircraft, but its details were classified. An analysis by CNN suggested the aircraft was an E-4B, which is a militarized version of a Boeing 747 that is used as a flying command post. [8] One such aircraft is known to have taken off from an airfield outside Washington, DC, shortly before the Pentagon was hit. [9]

Considering the historical significance of the 9/11 attacks, which have had devastating consequences that affect us to this day, it is essential that important details surrounding those attacks be thoroughly investigated. We therefore need to know exactly what the two aircraft--Bobcat 14 and Bobcat 17--were, and why they were flying above the Pentagon around the time it was attacked on September 11.

NOTES
[1] "Partial Transcript; Aircraft Accident; AAL77; Washington, DC; September 11, 2001." Federal Aviation Administration, September 20, 2001.
[2] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 10.
[3] "Memorandum for the Record: Visit to Reagan National Airport Control Tower in Alexandria, VA and Andrews Air Force Base Control Tower." 9/11 Commission, July 28, 2003.
[4] Ibid.
[5] "AA 77 Radar-Based Timeline and Maps." 9/11 Commission, n.d.; "9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: Witnesses See Military Cargo Plane Near Flight 77; Pilot Later Implies he is Far Away." Complete 9/11 Timeline.
[6] "The Secret History of 9/11: The U.S. Government Reacts." CBC, September 10, 2006.
[7] "Planes Crash Into World Trade Center." ABC News, September 11, 2001; "The White House Has Been Evacuated." Breaking News, CNN, September 11, 2001.
[8] "Tropical Storm Humberto Heads for Texas; Democrats Blast Petraeus Timeline for Troop Withdrawal; Interview With General David Petraeus." Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, CNN, September 12, 2007.
[9] Dan Verton, Black Ice: The Invisible Threat of Cyber-Terrorism. Emeryville, CA: McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2003, pp. 143-144. According to former 9/11 Commission staff member Miles Kara, this E-4B aircraft took off from Andrews Air Force Base and was airborne at 9:27 a.m. See Miles Kara, "9/11: The Mystery Plane; Not so Mysterious." 9/11 Revisited, June 30, 2009.

Was Delta 1989 Part of a Live-Fly Hijacking Exercise on 9/11?

2009-07-22T05:39:00.000-07:00

It has been widely reported that on September 11, 2001, four passenger aircraft were hijacked, and three of them subsequently hit their intended targets in New York and Washington. Less well known is that, during the two hours over which the 9/11 attacks occurred, air traffic controllers and military personnel had to devote significant time to a fifth plane that was incorrectly reported as hijacked. This aircraft was, in the words of one military official, "the first red herring of the day." [1]

The aircraft was Delta Air Lines Flight 1989, a Boeing 767 that had taken off from Boston. From around 9:30 a.m., it was repeatedly suspected of having been hijacked. Even though subsequent events had indicated the aircraft was fine, a police SWAT team and FBI agents were sent out to it after it made an emergency landing in Cleveland, Ohio, and it was not until about two hours after the plane landed that all its passengers had been allowed off.

While a person might dismiss the suspicions about Delta 1989 as understandable mistakes in the chaos and confusion of the attacks, there is another possible explanation for what happened. We know that the U.S. military and other government agencies were running various training exercises on September 11. At least one military exercise was scheduled to include the scenario of a plane being hijacked. In light of this, the possibility arises that Delta 1989 was playing the part of a hijacked aircraft in a training exercise, and this led to all the mistaken reports about it. Certainly, the number and nature of suspicious incidents around Delta 1989 make this possibility seem worthy of serious consideration.

While much remains speculative, if this explanation is correct, it would have serious implications. It would mean that, at the time the attacks took place, a "live-fly" exercise was being conducted, which involved a real aircraft pretending to be hijacked. It would imply that this exercise was not promptly canceled, but instead continued throughout the entire duration of the attacks. And it would raise a sinister possibility: that the role of Delta 1989--and the exercise it participated in--was to somehow help rogue individuals within the U.S. military and government to successfully perpetrate the 9/11 attacks.

TWO CATEGORIES OF EVIDENCE
There are two specific categories of evidence indicating that Delta 1989 was a mock hijacked aircraft in an exercise. Firstly, there were incidents where the plane and its pilots behaved unusually, such as failing to respond to radio communications. It was as if they were playing the part of a plane under siege, in order to test the ability of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and military personnel on the ground to recognize and respond to a hijacking. Secondly, there were incidents where some government personnel and members of the military alerted others that Delta 1989 had been hijacked, or was in danger of being hijacked, apparently with little justification for doing so. It is at least possible that these individuals were 'injecting' false information into the system, for the sake of the exercise, in order to create a realistic impression that Delta 1989 had been hijacked, when in reality it was fine.

I will describe this evidence later on, and then conclude by examining a military exercise that was held in mid-2002, which makes clear what kind of role Delta 1989 might have played in an exercise on September 11.

DELTA 1989 RESEMBLED FLIGHTS 11 AND 175
One thing that is notable about Delta 1989 is how much it resembled American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175--the first planes to be hijacked, which crashed into the World Trade Center. Like these aircraft, Delta 1989 was a Boeing 767, heavy with fuel, and making a transcontinental flight across America. Also like these two flights, it had taken off from Boston's Logan Airport, at around the same time as they had done. [2] And according to numerous accounts, it had the same destination as Flights 11 and 175, of Los Angeles, California. [3] (However, a few accounts have said its destination was Las Vegas. [4])

Some accounts have claimed that Delta 1989's similarity to Flights 11 and 175 contributed to it mistakenly being suspected as hijacked. But if Delta 1989 was involved in a training exercise, this would mean that an exercise was scheduled for 9/11 in which the mock hijacked aircraft had almost identical characteristics as two of the aircraft targeted in the real-world attacks. This would be an extraordinary "coincidence," to say the least, if not highly suspicious.

Not only did Delta 1989 resemble the first two hijacked planes, it also happened to be just 25 miles behind the fourth hijacked plane--United Airlines Flight 93--at the time this aircraft was apparently taken over by hijackers. This caused air traffic controllers at the FAA's Cleveland Center to initially conclude that Delta 1989, not United 93, had been hijacked. When, at 9:28, controller John Werth heard screaming over the radio, he was unsure which aircraft, out of seven or eight in the airspace he was monitoring, it had come from. When the Cleveland Center controllers then heard a voice with a heavy accent over the radio, saying "Ladies and gentlemen: Here the captain. ... We have a bomb on board," they thought it had come from Delta 1989. They concluded that the Delta flight had been hijacked and started notifying their chain of command of this. It was only after Flight 93 was subsequently observed flying erratically and its pilots failed to respond to radio communications that Werth concluded this flight, and not Delta 1989, had been hijacked. [5]

WAS DELTA 1989 PLAYING A HIJACKED AIRCRAFT IN AN EXERCISE?
It has been well established that the U.S. military and other government agencies were conducting training exercises at the time the 9/11 attacks occurred, and some of the exercise scenarios had uncanny similarities to the actual attacks. [6] One exercise, which was being conducted by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), was scheduled to include a simulated aircraft hijacking. As Vanity Fair described, this exercise "was designed to run a range of scenarios, including a 'traditional' simulated hijack in which politically motivated perpetrators commandeer an aircraft, land on a Cuba-like island, and seek asylum." [7]

When NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) in Rome, New York, was notified of the first real-world hijacking at 8:38 a.m., its mission crew commander, Major Kevin Nasypany, thought this was part of the exercise, which he'd helped to design. He said out loud, "The hijack's not supposed to be for another hour." [8] NEADS was in fact alerted to the suspected hijacking of Delta 1989 almost exactly one hour later, at 9:39 a.m. [9] This was therefore around the time it was due to be notified of the simulated hijacking in the exercise, and supports the contention that Delta 1989 was playing the targeted aircraft in that exercise.

Delta 1989 made an emergency landing at Cleveland Hopkins Airport shortly after 10:15 a.m. [10] Cleveland was one of six major Ohio cities that for several years had been part of a federal program to help defend against domestic terrorism. [11] A possibility therefore worth considering is that the decision to land Delta 1989 in Cleveland was made before 9/11, so that personnel on the ground there would be able to respond to a simulated hijacking, as part of a training exercise for this federal program.

DELTA 1989 INDICATED THAT IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN HIJACKED
As previously mentioned, there are two categories of evidence that suggest Delta 1989 was playing a hijacked aircraft in an exercise. The first category involves incidents where the plane and its pilots behaved suspiciously. These incidents are summarized below.

i) Just after 9:39 a.m., when a radio transmission was heard coming from the hijacked Flight 93 in which a hijacker said, "There is a bomb on board," Cleveland Center controller John Werth started handing off the flights he was dealing with to other controllers so he could devote his attention to Flight 93. But, according to author Lynn Spencer, the crew of Delta 1989 missed the hand-off to their new frequency. The new sector controller dealing with Delta 1989 called out to the plane several times but received no response from its pilots. According to Spencer, Delta 1989 "was out of radio contact for several minutes," and this news soon reached an FAA teleconference. [12]

ii) Cleveland Center controllers again became suspicious when, at 9:44 a.m., the pilot of Delta 1989, Captain Paul Werner, called and requested a change of course so he could land in Cleveland. As USA Today noted, "the captain's request comes before he can know that the FAA wants every flight down." [13] (The FAA Command Center instructed air traffic control centers to tell all aircraft to land at the nearest airport a minute later, at 9:45. [14]) USA Today continued: "On this day, the fact that the pilot requests to be rerouted before he is ordered to land seems suspicious. Why the urgency?" The reason was reportedly that Delta Air Lines had been alerted to the concerns about Flight 1989's safety and had been closely monitoring the aircraft. It had then sent the pilots an instruction to "Land immediately in Cleveland." But even though Cleveland Center was in charge of Delta 1989, for some reason it was not informed of this. [15] Its air traffic controllers then noticed Delta 1989 making a 30-degree turn back toward its new destination of the Cleveland airport. Spencer described, "An abrupt change of course for a transcontinental [Boeing] 767 out of Boston raises further suspicion." [16]

iii) As Delta 1989 descended toward Cleveland, controllers at the Cleveland Center became suspicious again because pilot Paul Werner failed to reply to a message. According to USA Today, the reason was simply that Werner was "busy." But the controllers grew "alarmed. Why didn't he respond? Have both jets--the United [Flight 93] and the Delta flights--been hijacked?" [17]

iv) A notable example of Delta 1989 behaving unusually--perhaps because it was playing a hijacked plane in an exercise--occurred while it was under the control of the Cleveland Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON). TRACONs are FAA facilities that guide aircraft approaching or departing an airport. The Cleveland TRACON was in contact with Delta 1989 as it descended from 9,000 feet down to 3,000 feet. [18]

According to a detailed chronology produced shortly after 9/11 by the Cleveland Airport air traffic control tower, "One anomaly that perpetuated concern" at the TRACON was that Paul Werner "never used the 'heavy' designator in his communications." [19] The term "heavy" notifies controllers that they need to provide extra space behind very large aircraft, which are above a certain weight, because these aircraft generate significant wake turbulence. [20] The TRACON controllers used this important term in their communications with Delta 1989, but "the pilot did not respond with it."

Although this may seem a minor technicality, it is of much significance. The control tower's chronology stated: "The use of 'heavy' in the terminal environment is of the highest importance. Increased separation standards are required, and misapplication of separation standards can be disastrous. For pilots, not referring to a heavy aircraft as 'heavy' is tantamount to calling a doctor 'Mister.'" Therefore, Werner's failure to use the term "kept everyone alert and skeptical of the security" of Delta 1989. [21]

Could the reason Werner failed to use the 'heavy' designator be that he was acting the part of a pilot who was surreptitiously trying to alert controllers that something was wrong on his flight, as part of an exercise?

v) A curious final incident occurred after Delta 1989 landed at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. The plane was directed to park at a remote area, and its pilots were told not to allow passengers off. Eventually, the Cleveland Police SWAT (special weapons and tactics) team and a team of FBI agents went out to the aircraft. [22] Members of the SWAT team, who'd taken up a position just behind the aircraft, saw Paul Werner with blood running down his face as he leaned out of the window to give them the "all clear" signal. The explanation Spencer has given for his bleeding face is that Werner accidentally knocked his head and cut it when he returned to his seat, after going to the cabin to speak to the plane's passengers. While this may be correct, in light of the evidence described above, might Werner's bloodied face alternatively have been simulated--using fake blood--because he was acting the part of the pilot of a plane under siege? Perhaps this was supposed to convey the impression that he had been assaulted by one of the exercise's mock hijackers. [23]

If Delta 1989 was taking part in a training exercise, the evidence above raises an important question: How aware were the pilots that real-world attacks had occurred in New York and Washington? Reportedly, at around 9:15 a.m., they heard over the radio that two aircraft had crashed into the World Trade Center. According to USA Today, Werner figured these planes "must be small ones--not passenger jets like the Boeing 767 he commands." The pilots also heard the hijacker transmissions, apparently coming from Flight 93, between 9:28 and 9:39 a.m. [24] But did they think these hijacker communications and the news of the attacks in New York were real, or did they believe they were part of an exercise? The question remains uninvestigated and, therefore, unanswered.

MILITARY AND OTHER GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS WRONGLY REPORTED DELTA 1989 AS HIJACKED
The second category of evidence that Delta 1989 was playing a hijacked aircraft in an exercise is a series of incidents where personnel within the military and other government agencies reported that the flight had been hijacked, or was in danger of being hijacked, apparently without having much evidence that this was the case.

Again, individually these incidents could be dismissed as understandable results of the morning's confusion, or as concerns elicited by the unprecedented and shocking events taking place. But the number of incorrect reports suggests the possibility that false information was being deliberately 'injected' into the system for an exercise, to create a realistic impression that Delta 1989 was a hijacked aircraft. The incidents are summarized below.

i) The first three notable incidents occurred before anyone claimed Delta 1989 had been hijacked. Shortly after 9:03 a.m., when the second plane hit the World Trade Center, FBI agents called the FAA's Cleveland Center and warned its controllers to keep an eye on Delta 1989. According to USA Today, the FBI suspected "that terrorists plan to hijack [Delta 1989] next." Apparently they had seen no indications that the flight was in danger, but were concerned because of its similarities to the first two hijacked aircraft, such as it having taken off from Boston at around the same time as them. [25]

ii) Then, at 9:19 a.m., the FAA's New England regional office called the FAA's Command Center in Herndon, Virginia, and asked it to tell the Cleveland Center to contact Delta 1989 and advise its pilots to use extra cockpit security. It is unclear why the New England regional office made this request. In response to it, as the 9/11 Commission described, the Command Center "ordered controllers to send a cockpit warning to Delta 1989 because, like American 11 and United 175, it was a transcontinental flight departing Boston's Logan Airport." [26]

The FAA's Boston Center had previously asked the Command Center to contact all FAA centers, with the instruction to tell airborne aircraft to increase their cockpit security. What is curious is that the Command Center's instruction to the Cleveland Center regarding Delta 1989 was apparently an exception: the 9/11 Commission has said it found "no evidence to suggest that the Command Center acted on [the Boston Center's] request." [27]

iii) The third incident from before Delta 1989 was suspected as hijacked occurred at 9:27 a.m. Colonel Alan Scott, the former vice commander of the Continental United States NORAD Region, told the 9/11 Commission that, at this time, the FAA's Boston Center reported to NEADS "a fifth aircraft missing, Delta Flight '89." [28] Boston Center's report to NEADS was odd for two reasons. Firstly, Delta 1989 "never turned off its transponder," according to the 9/11 Commission, so it was never missing and should have been clearly visible on radar at all times. [29] Secondly, at 9:27, Delta 1989 was being handled by the FAA's Cleveland Center, not the Boston Center. [30] So why did the Boston Center contact NEADS about a flight that was not under its command?

iv) Boston Center called NEADS again at 9:39 a.m. regarding Delta 1989. Colin Scoggins, the center's military liaison, reported that the flight was a possible hijack. [31] Again, the question applies as to why the Boston Center made this call, since Delta 1989 was still under the control of the FAA's Cleveland Center. [32] And it appears that Scoggins had no evidence that the flight had been targeted. According to the 9/11 Commission, Boston Center simply "guessed that Delta 1989 might also be hijacked," apparently because--like Flights 11 and 175--it was a transcontinental 767 that had departed Boston's Logan Airport. [33]

v) At 9:45 a.m., one of the ID technicians at NEADS called the FAA's Cleveland Center and incorrectly said that Delta 1989 was "a confirmed hijack." This prompted a supervisor there to go "running back and forth" around the center, informing the controllers and managers of the news. [34]

The supervisor, Kim Wernica, spoke to John Werth, the controller who had been handling Delta 1989. She told him, "It's the Delta, it's the Delta!" She said a military liaison on the phone had confirmed that the Delta jet had been hijacked. However, due to its pilots' normal responses to his instructions, Werth had already concluded that Delta 1989 had not been hijacked. He told Wernica he was pretty sure that Flight 93, not Delta 1989, had been hijacked, and when she returned a few moments later, he said Delta 1989 was "fine, at least for now." But after Wernica consulted again on the phone, she came back and said to Werth, "They said it's a confirmed hijack and a bomb threat." Convinced that Delta 1989 was being confused with United 93, Werth responded, "Tell them they're full of it!" [35]

MILITARY, FAA, POLICE, AND FBI RESPONDED TO HIJACK REPORTS
Although they turned out to be incorrect, the reports that Delta 1989 had been hijacked were taken seriously at the time and acted upon. NEADS commanders ordered their troops to call Air National Guard bases in the vicinity of the Delta aircraft, to see if any of them could launch fighter jets. [36] According to the 9/11 Commission, NEADS ordered jets from Ohio and Michigan to intercept Delta 1989. [37]

When Delta 1989 was coming in to land, Cleveland Hopkins Airport was evacuated. As Spencer wrote, this was because the flight was "confirmed hijacked," and air traffic controllers "believe it contains a bomb intended to detonate when the aircraft crashes into the terminal." [38] Furthermore, for the first time in his administration, Mayor Michael White ordered the evacuation of all federal and city buildings in Cleveland; a parking ban was issued downtown; and owners of large commercial high-rises in Cleveland were asked to evacuate their buildings. [39]

After it landed, Delta 1989 had to park at a remote area of Cleveland Airport, far away from the terminal. Its passengers were only allowed off after a police SWAT team came out, and FBI agents then carefully took the passengers off the plane in small groups. [40] Bomb-sniffing dogs were subsequently taken onboard and the aircraft was searched, but no explosives were found. [41]

EXERCISE MAY HAVE CONTINUED DESPITE REAL-WORLD ATTACKS
If, as the evidence above indicates, Delta 1989 was part of a military exercise based around a fictitious aircraft hijacking, this raises serious questions about the events of 9/11 and the emergency response to the attacks.

The evidence casts doubt on the claim that a NORAD exercise that morning was canceled after Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the WTC at 9:03 a.m. According to Airman, the official magazine of the U.S. Air Force, "Shortly after the second airliner smashed into [the] World Trade Center ... the exercise ceased." [42] Larry Arnold, the commanding general of the Continental United States NORAD Region, said that after Flight 175 hit the South Tower, "I thought it might be prudent to pull out of the exercise, which we did." [43]

But if Delta 1989 was participating in it, then the evidence indicates that this exercise continued for much longer. For example, NEADS received the incorrect report that Delta 1989 was a possible hijacking at 9:39 a.m., and called the FAA's Cleveland Center to report the aircraft as a "confirmed hijack" at 9:45 a.m. These two communications could have been part of the exercise, intended to 'inject' a realistic impression of a hijacking into the system.

And it appears that Delta 1989 may still have been playing a hijacked aircraft while it came in to land (with the pilot failing to use the 'heavy' designator), and continued doing so after it landed at around 10:18 a.m. (when the pilot appeared out of the plane's window, apparently with blood running down his face). This would mean the exercise continued throughout the entire duration of the real-world attacks, ending only after the fourth aircraft to be targeted--Flight 93--supposedly crashed in Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m. [44] If this was indeed the case, why was the simulated hijacking allowed to continue for so long? And who was responsible for this?

A LIVE-FLY EXERCISE IN 2002
We can better understand the role Delta 1989 might have played on September 11 by examining a later NORAD training exercise. "Amalgam Virgo 02" was a "live-fly" exercise conducted in June 2002, although NORAD was planning it as early as July 2001. [45]

This exercise involved two real aircraft being "hijacked," with actors playing the terrorists. One aircraft, a Delta Air Lines 757, was bound from Utah to Alaska and was taken over by FBI agents acting as hijackers. The other was a Navy C-9 bound from Washington State to Vancouver, Canada, with members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police playing the hijackers. On both planes, military personnel acted as civilian passengers, but the 757 had actual Delta Air Lines pilots at the controls. According to a NORAD spokesman, "both aircraft ... were to receive instructions once in-air, detailing the hijacking scenario affecting them and the roles they were to play."

NORAD launched fighter jets in response to the simulated hijackings. CNN reported before the exercise: "We don't know exactly how these [simulated] hijackings will play out. Neither do the pilots. Even their bases from which the U.S. and military--the U.S.-Canadian jets will be scrambled, don't know they are." After NORAD ran through a number of scenarios, the mock hijacked planes landed and law enforcement officers on the ground ran through scenarios around dealing with the hijackers.

About 1,500 people participated in Amalgam Virgo 02, including employees of NORAD, the FAA, the FBI, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and Delta Air Lines. The NORAD spokesman said the exercise was "very intense, very realistic." [46]

Could Delta 1989 have been taking part in a similar exercise on September 11? Were some of its passengers played by military personnel or other government employees? Only a thorough new investigation of the 9/11 attacks can answer these and the many other crucial questions that remain, around Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 and its possible involvement in a training exercise on September 11.

NOTES
[1] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Public Hearing. 9/11 Commission, May 23, 2003.
[2] Matthew L. Wald and Don Van Natta Jr., "Impact of Grounding Jets is Still Unclear." New York Times, October 18, 2001; Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board." USA Today, August 12, 2001; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 27-28.
[3] Paul Singer, "No Explosives Found on Cleveland Plane." Associated Press, September 11, 2001; Matthew L. Wald and Don Van Natta Jr., "Impact of Grounding Jets is Still Unclear"; Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board"; Tiana Velez, "How a Tiny Ladybug Changed the World for a Pilot on 9/11." Arizona Daily Star, September 24, 2007; Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11. New York: Free Press, 2008, p. 167.
[4] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 28; Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes." Vanity Fair, August 2006.
[5] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board"; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With John Werth, Air Traffic Controller, Area 4, Lorain Sector." 9/11 Commission, October 1, 2003; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 11-12, 28.
[6] See "Complete 9/11 Timeline: Training Exercises on 9/11." History Commons.
[7] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes."
[8] Ibid.
[9] "Timeline of the Events of the Day of 9/11 Drafted by the 9/11 Commission." 9/11 Commission, n.d.
[10] "DAL 1989 Order of Events." Federal Aviation Administration, September 16, 2001.
[11] "Cleveland Security." The Spotlight, WCPN, September 20, 2001.
[12] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 167-168.
[13] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board"; Alan Levin, "For Air Controller, Terror Still Vivid 7 Years Later." USA Today, September 11, 2008.
[14] U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Statement of Jane F. Garvey, Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration, Before the House Subcommittee on Aviation, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 107th Cong., 1st sess., September 21, 2001; Alan Levin, Marilyn Adams, and Blake Morrison, "Part I: Terror Attacks Brought Drastic Decision: Clear the Skies." USA Today, August 12, 2002; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 29.
[15] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 167; Alan Levin, "For Air Controller, Terror Still Vivid 7 Years Later."
[16] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 168.
[17] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board."
[18] "DAL 1989 Order of Events"; "Co-Located TRACONs (Terminal Radar Approach Control)." Federal Aviation Administration, March 24, 2006.
[19] "DAL 1989 Order of Events."
[20] Meryl Getline, "Who You Calling Heavy?" USA Today, June 1, 2005; Meryl Getline, "Organs on Board." USA Today, May 22, 2006.
[21] "DAL 1989 Order of Events."
[22] Ibid.; Michael O'Mara, "9/11: 'Fifth Plane' Terror Alert at Cleveland Hopkins Airport." WKYC, September 11, 2006.
[23] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 270.
[24] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board"; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 11-12; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 166-167.
[25] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board."
[26] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 10, 455.
[27] Ibid. p. 23; Staff Report: The Four Flights. 9/11 Commission, August 26, 2004, pp. 25-26.
[28] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Public Hearing; "Timeline 6/17/03 Based on NEADS-FAA Transcripts." 9/11 Commission, June 17, 2003; "Timeline of the Events of the Day of 9/11 Drafted by the 9/11 Commission."
[29] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 28.
[30] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board"; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 10.
[31] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes"; "Timeline of the Events of the Day of 9/11 Drafted by the 9/11 Commission."
[32] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board."
[33] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 27-28.
[34] "NEADS Audio File, Identification Technician, Channel 4." North American Aerospace Defense Command, September 11, 2001; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Kim Wernica, Operations Manager at Cleveland ARTCC on 9/11." 9/11 Commission, October 2, 2003; "Timeline of the Events of the Day of 9/11 Drafted by the 9/11 Commission."
[35] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Kim Wernica, Operations Manager at Cleveland ARTCC on 9/11"; Alan Levin, "For Air Controller, Terror Still Vivid 7 Years Later."
[36] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes."
[37] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 28.
[38] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 191-192.
[39] Paul Singer, "Plane Makes Emergency Landing." Associated Press, September 11, 2001; "Cleveland Reacts to the Terror." The Spotlight, WCPN, September 12, 2001; "Cleveland Security."
[40] Michael O'Mara, "9/11: 'Fifth Plane' Terror Alert at Cleveland Hopkins Airport"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 229.
[41] Paul Singer, "No Explosives Found on Cleveland Plane"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 271.
[42] Jason Tudor, "Inner Space: Cheyenne Mountain Operations Evolve Following Sept. 11 Hijacking." Airman, March 2002.
[43] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America: Sept. 11 Alters Face of Air Defense Mission. Tyndall Air Force Base, FL: 1st Air Force, 2003, p. 59.
[44] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 30.
[45] "NORAD to Sponsor Multi-Agency, Bi-Lateral Exercise." U.S. Department of Defense, May 31, 2002; Steven Komarow and Tom Squitieri, "NORAD Had Drills of Jets as Weapons." USA Today, April 18, 2004.
[46] Gerry J. Gilmore, "NORAD-Sponsored Exercise Prepares for Worst-Case Scenarios." American Forces Press Service, June 4, 2002; "Airborne Anti-Terrorist Operation Getting Underway." Live Today, CNN, June 4, 2002; "Mock Hijacks Play out Over U.S., Canada." United Press International, June 4, 2002; Nick Wadhams, "Joint U.S., Canadian Hijacking Drill Takes off With Whidbey Flight." Associated Press, June 5, 2002.

The F-16s That Failed to Protect Washington on 9/11: Was the Langley Jets' Emergency Response Sabotaged?

2009-05-26T01:01:00.000-07:00

Langley Air Force Base was the second military base that launched fighter jets to defend America in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Three of its F-16s were ordered to take off toward Washington at 9:24 a.m. that morning, but by the time they were airborne, more than 40 minutes had passed since the first attack on the World Trade Center, and almost half an hour since the second.

Furthermore, the pilots were hindered by an extraordinary combination of confusion, communications problems, conflicting orders, breaches of protocol, and other difficulties. Consequently, when the Pentagon was hit at 9:37 a.m., the jets were further away from it than they'd been when they took off. According to witnesses on the ground, fighters did not arrive over the Pentagon until around 10:40 a.m.--more than an hour too late to protect it from the attack.

