Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
They Let It Happen
[undated]
Note [added 2/8/09] While I am leaving this post up as-is and FWIW, the core point of it - the apparent "muzzling" represented by the 2001 order - seems to have been debunked. See Mike W's 9/11 Myths page. What I'd previously read as an exception to new restrictions was actually THE change to a MORE restrictive previous order. Good thing I had already called it a red herring, rather than hanging any weight on the issue. So for the record - the June 1 change can have had no direct role in impeding the 9/11 defense, and so it's implementation is not direct evidence of any LIHOP thinking. Apologies also for the late update.
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As indicated by the swift fighter response in the Payne Stewart case, the Chain of Command was not ordinarily needed to get escort fighters off the ground – this could all be done automatically and at intermediate levels. But more tightly controlled actions, like issuing an order for these fighters to shoot down a civilian aircraft, constituted an emergency and had to originate with the President and pass through every link in the chain of command to the responsible fighter pilots.
But these guidelines, in effect since 1986, oddly changed just three months before September 11, extending the need for approval yet further down. A Defense Department directive of June 1 2001 stated: “In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses […] forward requests for DoD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval.” [1] Aviation Week backed this up: “On Sept. 11, the normal scramble-approval procedure was for an FAA official to contact the National Military Command Center (NMCC) and request Pentagon air support. Someone in the NMCC would call NORAD's command center and ask about availability of aircraft, then seek approval from the Defense Secretary--Donald H. Rumsfeld--to launch fighters.” [2] In other words, the automatic scrambling of fighters was no more – the Secretary of Defense now had to personally sign off before fighters could be sent up, and specifically in response to a hijacking. Michael Ruppert wrote that this change in procedures “demonstrated a willful intent to centralize decision-making away from field commanders prior to the attacks.” [3]
But the 9/11 Commission’s final report states in its blameless way: “As they existed on 9/11, the protocols for the FAA to obtain military assistance from NORAD required multiple levels of notification and approval at the highest levels of government […] The NMCC would then seek approval from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to provide military assistance […] The protocols did not contemplate an intercept […] On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen.” [4] They do not mention how recently and intentionally it had become so unsuited.
Of course “immediate response” actions were allowed without Rumsfeld’s immediate permission, and it appears some thought the attacks fit this exception – neither the Otis nor the Langley fighters, the first wave of defense (scrampled 8:52 and 9:30), were scrambled with Rumsfeld’s permission. He claims he never even arrived at the NMCC until 10:30 am. According to the Commission, Major General Larry Arnold, commander of the Continental U.S. NORAD Region said to one of his subordinates “go ahead and scramble [the Otis fighters], and we’ll get authorities later.” So the fighters were sent up, if slowly and with great confusion, and Rumsfeld’s procedure change becomes a red herring, if a telling one.
Sources: [5] Ruppert, Micheal C. Crossing the Rubicon. Gabriola Island, BC, Canada. New Society Publishers. 2004. Page 316
[6] Scott, William B. “Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks.” Aviation week’s Aviation Now. June 3, 2002. Accessed April 27, 2003 at: http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm. (need subscription to read it now).
[7] See [5]. Ruppert. Page 337.
[8] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. 9/11 Commission Final Report. Page 17
Showing posts with label shoot-down. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shoot-down. Show all posts
Monday, February 9, 2009
Friday, October 12, 2007
THE CHAIN OF COMMAND ON 9/11 {masterlist}
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Tightly controlled actions, like issuing an order for fighter jets to shoot down a civilian aircraft, constituted an emergency and had to originate with the President and pass through every link in the chain to the responsible fighter pilots. As the 9/11 Commission explained, “prior to 9/11, it was understood that an order to shoot down a commercial aircraft would have to be issued by the National Command Authority (a phrase used to describe the president and secretary of defense).” [2]
This Chain of Command was not ordinarily needed to get escort fighters off the ground – this could all be done automatically and at intermediate levels, as indicated by the swift fighter response in the Payne Stewart case. These guidelines, in effect since 1986, oddly changed just three months before September 11, with Rumsfeld asserting the sole authority to allow fighters to take off at all. This is covered in more in detail in the post "Muzzling the Defense?"
The 9/11 Commission’s final report later stated in its blameless way: “As they existed on 9/11, the protocols for the FAA to obtain military assistance from NORAD required multiple levels of notification and approval at the highest levels of government […] The protocols did not contemplate an intercept […] On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen.” It became even more unsuited in the days and hours and even minutes before the attacks, and on the morning of September 11th, strangely, the National Command Authority’s chain of command seemed to sprout new links, swap out old ones, and seemed to not be anchored down to anything. The following posts deal with the US leadership response and the flailings and failings of a Chain of broken links.
- President Bush: “There’s one Terrible Pilot:” The accidental President Stumbles into 9/11.
- Vice President Cheney, the Roadmap Swap, and the “Effort.” Clarifying the Record. Did Bush hand Cheney the joystick to control the attacks?
- Cheney and the Shoot-Down Order: Who issued the order and when? 9:45, 10:14, 10:18?
- Link #2 AWOL: Psychic Rumsfeld’s Wanderings
- Myers the stand-in: How he responds "when things are happening."
- First Day Jitters: Sliney, Leidig, Myers: Three Defense Links Swapped out at the last minute at Joint Chiefs of Staff (ACTING Chairman richard Myers, as of ?:00 am, 9/11) Benedict Sliney at FAA Operations Center (first day as of ?:00 am, 9/11) and Leidig at the NMCC (see chart below - standing in as of 8:30 am, 9/11, as per a request from the previous day). This is spooky.
