See other 9/11 Articles
Title: 9/11 United 93 shootdown conspiracy? An insider dishes...
Source:
Daily Kos
URL Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/13/3335/57833
Published: Aug 13, 2006
Author: Blue Eyed Buddhist
Post Date: 2006-08-13 15:29:39 by Zipporah
Ping List: *9-11* Subscribe to *9-11*
Keywords: None
Views: 148
Comments: 8
Wow. You really need to go and read this article from Vanity Fair. It's by an author who was working on the movie United 93 who was given a more or less complete copy of the 9/11 voice tapes from the military local command center for NORAD. The author has done an incredible job of listening through all the tapes, figuring out all the times involved (the tapes have a time track on them that gives the time to the second), and coordinating it with everything else we know about the 9/11 attacks. It is, without a doubt, the best thing I've read about the 9/11 attacks from the military point of view. This is, frankly, the article that I would have written- had I been able to. Now that it's out there, I can discuss it; up until now, I haven't written much on the 9/11 attacks because I couldn't risk discussing something that wasn't declassified, and hence, screw up my security clearance. Hopefully this article will help debunk a great many conspiracy theories floating around about the 9/11 attacks in general, and specifically whether or not United 93 was shot down by the Air Force (it absolutely was not). You see, on 9/11 I was on vacation... but my regular job, at Seattle Center (ZSE), at that time was working as the military liason for the FAA. I had worked as a plain old air traffic controller (as if air traffic control is a "normal" occupation in any way) for 8 years in the FAA. In January of 1999 I had to quit working traffic because of some medication I was taking; there's pretty restrictive medical requirements on controllers, all kinds of medicines disqualify you from working live traffic. By 11 September 2001, I had worked as a "mission coordinator" at ZSE for almost two full years. The MC desk at a control center normally is responsible for activating and de-activating military training airspace (when inactive, civilian planes can fly through), handling scheduling issues, passing feedback to the military when they screw something up, passing feedback to the control room floor when THEY screw up, and so forth. In the article, when the Northeastern Air Defense Sector (NEADS or "Huntress", their military call sign) guys are talking with center military liasons, that's the position I would have been working, had I been in on 9/11. (I was at home, having flown in at midnight the night before, coming back from a trip to Europe.) What the tapes show is more or less complete disarray. The military can't find the airplanes, the FAA doesn't give them the proper information, everyone is confused, and no single entity even comes close to having the complete picture of the situation. It's just too big for anyone to get their mind around, let alone come up with some kind of coherent response. There are a few key things for people to realize when we're talking about 9/11 and the FAA/military response to it. First, it was a situation completely outside of our training, any scenario that we'd ever seriously considered, or had any kind of response plan for. Hijackings in the past were typically either a lone nutjob type or a small group of terrorists, who wanted one of four things: This situation, though, wasn't something anyone in the military or FAA had really thought much of. Someone hijacks an aircraft and uses it as a flying bomb? About the only other scenario we'd considered when we're talking about commercial jetliners would be something like when Pan Am 103 was blown up in midflight over Lockerbie, Scotland. We knew that Al Qaeda terror group had considered and tried to implement a plan where they'd simultaneously bomb several flights from the skies at one time. But, for whatever reason, the FAA, FBI, military, and so forth just hadn't ever thought of the 9/11 scenario. It's a shame and says something about the human being's ability to have selective perception, and also says something about the lack of imagination in large government institutions. After all, Tom Clancy thought of this scenario in his book Debt of Honor, where a Japan Air Lines pilot basically steals a 747 and smashes it into the US Capitol building during the State of the Union address. Sure, blowing up the entire Congress, the President, and most of the US government is a little over the top, but the point is that someone had thought of the jetliner-as-flying-bomb idea. However, as the 9/11 Commission said... ...NORAD perceived the dominant threat to be from cruise missiles. Other threats were identified during the late 1990s, including terrorists' use of aircraft as weapons. Exercises were conducted to counter this threat, but they were not based on actual intelligence. In most instances, the main concern was the use of such aircraft to deliver weapons of mass destruction. ...The threat of terrorists hijacking commercial airliners within the United States-and using them as guided missiles-was not recognized by NORAD before 9/11. Second, by 11 September 2001, the air defense system of the United States was in no way capable of handling 4 hijackings at once. Lack of imagining this type of attack was not all of this; the other part of it was that the air defense system was pretty much focussed in the wrong direction- outward. Prior to 9/11, the defense system was set up to intercept and repel