text:
2) 12:45 a.m.:
Willie Brown, the Mayor of San Francisco gets a call from what he described as
his airport security advising him that Americans should be cautious about their
air travel on September 11th. Mayor Brown was scheduled to fly from
San Francisco to New York City on September 11th.
3) 6:00 a.m.:
A van occupied by Middle Eastern men pulls up to The Colony Beach and Tennis
Resort on Longboat Key, Florida. They state they have an interview with Bush.
They are turned away for not having an appointment.
4) 6:30 a.m.:
Bush goes for a four mile jog around the golf course at the Colony Beach and
Tennis Resort.
5) 6:45 a.m.:
Two hours before the first attack, two workers at the instant messaging company
Odigo receive messages warning of the WTC attack. This Israeli owned company has
its headquarters two blocks from the WTC.
6) 6:50 a.m.:
Mohammed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari's flight from Portland, Maine arrives on
time at Boston's Logan Airport.
7) 7:45 a.m.: Mohammed
Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari board American Airlines Flight 11.
8) 7:59 a.m.: American
Airlines Flight 11 a Boeing 767-223ER with a maximum capacity of 181 passengers
and 23,980 gallons of fuel, lifts off from Logan International Airport in
Boston, Massachusetts, bound for Los Angeles International Airport in Los
Angeles, California. Take-off was scheduled for 7:45. There are supposed to be 92 victims
on board American Airlines Flight 11, yet when you add up the official death
manifest list that was published on CNN.com, there are only 86
The same goes for the other
three flights of September 11th. Add up the passenger and crew lists from all 4
flights of 911 and you have officially 266 people on board. Yet when one adds up
the 4 official death manifest lists published on CNN.com, there are only 229
names. Somehow 37 people are missing from the 4 CNN.com official death manifest
lists, including all 19 of the hijackers. There is not even one Arabic name
there. Why?
One other thing; CNN.com says there are 45
fatalities on United Airlines Flight 93, others say there are 44. This would
make 36 missing, and 265 deaths for all 4 airliners.
The 4 airliners of September 11th, 2
Boeing 767�s and 2 Boeing 757�s had a total passenger seating capacity of
762 people. There are only 229 passengers and crew members on the four death
lists, so, how could these flights possibly be 70% empty?
757 Seating Charts: http://www.boeing.com/commercial/757family/pf/pf_seating_charts.html
767 Seating Charts: http://www.boeing.com/commercial/767family/pf/pf_seating_charts.html
9)8:01 a.m.: United
Airlines Flight 93 a Boeing 757-222 with a maximum capacity of 200 passengers
and 11,489 gallons of fuel, rolls from the gate in Newark International Airport,
Newark, New Jersey with 44 people aboard bound for San Francisco International
Airport, San Francisco, California.United Airlines Flight 93 will sit on the
ground for 41 minutes before taking off. There are supposed to be 44 victims on
board, yet when you add up the official death manifest list that was published
on CNN.com, there are only 33 victims.
10) 8:13:31 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 11
last transmission from Boston Air Traffic Control: AAL11 turn 20 degrees right
American Airlines Flight 11 responds: 20 right AAL11.
A few seconds
later the Controller asks: AAL11 now climb maintain FL350 [35,000 feet]
Controller: AAL11 climb maintain FL350 Controller: AAL11 Boston. There is no
response from American Airlines Flight 11.
11) 8:14 to 8:20 a.m.: American Airlines Flight
11 goes off course and is hijacked.
12) 8:14 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 175 a
Boeing 767-222 with a maximum capacity of 181 passengers and 23,980 gallons of
fuel, lifts off from Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, bound
for Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, California. Take-off was
scheduled for 7:58. There are supposed to be 65 victims on board, yet when you
add up the official death manifest list that was published on CNN.com, there are
only 56 victims.
13)8:17 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 11
passenger Daniel Lewin, who belongs to the Israel Defense Force Sayeret Matkal,
a top-secret counter-terrorist unit is either stabbed or shot to death. Quite
the coincidence he would be onboard.
14) 8:20 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 11
transponder signal stops transmitting Identification, Friend or Foe (IFF) beacon
If a pilot
loses their transponder the controllers console immediately alerts him to this
fact since he no longer has the transponder code and altitude. This causes the
controllers a great deal of trouble and very shortly the pilot also has trouble.
The pilot is instructed to stay below 3,500 feet and return to the airport. The
reason for the concern is the pilot is a hazard to navigation. Now imagine the
situation in the Air Traffic Control Center.
The northeast
corner of the United States is the busiest airspace on the planet. Each
controller has a wedged shaped sector that he is responsible for. His airspace
is also bounded by altitude limits. Commercial flights are always under positive
control, they must constantly be in communication with the controllers in order
to maintain legal separation. If one of these heavies loses its transponder, it
causes instant problems for more than one controller since altitude information
is lost.
controllers still have a skin paint, or passive echo from the airframe, but the
blip now shows up on all consoles for that sector, not just the original one
that was handling the altitude range of the flight. If that same flight loses
communication with the controllers as well, the controller workload takes
another giant step upward. Keep in mind that this is in an area that is normally
stretched to the breaking point with controller overload. This flight is now a
hazard to air navigation, and the controllers primary function of separating the
planes is in jeopardy.
The procedure
for lost communication emergencies is simple: follow your last clearance. If the
flight under discussion follows its last clearance, the controllers can predict
where it will go and can still keep other flights out of harms way. If in
addition to losing communication and transponder the flight starts to deviate
from its last clearance, the whole system is in an emergency condition. Alarms
all over the country would be going off. One interesting piece of information is
the recording of controller and pilot conversations. These tapes are a matter of
public record and are written over after a few days unless something interesting
happens. These tapes would show the response of the system. Why did the FBI
confiscate all of these tapes between the controllers and these four flights?
The air
traffic control system would be in panic mode within two to three minutes of the
initial events. We know that Otis Air Force Base is only about seven minutes
from Manhattan by F-15. Also, there is an Air Defense Intercept Zone just off
shore for the entire Atlantic Coast. This zone is constantly being patrolled. In
general fast movers would not need to be scrambled. They can be diverted from
routine patrol and training flights for the intercept.
The odds are
that many flights would be on patrol just off shore. It would be most improbable
that even one commercial flight could go more than ten minutes without being
intercepted. The intercepting plane would slowly close from the left and take
station slightly above and ahead of the errant heavy. At this point he would
rock his wings and expect the other plane to do the same as a form of non-verbal
communication. After this he would perform a gentle turn to the left and the
intercepted plane is required to follow. If this does not occur, there are many
actions short of firing the fighter can take to prevent the commercial jet from
harming either itself, any other plane, or any ground structure.
15)8:20 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77 a
Boeing 757-223 with a maximum capacity of 200 passengers and 11,489 gallons of
fuel, lifts off from Dulles International Airport about 30 miles west of
Washington D.C. and the Pentagon, bound for Los Angeles International Airport in
Los Angeles, California. Take-off was scheduled for 8:01. There are supposed to
be 64 victims on board, yet when you add up the official death manifest list
that was published on CNN.com, there are only 56 victims.
16) 8:21 a.m.: Betty Ong, a flight attendant on
American Airlines Flight 11, calls Vanessa Minter at American Airlines
reservations from the seatback phone. "She said two flight attendants had been
stabbed, one was on oxygen," said the manager on duty. "A passenger had his
throat slashed and looked dead and they had gotten into the cockpit." She
identifies the seats of the hijackers and confirms that the plane is
17) 8:22 a.m.: Amy Sweeney another flight
attendant on American Airlines Flight 11, calls American Airlines ground manager
Michael Woodward and speaks calmly to him until the plane
18) 8:24:38 a.m.: The pilot of American
Airlines Flight 11, John Ogonowski, or one of the hijackers activates the
talk-back button, enabling Boston air traffic controllers to hear a hijacker say
to the passengers: "We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you will be OK. We
are returning to the airport. Nobody move." Apparently, one of the hijackers
confused the aircraft's radio with its public-address system. Air traffic
control responds, "Who's trying to call me?"
19) 8:24:57 a.m. from American Airlines Flight
11, "Everything will be OK. If you try to make any moves, you'll endanger
yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet."
20) 8:25 a.m.: Boston air traffic control
notified several air traffic control centers that a hijack is in progress with
American Airlines Flight 11. Boston air traffic control first lost communication
with American Airlines Flight 11 more than 11 minutes ago. What took them so
long to start to implement procedure? Why didn�t they also notify North
American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) at this time?
If they did
follow procedure and notify NORAD at 8:25 and NORAD followed protocol and
ordered the 102nd Fighter Wing of the Otis Air National Guard Base in Falmouth,
Massachusetts to scramble at say 8:26 � two F-15�s would have been airborne
by no later than 8:32 � these F-15�s would have had at least 14 minutes and
26 seconds to reach the WTC before American Airlines Flight 11 impacts the north
side of the North Tower (1 World Trade Center) at 8:46:26. If these two F-15�s
were flying at top speed, 14 minutes and 26 seconds is exactly twice the amount
of time need to reach the WTC. These two F-15�s could have been at the WTC in
just over 7 minutes, or as early as 8:39. Even a spokesperson for Otis said that
their F-15�s could reach the WTC in 10 to 12 minutes, which would have them
there at 8:42 to 8:44.
These two
F-15�s could have easily intercepted American Airlines Flight 11. If only
Boston air traffic control, which notified several air traffic control centers
that a hijack is in progress with American Airlines Flight 11 at 8:25, had also
notified NORAD. Why didn�t they? Or did they follow procedure, and notify
NORAD, and NORAD is lying about it. Let me state that it is NORAD�s job to
know every inch of the skies over North America, so they must have known that
American Airlines Flight 11 was hijacked somewhere between 8:14 and
21) 8:26 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 11 is
heading westnorthwest, its location is between Albany and Lake George, New York,
when it suddenly makes a 100 degree turn to the south and starts heading
directly toward New York City. American Airlines Flight 11 finds the Hudson
River and follows it all the way south till it impacts the north side of the
North Tower of the WTC.
Almost 40
miles north of the WTC on the Hudson River is by far the number one terrorist
target in the United States, Indian Point and its 3 nuclear power stations, 2 of
which are online. These 3 nuclear stations have accumulated 65 years worth of
stockpiled highly radioactive waste. Indian Point is only 24 miles north of the
New York City border. It is surrounded by the densest concentration of
population in the United States, the northeast corridor. Why did American
Airlines Flight 11 fly directly over the number one terrorist target in the
United States, Indian Point nuclear power stations, and not hit it? (See 8:39
a.m. # 28)
22) 8:32 a.m.:
Bush�s motorcade leaves The Colony Beach and Tennis Resort on Longboat Key,
Florida for Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota.
23) 8:33:59 a.m.: Another transmission from
American Airlines Flight 11, "Nobody move please. We are going back to the
airport. Don't try to make any stupid moves."
24) 8:36 a.m.: Flight attendant Betty Ong on
American Airlines Flight 11 reports that the plane tilts all the way on one side
and then becomes horizontal again. Flight attendant Amy Sweeney also reports on
her phone that the plane has begun a rapid descent.
25) 8:36 a.m.: A NORAD spokesman, Major Mike
Snyder, has been reported to have said, that the FAA notified NORAD of a
hijacked aircraft, American Airlines Flight 11, about 10 minutes before it
impacted into the World Trade Center.
26) 8:37 a.m.: Flight controllers ask the
United Airlines Flight 175 pilots to look for the lost American Airlines Flight
11, about 10 miles to the south. They respond that they can see it. They are
told to keep away from it. This incident is not included in The New York Times
flight controller transcript. Why?
27) 8:38 a.m.: Boston air traffic center
notifies NORAD that American Airlines Flight 11 has been
28) 8:39 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11 flies
directly over the number one terrorist target in the United States, Indian Point
nuclear power stations. Indian Point has 3 nuclear power stations (1 is offline
and the other 2 have been online since 1973 and 1976), which are only 24 miles
north of New York City.
If American
Airlines Flight 11 hits Indian Point correctly in any of three different ways,
they could have caused a meltdown and a release of vast amounts of radiation.
There are also a cumulative 65 operating years worth of highly radioactive waste
stored at Indian Point. Casualities could possibly be upwards of 20 million
people prematurely dieing from radiation poisoning. The whole northeast corridor
from New York City to Boston would instantly become a wasteland for thousands of
Why did
American Airlines Flight 11 jeopardize their mission by flying another 7 plus
minutes (when they could and should have been intercepted by the USAF) down the
Hudson River to hit the WTC between the 94th and 98th
floors where they ended up "only" killing less than 3,000 people when they could
have hit their enemies� number one target?
The mastermind
behind these "terrorists" hijackers would have soon figured out their best and
only shot against the strongest military foe in the world would have been to hit
them first and hit them as hard as you can. Why didn't they hit Indian
If the
terrorists were targeting the WTC, don't you think they would have waited until
around 11:00 when these buildings were full with 50,000 plus people? And of
course, to cause the most deaths and destruction isn't it elementary to strike
these buildings as low as possible, which would have been around the 25th to
30th floors?
So, why did
this well planned "terrorist" attack kill only 3,000 people when they could have
easily killed ten times that many? This reasoning also goes along with the
Pentagon attack. Why was the Pentagon hit on the so-called "peaceful" west side
which was mostly under construction as opposed to the command center east side
of the Pentagon?
If one plane
didn't do the job at Indian Point, two planes most definitely would have done
the job. United Airlines Flight 175 flew very close to Indian Point; it was
literally within a couple of minutes flying time.
8:40 a.m.
Nasty and Duff are the code names of the two F-15 pilots from the 102nd Fighter
Wing of the Otis Air National Guard Base in Falmouth, Massachusetts who would
scramble after United Airlines Flight 175. Nasty says that at this time, a
colleague tells him that a flight out of Boston has been hijacked, and to be on
alert. They put on their flight gear and get ready.
30) 8:40 a.m.: The Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) notifies NORAD that American Airlines Flight 11 has been
hijacked. Even NORAD officially admitted that the FAA told them about the
hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11 at 8:40.
NORAD Press Release: http://StandDown.net/NORADSeptember182001PressRelease.htm
AP Article On NORAD PR: http://www.AttackOnAmerica.net/8MinutesAway.htm
31) 8:41:32 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 175
last communication with the New York air traffic control: We figured we'd wait
to go to your center. We heard a suspicious transmission on our departure from
BOS [Boston] sounds like someone keyed the mike and said everyone stay in your
32)8:42 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93 a
Boeing 757-222 with a maximum capacity of 200 passengers and 11,489 gallons of
fuel, lifts off from Newark International Airport in Newark, New Jersey bound
for San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco, California. Take-off was
scheduled for 8:01. There are supposed to be 44 victims on board, yet when you
add up the official death manifest list that was published on CNN.com, there are
only 33 victims.
33) 8:42 a.m.: An air traffic controller says
of United Airlines Flight 175, looks like he's heading southbound but there's no
transponder no nothing and no one's talking to him.
34) 8:43 a.m.: The FAA notifies NORAD that
United Airlines Flight 175 has been hijacked. NORAD has officially admitted that
the FAA told them about the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 175 at
35) 8:44 a.m.:
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, talking about terrorism at the Pentagon says,
"Let me tell you, I�ve been around the block a few times. There will be
another event."He then repeats it for emphasis, there will be another
36) 8:46 a.m.: NORAD orders
the 102nd Fighter Wing of the Otis Air National Guard Base in Falmouth,
Massachusetts to scramble two of their F-15 fighters. This is from the 102nd
Fighter Wing's mission statement of September 11, 2001. "Our aircraft and their
crews are on continuous 24-hour, 365-day alert to guard our skies. The 102nd
Fighter Wing's area of responsibility includes over 500,000 square miles, 90
million people, and the major industrial centers of Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C."