In the end, what we got was a startlingly "unprepared" and disjointed command authority that ran something like this:
Monday, June 18, 2007
FAILED AIR DEFENSE {masterlist}
AN AERIAL BALLET OF PERFECTLY SYNCHRONIZED FAILURES (updated 2/5/07)
“Is this part of the exercise? Is this some kind of a screw-up?”
- Larry Arnold, NORAD Commander, upon hearing of the first hijack
“That was news to me. I thought we were still chasing American 11.”
- F-15 pilot “Duff” on hearing a second plane had hit the WTC
“Holy smoke, that’s why we’re here.”
- F-16 pilot “Lou” upon seeing smoke from the Pentagon
This post is to organize and link together all the related sub-posts on the ridiculously inadequate air defense during the 9/11 attack. The air-based wargames, which are referred to often in these posts, are covered seperately in the wargames masterlist. People still argue about whether our fighter defenses could have done anything if they had been better integrated. The answer depends on the presumptions one makes, but basically the answer is yes - there were procedures to defend the nation from roughly the 9/11 threat of suicide hijackings, but they have been magnified, obscured, and muddled by both sides in the post-9/11 debate. And they seem to have not been followed that morning.
This is a chart I made of the timeline of the attack and overall air defense during it - click the image to get a full-size, readable view (can also be saved and printed, 8.5 x 11").
> Status of air terror readiness as of 9/11: Could it be this bad on accident?
- Payne Stewart and Standard procedure: We had standard procedures for intercepting stray planes
- Rumors of a Stand-Down: Unprepared or Stood Down? (neither - this dichotomy is a false one).
- Muzzling the Defense: Rumsfeld's recent changes to fighter scramble procedures - ultimately a red herring?
- Warnings ignored?
- Fighter deployments decided on to defend the known primary zone of terrorism threats: notably inadequate.
- Commercial pilots' right to bear arms in the air rescinded in 2001? Post in the works...
> A Hobbled Defense in Action on 9/11
- Federal Attack Assistance? {masterlist}: The FAA's role in "dropping the ball" on 9/11, in several sub-posts: Sliney, the phantom Flight 11, the mistaken memo, etc...
- Phantom flights/radar inserts
- Radar blind spots
- Otis and Langley: Scrambling against the clock
- Heading and Speed: slowly away from the attacks
- Information shared with the defending fighter pilots: RIDICULOUSLY inadequate
> Permission to use deadly force to protect America: Negligently (?) denied
- No Such order recieved by the five defending pilots.
- Bush at Booker: Isolated accidents require no defensive orders, and Bush insisted on pretending it was an isolated accident until the last possible minute - and then still refused to issue the order for at least another hour. By the official story.
- Cheney and the Shoot-Down Order
“Is this part of the exercise? Is this some kind of a screw-up?”
- Larry Arnold, NORAD Commander, upon hearing of the first hijack
“That was news to me. I thought we were still chasing American 11.”
- F-15 pilot “Duff” on hearing a second plane had hit the WTC
“Holy smoke, that’s why we’re here.”
- F-16 pilot “Lou” upon seeing smoke from the Pentagon
This post is to organize and link together all the related sub-posts on the ridiculously inadequate air defense during the 9/11 attack. The air-based wargames, which are referred to often in these posts, are covered seperately in the wargames masterlist. People still argue about whether our fighter defenses could have done anything if they had been better integrated. The answer depends on the presumptions one makes, but basically the answer is yes - there were procedures to defend the nation from roughly the 9/11 threat of suicide hijackings, but they have been magnified, obscured, and muddled by both sides in the post-9/11 debate. And they seem to have not been followed that morning.
This is a chart I made of the timeline of the attack and overall air defense during it - click the image to get a full-size, readable view (can also be saved and printed, 8.5 x 11").
> Status of air terror readiness as of 9/11: Could it be this bad on accident?
- Payne Stewart and Standard procedure: We had standard procedures for intercepting stray planes
- Rumors of a Stand-Down: Unprepared or Stood Down? (neither - this dichotomy is a false one).
- Muzzling the Defense: Rumsfeld's recent changes to fighter scramble procedures - ultimately a red herring?
- Warnings ignored?
- Fighter deployments decided on to defend the known primary zone of terrorism threats: notably inadequate.
- Commercial pilots' right to bear arms in the air rescinded in 2001? Post in the works...
> A Hobbled Defense in Action on 9/11
- Federal Attack Assistance? {masterlist}: The FAA's role in "dropping the ball" on 9/11, in several sub-posts: Sliney, the phantom Flight 11, the mistaken memo, etc...
- Phantom flights/radar inserts
- Radar blind spots
- Otis and Langley: Scrambling against the clock
- Heading and Speed: slowly away from the attacks
- Information shared with the defending fighter pilots: RIDICULOUSLY inadequate
> Permission to use deadly force to protect America: Negligently (?) denied
- No Such order recieved by the five defending pilots.
- Bush at Booker: Isolated accidents require no defensive orders, and Bush insisted on pretending it was an isolated accident until the last possible minute - and then still refused to issue the order for at least another hour. By the official story.
- Cheney and the Shoot-Down Order
Friday, May 18, 2007
LICENSE TO KILL: DENIED
On September 11, two F-15s were sent from Otis AFB in Massachusetts to protect Manhattan from further hijacking attacks. They weren’t scrambled until 8:52, six minutes after the first impact, and didn’t arrive at the scene until 9:25, 23 minutes after the second impact, and they reportedly didn't learn of any impact at all until they got there after the NY leg of the attack was complete. One of the pilots, code-named “Nasty,” lamented to the BBC “for a long time I wondered what would’ve happened if we’d, uh… been scrambled in time.” [1]
I would like to invite you to wonder along with him; imagine for a moment that the two Otis fighters had been scrambled “in time,” sent in the right direction, and flew full-blower. Imagine them arriving in Manhattan at, say, 8:54, just after the first plane had hit the WTC. They would be circling nervously in their F-15s, seeing United 175 coming in fast and low. Imagine the fighters rushing out to intercept it, ready to scatter the airliner over some farmer’s field before it scattered itself against and into the South Tower. Imagine them on the scene, ready to act and deal with the nightmares later, and prevent the second catastrophic collision and alleged jet-fuel-induced collapse that killed so many.
