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September 30, 2006
Lyre, Lyre, Pants on Fire!
And the party won't be belated: today is my third son's 6th birthday. Happy birthday, Griffin.
Citing Mother Nature for Polluting the Environment
Does a bear shit in the woods? Why, yes, yes it does. With Mother Nature unable to meet clean water standards, one has to wonder whether the problem might just be with the standards themselves, at this point.
Never fear: Al Gore is protecting us! Or lining his pockets on the backs of hysteria which, coincidentally, happens to work to his political benefit. Either way, he's on the job!
UPDATE: I wish I had seen this first.
September 29, 2006
Target! Tank: 8600 meters. Sabot.
There are five basic classifications of weapons: melee weapons, missile weapons, mines, chemical weapons and nuclear weapons. A melee weapon is a sword, knife, club or similar instrument that does its damage by being bashed against the enemy, pushed into him, or some similar manner of employment. Missile weapons are weapons that throw some object away from the launcher, and do their damage when (if) that object hits its target. For the purposes of what I want to talk about the rest of the types are academic.
Missile weapons themselves can be operated in two distinct modes: direct fire and indirect fire. Direct fire means that you see your target, adjust for distance (a projectile falls due to gravity as it travels from its launcher) and other factors (some modern systems adjust for humidity and reported cross-winds half-way to the target!), and fire a projectile at that target. The principle is the same for bow and arrow, rifle and bullet, or cannon and shell. Today, of course, computers do much of the work for tank guns and artillery, such that a modern American tank can reliably hit targets with one shot at 4000 meters. (Which is why our invasions of Iraq and Kuwait were so seemingly easy: the enemy was destroyed before he could come within his own 2000 or so meter effective range.)
Indirect fire, on the other hand, is a mathematical game. Rather than taking an enemy and putting your gunsight on him, you determine where the enemy is in relation to you, do some math, and fire a shell along a parabolic arc which (hopefully) intersects that point. For that reason, you can shoot at targets 20-50 miles away with artillery (and anywhere in the world with large missiles) with a pretty good chance of hitting the enemy. Modern guided (usually GPS or laser) artillery shells have an excellent chance of hitting the target with one or two shots at 30 or more miles, if there is a person near enough to observe the target.
The primary difference between direct and indirect fire is simply that of seeing the enemy. Because a tanker or infantryman sees the enemy, he can choose his own targets. Because artillerymen cannot see the enemy, their fires have to be directed by observers who can see the target. But the US has just changed the equation in a fundamental way: the US has introduced a tank shell that has scored a kill at 8600 meters!
In other words, US tanks equipped with the MRM can now offer direct fire on targets that it cannot observe directly, giving the benefits of direct fire (pick an enemy and kill him without outside assistance) and indirect fire (range and difficulty, to the enemy, of returning fire or defending themselves) in one platform.
This is as much of an advance over WWII as WWII was over the US Civil War. In other words, once this is in full-scale use, there is not a conventional army in the world, regardless of size that can expect to win against the US Army. Which means we had better get very, very good at counter-guerilla work, because we're going to be seeing a lot more of it in the future, at least until we have an adversary rich enough and sophisticated enough to keep up, should that ever again happen.
September 26, 2006
Clinton's Outburst
I don't have much to say about Clinton's outburst on Fox News. Others have covered in far more detail how many lies and omissions were in Clinton's short interview, as well as the kind of political machinations that Clinton is so prone to. But there is something that I haven't seen: a look at what Clinton's outburst reveals — or rather, how it reinforces what we already know — about his character.
Bill Clinton (and yes, Hillary, too) is what Southerners call "white trash." He is not much more than the trailer park slut who gets pregnant at 15, or the poor guy who beats his wife because he can't ever manage to get ahead (or to care enough to change his own self-destructive behaviors), or the fat old slob bemoaning that the world finds them unattractive. Clinton has managed to cover it well, most of the time, because he is very charismatic and very intelligent. Which just goes to show that you can be intelligent and a great fool. Clinton is a great fool, on many levels. Clinton is also amoral, and a habitual liar. Worse yet, he is the kind of habitual liar who blames all of his failures on the machinations of others, and accepts no responsibility for his own behavior.
Bill Clinton is the only argument that I have ever seen in favor of term limits that have made me think there might be a point to that position, after all. My great fear is that enough people have managed to bury his and Hillary's lack of character in their disused memories, and that that forgetfulness will allow Hillary to become President. The gods forbid such a pestilence on our great nation.
If I sound disgusted, it's because I am.
Posted by jeff at 5:50 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBackSeptember 25, 2006
Wonderful Irony
Something occurred to me tonight: the reason we are so dependent on oil today might very well be because of early Progressives. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Progressives were on an anti-trust bender. I've always looked at this as a generally good thing, because it broke up a lot of monopolies, which tend to be very destructive.
But tonight I was thinking in a longer time frame. While the monopolies are very destructive in the short term, in the long term, don't they just spawn unorthodox competition? After all, if you look at Microsoft's rather blatant destruction of any and all competition, its eventual outcome was the open source movement, typified by operating systems like Linux and applications like Apache. Open source is largely immune to Microsoft's bullying tactics, and that has given many other companies (not least of them being Apple) a lot of breathing room that they didn't have before. Now you can compete with Microsoft without being crushed; that was not true in the 1990s.
So might it not also be true that, had Standard Oil not been broken up under anti-trust laws, that some very unexpected opposition would have arisen, giving both new options for those who wished to avoid using Standard Oil's monopoly product, and those wishing to compete with Standard Oil? And might it be that we would have been off of any serious dependency on oil by the end of the 1930s? And if so, aren't Progressives to a large degree responsible for the situation they now so decry, our dependence on oil from the Middle East to maintain our economies?
Well, at the very least, I think it's fair to say that free markets produce better solutions than government regulation, though they are sometimes slower than government regulation.
September 24, 2006
A Weekend of Scouting
I have been recruited into being the assistant cubmaster (and next year the cubmaster) for Cub Scout Pack 69 in Waterford. (With Connor and Aidan in scouts, and Griffin to join next year, it's kind of a natural fit to be involved in my sons' lives.) So today was leadership training: 6 hours. Tomorrow Connor is going to be in a program at a local park that does three Webelos badges in one day: another 6 hours. Then there is the pack meeting on Tuesday, and next weekend is the pack leaders' meeting, and really I think that scouts might very well become my entire social life for the next few years. That's not a complaint: it's a lot of fun.
September 20, 2006
The Song That Never Ends
The amount of blatant fakery in news lately — staged photographs, altered photographs, invented sources, invented documents and the like — has gotten me to the point where now I can not trust the news any more than I can trust random anonymous commenters on the web. I figured I'd keep a catalog of such fakery that I run across, so that when I say things like "the media lies", I'd have a quick place to point people when they say "prove it". Feel free to contribute examples you've found. I'll bump and update as I find new instances.
This is the song that never ends
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends
Some people started singing it not knowing what it was,
And they'll continue singing it forever just because —
This is the song that never ends
Yes, it goes on and on my friends
Some people started singing it not knowing what it was,
And they'll continue singing it forever just because —
In case they disappear from the web, the story links, in order, are:
Reuters publishes doctored photographs (fauxtographs?) of Israeli actions during the war in Lebanon, 2006.
Staged photographs from Reuters, AP and AFP of alleged child victims of Israeli attack on Qana, Lebanon, 2006.
NBC fakes footage of GM pickup truck with "sidesaddle" fuel tanks exploding. NBC had planted rockets underneath the truck to make it explode. 1993
CBS presents faked memos critical of President Bush's National Guard service, apparently in an effort to influence the upcoming 2004 presidential election.
"Pallywood", a documentary showing how Palestinians staged shots (including fake injuries and fake combat) and their use on CBS' 60 Minutes. Pallywood was made in 2005, but includes footage going back many years prior.
The Guardian cites section of Iraqi penal code as allowing anyone to kill homosexuals as an "honor killing", when the cited section actually is about depriving someone of their rights as a trustee of an estate. There is no apparent part of the Iraqi criminal code that allows killing of homosexuals or honor killings. This is an apparent attempt to make the Iraqi government look bad. 2006
Salon.com attempts to make it appear that President Bush skipped a National Guard physical because he was afraid of testing positive for drugs, quoting a non-existent regulation. 2004
The widely-quoted official from the Nixon and Reagan administrations, George Harleigh, doesn't apparently exist, and all links lead back to one source: Capitol Hill Blue. 2006
A veritable catalog of Reuters fakery — in categories! — from the Lebanon war of 2006, including some of the above-noted incidences as well as staged photographs with a wedding dress, other staged photographs with kids' toys, other staged photographs with people feigning death, and still more staged photos of people in front of various scenes of destruction (including one woman who appears to have spontaneously adopted the same pose on the loss of about six of her houses).
Eason Jordan admits shilling for Saddam Hussein, including just reprinting Iraqi propaganda, in order to maintain their Baghdad bureau. 2003
Jayson Blair exposed as having invented numerous reports for the New York Times. 2003
Journalist, having admitted in 2003 making up a story, lambastes blogs in 2006 for questioning the credibility of the media. In the process, the article that he wrote admitting making up a story is mysteriously edited.
AP story on speech given by SecDef Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly puts words in Rumsfeld's mouth, including words that could not be taken as a wild paraphrase, but which are quoted as if they were said in precisely those words. This is more subtle than most of the incidents of bad reporting that I am showing here, which means that it is also almost certainly more common. Essentially, the speech that is being reported on is not the one that was given, in any meaningful sense. 2006
An AP reporter, according to translated Iraqi documents, spied for Saddam against the inspectors looking for Iraqi WMD programs. 2000
Time's chief correspondent in South Vietnam during the Vietnam war was a Communist spy. His press credentials gave him access to US military bases and background briefings. 1960s and early 1970s
Chavez Who?
Here's the thing about rants like Chavez' UN spew: it's just the squeaking of the impotent, inconsequential and unimportant looking for a little attention. He wants to feel big. It's kind of like my four year old when he's really tired and wants to get his way: he cannot get it by persuasion or moral force, so he lies on the floor kicking and screaming. But of course, Chavez is all grown up, on the outside. Which just takes us back to impotent, inconsequential and unimportant.
UPDATE: And I gotta love the idea of Noam Chomsky "loving" America like an abusive husband "loves" his wife. He had to beat her up: it's for her own good.
September 19, 2006
Beating. Head. Against. Wall.
I need to have an "Idiots" category. Gregg Easterbrook would be a many-times-featured recipient of the "honor." For his latest mind-numbingly dense emission, go here, search down to "bummer edition", and read that section. If you drink into a comatose stupor first, you might avoid blindness or weeping. (thanks??? for the tip to the Jawa Report)
Once you've recovered, marvel that Easterbrook is a reporter, and for that reason alone, many people will take what he says seriously, will not stop to count the number of inaccuracies, will not notice the hyperbole, will not realize that his IQ must be hovering around 80.
Which, now that I think about it, explains why he covers the sports beat.
And as my darling wife notes: "Writing it is one thing; the editor letting it through is another. That's the whole point of editors." Clearly, my wife doesn't watch the news enough to separate theory from reality in journalism.
For reference, because news sites expire their content quickly, here is that section in all its garish, pitiable "glory":
Cosmic Thoughts -- Bummer Edition: Recently, I was creeped out by this supernova. Detected Feb. 18 by Swift, a satellite launched to look for gamma-ray bursts, the exploding star already was the 24th supernova discovered at that early point in 2006. As instruments improve, exploding stars appear more common than cosmologists had expected, and that's not the best news we might have heard. Coded GRB 060218, this star detonation began as a gamma-ray burst that lasted 33 minutes -- absolutely stunning because previous gamma-ray bursts from space have lasted a few seconds at the most. The gamma rays came from 470 million light-years away. That was discomfiting because strong gamma-ray bursts usually emanate from what astronomers call the "deep field," billions of light-years distant and thus billions of years back in the past. A distance of 470 million light-years means the GRB 060218 supernova happened 470 million years ago. That is ancient by human reckoning, but many cosmologists had been assuming the kind of extremely massive detonations thought to cause strong gamma-ray busts occurred only in the misty eons immediately after the Big Bang. The working assumption was that since life appeared on Earth, there had been no stellar mega-explosion. Now we know there has.For several days as the giant dying star GRB 060218 collapsed, this single supernova shined brighter than all 100 billion other suns in its galaxy combined. The detonation was so inexpressibly luminous that, though 470 million light-years distant, it could be seen by telescopes on Earth. And not just fancy telescopes at the tops of mountains: A few days after the Swift satellite detected the gamma-ray surge, an amateur astronomer in the Netherlands sighted the forming supernova through a backyard telescope. The stellar coordinates hit the Web -- it was at RA: 03:21:39.71 Dec: +16:52:02.6 -- and soon amateur astronomers the world over were marveling at the glistening beacon from the cosmic past. This explosion released so much energy that it happened 470 million years ago yet the light could travel for that protracted period, plus pass through the gas and dust of roughly a hundred galaxies along the way, and still illuminate mirrors of backyard telescopes on Earth.Now here's what creeped me out: had GRB 060218 happened in our galaxy, life on Earth would have ended Feb. 18.Gamma rays are a deadly form of radiation. Routine gamma-ray bursts course through the Milky Way, our galaxy, all the time, and the threat from them appears small. Recently Krzysztof Stanek, a professor of astronomy at Ohio State and one of the hot names in astronomy -- reader Jim Yrkoski of Warsaw, Poland, notes I missed one "z" in Stanek's name the last time I cited him -- calculates that a regular supernova causing a routine gamma-ray burst would need to detonate within about 3,000 light-years of Earth to expose our world to enough radiation to cause a calamity. Only a small portion of the Milky Way, and none of the larger universe beyond, is within 3,000 light-years of our world.This does not rule out "nearby" gamma-ray bursts as causes of past extinctions. About 340,000 years ago, a supernova called Geminga exploded 180 light-years from Earth, which is much too close. Calculations suggest Geminga was bright enough to rival the full moon; our Homo erectus ancestors must have looked up on it in wonder. The Geminga supernova is believed to have blown off much of the ozone layer, exposing Earth to solar and cosmic radiation that killed many mammals, including many of those ancestors. Another supernova, Vela, about 1,500 light-years away, detonated 11,300 years ago. About the same time, several large mammals of North America and Eurasia fell extinct: among them, the woolly mammoth, the giant sloth and the glyptodon, an armadillo larger than a bear. There's a lively archeological debate about whether these extinctions were triggered by climate change or by people armed with new hunting tools such as bow and arrow. Maybe the extinctions were caused by the supernova bathing Earth in gamma rays. At any rate, Vela and Geminga were normal supernovas that caused relatively mild gamma bombardments lasting just seconds. If a 33-minute, incredibly powerful gamma-ray burst similar to the one associated with GRB 060218 happened anywhere in the Milky Way or any nearby galaxy, Earth would be sterilized; any life that might exist on other planets in our galaxy and nearby galaxies also would end. Most likely, the gamma radiation from GRB 060218 ended all life in numerous galaxies near the explosion. After GRB 060218, a team of astronomers led by Andrew Fruchter of the Space Telescope Science Institute calculated that the class of extremely massive blue star that caused this mega-supernova probably is not found in the Milky Way. That's some consolation. But February's ultimate supernova tells us nature has a doomsday weapon -- and that creeps me out.Interstellar bonus: The Swift satellite has a marketing slogan
Posted by jeff at 9:26 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Full of Crap
Hossain Derakshan opines
that Iran should develop nuclear weapons:
[E]ven if Iran becomes the most peaceful, secular and progressive, yet still independent state on the planet, the U.S. would be unable to tolerate it. The U.S. would seek new excuses to topple Iran's government and install their favorite instead.
Quick: name the last secular democracy that the US invaded.
For this reason, I believe Iran needs to produce nuclear weapons as a defensive mechanism, to deter the U.S. today and the ever-expanding and equally energy-hungry China tomorrow.
Here's the thing: if Iran were a secular and progressive country, I would have no objection to them developing nuclear weapons. I don't mind Israel, India or (formerly) South Africa having nuclear weapons. I wouldn't mind Taiwan or Japan or South Korea or Australia or Brazil having nuclear weapons. I only mind Pakistan having nuclear weapons because they are so politically unstable, and I only mind China having nuclear weapons because I am unsure of their insularity. As long as China doesn't attack its neighbors, I have little problem with China having nuclear weapons at all. I only have problems with Russia having nuclear weapons because they don't have a very good nuclear safety record, and I worry that they will lose a few to terrorists who are more concerned with getting the weapons than the Russians are with keeping them from being taken.
I worry about North Korea having nuclear weapons, and would worry more if I were more confident that the North Korean weapons work, or if I didn't feel that we could engineer North Korea's fall (and are trying to) via financial and political pressure. I worry enough about that that I would be willing to declare an embargo against anything coming out of North Korea by land, sea, or air and would be willing to go to war to enforce it, because North Korea is not beyond selling a nuclear weapon to terrorists in the way that Kos is not beyond attacking President Bush for any failing, real or imagined.
But Iran is an expansionist theocracy which has been attacking the US, overtly and covertly, for 27 years, and which is fighting an undeclared low-level war against the US in Iraq as we speak, and which recently fought (undeclared) against Israel alongside Hizb'allah, and which is otherwise acting inimically to US interests immediately, and to my personal interests (to the extent they diverge from US interests) over the long term. So I don't just worry about Iran having nuclear weapons: I find the prospect unacceptable.
(hat tip: Glenn Reynolds)
September 17, 2006
Customer Disservice
The Internet is platform-neutral by design. That means that any application and any computer type that speaks the correct protocol should be able to talk to any other computer type and application using that protocol. For example, my Macintosh running Safari, Internet Explorer or Firefox should be able to talk to XM Radio's account management site running who-cares-what web server. But that is not possible, because some moron who programmed XM's site put in a check for the browser type, and won't let you connect to the site unless you are running a "supported" browser. These include IE, Netscape and AOL. But even IE on the mac (though it fits the version requirement of > 5.01) does not work. So it's apparent that XM's website is looking for the platform along with the browser name and version. I guarantee that I would never hire the person who made that decision to build a website.
This would not be a problem if XM did not charge more for using their phone service.
I know one thing: our investment in hardware for XM is relatively small, and I'll be looking very closely at Sirius the next time I buy a satellite radio.
September 14, 2006
Best One-Question Poll Ever
On which is a better predictor of outcomes, at crosstabs.
Say Again?
What does Keith Olbermann want the President to do, run New York City's Port Authority, too? (hat tip: The Jawa Report)
Ann Richards
Ann Richards, former governor of Texas, has died after a short battle with cancer. Although I would not have voted for her in a national office, I actually did vote for her over George Bush for a second term as Texas governor. Richards was a funny, no-nonsense Texan with an attitude appropriately sized for the state, and most of the time (when she wasn't playing partisan) a class act. Goodbye, Governor, and bright blessings.
September 13, 2006
Seventeen Words
In an offhand comment, in seventeen words, Wretchard managed to say what I've spend perhaps a few thouseand words in a dozen posts, as recently as yesterday, trying to say: "[T]he prospect of asymmetric warfare becoming symmetric that is the principal danger in the war on terror." At the point where we see Westerners adopting the enemy's organization, we will know our governments have failed to protect us. At the point where we see Westerners adopting the enemy's organization, we will know our civilization has failed to balance survival and liberalism.
September 12, 2006
Essentially Perfect
Every once in a while, a blog post comes along where you just have to say "yup" and move along. It's just so well reasoned, so well written, that there's nothing to add.
Posted by jeff at 11:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBackWhy I am not a Libertarian
I am not a Libertarian, though I am a libertarian. The primary reason I am not a Libertarian is this mindset.
Consider just this one point: Mueller neglects to consider that one reason that there may not have been attacks in the US on the scale of 9/11 is that we responded in force to 9/11. Indeed, he even notes that "the number of Americans killed within the United States by international terrorists in the five years since 9/11 is the same as the number killed in the five years before: zero" and that "they do not seem to have become more capable generally since 9/11", but fails to attribute this to anything other than al Qaeda supposedly being over-hyped as a threat.
No, also consider a second point. Here is Mueller:
Even if [terrorists] were able to pull off "another 9/11" every three months for the next five years, the chance an individual American would be killed in one of them would still be two one-hundredths of one percent.
Not quite. The chances of someone in Andalusia, Alabama dying in a terrorist attack would be essentially zero, while the chances of someone in New York dying in a terrorist attack would be near certainty. Lying with statistics does not add to Mueller's credibility.
The problem with Libertarians as a party is that they are fanatical purists — mostly ivory-tower academics and drug-fiends who like the "we'll let you smoke anything" plank of the party — and over the long-run can only retain the loyalty of people too out of touch with reality to consider the implications of their proposals. And frankly, that's a shame, because the libertarian ideal could use a good party to champion it. In fact, it could use every party championing it.
Global Warming
James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia hypothesis, had an interview where he said something that sums up the reasoning for my position on global warming:
The human species has been on the planet for a million years now. We’ve gone through seven major climatic changes that are equivalent to this. The ice ages were shifts in climate comparable with this one that’s coming. And we’ve survived.That series of glaciations and interglacials put the pressures on us to select the kind of human that could adapt. And we’re the progeny of them. And we’re just up against a new and different stress. Maybe we’ll come out better.
But he takes a different position from this than I do. Lovelock's position is that global warming is a very serious problem that is going to essentially leave the tropics uninhabitable, and therefore we need to take immediate action to prevent global warming.
I find it hard to see the overwhelming, unquestionable evidence that keeps being asserted, but never really demonstrated, for global warming being primarily due to man-made causes. I am not yet even convinced that we are in a long-term warming trend. Our knowledge of past climate changes is very incomplete. I find the arrogance of those who claim absolute knowlege on this subject quite unappealing.
As a result of my skepticism, I think we would be better off focusing our attention on technologies and methods of living that would adapt our lives to a warmer climate, rather than spending it all on "solutions" to a problem that we might not be able to solve, and that might not even exist. If the Earth is in fact in a long-term warming trend, and if that trend will result in a significantly warmer climate, then working on adaptive technologies will help us to avoid inconveniences that would cause. (Forget the hype, mankind has, as Lovelock points out, thrived in much warmer climates than currently exist, and we did it with far fewer technological aids.) If the Earth is not in a long-term warming trend, such technology developments will still undoubtedly have benefits; the knowlege gained, for example, could be applicable to space settlement or to adapting to climate cooling if that process happens. (And a new ice age is hardly beyond the realm of the possible.)
In short, we would be far better off learning to adapt to climate change than trying to avoid impacting the climate. That said, more nuclear power would be a good idea, for other reasons.
Armies of Davids
If the Army of Davids thesis is true, and I believe it is, there are some things we should be seeing happen as a natural consequence. In particular, there are two types of NGOs we should be seeing form. The first type is organizations formed around the idea of nourishing Westernization and modernization in the Arab world, and the second type amounts to vigilante groups (operating internally in the West) and private armies (operating externally to the West).
Organizations intending to nourish Westernization and modernization in the Arab world (and probably in Africa and possibly elsewhere) would essentially be a private effort to "shrink the Gap." Such organizations would probably initially consist of providing security for Western firms or local people trying to do things like building a modern economy (banks, factories, and so on) or culture (schools, churches, and so on). They would almost certainly evolve into bringing in additional investments and programs. This would actually cause a huge amount of disruption, because it would bring massive cultural change to areas not noted for their tolerance to cultural change. On the other hand, governments like those of Iran, Iraq, and possibly Jordan would welcome the idea of having stronger economies, and would likely be at least somewhat willing to take the short-term rise in violence for the long-term rise in economic activity.
Organizations built around a more aggressive model of confronting Islam would likely take two forms, and might take a third. One form would essentially be vigilantes, working domestically to uncover jihadis and Islamists, with the intent being anything from pressuring authorities to arrest and charge such people, to trying to drive them out. This type of group would form if people felt endangered by the Muslims in their community, and didn't feel that the police could or would protect them. Something like this,
but with a different objective.
The second type would be private armies, operating abroad to kill or capture enemies where the government could not or would not. This could be something like the Abraham Lincoln Brigade of the Spanish Civil War, with people volunteering in nations at risk, or it could be something more like WWII's USFIP. Such an organization might adopt the structural organization of guerilla (and terrorist) groups: small cells operating independently. It might instead operate more like a brigade, operating as a large unit with detachable parts. Much about its structure would depend on whether it were operating under legal sanction (such as by obtaining a letter of reprisal) or were extra-legal.
The really scary form, that hopefully will not come about, is the organization that adopts the terrorists structure and methods to "terrorize the terrorists". There is some evidence that such a group might be forming in Britain.
I think that seeing organizations like the hospitallers, but non-religious, is a good thing, as it would lead in the long term to a more tolerant society, as well as making business and social changes safer in the interim (though likely with a lot of fighting, but now on both sides instead of only the enemies' side). If vigilante organizations form, it will be because of a lack of confidence in the government's ability or willingness to enforce the law, which would be a bad thing (though the groups themselves would not necessarily be a bad thing). If private armies form to operate in areas where the government can't or won't go, that would be a good thing, as long as they didn't turn into terrorists themselves, in that it would remove sanctuaries the enemy currently enjoys.
The question I have is, which of these groups are already forming, somewhere out of sight?
Political Scorecard
A recent comment annoyed me, and being annoyed, I decided to list out my political positions. Being a geek, I decided to score them. (OK, the comment was recent at the time, but then I forgot to publish the entry. It's still relevant, so here it is.) So here's how this works: I list an issue, my position on that issue, the importance of that issue to me, the positions of various political parties, how well their positions agree with mine, and how they score on that issue.
My importance scale is:
0 — This issue is of no consequence whatsoever in policy terms. Not only will I put out any effort (other than occasional rhetoric) to get my positions passed, but if their antithesis passes instead, I won't much care.
1 — I care about this, at least theoretically, and it would effect my voting and political donation patterns.
2 — I care about this quite a bit, and it would strongly effect my voting and political donation patterns. Alternately, this would be a 3 if the issue were to seriously come up as a policy differentiator, but in reality it's only going to come up around the margins, rather than challenging the core of the issue.
3 — I care about this so deeply that it could be the sole determinant of my vote. In fact, if moves far enough away on enough of these issues, it would be sufficient to push me to emigration or rebellion.
A party's agreement with me is scored as follows:
0 — Their policy position is essentially or actually antithetical to mine. Discussion is meaningless because no compromise position can be reached. A pox on them!
1 — Their policy position is strongly opposed to mine, but there are points for discussion, which could lead to them seeing things my way.
2 — Their policy position matches mine closely enough that I am not unduly concerned about them getting their way.
3 — They agree with me completely, showing their great wisdom and deep understanding of the issue.
A party's score, then, is the product of the importance of the issue to me and their agreement with me on the issue. I couldn't figure out how to put this into a readable table, so I settled instead for a series of tables.
The War
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | Fight aggressively at home and abroad: no quarter given, because none will be given us. At the same time, let's not try to kill all 1.2 billion Muslims or do to Islam what Rome did to Carthage. The point is to remove the threats of jihadi terrorism and of nuclear weapons in the hands of unstable regimes. We need to dramatically expand the military, perhaps even back to Cold War levels, because we could be fighting Iran, Syria and potentially Saudi Arabia, and at the same time we will need to maintain the ability to defend Taiwan should China decide to attack. | 3 | ||
| Democrats | "The war is largely a matter of police work and intelligence in the US, combined with cooperation with our allies abroad. By understanding the root causes of terrorism, such as poverty and corruption and inefficient social services, we can work to end terrorism. We should vigorously pursue the terrorists in Afghanistan. We should not attack sovereign countries without the agreement of the UN and involvement by pretty much all of our allies. In particular, we should work with our allies to diplomatically resolve any crises arising from a rogue nation developing nuclear weapons.
If a Democrat is President, though, we'll act just like the Republicans are now. (Witness our bellicosity in 1998.)" | 1 | 3 | |
| Republicans | We should vigorously pursue the war at home and abroad, and should ensure that Americans are not attacked in the US ever again. If that means attacking nations that support terrorism, or are in the process of developing nuclear weapons and are a potential threat to the US, then we should destroy those nations with our allies if possible, and without them if necessary. All Muslims are not the enemy; Islam is not the enemy; the jihadis are the enemy. We believe that the key to eliminating terrorism is eliminating the failure of the Arab/Muslim nations that has caused frustration to boil over into terrorism. | 2 | 6 | |
| Libertarians | We should treat the "war" as a police issue at home, and should not fight abroad. | 0 | 0 |
The Economy
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | The economy is largely the domain of private individuals. Government's role should be limited to the actions of the Federal Reserve in setting money supply and interest rates. By and large, it's a good idea for the government to not interfere, but it is also necessary to recognize that moderate interference in the economy (such as spending more in a recession or using tax policy to encourage some actions and discourage others) can have a salutary effect on increasing prosperity and, in particular, on decreasing immiseration. | 2 | ||
| Democrats | The economy is almost entirely the responsibility of the Federal government, and should be regulated to produce fairness and eliminate poverty, even if that means confiscatory taxation, massive wealth transfer and/or forcing businesses to adopt socially progressive policies. | 1 | 2 | |
| Republicans | The economy is almost entirely the responsibility of the Federal government in cooperation with corporations and small businesses, and should be regulated to reduce income inequalities and poverty, even if that means high taxation, massive wealth transfer and/or forcing businesses to adopt policies convenient to Republicans politically. | 1 | 2 | |
| Libertarians | The economy is entirely the domain of private individuals. Period. Well, OK, the government can mint money, but that's it. | 2 | 4 |
Drugs
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | The government has no business regulating what products or substances people can purchase or use. In attempts to regulate drugs, for example, the Federal government generally strays into tyranny, such as no-knock warrants and long prison terms and regulation of funds transfers abroad. | 1 | ||
| Democrats | Drugs should be legal. But to the extent that they're not, it's important that the issue be manipulated for Democratic political advantage, for example by painting Rush Limbaugh as a hypocritical drug addicted fascist. | 2 | 2 | |
| Republicans | Drugs should be illegal. Anything we have to do to keep them that way is just fine. | 0 | 0 | |
| Libertarians | The government has no business regulating what products or substances people can purchase or use. In attempts to regulate drugs, for example, the Federal government generally strays into tyranny, such as no-knock warrants and long prison terms and regulation of funds transfers abroad. Besides, we really, really want to light up, man. | 3 | 3 |
Taxation
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | Obviously, taxes are necessary to run the government: it's not and should not be a business. Income taxes are particularly a problem, for two reasons: progressive taxation punishes economic advancement, leading to less of it; and the side-requirements to enforce income taxation, such as looking through your bank accounts without a warrant and preventing large money transfers abroad, lead the government to behave tyranically. We would be better off with a flat tax, and even better off with a consumption tax (in either case, with a significant up-front exemption to protect the truly impoverished). | 3 | ||
| Democrats | Taxes are good. Income taxes are especially good, and the more progressive they are the better. The more taxation the better, because the government can then efficiently make decisions about who should have what amount of money, ensuring fairness by reducing the incomes of high earners to raise the incomes of low earners. Besides, we have a lot of special interests to buy off. | 0 | 0 | |
| Republicans | Taxes are good, but they need to be lower than they are now. In fact, it might even be wise to look at things like a flat tax or a consumption task. But don't look too closely, because we have a lot of special interests to buy off. | 1 | 3 | |
| Libertarians | Taxes are evil. If we can't have an anarchy, the government should be restricted to funding itself through user fees and import duties. | 2 | 6 |
Health Care
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | It's none of the government's business. Providing the indigent with free health care, and the poor with subsidized health care, is a good idea for policy reasons, but other than that the government should stay out of it. Giving a tax credit to everyone for health care is OK, but giving a tax credit just to businesses leads to all kinds of problems. | 1 | ||
| Democrats | Nationalized health care is best. If we can't have that, we'll settle for excessive regulation. | 0 | 0 | |
| Republicans | Giving tax credits to businesses is best. And massive, massive wealth transfers is also good, because it buys votes. | 0 | 0 | |
| Libertarians | It's none of the government's business. | 3 | 3 |
Energy Policy
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | We shouldn't have one. It's not the government's job to decide what forms of energy to use, or how to get them: let the market handle that. | 1 | ||
| Democrats | It's the government's job to specify what energy sources we use, who can use them, how much, what they will cost and so on. | 0 | 0 | |
| Republicans | I suppose an energy policy would be a good idea. Absent that, why don't we just drill everywhere for oil and call it an energy policy. | 1 | 1 | |
| Libertarians | We shouldn't have one. | 3 | 3 |
The Environment
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | Don't soil your nest. The government should get involved only in so far as it is necessary to prevent you from soiling my nest. | 2 | ||
| Democrats | It's the government's job to specify how everything will be done that might effect the environment. Including breathing and the allowed percentage of methane in cow farts. | 0 | 0 | |
| Republicans | A clean environment is good. But not at the expense of prosperity. | 2 | 4 | |
| Libertarians | Why is the government at all involved in this, again? | 2 | 4 |
Immigration
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | Legal immigration should be easy. Illegal immigration should be hard. | 2 | ||
| Democrats | Illegal immigration should be easy. Legal immigration should be heavily bureaucratic and time-consuming. | 2 | 4 | |
| Republicans | Legal immigration should be hard. Illegal immigration should be hard, but we're really not going to put any effort into it. | 2 | 4 | |
| Libertarians | Immigration should be pretty much completely uncontrolled. | 1 | 2 |
Freedom of and From Religion
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | Both. | 3 | ||
| Democrats | From, certainly. | 2 | 6 | |
| Republicans | Of, certainly. | 2 | 6 | |
| Libertarians | Both. | 3 | 9 |
Freedom of Expression
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | Yes. | 3 | ||
| Democrats | Mostly. | 2 | 6 | |
| Republicans | Mostly. | 2 | 6 | |
| Libertarians | Yes. | 3 | 9 |
Freedom of Peacable Assembly and of Association
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | Yes | 3 | ||
| Democrats | Yes, for individuals. No, for groups or businesses; the government has to regulate membership and customer practices to protect minorities. | 2 | 6 | |
| Republicans | Yes | 3 | 9 | |
| Libertarians | Yes | 3 | 9 |
Right to Keep and Bear Arms
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | Yes. Except for area weapons (nuclear, chemical, biological, perhaps FAEs or cluster bombs). | 3 | ||
| Democrats | Not so much, no. | 0 | 0 | |
| Republicans | Personal arms, yes, but not crew-served weapons or vessels or aircraft or armored vehicles with weapons. | 2 | 6 | |
| Libertarians | Yes. | 3 | 9 |
Freedom From Unreasonable Searches and Seizures
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | Yes | 3 | ||
| Democrats | Yes, if the Republicans are in office. | 1 | 3 | |
| Republicans | Yes, if the Democrats are in office. | 1 | 3 | |
| Libertarians | Yes | 3 | 9 |
Eminent Domain
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | The government has no business taking private property. For practical reasons, like the ability to have roads, there will from time to time need to be exceptions, but these should meet stringent tests of need and be accompanied by excessive compensation, because you're not just taking someone's property, you're forcing them to change their lives in the process. | 3 | ||
| Democrats | Not so much, no. | 0 | 0 | |
| Republicans | Mostly. | 2 | 6 | |
| Libertarians | Eminent domain is an abomination. Better to have no roads at all. | 2 | 6 |
Law Enforcement
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | It's important to have a small number of well-defined laws, and enforce them vigorously (particularly criminal law). The rights of defendants must be protected completely, while also ensuring that justice is served, rather than technicalities (like whether two pages are stapled or paper-clipped together). | 3 | ||
| Democrats | The law should more or less be enforced, particularly those laws that disproportionately target Republicans. | 1 | 3 | |
| Republicans | The law should more or less be enforced, particularly criminal and drug laws. White collar crimes, not so much. Defendants currently get way too many protections, though. | 1 | 3 | |
| Libertarians | What very few laws should exist should be vigorously enforced, preferably by private citizens. | 3 | 9 |
Torture
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | We should not torture people. However, harsh, even humiliating, treatment of captured enemies is not the same thing as torture. | 2 | ||
| Democrats | We should not torture people. "Torture" includes anything from playing loud music or making people cold on up. Unless Democrats are in office. | 1 | 2 | |
| Republicans | We should not torture people. "Torture" and "people" are up for definitional debate. Unless Republicans are in office. | 2 | 4 | |
| Libertarians | We should not torture people. | 3 | 6 |
Federalism
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | I'm for it. | 3 | ||
| Democrats | We're against it. | 0 | 0 | |
| Republicans | We're against it. | 0 | 0 | |
| Libertarians | We're for it. | 3 | 9 |
Gay Marriage
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | Fine, if you want to. | 0 | ||
| Democrats | Yes, and we'll do anything we can to make it stick. | 2 | 0 | |
| Republicans | We're against it. | 0 | 0 | |
| Libertarians | Fine, if you want to. | 3 | 0 |
Abortion
| Person | Position | Importance | Agreement | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Me | Bad idea. Getting the government involved would be a worse idea. | 0 | ||
| Democrats | Abortion is good for womyn and children. No, really! | 0 | 0 | |
| Republicans | We're against it. You should be against it, too. By law. | 0 | 0 | |
| Libertarians | Why is this a political issue again? | 3 | 0 |
Now, I picked those issues because they are important to me, or because they were on my mind. If you want me to address other issues, or if you disagree with my characterizations (not my ratings: that's not your place), let me know, and I'll be glad to update. This is kind of fun, actually.
