WERE THE ACCUSED HIJACKERS PHYSICALLY CAPABLE OF PILOTING THE PLANES?
The best opinions on whether or not the official story of hijackers piloting the airliners in to buildings might come from experienced commercial airline pilots. There are few available opinions on this matter, as is understandable. The hegemony of the 9/11 myth has been very great among the population in general, and airline pilots as a group have special problems. Most of them are retired military officers, and they often move in circles where people with military backgrounds are common. If they are employed, they have to worry about their jobs. If they are retired, they may see no reason to get involved in a controversy that promises no gain, but only needless trouble for them personally. Nevertheless, there is enough evidence to substantiate the doubt that the four inept persons named in the official version would have been able to operate the aircraft in the way the observed phenomena indicate.
Flying a large modern commercial airliner is not especially demanding as long as the plane is taking advantage of its built-in guidance systems and computerized automatic pilot, which depend in turn on radio beacons, navigation aids, Global Positioning Satellites, and the like. As long as the plane sticks to its pre-arranged flight path, the pilot acts more like a superintendent than a driver. But the enterprise attributed to the hijackers changes all this. The hijackers are supposed to have abruptly wrenched the airliners out of the influence of all navigation aids, beacons, and positioning systems, and flown them by the seat of their pants to hit three demanding targets under conditions of conflict and stress inside the planes, and with the constant fear that fighter aircraft would soon pull up alongside, demanding to be followed. The issue is the transition from instrument flight techniques to visual flight rules and techniques in a context where all the usual instrument aids would have been in operative. Apart from the operation of the controls, there is also the question of how the hijackers could have navigated. On a fine clear day like September 11, 2001, it might be possible to follow certain natural features from one point to another, using landmarks for additional guidance. For the planes coming from Boston, one obvious expedient would have been to fly west, find the Hudson River, and then turn left towards New York City. But this is not what is shown on the maps offered by newspapers at the time. Instead of orienting towards natural features and landmarks, the planes fly strange detours, ignoring rivers and related navigation reference points. Real hijackers would have been concerned with reaching their targets as fast as possible, before they were overtaken by air defenses. But the 9/11 aircraft think nothing of deviating 50 miles in the wrong direction. All of this makes the official story implausible.
The 9/11 commission provided its own maps of the flight routes flown by the hijacked planes. Here there are pervasive anomalies that should have attracted the commission's curiosity, but did not. The hijackers did not choose the most direct routes to their targets, but flew long and dangerous detours. Real hijackers would have known that the greatest danger to their project was interception of their hijacked planes by us military aircraft. They could not have tolerated even the most minimal deviations from the direct path towards their goal. Another obvious course for American 11 would have been southwest across Rhode Island and Connecticut to the shore of Long Island Sound and thence down the East River to hit the North Tower. This would also have simplified navigation because of the constant orientation provided by the Connecticut coast, the Sound, and the north shore of Long Island. Instead, when it left its prescribed course, American 11 turned northwest, and came close to clipping the southwest corner of Vermont. It went well north of Albany before carrying out a 270 degree turn to then head approximately south, more or less following the Hudson River to New York City.
For United 175, the same course over Rhode Island, Connecticut, along Long Island Sound, and down the East River would have been the most direct and the most practical for amateur pilots of light planes. But according to the 9/11 commission's own map, this plane supposedly flew across southern New York state, across northern New Jersey, and entered Pennsylvania before finally turning back onto a northeasterly course towards the WTC south tower.
The case of American 77 is even more difficult to discuss, because of the numerous anomalies it offers. But, according to the 9/11 commission's own map, this plane is alleged to have flown all the way out to the meeting point of southern Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia before allegedly turning back towards Washington DC. The 9/11 commission map suppresses a five-minute jug- handle detour by this flight over the West Virginia panhandle along the way, which had attracted much curiosity and suspicion when it appeared in USA Today and other papers.
Finally, United 93, which took off last, went all the way across Pennsylvania, entered northern Ohio, and was west of Cleveland when it finally turned back towards the east.
Real hijackers could never have indulged in these interminable detours. For the success of their crimes, time was of the essence, and they would have had to choose far more direct routes in the case of each and everyone of the 9/11 aircraft. This pattern raises the level of suspicion about the coherence of the official version, and suggests that reality was not what the 9/11 commission and its predecessors claimed it was.