Now imagine they were left without legal authority to fire; imagine them asking and asking again as the hijacked airliner came into view “permission to engage?” and receiving the reply “do not engage.” We’d like to think they would pull the trigger anyway, and “take lives in the air in order to preserve lives on the ground,” the standard response in such an un-standard case. But it’s also possible they may have done their job and follow orders, even though the protocols mandated that they watch powerlessly as United 175 passed them by and slammed explosively into the South Tower. That would not look good for the government.
In fact, that would have been the situation if the pilots had been scrambled sooner. Every source agrees on this point; the fighter pilots sent to defend the skies were never instructed (and thus never allowed) to fire on airliners until long after all the targets had crashed. In fact, this itself may be the best clue in understanding the botched reaction up to that point. If not for the unlikely string of synchronized failures that kept all fighters well away from the hijacked planes, the lack of authorization would have been absolutely crucial and a political liability to say the least.
The Langley pilots did receive a vague order at 9:55 from the Secret Service to protect the white House. Recollections vary: “I want you to protect the White House” - ”The White House [is] an important asset to protect” - “Be aware of where it is… it could be a target.” [2] This was not taken by the pilots as a clear shoot-down order, signed off on by the proper authorities. Fifteen minutes later, in fact, the pilots were told they had “negative clearance to shoot.” [3] Jere Longman concluded that after patrolling Washington for hours “both Honey and Lou said that no one had given them any orders to shoot down a commercial airliner.” [4]
New York flight control mentioned to Otis pilot Nasty “if we have another hijacked aircraft we’re going to have to shoot it down.” He knew this was conversational and “not connected to the chain of command.” [5] “Only the President could make that decision,” Nasty explained to the Cape Cod Times, “and he was indisposed at a public event,” referring to his now-famous reading exercise at a Florida elementary school. [6]
Sources:
[1] “Clear the Skies.” BBC Video. 2002.
[2] Thompson, Paul and the Center for Cooperative Research. The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute. New York. Regan books. 2004. Page 436.
[3]See [2]. Page 453.
[4] Longman, Jere. Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew who Fought Back. New York. Harper Collins. 2002. Page 222
[5] See [2]. Page 440.
[6] Dennehy, Kevin. “'I Thought It Was the Start of World War III'” The Cape Cod Times. August 21, 2002. Accessed November 13, 2004 at: http://www.poconorecord.com/report/911-2002/000232.htm.
I would like to invite you to wonder along with him; imagine for a moment that the two Otis fighters had been scrambled “in time,” sent in the right direction, and flew full-blower. Imagine them arriving in Manhattan at, say, 8:54, just after the first plane had hit the WTC. They would be circling nervously in their F-15s, seeing United 175 coming in fast and low. Imagine the fighters rushing out to intercept it, ready to scatter the airliner over some farmer’s field before it scattered itself against and into the South Tower. Imagine them on the scene, ready to act and deal with the nightmares later, and prevent the second catastrophic collision and alleged jet-fuel-induced collapse that killed so many.
Now imagine they were left without legal authority to fire; imagine them asking and asking again as the hijacked airliner came into view “permission to engage?” and receiving the reply “do not engage.” We’d like to think they would pull the trigger anyway, and “take lives in the air in order to preserve lives on the ground,” the standard response in such an un-standard case. But it’s also possible they may have done their job and follow orders, even though the protocols mandated that they watch powerlessly as United 175 passed them by and slammed explosively into the South Tower. That would not look good for the government.
In fact, that would have been the situation if the pilots had been scrambled sooner. Every source agrees on this point; the fighter pilots sent to defend the skies were never instructed (and thus never allowed) to fire on airliners until long after all the targets had crashed. In fact, this itself may be the best clue in understanding the botched reaction up to that point. If not for the unlikely string of synchronized failures that kept all fighters well away from the hijacked planes, the lack of authorization would have been absolutely crucial and a political liability to say the least.
The Langley pilots did receive a vague order at 9:55 from the Secret Service to protect the white House. Recollections vary: “I want you to protect the White House” - ”The White House [is] an important asset to protect” - “Be aware of where it is… it could be a target.” [2] This was not taken by the pilots as a clear shoot-down order, signed off on by the proper authorities. Fifteen minutes later, in fact, the pilots were told they had “negative clearance to shoot.” [3] Jere Longman concluded that after patrolling Washington for hours “both Honey and Lou said that no one had given them any orders to shoot down a commercial airliner.” [4]
New York flight control mentioned to Otis pilot Nasty “if we have another hijacked aircraft we’re going to have to shoot it down.” He knew this was conversational and “not connected to the chain of command.” [5] “Only the President could make that decision,” Nasty explained to the Cape Cod Times, “and he was indisposed at a public event,” referring to his now-famous reading exercise at a Florida elementary school. [6]
Sources:
[1] “Clear the Skies.” BBC Video. 2002.
[2] Thompson, Paul and the Center for Cooperative Research. The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute. New York. Regan books. 2004. Page 436.
[3]See [2]. Page 453.
[4] Longman, Jere. Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew who Fought Back. New York. Harper Collins. 2002. Page 222
[5] See [2]. Page 440.