NORAD, by
their own account, held on to this most vital information of these two hijacking
for at least 6 minutes before ordering Otis to scramble. NORAD may have held on to the vital
information of American Airlines Flight 11 for perhaps 8 minutes, maybe 10
minutes (see 8:36 a.m. # 25 statement by NORAD spokesman, Major Mike Snyder),
possibly up to 26 minutes (see 8:20 a.m. # 14 American Airlines Flight 11
transponder signal stopped transmitting its IFF beacon signal) and let us not
forget that the last transmission of American Airlines Flight 11 with Boston air
traffic control occurred at 8:13:31, so maybe NORAD had over 32 minutes before
they notified Otis to scramble their two F-15�s.
How could
NORAD possibly hold on to the 8:40 information of the American Airlines Flight
11 hijacking, and not immediately scrambled Otis? How could NORAD possibly hold
on to the 8:43 information of the United Airlines Flight 175 hijacking, and not
have immediately scrambled Otis? How could NORAD, by their own account, hold on
to the most vital information of both of these hijackings for three and six full
minutes before notifying Otis to scramble?
NORAD Press Release: http://StandDown.net/NORADSeptember182001PressRelease.htm
AP Article On
NORAD PR: http://www.AttackOnAmerica.net/8MinutesAway.htm
Two New York Times articles apologetically
describing this:
Pentagon Tracked Deadly Jet But Found No Way to Stop
Chronology of Plane Crashes: Orders, at the Time of Impact
37) 8:46:26 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 11
impacts the north side of the North Tower (1 World Trade Center) of the WTC
between the 94th and 98th floors. American Airlines Flight 11 was
flying at a speed of 490 miles per hour (MPH).
When American
Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower, "it set up vibrations which were
transmitted through the building, through its foundation, and into the ground,"
says Lerner-Lam. Those vibrations, as indicated by seismographs at
Lamont-Doherty and other locations, were the equivalent of a magnitude 0.9
earthquake, one too small to be felt.
People in the
floors below the 94th of 1 WTC start to evacuate. Officials in the
South Tower (2 WTC) tell people shortly afterwards by megaphone and office
announcements that they are safe and to stay in their offices. Some people don't
hear it, others ignore it and evacuate anyway.
Between 8:47
and 10:29 a.m. many people trapped by fire and smoke in the upper floors of both
World Trade Center towers, jump to their deaths. One person at street level, a
NYC Firefighter is hit by such a jumper and also is killed.
38) 8:46 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 175
transponder signal stops transmitting IFF beacon signal.
39) 8:47 a.m.: NORAD informed of American
Airlines Flight 11 striking the World Trade Center.
40) 8:47 a.m.:
NYC Fire Battalion Chief Joe Pfeiffer from the 7th Battalion puts out an
emergency call stating that American Airlines Flight 11 impacting the north side
of the North Tower (1 World Trade Center) was no accident. The plane's impact
was clearly a deliberate attack an intentional act of mass death and
As the small
video crew (who shot the only video of American Airlines Flight 11 impacting the
WTC � the fireman video) and firemen that had eye-witnessed the first plane
hit the WTC were racing to the location, Chief Pfeiffer sounded red alerts over
the radio and phone; specifically stating that what they witnessed was a "direct
attack" and that the airliner was clearly being directed straight at the WTC and
the incident was definitely not any kind of accident.
41) 8:48 a.m.:
The first news reports appear on TV and radio that a plane may have crashed into
the WTC.
42) 8:49 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 175 now
deviates from its assigned flight path.
43) 8:50 a.m.: Rich Miles, a manager of United
Airlines Chicago system operations center, receives a call from a mechanic at an
airline maintenance center in San Francisco that takes in-flight calls from
flight attendants about broken items. The mechanic says a female flight
attendant from United Airlines Flight 175 just called and said, "Oh my God. The
crew has been killed; a flight attendant has been stabbed. We've been hijacked."
Then the line went dead.
44)8:50:51 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77
last radio communication, about 285 miles west of the Pentagon.
45) 8:51 a.m.:
Bush arrives at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida for a
photo op with 16 second graders. He is there to promote his administration's new
bill on education.
46) 8:52 a.m.:
Two F-15 Eagles have scrambled and are airborne from the 102nd Fighter Wing of
Otis Air National Guard Base in Falmouth, Massachusetts. An F-15 has a top speed
of 1875+ MPH. According to NORAD, Otis is 153 miles eastnortheast of
the WTC.
47) 8:53 a.m.:
A flight
controller says to other airplanes in the sky about United Airlines Flight 175,
"We may have a hijack. We have some problems over here right
48)8:55 a.m.:
Barbara Olson, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, "allegedly called"
her husband, Solicitor General Theodore Olson at the Justice Department. He is
watching the WTC news on TV. She tells him, "they had box cutters and knives.
They rounded up the passengers at the back of the plane." She asks him, "What
should I tell the pilot to do?" She gets cuts off; he calls the Justice
Department's command center to alert them of the hijacking. She calls back and
says the plane is turning around. She appears to have been the only person on
American Airlines Flight 77 to call someone on the ground. Why is she the only
person who "allegedly called" from American Airlines Flight 77?"
Planes Exceeded Their Software Limits / Cell Phone Calls Could Not Have Been
Riders In The Sky An Alternative 9-11 Scenario
by A. K. Dewdney
Operation Pearl
by A. K. Dewdney
49)8:56 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77
transponder signal stops.
50)8:56 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77 goes
off course and starts making a 180 degree turn over southern Ohio / northeastern
51) 8:57 a.m. The FAA formally notified the
military that American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the WTC. Until then, the
two F-15�s fighters from Otis did not know the plane had crashed — Yet at
8:47 a.m. NORAD had been notified. Why does it take over 10 minutes to inform
the two F-15�s of this, especially when United Airlines Flight 175 is headed
directly for New York City?
52)8:59 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77
completes its 180 degree turn over southern Ohio / northeastern Kentucky and
starts heading directly back to Washington D.C. and The Pentagon, 330 miles
53)9:00 a.m.: United Airlines systems
operations transmitted a system wide message, warning its pilots of a potential
"cockpit intrusion". United Airlines Flight 93, flying over Pennsylvania replies
54) 9:00 a.m.: Last radar reading on United
Airlines Flight 175 is observed at an altitude of 18,000 feet, descending, with
a ground speed of 480 knots.
55) 9:00 a.m.
The FAA starts contacting all airliners to warn them of the
56) 9:00 a.m.:
The Pentagon moves its alert status up one notch from normal to Alpha. It stays
on Alpha until after American Airlines Flight 77 hits the Pentagon.
57) 9:01 a.m.:
Bush later makes the following statement. "And I was sitting outside the
classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower — the TV was
obviously on, and I used to fly myself, and I said, 'There's one terrible
pilot.' And I said, 'It must have been a horrible accident.' But I was whisked
off from there — I didn't have much time to think about it." Bush could not
have possibly seen the first plane (American Airlines Flight 11) hit the WTC,
because the only video showing this was not shown on television till later in
the day. So how could he have possibly seen and said this?
58) 9:02:54 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 175
impacts the south side of the South Tower of the WTC between the 78th
and 84th floors at a speed of over 500 MPH. Parts of the plane
including an engine leave the building from its north side, to be found on the
ground up to six blocks away.
When United
Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower, "it set up vibrations which were
transmitted through the building, through its foundation, and into the ground,"
says Lerner-Lam. Those vibrations, as indicated by seismographs at
Lamont-Doherty and other locations, were the equivalent of a magnitude 0.7
NORAD says
that when United Airlines Flight 175 impacts the WTC at 9:02:54, the F-15's from
Otis are still 71 miles away. This means their average flight speed was only
23.9% of their top speed in trying to intercept United Airlines Flight 175.
Otis is 153
miles from WTC. F-15's have a top speed of 1875+ MPH. Minus 71 miles left from
153 miles equals 82 miles covered in the 11 minutes from 8:52 take-off to 9:03.
60 minutes divided by 11 minutes equals 5.45, times this by the 82 miles
covered, equals 447.3 MPH. divided by 1875 MPH equals 23.9% of their top speed.
How could these two F-15�s possibly be going less than one quarter of their
top speed in trying to intercept United Airlines Flight 175?
The following
passages are from a BBC article published on August 30, 2002. Two of the pilots
patrolling northeast America told the programme how they struggled to get to New
York as fast as possible after the first plane had hit the World Trade Center.
Pilots "Duff" and "Nasty" recalled they were only minutes away when the second
plane hit the towers. Pilot Duff said: "For a long time I wondered what would
have happened if we had been scrambled in time. "We've been over the flight a
thousand times in our minds and I don't know what we could have done to get
there any quicker." Perhaps if they flew a little faster than 23.9% of their top
speed is how.
US Considered 'Suicide Jet
The F-15 pilots flew
"like a scalded ape," topping 500 MPH but were unable to catch up to the
airliner [United Airliners Flight 175], Maj. Gen. Paul Weaver said.
National Guard Fighters Raced After 2
Now the only
airliner left in the sky with its IFF transponder signal off which has just made
a 180 degree turn over southern Ohio / northeastern Kentucky and has been
heading directly back to Washington D.C. and The Pentagon since 8:59 a.m. — is
American Airlines Flight 77. Why didn�t these two F-15�s that were 71 miles
from NYC and the WTC, immediately redirect to intercept the only dangerous
airliner in the sky, American Airlines Flight 77?
These two
F-15�s had 34 minutes to reach Washington D.C. before American Airlines Flight
77 hits the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. The mission of these two F-15�s from the
102nd Fighter Wing of the Otis Air National Guard Base is to protect the skies
from Washington D.C. to the north. The F-15 has a top speed of 1875+ MPH, so
they could have closed the 300 or so miles from their current position to
Washington D.C. in just about 10 minutes. At top speed they could have been at
the Pentagon 24 minutes before American Airlines Flight 77 hits it.
Even if they
were flying at the same speed NORAD says that they covered in the last 71 miles
till they reach the WTC (532.5 MPH or only 28.4% of top speed) they would have
beat American Airlines Flight 77 to the Pentagon. Why didn�t these two
F-15�s directly fly to intercept the only known airliner still in the sky that
is hijacked, and heading directly for the nations capitol?
Still, much
worse, why didn�t these two F-15�s upon reaching the WTC at 9:11 and now
knowing that American Airlines Flight 77 has been heading dead on for Washington
D.C. for 12 minutes, finally try to intercept? The WTC is about 250 miles from
the Pentagon. They still have 26 minutes to intercept American Airlines Flight
77 before the Pentagon gets hit at 9:37. All they have to do is to fly only
576.9 MPH or 30.8% of their top speed to beat American Airlines Flight 77 to the
Pentagon. What do we pay these guys to do?
unbelievably worse, these two F-15�s could have waited in New York City till
9:26 before heading down to protect Washington D.C. and the Pentagon. By 9:26
American Airlines Flight 77 has now been heading directly back to Washington
D.C. for 27 minutes. American Airlines Flight 77 is the only airliner in the sky
with its transponder signal off, and off course. If these F-15�s were flying
at top speed, they could be at the Pentagon in under 10 minutes. They can leave
New York City at 9:26 and still beat American Airlines Flight 77 to the Pentagon
by one minute. Why didn�t these two F-15�s leave at any time between 9:03
and 9:26 to intercept American Airlines Flight 77, the only airliner in the sky
with its transponder signal off, and also off course? Why,
NORAD Press Release: http://StandDown.net/NORADSeptember182001PressRelease.htm
AP Article On NORAD PR:http://www.AttackOnAmerica.net/8MinutesAway.htm
New York Times articles apologetically describing this:
Pentagon Tracked
Deadly Jet But Found No Way to Stop It
Chronology of Plane Crashes: Orders, at the Time of Impact
There is a
very important video of what looks very much like an F-15 streaking by the WTC
just as United Airlines Flight 175 impacts the South Tower of the WTC. Why
isn�t anyone talking about this video?
Take a look for yourself
59) 9:03 a.m.:
Boston air traffic control center halts traffic from its airports to all New
York area airspace.
60) 9:05 a.m.: Andrew Card walks up to Bush while he is listening
to a Goat Story with 16 second graders in Sandra Kay Daniels�s class at Emma
E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. Card whispers in his ear "A
second plane has hit the World Trade Center. America is under attack." Bush
(commander-and-chief?) keeps listening to this Goat Story with these children
for at least 7 minutes, and perhaps as long as 18 minutes. Why didn't he excuse
himself from these children right away, and immediately address this national
emergency, is totally unexplainable.
There is no
way this should have happened. What of course should have happened, was as soon
as the secret service found out about United Airlines Flight 175 impacting the
WTC (now knowing it was a "terrorist" act), they would have immediatly grabbed
Bush and brought him to an undisclosed location. There is no way the secret
service leaves Bush in a place (Emma E. Booker Elementary School) where everyone
knows he is. Stand Down.
9:05 a.m.:
West Virginia flight control notices a new eastbound plane entering their radar
with no radio contact and no transponder identification. They are not sure it is
American Airlines Flight 77. Supposedly they wait another 19 minutes before
notifying NORAD about it.
62) 9:06 a.m.:
Order to halt traffic is expanded to include the entire northeast from
Washington to Cleveland. FAA's air traffic control center outside Washington
D.C. notifies all air traffic facilities nationwide of the suspected hijacking
of American Airlines Flight 11.
63) 9:06 a.m.: The FAA formally notified the
military that United Airlines Flight 175 had been hijacked.
64) 9:08 a.m.:
FAA orders all aircraft to leave New York area airspace and orders all New
York-bound planes nationwide to stay on the ground.
65)9:10 a.m. to 9:20 a.m.: United Airlines
Flight 93 was hijacked.
66) 9:11 a.m.: The two F-15 Eagles from Otis Air National Guard
station in Falmouth; Massachusetts finally make it to NYC and the WTC. So it
takes these two F-15�s, which have a top speed of 1875+ MPH, 19 minutes to
cover the 153 miles from Otis to the WTC. This means their average flight speed
from Otis to the WTC was only 483.2 MPH or just 25.8% of their top speed.
67) 9:12 a.m.: The FAA formally notified the
military that United Airlines Flight 175 had crashed into the WTC.
68) 9:15 a.m.:
American Airlines orders no new takeoffs in the United States.
69)9:16 a.m. to 9:20: The FAA notifies NORAD
that United Airlines Flight 93 has been hijacked. (Reported as 9:20 a.m. in the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) No fighters are scrambled in specific response, now or
later. There is the possibility the fighters sent after American Airlines Flight
77 later headed towards United Airlines Flight 93. NORAD's own timeline
inexplicably fails to say when the FAA told them about the hijack, the only
flight they fail to provide this data for.
70) 9:17 a.m.:
The FAA shuts down all New York City area airports.
71) 9:20 a.m.:
United Airlines orders no new takeoffs in the United States.
72) 9:21 a.m.:
New York City Port Authority orders all bridges and tunnels in the New York City
area closed.
73) 9:23 a.m.:
Bush talks privately with Cheney, his National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller and Governor George Pataki of New
York. Why does Bush wait from 9:05 (when Andrew Card tells him of United
Airlines Flight 175 hitting the WTC) till 9:23 to finally call? He still does
not give the authority to the fighters to shoot down any hostile airliners. What
is he waiting for?
9:23 a.m.: A sonic boom occurs, which was picked up by an earthquake monitor in
southern Pennsylvania, 60 miles away from Shanksville. This was most likely
caused by a fighter jet breaking the sound barrier.
74)9:24 a.m.: The FAA notifies NORAD that
American Airlines Flight 77 has been hijacked. The FAA lost contact with
American Airlines Flight 77 when the transponder signal stops at 8:55 a.m. —
Why does it take 29 minutes for the FAA to tell NORAD that American Airlines
Flight 77 has been hijacked?
75) 9:24 a.m.: NORAD
orders the 1st Fighter Wing from Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia to
scramble two, possibly three F-16 fighters. This time NORAD does not sit on this
vital information for six minutes before notifying Langley AFB. Langley is 130
miles south of Washington D.C. and the Pentagon. The F-16 has a top speed of
Why wasn�t
Langley AFB scrambled at 8:20 or 8:40 or 8:46 or at the very least at 9:02:54?
