Journal of 9/11 Studies Letters, August 2013 Update: Anomalies of the Air Defense on 9/11 By Paul Schreyer In October 2012 the Journal of 9/11 Studies published my article Anomalies of the Air Defense on 9/11.1 Subsequently I discussed some aspects of this paper with Miles Kara, former staff member of the 9/11 Commission and Colin Scoggins, military liaison at Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center on 9/11, and Tom Lusch, former Air Traffic Controller at Indianapolis Center. I want to thank all of them for their willingness to discuss the issue and for contributing additional facts. I would also like to advise the reader of Kevin Ryan´s recent related letter at the Journal titled Political Warfare and the 9/11 Commission. Radar Loss In my original Anomalies paper I discussed only in brief the fact that American 77, the plane that hit the Pentagon, had turned exactly in a small area where it could get lost to radar - which then happened this way. Investigating this in more detail, former Air Traffic Controller Tom Lusch advised me of some important background information.2 This led to a follow-up article at the Journal of 9/11 Studies, titled Radar Loss on 9/11.3 I strongly recommend the reader to read this in order to understand this unsolved anomaly and also why the 9/11 Commission described it inaccurately. First Alarm to the Military In my original Anomalies paper I raised the possibility that the Otis scramble might have happened 8 minutes earlier than officially claimed.4 I based this on an inconsistency between the official timeline and a phone call by Colin Scoggins, military liaison at Boston Center. Scoggins called NORAD´s north east sector (NEADS) several times because of American 11. He remembers clearly that he said in his first call to NEADS: “The plane is 20 miles south of Albany.” However American 11 was at 8:31 already at this location, whereas the official timeline has the first alarm to NEADS at 8:38. Discussing this issue separately with Miles Kara, and also with Scoggins again, the picture got a bit clearer. Apparently Scoggin´s call was at about 8:35, following the 8:34 call by Dan Bueno to Otis TRACON, which is mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.5 However unfortunately we have no direct documentation because Scoggin´s initial call was not recorded. But although it also remains unclear why Scoggins was off by 4 minutes in his description of American 11´s location, one can at least conclude that the originally raised possibility of the Otis scramble having happened 8 minutes earlier cannot be based on the circumstance of this inconsistency. Of course it is also possible that Scoggins´ memory is in error about the “20 miles south of Albany“. This is Kara´s explanation. However Scoggins states that he is sure about having said that.6

Journal of 9/11 Studies Letters, August 2013 Detour of Langley Fighter Jets The fighter jets starting from Langley Air Force Base at 9:30 flew wrong direction for 8 minutes and were diverted a second time at 9:50 to the southwest. In my original Anomalies paper I raised the possibility that the jets made that turn to follow a so-called “Doomsday Plane“ that had just started at 9:44 from Andrews Air Force Base near Washington.7 Miles Kara insists that these were unrelated events. He says there is nothing on the tapes indicating a correlation and he points out that the Langley jets also made no attempt to change their altitude to get closer to the “Doomsday plane“ while flying southwest.8 So it´s possible that Kara is right here. However one still can only wonder about the series of anomalies in connection with the Langley scramble that all had just one effect: delaying the jets´ arrival over Washington. •NEADS commander Marr´s decision to delay the scramble order from 9:09 to 9:24 •Langley Tower´s decision to enter a flight plan with the course “090,” rather than the scramble order direction of “010” •Military air traffic controllers from “Giant Killer“ not forwarding the 9:33 NEADS course correction to the Langley jets •Langley jets being out of radio reach for NEADS from take-off for 8 minutes till 9:38, one minute after the Pentagon was hit •Langley jets diverted a second time at 9:50 away from Washington, just when United 93 was approaching the capital Though every single point can be explained more or less rationally (a - limited situational awareness, b - scramble order lacked distance, c - forwarding orders takes time, d - jets too far away, e – wrong coordinates given)9, in sum this appears at least remarkable. Simultaneous Wargames In my original Anomalies paper I discussed that it is still unclear if the war games on 9/11 included only a virtual hijacking or if actually real planes were involved. I also mentioned that the war games included at least fake inserts of virtual planes on the radar screens and that these inserts blurred the real radar picture while the hijackings occurred.10 As the NEADS tapes show, at 9:30 an order was given to “turn your sim switches off” to make these inserts disappear from the radar scopes.11 Miles Kara disagrees and says there were no fake inserts fed on radar screens that morning because NEADS Mission Crew Commander Kevin Nasypany had suppressed the feed just a few seconds after it had started.12 However, when I asked Kara how we knew that the feed hadn´t started well before 9:30, he answered that according to the tapes the surveillance technicians had not acknowledged any

Journal of 9/11 Studies Letters, August 2013 exercise feed on their scopes prior.13 Though that might be true, the question is how the technicians could have known what was just a feed and what was real traffic, before the sim switches were turned off at 9:30, 7 minutes before the crash into the Pentagon. Kara on the other hand pointed out that any feed had to support an exercise inject and that there apparently was no such inject. However he admits that we don´t know the time the first exercise inject was supposed to occur.14 Other Anomalies Other points of my original Anomalies paper remain and I would like to repeat them only briefly: •The key people responsible for managing a hijacking were absent from their command posts right in the crucial hours (Rumsfeld - Winfield - Canavan). •Important telephone and radio connections didn´t work until after the attacks were over. •The airbase which should have protected the capital was not able to send fighter jets within an hour of time. Conclusion The sheer amount of anomalies is still astonishing. Defenders of the official narrative try to explain them with the popular term “fog of war.” Indeed, there is some truth in this. If a threat becomes real, things tend to complicate. Nonetheless it should be noted that all the anomalies mentioned turned out to happen in perfect favor for the perpetrators of the attacks. However one still might accept that some of the failures on 9/11 were just bad luck. For example some of the decisions regarding Langley could be assessed that way. On the other hand it seems quite challenging to explain every single anomaly simply as “bad luck” or “fog of war.” The issue of the air defense also has to be viewed in context, not isolated. So far we have unclear evidence about who was actually aboard the planes (missing positive DNA identification of the alleged hijackers). Furthermore it´s still in doubt who really controlled the planes (American 77 perfect high speed dive into Pentagon in spite of documented bad flying skills of the alleged pilot Hani Hanjour). It´s also still unclear how the World Trade Center could collapse largely symmetrically, partly even in free fall speed (NIST refuses to publish details of their computer models). Bottom line: we still have ambivalence and uncertainty in many key aspects of the 9/11 attacks. The pre-arranged absence of General Winfield from his post as head of the National Military Command Center right between 8:30 and 10:00 could have been a coincidence. Or it could have been a deliberate decision to weaken the crisis management. Likewise the concurrent war games on 9/11, including at least a simulated hijacking, could have been a coincidence, too. Or they could not.