9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes

[canetoad]

9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes
How did the U.S. Air Force respond on 9/11? Could it have shot down United 93, as conspiracy theorists claim? Obtaining 30 hours of never-before-released tapes from the control room of NORAD's Northeast headquarters, the author reconstructs the chaotic military history of that day—and the Pentagon's apparent attempt to cover it up. VF.com exclusive: Hear excerpts from the September 11 NORAD tapes. Click PLAY after each transcript to listen
By MICHAEL BRONNER

http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/060801fege01

[mirandapriestly]

1. according to the Post article

this leaves out the contemplation of criminal behavior.
Hi canetoad!!!!

[canetoad]

2. Hey MP

Still taking in the Norad article.

The cracks in the dam wall are widening.

[mirandapriestly]

3. Well,

On second thought, after reading, this article is a "coverup". Who is the author to say that the exercises were coincidence? and why does he give the explanation (excuse) for "input".? Disappointing, plus it's sprinkled with the term "conspiracy theory" so I knew it would be bogus.


(Edited to change opinion after finishing article)

[greyl]

4. "Incompetent CYA Theory" Comes of Age.

DU LBN

[canetoad]

5. None so blind as those who will not see.

[greyl]

7. I can't argue with that statement. nt

[mirandapriestly]

9. Incompetent CYA is already what they promote

although officially it will be "plan B",for the suckers to believe, because it is still better than the truth (for them)

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[greyl]

18. Bullshit!

They promote ignorance, not incompetence.
Don't you get that?
www.newwartimes.com/warnings.html

[readmoreoften]

11. Incompetant underlings does not mean innocent top brass.

What does one have to do with the other? The bungling of underlings tells us nothing about who arranged the attack. No answers only more questions. Who was giving them such terrible information? The FAA? Put them on the stand.

So no stand down order. There was so much misinformation flying it wasn't even needed. Means nothing.

[mirandapriestly]

13. Yes, the real story

is with Norad. this story left out the consideration of criminal charges that the WP brought out...which is why you can be sure it's spin...

[greyl]

14. It sure doesn't. In fact, I think top brass is guilty.

What the fuck are you on about?

[Norrin Radd]

6. Tech Sergeant Shelley Watson says "Cool!"

when Master Sergeant Dooley says it's a "real-world" hijacking. Yikes.

[mirandapriestly]

10. That was shocking.nt

[Norrin Radd]

16. I find this curious, as well:

In order to find a hijacked airliner—or any airplane—military controllers need either the plane's beacon code (broadcast from an electronic transponder on board) or the plane's exact coordinates. When the hijackers on American 11 turned the beacon off, intentionally losing themselves in the dense sea of airplanes already flying over the U.S. that morning (a tactic that would be repeated, with some variations, on all the hijacked flights), the NEADS controllers were at a loss.

"You would see thousands of green blips on your scope," Nasypany told me, "and now you have to pick and choose. Which is the bad guy out there? Which is the hijacked aircraft? And without that information from F.A.A., it's a needle in a haystack."

So what is the point of NEADS? This seems like a variable they would've already been trained to handle.

And then, the spin:

At this point in the morning, more than 3,000 jetliners are already in the air over the continental United States, and the Boston controller's direction—"35 miles north of Kennedy"—doesn't help the NEADS controllers at all.

Once again, so what is the point of NEADS?

[mirandapriestly]

17. Exactly. Reading this, I felt so much like I have reading

most of the propaganda that has come out. It excuses disfunction as though it is to be expected. I got this sinking feeling about half way through it.

[Norrin Radd]

19. What's most telling to me are the statements of Major James Fox:

FOX: I've never seen so much real-world stuff happen during an exercise.

and then the irritated inflection in his voice when he says "Copy that" at the vague command of Major Nasypany.

FOX: M.C.C. , I don't know where I'm scrambling these guys to. I need a direction, a destination—

NASYPANY: O.K., I'm gonna give you the Z point . It's just north of—New York City.

FOX: I got this lat long, 41-15, 74-36, or 73-46.

