Military personnel responsible for defending U.S. airspace had false tracks displayed on their radar screens throughout the entire duration of the 9/11 attacks, as part of the simulation for a training exercise being conducted that day. Technicians at NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) were still receiving the simulated radar information around the time the third attack, on the Pentagon, took place. Those at NORAD's operations center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, were still receiving it several minutes after United Airlines Flight 93 apparently crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

No one has investigated why false tracks continued being injected onto NORAD radar screens long after the U.S. military was alerted to the real-world crisis taking place that morning. And yet we surely need to know more about these simulated "inputs" and what effect they had on the military's ability to respond to the 9/11 attacks.

NEADS TECHNICIANS TOLD TO TURN OFF 'SIM SWITCHES'

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) held a major training exercise in October 2000 that included the scenario of a person stealing a large jet plane, which they planned to crash into the United Nations headquarters building--a 39-story high-rise in New York, just a few miles away from the World Trade Center. Furthermore, a NORAD exercise in June that year included one scenario in which a plane was hijacked with the intention of crashing it into the White House, and another in which a transcontinental flight was hijacked with the intention of crashing the plane into the Statue of Liberty, only a short distance from where the WTC stood.

The existence of these exercise scenarios was revealed in August 2004 by General Richard Myers, at that time the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senator Mark Dayton (D-MN) asked, "Did NORAD"-- the military organization responsible for defending U.S. airspace--"conduct exercises or develop scenarios, prior to September 11, 2001, to test a military reaction to an aircraft hijacking which appeared destined to result in a suicide crash into a high-value target?" In response, Myers outlined "five exercise hijack events" that NORAD had practiced for between November 1999 and October 2000, which all "included a suicide crash into a high-value target." [1] Yet the details of these chilling scenarios, which were like premonitions of the attacks on New York and Washington that lay ahead, failed to receive the public attention they deserved.

From: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dr-gridlock/2010/07/norad_plans_washington_exercis.html

The North American Aerospace Defense Command will conduct early morning exercises over the Washington area.

The exercises will take place between midnight and 2 a.m. Tuesday and Wednesday. Civil Air Patrol aircraft and Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin helicopters will take part in the exercise.

These exercise flights have been conducted throughout the U.S. and Canada since the start of Operation Noble Eagle, the command's response to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

-- Associated Press

Recently Added Events
http://www.historycommons.org/project.jsp?project=911_project

Showing 1-20 of 100 recently added events:

* 6/28 - NEADS Instructs AWACS Plane to Return to Washington Area to Help It Communicate with Fighters, (11:25 a.m.) September 11, 2001, posted by matt
* 6/28 - Marine Fighters Arrive over Washington but Lack Correct Authentication Code, (11:25 a.m.) September 11, 2001, posted by matt
* 6/28 - Attorney General Ashcroft’s Plane Diverted to Richmond, Threatened with Being Shot Down, 11:11 a.m. September 11, 2001, posted by matt
* 6/28 - Attorney General Ashcroft Ignores FAA Order for His Plane to Land, 10:40 a.m. September 11, 2001, posted by matt
* 6/28 - Unarmed Fighters Find Target Is Just US Military Aircraft, (10:35 a.m.) September 11, 2001, posted by matt
* 6/27 - FAA Controller Passes on Shootdown Authorization to Toledo Fighters, Because NEADS Cannot Reach Them, (Shortly After 10:32 a.m.) September 11, 2001, posted by matt
* 6/27 - FAA’s Boston Center Declares ‘ATC Zero’, (Shortly After 10:20 a.m.) September 11, 2001, posted by matt

"During those entire 109 minutes ... this country
and its citizens were completely undefended." 

- Senator Mark Dayton

The famous document authorizing shoot down of planes dated 1 June 2001. It's been said this was changed just before 9/11, in June, to give the Sec of Defense authority to order shoot down aircraft. Actually it was updated from 1997 and hardly anything changed from the 1997 order but this is an important document nontheless..........

"1. Purpose. This instruction provides guidance to the Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), National Military Command Center (NMCC), and operational commanders in the event of an aircraft piracy (hijacking) or request for destruction of derelict airborne objects."

"NMCC is the focal point within Department of Defense for providing assistance. In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference d, forward requests for DOD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval."

"(1) When notified that military escort aircraft are needed in

Unacceptable.

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, November 20th, 2009

The government is to review an air defense system established after the September 11, 2001 attacks to determine whether the costly program is still necessary, the New York Times reported Friday.

The review is expected to include a complete reassessment of the threat of a terror attack by air and will consider the cumulative effects of various security measures taken since the 2001 attacks.

"The fighter force is extremely expensive, so you always have to ask yourself the question 'How much is enough?'" Major General Pierre Forgues, the Canadian who currently serves as director of operations for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, commonly known as Norad, told the paper.

The Times notes that US "Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., the head of Norad and Northern Command, ordered the review in response to criticism this year by the Government Accountability Office that the command had failed to conduct 'routine risk assessments.' General Renuart expanded the scope of the review 'to refine how we allocate and request resources today,' said the commands’ spokesman, James Graybeal."