How could NORAD possibly have waited the 21 minutes from the time United
Airlines Flight 175 hits the South Tower of the WTC at 9:02:54 before finally
scrambling Langley at 9:24? Waiting these 21 extra minutes to finally scramble
Langley is the real smoking gun that no one can get around.
76) 9:25 a.m.:
Air traffic controllers inform the US Secret Service as American Airlines Flight
77 approaches Washington D.C.
77) 9:26 a.m.:
The FAA halts takeoffs nationwide. All airborne international flights are told
to land in Canada.
78)9:26 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77 –
Passenger, Barbara K. Olson again calls her husband, Solicitor General Theodore
Olson at the Justice Department to tell him about the hijacking and to report
that the passengers and pilots were held in the back of the plane. Again she is
the only person who makes a call from American Airlines Flight 77. Isn�t it
very strange that is she the only person to call, not once but twice?
79)9:28 a.m. United Airlines Flight 93 — An
open microphone aboard reveals someone in the cockpit saying, "Get out of here!"
80)9:28 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93, "there
are the first audible signs of problems, in background cockpit noise." Air
traffic controllers hear the sound of screaming and scuffling over an open mike.
They then hear hijackers speaking in Arabic to each other. Yet this is at least
8 minutes and probably at least 12 minutes after the hijackers had taken over
the cockpit and done something to cause the FAA to notify NORAD of United
Airlines Flight 93's hijacking.
81)9:29 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93 –
Jeremy Glick, a passenger, calls his wife and describes the hijackers and is
informed about the attacks in New York City.
82) 9:30 a.m.: Two maybe three F-16 Fighting Falcons code-named
Huntress take off from Langley AFB headed at first toward at NYC. A couple of
minutes into their mission, according to General Haugen "A person came on the
radio and identified themselves as being with the Secret Service" and said, "I
want you to protect the White House at all costs." The F-16�s laid in a new
course and vectored to Washington D.C.
Why were these fighters headed to
NYC when American Airlines Flight 77 has been headed directly for Washington
D.C. for the last 31 minutes, and with their communication and transponder
turned off for 34 minutes? There are no airliners headed for NYC or anywhere
else with their communication and transponders turned off. Also, at 9:25 air
traffic controllers have already informed the US Secret Service in Washington
D.C. that American Airlines Flight 77 is approaching them very fast. So why are
these F-16�s first flying toward NYC?
83) 9:30 a m.:
Bush, speaking to the nation from Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota,
Florida, says the country has suffered an "apparent terrorist attack" and "a
national tragedy." He would chase down, "those folks who committed this act."
Bush also said, "Terrorism against our nation will not stand." It was an echo of
"This will not stand," the words his father, George H. W. Bush, had used a few
days after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990-in Bush's opinion, one of his
father's finest moments.
Also, during this address to the country Bush
promised a full investigation into the attack. Well here we are one year later
and there is still no investigation. Matter of fact he has done everything in
his power so there will not be any investigation into 911.
This address to the country
should have been said at least 15 to 20 minutes earlier. But of course he had
much more important business to attend to, he was listening to the Goat Story
with the 16 second graders from 9:05 till at least 9:12 and possibly as long as
9:23. Watch the video of Bush addressing the country from Emma E. Booker
Elementary School.
84) 9:30 a.m.:
The Secretary of State Colin Powell in Lima, Peru abruptly ended his breakfast
with the Peruvian president after getting word of the second strike on the trade
center and made plans to return to Washington. "Get the plane," he told an
assistant. "Go tell them we're leaving." He had a seven-hour flight, with poor
phone connections, ahead of him.
85) 9:30 a.m.:
United Airlines begins landing all of its flights inside the United
86) 9:32 a.m.:
Secret Service agents burst into Cheney's White House office. They carry him
under his arms — nearly lifting him off the ground — and take him to the
security of the underground bunker in the White House basement.
87) 9:32 a.m.:
The New York Stock Exchange closed.
88)9:33 a.m.: According to The New York Times,
American Airlines Flight 77 was lost at 8:56 when it turned off its transponder,
and stayed lost until now. Washington air traffic control sees a fast moving
blip on their radar at this time and sends a warning to Dulles Airport in
Washington. Is it conceivable that an airplane could be lost inside United
States air space for 37 minutes? One doesn't need a transponder signal to get a
radar signal. If this is true, why did the FAA warn that the plane was headed
towards Washington at 9:25?
89)9:35 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93 goes
off course near Cleveland, Ohio where it makes a 135 degree turn, and is now
headed to the southeast. United Airlines Flight 93 is 375 miles from Newark, New
Jersey and 280 miles from where it was now headed, Washington D.C.
reported about United Airlines Flight 93: ABC News has learned that shortly
before the plane changed directions, someone in the cockpit radioed in and asked
the FAA for a new flight plan, with a final destination of Washington. This
should have been a big red flag, a problem aircraft usually diverts to the
nearest field. Did the Pilot do this to signal Air Traffic
90) 9:35 a.m.:
American Airlines begins landing all of its flights inside the United
91)9:36 a.m.: Ronald Reagan Washington National
Airport instructs a military C130 aircraft that had just departed Andrews Air
Force base to try to identify American Airlines Flight 77. The C130 reports it
is a 767 and it is moving low and very fast.
92)9:37 a.m.: American Airlines Flight 77 is
lost from radar screens and impacts the western side of the Pentagon. The
section of the Pentagon hit consists mainly of newly renovated, unoccupied
offices. The Pentagon says American Airlines Flight 77 hits them at 9:37. Other
published reports have American Airlines Flight 77 striking at 9:40 to 9:43; The
New York Times even published 9:45 (see 9:24 a.m. # 75).
NORAD says the
F-16�s from Langley were still 105 miles and 12 minutes away. This means their
average flight speed was only 14.3% of their top speed in trying to intercept
United Airlines Flight 175. If these F-16�s flew at top speed, they would have
been there just after 9:37.
Langley is 130
miles from the Pentagon. F-16's have a top speed of 1500 MPH. Minus 105 miles
left from 130 miles equals 25 miles covered in the 7 minutes from 9:30 take-off
to 9:37. 60 minutes divided by 7 minutes equals 8.57, times this by the 25 miles
covered, equals 214.3 MPH. divided by 1500 MPH equals 14.3% of their top speed.
How could these two F-15�s possibly be going one seventh of their top speed in
trying to intercept American Airlines Flight 77? Even the story about first
flying to NYC does not account for this unbelievably slow speed because they got
the message to redirect to Washington D.C. within a couple of minutes of
take-off, and NYC and Washington D.C. are almost exactly the same direction
(north) from Langley.
NORAD Press Release: http://StandDown.net/NORADSeptember182001PressRelease.htm
AP Article On NORAD PR: http://www.AttackOnAmerica.net/8MinutesAway.htm
New York Times articles apologetically describing this:
Pentagon Tracked
Deadly Jet But Found No Way to Stop It
Chronology of Plane Crashes: Orders, at the Time of Impact
93)9:38 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93
completes its 135 degree turn and is headed directly towards Washington
94)9:40 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93
transponder signal stops.
95) 9:40 a.m.:
Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, summoned by the White House to the
bunker, was on an open line to the Federal Aviation Administration operations
center, monitoring Flight 77 as it hurtled toward Washington, with radar tracks
coming every seven seconds. Reports came that the plane was 50 miles out, 30
miles out, 10 miles out-until word reached the bunker that there had been an
explosion at the Pentagon.
Mineta shouted
into the phone to Monte Belger at the FAA: "Monte, bring all the planes down."
It was an unprecedented order — there were 4,546 airplanes in the air at the
time. Belger, the FAA's acting deputy administrator, amended Mineta's directive
to take into account the authority vested in airline pilots. "We're bringing
them down per pilot discretion," Belger told the secretary.
"Fuck pilot
discretion," Mineta yelled back. "Get those goddamn planes down."
The FAA stops
all flight operations at U.S. airports and orders all planes in the air to land
at the nearest airport. No civilian aircraft are allowed to lift off. This is
the first time all commercial flights in the U.S. have been suspended. Only
military and medical flights are allowed to fly.
96)9:42 a.m.: United Airlines Flight 93
passenger Mark Bingham calls his mother. "Mom, this is Mark Bingham," he said,
nervously. "I want to let you know that I love you. I'm calling from the plane.
We've been taken over. There are three men that say they have a bomb."
97) 9:45 a.m.:
Bush's motorcade leaves the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota,
Florida headed for Air Force One at the Sarasota-Bradenton International
98) 9:45 a.m.
to 9:48 a.m.: The Capitol and the White House are evacuated.
99)9:45 a.m. to 9:58 a.m.: United Flight 93
passenger Todd Beamer tries to call his family but gets patched through to a
Verizon supervisor. He said that the pilot and copilot were apparently dead, 2
hijackers were in the cockpit, one was guarding first class and another was
guarding 27 passengers at the rear of the plane. He said that they have voted to
storm the hijackers and the supervisor hears before he hangs up "Are you guys
ready? Let's roll."
100)9:45 a.m.: Tom Burnett calls his wife Deena
for the third time. She tells him about the crash into 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."
101) 9:47
a.m.: Commanders worldwide were ordered to raise their threat alert status four
notches to "Delta", the highest level, to defend United States facilities.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld raised the defense condition signaling of
the United States offensive readiness-to DefCon 3, the highest it had been since
the Arab-Israeli war in 1973. U.S. officials also sent a message to the
Russians, who were planning a military exercise not far from Alaska, urging them
to rethink their plans.
102) 9:49 a.m.: The F-16�s from Langley AFB finally arrive over
Washington, D.C. to perform Combat Air Patrol over the city. It takes these
F-16�s 19 minutes to reach Washington D.C. from Langley AFB which is about 130
miles to the south.
If these
F-16�s were flying at top speed it should have taken them just over 7 minutes
to reach the Pentagon. They should have been there at about the same time the
Pentagon is hit by American Airlines Flight 77, at 9:37.
By arriving in
Washington D.C. at 9:49, that would mean these F-16�s average flight speed was
only 410.5 MPH. This means their average flight speed was only 27.4% of their
top speed in trying to protect our nations capital. Langley AFB is 130 miles
from the Pentagonand F-16's have a top speed of 1500 MPH. 60
minutes divided by 19 minutes = 3.16 x 130 miles = 410.5 MPH divided by 1500 MPH
= 27.4%.
These F-16�s
took-off at 9:30, this is 43 minutes after American Airlines 11 impacts the
North Tower of the WTC and 27 minutes after United Airlines Flight 175 slams
into the South Tower of the WTC. Knowing this, these F-16�s fly at only 27.4%
of their top speed in trying to intercept American Airlines Flight 77 and
protect our nations capital, Washington D.C. How could that possibly
Why were all
of these ultra-sophisticated fighter jets averaging flight speeds only one
quarter of their top speed when sent to intercept hostile aircraft and protect
New York City and our nation's Capital, Washington D.C.? What exactly is the
purpose of these fighter jets being able to go 1875+ MPH and 1500 MPH, yet when
the United States is being attacked and needs them the most they are only
somehow capable of doing one quarter of their top speed?
The United
States Air Force is the most technologically advanced, and the most dominate
military force ever known to man, and yet we didn�t have any other fighters on
routine patrols or training missions anywhere within 1000 miles of New York City
or Washington D. C. that morning? I have talked to a few people in the Air
Force, and this totally impossible. There are always fighters up on routine
patrols or training missions. So where were they?
And lastly,
why didn't the Air Force follow procedure and immediately scramble a recon
aircraft or two to monitor any of these 4 flights like they did for the late
great golfer Payne Stewart when his Lear jet went off course? This is not
Oshkosh, Wisconsin we are talking about protecting here, it is New York City and
the Capital of the United States, Washington D.C., and its air defenses were
left total unguarded for almost an hour and a half by the same country who have
the greatest air superiority by far ever known. What type of a preposterous wag
of the NORAD tale is this?
Both of these groups of fighters, the
F-15�s out of Otis, and the F-16�s out of Langley were put in the air merely
as window dressing. To make the public actually think they were valiantly trying
to intercept these 4 hijacked planes. There is only one explanation for this —
our Air Force was ordered to stand down on 911.
NORAD Press Release: http://StandDown.net/NORADSeptember182001PressRelease.htm
AP Article On NORAD PR:http://www.AttackOnAmerica.net/8MinutesAway.htm
103) 9:49
a.m.: Pittsburgh International Airport flight tower is evacuated.
104) 9:55
a.m.: Bush arrives at the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport and boards
Air Force One.
105) 9:55
a.m.: Inside his White House bunker, a military aide asks Cheney, "There is a
plane 80 miles out. There is a fighter in the area. Should we engage?" Cheney
immediately says, "Yes." As the fighter gets nearer to United Airlines Flight
93, he is asked the same thing twice more, and responds yes both
106)9:58 a.m.: Confrontation with the hijackers
and the passengers begins aboard United Airlines Flight 93. Emergency dispatcher
in Pennsylvania receives a call from a passenger on Flight 93. The passenger
says: "We are being hijacked!"
107)9:58 a.m.: A frantic male passenger onboard
United Airlines Flight 93 called the 911 emergency number, he told the operator,
named Glen Cramer, that he had locked himself inside one of the toilets. Cramer
told the AP, in a report that was widely broadcast on September 11th, that the
passenger had spoken for one minute. "We're being hijacked, we're being
hijacked!" the man screamed into his mobile phone. "We confirmed that with him
several times," Cramer said, "and we asked him to repeat what he said. He was
very distraught. He said he believed the plane was going down. He did hear some
sort of an explosion and saw white smoke coming from the plane, but he didn't
know where. And then we lost contact with him." This was the last cell phone
call made from any passengers on any of the hijacked planes.
108) 9:59 a.m.: Air Force One Departs Sarasota-Bradenton
International Airport, Sarasota, Florida bound for Washington D.C. Air Force One
departed with no extra military protection, even though 2 of the 7 military air
stations we had on full alert to protect the continental United States that day
were based in Florida. Homestead Air Station in Homestead is 185 miles and the
Tyndall Air Station in Panama City is 235 miles from Sarasota.
These two air
stations should have been ordered to scramble their fighters at 8:20 or 8:40 or
8:43 or 8:46:26 or 9:02:54 or at the very least, at 9:24. Flying at top speed,
both of these air stations fighters could have been in Sarasota in about 20
minutes to protect Air Force One. Where were the fighters from both of these air
stations? Did both of these air stations have something better to do that day
than protect Air Force One? Please, this just does not happen.
Also, is the
place to be in the air when there are still hundreds of airliners in the air,
and who knew then how many of them were hostile or not?
We have
captured and saved the video of Bush as he arrives at Sarasota-Bradenton
International Airport, and the take-off of Air Force One.
Go to: http://www.AttackOnAmerica.net/AirForceOneLeavingSarasota.ra
Also, please
take a look at the August 30, 2002 BBC article which states: In the immediate
aftermath of the terror attacks US fighter planes took to the skies to defend
America from any further attacks. Their mission was to protect pResident George
W. Bush and to intercept any hijacked aircraft heading to other targets in the
US. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2222205.stm
109) 9:59:04 a.m.: The south tower of the World Trade Center
suddenly collapses, plummeting into the streets below. A massive cloud of dust
and debris quickly fills lower Manhattan. It is later explained (disinformation)
that the collapse was not directly caused by the impact, but the intense heat
caused by the fire fueled by the jet's fuel weakening the steel support beams of
the concrete floors. The WTC towers were built to withstand a 707 being flown
into them. A 767 carries almost the same amount of fuel as a 707.
at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New
York, 21 miles north of the WTC, recorded very interesting seismic activity on
September 11, 2001 that has still not been explained.
