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By tacitus Posted in War — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

This series, which will take on the 500+ page 9/11 Commission Report in a more or less chapter-by-chapter fashion, is intended to give you a breakdown of the main points and revelations (along with some commentary, of course) that weren't necessarily hitherto available in the public sphere. Presented as a civic public service by Red State. Enjoy, and learn.

Chapter One, pages 1-46

"WE HAVE SOME PLANES"

The first chapter opens with a series of harrowing accounts of the known events prior to the hijackings and on board the doomed aircraft.

Read on.

In the section covering aircraft boarding, a tragic series of "security" measures

are undertaken -- apparently the hijackers alerted some suspicions, but not

enough to prompt any person to preventive action. Main points include:

The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS,

proved particularly useless on the morning of September 11: hijackers Mohammed

Atta, Satam al Suqami, Wail al Shehri, Hani Hanour, Khalid al Mihdhar, Majed Moqed

and Waleed al Shehri were all flagged by the CAPPS system as needing further

security scrutiny. The response of ground personnel was to hold their checked

baggage until they were confirmed aboard the aircraft, presumably on the thesis

that this indicated an absence of bombs on that baggage. Why this remained a valid

thesis given the two prior decades of Islamic and Tamil suicide terrorism is

unaddressed by the Report. As the Report dryly remarks, "This did not hinder

Atta's plans."

Two of the terrorists traveling with Marwan al Shehhi were unable to

understand the standard security questions at check-in, and had to be walked

through them slowly until they gave the correct answers.

One of the Hamzi brothers had no photo ID but was allowed to board. His

checked bags were also held off the plane until he was confirmed aboard.

Nawaf al Hamzi and Majed Moqed both set off metal detectors and were wanded in

a "marginal" fashion by security personnel, who found nothing and did not bother to

resolve the source of the detector alarm.

The sections covering the hijackings themselves contain little that is not already

public knowledge. Notable points include the following:

Of especial note is the professional cool-headedness of Flight Attendants

Betty Ong and Amy Sweeney on board American Flight 11, which plowed into the North

Tower of the WTC complex. Both Ong and Sweeney contacted various American Airlines

corporate and operational centers to report the hijacking and communicate

information to ground personnel. The decision to contact employers instead of

public authorities turned out to be a good one, as events would show.

Chillingly, the Report reveals that the flight crew of United Flight 175

(which destroyed the WTC South Tower) heard but did not understand the

unintentionally-broadcast announcement of American Flight 11's hijacking. It is

also reveals that the Flight 175 passengers were apparently debating a revolt like

the one that happened on United Flight 93, but ran out of time in which to stage

it.

American Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon, was the flight on which it was

reported that the hijackers possessed box cutters. Once the hijacking of Flight 77

was made known to the American Airlines corporate hierarchy, the company took the

first action of the day to ground aircraft. At 9am, American Airlines Executive

Vice President ordered a ground stop (no further takeoffs allowed) for all American

aircraft in the Northeast. Once the hijacking of United Flight 175 became known,

American ordered a ground stop nationwide. This was the first of a few notable

occasions when corporate air control hierarchy proved more intuitive and responsive

than the government hierarchy -- although not perfectly so, since American failed

to issue cockpit security warnings to its aircraft already in flight.

FAA controllers in Boston, having tracked two hijackings, asked the FAA's

Herndon Command Center, from which air traffic control for the entire nation was

coordinated, to "get messages to airborne aircraft to increase security for the

cockpit." This request was made at 9:07am: four minutes after the second WTC tower

was hit. The Herndon Command Center failed to do this. At 9:19am, a United flight

dispatcher took the personal initiative to begin warning United flights, including

Flight 93 at 9:24am, to beware of cockpit intrusions. Four minutes later -- 21

minutes following the failure by the Herndon Control Center to accede to FAA

Boston's request -- Flight 93 was hijacked.

One member of the Flight 93 hijack team, Mohamed al Kahtani, was absent,

having been refused entry to the United States the previous month at the

international airport in Orlando, Florida. The Report does not mention any attempt

by law enforcement to investigate Kahtani's background or reasons for wanting to

enter the United States.

The passenger assault on the Flight 93 hijackers was vigorously pressed until

the very moment of the crash into a field outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The

crash was not the result of a struggle per se, but rather a conscious decision on

the part of the hijackers who feared an imminent passenger entry into the cockpit.

