After pledging to ask the hard questions concerning the failure of US air defenses on Sept. 11, the commission charged with belatedly investigating those events ignored inconsistent, sometimes nonsensical testimony. The 10- member panel also failed to ask about diverting exercises carried out that morning, why FL 93 came down in two places, or why the interceptors launched by the Air Force flew at a fraction of their top speeds. No one, it seems, wants to go near proof of treason rivaling America’s first Pearl Harbor. As a 911 investigator who authored Stand Down and All Fall Down, I have appended my commentary to the following “news” stories. -WT

Air Defenses Faltered on 9/11, Panel Finds
by Dan Eggen and William Branigin
Washington Post June17/04

The chief of U.S. air defenses testified today that if his command had been notified immediately of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings and ordered to intervene, U.S. fighter jets would have been able to shoot down all four of the airliners.

Air Force Gen. Ralph E. Eberhart, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that had the Federal Aviation Administration conveyed word of the hijackings as soon it knew of them, "yes, we could shoot down the airplanes."

[In fact, the FAA did not have to wait to confirm and relay word of “hijackings”. Regulations followed routinely at least once a week at the time saw FAA controllers calling for fighters on ready alert, or already aloft in the vicinity, to escort commercial planes that had lost radio or transponder contact. At least one Boston Center FAA controller says word of lost communications with FL 11was passed to the military immediately. –WT]

The chairman and vice chairman of the commission later expressed surprise about Eberhart's claim.

According to the commission's new staff report, Vice President Cheney did not issue orders to shoot down hostile aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, until long after the last hijacked airliner had already crashed, and that the order was never passed along to military fighter pilots searching for errant aircraft that morning.

The commission staff concluded that NORAD had received notice of the hijacking nine minutes before Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.

"The nine minutes notice was the most the military would receive that morning of any of the four hijackings," the report says.

[If that is the case, they could not have been watching there own radar screens. And they must have been the only Americans that morning not watching network news or answering calls from worried spouses.

As for official channels, the commission heard that a pair of F-15s were “wheels up” out of Massachusetts as Tower 1 was struck more than 150 miles away. Air National Guard head, Maj. Gen. Paul Weaver later confirmed an official NORAD news release, stating, “The F-15 pilots flew ''like a scalded ape, topping 500 mph but were unable to catch up to the airliner.” (St. Augustine Times Sept16/01; NORAD news release Sept18/01)

Airliners fly at 500 mph. An F-15 can fly almost four-times faster. Utilizing only 27% of available thrust, both F-15’s were eight minutes/71 miles away when FL 175 struck the South Tower (Christian Science Monitor Mar8/02)

Launched per regulations as soon as radio and transponder contact was lost with Flight 11, with both sets of throttles hammered to the stops the fastest fighters on Earth would have intercepted Flight 11 over the Hudson River at least six minutes from Manhattan. (Boston Globe Sept15/01)

Even launching as late as they did - on the FAA’s first officially acknowledged phone call to NORAD at 8:40 - the Mach 2.5 fighters could have reached FL 175 before it reached the World Trade Center.

One minute after the Otis-based F-15s were airborne, at 9:24, NORAD was informed by the FAA of a possible hijacking onboard FL 77. NORAD ordered Langley, VA F-16s to scramble. The “Fighting Falcon” has a top speed of 1500 mph. But NORAD confirms the jets did not go to full power using afterburners. At 9:40, FL 77 flew into the Pentagon. It took the 1,500 mph-capable Langley fighters 12 minutes to cover the 130 miles. They could have made it in seven. The commission never asked who ordered the interceptors to fly so slowly. –WT]

(continuing with the Washington Post story:}

The report also documents a succession of mistakes, wrong assumptions and puzzling errors made on the morning of Sept. 11 by air defense and aviation employees, who often did not communicate with each other when they should have and frequently seemed unsure of how to respond.

Panel investigators also tersely conclude that authorities with NORAD repeatedly misinformed the commission in testimony last fall about its scrambling of fighters from Langley Air Force Base just north of Hampton, Va. NORAD officials indicated at the time that the jets were responding to either United 93 or American Airlines 77, which struck the Pentagon.