an attack of Soviet bombers headed for the United States. NORAD is a joint US/Canada military unit, which is logical given that the Soviets would be coming up over the polar routes. The system of radars are jointly operated by the FAA and the Air Force. A quick look at this graphic shows you what I'm talking about... The ARSR-4 system was installed in the early to mid 90's around the United States. There are many more radars that both the Air Force and FAA use that are internal to the USA (for example, in my facility's airspace, there's only 3 ARSR-4s, but we have another 5 or 6 radar sites that we use that are older ARSR-3s or other types) but the money, and the emphasis, went into the ones around the exterior of the USA. So the military truly didn't have the ability to watch inside the USA, nor was it ever really considered. On top of that, with the end of the Cold War and lessening of tension between the USA and Soviet Union, we had vastly reduced the number of fighter/interceptor aircraft that were "on call", ready to launch on this kind of situation. As mentioned in the article and many other sources, the Air Force only had around 4 fighters ready as "alert-5" types of airplanes at any one time on 9/11. This was to cover pretty much the entire Eastern seaboard, from down by Virginia all the way up to Maine. And internally, like in (say) Ohio or Nebraska or Tennessee? Nothing. Why have fighter jets when there's nothing for them to be going after? In fact, to cover the entire United States of America, we only had 14 fighters stationed at 7 alert sites. Again, from the 9/11 Commission... Third, the scenarios that we were prepared for never truly involved the notion of shooting down jetliners, and that kind of command was always in the hands of only the President. Since we hadn't ever considered this kind of situation, our training and so forth was such that being human, we'd revert to what we had actually prepared for. In a hijacking scenario, that was basically for a fighter to take up a location behind a jetliner and monitor the situation. As the Vanity Fair article points out... In short, even though fighter jocks and the military ground controllers who aid them in finding their targets are programmed to be take-action, take-charge, do-something kinds of guys (as are the civilian air traffic controllers), the fact is that nobody was really ready or authorized to have the default situation be "if they're headed into a downtown area, shoot them down". Instead, our procedures and planning and actions on that day were all in the mindset of "let's get the fighters into position and monitor the hijacked aircraft." As the Vanity Fair article makes clear, by the time the order to shoot someone down was actually given on 9/11, all four of the hijacked aircraft had already crashed. Fourth, the chain of command was too long and convoluted, as were the procedures for a hijacking. In fact, in my opinion, they were pathetic, particularly in the FAA. At one point after the first aircraft was hijacked, calls were made to regional FAA management to report a second hijacking. The person that answered the phone was not the regional manager, and in fact the caller was told that the manager had gone into a very important meeting and was not to be disturbed. The meeting was, of course, to discuss the first hijacking. (See page 22 of the 9/11 Commission report.) Additionally, here's the chain of command that the FAA was supposed to follow on 9/11. At that point, if any aid were to be given by the military, the orders would be passed back down through their chain of command into the NORAD system. You'll notice who is not in that chain of command- the FAA's military liason, working at the mission coordinator desk! The very person who's stationed at the center and who's supposed to have the best knowlege of the various resources that the FAA and military has to offer is "out of the loop" when it comes to information flow and coordination. In fact, as the 9/11 Commission report makes clear, the few times that effective communication was achieved between the FAA and NORAD (at NEADS), it was stuff that the FAA's Boston Center mission coordinator was doing on his own. I've never met that guy, but if I do I want to buy him a beverage of his choosing, because despite an incredibly horrible, tough situation, he did as good at job as humanly possible from what I can tell. As the 9/11 Commision report says... ...In summary, NEADS received notice of the hijacking nine minutes before it struck the North Tower. That nine minutes' notice before impact was the most the military would receive of any of the four hijackings. Having worked at the mission coordinator position, when I read through the Vanity Fair article and listened to the recordings (they're live on the site; if you haven't already read the article I really, really urge you to do so) I immediately could see several spots where a smart, motivated mission coordinator would have been able to offer great help. For example, the equipment at NEADS didn't have the location of the White House displayed on the map. The NEADS air defense controllers had a lot of trouble picking out and identifying the actual hijacked aircraft, because their radar systems (at the time- they've since upgraded) were pretty old and finding a single primary-only target in the clutter was nearly impossible. But the FAA has the ability to get lat/long information on their targets; the mission coordinator could have given them a location for the White House, for the targets that the FAA controllers