MUBARAK'S CRITIQUE
In a CNN interview on September 15, 2001, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak commented about the 9/1l events. His testimony is of interest because he spent his military career as a fighter pilot in the Egyptian Air Force. Mubarak was also one of the world leaders who had tried to warn the US government about what was coming in the summer of 2001. Mubarak said first of all that he found the US government's official version, which was then taking shape, technically implausible. Mubarak: "Not any intelligence in the world could have the capability in the world to say they are going to use commercial planes with passengers on board to crash the towers, to crash the Pentagon, those who did that should have flown in the area for a long time, for example. The Pentagon is not very high, a pilot could come straight to the Pentagon like this to hit, he should have flown a lot in this area to know the obstacles which could meet him when he is flying very low with a big commercial plane to hit the Pentagon in a special place. Somebody has studied this very well, someone has flown in this area very much." Sensing a challenge to the orthodoxy of the official version, the CNN reporter countered: "Are you suggesting it was an inside operation? I may ask, who do you think was behind this?" Mubarak: "Frankly speaking, I don't want to jump to conclusions...something like this done in the United States is not an easy thing for pilots who had been training in Florida, so many pilots go and train just to fly and have a license, that means you are capable to do such terrorist action? I am speaking as a former pilot, I know that very well, I flew very heavy planes, I flew fighters, I know that very well, this is not an easy thing, so I think we should not jump to conclusions for now." (Meyssan 2002 26) One senses that Mubarak is restraining his skepticism for diplomatic reasons; he does not believe the official story, and he has good reasons for not doing so. ( http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/557/intrvw.htm )
NIKKI LAUDA: ACTUAL FLIGHT EXPERIENCE ON BOEINGS WAS REQUIRED
On the day after 9/11, two experienced German airline pilots, both veterans of many hours at the controls of Boeing 757s and 767s, agreed in the course of a September 12 prime time television broadcast that neither a real professional flight simulator and even less flight simulation software on a PC could ever suffice to impart the skills demonstrated by the supposed 9/11 suicide pilots. They were asked by host Guenter Jauch whether the hijackers could have flown the planes.
Captain Joerg Kujak's evaluation: "No. It's not that simple," whatever many laymen might think. "That wouldn't work. An amateur is not capable of steering a large commercial airliner anywhere with accuracy, neither with the automatic pilot, nor, with his hands on the controls. He would need training for that, and that does not necessarily have to last three years, the way normal pilot training in a flight school goes, but it has to go on for a certain amount of time. He needs basic training in the specific type of plane or on a jet in general, and through that he has to learn how to fly manually. With a PC you don't get the same feeling, for example for the trim tabs, for the steering yoke, for the change of situations. If you put your foot on the gas, then a jet rears up, because it has its engines under the wings, and that would be too much for an amateur, that can't be done without training."
Nikki Lauda, a legendary Formula One race driver, was a pilot and the founder of his own airline. He was asked by Jauch: "Is it easy to learn, we've seen that a video was found in a car near the Boston airport, and people think that the car belonged to a kidnapper, who had used it to bone up in advance on what the inside of a cockpit looks like. Is it so simple, for example, to learn that with the help of a computer simulator?"
Laud a judged that "these gentlemen were properly trained to fly a plane like that." In particular, he stressed that "you have to know exactly what the turning radius of a plane like that is, if I am trying to hit the World Trade Center. That means, these had to be fully trained 767 or 757 pilots, because otherwise they would have missed. It certainly could not be the case that some half-trained pilot tries it somehow, because then he will not hit it. That's not so easy, coming out of a curve ... If he's coming out of a curve, then he has to know precisely the turning radius that derives from the speed of the plane in order to be able to calculate it, so that he will hit right there."
Jauch asked which was harder to hit, the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. Lauda: "Well, what impressed me is the organization of this whole operation, since without good weather it would have not been possible at all, because then you can't see anything. These were visual flights, using VFR [visual flight rules] as we call them. And so the World Trade Center is relatively easy to find, because it is stands out so tall ... The Pentagon is another matter again, because it is a building that is relatively flat. That means, they had to be trained well enough that they had flown around in the air in the New York area, I would speculate, so they could see the scene from above of where the building is located and how you could best reach it." To hit a flat building like the Pentagon is "an even more difficult case" than the World Trade Center. Lauda: "That means, to fly downwards out of a curve, and still hit the building, in its core, I would have to be the best trained of all. I would speculate that a normal airline pilot would have a hard time with that, because you are simply not prepared for things like that. That means, they must have had some super-training to have been able to handle an airliner so precisely."