A close examination of publicly available accounts raises the possibility that deliberate attempts were made to sabotage the ability of the Langley jets to respond to the 9/11 attacks, thereby paralyzing normal, well-practiced procedures. In this article, I focus on three particular aspects of the jets' response.

Firstly, I examine the initial order to launch F-16s from Langley AFB. Notably, instead of the usual two jets taking off, a third pilot took off in a spare jet. This left the unit with no supervisor of flying (SOF) to communicate with other agencies and pass on vital information to the pilots. Secondly, I question why, instead of heading toward Washington as instructed, the jets initially flew out over the ocean, where they were of no use in defending against further attacks. I look at the mysterious role played by the Fleet Area Control and Surveillance Facility in Virginia Beach, which was handling the jets while they were over the ocean. Could this facility have been misdirecting them? Thirdly, I look at the breakdown of communications between the military and the Langley jets, and the confusion experienced by the pilots that this contributed to.

Taken together, the sheer number of things that went wrong appears highly suspicious, and makes clear the urgent need for a new and unrestrained investigation of 9/11, to find out what was really going on that day and who was behind the attacks.

LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE
Langley Air Force Base is in Hampton City, southeastern Virginia, about 130 miles south of the Pentagon. [1] It covers some 2,900 acres, and employs about 9,000 permanent military personnel and 3,000 civilians. It is the headquarters of the Air Combat Command, which provides active Air Force pilots to deploy for overseas combat missions, and the home of the 1st Fighter Wing, which is one of the largest fighter wings in the Air Combat Command. [2]

Crucially, on 9/11 the 119th Fighter Wing of the North Dakota Air National Guard had a small detachment at Langley AFB. Although it had only four aircraft and 18 full-time members of staff, this unit was involved in the air defense mission of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). It was one of NORAD's seven "alert" sites around the U.S., all of which kept a pair of fighter jets ready for immediate takeoff. [3] As author Lynn Spencer described: "As an alert site, the [119th Fighter Wing's] pilots are always just five minutes away from rolling out of the hangars in their armed fighters. They live, eat, and sleep just steps from jets." [4]

JETS TAKE OFF BUT LOSE THEIR SUPERVISOR
At 9:24 a.m. on September 11, NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), which is based in Rome, New York, ordered jets belonging to the 119th Fighter Wing to scramble (i.e. launch immediately) from Langley AFB. [5] In public accounts and testimony, NORAD officials subsequently claimed these jets were scrambled in response to either Flight 77 (the third hijacked aircraft) or Flight 93 (the fourth hijacked aircraft). However, according to various evidence uncovered by the 9/11 Commission, the scramble was in response to an incorrect report that Flight 11 (the first hijacked aircraft) hadn't crashed into the World Trade Center and was heading south toward Washington. The Langley jets were initially ordered toward the DC area, but their heading was soon adjusted to send them to the Baltimore area, about 35 miles north of Washington, so as to block the path of the supposedly southbound Flight 11 as it approached the capital. [6]

It is important to recognize here that, despite the unprecedented nature of the 9/11 attacks, the task the F-16s were being asked to perform was a well-practiced and routine one. Even before September 11, NORAD regularly launched fighters in response to suspicious aircraft. It reportedly performed 67 such scrambles between September 2000 and June 2001. [7] And a 1994 General Accounting Office report stated: "Overall, during the past four years, NORAD's alert fighters took off to intercept aircraft (referred to as scrambled) 1,518 times, or an average of 15 times per site per year. Of these incidents, the number of suspected drug smuggling aircraft averaged … less than 7 percent of all of the alert sites' total activity. The remaining activity generally involved visually inspecting unidentified aircraft and assisting aircraft in distress." [8] So, over that period, NORAD launched fighters to intercept suspicious aircraft once per day on average. Yet on September 11, the performance of the NORAD jets launched from Langley AFB was disastrous.

Problems began as the jets prepared to take off. The 1st Air Force's book about 9/11 stated that the fighters were "given highest priority over all other air traffic at Langley Air Force Base." [9] But according to Lynn Spencer, while on the runway, they were instructed to "hold for an air traffic delay," because the FAA's Washington Center had not yet cleared airliners out of the way for their intended path. [10] All the same, the fighters were finally airborne at 9:30 a.m. [11]

THREE JETS LAUNCH INSTEAD OF TWO
Of particular significance is that, instead of just launching its two F-16s that were kept on alert, the 119th Fighter Wing launched a third jet at this time. Unlike the two fully-armed alert jets, this aircraft had guns only and no missiles. [12] Its pilot was Captain Craig Borgstrom, the operations manager at the alert unit. In the event of a scramble order, he was supposed to man the battle cab and serve as the supervisor of flying. As the SOF, he had a critical role to play. He was responsible for monitoring scrambled jets, working with local air traffic controllers, and communicating with NEADS so as to get all necessary information about the jets' mission to pass on to the pilots. But by taking off himself, Borgstrom left his unit without an SOF. [13]

The reason for this alarming breach of protocol was that, shortly before 9:24, someone from NEADS called Borgstrom and asked him with urgency, "How many total aircraft can you launch?" When Borgstrom replied that, other than the two pilots on alert duty, he was the only pilot at the unit that day, the caller instructed him: "Suit up and go fly! We need all of you at battle stations!" [14] The two alert pilots were apparently shocked when they were told that their SOF would be taking off with them. According to Spencer, it "doesn't make any sense to" Major Dean Eckmann, the unit's lead pilot, and his initial response was "What?" [15] The other pilot, Major Brad Derrig, was "stunned. ... [N]ot much surprises him, but this does." And the unit's crew chiefs and mechanics were "bewildered" when they watched Borgstrom taking off, as they had "just been left with no commanding officer in the midst of a situation completely foreign to them." [16]

The decision to send the unit's SOF into the air caused serious problems. In her book Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11, Lynn Spencer explicitly pointed out two examples. Firstly, at around 9:30 a.m., Tech Sgt. Jeremy Powell called from NEADS, wanting to tell Borgstrom that his jets' mission was to set up a combat air patrol over Washington and intercept an airliner heading for the city. But with Borgstrom gone, the phone rang and rang. Finally, a sergeant answered it and told an incredulous Powell that the SOF had taken off. Powell knew that the alert unit at Langley was meant to keep an SOF on duty 24/7, and was speechless. Presumably, Borgstrom's absence meant the three F-16s did not receive Powell's message about what their mission was. [17]

Then, at around 9:34 a.m., William Huckabone, a staff sergeant at NEADS, noticed that the F-16s were drastically off course, heading east out over the ocean instead of north toward the Baltimore area (see below for details). The jets urgently needed to be redirected onto their intended course. But, as Spencer described, Huckabone could not "get word to the jets through their SOF--he's flying!" [18] Presumably there were other times when the absence of the SOF meant NEADS, and perhaps other agencies, were unable to quickly pass important information to the jets, but these incidents have not yet been reported.

Furthermore, we do not know who at NEADS instructed Borgstrom to take off in the spare jet, thereby leaving his unit without its SOF. In an interview, Borgstrom later said, "to this day, I don't know who it was" that made the call. [19] When Jeremy Powell had called from NEADS and learned that Borgstrom had taken off in a third jet, he exclaimed: "Three? I only scrambled two!" [20] Whoever instructed Borgstrom to take off should be rigorously questioned about why they issued such an unprecedented--and dangerous--order.

DID NAVY CONTROLLERS SEND THE JETS THE WRONG WAY?
After being delayed during takeoff, things got significantly worse for the Langley jets. Major Kevin Nasypany, the NEADS mission crew commander, had ordered them to fly north, toward the Baltimore area. [21] But at around 9:34 a.m., William Huckabone noticed that instead they were going east over the ocean, toward a military training airspace called Whiskey 386. [22] As a result, when the Pentagon was hit at 9:37 a.m., the Langley fighters were about 150 miles from there--further away from the Pentagon than they had been when they took off. [23]

The 9/11 Commission put forward rather elaborate reasons why the jets headed in the wrong direction, such as that the scramble order had not conveyed complete instructions for the pilots to follow, and that "a 'generic' flight plan--prepared to get the aircraft airborne and out of local airspace quickly--incorrectly led the Langley fighters to believe they were ordered to fly due east ... for 60 miles." [24]

However, evidence shows that the question of why the jets went so drastically off course requires further investigation. For example, a Navy facility was responsible for handling the F-16s while they were out over the ocean. The Fleet Area Control and Surveillance Facility in Virginia Beach, Virginia, is the Navy air traffic control agency that handles all over-water military operations. It is known by the call sign "Giant Killer." [25] When Nasypany asked Major James Fox--the leader of the NEADS weapons team--why the Langley jets had flown out over the ocean, Fox replied, "Giant Killer sent them out there." [26] Certainly, what little has been reported about the actions of this facility appears quite bizarre and suspicious.

UNCONCERNED CONTROLLERS
When William Huckabone first noticed that the Langley jets were off course, along with Master Sergeant Steve Citino he called Giant Killer to try and get them redirected onto the correct heading. Yet the Navy controller who answered their call sounded indifferent, as if he were oblivious to the seriousness of the situation. He responded: "You've got [the Langley F-16s] moving east in airspace. Now you want 'em to go to Baltimore?" Huckabone said yes, told the controller to get the jets to call NEADS, and asked him to inform the FAA's Washington Center that the F-16s needed to head toward Baltimore. Yet the controller showed no sense of urgency, saying: "All right, man. Stand by. We'll get back to you." In frustration, Citino snapped: "What do you mean, 'We'll get back to you'? Just do it!" After hanging up the phone, Huckabone joked, "I'm gonna choke that guy!" [27]

Another controller at Giant Killer showed similar indifference a couple of minutes later, when Huckabone again contacted the facility. Kevin Nasypany had just ordered that the Langley F-16s be sent toward the White House, and declared "AFIO" (Authorization for Interceptor Operations) for Washington airspace, which would give the military authority over the FAA for that airspace. Huckabone told the Navy controller: "Ma'am, we are going AFIO right now with [the Langley fighters]. They are going direct [to] Washington." The declaration of AFIO was an unusual and unique event. When Dean Eckmann, the lead Langley pilot, was finally notified of it, he was startled, because, according to Spencer: "He has never, in all his years of flying, received such an order. He's only heard about it and, to him, it means no less than the start of World War III." Yet, in response to Huckabone's information, the controller at Giant Killer appears to have shown no signs of emotion, and offered only modest reassurance that the Langley fighters would be given the necessary clearance. She said, "We're handing 'em off to [the FAA's Washington] Center right now." Apparently unsettled by the controller's lack of urgency, Huckabone instructed her: "Ma'am, we need that expedited right now! We need to contact them on 234.6. ... Do you understand?" [28]

As previously mentioned, one consequence of all the problems with the fighter response was that at the time the Pentagon was hit, the Langley jets were further from it than they had been when they took off. They had flown almost 60 miles out over the Atlantic Ocean and were 150 miles from Washington. [29] In fact, numerous witnesses on the ground have recalled seeing the first fighter jet arriving over the Pentagon possibly an hour or more after the Pentagon attack. [30] Authors Patrick Creed and Rick Newman have placed this at 10:40 a.m. [31] According to the New York Times, "witnesses, including a reporter for the New York Times who was headed toward the building, did not see any [fighter jets over the Pentagon] until closer to 11 [o'clock]." [32] Upon seeing the first jet arriving overhead, one firefighter commented: "Thank God that guy's there! Where has he been?" [33]

COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN AND CONFUSION
Another indication that the Langley F-16s' ability to respond to the crisis was being sabotaged is that military personnel repeatedly experienced problems when trying to communicate with them. Lynn Spencer described three particular incidents in which NEADS was unable to contact the fighters, although presumably there were other occurrences of this problem.

Firstly, when at around 9:34 a.m. William Huckabone noticed the jets were off course, he supposedly had "no direct method of contacting the jets, as they are out of radio range over the ocean in Giant Killer's airspace." Then, at 9:36 a.m., when NEADS declared AFIO for Washington airspace, Steve Citino tried to contact pilot Dean Eckmann to notify him of this. But, according to Spencer, Citino initially received "no response; the fighters are not yet in radio range." [34] And, minutes later, Citino was still "having trouble communicating with the Langley fighters heading toward Washington," supposedly because "NEADS radio coverage east of Washington is poor." [35]

While Spencer's explanation--that the Langley jets were outside NEADS's radio range--may be correct, these communications problems should surely be investigated further, to check this. This is especially the case since, as tape recordings of the NEADS operations floor from September 11 have revealed, personnel there repeatedly complained about various communications problems that morning. For example, one member of staff at NEADS told an American Airlines employee, "We cannot call out for some reason." Later on, when a caller mentioned, "We're having a tough time getting hold of you guys," a NEADS employee responded, "We're having problems with our phone lines as well." [36] During a 2004 interview, 9/11 Commission staffers mentioned to NEADS employee Chief Master Sgt. Edward Aires that "they had heard in past interviews that there were communication lapses and difficulties between NEADS and Langley scrambles." [37] Might there have been deliberate attempts made to block communications to and from NEADS that morning?

PILOTS HEAR JUMBLED COMMUNICATIONS
What is more, the three Langley pilots were confused by what journalist and author Jere Longman described as a "jumble of radio communications." [38] According to the New York Times, as the pilots approached Washington, "Their radio frequencies became cluttered with orders and chatter." Pilot Brad Derrig recalled: "It was like getting 10 hours of conversation in about 10 minutes. No one knew what was going on." [39] Craig Borgstrom has said that he and the two other pilots "were hearing a lot of chatter but nothing about airliners crashing into buildings." He recalled: "There was some confusion for us, this was very abnormal. We were all three on different frequencies ... and were getting orders from a lot of different people." [40]

Could these jumbled communications have been part of a deliberate attempt at paralyzing the emergency response, by trying to prevent legitimate orders from reaching the pilots?

PILOTS CONFUSED AND UNINFORMED
The poor communications between the pilots and their contacts on the ground, combined with the lack of an SOF to pass information to and from the pilots, may help explain why the pilots had so little understanding of what was going on. They were even unsure of what their mission was. As the 9/11 Commission stated: "The Langley pilots were never briefed about the reason they were scrambled. ... The pilots knew their mission was to divert aircraft, but did not know that the threat came from hijacked airliners." [41]

Brad Derrig described the confusion--what he called "the smoke of war"--over what was happening that morning, saying, "No one knew exactly what was going on." [42] Craig Borgstrom said that, as the crisis unfolded, he "had no idea" the Pentagon and World Trade Center had been struck by suicide terrorists in airplanes. Describing the growing confusion, he said, "It was a mess." [43]

Borgstrom has said it was only when he caught sight of the burning Pentagon that he started thinking, "OK, maybe there's some type of attack going on," adding, "You start correlating Washington, DC, with New York." [44] When Dean Eckmann saw the Pentagon, he actually thought the Russians had attacked it. He told the 9/11 Commission: "I reverted to the Russian threat. ... I'm thinking cruise missile threat from the sea. You know, you look down and see the Pentagon burning, and I thought the bastards snuck one by us. ... No one told us anything." [45]

Eckmann and Derrig had even thought that they were headed to New York rather than Washington. Craig Borgstrom described: "The other two guys I was flying with initially thought that we were going to New York because they knew the Trade Center had been hit and they'd seen the smoke. ... I was more familiar with the area and knew we were going more toward DC." But, he recalled, as they approached Washington, "We still have not been intel briefed as to what's going on." [46] At that time, according to Lynn Spencer, when Brad Derrig "looks up to see smoke on the horizon in front of him, he assumes that he is looking at New York. He had heard about an aircraft hitting the World Trade Center just before they were scrambled, and with all the changes in coordinates they've been given, he has no idea that he's looking at Washington." [47]

Furthermore, it was only when the jets returned to base, after being airborne for over four hours, that the three pilots learned about Flight 93--the fourth hijacked plane, which supposedly crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania. [48]

OTHER PROBLEMS
We have seen that there were numerous ways in which the Langley jets were hindered on 9/11: the delay while they were on the runway and the problems that occurred because the alert unit's supervisor of flying took off in a spare fighter; the fact that the F-16s flew east over the ocean, instead of going north as NEADS had instructed; the inexplicable indifference of the Navy controllers who were handling the jets while they were over the ocean; NEADS's repeated inability to contact the pilots directly; the jumbled communications the pilots were receiving over their radios; and the fact that the pilots were not informed about what was going on or what their exact mission was.

There is evidence of additional problems that further impeded the Langley F-16s that morning. Lynn Spencer described two notable incidents.

After the pilots had initially been misdirected over the ocean, NEADS weapons director Steve Citino forwarded coordinates to them, telling them to establish a combat air patrol over Washington. However, Citino apparently gave out the wrong coordinates. According to Spencer, "He inadvertently transposed two of the coordinates, and the F-16s turned onto a flight path that would take them 60 miles southwest of Washington." When he noticed the jets heading the wrong way, Citino had to contact them again to get them on the correct course. [49]

And after receiving the incorrect coordinates, lead pilot Dean Eckmann had a problem with his aircraft. The bearing pointer on its horizontal situation indicator, which shows a plane's position relative to its intended destination, froze, so he had to get the heading from one of the other pilots. [50]

These incidents are only what have been described in the publicly-available accounts. It seems reasonable to assume the jets experienced other complications that have so far gone unreported. A thorough and unrestrained investigation of the 9/11 attacks is imperative in order to reveal such problems, find out why the Langley F-16s were so badly obstructed in carrying out what should have been a routine emergency response, and uncover who was responsible for this.

NOTES
[1] Parsons Engineering Science, Inc., Draft: Work Plan for a Treatability Study in Support of the Intrinsic Remediation (Natural Attenuation) Option at IRP Site - 16. San Antonio, TX: Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence, June 1995, p. 1-3; Jonathan Weisman, "Shoot-Down Order Issued on Morning of Chaos." USA Today, September 16, 2001.
[2] Parsons Engineering Science, Inc., Draft: Work Plan for a Treatability Study in Support of the Intrinsic Remediation (Natural Attenuation) Option at IRP Site - 16, p. 1-3; "Langley AFB, Virginia." GlobalSecurity.org, January 21, 2006; Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11. New York: Free Press, 2008, p. 114.
[3] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 17; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 114.
[4] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 117.
[5] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 27.
[6] Ibid. pp. 26-27, 34.
[7] Dan Collins, "Scrambling to Prevent Another 9/11." Associated Press, August 14, 2002.
[8] Jerry Herley et al., Continental Air Defense: A Dedicated Force is no Longer Needed. Washington, DC: United States General Accounting Office, May 3, 1994, p. 4.
[9] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America: Sept. 11 Alters Face of Air Defense Mission. Tyndall Air Force Base, FL: 1st Air Force, 2003, p. 63.
[10] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 143.
[11] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 27.
[12] Ibid. p. 465; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 141-143.
[13] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 116, 118.
[14] Ann Scott Tyson, "A New Diligence in the American Blue Yonder." Christian Science Monitor, April 16, 2002; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 118.
[15] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 119.
[16] Ibid. p. 142.
[17] Ibid. p. 148.
[18] Ibid. p. 149.
[19] Craig Borgstrom, interview by Leslie Filson, circa 2002.
[20] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 148.
[21] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With NEADS Alpha Flight Mission Crew Commander (MCC), Lt. Col. Kevin J. Nasypany." 9/11 Commission, January 22-23, 2004; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 27.
[22] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes." Vanity Fair, August 2006; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 149.
[23] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 27.
[24] Ibid.; Staff Report: The Four Flights. 9/11 Commission, August 26, 2004, p. 96.
[25] Matthew L. Wald, "Military Air Controller is Criticized in Close Encounter." New York Times, February 10, 1997; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 143.
[26] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 151.
[27] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 149-150.
[28] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 150-151.
[29] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 27; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 151.
[30] "(10:40 a.m.) September 11, 2001: First Fighter Seen Arriving Over the Pentagon." Complete 9/11 Timeline.
[31] Patrick Creed and Rick Newman, Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11. New York: Presidio Press, 2008, p. 130.
[32] David E. Sanger and Don Van Natta Jr., "In Four Days, a National Crisis Changes Bush's Presidency." New York Times, September 16, 2001.
[33] Patrick Creed and Rick Newman, Firefight, p. 131.
[34] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 149-150.
[35] Ibid. p. 180.
[36] "(9:12 a.m.-11:57 a.m.) September 11, 2001: NEADS and NORAD Experiencing Communications Problems." Complete 9/11 Timeline.
[37] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Bill Aires." 9/11 Commission, January 23, 2004.
[38] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back. New York: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 76.
[39] Kevin Sack, "2 Pilots Praise Passengers Who Fought Hijackers." New York Times, November 15, 2001.
[40] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 66.
[41] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 45.
[42] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, p. 222.
[43] Ann Scott Tyson, "A New Diligence in the American Blue Yonder."
[44] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 65.
[45] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 45.
[46] Craig Borgstrom, interview by Leslie Filson.
[47] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 182.
[48] Kevin Sack, "2 Pilots Praise Passengers Who Fought Hijackers."
[49] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 180-181.
[50] Ibid. p. 181.

Why Was There No Jet Fuel at the Flight 93 Crash Site?

2009-03-04T06:37:00.000-08:00

The official account of United Airlines Flight 93 is a remarkable story of heroism and selfless bravery. On September 11, 2001, 46 minutes into its journey from Newark, New Jersey to San Francisco, California, Flight 93 was supposedly taken over by four fanatical Muslim hijackers, members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network. Their plan was to crash it into a target in Washington, DC, most likely the White House or the U.S. Capitol building. However, passengers and crew members on board made a series of phone calls to relatives and others on the ground, and were told of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. They consequently made the courageous decision to try and retake control of the plane. Following passenger Todd Beamer's now-famous call to action, "Let's roll!" the attempt began. Though they failed to take back the plane, the passengers forced the hijackers to crash Flight 93 into the ground in a sparsely populated area of rural Pennsylvania. All on board the plane were killed, but countless lives in Washington were saved.

Then-President Bush subsequently acknowledged the significance of the actions of these passengers. He said: "In those moments, and many times since, terrorists have learned that Americans are courageous and will not be intimidated. We will fight them with everything we have." [1] On the fifth anniversary of 9/11, he said the men and women on Flight 93 "gave America our first victory in the war on terror." [2] Addressing the nation two months after the attacks, Bush concluded a speech by referring to Todd Beamer's famous last words, saying: "We will, no doubt, face new challenges. But we have our marching orders: My fellow Americans, let's roll." [3]

Extraordinary though the story of Flight 93 is, under closer scrutiny we find it is highly problematic. Many aspects are questionable, and this is perhaps most apparent when we examine the scene where Flight 93 supposedly crashed. Although the plane was reportedly "heavily laden with jet fuel" when it "slammed at about 575 mph almost straight down into a rolling patch of grassy land," examination of the soil and groundwater around the crash site found no evidence of contamination by jet fuel. [4]

NO JET FUEL AT THE CRASH SITE
Six days after 9/11, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) began taking soil samples around the Flight 93 crash site, to test for jet fuel, hydraulic fluids, and other hazardous materials. At least three test wells were sunk to monitor groundwater for signs of contamination. [5]

According to the National Transportation Safety Board, Flight 93 had about 37,500 pounds of fuel remaining when it crashed, which was around 77 percent of its fuel load on takeoff. [6] Yet the DEP tests found no evidence of this huge volume of jet fuel at the crash site. Two weeks after the tests began, DEP spokeswoman Betsy Mallison reported that "no contamination has been discovered." [7] She said that, "whether it burned away or evaporated," much of the jet fuel assumed to have spilled at the site "seems to have dissipated." [8]

FUEL SUPPOSEDLY BURNED UP, BUT FIRES WERE SMALL
DEP Secretary David E. Hess suggested a possible explanation for this absence of jet fuel, which was that "most of the hazardous fluids were consumed by the crash's fire." [9] A particular problem with this explanation is that some of the first witnesses to arrive at the scene noticed only very small fires there.

Faye Hahn was a local emergency medical technician whose company was quickly dispatched to the crash site. However, she has recalled, "Arriving on the scene" there was "no smoke, no fire." [10] Jeff Phillips, who worked at a nearby salvage yard, heard a colleague calling out, "Plane down, plane down!" and then headed out with another employee to locate the crash site. He has recalled, "We had to have been at least among the first 20 people" to have arrived there. Yet, he said, the crater where Flight 93 supposedly hit the ground "was just a spot that had a little fire on it, which was the airplane fuel burning." [11] And Lee Purbaugh, who worked at a nearby scrap yard, was also one of the first to arrive. Reportedly, he "scrambled down the bluff from the scrap metal company and ran 300 yards to the place where the plane had crashed." He found "a smoking hole in the ground. But why wasn't there more fire?" [12]

Are these tiny fires what we would expect if a large commercial aircraft had just crashed there? And could they really have burned up 37,500 pounds of jet fuel?

PAPER SURVIVES THE FIRES
Hess's theory that "most of the hazardous fluids were consumed by the crash's fire" is further complicated by the fact that, though evidence of a huge volume of jet fuel was not found, large amounts of paper (which is, of course, highly flammable) survived, and were discovered around the crash site. [13]

Roger Bailey, a local volunteer firefighter, has said that as he walked through the crash's debris field, he found "mail. I guess there were 5,000 pounds of mail on board. Mail was scattered everywhere. ... It seemed like every piece of mail that I looked at was from Blue Cross and Blue Shield." [14] Faye Hahn confirmed that, after she arrived at the crash scene, she saw "papers everywhere," and she'd "bent over to check many papers on the ground and found that they were pieces of mail." [15] Journalist and author Jere Longman has claimed that Flight 93 "had been carrying thousands of pounds of mail," and added that "pieces had scattered about, envelopes with California addresses, magazines, paper on the ground and in the trees, some of the envelopes burned, some still in the same unharmed condition in which they were mailed." [16] Also found at the crash scene was a "Bible that, oddly, was unscorched," and the charred remains of the visa of alleged hijacker Ziad Jarrah. [17]

If the fires had been able to consume 37,500 pounds of jet fuel, surely they would have also burned up all this paper?

AN ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION
How do we make sense of this evidence--the absence of jet fuel in the soil and groundwater, yet the mass of paper debris that survived? Was this site really where United Airlines Flight 93--a Boeing 757-200 weighing maybe over 100 tons--crashed into the ground?

Another possible explanation to consider is that this scene was somehow fabricated to give the appearance that a large commercial jet plane had crashed there. Debris, including large amounts of paper, was planted. One witness in fact described the crater where Flight 93 supposedly hit the ground as appearing "like someone took a scrap truck, dug a 10-foot ditch, and dumped all this trash into it." [18]

If this is what happened, it would explain why early witnesses at the scene noticed a particularly strong smell of jet fuel in the air. They later recalled this smell being "overpowering," "incredibly strong," "really strong," or "just horrendous." [19] According to Jere Longman, "The pungency of unburned jet fuel was so strong that it blistered the lips of investigators." [20] Yet, as we have seen, tests found no fuel in the soil. So, rather than being the result of a Boeing 757 having crashed, might this odor have been created by some other means? The purpose was to help create the impression that a plane had crashed, so as to convince the first responders of this, and get information supporting this possibility into initial news reports.

By the time--weeks later--that contradictory evidence came to light, the idea that Flight 93 crashed at this site in rural Pennsylvania had become widely accepted, and was deeply entrenched in the public consciousness. New evidence that disproved this idea, such as the absence of jet fuel in the soil and groundwater, could then be ignored as if it were trivial.

Yet evidence like this is of critical importance. If Flight 93 did not crash into that field, as was officially claimed, then we need to find out what happened to it, and what the fate was of its unfortunate passengers and crew.

