- In a recent article, I presented compelling evidence
that an E-4B, the US military's most advanced command and control platform,
circled over the White House at the time of the September 11, 2001 attack.[1]
Officially known as the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP,
pronounced knee-cap), the E-4B's more common name is the "doomsday"
plane. This paper will expand that discussion and will ultimately argue
that the military fudged the time of the pentagon crash to conceal the
presence of the E-4B.
-
- As in any wartime situation, the day of September 11
2001 was marked by tremendous uncertainty and confusion. Although a total
of four commercial airliners were involved in the attack, the FAA processed
numerous false reports of other hijackings, well into the afternoon. By
one account New York City firemen at the World Trade Center also received
a false alarm about a third suicide plane.[2] There was a bomb scare at
the FAA's Boston Air Traffic Center, as well as a false alarm about an
approaching suicide plane that prompted the evacuation of the building.[3]
An evacuation also occurred at another FAA facility on Martha's Vineyard
when a large white plane was sighted near the tower. [4] Unfortunately,
this low-flying plane was never identified. There were also evacuations
at Reagan National Airport in Washington and at Cleveland Airport. There
was even a reported threat to Air Force One, which delayed President Bush's
return to Washington.[5]
-
- Numerous anomalies associated with the collapse of the
Trade Center and the Pentagon attack remain controversial nearly six years
after the attack because the official investigations failed to explain
them. To this day there is widespread uncertainty about the actual chronology
of events, i.e., exactly what happened on 9/11, and when. A glance at Paul
Thompson's invaluable book, The Terror Timeline, shows that the official
narrative as presented in the 9/11 Commission Report is at best a partial
record, and at worst a complete fabrication, since what it leaves out often
conflicts with the official story.[6] Moreover, Professor and Theologian
David Ray Griffin's 2005 book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and
Distortions is even more troubling, because it exposes numerous flaws in
the official investigation, including cases of deception. Griffin's critique
should be considered a necessary companion volume to the final report,
and together with Thompson's book makes for essential reading. Both are
indispensable resources for anyone trying to understand the events of September
11. Fortunately, Thompson's timeline, which attempts to be comprehensive,
is also accessible via the internet.[7]
-
-
- The official 9/11 narrative has undergone two revisions,
both major. The military announced the first just a week after the attack.
The 9/11 Commission unveiled the second in its final report, released in
July 2004. In his companion book Griffin argues persuasively that both
revisions were attempts to salvage the official conspiracy theory. Before
I proceed, allow me to briefly review how both of these revisions came
about: Two days after the attack, on September 13, 2001, General Richard
Myers, acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed
Services Committee that NORAD failed to get fighters in the air until after
the Pentagon strike.[8] This admission by Myers caused huge problems for
the US military, because its failure to respond looked like a deliberate
stand-down; which, if true, was treason. A week later, on September 18,
2001, the military attempted to shield itself from such criticism by announcing
a revised timeline, essentially blaming the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) for the breach of security on 9/11.[9] The Pentagon claimed that
NORAD was unable to respond in a timely manner because it did not receive
notification from the FAA about the hijacked planes until too late. As
the months passed, however, cracks began to appear in this revised timeline.
The problem was that even with the delayed notification NORAD arguably
still had sufficient time to scramble fighters and intercept two and possibly
three of the hijacked planes. The 9/11 Commission Report, published in
July 2004, acknowledged this problem,[10] then announced a second revision
of the timeline. According to this latest story, the FAA wasn't merely
tardy, no, it failed completely. In other words, the FAA neglected to notify
NORAD that Flights 175, 77 and 93 had been hijacked until after the the
planes had crashed. This gross incompetence on the part of the FAA was
bizarre, to say the least, since the FAA simultaneously showed remarkable
professionalism and skill by grounding nearly 4500 planes in about three
hours, all without a single mishap. In fact, the FAA's emergency shut down
of the entire US air traffic system on 9/11 was unprecedented in the annals
of US aviation.
-
- The latest revision was largely based on new evidence
in the form of certain NORAD audio-tapes, which the government had withheld
for many months. However, thanks to a court order the tapes were finally
made available to the panel late in the investigation. Based on its review
of these tapes, the commission surprised everyone by announcing a completely
new element in the story, the so called "phantom plane" scenario.
The 9/11 Commission Report asserts that at 9:21 AM on September 11 the
FAA mistakenly notified NORAD that Flight 11 had missed the World Trade
Center and was flying south en route to Washington.[11] The report further
states that the F-16s scrambled from Langley AFB at 9:30 AM were sent aloft
not to intercept Flight 77 (or Flight 93), as the military had previously
claimed, but for the purpose of intercepting this phantom Flight 11 somewhere
near Baltimore.[12] These new disclosures were a major change in the official
story, and were deeply embarrassing to the pentagon because they directly
contradicted the earlier testimony by generals and other military officers,
which made no mention of any phantom plane. Indeed, even during his final
appearance before the commission in June 2004 General Larry Arnold stated
that "We scrambled those aircraft [the Langley fighters] to get them
over Washington, D.C., to protect Washington, D.C."[13] Moments later,
Arnold had to be coached by panel members regarding the phantom plane.
The general's inability to recall details that as a NORAD commander he
should have known caused shock and outrage among panel members. The Washington
Post subsequently reported that some of the commissioners and their staff
were convinced that the pentagon had deliberately deceived them.[14] During
its final meeting the panel even discussed referring the matter to the
Justice Department for criminal investigation. However, the panel's outrage
never made it into in the 9/11 Commission Report, nor is there any mention
of deception. The report blandly informs us that the generals' previous
testimony was merely "incorrect."[15]
-
- Although much has been made of this loss of face by the
Pentagon, "what is really going on," as David Ray Griffin has
correctly pointed out, "is that the military is briefly suffering
a little embarrassment, experienced primarily by a few scapegoats [i.e.,
General Arnold], for the sake of the new story, which, if accepted, permanently
removes the suspicion of guilt for treason and murder from everyone in
the military."[16] A closer reading of the report shows that its
main objective was to exonerate the Pentagon brass of responsibility for
the breach of security on September 11. Yet, the report suffers from a
deeper weakness, which is fundamental: Even if we wish to believe the official
story and the newest timeline, this means we must accept that the Joint
Chiefs deliberately deceived the nation and the panel for nearly three
years. The entire chain of command kept quiet, as well, hence, was complicit
in this deception. While it's usually assumed that if the generals lied
it was to conceal their own incompetence, why would they expose themselves
to the treasonous charge of implementing a stand-down by overstating "the
FAA's ability to provide....timely and useful information," if the
FAA were responsible all along?[17] This makes no sense and should increase
our skepticism about every facet of the official narrative. There is also
a further problem: If the FAA was guilty of gross negligence on 9/11, why
was no one held accountable? In the months following the attack not a single
FAA official was dismissed, demoted, or even reprimanded. Why not? Did
the Bush administration refrain from demotions and dismissals because this
would have begun a legal process of discovery and appeal involving the
scrutiny of relevant documents and the release of evidence, which had to
be avoided at all costs? The Origin of the Phantom Plane Story
-
- The phantom plane story certainly had the effect of letting
the US military off the hook. Was it a device contrived for this purpose?