OK, and here are the results:
Of a maximum possible 123 points, given my importance ranking, the Democrats get 37 (about 30%), the Republicans 63 (about 51%), and the Libertarians get 100 (about 81%). So, if I agree so much with the Libertarians, why am I ruling them out? Well, as long as we're at war, the government is not our most dangerous enemy, so the Libertarians are out of the running, because they flunk on the war and do best on issues that, if we lose the war, they will have little chance of implementing anyway. (If the Libertarians would change their position on the war, I'd start voting for them again: I don't vote "strategically", which is little more than accepting second best in voting.)
This is pretty skewed by the choice of issues, because I put the basic freedom issues in there, where the Libertarians pretty much clean up from my point of view. A longer list of issues would moderate the list somewhat, and change the percentages. In particular, most of the issues where I would disagree with the Libertarians aren't in this list; on the other hand, they aren't there because they aren't a big deal to me (or because I didn't think about them), rather than because I'm trying to inflate Libertarian numbers. For an example of how this changes nothing, see the last two issues (abortion and gay marriage).
Also, some of the issues are really big, like the economy, while others (like energy policy) are really small. Some way of chunking up the issues better would probably be a good idea. But then I'd have to think, and it's late already.
How do you Achieve Something?
When I read posts like this (also found here, with more intelligent comments), I wonder how people who could write such a thing ever achieve any goal they set. In my world, you set a goal, along with a cost you are willing to pay to attain that goal; formulate a strategy to attain the goal, complete with some set of observable metrics that tell you whether you are progressing towards attaining the goal; design a plan to implement the strategy, complete with alternatives and options that would be invoked based on the situation as it changes; and set about performing the tasks called for by the plan. Mike Reynolds' ('sideways') world does not appear to work that way, and some of the comments on the Donklephant post indicate that there are some whose worlds are even more divergent from mine.
Let's take the specific incident that Reynolds writes about: Pakistan's recent agreement to withdraw from tribal areas. Reynolds, like Roggio (the link in the last sentence), has a very pessimistic take on this, most prominently indicated by his title: "Did We Just Lose?" (I am cautiously hopeful.) Another indicator of deep pessimism is this:
Our goal was to deny Al Qaeda a safe haven in the near east. If this deal is what it looks like, we appear to have failed.If this deal is what it looks like, we aren’t even back at square one: we’re wishing we could get back to square one.
In fact, if this deal is what it looks like, we just lost a war.
Um, OK, let's take it from the top. The President set the national goal for the war on September 20, 2001:
Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. ... [T]he only way to defeat terrorism as a threat to our way of life is to stop it, eliminate it, and destroy it where it grows.
In the same speech, the President began to lay out the strategy he would follow:
We will direct every resource at our command -- every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war -- to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.
Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
[snip]
We will come together to improve air safety, to dramatically expand the number of air marshals on domestic flights, and take new measures to prevent hijacking. We will come together to promote stability and keep our airlines flying, with direct assistance during this emergency.
We will come together to give law enforcement the additional tools it needs to track down terror here at home. We will come together to strengthen our intelligence capabilities to know the plans of terrorists before they act, and find them before they strike.
We will come together to take active steps that strengthen America's economy, and put our people back to work.
The strategy was made very explicit in 2002. Obviously, two parts of the plan were to eliminate the enemy's safe haven in Afghanistan, and to eliminate a major sponsor of terrorism in Iraq. Both of these have been done.
So if Reynolds' and Roggio's most profound fears are true, and the enemy acquires a new sanctuary, a more difficult sanctuary for us to attack than was Afghanistan (and now would be the time to remind everyone that most people who knew anything about Afghanistan thought that the enemy's Afghan sanctuary was more or less immune to serious attack), does this mean that we have lost the war, that our goals are unattainable? Hardly. Indeed, such an outcome, while a setback, would not even mean that our strategy was obviously wrong. It might merely indicate that Michael Ledeen's constant refrain, "faster please," should get more attention than it has heretofore. It might indicate that our strategy needs to be compressed in time, or that we need to modify or even completely rethink our strategy. It does not mean that we have lost.
But there is another side to this as well. What if this development opens the way for US troops to go into Waziristan and fight the enemy directly, with the enemy having no border as easy to hide behind as they do between Afghanistan and Pakistan? What if this development means that the tribal leaders are going to stop their cross-border raids and kick out the terrorists? What if this development is a way for Musharraf, knowing the agreement will be violated, to develop a domestic political consensus to commit real force to the area for the first time? Would this then even be a setback, in retrospect?
Unfortunately, we have developed a serious analysis problem. Our communications are so fast that we get almost instant news of what happens in even the remotest corners of the globe. But we only get that news, generally, if it is in the interest of mainstream journalists to provide it, and when they do, they often get the whole point so completely wrong that the information that is communicated is more false than true. This leads to bad, but rapid, analysis; to incorrect, but rapid, responses. We need to learn to sit back and let events unfold without feeling we have to respond immediately to each and every one. And we need to think through all the possible consequences, not just the most facile rationales or the most immediately horrifying or gratifying possibilities. First reports from the field, goes the military dictum, are generally wrong. We need to remember that.
But more importantly even than that, we need to remember that some goals are important to achieve. We need to remember that goals often have costs that need to be paid, and in this case, while the ashes were still settling over Manhattan, we put a very high price indeed on this particular goal. The world situation has not so changed as to make the goal unreasonable, or unnecessary to achieve. So we must attain our goal.
And we must remember that strategies sometimes are not quite right, but that it is better to do something that makes incremental gains than to do nothing, or worse still to pretend to be doing something while really just hoping the problem goes away. Worst of all is to pretend to be doing something useful while actually doing something guaranteed to make it harder, even impossible, to obtain our goals. If our strategies aren't quite right, we need to adjust them. We do not need to scrap them. If going to the store to get something turns out to be a bad idea, because that store doesn't carry that particular item, it doesn't mean you go to the park instead; it means you find the store that has the item you need.
Further we must remember that any plan we make will be flawed, and even if nearly perfect, will require many changes of direction as contingencies change the situation we are responding to. Worse, we could have to rethink the plan if it is not working. You don't throw up your hands if the store is sold out of the item you want; you get an alternate brand, or you go elsewhere, or you wait for the store to restock. Finally, the enemy gets a say in the situation, too. Imagine trying to get milk from the store while being shot at, and you are closer to the problem the military has.
It's possible, of course, to just throw up your hands at the slightest impediment and throw a screaming fit. Most two year olds do it. I've know forty year olds to do it. But those are people who don't get what they want, and who alienate everyone around them along the way. This war is important; this goal must be achieved, if we are to have a hope of leaving a peaceful, free, and prosperous life. And for that reason, we must not throw up our hands at every setback, must not throw a fit when things are imperfect (I'm picturing Andrew Sullivan right now). Instead, we must get the job done, and where we are making mistakes, we must fix them.
Reynolds' approach, though, to declare defeat when something happens that might be bad, or might not, is hardly a way to set about that process. At least, not if we care to win.
September 11, 2006
23:30
Before going to sleep, President Bush writes in his diary, “The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today. ... We think it’s Osama bin Laden.” [Washington Post, 1/27/2002]
22:49
It is reported that Attorney General Ashcroft has told members of Congress that there were three to five hijackers on each plane armed only with knives. [CNN, 9/12/2001]
21:00
President Bush meets with his full National Security Council in the PEOC beneath the White House for about 30 minutes. He then meets with a smaller group of key advisers. Bush and his advisers have already decided bin Laden is behind the attacks. CIA Director Tenet says that al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan are essentially one and the same. Bush says, “Tell the Taliban We’re finished with them.” [Washington Post, 1/27/2002] He goes on to say, “I want you all to understand that we are at war and we will stay at war until this is done. Nothing else matters. Everything is available for the pursuit of this war. Any barriers in your way, they’re gone. Any money you need, you have it. This is our only agenda.” When Rumsfeld points out that international law only allows force to prevent future attacks and not for retribution, Bush yells, “No. I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.” [Clarke, 2004, pp. 23-24]
20:30
President Bush addresses the nation on live television. [CNN, 9/12/2001] In what will later be called the Bush Doctrine, he states, “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” [Washington Post, 1/27/2002]
19:00
Secretary of State Powell returns to Washington from Lima, Peru. He is finally able to speak to President Bush for the first time since the 9/11 attacks began when they both arrive at the White House at about the same time. Powell later says of his flight, “And the worst part of it, is that because of the communications problems that existed during that day, I couldn’t talk to anybody in Washington.” [ABC News, 9/11/2002] The Daily Telegraph later theorizes, “Why so long? In the weeks before September 11, Washington was full of rumors that Powell was out of favor and had been quietly relegated to the sidelines...” [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001]
18:54
President Bush arrives at the White House, after exiting Air Force One at 6:42 p.m. and flying across Washington in a helicopter. [ABC News, 9/11/2002; Salon, 9/12/2001; Washington Times, 10/8/2002; CNN, 9/12/2001; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; Associated Press, 8/19/2002]
18:42
As Air Force One is approaching Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, with the president on board, the FAA reports an aircraft racing towards it. Fighters quickly intercept the aircraft, which turns out to be a Lear business jet, “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” [Filson, 2004, pp. 88]
17:20
Building 7 of the WTC complex, a 47-story tower, collapses. No one is killed. [MSNBC, 9/22/2001; CNN, 9/12/2001; Washington Post, 9/12/2001; Associated Press, 8/19/2002] Many questions will arise over the cause of this collapse in the coming weeks and months. Building 7, which was not hit by an airplane, is the first modern, steel-reinforced high-rise to collapse because of fire. [Chicago Tribune, 11/29/2001; Stanford Report, 12/5/2001; New York Times, 3/2/2002] Some later suggest that the diesel fuel stored in several tanks on the premises may have contributed to the building’s collapse. The building contained a 6,000-gallon tank between its first and second floors and another four tanks, holding as much as 36,000 gallons, below ground level. There were also three smaller tanks on higher floors. [Chicago Tribune, 11/29/2001; New York Times, 3/2/2002; New York Observer, 3/25/2002; Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002] However, the cause of the collapse is uncertain. A 2002 government report concludes: “The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence.” [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002] Some reports indicate that the building may have been deliberately destroyed. Shortly after the collapse, CBS News anchor Dan Rather comments that the collapse is “reminiscent of ... when a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down.” [CBS News, 9/11/2001]
16:33
President Bush leaves Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska for Washington. [MSNBC, 9/22/2001; CNN, 9/12/2001; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; Washington Times, 10/8/2002]
16:30
The area around WTC Building 7 is evacuated at this time. [Kansas City Star, 3/28/2004] New York fire department chief officers, who have surveyed the building, have determined it is in danger of collapsing. Several senior firefighters have described this decision-making process. According to fire chief Daniel Nigro, “The biggest decision we had to make was to clear the area and create a collapse zone around the severely damaged [WTC Building 7]. A number of fire officers and companies assessed the damage to the building. The appraisals indicated that the building’s integrity was in serious doubt.” [Fire Engineering, 9/2002]
16:15
After President Bush leaves his video conference, other top leaders continue to discuss what steps to take. Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke asks what to do about al-Qaeda, assuming they are behind the attacks. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage states, “Look, we told the Taliban in no uncertain terms that if this happened, it’s their ass. No difference between the Taliban and al-Qaeda now. They both go down.” Regarding Pakistan, the Taliban’s patrons, Armitage says, “Tell them to get out of the way. We have to eliminate the sanctuary.” [Clarke, 2004, pp. 22-23]
16:10
World Trade Center Building 7 is reported to be on fire. [CNN, 9/12/2001]
16:00
CNN reports US officials say there are “good indications” that bin Laden is involved in the attacks, based on “new and specific” information developed since the attacks. [CNN, 9/12/2001]
President Bush has just told his advisers that he is returning to Washington as soon as the plane is fueled— “No discussion.” [Clarke, 2004, pp. 21-22] Yet, Bush adviser Karl Rove later says that at this time President Bush is hesitant to return to Washington because, “they’ve accounted for all four [hijacked] planes, but they’ve got another, I think, three or four or five planes still outstanding.” [New Yorker, 9/25/2001] However, the FAA points out there are no such reports and that Bush had been quickly informed when domestic US skies were completely cleared at 12:16 p.m. [Wall Street Journal, 3/22/2004]
15:55
White House adviser Karen Hughes briefly speaks to the media and says President Bush is at an undisclosed location, taking part in a video conference. This is possibly the only in-person media appearance by any Bush administration official since the attacks and until a news conference by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld at 6:40 p.m. [CNN, 9/12/2001]
15:00
President Bush begins a video conference call from a bunker beneath Offutt Air Force Base. He and Chief of Staff Andrew Card visually communicate directly with Vice President Cheney, National Security Adviser Rice, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, CIA Director Tenet, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, and others. [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; Washington Times, 10/8/2002; ABC News, 9/11/2002] According to Clarke, Bush begins the meeting by saying, “I’m coming back to the White House as soon as the plane is fueled. No discussion.” Clarke leads a quick review of what has already occurred, and issues that need to be quickly addressed. CIA Director Tenet states that al-Qaeda is clearly behind the 9/11 attacks. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld states that about 120 fighters are now above US cities. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 21-22] The meeting ends at 4:15 P.M. [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; Washington Times, 10/8/2002]
14:50
Having left Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana at around 1:30 p.m. (see (1:30 p.m.)), Air Force One lands at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska. President Bush stays on the plane for about ten minutes before entering the United States Strategic Command bunker at 3:06 p.m. [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; Salon, 9/12/2001] Offutt Air Force Base appears to be the headquarters of the US Strategic Command (Stratcom) exercise Global Guardian that was “in full swing” at the time the attacks began (see 8:30 a.m.). While there, the president spends time in the underground Command Center from where Global Guardian was earlier being directed, being brought up to date on the attacks and their aftermath. [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; Omaha World-Herald, 2/27/2002; Washington Times, 10/8/2002]
Posted by jeff at 2:50 PM | TrackBack14:40
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is provided information from the CIA indicating that three of the hijackers were suspected al-Qaeda operatives. Notes composed by aides who were with Rumsfeld in the National Military Command Center on 9/11 are leaked nearly a year later. According to the notes, information shows, “One guy is [an] associate of [USS] Cole bomber.” (This is a probable reference to Khalid Almihdhar or Nawaf Alhazmi.) Rumsfeld has also been given information indicating an al-Qaeda operative had advanced details of the 9/11 attack. According to the aide’s notes, Rumsfeld wants the “best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time. Not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]. Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.” [CBS News, 9/4/2002; Bamford, 2004, pp. 285]
14:00
It is later revealed that only hours after the 9/11 attacks, a US “shadow government” is formed. Initially deployed “on the fly,” executive directives on government continuity in the face of a crisis dating back to the Reagan administration are put into effect. Approximately 100 midlevel officials are moved to underground bunkers and stay there 24 hours a day. Officials rotate in and out on a 90-day cycle (see September 11, 2001). [Washington Post, 3/1/2002; CBS News, 3/2/2002]
F-15 fighter pilot Major Daniel Nash returns to base around this time, after chasing Flight 175 and patrolling the skies over New York City. He says that when he gets out of the plane, “he [is] told that a military F-16 had shot down a fourth airliner in Pennsylvania.” [Cape Cod Times, 8/21/2002; Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002]
13:44
The Pentagon announces that aircraft carriers and guided missile destroyers have been dispatched toward New York and Washington. Around the country, more fighters, airborne radar (AWACs), and refueling planes are scrambling. NORAD is on its highest alert. [MSNBC, 9/22/2001; CNN, 9/12/2001]
13:30
President Bush leaves Louisiana on Air Force One, and flies to Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base, where the US Strategic Command is located. [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; Salon, 9/12/2001; MSNBC, 9/22/2001; CNN, 9/12/2001] He travels with Chief of Staff Andrew Card, senior adviser Karl Rove, communications staffers Dan Bartlett, Ari Fleischer, and Gordon Johndroe, and a small group of reporters. [Salon, 9/12/2001]
13:27
A state of emergency is declared in Washington. [CNN, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001]
13:04
President Bush announces that the US military has been put on high alert worldwide. [CNN, 9/12/2001; Associated Press, 8/19/2002] Apparently, this occurs in a televised speech that was actually recorded half an hour earlier.
13:02
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld later claims that he says to President Bush on the phone, “This is not a criminal action. This is war.” [Washington Times, 2/23/2004]
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani orders an evacuation of Manhattan south of Canal Street. [MSNBC, 9/22/2001; Associated Press, 8/19/2002]
12:58
President Bush spends most of his time at Barksdale Air Force Base arguing on the phone with Vice President Cheney and others over where he should go next. “A few minutes before 1 p.m.,” he agrees to fly to Nebraska. As earlier, there are rumors of a “credible terrorist threat” to Air Force One that are said to prevent his return to Washington. [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001]
12:36
President Bush records a short speech that is played by the networks at 1:04 p.m. [Salon, 9/12/2001; Washington Times, 10/8/2002] In a speech at the Louisiana base, President Bush announces that security measures are being taken and says: “Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.” [MSNBC, 9/22/2001; CNN, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001] He also states, “Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward. And freedom will be defended.” [ABC News, 9/11/2002]
12:16
US airspace is clear of aircraft except for military and emergency flights. Only a few transoceanic flights are still landing in Canada. [USA Today, 8/12/2002] At 12:30 p.m., the FAA reports about 50 (non-civilian) planes still flying in US airspace, but none are reporting problems. [CNN, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001]
12:15
It is announced that US borders with Canada and Mexico are on the highest state of alert, but no decision has been made about closing borders. [CNN, 9/12/2001]
12:05
CIA Director Tenet tells Defense Secretary Rumsfeld about an intercepted phone call from earlier in the day at 9:53 a.m. An al-Qaeda operative talked of a fourth target just before Flight 93 crashed. Rumsfeld wrote notes to himself at the time. According to CBS, “Rumsfeld felt it was ‘vague,’ that it ‘might not mean something,’ and that there was ‘no good basis for hanging hat.’ In other words, the evidence was not clear-cut enough to justify military action against bin Laden.” [CBS News, 9/4/2002] More evidence suggesting an al-Qaeda link comes several hours later.
12:00
President Bush arrives at the Barksdale Air Force Base headquarters in a Humvee escorted by armed outriders. Reporters and others are not allowed to say where they are. Bush remains in this location for approximately one hour, recording a brief message and talking on the phone. [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001]
Senator Orrin Hatch (R), a member of both the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, says he has just been “briefed by the highest levels of the FBI and of the intelligence community.” He says, “they’ve come to the conclusion that this looks like the signature of Osama bin Laden, and that he may be the one behind this.” [Salon, 9/12/2001]
At some point during the afternoon of 9/11, WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein receives a phone call from the Fire Department commander, where they discuss the state of Building 7 of the WTC complex. Silverstein will discuss this call in a PBS documentary broadcast in 2002, saying that he told the commander, “You know, we’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse.” [PBS, 9/10/2002] Some people suggest that by “pull it” Silverstein meant the deliberate demolition of the building. But a spokesman for Silverstein states that he was expressing “his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.” [US Department of State, 9/16/2005] Yet this claim is contradicted by some accounts, according to which firefighters decided early on not to attempt fighting the fires in WTC 7 (see After 10:28 a.m.). Building 7 eventually collapses at around 5:20 in the afternoon (see (5:20 p.m.)).
11:45
Air Force One lands at Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, Louisiana. “The official reason for landing at Barksdale was that President Bush felt it necessary to make a further statement, but it isn’t unreasonable to assume that—as there was no agreement as to what the president’s movements should be—it was felt he might as well be on the ground as in the air.” [Salon, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/16/2001; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; CBS News, 9/11/2002]
11:30
Within two hours of the attacks the 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron (RADES) based at Hill Air Force Base, Utah begins reviewing the radar trails of the four earlier hijacked aircraft, after Pentagon officials have turned to them to find out exactly what happened. Using their own software, the unit has the unique ability to create a “track of interest analysis,” singling out and zooming in on each of the planes. The unit has captured most of the flights of the four planes, but lost sight of Flight 93 at some point. [Airman, 12/2003] The FBI also contacts RADES within hours of the attacks, requesting detailed information on the hijacked planes. [Hilltop Times, 4/15/2004] NORAD official Colonel Alan Scott later will tell the 9/11 Commission that much of his radar data for the “primary targets” on 9/11 was not seen that day. He will say, “It was reconstructed days later by the 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron, and other agencies like it who are professionals at going back and looking at radar tapes and then given that they are loaded with knowledge after the fact, they can go and find things that perhaps were not visible during the event itself.” [9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003] Data reconstructed by RADES will be used as a source several times in the account of the hijackings and military response to them in the 9/11 Commission’s final report. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 457-459]
General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO, says on television, “This is clearly a coordinated effort. It hasn’t been announced that it’s over. ... Only one group has this kind of ability and that is Osama bin Laden’s.” [Ottawa Citizen, 9/11/2001]
Two congressmen, Dan Miller (R) and Adam Putnam (R), are on Air Force One. they’ve been receiving periodic updates on the crisis from President Bush’s adviser Karl Rove. At this time, they’re summoned forward to meet with the president. Bush points out the fighter escort, F-16s from a base in Texas, has now arrived. He says that a threat had been received from someone who knew the plane’s code name. However, there are doubts that any such threat ever occurred (see 10:32 a.m.). [St. Petersburg Times, 7/4/2004]
11:15
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld speaks with President Bush, and tells him that the Department of Defense is working on refining the rules of engagement, so pilots will have a better understanding of the circumstances under which an aircraft can be shot down. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 465] He also briefs the president on the earlier decision to go to Defcon Three (see (10:10 a.m.)). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 554]
Russian President Vladimir Putin phones President Bush while he is aboard Air Force One. Putin is the first foreign leader to call Bush following the attacks. He earlier called the White House to speak with the president, but had to speak with Condoleezza Rice instead (see Between 10:32 and 11:45 a.m.). Putin tells Bush he recognizes that the US has put troops on alert, and makes it clear that he will stand down Russian troops. US forces were ordered to high alert some time between 10:10 and 10:46 a.m. (see (10:10 a.m.)) Bush later describes, “In the past ... had the President put the—raised the DEF CON levels of our troops, Russia would have responded accordingly. There would have been inevitable tension.” Bush therefore describes this phone call as “a moment where it clearly said to me, [President Putin] understands the Cold War is over.” [US President, 10/1/2001; US President, 11/19/2001; CNN, 9/10/2002] Putin also sends a telegram to Bush today, stating: “The series of barbaric terrorist acts, directed against innocent people, has evoked our anger and indignation. ... The whole international community must rally in the fight against terrorism.” [Russian Embassy, 9/17/2001]
11:08
A message sent from Korean Air Flight 85 is misinterpreted to indicate a possible hijacking. At 1:24 p.m., the pilots accidentally issue a hijacking alert as the plane nears Alaska on its way to Anchorage. Two fighters tail the plane, and notify it that it will be shot down unless it avoids populated areas. Strategic sites are evacuated across Alaska. The plane eventually lands safely in Whitehorse, Canada, at 2:54 p.m. [USA Today, 8/12/2002]
11:00
More skyscrapers and tourist attractions are evacuated, including Walt Disney World, Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, Seattle’s Space Needle, and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. [Times Union (Albany), 9/11/2001]
The FAA Command Center is told that all the flights over the United States are accounted for and pilots are complying with controllers. There are 923 planes still in the air over the US. Every commercial flight in US airspace—about a quarter of the planes still in the air—is within 40 miles of its destination. Others are still over the oceans, and many are heading toward Canada. [USA Today, 8/13/2002]
Robert Bonner, the head of Customs and Border Protection, later testifies, “We ran passenger manifests through the system used by Customs—two were hits on our watch list of August 2001.” (This is presumably a reference to hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, watch-listed on August 23, 2001.) “And by looking at the Arab names and their seat locations, ticket purchases and other passenger information, it didn’t take a lot to do a rudimentary link analysis. Customs officers were able to ID 19 probable hijackers within 45 minutes. I saw the sheet by 11 a.m. And that analysis did indeed correctly identify the terrorists.” [New York Observer, 2/11/2004] However, Bonner appears to be at least somewhat incorrect: for two days after the attacks (see September 13, 2001-September 14, 2001), the FBI believes there are only 18 hijackers, and the original list contains some erroneous Arab-sounding names on the flight manifests, such as Adnan Bukhari and Ameer Bukhari. [CNN, 9/13/2001] Some hijacker names, including Mohamed Atta’s, were identified on a reservations computer around 8:30 a.m. (see (Before 8:26 a.m.)), and Richard Clarke was told some of the names were al-Qaeda around 10:00 a.m. (see (9:59 a.m.))
10:55
Colonel Mark Tillman, pilot of Air Force One, is told there is a threat to President Bush’s plane. Tillman has an armed guard placed at his cockpit door while the Secret Service double-checks the identity of everyone on board. Air traffic controllers warn that a suspect airliner is dead ahead, according to Tillman: “Coming out of Sarasota there was one call that said there was an airliner off our nose that they did not have contact with.” Tillman takes evasive action, pulling his plane high above normal traffic. [CBS News, 9/11/2002] Reporters on board notice the rise in elevation. [Dallas Morning News, 8/28/2002; Salon, 9/12/2001] The report is apparently a false alarm.
No fighters escort President Bush’s Air Force One until around this time, but accounts conflict. At 10:32 a.m., Vice President Cheney said it would take until about 11:10 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. to get a fighter escort to Air Force One. [Washington Post, 1/27/2002] However, according to one account, around 10:00 a.m., Air Force One “is joined by an escort of F-16 fighters from a base near Jacksonville, Florida.” [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001] Another report states, “At 10:41 [am.] ... Air Force One headed toward Jacksonville to meet jets scrambled to give the presidential jet its own air cover.” [New York Times, 9/16/2001] But apparently, when Air Force One takes evasive action around 10:55 a.m., there is still no fighter escort. NORAD commander Major General Larry Arnold later says, “We scrambled available airplanes from Tyndall [near Tallahassee and not near Jacksonville, Florida] and then from Ellington in Houston, Texas,” but he does not say when this occurs. [Code One Magazine, 1/2002 Sources: Larry Arnold] In yet another account, two F16s eventually arrive, piloted by Shane Brotherton and Randy Roberts, from Ellington, not from any Florida base. [CBS News, 9/11/2002] The St. Petersburg Times, after interviewing people on Air Force One, estimate the first fighters, from Texas, arrive between 11:00 and 11:20. [St. Petersburg Times, 7/4/2004] By 11:30 a.m., there are six fighters protecting Air Force One. [Sarasota Magazine, 9/19/2001] The BBC, however, reports that the Ellington, Texas, fighters are scrambled at 11:30 a.m., and quotes ABC reporter Ann Compton, inside Air Force One, saying fighters appear out the windows at 11:41 a.m. [BBC, 9/1/2002] Given that two of the seven bases said to have fighters on alert on 9/11 are in Florida (Homestead Air Station, 185 miles from Sarasota; and Tyndall Air Station, 235 miles from Sarasota), why a fighter escort does not reach Air Force One earlier remains unclear. Philip Melanson, author of a book on the Secret Service, comments, “I can’t imagine by what glitch the protection was not provided to Air Force One as soon as it took off. I would have thought there’d be something in place whereby one phone call from the head of the security would get the fighters in the air immediately.” [St. Petersburg Times, 7/4/2004]
10:53
New York’s primary elections, already in progress, are postponed. [CNN, 9/12/2001]
10:45
Wallace Miller, the coroner of Somerset County, is one of the first people to arrive at the Flight 93 crash scene. However, he is surprised by the absence of human remains there. He later says, “If you didn’t know, you would have thought no one was on the plane. You would have thought they dropped them off somewhere.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 217] The only recognizable body part he sees is a piece of spinal cord with five vertebrae attached. He will later tell Australian newspaper The Age, “I’ve seen a lot of highway fatalities where there’s fragmentation. The interesting thing about this particular case is that I haven’t, to this day, 11 months later, seen any single drop of blood. Not a drop.” [Age (Melbourne), 9/9/2002] Dave Fox, a former firefighter, also arrives early at the crash scene, but sees just three chunks of human tissue. He says, “You knew there were people there, but you couldn’t see them.” [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/11/2002] Yet, in the following weeks, hundreds of searchers are able to find about 1,500 scorched human tissue samples, weighing less than 600 pounds—approximately eight percent of the total body mass on Flight 93. Months after 9/11, more remains are found in a secluded cabin, several hundred yards from the crash site. [Washington Post, 5/12/2002]
10:43
According to the 9/11 Commission, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld makes the decision to go to Defcon Three, the “highest alert for the nuclear arsenal in 30 years.” [ABC News, 9/11/2002] His decision is broadcast on the air threat conference call. Then, according to the Commission, “A minute later, Secretary Rumsfeld spoke to the Vice President, and he asked Rumsfeld to run the issue by the President. At 10:45 conferees were told to ‘hold off’ on Defcon 3, but a minute later the order was reinstated. Rumsfeld believed the matter was urgent and, having consulted DOD directives, concluded he had the authority to issue the order and would brief the President. Rumsfeld briefed the President on the decision at 11:15.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 326 and 554] According to other accounts, the US military is put on high alert about 35 minutes earlier than the 9/11 Commission states (see (10:10 a.m.)).