It is useful to reflect on the tactics used by the hijackers, wherein four to five

men without firearms were on four occasions able to seize control of a craft in the

face of dozens of presumed opponents. Lack of numbers was compensated for by

clarity of purpose, thorough preparation, and ferocious discipline: a recipe for

victory against the odds quite familiar to readers of Victor Davis Hanson and

students of colonial warfare.

The Report reveals a cascading series of failures, miscommunications, confusion and

lack of assertion of authority amongst and within the government agencies tasked to

respond to the hijackings:

FAA officials told the Commission that it was solely up to air carriers(!) to

warn aircraft of security threats. A senior FAA official told the Commission that

the FAA had no power to tell the airlines to relay instructions or information to

their pilots. Both these statements are false.

As it transpired, air traffic control sectors had no standardized means of

monitoring events in adjacent sectors, nor of passing information to adjacent

sectors. Knowledge and events within the sectors was not even necessarily passed

on to the nationwide Herndon Command Center.

NORAD, the joint US-Canadian military air sovereignty command, was almost

wholly oriented toward threats emanating from outside North America, to the point

that pilots aloft over Washington, DC, went without instruction to monitoring the

inbound approaches from the Atlantic Ocean even as the Pentagon was hit by an

aircraft coming from the west.

Protocols in place for communication between NORAD and the FAA were cumbersome

and were not followed on September 11. There was no protocol whatsoever to provide

for a shootdown of hijacked aircraft.

Upon being informed at 8:28am that American Flight 11 was hijacked, the

Herndon Command Center violated hijack protocol when it failed to contact the

National Military Command Center (NMCC) at the Pentagon to request a military

escort for the hijacked aircraft.

FAA Boston elected to bypass protocol and the Herndon Command Center and

contact NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) on its own initiative. It

first tried to contact a long-gone Atlantic City NEADS post before reaching an

active post. This contact at 8:37am was the first notice that any element of the

United States military had that a hijacking was in progress. F-15s were scrambled

from Otis AFB nine minutes later, but NORAD had no idea where to route them. At

the same minute, American Flight 11 struck the WTC North Tower.

The same air traffic controller at FAA New York was handling both American

Flight 11 and United Flight 175, and in the course of searching for the

(first-hijacked) former, did not notice problems with the latter for several

minutes. Once a hijack was finally noticed on 175, the FAA New York controller in

charge attempted at 8:55am to notify FAA regional managers, but was rebuffed --

they were too busy discussing the hijack of American Flight 11. Eight minutes

later, 175 crashed into the WTC South Tower.

NEADS was not notified of a second hijacking until about the same time as the

second hit on the WTC towers. Upon learning of this second attack, it directed

fighters previously airborne over the Atlantic Ocean to begin combat air patrols

immediately over Manhattan.

Due to faulty assumptions -- first of a crash, then of an incorrect heading --

on the part of FAA Indianapolis (in whose sector it was hijacked), American Flight

77 was untracked and unmonitored by any FAA or military facility for a full 36

minutes after its hijacking. It was finally found heading swiftly inbound into

Washington, DC, airspace by the control tower at Dulles International Airport.

The only military escort/interception of any of the hijacked aircraft came

when a National Guard C-130H was routed by controllers at Reagan National Airport

to track American Flight 77. The crew witnessed the crash into the Pentagon.

Later, while on their original flight path, the crew would also witness the crash

plume of United Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.

FAA Boston relayed information to NORAD that American Flight 11 was inbound to

Washington, DC, long after that flight had struck the WTC complex. The source of

this report has never been identified. As a result, fighters were scrambled from

Langley AFB. They promptly headed out to sea to guard against an external threat.

FAA Boston falsely identified Delta Flight 1989 to NORAD as a potential hijack

based solely on the premise that it too was a Boeing 767 outbound from Boston.

Despite it having been identified as a hijack, no one at the FAA told the

military about United Flight 93.

At the close of the subsection on the civil and military air control response, the

Report has a curious passage on false statements and testimony made by military

officials to the Commission. The Report does not speculate as to the origin or

purpose, if any, behind the falsehoods. It is such a curious and bizarre passage

that it is worth quoting in full here:

In public testimony before this Commission in May 2003, NORAD officials
stated that at 9:16,NEADS received hijack notification of United 93 from
the FAA. This statement was incorrect. There was no hijack to report at

9:16.
United 93 was proceeding normally at that time.

