9-ll: Ho-Hum, Nothing Urgent
by George Szamuely
Research & documentation by Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel
[Posted 9 January 2002]
=======================================
On the morning of September 11, the present Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, General Richard B. Myers, was having a routine meeting on Capitol
Hill with Senator Max Cleland. Just before the meeting began,
"While in an outer office, he said, he saw a television report that a plane
had hit the World Trade Center. 'They thought it was a small plane or
something like that,' Myers said. So the two men went ahead with the office
call." --'American Forces Press Service' 23 October 2001 (1)
The meeting went on for some time. While the two men chatted away, a second
hijacked jet plowed into the World Trade Center’s south tower and a third
one into the Pentagon. And still they went on with their meeting.
"Meanwhile, the second World Trade Center tower was hit by another jet.
'Nobody informed us of that,' Myers said. 'But when we came out, that was
obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody said the Pentagon had been hit.'
"Somebody thrust a cell phone in Myers' hand. Gen. Ralph Eberhart, commander
of U.S. Space Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command was
on the other end of the line 'talking about what was happening and the
actions he was going to take.'
--'American Forces Press Service' 23 October 2001 (1)
Meanwhile, in Florida, it is clear from the public record that by the time
President Bush left his hotel he knew about the attack on the first WTC
tower. John Cochran, who was covering the President's trip to Sarasota told
, told Peter Jennings on ABC TV:
"He [the President] got out of his hotel suite this morning, was about to
leave, reporters saw the White House chief of staff, Andy Card, whisper into
his ear. The reporter said to the president, 'Do you know what's going on in
New York?' He said he did, and he said he will have something about it later."
--'ABC News' Special Report 11 September 2001 (2)
And then he went to an elementary school in Sarasota to read to children for
half an hour.
No urgency. Why should there be? Who could possibly have realized then the
calamitous nature of the events of September 11? Besides in one of the
planes, the hijackers had switched the transponders off. So how could anyone
know what was going on? Yet September 11 was not so unprecedented. Passenger
jet hijackings have happened before, and the US government has prepared
detailed plans to handle them. On September 11 these plans were ignored in
their entirety.
According to the 'New York Times,' air traffic controllers knew at 8:20 a.m.:
"that American Airlines Flight 11, bound from Boston to Los Angeles, had
probably been hijacked. When the first news report was made at 8:45 a.m.
that a plane might have hit the World Trade Center, they knew it was Flight
11." (3)
There was little ambiguity on the matter. The pilot had pushed a button on
the aircraft yoke that allowed controllers to hear the hijacker giving orders.
Here are the FAA regulations concerning hijackings:
"The FAA hijack coordinator…on duty at Washington headquarters will request
the military to provide an escort aircraft for a confirmed hijacked
aircraft…The escort service will be requested by the FAA hijack coordinator
by direct contact with the National Military Command Center (NMCC)." (4)
Here are the instructions issued by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff on June 1, 2001:
"In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most
expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will…forward requests for DOD
assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval." (5)
In addition, Vice President Cheney told Meet the Press on Sept. 16 that only
the president has the authority to order the shooting down of a civilian
airliner. "And you have to ask yourself," Cheney said, "‘If we had had
combat air patrol up over New York and we’d had the opportunity to take out
the two aircraft that hit the World Trade Center, would we have been
justified in doing that?’ I think absolutely we would have…. It’s a
presidential-level decision, and the president made, I think, exactly the
right call in this case, to say, ‘I wished we’d had combat air patrol up
over New York.’" (6)
The U.S. is supposed to scramble military aircraft the moment a hijacking is
confirmed. Yet Myers continues to chat on Capitol Hill, Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld works undisturbed in his Pentagon office and the president reads to
schoolchildren. Myers’ first statement to the Senate Armed Services
Committee on Sept. 13, that no fighter planes had been launched until after
the Pentagon was hit, was therefore scarcely surprising. Senators were a
little incredulous. And the day before, Dan Rather asked on CBS News:
"These hijacked aircraft were in the air for quite a while…Why doesn’t the
Pentagon have the kind of protection that they can get a fighter-interceptor
aircraft up, and if someone is going to plow an aircraft into the Pentagon,
that we have at least some…line of defense?" (7)
Good question. Clearly another, more comforting, story was needed and on the
evening of Friday September 14 CBS launched it:
"CBS News has learned the FAA alerted US Air defense units of a possible
hijacking at 8:38 Tuesday morning, and six minutes later, at 8:44, two F-15s
received a scramble order at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod. But two
minutes later, at 8:46, American Airlines Flight 11, the first hijacked jet,
slammed into the World Trade Center. Six minutes later, at 8:52, the F-15s
were airborne and began racing towards New York City, but the fighters were
still 70 miles away when the second hijacked jet, United Airlines Flight
175, hit the second Trade Center tower. Shortly after that blast, the F-15s
reached Manhattan and began flying air cover missions over the city.