While the
aircraft crashes caused minimal earth shaking, significant earthquakes with
unusual spikes occurred at the beginning of each collapse. The Palisades seismic
data recorded a 2.1 magnitude earthquake during the 10-second collapse of the
South Tower at 9:59:04 and a 2.3 quake during the 9-second collapse of the North
Tower at 10:28:31.
The Palisades
seismic record shows that — as the collapses began — a huge seismic "spikes"
marked the moment the greatest energy went into the ground. The strongest jolts
were both registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before the falling
debris struck the earth.
unexplained "spikes" in the seismic data tends to lend credence to the theory
that perhaps a massive explosion(s) in the lowest level of the basements where
the supporting steel columns of the WTC met the bedrock caused the collapses.
A "sharp spike
of short duration" is how seismologist Thorne Lay of University of California at
Santa Cruz told AFP an underground nuclear explosion appears on a seismograph.
The two
unexplained spikes are more than twenty times the amplitude of the other seismic
waves associated with the collapses and occurred in the East-West seismic
recording as the buildings began to fall.
In the
basements of the collapsed towers, where the 47 central support columns
connected with the bedrock, hot spots of "literally molten steel" were
discovered. Such persistent and intense residual heat, 70 feet below the
surface, could explain how these crucial structural supports failed.
Peter Tully,
president of Tully Construction of Flushing, New York, told AFP that he saw
pools of "literally molten steel" at the World Trade Center. Tully was
contracted on September 11 to remove the debris from the site.
Tully called
Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) of Phoenix,
Maryland, for consultation about removing the debris. CDI calls itself "the
innovator and global leader in the controlled demolition and implosion of
structures." Loizeaux, who cleaned up the bombed Federal Building in Oklahoma
City, arrived on the WTC site two days later and wrote the clean-up plan for the
entire operation.
AFP asked
Loizeaux about the report of molten steel on the site. "Yes," he said, "hot
spots of molten steel in the basements." These incredibly hot areas were found
"at the bottoms of the elevator shafts of the main towers, down seven [basement]
levels," Loizeaux said. The molten steel was found "three, four, and five weeks
later, when the rubble was being removed," Loizeaux said. He said molten steel
was also found at 7 WTC, which collapsed mysteriously at 5:20 on September 11th.
steel has an extremely high melting point of about 2800� Fahrenheit (1535�
Celsius). Asked what could have caused such extreme heat, Tully said, "Think of
the jet fuel."
A way to prove
that explosives had blasted the supporting steel columns of the Twin Towers
would be to examine fragments from them among the debris for evidence of what
metallurgists call "twinning". While steel is often tested for evidence of
explosions, despite numerous eyewitness reports of explosions in the towers, the
engineers involved in the FEMA-sponsored building assessment did no such tests.
The WTC debris
was removed as fast as possible and no forensic examination of the debris was
permitted by the FBI or any other government agency. Almost all the 300,000 tons
of steel from the Twin Towers was sold to New York scrap dealers and exported to
places like China and Korea as quickly as it could be loaded onto the ships,
thereby removing the evidence.
The magazine
Fire Engineering, a respected journal of firefighting for 125 years, which
publishes studies of catastrophic fires, criticized the American Society of
Civil Engineers and FEMA investigations as "a half-baked farce." Fire
Engineering editor WiIliam A. Manning wrote in the January issue: "…the
structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in
themselves were not enough to bring down the towers." Why is such there
disparity in opinion within the ranks of the fire-engineering
The immense
clouds of dust and apparent disintegration of the 425,000 cubic yards of
concrete of the World Trade Center cause me to question the MIT account of
events. Describing the ruins, television evangelist Dr. Robert Schuller said
that "…there was not a single block of concrete in that rubble." One observer
described the scene "as if some high-energy disintegration beam or laser had
been focused on the towers and pulverized the concrete into minute particles of
ash and dust." The 110-ten-story World Trade Center reduced to dust by jet fuel?
Dr. Michael
Baden, New York state's chief forensic pathologist and an expert in pathology
said in September that most of the victims' bodies should be identifiable,
because the fires had not reached the 3200�F for 30 minutes necessary to
incinerate a body. At a November press conference, Dr. Charles Hirsch, the chief
medical examiner, told grieving relatives that many bodies had been "vaporized."
Are we to believe that the people killed on 9/11 were "vaporized" at 1700� F?
The World
Trade Center smoldering pits of molten steel burned for exactly 100 days,
despite the constant spray of water being applied. The fires were finally
reported extinguished on December 19.
Also, the
collapses of the south tower at 9:59:04 took only 10 seconds while the collapse
of the north tower at 10:28:31 took only 9 seconds, this is only slightly more
than a free fall from the same height, indicating that there was very little
resistance. Yet the floors themselves are quite robust, each one is 39″ thick;
the top 4″ is a poured concrete slab, with interlocking vertical steel trusses
underneath. This steel would absorb a lot of kinetic energy by crumpling as one
floor fell onto another. So how did both of the towers fall so
In a newly
release audio, two of New York City�s Bravest are heard to have made it up to
where United Airlines Flight 175 impacted, the 78th floor. Their
voices where calm, they explain what was needed to help the many causalities and
to put out the two small fires that they discovered. The type of fire that these
two NYC Firemen describe does not seem to jive at all with the inferno that is
blamed for melting the support beams and bringing down the first steel high-rise
or skyscraper ever.
Also, Louie
Cacchioli 51, another NYC firefighter, assigned to Engine 47 in Harlem, has
stated on September 11, 2001: "We were the first ones in the second tower after
the plane struck. I was taking firefighters up in the elevator to the 24th floor
to get in position to evacuate workers. On the last trip up a bomb went off. We
think there were bombs set in the building. I had just asked another firefighter
to stay with me, which was a good thing because we were trapped inside the
elevator and he had the tools to get out."
"There were
probably 500 people trapped in the stairwell. It was mass chaos. The power went
out. It was dark. Everybody was screaming. We had oxygen masks and we were
giving people oxygen. Some of us made it out and some of us didn't. I know of at
least 30 firefighters who are still missing. This is my 20th year. I am
seriously considering retiring. This might have done it."
When cameraman
and Jules Naudet arrived at WTC tower one along with other crews of NYC Firemen
and entered the building's ground floor lobby, they were to a one completely
puzzled, actually astonished, to find significant and widespread damage to the
entire lobby area; although not of a deep, structural kind. Moreover, nowhere
was there any indication whatsoever of an incendiary-type explosion or any kind
of fire in this area.
Yet the
incredible number of blown-out windows and other extensive though rather
superficial damage throughout the lobby area was profoundly perplexing to these
experienced professional firefighters in relation to the impact of the plane
eighty stories above. As one put it: "The lobby looked like the plane hit the
Other reports,
from firemen, have said that the FBI�s offices in NYC that were on the
22nd, 23rd and 24th floors of the north tower
of the WTC were totally destroyed, presumably by bombs.
article: http://www.americanfreepress.net/09_03_02/NEW_SEISMIC_/new_seismic_.html
charts: http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/LCSN/Eq/WTC_20010911.html
article: http://www.firehouse.com/tech/news/2002/0121_terrorist.html
article and chart: http://serendipity.magnet.ch/wot/bollyn2.htm
Fire still
burning: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991634
Fire still
burning: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/letters.html
The Twin Towers Were Deliberately
Demolished: http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/towers
/ http://wtc7.net
110) 10:00
a.m.: Bill
Wright is flying a small plane when an air traffic controller asks him to look
around outside his window. He sees United Airlines Flight 93 three miles away –
close enough to see the United Airlines colors. Air traffic control asks him the
plane's altitude, and then commands him to get away from the plane and land
immediately. Wright saw the plan rock back and forth three or four times before
he flew from the area. He speculates that the hijackers were trying to throw off
the attacking passengers.
111) 10:00 a.m.: The NRC tells all nuclear
power stations to go to the highest level of alert.
112) 10:01
a.m.: The FAA orders F-16 fighters to scramble from Toledo, Ohio. Although the
base has no fighters on stand-by alert status, it manages to put fighters in the
air 16 minutes later, a "phenomenal" response time – but still 10 minutes after
the last hijacked plane has crashed.
interesting aspect is that NORAD has explained that it didn't scramble fighters
from bases nearer to the hijacked planes because they only used bases in the
NORAD defensive network (a mere 7 bases in the entire US). Yet this Toledo base
wasn't part of that network, so why weren't planes in this base and other bases
scrambled an hour or more earlier? Could it be that they were scrambled earlier,
and that it was one of these F-16's that tailed Flight 93? While it hasn't been
reported in the media yet, note this recent claim by a seismologist that there
was a sonic boom in Western Pennsylvania at 9:22. Could that have been a fighter
tracking United Airlines Flight 93?
113)10:02 a.m.: After a review of radar tapes, a
radar signal of United Airlines Flight 93 is detected near Shanksville,
114)10:03 a.m.: An unconfirmed report of a fire
at the State Department in Washington D.C. — Later confirmed not
115) 10:03 a.m.: According to the FBI,
cockpit voice recorder stops and United Airlines Flight 93 crashes near
Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in Somerset county, about 80 miles southeast of
116)10:04 a.m.: Johnstown-Cambria County Airport
reports United Airlines Flight 93 is 15 miles south.
117)10:06:05 a.m.: According to seismic data,
United Airlines Flight 93 crashes near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in Somerset
county, about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. This is also 124 miles or 15
minutes away at 500 MPH from Washington D.C. An eyewitness reports seeing a
white plane resembling a fighter jet circling the site just after the crash.
The F-16's
from Langley AFB arrived in Washington D.C at 9:49 a.m. The F-16 has a top speed
of 1500 MPH. After the Pentagon gets hit by American Airlines Flight 77 at 9:37,
there is only one airliner left in the sky with its transponder signal off, and
once again heading directly for Washington D.C., and that is United Airlines
Flight 93. Flying at top speed these F-16�s could have intercepted United
Airlines Flight 93 within 5 to 8 minutes depending on when they would have left.
Why didn�t these F-16�s try to intercept United Airlines Flight 93?
Listen to what
a former Pentagon air traffic controller says "All those years ago when I was at
the Pentagon, this wouldn't have happened. ATC Radar images were (and are)
available in the understructures of the Pentagon, and any commercial flight
within 300 miles of D. C. that made an abrupt course change toward Washington,
or turned off their transponder and refused to communicate with ATC, would have
been intercepted at supersonic speeds within minutes by fighters out of Andrews
AFB. Why there were no fighters from Andrews AFB up baffles me. If we could get
fighters notified, scrambled, and airborne within about 6 minutes from Andrews
AFB then, we could now."
NORAD Press
Release: http://StandDown.net/NORADSeptember182001PressRelease.htm
AP Article On
NORAD PR: http://www.AttackOnAmerica.net/8MinutesAway.htm
Shortly after
911, a flight controller in New Hampshire ignores a ban on controllers speaking
to the media, and it is reported he claims "that an F-16 fighter closely pursued
Flight 93… the F-16 made 360-degree turns to remain close to the commercial
jet, the employee said. 'He must've seen the whole thing,' the employee said of
the F-16 pilot's view of Flight 93's crash."
eyewitnesses see and hear United Airlines Flight 93 just before its crash:
1) 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.
2) Ernie
Stuhl, the mayor of Shanksville: "I know of two people — I will not mention
names — that heard a missile. They both live very close, within a couple of
hundred yards… This one fellow's served in Vietnam and he says he's heard
them, and he heard one that day." He adds that based on what he has learned;
F-16's were "very, very close."
3) 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).
4) 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."
5) Michael
Merringer, two miles from the crash site: "I heard the engine gun two different
times and then I heard a loud bang"
6) Tim
Lensbouer, 300 yards away: "I heard it for 10 or 15 seconds and it sounded like
it was going full bore." Accounts have the plane flying upside down.
7) 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."
8) 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
9) Bob Blair
of Stoystown: He sees the plane spiraling and flying upside down before
crashing. It�s not much higher than the treetops. Accounts of a sudden plunge
and more strange sounds.
10) An unnamed
witness says he hears two loud bangs before watching the plane take a downward
turn of nearly 90 degrees.
11) Another
unnamed witness sees the plane overhead. It makes a high-pitched, screeching
sound. The plane then makes a sharp, 90-degree downward turn and
12) 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."
13) 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."
14) 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
15) Linda
Shepley: She hears a loud bang and sees the plane bank to the side. 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 had an unobstructed view of Flight 93's final two
16) 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 its heading east.
17) 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
What sense can
be made of all these different accounts? Some say it was flying a couple
thousand feet up and suddenly plunged down, some say it was flying extremely
low. Turns, climbs, strange noises, flipping, etc. While many of these accounts
conflict, virtually all support a missile strike, because of the common theme of
noises and a plane struggling to rise and stay in the air. The plunge doesn't
seem to be a deliberate thrust of the plane towards the ground, but instead the
result of engine failure. Other passenger planes hit by missiles continued to
fly for several minutes before crashing. For instance, two Russian missiles hit
a Korean Airline 747 in 1983, yet it continued to fly for two more
118) 10:06
a.m.: and after "Lee Purbaugh is one of at least half a dozen named individuals
who have reported seeing a second plane flying low and in erratic patterns, not
much above treetop level, over the crash site within minutes of United Airlines
Flight 93 crashing. They describe the plane as a small, white jet with rear
engines and no discernible markings."
Susan Mcelwain
saw a small white jet with rear engines and no discernible markings swooped low
over her minivan near an intersection and disappeared over a hilltop, nearly
clipping the tops of trees lining the ridge. She saw this less than a minute
before the United Airlines Flight 93 crash rocked the countryside.
Dennis Decker
and Rick Chaney, Decker speaking: "As soon as we looked up [after hearing United
Airlines Flight 93 crash], we saw a midsize jet flying low and fast. It appeared
to make a loop or part of a circle, and then it turned fast and headed out."
Decker and Chaney described the plane as a Lear-jet type, with engines mounted
near the tail and painted white with no identifying markings. "It was a jet
plane, and it had to be flying real close when that 757 went down. If I was the
FBI, I'd find out who was driving that plane."
Jim Brandt and
Tom Spinello both report seeing a small plane with no markings stay about one or
two minutes over the crash site before leaving. The FBI later says this was a
Fairchild Falcon 20 business jet, directed after the crash to fly from 37,000
feet to 5,000 feet and obtain the coordinates for the crash site to help
rescuers. The FBI also says there was a C-130 military cargo aircraft flying at
24,000 feet about 17 miles away, but that plane wasn't armed and had no role in
the crash. Was the unmarked jet some kind of reconnaissance plane, and the C-130
a cover story for sending fighters in the area?
more information on United Airlines Flight 93: http://www.Flight93Crash.com
119) 10:07 a.m.: A NYC Police helicopter sends an urgent message over
the radio that the North Tower is leaning and in imminent danger of
120) 10:08 a.m.:
Secret Service agents armed with automatic rifles are deployed into Lafayette
Park across from the White House.
121) 10:10
a.m.: The FAA orders all planes to land at nearest airports.
122) 10:10
a.m.: The FBI headquarters evacuated.
123) 10:10
a.m.: The Pentagon "E Section" collapses.
124) 10:13
a.m.: Almost 12,000 people are evacuated from The United Nations.
125) 10:15
a.m.: The Palestinian group Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine
(DFLP) reportedly takes responsibility for the crashes, but this is quickly
denied by a senior officer of the group.
126) 10:15
a.m.: 2,000 planes have landed in the U.S. since the 9:40 FAA order was issued
telling all planes in the air to land at the nearest airport.
127) 10:17
a.m.: Two F-16�s from the 180th Fighter Wing in Toledo, Ohio take off, heading
128) 10:22
a.m.: In Washington D.C., the Justice and State departments are evacuated, along
with the World Bank.
129) 10:24
a.m.: The FAA reports that all inbound transatlantic aircraft flying into the
United States are being diverted to Canada.
130) 10:28:31 a.m.: The North Tower of the World Trade Center
collapses. The fact that the northern tower withstood much longer than the
southern one is later attributed to three facts: the region of impact was
higher, the speed of the airplane was lower, and the affected floors had their
fire proofing upgraded.