It's curious that one of the most muddled portions of the 9/11 chronology,
on a day marked by confusion, was the time period between 9:21 AM, when
the FAA notified NORAD about the phantom Flight 11, to 9:38 AM, when Flight
77 allegedly smashed into the pentagon. Let us now examine this part of
the official narrative, in the hope of shedding some fresh light on it.
-
- Although the 9/11 Commission Report fails to explain
how the phantom plane story originated,[18] Michael Bronner disclosed more
details last summer in a much-ballyhooed article in Vanity Fair, "9/11
Live: The NORAD Tapes."[19] Bronner is a former producer of 60 Minutes,
and also helped produce the recent film United 93 (not to be confused with
the 2005 Discovery docudrama, The Flight that Fought Back.) For reasons
that have never been explained, the US military granted Bronner exclusive
access to the same NORAD tapes that the 9/11 Commission obtained only after
a lengthy court battle.[20] The tapes provided the grist for Bronner's
article, which defends the official narrative as presented in the 9/11
Commission Report. Although Bronner asserts that "the truth is all
on tape," as we will see, there are solid reasons to question his
arguments and conclusions. Let's start with the phantom plane issue.
-
- As part of his research, Bronner interviewed Colin Scoggins,
who on September 11, 2001 was the military liaison at the FAA's Boston
Air Traffic Center, where much of the action occurred. Scoggins told Bronner
the phantom plane story began as a misunderstanding during a teleconference
"in the flurry of information zipping back and forth...[and]... transmogrified
into the idea that a different plane had hit the tower, and that American
11 was still hijacked and still in the air."[21] Although the 9/11
Commission Report doesn't mention Scoggins by name, it was he who placed
the crucial call to NEADS at 9:21 AM informing the military that Flight
11 was heading for Washington.[22] Recently, when I conducted my own interview
with Scoggins, he confirmed that the FAA tracked Flight 11 continuously
until just north of the World Trade Center, when the plane dropped below
2,000 feet and was lost to radar.[23] However, according to Scoggins the
FAA never tracked any phantom plane between New York and Washington. In
his article Bronner tagged Scoggins with the responsibility for the mistaken
report, but Scoggins told me he merely relayed what he overheard during
the conference call. More details emerged during our interview and subsequent
email exchanges. Scoggins thinks someone at FAA headquarters dropped a
"call sign" during the teleconference, meaning that during the
discussion about hijacked planes someone failed to mention a flight number,
leading to a mix-up.[24] (The FAA headquarters is located on Independence
Avenue in downtown Washington.)
-
- Numerous individuals from various agencies were on the
line, that morning. Scoggins doesn't know exactly who or how many people
were listening. The conference call may well have included staffers from
the Pentagon and NORAD, which, notice, if correct, would mean that the
military overheard the FAA discussion, and therefore, by 9:21 AM must have
known about at least one of the other hijacked planes, in addition to Flight
11. This would contradict the official story that the military was in the
dark. Scoggins doubts this interpretation, but it's certainly possible,
because the Pentagon and NORAD were usual participants in FAA conference
calls. Maj. General Craig McKinley, who was at the Pentagon on 9/11, confirmed
as much in his testimony before the 9/11 Commission in May 2003.[25] The
fact was also confirmed by the FAA's Deputy in Public Affairs Laura Brown
in a May 2003 memo to the 911 Commission, in which Brown sought to clarify
the FAA's role. Her memo states that "Within minutes after the first
aircraft hit the World Trade Center, the FAA immediately established several
phone bridges that included FAA field facilities, the FAA Command Center,
FAA headquarters, DoD [the Department of Defense, i.e., the Pentagon and
NORAD], the Secret Service, and other government agencies."[26] The
9/11 Commission discussed Brown's memo during its hearings. Commissioner
Richard Ben-Veniste even read it into the record.[27] Yet, her memo is
never mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report. Why not? Is it because the
FAA memo contradicts the official story that the US military was not in
the loop on September 11? Of course, it is possible that the FAA staffer
who dropped the call-sign was referring to one of the other suspected hijackings
that turned out to be a false alarm. But anyone who seriously doubts that
the military was in the loop should check out David Ray Griffin's latest
book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking, which presents an enormous amount of additional
evidence. Griffin thinks the FAA initiated a phone bridge with the military
much earlier, in fact, as early as 8:20-25 AM, and he is probably correct.[28]
As I proceed I will touch on some of this evidence.
-
- Pushback? Or Obfuscation?
-
- Michael Bronner made another serious charge in his article:
He claimed that the operational commander of NORAD's Northeast Sector (NEADS)
was unable to deploy his fighters over Manhattan on September 11 because
he encountered resistance from the FAA. With both WTC towers in flames,
as Bronner tells it, the NEADS mission-crew commander Lt. Col. Kevin Nasypany
was insistent about immediately moving his F-15s into position over New
York to protect the city. The planes had finally been scrambled from Otis
AFB, near Cape Cod, and were in a holding pattern over the Atlantic. However,
at this point, according to Bronner, NEADS received "pushback"
from FAA controllers who were afraid that NORAD's "fast-moving fighters"
might collide with commercial passenger planes, hundreds of which were
"in the area, still flying normal routes." To drive his point
home Bronner adds that FAA controllers had "the final authority over
the fighters as long as they [were] in civilian airspace." While Bronner
is correct that New York air traffic controllers initially hesitated to
allow NORAD fighters into New York City airspace, Bronner exaggerates this
delay, which according to Scoggins was no more than 2-4 minutes.[29] There
are excellent reasons why the FAA controllers were not unduly concerned
about a mid-air collision. Lower Manhattan is not a flight corridor for
commercial air traffic, nor was it on September 11. Three international
airports service greater New York City. Two of them, JFK and La Guardia,
are well to the east of Manhattan, and the third, Newark Airport, is located
in New Jersey, west across the Hudson. None of the flight corridors or
holding patterns for these busy airports intersect the borough of Manhattan
at any point.[30]
-
- Furthermore, the Manhattan airspace under 3,300 feet
is doubly restricted in the vicinity of the World Trade Center due to the
obvious hazards posed by tall buildings. The dangers have been known since
at least 1945, when an Air Force B-25 pilot lost his way on a foggy night
and smashed into the 78th-79th floor of the Empire State Building. The
following year another plane crashed into 40 Wall Street, the tallest building
in the financial district at that time. To prevent such fiery disasters
in the future the FAA long ago designated this airspace as a "no fly
zone." Aside from police traffic, the only exceptions to the ban were
by special permit. For which reasons the risk of a midair collision over
Manhattan on 9/11 was close to nil, as both NEADS and the FAA surely must
have known. Nor is it likely that a commercial pilot would have knowingly
violated this ban in the midst of an unparalleled aviation disaster. In
addition to risking his plane, crew and passengers for no reason, such
a pilot would have expected to encounter a fighter intercept himself within
minutes and, later, severe disciplinary action, probably including the
early termination of his career.