10:42
Two F-16 fighters take off from Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, near Syracuse, NY. The fighters belong to the 174th Fighter Wing, a unit of the New York Air National Guard. A commander from Syracuse had called NORAD offering to help earlier in the morning (see (After 9:03 a.m.)). Three more fighters from the 174th FW will take off from Hancock Field at around 1.30 p.m., and a further two at 3:55 p.m. [Post-Standard (Syracuse), 9/12/2001] The Hancock pilots are ordered to “Identify all aircraft ... Intercept them. Tell them to land. ‘Engage’ them if they [don’t].” [Post-Standard (Syracuse), 9/25/2001] Also at some time this morning, following the attacks, 174th FW officials form a command center to monitor the situation across the US. [Post-Standard (Syracuse), 9/11/2001; Post-Standard (Syracuse), 9/12/2001] 100 of the 174th FW’s staff have spent the last month deployed to Saudi Arabia and are due back this afternoon. However, they are diverted to Canada and arrive back at the base later in the week (see Mid-August-September 11, 2001).
Two F-16s take off from Andrews Air Force Base lightly armed with nothing more than “hot” guns and non-explosive training rounds. Lead pilot Lieutenant Colonel Marc Sasseville flies one; the other pilot is only known by the codename Lucky. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/9/2002] These fighters had been at another base that morning, waiting to be armed with AIM-9 missiles, a process that takes about an hour. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002] Since they took off without the missiles, presumably they could have taken off unarmed much earlier. (The first call for them to scramble came not long after 9:00 a.m.). Two more F-16s, armed with AIM-9 missiles, take off twenty-seven minutes later, at 11:09 a.m. These are apparently piloted by Major Dan Caine and Captain Brandon Rasmussen. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/9/2002; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] F-16s from Richmond, Virginia, and Atlantic City, New Jersey, arrive over Washington a short time later. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/9/2002] The Andrews fighters are apparently the only fighters in the US scrambled before 11:00 with official shootdown authorization, but the first Andrews fighters into the air have no missiles. It is unclear if the Andrews fighters relaunching a few minutes earlier had shootdown orders, but they had no weapons either. It appears the Andrews fighters launching at 11:09 a.m. are the first fighters in the US with both shootdown orders and missiles to use.
Around this time (roughly), the FAA tells the White House that it still cannot account for three planes in addition to the four that have crashed. It takes the FAA another hour and a half to account for these three aircraft. [Time, 9/14/2001] Vice President Cheney later says, “That’s what we started working off of, that list of six, and we could account for two of them in New York. The third one we didn’t know what had happened to. It turned out it had hit the Pentagon, but the first reports on the Pentagon attack suggested a helicopter and then later a private jet.” [Los Angeles Times, 9/17/2001] Amongst false rumors during the day are reports of a bomb aboard a United Airlines jet that just landed in Rockford, Illinois. “Another plane disappears from radar and might have crashed in Kentucky. The reports are so serious that [FAA head Jane] Garvey notifies the White House that there has been another crash. Only later does she learn the reports are erroneous.” [USA Today, 8/13/2002]
After taking off from Andrews Air Force Base, Lt. Col. Marc Sasseville and Captain Heather Penney Garcia are flying at low altitudes over Washington, DC. The three fighters launched from Langley Air Force Base at 9:30 a.m. are flying above them at around 20,000 feet. The Langley pilots are communicating with controllers at NEADS, while the Andrews pilots are communicating with civilian controllers at the FAA. However, both sets of pilots hear a message over a shared channel: “Attention all aircraft monitoring Andrews tower frequency. Andrews and Class Bravo airspace is closed. No general aviation aircraft are permitted to enter Class Bravo airspace. Any infractions will be shot down.” [Filson, 2004, pp. 82]
10:39
Vice President Cheney tries to bring Defense Secretary Rumsfeld up to date over the NMCC’s conference call, as Rumsfeld has just arrived there minutes before. Cheney explains that he has given authorization for hijacked planes to be shot down and that this has been told to the fighter pilots. Rumsfeld asks, “So we’ve got a couple of aircraft up there that have those instructions at the present time?” Cheney replies, “That is correct. And it’s my understanding they’ve already taken a couple of aircraft out.” Then Rumsfeld says, “We can’t confirm that. We’re told that one aircraft is down but we do not have a pilot report that they did it.” Cheney is incorrect that this command has reached the pilots. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
10:38
The 9/11 Commission claims that the first fighters from Andrews Air Force Base scramble at this time and are flying patrol over Washington by 10:45 a.m. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] The three F-16s flying on a training mission in North Carolina, 200 miles away have finally been recalled to their home base at Andrews. As soon as lead pilot Major Billy Hutchison lands and checks in via radio, he is told to take off again immediately. His fighter apparently has no weapons whatsoever. The two other fighters only have training rounds for their guns, and very little fuel. “Hutchison was probably airborne shortly after the alert F-16s from Langley arrive over Washington, although [the] pilots admit their timeline-recall ‘is fuzzy.’” The officer who sent Hutchison off “told him to ‘do exactly what ATC asks you to do.’ Primarily, he was to go ID [identify] that unknown [aircraft] that everybody was so excited about [Flight 93]. He blasted off and flew a standard departure route, which took him over the Pentagon.” Flight 93 crashed half an hour before this; it is unclear how the Andrews base could still not know it crashed by this time. The pilots later say that, had all else failed, they would have rammed into Flight 93, had they reached it in time. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/9/2002]
10:36
A Secret Service agent again contacts Andrews Air Force Base and commands, “Get in the air now!” It’s not clear if this is treated as an official scramble order, or how quickly fighters respond to it. According to fighter pilot Lieutenant Colonel Marc Sasseville, almost simultaneously, a call from someone else in the White House declares the Washington area “a free-fire zone. That meant we were given authority to use force, if the situation required it, in defense of the nation’s capital, its property, and people.” [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/9/2002] Apparently, this second call is made to General David Wherley, flight commander of the Air National Guard at Andrews, who has made several phone calls this morning, seeking airborne authorization for his fighters. Wherley had contacted the Secret Service after hearing reports that it wanted fighters airborne. One Secret Service agent, using two telephones at once, relays instructions to Wherley from another Secret Service agent in the White House who has been given the instructions from Vice President Cheney. Wherley’s fighters are to protect the White House and shoot down any planes that threaten Washington. Wherley gives Lieutenant Colonel Marc Sasseville, lead pilot, the authority to decide whether to execute a shootdown. According to a different account, during this call Wherley is speaking with a woman in the Secret Service’s command and control center at the White House. Wherley says, “She was standing next to the vice president (Dick Cheney) and she said, ‘They want you to put a CAP up.’ Basically what they told me, and this is another one of those things that’s clear in my mind ... ‘We want you to intercept any airplane that attempts to fly closer than 20 miles around any airport around the Washington area. ... Attempt to turn them away, do whatever you can to turn them away and if they won’t turn away use whatever force is necessary ... to keep them from hitting a building downtown.’” President Bush and Vice President Cheney later claim they were not aware that any fighters had scrambled from Andrews at the request of the Secret Service. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004; Filson, 2004, pp. 79] Sasseville and the pilot code-named Lucky will take off at 10:42 a.m. (see (10:42 a.m.))
10:35
Air Force One turns toward a new destination of Barksdale Air Force Base, near Shreveport, Louisiana, in response to a decision that Bush should not go directly to Washington. [CBS News, 9/11/2002; Washington Post, 1/27/2002]
10:32
Russian President Vladimir Putin phones the White House, wanting to speak with the US president. With Bush not there, Condoleezza Rice takes the call. Putin tells her that the Russians are voluntarily standing down a military exercise they are conducting, as a gesture of solidarity with the United States. [Washington Post, 1/27/2002] The Russian exercise began on September 10 in the Russian arctic and North Pacific oceans, and was scheduled to last until September 14. [NORAD, 9/9/2001; Washington Times, 9/11/2001] It involved Russian bombers staging a mock attack against NATO planes that are supposedly planning an assault on Russia. [BBC Worldwide, 2001, pp. 161] Subsequently, Putin manages to talk to Bush while he is aboard Air Force One (see (After 11:15 a.m.)).
Vice President Cheney reportedly calls President Bush and tells him of a threat to Air Force One and that it will take 40-90 minutes to get a protective fighter escort in place. Many doubt the existence of this threat. For instance, Representative Martin Meehan (D) says, “I don’t buy the notion Air Force One was a target. That’s just PR, that’s just spin.” [Washington Times, 10/8/2002] A later account calls the threat “completely untrue,” and says Cheney probably made the story up. A well-informed, anonymous Washington official says, “It did two things for [Cheney]. It reinforced his argument that the president should stay out of town, and it gave George W. an excellent reason for doing so.” [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001]
10:31
The FAA allows “military and law enforcement flights to resume (and some flights that the FAA can’t reveal that were already airborne).” All civilian, military, and law enforcement flights were ordered at 9:26 a.m. to land as soon as reasonably possible. [Time, 9/14/2001] Civilian flights remain banned until September 13. Note that the C-130 cargo plane that witnessed the Flight 77 crash (see 9.36 a.m.) and which came upon the Flight 93 crash site (see 10:08 a.m.) right after it had crashed was apparently not subject to the grounding order issued about an hour earlier.
According to the 9/11 Commission, NORAD Commander Major General Larry Arnold instructs his staff to broadcast the following message over a NORAD chat log: “10:31 Vice President [Cheney] has cleared us to intercept tracks of interest and shoot them down (see 10:14 a.m.) if they do not respond, per CONR CC [General Arnold].” NEADS first learns of the shootdown order from this message. However, NEADS does not pass the order to the fighter pilots in New York City and Washington. NEADS leaders later say they do not pass it on because they are unsure how the pilots should proceed with this guidance. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] The pilots flying over New York City claim they are never given a formal shootdown order that day.
10:30
Acting Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers enters the NMCC, though exactly when this happens remains unclear. According to his own statements, he was on Capitol Hill, in the offices of Senator Max Cleland (D) from the time just prior to the first WTC attack until around the time the Pentagon was hit (see (After 8:48 a.m.)). However, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke claims Myers takes part in a video conference for much of the morning. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, who enters the NMCC around 10:30 a.m., claims that as he entered, Myers “had just returned from Capitol Hill.” [9/11 Commission, 3/23/2004 Sources: Donald Rumsfeld, Richard A. Clarke] In Myers’ testimony before the 9/11 Commission, he fails to mention where he was or what he was doing from the time of the Pentagon crash until about 10:30 a.m., except to say, “I went back to my duty station. And we—what we started doing at that time was to say, ‘OK, we’ve had these attacks. Obviously they’re hostile acts. Not sure at that point who perpetrated them.’” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] These discrepancies in Myers’ whereabouts remain unresolved.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, missing for at least 30 minutes, finally enters the NMCC, where the military’s response to the 9/11 attacks is being coordinated. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004; CNN, 9/4/2002] Rumsfeld later claims that he only started to gain a situational awareness of what was happening after arriving at the NMCC. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Rumsfeld was in his office only 200 feet away from the NMCC until the Pentagon crash at 9:37 a.m. (see 9:37 a.m.). His activities during this period are unclear. He went outside to the Flight 77 crash site and then stayed somewhere else in the Pentagon until his arrival at the NMCC. Brigadier General Montague Winfield later says, “For 30 minutes we couldn’t find him. And just as we began to worry, he walked into the door of the [NMCC].” [ABC News, 9/11/2002] Winfield himself apparently only shows up at the NMCC around 10:30 a.m. as well.
Vice President Cheney and others in the White House bunker are given a report of another airplane heading toward Washington. Cheney’s Chief of Staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, later states, “We learn that a plane is five miles out and has dropped below 500 feet and can’t be found; it’s missing.” Believing they only have a minute or two before the plane crashes into Washington, Cheney orders fighters to engage the plane, saying, “Take it out.” However, reports that this is another hijacking are mistaken. It is learned later that day that a Medevac helicopter five miles away was mistaken for a hijacked plane. [Newsweek, 12/31/2001; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
10:28
The World Trade Center’s North Tower collapses. It was hit by Flight 11 at 8:46, 102 minutes earlier. [MSNBC, 9/22/2001; CNN, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001; Associated Press, 8/19/2002; Kim and Baum, 2002 pdf file] The death toll could have been much worse—an estimated 15,000 people made it out of the WTC to safety after 8:46 a.m. [St. Petersburg Times, 9/8/2002]
According to Captain Michael Currid, the sergeant at arms for the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, some time after the collapse of the North Tower, he sees four or five fire companies trying to extinguish fires in Building 7 of the WTC. Someone from the city’s Office of Emergency Management tells him that WTC 7 is in serious danger of collapse. Currid says, “The consensus was that it was basically a lost cause and we should not lose anyone else trying to save it.” Along with some others, he goes inside WTC 7 and yells up the stairwells to the fire fighters, “Drop everything and get out!” [Murphy, 2002, pp. 175-176] Although Currid doesn’t say exactly at what time this occurs, it is later reported that at 12:10 to 12:15 p.m. fire fighters find individuals inside the building and lead them out. [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 6/2004, pp. L-18 pdf file] So presumably it is some time after this when they call the fire fighters to evacuate. However, contradicting this account, one report later claims, “Given the limited water supply and the first strategic priority, which was to search for survivors in the rubble, FDNY did not fight the fires [in WTC 7].” [Fire Engineering, 9/2002] And a 2002 government report says, “the firefighters made the decision fairly early on not to attempt to fight the fires, due in part to the damage to WTC 7 from the collapsing towers.” [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002, pp. 5-21] Building 7 eventually collapses late in the afternoon of 9/11 (see (5:20 p.m.)).
10:24
Jane Garvey, head of the FAA, orders the diversion of all international flights with US destinations. Most flights are diverted to Canada. [Time, 9/14/2001; MSNBC, 9/22/2001; CNN, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001]
10:20
United Airlines headquarters receives confirmation that Flight 93 has crashed from the airport manager in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. [9/11 Commission, 1/27/2004] Cleveland flight control had confirmation of the crash at 10:08 a.m. (see 10:08 a.m.)
Patrick Madigan, the commander of the Somerset Barracks of the Pennsylvania State Police, arrives at the Flight 93 crash scene around 10:20 a.m. [Department of the Army and the Air Force National Guard Bureau, 2002 pdf file] He says that at some point later in the day (he does not specify a time), a “strange incident” occurs: “We were there at the site and an airplane started circling. It was a jetliner circling the crash site very low. No one knew what to expect because we knew that all of the planes were supposedly grounded.” (The FAA had, at about 9:45 a.m., ordered that all aircraft be instructed to land at the nearest airport (see (9:45 a.m.)).) After a few minutes of uncertainty, it is announced that the plane is carrying United Airlines executives, who are circling the site to view it before they land in nearby Johnstown. [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 63] Another low-flying jet plane was witnessed over the site earlier on, around the time Flight 93 went down (see (Before and After 10:06 a.m.)).
10:17
The National Military Command Center (NMCC) has been conducting an interagency teleconference to coordinate the nation’s response to the hijackings since 9:29 a.m. Yet the 9/11 Commission Reports that the FAA is unable to join the call until this time, apparently due to technical difficulties. NORAD asked three times before the last hijacked plane crashed for the FAA to provide a hijacking update to the teleconference. None were given, since no FAA representative was there. When an FAA representative finally joins in, that person has no proper experience, no access to decision makers, and no information known to senior FAA officials at the time. Furthermore, the highest-level Defense Department officials rely on this conference and do not talk directly with senior FAA officials. As a result, the leaders of NORAD and the FAA are effectively out of contact with each other during the entire crisis. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
10:15
Fire and rescue workers at the Pentagon in response to the attack are evacuated to a nearby highway overpass, due to the warning of another hijacked aircraft flying towards Washington, DC, currently 20 minutes away. The warning is passed on by Special Agent Chris Combs, the FBI’s representative at the Pentagon crash site. Combs received this information from the FBI’s Washington Field Office, which is in direct contact with the FAA. According to a report put out by the government of Arlington County, Virginia, updates are announced of the approaching aircraft “until the last warning when [it] went below radar coverage in Pennsylvania, an estimated 4 minutes flying time from the Pentagon.” [US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. A30; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 315] Yet if the timing of this account is correct, the approaching plane could not have been Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania considerably earlier (see (10:03-10:10 a.m.)).
The front section of the Pentagon that had been hit by Flight 77 collapses. [CNN, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001] A few minutes prior to its collapse, firefighters saw warning signs and sounded a general evacuation tone. No firefighters were injured. [NFPA Journal, 11/1/2001]
According to the 9/11 Commission, NEADS calls Washington flight control at this time. Asked about Flight 93, flight control responds, “He’s down.” It is clarified that the plane crashed “somewhere up northeast of Camp David.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
The FBI has issued a warning that a plane originating in San Diego might be hijacked and specifically targeting Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, where NORAD’s operations center is located. In response, the massive steel doors designed to protect the mountain from a nuclear blast are closed for the first time in its history. One report suggests, however, that these doors are closed in response to the US military being put on high alert (see (10:10 a.m.)). The NORAD operations center is also informed that a Ryder rental truck driven by “Arab-looking men” and packed with explosives is heading their way. Lt. Col. William Glover, chief of NORAD’s air defense operations, says, “It didn’t make sense, but those phone calls were happening.” [Toronto Star, 12/9/2001; Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002; BBC, 9/1/2002]
10:14
According to the 9/11 Commission, beginning at this time, the White House repeatedly conveys to the NMCC that Vice President Cheney confirmed fighters were cleared to engage the inbound aircraft if they could verify that the aircraft was hijacked. However, the authorization fails to reach the pilots. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
10:13
More prominent buildings in Washington begin evacuation. The United Nations building in New York City evacuates first; many federal buildings follow later. [CNN, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001] Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke apparently began arranging these evacuations a short time before this. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 14-15]
The 9/11 Commission later concludes that if Flight 93 had not crashed, it would probably have reached Washington around this time. The commission notes that there are only three fighters over Washington at this time, all from Langley, Virginia. However, the pilots of these fighters were never briefed about why they were scrambled. As the lead pilot explained, “I reverted to the Russian threat... I’m thinking cruise missile threat from the sea. You know, you look down and see the Pentagon burning and I thought the b_stards snuck one by us. ... You couldn’t see any airplanes, and no one told us anything.” The pilots knew their mission was to identify and divert aircraft flying within a certain radius of Washington, but did not know that the threat came from hijacked planes. In addition, the commission notes that NEADS did not know where Flight 93 was when it crashed, and wonders if they would have determined its location and passed it on the pilots before the plane reached Washington. They conclude, “NORAD officials have maintained that they would have intercepted and shot down United 93. We are not so sure.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
10:10
All US military forces are ordered to Defcon Three (or Defcon Delta), “The highest alert for the nuclear arsenal in 30 years.” [ABC News, 9/11/2002; CNN, 9/4/2002; Clarke, 2004, pp. 15; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001] Rumsfeld claims that he makes the recommendation, but it is hard to see how he can do this, at least at this time. He later asserts that he discusses the issue with acting Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers in the NMCC first. However, they do not arrive at the PEOC until about 10:30 a.m. [9/11 Commission, 3/23/2004] At 10:15 a.m., the massive blast doors to US Strategic Command, headquarters for NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, are closed for the first time in response to the high alert. [BBC, 9/1/2002; Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002] In another account, acting Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers gives the Defcon order by himself. President Bush later contradicts both accounts, asserting that he gives the order. [Wall Street Journal, 3/22/2004] According to the 9/11 Commission’s final report, though, the decision to go to Defcon Three takes place about 35 minutes later (see (10:43 a.m.)).
The Secret Service, viewing projected path information about Flight 93, rather than actual radar returns, does not realize that Flight 93 has already crashed. Based on this erroneous information, a military aide tells Vice President Cheney and others in the White House bunker that the plane is 80 miles away from Washington. Cheney is asked for authority to engage the plane, and he quickly provides authorization. The aide returns a few minutes later and says the plane is 60 miles out. Cheney again gives authorization to engage. A few minutes later and presumably after the flight has crashed or been shot down, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten suggests Cheney contact President Bush to confirm the engage order. Bolten later tells the 9/11 Commission that he had not heard any prior discussion on the topic with Bush, and wanted to make sure Bush knew. Apparently, Cheney calls Bush and obtains confirmation. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] However, there is controversy over whether Bush approved a shootdown before this incident or whether Cheney gave himself the authority to make the decision on the spot. As Newsweek notes, it is moot point in one sense, since the decision was made on false data and there is no plane to shoot down. [Newsweek, 6/20/2004]
10:08
Armed agents deploy around the White House. [CNN, 9/12/2001]
Cleveland flight controller Stacey Taylor has asked a nearby C-130 pilot to look at Flight 93’s last position and see if they can find anything. Remarkably, this C-130 pilot is the same pilot who was asked by flight control to observe Flight 77 as it crashed in Washington earlier (see 9.36 a.m.). He tells Taylor that he saw smoke from the crash shortly after the hijacked plane went down. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004; MSNBC, 9/11/2002; Guardian, 10/17/2001]
According to the 9/11 Commission, the FAA Command Center reports to FAA headquarters at this time that Flight 93 has crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside. “It hit the ground. That’s what they’re speculating, that’s speculation only.” The Command Center confirms that Flight 93 crashed at 10:17 a.m. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004; MSNBC, 9/11/2002; Guardian, 10/17/2001]
According to the 9/11 Commission, the NEADS Mission Crew Commander is sorting out the orders given to the Langley fighter pilots. The Commander does not know that Flight 93 had been heading toward Washington or that it had crashed. He explicitly instructs the Langley fighters that they cannot shoot down aircraft—they have “negative clearance to shoot” aircraft over Washington. Authorization to shoot down hijacked civilian aircraft only reaches NEADS at 10:31 a.m. (see 10:31 a.m.) Even then, the authorization is not passed on to the pilots. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
10:07
According to the 9/11 Commission, NEADS finally receives a call from Cleveland flight control about Flight 93. Cleveland passes on the plane’s last known latitude and longitude. NEADS is unable to locate it on radar because it has already crashed. By the commission’s account, this is NORAD’s first notification about the Flight 93 hijacking, even though Cleveland realized Flight 93 was hijacked at 9:32 a.m., 35 minutes earlier, and notified FAA headquarters at 9:34 a.m., 33 minutes earlier. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
Despite the apparent lack of plane wreckage and human remains at the Flight 93 crash site (see (After 10:06 a.m.))(see 10:45 a.m.), a large amount of paper debris is found there, mostly intact. Faye Hahn, an EMT who responds to the initial call for help, finds “pieces of mail” everywhere. [McCall, 2002, pp. 31-32] Roger Bailey of the Somerset Volunteer Fire Department finds mail “scattered everywhere” around the site. He says, “I guess there were 5,000 pounds of mail on board.” [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 38] Some envelopes are burned, but others are undamaged. Flight 93 had reportedly been carrying a cargo of thousands of pounds of US mail. [Longman, 2002, pp. 213-214] Whether this is later examined as crime scene evidence is unclear: According to Bailey, over subsequent days, whenever a lot of this mail has been recovered, the post office will be called and a truck will come to take it away. Several of the first responders at the crash site also see an unscorched bible lying open on the ground, about 15 yards from the crash crater. [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 43, 110 and 129; Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 6/13/2006] Local coroner Wallace Miller will later come across a second bible at the warehouse where the Flight 93 victims’ belongings are kept. [Washington Post, 5/12/2002] Other paper debris rains down on the nearby Indian Lake Marina (see (Before 10:06 a.m.)). According to witness Tom Spinelli, this is “mainly mail,” and also includes “bits of in-flight magazine.” [Mirror, 9/12/2002] Other paper items will be recovered from the crash site in the following days. These include a fragment of Ziad Jarrah’s passport and a business card linking al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui to the 9/11 hijackers. [CNN, 8/1/2002; Washington Post, 9/25/2002]
10:06
In the tiny town of Boswell, about ten miles north and slightly to the west of Flight 93’s crash site, Rodney Peterson and Brandon Leventry notice a passenger jet lumbering through the sky at about 2,000 feet. They realize such a big plane flying so low in that area is odd. They see the plane dip its wings sharply to the left, then to the right. The wings level off and the plane keeps flying south, continuing to descend slowly. Five minutes later, they hear news that the plane has crashed. Other witnesses also later describe the plane flying east-southeast, low, and wobbly. [Longman, 2002, pp. 205-206; New York Times, 9/14/2001] “Officials initially say that it looks like the plane was headed south when it hit the ground.” [News Channel 5 (Cleveland), 9/11/2001]
Shortly after 9/11, NORAD claims that there is a fighter 100 miles away from Flight 93 when it crashes. However, no details, such as who the pilot is, or which base or direction the fighter is coming from, are ever given by NORAD. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001] CBS television reports that two F-16 fighters were tailing the flight and within 60 miles of the plane when it crashed. [CBS News, 9/16/2001; Independent, 8/13/2002] Shortly after 9/11, an unnamed New England flight controller ignores a ban on controllers speaking to the media, reportedly claiming “that an F-16 fighter closely pursued Flight 93 ... the F-16 made 360-degree turns to remain close to the commercial jet.” He adds that the fighter pilot “must’ve seen the whole thing.” He reportedly learned this from speaking to controllers nearer to the crash. [Associated Press, 9/13/2001; Telegraph (Nashua), 9/13/2001] However, a Cleveland flight controller named Stacey Taylor later claims to have not seen any fighters on radar around the crash. [MSNBC, 9/11/2002] Major General Paul Weaver, director of the Air National Guard, had previously claimed that no military planes were sent after Flight 93. [Seattle Times, 9/16/2001] A different explanation by ABC News says, “The closest fighters are two F-16 pilots on a training mission from Selfridge Air National Guard Base” near Detroit, Michigan. These are ordered after Flight 93, even though they reportedly aren’t armed with any weapons. The two pilots, Lt. Col. Tom Froling and Major Douglas Champagne, have just fired the last of their 20mm cannon ammunition during their training mission. They are oblivious to what has happened in New York and Washington, but have heard unusual conversation over their radio frequencies. It is claimed they are supposed to crash into Flight 93 if they cannot persuade it to land. [ABC News, 8/30/2002; ABC News, 9/11/2002; Filson, 2004, pp. 68] However, these fighters apparently are not diverted from Michigan until after Flight 93 crashes at 10:06 a.m.
Flight 93 apparently starts to break up before it crashes, because debris is found very far away from the crash site. [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/15/2001] The plane is generally obliterated upon landing, except for one half-ton piece of engine found some distance away. Some reports indicate that the engine piece was found over a mile away. [Independent, 8/13/2002] The FBI reportedly acknowledges that this piece was found “a considerable distance” from the crash site. [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/15/2001] Later, the FBI will cordon off a three-mile wide area around the crash, as well as another area six to eight miles from the initial crash site. [CNN, 9/13/2001] One story calls what happened to this engine “intriguing, because the heat-seeking, air-to-air Sidewinder missiles aboard an F-16 would likely target one of the Boeing 757’s two large engines.” [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/15/2001] Smaller debris fields are also found two, three, and eight miles away from the main crash site. [Independent, 8/13/2002; Mirror, 9/12/2002] Eight miles away, local media quote residents speaking of a second plane in the area and burning debris falling from the sky. [Reuters, 9/13/2001] Residents outside Shanksville reported “discovering clothing, books, papers, and what appeared to be human remains. Some residents said they collected bags-full of items to be turned over to investigators. Others reported what appeared to be crash debris floating in Indian Lake, nearly six miles from the immediate crash scene. Workers at Indian Lake Marina said that they saw a cloud of confetti-like debris descend on the lake and nearby farms minutes after hearing the explosion...” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/13/2001] Moments after the crash, Carol Delasko initially thinks someone had blown up a boat on Indian Lake: “It just looked like confetti raining down all over the air above the lake.” [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/14/2001] Investigators say that far-off wreckage “probably was spread by the cloud created when the plane crashed and dispersed by a ten mph southeasterly wind.” [News Journal (Wilmington, DE), 9/16/2001] However, much of the wreckage is found sooner than that wind could have carried it, and not always southeast.
Numerous eyewitnesses see and hear Flight 93 just before its crash:
- Terry Butler, at Stoystown: He sees the plane come out of the clouds, low to the ground. “It was moving like you wouldn’t believe. Next thing I knew it makes a heck of a sharp, right-hand turn.” It banks to the right and appears to be trying to climb to clear one of the ridges, but it continues to turn to the right and then veers behind a ridge. About a second later it crashes. [St. Petersburg Times, 9/12/2001] Accounts of the plane making strange noises:
- Laura Temyer of Hooversville: “I didn’t see the plane but I heard the plane’s engine. Then I heard a loud thump that echoed off the hills and then I heard the plane’s engine. I heard two more loud thumps and didn’t hear the plane’s engine anymore after that.” (She insists that people she knows in state law enforcement have privately told her the plane was shot down, and that decompression sucked objects from the aircraft, explaining why there was a wide debris field.) [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/15/2001]
- Charles Sturtz, a half-mile from the crash site: The plane is heading southeast and has its engines running. No smoke can be seen. “It was really roaring, you know. Like it was trying to go someplace, I guess.” [WPXI 11 (Pittsburgh), 9/13/2001]
- Michael Merringer, two miles from the crash site: “I heard the engine gun two different times and then I heard a loud bang...” [Associated Press, 9/12/2001]
- Tim Lensbouer, 300 yards away: “I heard it for ten or 15 seconds and it sounded like it was going full bore.” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/12/2001] Accounts of the plane flying upside down:
- Rob Kimmel, several miles from the crash site: He sees it fly overhead, banking hard to the right. It is 200 feet or less off the ground as it crests a hill to the southeast. “I saw the top of the plane, not the bottom.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 210-211] Eric Peterson of Lambertsville: He sees a plane flying overhead unusually low. The plane seemed to be turning end-over-end as it dropped out of sight behind a tree line. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/12/2001]
- Bob Blair of Stoystown: He sees the plane spiraling and flying upside down, not much higher than the treetops, before crashing. [Daily American, 9/12/2001] Accounts of a sudden plunge and more strange sounds:
- An unnamed witness says he hears two loud bangs before watching the plane take a downward turn of nearly 90 degrees. [News Channel 5 (Cleveland), 9/11/2001]
- Tom Fritz, about a quarter-mile from the crash site: He hears a sound that “wasn’t quite right” and looks up in the sky. “It dropped all of a sudden, like a stone,” going “so fast that you couldn’t even make out what color it was.” [St. Petersburg Times, 9/12/2001]
- Terry Butler, a few miles north of Lambertsville: “It dropped out of the clouds.” The plane rose slightly, trying to gain altitude, then “it just went flip to the right and then straight down.” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/12/2001]
- Lee Purbaugh, 300 yards away: “There was an incredibly loud rumbling sound and there it was, right there, right above my head—maybe 50 feet up. ... I saw it rock from side to side then, suddenly, it dipped and dived, nose first, with a huge explosion, into the ground. I knew immediately that no one could possibly have survived.” [Independent, 8/13/2002] Upside down and a sudden plunge:
- Linda Shepley: She hears a loud bang and sees the plane bank to the side. [ABC News, 9/11/2001] She sees the plane wobbling right and left, at a low altitude of roughly 2,500 feet, when suddenly the right wing dips straight down, and the plane plunges into the earth. She says she has an unobstructed view of Flight 93’s final two minutes. [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/15/2001]
- Kelly Leverknight in Stony Creek Township of Shanksville: “There was no smoke, it just went straight down. I saw the belly of the plane.” It sounds like it is flying low, and it’s heading east. [Daily American, 9/12/2001; St. Petersburg Times, 9/12/2001]
- Tim Thornsberg, working in a nearby strip mine: “It came in low over the trees and started wobbling. Then it just rolled over and was flying upside down for a few seconds ... and then it kind of stalled and did a nose dive over the trees.” [WPXI 11 (Pittsburgh), 9/13/2001] Some claim that these witness accounts support the idea that Flight 93 is hit by a missile. [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/15/2001] While this theory certainly can be disputed, it is worth noting that some passenger planes hit by missiles continued to fly erratically for several minutes before crashing. For instance, a Korean Airline 747 was hit by two Russian missiles in 1983, yet continued to fly for two more minutes. [Korean Air, 8/31/1983]
Flight 93 crashes into an empty field just north of the Somerset County Airport, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, 124 miles or 15 minutes from Washington, D.C. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; Guardian, 10/17/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; MSNBC, 9/3/2002; USA Today, 8/13/2002; Associated Press, 8/19/2002; CNN, 9/12/2001] The point of impact is a reclaimed coal mine, known locally as the Diamond T Mine, that was reportedly abandoned in 1996. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/12/2001; St. Petersburg Times, 9/12/2001; Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/11/2002] Being “reclaimed” means the earth had been excavated down to the coal seam, the coal removed, and then the earth replaced and planted over. [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 121] A US Army authorized seismic study times the crash at five seconds after 10:06 a.m. [Kim and Baum, 2002 pdf file; San Francisco Chronicle, 12/9/2002] As mentioned previously, the timing of this crash is disputed and it may well occur at 10:03 a.m., 10:07 a.m., or 10:10 a.m.