Could this have been done with the best, most expensive professional flight simulator, asked Jauch. For Lauda, the flight simulator was only a prerequisite. "I don't think a simulator by itself would be enough to know all the New York landscapes, and to know exactly what angle to use to fly in there. I believe that these people had actually flown these airliners; they could have been pilots from some airline or the other, just to get this feeling for the plane -- in real flight, not on a simulator -- so they could then carry out this act of terror." (Wisnewski 38-40) Of course, not even the FBI has ever ascribed such thorough training to the accused suicide pilots; practice on a 757 or 767 was not available at Huffman Aviation.
THE GRANDPRE SEMINAR
In the days after 9/11, a private group of US military and civilian pilots held a seminar to evaluate this crucial feature of the official story -could the hijackers have flown the planes with the requisite accuracy? After 72 hours of deliberation and discussion, they issued a press release summarizing their findings: "The so-called terrorist attack was in fact a superbly executed military operation carried out against the USA, requiring the utmost professional military skill in command, communications and control. It was flawless in timing, in the choice of selected aircraft to be used as guided missiles and in the coordinated delivery of those missiles to their pre-selected targets." The seminar report expressed grave doubt as to whether the alleged hijackers, supposedly trained on Cessna light aircraft, could have located a target dead-on 200 miles or more from their takeoff point. The participants also called into question the ability of the hijackers to operate within the intricacies of the instrument flight rules (IFR) during the interval between their takeover of the planes and the moment of impact. One of the organizers of the seminar, retired Colonel Donn Grandpre, said that it would be impossible for novices to have taken control of the four aircraft and orchestrated such a complicated operation, which obviously had as a prerequisite military precision of the highest order. The seminar concluded that it was likely that the hijackers were not the ones in control of the aircraft. One participant in the seminar was a US Air Force officer who flew over 100 sorties during the Vietnam war. This experienced combat pilot concluded that "Those birds either had a crack fighter pilot in the left seat, or they were being maneuvered by remote control."
Another spokesman for the group was identified as Captain Kent Hill (USAF retired), who was reportedly a friend of Chic Burlingame, the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon. Hill recalled that the US had already carried out multiple flights of an unmanned aircraft, similar in size to a Boeing 737, between Edwards Air Force base in California across the Pacific to South Australia. Hill said this plane had flown on a pre- programmed flight path under the supervision of a pilot in an outside station.
Other expert witnesses at the inquiry were of the opinion that airliners could be controlled by electro-magnetic pulse or radio frequency instrumentation from command and control platforms based either in the air or at ground level. Captain Hill maintained that the four airliners must have been choreographed by an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS). This system can engage several aircraft simultaneously by knocking out their on-board flight controls.
According to press accounts, the pilot seminar also pointed to the inherent problems of the official account. In this, they drew on their own experience and the likely reactions of pilots like themselves. "All members of the inquiry team agreed that even if guns were held to their heads, none of them would fly a plane into a building. Their reaction would be to ditch the plane into a river or a field, thereby safeguarding the lives of those on the ground. A further question raised by the inquiry was why none of the pilots concerned had alerted ground control. It stated that all pilots are trained to punch a four-digit code into the flight control's transponder to warn ground control crews of a hijacking -- but this did not happen." The veteran pilots were also surprised by what had not happened. They noted that the pilots and crews of the hijacked aircraft had not taken any evasive action to resist the supposed hijackers. They had not attempted any sudden changes in flight path or nose-dive procedures -- which led them to believe that they had no control over their aircraft.
A reporter from the Portugal News, the largest English language publication in that country, sought an independent evaluation of these findings from Captain Colin McHattie of Algarve, Portugal. McHattie, a pilot with 20 years' experience, was then currently working for Cathay Pacific. He agreed with the independent commission's findings. He added that, while it is possible to fly a plane from the ground, the installation of the necessary equipment is a time-consuming process, and needs extensive planning. The pilots' seminar sent a copy of their findings to the White House, but there was no response. (Portugal News, August 3, 2002)
HYPOTHESIS: GLOBAL HAWK
The insuperable problems posed by the notion that the four misfits and patsies of the official version actually flew the planes can, however, be satisfactorily explained with the help of a hypothesis involving the application of a technology which is known to exist. This is Global Hawk, a guidance system developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the Pentagon. Global Hawk is a robot plane, the modern form of remote control, which has been a familiar concept for decades -- at the very least since the 1950s, when Nike missiles and Skysweeper radar-controlled antiaircraft guns used remote control drones for testing. Global Hawk is a somewhat more advanced and sophisticated version of the guidance system of the Predator drone, which has been used to attack supposed targets (and a wedding party) in Afghanistan. Predators were available during the later years of the Clinton administration.
Global Hawk became widely know as a result of its first transpacific flight, which took place in April 2001. The new weapons system was touted by the media in glowing terms:
The Global Hawk, a jet-powered aircraft with a wingspan equivalent to a Boeing 737, flew from Edwards Air Force Base in California and landed late on Monday at the Royal Australian Air Force base at Edinburgh, in South Australia. The 8600 mile (13840 km) flight, at an altitude of almost 12.5 miles (20 km), took 22 hours and set a world record for the furthest a robotic aircraft has flown between two points. The Global Hawk flies along a pre-programmed flight path, but a pilot monitors the aircraft during its flight via a sensor suite which provides infra-red and visual images.
According to Rod Smith, who managed the Australian end of the Global Hawk project, "The aircraft essentially flies itself, right from take-off, right through to landing, and even taxiing off the runway." The robot plane version of Global Hawk reportedly could fly non-stop for 36 hours. "Emerging systems such as the Global Hawk offer Australia great potential for surveillance, reconnaissance and ultimately the delivery of combat power," crowed Brendan Nelson, parliamentary secretary to the Australian defence minister. (ITN Entertainment April 24, 2001)
The existence of this technology in a fully operational form raises the possibility that it might have been installed in commercial airliners, and further that it may have been such airliners under the control of a Global Hawk equivalent which crashed into the WTC and the Pentagon. This entire matter is covered with secrecy, but it is clear that it is technically quite feasible that commercial jets were equipped with remote control systems capable of piloting them to landings (or to crashes) under the pretext of an anti-terrorism measure. The rationale would have been that, if terrorist had taken over the plane, authorities on the ground would have been able to frustrate the terrorists by seizing control of the hijacked airliners and flying them to safety. However, for such a system to be effective, it would have to include the ability of ground controllers to deny the personnel occupying the cockpit -the terrorists and the pilots under their control-any ability to steer the plane. To be effective, Global Hawk would presuppose that activating it would simultaneously deactivate the cockpit controls, making them useless. Otherwise, the hijackers might find ways to override the commands to the servomechanisms, flight surfaces and avionics being issued through Global Hawk from the ground. Total control of the plane, in other words, would have to be on the ground.
The advantages of such a system against classical hijack scenarios are clear. If the hijackers tell the pilot, "Fly to Cuba," and threaten to kill him if he does not do so, the plane can be landed in Miami no matter what the hijackers do or do not do, all thanks to Global Hawk. But what happens if the Global Hawk ground control center falls into the hands of a group of moles bent on insurrection and subversion, and determined to use aircraft as missiles in support of their attempt to re-order world affairs along the lines of the clash of civilizations doctrine? Here we can see that Global Hawk has an enormous potential for abuse. There is every reason to believe that the events of 9/1l were rendered possible, not by superhuman piloting skills on the part of the patsies, but by competent professionals using Global Hawk and operating out of a ground control center or an airborne command center such as AWACS.
There would be nothing new about any of this. Modern aircraft are equipped with a "Flight Control System" or FCS, which is integrated with sophisticated avionics capable of automatically landing the aircraft in zero visibility conditions. Even the takeoff and landing of large jets in largely automated, and the role of the pilots is more and more that of standing by for the unlikely eventuality that the guidance systems fail. To produce events of the type seen on 9/11, it would only be necessary for the computer access codes of an aircraft equipped with Global Hawk to fall into the hands of moles and professional experts with treasonous designs.
As aeronautical engineer Joe Vialls has pointed out, the main prerequisite for the use of Global Hawk in the manner suggested would be the installation of a back door on a plane's computer system so as to allow an interface with the Global Hawk command post located elsewhere. Vialls says that DARPA has indeed provided these back doors on certain aircraft. These aircraft came to be equipped with "a primary control channel for use in taking over the flight control system and flying the aircraft back to an airfield of choice, and secondly a covert audio channel for monitoring flight deck conversations.
Once the primary channel were activated, all aircraft functions came under direct ground control, permanently removing the hijackers and pilots from the control loop." Vialls is a former member of the Society of Licenced Aeronautical Engineers and Technologists, London.
The Global Hawk hypothesis also helps explain one of the singularities of 9/11, which is that none of the transponders in the hijacked planes ever broadcast the coded message telling ground controllers that the planes had been hijacked. The transponder is a combined radio transmitter and radio receiver which sends out signals announcing each flight's airline name and flight number, and thus indicating the plane's position. This is a supplement to radar, and becomes more important than radar for flight controllers in busy aviation corridors. Vialls' hypothesis is that Global Hawk operated by taking over the transponder channel and monopolizing it for the purpose of controlling the plane. So no airliners signaled that they had been hijacked, because the transponder channel which could have sent this code had been usurped for purposes of remote control. Vialls regards the lack of such coded hijack warning signals as "the first hard proof that the target aircraft had been hijacked electronically from the ground, rather than by motley crews of Arabs toting penknives."
According to Vialls, the remote control "listening device on the flight deck utilizes the cockpit microphones that normally feed the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), one of two black boxes armored to withstand heavy impact and thereby later give investigators significant clues to why the aircraft crashed." But once the remote control protocol has been activated, the "CVRs are bypassed and voice transmissions are no longer recorded on the 30-minute endless loop recording tape." In this case, after 30 minutes the CVR, which is designed to record the last minutes before a crash, will end up totally blank. This would explain the fact that the CVRs from the Pentagon and Pittsburgh aircraft were both claimed by the FBI to have been blank. For Vialls, this would be an additional indication that remote control had been employed.
It is not known if other US commercial aircraft have been equipped with back doors and interfaces permitting remote control by means of a technology cognate with Global Hawk. Vialls tells the story of a European carrier, possibly Lufthansa, which removed the flight control computers which had come with its Boeings as original equipment, and replaced them with computers impervious to Global Hawk, but this has yet to be confirmed. He also speculates that up to 600 US aircraft may still be vulnerable to Global Hawk. ( http://www.Qratyeka.org/wtc/wot/home-run.htm )
After 9/11, a special aviation radio was found in a safe in the Millennium Hilton Hotel near the World Trade Center. The radio was a transceiver of the type used by pilots to communicate air- to-air and air-to-ground. The FBI detained Abdallah Higazy, the son of an Egyptian diplomat, who was staying in the room in which the safe with the transceiver was located. Higazy was released on January 17, 2002 when it was established that the transceiver belonged to another hotel guest who was a private pilot. Since this pilot was neither Egyptian nor Arab, he was automatically exempted from suspicion -another example of the racist incompetence of the FBI. This transceiver might have been a radio beacon or a positioning or homing device of some kind.
During the 1999 bombing of Serbia, the government there had accused NATO agents of placing radio beacons at key points in Belgrade to aid in the bombing campaign. (Associated Press, January 17, 2002)
THE SCENARIO FOR 9/11 ON FOX ENTERTAINMENT
As so frequently happens in the world of US intelligence, the concept for this operation was popularized before the fact in a scenario film. This drama was entitled "The Lone Gunmen," and was broadcast by the Fox Entertainment Network on March 4, 2001. The writers were John Shiban, Vince Gilligan, and Frank Spotnitz, the director Rob Bowman. The filming was done in New York City and Vancouver , Canada between March 20 and April 7, 2000. Among the stars were Tom Braidwood, Dean Haglund, Bruce Harwood, and Zuleikha Robinson. This was the pilot for a series of thirteen episodes, after which Fox cancelled the series.
In this film, the good guys board Atlantic National Flight 265 for its 6:50 PM takeoff from gate 34 at Boston's Logan Airport -- just like Atta and Shehhi in the official story. The good guys are fighting a governmental power named Overlord which they believe is going to try to destroy Atlantic National 265. The good guys think they are dealing with a bomb, so they bring along some mini hydrocarbon sniffers to locate the explosives. But Overlord is not using bombs this time: the airplane is seized by a mysterious remote control system against which the pilot is helpless; the controls do not respond. The plane seems headed towards New York City, and soon the twin towers of the World Trade Center loom ahead. Realizing what is happening, the good guys use their laptop to attempt to hack into the Overlord computer. At first it seems like it will take seven to ten days to defeat Overlord's defenses, but the good guys access the remote control system just in time with the help of the new Octium IV computer chip. They take back control of the airplane, which misses the World Trade Center towers by a hair. ( http:/www.tvtome.com/servlets/EpisodeGuideSummary/showid-38/ .)
DOPPELGANGER, PHANTOMS, AND APPARITIONS
In 1995, Ziad Jarrah rented an apartment in Brooklyn, and reportedly worked as a photographer. The signed and dated lease is convincing proof of the presence of this Ziad Jarrah in New York. But there was another Ziad Jarrah, who was 20 years old and living with his family in Beirut, Lebanon. This Jarrah left home in 1996, when he went to study in Germany, where he found an ethnic Turkish fiancee to whom he was engaged to be married; their engagement was cut short by 9/11. One Ziad Jarrah was questioned on January 30, 2001 at Dubai Airport at the request of the CIA on suspicion of involvement in terror activities. The other Ziad Jarrah, a student at Kruithofs Florida Flight Training Center in Venice, was visiting his family and sick father in Beirut. Jarrah was among the more convivial of the accused terrorists, and would go for beer~; with KruithoL It would appear that the fake (Brooklyn) Jarrah obtained a pilot's license in Hamburg before the real (Beirut) Jarrah got his in Florida. Jarrah clearly had a double -- or Doppelganger, from the German -- who resembled him to some extent. The presence of doubles is an infallible signal for the presence of an intelligence agency. ( http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/essa ... ssayjarrah )
During the month of August 2001, the San Diego trio of Al-Hamzi, Al Midhar and Hanjour went traveling. One or two of them were at various times reported as sighted in Falls Church, Virginia getting illegal drivers licenses. They were in Las Vegas, and then in Baltimore, followed by ten days in New Jersey. Sightings were then reported in southern Maryland. However, their neighbors at the Parkwood Apartments in San Diego said that Al Hazmi, Al Midhar, and Hanjour had all stayed put in San Diego until about September 1, or perhaps as late as September 8. The use of doubles is standard intelligence practice in synthetic terrorism. If there is something the terrorist controllers need a patsy to do, but which the patsy is unwilling or incapable of accomplishing, then a double will step in to see that the necessary action is indeed carried out. At times in 1963 there were two or perhaps even three Lee Harvey Oswalds.
"KSM"
In the spring of 2002, it was announced that a certain Khalid Sheikh Mohamed had been the "mastermind" of 9-11. When this same KSM was allegedly captured by the US, this event was hailed by Porter Goss as an event equal in world-historical importance to the liberation of Paris from the Nazis in 1944. From the very beginning, the overblown KSM story has been a magnet for world skepticism. When the US media showed a video tape of what was supposed to be the capture of KSM, Geraldo Rivera reported that "foreign journalists looking at it laughed and said this is baloney." (Fox News, Hannity and Colmes, March 10,2002) Gerhard Wisnewski has shown that the account of KSM presented by Nick Fielding and Yosri Fouda in their study Masterminds of Terror -- billed as the last word on KSM -- lacks all probative elements. (Wisnewski 203 ff) The US government has never produced KSM for a trial, so everything that is alleged about him is pure hearsay, and thus to be discounted. One of the glaring incongruities of the 9/11 commission report is the degree to which unsubstantiated allegations about al Qaeda operations are regarded as proven simply because they allegedly came from KSM, who ranks as one of the star witnesses of the final report.
THE LIVING DEAD
There is also the possibility that Nawaf AI Hazmi and Salem Al Hazmi are still alive. According to press accounts, accused hijackers Salem Al Hazmi was reported alive and well and working at a petrochemical plant in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia after 9/11. (Guardian, September 21, 2001) Of the others on the FBI's list, a Waleed al-Shehri turned out to be alive in Casablanca, Morocco, working as a pilot with Saudi Arabian Airlines. An Abdulaziz al-Omari was also reported alive, and complaining that he had lost his passport in Denver. A Saeed al-Ghamdi was also alive and working as a pilot in Saudi Arabia. Khalid al-Midhar was also reported alive. (Marr 17-18) Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal noted that "it was proved that five of the names included in the FBI list had nothing to do with what happened" after his meeting with Bush on September 20, 2001. The FBI, contemptuous as always of both the truth and world public opinion, has stubbornly refused to revise the list of accused hijackers.
BEHIND THE AIR DEFENSE DEBACLE: 9/11 MANEUVERS
On 9/11, US air defense collapsed. Before and after 9/11, US air defense functioned more or less normally. What happened on 9/11 to create this paralysis, and why was that date such an anomaly in comparison to the previous and subsequent operation of the Federal Aeronautics Administration/North American Aerospace Defense Command tandem? The heart of the coverup of these events performed by the 9/11 commission can be found in the section sub-headed "Clarifying the Record," on page 31. The 9/11 commission here concedes that "the defense of US airspace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with pre- existing training and protocols." (31) Why then were the well-established procedures suddenly abandoned, for that one day? On this crucial point the 9/11 commission's sense certainty empirical account is silent.
What the 9/11 commission should have done, but did not do, was to prepare an honest timeline and then compare that timeline to the notification times as they would have been had the standard procedures been followed, rather that mysteriously thrown out the window. They would have found that American 11 (North Tower) at 8:20 AM stopped transmitting its IFF beacon and veered sharply off course. It was thus at 8:20 that F AA should have notified NORAD, and NORAD should have scrambled interceptors. Instead, the F AA waited until 8:38, and NORAD pilots at Otis AFB on Cape Cod were not informed of the emergency until 8:40, were not ordered to take off until 8:46, and did not actually get into the air until 8:52. By this time American 11 had already hit the World Trade Center, at 8:46. The pilots flew slowly and did not arrive over New York in time to protect the WTC South Tower, which was hit at 9:03. At this time the Otis jets were still 71 miles away.
Similarly, the hijacking of United 175 was evident at 8:42, when the aircraft went off course and its transponder was turned off This time NORAD was told within a minute, by 8:43, but was unable to scramble any additional planes from bases in New Jersey, despite the fact that multiple hijackings were now evident.
The 9/11 commission also found that on that day US air defense "was improvised by civilians who had never handled a hijacked aircraft that attempted to disappear, and by a military unprepared for the transformation of commercial aircraft into weapons of mass destruction. " (31) This is dishonest in the extreme. The long-established defenses against traditional, classical, or normal hijacking would also have been effective against the suicide hijacking that the 9/11 commission claimed was involved this time. One suspects that Philip Zelikow, the controversial Executive Director of the 9/11 commission, is attempting to provide cover for his former business partner Condoleezza Rice, who had made that absurd remark on precisely this subject ("I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." [May 16, 2002]) As Miss Rice knew or should have known, these scenarios had been prominent since the mid-1990s, since the Atlanta Olympics, since the threatened attack on the Eiffel Tower in Paris, since the 2001 Genoa summit, and were routinely one of the main themes of military exercises on various levels.
Why was it necessary to improvise US air defense? Before and after 9/11, the air defense system was noted primarily for its stability and regularity in responding to any emergency. An emergency was defined objectively as a plane that went off course, a plane that did not respond to radio communication, a plane whose transponder went off: or a plane that refused to obey the instructions of an air traffic controller. If anyone of these conditions were fulfilled, an emergency had to be declared, and fighters had to be scrambled for intercept. Intercept did not mean shooting down any aircraft; intercept simply meant that fighters would join the aircraft in trouble, carry out visual observation, and signal the pilot to follow them to a landing place. Only if these attempts failed, would shooting down an aircraft become an option. And shooting down would have to be approved by the President. The great virtue of its system was its automatic functioning, which was recognized by all concerned. The criteria were all objective. If there were any doubt that an incident had to be treated as an emergency, it was automatically upgraded to an emergency. Nothing fell between the chairs as long as the guidelines were observed. Before and after 9/11, the FAA/NORAD link worked like a well-oiled machine. Sixty-seven cases of successful intercept were carried out by the FAA-NORAD combination between January 1 and September 10, 2001.
STANDARD PROCEDURES: PAYNE STEWART, 1999
On October 26, 1999, a Lear jet carrying the famous golfer Payne Stewart veered off course and traveled for 1500 miles cross the United States before crashing into a field near Mina, South Dakota. Stewart had intended to fly to Love Field in Dallas for a business meeting. Stewart took off from Orlando, Florida at 9: 19 in the morning. His plane apparently lost oxygen pressure, leading to the deaths of the passengers. The plane proceeded on automatic pilot. The air traffic controllers stopped getting responses to their radio contacts with Stewart's plane. Following established procedures, FAA air traffic controllers called NORAD to inform them that something had gone wrong with a plane in the air. As soon as it was clear that Stewart's plane was in distress, the US Air Force scrambled two F-15s from Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, which intercepted the plane and followed it to Missouri. According to published accounts, fighter jets intercepted Stewart's jet in either 15 or 21 minutes after his plane first lost contact. An F-16 fighter aircraft came up behind it and did a visual inspection. The pilot said the windows of Stewart's plane were frosted over.
Two F-15s from Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida had been also sent to track the Lear jet, but they turned away when the Eglin planes got there first. After the Lear jet reached the Midwest, the two Eglin F-16s returned to base and four F-16s and a midair refueling tanker from the Tulsa National Guard followed it. Finally, four F-16s from Fargo, North Dakota moved in; they also helped to clear air space. According to the Air Force, additional F-16s were also scrambled from the Oklahoma Air National Guard unit in Tulsa, but were not used because the Fargo planes arrived first. Two additional F-16s on "strip alert" at Fargo, South Dakota, were armed, but never took off. This is a fair sample of the capabilities NORAD could normally deploy if it wanted to.
The Pentagon said it never came close to shooting down Stewart's plane in order to prevent a crash into a heavily populated area. Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said, "Once it was determined it was apparently going to crash in a lightly populated area, we didn't have to deal with other options, so we didn't." The FAA routed air traffic around the Lear jet and prevented other planes from flying underneath it, in case it should suddenly lose altitude. (CNN, ABC, October 26, 1999) Andrews Air Force Base is 12 miles from the White House, and on 9/11 was the home of a fighter squadron of F-16s as well as a fighter squadron of FA-18s.
A change in the standard operating procedures was introduced on June 1, 2001; this inserted the Secretary of Defense into the bureaucratic chain. This marked a radical departure from procedures which had been in relatively successful operation for some 35 years. Now, the approval of the Secretary of Defense was required for the scrambling of aircraft. The authority to order the shooting down of an aircraft remained with the president. There may have been something more afoot here than simply adding another layer of bureaucracy. The authors of this change may have been seeking to introduce that element of disorder and uncertainty which might be necessary in order to allow the success of the upcoming operation. Who was responsible for this needless change? The 9/11 commission, as usual, is silent.
THE 9/11 COMMISSION'S FUDGED TIMELlNES
The 9/11 commission was also guilty of doctoring the time lines of the key events of the day. These timelines had been established and empirically validated by a number of researchers, including Mike Ruppert, Paul Thompson, and others. The timelines had been assembled by an exhaustive collation of media reports, and, apart from a detailed analysis which need not detain us here, they provided conclusive demonstration that NORAD had had ample time to scramble fighter jets to intercept America 77 (Pentagon) and United 93 (Shanksville). If the system had performed according to its own strict protocols, there would also have been a fighting chance to intercept American II (North Tower) and United 175 (South Tower). But the 9/11 commission, in a sweeping and breathtaking revision of everything that was known about the chronology of the day, writes: "As it turned out, the NEADS air defenders had nine minutes' notice on the first hijacked plane, no advance notice on the second, no advance notice on the third, and no advance notice on the fourth." (31) For the 9/11 commission, it would appear that the longer the crisis went on, the less the lead time available for NORAD. During the time between 8:55 and 9:41 the whole world knew ( or thought it knew) that American 77 was headed east towards Washington; when even the Washington news stations were warning that the capital was a likely target, NORAD was incapable of providing two planes over Washington DC to provide a minimal screen against the threatened decapitation of the federal government.
The 9/11 commission hypocritically pretended that it was setting the record straight: "More than the actual events, inaccurate government accounts of those events made it appear that the military was notified in time to respond to two of the hijackings, raising questions about the adequacy of the response. Those accounts had the effect of deflecting questions about the military's capacity to obtain timely and accurate information from its own sources. In addition, they overstated the FAA's ability to provide the military with timely and useful information that morning." (34) Underlying this obfuscation is a strategic decision by the 9/11 commission to scapegoat the F AA, while attempting to lead investigators away from NORAD track, which in reality is likely the more important one. The 9/11 commission cites the testimony of NORAD officers that NEADS had learned from the FAA of the hijacking of United 93 at 9: 16. The 9/11 commission report claimed that there had been no such notification, since United 93 had not yet been hijacked at that time. In the last sessions of the 9/11 commission, we had the absurd spectacle of NORAD officers thanking the commissioners for helping them to straighten out their own erroneous and fragmentary in-house chronologies. Perhaps NORAD had decided early in the game to spread the chaff of disinformation as a means of foiling the radar of any future inquiries. If so, it appeared to have worked.
One of the more obvious absurdities recounted by NORAD personnel during the 9/11 commission hearings was their fairy tale to the effect that NORAD radar was only able to look outwards from US coasts, and that their radar capability for tracking events in US airspace was zero. NORAD, they claimed, could look out, but could not look in. In the May 2003 hearings, we have this exchange:
Mr. Ben-Veniste: And so on the day of September 11th, as you can see these dots -- I know it may be difficult to see -- NORAD was positioned in a perimeter around the United States, but nothing in the central region, nothing on the border with Canada?
Gen. McKinley: That's correct, sir.
This is a crude subterfuge. The NORAD generals would have us believe, for example, that a Russian submarine-launched cruise missile, once it had penetrated the US coastline in New Jersey, would have nothing more to fear from NORAD and could proceed on its leisurely way to Detroit or St. Louis, without any risk of further interference? Or, would they have us believe that a Russian Bear bomber, having once gotten into Minnesota, could fly on unmolested to destroy Chicago, because NORAD could no longer detect it? These nonsensical arguments refute themselves. NORAD was known to possess phased array warning system radars (PAWS) of various types which provided a comprehensive overview of US airspace and beyond.