NOTES
[1] "Bush Speaks to Air National Guard." CNN, October 9, 2003.
[2] "Transcript: Bush's Sept. 11 Anniversary Address from the Oval Office." Associated Press, September 11, 2006.
[3] "President Discusses War on Terrorism." U.S. Department of Homeland Security, November 8, 2001.
[4] Tom Gibb, "Latest Somerset Crash Site Findings May Yield Added IDs." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 3, 2001; Peter Perl, "Hallowed Ground." Washington Post, May 12, 2002.
[5] Steve Levin and Tom Barnes, "Flight 93 Relatives Gathering for Service." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 17, 2001; Tom Gibb, "Latest Somerset Crash Site Findings May Yield Added IDs."
[6] John O'Callaghan and Daniel Bower, "Study of Autopilot, Navigation Equipment, and Fuel Consumption Activity Based on United Airlines Flight 93 and American Airlines Flight 77 Digital Flight Data Recorder Information." National Transportation Safety Board, February 13, 2002.
[7] Tom Gibb, "Latest Somerset Crash Site Findings May Yield Added IDs."
[8] "Environmental Restoration Begins at Somerset Site." Pittsburgh Channel, October 2, 2001.
[9] Steve Levin and Tom Barnes, "Flight 93 Relatives Gathering for Service."
[10] David McCall, From Tragedy to Triumph. Johnstown, PA: Noah's Ark Publishing Company, 2002, p. 31.
[11] Ibid. pp. 29-30.
[12] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back. New York: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 213.
[13] Gerard Wright, "On Hallowed Ground." The Age, September 9, 2002.
[14] Glenn J. Kashurba, Courage After the Crash: Flight 93 Aftermath--An Oral and Pictorial Chronicle. Somerset, PA: SAJ Publishing, 2002, pp. 38-39.
[15] David McCall, From Tragedy to Triumph, pp. 31-32.
[16] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, pp. 213-214.
[17] Phil Hirschkorn, "9/11 Panel Describes How Attackers Got Money." CNN, August 22, 2004; Mike Masterson, "Flight 93: A Hallowed Field." Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 13, 2006.
[18] Peter Perl, "Hallowed Ground."
[19] Glenn J. Kashurba, Courage After the Crash, pp. 32, 40, 43, and 64.
[20] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, p. 261.

Rehearsing 9/11: How Training Exercises Foretold the Attacks of September 11

2009-01-27T00:43:00.000-08:00

The idea of such an attack was well known [and] had been
wargamed as a possibility in exercises before September 11.

- Professor John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate
School, Monterey, California

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, senior U.S. government and military officials repeatedly claimed that what happened that day was unexpected. In May 2002, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said, "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." [1] Two years later, President Bush stated, "Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale." [2] General Ralph Eberhart, the commander of NORAD on September 11, said, "Regrettably, the tragic events of 9/11 were never anticipated or exercised." [3]

Yet these claims were untrue. Not only had the U.S. military and other government agencies discussed the possibility of such attacks, they also conducted numerous training exercises in the year or two before September 11 based around scenarios remarkably similar to what occurred on 9/11. As John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, said, "No one knew specifically that 20 people would hijack four airliners and use them for suicide attacks against major buildings ... but the idea of such an attack was well known [and] had been wargamed as a possibility in exercises before September 11." [4]

The existence of these training exercises proves that official claims that the events of September 11 were unimaginable have been false. However, future investigations of 9/11 will need to determine whether these exercises served a more nefarious purpose. For example, might they have been intended as a smokescreen for rogue individuals working within the military and other government agencies who were involved in planning the attacks? Thus, if colleagues overheard these individuals discussing matters such as planes hitting the World Trade Center or crashing into the Pentagon, they could have claimed they were simply talking about a forthcoming training exercise.

The following summary outlines three specific categories of training exercises and preparations that took place before September 11. Firstly, those that dealt with terrorists deliberately crashing a plane into the World Trade Center. Secondly, those that considered an aircraft crashing into the Pentagon. And thirdly, those that resembled other aspects of the 9/11 attacks, such as the use of planes as weapons more generally.

1) PREPARING FOR AN ATTACK ON THE WORLD TRADE CENTER

i) Military Personnel Briefed on Possible Attack on the WTC

At some point before 9/11, members of staff at NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) in Rome, New York appear to have been briefed on the possibility of terrorists deliberately crashing a plane into the World Trade Center. In her book Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama that Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11, author Lynn Spencer described the actions of Trey Murphy, a former Marine who on September 11 was a weapons controller at NEADS. Murphy learned of the first plane hitting the WTC while still at home. According to Spencer: "The news brought to mind one of his briefings: What if a terrorist flies an airplane with a weapon of mass destruction into the World Trade Center? It had always been one of the military's big fears." She added, "The image on the [television] screen certainly reminded him of his briefing." [5]

ii) NORAD Trains for Terrorists Crashing a Hijacked Plane into the WTC

At unspecified times during the two years prior to September 11, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD, the military organization responsible for defending U.S. airspace) conducted training exercises that simulated hijacked aircraft being deliberately crashed into targets so as to cause mass casualties. As USA Today later reported, "One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center." NORAD stated that "Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft" in these exercises. Among other things, the exercises tested "track detection and identification" (presumably on military radar screens); "scramble and interception" by fighter jet planes; and "hijack procedures." According to NORAD, the exercises were regional drills, not regularly scheduled continent-wide exercises, and unlike what happened on 9/11, the planes in the simulated scenarios were coming from a foreign country rather than from within the United States. [6]

NORAD added that, before 9/11, "At the NORAD headquarters' level we normally conducted four major exercises a year, most of which included a hijack scenario." [7] Shortly after September 11, the New Yorker similarly reported, "During the last several years, the government regularly planned for and simulated terrorist attacks, including scenarios that involved multiple-plane hijackings." [8]

In spite of these specific concerns and preparations, the 9/11 Commission Report claimed that NORAD was "unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on September 11, 2001. [It] struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge [it] had never before encountered and had never trained to meet." [9]

2) PREPARING FOR A PLANE HITTING THE PENTAGON

The number of training exercises based around a plane crashing into the Pentagon is particularly notable. In the 12 months prior to 9/11, we know of three such exercises that were conducted, and a fourth exercise that considered, but rejected, this scenario.

i) The Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise

Between October 24 and October 26, 2000, emergency responders gathered at the Office of the Secretary of Defense conference room in the Pentagon for the Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise. Responses to several scenarios were rehearsed, including the possibility of a passenger aircraft crashing into the Pentagon. A military news service described the exercise: "The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense Protective Services Police seal the crash sight. Army medics, nurses, and doctors scramble to organize aid. An Arlington Fire Department chief dispatches his equipment to the affected areas." It sounds almost like a description of what happened on September 11. But then "Don Abbott, of Command Emergency Response Training, walks over to the Pentagon and extinguishes the flames. The Pentagon was a model and the 'plane crash' was a simulated one." [10]

ii) Medics Practice for a Plane Hitting the Pentagon

Little over six months later, in May 2001, the U.S. Army's DiLorenzo Tricare Health Clinic and the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic--which are both located within the Pentagon--along with Arlington County Emergency Medical Services, held a tabletop exercise. The scenario they practiced for was an airplane crashing into the Pentagon's west side--the same side as was hit on September 11. [11] There have been some contradictions between reports, regarding the exact details of this exercise. But according to U.S. Medicine newspaper, the plane in the scenario was a hijacked Boeing 757, the same kind of aircraft as allegedly hit the Pentagon on 9/11. [12] The Defense Department's book about the Pentagon attack, Pentagon 9/11, reported that the plane in the exercise scenario was a twin-engine aircraft (Boeing 757s are twin-engine aircraft), but that it crashed into the Pentagon by accident, rather than as a consequence of a hijacking. [13] The commanders of the two Pentagon clinics that participated later said this exercise "prepared them well to respond" to the attack on 9/11. [14] And Air Force Surgeon General Paul Carlton Jr. commented, "We learned a lot from that exercise and applied those lessons to September 11." [15]

iii) Practice Evacuation Conducted in Response to Simulation of a Plane Hitting the Pentagon

Just one month before September 11, a third plane-into-Pentagon training exercise was held. General Lance Lord, the assistant vice chief of staff of the Air Force, later recalled his experiences of 9/11, commenting, "Fortunately, we had practiced an evacuation of the building during a mass casualty exercise just a month earlier, so our assembly points were fresh in our minds." He added, "Purely a coincidence, the scenario for that exercise included a plane hitting the building." [16]

iv) Military Considers, but Rejects, Exercise Scenario of a Hijacked Plane Being Crashed into the Pentagon

For another exercise, military planners actually considered the possibility of a commercial aircraft being hijacked by terrorists and then crashed into the Pentagon. [17] From April 17-26, 2001, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff conducted the exercise Positive Force 01, which was designed "to test, evaluate, and train the national defense community in decision making and execution of mobilization and force deployment in response to multiple crises." [18] Positive Force was a "continuity of operations exercise," dealing with government contingency plans to keep working in the event of an attack on the U.S. [19] NORAD was one of the agencies invited to participate. [20]

During the planning of this exercise, special operations officers had to think like terrorists and plot unexpected attacks that would test NORAD's air defenses. According to an officer who was temporarily assigned to NORAD in the spring of 2001, "the NORAD exercise developers wanted an event having a terrorist group hijack a commercial airline and fly it into the Pentagon." [21] The NORAD employee who suggested this had been asked for a scenario in which the Pentagon was rendered inoperable and part of its functions had to be moved to another location. [22] However, the U.S. Pacific Command didn't want the scenario, "because it would take attention away from their exercise objectives." Joint Staff action officers then rejected the scenario as being "too unrealistic." [23]

3) OTHER PREPARATIONS AND EXERCISES

There were other training exercises and emergency preparations that are noteworthy. Few specific details have been disclosed of these. They have not been reported to have included scenarios of aircraft hitting the World Trade Center or Pentagon, but they relate to what happened on 9/11 in other ways.

i) Department of Transportation Exercise Involves a Cell Phone Call from a Hijacked Plane

Less than two weeks before September 11, on August 30, 2001, an exercise was held at the Department of Transportation in Washington, DC, as part of its preparations for the 2002 Winter Olympics. According to Ellen Engleman, the administrator of the DOT's Research and Special Programs Administration, this was a "full intermodal exercise" (although she did not explain what exactly that meant). Engleman has recalled: "During that exercise, part of the scenario, interestingly enough, involved a potentially hijacked plane and someone calling on a cell phone, among other aspects of the scenario that were very strange when 12 days later, as you know, we had the actual event [of 9/11]." [24] (As has been widely reported, numerous passengers on the hijacked planes allegedly were able to make calls using cell phones to people on the ground.) The Department of Transportation was subsequently much involved in the emergency response on September 11, with its Crisis Management Center being activated less than 30 minutes after the first attack on the WTC. [25]

Although further details of this exercise are unknown, the fact that Engleman referred to "other aspects of the scenario that were very strange" indicates that it resembled the 9/11 attacks in other ways.

ii) Threat of Planes as Weapons Considered During Preparations for 'Special Security Events'

The possibility of attacks resembling those that occurred on 9/11 was considered during the preparations for what are called "National Special Security Events" (NSSEs). This is particularly notable, since preparations were underway in the two cities targeted in the attacks--New York and Washington--the morning of September 11, for National Special Security Events due to take plane later that month. Considering that only four or five events per year were being designated as NSSEs, it seems hard to dismiss this as just coincidence.

Since 1998, the National Security Council has had the authority to designate any important upcoming public event as an NSSE. [26] Events such as the 2000 Republican and Democratic National Conventions and the 2000 presidential inauguration were designated as NSSEs. [27] Once an event has been designated as an NSSE, the Secret Service becomes the lead agency for designing and implementing its security plan, while the FBI and FEMA also have major security roles. [28]

According to the Secret Service, there would be "a tremendous amount of advance planning and coordination" for NSSEs. A variety of training initiatives would be conducted, including "simulated attacks and medical emergencies, inter-agency tabletop exercises, and field exercises." [29] Most significantly, according to Louis Freeh, the director of the FBI from September 1993 to June 2001, in the years 2000 and 2001, the subject of "planes as weapons" was always one of the considerations in the planning of security for "a series of these, as we call them, special events." Freeh told the 9/11 Commission that "resources were actually designated to deal with that particular threat," and confirmed that "the use of airplanes, either packed with explosives or otherwise, in suicide missions" was "part of the planning" for NSSEs. [30] Although Freeh did not state it, it seems a quite likely possibility that the "simulated attacks ... inter-agency tabletop exercises, and field exercises" held during 2000 and 2001 in preparation for NSSEs would therefore have included the scenario of planes being used as weapons.

Furthermore, the morning of September 11, Secret Service employees in New York were "about to attend meetings to prepare for the upcoming meeting of the United Nations General Assembly." [31] An additional 100 Secret Service employees were in New York to help prepare for the event. [32] The General Assembly's annual gathering of world leaders was scheduled for September 24 to October 5, with President Bush due to give his address on September 24. [33] Significantly, this event was designated as an NSSE. [34] Since the UN's previous 'Millennium Summit' in New York in September 2000 was an NSSE, it seems logical to assume that the 2001 gathering received NSSE status before 9/11, and not simply as a result of the attacks. [35]

Preparations were also underway in Washington, DC on September 11 for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which were scheduled to take place on September 29-30. Many of the agencies that would be involved in the emergency response to the Pentagon attack later that morning were taking part in these preparations. [36] It was reported several weeks before 9/11 that these meetings had been designated as an NSSE. [37]

The question therefore arises, might preparations for the threat of planes being used as weapons have been taking place around the time of the 9/11 attacks? Were "simulated attacks ... inter-agency tabletop exercises, and field exercises" based around planes used as weapons scheduled in New York and Washington around that period? Further research and investigation is required to answer these questions.

OTHER EXERCISES?

The above summary describes training exercises and preparations that have been reported or publicly discussed. But it seems reasonable to assume that there were other exercises held in the year or two before 9/11 that have not yet been reported and that also resembled the attacks that took place that day. If they occurred, we need to know about these other exercises and we must consider what role they might have played in the planning and execution of the September 11 attacks.

NOTES

[1] "National Security Advisor Holds Press Briefing." White House, May 16, 2002.
[2] "President Addresses the Nation in Prime Time Press Conference." White House, April 13, 2004.
[3] Steven Komarow and Tom Squitieri, "NORAD Had Drills of Jets as Weapons." USA Today, April 18, 2004.
[4] Kevin Howe, "Expert Stresses Need for Intelligence." Monterey County Herald, July 18, 2002.
[5] Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11. New York: Free Press, 2008, p. 179.
[6] Steven Komarow and Tom Squitieri, "NORAD Had Drills of Jets as Weapons."
[7] Barbara Starr, "NORAD Exercise Had Jet Crashing into Building." CNN, April 19, 2004.
[8] "September 11, 2001." New Yorker, September 24, 2001.
[9] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 45.
[10] Dennis Ryan, "Pentagon MASCAL Exercise Simulates Scenarios in Preparing for Emergencies." MDW News Service, November 3, 2000.
[11] Arlington County, Virginia, report, Titan Systems Corp., Arlington County: After-Action Report on the Response to the September 11 Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon. 2002, p. B17; Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11. Washington, DC: Defense Department, Office of the Secretary, Historical Office, 2007, pp. 23 and 107.
[12] "Crisis Response Puts Agencies on Path to Better Coordination." U.S. Medicine, January 2002.
[13] Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11, p. 107.
[14] Matt Mientka, "Pentagon Medics Trained for Strike." U.S. Medicine, October 2001.
[15] Dean E. Murphy, September 11: An Oral History. New York: Doubleday, 2002, p. 222.
[16] Lance Lord, "A Year ago, a Lifetime ago." Air Force Print News, September 10, 2002.
[17] Danielle Brian, "POGO Letter to Hon. Thomas K. Kean, Chairman, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States." Project On Government Oversight, April 13, 2004.
[18] "Positive Force." GlobalSecurity.org, June 9, 2002.
[19] Julian Borger, "Hijackers Fly into Pentagon? No Chance, Said Top Brass." The Guardian, April 15, 2004.
[20] Nicole Gaudiano, "Military Considered Hijacked Plane Exercise, and Rejected it." Air Force Times, April 13, 2004.
[21] Terry Ropes, "Exercise Scenario." September 18, 2001, internal e-mail; Julian Borger, "Hijackers Fly into Pentagon? No Chance, Said Top Brass."
[22] Nicole Gaudiano, "Military Considered Hijacked Plane Exercise, and Rejected it."
[23] Terry Ropes, "Exercise Scenario"; Julian Borger, "Hijackers Fly into Pentagon? No Chance, Said Top Brass."
[24] Mineta Transportation Institute, National Transportation Security Summit, Washington, DC. San Jose, CA: Mineta Transportation Institute, October 30, 2001, p. 108.
[25] Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Federal Aviation Security Standards. 107th Cong., 1st sess., September 20, 2001; Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Statement of Ellen G. Engleman, Administrator, Research and Special Programs Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation. 107th Cong., 1st sess., October 10, 2001.
[26] Bruce M. Lawlor, "Military Support of Civil Authorities: A New Focus for a New Millennium." Journal of Homeland Defense, October 2000; "National Special Security Events." United States Secret Service, 2002.
[27] "National Special Security Events Fact Sheet." U.S. Department of Homeland Security, July 9, 2003; "Fact Sheet: 2005 Presidential Inauguration: National Special Security Event." U.S. Department of Homeland Security, November 8, 2004.
[28] "National Special Security Events Fact Sheet"; Sarah D. Scalet, "In Depth: Democratic Party Convention Security." CSO, September 2004.
[29] "National Special Security Events."
[30] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Tenth Public Hearing. 9/11 Commission, April 13, 2004.
[31] United States Congress, Honoring United States Secret Service New York Field Office for Extraordinary Performance During and Immediately Following September 11, 2001. 107th Cong., 2nd sess., April 23, 2002.
[32] "Spotlight on: Barbara Riggs." PCCW Newsletter, Spring 2006.
[33] "UN General Security Council Condemns Attacks." Reuters, September 12, 2001; "Bush to Attend UN General Assembly." Associated Press, October 29, 2001.
[34] Al Baker, "Security Tight for Start of United Nations Meeting in New York." New York Times, November 10, 2001; House Committee on the Judiciary, Proposal to Create a Department of Homeland Security. 107th Cong., 2nd sess., July 9, 2002; "National Special Security Events Fact Sheet."
[35] U.S. Department of the Treasury, Program Performance Report Fiscal Year 2000. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2000, p. 177; United States Congress, Making Appropriations for Military Construction, Family Housing, and Base Realignment and Closure for the Department of Defense for the Fiscal Year Ending September 30, 2001, and for Other Purposes. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 29, 2000; "Preparing for the World: Homeland Security and Winter Olympics." White House, January 10, 2002.
[36] Arlington County, After-Action Report on the Response to the September 11 Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon, p. A4; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 314.
[37] "Washington is Seeking Support to Handle Protests at 2 Meetings." New York Times, August 18, 2001.

What Do NORAD's 9/11 Computer Chat Logs Reveal?

2008-12-14T07:40:00.000-08:00

In April 2006, journalist Michael Bronner received in the post 30 hours of recordings he had requested from the Pentagon. These recordings, which came as a series of computer audio files on three CDs, had captured events on the operations floor at NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector throughout the day of September 11, 2001. [1] NORAD--the North American Aerospace Defense Command--is the military organization responsible for monitoring and defending the airspace of North America. Its Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), based in Rome, New York, is responsible for monitoring and protecting 500,000 square miles of airspace above the northeast U.S., including the airspace over New York City and Washington, DC. [2] It was within this airspace that the 9/11 attacks occurred, and from the NEADS operations floor that the U.S. military's response originated. Evidence of what happened there that day is clearly in the public interest and of obvious importance for attempts to unravel how the attacks were able to succeed. In an August 2006 Vanity Fair article based on the recordings, Bronner therefore referred to these "NORAD tapes" as "the authentic military history of 9/11." [3]

However, the NORAD tapes are not the only record of the actions of NORAD and its Northeast Air Defense Sector on September 11. In her recent book Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama that Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11, commercial pilot and author Lynn Spencer revealed the existence of other crucial documentation. Yet, more than seven years on from 9/11, this record remains unreleased to the public and its contents are almost completely unknown.

Spencer described how, at around 9:25 a.m. on September 11, Master Sergeant Joe McCain, the mission crew commander technician at NEADS, received a call from the Continental U.S. NORAD Region (CONR) headquarters at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. Major General Larry Arnold and his staff at Tyndall had been trying to gather information about the ongoing crisis, and wanted to know the transponder codes for the two fighter jets that had been launched in response to the first hijacking. The CONR officer that made the call told McCain to "send [the transponder codes] out on chat." By "chat," he meant NORAD's computer chat system. [4]

NORAD'S COMPUTER CHAT SYSTEM
According to Spencer, the chat system used by NORAD that day was "similar to the chat rooms on most Internet servers, but classified." It had three chat rooms that could be used by anyone with proper access. One room was specifically for NEADS, and connected its ID, surveillance, and weapons technicians to its alert fighter squadrons, and was where NEADS received status reports on fighter units and their aircraft. Another chat room was for CONR, and was where its three sectors--NEADS, the Western Air Defense Sector (WADS), and the Southeast Air Defense Sector (SEADS)--communicated with each other and could "upchannel" information to CONR headquarters. The third room was the Air Warfare Center (AWC), where senior NORAD commanders from the three NORAD regions--CONR, Canada, and Alaska--communicated with each other. Although NEADS was allowed to monitor this room, it could not type into it. [5]

Furthermore, when a training exercise was taking place, one or two additional chat windows would be open specifically for communicating exercise information, so as to help prevent it being confused with real-world information. [6] This fact is of particular significance, as the whole of NORAD, including the staff at NEADS, was involved in at least one major training exercise the morning of 9/11. The annual "Vigilant Guardian" exercise has been described as "an air defense exercise simulating an attack on the United States," and was scheduled to include a simulated hijacking that day. [7] According to Larry Arnold, who was the commanding general of NORAD's Continental U.S. Region, this exercise was only canceled after the second World Trade Center tower was hit at 9:03 a.m. [8]

PAPER LOGS DOCUMENT COMMUNICATIONS
NORAD kept paper logs of the communications that took place in its computer chat rooms. As Spencer described, at NEADS it was Joe McCain's responsibility "to monitor the chats and keep paper logs of everything that is happening. ... These chat logs help to keep everyone on the same page, but in a situation like the one unfolding [on 9/11] they have to be updated almost instantaneously to achieve that end." [9] These logs are actually referred to in the notes at the back of the 9/11 Commission Report. However, this is only in relation to a single communication made across the chat system. As the report described: "At 10:31, General Larry Arnold instructed his staff to broadcast the following over a NORAD instant messaging system: '10:31 Vice president has cleared to us to intercept tracks of interest and shoot them down if they do not respond per [General Arnold].'" [10] This detail makes clear that crucial information was being communicated in the NORAD chat rooms. Yet, to date, we know practically nothing about what else was being discussed in them.

Clearly, the details of the NORAD chat logs for the day of 9/11 need to be made public and must be carefully examined. They may not tell us the full story of the U.S. military's response to the attacks, nor give us all the answers we require about why the military failed so catastrophically to protect the nation. But they will surely fill a large gap in the puzzle.

NOTES
[1] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes." Vanity Fair, August 2006.
[2] Leslie Filson, Sovereign Skies: Air National Guard Takes Command of 1st Air Force. Panama City, FL: 1st Air Force, 1999, p. 51; Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes."
[3] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes." The NORAD tapes were previously subpoenaed by the 9/11 Commission in November 2003. (See Philip Shenon, "9/11 Panel Issues Subpoena to Pentagon." New York Times, November 8, 2003; Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission. New York: Knopf, 2006, pp. 85-88.) However, the Commission played only a few short excerpts from the tapes, during its final public hearing on June 17, 2004. In August 2007, the producers of the popular 9/11 documentary film Loose Change received audio files of the NORAD tapes, which they made fully available to members of the public over the Internet. (See "NORAD Live and Uncut." Official Loose Change Blog, August 30, 2007.)
[4] Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11. New York: Free Press, 2008, p. 139.
[5] Ibid. p. 139.
[6] Ibid. pp. 139-140.
[7] Hart Seely, "Amid Crisis Simulation, 'We Were Suddenly No-Kidding Under Attack.'" Newhouse News Service, January 25, 2002; Leslie Filson, Air War Over America: Sept. 11 Alters Face of Air Defense Mission. Tyndall Air Force Base, FL: 1st Air Force, 2003, pp. 41 and 122; Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes."
[8] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 59.
[9] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 140.
[10] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 42 and 465-466.

The Phantom USA Today Building Fire and the Evacuation of Arlington's 'Twin Towers' on 9/11

2008-10-31T08:53:00.001-07:00

In a recent interview, Assistant Chief James Schwartz of the Arlington County Fire Department (ACFD) revealed an intriguing detail relating to the 9/11 Pentagon attack. Just before the Pentagon was hit, ACFD responded to alarms going off at the USA Today building, located a few miles from there. Yet it is unclear whether there was actually any fire. Other evidence indicates that, as a result of this alarm, when the Pentagon was hit a significant number of fire and medical units were already on the road nearby and available to quickly respond to the attack. Curiously, the two buildings of the USA Today complex were known as the "Twin Towers." [1]

In his interview, Assistant Chief Schwartz told McClatchy Washington Bureau that, after the two towers of the World Trade Center had been hit on September 11, the Emergency Communications Center (ECC), which is the focal point of all police and fire 911 calls for Arlington County, started receiving phone calls from buildings along the Potomac River and along the flight path for Washington's Reagan National Airport. These were made by people concerned about what they should do. Among the callers were the building managers at the USA Today towers, who were afraid their complex might be a terrorist target and wanted to know if they should evacuate it. [2]

The USA Today complex is in Rosslyn, Virginia, just a few miles down the road from the Pentagon. [3] It includes the two tallest high-rise buildings in Arlington County--the "Twin Towers"--the tallest of them being 30-stories high. [4]

Schwartz recalled, "Our communications center, who didn't have a lot of other guidance to give them, told [the USA Today building managers] that if they felt better, based on what they were watching on the television and the situation as it was shaping up then, if they felt better to evacuate the building, then they should in fact do that."

FIREFIGHTERS RESPOND TO USA TODAY BUILDING ALARM
Curiously, Schwartz said: "Shortly after that, we had a fire response for alarm bells at the USA Today building. ... And I was actually dispatched to that building first [before heading to the Pentagon]. By the time I got to the elevator, the transmissions were coming out about the situation as it was unfolding at the Pentagon. I did not go to the USA Today building. I drove directly to the Pentagon." [5]

Some early news reports even claimed that there was a fire at the USA Today building. At 9:46 a.m., local radio station WTOP reported, "We're hearing from a caller who says she is eyewitness to another hit here in town; the USA Today building may also be on fire in addition to the Pentagon." [6] The Washington Post described reports from "sources unknown" that the "USA Today building in Rosslyn was supposedly enveloped in smoke." [7] But according to the Associated Press, "Radio reports about an explosion at the USA Today building in Rosslyn were false." [8]

Schwartz told McClatchy Washington Bureau he believed the USA Today building alarm had gone off because "people who were evacuating decided that they would pull the fire alarm in order to get everybody out of the building, and that initiated a response on our part." [9] But USA Today spokesman Steve Anderson, who was in the building the morning of 9/11, has stated that employees of USA Today and its parent company Gannett only began evacuating after the Pentagon attack occurred, not before it, as would likely have been the case if Schwartz's theory were correct. [10]

FALSE ALARM HASTENS REPONSE TO PENTAGON ATTACK
What, if anything, is the significance of all this? Was it just a coincidence that an alarm sounded for the USA Today building just before the Pentagon was hit? Could the alarm have simply been set off by someone who was panicked by the events in New York, and concerned that this building might be the next target? Or could the incident have a more sinister meaning?