Soon after Flight 93 has crashed, Sherry Stalley, who is a reporter with a Johnstown, Pennsylvania, television station, is traveling in a car and hears a dispatch over the scanner (a type of radio receiver used by reporters), reporting that apparently another plane, possibly with a bomb onboard, is heading towards the Johnstown airport (located about 14 miles north of the Flight 93 crash site). According to Stalley, “The scanner was jammed with talk. Emergency crews and firefighters were being sent to the airport. Police were being dispatched to shut down roads. Every available unit within a thirty-mile radius was asked to help.” [Gilbert et al., 2002, pp. 111] The control tower at the Johnstown airport was evacuated at around 10 a.m., following reports of a suspect aircraft heading towards it (see (Between 9:40 and 10:00 a.m.)).
At some point after Flight 93 crashes, NORAD diverts “unarmed Michigan Air National Guard fighter jets that happened to be flying a training mission in northern Michigan since the time of the first attack.” [Associated Press, 8/30/2002] The 9/11 Commission concludes these fighters and fighters from Ohio are scrambled for Delta Flight 1989, a flight that was never hijacked or even out of contact. Meanwhile, reportedly, no fighters are scrambled after Flight 93 at all, which has already crashed. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke is told by an aide, “Secret Service reports a hostile aircraft ten minutes out.” Two minutes later, he is given an update: “Hostile aircraft eight minutes out.” In actual fact, when Flight 93 crashes at 10:06 a.m., it’s still about 15 minutes away from Washington. Clarke is also told that there are 3,900 aircraft still in the air over the Continental US (which is roughly accurate); four of those aircraft are believed to be piloted by terrorists (which is inaccurate by this time). Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Richard Myers then reports, “We have three F-16s from Langley over the Pentagon. Andrews is launching fighters from the D.C. Air National Guard. We have fighters aloft from the Michigan Air National Guard, moving east toward a potential hostile over Pennsylvania. Six fighters from Tyndall and Ellington are en route to rendezvous with Air Force One over Florida. They will escort it to Barksdale.” [Clarke, 2004, pp. 8-9; North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001] However, fighters do not meet up with Air Force One until about an hour later. Franklin Miller, a senior national security official who worked alongside Clarke on 9/11, and another official there, later fail to recall hearing any aide warning that a plane could be only minutes away. [New York Times, 3/30/2004] The time of this incident is not given, but the Michigan fighters are not diverted until after 10:06 a.m. (see (After 10:06 a.m.)). If this takes place after 10:06 a.m., it would parallel similar warnings about Flight 93 after it has already crashed provided to Vice President Cheney elsewhere in the White House.
Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke is told by an aide, “United 93 is down, crashed outside of Pittsburgh. It’s odd. Appears not to have hit anything much on the ground.” The timing of this event is unclear. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 14-15]
President Bush is told that Flight 93 crashed a few minutes after it happened, but the exact timing of this notice is unclear. Because of Vice President Cheney’s earlier order, he asks, “Did we shoot it down or did it crash?” Several hours later, he is assured that it crashed. [Washington Post, 1/27/2002]
According to Newsweek, “shortly after the suicide attacks,” US intelligence picks up communications among bin Laden associates relaying the message: “we’ve hit the targets.” [Newsweek, 9/13/2001]
The local structure most severely damaged when Flight 93 crashes in rural Pennsylvania is a stone cottage, an estimated 1,000 feet from the crash site. Located within thick trees, the cottage belongs to Barry Hoover who is away at work at the time of the crash. Reportedly, “every window and door” has been “blown off and obliterated, its ceilings and floor tiles had been blasted loose and much of the interior was wrecked.” Hoover describes it as “like what you see after a tornado or hurricane goes through—a total ruin.” The garage adjacent to it has its door blown off by the shockwave from the crash. According to Somerset County Solicitor Dan Rullo, “The way it was described to me was that it must have been blown up, the springs snapped, and it came back upside down.” The surrounding area is scattered with remains and debris. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/14/2001; Washington Post, 5/12/2002; Kashurba, 2002, pp. 122]
Posted by jeff at 10:06 AM | TrackBack
10:03
According to the 9/11 Commission, the NMCC learns about the Flight 93 hijacking at this time. Since the FAA has not yet been patched in to the NMCC’s conference call, the news comes from the White House. The White House learned about it from the Secret Service, and the Secret Service learned about it from the FAA. NORAD apparently is still unaware. Four minutes later, a NORAD representative on the conference call states, “NORAD has no indication of a hijack heading to Washington, D.C., at this time.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
Exactly when Flight 93 crashes remains unclear. According to NORAD, Flight 93 crashes at 10:03 a.m. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001] The 9/11 Commission gives an exact time of 11 seconds after 10:03 a.m. They claim this “time is supported by evidence from the staff’s radar analysis, the flight data recorder, NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] analysis, and infrared satellite data.” They do note that “[t]he precise crash time has been the subject of some dispute.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] However, a seismic study authorized by the US Army to determine when the plane crashed concluded that the crash happened at 10:06:05 a.m. [Kim and Baum, 2002 pdf file; San Francisco Chronicle, 12/9/2002] The discrepancy is so puzzling that the Philadelphia Daily News publishes an article on the issue, titled “Three-Minute Discrepancy in Tape.” It notes that leading seismologists agree on the 10:06 a.m. time, give or take a couple of seconds. [Philadelphia Daily News, 9/16/2002] The New York Observer notes that, in addition to the seismology study, “The FAA gives a crash time of 10:07 a.m. In addition, the New York Times, drawing on flight controllers in more than one FAA facility, put the time at 10:10 a.m. Up to a seven-minute discrepancy? In terms of an air disaster, seven minutes is close to an eternity. The way our nation has historically treated any airline tragedy is to pair up recordings from the cockpit and air-traffic control and parse the timeline down to the hundredths of a second. However, as [former Inspector General of the Transportation Department] Mary Schiavo points out, ‘We don’t have an NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigation here, and they ordinarily dissect the timeline to the thousandth of a second.’” [New York Observer, 2/11/2004] (Note that this work uses 10:06 a.m. as the most likely time of the crash, detailed below).
Posted by jeff at 10:03 AM | TrackBack
10:02
Vice President Cheney and other leaders now in the White House bunker begin receiving reports from the Secret Service of a presumably hijacked aircraft heading toward Washington. The Secret Service is getting this information about Flight 93 through links to the FAA. However, they are looking at a projected path, not an actual radar return, so they do not realize that the plane crashes minutes later. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
The cockpit voice recording of Flight 93 was recorded on a 30-minute reel, which means that the tape is continually overwritten and only the final 30 minutes of any flight would be recorded. The government later permits relatives to hear this tape. Apparently, the version of the tape played to the family members begins at 9:31 a.m. and runs for 31 minutes, ending one minute before, according to the government, the plane crashes. [CNN, 4/19/2002; Longman, 2002, pp. 206-207] The New York Observer comments, “Some of the relatives are keen to find out why, at the peak of this struggle, the tape suddenly stops recording voices and all that is heard in the last 60 seconds or so is engine noise. Had the tape been tampered with?” [New York Observer, 6/17/2004]
According to the 9/11 Commission, a Flight 93 hijacker says, “Pull it down! Pull it down!” The airplane rolls onto its back as one of the hijackers shouts, “Allah o akbar! Allah o akbar!” The commission comments, “The hijackers remained at the controls but must have judged that the passengers were only seconds from overcoming them.” Presumably the plane crashes seconds later. [San Francisco Chronicle, 7/23/2004] However, there are questions as to whether the voice recording actually ends at this time. Furthermore, there is a near complete disconnect between these quotes and the quotes given in previous accounts of what the cockpit recording revealed (see (9:57 a.m. and After)). For instance, in other accounts, passenger voices saying, “Give it to me!,” “I’m injured,” and “Roll it up” or “Lift it up” are heard just before the recording ends. [MSNBC, 7/30/2002; Daily Telegraph, 8/6/2002; Newsweek, 11/25/2001; Observer, 12/2/2001; Longman, 2002, pp. 270-271]
Posted by jeff at 10:02 AM | TrackBack
10:01
Bill Wright is piloting a small plane when a flight controller asks him to look around outside his window, according to his later claims. He sees Flight 93 three miles away—close enough that Wright can see the United Airlines colors. Flight control asks him the plane’s altitude, and then commands him to get away from the plane and land immediately. Wright sees the plane rock back and forth three or four times before he flies from the area. [Pittsburgh Channel, 9/19/2001] According to the 9/11 Commission, the FAA Command Center tells FAA headquarters that a nearby plane had seen Flight 93 “waving his wings.” The commission says, “The aircraft had witnessed the radical gyrations in what we believe was the hijackers’ effort to defeat the passenger assault.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] This presumably is a reference to Wright.
NORAD orders F-16 fighters to scramble from Toledo, Ohio. Although the base has no fighters on standby alert status, it manages to put fighters in the air 16 minutes later, a “phenomenal” response time—but still ten minutes after the last hijacked plane has crashed. [Toledo Blade, 12/9/2001] The 9/11 Commission concludes these fighters, along with fighters from Michigan, are scrambled to go after Delta Flight 1989. (Delta Flight 1989 was not out of contact with air traffic controllers, and was not hijacked.) Meanwhile, according to the 9/11 Commission, no fighters are ever scrambled to intercept Flight 93. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
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10:00
The transponder for Flight 93 briefly turns back on. The plane is at 7,000 feet. The transponder stays on until about 10:03 a.m. It is unclear why the transponder signal briefly returns. [MSNBC, 9/11/2002; Guardian, 10/17/2001]
Flight 93 passenger Elizabeth Wainio says to her stepmother, “Mom, they’re rushing the cockpit. I’ve got to go. Bye,” then hangs up. This may have been a delayed reaction to events, since her stepmother says that in their 10-minute call, Elizabeth was in a trancelike state, appeared to have resigned herself to death, was breathing in a strange manner, and even said she felt she was leaving her body. The timing for this call is also approximate, and variously reported as taking place just before or just after 10:00 a.m. [MSNBC, 7/30/2002; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001]
According to the 9/11 Commission, the hijacker pilot, presumably Ziad Jarrah, has been rolling the plane sharply to the left and right in an attempt to prevent passengers from reaching the cockpit. At this time, he stabilizes the plane and asks another hijacker, “Is that it? Shall we finish it off?” Another voice answers, “No. Not yet. When they all come, we finish it off.” The pilot starts pitching the nose of the airplane up and down. A few seconds later a passenger’s voice can be heard saying, “In the cockpit. If we don’t we’ll die!” Another voice says, “Roll it!” which some speculate could be a reference to pushing a foot cart into the cockpit door. By 10:01, the pilot stops the pitching and says, “Allah o akbar! Allah o akbar!” (“God is great”), then asks, “Is that it? I mean, shall we put it down?” Another hijacker responds, “Yes, put it in it, and pull it down.” [New York Times, 7/22/2004; San Francisco Chronicle, 7/23/2004]
During this time, there apparently are no calls from Flight 93. Several cell phones that are left on record only silence. For instance, although Todd Beamer does not hang up, nothing more is heard after he puts down the phone, suggesting things are quiet in the back of the plane. [Longman, 2002, pp. 218] The only exception is Richard Makely, who listens to Jeremy Glick’s open phone line after Glick goes to attack the hijackers. A reporter summarizes Makely explaining that, “The silence last[s] two minutes, then there [is] screaming. More silence, followed by more screams. Finally, there [is] a mechanical sound, followed by nothing.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 9/17/2001] The second silence lasts between 60 and 90 seconds. [Longman, 2002, pp. 219] Near the end of the cockpit voice recording, loud wind sounds can be heard. [CNN, 4/19/2002; Longman, 2002, pp. 270-271] “Sources claim the last thing heard on the cockpit voice recorder is the sound of wind—suggesting the plane had been holed.” [Mirror, 9/12/2002] There was at least one passenger, Don Greene, who was a professional pilot. Another passenger, Andrew Garcia, was a former flight controller. [Newsweek, 9/22/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; Daily Telegraph, 8/6/2002]
According to a 9/11 Commission staff report, Vice President Cheney is told that a combat air patrol has been established over Washington. Cheney then calls President Bush to discuss the rules of engagement for the pilots. Bush authorizes the shootdown of hijacked aircraft at this time. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] According to a Washington Post article, which places the call after 9:55 a.m., “Cheney recommended that Bush authorize the military to shoot down any such civilian airliners—as momentous a decision as the president was asked to make in those first hours.” Bush then talks to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to clarify the procedure, and Rumsfeld passes word down the chain of command. [Washington Post, 1/27/2002] Cheney and Bush recall having this phone call, and National Security Adviser Rice recalls overhearing it. However, as the commission notes, “Among the sources that reflect other important events that morning there is no documentary evidence for this call, although the relevant sources are incomplete. Others nearby who were taking notes, such as the vice president’s chief of staff, [I. Lewis ‘Scooter’] Libby, who sat next to him, and [Lynne] Cheney, did not note a call between the president and vice president immediately after the vice president entered the conference room.” The commission also apparently concludes that no evidence exists to support the claim that Bush and Rumsfeld talked about such procedures at this time. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Commission Chairman Thomas Kean says, “The phone logs don’t exist, because they evidently got so fouled up in communications that the phone logs have nothing. So that’s the evidence we have.” Commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton says of the shootdown order, “Well, I’m not sure it was carried out.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004; New York Daily News, 6/18/2004] Newsweek reports that it “has learned that some 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. According to one knowledgeable source, some staffers ‘flat out didn’t believe the call ever took place.’” According to a 9/11 Commission staffer, the report “was watered down” after vigorous lobbying from the White House. [Newsweek, 6/20/2004] An account by Canadian Captain Mike Jellinek (who was overseeing NORAD’s Colorado headquarters, where he claims to hear Bush give a shootdown order), as well as the order to empty the skies of aircraft, appears to be discredited. [Toledo Blade, 12/9/2001]
Rumsfeld returns from the Pentagon crash site “by shortly before or after 10:00 a.m.” Then he has “one or more calls in my office, one of which was with the president,” according to his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] The commission later concludes that Rumsfeld’s call with President Bush has little impact: “No one can recall any content beyond a general request to alert forces.” The possibility of shooting down hijacked planes is not mentioned. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Then Rumsfeld goes to the Executive Support Center before finally entering the NMCC at 10:30 a.m. Acting Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers repeats all these details. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] The Executive Support Center has secure video facilities [Washington Times, 2/23/2004] , so it is possible Rumsfeld joins or rejoins the video conference that counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke claims Rumsfeld is a part of much of the morning (see (9:10 a.m.)).
Posted by jeff at 10:00 AM | TrackBack
9:59
Large amounts of gold are stored in vaults in the massive basement below the WTC, and some of this is being transported through the basement this morning. Several weeks later, recovery workers will discover hundreds of ingots in a service tunnel below WTC 5, along with a ten-wheel lorry and some cars (which were, presumably, transporting the gold) (see (Mid-October-mid November 2001)). The lorry and cars had been crushed by falling steel, but no bodies will be reported found with them, so presumably they were abandoned before the first WTC collapse, at 9:59 a.m. [New York Daily News, 10/31/2001; London Times, 11/1/2001]
In the lobby of Building 7 of the WTC, EMS Division Chief John Peruggia is in discussion with Fire Department Captain Richard Rotanz and a representative from the Department of Buildings. As Peruggia later describes, “It was brought to my attention, it was believed that the structural damage that was suffered to the [twin] towers was quite significant and they were very confident that the building’s stability was compromised and they felt that the north tower was in danger of a near imminent collapse.” Peruggia grabs EMT Richard Zarrillo and tells him to pass on the message “that the buildings have been compromised, we need to evacuate, they’re going to collapse.” Zarrillo heads out to the fire command post, situated in front of 3 World Financial, the American Express Building, where he relays this message to several senior firefighters. Seconds later, they hear the noise of the South Tower as it collapses. [City of New York, 10/23/2001; City of New York, 10/23/2001; City of New York, 10/25/2001; City of New York, 10/25/2001] Others also appear to have been aware of the imminent danger. Fire Chief Joseph Pfeifer, who is at the command post in the lobby of the north tower, says, “Right before the south tower collapsed, I noticed a lot of people just left the lobby, and I heard we had a crew of all different people, high-level people in government, everybody was gone, almost like they had information that we didn’t have.” He says some of them are moving to a new command post across the street. [City of New York, 10/23/2001; Firehouse Magazine, 4/2002; Dwyer and Flynn, 2005, pp. 214]
Between 9:25 a.m. and 9:45 a.m., one senior New York fire chief recommends to the Fire Department Chief of Department that there might be a WTC collapse in a few hours, and, therefore, fire units probably shouldn’t ascend much above the sixtieth floor (presumably this assumes the collapse would be gradual so those on lower floors would still have time to evacuate). This advice is not followed or not passed on. Apparently, no other senior fire chiefs mention or foresee the possibility of the WTC towers falling. [9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004] However, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani recounts, “I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barclay Street, which was right there, with the police commissioner, the fire commissioner, the head of emergency management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for ten, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us.” [ABC News, 9/11/2001] As can be seen by another account of similar events, this happens before the first WTC tower falls, not the second. [9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004] It is not clear who tells Giuliani to evacuate when no fire chiefs were considering the possibility of an imminent collapse.
According to Major Daniel Nash, pilot of one of the two fighters first scrambled on 9/11 at 8:52 a.m., their fighters over New York City are never given a shootdown order by the military that day. He recalls that around the time of the collapse of the South Tower, “The New York controller did come over the radio and say if we have another hijacked aircraft, we’re going to have to shoot it down.” [BBC, 9/1/2002] However, he says this is an off-the-cuff personal statement, not connected to the chain of command. [Cape Cod Times, 8/21/2002]
The 9/11 Commission Reports, “An Air Force Lieutenant Colonel working in the White House Military Office [joins] the [NMCC] conference and state[s] that he had just talked to Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. The White House request[s]: (1) the implementation of Continuity of Government measures, (2) fighter escorts for Air Force One, and (3) the establishment of a fighter combat air patrol over Washington, D.C.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke gave the Continuity of Government orders a few minutes before from inside the White House (see (Between 9:45-9:55 a.m.)). This is consistent with Bush’s claim that he doesn’t make any major decisions about the 9/11 attacks until shortly before 10:00 a.m.
The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses. It was hit by Flight 175 at 9:03 A.M., 57 minutes earlier (see 9:03 a.m.). [Washington Post, 9/12/2001; MSNBC, 9/22/2001; Associated Press, 8/19/2002; ABC News, 9/11/2002; New York Times, 9/12/2001; USA Today, 12/20/2001]
Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke is told in private by Dale Watson, the head of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, “We got the passenger manifests from the airlines. We recognize some names, Dick. They’re al-Qaeda.” Clarke replies, “How the f_ck did they get on board then?” He is told, “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger, friend. CIA forgot to tell us about them.” As they are talking about this, they see the first WTC tower collapse on television. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 13-14] Some hijacker names, including Mohamed Atta’s, were identified on a reservations computer over an hour earlier.
According to Lyz Glick, as recounted in the book “Among the Heroes,” she is speaking to her husband Jeremy Glick on Flight 93 when he tells her that passengers have been hearing from other phone calls that planes are crashing into the World Trade Center. He asks her, “Are [the hijackers] going to blow this plane up?” Lyz replies that she doesn’t know, but tells him that it is true two planes have crashed into the World Trade Center. He asks her if they’re going to crash the plane into the World Trade Center. She replies, “No. They’re not going there.” He asks why, and she replies that one of the towers has just fallen. “They knocked it down.” The first World Trade Center tower collapses at 9:59 and is seen by millions on television. The book makes clear that this exchange takes place at “almost ten o’clock” —within a minute of the tower collapse. [Longman, 2002, pp. 147] This account contradicts the 9/11 Commission’s conclusion that the passenger assault on the cockpit begins at 9:58, because the tower collapse was definitely at 9:59. Only later in the same phone call does Jeremy Glick mention that passengers are still taking a vote on whether or not to attack the hijackers. He confers with others and tells Lyz that they’ve decided to do so, and then gets off the phone line. [Longman, 2002, pp. 153-54]
At some point between the collapse of the two WTC towers, it is claimed that fire chiefs order the firefighters to come down. It has not been reported exactly who issued this order or when. Witnesses claim that scores of firefighters, unaware of the danger, were resting on lower floors in the minutes before the second tower collapsed. “Some firefighters who managed to get out said they had no idea the other building had already fallen, and said that they thought that few of those who perished knew.” At least 121 firefighters in the remaining tower die. The Fire Department blames a faulty radio repeater. However, Port Authority claims later transcripts of radio communications show the repeaters worked. [New York Times, 11/9/2002]
WTC Building 7 appears to have suffered significant damage at some point after the WTC Towers had collapsed, according to firefighters at the scene. Firefighter Butch Brandies tells other firefighters that nobody is to go into Building 7 because of creaking and noises coming out of there. [Firehouse Magazine, 8/2002] According to Deputy Chief Peter Hayden, there is a bulge in the southwest corner of the building between floors 10 and 13. [Firehouse Magazine, 4/2002] Battalion Chief John Norman later recalls, “At the edge of the south face you could see that it was very heavily damaged.” [Firehouse Magazine, 4/2002] Deputy Chief Nick Visconti also later recalls, “A big chunk of the lower floors had been taken out on the Vesey Street side.” Captain Chris Boyle recalls, “On the south side of 7 there had to be a hole 20 stories tall in the building, with fire on several floors.” [Firehouse Magazine, 8/2002] The building will collapse hours later.
Some time after the first WTC tower collapse, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke orders all landmark buildings and all federal buildings in the US evacuated. He also orders all harbors and borders closed. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 14-15] The Sears Tower in Chicago begins evacuation around 10:02 a.m. Other prominent buildings are slower to evacuate. [Ottawa Citizen, 9/11/2001]
Posted by jeff at 9:59 AM | TrackBack
9:58
Todd Beamer ends his long phone call with a Verizon phone company representative saying that they plan “to jump” the hijacker in the back of the plane who has the bomb. In the background, the phone operator already could hear an “awful commotion” of people shouting, and women screaming, “Oh my God,” and “God help us.” He lets go of the phone but leaves it connected. His famous last words are said to nearby passengers: “Are you ready guys? Let’s roll” (alternate version: “You ready? Okay. Let’s roll”). [Longman, 2002, pp. 204; Newsweek, 9/22/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001] Sounds of fighting in the back of the plane where Beamer is can be heard about a minute after such sounds in the front. [Observer, 12/2/2001]
CeeCee Lyles says to her husband, “Aah, it feels like the plane’s going down.” Her husband Lorne says, “What’s that?” She replies, “I think they’re going to do it. they’re forcing their way into the cockpit” (an alternate version says, “they’re getting ready to force their way into the cockpit”). A little later she screams, then says, “they’re doing it! they’re doing it! they’re doing it!” Her husband hears more screaming in the background, then he hears a “whooshing sound, a sound like wind,” then more screaming, and then the call breaks off. [Longman, 2002, pp. 180; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001]
Sandy Bradshaw tells her husband, “Everyone’s running to first class. I’ve got to go. Bye.” She had been speaking with him since 9:50 a.m. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; Boston Globe, 11/23/2001]
A man dials emergency 9-1-1 from a bathroom on the plane, crying, “We’re being hijacked, We’re being hijacked!” [Toronto Sun, 9/16/2001] The operator reports, “He heard some sort of explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane and we lost contact with him.” [ABC News, 9/11/2001; ABC News, 9/11/2001; Associated Press, 9/12/2001] One minute after the call begins, the line goes dead. [Pittsburgh Channel, 12/6/2001] Investigators believe this was Edward Felt, the only passenger not accounted for on phone calls. He was sitting in first class, so he probably was in the bathroom near the front of the plane. At one point, he appears to have peeked out the bathroom door during the call. [Longman, 2002, pp. 193-194, 196] The mentions of smoke and explosions on the recording of his call are now denied. [Longman, 2002, pp. 264] The person who took Felt’s call is not allowed to speak to the media. [Mirror, 9/12/2002]
According to New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s 9/11 Commission testimony in 2004, about one minute before the first WTC tower falls, he is able to reach the White House by phone. Speaking to Chris Henick, deputy political director to President Bush, Giuliani learns the Pentagon has been hit and he asks about fighter cover over New York City. Henick replies, “The jets were dispatched 12 minutes ago and they should be there very shortly, and they should be able to defend you against further attack.” [9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004] If this is true, it means fighters scramble from the Otis base around 9:46 a.m., not at 8:52 a.m., as most other accounts have claimed. While Giuliani’s account may seem wildly off, it is consistent with reports shortly after 9/11. In the first few days, acting Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers, and a NORAD spokesman, Marine Corps Major Mike Snyder, claimed no fighters were scrambled anywhere until after the Pentagon was hit. [US Congress, 9/13/2001; Boston Globe, 9/15/2001] This story only changed on the evening of September 14, 2001, when CBS reported, “contrary to early reports, US Air Force jets did get into the air on Tuesday while the attacks were under way.” [CBS News, 9/14/2001]
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9:57
One of the hijackers in the cockpit asks if anything is going on, apparently meaning outside the cockpit. “Fighting,” the other says. [Longman, 2002, pp. 210] An analysis of the cockpit flight recording suggests that the passenger struggle actually starts in the front of the plane (where Mark Bingham and Tom Burnett are sitting) about a minute before a struggle in the back of the plane (where Todd Beamer is sitting). [Observer, 12/2/2001] Officials later theorize that the Flight 93 passengers reach the cockpit using a food cart as a battering ram and a shield. They claim digital enhancement of the cockpit voice recorder reveals the sound of plates and glassware crashing around 9:57 a.m. [Newsweek, 11/25/2001]
“In the cockpit! In the cockpit!” is heard. The hijackers are reportedly heard telling each other to hold the door. In English, someone outside shouts, “Let’s get them.” The hijackers are also praying “Allah o akbar” (God is great). One of the hijackers suggests shutting off the oxygen supply to the cabin (which apparently would not have had any effect since the plane was already below 10,000 feet). A hijacker says, “Should we finish?” Another one says, “Not yet.” The sounds of the passengers get clearer, and in unaccented English “Give it to me!” is heard. “I’m injured,” someone says in English. Then something like “roll it up” and “lift it up” is heard. Passengers’ relatives believe this sequence proves that the passengers did take control of the plane. [MSNBC, 7/30/2002; Daily Telegraph, 8/6/2002; Newsweek, 11/25/2001; Observer, 12/2/2001; Longman, 2002, pp. 270-271]
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9:56
President Bush departs from the Sarasota, Florida, airport on Air Force One. [New York Times, 9/16/2001; Daily Mail, 9/8/2002; Washington Post, 1/27/2002; Associated Press, 9/12/2001; ABC News, 9/11/2002; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004; Wall Street Journal, 3/22/2004; CBS News, 9/11/2002; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001] Amazingly, his plane takes off without any fighters protecting it. “The object seemed to be simply to get the president airborne and out of the way,” says an administration official. [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001] There are still 3,520 planes in the air over the US. [USA Today, 8/13/2002] About half of the planes in the Florida region where Bush’s plane is are still airborne. [St. Petersburg Times, 9/7/2002] Apparently, fighters don’t meet up with Air Force One until about an hour later. Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke claims to have heard around 9:50 a.m. from the bunker containing Vice President Cheney that fighter escort had been authorized. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 8-9]
After flying off in Air Force One, President Bush talks on the phone to Vice President Cheney. Cheney recommends that Bush authorize the military to shoot down any plane under control of the hijackers. “I said, ‘You bet,’” Bush later recalls. “We had a little discussion, but not much.” [Newsday, 9/23/2001; USA Today, 9/16/2001; Washington Post, 1/27/2002; CBS News, 9/11/2002] The 9/11 Commission claims that Cheney tells Bush three planes are still missing and one has hit the Pentagon. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Bush later says that he doesn’t make any major decisions about how to respond to the 9/11 attacks until after Air Force One takes off [Wall Street Journal, 3/22/2004] , which fits with this account of Bush approving shootdown authorization shortly after take off.
Air Force One takes off and quickly gains altitude. One passenger later says, “It was like a rocket. For a good ten minutes, the plane was going almost straight up.” [CBS News, 9/11/2002] Once the plane reaches cruising altitude, it flies in circles. Journalists on board sense this because the television reception for a local station generally remains good. “Apparently Bush, Cheney, and the Secret Service argue over the safety of Bush coming back to Washington.” [Salon, 9/12/2001; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001] For much of the day Bush is plagued by connectivity problems in trying to call Cheney and others. He is forced to use an ordinary cell phone instead of his secure phone. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
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9:55
The three F-16s scrambled after Flight 77 from Langley, Virginia, at 9:30 a.m. finally reach Washington and the burning Pentagon. The 129 mile distance could theoretically be covered by the fighters in six minutes, but they’ve taken a wide detour over the ocean. The exact time they arrive is very unclear. NORAD originally claimed they arrive as soon as 9:49 a.m., but the 9/11 Commission implies they don’t arrive until shortly after 10:00 a.m., though no exact time is specified. [CNN, 9/17/2001; North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; New York Times, 9/15/2001; CBS News, 9/14/2001; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Press accounts of when the first fighters reach Washington are highly contradictory. Early news accounts of fighters arriving from Andrews Air Force Base “within minutes,” “a few moments,” or “just moments” after the Pentagon crash appear to have been accounts of these Langley fighters, since they apparently arrive before Andrews fighters do. [Daily Telegraph, 9/16/2001; Denver Post, 9/11/2001; ABC News, 9/11/2002] Yet other newspaper accounts inaccurately deny fighters from Andrews were deployed [USA Today, 9/16/2001] , and some deny Andrews even had fighters at all. [USA Today, 9/16/2001] Defense officials initially claimed, “There were no military planes in the skies over Washington until 15 to 20 minutes after the Pentagon was hit” —in other words, 9:53 a.m. to 9:58 a.m. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 9/14/2001] ABC News reports that by 10:00 a.m., “Dozens of fighters are buzzing in the sky” over Washington. [ABC News, 9/11/2002] Whereas the New York Times reports, “In the White House Situation Room and at the Pentagon, the response seemed agonizingly slow. One military official recalls hearing words to the effect of, ‘Where are the planes?’” The Pentagon insists it had air cover over its own building by 10 a.m., 15 minutes after the building was hit. However, witnesses, including a reporter for the New York Times who was headed toward the building, did not see any until “closer to 11.” [New York Times, 9/16/2001] It is likely, though not completely certain, that fighters would have reached Washington before Flight 93 did, had the plane not crashed.
