By M.K. Styllinski

“For 60 decisive minutes, the military and intelligence agencies let the fighter planes stay on the ground.”

– Andreas von Bülow, German politician and writer



***

“Generally it is impossible to carry out an act of terror on the scenario which was used in the USA yesterday…As soon as something like that happens here, I am reported about that right away and in a minute we are all up.”

– Anatoli Kornukov, Russian Army General, September 13, 2001

United Airlines Flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Centre Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001. Both flights were Boeing 767-200s on scheduled destinations from Boston to Los Angeles. Flight 175, had two pilots, seven flight attendants and 56 passengers and Flight 11, had two pilots, nine flight attendants and 81 passengers. Flight 11 took off from Boston’s Logan Airport at 7:59am followed by the loss of contact with the pilots by Boston Air Traffic Control at around 8:13am. At 8:20am Flight 11’s transponder signal ceased, and it began flying south toward New York City. Flight 175 took off from Logan at 8:14am, 16 minutes late and around the time Flight 11 lost contact. At 8:42am Flight 175 switched off its transponder, and veered off course flying first southward, and then turning northeast to attack the World Trade Centre. [1]

At 8:46am Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Centre’s North Tower, 32 minutes after the warning signs were evident that hijack may have been in progress and 25 minutes after it was known that it was definitely a hijack scenario. What is curious is that if normal protocol had been followed then Flight 11 would have been intercepted by US Air Force fighters in no less than ten minutes. If the aircraft failed to acknowledge interception procedures then it would certainly have been shot down, all before 8:30am at the latest.

The loss of radio contact and the transponder signal was bad enough but Flight 11 also veered off its flight path dramatically at 8:20am which should have led the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to notify the military, which they did not do. The relevancy is even greater when applied to UA Flight 175 due to the period of time which had already lapsed. [2]

When the FAA was learning that Flight 11 may have been hijacked, Flight 175 was leaving Boston at 8.14am. By 8:42, the radio and transponder went off and it veered off course. At 8:43 am NORAD was notified that Flight 175 had been hijacked and was heading toward New York City. Why wasn’t the US Air Force notified by the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) who could have intercepted the plane at 8.55 at the latest. Nothing was done and it crashed into WTC’s South Tower at 9:03.

After the first crash all the relevant employees at NORAD’s North East Air Defence Sector were linked in to the FAA in Boston to receive updates about Flight 11 so there is no way that NORAD wasn’t aware of the seriousness of the situation and the importance of a speedy response. [3] Furthermore, no warning was given to the people inside the South Tower. In fact, what was given at 8:55 was a public announcement saying that the building was secure, and people could return to their offices. This announcement continued right up to when the building was hit. Was someone other than the hijackers seeking the maximum amount of deaths on the ground? [4]

Vice President Dick Cheney and acting head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers gave testimony and statements that there is a command chronology that must be followed so that jets can be scrambled. This is false. It actually requires an order for jets NOT to be scrambled at the highest level as the procedures are automatic in the face of such emergencies. The National Military Command Centre (NMCC) based in the Pentagon would have been well aware what was needed well before the Pentagon itself was struck by Flight 77 at 9.38am; over 50 minutes in fact, knowing that another plane was en route for the WTC. General Myers said to the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 13: “When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft.” [5]

This is a lie. The order was given, according to Myers, after the Pentagon had been struck. There is no procedure for dilly-dallying with a perceived threat. So, why is this Senior military General and acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying otherwise? Once again, why were standard operating procedures suddenly dropped across the board? At the very least, if we can believe NORAD, why were criminal charges for negligence and incompetence not brought against FAA when they were accused of not notifying NORAD before it was too late?

According to NORAD they did not receive news of the hijacking until 8:43am and did not give the order to scramble two F-15s to intercept Flight 175 until 8:46. But they didn’t take off until 8.52 – six minutes later. This was compounded by the fact that the order was relayed to Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, over 180 miles away rather than the McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, just 70 miles from NYC, but 70 miles too far when Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower.