In this same public testimony, NORAD officials stated that at 9:24,
NEADS received notification of the hijacking of American 77. This statement
was also incorrect. The notice NEADS received at 9:24 was that American
11 had not hit the World Trade Center and was heading for Washington,
D.C.

In their testimony and in other public accounts, NORAD officials also
stated that the Langley fighters were scrambled to respond to the notifications
about American 77,178 United 93, or both. These statements were incorrect as
well. The fighters were scrambled because of the report that American 11 was
heading south, as is clear not just from taped conversations at NEADS but also
from taped conversations at FAA centers; contemporaneous logs compiled at
NEADS, Continental Region headquarters, and NORAD; and other records.
Yet this response to a phantom aircraft was not recounted in a single public
timeline or statement issued by the FAA or Department of Defense. The inaccurate
accounts created the impression that the Langley scramble was a logical
response to an actual hijacked aircraft.

In fact, not only was the scramble prompted by the mistaken information
about American 11, but NEADS never received notice that American 77 was
hijacked. It was notified at 9:34 that American 77 was lost. Then, minutes later,
NEADS was told that an unknown plane was 6 miles southwest of the White
House. Only then did the already scrambled airplanes start moving directly
toward Washington,D.C.

Thus the military did not have 14 minutes to respond to American 77, as
testimony to the Commission in May 2003 suggested. It had at most one or
two minutes to react to the unidentified plane approaching Washington, and
the fighters were in the wrong place to be able to help.They had been responding
to a report about an aircraft that did not exist.

Nor did the military have 47 minutes to respond to United 93, as would be
implied by the account that it received notice of the flight’s hijacking at 9:16.
By the time the military learned about the flight, it had crashed.

The subsequent subsection, on "national crisis management," focuses on the actions

of the nation's political leadership and their bureaucratic apparati. Key points

include:

Upon learning of the hijacking of American Flight 77 from his wife Barbara,

who was on board, Solicitor General Ted Olson's first reaction was to call --

unsuccessfully -- the Attorney General of the United States.

The FAA, White House and Defense Department convened a teleconference to

manage the crisis sometime before 9:30am. As none of the appropriate officials

from the FAA or Defense were present until at least 10am, the teleconference was

useless for some time. Furthermore, no information from this teleconference was

passed on to the NMCC for at least an hour.

FAA and Defense were also participating in a separate multiagency crisis

teleconference starting at 9:20am. This too was a nearly worthless exercise for

all concerned.

At the NMCC, yet another teleconference was begun at 9:29am. No one connected

the FAA to the call, and so this call too was functionally useless and was quickly

discontinued. The NMCC reinitiated the call at 9:37am. It would last eight hours.

FAA personnel continued to be denied access to the call due to a lack of secure

phones. The FAA official who finally joined the call at 10:17am had no authority,

information or access to decisionmakers regarding the hijackings.

The top NORAD command echelon at Cheyenne Mountain, Wyoming, did not attempt

to exercise authority in the crisis until 9:49am, when it ordered all air

sovereignty aircraft aloft and armed.

After receiving the news of the second WTC strike while in Florida, the

President's staff communicated with the White House Situation Room, but not with

the Defense Department.

The President testified to the Commission that he was frustrated by his

inability to reach key officials. Phone lines to the Secretary of Defense, the

White House, and the Vice President continually dropped the calls.

The Secret Service established a direct line of communication with the FAA at

some point in the morning. Even after United Flight 93 crashed, the Secret Service

continued to receive FAA reports -- apparently based upon projections -- that the

aircraft was rapidly inbound to Washington, DC.

Command authorization granted by the Vice President to shoot down incoming

aircraft was never passed on to a single interceptor aloft at any point during the

morning. However, a single unit -- the 113th Wing out of Andrews AFB -- did send

fighters aloft with permissive engagement rules as a result of that unit's

commander taking the initiative to directly contact the Secret Service.

The unfortunate picture revealed by the Report is of a government utterly

unprepared and unable to perform government's most basic task -- the protection of

its own citizens and territory. We'll be looking at the Report's recommendations

for fixing this as we move further in.

Next: THE FOUNDATION OF THE NEW TERRORISM