Exactly at the
beginning of the collapse of the north tower there was a seismic event that was
the equivalent to a magnitude 2.3 earthquake. This unexplained "spike" in the
seismic data tends to lend credence to the theory that perhaps a massive
explosion(s) in the lowest level of the basement where the supporting steel
columns of the WTC met the bedrock that caused the collapse (see 9:59:04 a.m. #
The Twin Towers Were Deliberately
Demolished: http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/towers
/ http://wtc7.net
131) 10:32
a.m.: Cheney called Bush on Air Force One, on its way from Florida to
Washington, to say the White House had just received a threat against the plane.
The caller had used its code word, "Angel," suggesting terrorists had inside
information. Card was told it would take between 40 minutes and 90 minutes to
get a protective fighter escort up to Air Force One.
Bush told an
aide that Air Force One "is next." He was in an angry mood. "We're going to find
out who did this," he said to Cheney, "and we're going to kick their
132) 10:35
a.m.: Washington D.C. Police are reportedly alerted about a bomb in a car
outside the State Department. Later reports claim that nothing happened at the
State Department.
133) 10:41
a.m.: Air Force One was still en route to Washington when Cheney called again.
This time, he urged Bush not to return. "There's still a threat to Washington."
Rice agreed, and had told Bush the same thing.
There was
little debate or discussion. Cheney was worried the terrorists might be trying
to decapitate the government, to kill its leaders. Bush agreed.
134) 10:43
a.m.: Air Force One banks suddenly and sharply to the left, its course now
westerly toward Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. It was within easy range,
and once there food and fuel could be loaded and the president could have access
to its more sophisticated communications systems.
135) 10:45
a.m.: All federal office buildings in Washington D. C. are evacuated.
136) 10.46
a.m.: U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell cuts short his trip to Latin America
to return to the United States.
137) 10.48
a.m.: Police confirm the crash of a large plane in Somerset County,
138) 10:50
a.m.: Five stories of the Pentagon collapse due to the fire.
139) 10:53
a.m.: New York's primary elections scheduled for today are postponed.
140) 10:54
a.m.: Israel evacuates all diplomatic missions.
141) 10:57
a.m.: New York Gov. George Pataki says all state government offices are closed.
142) 11:00
a.m.: Evacuations are ordered at the tallest skyscrapers in several cities, and
major tourist attractions are closed, including Walt Disney World,
Philadelphia's Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, Seattle's Space Needle and
the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
143) 11:02
a.m.: Giuliani urges New Yorkers to stay at home and orders an evacuation of the
area south of Canal Street (see 1:02 p.m. # 159).
144) 11:08
a.m.: Canada shuts down all airports.
145) 11:15
a.m.: There were reports that the F-16�s over Washington had shot something
down. There was no later confirmation of these reports.
146) 11:16
a.m.: CNN reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are
preparing emergency-response teams in a precautionary move.
147) 11:17
a.m.: American Airlines reports it has lost two aircraft. American Airlines
Flight 11, a Boeing 767 flying from Boston to Los Angeles, had 81 passengers and
11 crewmembers aboard. American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 en route from
Washington's Dulles Airport to Los Angeles, had 58 passengers and six crew
members aboard.
a.m.: United Airlines reports that Flight 93, en route from Newark, New Jersey,
to San Francisco, has crashed in Pennsylvania, southeast of Pittsburgh.
149) 11:40
a.m.: Air Force One arrives at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
150) 11:45
a.m.: From Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, Bush made a brief and informal
initial statement to the effect that terrorism on U.S. soil would not be
tolerated, stating that "freedom itself has been attacked and freedom will be
a.m.: United Airlines confirms that Flight 175, from Boston to Los Angeles, has
crashed with 56 passengers and nine crewmembers aboard.
152) 11:55
a.m.: The border between the U.S. and Mexico is placed on highest alert, but is
not closed.
153) 12:02
p.m.: The Taliban government of Afghanistan denounces the attacks.
154) 12:04
a.m.: Los Angeles International Airport, the destination of American Airlines
Flights 11 and United Airlines 175, is evacuated.
155) 12:15
a.m.: San Francisco International Airport, the destination of United Flight 93
is evacuated and shut down.
156) 12:15
p.m.: The Immigration and Naturalization Service says U.S. borders with Canada
and Mexico are on the highest state of alert, but no decision is made about
closing the borders.
157) 12:16
p.m.: The FAA says all aircraft ordered to land at 9:40 have landed.
158) 12:30
p.m.: The FAA says 50 flights are in U.S. airspace, but none are reporting any
159) 12:36 p.m.: Bush finally appeared on television from the
Barksdale Air Force Base conference room, it was not a reassuring picture. He
spoke haltingly, mispronouncing several words as he looked down at his notes. He
says that all appropriate security measures are being taken, including putting
the United States military on high alert worldwide. He asks for prayers for
those killed or wounded in the attacks and says: "Make no mistake, the United
States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts."
When he got to
the last sentence, he seemed to gain strength. "The resolve of our great nation
is being tested," he said in even tones. "But make no mistake: We will show the
world that we will pass this test."
His remarks
were fed by the media pool to the networks, causing a short delay before the
nation could see them. The entire statement consisted of just 219 words, and
Bush took no questions from reporters.
160) 1:00
p.m.: At the Pentagon, fire crews are still fighting fires. The early response
to the attack had been coordinated from the National Military Command Center,
but that had to be evacuated when it began to fill with smoke.
161) 1:02
p.m.: New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani orders an evacuation of Manhattan south of
Canal Street (see 11:02 a.m. # 141).
162) 1:27
p.m.: Mayor Anthony A. Williams of Washington, D.C., declares a state of
emergency; the National Guard arrives on site.
163) 1:44
a.m.: The Pentagon says five warships and two aircraft carriers (USS George
Washington and USS John F. Kennedy) will leave Norfolk, Virginia to protect the
East Coast from further attack and to reduce the number of ships in port.
164) 1:48
p.m.: President Bush leaves Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana aboard Air
Force One and flies to an undisclosed location. He flies to the Strategic Air
Command (SAC) bunker at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska where there were
secure facilities that would allow the president to conduct a meeting of his
National Security Council in Washington over a video link.
On the plane,
Bush expressed his irritation over being away from the White House. "I want to
go back home ASAP," he told Card, according to notes of the conversation. "I
don't want whoever did this holding me outside of Washington."
Some aides
recall Bush saying he would return to Washington later in the day, unless there
was some extraordinary new threat. The senior Secret Service agent aboard Air
Force One told Bush the situation was "too unsteady still" to allow his return.
"The right thing is to let the dust settle," Card said.
165) 2:00
p.m.: Senior FBI sources tell CNN they are working on the assumption that the
four airplanes that crashed were hijacked as part of a terrorist attack.
166) 2:15
p.m.: Bush onboard Air Force One en route to the (SAC) bunker at Offutt Air
Force Base in Nebraska talks to Cheney again and schedules a 4 p.m. meeting of
his national security staff — He also talks to New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and
Gov. George Pataki. "I know your heart is broken and your city is strained and
anything we can do, let me know," Bush says.
167) 2:30
p.m.: The FAA announces there will be no U.S. commercial air traffic until noon
EDT Wednesday.
168) 2:30
p.m.: Senator John McCain characterizes attack as an "act of war."
169) 2:36
p.m.: En route to Offutt, Bush reached his father on the phone. His aides left
him alone in the cabin. "Where are you?" Bush recalled asking his father. The
former president said he and his wife, Barbara, were in Milwaukee, on their way
to Minneapolis. "What are you doing in Milwaukee?" "You grounded my plane," the
former president said.
170) 2:49
p.m.: At a news conference, Giuliani says that subway and bus service are
restored in New York City. Asked about the number of people killed, Giuliani
says, "I don't think we want to speculate about that — more than any of us can
171) 2:50
p.m.: Before leaving Air Force One, Bush repeated to his lead Secret Service
agent, "We need to get back to Washington. We don't need some tinhorn terrorist
to scare us off. The American people want to know where their president is."
172) 2:51
p.m.: The Navy dispatches missile destroyers and other equipment to New York and
173) 3:06 p.m.: Air Force One landed at U.S. Strategic Air Command
at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Bush was driven the short distance to the
U.S. Strategic Command headquarters and was ushered into the secure command
center, a cavernous room with multi-story video screens and batteries of
military personnel at computer terminals hooked into satellites monitoring
activities around the globe. As Bush arrived, they were tracking a commercial
airliner on its way from Spain to the United States. It was giving out an
emergency signal, indicating it might be hijacked.
Very bizarrely, Warren Buffett, (reported to be the
second richest person on Earth), has a golf outing for top Corporate CEO�s, at
the same Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. What is the likelihood of that
174) 3:30 p.m.: Bush convened the day's first meeting of his
National Security Council; the others were piped in by secure video links from
various command centers in Washington.
CIA Director
Tenet reported that he was virtually certain Usama bin Laden and his network
were behind the attacks. A check of the passenger manifests of the hijacked
flights had turned up three known al-Qaeda operatives on American Airlines
Flight 77, which had struck the Pentagon. Please check out the passenger name
manifest list (there are no Arabic names on the list).
One of them,
Khalid Al-Midhar, had come to the CIA's attention the previous year, when he
traveled to Malaysia and met with a key al-Qaeda suspect in the 2000 terrorist
bombing of the USS Cole. The FBI had been informed about Al-Midhar and he had
been put on a watch list, but he had slipped into the United States over the
summer and the bureau had been looking for him since. Tenet said al-Qaeda was
the only terrorist organization in the world that had the capability to pull off
such well-coordinated attacks. And, he said, intelligence monitoring had
overheard a number of known Usama bin Laden operatives congratulating each other
after the strikes. Intelligence monitoring also found five Mossad agents
congratulating themselves after the strike. Israel is the only terrorist state
in the world that had the capacity to pull off such a well coordinated strike
and pin the blame on others. He said information collected before September 11
but only now being processed indicated that operatives had expected something
big. But none of it specified the day, time or place of the attacks in a way
that would have allowed the CIA or FBI to preempt them.
"Get your ears
up," Bush told Tenet and the others. "The primary mission of this administration
is to find them and catch them." Cheney voiced concern that more hijacked planes
could be out there. Tenet said that since all the attacks had taken place before
10 a.m., that was probably it for the day but there was no way to be sure. FBI
Director Mueller expressed concerns that investigators still did not know how
the terrorists had penetrated airport security. Tenet said it was essential to
know this before flights resumed.
"I'll announce
more security measures, but we won't be held hostage," Bush insisted. "We'll fly
at noon tomorrow," he said, although it took three more days for commercial
flights to resume and then only on a reduced schedule.
mentioned that New York officials had asked whether they should urge people to
go back to work the next day, particularly those working in banks and the
financial markets. "Terrorists can always attack," Rumsfeld said. "The
Pentagon's going back to work tomorrow." People in New York should go back to
work, the president said. "Banks should open tomorrow, too."
Bush asked
about coming back to Washington, although he had already told his traveling
party that he would fly back immediately after the video conference. Cheney
suggested the president return and make a statement at Andrews, but the Secret
Service still insisted that it was not safe. "I'm coming back," Bush said.
As the meeting
was ending Bush said, "We will find these people. They will pay. And I don't
want you to have any doubt about it."
In the course
of this NSC videoconference, CIA Director George Tenet fed unconfirmed
information to Bush. Tenet stated, "He was virtually certain that Usama bin
Laden and his network were behind the attacks."
175) 3:55
p.m.: Karen Hughes, a White House counselor, says the pResident is at an
undisclosed location, later revealed to be an Air Force base in Nebraska, and is
conducting a National Security Council meeting by phone. Vice President Dick
Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice are in the underground
bunker at the White House. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is at the Pentagon.
176) 3:55
p.m.: Giuliani now says the number of critically injured in New York City is up
to 200 with 2,100 total injuries reported.
177) 4:00
p.m.: CNN National Security Correspondent David Ensor reports that U.S.
officials say there are "good indications" that bin Laden is involved in the
attacks, based on "new and specific" information developed since the attacks.
178) 4:06
p.m.: California Gov. Gray Davis dispatches urban search-and-rescue teams to New
York City.
179) 4:10
p.m.: Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex is reported on fire.
180) 4:20
p.m.: U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, says he was "not surprised there was an attack (but) was surprised at
the specificity." He says he was "shocked at what actually happened — the
extent of it."
181) 4:25
p.m.: The American Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange
say they will remain closed Wednesday.
182) 4:30
p.m.: NORAD releases a statement that denies it had anything to do with shooting
down Unites Airlines Flight 93.
183) 4:36
p.m.: The president leaves Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska aboard Air Force
One to return to Washington D.C. — Air Force One now has an F-16 guarding it,
off a wing.
184) 5:00 p.m.: The first national television
feed of United Airlines Flight 93 crash site — A long shot, showing a 20 foot
wide smoldering hole in the ground. Why does it take almost 7 hours to get
anything on the television from this crash?
185) 5:15
p.m.: CNN Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre reports fires are still
burning in part of the Pentagon. No death figures have been released yet.
186) 5:20:33 p.m.: World Trade Center Building 7, a 47-story
skyscraper, collapses. The evacuated building is damaged when the twin towers
across the street collapse earlier in the day. The CIA (secretly) and the United
States Secret Service had offices in this building. How and why World Trade
Center Building 7 fell is still quite the mystery.
The Twin Towers Were Deliberately Demolished: http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/towers
/ http://wtc7.net
187) 5:30 p.m.: CNN
Senior White House Correspondent John King reports that U.S. officials say the
plane that crashed in Pennsylvania could have been headed for one of three
possible targets: Camp David, the White House or the U.S. Capitol building.
188) 6:00
p.m.: Explosions are heard in Kabul, Afghanistan, hours after terrorist attacks
targeted financial and military centers in the United States. Afghanistan is
believed to be the home of Saudi militant Usama bin Laden, who U.S. officials
say is possibly behind Tuesday's deadly attacks. U.S. officials say later that
the United States had no involvement in the incident whatsoever.
189) 6:00
p.m.: Iraq announces the attacks are the fruit of "U.S. crimes against humanity"
in an official announcement on state television.
190) 6:10
p.m.: Mayor Rudolph Giuliani urges New Yorkers to stay home Wednesday if they
191) 6:34
p.m.: Air Force One landed at Andrews AFB. On his way back to the White House,
his Marine One helicopter flew over the Pentagon to give him a first-hand look
at the damage.
192) 6:40
p.m.: U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld holds a news conference in the
Pentagon, noting the building is operational. "It will be in business tomorrow,"
he says.
193) 6:54 p.m.: Bush arrives back at the White House aboard Marine
One and is scheduled to address the nation at 8:30 p.m. The pResident earlier
landed at Andrews Air Force Base with a three-fighter jet escort. CNN's John
King reports Laura Bush arrived earlier by motorcade from a "secure location."
So, when Air
Force One departed Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport at 9:59 a.m.
there was no extra military protection
(fighter jets) even though there are still hundreds of airliners in the
air, and who knew how many of them were hostile or not? Yet, when Air Force
One arrives back home at Andrews Air Force Base,
there are no airliners in the sky, and now he has a three-fighter jet escort.
Why did every TV station show the fighters
protecting him on his way from U.S. Strategic Air Command at Offutt Air
Force Base to
Andrews Air Force Base, making it seem as if they were always there when they
weren't? Why when
he needed an escort from the fighters the most they are not there, yet when the
skies are empty they are there (see 9:59 a.m. # 108)?