A possible and more disquieting reason why someone might have set off the alarm is suggested by an incident described in a federally funded report on the emergency response to the attack on the Pentagon. The 2002 Arlington County After-Action Report stated, "Just one minute before the Pentagon crash, in response to a 911 telephone call at 9:37 a.m., the [Arlington County Emergency Communications Center] dispatched several [fire and medical] units to an apartment fire at 1003 Wilson Boulevard in Rosslyn." But by the time the first engine arrived there, "the apartment fire was out." [11]

The address of the USA Today complex has been reported as "1000 and 1110 Wilson Boulevard." [12] This would indicate that the alleged "apartment fire" at 1003 Wilson Boulevard and the USA Today building incident described by Schwartz were one and the same thing. What was the result of this apparent false alarm? According to the After-Action Report, "by sheer coincidence, there were a significant number of units already on the road near the Pentagon at the time of the attack." [13]

Consequently, numerous firefighters arrived at the crash scene within about five minutes of the attack on the Pentagon. Captain Chuck Gibbs of the Arlington County Fire Department arrived at 9:40 a.m. A minute later, ACFD Battalion Chief Bob Cornwell arrived and assumed initial incident command responsibilities. At the same time, ACFD Truck 105 arrived at the scene. Then, at 9:42, ACFD Captain Edward Blunt arrived and established emergency medical services control. [14]

CRITICAL QUESTIONS
So, at the very least, the setting off of the USA Today building alarm suggests that someone may have had foreknowledge of the Pentagon attack, and wanted to ensure a swift emergency response to it. Establishing who this person, or persons, was will be one of the tasks of a new investigation of the 9/11 attacks. Investigators will also need to establish what exactly this person(s) knew, and from where they gained their foreknowledge.

But might this incident have further significance? We know, for example, that there were numerous training exercises being held or prepared for by the U.S. military and other government agencies on the morning of 9/11. Some of these exercises are known to have had an uncanny resemblance to the actual attacks. [15] Therefore, could there have been an exercise based around the scenario of an aircraft crashing into the "Twin Towers" of the USA Today complex that was scheduled to occur at the same time as the Pentagon was hit? The confusion created by such an exercise could have led to the false alarm of a fire at the complex. Giving some credence to this possibility is the fact that, as well as being the home of USA Today, the Arlington Twin Towers also housed "several Department of Defense employees," according to the Washington Business Journal. [16]

The fact that existing investigations have failed to even consider these questions proves how urgent it is that we now have a proper, unrestrained investigation into 9/11.

NOTES
[1] Greg A. Lohr, "Gannett Nails Down Dates for Headquarters Move." Washington Business Journal, September 7, 2001.
[2] Michael Doyle, "Extended Interview with Chief Jim Schwartz." McClatchy Washington Bureau, 2008; Patrick Creed and Rick Newman, Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11. New York: Presidio Press, 2008, p. 48.
[3] Jeff Zillgitt, "Put Sports Aside: Tragedy Affects all Americans." USA Today, September 13, 2001.
[4] Suzanne White and Greg A. Lohr, "Arlington's Twin Towers Evacuate Tenants." Washington Business Journal, September 11, 2001; Patrick Creed and Rick Newman, Firefight, p. 9.
[5] Michael Doyle, "Extended Interview with Chief Jim Schwartz."
[6] Mark K. Miller, "Three Hours That Shook America: A Chronology of Chaos." Broadcasting & Cable, August 26, 2002.
[7] Joel Achenbach, "Nation's Capital in State of Shock." Washington Post, September 11, 2001.
[8] Matthew Barakat, "Pentagon Employees Feel the Building Shake." Associated Press, September 11, 2001.
[9] Michael Doyle, "Extended Interview with Chief Jim Schwartz."
[10] Greg A. Lohr, "Media Work Tirelessly to Convey 'Magnitude' of Story." Washington Business Journal, September 14, 2001; "September 11, 2001." James Madison University Alumni Association, October 2, 20i01.
[11] Arlington County, Virginia, report, Titan Systems Corp., Arlington County: After-Action Report on the Response to the September 11 Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon. 2002, p. A9.
[12] Greg A. Lohr, "Gannett Nails Down Dates for Headquarters Move."
[13] Arlington County, After-Action Report on the Response to the September 11 Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon, p. A9.
[14] Ibid. pp. A5-A6 and 1-1.
[15] "Complete 9/11 Timeline: Military Exercises Up to 9/11." History Commons.
[16] Suzanne White and Greg A. Lohr, "Arlington's Twin Towers Evacuate Tenants."

Fake Firefighters and Military Imposters at the Pentagon After 9/11

2008-10-08T11:16:00.001-07:00

Several entries in the Complete 9/11 Timeline (copied below) describe what appear to have been individuals disguised as firefighters or military personnel, who were involved in the rescue and recovery efforts at the Pentagon following the attack there on September 11, 2001. What these individuals were doing is unknown, but possibilities need to be investigated, such as whether they were there to tamper with, plant, or remove evidence. That this may have been the case is given weight by the fact that some people who appeared to be members of the military were witnessed stealing crash debris from in front of the Pentagon.

Fairly early on in the firefighting operation at the Pentagon, what appeared to be a crew of firefighters was seen behaving completely at odds with how firefighters are trained to act. An Arlington County firefighter working on the building's second floor witnessed the crew walking past burning fires, apparently to get to fires elsewhere in the building. But, as authors Patrick Creed and Rick Newman have pointed out: "Firefighters are trained never to go through a fire without putting it out, since it might seal off your exit. You might as well walk into a burning room and lock the door behind you."

Then, on September 12, the Defense Protective Service (DPS), which guards the Pentagon, arrested three people at the Pentagon who were dressed as firefighters, but were not firefighters.

Beginning that same day, a couple of firefighters involved in the recovery effort were repeatedly assisted by a mysterious man who appeared to work for the military, but who wore no identifying badge and was known to them only as "Johnny." This man said if the firefighters needed anything from the military, he could help them, and even introduced them to some friends of his who said they worked for Special Forces. But on the evening of September 14, Johnny suddenly disappeared. When the two firefighters asked around, they found that no one at the Pentagon knew who "Johnny" was, and none of the agencies involved in the recovery effort said he worked for them. The two firefighters started to wonder if he'd been an imposter who'd perhaps managed to gain access to the site before security had been tightened there.

The presence of these fake personnel raises the question of why they were at the Pentagon. Were these men just "thrill seekers," as the chief of the DPS has claimed, there for their own misguided reasons? Or could they have been at the site for a more sinister purpose, perhaps as part of a coordinated operation to plant or remove evidence from the crime scene?

This latter possibility has some evidence to support it. Shortly after the attack occurred, DPS officer Lt. Robbie Turner saw people apparently stealing plane debris from the road in front of the Pentagon. Turner has recalled, "We had to try to stop other people from pilfering the wreckage because, believe it or not, there were people--military personnel involved--you know, included, rather, that was picking up the wreckage of the plane from off the highway." Another DPS officer, Roosevelt Roberts Jr., worked during the afternoon and evening of 9/11 at the heliport near where the Pentagon was hit. He has recalled that, in that time, "We had a lot of people vandalizing, stealing evidence."

FAKE FIREFIGHTERS

(Between 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m.) September 11, 2001: Mystery Firefighters Seen Behaving Oddly inside Pentagon
A mysterious fire crew is witnessed inside the Pentagon, behaving completely at odds with how firefighters are trained to act. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 137] Chad Stamps is a firefighter with Rescue 104 of the Arlington County Fire Department. [National Fire and Rescue, 5/2002] Along with his crew, he has been fighting fires on the second floor of the Pentagon's outer E Ring. With fires burning around him, he is astonished to see another crew walk past, carrying two packs of hose line, apparently on its way to fight fires elsewhere in the Pentagon. Describing this incident, authors Patrick Creed and Rick Newman will point out: "Firefighters are trained never to go through a fire without putting it out, since it might seal off your exit. You might as well walk into a burning room and lock the door behind you. Yet there they went." Seeing the crew passing by, Stamps thinks, "This is totally disjointed." [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 137] The odd behavior of this crew is perhaps notable because there is at least one reported incident of fake firefighters being caught at the Pentagon following the attack there: On September 12, three people will be arrested who are not firefighters, yet who are dressed in firefighting gear (see September 12, 2001). [Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 170]
Source

September 12, 2001: People Disguised as Firefighters Arrested at Pentagon
The Defense Protective Service (DPS)--the law enforcement agency that guards the Pentagon--arrests three people at the Pentagon who are dressed in firefighting gear but are not firefighters. Further details of who these people are and why they are at the Pentagon are unstated. John Jester, the chief of the DPS, later reflects: "When you have a major event, certain people are like moths around a light bulb. They come to the scene as thrill seekers." Reportedly, incident command, DPS, and FBI officials are worried by the "absence of an effective identification system to control the large number of people that [are passing] through the outer perimeter fence to support firefighting and recovery operations" at the Pentagon. [Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 170]
Source

MILITARY IMPOSTER

September 12-14, 2001: Apparently Fake Military Official Helps with Pentagon Recovery, then Disappears
A mysterious man, who is initially assumed to be working for the military, assists firefighters involved in the Pentagon recovery efforts, but then disappears without trace and is thought to have been an impostor who had managed to slip inside the Pentagon grounds.
"Johnny" - Arlington firefighter Bob Gray is introduced by his colleague Bobby Beer to a man wearing a hard hat. Beer introduces the man only as "Johnny," and adds, "He's our go-between with PenRen [the Pentagon Renovation Program], and he knows some of the military guys too." Although "Johnny" is not wearing any identifying badge or ID, he seems knowledgeable, appears "taut and serious, with a purposeful military stance," and even introduces Gray and Beer to a couple of friends of his who say they work for Special Forces. Johnny says if Gray and Beer need anything from the military, he can help. As a security perimeter has now been set up around the crash site, Gray assumes Johnny must be there officially. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 367-368]
Disappears - Johnny turns out to be very helpful and assists Gray and Beer repeatedly. But, on the evening of September 14, he suddenly disappears. Gray and Beer ask around, but no one at the Pentagon seems to know exactly who Johnny is or what his last name is, and none of the agencies involved in the recovery effort say he worked for them. Johnny's disappearance appears to follow an error he had made after firefighters discovered two bodies inside the Pentagon's E Ring. Johnny mistakenly called the truck used to remove bodies to the temporary morgue prematurely, before FBI agents had the chance to photograph and document the remains. Gray and Beer start to wonder if Johnny in fact had no official standing, and was an impostor.
Clearance - According to authors Patrick Creed and Rick Newman, "It wasn't unusual at high-profile crime scenes for law-enforcement pretenders to show up and insinuate themselves into the work." Johnny would have required "some kind of clearance to get through the concentric security perimeters that sprung up around the building--unless he'd been inside the wire before security tightened. It was possible that he had wandered in at the very beginning and simply stayed--there was enough food, water, and basic support on the scene to survive for days. Somebody who was determined enough to sleep inside one of the tents, or even on the grass, could easily have bypassed security."
Tighter Security - However, the FBI has now become stricter about security, and is ushering out volunteers and scrutinizing anyone without airtight credentials. Gray and Beer conclude that Johnny may have come to the attention of the FBI when he called the body truck, leading agents to inquire who he was, and this could have prompted his disappearance from the Pentagon. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 416-418]
Source

STEALING EVIDENCE

(After 10:15 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Police See People, Including Military Personnel, Stealing Debris from Pentagon Crash Site
Two Pentagon police officers see people--some of them members of the military--stealing crash debris from in front of the Pentagon. After the Pentagon was hit, Lt. Robbie Turner had been helping the injured at a triage area. When, at around 10:15 a.m., reports are received of a possible second plane heading for the Pentagon (see (10:15 a.m.-10:38 a.m.) September 11, 2001), he sets about evacuating people away from there. As this is going on, he later recalls: "[W]e had to try to collect up evidence, as much of the evidence as we possibly could. Take pictures of it or whatever." However, some people are apparently trying to steal plane debris from the road in front of the Pentagon. According to Turner, "[W]e had to try to stop other people from pilfering the wreckage because, believe it or not, there were people--military personnel involved--you know, included, rather, that was picking up the wreckage of the plane from off the highway as we were running away." [Library of Congress, 12/3/2001] Later on in the day, around 3:00 p.m., another Pentagon police officer, Roosevelt Roberts Jr., is called to the heliport near where the Pentagon was hit, and remains there for the next 13 hours. He will recall that, during this time, "we had a lot of people vandalizing, stealing evidence." He does not specify who these people are, or what this "evidence" is that is being stolen and vandalized. [Library of Congress, 11/30/2001]
Source

Davison Army Airfield and the 12th Aviation Battalion on 9/11: Pentagon Attack Oral Histories Reveal New Details

2008-10-01T10:36:00.001-07:00

Minutes after the Pentagon was hit on September 11, two aircraft were seen on the radar screen at a nearby Army airfield, circling the Pentagon and rapidly descending, with one of them emitting an emergency distress signal. The identities of these aircraft are unclear, as is the reason one of them was emitting the distress signal. These and other details about the 9/11 Pentagon attack were revealed by a supervisor of air traffic control at the airfield, in one of over 1,300 oral histories relating to the attack that were recorded by military employees. To date, only a small number of the oral histories have been publicly released, which raises questions about what important details might be in the other, unreleased interviews.

UNIDENTIFIED AIRCRAFT OVER THE PENTAGON
The supervisor of air traffic control (whose name is blacked out in the transcript of his interview) was working at the control tower at Davison Army Airfield, which is located at Fort Belvoir, an Army base 12 miles south of the Pentagon. He was informed that news reports were saying an aircraft had hit the Pentagon. He then looked at the radar scope, which showed two aircraft circling above the Pentagon. The supervisor described: "We have a small radar up in the tower cap. It's called the D-Bright. It's a tower display just to make sure that when the aircraft reports--just for us to ensure that when he reports like, six miles west of the airport, it's actually six miles." [1]

Aircraft are fitted with an electronic device called a transponder that identifies a plane on a controller's screen and gives information such as its exact location and altitude. Pilots can signify to air traffic controllers that they are experiencing a general in-flight emergency by dialing 7700 into their transponder. [2] The Davison supervisor has recalled that he looked "at where the Pentagon area is [on the radar scope], and I look, and there was an aircraft squawking 7700, meaning emergency. And it was circling--it was coming down and fast, and it was circling." He also noticed another aircraft: "And there was another target with no markings or anything--it was just a target," with none of the accompanying information that would be emitted by a transponder, such as the aircraft's call sign and speed. He continued describing the two aircraft: "But there was an aircraft circling the area squawking, emergency, emergency. ... And there was another aircraft coming in--descending rapidly and very fast. So it circled around--they circled around and both tags they disappeared. But they stay in the air." [3]

What were these aircraft and why was one of them emitting the distress code? Two U.S. military aircraft are known to have been in the air near the Pentagon around this time, just after the attack there. But neither should have had any reason for emitting a distress code.

One of these was a C-130 cargo plane that had reportedly taken off from Andrews Air Force Base at 9:30 a.m. The pilot, Steve O'Brien, has claimed he witnessed the Pentagon being hit from the air at 9:37, and then he reported to air traffic controllers, "looks like that aircraft crashed into the Pentagon." [4]

The other aircraft was a mysterious jet plane that was witnessed circling above the White House, shortly after the time when the Pentagon was hit. [5] (The White House is about three miles from the Pentagon.) An analysis by CNN later revealed this to have been an E-4B National Airborne Operations Center (NAOC), which is a militarized version of a Boeing 747 that is fitted with sophisticated communications equipment and is used as a flying command post. The U.S. Air Force possesses just four of them. [6] It is known that one of the E-4Bs took off from an unspecified airfield outside of Washington shortly before the time of the Pentagon attack, as part of a major training exercise called Global Guardian, which was being conducted by the U.S. Strategic Command (Stratcom). [7]

Was the supervisor at Davison Airfield watching one or both of these aircraft--the C-130 and the E-4B--on his radar scope? If so, why was one of them emitting the 7700 distress code? If it was other aircraft that he saw, what were they? And, again, why was one of them emitting the distress code?

HELICOPTER PILOTS WERE AWAY FOR WEAPONS TRAINING
According to the military newspaper Pentagram, Davison Army Airfield's principal missions include maintaining "a readiness posture in support of contingency plans," exercising "operational control" of the local airspace, and providing "aviation support for the White House, U.S. government officials, Department of Defense, Department of the Army, and other government agencies." [8] Stationed at the airfield is the 12th Aviation Battalion, which is the aviation support unit for the Military District of Washington. The battalion operates UH-1 "Huey" and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. [9]

This raises two key questions: Could 12th Aviation Battalion helicopters have helped protect the Pentagon on September 11, and, if they could, why didn't they?

A possible reason their response may have been hindered is revealed in another of the Pentagon oral histories, this one an interview with a helicopter pilot and training officer with the 12th Aviation Battalion. He said that at least some members of the battalion were away from base that morning at a shooting range at Fort A.P. Hill, for their annual weapons training. They had driven there--a journey of one and a half to two hours. Having headed out early in the morning, they were at the range at the time of the attacks on the World Trade Center. They only learned of these when the sister of one of their captains called her brother with news of the attacks, presumably after seeing them on television. They were still at Fort A.P. Hill at the time the Pentagon was hit. It was only then, according to the training officer, that "we just pretty much packed up and came back up here and came into work." [10]

When the members of the battalion finally made it back to base, they were broken down into aviation crews and briefed on what to expect at the Pentagon. Even then, they were unable to launch. This was because they "were locked down until further notice," because, "at that point, aviation got hit the hardest, so nobody was flying anywhere unless we had specific permission."

What is more, the 12th Aviation Battalion had "two crews that are always on standby for any kind of contingency mission." According to the training officer, one of these crews had been "launched earlier that morning." They had been "flying around doing a traffic survey." [11] So, all in all, it appears to have been a rather unsuccessful day for the 12th Aviation Battalion.

DAVISON AIRFIELD WAS ORDERED TO RECALL ITS AIRCRAFT
Another detail revealed in the oral history of the supervisor of air traffic control at Davison Army Airfield is that, just before the Pentagon was hit, someone from Washington's Reagan National Airport--presumably an air traffic controller--called Davison Airfield and instructed it to recall its aircraft. The caller was "going crazy," and was "telling us, recall all your traffic. Just make sure that everybody lands ... he was like, telling us, everybody that you got outside, bring them in and land them quickly, very quickly." The supervisor responded to him, "Give me a reason and I'll do it," to which the caller replied, "I can't tell you the reason, but you need to do this." After the caller hung up, the supervisor told the air traffic controller at his facility, "Okay, tell everybody to come in." The Davison controller started "recalling everybody that just departed," and the supervisor "approved for them to make it straight in, the helicopters to land straight in without using the regular traffic pattern." According to the supervisor: "Everybody was coming in. And at that time when everybody was coming in ... I was like thinking, why? Why do they want to recall everybody? That means that something is going on." [12]

This raises more questions: Exactly what aircraft from Davison Army Airfield were airborne at that time? And could any of them have helped protect the Pentagon had they been informed of the threat to it in time, and had they not been urgently recalled to base?

CLUELESS AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS
Furthermore, the Davison air traffic control supervisor was unhappy about the odd behavior of the air traffic controllers at Reagan National Airport, who were responsible for the airspace around that area. He later visited the airport's control tower and talked to one of the controllers there, wanting to know why they had not alerted Davison Airfield or the Pentagon to the aircraft that hit the Pentagon. The supervisor described: "I was asking him, did you know that the aircraft was coming this way? And he said, yes. We were tracking him for so many miles."

The supervisor asked: "Why you didn't say anything to Davison? Why you didn't say anything to the Pentagon? Because if you would have said something, my controller at the Pentagon would have called the DPS unit," meaning the Defense Protective Service, which guards the Pentagon, "and it would have alerted them that there was something coming to Washington, DC, an aircraft with hostile intentions or something." The controller's reply was, "Well, you know what, it never occurred to me," and "we didn't know that he was going to hit the Pentagon." The supervisor responded, "I know, but all these buildings around here and, you know, we're also an air traffic control facility, you should have said something, you should have said something." [13]

Surely this behavior was suspicious and needs to be investigated? The controllers at the Reagan National Airport tower were aware that two planes had flown into the World Trade Center, so should have realized America was under attack. [14] And yet it supposedly did not occur to them to alert the Pentagon or the Davison air traffic control tower to an unidentified aircraft approaching Washington--the location of the White House, the Capitol, the U.S. Supreme Court, and many other government buildings. We need to find out what was really going on.

The information described above comes from just two of the Pentagon attack oral histories. The website AAL77.com has 41 of them available to view. [15] But the military gathered more than 1,300 interviews with survivors, rescuers, and other witnesses to the Pentagon attack. [16] What new details about 9/11 might the other oral histories reveal?

Clearly we need a new and unrestrained investigation of the September 11 attacks. But a good start would be for all 1,300 of these interviews to be made publicly available.

NOTES
[1] "NEIT 321." U.S. Army Center of Military History, November 14, 2001.
[2] Wm. Steven Humphrey, "With Deadly Intent: Dr. Todd Curtis on the Modern Hijacker." Portland Mercury, September 13, 2001.
[3] "NEIT 321."
[4] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 25-26; "The Secret History of 9/11: The U.S. Government Reacts." CBC, September 10, 2006.
[5] "The White House Has Been Evacuated." Breaking News, CNN, September 11, 2001.
[6] "E-4B National Airborne Operations Center." Federation of American Scientists, April 23, 2000; Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees. CNN, September 12, 2007.
[7] Joe Dejka, "Inside Stratcom on Sept. 11 Offutt Exercise Took Real-Life Twist." Omaha World-Herald, February 27, 2002; Dan Verton, Black Ice: The Invisible Threat of Cyber-Terrorism. New York: Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 2003, pp. 143-144.
[8] Jody T. Fahrig, "Davison Army Airfield Hosts Open House." Pentagram, May 7, 1999.
[9] "Davison U.S. Army Airfield." Military District of Washington, August 2000.
[10] "NEIT 322." U.S. Army Center of Military History, November 14, 2001.
[11] Ibid.
[12] "NEIT 321."
[13] Ibid.
[14] Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies over America on 9/11. New York: Free Press, 2008, pp. 144-145.
[15] "Army Center of Military History Interviews." AAL77.com.
[16] Milan Simonich, "Sgt. Dennis Lapic: Army History Team." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 11, 2002; Steve Vogel, "The Attack Recounted, by Those Who Were There." Washington Post, September 27, 2007.

The Andrews Air Force Base Stand Down: How the 'Capital Guardians' Failed to Guard the Capital on 9/11

2008-08-24T08:40:00.000-07:00

"Thank God that guy's there! Where has he been?"

- Firefighter Mike Smith, upon seeing the first military fighter jetarriving over the Pentagon, 10:40 a.m., September 11, 2001

At the time the 9/11 attacks began, many of the pilots with the District of Columbia Air National Guard (DCANG) were in the headquarters of the 121st Fighter Squadron at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland. They had been suspicious upon learning of the first crash in New York, but when a second plane hit the World Trade Center the emergency became obvious. "We're under a terrorist attack!" someone yelled. One DCANG officer at the base exclaimed, "Well, holy shit, if this is a terrorist attack, we need to get something in the air!" According to Lt. Col. Steve Chase, who was at the operations desk there: "People just launched into action. There was a buzz in the unit." [1]

Andrews Air Force Base is located just 10 miles southeast of Washington, DC, and has been described as "one of the most modern bases in the Air Force." [2] Yet the first fighter jet did not take off from there until well after the time the Pentagon was hit--possibly as late as 10:38 a.m.--and this was armed only with training ammunition. [3] The first properly armed jets took off at 10:52 a.m. [4]

Why did the units at Andrews perform so badly? Why did this base fail to protect the nation's capital and prevent an attack on the nearby Pentagon? Despite the absence of any serious official investigation of these questions, evidence already available indicates that a number of subtle but effective measures may have been used to deliberately sabotage the emergency response and render the DC Air National Guard useless.

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE AND THE DC AIR NATIONAL GUARD
Andrews Air Force Base is a huge military installation in Prince George's County, Maryland. [5] It is the home of the 113th Wing and associated units of the DC Air National Guard, including the 121st Fighter Squadron. [6]

According to a book published by the 1st Air Force, the 113th Wing "is not part of the NORAD [North American Aerospace Defense Command] air sovereignty force and did not have an alert mission" in 2001. [7] However, evidence clearly indicates it still should have been involved in defending the Washington area in response to the 9/11 attacks. Shortly before September 11, the "DC Military" website stated that the 113th Wing's mission included providing "capable and ready response forces for the District of Columbia in the event of a natural disaster or civil emergency." [8] The day of 9/11, Knight Ridder reported, "Air defense around Washington, DC, is provided mainly by fighter planes from Andrews Air Force Base." [9] Indeed, the DC Air National Guard was known as the "Capital Guardians." [10] And while he has said, "We've never been an air defense unit," Lt. Col. Phil Thompson--the chief of safety for the 113th Wing--admitted, "We practice scrambles [i.e. taking off as fast as possible, to inspect enemy aircraft], we know how to do intercepts and other things." [11]

Why then didn't Andrews AFB successfully defend Washington? The following five key pieces of evidence suggest its ability to respond to the attacks may well have been sabotaged:

1) ONLY SEVEN PILOTS WERE AVAILABLE FOLLOWING THE 'RED FLAG' TRAINING EXERCISE
The 121st Fighter Squadron had recently participated in a massive training exercise in Nevada. "Red Flag," an exercise held four times a year at Nellis Air Force Base, ran from August 11 to September 7, 2001, and the 121st FS only returned from it on September 8. [12] Most of the DC Air National Guard pilots are involved with the unit on a part-time basis, while flying commercial jet planes in their civilian lives. [13] Apparently as a result of Red Flag, most of the 121st FS's pilots were back at their usual airline jobs, and the unit only had seven pilots available on September 11. [14] Prior to taking off in response to the attacks, some of these pilots had been uploading onto disks the flight data they would need once airborne, such as navigational waypoints, maps, and frequencies. Reportedly, these disks "still contain[ed] all the Nellis data from the Red Flag training exercise they just returned from." [15] This raises the question of whether the job of replacing the exercise data delayed the takeoffs.