[6] Dennehy, Kevin. “'I Thought It Was the Start of World War III'” The Cape Cod Times. August 21, 2002. Accessed November 13, 2004 at: http://www.poconorecord.com/report/911-2002/000232.htm.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
CHENEY AND THE SHOOT-DOWN ORDER
White House Conter-terrorism Czar Richard Clarke explained in his account of 9/11 how at 9:30 he told his deputy in the PEOC to inform Vice President Cheney “we need to authorize the Air Force to shoot down any aircraft […] that looks like it is threatening to attack […] Got it?” [1] Accounts differ as to whether or not the vice president “got it” at this point, but Clarke says the shoot-down order was agreed upon by Bush and Cheney some time before the president’s plane took off at 9:55. This was in a call he remembered getting from his deputy with Cheney who informed him “Air Force One is getting ready to take off […] fighter escort is authorized. And […] tell the Pentagon they have authority from the President to shoot down hostile aircraft, repeat, they have authority to shoot down hostile aircraft.” It’s not clear why this aide thought Clarke was a link in the Chain of Command to pass the order on, but Clarke wrote “I was amazed at the speed of the decision coming from Cheney and, through him, from Bush.” [2]
But at least one other account seems to back up an even earlier order. Recall that Cheney was informed of flight 77 closing in on Washington at about 9:33. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta told the 9-11 Commission in 2003 that he saw Cheney give what he interpreted as a shoot-down order at this time. [3] The BBC documentary Clear the Skies records Mineta’s recollection of a plane reported coming in fast. Cheney was informed it was 30 miles out, and he ordered it shot down. He was informed again that it was 10 miles out and the aide asked if the orders still stood. Mineta recalls “the vice president sort of whipped his head around and said “of course they do.” [4] This account was placed in the documentary, which is based on a ticking timeline of the events, in the time slot right before the Pentagon impact at 9:37.
But the official story is that the order was finally transmitted from the President to Cheney, with a casual “you bet,” at just about 10:05, for sure before 10:10, or maybe 10:18 - this has been hotly contested. The 9-11 Commission, in a rare and curious show of contrariness, got into a bit of a brawl with Cheney over this phone call. In June 2004, as the final report was released, Newsweek reported:
“[S]ome on the commission staff were, in fact, highly skeptical of the vice president’s account and made their views clearer in an earlier draft of their staff report […] some staffers “flat out didn’t believe the call ever took place.” When the early draft conveying that skepticism was circulated to the administration, it provoked an angry reaction […] the White House vigorously lobbied the commission to change the language in its report.” [5]
The Commission finally caved to Cheney’s protests and simply concluded in their final report “there is no documentary evidence for this call.” But they did get some subtle hints of this earlier argument worked in. For example, they note that neither Cheney’s wife Lynn nor his Chief of Staff Libby, who were nearby, can recall this call being made. [6]
By 10:15, Cheney was ordering a phantom flight shot down, saying the President had “signed-off on the concept.” Cheney’s Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, Libby’s underling, urged Cheney to “confirm the engage order,” since he “had not heard any prior conversation on the subject with the President.” [7] This confirmation call, unlike the first, was logged at 10:18 and found by the commission. The final report also notes that Bush informed Press Secretary Fleischer at 10:20 that he had just passed on the historical shoot-down order.
The clear but subtle implication is that perhaps Cheney issued this order on his own and only ran it by Bush at 10:18 – or at least Libby, Lynn, Bolten, and the 9/11 Commission have made it look that way, for reasons that are unclear. But Bush stubbornly insists standard procedure was observed, and that he passed the order on whenever Cheney says he did. He said this in the secret hearing he had with the commission in Cheney’s presence, not under oath, off the record, with no recordings, minutes, or direct quotes allowed. They summed up Bush’s recollection:
“The President said he remembered such a conversation, and that it reminded him of when he had been an interceptor pilot. The President emphasized to us that he authorized the shootdown of hijacked aircraft.” [8]
Much has been made of Cheney’s aggressive application of the shoot-down order once he finally had it. In an incident eerily similar to Mineta’s recollection cited above, Cheney urged the shoot-down of United 93 as it was reported closing in at about 10:10. This was read by the Secret Service as a radar track, but, the Commission concluded, was actually a projection of 93’s path if it ,hadn’t just crashed. But it gave Cheney a chance to do something. Informed the plane was eighty miles out, Cheney quickly “authorized fighter aircraft to engage the inbound plane.” Again he was informed when the projected plane was 60 miles out and wanted to know if the order still stood. “Scooter” Libby described Cheney’s confirmation to the 9-11 Commission as swift - “in about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing.” [9] But he only started swinging almost the exact minute there was nothing left to swing at, giving an impression of decisive leadership without actually screwing up a perfectly good terror attack.
Besides the vague possibility of ordering the shoot-down of 93 without the Presiden't approval, another Cheney contribution to the 9/11 mythos is his instant response to the plane's crash. Once it became clear that 93 had gone down short of Washington, everyone wondered if it had been shot down. Yet without any of the evidence that would later surface from the audio record of the doomed flight’s last moments, without the benefit of having heard anyone cry “let’s roll,” Cheney already knew the official story. “The Vice President was a little bit ahead of us,” said Eric Edelman, Cheney's national security advisor. “He said sort of softly and to nobody in particular, ‘I think an act of heroism just took place on that plane.’” [10] What an eerily acurate guess.
[1] Clarke, Richard A. “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.” New York. Free Press. 2004. Page 7.
[2] Thompson, Paul and the Center for Cooperative Research. "The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute." New York. Regan books. 2004. Page 431.
[3] See [2]. Thompson. Page 431.
[4] "Clear the Skies." BBC Video. 2002.
[5] Klaidman, Daniel and Michael Hirsh. “Who was Really in Charge?” Newsweek. June 28, 2004.