were tracking but the NEADS controllers couldn't pick out, and so forth. After reading through this article, I'm even more convinced than before, if that's possible, that there was and is no big conspiracy to hide a shoot-down of United 93. In fact, while the article makes clear that in the initial hearings, the military officers questioned appear to have been confused or misled the 9/11 Commission at a minimum, and possibly to have intentionally lied to them, the true reason is simple- they didn't want people to realize just how badly the FAA and military were overmatched on 9/11. From the article... If nothing else, it might have given the public a more realistic sense of the limitations, particularly in the face of suicide terrorism, of what is, without doubt, the most powerful military in the world. The fact of the matter is that this "perfect storm" of conditions- the lack of imagination of this possibility, the relatively weak condition of the air defense system, the default scenarios and training that we reverted to, and the crappy procedures and failure to involve the people who actually know enough to be able to help- all worked against us on 9/11. What this article points out even more clearly is something I've ranted about in the FAA, a few times online, and occasionally to other people in the aviation business... the FAA is grossly top-heavy when it comes to this kind of thing. A manager in a regional headquarters probably hasn't worked air traffic in years, if ever- yet they're supposed to make decisions based on that situational awareness and familiarity? We had a chain of notification and action that didn't include the most experienced people in dealing with FAA-military operational issues? No, United 93 was not shot down by fighter jets. No, there was no grand conspiracy on 9/11. Yes, the FAA's upper level managers really ARE that incompetent. Yes, we really were pretty much helpless in terms of staging an armed military response on 9/11. I've been there, folks, and done that. I've vectored military aircraft onto targets, I've done the conference calls, I've passed the information back and forth, and I can tell you that everything in the article rings true to me. The obvious question is this- are we ready today? Well, to be frank, I can't really go into operational details of what's changed in the FAA and military. Despite the fact that I'm fairly willing to tweak people in positions of power with my blog, I can't and won't get into security stuff, because I think it'd be wrong and because I'd probably pay a stiff price in my own personal life (ie, loss of job, loss of house, etc etc etc.) What's more, since 2002 I haven't worked the mission coordinator position, because I got my medical clearance back and now control traffic again. I will say this, though- I fly without hesitation. Whether I think we're safe from more terrorism or not, I still fly, because even on 9/11 only 4 planes out of 4,000 in the air at the time were taken over. The odds are so immensely against anyone on a given plane being killed in this kind of attack that I can't imagine NOT flying. As the old saying goes, you're in more danger driving to the airport to fly than you are when you're actually flying. When it comes to 9/11, though, this awesome story (and big kudos to Michael Bronner, the author, and to Vanity Fair, for running the article and putting it on the net for people to see) makes it pretty clear; there's no big conspiracy. Just a sad, tragic tale of 19 madmen staging a pretty brilliant plan and attacking the people of the United States simply because they live here. No big conspiracy, no coverup, no smoking guns... just smoking holes in Manhattan, the Pentagon, and in the Pennsylvania countryside. The most true, and best, story about 9/11 is the heroism that was displayed by the passengers of United 93. That was the first, best, and most honest counterattack in this battle against terrorism. And what's more, Americans should be proud; a somewhat motley group of plain old folks- black, white, gay, straight, young, old- took on the terrorists, paid the ultimate price of their lives, but they dealth the terrorists a big defeat. There's a lesson in there for the chicken hawks who're running America right now. Direct action aimed at the specific terrorists- works. Attacking a nation (Iraq) that had absolutely zero involvement in 9/11 and who wasn't really part of any group attacking the United States? Didn't work, isn't working, and won't work in the future, either. (cross-posted from my blog, A Blue Eyed Buddhist)
...because NORAD was created to counter the Soviet threat, it came to define its job as defending against external attacks.
(from http://www.fas.org/... click on graphic for full size)Notwithstanding the identification of these emerging threats, by 9/11 there were only seven alert sites left in the United States, each with two fighter aircraft on alert. This led some NORAD commanders to worry that NORAD was not postured adequately to protect the United States.
A former senior executive at the F.A.A., speaking to me on the condition that I not identify him by name, tried to explain. "Our whole procedures prior to 9/11 were that you turned everything [regarding a hijacking] over to the F.B.I.," he said, reiterating that hijackers had never actually flown airplanes; it was expected that they'd land and make demands. "There were absolutely no shootdown protocols at all. The F.A.A. had nothing to do with whether they were going to shoot anybody down. We had no protocols or rules of engagement."