-
- As we know, of course, there were no fighter intercepts
on 9/11. The two F-15s scrambled from Otis AFB ended up in a holding pen
south of Long Island. The pilots later explained that while they waited
for orders they watched the ominous plume of smoke billowing from the WTC,
conspicuous from 70 miles away.[31] Their orders never did come. The pilots
only learned about the second strike when they called their commander for
an update.[32] In the end, they took the initiative themselves, an admission
that is deeply buried in a footnote of the 9/11 Commission Report. [33]
At 9:13 AM the pilots "told their Boston Center controller that they
needed to establish a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) over New York." Which
they finally accomplished at 9:25 AM, much too late to make a difference.[34]
-
-
- Given all of this, Bronner's charge that the FAA obstructed
and delayed NEADS on 9/11 is extremely dubious. The real question is why
NEADS did not scramble the fighters from Otis much sooner, in which case
the F-15s would have arrived in time to intercept Flight 11 and Flight
175. All of the evidence suggests that FAA controllers were begging for
fighter protection. Colin Scoggins told me he made as many as 40 calls
to NEADS on the morning of September 11 trying to get fighters in the air.
During some of these calls he attempted to persuade NEADS to scramble fighters
from bases that were not officially on alert, such as the Pomona base,
near Atlantic City, which is much closer to New York than the NEADS alert
base on Cape Cod (Otis AFB). Pomona is the home of the Air National Guard's
177th fighter wing, and I was astonished to learn that the base actually
had fighters in the air at the time of the attack. Two F-16s from Pomona
were practicing bombing-runs over an empty stretch of New Jersey pine barrens,
and could easily have been rerouted to Manhattan in just minutes.[35]
-
- But NEADS ignored Scoggins' request. The 9/11 Commission
Report mentions his call, but distorts what actually happened. The report
states: "the [Boston] Center also tried to contact a former alert
site in Atlantic City, unaware it had been phased out."[36] This
is hogwash. Scoggins was well aware the Pomona base was not officially
on alert. But he was rightly undeterred by this formality, which, under
the circumstances, was irrelevant. Given that a hijacking was in progress
just a few miles up the coast, the fighters from Pomona, already airborne,
could and should have been mustered without delay. While it is true they
were unarmed, this should not have been a consideration, since the military
protocols in effect required scrambled fighters to follow and track hijacked
planes. Shooting them down was a last resort. Scoggins still believes that
if NEADS had utilized the fighters from Pomona they might well have foiled
the suicide attack. Whether or not hijackers were actually on board and
flying the 767s remains controversial, but his point is well taken. The
decision to scramble on 9/11 should have been made irrespective of whether
the fighters were officially "on alert," and whether or not they
were armed. The 9/11 Commission Report's misrepresentation of this call
by Scoggins was a case of treasonous deception; and the same is true of
Bronner's article, which was a carefully-crafted piece of misinformation.
Unfortunately, ordinary citizens who know nothing about emergency protocols
and no-fly zones probably found it persuasive. Although Bronner claims
to have heard 30 hours of NORAD tape, according to Scoggins most of those
hours were "dead time," that is, empty tape. Scoggins thinks
Bronner heard only snippets, about 10 of which are mentioned in his article.
Indeed, the information that NORAD made available to Bronner was highly
selective: only a fraction of the 100-300 phone calls made on the morning
of 9/11, not to mention FAA recordings and in-house tapes recorded by American
and United Airlines. For which reason we should be wary of the picture
Bronner paints. Only a comprehensive review of all of the recordings and
radar data from 9/11 can reveal what actually happened.
-
- Andrews Air Force Base is another facility that NEADS
could have mustered on 9/11. Just minutes away from the White House by
air, Andrews is the home of Air Force One and is the port of entry to and
from Washington for US presidents and diplomats. Indeed, the base has a
long tradition of servicing and defending the nation's capital. Although
Andrews was not one of NORAD's officially designated alert bases on 9/11,
at least two combat-ready fighter units were based there, including a DC
Air National Guard (DCANG) squadron of the 113th fighter wing. The 113th's
mission, as stated on the Andrews website, was to provide "capable
and ready response forces for the District of Columbia."[37] On a
separate page the DCANG squadron boasted about providing "combat units
in the highest possible state of readiness."[38] The 321st Marine
Fighter Attack Squadron was also based at Andrews, and flew the sophisticated
F/A-18 Hornet.[39] Nor was Andrews the only response-capable facility
in the area. The Patuxent Naval Base in Maryland also had fighters. In
fact, Former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger told FOX News on September
11 that "The city [Washington] is ringed with Air Force bases and
Navy bases, and the ability to get defensive planes in the air is very
very high."[40] But not on the morning of September 11. During a
national security teleconference convened that morning by Counter-terrorism
Czar Richard A. Clark, General Richard Myers explained that F-16 fighters
from the DCANG squadron at Andrews had finally been scrambled.[41] The
general didn't mention that the Secret Service had rousted them, not the
Pentagon.[42] The F-16s arrived over Washington even later than the fighters
from Langley, much too late to matter.
-
- This story also has a postscript. Soon after the attack,
9/11 truth investigators discovered that someone had scrubbed the DCANG
web page from the internet, along with its mission statement about "providing
combat units in the highest possible state of readiness."[43] Luckily,
however, several months before the attack someone archived the page, which
can still be viewed on line[44] A number of 9/11 researchers, including
Mike Ruppert, Paul Thompson and David Griffin, have already told this story;
but the alteration of the Andrews website, involving the destruction of
evidence, is so important it bears repeating.
-
- NEADS fails in its mission: to track planes
-
- During our interview Scoggins also provided more details
about another important matter that the 9/11 Commission failed to explain.