We have
captured and saved the video of Bush as he arrives at Sarasota-Bradenton
International Airport, and the take-off of Air Force One with no extra military
Go to: http://www.AttackOnAmerica.net/AirForceOneLeavingSarasota.ra
Also, please
take a look at the August 30, 2002 BBC article which states: In the immediate
aftermath of the terror attacks US fighter planes took to the skies to defend
America from any further attacks. Their mission was to protect pResident George
W. Bush and to intercept any hijacked aircraft heading to other targets in the
US. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2222205.stm
194) 7:02
p.m.: CNN's Paula Zahn reports the Marriott Hotel near the World Trade Center is
on the verge of collapse and says some New York bridges are now open to outbound
195) 7:17
p.m.: U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft says the FBI is setting up a Web site
for tips on the attacks: http://www.ifccfbi.gov He also says family and friends
of possible victims can leave contact information at 1 800 331.0075
from: http://www.911timeline.net/
Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States
We present the narrative of this report and the recommendations that flow
from it to the President of the United States, the United States Congress, and
the American people for their consideration. Ten Commissioners-five Republicans
and five Democrats chosen by elected leaders from our nation's capital at a time
of great partisan division-have come together to present this report without
We have come together with a unity of purpose because our nation demands it.
September 11, 2001, was a day of unprecedented shock and suffering in the
history of the United States. The nation was unprepared.
At 8:46 on the morning of September 11, 2001, the United States became a
nation transformed.
An airliner traveling at hundreds of miles per hour and carrying some 10,000
gallons of jet fuel plowed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in
Lower Manhattan. At 9:03, a second airliner hit the South Tower. Fire and smoke
billowed upward. Steel, glass, ash, and bodies fell below. The Twin Towers,
where up to 50,000 people worked each day, both collapsed less than 90 minutes
At 9:37 that same morning, a third airliner slammed into the western face of
the Pentagon. At 10:03, a fourth airliner crashed in a field in southern
Pennsylvania. It had been aimed at the United States Capitol or the White House,
and was forced down by heroic passengers armed with the knowledge that America
was under attack.
More than 2,600 people died at the World Trade Center; 125 died at the
Pentagon; 256 died on the four planes. The death toll surpassed that at Pearl
Harbor in December 1941.
This immeasurable pain was inflicted by 19 young Arabs acting at the behest
of Islamist extremists headquartered in distant Afghanistan. Some had been in
the United States for more than a year, mixing with the rest of the population.
Though four had training as pilots, most were not well-educated. Most spoke
English poorly, some hardly at all. In groups of four or five, carrying with
them only small knives, box cutters, and cans of Mace or pepper spray, they had
hijacked the four planes and turned them into deadly guided missiles.
Why did they do this? How was the attack planned and conceived? How did the
U.S. government fail to anticipate and prevent it? What can we do in the future
to prevent similar acts of terrorism?
A Shock, Not a Surprise
The 9/11 attacks were a shock,
but they should not have come as a surprise. Islamist extremists had given
plenty of warning that they meant to kill Americans indiscriminately and in
large numbers. Although Usama Bin Ladin himself would not emerge as a signal
threat until the late 1990s, the threat of Islamist terrorism grew over the
In February 1993, a group led by Ramzi Yousef tried to bring down the World
Trade Center with a truck bomb. They killed six and wounded a thousand. Plans by
Omar Abdel Rahman and others to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels and
other New York City landmarks were frustrated when the plotters were arrested.
In October 1993, Somali tribesmen shot down U.S. helicopters, killing 18 and
wounding 73 in an incident that came to be known as "Black Hawk down." Years
later it would be learned that those Somali tribesmen had received help from al
In early 1995, police in Manila uncovered a plot by Ramzi Yousef to blow up a
dozen U.S. airliners while they were flying over the Pacific. In November 1995,
a car bomb exploded outside the office of the U.S. program manager for the Saudi
National Guard in Riyadh, killing five Americans and two others. In June 1996, a
truck bomb demolished the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Dhahran, Saudi
Arabia, killing 19 U.S. servicemen and wounding hundreds. The attack was carried
out primarily by Saudi Hezbollah, an organization that had received help from
the government of Iran.
Until 1997, the U.S. intelligence community viewed Bin Ladin as a financier
of terrorism, not as a terrorist leader. In February 1998, Usama Bin Ladin and
four others issued a self-styled fatwa, publicly declaring that it was God's
decree that every Muslim should try his utmost to kill any American, military or
civilian, anywhere in the world, because of American "occupation" of Islam's
holy places and aggression against Muslims.
In August 1998, Bin Ladin's group, al Qaeda, carried out near-simultaneous
truck bomb attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded
thousands more.
In December 1999, Jordanian police foiled a plot to bomb hotels and other
sites frequented by American tourists, and a U.S. Customs agent arrested Ahmed
Ressam at the U.S. Canadian border as he was smuggling in explosives intended
for an attack on Los Angeles International Airport.
In October 2000, an al Qaeda team in Aden, Yemen, used a motorboat filled
with explosives to blow a hole in the side of a destroyer, the USS
Cole, almost sinking the vessel and killing 17 American sailors.
The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were far more
elaborate, precise, and destructive than any of these earlier assaults. But by
September 2001, the executive branch of the U.S. government, the Congress, the
news media, and the American public had received clear warning that Islamist
terrorists meant to kill Americans in high numbers.
Who Is the Enemy?
Who is this enemy that created an
organization capable of inflicting such horrific damage on the United States? We
now know that these attacks were carried out by various groups of Islamist
extremists. The 9/11 attack was driven by Usama Bin Ladin.
In the 1980s, young Muslims from around the world went to Afghanistan to join
as volunteers in a jihad (or holy struggle) against the Soviet Union. A wealthy
Saudi, Usama Bin Ladin, was one of them. Following the defeat of the Soviets in
the late 1980s, Bin Ladin and others formed al Qaeda to mobilize jihads
The history, culture, and body of beliefs from which Bin Ladin shapes and
spreads his message are largely unknown to many Americans. Seizing on symbols of
Islam's past greatness, he promises to restore pride to people who consider
themselves the victims of successive foreign masters. He uses cultural and
religious allusions to the holy Qur'an and some of its interpreters. He appeals
to people disoriented by cyclonic change as they confront modernity and
globalization. His rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources-Islam,
history, and the region's political and economic malaise.
Bin Ladin also stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in
the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi
Arabia, which is the home of Islam's holiest sites, and against other U.S.
policies in the Middle East.
Upon this political and ideological foundation, Bin Ladin built over the
course of a decade a dynamic and lethal organization. He built an infrastructure
and organization in Afghanistan that could attract, train, and use recruits
against ever more ambitious targets. He rallied new zealots and new money with
each demonstration of al Qaeda's capability. He had forged a close alliance with
the Taliban, a regime providing sanctuary for al Qaeda.
By September 11, 2001, al Qaeda possessed
- leaders able to evaluate, approve, and supervise the planning and direction
of a major operation;
- a personnel system that could recruit candidates, indoctrinate them, vet
them, and give them the necessary training;
- communications sufficient to enable planning and direction of operatives and
those who would be helping them;
- an intelligence effort to gather required information and form assessments
of enemy strengths and weaknesses;
- the ability to move people great distances; and
- the ability to raise and move the money necessary to finance an
1998 to September 11, 2001
The August 1998 bombings of
U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania established al Qaeda as a potent adversary
of the United States.
After launching cruise missile strikes against al Qaeda targets in
Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the embassy bombings, the Clinton
administration applied diplomatic pressure to try to persuade the Taliban regime
in Afghanistan to expel Bin Ladin. The administration also devised covert
operations to use CIA-paid foreign agents to capture or kill Bin Ladin and his
chief lieutenants. These actions did not stop Bin Ladin or dislodge al Qaeda
from its sanctuary.
By late 1998 or early 1999, Bin Ladin and his advisers had agreed on an idea
brought to them by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) called the "planes operation."
It would eventually culminate in the 9/11 attacks. Bin Ladin and his chief of
operations, Mohammed Atef, occupied undisputed leadership positions atop al
Qaeda. Within al Qaeda, they relied heavily on the ideas and enterprise of
strong-willed field commanders, such as KSM, to carry out worldwide terrorist
KSM claims that his original plot was even grander than those carried out on
9/11-ten planes would attack targets on both the East and West coasts of the
United States. This plan was modified by Bin Ladin, KSM said, owing to its scale
and complexity. Bin Ladin provided KSM with four initial operatives for suicide
plane attacks within the United States, and in the fall of 1999 training for the
attacks began. New recruits included four from a cell of expatriate Muslim
extremists who had clustered together in Hamburg, Germany. One became the
tactical commander of the operation in the United States: Mohamed Atta.
U.S. intelligence frequently picked up reports of attacks planned by al
Qaeda. Working with foreign security services, the CIA broke up some al Qaeda
cells. The core of Bin Ladin's organization nevertheless remained intact. In
December 1999, news about the arrests of the terrorist cell in Jordan and the
arrest of a terrorist at the U.S.-Canadian border became part of a "millennium
alert." The government was galvanized, and the public was on alert for any
possible attack.
In January 2000, the intense intelligence effort glimpsed and then lost sight
of two operatives destined for the "planes operation." Spotted in Kuala Lumpur,
the pair were lost passing through Bangkok. On January 15, 2000, they arrived in
Los Angeles.
Because these two al Qaeda operatives had spent little time in the West and
spoke little, if any, English, it is plausible that they or KSM would have tried
to identify, in advance, a friendly contact in the United States. We explored
suspicions about whether these two operatives had a support network of
accomplices in the United States. The evidence is thin-simply not there for some
cases, more worrisome in others.
We do know that soon after arriving in California, the two al Qaeda
operatives sought out and found a group of ideologically like-minded Muslims
with roots in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, individuals mainly associated with a young
Yemeni and others who attended a mosque in San Diego. After a brief stay in Los
Angeles about which we know little, the al Qaeda operatives lived openly in San
Diego under their true names. They managed to avoid attracting much attention.
By the summer of 2000, three of the four Hamburg cell members had arrived on
the East Coast of the United States and had begun pilot training. In early 2001,
a fourth future hijacker pilot, Hani Hanjour, journeyed to Arizona with another
operative, Nawaf al Hazmi, and conducted his refresher pilot training there. A
number of al Qaeda operatives had spent time in Arizona during the 1980s and
early 1990s.
During 2000, President Bill Clinton and his advisers renewed diplomatic
efforts to get Bin Ladin expelled from Afghanistan. They also renewed secret
efforts with some of the Taliban's opponents-the Northern Alliance-to get enough
intelligence to attack Bin Ladin directly. Diplomatic efforts centered on the
new military government in Pakistan, and they did not succeed. The efforts with
the Northern Alliance revived an inconclusive and secret debate about whether
the United States should take sides in Afghanistan's civil war and support the
Taliban's enemies. The CIA also produced a plan to improve intelligence
collection on al Qaeda, including the use of a small, unmanned airplane with a
video camera, known as the Predator.
After the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, evidence accumulated
that it had been launched by al Qaeda operatives, but without confirmation that
Bin Ladin had given the order. The Taliban had earlier been warned that it would
be held responsible for another Bin Ladin attack on the United States. The CIA
described its findings as a "preliminary judgment"; President Clinton and his
chief advisers told us they were waiting for a conclusion before deciding
whether to take military action. The military alternatives remained unappealing
to them.
The transition to the new Bush administration in late 2000 and early 2001
took place with the Cole issue still pending. President George W. Bush
and his chief advisers accepted that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on
the Cole, but did not like the options available for a response.
Bin Ladin's inference may well have been that attacks, at least at the level
of the Cole, were risk free.
The Bush administration began developing a new strategy with the stated goal
of eliminating the al Qaeda threat within three to five years.
During the spring and summer of 2001, U.S. intelligence agencies received a
stream of warnings that al Qaeda planned, as one report put it, "something very,
very, very big." Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet told us, "The
system was blinking red."
Although Bin Ladin was determined to strike in the United States, as
President Clinton had been told and President Bush was reminded in a
Presidential Daily Brief article briefed to him in August 2001, the specific
threat information pointed overseas. Numerous precautions were taken overseas.
Domestic agencies were not effectively mobilized. The threat did not receive
national media attention comparable to the millennium alert.
While the United States continued disruption efforts around the world, its
emerging strategy to eliminate the al Qaeda threat was to include an enlarged
covert action program in Afghanistan, as well as diplomatic strategies for
Afghanistan and Pakistan. The process culminated during the summer of 2001 in a
draft presidential directive and arguments about the Predator aircraft, which
was soon to be deployed with a missile of its own, so that it might be used to
attempt to kill Bin Ladin or his chief lieutenants. At a September 4 meeting,
President Bush's chief advisers approved the draft directive of the strategy and
endorsed the concept of arming the Predator. This directive on the al Qaeda
strategy was awaiting President Bush's signature on September 11, 2001.
Though the "planes operation" was progressing, the plotters had problems of
their own in 2001. Several possible participants dropped out; others could not
gain entry into the United States (including one denial at a port of entry and
visa denials not related to terrorism). One of the eventual pilots may have
considered abandoning the planes operation. Zacarias Moussaoui, who showed up at
a flight training school in Minnesota, may have been a candidate to replace him.
Some of the vulnerabilities of the plotters become clear in retrospect.
Moussaoui aroused suspicion for seeking fast-track training on how to pilot
large jet airliners. He was arrested on August 16, 2001, for violations of
immigration regulations. In late August, officials in the intelligence community
realized that the terrorists spotted in Southeast Asia in January 2000 had
arrived in the United States.
These cases did not prompt urgent action. No one working on these late leads
in the summer of 2001 connected them to the high level of threat reporting. In
the words of one official, no analytic work foresaw the lightning that could
connect the thundercloud to the ground.
As final preparations were under way during the summer of 2001, dissent
emerged among al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan over whether to proceed. The
Taliban's chief, Mullah Omar, opposed attacking the United States. Although
facing opposition from many of his senior lieutenants, Bin Ladin effectively
overruled their objections, and the attacks went forward.
September 11, 2001
The day began with the 19 hijackers
getting through a security checkpoint system that they had evidently analyzed
and knew how to defeat. Their success rate in penetrating the system was 19 for
19.They took over the four flights, taking advantage of air crews and cockpits
that were not prepared for the contingency of a suicide hijacking.
On 9/11, the defense of U.S. air space depended on close interaction between
two federal agencies: the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and North
American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Existing protocols on 9/11 were
unsuited in every respect for an attack in which hijacked planes were used as
What ensued was a hurried attempt to improvise a defense by civilians who had
never handled a hijacked aircraft that attempted to disappear, and by a military
unprepared for the transformation of commercial aircraft into weapons of mass
A shootdown authorization was not communicated to the NORAD air defense
sector until 28 minutes after United 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania. Planes were
scrambled, but ineffectively, as they did not know where to go or what targets
they were to intercept. And once the shootdown order was given, it was not
communicated to the pilots. In short, while leaders in Washington believed that
the fighters circling above them had been instructed to "take out" hostile
aircraft, the only orders actually conveyed to the pilots were to "ID type and
Like the national defense, the emergency response on 9/11 was necessarily
In New York City, the Fire Department of New York, the New York Police
Department, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the building
employees, and the occupants of the buildings did their best to cope with the
effects of almost unimaginable events-unfolding furiously over 102 minutes.
Casualties were nearly 100 percent at and above the impact zones and were very
high among first responders who stayed in danger as they tried to save lives.
Despite weaknesses in preparations for disaster, failure to achieve unified
incident command, and inadequate communications among responding agencies, all
but approximately one hundred of the thousands of civilians who worked below the
impact zone escaped, often with help from the emergency responders.
At the Pentagon, while there were also problems of command and control, the
emergency response was generally effective. The Incident Command System, a
formalized management structure for emergency response in place in the National
Capital Region, overcame the inherent complications of a response across local,
state, and federal jurisdictions.
Operational Opportunities
We write with the benefit and
handicap of hindsight. We are mindful of the danger of being unjust to men and
women who made choices in conditions of uncertainty and in circumstances over
which they often had little control.