While President Bush is still in Sarasota, an AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System plane) is flying a training mission off the coast of Florida. Referring to the AWACS plane, NORAD Commander Larry Arnold later says: “I had set up an arrangement with their wing commander at Tinker [Air Force Base, Oklahoma] some months earlier for us to divert their AWACS off a normal training mission to go into an exercise scenario simulating an attack on the United States. The AWACS crew initially thought we were going into one of those simulations.” Another AWACS is also flying a training mission, near Washington, DC, the morning of 9/11. [Code One Magazine, 1/2002]
The Langley F-16s headed to Washington are told that all planes in the US have been ordered to land (that command was given at 9:45 a.m.). According to the New York Times, at some point after this, someone from the Secret Service gets on the radio and tells the pilots, “I want you to protect the White House at all costs.” [New York Times, 10/16/2001] F-16 pilot Honey (who is apparently Captain Craig Borgstrom) gives a similar, though less dramatic, account. At some point after the F-16s had set up a defensive perimeter over Washington, the lead pilot (again, Borgstrom) receives a garbled message about Flight 93 that isn’t heard by the other two pilots. “The message seemed to convey that the White House was an important asset to protect.” Honey says he is later told the message is, “Something like, ‘Be aware of where it is, and it could be a target.’” Another pilot, codenamed Lou, says Honey tells him, “I think the Secret Service told me this.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 76] Both Lou and Honey state they are never given clear and direct orders to shoot down any plane that day. [Longman, 2002, pp. 222]
Two F-16s from the 147th Fighter Wing, Ellington Air National Guard Base, Texas, are said to be already airborne on a local training mission when they are instructed to escort Air Force One after it departs Sarasota, Florida, with President Bush on board. [American Defender, 12/2001; Code One Magazine, 1/2002]
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9:54
Tom Burnett calls his wife, Deena, for the fourth and last time. In early reports of this call, he says, “I know we’re all going to die. There’s three of us who are going to do something about it.” [Toronto Sun, 9/16/2001; Boston Globe, 11/23/2001] However, in a later, more complete, account, he sounds much more upbeat. “It’s up to us. I think we can do it.” He adds, “Don’t worry, we’re going to do something.” He specifically mentions they plan to regain control of the airplane over a rural area. [Longman, 2002, pp. 118]
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9:53
The National Security Agency (NSA) reportedly intercepts a phone call from one of bin Laden’s operatives in Afghanistan to a phone number in the Republic of Georgia. The caller says he has “heard good news” and that another target is still to come (presumably, the target Flight 93 is intended to hit). [CBS News, 9/4/2002] The caller is also supposed to say that the attackers are following through on “the doctor’s program.” This is said to be a reference to al-Qaeda’s number two leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has a doctorate in medicine. [New Yorker, 9/9/2002] Since the 9/11 crisis began, NSA translators have been told to focus on Middle Eastern intercepts and translate them as they are received instead of oldest first, as is the usual practice. This call is translated in the next hour or two, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld hears about it just after noon. [CBS News, 9/4/2002; Bamford, 2004, pp. 54]
According to Flight 93’s cockpit voice recording, the hijackers grow concerned that the passengers might retaliate. One urges that the plane’s fire axe be held up to the cockpit door’s peephole to scare the passengers. [Longman, 2002, pp. 209-210]
According to the 9/11 Commission, FAA headquarters informs the FAA Command Center that the deputy director for air traffic services is talking to Deputy Administrator Monty Belger about scrambling aircraft after Flight 93. Yet in interviews with the commission, neither Belger nor the deputy director recall this discussion, and Belger subsequently e-mails the commission saying he does not believe the conversation took place. However, tape recordings reveal a staff person from headquarters at this time telling the Command Center, “Peter’s talking to Monte now about scrambling.” FAA headquarters is also informed that the flight is 20 miles northwest of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Incredibly, FAA headquarters has known since 9:34 A.M. about hijackers talking about a bomb on board the flight, and more evidence has since been passed on confirming a hijacking in progress. Still, reportedly, no one tells NORAD anything about the plane.
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9:52
Two firefighters climbing up the south tower, Orio Palmer and Ronald Bucca, have reached its 78th floor, the lower end of the impact zone where Flight 175 hit. [New York Times, 8/4/2002] They are just two floors below the level where, minutes later, its collapse initiates. [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002, pp. 2-34] Over radio, Palmer tells firefighter Joseph Leavey, “We’ve got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines.” [Dwyer and Flynn, 2005, pp. 206] The fact that they reached so high up the tower only comes to light almost a year later, when a tape of radio communications from 9/11 is made public (see August 4, 2002). The New York Times will report “[N]owhere on the tape is there any indication that firefighters had the slightest indication that the tower had become unstable or that it could fall.” [New York Times, 11/9/2002] Palmer’s communication appears to contradict claims that “extreme fires” contributed to the tower’s collapse. [BBC, 9/13/2001; New York Times, 10/20/2004] Ronald Bucca, a Special Forces veteran, had actually conducted his own private research into Islamic militancy following the 1993 WTC bombing. He’d even taken time, in 1996, to attend the beginning of the trial of Ramzi Yousef, a mastermind of the bombing (see September 5, 1996). [Lance, 2003, pp. 180-183, 333-334]
According to the 9/11 Commission, Lynne Cheney joins her husband, Vice President Cheney, in the PEOC (Presidential Emergency Operations Center) bunker below the White House. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] She had been at a downtown office around 9:00 a.m. when she was escorted by the Secret Service to the White House. [Newsweek, 12/31/2001] Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke describes the people in the PEOC as “decidedly more political” than those in his bunker below the other wing of the White House. In addition to Cheney and his wife, most of the day the PEOC contains National Security Adviser Rice, political adviser Mary Matalin, Cheney’s Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, and White House Communications Director Karen Hughes. Clarke is told later in the day by someone else in the PEOC, “I can’t hear the crisis conference [led by Clarke] because Mrs. Cheney keeps turning down the volume on you so she can hear CNN ... and the vice president keeps hanging up the open line to you.” Clarke notes that the “right-wing ideologue” Lynne Cheney frequently offers her advice and opinions during the crisis. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 18]
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9:50
Video footage later reveals that in the minutes immediately before the collapse of the WTC’s south tower, a stream of molten metal starts pouring out of a window opening around the northeast corner of its 80th floor. FEMA later suggests that this is “possibly aluminum from the airliner,” and comments, “This is of particular interest because, although the building collapse appears to have initiated at this floor level, the initiation seems to have occurred at the southeast rather than the northeast corner.” [Civil Engineering, 5/2002; Dwyer and Flynn, 2005, pp. 207; Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002, pp. 2-34] According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, “The composition of the flowing material can only be the subject of speculation, but its behavior suggests it could have been molten aluminum.” [Pitts, Butler, and Junker, 9/2005, pp. 375] However physics professor Steven E. Jones will in 2006 dispute this, saying that molten aluminum is silvery and never turns yellow, like what is in the video footage. He will instead claim the presence of this molten metal supports the theory that explosives, specifically thermite, are what caused the twin towers to collapse. He says thermite can cause steel to melt and become yellowish. [Deseret Morning News, 4/10/2006]
Sandy Bradshaw calls her husband from Flight 93. She says, “Have you heard what’s going on? My flight has been hijacked. My flight has been hijacked with three guys with knives.” [Boston Globe, 11/23/2001] She tells him that some passengers are in the rear galley filling pitchers with hot water to use against the hijackers. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001]
There are numerous false reports of additional terror attacks. Before 10:00 a.m., some hear reports on television of a fire at the State Department. At 10:20 a.m., and apparently again at 10:33 a.m., it is publicly reported this was caused by a car bomb. [Ottawa Citizen, 9/11/2001; Broadcasting and Cable, 8/26/2002; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001] At 10:23 a.m., the Associated Press reports, “A car bomb explodes outside the State Department, senior law enforcement officials say.” [Broadcasting and Cable, 8/26/2002] Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke hears these reports at this time and asks Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in the State Department to see if the building he’s in has been hit. Armitage goes outside the building, finds out there’s no bomb, and calls his colleagues to inform them that the reports are false. Reports of a fire on the Capitol Mall also appear and are quickly found to be false. [ABC News, 9/15/2002; Clarke, 2004, pp. 8-9] There are numerous other false reports over the next hour, including explosions at the Capitol building and USA Today headquarters. [Broadcasting and Cable, 8/26/2002] For instance, CNN reports an explosion on Capitol Hill at 10:12 a.m. CNN then announces this is untrue 12 minutes later. [Ottawa Citizen, 9/11/2001]
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9:49
The FAA orders the Pittsburgh control tower evacuated. Shortly before the order, Cleveland flight controllers called Pittsburgh flight control to say that a plane is heading toward Pittsburgh and the pilot refuses to communicate. The plane is Flight 93. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/23/2001] Also, around this time, while Flight 93 is heading east, NEADS Commander Robert Marr hears that the FAA is evacuating its Cleveland Center. [Filson, 2004, pp. 73]
According to the 9/11 Commission, the FAA Command Center has just twice warned FAA headquarters that United 93 is now “29 minutes out of Washington, D.C.” Someone at headquarters says to someone at the Command Center, “they’re pulling Jeff [last name unknown] away to go talk about United 93.” Command Center replies, “Uh, do we want to think about, uh, scrambling aircraft [NORAD fighters]?” FAA headquarters replies, “Uh, God, I don’t know.” Command Center says, “Uh, that’s a decision somebody’s gonna have to make probably, in the next ten minutes.” FAA headquarters answers, “Uh, ya know, everybody just left the room.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] This is 13 minutes since Cleveland flight control had asked the Command Center in vain to contact NORAD about Flight 93.
In the words of the 9/11 Commission, the commander of NORAD (General Ralph Eberhart) directs “all air sovereignty aircraft to battle stations fully armed.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Apparently, this means all fighters with air defense missions are to be armed and ready to scramble. This may be connected to counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke’s claim that after the Pentagon is hit, he orders an aide, “Find out where the fighter planes are. I want Combat Air Patrol over every major city in this country. Now!” (see (Between 9:37-9:45 a.m.)) Another account says calls to bases to scramble don’t begin until about 10:01 a.m. (see 10:01 a.m.). [Toledo Blade, 12/9/2001] It has not been explained why this order wasn’t given much earlier. Calls from Air Force bases across the country offering to help had started “pouring into NORAD” shortly after 9:03 a.m. (see (After 9:03 a.m.)), when televised reports made an emergency situation clear. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002] With a couple of exceptions, other fighters do not actually start taking off until about 11:00 a.m.
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9:48
The Capitol building in Washington begins evacuation. Congress is in session, but apparently the chambers are not filled with congresspeople. [Guardian, 7/22/2004; Associated Press, 8/19/2002] Senator Tom Daschle, Majority Leader of the Senate, later states, “Some capitol policemen broke into the room and said, ‘We’re under attack. I’ve got to take you out right away.’” Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, third in line of succession to the presidency behind Vice President Cheney, is in the Capitol building with other congresspeople. Only after this time are Hastert and others in the line of succession moved to secure locations. Some time after this, Hastert and other leaders are flown by helicopter to secret bunkers. [ABC News, 9/11/2002]
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9:47
A man who is on the 105th floor of the South Tower calls emergency 9-1-1 to report that floors below his location, “in the 90-something floor,” have collapsed. The 9-1-1 operator types a record of this call into the Special Police Radio Inquiry Network (SPRINT) data link, which will be passed on to the New York fire department’s Emergency Medical Service (EMS). It isn’t known when the call is made exactly, but the EMS Dispatch computer apparently receives the call record at this time. However, because it is classified as a “supplement message,” it is not yet read by anyone. The police dispatcher dealing with the area around the WTC also receives the call record, but misinterprets it as meaning that the floor the person is on has collapsed. EMS dispatchers are dealing with an enormous volume of calls as well as performing many other tasks under extreme pressure during the crisis, so a report later concludes that the EMS operators didn’t have the time to review the information before the collapse of the South Tower at 9:59 (see 9:59 a.m.), and the fire chiefs never received the information. [New York City Fire Department, 8/19/2002]
On Flight 93, Jeremy Glick is still on the phone with his wife, Lyz. He tells her that the passengers are taking a vote if they should try to take over the plane or not. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001] He later says that all the men on the plane have voted to attack the hijackers. [Toronto Sun, 9/16/2001] When asked about weapons, he says they don’t have guns, just knives. This appears to contradict an earlier mention of guns. His wife gets the impression from him that the hijacker standing nearby, claiming to hold the bomb, would be easy to overwhelm. [Longman, 2002, pp. 153-154]
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9:46
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s office, and acting Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Myers’ office, report to the NMCC teleconference that they are still trying to track down Rumsfeld and Myers, respectively, and bring them into the conference. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Rumsfeld is apparently outside the Pentagon looking at the Flight 77 crash site (see (After 9:37 a.m.)), though counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke suggests Rumsfeld is elsewhere in the Pentagon for much of the time (see (Between 9:37-9:45 a.m.)). Myers’ whereabouts in the period after the Pentagon crash have not been fully explained (see (Before 10:30 a.m.)). Rumsfeld and Myers do not enter the NMCC until about 10:30 a.m. (see (10:30 a.m.)).
According to the later-recovered Flight 93 cockpit voice recording, around this time one hijacker in the cockpit says to another, “Let the guys in now.” A vague instruction is given to bring the pilot back in. It’s not clear if this is a reference to an original pilot or a hijacker pilot. Investigators aren’t sure if the original pilots were quickly killed or allowed to live. [Longman, 2002, pp. 208]
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9:45
United Airlines headquarters receives a report that an aircraft has crashed into the Pentagon. They learn it is Flight 77. [9/11 Commission, 1/27/2004]
Tom Burnett calls his wife, Deena, for the third time. She tells him about the crash at the Pentagon. Tom speaks about the bomb he’d mentioned earlier, saying, “I don’t think they have one. I think they’re just telling us that.” He says the hijackers are talking about crashing the plane into the ground. “We have to do something.” He says that “a group of us” are making a plan. [Longman, 2002, pp. 111] This indicates there would have been at least 19 minutes advance notice that a passenger takeover was likely, if the contents of these phone calls are being passed on to the right authorities. Note that by Burnett’s second call at 9:34 a.m., the FBI was already listening in. [Toronto Sun, 9/16/2001]
After having some trouble getting authorization to use an Airfone to call his family, passenger Todd Beamer is able to speak to Verizon phone representative Lisa Jefferson, with the FBI listening in. He talks for about 15 minutes. Beamer says he has been herded to the back of the plane along with nine other passengers and five flight attendants. A hijacker, who says he has a bomb strapped to his body, is guarding them. Twenty-seven passengers are being guarded by a hijacker in first class, which is separated from the rest of the aircraft by a curtain. One hijacker has gone into the cockpit. One passenger is dead (that leaves one passenger unaccounted for—presumably the man who made a call from the bathroom, thought to be Edward Felt). The two pilots are apparently dead. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/16/2001; Newsweek, 9/22/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; Boston Globe, 11/23/2001] A conflicting version states that 27 passengers were in the back, and that Beamer saw four hijackers instead of just three. [Boston Globe, 11/23/2001] It is not clear if Tom Burnett’s first class section group is in contact with Todd Beamer’s coach section group or if there are two independent plans to take over the plane.
The White House begins a general evacuation. This comes about 30 minutes after the probable time Vice President Cheney has been evacuated from the White House (see (9:10 a.m.)). [New York Times, 9/12/2001; MSNBC, 9/22/2001; Washington Post, 1/27/2002; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; Associated Press, 8/19/2002] Initially the evacuation is orderly, but soon the Secret Service agents are yelling that everyone should run. [ABC News, 9/11/2002]
Ben Sliney, FAA’s National Operations Manager, orders the entire nationwide air traffic system shut down. All flights at US airports are stopped. Around 3,950 flights are still in the air. Sliney makes the decision without consulting FAA head Jane Garvey, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, or other bosses, but they quickly approve his actions. It’s Sliney’s first day on the job. [USA Today, 8/13/2002; USA Today, 8/13/2002; MSNBC, 9/22/2001; CNN, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001; Associated Press, 8/12/2002; Associated Press, 8/19/2002; Newsday, 9/10/2002; USA Today, 8/13/2002; Washington Post, 9/12/2001] Seventy-five percent of the planes land within one hour of the order. [USA Today, 8/12/2002] The 9/11 Commission will later remark that this “was an unprecedented order” that the “air traffic control system handled ... with great skill.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 29] The Washington Post has reported that Mineta told Monty Belger at the FAA: “Monty, bring all the planes down,” even adding, “[Expletive] pilot discretion.” [Washington Post, 1/27/2002] However, it is later reported by a different Post reporter that Mineta did not even know of the order until 15 minutes later. This reporter “says FAA officials had begged him to maintain the fiction.” [Slate, 4/2/2002]
According to the 9/11 Commission, Chief of Staff Andrew Card, the lead Secret Service agent, the president’s military aide, and Air Force One pilot Colonel Mark Tillman, confer on a possible destination for Air Force One around this time. According to witnesses, some support President Bush’s desire to return to Washington, but the others advise against it. The issue is still not decided when Air Force One takes off around 9:55 a.m. (see (9:56 a.m.)). [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
At some point after the White House is evacuated, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke institutes Continuity of Government plans. Important government personnel, especially those in line to succeed the president, are evacuated to alternate Command Centers. Additionally, Clarke gets a phone call from the PEOC Command Center where Vice President Cheney and National Security Adviser Rice are positioned. An aide tells Clarke, “Air Force One is getting ready to take off with some press still on board. [President Bush will] divert to an air base. 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.” However, acting Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers wants the rules of engagement clarified before the shootdown order is passed on, so Clarke orders that pilots be given guidelines before receiving shootdown authorization. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 8-9] Clarke’s account that Cheney is giving shootdown authorization well before 10:00 a.m. matches Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta’s account of seeing Cheney giving what he interprets as a shootdown order before the Pentagon crash. [9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003] However, the 9/11 Commission later asserts that Cheney doesn’t make the shootdown decision until about 10:00 a.m. (see (Between 10:00-10:15 a.m.)). [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
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9:44
NORAD briefs the NMCC teleconference on the possible hijacking of Delta Flight 1989. Four minutes later, a representative from the White House bunker containing Vice President Cheney asks if there are any indications of other hijacked planes. Captain Charles Leidig, temporarily in charge of the NMCC, mentions the Delta Flight and comments, “that would be the fourth possible hijack.” Flight 1989 is in the same general Ohio region as Flight 93, but NORAD doesn’t scramble fighters toward either plane at this time. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
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9:43
President Bush’s motorcade arrives at Sarasota’s airport and pulls up close to Air Force One. As the motorcade nears the airport, he learns a plane has hit the Pentagon. Bush immediately boards the plane. [Washington Times, 10/8/2002; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001] Congressman Dan Miller and others hurry up the rear steps of the plane while Bush enters through the exposed front stairs. Bush pauses in the doorway to wave to photographers. The St. Petersburg Times notes this raises “further questions about security [on 9/11].” [St. Petersburg Times, 7/4/2004] Security then does an extra-thorough search of all the baggage of the other passengers, delaying takeoff until 9:55 a.m. [St. Petersburg Times, 9/8/2002]
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9:41
Flight 93 passenger Marion Birtton calls a friend. She tells him two people have been killed and the plane has been turned around. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001]
Newark, New Jersey, flight controller Greg Callahan is talking on the phone to an FBI agent. The agent says about Flight 93: “We suspect that this aircraft has now been taken over by hostile forces.” The agent describes the sharp turn it has made over eastern Ohio and that it is now heading back over southwestern Pennsylvania. Callahan says he could tell the plane is on a course for Washington. [MSNBC, 9/11/2002] The FBI has been in contact with Deena Burnett and informed of what her husband, Flight 93 passenger Tom Burnett, has been saying since at least 9:34 a.m. (see 9:34 a.m.) [Longman, 2002, pp. 110] It is unclear where in the chain of command details of these Flight 93 calls reach, and the 9/11 Commission has not clarified the issue of what the FBI knew and when.
Posted by jeff at 9:42 AM | TrackBack
9:42
From Flight 93, Mark Bingham calls his mother and says, “I’m on a flight from Newark to San Francisco and there are three guys who have taken over the plane and they say they have a bomb.” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001] In an alternate version, he says, “I’m in the air, I’m calling you on the Airfone. I’m calling you from the plane. We’ve been taken over. There are three men that say they have a bomb.” [Toronto Sun, 9/16/2001; Boston Globe, 11/23/2001]
Within five minutes of the Pentagon being hit, the first group from the FBI’s National Capital Response Squad arrives there. Due to this being a terrorist attack, the Pentagon and its grounds are immediately declared a federal crime scene. Under the terms of a 1995 presidential directive, this makes them the exclusive responsibility of the FBI. The FBI immediately begins collecting evidence and is also responsible for recovering bodies. Its agents are able to confiscate security videos from a nearby gas station within minutes of the crash (see (After 9:37 a.m.)). More than 700 FBI agents, assisted by hundreds of individuals from other organizations, will participate in the recovery operation. [US President, 6/21/1995; Washington Times, 9/12/2001; Arlington County, 7/2002, pp. A-7, A-23, C-1, C-54]
Posted by jeff at 9:42 AM | TrackBack
9:40
The transponder signal from Flight 93 ceases. [MSNBC, 9/3/2002; MSNBC, 9/11/2002; CNN, 9/17/2001; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] However, the plane can be—and is—tracked using primary radar by Cleveland flight controllers and at United headquarters. Altitude can no longer be determined, except by visual sightings from other aircraft. The plane’s speed begins to vary wildly, fluctuating between 600 and 400 mph before eventually settling around 400 mph. [Longman, 2002, pp. 77, 214; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
Newark, New Jersey, flight controller Bob Varcadapane is talking on the phone with the FAA Command Center. He is told that the Command Center is still suspicious of at least ten planes for one reason or another, all possible hijackings. [MSNBC, 9/11/2002]
At some time shortly before 10 a.m.—as early as 9:40 a.m. according to one report—air traffic manager Dennis Fritz, in the control tower at Johnstown-Cambria County Airport, 70 miles east of Pittsburgh, receives a call from Cleveland Air Traffic Control reporting a large, suspicious aircraft about 20 miles south of them, descending below six thousand feet. Despite the clear day, Fritz and his colleagues can see no plane approaching through binoculars. Soon afterwards, in response to another call from Cleveland, Fritz orders trainees and custodial staff to evacuate the tower, yet he is still unable to see any plane approaching. Less than a minute later, though, Cleveland calls a third time, saying to disregard the evacuation: The plane has turned south and they have lost radar contact with it. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/12/2001; Knight Ridder, 9/13/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; Longman, 2002, pp. 197] Flight 93 crashes around 10:03 a.m. or soon thereafter (see (10:03-10:10 a.m.)), going down in a field just 14 miles south of Johnstown. [Washington Post, 9/13/2001]
Soon after the Pentagon is hit, medical workers initiate their mass casualty plan (MASCAL) for dealing with disasters. Sergeant Matthew Rosenberg, a medic at the Pentagon’s DiLorenzo Tricare Health Clinic, arrives at the center courtyard. Seeing smoke rising from the side of the building and patients staggering out, he radios the clinic: “You need to initiate MASCAL right now! We have mass casualties! I need medical assets to the courtyard!” Major Lorie Brown, chief nurse of the DiLorenzo Clinic, says that as soon as she sees people running down the corridor to evacuate, “we initiated the MASCAL, started galvanizing all of our assets and put our plan in action.” [Washington Post, 9/16/2001; Office of Medical History, 9/2004, pp. 7, 39] The Pentagon has actually conducted at least three MASCAL training exercises in the previous 12 months, based around a plane crashing into the place (see Between October 24 and 28, 2000)(see May 2001)(see Early August 2001). Lieutenant Colonel John Felicio, the deputy commander for administration of the DiLorenzo Clinic, says, “The saving grace to our efforts was the two MASCAL exercises we previously had conducted. ... Our scenario for both MASCALS was a plane flying into the Pentagon courtyard.” Furthermore, the nearby Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC), which sends ambulances in response to the attack, has recently recovered from a four-day power loss (see August 27-31, 2001). A military report will later state: “Many believe that [this] extended emergency ... helped WRAMC in its response on September 11.” [Office of Medical History, 9/2004, pp. 18, 146]
Posted by jeff at 9:40 AM | TrackBack
9:39
Captain Charles Leidig, a low ranking officer temporarily in charge of the NMCC, is handling the NMCC’s crisis teleconference. He mentions reports of a crash into the opposite side of the Pentagon, and requests that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld be added to the conference. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] As one magazine has noted, “On September 11, the normal scramble-approval procedure was for an FAA official to contact the [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.” [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002] Rather than join the NMCC conference, Rumsfeld has already gone out of the Pentagon to see the crash site, and remains out of contact for some time. It is unknown if Rumsfeld had a cell phone or pager, and if so, why he cannot be reached.
Two seconds after 9:39 a.m., reporter Jim Miklaszewski states on NBC News, “Moments ago, I felt an explosion here at the Pentagon.” [Name Missing, n.d.] However, no media outlets record video footage of the Pentagon crash, and the cause of the crash remains unknown for some minutes afterward.
The Flight 93 hijackers (probably inadvertently) transmit over the radio: “Hi, this is the captain. We’d like you all to remain seated. There is a bomb on board. And we are going to turn back to the airport. And they had our demands, so please remain quiet.” [Boston Globe, 11/23/2001; MSNBC, 9/3/2002; Longman, 2002, pp. 209; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] The controller responds, “United 93, understand you have a bomb on board. Go ahead,” but there is no response. There was a very similar “bomb on board” warning from the same flight at 9:32 a.m. (see (9:32 a.m.)). The 9/11 Commission indicates that these are separate incidents. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Cleveland flight control apparently continues to wait for FAA superiors to notify NORAD. Earlier in the morning, Boston flight control directly contacted NORAD (see (8:37 a.m.)) and local air force bases when they determined Flight 11 was hijacked.
Posted by jeff at 9:39 AM | TrackBack
9:37
In response to an emergency 9-1-1 telephone call, the Arlington County Emergency Communications Center dispatches several units to deal with an apartment fire in Rosslyn, Virginia—within the vicinity of the Pentagon. Because this fire is in a high-rise building, nine different fire and medical service units are dispatched. However, the first engine crew to arrive radios to the other units that the fire has gone out. Consequently, by “sheer coincidence,” at the time when the Pentagon is hit, there are a significant number of available fire and medical service units already on the road nearby. [US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002; Fire Engineering, 11/2002] Additionally, Secret Service personnel are concentrated around the heliport a short distance from where Flight 77 will hit: “President Bush was scheduled to fly from Florida that afternoon, and his helicopter, Marine One, would carry him to the Pentagon. That meant Secret Service everywhere and their cars blocking the driveway.” [Scripps Howard News Service, 8/1/2002]
Washington flight controllers are watching Flight 77’s radar blip. Just before radar contact is lost, FAA headquarters is told, “The aircraft is circling. It’s turning away from the White House.” [USA Today, 8/13/2002] Then the blip disappears. Its last known position is six miles from the Pentagon and four miles from the White House. The plane is said to be traveling 500 mph, or a mile every seven seconds. [CBS News, 9/21/2001; Newhouse News Service, 1/25/2002; ABC News, 9/11/2002; USA Today, 8/13/2002]
Representative Christopher Cox later claims he is still meeting with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. They are still discussing missile defense, apparently completely oblivious of the approaching Flight 77. Watching television coverage from New York City, Rumsfeld says to Cox, “Believe me, this isn’t over yet. There’s going to be another attack, and it could be us.” According to the Daily Telegraph, Flight 77 hits the building “moments later.” [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001] In another telling, Cox claims that Rumsfeld says, “If we remain vulnerable to missile attack, a terrorist group or rogue state that demonstrates the capacity to strike the US or its allies from long range could have the power to hold our entire country hostage to nuclear or other blackmail. And let me tell you, I’ve been around the block a few times. There will be another event.” Rumsfeld repeats that sentence for emphasis. According to Cox, “Within minutes of that utterance, Rumsfeld’s words proved tragically prophetic.” Cox also claims, “I escaped just minutes before the building was hit.” [Office of Representative Christopher Cox, 9/11/2001] However, Rumsfeld claims that this meeting with Cox ended before the second WTC crash, which occurred at 9:03 a.m. Cox himself said that after being told of the WTC, “[Rumsfeld] sped off, as did I.” Cox says he immediately headed to his car, making it impossible for him to still be in the Pentagon “just minutes before” it is hit. [Associated Press, 9/11/2001] Another account puts Rumsfeld’s “I’ve been around the block a few times. There will be another event” comment two minutes before the first WTC crash at 8:46 a.m., when Rumsfeld reportedly makes other predictive comments. [Associated Press, 9/16/2001]
Fireman Alan Wallace is busy with a safety crew at the Pentagon’s heliport pad. As Wallace is walking in front of the Pentagon, he looks up and sees Flight 77 coming straight at him. It is about 25 feet off the ground, with no landing wheels visible, a few hundred yards away, and closing fast. He runs about 30 feet and dives under a nearby van. [Washington Post, 9/21/2001] The plane is traveling at about 460 mph, and flying so low that it clips the tops of streetlights. [CBS News, 9/21/2001] Using the radio in the van, he calls his fire chief at nearby Fort Myer and says, “We have had a commercial carrier crash into the west side of the Pentagon at the heliport, Washington Boulevard side. The crew is OK. The airplane was a 757 Boeing or a 320 Airbus.” [Scripps Howard News Service, 8/1/2002]
Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon. Approximately 125 people on the ground are later determined killed or missing. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; CNN, 9/17/2001; Guardian, 10/17/2001; USA Today, 8/13/2002; ABC News, 9/11/2002; CBS News, 9/11/2002; Associated Press, 8/19/2002; MSNBC, 9/3/2002] Flight 77 strikes the only side of the Pentagon that had recently been renovated—it was “within days of being totally [renovated].” [US Department of Defense, 9/15/2001] “It was the only area of the Pentagon with a sprinkler system, and it had been reconstructed with a web of steel columns and bars to withstand bomb blasts. The area struck by the plane also had blast-resistant windows—two inches thick and 2,500 pounds each—that stayed intact during the crash and fire. While perhaps, 4,500 people normally would have been working in the hardest-hit areas, because of the renovation work only about 800 were there...” More than 25,000 people work at the Pentagon. [Los Angeles Times, 9/16/2001]
A C-130 transport plane that has been sent to follow Flight 77 is trailing only a short distance behind the plane as it crashes. This curious C-130, originally bound for Minnesota, is the same C-130 that will be 17 miles from Flight 93 when it later crashes into the Pennsylvania countryside. [Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), 9/11/2002; Pittsburgh Channel, 9/15/2001] A number of people see this plane fly remarkably close to Flight 77:
- Kelly Knowles says that seconds after seeing Flight 77 pass, she sees a “second plane that seemed to be chasing the first [pass] over at a slightly different angle.” [Daily Press (Newport News), 9/15/2001]
- Keith Wheelhouse says the second plane was a C-130; two other witnesses aren’t certain. [Daily Press (Newport News), 9/15/2001] Wheelhouse “believes it flew directly above the American Airlines jet, as if to prevent two planes from appearing on radar, while at the same time guiding the jet toward the Pentagon.” As Flight 77 descends toward the Pentagon, the second plane veers off west. [Daily Press (Newport News), 9/14/2001]
- USA Today reporter Vin Narayanan, who saw the Pentagon explosion, says, “I hopped out of my car after the jet exploded, nearly oblivious to a second jet hovering in the skies.” [USA Today, 9/17/2001]
- USA Today Editor Joel Sucherman sees a second plane but gives few details. [eWeek, 9/13/2001] Brian Kennedy, press secretary for a congressman, and others also see a second plane. [Sacramento Bee, 9/15/2001]
- An unnamed worker at Arlington National Cemetery “said a mysterious second plane was circling the area when the first one attacked the Pentagon.” [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 12/20/2001]
- John O’Keefe is driving a car when he sees the Pentagon crash. “The first thing I did was pull over onto the shoulder, and when I got out of the car I saw another plane flying over my head. ... Then the plane—it looked like a C-130 cargo plane—started turning away from the Pentagon, it did a complete turnaround.” [New York Law Journal, 9/12/2001]
- The pilot of the C-130, Lieutenant Colonel Steve O’Brien, is later interviewed, but his account differs from the on-the-ground eyewitnesses. He claims that just before the explosion, “With all of the East Coast haze, I had a hard time picking him out,” implying he is not nearby. He also says that just after the explosion, “I could see the outline of the Pentagon,” again implying he is not nearby. He then asks “the controller whether [I] should set up a low orbit around the building,” but he is told “to get out of the area as quickly as possible.” “I took the plane once through the plume of smoke and thought if this was a terrorist attack, it probably wasn’t a good idea to be flying through that plume.” [Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), 9/11/2002]
Accounts differ as to how far from Washington the F-16 fighters scrambled from Langley are when Flight 77 crashes. The Langley, Virginia, base is 129 miles from Washington. NORAD originally claimed that, at the time of the crash, the fighters are 105 miles away, despite having taken off seven minutes earlier. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001] The 9/11 Commission claims that at 9:36 a.m., NEADS discovers that Flight 77 is only a few miles from the White House and is dismayed to find the fighters have headed east over the ocean. They are ordered to Washington immediately, but are still about 150 miles away. This is farther away than the base from which they took off. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] The F-16 pilot codenamed Honey (who is apparently Captain Craig Borgstrom) offers a different explanation. As previously mentioned, he says they are flying toward New York, when they see a black column of smoke coming from Washington, about 30 or 40 miles to the west. He is then asked over the radio by NEADS if he can confirm the Pentagon is burning. He confirms it. He says that the mission of the Langley pilots at this time is clear: to keep all airplanes away from Washington. The F-16s are then ordered to set up a defensive perimeter above Washington. [Longman, 2002, pp. 76; New York Observer, 2/11/2004; Filson, 2004, pp. 66] The maximum speed of an F-16 is 1,500 mph. [Associated Press, 6/16/2000] Had the fighters traveled straight to Washington at 1,300 mph, they would have reached Washington at least one minute before Flight 77. Furthermore, at the time the Pentagon is hit, according to Craig Borgstrom, he and the other Langley pilots are hearing a lot of chatter over their radios, but nothing about airliners crashing into buildings. He says they are “all three on different frequencies ... and [are] getting orders from a lot of different people.” [Filson, 2004, pp. 66]
There are conflicting accounts of what Defense Secretary Rumsfeld does in the 35 minutes between the second WTC crash and the Pentagon crash. In his 9/11 Commission testimony, he covers the time with the phrase “shortly thereafter:” “I was in my office with a CIA briefer and I was told that a second plane had hit the other tower. Shortly thereafter, at 9:38 a.m., the Pentagon shook with an explosion of then unknown origin.” [9/11 Commission, 3/23/2004] In the book Bush at War, Bob Woodward writes, “Aware of the attacks on the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld had been proceeding with his daily intelligence briefing in his office” when the Pentagon gets hit. [Woodward, 2002] However, according to counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, Rumsfeld joins a video conference at 9:10 a.m. (see (9:10 a.m.)), shortly after the second WTC hit, and stays with the conference, possibly from his office. After being told the Pentagon has been hit, Clarke says, “I can still see Rumsfeld on the screen, so the whole building didn’t get hit”. The military response to the 9/11 crisis is being coordinated in the NMCC, apparently located only around 200 feet away, directly below Rumsfeld’s office. [WBZ Radio 1030 (Boston), 9/15/2001; Reuters, 9/11/2001]
Captain Jim Hosking, piloting United Flight 890 from Japan to Los Angeles, is sent a warning message to his cockpit printer. It reads, “There has been a terrorist attack against United Airlines and American Airlines aircraft. We are advised there may be additional hijackings in progress. Shut down all access to the flight deck. Unable to elaborate further.” He tells his first officer, “Get out the crash axe.” Other pilots are receiving similar messages around this time. [USA Today, 8/13/2002]
Jeremy Glick calls his wife, Lyz, from Flight 93. He describes the hijackers as Middle Eastern- and Iranian-looking. According to Glick, three of them put on red headbands, stood up, yelled, and ran into the cockpit. He had been sitting in the front of the coach section, but he was then sent to the back with most of the passengers. Glick says the hijackers claimed to have a bomb, which looked like a box with something red around it. Family members immediately call emergency 9-1-1 on another line. New York State Police are patched in midway through the call. Glick finds out about the WTC towers. Two others onboard also learn about the WTC at about this time. Glick’s phone remains connected until the very end of the flight. [Longman, 2002, pp. 143; MSNBC, 7/30/2002; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; Toronto Sun, 9/16/2001]
An employee at a gas station located across the street from the Pentagon servicing military personnel later says the station’s security cameras should have recorded the moment of impact. However, he says, “I’ve never seen what the pictures looked like. The FBI was here within minutes and took the film.” [Richmond Times-Dispatch, 12/11/2001] A security camera atop a hotel close to the Pentagon also records the impact. Hotel employees watch the film several times before the FBI confiscates the video. [Washington Times, 9/21/2001] The Justice Department will refuse to release the footage, claiming that if they did it might provide intelligence to someone who would want to harm the US, but some Pentagon officials say they see no national security value to the video. [CNN, 3/7/2002] Reporter Sandra Jontz, who is evacuated from the Pentagon some time after it is hit, notices a Department of Transportation camera that monitors traffic backups pointed towards the crash site. [Bull and Erman, 2002, pp. 281] The footage from this camera has not been released either.