Although the FAA's Boston Center tracked Flight 11 continuously on radar,
for some reason NEADS was unable to locate the hijacked plane. Scoggins
told me he gave them "nav aids," which are commonly used reference
points, and even precise latitude and longitude coordinates, but to no
avail. Lt. Col Dawne Deskins, who was on the receiving end of his call,
told FOX News exactly what Scoggins told me: "He [Scoggins] gave me
the latitude and longitude of that track...but there was nothing there."[45]
At the time, Flight 11 was moving at 600 mph and should have been conspicuous
on radar, according to Scoggins. But NEADS never did find the plane. This
strange lapse haunts Scoggins to this day, because it never should have
happened. The problem was not the transfer of information. NEADS received
the precise coordinates. The NORAD/FAA interface was a practiced routine,
and it functioned on 9/11. NEADS' failure to locate Flight 11 on radar
is a genuine anomaly, and getting to the bottom of it should have been
one of the 9/11 Commission's top priorities.
-
- Yet, incredibly, the 9/11 Commission Report barely mentions
the issue. It appears that instead of doing its job, i.e., digging for
the truth, the commission meekly accepted the military's various explanations,
without a word of protest. General McKinley, for example, told the panel
that "We are dependent on the FAA."[46] During the same hearing
General Arnold told them: "Our resources were extremely limited in
many cases, because we initially could not even see what the FAA could
see..." There was also the lame excuse about antiquated radar equipment.
During his October 2001 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee,
General Ralph Eberhart described NORAD's command and control systems as
"70's and 80's technology"[47]; and Michael Bronner echoes this
latter theme in his Vanity Fair article. Indeed, he amplifies it in melodramatic
fashion, and I'm going to quote a passage verbatim because the issue is
so important. Bronner: "Radar is the NEADS controllers' most vital
piece of equipment, but by 9/11 the scopes were so old, among other factors,
that controllers were ultimately unable to find any of the hijacked planes
in enough time to react. Known collectively as the Green Eye for the glow
the radar rings give off, the scopes looked like something out of Dr. Strangelove
and were strikingly anachronistic compared with the equipment at civilian
air-traffic sites."[48] This is pure obfuscation. While it's true
that NEADS was using older hardware on 9/11, Scoggins told me the military's
radar was more than adequate. According to Scoggins NEADS could see everything
the FAA saw, and more. NEADS' failure to locate Flight 11 on radar had
the serious consequence of slowing down the military's response, because
Col. Robert Marr, NEADS commander, was reluctant to scramble his Otis fighters
without a target. Was this the intended outcome?
-
- The Actual Path of Flight 77
-
- Scoggins placed yet another important call on that fateful
morning. At 9:36 AM he notified NEADS about an unidentified plane six to
eight miles southeast of the White House. Scoggins was again merely relaying
information from the FAA's Washington headquarters. Yet, the call sparked
a frenzy. NEADS immediately redirected the Langley fighters to the capital.
As we know, of course, only moments before, NEADS had discovered that the
F-16s were not en route to Baltimore, where they supposedly had been sent
to intercept Flight 11 (the phantom plane). No, in fact, they were in a
holding pattern over the Atlantic. The fighters did not finally reach Washington
until a few minutes before 10 AM, much too late. (Fighters from the DCANG
unit based at Andrews arrived moments later.) Scoggins told me that after
the Pentagon strike he assumed, like everyone else, that this unidentified
plane he reported at 9:36 AM was Flight 77. He was also under the impression
that it made a pass near the White House. Scoggins is not alone in this
view. Even today, many people think Flight 77 flew over Washington before
striking the Pentagon. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer actually gave
rise to one of these stories, which were widely reported in the media.[49]
-
-
- This cannot be correct, however, because the National
Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) flight path study, which was finally
released in August 2006, shows that American Airlines Flight 77 never crossed
the Potomac River.[50] If you will glance at a map of the Washington DC
area you will see that the Potomac lies directly south of the White House.
This means that the unidentified plane reported by Scoggins, 6 to 8 miles
SE of the White House, was over Maryland at the time, hence, could not
have been Flight 77. According to the NTSB flight path study, Flight 77
approached Washington from the west. However, at the last minute it veered
south and completed its now-famous downward spiraling loop over Alexandria;
after which, it came around and smashed into the Pentagon.
-
-
-
-
- The NTSB study, based on Flight 77's recovered flight
data recorder, is extremely important, because it shows that Flight 77
never came closer to the White House than the pentagon itself. What, then,
did the FAA "see" over Maryland at 9:36 AM, if not Flight 77?
As I've shown in a previous article, another aircraft, an E-4B, the so
called doomsday plane, was also in the air over Washington at the time
of the 9/11 attack.[51] The FAA may well have been tracking this other
plane. The E-4B is equipped with a military transponder and therefore has
the capability to transmit in code unreadable to the FAA. For which reason
the E-4B would have appeared only as a blip on primary radar; and so, would
have been indistinguishable from a hijacked commercial-sized plane with
its transponder off; and as we know, Flight 77's transponder went off at
8:56 AM. It's no wonder Scoggins later assumed this plane was Flight 77.
Did Ari Fleischer also confuse the two planes for the same reason? Fleischer
probably received his information from the Secret Service, which had a
direct feed to FAA radar.[52] The Secret Service was probably tracking
the same plane that the FAA was seeing. This would explain Fleischer's
emotional statement to the press that Flight 77 passed near the White House.
Of course, only a comprehensive review of all of the radar data can ultimately
determine if this is correct.
-
- Three Eyewitness Accounts
-
- The NTSB's flight path study is also important for another
reason: It corroborates several key eyewitness accounts from 9/11 that
were excluded from the official narrative. Let us examine them: During
a 2002 MSNBC special, NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw interviewed several air
traffic controllers who described what they saw on September 11. One of
them, Todd Lewis, was on duty at Dulles International Airport. Here is
a portion of the MSNBC transcript:
-
- Mr. LEWIS: Well, it -- it [Flight 77] was heading right
towards a prohibited area in downtown Washington. And that -- that covers
the Capitol and the White House. We then called the White House on the
hotline to let them know....Then, it turned south and away from the prohibited
area, which seemed like a momentary sigh of relief.[53] [my emphasis]
-
- Notice, this testimony by Todd Lewis accords with the
NTSB's flight path study. Moreover, his story is corroborated by another
account that appeared in USA Today.[54] According to this report, Chris
Stephenson, chief air traffic controller at Washington's Reagan National
Airport, received a warning call from the Secret Service at 9:30 AM that
an unidentified aircraft was approaching Washington from the west at high
speed. Stephenson quickly checked his scope and located the plane on radar,
about 5 miles west of the city. He then looked out the window and actually
saw Flight 77 approaching. He watched it turn south and make a 360 degree
looping spiral, descending all the while. The plane came back around and
passed out of view behind some tall buildings in Crystal City, which is
immediately south of the Pentagon. Next, he witnessed a huge fireball.