In fact, they were chasing "a phantom aircraft," American 11, which had already struck the World Trade Center. [So why did they fly to Washington DC instead of NYC? –WT]

American Airlines FL 77, which was hijacked after taking off from Dulles International Airport, flew undetected by anyone for 36 minutes as it turned and headed back east toward the Pentagon.

[If the most sophisticated radars on the planet couldn’t spot a jetliner, how could Flight Explorer - a company selling FAA real-time flight tracking data - follow Flights 11, 175 and 77 from take-off to final impacts? –WT]

The FAA never asked for any military assistance or notified the military about either Flight 77 or United Airlines Flight 93 before they crashed.

[At 9:16 the FAA notified NORAD that United Airlines Flight 93 had been hijacked. At 9:24 the FAA told NORAD that American Airlines flight 77 might be hijacked and appeared headed toward Washington. Standard procedures would have launched interceptors immediately. –WT]

Nor did the FAA's command center issue an order to implement cockpit security measures in other planes that were in flight or on the ground after the hijackings became known.

None of the jetliners likely could have been intercepted given the time available.
[Absolutely not true – see above, and FL 93 which follows. –WT]

Time to respond might have been lengthened if the status of the flights had been communicated more quickly to and among military and Federal Aviation Administration officials.

A telephone conversation occurred between the two leaders shortly before 10:10 a.m. or 10:15 a.m. in which Bush authorized Cheney to order jet pilots to shoot down hostile aircraft.

Within a few minutes, Cheney issued the first shoot-down order, based on reports from the Secret Service of an aircraft - United 93 - headed toward Washington. But the reports were based on trajectory estimates; Flight 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m.

[At 9:22 an earthquake monitor in southern Pennsylvania picked up a sonic boom caused by a supersonic jet, 60 miles from Shanksville. At 9:58 a flight controller manning a radarscope in New Hampshire watched a pursuing F-16 from the 180th Fighter Wing out of Toledo, Ohio line up to take the shot. “An F-16 fighter closely pursued United Airlines Flight 93,” he explained. “The F-16 made 360-degree turns to remain close to the commercial jet. He must’ve seen the whole thing.” (Telegraph Sept13/01) One of Fl 93’s exploded engines – indicative of a hit by a heat-seeking air-to-air missile - landed 8 miles from the main crash site. –WT]

The vice president issued a similar order at around 10:30 a.m. in response to another report of a hijacked plane. "Eventually," the report notes, "the shelter received word that the alleged hijacker five miles away had been a Medevac helicopter."

Cheney's general shoot-down orders were issued to NORAD at 10:31 a.m., but clear instructions were never passed along to pilots in the air. The only orders actually conveyed to the Langley pilots were to 'ID type and tail.' "

The Langley pilots were also never told why they were scrambled or that hijacked commercial airliners were a threat.

Cheney mistakenly informed Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld that U.S. fighters had shot down a couple of hijacked aircraft on his orders.

While Bush was seated in a classroom of second-graders, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. whispered to him, "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack," the report says.

"The president told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis," the 29-page document continues. Bush saw the phones and pagers of reporters starting to ring as they stood behind the children in the classroom and "felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening," the report says.

[Following standing orders, the Secret Service should have whisked him from the room instantly. Bush was told of the first WTC crash at his hotel in front of television news reporters before leaving for the school. –WT]

" All witnesses agreed that the president strongly wanted to return to Washington and only grudgingly agreed to go elsewhere," the report says.

Commission member John F. Lehman, a Republican former secretary of the Navy, said that "there was considerable breakdown in command and control" on Sept. 11 in the air defense effort.

[The commission never looked at “Operation Vigilant Guardian” and other air defense/airliner crash drills taking place that morning, which misdirected air defenders and sowed confusion in the minds of key commanders. Who ordered those exercise? -WT]

Lehman pointed to "very identifiable" failures by FAA headquarters on the day of the terrorist attacks, including the failure of the agency to issue a broad early notification of multiple hijackings and to notify the military of that Flight 93 was heading toward Washington.