2) THREE ANDREWS JETS WERE AWAY ON A TRAINING MISSION IN NORTH CAROLINA
Furthermore, when the 9/11 attacks began, three F-16s belonging to the 121st FS were 207 miles away from base, flying a training mission in North Carolina, where they'd gone "to drop some bombs and hit a refueling tanker." [16] Therefore, three of the squadron's seven pilots were unavailable to respond to the attacks. Critically, the F-16s were out of radio range with the base. So when weapons officer Major Daniel Caine wanted to recall them, he had to contact a tanker refueling plane they were scheduled to meet and ask its pilot to pass on an urgent "return to base" message. [17] The three fighter jets did not arrive back at Andrews until after the Pentagon was hit. [18]

3) THE SECRET SERVICE SAID IT DIDN'T NEED HELP
Unlike other Air National Guard units, the DC Air National Guard reported to the president rather than a state governor. The president, in turn, had delegated that authority to the Department of Defense. Also, because of its responsibility to protect the president, the Secret Service had a level of authority over the DCANG, and 121st FS officers had a close relationship with Secret Service agents who worked at Andrews Air Force Base. [19]

After the second attack in New York, at 9:03 a.m., Daniel Caine called a contact in the Secret Service that he was friends with. He asked: "Do you have any additional information? Are you guys going to need some help?" Even though it was now obvious the U.S. was under attack and that Washington was a likely target for terrorists, the agent responded, "No, but I'll call you back if that changes." Lt. Col. Marc Sasseville, the commander of the 121st FS, has claimed: "At that time, we weren't thinking about defending anything. Our primary concern was what would happen to the air traffic system." [20]

It wasn't until after 9:34 a.m., when the Secret Service learned of an unidentified aircraft approaching the White House, that an agent at the White House Joint Operations Center called Caine to request help. He asked: "Can you guys do anything? Can you get some fighters in the air as soon as possible?" [21] This was more than half an hour after the second plane hit the WTC. However, the emergency response was delayed even further. Caine has recalled, "Then [the Secret Service agent] told us to stand by and that somebody else would call." The 113th Wing's maintenance section started getting several F-16s armed and ready to fly. Finally, in a subsequent phone call, the Secret Service ordered Andrews AFB, "Get in the air now!" [22]

4) THE INTELLIGENCE OFFICE WAS UNABLE TO GET INFORMATION
The DC Air National Guard's ability to respond to the attacks may also have been hindered because it was being denied the information it needed about what was happening, and had to rely instead upon CNN. At around 9:30 a.m., its intelligence officer went onto the SIPRNET--the Department of Defense's classified version of the Internet--in search of pertinent information, but to no avail. He phoned anyone he could think of who might be able to help, including the Air Combat Command Intelligence Squadron at Langley Air Force Base, the 9th Air Intelligence Squadron at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, Washington's FBI field office, and the White House Joint Operations Center. Yet he was unable to find out anything more than what he'd learned from television. Author Lynn Spencer has claimed, "As DCANG is a general purpose F-16 unit, no one [was] specifically tasked with keeping the squadron informed." [23]

The question to be investigated is whether this apparent agency-wide information blackout can be dismissed as the result of mere confusion, or was it due to sabotage?

5) THE SLOW REACTIONS OF GENERAL DAVID WHERLEY
The actions of Brigadier General David Wherley Jr. are particularly notable. As the commander of the DC Air National Guard, Wherley surely had a crucial role to play in responding to the attacks. However, although accounts are vague and sometimes contradictory, descriptions of what he did give us serious cause for concern.

Wherley was in the headquarters of the 113th Wing the morning of September 11. Yet reports indicate he only started taking action after 9:37 a.m., when the Pentagon was hit. According to the Washington Post, Wherley's "first inkling that the attacks would go beyond New York was when one of his officers, whose husband worked at the Pentagon, saw on television that the building had been hit and began shrieking." [24] After taking a moment to comfort the officer, he "raced out of his office and ran several hundred yards to the headquarters of the DC Guard's 121st Fighter Squadron." But then, upon learning that the Secret Service wanted Andrews to launch fighter jets, Wherley told squadron officers he wanted more explicit authorization, saying: "We have to get instructions. We can't just fly off half-cocked." [25]

Wherley talked over the phone with the Secret Service, which wanted the DCANG to establish a combat air patrol (CAP) over Washington. Yet he seemed reluctant to help. He told the Secret Service agent, "I would feel more comfortable receiving such an order from someone higher in the chain of command, preferably in the military." He was given the number for the Presidential Emergency Operations Center--a bunker below the White House--which he then called. The Secret Service agent who answered implored Wherley: "We want you to put a CAP up over the city. We need some fighters now." Yet Wherley was "not very comfortable taking orders from a Secret Service agent. That's just not how things are done." He asked, "Is there anybody else there from the military available to talk?" As there was not, he asked, "Is the vice president available?" The vice president was on the phone with the president. Only after further reflection did Wherley finally agree to help, saying: "Okay, then. What exactly do they want me to do?" [26]

Wherley then had to wait for the Secret Service to determine "exactly" what it wanted. According to the Washington Post, the instructions came "within a half-hour." Again, another delay. [27] The Secret Service agent who got back to Wherley said he had received instructions that came from the vice president. The guidance was "to send up the aircraft, with orders to protect the White House and take out any aircraft that threatened the Capitol." If the 9/11 Commission is correct, these instructions were not passed on to the first fighter jet that took off from Andrews, but instead only to "the pilots that launched at 10:42 and afterward." By that time, of course, the attacks were long over. [28]

ANDREWS JETS ONLY TOOK OFF AFTER THE PENTAGON ATTACK
Taking into account these five pieces of evidence (and presumably there are other relevant details that we are as yet unaware of) it is unsurprising that the DCANG was so slow in responding to the 9/11 attacks. The first fighter jet to take off from Andrews Air Force Base in response was an F-16 piloted by Major Billy Hutchison--one of the aircraft that had been away on a training mission in North Carolina and had just returned to the base. Hutchison's was the only one of the three returning jets with enough fuel remaining to take off again immediately, though he had just 2,800 pounds, which is equivalent to one-eighth of a tank in a car. He had no missiles and only training ammunition. He took off "without afterburner to conserve fuel, go across the White House over the Georgetown area and continue northwest up the Potomac." [29]

The time when Hutchison took off is unclear. Different accounts have said he did so "Within minutes of American Airlines Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon," [30] some time roughly around 10:00 a.m. [31], or "about 50 minutes after the Pentagon was hit." [32] According to 113th Wing operations desk records, he did not take off until 10:33 a.m. [33], and, according to the 9/11 Commission, he was not airborne until 10:38 a.m. [34]

Hutchison has recalled that he circled low over the Pentagon some time after taking off. [35] Many witnesses who were on the ground have recalled seeing the first military jet arriving over the Pentagon following the attack there at around 10:40 a.m., or "closer to 11" o'clock, according to the New York Times. In other words, the first Andrews jet to reach the Pentagon in response to the 9/11 attacks only arrived an hour or more after it had been hit--far too late to have been any use in preventing the attack there. Understandably, upon seeing the F-16 above, one firefighter exclaimed: "Thank God that guy's there! Where has he been?" [36]

The next two F-16s to launch from Andrews took off at 10:42 a.m. These also had no missiles, and only non-explosive training rounds for their Gatling guns--"hardly enough to bring down an airliner," the pilots have conceded. Finally, at 10:52 a.m., the first fighters armed with live ammunition and AIM-9 air-to-air missiles took off. [37] Their pilots were instructed to establish a combat air patrol over Washington and intercept any incoming aircraft. [38]

So, although the DC Air National Guard is meant to have realized, "We're under a terrorist attack!" when the second plane hit the World Trade Center, and immediately to have "launched into action," its first properly armed fighters did not take off until more than an hour after the Pentagon was hit, and more than two hours after the first attack in New York.

OTHER UNITS AND UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
The information currently available on Andrews Air Force Base and what happened there on 9/11 is vague, often contradictory, and only serves to raise new questions. For example, we know that, as well as the 113th Wing, there were other units at the base with fighter jets available. These included Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 321, which flew the sophisticated F/A-18 Hornet, and Naval Air Facility, Washington, DC, which provided "Naval air operations support for the Naval District of Washington," and also had F/A-18 Hornets available. [39] Yet little is known about these units' activities on September 11 and what they could have done to defend the capital.

It seems logical to assume, however, that fighter jets from Andrews should have been in the air protecting Washington and the Pentagon long before the Pentagon was hit. The question of why they failed to do so needs to be part of a serious and unrestrained new investigation of the 9/11 attacks.

NOTES
[1] Steve Vogel, "Flights of Vigilance Over the Capital." Washington Post, April 8, 2002; Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11. New York: Free Press, 2008, p. 123.
[2] "Andrews AFB, Maryland." GlobalSecurity.org, March 3, 2002.
[3] NBC Nightly News. NBC, September 11, 2001; Steve Vogel, "Flights of Vigilance Over the Capital"; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 44.
[4] Steve Vogel, The Pentagon: A History. New York: Random House, 2007, p. 446.
[5] "Andrews Air Force Base: Welcome." DCMilitary.com, Summer 2001; "Andrews AFB, Maryland."
[6] "Andrews Air Force Base: Partner Units." DCMilitary.com, Summer 2001; "113th Wing." GlobalSecurity.org, October 21, 2001.
[7] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America: Sept. 11 Alters Face of Air Defense Mission. Tyndall Air Force Base, FL: 1st Air Force, 2003, p. 76.
[8] "Andrews Air Force Base: Partner Units."
[9] Steve Goldstein, "Focus of Training for Terrorist Attacks has Been Chemical, Biological Warfare." Knight Ridder, September 11, 2001.
[10] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 122.
[11] William B. Scott, "F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93." Aviation Week & Space Technology, September 9, 2002.
[12] "Photo: Exercise Routine." Las Vegas Review-Journal, August 22, 2001; Steve Vogel, "Flights of Vigilance Over the Capital"; William M. Arkin, Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World. Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2005, p. 476.
[13] Steve Vogel, "Flights of Vigilance Over the Capital."
[14] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 156.
[15] Ibid. pp. 236-237.
[16] William B. Scott, "F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93"; Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 79.
[17] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 124.
[18] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 79; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 216-218.
[19] Steve Vogel, The Pentagon, p. 445; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 122-123.
[20] William B. Scott, "F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 124.
[21] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 9; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 156.
[22] William B. Scott, "F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93"; Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 78.
[23] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 79; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 155-156.
[24] Steve Vogel, "Flights of Vigilance Over the Capital."
[25] Steve Vogel, The Pentagon, pp. 445-446.
[26] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 184-185.
[27] Steve Vogel, "Flights of Vigilance Over the Capital."
[28] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 44.
[29] Steve Vogel, "Flights of Vigilance Over the Capital"; Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, pp. 79-81.
[30] William B. Scott, "F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93."
[31] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 216-220.
[32] Steve Vogel, "Flights of Vigilance Over the Capital."
[33] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, pp. 81 and 89.
[34] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 44.
[35] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, pp. 81-82.
[36] David E. Sanger and Don Van Natta Jr., "In Four Days, a National Crisis Changes Bush's Presidency." New York Times, September 16, 2001; Patrick Creed and Rick Newman, Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11. New York: Presidio Press, 2008, pp. 130-131.
[37] William B. Scott, "F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93"; Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, pp. 82-84; Steve Vogel, The Pentagon, p. 446.
[38] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 238.
[39] "Andrews Air Force Base: Partner Units."

"Shockingly Calm": The Phone Calls From the Planes on 9/11

2008-07-05T06:33:00.000-07:00

A number of people received phone calls the morning of September 11, 2001 that they believed were made by individuals on board the planes that crashed in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. Descriptions of these calls, however, reveal something odd. According to the official story we have been told, the callers were in an unprecedented crisis, stuck on planes under the control of murderous terrorists, and with no knowledge of whether they were going to be allowed to live or die. Yet in many of the phone calls, the caller appears to have been remarkably calm. Perhaps if just a few of them--for example, those with specific personal experiences, like the flight attendant who was a former police officer--had maintained their composure, then this would be less remarkable. Yet the large majority of the callers displayed this same calmness. In their recollections, some of the people who received the calls have indeed commented on this fact, apparently surprised by it. Some of them have also commented on the absence of panic, screaming, or other sounds of chaos in the background.

At the very least, these details appear highly unusual. As with much else about the events of 9/11, these phone calls raise serious questions. Were they really being made from the four planes targeted that morning, by passengers and crew members? Or is it possible the perpetrators of the attacks were faking them, in a cruel deception intended to help establish the official story, and this was why the callers were able to maintain such calmness? The calls need to be subjected to far closer and more critical scrutiny than has so far occurred, as part of a real investigation into the attacks, in order to establish the truth.

The following summary shows how odd the calls appear to be:

FLIGHT 11
A computer presentation shown during the 2006 trial of Zacarias Moussaoui summarized the phone calls allegedly made from the four flights targeted on 9/11. According to this presentation, two people successfully made calls from Flight 11, the first plane to supposedly be taken over by hijackers: flight attendants Betty Ong and Madeline "Amy" Sweeney. [1]

Betty Ong called the American Airlines Southeastern Reservations Office in North Carolina, and spoke for about 25 minutes with employees there. Ong said she thought her plane was being hijacked, that two flight attendants had been stabbed and injured, and that a passenger had perhaps been fatally stabbed. She said Mace spray had been used, and "we can't breathe." [2] Despite these harrowing circumstances, as the New York Times described, Ong "could not have sounded much calmer." [3] Nydia Gonzalez, one of the American Airlines employees who received the call, described Ong as speaking in "a very calm, professional, and poised demeanor," and added, "Betty was calm, professional, and in control throughout the call." [4] Reportedly, when Ong's family heard the recording of her call, they "couldn't believe the calm in Betty's voice." [5] In the plane's final moments, when Ong asked those on the other end of her call to "pray for us," she was still speaking "in a composed voice." [6] As the plane approached the World Trade Center, according to Vanessa Minter, another of the employees receiving Ong's call: "You didn't hear hysteria in the background. You didn't hear people screaming." [7]

Amy Sweeney contacted the American Airlines Flight Services Office at Boston's Logan Airport. After her first calls got broken off, she was finally able to speak for 13 minutes, up to about 8:45. Sweeney reported "that the plane had been hijacked; a man in first class had his throat slashed; two flight attendants had been stabbed ... the flight attendants were unable to contact the cockpit; and there was a bomb in the cockpit." [8] Michael Woodward, the manager with whom Sweeney talked, later told the FBI that despite reporting such horrific events, "during the entire conversation," Sweeney's voice "remained calm and even." [9] Even just before Flight 11 crashed, Sweeney retained her composure. After reporting that her plane was flying very low, Woodward recalled, she "took a very slow, deep breath and then just said, 'Oh, my God!' Very slowly, very calmly, very quietly. It wasn't in panic." [10] Furthermore, Woodward noted, he "did not hear any noise in the background during the conversation." [11]

FLIGHT 175
Three people reportedly made successful phone calls from Flight 175, the plane that hit the South Tower of the WTC: one flight attendant and two passengers. While brief descriptions are available of the call made by the attendant--thought to be Robert Fangman--these reveal no details of his level of composure. [12] Some relevant information is available regarding the other calls from this aircraft.

Passenger Brian Sweeney left a short message on his wife's answering machine, and then called his mother. [13] In his message to his wife, Julie, he stated, "The plane I'm on has been hijacked, and it doesn't look good." According to Julie Sweeney, Brian "sounded calm. ... He was not crying." [14] Details of his composure during the call to his mother are unstated. The other passenger, Peter Hanson, twice called his father, and told him about the hijacking. [15] According to the Los Angeles Times, "In the first call, Peter was calm." According to Hanson's father, "His voice was soft, not too nervous." Whether he was also calm in his second call is unstated. [16]

FLIGHT 77
Two individuals have been reported as making phone calls from the third hijacked plane, Flight 77: attendant Renee May and passenger Barbara Olson. No details have been revealed of whether Renee May remained calm during her call. But, according to Newsweek, Barbara Olson phoned her husband and "was calm and collected as she told him how hijackers had used boxcutters and knifes to take control of the plane and had herded the passengers and crew to the back." [17] Her husband Ted Olson--who at that time was the United States solicitor general--described to CNN: "She sounded very, very calm. ... In retrospect, enormously, remarkably, incredibly calm." [18]

FLIGHT 93
The majority of the phone calls made from the planes allegedly came from Flight 93, the aircraft said to have crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers attempted to retake control from the hijackers. At least 12 individuals reportedly made calls. Most of them displayed a surprising degree of calmness.

1) Flight attendant Sandy Bradshaw phoned the United Airlines maintenance facility in San Francisco and reported her plane had been hijacked, and that the hijackers had pulled a knife and killed a flight attendant. The manager who took the call later described Bradshaw as being "shockingly calm." [19] Bradshaw subsequently phoned her husband, who later recalled, "She sounded calm, but like her adrenaline was really going." [20]

2) Another flight attendant, CeeCee Lyles--who was a former police officer--called her husband. He described, "She was surprisingly calm," considering the screaming he heard in the background. [21]

3) Passenger Mark Bingham called his family, and talked to his aunt and his mother. His aunt found him sounding "calm, matter-of-fact." His mother recalled: "His voice was calm. He seemed very much composed, even though I know he must have been under terrible duress." [22] She also said a background discussion between passengers she could hear, about taking back the plane from the hijackers, sounded like a "calm boardroom meeting." [23]

4) Another passenger, Tom Burnett, called his wife Deena four times. Deena Burnett later recalled his third call: "[I]t was as if he was at Thoratec [the company he worked for], sitting at his desk, and we were having a regular conversation. It was the strangest thing because he was using the same tone of voice I had heard a thousand times. It calmed me to know he was so confident." [24] According to journalist and author Jere Longman, in his fourth call, Tom was "speaking in a normal voice, calm." [25]

5) Passenger Lauren Grandcolas called her husband, Jack, and left a message on the answering machine. Jack Grandcolas later recalled, "She sounded calm." [26] According to Jere Longman, "It sounded to Jack as if she were driving home from the grocery store or ordering a pizza." [27] Furthermore, Jack Grandcolas has described: "There is absolutely no background noise on her message. You can't hear people screaming or yelling or crying. It's very calm, the whole cabin, the background, there's really very little sound." [28]

6) Jeremy Glick called his wife, Lyz, and told her his plane had been hijacked. She recalled, "He was so calm, the plane sounded so calm, that if I hadn't seen what was going on on the TV, I wouldn't have believed it." [29] She has added: "I was surprised by how calm it seemed in the background. I didn't hear any screaming. I didn't hear any noises. I didn't hear any commotion." [30]

7) Todd Beamer talked for 13 minutes with GTE-Verizon supervisor Lisa Jefferson. According to Jefferson, Beamer "was amazingly calm and composed as he told her of the hijacking of Flight 93 and passengers' plans to rush their captors." [31] Jefferson said he "stayed calm through the entire conversation. He made me doubt the severity of the call." [32] She later told Beamer's wife, "If I hadn't known it was a real hijacking, I'd have thought it was a crank call, because Todd was so rational and methodical about what he was doing." [33]

8) Honor Elizabeth Wainio spoke with her stepmother, Esther Heymann. Heymann has said that Wainio "really was remarkably calm throughout our whole conversation." [34] According to Jere Longman, when Wainio was not talking, Heymann "could not hear another person. She could not hear any conversation or crying or yelling or whimpering. Nothing." [35]

9) Linda Gronlund left a voice mail message at the home of her sister, saying that terrorists who said they had a bomb had hijacked her plane. [36] Her sister has described that, during the call, Gronlund "got real calm and said, 'Now my will is in my safe and my safe is in my closet. And this is the combination.'" [37]

10) Edward Felt spoke with 911 dispatcher John Shaw just minutes before Flight 93 reportedly crashed, and said his plane had been hijacked. According to Shaw, Felt "was crying ... frightened, scared, and anxious." But Felt's brother Gordon, who heard the recording of the call, has disputed this, saying: "My brother was not scared. He was very composed, under the circumstances." [38] Felt's wife, who heard the recording of the 911 call and also the Flight 93 cockpit voice recording, said Edward "was very calm in the face of death." [39]

Indeed, author Jere Longman said he'd "heard tapes of a couple of the phone calls made from [Flight 93] and was struck by the absence of panic in the voices." [40]

Only two other people are reported to have made successful calls from Flight 93. Passenger Marion Britton appears to be the only clear example of a caller sounding panicked. She called her friend Fred Fiumano. According to Fiumano, Britton "was crying and--you know--more or less crying and screaming and yelling." [41] Fiumano said he heard a lot of screaming in the background near the end of the call. [42] Joseph DeLuca, also a passenger, called his father and reported there were terrorists on his plane. But he has been described simply as having "sounded sad" during the call. [43]

NOTES
[1] U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, "Summary From Flight 93 Depicting: The Identity of Pilots and Flight Attendants, Seat Assignments of Passengers, and Telephone Calls From the Flight." July 31, 2006.
[2] Public Hearing. 9/11 Commission, January 27, 2004; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 5.
[3] Philip Shenon, "A Calm Voice as Disaster Unfolded in the Sky." New York Times, January 28, 2004.
[4] Public Hearing. 9/11 Commission, January 27, 2004.
[5] Jennifer Julian, "One of the Last Calls." ABC11 Eyewitness News, September 11, 2002.
[6] Steven Knipp, "Sept. 11: An Angel Named Betty Ong." Pacific News Service, September 8, 2004.
[7] "Calm Before the Crash." ABC News, July 18, 2002.
[8] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 6 and 453; U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, "Summary From Flight 93."
[9] "FBI FD-302, Michael Woodward." Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 14, 2001.
[10] "Calm Before the Crash."
[11] "FBI FD-302, Michael Woodward."
[12] Scott McCartney and Susan Carey, "American, United Watched and Worked in Horror as Sept. 11 Hijackings Unfolded." Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2001; "The Four Flights: Staff Statement No. 4." 9/11 Commission, January 27, 2004; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 7-8; 9/11 Commission, Staff Report. August 26, 2004, p. 21.
[13] 9/11 Commission, Staff Report, p. 22; U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, "Summary From Flight 93."
[14] K. C. Myers, "Message From Air is Final Goodbye." Cape Cod Times, September 12, 2001.
[15] 9/11 Commission, Staff Report, pp. 21-23.
[16] Richard A. Serrano, "Moussaoui Jury Hears the Panic From 9/11." Los Angeles Times, April 11, 2006.
[17] Michael Isikoff, "'I Can't Just Sit Back.'" Newsweek, September 19, 2001.
[18] "Recovering From Tragedy." Larry King Live, CNN, September 14, 2001.
[19] 9/11 Commission, Staff Report, p. 40; United States of America v. Zacarias Moussaoui. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, April 11, 2006.
[20] Angie Cannon, "Final Words From Flight 93." U.S. News & World Report, October 29, 2001.
[21] Brad Townsend, Chip Brown, and Gerry Fraley, "Trapped in the Skies, Captives Fought Back." Dallas Morning News, September 17, 2001.
[22] "World Leaders Express Horror, Outrage." CNN, September 12, 2001; Jere Longman, Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back. New York: HarperCollins, 2002, pp. 129-130.
[23] Phil Hirschkorn, "More 9/11 Families Testify for Moussaoui." CNN, April 21, 2006.
[24] Deena Burnett with Anthony Giombetti, Fighting Back: Living Life Beyond Ourselves. Altamonte Springs, FL: Advantage Books, 2006, p. 66.
[25] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, p. 118.
[26] David Segal, "A Red Carpet Tragedy." Washington Post, April 26, 2006.
[27] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, p. 128.
[28] United 93: The Families and the Film. Directed by Kate Solomon, Working Title Films, 2006.
[29] Matthew Brown, "Hero's Family Perseveres." Bergen Record, October 5, 2001.
[30] Jane Pauley, "No Greater Love." NBC News, September 11, 2006.
[31] Jim McKinnon, "13-Minute Call Bonds her Forever With Hero." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 22, 2001.
[32] Wendy Schuman, "'I Promised I Wouldn't Hang Up.'" Beliefnet, 2006.
[33] Lisa Beamer and Ken Abraham, Let's Roll!: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2002, p. 211.
[34] "Stories of Flight 93." Larry King Live, CNN, February 18, 2006.
[35] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, pp. 171-172.
[36] 9/11 Commission, Staff Report, p. 44.
[37] Jane Pauley, "No Greater Love."
[38] Richard Gazarik, "Felt Reaches 911 Just Before Crash." Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 8, 2002.
[39] Chuck Biedka, "911 Dispatcher Recalls Frantic Cell Phone Call From Flight 93." Valley News Dispatch, September 11, 2002.
[40] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, p. xi.
[41] Jane Pauley, "No Greater Love."
[42] "FBI FD-302, Unidentified Person re: Marion Britton." Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 20, 2001; United States of America v. Zacarias Moussaoui.
[43] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, p. 161.

Pentagon Medics Thought 9/11 Attack Was Part of a Drill

2008-06-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

The morning of September 11, 2001, the U.S. Army's DiLorenzo Tricare Health Clinic (DTHC) had over 200 staff members working in its offices at the Pentagon, available to offer primary and emergency care to Department of Defense employees. [1] Following the attack on the Pentagon, DTHC workers were involved with the emergency response, performing triage and treatment in the clinic and at other locations within the building. [2]

Curiously, several DTHC workers have indicated that, when they were ordered to evacuate after the Pentagon was hit, they initially thought this was a drill. Admittedly, the clinic is located in the basement and on the east of the building--the opposite side to where it was impacted--and so people there had not heard or felt the crash. [3] Yet, considering that the two crashes occurring in New York made it obvious the U.S. was under attack, this reaction seems surprising. An examination of the accounts of these workers and other evidence raises the possibility that their confusion was because a drill was scheduled to take place there that day. Remarkably, there is evidence that such a drill might have been based around a plane hitting the Pentagon.

WITNESS ACCOUNTS
Captain Jennifer Glidewell, the chief nurse at the acute care section of the DTHC, has described how she mistook the evacuation for part of a training exercise. Like numerous others at the clinic, Glidewell had seen the TV coverage reporting the attacks in New York. When informed that two planes--not one--had hit the World Trade Center, she said out loud: "That wasn't an accident. That was terrorism." A man had then run through the clinic, looking serious and yelling, "Everybody get out!" Glidewell started evacuating the place, herself leaving with Sergeant Matthew Rosenberg, a medic there. Yet Glidewell has recalled that, as she and Rosenberg saw "throngs of people going out," they were "thinking fire drill. I still had not made the connection." [4]

After being told there was a patient in the Pentagon's center courtyard requiring attention, Glidewell and Rosenberg headed there. [5] Authors Patrick Creed and Rick Newman have described, "When they entered the courtyard, the first thing they saw was smoke, billowing up out of the opposite side of the building." They saw a man, "running with his arms up in the air, screaming, his clothes hanging off him like rags." Yet Glidewell thought this was part of a training exercise: "When Glidewell saw his face, her first thought was that it was the best moulage job she had ever seen. Moulage was the makeup medical practitioners put on mock patients during exercises, to simulate injuries." Only as she realized his injuries were genuine did reality sink in. She grabbed her radio and yelled into it: "This is not a drill! This is real!" [6]

Other DiLorenzo Clinic employees have also recalled mistaking the response to the Pentagon attack for a drill:

• Dr. Veena Railan was examining a patient when she heard the call to evacuate. She recalled: "I was not very sure what was happening, what was going on at that time. Maybe this is a drill because of what happened in New York." [7]
• U.S. Air Force Surgeon General Paul Carlton had been at the Pentagon for a meeting. [8] After the building was hit, he'd gone to the DTHC and volunteered to head a team of medics that was going to the center courtyard. [9] As they rushed there, a young sergeant "was under the impression that this crash was yet another exercise." Carlton told him, "I think this one's for real, my friend." [10]
• Captain Liza Lindenberg, a physician at the DTHC, heard about the WTC being hit. She was discussing this with a couple of colleagues, "and we were jokingly saying that maybe we should go home for the day because of the incident." She then "heard a thud, like a construction crane, and then all of a sudden people started yelling that we should be evacuating." However, "Not until we went out the door did I see these plumes of smoke and thought, this is definitely not a drill." [11]
• Major Bridget Larew had been told two planes had hit the WTC. She realized, "That wasn't a coincidence; that is terrorism." After the man ran through the clinic, yelling at everyone to evacuate, she saw "people streaming by the glass doors as they were exiting the building." She said aloud, "I don't think this is an exercise." After helping an injured victim, she "went back out to the front desk to see if I had other providers because, by now, the people, our medical teams were starting to come back in the building, realizing that this was not a drill and that they needed to be here with us to get supplies and stuff." [12]
• Staff Sergeant Keith Pernell saw the television footage of the second plane hitting the WTC and was thinking, "What's going on?" Although he did not hear or feel the impact when the Pentagon was hit, he heard the order to "Get out!" Yet, he has recalled, "We just thought it was a regular fire drill." [13]
• Sergeant Mark Maxey Davis knew about the first--but not the second--plane hitting the WTC. When someone walked into the office he was in and said they all needed to evacuate the building, he has recalled, "I just thought it was a routine fire drill or something like that." As he walked out, he "didn't grab anything because, again, I just thought it was something routine." When he got outside, he saw people running from the center courtyard. As he was leaving the North Parking area, he looked back and saw the smoke coming from the Pentagon. Yet he "wasn't even afraid then because I just thought it was maybe something caught on fire." [14]

While these accounts do not prove the DTHC was due to take part in a training exercise that day, other evidence further supports this possibility.