Stephenson's account begins at 9:30 AM, 8 minutes before the official Flight
77 crash time of 9:38 AM. This time difference is extremely important,
because both Stephenson and the official narrative cannot be correct. Obviously,
Flight 77 did not require 8 minutes to complete a looping spiral and make
its final approach. These last maneuvers surely took no longer than 1-2
minutes. Thus, we are talking about a discrepancy of roughly 6 minutes.
Under the circumstances, this might as well be an eternity.
-
- Chris Stephenson's account flatly contradicts the 9/11
Commission Report, which states that Flight 77 did not begin its famous
looping turn until after 9:34 AM.[55] Yet, Stephenson's timeline is further
supported by Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta's testimony to the
9/11 Commission. On May 23, 2003 Mineta told the panel that on the morning
of September 11 he arrived at the PEOC (the Presidential Emergency Operations
Center, located under the White House) at 9:20 AM. Vice President Cheney
was already present. Mineta explained that about 5-6 minutes later he overheard
a conversation between Cheney and a young man who came in to inform the
vice president about an approaching aircraft. In the words of Mineta: "There
was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, 'The plane
is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.' And when it got down to, 'The
plane is 10 miles out,' the young man also said to the vice president,
'Do the orders still stand?' And the vice president turned and whipped
his neck around and said, 'Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard
anything to the contrary?'"[56] As numerous 9/11 investigators have
observed, Mineta's testimony is powerful evidence that a stand-down order
was in effect. Certainly, at the very least, the "orders" were
not that the plane should be shot down, which would have been standard
operating procedure (SOP). The fact that some other unusual order was in
effect raises questions about the role that a pre-planned military exercise
may have played in the 9/11 attack. As we know, at least 10 such drills
were in progress on September 11. My point, however, is that this conversation
between Cheney and the young man, which Mineta says took place at 9:25
- 9:26 AM, is consistent with what I am proposing: that the Pentagon strike
occurred 5-6 minutes before the official crash time of 9:38 AM.
-
- Notice also that the accounts of both Stephenson and
Mineta mention a warning call from the Secret Service. The fact that Vice
President Cheney was being kept apprised of the status of Flight 77 strongly
suggests that the military was also tracking the plane. Yet, all of the
above accounts, which are mutually corroborative, were excluded from the
9/11 Commission Report. Why? Well, obviously, because they contradict the
official narrative.
-
- Frozen in Time
-
- Compelling physical evidence also supports what I am
proposing. Among the oddities from 9/11 are two curious photographs of
Pentagon clocks that stopped working at the time of the attack. One of
these clocks was in the heliport office.[57] The other was inside the
west wing.[58] It appears that the powerful shock wave that occurred at
the moment of impact knocked the clocks off the wall, causing them to break.
Notice the shattered glass in the following photo. One of the clocks stopped
at 9:31:40 AM, the other at 9:32:30 AM. For the purposes of this discussion,
I will round them off to 9:32 AM.
-
-
-
-
-
- This important evidence was preserved by the US Navy
and the Smithsonian Institution, both unimpeachable sources. From what
I understand, until very recently one of the clocks was on display in the
Smithsonian. Both of the photos may be viewed via the internet. One website
mentions that "The airplane actually struck the Pentagon at 9:38 AM;
apparently the clock was six minutes slow." Yet, both clocks stopped
within a minute of the same time. Were they both running 5-6 minutes late?
I think not. Remember, these were military clocks. Anyone familiar with
the US military knows they do not run 5-6 minutes behind schedule. Being
"on time" is an important part of military discipline. Indeed,
it's one of the first lessons that grunts learn in boot camp. Judging from
the photos, it appears that one of the clocks was battery-powered, a common
type. We can't be certain about the other. It might have been battery-powered,
or possibly it was an electric wall clock, and stopped when the power went
off.
-
- I am not, however, the first to challenge the 9/11 timeline
based on this photographic evidence. Barbara Honegger, a military affairs
journalist, discussed the frozen Pentagon clocks in her excellent 2006
article "The Pentagon Attack Papers."[59] Honegger starts with
a germane story about another famous historical event that was similarly
frozen in time: the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. In the aftermath
of "the big one" the San Francisco Chronicle featured a front-page
photo of a charred clock that stopped at precisely 5:12 AM, marking the
fateful moment when the massive quake rocked the city. She writes: "a
century after that devastating event the stopped clock serves as both the
ultimate evidence and the symbol that captures it all."[60] Honegger
makes an astute point: Will the Pentagon clocks one day be viewed in a
similar way? I would argue, yes, though I suspect they will become even
more famous.
-
- In her article Honegger argues on the basis of the frozen
clocks that the Pentagon attack commenced at 9:32 AM. She also cites additional
evidence, including a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) "timeline
document" from September 11 2001, which, according to her, states
that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:32 AM.[61] Although Barbara was unable
to produce this document when I contacted her, I was able to determine
that she is correct. After an extensive search I found the original document
posted at the National Security Archive, a website maintained by staff
at George Washington University.[62] The site specializes in posting official
9/11-related documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The document, titled "Executive Summary: Chronology of a Multiple
Hijacking Crisis, September 11, 2001," records the FAA's original
timeline of the major events of 9/11. The entry for "0932" reads
as follows: "ATC AEA reports aircraft crashes into west side of pentagon."
Here, the double acronym ATC AEA stands for "Air Traffic Control Eastern
Region." Amazingly, the 9/11 Commission Report actually references
this FAA document in two separate footnotes, although, obviously, not for
the purpose of corroborating the official Pentagon crash time of 9:38.[63]
The FAA document, dated September 17 2001, evidently was released one
day before the Pentagon announced its major revision in the official story.
Judging by the scant amount of press attention it received, the FAA timeline
soon disappeared into America's collective memory hole, where it has languished
in obscurity ever since. Nonetheless, though long forgotten, the document
is no less real, and is explosive evidence that flatly contradicts the
official narrative.
-
- Honegger also cites the testimony of a notable eyewitness.
The soon-to-be Danish Foreign Minister, Per Stig Moller, happened to be
in Washington on the day of the September 11 attack. When he heard a loud
noise Moller looked outside, saw smoke rising from the Pentagon, and immediately
checked his watch. The time was 9:32 AM, a time Moller subsequently reported
in press interviews on his return to Denmark.[64] Honegger also mentions
Alberto Gonzales, who on 9/11 was President Bush's legal counsel. On August
27, 2002 Gonzales gave an address at the Naval Postgraduate School in which
he stated unequivocally that "the Pentagon was attacked at 9:32."
Honegger works at the school and has a tape of the address. Although Gonzales'
remark has long since been forgotten, it shows that even within the Bush
administration the official timeline did not take hold for many months.
