First, although M. Bronner’s article does not mention it, NORAD’s September 18th time line said that it had been
notified by the FAA about UA 175 at 8:43. 5 Can we believe that NORAD officials would have said this--which
would mean that NEADS failed to prevent this flight from crashing into the WTC even though it had 20 minutes to
do so--if the truth was that the military was not notified until 9:03? Would that not have been a very irrational lie?
The only other explanation would seem to be that these NORAD officials were confused. But can we believe that
they would have been confused about such a major point only a few days after the event?
Second, the Commission’s tapes-based claim that the military did not know about Flight 175 until it crashed
is also contradicted by a report involving Captain Michael Jellinek, a Canadian who on 9/11 was overseeing
NORAD’s headquarters in Colorado. According to a story in the Toronto Star, Jellinek was on the phone with
NEADS as he watched Flight 175 crash into the South Tower, after which he asked NEADS, “Was that the hi
jacked aircraft you were dealing with?”--to which NEADS replied that it was. 6 If the new time line is accepted, that
story must be regarded as a fabrication. But what motive would Jellinek or the reporter have had for making up
such a story? The 9/11 Commission once again avoided this question simply by not mentioning this story.
Third, the claim that the military did not know about problems with UA 175 until NEADS received a telephone call
from the FAA’s New York Center at 9:03 is in conflict with several reports about ongoing conversations - Let’s
review two:
-A story by the Newhouse News Service contains this statement: “At 8:43 a.m., [Master Sergeant Maureen]
Dooley’s technicians [at NEADS], their headsets linked to Boston Center, heard of a second plane, United Flight
175, that also was not responding. It, too, was moving to New York.” 7 According to this story, NEADS knew by
8:43 that UA 175 was problematic.
-A memo entitled “FAA Communications with NORAD on September 11, 2001,” sent to the 9/11 Commission in
2003 by Laura Brown, the Deputy in Public Affairs at FAA headquarters, stated: (cont.)
1
US News, 9-8-2003
2
http://www.tomflocco.com/fs/NMCCOpsDirector.htm
3
911 Commission Report, p.18-20
4
Michael Bronner, “9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes,” Vanity Fair, September 2006, p268
(http://www.vanityfair.com/pdf/pressroom/advance_Air_Force_9-11.pdf).
5
“NORAD’s Response Times,” September 18, 2001
(archived at www.standdown.net/noradseptember182001pressrelease.htm).
6
Toronto Star, December 9, 2001.
7
Hart Seely, “Amid Crisis Simulation, ‘We Were Suddenly No-Kidding Under Attack,’” Newhouse News Service, January 25,
2002.
“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 [meaning the NMCC
in the Department of Defense], the Secret Service...The US Air Force liaison to the FAA immediately joined the
FAA headquarters phone bridge and established contact with NORAD...The FAA shared real-time information
on the phone bridges about the unfolding events, including information about loss of communication with aircraft,
loss of transponder signals, unauthorized changes in course, and other actions being taken by all the flights of
interest...” 1
So, from these and other reports of ongoing contact, we can see that the military would not have needed to wait
for a telephone call from the FAA to learn about UA 175.
Flight 77:
According to the 911 Comm/Tape based Account:
8:54am - AA77 seen going off course/lost transponder by FAA controller in Indianapolis.
9:25am - FAA headquarters notified
9:34am - NEADS finally hears about it in the context of it being “lost”, not hijacked 2
This account strains credulity from many angles. It is improbable that the officials at Indianapolis could have been
so irresponsible and that those at FAA headquarters, after knowing that two hijacked airplanes had already
crashed into the WTC, (8:45am and 9:03 am) would not have told the military that AA 77 might also have been
hijacked?
Again, this story is challenged by earlier reports. For example, contrary to the claim that Indianapolis did not know
of previous hijackings, Boston flight controllers, according to stories in the Guardian and the Village Voice that
appeared shortly after 9/11, had at 8:25 notified other regional centers--one of which is Indianapolis--of the
hijacking of Flight 11. 3
Also, contrary to the claim that Indianapolis first noticed something amiss--AA’s 77 deviation from its flight
path--at 8:54, NORAD’s earlier report and many newspaper stories said otherwise. According to these accounts,
AA 77 went significantly off course for four minutes at 8:46, 4 after which radio contact was lost. 5 The 9/11
Commission Report did not refute these reports but, again, simply ignored them.