MORE EVIDENCE OF A DRILL AT THE PENTAGON ON 9/11
Major Lorie Brown was the chief nurse at the DiLorenzo Tricare Health Clinic on September 11. According to Brown, the clinic "actually had our MASCAL equipment out of the storage areas" that morning, "because we were doing an inventory." ("MASCAL" equipment is that which is required for situations with "mass casualties.") Brown has continued: "So there were many pieces that just fell into place and worked so well on that day. It was just fortuitous. It was just amazing that way that things kind of happened the way they did." [15]

Sergeant Matthew Rosenberg said that, on September 11: "We had virtually completed our MASCAL plan. I was setting up training for medics, I was in the process of ordering new supplies, and trying to reinvent what we would do, how we would go about it." Furthermore, "Believe it or not, the day prior to" September 11, he had been "on the phone with the FBI, and we were talking, 'so who has command should this happen, who has the medical jurisdiction, who does this, who does that,' and we talked about it and talked about it, and he helped me out a lot." [16] Might Brown and Rosenberg have been implying they had been preparing for a training exercise due to take place on 9/11?

What is more, as the Washington Post reported, early in the morning of September 11, before the attacks occurred in New York, Rosenberg had been "down on Corridor 8" of the Pentagon (where the DTHC is located), "grateful for an uninterrupted hour in which he could study a new medical emergency disaster plan based on the unlikely scenario of an airplane crashing into the place." [17] Could he have been studying this in preparation for an exercise that day, which would be based on a plane crashing into the Pentagon?

PRE-9/11 PLANE CRASH EXERCISES
Extraordinary as this possibility may sound, it would not have been the first time the DTHC participated in such a drill. The clinic had been involved in at least two training exercises in the 12 months prior to 9/11, based around the scenario of an aircraft crashing into the Pentagon. The DiLorenzo Clinic's Action Response Team (DART) had been developing a new MASCAL plan and, for that purpose, participated in several large tabletop exercises with other organizations such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and civilian medical agencies. [18]

In late October 2000, Lorie Brown and others from the DTHC took part in the Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise, held in the Office of the Secretary of Defense conference room. One of the scenarios practiced for was a passenger aircraft crashing into the Pentagon, with 341 victims. [19] And in May 2001, the DTHC held an exercise along with the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic and Arlington County Emergency Medical Services, which practiced for the scenario of an airplane with 35 passengers on board crashing into the Pentagon's west face--the same side as was impacted in the attack on 9/11. [20]

We therefore have evidence indicating the DiLorenzo Tricare Health Clinic was due to hold a training exercise on September 11, and that this exercise may have been based around the scenario of a plane hitting the Pentagon. Certainly this possibility is something that needs to be urgently examined as part of a new investigation of 9/11. If a training exercise was scheduled to take place at the Pentagon that day, what precisely did it involve? When was it due to start? Who planned it? And why has its existence never been publicly admitted?

NOTES
[1] Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11. Washington, DC: Defense Department, Office of the Secretary, Historical Office, 2007, p. 107.
[2] Arlington County, Virginia, report, Titan Systems Corp., Arlington County: After-Action Report on the Response to the September 11 Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon. 2002, p. B1.
[3] Janet Boivin, "Pentagon Nurse Quells Chaos of Terrorist Attack." Nursing Spectrum, September 24, 2001; Soldiers to the Rescue: The Medical Response to the Pentagon Attack. Washington, DC: Office of Medical History, September 2004, pp. 7 and 111; Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11, p. 107; Patrick Creed and Rick Newman, Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11. New York: Presidio Press, 2008, p. 57.
[4] Soldiers to the Rescue, p. 19; Patrick Creed and Rick Newman, Firefight, pp. 57-58.
[5] Soldiers to the Rescue, p. 39.
[6] Ibid. p. 19; Patrick Creed and Rick Newman, Firefight, p. 58.
[7] Soldiers to the Rescue, p. 125.
[8] Dean E. Murphy, September 11: An Oral History. New York: Doubleday, 2002, p. 216.
[9] Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11, p. 109.
[10] Dean E. Murphy, September 11: An Oral History, p. 222.
[11] Soldiers to the Rescue, p. 85.
[12] Ibid. p. 83.
[13] Ibid. p. 111.
[14] Ibid. p. 69.
[15] Ibid. p. 7.
[16] Ibid. p. 39.
[17] David Maraniss, "September 11, 2001." Washington Post, September 16, 2001.
[18] Soldiers to the Rescue, p. 7.
[19] Dennis Ryan, "Contingency Planning Pentagon MASCAL Exercise Simulates Scenarios in Preparing for Emergencies." MDW News Service, November 3, 2000.
[20] Arlington County, After-Action Report on the Response to the September 11 Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon, p. B17; James A. Geiling, "Overview of Command and Control Issues: Setting the Stage." Military Medicine, September 2002; Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11, pp. 23 and 107.

Richard Clarke, 9/11, and the Continuity of Government Plan

2008-05-24T05:47:00.000-07:00

The morning of 9/11, a highly secret plan was activated for the first time. Called continuity of government (COG), it dated back to the cold war and had originally been designed to ensure the U.S. government would continue to function in the event of a nuclear war. According to author James Mann, this little-known plan "helps to explain the thinking and behavior" of the Bush administration, "in the hours, days, and months after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001." [1]

Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, who on 9/11 were the secretary of defense and vice president, were key players in the COG program throughout the 1980s. Both regularly participated in secret exercises rehearsing the plan. Furthermore, a third Bush administration official was also a major player. That person was Richard Clarke, who on September 11 was the White House chief of counterterrorism. Not only was he a regular participant in the COG exercises, Clarke also wrote a presidential directive that in 1998 changed the focus of the program from the Soviet threat to the threat posed by terrorists. And, according to his own recollection, it was Clarke that initiated COG on the morning of 9/11. This means that on September 11, individuals in three of the most important positions within the U.S. government, who all had crucial roles to play during the attacks, had in common their participation in this most secretive and mysterious program.

RICHARD CLARKE ON 9/11
In his book Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke described how he personally ordered the COG plan into effect during the 9/11 attacks. At around 9:45-9:55 that morning, he had been joined in the White House Situation Room by the coordinator for continuity of government. Clarke asked him, "How do I activate COG?" According to Clarke, "In the exercises we had done, the person playing the president had always given that order." But the coordinator replied, "You tell me to do it." Clarke ordered him, "Go." [2]

If this account is accurate, then Clarke's central role in COG becomes obvious: He was able to initiate the plan, performing a task conducted by the acting president during exercises.

Clarke has explained what happened next: "Every federal agency was ordered ... to activate an alternative command post, an alternative headquarters outside of Washington, DC, and to staff it as soon as possible." Cabinet officers were dispatched around the U.S., and members of Congress were taken to alternative locations. According to ABC News, "If executive branch leaders and large numbers of congressmen had been killed ... the plan could have gone further, officials suggest, perhaps even with non-elected leaders of the United States taking control and declaring martial law." [3]

RICHARD CLARKE PARTICIPATES IN COG EXERCISES
In 2004, Clarke revealed that over the previous 20 years he had been a regular participant in exercises where he had "gone off into caves in mountains in remote locations and spent days on end in miserable conditions, pretending that the rest of the world had blown up." [4] As part of a program with a secret budget of hundreds of millions of dollars per year, these exercises rehearsed the COG plan. During the 1980s, teams of 40 to 60 federal officials, plus a member of President Reagan's Cabinet, would disappear at least once a year to a remote location such as an underground bunker or a disused military base. There they would practice in detail how to keep the federal government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were also among those who regularly participated in these exercises. [5]

Despite the fall of the Soviet Union, the exercises continued throughout the 1990s and the program's budget remained at over $200 million a year. But now the exercises practiced for the threat posed by terrorists. [6]

PDD-67: TERRORISM BECOMES THE NEW THREAT
In early 1998, while he was the chair of the White House's Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG), Richard Clarke wrote the Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) that updated the COG program to make its focus terrorism rather than the Soviet Union. As he later explained: "We thought that individual buildings in Washington, and indeed perhaps all of Washington, could still come under attack, only it might not be from the former Soviet Union. ... It might be with a terrorist walking a weapon into our city." [7] Clarke has recalled, "If terrorists could attack Washington, particularly with weapons of mass destruction, we needed to have a robust system of command and control, with plans to devolve authority and capabilities to officials outside Washington." President Clinton signed Clarke's directive on October 21, 1998, as Presidential Decision Directive 67, "Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations." [8]

This top-secret document has never been released, and there is no White House fact sheet summarizing its contents. [9] But Knight Ridder reported in 1999 that PDD-67 required "agencies to prepare plans for governmental continuity if the country is hit by a major terrorist attack." According to Energy Department emergency planning documents, the continuity plans "could be triggered by an event worse than what's expected from the Y2K problem and comparable to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing." [10] The Washington Post reported that, under PDD-67: "[E]very single government department and agency was directed to see to it that they could resume critical functions within 12 hours of a warning, and keep their operations running at emergency facilities for up to 30 days. FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] was put in charge of this broad new program." [11] The fact that he wrote such a key document again shows the central role Clarke must have had within the COG program. And, as it could be triggered "by an event ... comparable to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing," it appears that Clarke's directive may be what enabled COG to be activated in response to the 9/11 attacks.

REPUBLICAN HAWKS
In light of his involvement with the continuity of government program, it is worth noting that, while he has become well known for his criticisms of the Bush administration's pre-9/11 failures, Richard Clarke is by no means a peace-loving liberal. Some who have known him have in fact described quite the opposite. According to the Washington Post, many in the Clinton administration viewed him as a hawk. [12] Robert Gelbard, who worked with him at the State Department in the early 1990s, said Clarke is "no liberal. He is very hawkish." [13] Larry DiCara, the former president of the Boston City Council, who knew Clarke when he was younger, has described him as "fiercely conservative at a time when just about everyone in Boston was a Democrat." DiCara added, "I'm amazed he worked for [President] Clinton." [14]

As early as February 1999, Clarke was articulating the desire for a particularly aggressive foreign policy, telling the Associated Press: "We may not just go in a strike against a terrorist facility. We may choose to retaliate against the facilities of the host country, if that host country is a knowing, cooperative sanctuary." [15] In April 2000, he told the Washington Post: "We should have a very low barrier in terms of acting when there is a threat of weapons of mass destruction being used against American citizens. We should not have a barrier of evidence that can be used in a court of law." [16] That year, The Independent called Clarke "the Dr. Strangelove de nos jours," while The Spectator magazine later described him as having "frequently sounded more Bush-like than Bush," prior to his much-publicized attacks on the president in 2004. [17]

Indeed, according to journalist and author Andrew Cockburn, during the 1990s, the COG exercises Clarke participated in were attended "almost exclusively" by Republican hawks. A former Pentagon official with direct knowledge has described: "It was one way for these people to stay in touch. They'd meet, do the exercise, but also sit around and castigate the Clinton administration in the most extreme way. You could say this was a secret government-in-waiting. The Clinton administration was extraordinarily inattentive, [they had] no idea what was going on." [18]

NOTES
[1] James Mann, "The Armageddon Plan." Atlantic Monthly, March 2004.
[2] Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror. New York: Free Press, 2004, p. 8.
[3] "Worst Case Scenario: Secret Plan to Control U.S. Government After an Attack Went Into Motion on 9/11." ABC News, April 25, 2004.
[4] Howard Kurtz, "'Armageddon' Plan Was Put Into Action on 9/11, Clarke Says." Washington Post, April 7, 2004.
[5] James Mann, "The Armageddon Plan."
[6] Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy. New York: Scribner, 2007, p. 88.
[7] CBS News, September 11, 2001.
[8] Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies, pp. 167 and 170; William M. Arkin, "Back to the Bunker." Washington Post, June 4, 2006.
[9] "PDD-NSC-67: Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations (U) 21 October 1998." Federation of American Scientists, December 12, 2000.
[10] Jim Landers, "Government Uses Y2K Lessons in its Blueprint for Cyber-Terror Defenses." Knight Ridder, November 17, 1999.
[11] William M. Arkin, "Back to the Bunker."
[12] Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus, "The Book on Richard Clarke." Washington Post, March 23, 2004.
[13] David E. Kaplan, "Clarke: A Man on a Mission." U.S. News & World Report, April 5, 2004.
[14] David Abel, "Conservative Side Showed in Hub Days." Boston Globe, March 29, 2004.
[15] "USA Claims Right to Bomb Kabul." Associated Press, February 8, 1999.
[16] Michael Dobbs, "An Obscure Chief in U.S. War on Terror." Washington Post, April 2, 2000.
[17] Andrew Marshall, "Losing the War for Justice Against the 'Islamic Menace.'" The Independent, August 23, 2000; Mark Steyn, "Murderous Rhetoric." The Spectator, April 10, 2004.
[18] Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, p. 88.

Was 10:45 a.m. the Originally Planned Demolition Time of WTC 7?

2008-04-30T07:22:00.000-07:00

At 11:07 a.m. in the morning of September 11, 2001, a CNN correspondent in New York reported that a third tower had possibly collapsed. While this report was incorrect, it is interesting to note that the reporter's description could have applied to World Trade Center Building 7. This huge skyscraper was indeed the third tower to collapse on 9/11. However it did not come down until late in the afternoon, more than six hours after this report.

CNN correspondent Allan Dodds Frank reported by phone from Lower Manhattan. He described: "[J]ust two or three minutes ago there was yet another collapse or explosion. I'm now out of sight, a Good Samaritan has taken me in on Duane Street. But at a quarter to 11, there was another collapse or explosion following the 10:30 collapse of the second tower. And a firefighter who rushed by us estimated that 50 stories went down. The street filled with smoke. It was like a forest fire roaring down a canyon." [1]

WTC 7 was a 47-story tower, so would have fitted the description of the estimated "50 stories" described by Frank. And it did indeed collapse completely. One could in fact accurately describe its demise with Frank's words: "The street filled with smoke. It was like a forest fire roaring down a canyon." However, this collapse did not happen until 5:20 that afternoon.

What could have led Frank to make his incorrect report? Surely, even in the chaos of that morning, it would have been quite difficult for a mistaken report of another massive skyscraper coming down to have emerged out of nothing. Could the reason be that WTC 7 had originally been scheduled to be brought down (with explosives) at 10:45 a.m.? The incorrect information Frank reported had therefore been put out, by persons unknown, on the assumption that this would be the case. However, something--as yet unknown to us--happened that meant the demolition had to be delayed, and so Building 7 was not ready to be brought down until late that afternoon.

10:45 a.m. would certainly seem a far more logical time for the masterminds behind 9/11 to have wanted to bring down WTC 7. At that time, just 17 minutes after the North Tower had come down, the collapse of a third skyscraper would have appeared less obviously suspicious. It would have been easier for those involved with covering up the truth about 9/11 to claim this collapse was simply a consequence of the two earlier ones. Instead, however, the collapse at 5:20 p.m. appeared completely inexplicable. (Unless, of course, it was a controlled demolition.)

MORE REPORTS OF A THIRD COLLAPSE
What makes Frank's report particularly notable is that there were other incorrect reports of a third building having collapsed--or at least being in danger of collapsing--later in the day, though these made specific reference to WTC 7. These went out in the hour or so before Building 7 came down:

At 4:15 p.m., CNN reported, "We're getting information that one of the other buildings ... Building 7 ... is on fire and has either collapsed or is collapsing." At 4:27, Greg Barrow reported from New York for the BBC radio channel Five Live, "We are hearing reports from local media that another building may have caught light and is in danger of collapse." He added, "I'm not sure if it has yet collapsed, but the report we have is talking about Building 7." At 4:54, presenter Gavin Esler reported on the BBC's domestic television news channel, BBC News 24: "We're now being told that yet another enormous building has collapsed. ... It is the 47-story Salomon Brothers building." At 4:57, presenter Phil Hayton announced on the BBC's international channel, BBC World, "We've got some news just coming in actually that the Salomon Brothers building in New York right in the heart of Manhattan has also collapsed." [2] However, WTC 7 (the "Salomon Brothers building") did not collapse until almost 25 minutes later.

WHY PUT OUT ADVANCE REPORTS OF THE COLLAPSE?
These reports indicated that some people knew in advance that Building 7 was going to come down. This would have been quite a feat, since, as the New York Times put it, "before then, no modern, steel-reinforced high-rise in the United States had ever collapsed in a fire." [3]

Perhaps the real reason we heard these premature reports was that this information had somehow been passed to the media by the 9/11 perpetrators, as a cautious attempt at preventing speculation that WTC 7 was brought down with explosives. This was clearly what the collapse resembled, with the building falling completely and symmetrically into its own footprint in just 6.6 seconds. Indeed, CBS News anchor Dan Rather commented at the time that it was "reminiscent of ... when a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down." [4]

Speculation such as this would surely have been a threat to the official 9/11 story, as it might lead people to ponder whether--rather than being committed by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda--the attacks were an "inside job." To stifle any such debate, an official narrative would need to have been put out promptly. Perhaps this was why at 5:10 p.m.--still before WTC 7 had come down--the BBC's Phil Hayton reported: "[Y]ou might have heard I was talking a few moments ago about the Salomon building collapsing and indeed it has. ... It seems this wasn't the result of a new attack but because the building had been weakened during this morning's attack." [5] It appears the information had been put out already, not only that WTC 7 had collapsed, but also that it had come down without the use of explosives: It collapsed because "the building had been weakened during this morning's attack."

And thus, the cover-up had begun.

NOTES
[1] "America Under Attack." Breaking News, CNN, September 11, 2001.
[2] These reports are summarized in Richard Porter, "Part of the Conspiracy? (2)." BBC News, March 2, 2007.
[3] James Glanz and Eric Lipton, "Burning Diesel is Cited in Fall of 3rd Tower." New York Times, March 2, 2002.
[4] CBS News, September 11, 2001.
[5] Quoted in Richard Porter, "Part of the Conspiracy? (2)."

Husband of Flight 93 Attendant: "Cell Phones Don't Work on a Plane ..."

2008-04-24T09:17:00.000-07:00

The husband of a flight attendant on one of the four planes that crashed on 9/11 has, during an interview, revealed his astonishment at receiving a cell phone call from his wife that morning. The reason for his surprise: "because cell phones don't work on a plane."

The interview appeared on the 2006 documentary DVD, Portrait of Courage: The Untold Story of Flight 93. In it Lorne Lyles, a police officer in Florida, described how, at around 9:51 a.m. on September 11, he received a call from his wife, CeeCee Lyles, who was a flight attendant on United 93. She told him her plane had been hijacked and that she and some others were getting ready to "go to the cockpit." Lorne described that, after the call got disconnected: "I looked at the caller ID, and noticed that it was a call, and it was from her cell phone. And I'm like, OK, wait a minute. How can she call me from on the plane from a cell phone, because cell phones don't work on a plane? That's what I'm thinking." [1]

EXPERT OPINIONS
Lorne Lyles' concern was understandable. An article published by the Travel Technologist shortly after 9/11 stated: "[W]ireless communications networks weren't designed for ground-to-air communication. Cellular experts privately admit that they're surprised the calls were able to be placed from the hijacked planes, and that they lasted as long as they did." [2] Wireless Review similarly commented: "Because wireless networks are designed for terrestrial use, the fact that so many people were able to call from the sky [on September 11] brings into question how the phones worked from such altitudes. Alexa Graf, AT&T spokesperson, said systems are not designed for calls from high altitudes, suggesting it was almost a fluke that the calls reached their destinations." [3]

To investigate this matter, scientist A. K. Dewdney conducted a series of experiments using mobile phones from a small propeller aircraft, over the city of London, Ontario in Canada. (He noted that, "not only is the cell phone technological base in Canada identical to its U.S. counterpart, but Canadian communication technology is second to none, Canada being a world leader in research and development." [4]) Dewdney found:

[C]ell phone calls from commercial aircraft much over 8,000 feet are essentially impossible, while those below 8,000 feet are highly unlikely down to about 2,000, where they become merely unlikely. Moreover, even at the latter altitude (and below), the handoff problem appears. Any airliner at or below this altitude, flying at the normal speed of approximately 500 mph, would encounter the handoff problem. An aircraft traveling at this speed would not be over the cell site long enough to complete the electronic "handshake" (which takes several seconds to complete) before arriving over the next cell site, when the call has to be handed off from the first cell site to the next one. This also takes a few seconds, the result being, in the optimal case, a series of broken transmissions that must end, sooner or later, in failure. [5]

TOM BURNETT'S FOUR CELL PHONE CALLS
A similar concern to that expressed by Lorne Lyles may also have been hinted at by Deena Burnett, whose husband Tom Burnett apparently called her four times from on board Flight 93. In her own book, published in 2006, Deena Burnett described receiving the first of these calls from her husband at 9:27 a.m. on September 11: "I looked at the caller ID and indeed it was Tom's cell phone number." Deena, who during the early 1990s had worked as a flight attendant for Delta Airlines, asked Tom: "Where are you? Are you in the air?" She commented in her book, "I didn't understand how he could be calling me on his cell phone from the air." [6]

Later in the day of 9/11, Deena told the FBI that "only one" of the calls she'd received from her husband "did not show on the caller identification." The reason for this was simply that "she was on the line with another call" when it was made. Otherwise, she had been "able to determine that her husband was using his own cellular telephone" on all his calls, "because the caller identification showed his number." [7]

Yet if cell phone calls like these would have been so unlikely from an aircraft in flight, what was really going on that morning? Was it just a "fluke" that these and other alleged passenger cell phone calls got through? Or, alternatively, might the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks have been involved in a sinister and malicious deception, to make the victims' relatives mistakenly believe they had been called from the hijacked flights?

NOTES
[1] Portrait of Courage: The Untold Story of Flight 93. DVD. Directed by David Priest. Baker City, OR: Grizzly Adams Productions, 2006.
[2] Christopher Elliott, "Will They Allow Cell Phones on Planes?" Travel Technologist, September 19, 2001.
[3] Betsy Harter, "Final Contact." Wireless Review, November 1, 2001.
[4] A. K. Dewdney, "'Project Achilles': Final (Third) Report and Summary of Findings." Physics 911, April 19, 2003.
[5] A. K. Dewdney, "The Cellphone and Airfone Calls from Flight UA93." Physics 911, undated.
[6] Deena Burnett with Anthony Giombetti, Fighting Back: Living Life Beyond Ourselves. Altamonte Springs, FL: Advantage Books, 2006, p. 61.
[7] "Interview with Deena Lynne Burnett (re: Phone Call from Hijacked Flight)." Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 11, 2001.

Bombs in the Pentagon on 9/11? Witness Accounts Raise Questions

2008-04-12T04:49:00.000-07:00

Several accounts reveal that some witnesses who were at the Pentagon when it was attacked on 9/11, and located close to where the building was struck, initially were quite sure a bomb--or bombs--had gone off. These accounts are particularly notable since these individuals were members of the armed forces, and therefore familiar with what explosives sounded and felt like. While they may not tell us anything conclusive, these reports raise questions about what actually happened at the Pentagon that morning:

• John Thurman, a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, was in a second floor office just above where the Pentagon was hit. He has described the attack: "To me it didn't seem like a plane." Although he was aware that aircraft had hit the World Trade Center, he has recalled: "[T]o me, it seemed like it was a bomb. Being in the military, I have been around grenade, artillery explosions. It was a two-part explosion to me. ... [I]t seemed like that there was a percussion blast that blew me kind of backwards in my cubicle to the side. And then it seemed as if a massive explosion went off at the same time." He described what happened next: "[I]t just felt like this rolling earthquake going on underneath me. And in reflection, I realize that it was the plane that was actually underneath me. But at the time, again, I had thought that perhaps the terrorists had surreptitiously gotten construction workers to come in and place explosives, and they had perhaps commanded--detonated them synchronous with what was going on in New York." [1]

• Lieutenant Nancy McKeown ran a small meteorological unit in the Navy Command Center on the first floor of the Pentagon's D Ring--an area that was mostly destroyed when the building was hit. She described the attack: "[T]he building started to vibrate and things started to fall. And it initially felt like an earthquake. As the, as time progressed, the shaking of the building got violent. The noises got louder and louder." She added, "It sounded like a series of explosions going off." A colleague yelled out, and she "yelled back, bomb." When asked about the incident, "At that point you thought a bomb had gone off in the Pentagon?" McKeown replied: "That's correct. It sounded like a series of bombs exploding, similar to like firecrackers when you light them and you just get a series going off. But they got very loud, very extensive." [2]

• Army Major Craig Collier and his colleagues were in their second floor office, about 200 feet from where the Pentagon was hit. Collier described the moment of the attack: "[T]he building jolted and we heard a muffled boom, then a rumble. ... All of my peers in the area are experienced combat arms officers, and we quickly agreed that it sounded and felt like a bomb." [3]

Considering these accounts, it is perhaps interesting to note the following description of the physical effects of the attack, which was given in the U.S. Department of Defense's book Pentagon 9/11: "The Jet A fuel atomized and quickly combusted, causing explosive bursts as the plane hurtled into the building. A detonation 150 feet inside the building resulted from a 'fuel-air' explosion after the Jet A tanks disintegrated on impact. Here, as elsewhere, there was no uniform pattern of death and destruction. The vagaries of the fuel-air explosions and freakish blast effects meant deaths occurred randomly inside the Pentagon, with the occupants of seemingly more secure interior offices sometimes suffering worse fates than those nearer the outside wall." [Emphasis added] [4]

While these accounts provide us with no clear answers, they do show, again, why we need a proper investigation of 9/11--one that will include a thorough and unrestrained examination of what happened at the Pentagon that day.

NOTES
[1] United States of America v. Zacarias Moussaoui. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, April 11, 2006.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11. Washington, DC: Defense Department, Office of the Secretary, Historical Office, 2007, p. 26.
[4] Ibid. p. 37.

Last-Minute Pilots, Passengers, and Flight Attendants: The Unexplained Oddity of 9/11

2008-03-31T12:08:00.001-07:00

In all the valuable research that has been conducted into 9/11, a significant detail has so far been mostly overlooked: An examination of news reports and other accounts reveals that a surprising proportion of the people on the four targeted planes had only been booked onto those flights at the last minute, often the day before or even the morning of September 11. Pilots on three of the four planes, more than half of all the flight attendants, and many passengers--including almost half those on Flight 93--were not originally booked to be on those flights.

It is difficult to dismiss all this evidence as mere coincidence. There must be specific reasons that we do not yet know about. For the truth to be uncovered will require further study by independent researchers, scrutiny by the press, and proper formal investigations of the 9/11 attacks.

Below is a summary of these latecomers to the four planes: American Airlines Flights 11 and 77, and United Airlines Flights 175 and 93.