[6] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The 9/11 Commission Report. Authorized First Edition. New York. W.W. Norton. 2004. Pages 40-41
[7] See [5]. Klaidman and Hirsh.
[8] See [6]. Page 40.
[9] See [6]. Page 41
[10] CNN. “Cheney recalls taking charge from bunker.” September 12, 2002. Accessed at: http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/11/ar911.king.cheney/
But at least one other account seems to back up an even earlier order. Recall that Cheney was informed of flight 77 closing in on Washington at about 9:33. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta told the 9-11 Commission in 2003 that he saw Cheney give what he interpreted as a shoot-down order at this time. [3] The BBC documentary Clear the Skies records Mineta’s recollection of a plane reported coming in fast. Cheney was informed it was 30 miles out, and he ordered it shot down. He was informed again that it was 10 miles out and the aide asked if the orders still stood. Mineta recalls “the vice president sort of whipped his head around and said “of course they do.” [4] This account was placed in the documentary, which is based on a ticking timeline of the events, in the time slot right before the Pentagon impact at 9:37.
But the official story is that the order was finally transmitted from the President to Cheney, with a casual “you bet,” at just about 10:05, for sure before 10:10, or maybe 10:18 - this has been hotly contested. The 9-11 Commission, in a rare and curious show of contrariness, got into a bit of a brawl with Cheney over this phone call. In June 2004, as the final report was released, Newsweek reported:
“[S]ome on the commission staff were, in fact, highly skeptical of the vice president’s account and made their views clearer in an earlier draft of their staff report […] some staffers “flat out didn’t believe the call ever took place.” When the early draft conveying that skepticism was circulated to the administration, it provoked an angry reaction […] the White House vigorously lobbied the commission to change the language in its report.” [5]
 |
By 10:15, Cheney was ordering a phantom flight shot down, saying the President had “signed-off on the concept.” Cheney’s Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, Libby’s underling, urged Cheney to “confirm the engage order,” since he “had not heard any prior conversation on the subject with the President.” [7] This confirmation call, unlike the first, was logged at 10:18 and found by the commission. The final report also notes that Bush informed Press Secretary Fleischer at 10:20 that he had just passed on the historical shoot-down order.
The clear but subtle implication is that perhaps Cheney issued this order on his own and only ran it by Bush at 10:18 – or at least Libby, Lynn, Bolten, and the 9/11 Commission have made it look that way, for reasons that are unclear. But Bush stubbornly insists standard procedure was observed, and that he passed the order on whenever Cheney says he did. He said this in the secret hearing he had with the commission in Cheney’s presence, not under oath, off the record, with no recordings, minutes, or direct quotes allowed. They summed up Bush’s recollection:
“The President said he remembered such a conversation, and that it reminded him of when he had been an interceptor pilot. The President emphasized to us that he authorized the shootdown of hijacked aircraft.” [8]
Much has been made of Cheney’s aggressive application of the shoot-down order once he finally had it. In an incident eerily similar to Mineta’s recollection cited above, Cheney urged the shoot-down of United 93 as it was reported closing in at about 10:10. This was read by the Secret Service as a radar track, but, the Commission concluded, was actually a projection of 93’s path if it ,hadn’t just crashed. But it gave Cheney a chance to do something. Informed the plane was eighty miles out, Cheney quickly “authorized fighter aircraft to engage the inbound plane.” Again he was informed when the projected plane was 60 miles out and wanted to know if the order still stood. “Scooter” Libby described Cheney’s confirmation to the 9-11 Commission as swift - “in about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing.” [9] But he only started swinging almost the exact minute there was nothing left to swing at, giving an impression of decisive leadership without actually screwing up a perfectly good terror attack.
Besides the vague possibility of ordering the shoot-down of 93 without the Presiden't approval, another Cheney contribution to the 9/11 mythos is his instant response to the plane's crash. Once it became clear that 93 had gone down short of Washington, everyone wondered if it had been shot down. Yet without any of the evidence that would later surface from the audio record of the doomed flight’s last moments, without the benefit of having heard anyone cry “let’s roll,” Cheney already knew the official story. “The Vice President was a little bit ahead of us,” said Eric Edelman, Cheney's national security advisor. “He said sort of softly and to nobody in particular, ‘I think an act of heroism just took place on that plane.’” [10] What an eerily acurate guess.
[1] Clarke, Richard A. “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.” New York. Free Press. 2004. Page 7.
[2] Thompson, Paul and the Center for Cooperative Research. "The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute." New York. Regan books. 2004. Page 431.
[3] See [2]. Thompson. Page 431.
[4] "Clear the Skies." BBC Video. 2002.
[5] Klaidman, Daniel and Michael Hirsh. “Who was Really in Charge?” Newsweek. June 28, 2004.
[6] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The 9/11 Commission Report. Authorized First Edition. New York. W.W. Norton. 2004. Pages 40-41
[7] See [5]. Klaidman and Hirsh.
[8] See [6]. Page 40.