-
- But Honegger seriously doubts that a commercial airliner
hit the Pentagon. Evidently, she supports the view that conspirators staged
a plane-switch. She thinks bombs were planted in the building, which caused
the initial blast wave, although she doesn't rule out the possibility of
a subsequent strike by missile or a smaller plane. Yet, as Honegger herself
admits, one of the frozen clocks was found in the heliport office, a separate
building located outside the Pentagon. This is significant, because if
explosions occurred within the Pentagon the shocks surely would have been
contained by the west wing's brand-new exterior blast wall; in which case,
the clock in the heliport office would not have been affected. Moreover,
if a separate bomb went off outside the building, near the heliport office,
the explosion could not have been missed. Surely it would have been seen
and reported by numerous passers by. If it happened in this way, where
are these many witnesses? To my knowledge, there are none. Moreover, the
flight recorder data shows that Flight 77 never flew below 20,000 feet,
until its final approach, not even during the time it was lost to radar.
In short, there were no interruptions in its flight path. Finally, the
recovery of Boeing 757 parts from within the Pentagon[65] confirms this
interpretation, and suggests that at least some of the anomalies, such
as the small hole and the seeming absence of wreckage, may have been the
result of a high speed impact against the Pentagon's exterior blast wall.
Bear in mind that the west wing was no ordinary construction. This section
of the Pentagon had just been outfitted with a 2 foot thick outer wall
of steel-reinforced concrete. I would argue that the frozen clocks corroborate
air traffic controller Chris Stephenson's eyewitness account of Flight
77's final approach; and are compelling evidence that Flight 77 hit the
west wing at approximately 9:32 AM, a full 6 minutes before the official
crash time. Assuming this interpretation is correct, how might we explain
a discrepancy of this magnitude, which, in the context of 9/11, is a veritable
lifetime?
-
- Two Different Events?
-
- As we know, the press initially reported that the Pentagon
strike occurred at 9:43 AM. However, 7 days after the attack, on September
18 2001, NORAD announced a revised crash time of 9:38 AM, which the 9/11
Commission later reaffirmed. But if the strike actually occurred at 9:32
AM, why was the crash time in the original report (9:43 AM), so far wrong?
Initially, as I puzzled over this, I attributed the huge 11 minute disparity
to the confusion of events. I also discounted the possibility that the
Pentagon had fudged the timeline. My reasoning was straightforward. Moving
the crash time back by a minute or two, to say nothing of 6 or even 11
whopping minutes, made the generals look more guilty of a stand-down, not
less. This made absolutely no sense. If the Joint Chiefs were bent on covering-up
their gross negligence, even their complicity, surely they would have adjusted
the crash-time forward, not backward. The same logic held for the 9/11
Commission. Although their phantom plane scenario proved embarrassing to
the generals, as I've explained, the commission's main objective was to
absolve the general staff of all responsibility. So, if the crash actually
occurred at 9:32 AM, why would the panel ratify a later time, which made
the generals look more guilty? Again, this made no sense.
-
- This logic went out the window, however, when I learned
about the E-4B. Whence, I began to suspect that the answer is counter-intuitive.
The presence of the world's most advanced command and control platform
over Washington on 9/11 not only brings clarity to the many ambiguous reports
about Flight 77's trajectory, it also suggests a likely motive for a cover-up,
and even points to the means by which this was achieved. According to one
early and widely reported version of events, the hijacked American Airlines
Flight 77 missed the Pentagon on its first pass, then continued east across
the Potomac River. The plane allegedly passed close to the White House,
swung around, re-crossed the river, circled the Pentagon again, and finally
smacked into the west wing. What is astonishing about this popular account,
which attempts to support the official narrative, is that so many people
took it seriously. No doubt, many still do. (See the diagram below.)
-
-
-
-
- There are serious problems, however, with this version
of events: If Flight 77 crossed the Potomac it would also have had to cross
Reagan Airport's busy air traffic corridor, which follows the river. In
which case, air traffic controllers at Reagan surely would have noticed
the intrusion. What is more, on its return the errant plane would have
intruded a second time. Indeed, Flight 77 would have flown directly over
Reagan Airport. It would be hard to imagine a more conspicuous display.
Assuming the controllers at Reagan were dozing on the job and somehow missed
the first pass, it is just not possible that they missed the second. If
it happened in this way, there would also be many additional eyewitnesses.
So, where are these witnesses? As far as I know, they don't exist. Instead,
we have the credible testimony, already presented, of air traffic controller
Stephenson, who saw Flight 77 on radar, then looked out the window of the
Reagan tower and watched the plane complete its final approach without
ever leaving Virginia. Obviously, the early account illustrated by the
above diagram was a hybrid attempt to explain both the Pentagon crash and
the mystery sightings over Washington. But given that Flight 77 never crossed
the Potomac, and also the powerful evidence that the mystery plane was
an E-4B, I think we must conclude that these were two separate events.
-
- The fact that the US military denies to this day that
an E-4B circled over Washington on 9/11 suggests a likely motive for a
cover-up: to conceal the E-4B's presence, hence, the role it played. Although
the military brass could have minimized the appearance of a stand-down
by acknowledging the actual crash time of 9:32 AM, in that case the generals
would have had a lot of explaining to do. For instance, they would have
had to explain what the FAA was tracking at 9:36 AM when Scoggins reported
an unidentified plane 6 miles southeast of the White House, not to mention
the various media reports of a large white plane circling over the White
House and Capitol during the attack. Settling on a 9:38 AM crash time allowed
the generals to exploit the ambiguous reports and the genuine chaos that
prevailed on September 11. This analysis also brings clarity to the strange
9/11 account of Langley fighter pilot Major Dean Eckmann, who, according
to the BBC, received a radio transmission at 9:33 AM while piloting his
F-16 over the Atlantic. In Eckmann's own words: "They said: All aeroplanes,
if you come within 30 miles of Washington DC, you will be shot down."[66]
Who sent this order? Was this the E-4B, warning off all planes, military
as well as commercial, in order to conceal its presence over the Capitol?
Not surprisingly, the BBC news story is nowhere recounted in the 9/11 Commission
Report.
-
- Flight 77: Lost? Or: Crashed?