REPLACEMENT PILOTS

The pilot at the controls of Flight 11--the first plane to hit the World Trade Center--before it was supposedly hijacked was John Ogonowski. However, as the Georgetown Record reported: "American Airlines Captain Walter Sorenson of Groveland was scheduled to fly Flight #11 on Sept. 11, 2001. He was disappointed when he was replaced by Captain John Ogonowski, who had seniority over Sorenson and requested to fly that day. ... The last-minute change of pilots ... spared Sorenson's wife Sarah the untimely loss of a young husband." [1] On Flight 77, which supposedly hit the Pentagon, the pilot and co-pilot were Charles Burlingame and David Charlebois. But, as the New York Times reported: "Bill Cheng, an American Airlines pilot who normally flies Flight 77, changed his plans in late August [2001] and applied for time off on Tuesday [September 11] so he could go camping. When another pilot signed up for the slot, Mr. Cheng's application was accepted." [2] Whether it was Burlingame or Charlebois that replaced him is unstated. And the pilot of Flight 93 was Jason Dahl. But according to the Denver Post: "Dahl piloted United Flight 93 on Sept. 11 because he asked to. At his request, [his wife] traded for the flight on their home computer. He'd wanted to get back to Ken-Caryl Valley sooner to start celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary. Days after the request, Dahl's terrorist-invaded plane took a nose dive in a Pennsylvania field." [3] Dahl took Flight 93 in exchange for a flight he'd been booked on later that month. [4]

UNSCHEDULED FLIGHT ATTENDANTS

Flight 11: There were nine flight attendants on American Airlines Flight 11 the morning of 9/11. At least four of them were not originally booked to be on this flight, but had recently been assigned to it. Barbara "Bobbi" Arestegui "was not scheduled to work Flight 11 that day but had accepted extra flights. She was saving up vacation to take a trip with her boyfriend to Vermont at the end of this month." [5] Jeffrey Collman "didn't normally work the Boston-to-Los Angeles route but made an exception to get vacation time at the end of the month." [6] Jean Roger was a relatively new flight attendant, and every third month was placed on a "standby" work list. On September 11, "Someone called in sick and she had to go." [7] And Sara Low also "was not originally scheduled to work the flight." [8]

Flight 175: There were seven flight attendants on this plane on 9/11, at least four of whom had only recently been assigned to it. Robert Fangman was a reserve attendant for Flight 175, and was on it by chance. He replaced Elise O'Kane, who'd been on the flight regularly for the previous six months. When she was signing up for her flights for the month, O'Kane entered an incorrect code into the computer, which scheduled her instead for flights from Boston to Denver. She later said "she had never made such an error in 16 years as a flight attendant." She had subsequently "made several attempts to switch onto the flight, but had computer problems." [9] Another original attendant was Elaine Lawrence. However, "because she was going on vacation, she traded shifts with her close friend, Amy Jarret." [10] Lauren Gurskis was also one of the original attendants. "In August of [2001], however, she switched assignments--trip-traded, as flight attendants call it--so that she could drive her son to his first day of kindergarten." According to the Boston Globe, Kathryn Laborie was most likely the attendant that replaced her. [11] One more of the original attendants, Barbara McFarland, had "decided to spend an extra day with her son," and so she "swapped shifts with another attendant." The name of this attendant is unstated. [12]

Flight 77: Of the four attendants on this plane, at least two were not originally scheduled to be on it. Michele Heidenberger regularly flew from Washington's Reagan National Airport to Dallas, but on 9/11 was unusually flying out of Dulles Airport on Flight 77. When Heidenberger phoned her friend Toni Knisley, an administrator at Reagan Airport, shortly before boarding her plane, Knisley was surprised, saying: "What are you doing at Dulles? Aren't you flying your regular turn to Dallas today?" Heidenberger explained: "I'm working Flight 77 to LA because I want to take time off in October to go to Italy with [my husband] and the kids." [13] Renee May was only assigned to Flight 77 during the morning of 9/11. American Airlines had earlier called another attendant, Lena Brown, and asked her to take the flight, but Brown said she would be unable to get to the airport in time. "Renee May, the next flight attendant on American Airlines' list, accepted." [14]

Flight 93: At least three of the five attendants on this flight were not originally booked to be on it. Sandra Bradshaw "liked working first class," but "was in economy because she'd picked up Flight 93 late in the planning." She had "switched flights with another attendant." [15] Wanda Green "had been scheduled to fly Sept. 13, but Green, who also worked as a real estate agent, realized she had to handle the closing of a home sale Sept. 13. She'd phoned her best friend, fellow flight attendant Donita Judge, who opened United's computerized schedule and shifted Green to the Sept. 11 flight." [16] Deborah Welsh "usually avoided early-morning flights," and "was not originally slated to be on Flight 93, but was assigned to the flight when she swapped shifts." [17]

It wasn't just pilots and flight attendants who'd joined the doomed flights late. A large number of the passengers had similarly not originally been booked on these aircraft.

LAST-MINUTE PASSENGERS

Flight 11: Alexander Filipov "originally held a ticket for a Delta flight, but switched at the last minute to American Flight 11." [18] Edmund Glazer had got a call from his company's home office in Los Angeles the night of September 10, asking for his help on a major project. "In his obliging way, Mr. Glazer boarded Flight 11 the next morning." [19] Pendyala Vamsikrishna "was to leave Boston on Sept. 10, but hadn't finished his job, and rescheduled for the following day on American Airlines Flight 11." [20] Brian Dale "was supposed to have flown Monday night. But the Warren, NJ, man instead opted to fly out Tuesday morning." [21] Peter Hashem "had been scheduled to take an earlier flight but postponed the trip in order to make time to attend his son's soccer game." [22] Robin Kaplan had also been scheduled to take an earlier flight, but "she would have had to get up too early, so she didn't." [23] David Angell and his wife Lynn "were on board [Flight 11], even though they had originally planned to take a later flight." [24] David Kovalcin "wasn't supposed to fly to California until later this week." But his company's managers "were looking for someone to leave on Tuesday to discuss a hardware problem with a supplier. He volunteered." [25] Christopher Mello had originally "planned to return home on a red-eye flight the next day." [26] And Kenneth Waldie "was supposed to leave Wednesday, but he got the flight the day before." [27]

Flight 175: Touri Bolourchi "was not supposed to be aboard Flight 175, but she decided to stay a few extra days in Boston to visit her daughter and two grandchildren." [28] Francis Grogan "was not originally booked on Flight 175, but overcrowding on his original flight bumped him." [29] Mark Bavis "was originally scheduled for the 11 a.m. departure but pushed it up a few hours." [30] And Daniel Brandhorst, Ronald Gamboa, and their adopted son David, "changed their flight plans so they could return to Los Angeles from Boston on Sept. 11." Brandhorst's mother had "thought her son was flying the previous night." [31]

Flight 77: Barbara Olson, who flew on Flight 77 on 9/11, was originally "scheduled to fly to Los Angeles on the night of Sept. 10," but "changed her schedule ... to be with her husband on the morning of his 61st birthday." [32] Barbara Edwards "had gone to Connecticut for a wedding and was supposed to return home Saturday [September 8]." But, "her friends talked her into staying with them so she took the flight that crashed into the Pentagon." [33] Vicki Yancey "had planned to leave Washington earlier, but ticketing problems delayed her departure." [34] After a vacation with their daughter, husband and wife Shuyin Yang and Yuguang Zheng were "scheduled to leave for China on September 10." But as they had only finished their vacation on September 9, their daughter "felt it might be a hassle for my parents [to] leave [in] just like a couple hours and to get on the plane. So, I have them to reschedule their flight ticket to September 11." [35] Dora Menchaca was in Washington for two days of meetings. "The meetings ended late Monday [September 10], a day earlier than expected." So, "The next morning, flying on standby, she caught an earlier-than-scheduled departure to California." [36] Ruben Ornedo was originally scheduled to fly two weeks after 9/11. But "during a lull in an extended Washington business trip he seized the chance to rush home for a day or two and see his wife." [37] One group of passengers on Flight 77 comprised eight individuals: three teachers and three 11-year-old students who had been selected to participate in a program at the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary near Santa Barbara, accompanied by two staff members of the National Geographic Society. According to a close friend of one of the teachers, Sarah Clark, "She was originally supposed to go to Florida, but two weeks [before 9/11] they changed it and told her she was going to California." [38]

There were likely more passengers who were only booked onto these flights at the last minute, but I have simply not yet come across the reports describing this. And it seems reasonable to assume there were even more of these late additions to the flights, where the details of these individuals' travel arrangements have so far gone unreported.

In the case of Flight 93, however, since the official story revolves around the heroism of the passengers who supposedly fought back against terrorists, we have the fortune that a lot more has been written about these individuals and how they came to be on that flight. What has been reported is extraordinary: Of the 33 passengers (excluding the four supposed hijackers), at least 16 had only recently been booked onto the plane. Some only joined it early in the morning of September 11.

Flight 93: Environmental lawyer Alan Beaven arranged to take Flight 93 on 9/11 the day before, as he was duty-bound to go to San Francisco to help settle a case after talks had just broken down. [39] "Normally," passenger Todd Beamer "would have left [for San Francisco] the night before." But on September 10 he had returned from a trip to Italy and wanted some time with his children before flying out. [40] Edward Felt "was on a last-minute business trip to San Francisco." [41] Sisters-in-law Patricia Cushing and Jane Folger had "moved up the time of their flight" in the days before 9/11. [42] Mark Bingham "had missed his plane the day before because of a hangover from a friend's birthday party." [43] Jeremy Glick "was supposed to leave Monday night, but there were problems at the airport: He decided to wait 'til Tuesday morning." [44] Nicole Miller's "Monday night ... flight back to the Bay Area was canceled due to weather. Miller re-booked on a flight the next morning." [45] Lou Nacke "only booked his seat the night before. He had a customer on the coast with an inventory problem and offered to fly out first thing Tuesday morning to fix it." [46] When she'd checked in at the airport on September 11, Georgine Corrigan switched to Flight 93, as it was non-stop, whereas her original plane would be making two stops on the way to San Francisco. [47]

A number of the Flight 93 passengers were originally booked on United Airlines Flight 91, scheduled to depart 1 hour 20 minutes after Flight 93, at 9:20 a.m. Deora Bodley "was supposed to take United Flight 91, but decided the night before to take one an hour earlier so she could get home sooner to her family and boyfriend." [48] Christine Snyder "called to check on her flight, Flight 91," early in the morning of September 11, and "moved up to Flight 93 for an earlier start." [49] Lauren Grandcolas "had been scheduled for United 91, but her car service had arrived at the airport early." [50] Husband and wife Donald and Jean Peterson "arrived at the airport early for United Flight 91 ... so they switched to Flight 93." [51] Tom Burnett, according to author Jere Longman, "had changed his plans. ... He would be leaving at 8 a.m. instead of taking Flight 91." (The San Francisco Chronicle said, however, that he'd originally been booked on a Delta Airlines flight that afternoon.) [52]

NOTES

[1] Sally Applegate, "Flight 11 Crew Not Forgotten." Georgetown Record, September 18, 2003. Credit to Woody Box for having found this little-known information.
[2] Elaine Sciolino and John H. Cushman Jr., "A Route out of Washington, Horribly Changed." New York Times, September 13, 2001.
[3] Susan Besze Wallace, "Legacy of Sept. 11 Pilot Comforts Widow." Denver Post, December 16, 2001.
[4] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back. New York: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 1.
[5] "The Attack on America Hits Home." Cape Cod Times, September 10, 2002.
[6] "Among the Lost: Victims Included CEO, Researcher." Seattle Times, September 17, 2001.
[7] "Jean Destrehan Roger." Chicago Tribune, September 15, 2001.
[8] "American Flight 11 Victims at a Glance." Associated Press, September 25, 2001.
[9] Wendy Killeen, "Flight Attendant Changes Course." Boston Globe, May 22, 2005; "Twists of Fate: Stories from 9/11." CNN Presents, CNN, October 8, 2005.
[10] Michael Taylor, "Airline Passengers Keeping Eyes Peeled." San Francisco Chronicle, October 23, 2001.
[11] Joseph P. Kahn, "The Flight Not Taken." Boston Globe, September 8, 2002.
[12] Meg Murphy, "Flight Workers: 'It Could Have Been Any of Us.'" Cape Cod Times, September 14, 2001; Meg Murphy, "Three Cape Flight Attendants Reflect on Returning to Air." Cape Cod Times, March 10, 2002.
[13] Tom Murphy, Reclaiming the Sky: 9/11 and the Untold Story of the Men and Women Who Kept America Flying. New York: AMACOM, 2006, pp. 42-43.
[14] Eunice Moscoso, "Not All Airline Pilots Want to be Armed." Atlanta Journal-Constitution, August 9, 2002; Cynthia Kopkowski, "Stewardess Returns to Work after Passing on Ill-Fated Flight." Daily Reflector, September 11, 2002.
[15] Dennis B. Roddy, "Flight 93: Forty Lives, One Destiny." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 28, 2001; Maria C. Johnson, "Mother Wants People to Remember Bradshaw, Sept. 11." Greensboro News-Record, September 3, 2006.
[16] Dennis B. Roddy, "Flight 93: Forty Lives, One Destiny."
[17] Kim Barker, Louise Kiernan, and Steve Mills, "The Heroes of Flight 93." Chicago Tribune, October 2, 2001; "Victims in the Flight 93 Crash." Associated Press, September 9, 2006.
[18] "Their Lives, Deaths Touch Us All." Chicago Tribune, September 13, 2001.
[19] "Charming the Snake and the Husband; Making the Fire Drills Count." New York Times, June 2, 2002.
[20] Steve Lopez, "When Love Stands Bravely against Unbearable Grief." Los Angeles Times, October 24, 2001.
[21] "Bittersweet Memories of Lives Cut Short." Chicago Tribune, September 17, 2001.
[22] "Region Remembers Terrorism Victims." Boston Globe, September 16, 2001.
[23] Alice Dembner and Bella English, "Firm and Families Mourn Seven Women." Boston Globe, September 13, 2001.
[24] Amy Goldstein and Cheryl W. Thompson, "Jet Crash Victims' Stories Start to Emerge." Washington Post, September 12, 2001.
[25] Liz Kowalczyk and Beth Healy, "After Tragedy, Executives Feel Invincible No More." Boston Globe, September 13, 2001.
[26] Ibid.
[27] "American Flight 11 Victims at a Glance."
[28] "Calls to Family ... Then Silence." Chicago Tribune, September 14, 2001.
[29] "United Flight 175 Victims at a Glance." Associated Press, September 25, 2001.
[30] Jim McCabe, "Team Players Bavis Was at Center of Extended Family." Boston Globe, September 16, 2001.
[31] John Glionna and Joe Mozingo, "Lurched into Grief, Families Are Left Only with Questions." Los Angeles Times, September 13, 2001; "A Spitball-Shooting Executive, a Frank Zappa Fan, and the Lawn King." New York Times, March 31, 2002.
[32] "Barbara Olson: A Sparkling Celebrity 'Full of Energy.'" Newsday, February 27, 2002.
[33] Shawn D. Lewis, "Memorial Day Recalls Pain of 9/11." Detroit News, May 27, 2002.
[34] "Calls to Family ... Then Silence."
[35] United States of America v. Zacarias Moussaoui. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, April 11, 2006, pp. 59-60.
[36] John Scheibe, "Thousand Oaks, Calif., Scientist among Dead in Hijacking." Knight Ridder, September 14, 2001; "Dora Menchaca." Wall Street Journal, October 11, 2001.
[37] "Ruben Ornedo." Los Angeles Times, September 17, 2001.
[38] "Team from National Geographic Killed in Pentagon Crash." National Geographic News, September 12, 2001; "Maryland's Lost." Baltimore Sun, September 19, 2001.
[39] Jaxon Van Derbeken, "Bound by Fate, Determination." San Francisco Chronicle, September 17, 2001; Peter Hecht, "A Spiritual Journey Aborted on Flight 93." Sacramento Bee, September 30, 2001.
[40] Angie Cannon, "Final Words from Flight 93." US News and World Report, October 21, 2001.
[41] "Victims in the Flight 93 Crash."
[42] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, p. 35.
[43] Karen Breslau, "Courage in the Air." Newsweek, September 27, 2001.
[44] Jane Pauley, "No Greater Love." NBC News, September 11, 2006.
[45] Oakley Brooks, "School Daze." Saratoga News, September 26, 2001.
[46] Jane Pauley, "No Greater Love."
[47] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, p. 12; "Victims in the Flight 93 Crash."
[48] Jaxon Van Derbeken, "Bound by Fate, Determination."
[49] Dennis B. Roddy, "Flight 93: Forty Lives, One Destiny."
[50] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, p. 12.
[51] Ibid. p. 16.
[52] Jaxon Van Derbeken, "Bound by Fate, Determination"; Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, p. 8.

Engineer Sees Evidence of Extreme Temperatures in WTC Steel

2008-02-25T11:02:00.000-08:00

A structural engineer who was a member of the team assembled by the American Society of Civil Engineers to investigate the World Trade Center site after 9/11 has described numerous phenomena indicating extremely high temperatures suffered by the WTC structural steel. This appears to be further evidence that high-temperature explosives, such as thermate, were used to bring down the towers.

Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, who specializes in studying structural damage done by earthquakes and terrorist bombings. He flew to New York on September 19, 2001 to conduct a two-week reconnaissance of the collapsed towers, hoping to gain an understanding of how they'd come down. He was able to examine numerous pieces of steel taken from Ground Zero. [1]

He said the towers were exceptionally well designed and built, describing the WTC as "the best-designed building I have ever seen." [2] Yet the structural steel had suffered unusual warping and other major damage:

• Astaneh-Asl said that steel flanges "had been reduced from an inch thick to paper thin." [3]

• At a recycling center in New Jersey, he saw 10-ton steel beams from the towers that "looked like giant sticks of twisted licorice." [4] He showed the San Francisco Chronicle a "banana-shaped, rust-colored piece of steel" that had somehow "twisted like toffee during the terrorist attack." [5]

• He noted the way steel from the WTC had bent at several connection points that had joined the floors to the vertical columns. He described the connections as being smoothly warped, saying, "If you remember the Salvador Dali paintings with the clocks that are kind of melted--it's kind of like that." He added, "That could only happen if you get steel yellow hot or white hot--perhaps around 2,000 degrees." [6]

• In an interview in 2007, Astaneh-Asl recalled, "I saw melting of girders in [the] World Trade Center." [7]

• He found a foot-long twisted shard of steel that was "like a piece of bread, but it was high-strength steel." He commented, "I haven't seen anything like this [before]." [8]

• He came across "severely scorched [steel] members from 40 or so floors below the points of impact [by the planes]." [9]

• The fireproofing that had been used to protect the WTC steel also showed evidence of extreme conditions. In some places it had "melted into a glassy residue." [10]

• Astaneh-Asl saw a charred I-beam from WTC Building 7--a 47-story skyscraper that collapsed late in the afternoon of 9/11, even though no plane hit it. "The beam, so named because its cross-section looks like a capital I, had clearly endured searing temperatures. Parts of the flat top of the I, once five-eighths of an inch thick, had vaporized." [11]

These observations indicate that the World Trade Center steel was subjected to very high temperatures. Yet, while postulating that the towers collapsed due to fire (and without the use of explosives), even Thomas Eagar--an engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology--admitted, "The temperature of the fire at the WTC was not unusual, and it was most definitely not capable of melting steel." [12] One must conclude that the phenomena observed by Astaneh-Asl are therefore highly suspicious.

It may well have been because it offered such revealing clues that the remaining structural steel from the World Trade Center was so rapidly destroyed, being shipped abroad as scrap to be melted down and recycled. CBS News described: "The [cleanup] operation--which began days after the collapse, okayed by then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani--goes on 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a result, Astaneh has almost certainly missed seeing crucial pieces before they were cut up and sent overseas." [13] As the New York Times reported, the steel scrap was worth "only a few million dollars, a tiny fraction of the billions of dollars the cleanup" was going to cost. Yet the knowledge that could have been gained from it "could save lives in a future disaster." [14]

NOTES
[1] Kenneth Chang, "Scarred Steel Holds Clues, and Remedies." New York Times, October 2, 2001; Robert Sanders, "Report from Ground Zero." Berkeleyan, October 3, 2001; Jeffrey R. Young, "Scholars Work to Rebuild the World Trade Center Virtually." Chronicle of Higher Education, December 7, 2001.
[2] Keay Davidson, "Berkeley Professor Seeks the Safer Skyscraper." San Francisco Chronicle, October 22, 2001.
[3] Robert Sanders, "Report from Ground Zero."
[4] Jeffrey R. Young, "Scholars Work to Rebuild the World Trade Center Virtually."
[5] Keay Davidson, "Berkeley Professor Seeks the Safer Skyscraper."
[6] Jeffrey R. Young, "Scholars Work to Rebuild the World Trade Center Virtually."
[7] "Collapse of Overpass in California Becomes Lesson in Construction." NewsHour, PBS, May 10, 2007.
[8] Pamitha Reynolds, "Berkeley Prof Analyzes Structural Damage of the WTC." Berkeley Daily Planet, October 20, 2001.
[9] David Kohn, "Culling Through Mangled Steel." CBS News, March 12, 2002.
[10] Kenneth Chang, "Scarred Steel Holds Clues, and Remedies."
[11] Ibid.
[12] Thomas W. Eagar and Christopher Musso, "Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation." Journal of the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society 53 (12) 2001: 8-11.
[13] David Kohn, "Culling Through Mangled Steel."
[14] Kenneth Chang, "Scarred Steel Holds Clues, and Remedies."

The Flight 77 Murder Mystery: Who Really Killed Charles Burlingame?

2008-02-02T06:27:00.000-08:00

According to the official account of 9/11, American Airlines Flight 77--which supposedly crashed into the Pentagon--was hijacked shortly after 8:51 a.m. on September 11, 2001. This claim is so central to the U.S. government's story that we would reasonably expect it to have been proven. Yet a closer analysis of the evidence shows that, in fact, it appears preposterous.

THE TOUGH PILOT
The first thing to recognize when evaluating the official Flight 77 story is that the plane's pilot was a former military man, and a genuinely tough guy. Captain Charles "Chic" Burlingame had graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1971. He served eight years on active duty as a fighter pilot, and served several tours at the Navy's elite Top Gun school. He then spent 17 years in the Naval Reserve before retiring from the military in 1996. [1] During his military career, he had tours in Vietnam and the 1991 Gulf War. [2] His sister Debra Burlingame described him as "a guy that's been through SERE [Survival Evasion Resistance Escape] school in the Navy and had very tough psychological and physical preparation." She said, "If there was any chance of saving [Flight 77], this was the kind of guy who would have been able to do that." [3] Admiral Timothy Keating was a good friend of Burlingame's, having been a classmate of his in the Navy and attended flight school with him. He told CNN: "I was in a plebe summer boxing match with Chic, and he pounded me. ... Chic was really tough." [4] Even up to his death Burlingame enjoyed boating, in-line skating, and weightlifting, and was "in great shape," according to his friend Steve Brooks. [5]

Surely it would take a particularly formidable team of terrorists to wrestle control of a plane from a man like this? Yet here is where the official story falls apart at the first hurdle. The supposed hijackers in fact appear to have been a group of weaklings.

THE FEEBLE HIJACKERS
The five men who allegedly hijacked Flight 77 comprised of a pilot, Hani Hanjour, and four "muscle" hijackers who'd been tasked with storming the cockpit and controlling the passengers: Majed Moqed, Khalid al Mihdhar, Nawaf al Hazmi, and his brother Salem al Hazmi. However, as the 9/11 Commission pointed out, "The so-called muscle hijackers actually were not physically imposing," with the majority of them being between 5'5" and 5'7" in height, "and slender in build." [6] As their ID cards have revealed, Salem al Hazmi was just 5'4" tall and Khalid al Mihdhar's was 5'6". [7]

Between September 2 and September 6, 2001, about a week before the attacks, the five alleged hijackers attended Gold's Gym in Greenbelt, Maryland, where, reportedly, they were "awkwardly lifting weights and using resistance machines." [8] Gold's Gym regional manager Spero Courtis has described, "They seemed not to really know what they were doing." [9] According to Gene LaMott, the CEO of Gold's Gym International Inc.: "They weren't on the masculine side. They looked like students from the university." [10]

Heading this group of supposed mass murderers was Hani Hanjour, the alleged suicide pilot said to have crashed Flight 77 into the Pentagon. This 29-year-old from Saudi Arabia was "barely over 5 feet tall, skinny and boyish," according to the Washington Post. [11] Not only was he physically unimposing, he was also quite a nice man, according to several people who met him. In spring 1996, he'd stayed for a month in Miramar, Florida, in the home of Adnan Khalil, a Saudi professor at a local college, and his wife Susan. The Khalils have recalled Hanjour being "mousey and gentle, with a weak personality." Susan Khalil has commented, "I didn't get the feeling that he hated me or hated Americans." [12] He also liked children. Susan Khalil recalled, "He was very kind and gentle to my son, who was 3 years old." [13] Early in 2001, Hanjour attended the JetTech flight school in Phoenix, Arizona. [14] According to Marilyn Ladner, a vice president at the Pan Am International Flight Academy, which operated the school: "The staff thought he was a very nice guy. ... There was no suspicion as far as evildoing." [15] After 9/11, Abulrahman Hanjour, Hani's older brother, described the family's feelings: "We thought that he liked the USA. ... I would think he would give his life to save lives, not to do this." [16]

THE IMPOSSIBLE HIJACKING
Yet this apparently sweet and gentle little man, along with his four physically unimposing colleagues, are meant to have become a gang of killers on 9/11. Here, in the words of the 9/11 Commission, is what they are alleged to have done: "Between 8:51 a.m. and 8:54 a.m., the hijackers began their takeover of the aircraft. They initiated and sustained their command of the aircraft using knives and box cutters (reported by one passenger) and moved all of the passengers (and possibly crew) to the rear of the aircraft (reported by one flight attendant and one passenger)." However, "Neither of the firsthand accounts to come from Flight 77, from a flight attendant and from a passenger, mentioned any actual use of violence (e.g., stabbings) or the threat or use of either a bomb or Mace." [17] I guess we are supposed to believe the passengers and crew were so terrified by these puny little men that they just submitted to them without a fight.

Charles Burlingame and his co-pilot David Charlebois appear to have lost control of Flight 77 within the space of just a few minutes. At 8:54, three minutes after its last routine radio communication, the plane veered off its assigned course. Two minutes later, its transponder--a small radio transmitter that sends information about a plane to controllers--was switched off. [18] In other words, five short, weak men were supposedly able to seize control from Burlingame--a highly trained former military man who enjoyed weightlifting and was described as "really tough"--in about three minutes.

Although neither of the two alleged callers from Flight 77 mentioned any violence having occurred, Burlingame's younger brother Mark has commented: "I don't know what happened in that cockpit, but I'm sure that [the hijackers] would have had to incapacitate [Charles Burlingame] or kill him because he would have done anything to prevent the kind of tragedy that befell that airplane." [19] Burlingame's friend Timothy Keating remarked that "the terrorists had to perform some inhumane act to get him out of that cockpit, I guarantee you." [20] And indeed, according to Virginia Senator John Warner, "the examination of his remains ... indicated Captain Burlingame was in a struggle and died before the crash, doing his best to save lives on the aircraft and on the ground." [21] Former Senator George Allen said the FBI had determined that Burlingame was bludgeoned to death. [22]

This story is ridiculous. There is no way five weaklings could have seized control of Flight 77, in the process beating Charles Burlingame to death, all within a few minutes. The most crucial questions therefore remain uninvestigated and unanswered: Who really killed Charles Burlingame? And what actually happened that day?