By all accounts, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is in his Pentagon office when Flight 77 crashes, though accounts differ as to what he’s doing there. Rumsfeld later relates what he does next: “I was sitting here and the building was struck, and you could feel the impact of it very clearly, and I don’t know what made me do anything I did, to be honest with you. I just do it instinctive. I looked out the window, saw nothing here, and then went down the hall until the smoke was too bad, then to a stairwell down and went outside and saw what had happened. Asked a person who’d seen it, and he told me that a plane had flown into it. I had been aware of a plane going into the World Trade Center, and I saw people on the grass, and we just, we tried to put them in stretchers and then move them out across the grass towards the road and lifted them over a jersey wall so the people on that side could stick them into the ambulances. I was out there for awhile, and then people started gathering, and we were able to get other people to do that, to hold IVs for people. There were people lying on the grass with clothes blown off and burns all over them. Then at some moment I decided I should be in here figuring out what to do, because your brain begins to connect things, and there were enough people there to worry about that. I came back in here, came into this office. There was smoke in here by then.” [Parade Magazine, 10/12/2001] Versions of this story appear elsewhere. [Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), 9/12/2001; Larry King Live, 12/5/2001; ABC News, 9/11/2002; Vanity Fair, 5/9/2005] Rumsfeld says the crash site is “around the corner” from his fourth floor office [ABC News, 9/11/2002] , but, in fact, the crash site is on the opposite site of the huge Pentagon. [Reuters, 9/11/2001] Rumsfeld says he reaches the crash site “moments after” the crash, which would be an impressive feat given the over 2,000 feet distance. [9/11 Commission, 3/23/2004] One report even has Rumsfeld pull budget analyst Paul Gonzalez to safety from the burning wreckage. [Daily Telegraph, 9/16/2001] However, Gonzalez later offers his own detailed recollections of pulling other people to safety, which fail to involve Rumsfeld in any way. [Washington Post, 3/11/2002] Deputy Defense Secretary Torie Clarke, in the Pentagon at the time, says Rumsfeld is “one of the first people” outside [KYW Radio 1060 (Philadelphia), 9/15/2001] , and remains outside for “about half an hour.” [WBZ Radio 1030 (Boston), 9/15/2001] A Pentagon spokesperson has Rumsfeld helping for “15 minutes or so...” [Reuters, 9/11/2001] In another account, he loads the wounded onto stretchers for 15 minutes. [Scripps Howard News Service, 9/11/2001] Rumsfeld reportedly helps at the crash site until a security agent urges him to leave. [Washington Post, 1/27/2002] However, in his 2004 testimony to the 9/11 Commission, he no longer mentions helping the wounded, merely saying, “I went outside to determine what had happened. I was not there long because I was back in the Pentagon with a crisis action team shortly before or after 10:00 a.m. (see (Between 10:00-10:30 a.m.)).” [9/11 Commission, 3/23/2004] There are no photographs or eyewitness accounts of Rumsfeld outside the Pentagon that morning, except for one photograph of him walking down a sidewalk with some aides. In counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke’s account, Rumsfeld never leaves a video conference for very long, except to move from one secure teleconferencing studio to another elsewhere in the Pentagon. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 8-9 Sources: Richard A. Clarke]
Having learned that the Pentagon had been hit, Vice President Cheney telephones President Bush, who is on his way to the Sarasota airport, and tells him that the White House has been “targeted.” Bush says he wants to return to Washington, but Cheney advises him not to “until we could find out what the hell was going on.” According to Newsweek, this call takes place in a tunnel on the way to the PEOC underground bunker. Cheney reaches the bunker “shortly before 10:00 a.m.” [Newsweek, 12/31/2001] The 9/11 Commission’s account largely follows Newsweek’s. He reaches the tunnel around the time of the Pentagon crash and lingers by a television and secure telephone as he talks to Bush. The commission has Cheney enter the bunker just before 10:00, but they note, “There is conflicting evidence as to when the vice president arrived in the shelter conference room.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Indeed, in other accounts, including those of Richard Clarke and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, Cheney reaches the bunker before the Flight 77 crash at 9:37 a.m. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 3-4; ABC News, 9/11/2002; 9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003 Sources: Norman Mineta, Richard A. Clarke] Regardless of Cheney’s location, as Cheney and Bush talk on the phone, Bush once again refrains from making any decisions or orders about the crisis. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
After the Pentagon is hit, fighters at nearby Andrews Air Force Base are still preparing to launch. At some unknown point, flight squad commander Lieutenant Colonel Marc Sasseville assembles three F-16 pilots and gives them a curt briefing. He recalls saying, “I have no idea what’s going on, but we’re flying. Here’s our frequency. We’ll split up the area as we have to. Just defend as required. We’ll talk about the rest in the air.” All four of them dress up and get ready. One officer at Andrews recalls, “After the Pentagon was hit, we were told there were more [airliners] coming. Not ‘might be’—they were coming.” Meanwhile, a “flood” of calls from the Secret Service and local FAA flight control centers pour into Andrews, as the fighter response is coordinated. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/9/2002] However, the loading of missiles onto the fighters is very time consuming, and when these fighters finally take off nearly an hour later, they will launch without the missiles installed.
At an indeterminate time after Flight 77 hits the Pentagon, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke is given a note by the head of the Secret Service. The note reads, “Radar shows aircraft headed this way. I’m going to empty out the [White House].” The Secret Service knows this because they have equipment that can see what the FAA’s radar is seeing around Washington. However, the note is too late: Flight 77 has already crashed. At almost the same time, another aide says to Clarke, “A plane just hit the Pentagon.” He replies, “I can still see Rumsfeld on the screen, so the whole building didn’t get hit. No emotion in here. We are going to stay focused.” He orders an aide, “Find out where the fighter planes are. I want Combat Air Patrol over every major city in this country. Now!” [Clarke, 2004, pp. 7-8; Australian, 3/27/2004] NORAD does give this nationwide order around 9:49 a.m. (see 9:49 a.m.), but bases had been calling into NORAD and asking for permission to send up fighters since the second WTC crash. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Other cities generally remain unprotected until after 11:00 a.m. [Toledo Blade, 12/9/2001] The Secret Service order to evacuate the White House takes place at 9:45 a.m. (see (9:45 a.m.))
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is told by his chief of staff that the White House knows of seven planes that are unaccounted for. He is told that the Pentagon has been hit, but also hears erroneous reports that the Sears Tower and other buildings have been hit. [9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004]
At the Education Center at Fort Myer, an army base 1.5 miles northwest of the Pentagon, the base’s firefighters are undertaking training variously described as “an airport rescue firefighters class”; “an aircraft crash refresher class”; “a week-long class on Air Field Fire Fighting”; and a “training exercise in airport emergency operations.” Despite hearing of the first WTC crash during a break, with no access to a TV, the class simply continues with its training. According to Bruce Surette, who is attending the session: “We had heard some radio transmissions from some other units in Arlington about how they thought they had a plane down here or a plane down there. So you’re thinking, ‘Hey this could be real.’ But it really didn’t strike home as being real until our guy came on the radio and said where the plane crash was.” The Fort Myer firefighters then immediately head for the Pentagon, arriving there at 9:40 a.m., only three minutes after it is hit, and participate in the firefighting and rescue effort there. The fire station at the Pentagon heliport is actually operated by the Fort Myer Fire Department, and is manned on the morning of 9/11 by three Fort Myer firefighters who have already undertaken the airfield firefighting training. [MDW News Service, 10/4/2001; Pentagram, 11/2/2001; JEMS, 4/2002 ; US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002; First Due News, 4/17/2003] The Fort Myer military community, which includes Fort Myer and Fort Lesley J. McNair—another army base, just two miles east of the Pentagon—was scheduled to hold a “force protection exercise” the week after 9/11. However this has been cancelled, so just prior to the attacks the morning of September 11, “some of its participants [are] breathing a sigh of relief.” [Pentagram, 9/14/2001]
Posted by jeff at 9:37 AM | TrackBack
9:36
According to one account given by NEADS Commander Robert Marr, some time before around 9:36 when it changes direction, while it is still flying west, Flight 93 is being monitored by NEADS. Marr describes how, “We don’t have fighters that way and we think [Flight 93 is] headed toward Detroit or Chicago.” He says he contacts a base in the area “so they [can] head off 93 at the pass.” Not only does NORAD know about the flight, but also, according to NORAD Commander Larry Arnold, “We watched the 93 track as it meandered around the Ohio-Pennsylvania area and started to turn south toward DC.” (This change of direction occurs around 9:36 a.m.) [Filson, 2004] This account completely contradicts the 9/11 Commission’s later claim that NEADS is first notified about Flight 93 at 10:07 a.m. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
An unnamed senior Air Force officer tells a CNN reporter minutes later that, just prior to the Pentagon being hit, he is outside the building and sees what appears to be a US military helicopter circling the Pentagon. He says it disappears behind the building where the helicopter landing pad is, and then he sees an explosion. [CNN, 9/11/2001] The Guardian reports one witness claiming that the explosion occurring when the Pentagon is hit blows up a helicopter circling overhead. [Guardian, 9/12/2001] No other witnesses are known to report seeing this helicopter. However, Dick Cheney will later tell NBC’s Meet the Press that “the first reports on the Pentagon attack suggested a helicopter” hit it. [Meet the Press, 9/16/2001] Interestingly, New York Times columnist William Safire will report that, at approximately this time, Dick Cheney is told that either another plane or “a helicopter loaded with explosives” is heading for the White House. [New York Times, 9/13/2001 ]
Reagan Airport flight control instructs a military C-130 (Golfer 06) that has just departed Andrews Air Force Base to intercept Flight 77 and identify it. [Guardian, 10/17/2001; New York Times, 10/16/2001] Remarkably, this C-130 is the same C-130 that is 17 miles from Flight 93 when it later crashes into the Pennsylvania countryside (see 10:08 a.m.). [Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), 9/11/2002; Pittsburgh Channel, 9/15/2001] The pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Steve O’Brien, claims he took off around 9:30 a.m., planning to return to Minnesota after dropping supplies off in the Caribbean. He later describes his close encounter: “When air traffic control asked me if we had him [Flight 77] in sight, I told him that was an understatement—by then, he had pretty much filled our windscreen. Then he made a pretty aggressive turn so he was moving right in front of us, a mile and a half, two miles away. I said we had him in sight, then the controller asked me what kind of plane it was. That caught us up, because normally they have all that information. The controller didn’t seem to know anything.” O’Brien reports that the plane is either a 757 or 767 and its silver fuselage means it is probably an American Airlines plane. “They told us to turn and follow that aircraft—in 20 plus years of flying, I’ve never been asked to do something like that.” [Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), 9/11/2002] The 9/11 Commission Reports that it is a C-130H and the pilot specifically identifies the hijacked plane as a 757. Seconds after impact, he reports, “Looks like that aircraft crashed into the Pentagon, sir.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
Flight 93 files a new flight plan with a final destination of Washington, reverses course and heads toward Washington. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; Guardian, 10/17/2001; MSNBC, 9/3/2002; Longman, 2002, pp. 219] Radar shows the plane turning 180 degrees. [CNN, 9/13/2001] The new flight plan schedules the plane to arrive in Washington at 10:28 a.m. [Longman, 2002, pp. 78]
According to the 9/11 Commission, at about this time Cleveland flight control specifically asks the FAA Command Center whether someone has requested the military to launch fighters toward Flight 93. Cleveland offers to contact a nearby military base. The Command Center replies that FAA personnel well above them in the chain of command have to make that decision and are working on the issue. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Cleveland overheard a hijacker say there was a “bomb on board” at 9:32 a.m. and passed the message to FAA higher ups.
Posted by jeff at 9:36 AM | TrackBack
9:35
The San Francisco United Airlines maintenance center receives a call from an unnamed flight attendant on Flight 93 saying that the flight has been hijacked. The information is quickly passed on. [9/11 Commission, 1/27/2004] Within ten minutes, “everyone” in the United Airlines crisis center “now [knows] that a flight attendant on board had called the mechanics desk to report that one hijacker had a bomb strapped on and another was holding a knife on the crew.” [Wall Street Journal, 10/15/2001]
When Flight 93 is over Youngstown, Ohio, Stacey Taylor and other Cleveland flight controllers see it rapidly climb 6,000 feet above its assigned altitude of 35,000 feet and then rapidly descend. The plane drops so quickly toward Cleveland that the flight controllers worry they might be the target. Other accounts say the climb occurs around 9:35 a.m. Controllers continue to try to contact the plane but still get no response. [Guardian, 10/17/2001; USA Today, 8/13/2002; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
The Treasury Department is evacuated a few minutes before Flight 77 crashes. [9/11 Commission, 1/26/2004] Yet, CNN notes that “after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) warned the military’s air defense command that a hijacked airliner appeared to be headed toward Washington, the federal government failed to make any move to evacuate the White House, Capitol, State Department, or the Pentagon.” [CNN, 9/16/2001] A Pentagon representative says, “The Pentagon was simply not aware that this aircraft was coming our way.” Even Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his top aides in the Pentagon remain unaware of any danger up to the moment of impact. [Newsday, 9/23/2001] Senators and congresspeople are in the Capitol building, which is not evacuated until 9:48 a.m. (see 9:48 a.m.) Only Vice President Cheney, National Security Adviser Rice, and possibly a few others are evacuated to safety a few minutes after 9:03 a.m. (see (After 9:03 a.m.)). Yet, supposedly, since at least the Flight 11 crash, “military officials in a Command Center [the National Military Command Center] on the east side of the [Pentagon] [are] urgently talking to law enforcement and air traffic control officials about what to do.” [New York Times, 9/15/2001] The White House is evacuated at 9:45 a.m. (see (9:45 a.m.))
Posted by jeff at 9:35 AM | TrackBack
9:34
According to the 9/11 Commission, word of Flight 93’s hijacking reaches FAA headquarters. By this time, headquarters has established an open line of communication with the FAA Command Center at Herndon, Virginia. It had instructed the center to poll all flight control centers about suspect aircraft. So, at this time, the Command Center passes on Cleveland’s message: “United 93 may have a bomb on board.” The Command Center continually updates FAA headquarters on Flight 93 until it crashes. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
According to the 9/11 Commission, NEADS contacts Washington flight control to ask about Flight 11. A manager there happens to mention, “We’re looking—we also lost American 77.” The commission claims, “No one at FAA Command Center or headquarters ever asked for military assistance with American 77.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Yet, 38 minutes earlier, flight controllers determined Flight 77 was off course, out of radio contact, and had no transponder signal (see (8:56 a.m.)). They’d warned American Airlines headquarters within minutes. By some accounts, this is the first time NORAD is told about Flight 77, but other accounts have them warned around 9:25 a.m.
Tom Burnett calls his wife Deena a second time. He says, “They’re in the cockpit.” He has checked the pulse of the man who was knifed (later identified as Mark Rothenberg, sitting next to him in seat 5B) and determined he is dead. She tells him about the hits on the WTC. He responds, “Oh my God, it’s a suicide mission.” As they continue to talk, he tells her the plane has turned back. By this time, Deena is in constant communication with the FBI and others, and a police officer is at her house. [Longman, 2002, pp. 110]
President Bush’s motorcade leaves Booker Elementary School and heads toward Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport. [Washington Times, 10/8/2002; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; Wall Street Journal, 3/22/2004] A few days after 9/11, Sarasota’s main newspaper reports, “Sarasota barely skirted its own disaster. As it turns out, terrorists targeted the president and Air Force One on Tuesday, maybe even while they were on the ground in Sarasota and certainly not long after. The Secret Service learned of the threat just minutes after Bush left Booker Elementary.” [Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/16/2001] Kevin Down, a Sarasota police officer at the scene, recalls, “I thought they were actually anticipating a terrorist attack on the president while we were en route.” [BBC, 8/30/2002] ABC News reporter Ann Compton, who is part of the motorcade, recalls, “It was a mad-dash motorcade out to the airport.” [BBC, 9/1/2002] A year later, Chief of Staff Andrew Card says, “As we were heading to Air Force One, we did hear about the Pentagon attack, and we also learned, what turned out to be a mistake, but we learned that the Air Force One package could in fact be a target.” [MSNBC, 9/9/2002]
Posted by jeff at 9:34 AM | TrackBack
9:33
The BBC reports that pilot Major Dean Eckmann gets a message as he’s flying from Langley, Virginia. “They said—all airplanes, if you come within (I believe it was) 30 miles of Washington, D.C., you will be shot down.” [BBC, 9/1/2002] It’s not clear who “they” are and what authority they have. However, fighters are not actually given shootdown orders until later, if at all.
Radar data shows Flight 77 crossing the Capitol Beltway and headed toward the Pentagon. However, the plane, flying more than 400 mph, is too high when it nears the Pentagon at 9:35 a.m., crossing the Pentagon at about 7,000 feet up. [CBS News, 9/21/2001; Boston Globe, 11/23/2001] The plane then makes a difficult high-speed descending turn. It makes a “downward spiral, turning almost a complete circle and dropping the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes. The steep turn is so smooth, the sources say, it’s clear there [is] no fight for control going on.” [CBS News, 9/21/2001] It gets very near the White House during this turn. “Sources say the hijacked jet ... [flies] several miles south of the restricted airspace around the White House.” [CBS News, 9/21/2001] The Daily Telegraph later writes, “If the airliner had approached much nearer to the White House it might have been shot down by the Secret Service, who are believed to have a battery of ground-to-air Stinger missiles ready to defend the president’s home. The Pentagon is not similarly defended.” [Daily Telegraph, 9/16/2001] White House spokesman Ari Fleischer suggests the plane goes even closer to the White House, saying, “That is not the radar data that we have seen. The plane was headed toward the White House.” [CBS News, 9/21/2001 Sources: Ari Fleischer]
Posted by jeff at 9:33 AM | TrackBack
9:32
The New York Stock Exchange closes. It is a short distance from the WTC. [MSNBC, 9/22/2001]
The FAA notifies United Airlines’ headquarters that Flight 93 is not responding to radio calls. This lack of response, combined with the plane’s turning to the east, causes United to believe, by 9:36 a.m., that the plane has been hijacked. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 456]
According to the 9/11 Commission, the Dulles Airport terminal control facility in Washington has been looking for unidentified primary radar blips since 9:21 a.m. (see 9:21 a.m.) and now finds one. Several Dulles flight controllers “observed a primary radar target tracking eastbound at a high rate of speed” and notify Reagan Airport. FAA personnel at both Reagan and Dulles airports notify the Secret Service. The identity or aircraft type is unknown. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] However, other accounts place the discovery of this plane by Dulles around 9:24 a.m. (see (9:24 a.m.)) or 9:30 a.m. (see (9:30 a.m.)), and Vice President Cheney is told radar is tracking Flight 77 at 9:27 a.m. (see (9:27 a.m.)).
A hijacker says over the radio to Flight 93’s passengers: “Ladies and gentlemen, here is the captain, please sit down. Keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb aboard.” Apparently, Cleveland flight controllers can understand about a minute of screams, before a voice again says something about a “bomb on board.” A hijacker says in broken English that they are returning to the airport. [Newsweek, 9/22/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; MSNBC, 9/3/2002] According to the 9/11 Commission’s account, the hijacker’s voice says, “Keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board.” The controller understands, but chooses to respond, “Calling Cleveland [flight control], you’re unreadable. Say again, slowly.” Apparently there’s no answer. The controller notifies his supervisor, who soon passes the notice to FAA headquarters. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
Posted by jeff at 9:32 AM | TrackBack
9:31
A few minutes after 9:31 a.m., a hijacker on board Flight 93 can be heard on the cockpit voice recorder ordering a woman to sit down. A woman, presumably a flight attendant, implores, “don’t, don’t.” She pleads, “Please, I don’t want to die.” Patrick Welsh, the husband of flight attendant Debbie Welsh, is later told that a flight attendant was stabbed early in the takeover, and it is strongly implied it was his wife. She was a first-class attendant, and he says, “knowing Debbie,” she would have resisted. [Longman, 2002, pp. 207]
Posted by jeff at 9:31 AM | TrackBack
9:30
United Airlines begins landing all of its flights inside the US (Note: All planes nationwide were already ordered down at 9:26 a.m. (see (9:26 a.m.)) and told to land in a reasonable amount of time. Now they’re told to land immediately.) American Airlines begins landing all of their flights five minutes later. [Wall Street Journal, 10/15/2001]
The three F-16s at Langley, Virginia, get airborne. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; ABC News, 9/11/2002; Washington Post, 9/12/2001; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] The pilots are Major Brad Derrig, Captain Craig Borgstrom, and Major Dean Eckmann, all from the North Dakota Air National Guard’s 119th Fighter Wing stationed at Langley. [Associated Press, 8/19/2002; ABC News, 9/11/2002] If the assumed NORAD departure time is correct, the F-16s would have to travel slightly over 700 mph to reach Washington before Flight 77 does. The maximum speed of an F-16 is 1,500 mph. [Associated Press, 6/16/2000] Even traveling at 1,300 mph, these planes could have reached Washington in six minutes—well before any claim of when Flight 77 crashed. Yet it is claimed they are accidentally directed over the Atlantic Ocean instead, and they will only reach Washington about 30 minutes later. NORAD commander Major General Larry Arnold admits in 2003 testimony that had the fighters been going at full speed, “it is physically possible that they could have gotten over Washington” before Flight 77. But asked if the fighters would have had shootdown authorization had they reached the hijacked plane, Arnold says no, claiming that even by this time in the morning it is only “through hindsight that we are certain that this was a coordinated attack on the United States.” [9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003 Sources: Larry Arnold]
As President Bush begins a speech in Florida, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke orders all US embassies overseas closed and orders all military bases to an alert level named Combat Threatcon. Over the next few minutes, Clarke discusses with aides where Bush should go from Sarasota, Florida. He telephones PEOC, the command bunker containing Vice President Cheney and National Security Adviser Rice, and says, “Somebody has to tell the president he can’t come right back here [to Washington]. Cheney, Condi, somebody, Secret Service concurs. We do not want them saying where they are going when they take off. Second, when they take off, they should have fighter escort. Three, we need to authorize the Air Force to shoot down any aircraft—including a hijacked passenger flight—that looks like it is threatening to attack and cause large-scale death on the ground. Got it?” [Clarke, 2004, pp. 5-7] However, when Bush departs on Air Force One about half an hour later, there are no fighter escorts, and none appear for an hour or so. In addition, if Clarke requests authorization for a shootdown order at this time, it is apparently ignored; neither President Bush nor Vice President Cheney give shootdown authorization for at least another 30 minutes (see (Between 10:00-10:15 a.m.)).
Radar tracks Flight 77 as it closes within 30 miles of Washington. [CBS News, 9/21/2001] Todd Lewis, flight controller at Washington’s Dulles Airport, later recalls, “... my colleagues saw a target moving quite fast from the northwest to the southeast. So she—we all started watching that target, and she notified the supervisor. However, nobody knew that was a commercial flight at the time. Nobody knew that was American 77. ... I thought it was a military flight.” [MSNBC, 9/11/2002] Another account is similar, saying that just before 9:30 a.m., a Dulles Airport controller sees an aircraft without a transponder traveling almost 500 mph headed toward Washington. [USA Today, 8/13/2002] In yet another account, Danielle O’Brien, the Dulles flight controller said to be the first to spot the blip, claims she doesn’t spot it until it is around 12 to 14 miles from Washington. [ABC News, 10/24/2001; ABC News, 10/24/2001] There are also accounts that Vice President Cheney is told around 9:27 a.m. that radar is tracking Flight 77, 50 miles away from Washington. The 9/11 Commission says the plane isn’t discovered until 9:32 a.m.
The FAA’s Emergency Operations Center gets up and running, five minutes after the FAA issues an order grounding all civilian, military, and law enforcement aircraft. [Time, 9/14/2001] This center’s role in the crisis response remains unclear.
Chris Stephenson, head flight controller at Washington’s Reagan National Airport tower, says that he is called by the Secret Service around this time. He is told an unidentified aircraft is speeding toward Washington. Stephenson looks at the radarscope and sees Flight 77 about five miles to the west. He looks out the tower window and sees the plane turning to the right and descending. He follows it until it disappears behind a building in nearby Crystal City, Virginia. [USA Today, 8/12/2002] However, according to another account, just before 9:30 a.m., a controller in the same tower has an unidentified plane on radar, “heading toward Washington and without a transponder signal to identify it. It’s flying fast, she says: almost 500 mph. And it’s heading straight for the heart of the city. Could it be American Flight 77? The FAA warns the Secret Service.” [USA Today, 8/13/2002] In short, it is unclear whether the Secret Service warns the FAA, or vice versa.
The headquarters of New York’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), which is on the 23rd floor of WTC Building 7, is evacuated. The headquarters was opened in 1999 and was specifically intended to co-ordinate the city’s response to disasters such as terrorist attacks (see June 8, 1999). [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 283-284] A senior OEM official orders the evacuation after being told by a Secret Service agent that additional commercial planes are unaccounted for. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 305] All civilians were evacuated from WTC 7 around the time the second WTC tower was hit (see After 9:03 a.m.). Despite these evacuations though, firefighters reportedly find individuals on the 7th and 8th floors of WTC 7 at around 12:10 to 12:15 p.m., who they then lead out of the building. [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 6/2004, pp. L-18 ]
Flight controllers mistakenly suspect that Delta Flight 1989, flying west over Pennsylvania, has been hijacked. The controllers briefly suspect the sound of hijackers’ voices in Flight 93 is coming from this plane, only a few miles away. USA Today reports the flight “joins a growing list of suspicious jets. Some of their flight numbers will be scrawled on a white dry-erase board throughout the morning” at FAA headquarters. Miscommunications lead to further suspicion of Flight 1989 even after the source of the hijackers’ message is confirmed to come from Flight 93. At some point, the Cleveland Airport flight control tower is evacuated for fear Flight 1989 will crash into it. Flight 1989 lands in Cleveland at 10:10 a.m. Eventually, about 11 flights will be labeled suspicious, with four of them actually hijacked. [USA Today, 8/13/2002; MSNBC, 9/11/2002] The 9/11 Commission later has another explanation as to why Flight 1989 is suspected. They claim that at 9:41 a.m., Boston flight control identifies Flight 1989 as a possible hijacking strictly because it is a transcontinental 767 that had departed from Logan Airport. Although NEADS never loses track of the flight, it launches fighters from Ohio and Michigan to intercept it soon after 10:00 a.m. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
The three Langley fighters are airborne, but just where they go and how fast are in dispute. There are varying accounts that the fighters are ordered to Washington, New York, Baltimore, or no destination at all. The 9/11 Commission Reports that, in fact, the pilots don’t understand there is an emergency and head east. They give three reasons. “First, unlike a normal scramble order, this order did not include a distance to the target, or the target’s location. Second, a ‘generic’ flight plan incorrectly led the Langley fighters to believe they were ordered to fly due east (090) for 60 miles. The purpose of the generic flight plan was to quickly get the aircraft airborne and out of local airspace. Third, the lead pilot and local FAA controller incorrectly assumed the flight plan instruction to go ‘090 for 60’ was newer guidance that superseded the original scramble order.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] However, the Wall Street Journal gives a different explanation, surprisingly from 9/11 Commission testimony. “Once they got in the air, the Langley fighters observed peacetime noise restrictions requiring that they fly more slowly than supersonic speed and takeoff over water, pointed away from Washington, according to testimony before the [9/11 Commission].” The fighters that departed to New York City over 30 minutes earlier at 8:52 a.m. (see 8:52 a.m.) traveled faster than supersonic because they realized they were in a national emergency. [Wall Street Journal, 3/22/2004] In 2003 testimony, NORAD Commander Major General Larry Arnold explains that the fighters head over the ocean because NORAD is “looking outward” and has to have clearance to fly over land. [9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003] One of the Langley pilots, Craig Borgstrom, later says that after taking off, “They (NEADS) [are] giving us the heading and altitude of north-northeast up to 20,000 feet. Then shortly after takeoff they changed our heading more north-westerly and gave us max-subsonic. That’s as fast as you can go without breaking the sound barrier.” Reportedly, the Langley fighters are now being vectored toward Washington, instead of New York. [Filson, 2004, pp. 63-65] Yet, in contrast to these accounts, the BBC reports that just before takeoff at 9:24 a.m., the pilots are specifically told that Flight 77 may have been hijacked, and they get a cockpit signal indicating they are in an emergency wartime situation (see (9:24 a.m.)). All the above accounts concur that, for whatever reason, the fighters go too far east. They don’t reach Washington until roughly around 10:00 a.m.
Apparently, the only cockpit voice recording recovered undamaged from any of the 9/11 crashes is from Flight 93. It recorded on a 30-minute reel, which means that the tape is continually overwritten and only the final 30 minutes of any flight is recorded, though in practice sometimes the tape is slightly longer. Flight 93’s recording lasts 31 minutes and begins at this time. [CNN, 4/19/2002; Longman, 2002, pp. 206-207; Hartford Courant, 4/19/2004] According to one account, it begins seconds before the plane is hijacked. [Washington Post, 11/17/2001] However, the version of the tape later played for the victims’ relatives begins “too late to pick up the sounds of the hijackers’ initial takeover.” [MSNBC, 4/18/2002]
Kevin Down, a Sarasota police officer, recalls that immediately after President Bush’s speech concludes, “The Secret Service agent [runs] out from the school and [says] We’re under terrorist attack, we have to go now.” [BBC, 9/1/2002] The motorcade departs a few minutes later.