"But to the south, a new danger and a new response. At 9:30, three F-16s
were launched out of Langley Air Force base in Virginia, 150 miles south of
Washington. But just seven minutes later, at 9:37, American Airlines Flight
77 hit the Pentagon. The F-16s arrived in Washington just before 10:00 and
began flying cover over the nation's capital." (8)
This story, which has now, with slight modifications, become the "official"
NORAD version, raises more questions than it answers.
F-15s have a cruising speed of 577-mph, (9) while F-16s have a cruising
speed of 570-mph. (10) . Both planes can fly much faster, though there is a
rapid drop in fuel economy.
According to CBS, three F-16s scrambled from Langley at 9:30 and arrived in
Washington at 10:00. The distance from Langley Air Force Base to the
Pentagon is 129 miles - not 150, as CBS stated. If these F-16s took half an
hour to get to Washington they were flying at 4.4 miles per minute, 258 mph.
That's less than half their cruising speed. It's a fifth of the maximum
speed for these F-16s, 1500-mph.
Talk about a lack of urgency!
And since Washington, D.C. is little more than 200 miles from New York, the
two F-15 fighters from Otis would have had time to get to DC, intercept
Flight 77 and grab a breakfast on the way.
And then of course, there is the small matter of Andrews Air Force Base. It
is, after all, but ten miles from the Pentagon. As Matthew Wald wrote in the
New York Times on September 15th:
"During the hour or so that American Airlines Flight 77 was under the
control of hijackers, up to the moment it struck the west side of the
Pentagon, military officials in a command center on the east side of the
building were urgently talking to law enforcement and air traffic control
officials about what to do." (11)
Why didn't they order planes from Andrews put in the air to protect
Washington D.C. and to intercept American Flight 77 long before it reached
the U.S. capital?
(1) 'American Forces Press Service' 23 October 2001 "Myers and Sept. 11: 'We
Hadn't Thought About This'" by Sergeant 1st Class Kathleen T. Rhem, USA.
Full text posted at:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/n10232001_200110236.html
backup at:
http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/myersafrts.htm
(2) 'ABC News' Special Report: "Planes crash into World Trade Center" (8:53
AM ET) Tuesday 11 September 2001
To see the quotation in the full transcript, go to:
http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/abc911.htm#mybust
(3) 'New York Times' Saturday 15 September 2001 "AFTER THE ATTACKS: SKY
RULES; Pentagon Tracked Deadly Jet But Found No Way to Stop It" by Matthew
L. Wald
Full text with quotation is at:
http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/nyt915.htm#mybust
(4) FAA Order 7610.4J 'Special Military Operations' (Effective Date:
November 3, 1998; Includes: Change 1, effective July 3, 2000; Change 2,
effective July 12, 2001), Chapter 7, Section 1-2, "Escort of Hijacked
Aircraft: Requests for Service"
Full text posted at:
http://faa.gov/ATpubs/MIL/Ch7/mil0701.html#7-1-2
(5) 'Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction 3610.01A,' 1 June
2001, "Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne
Objects," 4.Policy (page 1)
PDF available at:
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/cjcsd/cjcsi/3610_01a.pdf
Backup at:
http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/3610_01a.pdf
(6)'NBC, Meet the Press' (10:00 AM ET) Sunday 16 September 2001.
Full transcript at:
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/629714.asp?cp1=1
Backup transcript at:
http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/nbcmp.htm
(7) CBS News Special Report (12:00 Noon PM ET) - September 12, 2001
"Aftermath of and investigation into attacks on World Trade Center and the
Pentagon at http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/cbs12th.htm
(8) To read the new cover story floated by CBS on 14 September go to
http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/changes.htm#a
(9) Website of the 88th Communications Group, Wright-Patterson AFB OH,
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/research/fighter/f16a.htm
(10) From 'Popular Mechanics' Website, 'The Weapons Of Enduring Freedom,' at
http://popularmechanics.com/science/military/2001/9/weapons_of_infinite_just
ice/
(11) 'Pentagon Tracked Deadly Jet but Found No Way to Stop It,' 'New York
Times,' September 15, 2001, Section A; Page 1; Column 1
http://college4.nytimes.com/guests/articles/2001/09/15/868107.xml
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