[9] See [6]. Page 41
[10] CNN. “Cheney recalls taking charge from bunker.” September 12, 2002. Accessed at: http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/11/ar911.king.cheney/
Sunday, January 21, 2007
"THERE'S ONE TERRIBLE PILOT"
THE PRESIDENT STUMBLES INTO 9/11
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/They Let it Happen
December 12 2006
One gaping hole in Bush’s account of his long dance with responsibility on 9/11 is how he first learned of the attack in New York and what he thought about it. Numerous people in the motorcade heading to the school before 9:00 were alerted to the first crash, and several eyewitness accounts have Bush informed before or shortly after arriving at the school that an airplane, probably a small private plane, had hit the World Trade Center. Bush himself has admitted to being informed by Andy Card, Carl Rove, and Condoleezza Rice; one report has the president musing in response that maybe the pilot had a heart attack, another that maybe it was bad weather. In all, Alan Wood and Paul Thompson at the Center for Cooperative Research counted six different stories of people informing him of this first plane’s crash. [1]
But Bush also has a seventh version, and it’s perhaps the most fascinating. On at least two occasions, Bush implied that he first heard of the crash from a TV left on in the hallway he was wandering before entering Miss Daniels’ room. At right around 9:00, a couple of minutes before the second plane hit, Bush said he “saw an airplane hit the tower” on the TV news. [2] But this is highly unlikely, as no footage of this event was aired until CNN obtained a video copy of the impact from a French camera crew that evening. Perhaps he meant to say he saw “the first plane had hit the tower,” and he was watching the smoking aftermath, which we all saw. But he repeated and clarified the story on January 5th, 2002; “when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on.” [3]
To my knowledge, no other government officials have backed this up – apparently the president had wandered off on his own at this point. These incongruous stories are certainly a curious window onto the President’s psychology. Everyone remembers where they were on 9/11, so why are his memories so strange and so obviously untrue?
Either way, the clincher is when he later recalled his thought process upon learning of the first plane to a Florida third grader named Jordan:“I used to fly myself, and I said, "There's one terrible pilot." And I said, "It must have been a horrible accident. But I was whisked off there - I didn't have much time to think about it." [4]
Let’s check the reasoning behind this conclusion, comparing it to Bush’s own experiences in the previous two months. In late July, Bush himself had been sleeping, dreaming peacefully of Crawford while floating on an aircraft carrier in Italy when he attended the 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa. This accommodation replaced the standard posh hotel on order of the Secret Service after warnings were received of a suicide hijacking threat (the crashing a plane into a building kind) against the collection of world leaders. According to the Los Angeles Times, Italian authorities closed the airspace over the venue and set up anti-aircraft guns, though the Summit continued with no incident. [5]
About two weeks later, after returning to Washington and then departing for a vacation in Crawford to dream of Genoa, Bush was informed of some kind of hijacking threat in the U.S. This was in his famous August 6th daily CIA briefing, entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.,” which Bush later clarified he asked for in response to the Genoa affair. It stated that “FBI information […] indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.” [6] Traditional hijackings, it should be noted, do not really require any preparations, nor do they involve federal buildings on the ground. If by preparation they meant flight training, and if the building scoping was related to the air threat, the message should have been clear – suicide hijackings to bomb targets on the ground, as had been threatened at Genoa. It's not clear if this was clearly conveyed to the President at the briefing.
So in Bush’s mind, then:
Two-moth old threat of suicide hijacking (where a plane flies into a building)
+ One month old warning of possible “attack” involving a hijacking and/or New York buildings
+ A plane actually flying into a New York building known to attract terrorist attacks
= “Horrible accident… Terrible pilot.”
Is this chain of logic believable, even from George W. Bush? A year later, he still held to his story. He told 60 Minutes in an anniversary interview “I thought it was an accident. I thought it was a pilot error. I thought that some foolish soul had gotten lost and - and made a terrible mistake.” [7] “I was concerned about it, but there were no alarm bells,” he said elsewhere. And so, his services not required to deal with freak accidents, he calmly entered Miss Daniels’ room and surrendered to the power of story time at about 9:03, just as the second plane hit the WTC’s south tower.
Of course he learned a bare three minutes later that it was indeed terrorism and they were officially two-for-two, yet he failed to act decisively. I'm not terribly concerned with the five-to-seven minute Pet Goat episode, though the Booker Video is gripping. the problem for me is the next 55 minutes. Everybody who's broached the subject agrees that the only way the hijacked planes could have been stopped so late was by shooting them down and only the President could authorize that. By the official account anyway, he did not issue this authorization until about 10:05 or even as late as 10:18 - an hour or more after Andy Card's famous whisper and just as it became clear that the last plane had crashed.
But someone kept all the fighters well away from the targets anyway so Bush's serious dereliction of duty never became an issue. And once those planes completed their work unhindered, as Bush concluded to little Jordan, “when I got all the facts that we were under attack, there would be hell to pay for attacking America.” [8] And he should know, as the self-appointed collecter of payments on "hell's" behalf.
Sources:
[1] An Interesting Day: President Bush's Movements and Actions on 9/11 By Allan Wood, Paul Thompson. Center for Cooperative Research.
[2] Bush, George W. “President Meets with Displaced Workers in Town Hall Meeting” Orlando, FL. White House Press Release. December 4, 2001.
[3] Bush, George W. “President Holds Town Hall Forum on Economy in California.” Ontario, Calif. White House Press Release. January 5, 2002.
[4] See [2]. Orlando.
[5] “Italy Tells of Threat at Genoa Summit” Los Angeles Times. September 27, 2001.
[6] [partial] “Transcript: Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” CNN. April 10, 2004.
[7] “Bush Talks about the Moments of 9-11 as they unfolded for him.” CBS News. September 12, 2002.
[8] See [2]. Orlando.