NASYPANY: Head 'em in that direction.

FOX: Copy that.

[paulthompson]

8. Spin, spin, spin

I posted this on the LBN thread, and I'll repost it here:

As the author of the 9/11 Timeline, I find this article very interesting as it probably contains new tidbits of truth, but it obviously is still mostly filled with spin to protect the guilty.

The author very carefully selects some facts and ignores others in an attempt to preserve the 9/11 Commission's account as much as possible. But even forgetting the conflicting facts not mentioned in the article, the article itself is self-contradictory. For instance, it says:

But by the time NEADS gets the report of a bomb on United 93, everyone on board is already dead. Following the passengers' counterattack, the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m., 4 minutes before Cleveland Center notified NEADS, and a full 35 minutes after a Cleveland Center controller, a veteran named John Werth, first suspected something was wrong with the flight. At 9:28, Werth actually heard the guttural sounds of the cockpit struggle over the radio as the hijackers attacked the pilots.

Werth's suspicions about United 93 were passed quickly up the F.A.A.'s chain of command, so how is it that no one from the agency alerted NEADS for more than half an hour?

A former senior executive at the F.A.A., speaking to me on the condition that I not identify him by name, tried to explain. "Our whole procedures prior to 9/11 were that you turned everything over to the F.B.I.," he said, reiterating that hijackers had never actually flown airplanes; it was expected that they'd land and make demands. "There were absolutely no shootdown protocols at all. The F.A.A. had nothing to do with whether they were going to shoot anybody down. We had no protocols or rules of engagement."

---

Yet earlier in the article it mentions how Boston flight control directly and immediately contacted NEADS without going through the FAA chain of command. In fact, it's not mentioned here, but Boston even directly called up military bases. So why couldn't Cleveland flight control do the same?! It also says earlier in the article that it was standard procedure to send up fighters at the first reasonable sign of trouble and investigate (in fact, there's a series of steps the fighter is supposed to take, for instance getting close enough to see into the cockpit of the hijacked plane to see if it's hijacked). But the quote from the FAA official above confuses the issue of sending up a fighter to investigate vs. permission to shoot down the hijacked plane. Just because you may not have permission to shoot down the plane yet is no reason to keep fighters on the ground! In fact, that's a violation of very clear protocols.

NORAD lied and lied, with something like five different accounts of what happened that day already, yet now we're supposed to believe they suddenly come clean with the release of these tapes? This is just one more level of spin to further confuse and hide the truth. There are so many other lies and half-truths in this article that I can't even begin to list them.

But there are some interesting tidbits of probable truth. For instance, the revelation that there was a war game of a hijacked plane scheduled an hour later - an important fact the 9/11 Commission never bothered to mention. Mike Ruppert and others have speculated that there were injects of false radar data that day as part of the wargame, and sure enough, we find out that as late as 9:04, one of the flight controllers says: "I think this is a damn input, to be honest." At the very least, this shows a lot of confusion relating to the war game, another thing denied by the 9/11 Commission and all official accounts.

[Grateful for Hope]

20. Yes

NORAD lied and lied, with something like five different accounts of what happened that day already, yet now we're supposed to believe they suddenly come clean with the release of these tapes? This is just one more level of spin to further confuse and hide the truth. There are so many other lies and half-truths in this article that I can't even begin to list them.

I found myself wondering what it was they were really trying to say. I think you nailed it, Paul.

[Norrin Radd]

21. Bronner uses the term "conspiracy theories" five times,

within the article. It's curious why he felt it necessary to mention "conspiracy theories," at all, regarding the Pentagon cover-up? Hrrmmm....

[paulthompson]

22. I'm going to be a guest on Air America today to talk about this!

I just found out that Randi Rhodes wants me to be a guest on her show today to talk about these latest 9/11 developments. The time is approximately 5:30 Eastern time and 2:30 Pacific time. I hope you'll listen in.

[debbierlus]

23. I will listen in! Thanks for the heads-up

I need a little clarification.

Thanks!