The Commission’s tapes-based story is also challenged by evidence that the FAA had first notified the military
about AA 77 not at 9:24, as NORAD’s September 18th timeline said, but considerably earlier. FAA official Laura
Brown’s earlier mentioned memo, after stating that a teleconference was established with the military “within
minutes after the first aircraft hit the World Trade Center” (and hence by about 8:50), said that the FAA shared
“real-time information” with the military about “all the flights of interest, including Flight 77“ (emphasis added).
Bringing out the full implication of this assertion, she added: “NORAD logs indicate that the FAA made formal
notification about American Flight 77 at 9:24 a.m., but information about the flight was conveyed continuously
during the phone bridges before the formal notification.” 6 In a telephone conversation David Ray Griffin had with
Laura Brown in 2004, she emphasized this distinction, saying that the formal notification was primarily a formality
and hence irrelevant to the question of when the military knew about Flight 77. 7
Brown’s main point, in other words, was that the FAA and the military had been talking about AA 77 long before
9:24. The implication of her memo, therefore, is that although, as Bronner and the 9/11 Commission say, the 9:24
notification time was false, it was false by being too late, not too early.
Brown’s account is supported, moreover, by a New York Times story that appeared four days after 9/11, which
began: “During the hour or so that American Airlines Flight 77 was under the control of hijackers, up to the
moment it struck the west side of the Pentagon, military officials in a command center on the east side of the
building were urgently talking to law enforcement and air traffic control officials about what to do.” 8
1
Laura Brown’s memo is available at www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2004081200421797.
2
911 Commission Report, p.27
3
Village Voice, September 13, 2001; Guardian, October 17, 2001.
4
This deviation was shown in the flight course for AA 77 provided by USA Today
(available at www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_911=aa77).
5
Guardian, October 17, 2001; New York Times, October 17, 2001; Boston Globe, November 23, 2001.
6
See David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, Northampton: Olive Branch [Interlink Books],
2005, 182-188.
7
Telephone conversation between Laura Brown and David Ray Griffin on Sunday, August 15, 2004.
8
Matthew Wald, “After the Attacks: Sky Rules; Pentagon Tracked Deadly Jet but Found No Way to Stop It,” New York Times,
September 15, 2001.
Laura Brown’s 2003 memo, therefore, reflects information that was available immediately after 9/11.
What did the 9/11 Commission do about Brown’s memo which was, in fact, presented to them directly? Richard
Ben-Veniste, after reading it into the record, even said: “So now we have in question whether there was an
informal real-time communication of the situation, including Flight 77’s situation, to personnel at NORAD.” 1 The
Commission knew, therefore, that this was the FAA’s position, and it offered no rebuttal. When The 9/11
Commission Report appeared, however, it contained no mention of this memo or its account. The Commission
implicitly claimed, in fact, that the memo’s account could not be true by claiming that the FAA initiated conference
(which according to Brown’s memo had begun about 8:50) did not begin until 9:20. 2 As usual, inconvenient facts
were simply eliminated by the 911 Commission.
If we, however, refuse to ignore all these facts, we have good reason to consider the Commission’s tapes-based
account of AA 77 false--which would imply that the tapes are inauthentic. An examination of the Commission’s
account of UA 93 will provide additional support for this conclusion.
Flight 93:
According to the 911 Comm/Tape based Account:
9:28am - FAA controller hears “sounds of possible screaming” - 93 descends 700 feet. No one notified
9:32am - A voice is heard saying, “We have a bomb on board.” - Notified his supervisor
9:36am - Various debate occurs, no direct action
9:49am - Conversation between Command Center and FAA headquarters occurs, but no decisions are made
10:03am - Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania, no active action taken by NEADS/NORAD 3
This account involves yet more apparent amazing incompetence by FAA officials. To accept this account, we must
believe that the decision to call the military is a momentous, extraordinary one, not a routine one, made over a
hundred times a year. We must also believe that, on a day on which hijacked airliners had already caused much
death and destruction, officials at FAA headquarters had to debate whether a hijacked airliner with a bomb on
board was important enough to disturb the military. We must believe, moreover, that they were still debating this
13 minutes later at 9:49, when the following conversation between Herndon VA and FAA headquarters occurred:
Command Center: Uh, do we want to think, uh, about scrambling aircraft?