Boston Center did not follow the protocol in seeking military assistance through the prescribed chain of command. In addition to notifications within the FAA, Boston Center took the initiative, at 8:34, to contact the military through the FAA's Cape Cod facility. The center also tried to contact a former alert site in Atlantic City, unaware it had been phased out. At 8:37:52, Boston Center reached NEADS. This was the first notification received by the military-at any level-that American 11 had been hijacked...
"How good would it have looked for the government in general if we still couldn't have stopped the fourth plane an hour and 35 minutes [into the attack]?" Azzarello asked. "How good would it have looked if there was a total breakdown in communication and nothing worked right?"
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: All (#0)
Go to the Kos link.. interesting this diary in that he's trying to debunk the "truthies" as he calls them.. amazing.
How many times are people going to keep repeating this lie? This isn't ignorance. If this guy is really "in the know," then he's a liar...period. The fact of the matter is that this "perfect storm" of conditions And yet he conveniently avoids the big, inconvenient question: How did 19 scimiter-wielding, cave-dwelling, flight school washouts know to hijack four planes at the same time and in the same area where the feds were running several wargames testing the NEADS air defence systems? Nevermind the other issues at the WTC and Pentagon...just take those off the table for a minute. Why won't he address the issues of timing and location while at the same time, lying about the feds never planning for planes being used as missiles? I haven't been over at kos, but I hope they are tearing this liar to shreds on these things.
"Ohio: It's not the heat...it's the humidity!"
To find answers, I try to ask the most elementary questions.
Exactly. This "revelation" from Vanity Fair is whats called a "limited hangout". Like the government is going to give a shumck working on a movie real info. The year prior pilots were scrambled 70 times. Pilots were quoted that they were ready to go and just were sitting waiting. The entire east coast was stripped down to nothing. Fema was in NYC on Sept 10th all ready to go. FAA tapes were destroyed. There were up to 29 fake blips that represented planes on the Norad screens. On Sept. 11th there were more war games being run than ever in history. Also the planes were able to be tracked. Shuting off the transponder only affects altitude reading. The plane could still be seen, but NORAD could not figure what was real or not. Mark
Has anyone ever produced a "master coincidence list" of all the amazing coincidences that occured the day of 9/11 and the days and weeks leading up to it? It would have to be an uncomfortably long list for the shills to explain away. There is one list that would be much, much shorter...the list of people of fedgov employees who were fired, written up, or even given a stern talking-to after 9/11. And as far as I know, the only people on that list would be the whistle blowers who tried to warn their higher-ups that something was going to happen.
"Ohio: It's not the heat...it's the humidity!"
Killtown has a 200 smoking gun list also. The link above destroys the Vanity Fair limited hangout. Long and detailed 911 timeline of everything to do with all aspects of the event. Mark
The 9-11 history is that the FAA methodically screwed up everything from beginning to end - including keeping what fighters who got airborne from coming within an electronic/eyball range of witnessing the reality of the hijacked aircraft. Add the intense cover-up, including the non-availability of pertinent radar imagery and audio tapes of the day. That was no accident, starting with the lack of internal investigations, reprimands, firings or prosecutions. The FAA was in it up to their fucking ears!
Bullshit! Anyone who says this and being in the position claimed, and then supposedly knows nothing of Operation Bojinka is so full of it that it's coming out his ears.
"Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively, and if after all of this time, and all of this sacrifice, and all of this support, there is still no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership not tied to the mistakes and policies of the past." Richard M. Nixon
#2. To: Zipporah (#0)
First, it was a situation completely outside of our training, any scenario that we'd ever seriously considered, or had any kind of response plan for.
#3. To: Zipporah (#0)
Uh...so how does a plane crash create an eight mile debris field?
#4. To: orangedog (#2)
(Edited)
#5. To: Kamala (#4)
#6. To: orangedog (#5)
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=911_project
#7. To: Zipporah, Christine, robin, Zoroaster, BTP Holdings, Arator, Bayonne, Brian S, A K A Stone, Bub, mugwort, bluegrass, Bill D Berger, FormerLurker, Uncle Bill, Dakmar, Flintlock, Neil McIver, tom007, aristeides, Burkeman1, Diana, (#0)
#8. To: Zipporah, orangedog (#0)
First, it was a situation completely outside of our training, any scenario that we'd ever seriously considered, or had any kind of response plan for. Hijackings in the past were typically either a lone nutjob type or a small group of terrorists,
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest