Those interested in the events of 11 September
might want to consult the
response times to the highjackings by the North
American Aerospace Defense
Command (NORAD) at:
http://www.peterson.af.mil/norad/presrelNORADTimelines.htm
http://www.defendamerica.mil/index.html
It is worth noting that the
FAA notifications
to the North East Air Defense
Sector (NEADS) came so late that interception
of the highjacked planes was
impossible, except in the case of United Airlines
Flight 175 (Boston - Los
Angeles), which, theoretically, could have been
intercepted two mintues
before it hit World Trade Center 2 but wasn't.
It is also worth noting that
there was never any formal FAA notification of
a highjacking of United
Flight 93 (Newark - San Francisco), although
"the FAA and NEADS established
a line of open comnmunication discussing AA Flt
77 and UA Flt 93". There was
a "Fighter Scrambler Order" given ("order to
get an aircraft airborne as
soon as possible") for United Flight 93:
"Langley F-16s already airborne
for AA Flt 77". So, what happened to UA Flt 93?
Was it intercepted (forced
down)?
And why the delay in notification from the
FAA,
when notification is
supposed to be immediate with a response from
NORAD in two minutes at most?
The Washington Post, on 12 September ("White
House
Said Targeted") and the
New York Times on the next day ("Aides Say Bush
Was One Target of Hijacked
Jet") let it be known that the attackers had
made phone contact with the
Secret Service (at10:05) and had authenticated
themselves by citing the
secret codes giving access to the secure lines
for the White House and Air
Force One that would be used to set a nuclear
attack in motion. This is what
necessitated moving Bush from his safe haven
in Louisiana to Nebraska: since
the secure lines were no longer considered so,
he had to be at the control
center of the nuclear arsenal in Nebraska in
person. On the thirteenth of
September, Karl Rove confirmed that the attackers
had called the Secret
Service, but on the twenty-eighth, Ari Fleischer,
the White house spokeman,
denied this, saying that his colleagues had been
mistaken about it,
suffering from the intense emotion of the day.
Yet former chief of the CIA
Woolsey said that the attackers had secure codes
to all the main
intelligence services.
Either the security of codes is hopelessly
weak
(unlikely), or the attackers
were connected to somebody highly placed in the
military. Either way, there
should have been a major inquest into the
question.
If one accepts that the attackers were linked
to military top brass, then
the phone call to the Secret Service was most
likely a request for
negotitions.Oddly, US air space was not closed
until 9:45 a.m., at which
time Bush gave the order to shoot down any
suspect
aircraft in US air space.
(UA Flt 93 crashed in Pennsyvania at 10:03 --
estimated time, according to
NORAD.) Yet at 12:15 p.m., there were still some
50 civil aircraft still in
US air space, which suggests that at least in
certain places the air space
closure was not considered worth taking
seriously.
Yet, at 12:00 noon, the
border with Mexico was closed, at 12.04 the order
was given to evacuate Los
Angeles International Airport, and at 12:15 an
evacuation order was given
for San Francisco International Airport. What
about the airports on the East
Coast, and the big ones like Chicago and Atlanta?
If, one accepts that there were negotiations
going
on, then it is reasonable
to assume that they faltered and that the
attackers
made some sort of threat
that made closing the border with Mexico seem
necessary, as well as the
evacuation of the Los Angeles and San Francisco
airports. Also, following
the the phone call, there were orders to evacuate
the State Department, the
World Bank and the Justice Department (10:22),
an order to close all
airports (at 10:39), then an order to evacuate
all federal [SIC] buildings i
n Washington (10:45), and one, from Governor
George Pataki, to close all
federal buildings in the state of New York
(10:57).
Why only federal buildings in Washington? Why
federal buildings in New York
but not elsewhere? (The last time a federal
building
was hit, it was in
Oklahoma.) This suggests that in the course of
evaluating the first phone
call from the attackers, certain buildings and
places came to be perceived
as in danger, but not others. If there was no
communication with the
attackers and everybody was blindly trying to
find his way to an
understanding of what was taking place, the air
space would have been closed
immediately after the second hit at the World
Trade Center, at the latest
(9:02); all airports immediately closed (and
possibily evacuated); all of at
least the center of Washington evacuated; and
all federal buildings
throughout the country closed, as soon as
possible.
Noteworthy was George W. Bush's first response
in Sarasota, where he spoke
of "getting those folks". Thereafter, in all
the briefings given by the
various government actors, terrorism was never
mentioned. When George W.
Bush finally spoke of it, in his speach to the
nation at 8:30 p.m., it was
not in order to speak of getting the attackers
but to speak of launching a
vague "crusade" against all terrorism, without
any definition of what this
might mean.
It is further noteworthy that the four
highjacked
planes took off over a
period of sixteen minutes, evidently anticipating
a closure of US air
space -- which came too late to bother them.
Also, during the trail of those accused of
bombing
the World Trade Center in
1993, one of the accused spoke of how the
bombers'
evaluation of their act
resulted in the conclusion that to topple to
the buildings (the goal of the
1993 bombing: the builidng hit was expected to
fall on the other), they
would need to hit them each with a jumbo jet
airliner, since the buildings
had been designed to resist the impact of a
Boeing
707. But nobody seems to
remember that now...
Finally, none of the intelligence services
(the
National Security Agency,
the CIA, the FBI, the Defense Intelligence
Services
(Army, Navy, Marines,
Air Force), the Energy Department Security
Service,
etc.) saw anything
coming, despite hundreds of billions of dollars
worth of resources over the
years. Either it's all defective (highly
unlikely:
US intelligence
capacities are the envy of every other country
in the world, so I'm told
here in Geneva, over and over), or the people
were lax and incompetent
(highly unlikely also, although there's probably
quite a bit of room for
improvement). Either way, there should be a blue
ribbon inquiry into what's
amiss. The government doesn't seem to think that
this is necessary, which
again suggests that insiders were involved, which
allowed for circumventing
the world's best intelligence services.
Comment (Midgie, if you're still
with
us, don't read any further: you'll
only get upset):
If the people of the United States spent as
much
time following pulbic
affairs, as behooves citizens of a democracy,
as they spend following soap
operas and sit coms and the lives of those who
act in them, they would've
pieced this together a long time ago and demanded
the explanations they
deserve concerning what was and is really going
on.
Robert James Parsons
rue de la Flèche 17
CH - 1207 Geneva, Switzerland
Telephone: +41 22 736-59-55
Geneva United Nations Office
Press Room No 1
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Telephone: +41 22 917-20-18
9:59 a.m. September 11, 2001: Some Witnesses Hear Explosions as South Tower CollapsesNumerous
witnesses, including firefighters and other rescue workers, hear
explosions at the start of, and during, the collapse of the south WTC
tower. Some of them report hearing a single explosion: Entity Tags: Sue Keane, Thomas Vallebuona, Stephen Viola, Thomas Turilli, Pete Hamill, World Trade Center, Kevin Darnowski, Ed Kennedy, Craig Carlsen, Lance Lizzul, Edward Sheehey, John Sudnik, Keith Murphy, Julio Marrero, Jeff Birnbaum Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, WTC Investigation 9:59 a.m. September 11, 2001: Some Witnesses Think South Tower Collapse Resembles a Controlled DemolitionNumerous
witnesses to the collapse of the south WTC tower think it resembles a
demolition using explosives. Some initially believe this is what is
occurring: Entity Tags: Stephen Gregory, World Trade Center, Richard Banaciski, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Kenneth Rogers, Timothy Burke, John Bussey, Joseph Meola, Brian Dixon, Daniel Rivera, Beth Fertig, Edward Cachia, Frank Cruthers, Dominick DeRubbio Category Tags: All
Day of 9/11 Events, WTC
Investigation from: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?startpos=1900&timeline=complete_911_timeline February 27, 1993: WTC Engineer Says Building Would Survive Jumbo Jet Hitting ItIn the wake of the WTC bombing, the Seattle Times interviews John Skilling who was one of the two structural engineers responsible for designing the Trade Center. Skilling recounts his people having carried out an analysis which found the Twin Towers could withstand the impact of a Boeing 707. He says, “Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building. There would be a horrendous fire. A lot of people would be killed.” But, he says, “The building structure would still be there.” [Seattle Times, 2/27/1993] The analysis Skilling is referring to is likely one done in early 1964, during the design phase of the towers. A three-page white paper, dated February 3, 1964, described its findings: “The buildings have been investigated and found to be safe in an assumed collision with a large jet airliner (Boeing 707—DC 8) traveling at 600 miles per hour. Analysis indicates that such collision would result in only local damage which could not cause collapse or substantial damage to the building and would not endanger the lives and safety of occupants not in the immediate area of impact.” However, besides this paper, no documents are known detailing how this analysis was made. [Glanz and Lipton, 2004, pp. 131-132; Lew, Bukowski, and Carino, 10/2005, pp. 70-71] The other structural engineer who designed the towers, Leslie Robertson, carried out a second study later in 1964, of how the towers would handle the impact of a 707 (see Between September 3, 2001 and September 7, 2001). However, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), following its three-year investigation into the WTC collapses, will in 2005 state that it has been “unable to locate any evidence to indicate consideration of the extent of impact-induced structural damage or the size of a fire that could be created by thousands of gallons of jet fuel.” [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005, pp. 13 ] Entity Tags: World Trade Center, John Skilling Category Tags: WTC Investigation
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