FAA Headquarters: Oh, God, I don’t know.
Command Center: Uh, that’s a decision somebody’s gonna have to make probably in the next ten minutes.
The decision, moreover, was obviously that the military should not be disturbed, because 14 minutes later, at
10:03, when Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, “no one from FAA headquarters [had yet] requested military
assistance regarding United 93.” 4 To believe the Commission’s tapes-based report, in other words, we must
believe that FAA officials acted in a manner beyond incompetent.
Besides the fact that the Tape based / 911 Commission’s new story about UA 93 is highly implausible, it is
challenged by some inconvenient facts. One fact is the existence of the teleconference mentioned in Laura
Brown’s memo. The Commission claims that this FAA-initiated teleconference did not start until 9:20
(instead of about 8:50, as her memo indicated), but this claim provides no help with regard to UA 93, which did
not crash until 10:03 AM, so that the time between 9:30 and 10:00 was the crucial period. Her memo said, as we
saw, that “[t]he FAA shared real-time information...about...all the flights of interest,” and the Commission itself
agrees that by 9:34, FAA headquarters knew about the hijacking of Flight 93 so that it was a “flight of interest.”
Accordingly, the Commission’s tapes-based claim (that the military was not told about the hijacking of UA 93 until
it crashed) is flatly contradicted by Laura Brown’s memo, which, although it was ignored in the Commission’s final
report, had, again, been read into the Commission’s record by Richard Ben-Veniste.
Another inconvenient fact was a video conference being run from the White House that morning by Richard
Clarke, the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, who described this video conference in his
best-selling book, “Against All Enemies”--which came out in 2004 while the hearings were still going on. (cont.)
1
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, May 23, 2003
(http://www.911commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm). In introducing the memo,
Ben-Veniste said he was told it had been authored by two “high level individuals at FAA, Mr. Asmus and Ms. Schuessler.” That
it was in reality written by Laura Brown, however, was confirmed during a telephone conversation I had with her on Sunday,
August 15, 2004.
2
911 Commission Report, p.27
3
911 Commission Report, p.28-29
4
911 Commission Report, p.29-30
The FAA was represented in this video conference by its head, Jane Garvey. And although the Commissioners
claimed, absurdly, that they did “not know who from Defense participated,” 1 Clarke had clearly stated that the
Pentagon was represented by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, who on 9/11
had been Acting Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Clarke had also reported that at about 9:35, Garvey reported
on a number of “potential hijacks,” which included “United 93 over Pennsylvania.” 2 Therefore, more than 25
minutes before Flight 93 crashed, according to Clarke, both Myers and Rumsfeld heard from the head of the FAA
that Flight 93 was considered a potential hijack.
Still another inconvenient fact is the existence of military liaisons to the FAA, through whom the military, if by no
other means, would have known about FAA communications. The existence of such liaisons, besides being
mentioned in Laura Brown’s memo, were discussed by Monte Belger, the Acting Deputy Administrator of the
FAA, during his testimony to the 9/11 Commission in 2004. After Commissioner Bob Kerrey, on the basis of the
tapes, said to Belger, in relation to UA 93: “[A] plane was headed to Washington D.C. FAA Headquarters knew it
and didn’t let the military know,” Belger replied:
“I truly do not mean this to be defensive, but it is a fact-- there were military people on duty at the FAA Command
Center...They were participating in what was going on. There were military people in the FAA’s Air Traffic
Organization in a situation room. They were participating in what was going on. 3
Accordingly, if FAA headquarters heard about UA 93’s approach to Washington at 9:32, as the tapes indicate,
then that would be when the military learned about it. The Commission, while portraying the FAA personnel as
incompetent bumblers who debated endlessly whether “to seek military assistance,” ignored the fact, pointed out
by both Brown and Belger, that military personnel were already informed.
