Sorry this answer seems to have turned into a book. :hi:
But is it not true that the government knew how bad airport security was and did nothing about it? Don't you think the AIRPORT/ATC/FAA part is where the biggest breakdown occurred? Whose fault is that?I would strongly suggest that if you are relying at all on airport security to protect you from this kind of operation, I feel sorry for you. I'm pretty sure we all know airport security is merely window dressing. The place to get these guys would have been at the State Department before they got into the country. Many of them were on known terrorist watch lists. Furthermore, there were so many opportunities to catch them prior to 9/11 it is enough to make your head spin.
To your questions and comments, technically, ATC did their job. Boston Ground Control identified Flight 11 as hijacked at 8:24 the controller realized the plane had been hijacked and sent it up the chain of command, that's their job and they did it. No problem there that I an see.
Notice of the hijacking went to the Command Center in Herndon, VA. Ben Sliney, on his first day on the job, tried to get the message out. He broke into the daily senior staff meeting to tell them, and at that point should have informed the Hijack Coordinator. Ben Sliney is supposed to be the dude who decided to ground all air traffic on 9/11 (best idea they had all day IMO).
He contacted NORAD but they didn't know who had the authority to order a 'military intervention'.
"Sliney and his NORAD counterpart were unsure who had the power to order a military intervention. It took Sliney more than five minutes to ascertain where the authority lay."
My question would be, was he trying to ascertain where the authority lay, or was he trying to figure out where the damn Hijack Coordinator was? It is the job of the "FAA Hijack Coordinator" to contact and stay in contact with the NMCC, to provide escort for hijacked aircraft. Michael Canavan, the Hijack Coordinator, was in Puerto Rico that day, and we don't know who if anyone was designated to take over for him. No one ever asked that question. Can you find any references to a hijack coordinator doing this or that in any one's examination of the day? If you can, give me a link, because I can't find anyone responsible for this duty that day. He did quit his job in October, so while not really accountable for anything, at least he's gone.
Ironically, Canavan had been involved with a Delta Force operation to use tribal leaders to capture UBL in Afghanistan. He thought it was too complicated for the CIA (out of their league - this makes me laugh), and an effort to do it on the cheap, etc. OTOH, Sandy Berger at that time was worried that they'd catch him and acquit him, due to lack of evidence.
http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdfBTW escorts are sent up for "unknown riders" all the time, in the year 2000 alone there were 425 "unknown riders", but a hijack is taken care of by a specific person in FAA, the Hijack Coordinator.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5233007http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_7-8_36/ai_n6159486This is the law/guidance regarding hijackings FWIW:
ESCORT OF HIJACKED AIRCRAFT
7-1-1. PURPOSE
The FAA hijack coordinator (the Director or his designate of the FAA Office of Civil Aviation Security) on duty at Washington headquarters will request the military to provide an escort aircraft for a confirmed hijacked aircraft to:
a. Assure positive flight following.
b. Report unusual observances.
c. Aid search and rescue in the event of an emergency.
7-1-2. REQUESTS FOR SERVICE
The escort service will be requested by the FAA hijack coordinator by direct contact with the National Military Command Center (NMCC). Normally, NORAD escort aircraft will take the required action. However, for the purpose of these procedures, the term "escort aircraft" applies to any military aircraft assigned to the escort mission. When the military can provide escort aircraft, the NMCC will advise the FAA hijack coordinator the identification and location of the squadron tasked to provide escort aircraft. NMCC will then authorize direct coordination between FAA and the designated military unit. When a NORAD resource is tasked, FAA will coordinate through the appropriate SOCC/ROCC.
http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/terrorism/chp7.htmlThis type of thing was not new to NORAD, it's a part of their mission, and they prepare for it. Terrorism was pretty much a top of mind threat throughout the late '90s. In the military they feel that the more you sweat the less you bleed, basically. Who can argue with that. They prepare for everything. They're not still fighting the Cold War, and haven't been for some time.
NORAD prepares and practices its charter through continuous training and a realistic exercise program. Probably the biggest of these exercises is Amalgam Warrior, which is held twice annually in the fall for the East Coast and in the spring for the West Coast. The five-day fall Amalgam Warrior put Americans and Canadians through their paces, challenging forces in three areas coinciding with the command's aerospace warning, air sovereignty and air defense missions.