Transcript by Erik Larson- John Farmer, guest of Brad Friedman on Mike Malloy Radio Show, Sept 11, 2009

Brad Friedman- … John Farmer is the Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, he served as the Attorney General of New Jersey, Chief Counsel to Governor Christine Todd Whitman, he’s now the Dean of Rutgers University Law School… and he joins us here tonight… very happily so- he is the author of a new book, ‘The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11’- John Farmer, welcome to the Mike Malloy program.

John Farmer- Thanks Brad, I really appreciate it- thanks for having me.

Attorney William Veal asked if I were interested in supporting April Gallop's lawsuit against Cheney, Rumsfeld and Meyers and if I could make some statements from my perspective and analysis being a pilot and former Air Traffic Controller. I agreed to do so and provided a lengthy [and less than professionally written] affidavit covering the aviation, NORAD, radar and other data research and conclusions which I have accumulated so far.

Its important to note that I believe that the FDR for AA77? has been tampered with and any conclusions based upon that data is subject to such errors, but I made some points based upon the FDR anyway. The same goes for the RADES radar data that I have been able to analyze...I believe that the RADES radar data has been scrubbed or compromised also. However, it is data that has been made available to us and we need to look at it for what it is.

D.C. Crash Kills General Who Scrambled Jets on 9/11

David F. Wherley Jr., the head of the Washington National Guard who scrambled jets over the city during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was among those killed in the worst commuter train crash in the city’s history, officials said.
Wherley’s wife, Ann, was also among the nine people killed when a train plowed into the rear of a stopped train during rush hour on June 22, Quintin Peterson, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department, said in a telephone interview. Both were 62 and lived in southeast Washington.

Wherley was commander of the 113th Fighter Wing at Andrews Air Force base in Maryland during the September 2001 terrorist attacks and sent up aircraft with orders to protect the White House and the Capitol, according to the 9/11 Commission report.

He commanded the District of Columbia National Guard from 2003 to 2008, the unit said in a statement.

The US military conducted a training exercise in the five days before the September 11 attacks that included simulated aircraft hijackings by terrorists, according to a 9/11 Commission document recently found in the US National Archives. In one of the scenarios, implemented on September 9, terrorists hijacked a London to New York flight, planning to blow it up with explosives over New York.

The undated document, entitled "NORAD EXERCISES Hijack Summary," was part of a series of 9/11 Commission records moved to the National Archives at the start of the year. It was found there and posted to the History Commons site at Scribd by History Commons contributor paxvector in the files of the commission's Team 8, which focused on the failed emergency response on the day of the attacks. The summary appears to have been drafted by one of the commission's staffers, possibly Miles Kara, based on documents submitted by NORAD.

I was going back through the NEADS tapes we released in 2007 and discovered something a little strange ...

DRM1 DAT2 Channel 4 ID Op

08:46:15: New York told me to hold on, you heard that, right?

08:46:36: Come on New York. (Dooley again) You know what, you know what, let's
get a tail number off of for American 11. (Roundtree) Call Boston, American 11 tail
number. (Dooley) Tell them we need the tail number of the aircraft, (male voice)
American one one. (Roundtree to New York) Yes it is, (right now he's primary only.)
Do you have Mode 3 or anything? Or a location? (Fm not showing anything, no.) Lat
Ion? (Hold on, I'll get a lat lon.) Good.

NORTH TOWER IS STRUCK AT 8:46:48.

08:47:05: (Dooley?) We're going to get an updated lat Ion now. (to background
question) We called Boston his filed one [Mode 3] was 1443, but he's not working that,
he's primary only, we're getting an updated lat Ion position. (I'm showing 40 39 North.)
40 39 North. (74 03 West) 74 03 West.

08:47:35: End of HUNTRESS call to NY AMIS

---

If you input that Lat/Long into Google Maps ...

Langley Air Force Base was the second military base that launched fighter jets to defend America in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Three of its F-16s were ordered to take off toward Washington at 9:24 a.m. that morning, but by the time they were airborne, more than 40 minutes had passed since the first attack on the World Trade Center, and almost half an hour since the second.

Furthermore, the pilots were hindered by an extraordinary combination of confusion, communications problems, conflicting orders, breaches of protocol, and other difficulties. Consequently, when the Pentagon was hit at 9:37 a.m., the jets were further away from it than they'd been when they took off. According to witnesses on the ground, fighters did not arrive over the Pentagon until around 10:40 a.m.--more than an hour too late to protect it from the attack.

A close examination of publicly available accounts raises the possibility that deliberate attempts were made to sabotage the ability of the Langley jets to respond to the 9/11 attacks, thereby paralyzing normal, well-practiced procedures. In this article, I focus on three particular aspects of the jets' response.

Jon Gold
5/7/2009

Today, Rawstory reported on New York Times columnist Frank Rich, and his belief that the Defense Department Inspector General's office's investigations over the years may have been cover-ups that were "carried out in response to "orders from above." He said that any report "over the past five or six years during the war in Iraq" may be suspect, and that "there may be a much bigger story here."

Really?