3.4.0 NORAD Response

The question of why the planes were not intercepted by NORAD is the most obvious of all. The world's most advanced, sophisticated and expensive air defense system was designed so that the amount of time that elapses, between when the FAA suspect a hijacking and when F-16 military fighters are on the tail of the plane, is limited. The procedure was implemented 67 times in the year preceding 9/11, and there were regular training exercises, or war games. A notice sent out to pilots warned them that if they refused to follow FAA orders, or lost contact, or entered restricted airspace, they could expect F-16s to be on their tail in 10 minutes. This begs the question: what went wrong on 9/11?

The official version of the events of the military response have been completely revised twice. The first version, given by NORAD commanders on the day of 9/11 was that no fighters were scrambled until 9:37am. This was easily proved false, as fighters were seen over Ground Zero around 9:25am. The second version was a timeline of events released by NORAD on September 19th, 2001. This version was the Official Account for almost three years. The 9/11 Commission completely revised the timeline of events of the military response, when it published it's report in 2004.

NORAD Version:

	AA Flight 11	UA Flight 175	AA Flight 77	UA Flight 93
FAA notification of NEADS	08:40	08:43	09:24	N/A
Fighter Scramble Order	08:46		09:24	--
Fighters Airborne	08:52		09:30	--
Originating Base	Otis ANGB Falmouth, MA		Langley AFB Hampton, VA
Fighter Distance / Time to Impact Location	not airborne 153 miles	8 min / 71 miles	12 min / 105 miles	11 min / 100 miles

9/11 Commission Report Version:

	AA Flight 11	UA Flight 175	phantom Flight 11*	AA Flight 77	UA Flight 93
Notification of NEADS	08:38	09:15	--	09:34	10:07
Fighters Scrambled	08:46		09:24
Fighters Airborne	08:53
Originating Base	Otis, MA		Langley, VA

*Phantom Flight 11 refers to the Commission's assertion that the F-16s scrambled from Langley were sent up, not to intercept Flight 77, but to look for Flight 11, under the erroneous belief that it had bypassed New York City and was headed for the capital.

Apparent Failures

Neither the NORAD timeline nor the 9/11 Commission Report timeline give a believable account of how the hijackings were dealt with. The failings are multi-layered and include the following:

Failures to Report:

• FAA report times (according to NORAD): 18mins (Flight 11), 39mins (Flight 77), 36mins (Flight 93) – never been explained – no reprimands. 9/11 Commission Report account even more incredible failures to report.
• Why weren’t NORAD watching the skies directly (especially after 9:03)?
• None of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld (the only people with authority to order a shoot-down) were fully informed, we are told, until after 9:37.
  

Failures to Scramble:

• Fighters were scrambled slowly
  
• Not enough fighters were scrambled
• The fighters used were from far away bases (eg Andrews Air Force Base, 10 miles from the Pentagon, did not scramble fighters until 10:42).

Failures to Intercept:

• Fighters flew slowly (approx one quarter of their top speed, according to NORAD’s timeline).
• Fighters flew in the wrong direction (headed east over the Atlantic).
• Pentagon Ground-to-Air missile defenses were ineffective

Failures to Redeploy:

• Fighters scrambled from Otis Air Force Base were not redirected to Washington (after they had reached the WTC too late).

The New Official Explanation

Recognising that the NORAD timeline of events was not believable, the 9/11 Commission concocted a completely revised story of events. They placed the blame firmly with the FAA - for failing to contact NORAD in time - as opposed to with NORAD for being ineffective. In order to make the new story sound convincing, they had to give explanations for what went wrong at the FAA. The picture painted by the Report is one of confusion and apparent gross incompetence on the part of FAA personnel, at all levels.

In order to understand the extent of the incompetence that the 9/11 Commission want us to believe took place, and why it simply staggers belief, it is only necessary to read the relevant chapter (Chapter 1: "We have some planes") and think about the plausability of each delay and each deviation from standard protocol. For a detailed critique of the 9/11 Commission Report account, I recommend David Ray Griffins book "Debunking 9/11 Debunking".

This is a summary of the 9/11 Commission Report account of the military response on 9/11:

Flight 11

At 8:14, the pilot of Flight 11 failed to respond to an FAA Boston Center instruction to ascend. At 8:21, the transponder signal was switched off and the plane (now visible only on primary radar) veered radically off course. At 8:25, the controller heard what he believed was the voice of hijacker. The Boston Center called the FAA Command Center at Herndon at 8:28 to report the hijacking. At 8:32, Herndon called FAA Headquarters in Washington. At 8:38, Boston Center contacted the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) of NORAD.

