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Banned
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In this post: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=56
...over on the "Tilted Politics" Forum, I responded to Marvelous Marv's comment about my earlier statement that, on the morning of 9/11, there occured a <b>""staged inability of the federal government to muster a timely air defense of the east coast skies.""</b>
My reasons for stating this are:
<b>( Consider that the fighter reductions at Langley, and the inordinate numbers of 9/11 "War Games and exercises", were scheduled against the backdrop of Bush's receipt of the now infamous Aug. 6th PDB that advised Bush that Al-Qaeda was planning to hijack airliners and use them as weapons. Bush later fought to keep from disclosing to us, that PDB's contents. )</b>
<b>[1]</b>The record shows that air defense fighters, in Aug. 2001, were removed from Langley Air Force Base.
<b>[2]</b>A large number of "War Games and "Special Exercises" were discovered to have been planned by military and intel agencies on 9/11, an effort was made to hide the numbers and extent of these "events", and we were ultimately told that these "events" heightened air defense response to the hijacking of four jet airliners, while the actual defense response and testimony of military and government officials seems to indicate that the opposite is true.
<b>[3]</b>The false premise, from the 9/11 Commission report, that War Games and "exercises" that "coincided" with the 9/11 attacks, enhanced response performance by NORAD and it's military defense response. The scope and numbers of the actual "exercises" were minimized in the Commission report.
<b>[4]</b>A report of a scheduled 9/11 "exercise" by the "NRO", reported in
2002 by AP and UPI as a "bizarre coincidence".
<b>[5]</b>A key, 9-17-2001 CNN report, attributed to sources in the military, that details the timeline of Flight 93 on 9/11. The timeline was exactly matched by testimony in 2003 to the 9/11 Commission by Mr. Scott, on behalf of General Arnold. The Flight 93 take-off time was, however,wrong.
<b>[6]</b>2003 Testimony of General Arnold & Mr. Scott, and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, before the 9/11 Commission, as well as an examination of General McKinely and the circumstances of his receipt of the "first shootdown order of an airliner in history, (Flight 93). The timeline testimony of Mr. Scott matched the above CNN report from two years earlier.
Mineta's testimony that placed Cheney and Mineta in the underground,Washington Command center before 9:30 am, was later altered by the 9/11 Commission, and pushed just past 10:00 am, with no explanation.
<b>[7]</b>In June, 2004 shortly before the final 9/11 Commission report was issued, it's staff "amended" the time that the FAA notified the military of the hijacking of Flight 93...from the previously testimony of 9:16 am, to <b>"no report until after it crashed at about 10:02 am !!!!!!!!"</b> Ignoring Mineta's 2003 testimony that he arrived at Cheney's location at 9:24 am, the 9/11 Commission revised the facts to a determination that Cheney did not even arrive until just after 10:00 am !
<b>[8]</b>Link to page of info now deleted from the web that shows phone calls from Flight 93 passengers that reported it's hijacked status, began at 9:20 am. Also contains info concerning takeoff time of Flight 93.
<b>[9]</b>Link and display of BTS website data for Flight 93 that shows the flight's wheels lifting off runway in Newark, NJ at 8:28 am, not at the 8:40 am
time from the 9/11 Commission report. You can duplicate that data search at the link. Just choose "Newark", "United", and "Sept. 11, 2001". The data is known to be a reliable record of every airliner wheel lift-off and touchdown in the U.S.
<b>[10]</b>Links to documentation of the attempts by Rumsfeld, Myers, Bush administration members, and 9/11 Commission members to alter, cover up, and avoid openly and accurately reporting on the events of 9/11 and the military response to the attacks, along with congresswoman Cynthia McKinney's successful attempt to expose the concealed 9/11 War Games, complete with video. In addition to the War Game cover up, there is a convincing case that a desperate, but transparent attempt has been made to
conceal Cheney's role in the Flight 93 shootdown order, as well as the timeline of that Flight, to falsely place the blame on the FAA for delayed notification of the hijacking to NORAD, from 9:16 am, until after Flight 93 crashed.
<b>[1]</b>
Quote:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/c...rthernguardian
Context of 'Late August-Early December 2001'
This page shows all events that either reference, or are referenced by, the event 'Late August-Early December 2001'.
Late August-Early December 2001: Fighters from Langley Air Force Base Deployed to Iceland for Operation Northern Guardian Complete 911 Timeline
In late August 2001, two-thirds of the 27th Fighter Squadron are sent overseas. Six of the squadron's fighters and 115 people go to Turkey to enforce the no-fly zone over northern Iraq as part of Operation Northern Watch. Another six fighters and 70 people are sent to Iceland to participate in “Operation Northern Guardian.” The fighter groups will not return to Langley until early December.
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<b>[2]</b>
Quote:
http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/story1a012802.html
6 A.M.: WAR GAMES
Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins figured it would be a long day.