The Official explanation of the departure and final destination routes of Flights 175 and 11. Source: Wikipedia

“… sophisticated mind, provided with ample means not only to recruit fanatic kamikazes, but also highly specialized personnel. I add one thing: it could not be accomplished without infiltrations in the radar and flight security personnel.”

– Francesco Cossiga, President of Italy (1985 – 1992) and Former Prime Minister, referring to the architects of the 9/11 false flag (La Stampa 9/14/01, EIR 9/15/01) (p. 36) http://www.indymedia.org

Let’s put this into some perspective so that we can grasp the truly bizarre nature of the events surrounding Flights 11 and 175. NORAD has regularly launched fighters to intercept suspicious or unidentified aircraft way before 9/11. It has been doing so since the early 1990s right up to 2001. 1st Air Force Commander, Maj. Gen. Larry K. Arnold reassures us that:

“… 20 pilots sitting alert around the clock waiting for the order to fly when needed. They interact with our three air defense sectors, where trained weapons controllers tirelessly monitor radar screens 24 hours a day, seven days a week, watching for that unknown threat. At the Southeast Air Defense Sector in 1997, weapons controllers tracked 427 unknown aircraft and intercepted “unknowns” 36 times. In the same year, the sectors in the Northeast and West handled 65 and 104 tracks, respectively.” [6]

NORAD keeps pairs of fighters on “alert” at various sites around the United States. These fighters are ready to take off within minutes of receiving a scramble order. [7] A General Accounting Office report published in May 1994 confirmed the reduction of a “dedicated continental air defense force” due to the disappearance of the Cold War threat, while refocusing “… activity on the air sovereignty mission, concentrating on intercepting drug smugglers.” This effectively means that there was more attention paid to internal aircraft within national boarders rather than incoming craft from international catchment areas. This makes statements by NORAD that they were unprepared due to a focus on external, continental aircraft nonsensical.

The report also states that:

“… during the past four years, NORAD’s alert fighters took off to intercept aircraft (referred to as scrambled) 1,518 times, or an average of 15 times per site per year. Of these incidents, the number of scrambles that are in response to suspected drug smuggling aircraft averages “one per site, or less than 7 percent of all of the alert sites’ total activity. The remaining activity, about 93 percent of the total scrambles, generally involved visually inspecting unidentified aircraft and assisting aircraft in distress.” [8]

NORAD’s Western Air Defence Sector (WADS), which incorporates the Air National Guard organization, is responsible for the air sovereignty of the western region of the continental United States at 63 percent: “More than 300 Washington Air National Guard members at WADS have operational control of fighters on continuous alert, keeping track of 1.9 million square miles of airspace, from Texas to the Pacific Coast, across to North Dakota. WADS works directly with three alert bases, where pilots wait for the call to identify unknown aircraft that could be a threat to the nation’s air sovereignty.” From May 15, 1996 to May 14, 1998: “…the sector ‘scrambled’ jets 129 times to identify … ‘unknown riders’. The WADS scrambled jets another 42 times against potential and actual drug smugglers to support the Domestic Air Interdiction Coordination Center and U.S. Drug Enforcement agencies.” [9]

That’s NORAD’s job: To defend US airspace. Except, that is, on September 11 2001 in the face of the worst domestic attack on American soil, it was told not to. It wasn’t yet another failure of intelligence. It was a chain-of-command choice.



The whole idea of Muslim hijackers taking over planes and flying them into the most heavily defended places on earth when they could barely fly at all is less than believable. What is more, pilot training requires them to “squawk” a universal hijack code (7500) on a transponder if they receive evidence of an attempted hijacking. FAA is then notified automatically. But the media and the 9/11 Commission revealed that FAA controllers received no such notification. As “9/11 Consensus” pointed out: “… entering the code takes only two or three seconds, whereas it took hijackers, according to the official story, more than 30 seconds to break into the pilots’ cabin of Flight 93. The fact that not one of the eight pilots performed this required action casts serious doubt on the hijacker story.” [10]