The Command Center of New York’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), based in WTC Building 7, was evacuated around 9:30 a.m. (see 9:30 a.m.). Subsequently, OEM staff members request the OEM command bus, which is equipped with radios and computers, to use as a mobile operations center. This is then used to set up a temporary command post, located at one point in front of 70 Barclay Street, with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, OEM Commissioner John Odermatt, and the police and fire commissioners all present. Giuliani is apparently at this post when forewarned of the WTC collapse (see (Before 9:59 a.m.)). Alarm is raised when a panel truck is stopped near the temporary command post, with a painting of a plane flying into the World Trade Center on it. Fearing that it might be a truck bomb, the New York Police Department immediately evacuates the surrounding area and calls out the bomb squad. NYPD temporarily detains the truck’s occupants, who turn out to be a group of Middle Easterners who speak no English, and have rented the truck. According to a report by the Mineta Transportation Institute, the vehicle turns out to be an innocent delivery truck. The report does not state who rented the truck to the Middle Easterners, or why it shows a picture of a plane hitting the WTC. [9/11 Commission, 5/19/2004; Jenkins and Edwards-Winslow, 9/2003, pp. 20]
Posted by jeff at 9:30 AM | TrackBack
9:29
Flight 77’s autopilot is disengaged. The plane is flying at 7,000 feet and is about 38 miles west of the Pentagon. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 9] Information from the plane’s recovered flight data recorder (see September 13-14, 2001) later will indicate the pilot had entered autopilot instructions for a course to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (which is nearby the Pentagon). [9/11 Commission, 1/27/2004]
Inside Booker Elementary School, President Bush gives a brief speech in front of about 200 students, plus many teachers and reporters. [Daily Mail, 9/8/2002] He says, “Today we’ve had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country.” [Federal News Service, 9/11/2001] The talk occurs at exactly the time and place stated in his publicly announced advance schedule—making Bush a possible terrorist target. [MSNBC, 9/22/2001; Washington Post, 9/12/2001; CNN, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001] This is the last most Americans will see of Bush until the evening. reporters at Booker Elementary School.
Shortly after hearing strange noises from the cockpit of Flight 93, Cleveland flight controllers notice the plane has descended about 700 feet. They try to contact the plane several times, but get no answer. At 9:30 a.m., a controller asks other nearby flights on his frequency if they’ve heard screaming; several say that they have. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] However, despite these disturbing sounds and lack of contact with the plane, Cleveland doesn’t notify anyone else about it.
Captain Charles Leidig is in command of the National Military Command Center (NMCC), “the military’s worldwide nerve center.” [CNN, 9/4/2002] Telephone links are established with the NMCC located inside the Pentagon (but on the opposite side of the building from where the explosion will happen), Canada’s equivalent Command Center, Strategic Command, theater commanders, and federal emergency-response agencies. An Air Threat Conference Call is initiated and it lasts for eight hours. At one time or another, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, key military officers, leaders of the FAA and NORAD, the White House, and Air Force One are heard on the open line. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] NORAD command director Captain Michael Jellinek claims this happens “immediately” after the second WTC hit. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002] However, the 9/11 Commission concludes it starts nearly 30 minutes later, at approximately 9:29 a.m. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Brigadier General Montague Winfield, who later takes over for Leidig, says, “All of the governmental agencies that were involved in any activity going on in the United States at that point, were in that conference.” [ABC News, 9/11/2002] The call continues right through the Pentagon explosion; the impact is not felt within the NMCC. [CNN, 9/4/2002] However, despite being in the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld doesn’t enter the NMCC or participate in the call until 10:30 a.m. (see (10:30 a.m.)).
Posted by jeff at 9:29 AM | TrackBack
9:28
CNN quotes the Associate Press as reporting that a US official believes the attacks are believed to have been carried out by terrorists. [Ottawa Citizen, 9/11/2001]
Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, directing a video conference with top officials, asks Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Richard Myers, “I assume NORAD has scrambled fighters and AWACS. How many? Where?” Myers replies, “Not a pretty picture, Dick. We are in the middle of Vigilant Warrior, a NORAD exercise, but ... Otis has launched two birds toward New York. Langley is trying to get two up now [toward Washington]. The AWACS are at Tinker and not on alert.” Vigilant Warrior may be a mistaken reference to the on-going war game Vigilant Guardian. Otis Air National Guard Base is in Massachusetts, 188 miles east of New York City; Langley is in Virginia, 129 miles south of Washington; Tinker Air Force Base is in Oklahoma. Clarke asks, “Okay, how long to CAP [combat air patrol] over D.C.?” Myers replies, “Fast as we can. Fifteen minutes?” Note that according to Clarke, Myers is surrounded by generals and colonels as he says this (which contradicts Myers’ own accounts of where he is and what he’s doing). [Clarke, 2004, pp. 5] The first fighters don’t reach Washington until 30 minutes or more later.
Cleveland flight controller Stacey Taylor has been warned to watch transcontinental flights heading west for anything suspicious. She later recalls, “I hear one of the controllers behind me go, ‘Oh, my God, oh my God,’ and he starts yelling for the supervisor. He goes, ‘What is this plane doing? What is this plane doing?’ I wasn’t that busy at the time, and I pulled it up on my screen and he was climbing and descending and climbing and descending, but very gradually. He’d go up 300 feet, he’d go down 300 feet. And it turned out to be United 93.” (Note the time of this incident is not specified, but presumably it is prior to when Cleveland controllers note Flight 93 descends 700 feet at 9:29 a.m. (see (9:29 a.m.))) [MSNBC, 9/11/2002]
Flight 93 acknowledges a transmission from a Cleveland flight controller. This is the last normal contact with the plane. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] According to the 9/11 Commission, less than a minute later, the controller, and pilots of aircraft in the vicinity, hear “a radio transmission of unintelligible sounds of possible screaming or a struggle from an unknown origin...” [Newsweek, 11/25/2001; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004; Guardian, 10/17/2001] Someone, presumably pilot Jason Dahl, is overheard by controllers as he shouts, “Mayday!” [New York Times, 7/22/2004] Seconds later, the controller responds: “Somebody call Cleveland?” Then there are more sounds of screaming and someone yelling, “Get out of here, get out of here.” [MSNBC, 7/30/2002; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004; Observer, 12/2/2001; Toronto Sun, 9/16/2001; Newsweek, 9/22/2001] Then the voices of the hijackers can be heard talking in Arabic. The words are later translated to show they are talking to each other, saying, “Everything is fine.” [Newsweek, 11/25/2001] Later passenger phone calls describe two dead or injured bodies just outside the cockpit; presumably these are the two pilots. [New York Times, 7/22/2004]
According to former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, around this time the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers tells him via video link: “We are in the middle of Vigilant Warrior, a NORAD exercise, but ... Otis [Air National Guard Base] has launched two birds toward New York.” [Clarke, 2004, pp. 5] However, no other references have been found to this exercise, “Vigilant Warrior.” Considering that exercise terms are “normally an unclassified nickname,” [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 4/23/1998 ] this is perhaps a little odd. Could Richard Clarke have mistakenly been referring to the Vigilant Guardian exercise (see (6:30 a.m.)), which is taking place on 9/11? According to a later news report though, NORAD confirms that “it was running two mock drills on Sept. 11 at various radar sites and Command Centers in the United States and Canada,” one of these being Vigilant Guardian. [New Jersey Star-Ledger, 12/5/2003] If this is correct then there must be another NORAD exercise on 9/11. If not “Vigilant Warrior,” a possibility is that the exercise referred to by Richard Clarke is in fact “Amalgam Warrior,” which is a NORAD-sponsored, large-scale, live-fly air defense and air intercept field training exercise. Amalgam Warrior usually involves two or more NORAD regions and is held twice yearly, in the spring for the West Coast and in the autumn for the East Coast. [Airman, 1996; GlobalSecurity (.org), 4/14/2002; US Congress, n.d.; Arkin, 2005, pp. 254] Is it possible that in 2001 the East Coast Amalgam Warrior is being held earlier than usual (like Global Guardian (see 8:30 a.m.)) and is taking place on 9/11? In support of this possibility is a 1997 Defense Department report that describes the Stratcom exercise Global Guardian, saying it “links with other exercise activities sponsored by the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Unified Commands.” The exercises it links with are Crown Vigilance (an Air Combat Command exercise), Apollo Guardian (a US Space Command exercise), and—significantly—the NORAD exercises Vigilant Guardian and Amalgam Warrior. [US Department of Defense, 5/1997; GlobalSecurity (.org), 10/10/2002] Since in 2001, Vigilant Guardian (see (6:30 a.m.)) is occurring the same time as Global Guardian, might Amalgam Warrior be as well? In his book Code Names, William Arkin says that Amalgam Warrior is “sometimes combined with Global Guardian.” [Arkin, 2005, pp. 254] Amalgam Warrior tests such activities as tracking, surveillance, air interception, employing rules of engagement, attack assessment, electronic warfare, and counter-cruise-missile operations. A previous Amalgam Warrior in 1996 involved such situations as tracking unknown aircraft that had incorrectly filed their flight plans or wandered off course, in-flight emergencies, terrorist aircraft attacks, and large-scale bomber strike missions. Amalgam Warrior 98-1 was NORAD’s largest ever exercise and involved six B-1B bombers being deployed to Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, to act as an enemy threat by infiltrating the aerial borders of North America. [Airman, 1996; GlobalSecurity (.org), 4/14/2002; Arkin, 2005, pp. 254] Another Amalgam Warrior in fall 2000 similarly involved four B-1 bombers acting as enemy forces trying to invade Alaska, with NORAD going from tracking the unknown aircraft to sending up “alert” F-15s in response. [Eielson News Service, 10/27/2000; Associated Press, 10/29/2000] If either one (or both) of these exercises ending with the name “Warrior” is taking place on 9/11, this could be very significant, because the word “Warrior” indicates that the exercise is a Joint Chiefs of Staff-approved, Commander in Chief, NORAD-sponsored field training exercise. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 8/25/1989] Real planes would be pretending to be threats to the US and real fighters would be deployed to defend against them.
Posted by jeff at 9:28 AM | TrackBack
9:27
Vice President Cheney and National Security Adviser Rice, in their bunker below the White House, are told by an aide that an airplane is headed toward Washington from 50 miles away. The plane is Flight 77. FAA deputy Monty Belger says, “Well We’re watching this target on the radar, but the transponder’s been turned off. So we have no identification.” They are given further notices when the plane is 30 miles away, then ten miles away, until it disappears from radar (time unknown, but the plane is said to be traveling about 500 mph and was 30 miles away at 9:30 a.m., so 50 miles would be about three minutes before that). [ABC News, 9/11/2002] Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta gives virtually the same account before the 9/11 Commission. [9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003] However, the 9/11 Commission later claims the plane heading toward Washington is only discovered at 9:32 a.m. (see 9:32 a.m.). [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
Tom Burnett calls his wife, Deena, using a cell phone and says, “I’m on United Flight 93 from Newark to San Francisco. The plane has been hijacked. We are in the air. They’ve already knifed a guy. There is a bomb on board. Call the FBI.” Deena connects to emergency 9-1-1. [ABC News, 9/12/2001; Longman, 2002, pp. 107; MSNBC, 7/30/2002; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/2001; Toronto Sun, 9/16/2001] Deena wonders if the call might have been before the cockpit was taken over, because he spoke quickly and quietly as if he was being watched. He also had a headset like phone operators use, so he could have made the call unnoticed. Note that original versions of this conversation appear to have been censored. The most recent account has the phone call ending with, “We are in the air. The plane has been hijacked. They already knifed a guy. One of them has a gun. They’re saying there is a bomb onboard. Please call the authorities.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 107] The major difference from earlier accounts, is the mention of a gun. The call wasn’t recorded, but Deena’s call to 9-1-1 immediately afterwards was, and on that call she states, “They just knifed a passenger and there are guns on the plane.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 108] Deena Burnett later says of her husband: “He told me one of the hijackers had a gun. He wouldn’t have made it up. Tom grew up around guns. He was an avid hunter and we have guns in our home. If he said there was a gun on board, there was.” [London Times, 8/11/2002] This is the first of over 30 phone calls by passengers inside the plane. [MSNBC, 7/30/2002] Passengers are told what happened at the WTC in least five of the phone calls. Five calls show an intent to revolt against the hijackers. [San Francisco Chronicle, 7/23/2004]
Posted by jeff at 9:27 AM | TrackBack
9:26
Time magazine later reports that Jane Garvey, head of the FAA, “almost certainly after getting an okay from the White House, initiate[s] a national ground stop, which forbids takeoffs and requires planes in the air to get down as soon as is reasonable. The order, which has never been implemented since flying was invented in 1903, applie[s] to virtually every single kind of machine that can takeoff—civilian, military, or law enforcement.” Military and law enforcement flights are allowed to resume at 10:31 a.m. (see 10:31 a.m.) A limited number of military flights—the FAA will not reveal details—are allowed to fly during this ban. [Time, 9/14/2001] Garvey later calls it “a national ground stop ... that prevented any aircraft from taking off.” [US Congress, 9/21/2001] Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta later says he was the one to give the order: “As soon as I was aware of the nature and scale of the attack, I called from the White House to order the air traffic system to land all aircraft, immediately and without exception.” [US Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, 9/20/2001] According to Mineta, “At approximately 9:45 ... I gave the FAA the final order for all civil aircraft to land at the nearest airport as soon as possible.” [9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003] At the time, 4,452 planes are flying in the continental US. A later account states that Ben Sliney, the FAA’s National Operations Manager, makes the decision without consulting his superiors, like Jane Garvey, first. It would be remarkable if Sliney was the one to make the decision, because 9/11 is Sliney’s first day on the job as National Operations Manager, “the chess master of the air traffic system.” [USA Today, 8/13/2002] When he accepted the job a couple of months earlier, he had asked, “What is the limit of my authority?” The man who had promoted him replied, “Unlimited.” [USA Today, 8/13/2002] Yet another account, by Linda Schuessler, manager of tactical operations at the FAA Command Center where Sliney was located, says, “... it was done collaboratively ... All these decisions were corporate decisions. It wasn’t one person who said, ‘Yes, this has got to get done.’” [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 12/17/2001] About 500 planes land in the next 20 minutes, and then much more urgent orders to land are issued at 9:45 a.m. (see (9:45 a.m.)). [USA Today, 8/13/2002; Time, 9/14/2001; USA Today, 8/13/2002; US Congress, 9/21/2001; Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002; Newsday, 9/23/2001; Associated Press, 8/19/2002; Newsday, 9/10/2002]
Posted by jeff at 9:26 AM | TrackBack
9:25
According to the 9/11 Commission, the FAA Command Center advises FAA headquarters that American 77 is lost in Indianapolis flight control’s airspace, that Indianapolis has no primary radar track, and is looking for the aircraft. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] The Command Center had learned this 16 minutes earlier at 9:09 a.m. (see 9:09 a.m.). American Airlines headquarters was notified of the same information before 9:00 a.m. (see (Before 9:00 a.m.)).
According to his own account, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, started a video teleconference from the White House’s Secure Video Conferencing Center, next to the Situation Room, at around 9:10 a.m.(see (9:10 a.m.)). However, the 9/11 Commission says that logs indicate this conference beginning 15 minutes later than this. Included in the conference are the FBI, the CIA, the FAA, the departments of State, Justice, and Defense, and the White House shelter. The FAA and CIA join at 9:40 a.m. The 9/11 Commission says, “It is not clear to us that the video teleconference was fully under way before 9:37, when the Pentagon was struck.” Furthermore, it states: “We do not know who from Defense participated, but we know that in the first hour none of the personnel involved in managing the crisis did. And none of the information conveyed in the White House video teleconference, at least in the first hour, was being passed to the NMCC [in the Pentagon].” Clarke’s video teleconference is not connected into the area of the NMCC from where the crisis is being managed. Consequently, “the director of the operations team-who was on the phone with NORAD-did not have the benefit of information being shared on the video teleconference.” And, “when the Secretary [of Defense Rumsfeld] and Vice Chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Myers] later participated in the White House video teleconference, they were necessarily absent from the NMCC and unable to provide guidance to the operations team.” Clarke, however, gives a specific recollection of Myers speaking over video at 9:28, which is seemingly at odds with the 9/11 Commission’s account (see 9:28 a.m.). One witness later recalls: “[It] was almost like there were parallel decision-making processes going on; one was a voice conference orchestrated by the NMCC ... and then there was the [White House video teleconference]. ... [I]n my mind they were competing venues for command and control and decision-making.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004]
Theodore (Ted) Olson, the Justice Department’s Solicitor General, calls the Justice Department’s control center to relate his wife Barbara’s call from Flight 77. Accounts vary whether the Justice Department already knows of the hijack or not. [Washington Post, 9/12/2001; Channel 4 News (London), 9/13/2001; New York Times, 9/15/2001] Olson merely says, “They just absorbed the information. And they promised to send someone down right away.” He assumes they then “pass the information on to the appropriate people.” [Hannity & Colmes, 9/14/2001]
Posted by jeff at 9:25 AM | TrackBack
9:24
Shortly after 9/11, NORAD reported that the FAA notified them at this time that Flight 77 “may” have been hijacked and that it appears headed toward Washington. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; Associated Press, 8/19/2002; CNN, 9/17/2001; Washington Post, 9/12/2001; Guardian, 10/17/2001] Apparently, flight controllers at Dulles International Airport discover a plane heading at high speed toward Washington; an alert is sounded within moments that the plane appears to be headed toward the White House. [Washington Post, 11/3/2001] In 2003, the FAA supported this account, but claimed that they had informally notified NORAD earlier. “NORAD logs indicate that the FAA made formal notification about American Flight 77 at 9:24 a.m. (see (9:24 a.m.)), but information about the flight was conveyed continuously during the phone bridges before the formal notification.” [Federal Aviation Administration, 5/22/2003] Yet in 2004, the 9/11 Commission claims that both NORAD and the FAA are wrong. The 9/11 Commission explains that the notification NEADS received at 9:24 a.m. was the incorrect information that Flight 11 had not hit the WTC and was headed south for Washington, D.C. Thus, according to the 9/11 Commission, NORAD is never notified by the FAA about the hijacking of Flight 77, but accidentally learns about it at 9:34 a.m. (see 9:34 a.m.). [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
The BBC later reports that at this time, Robert Marr, head of NEADS, gives the scramble order to the F-16 fighters based in Langley, Virginia: “North East sectors back on. We ought to be getting the weapons crews back in. Get the scramble order rolling. Scramble.” [BBC, 9/1/2002] The 9/11 Commission concurs that the scramble order is given now. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] NORAD also has agreed. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001] However, many media reports have placed it later. [CNN, 9/17/2001; Washington Post, 9/12/2001; CNN, 9/17/2001; Washington Post, 9/15/2001] A pilot codenamed Honey gives a slightly different account. He claims that at this time a battle stations alert sounds and two other pilots are given the order to climb into their F-16s and await further instructions. Then, Honey, the supervising pilot, talks to the two other pilots. Then, “five or ten minutes later,” a person from NORAD calls and Honey speaks to him at the nearby administrative office. He is told that all three of them are ordered to scramble. Honey goes to his living quarters, grabs his flight gear, puts it on, runs to his plane, and takes off. [Longman, 2002, pp. 64-65] Honey appears to be the codename for Captain Craig Borgstrom, because in another account, Borgstrom is given an alert and then talks to the two other pilots. [Associated Press, 8/19/2002] A different pilot account has the battle stations warning three minutes earlier, while the 9/11 Commission claims that it happens fifteen minutes earlier. Pilot Major Dean Eckmann recalls, “They go ‘active air scramble, vector zero one zero one, max speed.’ And then I push us over to the tower frequency and get our departure clearance and they launch us out right away. ... We can carry M9-Heat Seekers, Side Winders for the M7-Sparrow, plus we have an internal 20mm Vulcan Cannon, and we were pretty much armed with all that. We had a pretty quick response time. I believe it was four to five minutes we were airborne from that point.” The BBC reports, “Even while last minute pre-launch checks are being made, the controllers learn that a third plane—American Airlines flight 77 out of Washington—may have been hijacked.” Just before the fighters take off, the BBC says, “The pilots get a signal over the plane’s transponder—a code that indicates an emergency wartime situation.” [BBC, 9/1/2002]
Posted by jeff at 9:24 AM | TrackBack
9:23
According to the 9/11 Commission, NEADS has just been told that the hijacked Flight 11 is still in the air and heading toward Washington. The NEADS Battle Commander says, “Okay, uh, American Airlines is still airborne. Eleven, the first guy, he’s heading towards Washington. Okay? I think we need to scramble Langley right now. And I’m gonna take the fighters from Otis, try to chase this guy down if I can find him.” The NEADS Mission Crew Commander issues the order, “Okay ... scramble Langley. Head them towards the Washington area.” The Langley, Virginia, base gets the scramble order at 9:24 a.m. (see (9:24 a.m.)). NEADS keeps their fighters from the Otis base over New York City. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
Posted by jeff at 9:23 AM | TrackBack
9:21
The New York City Port Authority closes all bridges and tunnels in New York City. [MSNBC, 9/22/2001; CNN, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001; Associated Press, 8/19/2002]
According to the 9/11 Commission, NEADS is contacted by Boston flight control. A controller says, “I just had a report that American 11 is still in the air, and it’s on its way towards—heading towards Washington. ... That was another—it was evidently another aircraft that hit the tower. That’s the latest report we have. ... I’m going to try to confirm an ID for you, but I would assume he’s somewhere over, uh, either New Jersey or somewhere further south.” The NEADS official asks, “He—American 11 is a hijack? ... And he’s heading into Washington?” The Boston controller answers yes both times and adds, “This could be a third aircraft.” Somehow Boston is told by FAA headquarters that Flight 11 is still airborne, but the commission hasn’t been able to find where this mistaken information came from. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
According to the 9/11 Commission, the FAA Command Center advises the Dulles Airport terminal control facility in Washington to look for primary targets. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] By at least one account, Dulles notices Flight 77 a few minutes later.
Major Dean Eckmann, an F-16 fight pilot at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, recalls, “The scramble horn goes off and we get the yellow light, which is our battle stations. So at that point I go running out to the airplanes—to my assigned alert airplane—get suited up and I get into the cockpit ready to start.” [BBC, 9/1/2002] A few minutes before the battle stations order, Eckmann is told that a plane has hit the WTC. He assumes it’s some kind of accident. [Associated Press, 8/19/2002] However, another pilot, codenamed Honey (apparently Craig Borgstrom), claims the battle stations command happens at 9:24 a.m. (see (9:24 a.m.)); while the 9/11 Commission claims it happens at 9:09 a.m. (see 9:09 a.m.).
At 9:21 a.m., United Airlines dispatchers are told to advise their flights to secure cockpit doors. Flight dispatcher Ed Ballinger has apparently already started doing this on his own a couple of minutes earlier. Sending electronic messages one by one, at 9:24 he sends a message to Flight 93 reading: “Beware of cockpit intrusion. Two aircraft in New York hit Trade Center buildings.” Ballinger claims that he was specifically instructed by superiors not to tell pilots why they needed to land (apparently he added the detail about the WTC against orders). [New York Observer, 6/17/2004] Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl acknowledges the message two minutes later, replying, “Ed, confirm latest message please Jason.” This is the last vocal contact from the cockpit of Flight 93. [9/11 Commission, 1/27/2004] Note that this formal warning is in addition to an informal one sent by Ballinger that reached Flight 93 around 9:00 a.m. In contrast to United Airlines, the 9/11 Commission finds no evidence that American Airlines sends such warnings to their pilots at any time during the hijackings.
Posted by jeff at 9:21 AM | TrackBack
9:20
According to the 9/11 Commission, Indianapolis flight control learns that there are other hijacked aircraft by this time (presumably at least Flights 11 and 175). Millions of people have known about the crashes since CNN and all other media began broadcasting images from New York at 8:48 a.m., but Indianapolis is reportedly unaware until this time. The Indianapolis flight controllers begin to doubt their assumption that Flight 77 has crashed and consider that it might be hijacked. After a discussion between the Indianapolis manager and the FAA Command Center, the Command Center notifies some other FAA facilities that Flight 77 is lost. By 9:21 a.m., the Command Center, some FAA field facilities, and American Airlines join the search for Flight 77. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
The FAA sets up a hijacking teleconference with several agencies, including the Defense Department. This is almost one hour after the FAA’s Boston flight control notified other flight control centers about the first hijacking at 8:25 a.m. (see 8:25 a.m.). Yet even after this delay, FAA and Defense Department participants in the teleconference later claim it plays no role in coordinating the response to the hijackings. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
Transportation Secretary Mineta arrives at the White House bunker containing Vice President Cheney and others. In later testimony, he recalls that Cheney is already there when he arrives. [St. Petersburg Times, 7/4/2004] This supports accounts of Cheney reaching the bunker not long after the second WTC crash, but the 9/11 Commission concludes Cheney doesn’t arrive until a few minutes before 10:00 a.m.. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
In a government report analyzing the effectiveness of rescue worker response to the Pentagon crash, it is mentioned that, “At about 9:20 a.m., the WFO [FBI Washington Field Office] Command Center [is] notified that American Airlines Flight 77 had been hijacked shortly after takeoff from Washington Dulles International Airport. [Special Agent in Charge Arthur] Eberhart dispatche[s] a team of 50 agents to investigate the Dulles hijacking and provide additional security to prevent another. He sen[ds] a second team to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport as a precautionary step. At the WFO Command Center, Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) Jim Rice [is] on the telephone with the Pentagon when Flight 77 crashe[s] into the building.” [US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002] Yet according to the 9/11 Commission, NORAD is not told that Flight 77 had been hijacked at this time or any time before it crashes. However, the FAA has claimed they officially warned NORAD at 9:24 a.m. (see (9:24 a.m.)) and informally warned them even earlier (see (9:24 a.m.)).
A passenger on Flight 77, Barbara Olson, calls her husband, Theodore (Ted) Olson, who is Solicitor General at the Justice Department. [San Francisco Chronicle, 7/23/2004] Ted Olson is in his Justice Department office watching WTC news on television when his wife calls. A few days later, he says, “She told me that she had been herded to the back of the plane. She mentioned that they had used knives and box cutters to hijack the plane. She mentioned that the pilot had announced that the plane had been hijacked.” [CNN, 9/14/2001] He tells her that two planes have hit the WTC. [Daily Telegraph, 3/5/2002] She feels nobody is taking charge. [CNN, 9/12/2001] He doesn’t know if she was near the pilots, but at one point she asks, “What shall I tell the pilot? What can I tell the pilot to do?” [CNN, 9/14/2001] Then she is cut off without warning. [Newsweek, 9/29/2001] Ted Olson’s recollection of the call’s timing is extremely vague, saying it “must have been 9:15 [am.] or 9:30 [am.]. Someone would have to reconstruct the time for me.” [CNN, 9/14/2001] Other accounts place it around 9:25 a.m. [Miami Herald, 9/14/2001; New York Times, 9/15/2001; Washington Post, 9/21/2001] The call is said to have lasted about a minute. [Washington Post, 9/12/2001] By some accounts, his message that planes have hit the WTC comes later, in a second phone call. [Washington Post, 9/21/2001] In one account, Barbara Olson calls from inside a bathroom. [Evening Standard, 9/12/2001] In another account, she is near a pilot, and in yet another she is near two pilots. [Boston Globe, 11/23/2001] Ted Olson’s account of how Barbara Olson made her calls is also conflicting. Three days after 9/11, he says, “I found out later that she was having, for some reason, to call collect and was having trouble getting through. You know how it is to get through to a government institution when you’re calling collect.” He says he doesn’t know what kind of phone she used, but he has “assumed that it must have been on the airplane phone, and that she somehow didn’t have access to her credit cards. Otherwise, she would have used her cell phone and called me.” [Hannity & Colmes, 9/14/2001] Why Barbara Olson would have needed access to her credit cards to call him on her cell phone is not explained. However, in another interview on the same day, he says that she used a cell phone and that she may have been cut off “because the signals from cell phones coming from airplanes don’t work that well.” [CNN, 9/14/2001] Six months later, he claims she called collect “using the phone in the passengers’ seats.” [Daily Telegraph, 3/5/2002] However, it is not possible to call on seatback phones, collect or otherwise, without a credit card, which would render making a collect call moot. Many other details are conflicting, and Olson faults his memory and says that he “tends to mix the two [calls] up because of the emotion of the events.” [CNN, 9/14/2001] The couple liked to joke that they were at the heart of what Hillary Clinton famously called a “vast, right-wing conspiracy.” Ted Olson has been a controversial choice as Solicitor General since he argued on behalf of Bush before the Supreme Court in the 2000 presidential election controversy before being nominated for his current position.
Posted by jeff at 9:20 AM | TrackBack
9:18
The FAA Command Center finally issues a nationwide alert to flight controllers to watch for planes disappearing from radar or making unauthorized course changes. [Washington Post, 11/3/2001]
Posted by jeff at 9:18 AM | TrackBack
9:17
The FAA shuts down all New York City area airports. [CNN, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001] A flight controller at La Guardia airport reports the taxiways, runways, and airspace are completely clear at 9:37 a.m.m [New York Times, 12/30/2003]
Posted by jeff at 9:17 AM | TrackBack
9:16
According to a NORAD timeline from a week after 9/11, NORAD claims that Flight 93 may have been hijacked at this time. The timeline inexplicably fails to say when the FAA told them about the hijack, the only flight for which they fail to provide this data. [CNN, 9/17/2001; North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001] However, there may be one explanation: There are media reports that “investigators had determined from the cockpit voice recorder from United Airlines Flight 93 ... that one of the four hijackers had been invited into the cockpit area before the flight took off from Newark, New Jersey.” Cockpit voice recordings indicate that the pilots believed their guest was a colleague “and was thereby extended the typical airline courtesy of allowing any pilot from any airline to join a flight by sitting in the jumpseat, the folded over extra seat located inside the cockpit.” [Fox News, 9/24/2001; Herald Sun (Melbourne), 9/25/2001] However, this account has not been confirmed. The 9/11 Commission asserts the hijacking begins around 9:28 a.m. (see (9:28 a.m.)) [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Note that during the 9/11 Commission hearings in May 2003, NORAD officials stated that the FAA informed NEADS at 9:16 a.m. that United Flight 93 was hijacked. According to a commission report in 2004, “this statement was incorrect.” No further explanation is offered for NORAD’s incorrect timeline. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
President Bush leaves the Sarasota classroom where he has been since about 9:03 a.m.(see 9:03 a.m.). The children finish their lessons and put away their readers. [Sarasota Magazine, 9/19/2001] Bush advises the children to stay in school and be good citizens. [Tampa Tribune, 9/1/2002; St. Petersburg Times, 9/8/2002] He also tells the children, “Thank you all so very much for showing me your reading skills.” [ABC News, 9/11/2002] One student also asks Bush a question, and Bush gives a quick response on his education policy. [New York Post, 9/12/2002] A reporter asks, “Mr. President, are you aware of the reports of the plane crash in New York? Is there any...” This question is interrupted by an aide who has come into the room, saying, “All right. Thank you. If everyone could please step outside.” Bush then says, “We’ll talk about it later.” [CBS News, 9/11/2002] Bush then tells school principal Gwen Tose-Rigell, who is in the room, about the terror attacks and why he has to leave. [Washington Times, 10/7/2002] He then goes into an empty classroom next door and meets with his staff there. [ABC News, 9/11/2002] Bush’s program with the children was supposed to start at 9:00 a.m. and end 20 minutes later. [Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/16/2001] He leaves the classroom only a couple of minutes earlier than planned, if at all. The “goodbyes” and questions on the way out may have taken another minute or two.
President Bush works with his staff to prepare a speech he will deliver at 9:29 a.m. (see 9:29 a.m.) He intermittently watches the television coverage in the room. [Albuquerque Tribune, 9/10/2002] He also speaks on the phone to advisers, first calling National Security Adviser Rice, then Vice President Cheney, then New York Governor George Pataki. [Daily Mail, 9/8/2002] Bush often turns to look at a television screen. He declares, “We’re at war.” [BBC, 9/1/2002] Bush later claims he makes no major decisions about the crisis until after boarding Air Force One at 9:55 a.m. (see (9:56 a.m.)).