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/They Let it Happen
December 12 2006
One gaping hole in Bush’s account of his long dance with responsibility on 9/11 is how he first learned of the attack in New York and what he thought about it. Numerous people in the motorcade heading to the school before 9:00 were alerted to the first crash, and several eyewitness accounts have Bush informed before or shortly after arriving at the school that an airplane, probably a small private plane, had hit the World Trade Center. Bush himself has admitted to being informed by Andy Card, Carl Rove, and Condoleezza Rice; one report has the president musing in response that maybe the pilot had a heart attack, another that maybe it was bad weather. In all, Alan Wood and Paul Thompson at the Center for Cooperative Research counted six different stories of people informing him of this first plane’s crash. [1]
But Bush also has a seventh version, and it’s perhaps the most fascinating. On at least two occasions, Bush implied that he first heard of the crash from a TV left on in the hallway he was wandering before entering Miss Daniels’ room. At right around 9:00, a couple of minutes before the second plane hit, Bush said he “saw an airplane hit the tower” on the TV news. [2] But this is highly unlikely, as no footage of this event was aired until CNN obtained a video copy of the impact from a French camera crew that evening. Perhaps he meant to say he saw “the first plane had hit the tower,” and he was watching the smoking aftermath, which we all saw. But he repeated and clarified the story on January 5th, 2002; “when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on.” [3]
To my knowledge, no other government officials have backed this up – apparently the president had wandered off on his own at this point. These incongruous stories are certainly a curious window onto the President’s psychology. Everyone remembers where they were on 9/11, so why are his memories so strange and so obviously untrue?
Either way, the clincher is when he later recalled his thought process upon learning of the first plane to a Florida third grader named Jordan:“I used to fly myself, and I said, "There's one terrible pilot." And I said, "It must have been a horrible accident. But I was whisked off there - I didn't have much time to think about it." [4]
Let’s check the reasoning behind this conclusion, comparing it to Bush’s own experiences in the previous two months. In late July, Bush himself had been sleeping, dreaming peacefully of Crawford while floating on an aircraft carrier in Italy when he attended the 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa. This accommodation replaced the standard posh hotel on order of the Secret Service after warnings were received of a suicide hijacking threat (the crashing a plane into a building kind) against the collection of world leaders. According to the Los Angeles Times, Italian authorities closed the airspace over the venue and set up anti-aircraft guns, though the Summit continued with no incident. [5]
About two weeks later, after returning to Washington and then departing for a vacation in Crawford to dream of Genoa, Bush was informed of some kind of hijacking threat in the U.S. This was in his famous August 6th daily CIA briefing, entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.,” which Bush later clarified he asked for in response to the Genoa affair. It stated that “FBI information […] indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.” [6] Traditional hijackings, it should be noted, do not really require any preparations, nor do they involve federal buildings on the ground. If by preparation they meant flight training, and if the building scoping was related to the air threat, the message should have been clear – suicide hijackings to bomb targets on the ground, as had been threatened at Genoa. It's not clear if this was clearly conveyed to the President at the briefing.
So in Bush’s mind, then:
Two-moth old threat of suicide hijacking (where a plane flies into a building)
+ One month old warning of possible “attack” involving a hijacking and/or New York buildings
+ A plane actually flying into a New York building known to attract terrorist attacks
= “Horrible accident… Terrible pilot.”
Is this chain of logic believable, even from George W. Bush? A year later, he still held to his story. He told 60 Minutes in an anniversary interview “I thought it was an accident. I thought it was a pilot error. I thought that some foolish soul had gotten lost and - and made a terrible mistake.” [7] “I was concerned about it, but there were no alarm bells,” he said elsewhere. And so, his services not required to deal with freak accidents, he calmly entered Miss Daniels’ room and surrendered to the power of story time at about 9:03, just as the second plane hit the WTC’s south tower.
Of course he learned a bare three minutes later that it was indeed terrorism and they were officially two-for-two, yet he failed to act decisively. I'm not terribly concerned with the five-to-seven minute Pet Goat episode, though the Booker Video is gripping. the problem for me is the next 55 minutes. Everybody who's broached the subject agrees that the only way the hijacked planes could have been stopped so late was by shooting them down and only the President could authorize that. By the official account anyway, he did not issue this authorization until about 10:05 or even as late as 10:18 - an hour or more after Andy Card's famous whisper and just as it became clear that the last plane had crashed.
But someone kept all the fighters well away from the targets anyway so Bush's serious dereliction of duty never became an issue. And once those planes completed their work unhindered, as Bush concluded to little Jordan, “when I got all the facts that we were under attack, there would be hell to pay for attacking America.” [8] And he should know, as the self-appointed collecter of payments on "hell's" behalf.
Sources:
[1] An Interesting Day: President Bush's Movements and Actions on 9/11 By Allan Wood, Paul Thompson. Center for Cooperative Research.
[2] Bush, George W. “President Meets with Displaced Workers in Town Hall Meeting” Orlando, FL. White House Press Release. December 4, 2001.
[3] Bush, George W. “President Holds Town Hall Forum on Economy in California.” Ontario, Calif. White House Press Release. January 5, 2002.
[4] See [2]. Orlando.
[5] “Italy Tells of Threat at Genoa Summit” Los Angeles Times. September 27, 2001.
[6] [partial] “Transcript: Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.” CNN. April 10, 2004.
[7] “Bush Talks about the Moments of 9-11 as they unfolded for him.” CBS News. September 12, 2002.