The New Pearl Harbour: an age-old pretext for world imperialism

The 9/11 Commission attributes gross failures in communication for the reasons why FAA management did not request military assistance to intercept the planes before they reached their targets. Yet, no mention was made of any of the people involved in this negligence nor does it highlight key persons who had the most responsibilities regarding authorisation and the rely of emergency information. As but one example, writer Kevin Ryan highlights the curious posting of Wall Street lawyer Benedict Sliney who worked as a specialist in the FAA and Michael Canavan, the FAA hijack coordinator both personify the extreme incompetence, lack of responsibility and immunity from even the slightest reprimand, let alone prosecution, within the FAA, NORAD and the military. Both of these men, like so many, were new personnel. For Sliney, September 11th was his first day on the job, while Canavan, a former special operations commander, arrived at his civilian FAA role just nine months before 9/11. On the subject of making sure military interception of hijacked planes took place, Ryan states that Sliney: “… did not receive a “request to authorize a request.” Sliney also claimed to not know that FAA management at the Command Center, where he was in charge, or FAA HQ, had any role in requests for military assistance. This is in contradiction to the stated protocol in the 9/11 Commission report and also the idea of an FAA “hijack coordinator.” [11]

Ryan quotes an FAA intelligence agent explaining the same patterns of shadow evidence mirrored across many departments and agencies during 9/11. He states: “One of the first things Canavan did in that job was lead and participate in exercises that were “pretty damn close to the 9/11 plot.” He was also known within the FAA for writing a memo just a few months before 9/11 that instituted a new leniency with regard to airport and airline security.” [12]

Yet, the 9/11 Commission report did not address any possibility that the personnel within the FAA, NORAD and other key infrastructure organisations and departments could have been compromised. This was a overshadowing pattern that was to be repeated in every facet of the 9/11 experience.

Notes



[1] ‘Flights 11 and 175’ http://www.911review.com/attack/flights/f11_175.html

[2] MSNBC Transcript MSNBC Dateline: America Remembers: Air Traffic Controllers Describe How Events Unfolded as they saw them on September 11th 2001. September 9th 2002. | 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 20; 9/11 Commission, 8/26/2004, pp. 13 (PDF file).

[3] 9/11 commission staff statement No. 17; The text as submitted to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.‘Improvising a Homeland Defense.’| http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5233007#.UPLiUvJwjAM

[4] ‘The Failure to Defend the Skies on 9/11’ By Paul Thompson, http://www.historycommons.org/essay.jsp?article=essayairdefense

[5] Senate Armed Services Committee, U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) Holds Hearing On Nomination of General Richard Myers to be Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff Speaker: U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-Mi), Chairman Washington, D.C. | http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/mycon.htm | After giving a wholly inaccurate account to the Senate General myers lied repeatedly to both the media and colleagues as to his location during the time of the attacks. His statements that he was in a meeting with a Congressman Senator Maz Cleland rather than at the Pentagon has been contradicted by the then Counter-Terrorism Tsar Richard Clarke who claims to have seen him in a live video feed at the Pentagon at the time of his alleged meeting. See: Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror 2004 (pp. 1-3).

[6] ‘Force Structure: What’s it mean?’ by Maj. Gen. Larry K. Arnold, 1st Air Force Commander, American Defender April 1998. http://www.1staf.tyndall.af.mil/defender/April98/force.htm | ‘The Return of NORAD’ by Adam J. Hebert, Airforce Magazine, Vol. 85, No. 2, February 2002 http://www.airforce-magazine.com: “Practically invisible since the Cold War, North American Aerospace Defense Command is now a daily presence over American cities.” | ‘The Border Guards, NORAD: The eyes and ears of North America by TSgt. Pat McKenna http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0196/border.htm

[7] Ibid.

[8] Continental Air Defense: A Dedicated Force Is No Longer Needed (Letter Report, 05/03/94, GAO/NSIAD-94-76). | http://www.fas.org/man/gao/gao9476.htm

[9] ‘WADS Receives Organizational Excellence Award’ Story & photo by Maj Herb Porter http://www.washingtonguard.org/news/archive/fo-wadsaward.shtml

[10] Consensus 911 | The 911 Best Evidence Panel: www. consensus911.org.

[11] ‘Why the Planes Were Not Intercepted on 9/11: The Wall Street Lawyer and the Special Ops Hijack Coordinator