Posted by jeff at 9:16 AM | TrackBack
9:15
American Airlines orders no new take-offs in the US United Airlines follows suit five minutes later. [Wall Street Journal, 10/15/2001]
Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke begins a crisis response video conference by asking FAA Administrator Jane Garvey what she knows. Garvey replies, “The two aircraft that went in [to the WTC] were American flight 11, a 767, and United 175, also a 767. Hijacked.” She says that she has put a hold on all takeoffs and landings in New York and Washington, then states, “We have reports of eleven aircraft off course or out of communications.” Clarke and Garvey discuss the feasibility of canceling all takeoffs nationally, and grounding all planes in the air. Garvey says it is possible, but will take time. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 4-5]
Posted by jeff at 9:15 AM | TrackBack
9:13
A Port Authority police officer calls a flight controller at La Guardia Airport in New York City. The officer asks, “They are inquiring whether or not you can call Kennedy’s tower, because they can’t get through, and inquire whether or not they had any contact with these aircrafts.” The flight controller responds, “At this time, we do not think that anyone in the FAA had any contact with them.” [New York Times, 12/30/2003] “Kennedy” is a reference to John F. Kennedy Airport, another major airport in New York City. Port Authority police, who patrol both the WTC and the airports, seek information from the controllers about the hijackers. However, the controllers are unable to offer any news. [New York Times, 12/30/2003]
Posted by jeff at 9:13 AM | TrackBack
9:12
Renee May, a flight attendant on Flight 77, uses a cell phone to call her mother in Las Vegas. She tells her mother that the flight has been hijacked, and that everyone has been asked to move to the back of the plane. She asks her mother to call American Airlines and let them know Flight 77 has been hijacked. Her mother (Nancy May) calls the airline. [Las Vegas Review-Journal, 9/13/2001; Las Vegas Review-Journal, 9/15/2001; 9/11 Commission, 1/27/2004; San Francisco Chronicle, 7/23/2004] American Airlines headquarters is already aware that Flight 77 is hijacked, but supposedly Indianapolis flight control covering the flight still is not told.
Posted by jeff at 9:12 AM | TrackBack
9:10
According to released transcripts, a caller from the Port Authority police desk tells a La Guardia Airport control tower employee that, “they are considering [the crashes into the WTC] a criminal act.” The control tower employee replies, “We believe that, and we are holding all aircraft on the ground.” [Associated Press, 12/29/2003] La Guardia is one of two major New York City airports, and the Port Authority patrol both the WTC and the city’s airports.
According to counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke and others, Vice President Cheney goes from his White House office to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), a bunker in the East Wing of the White House, at about this time. National Security Adviser Rice, after initiating a video conference with Richard Clarke in the West Wing, goes to the PEOC to be with Cheney. There is no video link between response centers in the East and West Wings, but a secure telephone line is used instead. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 3-4; ABC News, 9/14/2002; New York Times, 9/16/2001; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001] One eyewitness account, David Bohrer, a White House photographer, says Cheney leaves for the PEOC just after 9:00 a.m. [ABC News, 9/14/2002] However, there is a second account claiming that Cheney doesn’t leave until sometime after 9:30 a.m. In this account, Secret Service agents burst into Cheney’s White House office. They carry him under his arms—nearly lifting him off the ground—and propel him down the steps into the White House basement and through a long tunnel toward an underground bunker. [Washington Post, 1/27/2002; BBC, 9/1/2002; Newsweek, 12/31/2001; New York Times, 10/16/2001; MSNBC, 9/11/2002; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] At about the same time, National Security Adviser Rice is told to go to the bunker as well. [ABC News, 9/11/2002] In addition to the eyewitness accounts of Clarke and Bohrer, ABC News claims that Cheney is in the bunker when he is told Flight 77 is 50 miles away from Washington at 9:27 a.m., suggesting that accounts of Cheney entering the bunker after 9:27 a.m. are likely incorrect.
Washington flight control notices a new eastbound plane entering its radar with no radio contact and no transponder identification. They do not realize it is Flight 77. They are aware of the hijackings and crashes of Flights 11 and 175, yet they apparently fail to notify anyone about the unidentified plane. [Newsday, 9/23/2001; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Another report says they never notice it, and it is only noticed when it enters radar coverage of Washington’s Dulles International Airport at 9:24 a.m. (see (9:24 a.m.)). [Washington Post, 11/3/2001]
Around this time, counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke reaches the Secure Video Conferencing Center next to the Situation Room in the West Wing of the White House. From there, he directs the response to the 9/11 attacks and stays in contact with other top officials through video links. On video are Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, CIA Director Tenet, FBI Director Mueller, FAA Administrator Jane Garvey, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson (filling in for the traveling Attorney General Ashcroft), Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (filling in for the traveling Secretary of State Powell), and Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers (filling in for the traveling Chairman Henry Shelton). National Security Adviser Rice is with Clarke, but she lets Clarke run the crisis response, deferring to his longer experience on terrorism matters. Clarke is also told by an aide, “We’re on the line with NORAD, on an air threat conference call.” [Clarke, 2004, pp. 2-4; Australian, 3/27/2004] The 9/11 Commission says of this conference in a staff report: “The White House Situation Room initiated a video teleconference, chaired by Richard Clarke. While important, it had no immediate effect on the emergency defense efforts.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] The 9/11 Commission’s Final Report covers the conference in greater depth and suggests begins about 15 minutes later than Clarke claims, at 9:25 a.m.(see 9:25 a.m.). Yet, as the Washington Post puts it, “everyone seems to agree” Clarke is the chief crisis manager on 9/11. [Washington Post, 3/28/2004] Even Clarke’s later opponent, National Security Adviser Rice, calls him 9/11’s “crisis management guy.” [United Press International, 4/10/2004] The conference is where the government’s emergency defense efforts are concentrated.
Posted by jeff at 9:10 AM | TrackBack
9:09
The mission crew commander at NEADS is considering launching F-16s at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, towards New York to provide backup for the Otis fighters. However, the command area at NEADS overlooking the operations floor (the “Battle Cab”) orders “battle stations only at Langley.” [] [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 460] Consequently, at this time, according to some reports, NORAD orders the Langley fighters on battle stations alert. Around this time, the FAA Command Center reports that 11 aircraft are either not in communication with FAA facilities, or flying unexpected routes. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 460] The 9/11 Commission also later accepts this version, claiming that the intent of the alert was not to protect Washington, but because there is a concern that the fighters currently hovering over New York City will run low on fuel, and need to be replaced, and also because of the general uncertainty of the situation in the sky. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 460] NEADS Commander Robert Marr says that after seeing Flight 175 hit the WTC (at 9:03 a.m.), “we’re thinking New York City is under attack,” so he directs the Langley pilots to battle stations. “The plan was to protect New York City.” [Filson, 2004, pp. 60] However, at least one pilot, Major Dean Eckmann, asserts that the battle stations alert does not occur until 9:21 a.m. Another pilot, code-named Honey (presumably Craig Borgstrom), asserts that this does not occur until 9:24 a.m. [BBC, 9/1/2002]
Indianapolis flight control reports the loss of contact with Flight 77 to the FAA regional center. They describe it as a possible crash. The center waits 16 minutes before passing the information to FAA headquarters at 9:25 a.m. (see 9:25 a.m.) [Washington Post, 11/3/2001; 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] However, American Airlines headquarters has been notified of the same information before 9:00 a.m. (see (Before 9:00 a.m.)).
According to the 9/11 Commission, “During the course of the morning, there were multiple erroneous reports of hijacked aircraft in the system.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Around 9:09 a.m., the FAA Command Center reports that 11 aircraft are either not communicating with FAA facilities or flying unexpected routes. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002] NORAD’s Major General Larry Arnold claims that during the “four-hour ordeal” of the attacks, a total of 21 planes are identified as possible hijackings. [Filson, 2004, pp. 71; Code One Magazine, 1/2002] Robert Marr, head of NEADS on 9/11, says, “At one time I was told that across the nation there were some 29 different reports of hijackings.” [Newhouse News Service, 3/31/2005] It is later claimed that these false reports cause considerable chaos. Larry Arnold says that particularly during the time between the Pentagon being hit at 9:37 and Flight 93 going down at around 10:06, “a number of aircraft are being called possibly hijacked ... There was a lot of confusion, as you can imagine.” [Filson, 2004, pp. 55,122; Filson, 2004, pp. 55,122] He says, “We were receiving many reports of hijacked aircraft. When we received those calls, we might not know from where the aircraft had departed. We also didn’t know the location of the airplane.” [Code One Magazine, 1/2002] According to Robert Marr, “There were a number of false reports out there. What was valid? What was a guess? We just didn’t know.” [Filson, 2004, pp. 73]
Posted by jeff at 9:09 AM | TrackBack
9:08-9:13
The two F-15s scrambled to find Flight 11 in New York are now ordered to circle in a 150-mile window of air space off the coast of Long Island. It is not clear whether they reach New York City before being directed over the ocean. Pilot Major Daniel Nash states, “Neither the civilian controller or the military controller knew what they wanted us to do.” [Cape Cod Times, 8/21/2002] At 9:09 a.m., the NEADS Mission Crew Commander learns of the second WTC crash, and decides to send the fighters to New York City. At 9:10 a.m., the senior director on the NEADS floor tells the weapons director, “I want those fighters closer in.” NEADS controllers are concerned about refueling, and are simultaneously working with a tanker to relocate close to the Otis fighters. Then, at 9:11 a.m., either the senior weapons director at NEADS or his technician instructs the Otis fighters to “remain at current position [holding pattern] until FAA requests assistance.” According to the 9/11 Commission, the record of this instruction is the only NEADS recording of the NEADS senior weapons director and weapons director technician responsible for controlling the Otis scramble that is available to them. This, they state, is because of a “technical issue.” The Commission says the Otis fighters remain in a holding pattern over the ocean until 9:13 a.m. while the FAA clears the airspace. The fighters then establish a Combat Air Patrol over the city at 9:25 a.m. What the fighters do between 9:13 a.m. and 9:25 a.m. is unclear. The distance between the two locations is unknown but presumably not large. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004] These fighters remain over New York City for the next four hours. [Cape Cod Times, 8/21/2002]
Posted by jeff at 9:08 AM | TrackBack
9:06
All flight control facilities nationwide are notified that the Flight 11 crash into the WTC was probably a hijacking. [US Congress, 9/21/2001; Newsday, 9/23/2001]
President Bush is in a Booker Elementary School second-grader classroom. His chief of staff, Andrew Card, enters the room and whispers into his ear, “A second plane hit the other tower, and America’s under attack.” [New York Times, 9/16/2001; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; Albuquerque Tribune, 9/10/2002; Washington Times, 10/8/2002; ABC News, 9/11/2002] Intelligence expert James Bamford describes Bush’s reaction: “Immediately [after Card speaks to Bush] an expression of befuddlement passe[s] across the president’s face. Then, having just been told that the country was under attack, the commander in chief appear[s] uninterested in further details. He never ask[s] if there had been any additional threats, where the attacks were coming from, how to best protect the country from further attacks. ... Instead, in the middle of a modern-day Pearl Harbor, he simply turn[s] back to the matter at hand: the day’s photo-op.” [Bamford, 2002, pp. 633] Bush begins listening to a story about a goat. But despite the pause and change in children’s exercises, as one newspaper put it, “For some reason, Secret Service agents [do] not bustle him away.” [Globe and Mail, 9/12/2001] Bush later says of the experience, “I am very aware of the cameras. I’m trying to absorb that knowledge. I have nobody to talk to. I’m sitting in the midst of a classroom with little kids, listening to a children’s story and I realize I’m the commander in chief and the country has just come under attack.” [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001] Bush listens to the goat story for about ten more minutes. The reason given is that, “Without all the facts at hand, George Bush ha[s] no intention of upsetting the schoolchildren who had come to read for him.” [MSNBC, 10/29/2002] Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport is only three and a half miles away. In fact, the elementary school was chosen for the photo-op partly because of its closeness to the airport. [Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/12/2002] Why the Secret Service does not move Bush away from his publicized location that morning remains unclear.
President Bush, having just been told of the second WTC crash, stays in the Booker Elementary School Classroom, and listens as 16 Booker Elementary School second-graders take turns reading “The Pet Goat.” It’s a simple story about a girl’s pet goat. [Agence France-Presse, 9/7/2002; Editor & Publisher, 7/2/2004] They are just about to begin reading when Bush is told of the attack. One account says that the classroom is then silent for about 30 seconds, maybe more. Bush then picks up the book and reads with the children “for eight or nine minutes.” [Tampa Tribune, 9/1/2002] In unison, the children read aloud, “The—Pet—Goat. A—girl—got—a—pet—goat. But—the—goat—did—some—things—that—made—the—girl’s—dad—mad.” And so on. Bush mostly listens, but does ask the children a few questions to encourage them. [Washington Times, 10/7/2002] At one point he says, “Really good readers, whew! ... These must be sixth-graders!” [Time, 9/12/2001] In the back of the room, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer catches Bush’s eye and holds up a pad of paper for him to read, with “DON’ T SAY ANYTHING YET” written on it in big block letters. [Washington Times, 10/7/2002] (Note that three articles claim that Bush leaves the classroom at 9:12 a.m.) [New York Times, 9/16/2001; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; Daily Mail, 9/8/2002] However, a videotape of the event lasts for “at least seven additional minutes” and ends before Bush leaves. [Wall Street Journal, 3/22/2004] (The timing of this entry is a rough approximation based mostly on the Tampa Tribune estimate. Much of this video footage is shown in Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. [New York Times, 6/18/2004]
Posted by jeff at 9:06 AM | TrackBack
9:05
Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke is driving up to a gate outside the White House when an aide calls and tells him, “The other tower was just hit.” He responds, “Well, now we know who we’re dealing with. I want the highest level person in Washington from each agency on-screen now, especially the FAA.” He has already ordered this aide to set up a secure video conference, about five minutes earlier. A few minutes later, he finds Vice President Cheney and National Security Adviser Rice in Vice President Cheney’s White House office. Cheney tells Clarke, “It’s an al-Qaeda attack and they like simultaneous attacks. This may not be over.” Rice asks Clarke for recommendations, and he says, “We’re putting together a secure teleconference to manage the crisis.” He also recommends evacuating the White House (However, evacuation does not begin until 9:45 a.m. (see (9:45 a.m.)), after a critical 40 minutes has passed). Rice notes the Secret Service wants them to go to the bomb shelter below the White House, and as Clarke leaves the other two, he sees Rice and Cheney gathering papers and preparing to evacuate. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 1-2; Australian, 3/27/2004]
According to the 9/11 Commission, Flight 77’s radar blip, missing for the last eight minutes, reappears on Indianapolis flight control’s primary radar scope. It is east of its last known position. It remains in air space managed by Indianapolis until 9:10 a.m., and then passes into Washington air space. Two managers and one flight controller continue to look west and southwest for the flight, but don’t look east. Managers don’t instruct other Indianapolis controllers to join the search for the flight. Neither they nor FAA headquarters issues an “all points bulletin” to surrounding centers to search for Flight 77. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Newsday claims that rumors circulate the plane might have exploded in midair. [Newsday, 9/23/2001] However, the 9/11 Commission’s conclusion that Indianapolis flight controllers did not look east is contradicted by an account indicating that American Airlines headquarters was told that Flight 77 had turned around.
Posted by jeff at 9:05 AM | TrackBack
9:04
The second plane hitting the World Trade Center (see 9:03 a.m.) causes internal alarms to go off in WTC Building 7, located just a few hundred feet away from the twin towers. The alarms warn there is no water pressure and that the building’s emergency power generator has been activated. Office of Emergency Management (OEM) staff, based in Building 7, immediately request air security over New York. They are told that federal support is on its way, but the Federal Aviation Administration instructs them to use NYPD and Port Authority Police Department air assets to clear the airspace around the WTC. They are also warned that the Kennedy Airport control tower is reporting an unaccounted for plane heading towards New York. A report by the Mineta Transportation Institute will claim that this plane is Flight 93, which later crashes in Pennsylvania. [Jenkins and Edwards-Winslow, 9/2003, pp. 16] However, Flight 93 is still flying west at this time, and only reverses course and heads towards Washington at around 9:36 a.m. (see (9:36 a.m.)). According to at least one person at the scene, WTC 7 is evacuated around this time due to the reports of this incoming third plane (see After 9:03 a.m.). [Jems And FireRescue Supplement, 3/2002, pp. 68 ]
Posted by jeff at 9:04 AM | TrackBack
9:03
At some point before the second WTC crash, the FAA Command Center sets up a teleconference with FAA facilities in the New York area. Also on the same floor of the same building is “the military cell” —the Air Traffic Services Cell—created by the FAA and the Defense Department to coordinate priority aircraft movement during warfare or emergencies if needed. “The Pentagon staffs it only three days per month for refresher training, but September 11 happen[s] to be one of those days.” [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 12/17/2001] Additionally, just weeks earlier the cell had been given a secure terminal and other hardware “greatly enhancing the movement of vital information.” [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/10/2002] The 9/11 Commission later determines that communication between the FAA and the military is extremely poor. It is unclear why this connection, which the 9/11 Commission fails to mention, does not help.
Flight 175 hits the South Tower of the World Trade Center (Tower Two). Seismic records pinpoint the time at six seconds before 9:03 a.m. (rounded to 9:03 a.m.). [CNN, 9/17/2001; North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001; CNN, 9/12/2001; Associated Press, 8/19/2002; USA Today, 9/2/2002; New York Times, 9/11/2002; USA Today, 12/20/2001] Millions watch the crash live on television. The plane strikes the 78th through 84th floors in the 110-story building. Approximately 100 people are killed or injured in the initial impact; 600 people in the tower eventually die. All but four of those killed work above the crash point. The death toll is far lower than in the North Tower because about two-thirds of the South Tower’s occupants have evacuated the building in the 17 minutes since the first tower was struck. [USA Today, 12/20/2001] The combined death toll from the two towers is estimated at 2,819, not including the hijackers. [Associated Press, 8/19/2002]
According to Sarasota County Sheriff Bill Balkwill, just after President Bush enters a Booker Elementary classroom, a Marine responsible for carrying Bush’s phone walks up to Balkwill, who is standing in a nearby side room. While listening to someone talk to him in his earpiece, the Marine asks, “Can you get me to a television? We’re not sure what’s going on, but we need to see a television.” Three Secret Service agents, a SWAT member, the Marine, and Balkwill turn on the television in a nearby front office just as Flight 175 crashes into the WTC. “We’re out of here,” the Marine tells Balkwill. “Can you get everyone ready?” [Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/10/2002] However, Bush stays at the school for another half-hour. Who makes the decision to stay—and why—remains unclear, and the Secret Service won’t comment on the matter. Philip Melanson, author of a book on the Secret Service, comments, “With an unfolding terrorist attack, the procedure should have been to get the president to the closest secure location as quickly as possible, which clearly is not a school. you’re safer in that presidential limo, which is bombproof and blastproof and bulletproof. ... In the presidential limo, the communications system is almost duplicative of the White House—he can do almost anything from there but he can’t do much sitting in a school.” [St. Petersburg Times, 7/4/2004]
Flight controllers in Newark, New Jersey, are on the phone with New York flight controllers and are asked to find Flight 175 from their windows. They see it and watch in horror as it drops the last five thousand feet and crashes into the WTC. Rick Tepper (who also saw the explosion of the first crash) recalls, “He was in a hard right bank, diving very steeply and very fast. And he—as he was coming up the Hudson River, he—he made another hard left turn and—just heading for downtown Manhattan. ... You could see that he was trying to line himself up on the tower. Just before he hit the tower, he almost leveled it out and just—just hit the building.” Newark immediately calls the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Washington and tells them they will not land any more airplanes in Newark, in an effort to keep aircraft away from New York City. It is the first step in shutting down the national airspace system. [MSNBC, 9/11/2002]
The minute Flight 175 hits the South Tower, pilot Major Daniel Nash says that clear visibility allows him to see smoke pour out of Manhattan, even though NORAD says he is 71 miles away. [Cape Cod Times, 8/21/2002] The other Otis pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Duffy, recalls, “We’re 60 miles out, and I could see the smoke from the towers.” They call NORAD right then for an update, and Duffy relates, “At that point, they said the second aircraft just hit the World Trade Center. That was news to me. I thought we were still chasing American [Airlines Flight] 11.” [ABC News, 9/14/2002] In another account Duffy again relates, “It was right about then when they said the second aircraft had just hit the World Trade Center, which was quite a shock to both [Nash] and I, because we both thought there was only one aircraft out there. We were probably 70 miles or so out when the second one hit. So, we were just a matter of minutes away.” [BBC, 9/1/2002] He asks for clarification of their mission, but the request is met with “considerable confusion.” [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002] Bob Varcadapane, a Newark, New Jersey, flight controller who sees the Flight 175 crash, claims, “I remember the two F-15s. They were there moments after the impact. And I was just—said to myself, ‘If only they could have gotten there a couple minutes earlier.’ They just missed it.” [MSNBC, 9/11/2002] However, the 9/11 Commission appears to believe that the pilots never get near New York City at this time. According to the commission’s account, from 8:46 a.m. until 8:52 a.m., NORAD personnel are unable to find Flight 11. Shortly after 8:50 a.m., and just before the fighters take off, NORAD is given word that a plane has hit the WTC (see (8:50 a.m.)). Lacking a clear target, the fighters take off toward a military controlled airspace over the ocean, off the coast of Long Island. A map released by the 9/11 Commission indicates that at 9:03 the fighters are about 100 miles away and heading southwest instead of west to New York City. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] The 9/11 Commission says that, at 9:10 a.m., Boston flight control tells the Otis fighters about the second WTC tower being struck. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 459]
The 9/11 Commission later concludes that New York flight control tells NEADS that Flight 175 has been hijacked at this time. The commission refers to this as “the first indication that the NORAD air defenders had of the second hijacked aircraft.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Colonel Robert Marr, head of NEADS, claims that he first learns a flight other than Flight 11 has been hijacked when he sees Flight 175 crash into the WTC on television. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002] NEADS Mission Crew Commander Dawne Deskins claims that when she sees Flight 175 hitting the South Tower on television, “we didn’t even know there was a second hijack.” [Filson, 2004, pp. 59] However, these accounts contradict NORAD’s conclusion reached shortly after 9/11 that it was first notified about Flight 175 at 8:43 a.m. (see 8:43 a.m.). [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001] Additionally, as Flight 175 crashes into the WTC, Canadian Captain Mike Jellinek (who is overseeing the Command Center in NORAD’s Colorado headquarters) is on the phone with NEADS. He sees the crash live on television and asks NEADS, “Was that the hijacked aircraft you were dealing with?” The reply is yes. [Toledo Blade, 12/9/2001] If the commission’s account is correct, several questions remain unanswered. Flight 175 lost radio contact at 8:42 a.m. (see 8:41 a.m.) and changed transponder signals at 8:46 a.m. (see 8:46 a.m.); a flight controller declared it possibly hijacked sometime between 8:46 a.m. and 8:53 a.m. (see 8:46 a.m.); and a flight control manager called it hijacked at 8:55 a.m.(see (8:55 a.m.)) The commission has not explained why New York flight control would wait 10-17 minutes before warning NORAD that Flight 175 is possibly hijacked. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] It also would not explain why United Airlines headquarters would fail to notify NORAD National Guard after learning that the plane has been hijacked at about 8:50 a.m. (see (8:50 a.m.))
A fighter pilot flying from Otis Air Base toward New York City later notes that it wouldn’t have mattered if he caught up with Flight 175, because only President Bush could order a shootdown, and Bush is at a public event at the time. [Cape Cod Times, 8/21/2002] “Only the president has the authority to order a civilian aircraft shot down,” according to a 1999 CNN report. [CNN, 10/26/1999] In fact, by 9/11, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld also has the authority to order a shootdown, but he is not responding to the crisis at this time. [New York Observer, 6/17/2004] Furthermore, NORAD Commander Larry Arnold later states that on 9/11, “I have the authority in case of an emergency to declare a target hostile and shoot it down under an emergency condition.” [Filson, 2004, pp. 75]
A manager at Boston flight control reports to the FAA’s New England regional headquarters the “We have some planes” comment made by a Flight 11 hijacker at 8:24 a.m. (see (8:24 a.m.)). The Boston controller says, “I’m gonna reconfirm with, with downstairs, but the, as far as the tape ... seemed to think the guy said that ‘we have planes.’ Now, I don’t know if it was because it was the accent, or if there’s more than one [hijacked plane], but I’m gonna, I’m gonna reconfirm that for you, and I’ll get back to you real quick. Okay?” Asked, “They have what?,” this person clarifies, “Planes, as in plural. ... It sounds like, We’re talking to New York, that there’s another one aimed at the World Trade Center. ... A second one just hit the Trade Center.” The person at New England headquarters replies, “Okay. Yeah, we gotta get—we gotta alert the military real quick on this.” At 9:05 a.m., Boston confirms for this headquarters and the FAA Command Center in Herndon, Virginia, that a hijacker said, “we have planes” (forgetting the “some”). [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] It appears Boston replays the recording of the hijacker saying this from about 30 minutes earlier. Other people, such as American Airlines leader Gerard Arpey at that airline’s headquarters, apparently learned about this comment before the Flight 11 crash at 8:46 a.m. (see 8:46 a.m.)
President Bush enters Sandra Kay Daniels’ second-grade class for a photo-op to promote Bush’s education policies. [Daily Mail, 9/8/2002] Numerous reporters who travel with the president, as well as members of the local media, watch from the back of the room. [Associated Press, 8/19/2002] Altogether, there are about 150 people in the room, 16 of whom are children in the class. He is introduced to the children and poses for a number of pictures. The teacher then leads the students through some reading exercises (video footage shows this lasts about three minutes). [Salon, 9/12/2001] Bush later claims that during this lesson, he is thinking what he will say about the WTC crash. “I was concentrating on the program at this point, thinking about what I was going to say. Obviously, I felt it was an accident. I was concerned about it, but there were no alarm bells.” [Washington Times, 10/7/2002] The children are just getting their books from under their seats to read a story together when Chief of Staff Andrew Card comes in to tell Bush of the second WTC crash. [Washington Times, 10/8/2002; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001] According to the Washington Times, Card comes in at the conclusion of the first half of the planned lesson, and “[seizes] a pause in the reading drill to walk up to Mr. Bush’s seat.” [Washington Times, 10/7/2002; Washington Times, 10/8/2002]
In a series of stages, flight control managers ban aircraft from flying near the cities targeted by the hijackers. All takeoffs and landings in New York City are halted within a minute of the Flight 175 crash, without asking for permission from Washington. Boston and Newark flight control centers follow suit in the next few minutes. Around 9:08 a.m., departures nationwide heading to or through New York and Boston airspace are canceled. [Associated Press, 8/12/2002; Newsday, 9/10/2002; Associated Press, 8/19/2002; USA Today, 8/13/2002] Mike McCormick, head of a Long Island, New York, air traffic control center, makes the decision without consulting any superiors. [ABC News, 8/12/2002] In addition, “a few minutes” after 9:03 a.m., all takeoffs from Washington are stopped. [USA Today, 8/12/2002; USA Today, 8/13/2002]
After the second WTC tower is hit, NBC News correspondent Jim Miklaszewski is heading down a hall inside the Pentagon when he runs into a Defense Department official. The official says he doesn’t yet know anything specific about the attack. But, he says, it is so coordinated that “[i]f I were you I would stay off the E-ring [the outermost corridor of the Pentagon] today, because we’re next.” According to Miklaszewski, the official had no specific information, “that was just his gut instinct.” [Gilbert et al., 2002, pp. 43]
Soon after the second WTC tower is hit, a senior Secret Service agent who is responsible for coordinating the president’s movements establishes an open line with his counterpart at the FAA. This FAA official tells him of further planes, on top of the two that have already crashed, that are unaccounted for and possibly hijacked. Although the Secret Service agent asks someone to pass this information on to the Secret Service’s operations center, the 9/11 Commission says that either this does not happen or else the message is passed on but not disseminated. Therefore the information fails to reach agents assigned to the vice president and, consequently, “the Vice President was not evacuated at that time.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 464] However, some other accounts contradict this, saying the vice president is indeed evacuated from his White House office by Secret Service agents at around this time. [New York Times, 9/16/2001; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; ABC News, 9/14/2002]
New York flight controllers are told by the FAA to watch for airplanes whose speed indicates that they are jets, but which either are not responding to commands or have disabled their transponders. “Controllers in Washington [get] a similar briefing, which [help] them pick out hijacked planes more quickly.” [New York Times, 9/13/2001] Other centers are apparently not told the same, and Indianapolis flight control apparently remains unaware of any crisis. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
National Security Adviser Rice has just started her daily national security staff meeting at 9:00 a.m. Shortly after 9:03 a.m., an aide hands her a note saying a second plane has hit the WTC. Rice later claims that she thinks, “This is a terrorist attack,” and then leaves the meeting, quickly walking to the White House Situation Room. [Newsweek, 12/31/2001] However, according to counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, Rice leaves the meeting for Vice President Cheney’s office. Clarke meets her there a few minutes later and only then does she go down to the basement bunker. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 1-2]
“Within minutes of the second impact,” Boston flight control’s Operations Manager instructs all flight controllers in his center to inform all aircraft in the New England region to monitor the events unfolding in New York and to advise aircraft to heighten cockpit security. Boston asks the FAA Command Center to issue a similar cockpit security alert to all aircraft nationwide. The 9/11 Commission concludes, “We have found no evidence to suggest that Command Center managers instructed any centers to issue a cockpit security alert.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] United Airlines flight dispatchers give their pilots a cockpit warning about 20 minutes later.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has recently left a meeting with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld around 8:46 a.m (see (Before 8:46 a.m.)). Wolfowitz later recalls, “We were having a meeting in my office. Someone said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Then we turned on the television and we started seeing the shots of the second plane hitting, and this is the way I remember it. It’s a little fuzzy. ... There didn’t seem to be much to do about it immediately and we went on with whatever the meeting was.” [Vanity Fair, 5/9/2005] Rumsfeld recalls, “I was in my office with a CIA briefer and I was told that a second plane had hit the other tower.” [9/11 Commission, 3/23/2004] Deputy Defense Secretary Torie Clarke recalls, “A couple of us had gone into ... Secretary Rumsfeld’s office, to alert him to that, tell him that the crisis management process was starting up. He wanted to make a few phone calls. So a few of us headed across the hallway to an area called the National Military Command Center [around 200 feet away]. He stayed in his office.” [WBZ Radio 1030 (Boston), 9/15/2001]
Shortly after the second WTC crash, calls from fighter units begin “pouring into NORAD and sector operations centers, asking, ‘What can we do to help?’” In Syracuse, New York, an Air National Guard commander tells NEADS commander Robert Marr, “Give me ten [minutes] and I can give you hot guns. Give me 30 [minutes] and I’ll have heat-seeker [missiles]. Give me an hour and I can give you slammers [Amraams].” Marr replies, “I want it all.” [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002] Reportedly, Marr says, “Get to the phones. Call every Air National Guard unit in the land. Prepare to put jets in the air. The nation is under attack.” [Newhouse News Service, 1/25/2002] Canadian Major General Eric Findley, based in Colorado and in charge of NORAD that day, reportedly has his staff immediately order as many fighters in the air as possible. [Ottawa Citizen, 9/11/2002] However, according to another account, NORAD does not accept the offers until about an hour later: “By 10:01 a.m., the Command Center began calling several bases across the country for help.” [Toledo Blade, 12/9/2001] The 9/11 Commission later concludes that a command for other bases to prepare fighters to scramble is not given until 9:49 a.m. In fact, it appears the first fighters from other bases to take off are those from Syracuse at 10:42 a.m. (see 10:42 a.m.) This is over an hour and a half after Syracuse’s initial offer to help, and not long after a general ban on all flights, including military ones, is lifted at 10:31 a.m. (see 10:31 a.m.) These are apparently the fourth set of fighters scrambled from the ground. Previously, three fighters from Langley, two from Otis, and two from Toledo, Ohio, were scrambled at 10:01 a.m. (see 10:01 a.m.), but did not launch until fifteen minutes later. [Toledo Blade, 12/9/2001]
A few minutes after 9:03 a.m., a squadron pilot at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland (just ten miles from Washington), hears that two planes have crashed into the WTC. He calls a friend in the Secret Service to see what’s going on. The Secret Service calls back, and asks whether Andrews can scramble fighters. According to weapons officer, Major Dan Caine, who takes this call, the Secret Service agent then tells them “to stand by and that somebody else [will] call.” Apparently anticipating the need, one commander has already started preparing weapons for the fighters. However, the weapons are located in a bunker on the other side of The Base, and the process takes time. The fighters don’t take off for about another hour and a half (see (10:42 a.m.)). Apparently anticipating the need to launch fighters, one commander has already started preparing weapons for the fighters. However, the weapons are located in a bunker on the other side of the base, and the process takes time. Senior Master Sergeant David Bowman, 113th Wing munitions supervisor, says, “We were doing it as fast as we could, because for all we knew the terrorists were getting ready to hit us.” It normally takes three hours to get weapons from the storage sheds and load them onto the fighters. However, on this occasion, it is later claimed, it only takes 45 minutes. The fighters don’t take off though for about another hour and a half (10:42 a.m.). Whilst the crew at Andrews are unloading missiles onto a flatb
- Kelly Knowles says that seconds after seeing Flight 77 pass, she sees a “second plane that seemed to be chasing the first [pass] over at a slightly different angle.” [Daily Press (Newport News), 9/15/2001]