Another inconvenient fact is that Secret Service personnel would also have been aware of these FAA
communications about UA 93 (and other flights). Laura Brown’s memo mentioned that the Secret Service was
part of the teleconference established by the FAA. Richard Clarke, reporting that the Secret Service’s director
told him shortly after 9:30 that radar showed the existence of an aircraft headed towards Washington, explained:
“Secret Service had a system that allowed them to see what FAA’s radar was seeing.” 4 This fact was also
revealed inadvertently by Vice President Cheney, who during a television interview five days after 9/11 said, “The
Secret Service has an arrangement with the FAA. They had open lines after the World Trade Center was...”--at
which point he stopped himself before finishing the sentence. 5
The combined force of these inconvenient facts provides powerful evidence against the Commission’s main
claim about UA 93--that “[b]y the time the military learned about the flight, it had crashed.” 6
This evidence becomes even stronger when we look at the evidence that supports a military shootdown of Flight
93, which has already been partially covered in the prior section on it in this Guide. Part of this evidence
consisted of a rumor/report to this effect within the military itself. Major Daniel Nash, an F–15 pilot sent to New
York City that morning, reported that when he returned to base he was told that a military F-16 had shot down an
airliner in Pennsylvania. 7 During General Myers’ interview with the Senate Armed Services Committee on
September 13th, chairman Carl Levin asked him about “statements that the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania
was shot down.” 8
This rumor was, moreover, somewhat corroborated by reports from people who lived near the spot where the
airliner came down--reports of sightings of a small military airplane, of missile-like noises, of debris falling from
the airliner miles from its crash site, and part of one of the engines far from that site. (see section above
regarding “[Shanksville]”)
The Commission, in seeking to refute the claim that UA 93 had been shot down, did not do so by disputing any
of this evidence; they simply ignored it, once again. Rather, it constructed a new timeline, based in part on the
tapes, which entails that the military could not possibly have shot down UA 93. How conenient.
1
911 Commission Report, p.36
2
Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), p7
3
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 12th Public Hearing, June 17, 2004.
4
Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), p7
5
“Meet the Press,” NBC News, Sept. 16, 2001.
6
911 Commission Report, p.34
7
William B. Scott, “Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks,” Aviation Week and Space Technology, June 3, 2002; Cape
Cod Times, August 21, 2002.
8
This exchange is quoted in Meyssan: “9/11: The Big Lie’, p.162
This new timeline involves four claims: (1) Cheney, who was known to have issued the shoot-down authorization,
did not get down to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center until almost 10:00. (2) Since NEADS did not
learn that UA 93 had been hijacked until 10:07, it could not have been tracking it. 1 (3) Cheney was not notified
about UA 93 until 10:02 2 -”only,” M. Bronner emphasizes, “one minute before the airliner impacted the ground.”
(4) Cheney did not give the shoot-down authorization until “some time between 10:10 and 10:15.” 3
-Regarding the first claim, as will be further discussed in the next section on the 911 Commission, there is a
severe conflict with this account when the Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta’s testimony at the
Commission’s hearing on May 23, 2003 is taken into account. He put Cheney in the PEOC at 9:20am, not
10:00am. The 911 Commission claim regarding Cheney can hence only be a lie if Minetta is correct in his story.
More on this important point in the next section.
-The second claim--that NEADS could not have been tracking UA 93--is challenged not only by the evidence,
examined above, that the military knew about the hijacking long before it crashed, but also by evidence that UA
93 was, in fact, being tailed by US military fighters. One flight controller, ignoring a general order to controllers not
to talk to the media, reportedly said that “an F-16 fighter closely pursued Flight 93.” 4 On September 13th, General
Richard Myers said that fighters were scrambled “on the [airliner] that eventually crashed in Pennsylvania...
[W]e had gotten somebody close to it.” 5 Two days later, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said that
“the Air Force was tracking the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania... and had been in a position to
bring it down if necessary. ” 6 Moreover, one of the Air Force pilots who was in the air that morning, Lt. Anthony
Kuczynski, has reported that while he was flying an E-3 Sentry toward Pittsburgh alongside two F-16s, they were
“given direct orders to shoot down an airliner” and would have done so if UA 93 had not crashed before they could
intercept it. 7 For the Commission’s tapes-based account to true, the statements of all those men would have to be
false.
-The third and fourth claims regarding when Cheney learned of UA 93’s hijacking and gave the shoot-down
authorization, are also challenged by many contrary reports. For example, although the Commission says that
Richard Clarke did not receive the shoot-down authorization