-
- This analysis would also explain the 9:34 AM report that
Flight 77 had disappeared from radar. The 9/11 Commission Report mentions
this event, probably because it was too prominent to exclude.[67] However,
as I will show, the official narrative distorts its significance, spinning
the story to convey the false impression that Flight 77 was still airborne
at 9:34 AM, when, in fact, it had just crashed. Let us now examine the
verbatim wording of the official narrative:
-
- "At the suggestion of the Boston Center's military
liaison [i.e., Scoggins], NEADS contacted the FAA's Washington Center to
ask about American Flight 11. In the course of the conversation, a Washington
Center manager informed NEADS: 'We're lookingwe also lost
Flight 77.' The time was 9:34. This was the first notice to the military
that Flight 77 was missing, and it had come by chance."[68]
-
-
- Notice, the time of this report, 9:34 AM, is consistent
with the alternative crash scenario I have proposed. Obviously, if Flight
77 struck the pentagon at 9:32 AM it would have been lost to radar. Therefore,
the remark by the staffer at Washington Center at 9:34 AM about a missing
plane is not in the least surprising. In fact, we would expect this. Yet,
here we are led to believe that Flight 77 was still aloft and cruising
at 9:34 AM when the FAA somehow lost the plane. Nor does the 9/11 Commission
Report tell us why it disappeared: one of several reasons why the official
narrative is just not believable. Evidently, the FAA's Washington Center
had been tracking Flight 77 for some time. Yet, we are supposed to believe
that the FAA failed to inform NORAD about the hijacking. Then, for reasons
that are equally mysterious, the FAA somehow lost Flight 77 at 9:34 AM.
The 9/11 Commission Report mentions this event a second time, possibly
for emphasis. The second passage reads as follows: "[NEADS] was notified
at 9:34 AM that American 77 was lost. Then, minutes later, NEADS was told
that an unknown plane was 6 miles southeast of the White House. Only then
did the already scrambled airplanes start moving directly toward Washington,
D.C."[69] Notice, the text mentions the warning call made by Scoggins.
Notice also the clever use of the passive tense, for added effect. The
reader gets the impression that the bungler at the FAA was the active party.
NEADS was merely the unfortunate victim of the FAA's incompetence. I would
argue that the above passages are a cunning example of treasonous deception,
carefully orchestrated for the purpose of leading the reader away from
the actual crash time of 9:32 AM.
-
- As we know, one of the NORAD audio-tapes was the original
source of this 9:34 AM report. The tape was among those made available
to Michael Bronner, who mentions it in his August 2006 Vanity Fair article.
Indeed, Bronner actually includes a portion of the transcript of this conversation
between NEADS ID techs Dooley and Watson and the FAA's Washington Center:
-
- 09:34:01 WASHINGTON CENTER: Now, let me tell you this.
I-I'll-we've been looking. We're-also lost American 77- WATSON: American
77? DOOLEY: American 77's lost- WATSON: Where was it proposed to head,
sir? WASHINGTON CENTER: Okay, he was going to L.A. also- WATSON: From where,
sir? WASHINGTON CENTER: I think he was from Boston also. Now let me tell
you this story here. Indianapolis Center was working this guy- WATSON:
What guy? WASHINGTON CENTER: American 77, at flight level 3-5-0 [35,000
feet]. However, they lost radar with him. They lost contact with him. They
lost everything. And they don't have any idea where he is or what happened.
-
- The transcript provides more details. Notice, the FAA
controller at Washington Center states incorrectly that Flight 77 departed
from Boston, when in fact it departed from Dulles. Also, near the end he
mentions, almost in passing, that Flight 77 was at 35,000 feet when it
disappeared from radar. Seeing this, the average reader will probably conclude
that Flight 77 was still at cruising altitude when Washington Center lost
radar contact at 9:34 AM. But this would be a misreading of the transcript.
Notice, Washington Center mentions that the FAA center in Indianapolis
had been tracking Flight 77 earlier in the morning. The 9/11 Commission
Report states that Indianapolis lost Flight 77 at 8:56 AM when the plane's
transponder was turned off, and at this point reported that Flight 77 had
crashed.[70] As we know, of course, Flight 77 did not crash at 8:56 AM.[71]
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, this earlier loss of radar contact
occurred for technical reasons.[72]
-
-
- But here's my point: When the controller at Washington
Center informed NEADS that Flight 77's altitude was 35,000 feet, he was
not giving the plane's current altitude (at 9:34 AM), which he had no way
of knowing without a transponder. No, he was merely restating the plane's
last known altitude, data that was current some 38 minutes before, at 8:56
AM, when Flight 77's transponder went off. Yet, the above transcript is
ambiguous enough to reinforce the false impression that the plane was still
aloft and cruising at 9:34 AM. Is this why the Pentagon chose to release
this particular tape: because it proved helpful in spinning the story and
reinforcing the cover-up? No doubt, the military brass made the tape available
for a reason, first to the 9/11 Commission, then to Bronner. And why Bronner?
Well, as we know, it's long been standard practice for the US government
and the Pentagon to shape and spin the news by feeding selected tidbits
to anointed journalists. Some well-known reporters have built entire careers,
not to say reputations, on their "privileged" access to "insider"
information from official sources.
-
- Conclusion
-
- Based on all of the above, I believe that the US military
announced the original 9:43 AM Pentagon crash time to conceal the presence
of the E-4B over Washington. A week later, when the military revised the
cover-up, they moved the timeline forward by as much as they dared. The
9:38 AM crash time should therefore be understood as a "best fit"
that succeeded in masking the presence of the E-4B on the one hand, while
minimizing the evidence pointing to a stand-down on the other. The fact
that the evidence was still quite incriminating is a measure of just how
important concealment of the E-4B was, from the standpoint of the Joint
Chiefs. Otherwise, they would never have exposed themselves in this way.
Notice, assuming this analysis is correct, it tends to rule out any possibility
that the E-4B was conducting legitimate business on 9/11 when it circled
over Washington. On this basis we must also conclude that the 9/11 Commission
participated in the cover up. We know that the commission had access to
the NTSB flight path study long before it was released to the public, because
the footnotes of the 9/11 Commission Report cite this important document.
Therefore, the panel surely knew that Flight 77 never crossed the Potomac.
This knowledge alone should have led the panel to investigate the news
reports and eyewitness accounts of the mystery plane over Washington, in
order to resolve the ambiguous sightings. Of course, as we know, the panel
did nothing of the kind. Their ratification of the 9:38 AM crash time allowed
the ambiguous reports to stand, so crucial to the continuing cover up.
Of course, given that a Bush insider, Phil Zelikow, stage-managed the 9/11
investigation and oversaw the preparation of the final report, none of
this is so surprising. Indeed, there are questions about just how much
access the various panel members had to key documents during the investigation.
It's quite possible that none of them ever saw the NTSB flight path study,
thanks to the role played by Zelikow.
-
- In conclusion, it would appear that the official 9/11
narrative is a house of cards, a complete fabrication that a genuine investigation
could expose in short order simply by plying key witnesses with the right
questions. One prime candidate would be the Washington Center controller
who spoke with NEADS ID techs Watson and Dooley at 9:34 AM on September
11. This controller should be able to set the record straight regarding
the context of his/her conversation about the "lost" Flight 77,
which would help to establish the actual time of impact. It would also
be fruitful to interview the various commissioners to learn if they had
a chance to actually examine key documents like the NTSB flight path study.