Difficulties in pinpointing the exact location of Flight 11 led to a delay of five minutes before the scramble order was given at 8:43. When Flight 11 hit the North Tower at 8:46, the two fighters that had been ordered to scramble were still on the runway at Otis Air Force Base; they did not take to the air until 8:52. Lacking a target, the Otis fighters "were vectored toward military-controlled airspace off the Long Island coast. To avoid New York area air traffic and uncertain about what to do, the fighters were brought down to military airspace to 'hold as needed'. From 9:09 to 9:13 the Otis fighters stayed in this holding pattern." At 9:13, the pilots of the Otis fighters told FAA Boston Center that they were heading for Manhattan to establish a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) over the area. The fighters arrived over Manhattan at 9:25.

Flight 175

Flight 175 veered off course at 8:42, turning towards New York, and its transponder code was changed at 8:47. The flight controller at FAA Boston Center did not notice these warning signs until 8:51, when he tried unsuccessfully to contact the pilot. At 8:55 he told a manager at FAA New York Center that he thought Flight 175 had been hijacked; this manager then tried to contact regional managers but "was told that they were discussing hijacked aircraft... and refused to be disturbed." At 9:01, a New York Center manager called FAA Command Center at Herndon. NEADS were not notified until 9:03, when the New York Center manager called them directly, at about the time that Flight 175 hit the South Tower.

Flight 77

The transponder of Flight 77 was switched off, and the plane veered off course, at 8:54, and its primary radar track was lost. The flight controller at the FAA Indianapolis Center assumed that some kind of electrical or mechanical failure had occurred and that the plane had crashed. Later, after hearing about the hijacked planes hitting the World Trade Center, Indianapolis Center suspected that Flight 77 may also have been hijacked, and shared this information with FAA Command Center at Herndon, who contacted FAA Headquarters in Washington at 9:25am. NEADS learned that the flight was lost at 9:34 during a NEADS-initiated conversation with the FAA Headquarters.

Flight 93

At 9:28, the FAA Cleveland Center controller heard "sounds of possible screaming" coming from Flight 93 and noticed that the plane had descended 700 feet. At 9:32, he heard a voice saying "We have a bomb on board" and told his supervisor who notified FAA Headquarters. At 9:36, FAA Cleveland called FAA Command Center at Herndon to ask whether the military had been notified - FAA Command Center told Cleveland that "FAA personnel well above them in the chain of command had to make the decision to seek military assistance and were working on the issue". At 9:49, the decision about whether to call the military had still not been made, and nobody did call them until 10:07, four minutes after Flight 93 hit the ground.

Phantom Flight 11

At 9:21, NEADS received a call from Colin Scoggins, the military liaison at the FAA Boston Center, reporting that Flight 11 had not, in fact, hit the North Tower at 8:46 as they were told, but that it was still in the air and heading towards Washington. NEADS responded to this report by giving a scramble order to three fighters on alert at Langley Air Force Base, and by 9:24, they were in the air. After at first heading east out into the Atlantic, the fighters then flew north-west towards Washington, arriving around 10:00.

War Games

A common explanation (or excuse) for the NORAD and FAA failures is that they were involved in war games at the time of the attacks. At least 6 different war game exercises were in play on the day of the attack:

• Northern Vigilence – simulated Russian attack of Alaska.
• Vigilant Warrior / Vigilant Guardian – live-fly multiple hijacking scenario, which involved ‘false blips’ appearing on radar screens.
• Global Guardian – large-scale exercise involving the US Strategic Command, US Space Command and NORAD, which was ‘in full swing’ on 9/11.
• The National Reconnaissance Office Plane Crash Drill – practicing a scenario of a plane crashing into their headquarters near Dulles Airport. The “fake” plane crash was scheduled to occur at 8:47am.
• Timely Alert II Terrorism Drill – an exercise practicing the scenario of a chemical attack in New Jersey, involving law enforcement and emergency responders, was due to take place over September 11-12; it was cancelled just before it was about to start.
• Tripod II Biowarfare exercise – FEMA were due to deploy to New York for a biowarfare scenario due to take place on September 12.

The apparent effect of these war games was to deplete the resources of NORAD and to confuse the controllers and pilots. It is supposedly an incredible coincidence that such an array of war games were in progress on that day. A more rational explanation would be that the war games were specifically arranged that way to provide a reasonable explanation for the slow response. The war games also explain the quick arrival of FEMA at Ground Zero, ready to control the site.

Norman Mineta Testimony

There is even evidence of a stand-down order in the form of Norman Mineta’s testimony to the 9/11 Commission, which was completely ignored. He was in a room in the Presidential Emergency Operating Centre with Dick Cheney during the attacks; a young officer (referring to Flight 77) reported that it was 50 miles out, then 30 miles out, then 10 miles out when he asked “Do the orders still stand?” The response from Cheney was “Of course they still stand, have you heard anything to the contrary?!” The orders the young man was referring to must have been orders to not shoot down the plane. Although Mineta has repeatedly said that this exchange took place before the Pentagon was hit, and his story is corroborated by many other personal accounts (including Dick Cheney), the official story was changed - we were later told that the plane in question here was Flight 93. When, later still, the Commission concluded that there was no warning even of Flight 93, they simply omitted his testimony from their report.

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