The exercise was conducted in real time with a fictitious world political scenario, which prompted NORAD forces to transition from a peacetime posture to a war-fighting stance. The threat escalated from tracking unknown aircraft, which filed bad flight plans or wandered off course, and in-flight emergencies to terrorist aircraft attacks and large-scale bomber strike missions.
http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0196/border.htmThe problem I have with your position is that you don't think there was negligence or failures for not planning and preparing for this kind of attack, and thats exactly what all the evidence shows.I can respect that, and would accept that they were unprepared (though the thought terrifies me), except for the fact that NORAD had planned for precisely this type of attack. NORAD had drills/exercises that simulated using jets as weapons. Strangely enough, one of the targets in these exercises was, in fact, the WTC. I certainly don't think there was negligence or failures in planning. It also wasn't the machines that failed, because they worked in the exercises. It was in execution that they failed miserably. If you read the testimony (rather than the final report) of the 9/11 Commission you can begin to understand why. The leadership was essentially AWOL on that day.
In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.
One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.
"Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft," the statement said. "These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htmAccording to Richard Clarke there were "live fly" exercises going on also, I think that would have introduced some chaos both at ATC/FAA and NORAD, as "live fly" would be real planes, civilian and military, being used in the exercise to give it more realism. Though, it's hard to say if this is a fact, because much of his book is fiction. He puts people in places they could have not have possibly been, at times they were in conferences with other people, according to their own testimony.
"Is it real world" was more or less an example of the chaos that does seem to play a part in their inability to get it together, except in the mind of General Eberhardt. I don't lay any blame at the feet of those working at NEADS that day. It's the leadership's fault. When big things go wrong, you look at the top to find out why.
For the NEADS crew, 9/11 was not a story of four hijacked airplanes, but one of a heated chase after more than a dozen potential hijackings—some real, some phantom—that emerged from the turbulence of misinformation that spiked in the first 100 minutes of the attack and continued well into the afternoon and evening.
http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/060801fege01
what kind of drills did they do for these attacks, did the drills involve the ATC/FAA or just the military NORAD part of it.I imagine FAA does have such exercises, because they have a video on it. How thorough they are is anyone's guess, and to some degree I would suggest it is subjective, after all, they failed on 9/11.
Managing A Hijacking Exercise. Federal Aviation Administration. 1994. Av-Vhs 1/2 Inch - 1 Cassette.
http://dotlibrary.dot.gov/bibliographies/govsafe.htmThey should have been very, very ready - it was a very noisy summer for anyone paying attention. On July 5 of 2001 Richard Clarke told a group of leaders including the FAA, Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service and INS that, "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon."
Clarke directed every counterterrorist office to cancel vacations, defer nonvital travel, put off scheduled exercises and place domestic rapid-response teams on much shorter alert. For six weeks last summer, at home and overseas, the U.S. government was at its highest possible state of readiness -- and anxiety -- against imminent terrorist attack.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A30176-2002May16Rummy, Wolfowitz, The Pretzelnut, General Myers, the Commander of the NMCC and The FAA Hijack Coordinator were all AWOL on September 11.
Why was Rumfeld unreachable by everyone for nearly 2 hours?
Why was * allowed to sit in that school in FLA? WTF was going on with the SS? Why didn't they even try to follow SOP? Could they read the POS's mind and know he wanted to stay, so not to alarm the children or whatever lame excuse they're trotting around now?
Why did General Myers continue with his meeting, after he knew we had planes crashing into the WTC, etc? Did he also think there was "nothing he could do about it?"
The hijack coordinator was in Puerto Rico on 9/11, who was in his place? Was anyone? Why did the 9/11 Commission not ask this question?
Where was Monty? Why did he, just the day before, ask the noob to take his place for the precise times of the attack on 9/11? Did he have a dentist appointment, a meeting with a superior? He returned around roughly 10:00, shortly before the last plane crashed. Is that not just a little too fortuitous to be real?
Why was the noob, who couldn't get the phone bridge with FAA, et al., to work, Captain Charles Leidig, promoted to rear admiral. He obviously failed miserably.
Does this not give you pause?These are only a handful of the facts that pertain to the actual day of hijackings. We haven't even touched on the lead up to 9/11, the behavior of the hijackers, the behavior of the FBI, CIA and DIA, the behavior and strange priorities of the administration and contrasting that with previous administrations. Failures of this magnitude with no repercussions strongly suggest an intention to fail. If a man "accidentally" shoots 15 other hunters and kills them, each time saying, oops, I didn't see him there, do you start to think he's more like a serial killer than a drunk or myopic hunter?
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