Nonetheless, there were specific points of vulnerability in the plot and
opportunities to disrupt it. Operational failures-opportunities that were not or
could not be exploited by the organizations and systems of that time-included
- not watchlisting future hijackers Hazmi and Mihdhar, not trailing them after
they traveled to Bangkok, and not informing the FBI about one future hijacker's
U.S. visa or his companion's travel to the United States;
- not sharing information linking individuals in the Cole attack to
- not taking adequate steps in time to find Mihdhar or Hazmi in the United
- not linking the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, described as interested in
flight training for the purpose of using an airplane in a terrorist act, to the
heightened indications of attack;
- not discovering false statements on visa applications;
- not recognizing passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner;
- not expanding no-fly lists to include names from terrorist watchlists;
- not searching airline passengers identified by the computer-based CAPPS
screening system; and
- not hardening aircraft cockpit doors or taking other measures to prepare for
the possibility of suicide hijackings.
Since the plotters were flexible and resourceful, we cannot know whether any
single step or series of steps would have defeated them. What we can say with
confidence is that none of the measures adopted by the U.S. government from 1998
to 2001 disturbed or even delayed the progress of the al Qaeda plot. Across the
government, there were failures of imagination, policy, capabilities, and
The most important failure was one of
imagination. We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat. The
terrorist danger from Bin Ladin and al Qaeda was not a major topic for policy
debate among the public, the media, or in the Congress. Indeed, it barely came
up during the 2000 presidential campaign.
Al Qaeda's new brand of terrorism presented challenges to U.S. governmental
institutions that they were not well-designed to meet. Though top officials all
told us that they understood the danger, we believe there was uncertainty among
them as to whether this was just a new and especially venomous version of the
ordinary terrorist threat the United States had lived with for decades, or it
was indeed radically new, posing a threat beyond any yet experienced.
As late as September 4, 2001, Richard Clarke, the White House staffer long
responsible for counterterrorism policy coordination, asserted that the
government had not yet made up its mind how to answer the question: "Is al Qida
a big deal?"
A week later came the answer.
Terrorism was not the overriding national security
concern for the U.S. government under either the Clinton or the pre-9/11 Bush
The policy challenges were linked to this failure of imagination. Officials
in both the Clinton and Bush administrations regarded a full U.S. invasion of
Afghanistan as practically inconceivable before 9/11.
Before 9/11, the United States tried to
solve the al Qaeda problem with the capabilities it had used in the last stages
of the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. These capabilities were
insufficient. Little was done to expand or reform them.
The CIA had minimal capacity to conduct paramilitary operations with its own
personnel, and it did not seek a large-scale expansion of these capabilities
before 9/11. The CIA also needed to improve its capability to collect
intelligence from human agents.
At no point before 9/11 was the Department of Defense fully engaged in the
mission of countering al Qaeda, even though this was perhaps the most dangerous
foreign enemy threatening the United States.
America's homeland defenders faced outward. NORAD itself was barely able to
retain any alert bases at all. Its planning scenarios occasionally considered
the danger of hijacked aircraft being guided to American targets, but only
aircraft that were coming from overseas.
The most serious weaknesses in agency capabilities were in the domestic
arena. The FBI did not have the capability to link the collective knowledge of
agents in the field to national priorities. Other domestic agencies deferred to
the FBI.
FAA capabilities were weak. Any serious examination of the possibility of a
suicide hijacking could have suggested changes to fix glaring
vulnerabilities-expanding no-fly lists, searching passengers identified by the
CAPPS screening system, deploying federal air marshals domestically, hardening
cockpit doors, alerting air crews to a different kind of hijacking possibility
than they had been trained to expect. Yet the FAA did not adjust either its own
training or training with NORAD to take account of threats other than those
experienced in the past.
The missed opportunities to thwart the 9/11
plot were also symptoms of a broader inability to adapt the way government
manages problems to the new challenges of the twenty-first century. Action
officers should have been able to draw on all available knowledge about al Qaeda
in the government. Management should have ensured that information was shared
and duties were clearly assigned across agencies, and across the
foreign-domestic divide.
There were also broader management issues with respect to how top leaders set
priorities and allocated resources. For instance, on December 4, 1998, DCI Tenet
issued a directive to several CIA officials and the DDCI for Community
Management, stating: "We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in
this effort, either inside CIA or the Community." The memorandum had little
overall effect on mobilizing the CIA or the intelligence community. This episode
indicates the limitations of the DCI's authority over the direction of the
intelligence community, including agencies within the Department of Defense.
The U.S. government did not find a way of pooling intelligence and using it
to guide the planning and assignment of responsibilities for joint operations
involving entities as disparate as the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, the
military, and the agencies involved in homeland security.
Unsuccessful Diplomacy
Beginning in February 1997, and
through September 11, 2001, the U.S. government tried to use diplomatic pressure
to persuade the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to stop being a sanctuary for al
Qaeda, and to expel Bin Ladin to a country where he could face justice. These
efforts included warnings and sanctions, but they all failed.
The U.S. government also pressed two successive Pakistani governments to
demand that the Taliban cease providing a sanctuary for Bin Ladin and his
organization and, failing that, to cut off their support for the Taliban. Before
9/11, the United States could not find a mix of incentives and pressure that
would persuade Pakistan to reconsider its fundamental relationship with the
From 1999 through early 2001, the United States pressed the United Arab
Emirates, one of the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside
world, to break off ties and enforce sanctions, especially those related to air
travel to Afghanistan. These efforts achieved little before 9/11.
Saudi Arabia has been a problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism.
Before 9/11, the Saudi and U.S. governments did not fully share intelligence
information or develop an adequate joint effort to track and disrupt the
finances of the al Qaeda organization. On the other hand, government officials
of Saudi Arabia at the highest levels worked closely with top U.S. officials in
major initiatives to solve the Bin Ladin problem with diplomacy.
Lack of Military Options
In response to the request of
policymakers, the military prepared an array of limited strike options for
attacking Bin Ladin and his organization from May 1998 onward. When they briefed
policymakers, the military presented both the pros and cons of those strike
options and the associated risks. Policymakers expressed frustration with the
range of options presented.
Following the August 20, 1998, missile strikes on al Qaeda targets in
Afghanistan and Sudan, both senior military officials and policymakers placed
great emphasis on actionable intelligence as the key factor in recommending or
deciding to launch military action against Bin Ladin and his organization. They
did not want to risk significant collateral damage, and they did not want to
miss Bin Ladin and thus make the United States look weak while making Bin Ladin
look strong. On three specific occasions in 1998-1999, intelligence was deemed
credible enough to warrant planning for possible strikes to kill Bin Ladin. But
in each case the strikes did not go forward, because senior policymakers did not
regard the intelligence as sufficiently actionable to offset their assessment of
the risks.
The Director of Central Intelligence, policymakers, and military officials
expressed frustration with the lack of actionable intelligence. Some officials
inside the Pentagon, including those in the special forces and the
counterterrorism policy office, also expressed frustration with the lack of
military action. The Bush administration began to develop new policies toward al
Qaeda in 2001, but military plans did not change until after 9/11.
Problems within the Intelligence Community
intelligence community struggled throughout the 1990s and up to 9/11 to collect
intelligence on and analyze the phenomenon of transnational terrorism. The
combination of an overwhelming number of priorities, flat budgets, an outmoded
structure, and bureaucratic rivalries resulted in an insufficient response to
this new challenge.
Many dedicated officers worked day and night for years to piece together the
growing body of evidence on al Qaeda and to understand the threats. Yet, while
there were many reports on Bin Laden and his growing al Qaeda organization,
there was no comprehensive review of what the intelligence community knew and
what it did not know, and what that meant. There was no National Intelligence
Estimate on terrorism between 1995 and 9/11.
Before 9/11, no agency did more to attack al Qaeda than the CIA. But there
were limits to what the CIA was able to achieve by disrupting terrorist
activities abroad and by using proxies to try to capture Bin Ladin and his
lieutenants in Afghanistan. CIA officers were aware of those limitations.
To put it simply, covert action was not a silver bullet. It was important to
engage proxies in Afghanistan and to build various capabilities so that if an
opportunity presented itself, the CIA could act on it. But for more than three
years, through both the late Clinton and early Bush administrations, the CIA
relied on proxy forces, and there was growing frustration within the CIA's
Counterterrorist Center and in the National Security Council staff with the lack
of results. The development of the Predator and the push to aid the Northern
Alliance were products of this frustration.
Problems in the FBI
From the time of the first World
Trade Center attack in 1993, FBI and Department of Justice leadership in
Washington and New York became increasingly concerned about the terrorist threat
from Islamist extremists to U.S. interests, both at home and abroad. Throughout
the 1990s, the FBI's counterterrorism efforts against international terrorist
organizations included both intelligence and criminal investigations. The FBI's
approach to investigations was case-specific, decentralized, and geared toward
prosecution. Significant FBI resources were devoted to after-the-fact
investigations of major terrorist attacks, resulting in several prosecutions.
The FBI attempted several reform efforts aimed at strengthening its ability
to prevent such attacks, but these reform efforts failed to implement
organization-wide institutional change. On September 11, 2001, the FBI was
limited in several areas critical to an effective preventive counterterrorism
strategy. Those working counterterrorism matters did so despite limited
intelligence collection and strategic analysis capabilities, a limited capacity
to share information both internally and externally, insufficient training,
perceived legal barriers to sharing information, and inadequate resources.
Permeable Borders and Immigration Controls
There were
opportunities for intelligence and law enforcement to exploit al Qaeda's travel
vulnerabilities. Considered collectively, the 9/11 hijackers
- included known al Qaeda operatives who could have been watchlisted;
- presented passports manipulated in a fraudulent manner;
- presented passports with suspicious indicators of extremism;
- made detectable false statements on visa applications;
- made false statements to border officials to gain entry into the United
States; and
- violated immigration laws while in the United States.
Neither the State Department's consular officers nor the Immigration and
Naturalization Service's inspectors and agents were ever considered full
partners in a national counterterrorism effort. Protecting borders was not a
national security issue before 9/11.
Permeable Aviation Security
Hijackers studied publicly
available materials on the aviation security system and used items that had less
metal content than a handgun and were most likely permissible. Though two of the
hijackers were on the U.S.TIPOFF terrorist watchlist, the FAA did not use TIPOFF
data. The hijackers had to beat only one layer of security-the security
checkpoint process. Even though several hijackers were selected for extra
screening by the CAPPS system, this led only to greater scrutiny of their
checked baggage. Once on board, the hijackers were faced with aircraft personnel
who were trained to be nonconfrontational in the event of a hijacking.
The 9/11 attacks cost somewhere between
$400,000 and $500,000 to execute. The operatives spent more than $270,000 in the
United States. Additional expenses included travel to obtain passports and
visas, travel to the United States, expenses incurred by the plot leader and
facilitators outside the United States, and expenses incurred by the people
selected to be hijackers who ultimately did not participate.
The conspiracy made extensive use of banks in the United States. The
hijackers opened accounts in their own names, using passports and other
identification documents. Their transactions were unremarkable and essentially
invisible amid the billions of dollars flowing around the world every day.
To date, we have not been able to determine the origin of the money used for
the 9/11 attacks. Al Qaeda had many sources of funding and a pre-9/11 annual
budget estimated at $30 million. If a particular source of funds had dried up,
al Qaeda could easily have found enough money elsewhere to fund the attack.
An Improvised Homeland Defense
The civilian and military
defenders of the nation's airspace-FAA and NORAD-were unprepared for the attacks
launched against them. Given that lack of preparedness, they attempted and
failed to improvise an effective homeland defense against an unprecedented
The events of that morning do not reflect discredit on operational personnel.
NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector personnel reached out for information and
made the best judgments they could based on the information they received.
Individual FAA controllers, facility managers, and command center managers were
creative and agile in recommending a nationwide alert, ground-stopping local
traffic, ordering all aircraft nationwide to land, and executing that
unprecedented order flawlessly.
At more senior levels, communication was poor. Senior military and FAA
leaders had no effective communication with each other. The chain of command did
not function well. The President could not reach some senior officials. The
Secretary of Defense did not enter the chain of command until the morning's key
events were over. Air National Guard units with different rules of engagement
were scrambled without the knowledge of the President, NORAD, or the National
Military Command Center.
Emergency Response
The civilians, firefighters, police
officers, emergency medical technicians, and emergency management professionals
exhibited steady determination and resolve under horrifying, overwhelming
conditions on 9/11.Their actions saved lives and inspired a nation.
Effective decisionmaking in New York was hampered by problems in command and
control and in internal communications. Within the Fire Department of New York,
this was true for several reasons: the magnitude of the incident was unforeseen;
commanders had difficulty communicating with their units; more units were
actually dispatched than were ordered by the chiefs; some units self-dispatched;
and once units arrived at the World Trade Center, they were neither
comprehensively accounted for nor coordinated. The Port Authority's response was
hampered by the lack both of standard operating procedures and of radios capable
of enabling multiple commands to respond to an incident in unified fashion. The
New York Police Department, because of its history of mobilizing thousands of
officers for major events requiring crowd control, had a technical radio
capability and protocols more easily adapted to an incident of the magnitude of
The Congress, like the executive branch,
responded slowly to the rise of transnational terrorism as a threat to national
security. The legislative branch adjusted little and did not restructure itself
to address changing threats. Its attention to terrorism was episodic and
splintered across several committees. The Congress gave little guidance to
executive branch agencies on terrorism, did not reform them in any significant
way to meet the threat, and did not systematically perform robust oversight to
identify, address, and attempt to resolve the many problems in national security
and domestic agencies that became apparent in the aftermath of 9/11.
So long as oversight is undermined by current congressional rules and
resolutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they want
and need. The United States needs a strong, stable, and capable congressional
committee structure to give America's national intelligence agencies oversight,
support, and leadership.
Are We Safer?
Since 9/11, the United States and its
allies have killed or captured a majority of al Qaeda's leadership; toppled the
Taliban, which gave al Qaeda sanctuary in Afghanistan; and severely damaged the
organization. Yet terrorist attacks continue. Even as we have thwarted attacks,
nearly everyone expects they will come. How can this be?
The problem is that al Qaeda represents an ideological movement, not a finite
group of people. It initiates and inspires, even if it no longer directs. In
this way it has transformed itself into a decentralized force. Bin Ladin may be
limited in his ability to organize major attacks from his hideouts. Yet killing
or capturing him, while extremely important, would not end terror. His message
of inspiration to a new generation of terrorists would continue.
Because of offensive actions against al Qaeda since 9/11, and defensive
actions to improve homeland security, we believe we are safer today. But we are
not safe. We therefore make the following recommendations that we believe can
make America safer and more secure.
Three years after 9/11, the national debate continues about how to protect
our nation in this new era. We divide our recommendations into two basic parts:
What to do, and how to do it.
The enemy is not just "terrorism." It is the threat posed specifically by
Islamist terrorism, by Bin Ladin and others who draw on a long tradition of
extreme intolerance within a minority strain of Islam that does not distinguish
politics from religion, and distorts both.
The enemy is not Islam, the great world faith, but a perversion of Islam. The
enemy goes beyond al Qaeda to include the radical ideological movement, inspired
in part by al Qaeda, that has spawned other terrorist groups and violence. Thus
our strategy must match our means to two ends: dismantling the al Qaeda network
and, in the long term, prevailing over the ideology that contributes to Islamist
The first phase of our post-9/11 efforts rightly included military action to
topple the Taliban and pursue al Qaeda. This work continues. But long-term
success demands the use of all elements of national power: diplomacy,
intelligence, covert action, law enforcement, economic policy, foreign aid,
public diplomacy, and homeland defense. If we favor one tool while neglecting
others, we leave ourselves vulnerable and weaken our national effort.
What should Americans expect from their government? The goal seems unlimited:
Defeat terrorism anywhere in the world. But Americans have also been told to
expect the worst: An attack is probably coming; it may be more devastating
Vague goals match an amorphous picture of the enemy. Al Qaeda and other
groups are popularly described as being all over the world, adaptable,
resilient, needing little higher-level organization, and capable of anything. It
is an image of an omnipotent hydra of destruction. That image lowers
expectations of government effectiveness.