[8] See [2]. Orlando.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Suited Up for Standard Procedure
To this day, opinions differ as to whether or not scrambling fighter jets was considered standard procedure in air emergencies at the time of the attacks or whether, as Popular Mechanics argued in March 2005, this was something rare and extraordinary. In their cover story “Debunking 9-11 Lies,” they tried to explain NORAD’s delays and failures by pointing out lamely that "in the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October 1999 […] it took an F-16 1 hour and 22 minutes to reach the stricken jet. […] Prior to 9/11, all other NORAD interceptions were limited to offshore Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ). The ADIZ areas seem to be a sort of moat 'round the castle, where incoming international flights are made to identify themselves or risk being taken out. They run along the East and West Coasts and along the Mexican and Canadian borders. "Until 9/11 there was no domestic ADIZ," FAA spokesman Bill Schumann told the magazine. [1]
They would probably have liked to say there were no intercepts at all over continental airspace, but had to cede the one instance after it was pointed out in the factual record by 9-11 revisionists, an errant plane that crossed no borders or ocean shores and yet triggered a fighter escort. On October 26, 1999, famous pro Golfer Payne Stewart was flying in his private Learjet when the cabin lost pressure and killed all on board. The plane continued on autopilot across several states, trailed by fighter jets until it finally crashed in North Dakota. The shoot-down option was publicly addressed at the time: The Washington Post reported “Pentagon officials said they never considered shooting down the Learjet” because, according to a senior defense official, ‘the (FAA) said this thing was headed to a sparsely populated part of the country, so let it go.’” [2] Now, if it had been a hijacked 757 headed for New York after one plane had already crashed into the World Trade Center…
But was this the only fighter intercept ever ordered over the continental U.S.? If intercepts simply weren't done over the mainland, why was an exception made in this one case and this one case alone? Or did they mean this was the only intercept over America that made the news? According to an article in the Calgary Herald-Tribune from a month after the attack, fighter interception for stray aircraft actually was a weekly occurrence even before 9-11: “Today […] fighter jets are scrambled to babysit suspect aircraft or "unknowns" three or four times a day. Before Sept. 11, that happened twice a week. Last year, there were 425 unknowns -- pilots who didn't file or diverted from flight plans or used the wrong frequency. Jets were scrambled 129 times.” [3] Was every one of these 129 intercepts in the year 2000 over the ocean in ADIZ areas, with none over the continental U.S.? And in the nine years before that too, with the exception of one famous golfer?
Common sense and some evidence indicate otherwise. One of the fighter pilots that was scrambled on 9-11 said in a BBC documentary on his first notification of trouble “they said the Tower [was] calling and something about a hijacking. It was flight American 11, a 767, out of Boston going to California. At the time we ran in and got suited up… It's just peacetime. We're not thinking anything real bad is going to happen out there.” The narrator of the documentary adds “neither pilot at this time has any reason to believe that this is other than a routine exercise.” [4]
This was at some point before American 11 ended – we were still in pre-9-11 peace time, if the last minutes of it, and he knew to get suited up (that is, ready for takeoff) in response to the hijacking of a trans-continental flight. This sounds like a routine, standard procedure scramble and intended intercept over continental airspace to me. Perhaps the Payne Stewart case is not so anomalous after all.
Sources:
[1] Chertoff, Benjamin et al. “Debunking 9/11 Myths.” Popular Mechanics. March 2005.
[2] Walsh, Edward and William Claiborne. “Golfer Payne Stewart Dies in Jet Crash.” Washington Post. October 26, 1999. Page A1.
[3] Slobodian, Linda. “NORAD on Heightened Alert.” The Calgary Herald. October 13, 2001.
[4] BBC Video. Clear the Skies. First Aired September 2002.
They would probably have liked to say there were no intercepts at all over continental airspace, but had to cede the one instance after it was pointed out in the factual record by 9-11 revisionists, an errant plane that crossed no borders or ocean shores and yet triggered a fighter escort. On October 26, 1999, famous pro Golfer Payne Stewart was flying in his private Learjet when the cabin lost pressure and killed all on board. The plane continued on autopilot across several states, trailed by fighter jets until it finally crashed in North Dakota. The shoot-down option was publicly addressed at the time: The Washington Post reported “Pentagon officials said they never considered shooting down the Learjet” because, according to a senior defense official, ‘the (FAA) said this thing was headed to a sparsely populated part of the country, so let it go.’” [2] Now, if it had been a hijacked 757 headed for New York after one plane had already crashed into the World Trade Center…
But was this the only fighter intercept ever ordered over the continental U.S.? If intercepts simply weren't done over the mainland, why was an exception made in this one case and this one case alone? Or did they mean this was the only intercept over America that made the news? According to an article in the Calgary Herald-Tribune from a month after the attack, fighter interception for stray aircraft actually was a weekly occurrence even before 9-11: “Today […] fighter jets are scrambled to babysit suspect aircraft or "unknowns" three or four times a day. Before Sept. 11, that happened twice a week. Last year, there were 425 unknowns -- pilots who didn't file or diverted from flight plans or used the wrong frequency. Jets were scrambled 129 times.” [3] Was every one of these 129 intercepts in the year 2000 over the ocean in ADIZ areas, with none over the continental U.S.? And in the nine years before that too, with the exception of one famous golfer?
Common sense and some evidence indicate otherwise. One of the fighter pilots that was scrambled on 9-11 said in a BBC documentary on his first notification of trouble “they said the Tower [was] calling and something about a hijacking. It was flight American 11, a 767, out of Boston going to California. At the time we ran in and got suited up… It's just peacetime. We're not thinking anything real bad is going to happen out there.” The narrator of the documentary adds “neither pilot at this time has any reason to believe that this is other than a routine exercise.” [4]
This was at some point before American 11 ended – we were still in pre-9-11 peace time, if the last minutes of it, and he knew to get suited up (that is, ready for takeoff) in response to the hijacking of a trans-continental flight. This sounds like a routine, standard procedure scramble and intended intercept over continental airspace to me. Perhaps the Payne Stewart case is not so anomalous after all.
Sources:
[1] Chertoff, Benjamin et al. “Debunking 9/11 Myths.” Popular Mechanics. March 2005.
[2] Walsh, Edward and William Claiborne. “Golfer Payne Stewart Dies in Jet Crash.” Washington Post. October 26, 1999. Page A1.
[3] Slobodian, Linda. “NORAD on Heightened Alert.” The Calgary Herald. October 13, 2001.
[4] BBC Video. Clear the Skies. First Aired September 2002.
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