Of course, without a new 9/11 investigation, we will probably never know
the full story.
-
-
- Mark H. Gaffney's latest book, Gnostic Secrets of the
Naassenes, was a finalist for the 2004 Narcissus Book Award. Mark can be
reached for comment at markhgaffney@earthlink.net Visit Mark's website
at www.gnosticsecrets.com
-
- NOTES
- [1] Mark H. Gaffney, "The 9/11 Mystery Plane,"
posted at
- http://www.rense.com/general76/missing.htm
- [2] Interview with Deputy Fire Chief Peter Hayden, Firehouse
Magazine,
- April 2002.
- [3] Interview with Colin Scoggins, March 11, 2007.
- [4] email from Colin Scoggins, April 11, 2007
- [5] The best account I've seen of this incident is by
Webster Griffin
- Tarpley, 911: Synthetic Terrorism, Progressive Press,
2006, pp.
- 179-283.
- [6] Paul Thompson, The Terror Timeline: Year by Year,
Day by Day,
- Minute by Minute, Reagan Books, 2004.
- [7] Go to
- http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=911_project
- [8] Senate Armed Services Committee, Chairman, U.S.
Senator Carl Levin
- (D-MI), Hearing On the Nomination of General Richard
Myers to be
- Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 13,
2001. Archived at
- http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/mycon.htm
- [9] Press Release, Directorate of Public Affairs, NORAD,
September 18,
- 2001. Archived at http://www.public-action.com/911/noradresponse/
- [10] The 9/11 Commission Report. Final Report of the
National
- Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States,
WW Norton and
- Company, New York, 2004, p. 34
- [11] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 26
- [12] While Col. Alan Scott testified that the Langley
fighters were
- scrambled to intercept Flight 77, NORAD Maj. Gen. Larry
Arnold was less
- clear about this in his remarks, and indicated that the
intent was also
- to intercept Flight 93. Transcript of NATIONAL COMMISSION
ON TERRORIST
- ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES, Public Hearing, Friday,
May 23, 2003.
- For the transcript go to
- http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9
- -11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm
- [13] Transcript: 9/11 Commission Hearings for June 17,
2004, Thursday,
- June 17, 2004; 2:01 PM. Posted at
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49429-2004Jun17.html
- [14] Dan Eggen, "9/11 Panel Suspected Deception
by Pentagon,"
- Washington Post, August 2, 2006.
- [15] This phrase occurs numerous times. The 9/11 Commission
Report.
- Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks upon the
- United States, WW Norton and Company, New York, 2004,
p. 34.
- [16] David Ray Griffin, "9/11 Live or Fabricated:
Do the NORAD Tapes
- Verify The 9/11 Commission Report?", September 4,
2006, posted at
- http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2006091418303369
- [17] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 34.
- [18] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 26.
- [19] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes,"
Vanity Fair,
- August 2006. Posted at
- http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/08/norad200608?
- printable=true?tPage=all
- [20] Subsequently, the transcripts were released and
are currently
- available for download at George Washington University's
National
- Security Archive, along with the National Transportation
and Safety
- Board (NTSB) flight path studies for flights 11, 175
and 77. Go to
- http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB165/index.htm
- [21] "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes."
- [22] Paul Thompson, "Complete 911 Timeline,"
posted at
- http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?
- timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_9/11=aa77 Also
see The 9/11
- Commission Report, p. 26.
- [23] Interview with Colin Scoggins, March 10, 2007.
- [24] email from Colin Scoggins, April 27, 2007.
- [25] 9/11 Commission, Public Hearing, May 23, 2003.
- [26] FAA Communications with NORAD On September 11,
2001, FAA
- clarification memo to 9/11 Independent Commission, posted
at
- http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2004081200421797
- [27] NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE
UNITED STATES,
- Public Hearing, Friday, May 23, 2003. For the transcript
go to
- http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9
- -11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm
- [28] David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report:
Omissions and
- Distortions, Olive Branch Press, Massachusetts, 2005,
pp. 186-188.
- [29] email from Colin Scoggins, May 1, 2007.
- [30] Reynolds Dixon, "The Flying Elephant: Evidence
for Involvement of
- a Third Jet in the WTC Attacks," Journal of 9/11
Studies, Vol 1,
- Scholars for 9/11 Truth, June 2006, posted at
- http://journalof911studies.com/
- [31] Kevin Dennehy, "I thought it was the end of
the world," Cape Cod
- Times, August 21, 2002.
- [32] "Moments of Crisis, Part I: Terror Hits the
Towers," ABC News,
- September 14, 2002.
- [33]The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 459, note 120.
- [34] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 24.
- [35] M. Kelly, North Jersey Media Group, "Atlantic
City F-16 Fighters
- Were Eight Minutes Away from 9/11 Hijacked Planes,"
posted at
- http://www.prisonplanet.com/051203atlanticcityfighters.html
- [36] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 20.
- [37] The Andrews web page has been archived. To see it
as it looked in
- September 2001 go to
- http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/dcmilsep.htm
- [38] The original page has been archived. Here's how
it looked on April
- 19, 2001. http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/dcandr2.htm
- [39] The Andrews page has been archived. Scroll to the
bottom:
- http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/dcmil.htm
- [40] Interview with Casper Weinberger, FOX News, September
11, 2001.
- [41] Richard A. Clark, Against All Enemies, New York,
The Free Press,
- 2004, p.12.
- [42] General Arnold admitted this during his testimony
before the 9/11
- Commission. Transcript, NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST
ATTACKS UPON
- THE UNITED STATES, Public Hearing, Friday, May 23, 2003
posted at
- http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9
- -11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm
- [43] Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel were the first to
report this, in
- November 2001. Go to http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-1.htm
- [44] Here's how the original page looked on April 19,
2001:
- http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/dcandr2.htm
- [45] Steve Brown, 'Air Defenders Learn Lessons from
September 11," FOX
- News, September 8 2002.
- [46] Transcript, NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS
UPON THE
- UNITED STATES, Public Hearing, Friday, May 23, 2003 posted
at
- http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9
- -11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm
- [47] FDCH Transcripts, Senate Armed Services Committee
Holds Hearing on
- Role of Defense Department in HOmeland Security, October
25, 2001.
- [48] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes,"
Vanity Fair,
- August 2006.
- [49] "Primary Target: The Pentagon," CBS NEWS,
September 21, 2001;
- Boston Globe, November 23, 2001; Daily Telegraph, September
16, 2001.
- [50] To view a map of Flight 77's final approach to
the pentagon or to
- download the NTSB's flight path study go to
|