NOTES
[1] "Arlington's Burial Regulations Anger Family of Hijacked Pilot." New York Times, December 5, 2001; "Arlington Plot Sought for Slain Pilot." Associated Press, December 6, 2001.
[2] Marcia C. Smith, "Man Will Toss out the First Pitch in His Brother's--and the Nation's--Honor." Orange County Register, March 29, 2002.
[3] Shawn Cohen, "Pilot's Death Leads to Sister's Crusade." Westchester Journal News, December 30, 2003.
[4] "Tony Snow's First Day as Press Secretary; Video Released of September 11 Plane Crashing into Pentagon." CNN, May 16, 2006.
[5] Megan O'Matz and Kathy Bushouse, "Reactions Across S. Florida: Agonizing Wait in Weston; Radio and Music Offer Comfort." South Florida Sun-Sentinel, September 14, 2001.
[6] "Staff Statement No. 16: Outline of the 9/11 Plot." 9/11 Commission, June 16, 2004.
[7] 9/11 Commission, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel: A Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Franklin, TN: Hillsboro Press, 2004, pp. 191-192.
[8] Bradley Olson, "Md. Was Among Last Stops for Hijackers." Baltimore Sun, September 9, 2006.
[9] Thomas Frank, "Tracing Trail of Hijackers." Newsday, September 23, 2001.
[10] "The Banality of Evil." U.S. News & World Report, September 23, 2001.
[11] Amy Goldstein, Lena H. Sun, and George Lardner Jr., "Hanjour a Study in Paradox." Washington Post, October 15, 2001.
[12] Wes Allison, "The Terrorists Next Door." St. Petersburg Times, October 2, 2001.
[13] David Crary, "Baseball, Pizza and Porn: Hijackers Saw American Daily Life up Close." Associated Press, September 21, 2001.
[14] "FAA Was Alerted to Sept. 11 Hijacker." CBS News, May 10, 2002.
[15] Jim Yardley, "A Trainee Noted for Incompetence." New York Times, May 4, 2002.
[16] Amy Goldstein, Lena H. Sun, and George Lardner Jr., "Hanjour a Study in Paradox."
[17] "Staff Report, August 26, 2004." 9/11 Commission, August 26, 2004, p. 29.
[18] Ibid.
[19] "Remembering the Pentagon Victims: Charles Burlingame." Washington Post, undated.
[20] "Tony Snow's First Day as Press Secretary; Video Released of September 11 Plane Crashing Into Pentagon."
[21] Josh White, "An About-Face on Pilot's Burial." Washington Post, December 8, 2001.
[22] Josh White, "Lawmakers Seek Full Burial for Pilot." Washington Post, December 6, 2001.

"We're Next": Who Gave the Warning to "Stay off the E-Ring" of the Pentagon?

2008-01-14T12:54:00.000-08:00

On September 11, 2001, NBC News Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski was the first reporter at the scene to relay that the Pentagon had been attacked. In a 9:39 a.m. report, he said, "[J]ust a few moments ago ... there was an explosion of some kind here at the Pentagon." After describing what he was seeing and hearing around him, Miklaszewski added: "[I]nterestingly enough, one intelligence official here in the building said [that] when he saw what appeared to be the coordinated attack on the World Trade Center, his advice was to stay away from the outside of the building today, just in case." [1]

Miklaszewski later described this incident again for a book. He recalled that, while heading down the hallway at the Pentagon, he'd "ran into a Defense official who said he didn't know anything specific about the attack yet. But it was so coordinated, he said, 'If I were you I would stay off the E-ring today, because we're next.'" According to Miklaszewski, this official "had no specific information; that was just his gut instinct." [2]

This raises serious questions. Firstly, who was this Defense Department intelligence official? Secondly, why did he think the Pentagon was going to be hit next? After the attacks in New York occurred, Paul Gonzalez, a supervisor in the Defense Intelligence Agency comptroller's office, had in fact reassured his colleagues that the Pentagon was "probably the safest building in the world." No steps were being taken to evacuate the building or alert its employees to any danger. [3] Yet the official that spoke to Miklaszewski thought it would be a target.

Most importantly, why did he specifically warn Miklaszewski to "stay off the E-ring," meaning the outermost of the five concentric rings that make up the Pentagon? Even if we believed that it really was just his gut feeling that the Pentagon would be a target, how could he have guessed the E-ring was at risk? As David Ray Griffin has pointed out: "Assuming that terrorists in control of a Boeing 757 would want to be certain of hitting [the Pentagon], why would they aim at one of the facades, which are only 80 feet high, when they could have simply dived into the roof, which covers 29 acres? More important, one would assume that they would have wanted to cause as much damage to the Pentagon and kill as many of its employees as possible, and these aims would also have made the roof the logical target." [4] So surely if someone had feared an attack on the Pentagon based solely on gut feeling, they would have been most afraid that the roof would be hit. The fact that this Defense Department official believed the E-ring was the likely target suggests he had some kind of specific foreknowledge, and not just a "gut instinct."

While the available evidence is far from conclusive, this indication of foreknowledge is one of the many things that ought to be looked into when there is a proper investigation of 9/11.

NOTES
[1] NBC News, September 11, 2001.
[2] Allison Gilbert et al. (Editors), Covering Catastrophe: Broadcast Journalists Report September 11. Chicago: Bonus Books, 2002, p. 43.
[3] Steve Vogel, "Survivors Healed, but Not Whole." Washington Post, March 11, 2002; Steve Vogel, The Pentagon: A History. New York: Random House, 2007, p. 429.
[4] David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2004, p. 40.

Ground Level Fireballs Disprove Official WTC Collapse Theories

2007-12-29T11:34:00.000-08:00

As the two entries from the Complete 9/11 Timeline copied below show, several witnesses have recalled seeing large fireballs coming from the bases of each of the Twin Towers when they collapsed on September 11, 2001. From their descriptions, it seems the fireballs erupted at the time the collapses began, or just before.

These accounts are important evidence, strongly refuting official explanations of why the World Trade Center fell. In its final report on the collapses of the Twin Towers, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) claimed the collapses "initiated at the fire and impact floors," and "progressed from the initiating floors downward." This would mean the collapse began, in the case of the South Tower, around the 78th to 84th floors, and for the North Tower, around the 93rd to 98th floors.

Why would a collapse that started way up towards the top of each building coincide with, or be preceded by, a massive fireball erupting from the bottom? The official theory--that structural damage and fire caused the collapses--cannot explain this. Nor can it explain why, according to several witnesses, the ground started shaking just before the collapse of the South Tower, and again just before the collapse of the North Tower.

The ground level fireballs make sense, however, when we consider what Mark Loizeaux--the president of Controlled Demolition Inc.--has said: "If I were to bring the towers down, I would put explosives in the basement to get the weight of the building to help collapse the structure."

Shortly Before 9:59 a.m. September 11, 2001: Some Witnesses See Ground-Level Explosion Just Before WTC 2 Collapses
Some witnesses reportedly see a massive fireball at ground level, coming from the South Tower just before it starts to collapse. According to a report by the Mineta Transportation Institute (a research institute founded by Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta), "People inside the South Tower felt the floor vibrate as if a small earthquake were occurring.… The vibration lasted for about 30 seconds. The doors were knocked out, and a huge ball of flame created by the exploding diesel fuel from the building's own supply tank shot from the elevator shaft and out the doors of the South Tower, consuming everything in its path. Minutes later, at 9:59 a.m., the tower collapsed." [Jenkins and Edwards-Winslow, 9/2003, pp. 16] Around the same time, Port Authority Police Officer Will Jimeno is in a corridor leading toward the North Tower. "Suddenly the hallway began to shudder," and he sees "the giant fireball explode in the street," when the South Tower begins to collapse. [Bowhunter, 1/2003] Ronald DiFrancesco is the last person to make it out of the South Tower before it collapses. As he is heading toward the exit that leads onto Church Street, he hears a loud roar as the collapse begins. According to the Ottawa Citizen, "Mr. DiFrancesco turned to his right in the direction of Liberty Street, to see a massive fireball—compressed as the South Tower fell—roiling toward [him]." He bolts for the exit, before being knocked unconscious and blown many yards across the street. [USA Today, 12/18/2001; Ottawa Citizen, 6/4/2005; Ottawa Citizen, 6/5/2005; PBS NOVA, 9/5/2006] A number of other witnesses report feeling the ground shaking just seconds before the South Tower collapses (see Shortly Before 9:59 a.m. September 11, 2001).
Source

10:28 a.m. September 11, 2001: Reporter Sees Ground-Level Explosion When North Tower Collapses
CBS News correspondent Carol Marin witnesses what she describes as a "gigantic fireball" coming from the base of the North Tower as it starts to collapse. [USA Today, 9/11/2001; Chicago Sun-Times, 9/12/2001; Daily Herald (Arlington Heights), 9/11/2002] Marin headed to the scene of the attacks and arrived on West Street after the South Tower collapsed. She then sees the second tower come down, later describing, "I was only a block or two away from the North Tower when the street trembled under my feet, a fireball of pooled jet fuel exploded out of the building's base, and it too, unbelievably, started to collapse right in front of me." [Chicago Sun-Times, 9/10/2006] (However, the explosion could not be due to "pooled jet fuel," as, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, "The jet fuel" from the planes "was mostly consumed within the first few minutes after impact." [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 6/18/2004; New York Times, 4/5/2005]) In one telling, Marin describes, "a roar seemed to come out of the earth," causing the fireball. [Gilbert et al., 2002] In another, she says, "there was a roar, an explosion, and we could see coming toward us a ball of flame, stories high." She runs, and a firefighter throws her against a building to protect her. She recalls, "The flame somehow stopped short of us." [CBS News, 2002, pp. 54] Other witnesses also describe the ground shaking before the North Tower collapse (see Shortly Before 10:28 a.m. September 11, 2001). And some witnesses similarly report seeing a fireball at ground level coming from the South Tower when it collapsed (see Shortly Before 9:59 a.m. September 11, 2001).
Source

The Breakdown of the FBI Anti-Terror Team on 9/11

2007-11-17T06:51:00.000-08:00

A brief but important NBC News report broadcast during the morning of 9/11 indicated how the FBI was rendered useless in its ability to respond to the kind of attacks that were taking place. Shortly after 10:00 a.m., correspondent Andrea Mitchell reported: "This very interesting information ... from the FBI: They have been operating a massive exercise from their hostage rescue unit. All of their top teams, about 50 personnel, helicopters, equipment, were in Monterey, California for the last two days, scheduled to fly back today commercially. So all of those people are out of place." She continued: "You've got all of their special experts on this stuck in Monterey, California, trying to get a military flight back because there are no longer commercial flights. So they are seriously out of pocket, and there is a real breakdown of the FBI anti-terror coordination team, which is of course the principal team that would lead any effort, and was so effective under Jim Kallstrom in New York City during the World Trade Center bombing and the TWA [Flight 800] explosion."

Despite the implications of this incredible information, only one newspaper covered it. In a report published that same day, USA Today briefly described: "The attack was so unexpected that a joint FBI/CIA anti-terrorist task force that specifically prepared for this type of disaster was on a training exercise in Monterey, Calif." The politics website Evote.com also mentioned the incident, concluding: "just as the worst terrorist act was being committed on American lives and property, the chief federal agency responsible for preventing such crimes was being AWOL." But, in the six years since, this information has been ignored, and no mention was made of it in the 9/11 Commission Report.

If the official theory about 9/11 is correct, and the attacks were indeed perpetrated by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, then the absence of the FBI's antiterrorist experts at the one time they were most needed must be a freak coincidence. However, if the official theory is wrong, then this could have been part of a deliberate attempt to 'stand down' normal lines of defense, so as to ensure that the attacks succeeded.

In her report, Mitchell also stated: "It's fair to say, according to sources that we've talked to here at NBC, that the FBI rescue operations and other FBI operations are really in chaos right now, because they can't reach their officials in New York, all of their phone lines are down." I have previously described evidence that communications may have been deliberately sabotaged on 9/11, particularly in the Washington, DC area. Key individuals, including government officials and members of the military, appear to have been affected. So when we hear a report about the FBI on 9/11, stating, "all of their phone lines are down," we must surely also wonder whether this was due to sabotage. A proper investigation of the 9/11 attacks is urgently needed to establish the truth.

"A Great Opportunity": President Bush Describes 9/11

2007-11-10T07:12:00.000-08:00

How did President Bush feel about the September 11 attacks? In the following hours, weeks, and months, he repeatedly used one word. While most people no doubt felt that it was an absolute catastrophe, George W. Bush described 9/11--or at least the political climate it had engendered--as an "opportunity." He said this again and again:

September 11, 2001
Hours after the attacks, during a 9:30 p.m. meeting with his key advisers, Bush declared: "This is a great opportunity. We have to think of this as an opportunity." [1]

Later that evening, he dictated for his diary: "My hope is that this will provide an opportunity for us to rally the world against terrorism." [2]

September 13, 2001
During an appearance in the White House Oval Office, Bush said: "You know, through the tears of sadness I see an opportunity. ... And now is an opportunity to do generations a favor, by coming together and whipping terrorism." [3]

During the National Security Council meeting later that day, he said: "This is a new world. ... Start the clock. This is an opportunity. ... I want Afghan options ... I want decisions quick." [4]

September 19, 2001
During a photo opportunity at the White House, the president described: "Progress is being made. ... I said at the time, through my tears I see opportunity. One of the opportunities I saw was the ability not to put--not only for freedom-loving nations to come together to say resolutely we will fight terrorism, but I felt like there would be--this event may shake up the attitudes of the Middle East where people would end up resolving to show the world that there could be peace there as well." [5]

During another photo opportunity later in the day, he said: "Let me say that, in terms of foreign policy and in terms of the world, this horrible tragedy has provided us with an interesting opportunity. One of the opportunities is in the Middle East. ... I think there's some interesting opportunities to shake terrorism loose from sponsor states. And this government, working with Congress, are going to seize the moment." [6]

October 3, 2001
Bush told a meeting of business leaders in New York: "There's now a reassessment taking place all over America. ... [P]eople are reassessing: what can I do to help? I truly believe that out of this will come greater opportunities for peace; peace in the Middle East. This is a fantastic opportunity born out of sadness, and the question is--can we seize it?" [7]

October 21, 2001
During a press conference along with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bush said: "Both of us see great opportunity. Both of us see positive good that has come out of the evil of September the 11th. Both of us are willing to work hard to seize the moment." [8]

October 29, 2001
Addressing the African Growth and Opportunity Forum, the president said: "Out of the sorrow of September 11th, I see opportunity, a chance for nations to strengthen and rethink and reinvigorate their relationships." [9]

January 29, 2002
During his State of the Union address, the president said: "In the sacrifice of soldiers, the fierce brotherhood of firefighters, and the bravery and generosity of ordinary citizens, we have glimpsed what a new culture of responsibility could look like. ... We've been offered a unique opportunity, and we must not let this moment pass. ... This time of adversity offers a unique moment of opportunity--a moment we must seize to change our culture. ... And we have a great opportunity during this time of war to lead the world toward the values that will bring lasting peace. ... In this moment of opportunity, a common danger is erasing old rivalries." [10]

July 19, 2002
Bush told journalist Bill Sammon that "the events of September 11 caused him to focus on two big goals that he believed the nation could achieve." One of these, the president said, was "peace. ... I believe we can achieve the peace in the Middle East. And I believe we can achieve a peace in South Asia. ... I view this as an opportunity that we will seize." And at home, he added: "the cultural shift toward personal responsibility is going to enable us to better deal with those who could be left behind. ... And one of my jobs is to seize this opportunity, to encourage its impact on our culture." [11]

It would appear that the president's feelings were similar to those articulated by a senior Pentagon official. In 2004, this unnamed official told Washington Times reporter Rowan Scarborough: "I hate to say this and would never say this in public, but 9/11 had its benefits." [12]

NOTES
[1] Bob Woodward, Bush at War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002, pp. 31-32.
[2] Dan Balz and Bob Woodward, "America's Chaotic Road to War." Washington Post, January 27, 2002.
[3] "President Pledges Assistance for New York in Phone Call With Pataki, Giuliani." White House, September 13, 2001; Elisabeth Bumiller and Jane Perlez, "The Overview; Bush and Top Aides Proclaim Policy of 'Ending' States That Back Terror; Local Airports Shut After an Arrest." New York Times, September 14, 2001.
[4] Dan Balz, Bob Woodward and Jeff Himmelman, "Afghan Campaign's Blueprint Emerges." Washington Post, January 29, 2002.
[5] "President Building Worldwide Campaign Against Terrorism." White House, September 19, 2001.
[6] "Remarks by the President at Photo Opportunity With House and Senate Leadership." White House, September 19, 2001.
[7] Karen Hughes, Ten Minutes From Normal. New York: Viking, 2004, pp. 267-268.
[8] "President Bush and Russian President Putin Discuss Progress." White House, October 21, 2001.
[9] "U.S., Africa Strengthen Counter-Terrorism and Economic Ties." White House, October 29, 2001.
[10] "President Delivers State of the Union Address." White House, January 29, 2002.
[11] Bill Sammon, Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism--From Inside the Bush White House. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2002, pp. 382-383.
[12] Rowan Scarborough, Rumsfeld's War: The Untold Story of America's Anti-Terrorist Commander. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2004, pp. iii.

Todd Beamer's Odd Phone Call and the Silent Crash of Flight 93

2007-10-28T14:01:00.000-07:00

A key element of the official 9/11 story is the phone call Todd Beamer made from United Airlines Flight 93 shortly before it supposedly crashed in rural Pennsylvania. It was at the end of this call that Beamer was heard declaring: "Let's roll," before joining a passenger revolt against the terrorists. Without this now-famous call to battle, 9/11 would arguably have been less effective in motivating the public to get behind the war on terror. By May 2002, the Washington Post reported, Beamer's phrase "Let's roll" had been "Embraced and promoted by President Bush as a patriotic battle cry," and was "now emblazoned on Air Force fighter planes, city firetrucks, school athletic jerseys, and countless T-shirts, baseball caps and souvenir buttons. It's also commemorated in popular songs." [1] The London Evening Standard called Beamer's final words "a symbol of America's determination to fight back." [2] Rowland Morgan, author of the book Flight 93 Revealed, concluded: "Truly, the Let's Roll slogan had become a call to arms--just at a time the White House needed it most." [3] Yet, an examination of Todd Beamer's phone call reveals numerous oddities, coincidences, and seeming impossibilities.

THE ODD PHONE CALL
For 13 minutes, Beamer had spoken with Lisa Jefferson, a customer service supervisor at GTE Airfone's Chicago call center. He explained to her that his plane had been hijacked, and, assisted by a flight attendant sitting next to him, provided details about the flight. He also talked about his pregnant wife and two young sons. Being a devout Christian, he asked Jefferson to recite the Lord's Prayer with him, and then recited the 23rd Psalm. Before declaring his famous last words, Beamer said some of the passengers were going to try and seize control of the plane. At around 9:58 a.m., he put the phone down and was heard saying to someone else: "You ready? OK. Let's roll." [4]

The first thing that was odd about this call is the simple fact that Beamer was able to talk to Jefferson continuously for 13 minutes. In her 2002 book, his wife Lisa Beamer revealed that Jefferson had informed her "it was a miracle that Todd's call hadn't been disconnected." The reason: "Because of the enormous number of calls that day, the GTE systems overloaded and lines were being disconnected all around her as she sat at the operator's station outside of Chicago, talking to Todd. [Jefferson] kept thinking, This call is going to get dropped! Yet Todd stayed connected ... all the way to the end." [5] Very fortunate indeed this was, because if the call had become disconnected there would have been no "Let's roll" slogan for the war on terror.

A further oddity was Todd Beamer's remarkable calmness, despite the catastrophic situation he was in. Jefferson recalled: "Todd, when he came to me, he was calm. ... [H]e stayed calm through the entire conversation." [6] In her 2006 book, Called, Jefferson wrote: "[H]is voice was devoid of any stress. In fact, he sounded so tranquil it made me begin to doubt the authenticity and urgency of his call." [7] She told Beamer's wife: "If I hadn't known it was a real hijacking, I'd have thought it was a crank call, because Todd was so rational and methodical about what he was doing." [8]

WHY DIDN'T BEAMER TALK TO HIS WIFE?
At some point during the call, Beamer said he did not think he was going to survive, telling Jefferson: "I know we're not going to make it out of here." [9] He gave her his home phone number and said: "If I don't make it out of this, would you please call my family and let them know how much I love them?" [10] Yet he refused offers to be put through to his wife. Jefferson has recalled: "I asked if he wanted to be connected to his wife." But, "he said no, that he did not want to upset her as they were expecting their third child in January." [11]

However, before reaching the call center, Todd Beamer had supposedly been trying to call his wife, but was simply unable to get through. [12] According to a summary of passenger phone calls presented at the 2006 trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, Beamer tried making this call just before 9:44 a.m., but it had been "terminated upon connection." [13] His wife has recalled that she heard her phone ring twice before stopping, and then, moments later, ringing once more. She said: "When I picked it up, it was dead air. I feel fairly confident that it was Todd. It would be on his mind to call me, to protect me." [14] According to some accounts, he reached the call center because his call was automatically routed there when his attempt at reaching his wife failed. [15] (However, other accounts claim he'd reached it by dialing "0" on the Airfone. [16])

The question remains: If Todd Beamer really did not want to talk to his wife because she was pregnant and he was afraid he might upset her, why had be been trying to phone her in the first place? Even if we somehow accept that he'd changed his mind over the space of a few minutes, another question arises: Why had Beamer not instead asked Jefferson to try and put him through to his parents, or one of his sisters, or another relative, or a friend? Instead, he'd apparently been content to talk with a stranger, explaining to Jefferson: "I just want to talk to somebody and just let someone know that this is happening." [17]

THE SILENT CRASH OF FLIGHT 93
Perhaps the oddest aspect of the call is what happened after 9:58, when Todd Beamer put the phone down to join the passenger revolt against the hijackers. Jefferson has recalled: "After he said, 'Let's roll,' he left the phone, and I would assume that's at the point that they went to charge the cockpit. And I was still on the line and the plane took a dive, and by then, it just went silent. I held on until after the plane crashed--probably about 15 minutes longer and I never heard a crash--it just went silent because--I can't explain it. We didn't lose a connection because there's a different sound that you use. It's a squealing sound when you lose a connection. I never lost connection, but it just went silent." [18]

Now how is this possible? Firstly, how could the call have remained connected after the plane crashed? According to the summary of passenger phone calls presented at the Moussaoui trial, Beamer's call lasted "3,925 seconds." [19] This would mean it did not end until 10:49 a.m., about three-quarters of an hour after Flight 93 supposedly crashed. And, secondly, how could there have been silence when the crash occurred?

WAS BEAMER'S CALL RECORDED?
Considering that Todd Beamer's call is central to the official 9/11 narrative, it would be helpful if a recording of it were available to be properly analyzed. However, all that supposedly exists is a summary written by Jefferson. According to journalist and author Jere Longman: "GTE-Verizon did not routinely tape its telephone calls. As a supervisor, [Jefferson] would have been the one to monitor the taping, but she did not want to risk losing the call." [20] In her own book, Jefferson claimed she had "not had a chance to press the switch in my office that initiates the taping of a conversation." [21] Rowland Morgan has pointed out that this means the evidence of Beamer's call is "single-sourced, unsubstantiated hearsay of which there was no record. ... [Jefferson] had no idea what Beamer's voice sounded like, and she would never hear it again to judge whether he had actually been speaking to her." [22] However, a week after 9/11 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had claimed otherwise, stating that, "because it was to an operator," the call "was tape-recorded." [23] If a recording of the call indeed exists, it has been kept well hidden.

Todd Beamer's call in fact only came to light five days after the attacks, in a report in the Post-Gazette. [24] Beamer's wife first learned of it three days after the attacks, in a phone call from United Airlines. Until then, the FBI had been keeping the information private until it had an opportunity to review it. (Yet how long does it take to review a written summary of a 13-minute phone call?) [25] An FBI agent had phoned Lisa Jefferson on the afternoon of 9/11. She recalled: "I was told to maintain secrecy. In fact, he stressed the importance of keeping the matter under wraps." [26] But why? What was there to hide?

THE SHAKY FOUNDATION OF THE WAR ON TERROR
Clearly, many things seem odd about Todd Beamer's phone call. For now, it is really up to each of us to decide what we think was going on. But it should concern us all that the war on terror is founded upon such dubious evidence. This war, after all, has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans, tens of thousands of Afghans, and over a million Iraqis. It's time to go back and properly investigate the event that started it all.

NOTES
[1] Peter Perl, "Hallowed Ground." Washington Post, May 12, 2002.
[2] James Langton, "Pain and Joy of 11." Evening Standard, August 19, 2002.
[3] Rowland Morgan, "Flight 93 'Was Shot Down' Claims Book." Daily Mail, August 18, 2006.
[4] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002, pp. 198-200 and 203-204; Wes Smith, "Operator Can't Forget Haunting Cries From Flight 93." Orlando Sentinel, September 5, 2002.
[5] Lisa Beamer and Ken Abraham, Let's Roll!: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2002, p. 217.
[6] Wendy Schuman, "'I Promised I Wouldn't Hang Up.'" Beliefnet, 2006.
[7] Lisa Jefferson and Felicia Middlebrooks, Called. Chicago: Northfield Publishing, 2006, p. 33.
[8] Lisa Beamer and Ken Abraham, Let's Roll! p. 211.
[9] Douglas Holt, "Call Records Detail How Passengers Foiled 2nd Washington Attack." Chicago Tribune, September 16, 2001.
[10] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, p. 200.
[11] Wes Smith, "Operator Can't Forget Haunting Cries From Flight 93."
[12] U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, "Stipulation [Regarding Flights Hijacked on September 11, 2001; September 11, 2001 Deaths; al Qaeda; Chronology of Hijackers' Activities; Zacarias Moussaoui; and the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System (CAPPS)]." March 1, 2006, p. 11.
[13] U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, "Summary From Flight 93 Depicting: The Identity of Pilots and Flight Attendants, Seat Assignments of Passengers, and Telephone Calls From the Flight." July 31, 2006.
[14] Jaxon Van Derbeken, "Bound by Fate, Determination: The Final Hours of the Passengers Aboard SF-Bound Flight 93." San Francisco Chronicle, September 17, 2001.
[15] Karen Breslau, "The Final Moments of United Flight 93." Newsweek, September 22, 2001; Dennis B. Roddy, "Flight 93: Forty Lives, One Destiny." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 28, 2001; Glen Johnson, "Probe Reconstructs Horror, Calculated Attacks on Planes." Boston Globe, November 23, 2001; U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, March 1, 2006, p. 11.
[16] Jim McKinnon, "GTE Operator Connects With, Uplifts Widow of Hero in Hijacking." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 19, 2001; Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, pp. 198-199; Wes Smith, "Operator Can't Forget Haunting Cries From Flight 93."
[17] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, p. 204.
[18] Wendy Schuman, "'I Promised I Wouldn't Hang Up.'"
[19] U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, July 31, 2006.
[20] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, p. 199.
[21] Lisa Jefferson and Felicia Middlebrooks, Called, p. 36.
[22] Rowland Morgan, "Flight 93 'Was Shot Down' Claims Book."
[23] Jim McKinnon, "GTE Operator Connects With, Uplifts Widow of Hero in Hijacking."
[24] Jim McKinnon, "The Phone Line From Flight 93 Was Still Open When a GTE Operator Heard Todd Beamer Say: 'Are You Guys Ready? Let's Roll.'" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 16, 2001.
[25] Lisa Beamer and Ken Abraham, Let's Roll! pp. 185-186.
[26] Lisa Jefferson and Felicia Middlebrooks, Called, p. 69.