[In fact, the military shares the same FAA radars and could see the developing situation for themselves - as they did during the golfer Payne incident and similar aerial incidents. -WT]

"I think [FAA] headquarters blew it," said commission member Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic governor and senator from Nebraska.

[I think the commission blew it. The record shows that America’s air defenses were deliberately stood down. The FAA did a terrific job getting 4,500 airliners safely on the ground. –WT]

Cheney Authorized Shooting Down Planes
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post June18/04

The report portrays the vice president taking command from his bunker while Bush, who was in Florida, communicated with the White House in a series of phone calls, and occasionally had trouble getting through.

[According to insiders, extensive communications – including extra phone lines – are always installed ahead of time at Presidential venues. –WT]

Cheney told the commission he was operating on instructions from Bush given in a phone call. [Cheney] issued authority for aircraft threatening Washington to be shot down. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who had joined Cheney [on 911], told the commission that she heard the vice president discuss the rules of engagement for fighter jets over Washington with Bush.

Told - erroneously, as it turned out - that a presumably hijacked aircraft was 80 miles from Washington, Cheney decided "in about the time it takes a batter to swing" to authorize fighter jets scrambled from Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Va., to engage it.
[The commission says the Langley F-16s were chasing Flight 11, which had long since crashed. NORAD says the Langley jets were cruising north to “defend” the Pentagon from Flight 77. Cheney says he ordered the same planes to engage Flight 93 over Pennsylvania. Say what? –WT]

Only later did White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten suggest that Cheney call Bush once more to confirm the engagement order. Logs in Cheney's bunker and on Air Force One confirm conversations at 10:18 and 10:20, respectively.
[Just before Fl 93 was shot down. –WT]

Rumsfeld replied: "We can't confirm that. We're told that one aircraft is down but we do not have a pilot report that they did it."

The Langley fighter jets sent to circle Washington never received the shoot-down order. It was passed down the chain of command, but commanders of the North American Aerospace Defense Command's northeast sector did not give it to the pilots.
" While leaders believed the fighters circling above them had been instructed to 'take out' hostile aircraft, the only orders actually conveyed to the Langley pilots were to 'ID type and tail.' "

[“Pilots” plural. At least two Langley jets, each carrying one pilot, were launched. An earlier report carried on this website of the Otis F-15s being asked to ID Flight 11 as it closed on Manhattan could have mistaken the Langley order. –WT]

By 10:45 other fighter jets would be circling Washington, and these had clear authority to shoot down planes, the commission determined. They were sent from Andrews Air Force Base by the commander of the 113th Wing of the Air National Guard, in consultation with the Secret Service, which relayed instructions that an agent said were from Cheney.

That arrangement was "outside the military chain of command," Bush and Cheney told the commission they were unaware that fighters had been scrambled from Andrews.

[The Andrews alert jets were routinely launched to escort out-of-communications aircraft straying toward DC “No Fly” zones. On Sept. 11, existing doctrine says they should have been launched immediately and a CAP (Combat Air Patrol) placed over the capitol at least an hour earlier. Except Rumsfeld had changed the rules for notifying and scrambling fighters two months before. –WT]

Cheney would give the order to engage twice - at news that United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, was approaching Washington, and at what turned out to be a Medevac helicopter, the commission determined. Neither aircraft was engaged.

Communications with Washington were so poor that Bush, who told the commission he was "deeply dissatisfied" with the technical problems, at one point resorted to using a cell phone on the way to Air Force One. Bush's motorcade took a wrong turn on the way to the airport and had to reverse.

Bush and Cheney spoke again at 9:45, while Bush was on the tarmac aboard Air Force One. By that time, both towers of the World Trade Center were aflame and the Pentagon had been hit. [With the nation under attack, Air Force One took off air without fighter escort. –WT]

"Sounds like we have a minor war going on here," Bush told Cheney, according to the commission report. "I heard about the Pentagon. We're at war . . . somebody's going to pay."

The commission’s final report is due next month, on the eve of the Democratic convention.