It lowers them too far. Our report shows a determined and capable group of
plotters. Yet the group was fragile and occasionally left vulnerable by the
marginal, unstable people often attracted to such causes. The enemy made
mistakes. The U.S. government was not able to capitalize on them.
No president can promise that a catastrophic attack like that of 9/11 will
not happen again. But the American people are entitled to expect that officials
will have realistic objectives, clear guidance, and effective organization. They
are entitled to see standards for performance so they can judge, with the help
of their elected representatives, whether the objectives are being met.
We propose a strategy with three dimensions: (1) attack terrorists and their
organizations, (2) prevent the continued growth of Islamist terrorism, and (3)
protect against and prepare for terrorist attacks.
Attack Terrorists and Their Organizations
- Root out sanctuaries.The U.S. government should identify and prioritize
actual or potential terrorist sanctuaries and have realistic country or regional
strategies for each, utilizing every element of national power and reaching out
to countries that can help us.
- Strengthen long-term U.S. and international commitments to the future of
Pakistan and Afghanistan.
- Confront problems with Saudi Arabia in the open and build a relationship
beyond oil, a relationship that both sides can defend to their citizens and
includes a shared commitment to reform.
Prevent the Continued Growth of Islamist Terrorism
October 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked if enough was being
done "to fashion a broad integrated plan to stop the next generation of
terrorists." As part of such a plan, the U.S. government should
- Define the message and stand as an example of moral leadership in the world.
To Muslim parents, terrorists like Bin Ladin have nothing to offer their
children but visions of violence and death. America and its friends have the
advantage-our vision can offer a better future.
- Where Muslim governments, even those who are friends, do not offer
opportunity, respect the rule of law, or tolerate differences, then the United
States needs to stand for a better future.
- Communicate and defend American ideals in the Islamic world, through much
stronger public diplomacy to reach more people, including students and leaders
outside of government. Our efforts here should be as strong as they were in
combating closed societies during the Cold War.
- Offer an agenda of opportunity that includes support for public education
and economic openness.
- Develop a comprehensive coalition strategy against Islamist terrorism, using
a flexible contact group of leading coalition governments and fashioning a
common coalition approach on issues like the treatment of captured terrorists.
- Devote a maximum effort to the parallel task of countering the proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction.
- Expect less from trying to dry up terrorist money and more from following
the money for intelligence, as a tool to hunt terrorists, understand their
networks, and disrupt their operations.
Protect against and Prepare for Terrorist Attacks
- Target terrorist travel, an intelligence and security strategy that the 9/11
story showed could be at least as powerful as the effort devoted to terrorist
- Address problems of screening people with biometric identifiers across
agencies and governments, including our border and transportation systems, by
designing a comprehensive screening system that addresses common problems and
sets common standards. As standards spread, this necessary and ambitious effort
could dramatically strengthen the world's ability to intercept individuals who
could pose catastrophic threats.
- Quickly complete a biometric entry-exit screening system, one that also
speeds qualified travelers.
- Set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of
identification, such as driver's licenses.
- Develop strategies for neglected parts of our transportation security
system. Since 9/11, about 90 percent of the nation's $5 billion annual
investment in transportation security has gone to aviation, to fight the last
- In aviation, prevent arguments about a new computerized profiling system
from delaying vital improvements in the "no-fly" and "automatic selectee" lists.
Also, give priority to the improvement of checkpoint screening.
- Determine, with leadership from the President, guidelines for gathering and
sharing information in the new security systems that are needed, guidelines that
integrate safeguards for privacy and other essential liberties.
- Underscore that as government power necessarily expands in certain ways, the
burden of retaining such powers remains on the executive to demonstrate the
value of such powers and ensure adequate supervision of how they are used,
including a new board to oversee the implementation of the guidelines needed for
gathering and sharing information in these new security systems.
- Base federal funding for emergency preparedness solely on risks and
vulnerabilities, putting New York City and Washington, D.C., at the top of the
current list. Such assistance should not remain a program for general revenue
sharing or pork-barrel spending.
- Make homeland security funding contingent on the adoption of an incident
command system to strengthen teamwork in a crisis, including a regional
approach. Allocate more radio spectrum and improve connectivity for public
safety communications, and encourage widespread adoption of newly developed
standards for private-sector emergency preparedness-since the private sector
controls 85 percent of the nation's critical infrastructure.
The strategy we have recommended is elaborate, even as presented here very
briefly. To implement it will require a government better organized than the one
that exists today, with its national security institutions designed half a
century ago to win the Cold War. Americans should not settle for incremental, ad
hoc adjustments to a system created a generation ago for a world that no longer
Our detailed recommendations are designed to fit together. Their purpose is
clear: to build unity of effort across the U.S. government. As one official now
serving on the front lines overseas put it to us: "One fight, one team."
We call for unity of effort in five areas, beginning with unity of effort on
the challenge of counterterrorism itself:
- unifying strategic intelligence and operational planning against Islamist
terrorists across the foreign-domestic divide with a National Counterterrorism
- unifying the intelligence community with a new National Intelligence
- unifying the many participants in the counterterrorism effort and their
knowledge in a network-based information sharing system that transcends
traditional governmental boundaries;
- unifying and strengthening congressional oversight to improve quality and
accountability; and
- strengthening the FBI and homeland defenders.
Unity of Effort: A National Counterterrorism Center
9/11 story teaches the value of integrating strategic intelligence from all
sources into joint operational planning-with both dimensions spanning
the foreign-domestic divide.
- In some ways, since 9/11, joint work has gotten better. The effort of
fighting terrorism has flooded over many of the usual agency boundaries because
of its sheer quantity and energy. Attitudes have changed. But the problems of
coordination have multiplied. The Defense Department alone has three unified
commands (SOCOM, CENTCOM, and NORTHCOM) that deal with terrorism as one of their
principal concerns.
- Much of the public commentary about the 9/11 attacks has focused on "lost
opportunities." Though characterized as problems of "watchlisting," "information
sharing," or "connecting the dots," each of these labels is too narrow. They
describe the symptoms, not the disease.
- Breaking the older mold of organization stovepiped purely in executive
agencies, we propose a National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) that would borrow
the joint, unified command concept adopted in the 1980s by the American military
in a civilian agency, combining the joint intelligence function alongside the
operations work.
- The NCTC would build on the existing Terrorist Threat Integration Center and
would replace it and other terrorism "fusion centers" within the government. The
NCTC would become the authoritative knowledge bank, bringing information to bear
on common plans. It should task collection requirements both inside and outside
the United States.
- The NCTC should perform joint operational planning, assigning lead
responsibilities to existing agencies and letting them direct the actual
execution of the plans.
- Placed in the Executive Office of the President, headed by a
Senate-confirmed official (with rank equal to the deputy head of a cabinet
department) who reports to the National Intelligence Director, the NCTC would
track implementation of plans. It would be able to influence the leadership and
the budgets of the counterterrorism operating arms of the CIA, the FBI, and the
departments of Defense and Homeland Security.
- The NCTC should not be a policymaking body. Its operations and
planning should follow the policy direction of the president and the National
Security Council.
Unity of Effort: A National Intelligence Director
long before 9/11-and continuing to this day-the intelligence community is not
organized well for joint intelligence work. It does not employ common standards
and practices in reporting intelligence or in training experts overseas and at
home. The expensive national capabilities for collecting intelligence have
divided management. The structures are too complex and too secret.
- The community's head-the Director of Central Intelligence-has at least three
jobs: running the CIA, coordinating a 15-agency confederation, and being the
intelligence analyst-in-chief to the president. No one person can do all these
- A new National Intelligence Director should be established with two main
jobs: (1) to oversee national intelligence centers that combine experts from all
the collection disciplines against common targets- like counterterrorism or
nuclear proliferation; and (2) to oversee the agencies that contribute to the
national intelligence program, a task that includes setting common standards for
personnel and information technology.
- The national intelligence centers would be the unified commands of the
intelligence world-a long-overdue reform for intelligence comparable to the 1986
Goldwater-Nichols law that reformed the organization of national defense. The
home services-such as the CIA, DIA, NSA, and FBI-would organize, train, and
equip the best intelligence professionals in the world, and would handle the
execution of intelligence operations in the field.
- This National Intelligence Director (NID) should be located in the Executive
Office of the President and report directly to the president, yet be confirmed
by the Senate. In addition to overseeing the National Counterterrorism Center
described above (which will include both the national intelligence center for
terrorism and the joint operations planning effort), the NID should have three
- For foreign intelligence (a deputy who also would be the head of the CIA)
- For defense intelligence (also the under secretary of defense for
- For homeland intelligence (also the executive assistant director for
intelligence at the FBI or the under secretary of homeland security for
information analysis and infrastructure protection)
- The NID should receive a public appropriation for national intelligence,
should have authority to hire and fire his or her intelligence deputies, and
should be able to set common personnel and information technology policies
across the intelligence community.
- The CIA should concentrate on strengthening the collection capabilities of
its clandestine service and the talents of its analysts, building pride in its
core expertise.
- Secrecy stifles oversight, accountability, and information sharing.
Unfortunately, all the current organizational incentives encourage
overclassification. This balance should change; and as a start, open information
should be provided about the overall size of agency intelligence
Unity of Effort: Sharing Information
The U.S. government
has access to a vast amount of information. But it has a weak system for
processing and using what it has. The system of "need to know" should be
replaced by a system of "need to share."
- The President should lead a government-wide effort to bring the major
national security institutions into the information revolution, turning a
mainframe system into a decentralized network. The obstacles are not
technological. Official after official has urged us to call attention to
problems with the unglamorous "back office" side of government operations.
- But no agency can solve the problems on its own-to build the network
requires an effort that transcends old divides, solving common legal and policy
issues in ways that can help officials know what they can and cannot do. Again,
in tackling information issues, America needs unity of effort.
Unity of Effort: Congress Congress took too little action to
adjust itself or to restructure the executive branch to address the emerging
terrorist threat. Congressional oversight for intelligence-and
counterterrorism-is dysfunctional. Both Congress and the executive need to do
more to minimize national security risks during transitions between
- For intelligence oversight, we propose two options: either a joint committee
on the old model of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy or a single committee
in each house combining authorizing and appropriating committees. Our central
message is the same: the intelligence committees cannot carry out their
oversight function unless they are made stronger, and thereby have both clear
responsibility and accountability for that oversight.
- Congress should create a single, principal point of oversight and review for
homeland security. There should be one permanent standing committee for homeland
security in each chamber.
- We propose reforms to speed up the nomination, financial reporting, security
clearance, and confirmation process for national security officials at the start
of an administration, and suggest steps to make sure that incoming
administrations have the information they need.
Unity of Effort: Organizing America's Defenses in the United
We have considered several proposals relating to the future
of the domestic intelligence and counterterrorism mission. Adding a new domestic
intelligence agency will not solve America's problems in collecting and
analyzing intelligence within the United States. We do not recommend creating
- We propose the establishment of a specialized and integrated national
security workforce at the FBI, consisting of agents, analysts, linguists, and
surveillance specialists who are recruited, trained, rewarded, and retained to
ensure the development of an institutional culture imbued with a deep expertise
in intelligence and national security.At several points we asked: Who has the responsibility for defending us at
home? Responsibility for America's national defense is shared by the Department
of Defense, with its new Northern Command, and by the Department of Homeland
Security.They must have a clear delineation of roles, missions, and authority.
- The Department of Defense and its oversight committees should regularly
assess the adequacy of Northern Command's strategies and planning to defend
against military threats to the homeland.
- The Department of Homeland Security and its oversight committees should
regularly assess the types of threats the country faces, in order to determine
the adequacy of the government's plans and the readiness of the government to
respond to those threats.
from: http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Exec.htm
September 11th, 2001
9 + 11 = 20 = 9/11's core number = Punishment. Judgement strikes. Judgement Day.
September 11th, 2001
11 +2+0+0+1 = 14 = 9/11's "secret" number = Intolerance.
September 11th, 2001
9 + 11 +2+0+0+1 = 23 = 9/11's personal year (from September 11th, 2001 to September 10th, 2002) = Taking action.
23 year + 9 (September) = 32 = 9/11's personal month (from September 11th, 2011 to October 10th, 2001) = Hitting America.
32 month + 11 (11th of the month on September 11th, 2001) = 43 = 9/11's personal day = This is no fun.
September 11th, 2001
the United States was born on July 4th, 1776 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
July 4th, 1776
July 4th
7 + 4 +2+0+0+1 = 14 = the United States' personal year (from July 4th, 2001 to July 3rd, 2002) = Intolerance.
14 year + (September) = 23 = the United States' personal month (from September 4th, 2001 to October 3rd, 2011) = Taking action.
23 month + 11 (11th of the month on September 11th, 2001) = 34 = the United States' personal day = Airplanes. Explosions. Fire. Quick strikes. High rates of speed.
George Bush was born on July 6th, 1946 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush
July 6th, 1946
July 6th
7 + 6 +2+0+1+0 = 16 = his personal year (from July 6th, 2001 to July 5th, 2002) = Shocks. Surprises. Unpredictable. Unprecedented. Shock to the system.
Rudy Giuliani was born on May 28th, 1944 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Giuliani
May 28th, 1944
May 28th
5 + 28 +2+0+0+1 = 36 = his personal year (from May 28th, 2001 to May 27th, 2012) = Managing. Feeling like the weight of the world is on his shoulders.
36 year + 8 (August) = 44 = his personal month (from August 28th, 2001 to September 27th, 2001) = It is what it is.
44 month + 11 (11th of the month on September 11th, 2001) = 55 = his personal day = Brainstorming.
Osama bin Laden was born on March 10th, 1957 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden
March 10th, 1957
March 10th
3 + 10 +2+0+0+1 = 16 = his personal year (from March 10th, 2001 to March 9th, 2002) = Unpredictable. Unprecedented. Shock to the system.
Mohamed Atta was born on September 1st, 1968 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atta
September 1st, 1968
9 + 1 +1+9+6+8 = 34 = his life lesson = what he was here to learn = Airplanes. Pilot. Flight 11. Plane crash. Explosions. Fire. Quick strikes. High rates of speed. Self-immolation.
September 1st, 1968
September 1st
9 + 1 +2+0+0+1 = 13 = his personal year (from September 1st, 2001 to September 1st, 2002) = Death.
13 year + 9 (September) = 22 = his personal month (for September 2001) = Like a three ring circus.
22 month + 11 (11th of the month on September 11th, 2001) = 33 = his personal day = Not backing down.
John Ogonowski was born on February 24th, 1951 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ogonowski
February 24th, 1951
February 24th
2 + 24 +2+0+0+1 = 29 = his personal year (from February 24th, 2001 to February 23rd, 2002) = Crew. Teamwork.
29 year + 8 (August) = 37 = his personal month (from August 24th, 2001 to September 23rd, 2001) = Doing it for his country. My fellow countrymen.
37 month + 11 (11th of the month on September 11th, 2001) = 48 = his personal day = Remembrance.
Betty Ong was born on February 5th, 1956 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Ong
February 5th, 1956
February 5th
2 + 5 +2+0+0+1 = 10 = her personal year (from February 5th, 2001 to February 4th, 2002) = Completely random.
Madeline Sweeney was born on December 14th, 1966 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeline_Amy_Sweeney
December 14th, 1966
12 + 14 +1+9+6+6 = 48 = her life lesson = Remembrance.
Todd Morgan Beamer was born on November 24, 1968 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Beamer
November 24th, 1968
November 24th
11 + 24 +2+0+0+0 = 37 = his personal year (from November 24th, 2000 to November 23rd, 2001) = Doing it for his country. My fellow countrymen.
37 year + 8 (August) = 45 = his personal month (from August 24th, 2001 to September 23rd, 2001) = Uh oh. I have a bad feeling about this. Heart sinking feeling. Things go horribly wrong.
45 month + 11 (11th of the month on September 11th, 2001) = 56 = his personal day = Deciding. Choosing. His mind was made up.
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