Sept. 11 was Day II of "Vigilant Guardian," an exercise that would pose an imaginary crisis to North American Air Defense outposts nationwide. The simulation would run all week, and Deskins, starting her 12-hour shift in the Operations Center as the NORAD unit's airborne control and warning officer, might find herself on the spot.
Day I of the simulation had moved slowly. She hoped the exercise gathered steam. It made a long day go faster.
8:40 A.M.: REAL WORLD
In the Ops Center, three rows of radar scopes face a high wall of wide-screen monitors. Supervisors pace behind technicians who peer at the instruments. Here it is always quiet, always dark, except for the green radar glow.
At 8:40, Deskins noticed senior technician Jeremy Powell waving his hand. Boston Center was on the line, he said. It had a hijacked airplane.
"It must be part of the exercise," Deskins thought.
At first, everybody did. Then Deskins saw the glowing direct phone line to the Federal Aviation Administration.
On the phone she heard the voice of a military liaison for the FAA's Boston Center.
"I have a hijacked aircraft," he told her........
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<b>[3]</b>
Quote:
http://demos.vivisimo.com/search?inp...Union&x=58&y=7
116. On 9/11, NORAD was scheduled to conduct a military exercise,Vigilant Guardian, which postulated a bomber attack from the former Soviet Union. We investigated whether military preparations for the large-scale exercise compromised the military’s response to the real-world terrorist attack on 9/11. According to General Eberhart,“it took about 30 seconds” to make the adjustment to the real-world situation. Ralph Eberhart testimony, June 17, 2004.We found that the response was, if anything, expedited by the increased number of staff at the sectors and at NORAD because of the scheduled exercise. See Robert Marr interview (Jan. 23, 2004).
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<b>[4]</b>
Quote:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/08.26C.errant.plane.htm
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/newsday/...ubold&x=23&y=7
9/11 Exercise: An Errant Plane
The Associated Press | NewsDay.com
Thursday, 22 August, 2002
Washington - In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism - it was to be a simulated accident.
Officials at the Chantilly, Va.-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure. The agency is about four miles from the runways of Washington Dulles International Airport.
Agency chiefs came up with the scenario to test employees' ability to respond to a disaster, said spokesman Art Haubold. No actual plane was to be involved - to simulate the damage from the crash, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building. "It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility," Haubold said. "As soon as the real world events began, we canceled the exercise."
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<b>[5]</b>
Quote:
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/1...ijack.warning/
Officials: Government failed to react to FAA warning
September 17, 2001 Posted: 9:12 AM EDT (1312 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The federal government failed to heed a warning from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to evacuate key Washington buildings following Tuesday's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, senior Defense Department officials told CNN..........
......The following timeline is for United Airlines flight 93, scheduled to fly from Newark International Airport to San Francisco. The flight crashed in Pennsylvania.
--8:42 a.m.: United Airlines flight 93 takes off from Newark International Airport.
--9:16 a.m.: FAA informs NORAD that United Airlines flight 93 may have been hijacked.
--9:40 a.m.: Transponder signal from United flight 93 ceases and radar contact is lost.
--10:02 a.m.: After a review of radar tapes, a radar signal is detected near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
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<b>[6]</b>
Quote:
http://www.9-11commission.gov/archiv...2003-05-23.htm
I would like to have Major General Craig McKinley, commander, 1st Air Force, Continental U.S. NORAD, here representing NORAD.
GEN. MCKINLEY: Governor Kean, Congressman Hamilton and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today on behalf of the combatant commander, United States Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, to provide testimony on the events surrounding the events of September 11th, 2001, when our nation was attacked from within by foreign terrorists using commercial aircraft as weapons of mass destruction......
.........I'd like to thank the Commission staff, especially Miles Kara, for his help in preparing for this. The committee has posed many questions regarding the events surrounding the 9/11 attacks. Our intention is to provide the chronology first to the events leading up to September 11th, as well as taking your questions to give you a detailed look at how NORAD's response was made on 9/11, and any subsequent questions you may have on our posture since. Mr. Commissioner, that concludes my formal statement. The rest will be provided for the record. And, with your indulgence, sir, I would like Colonel Scott (ret.), Alan Scott, to walk you through the timeline.
MR. SCOTT: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, commissioners. It is my pleasure to be here with you today. General Arnold and I worked together that day on September the 11th.
What I will walk you through here is a chronology of the attacks, and I've presented it in a matrix form.....
.......I will tell you the times on this chart come from our logs. The time on the chart is the time that's in the log. It may not be the exact time the event happened. It may be the time when the log-keeper was advised or became aware of the event............
The first thing that happened in the morning related to the events at 9:02, or I'm sorry 8:02 a.m., Eastern Standard Time, is when American Airlines 11 took off out of Boston........
......At 9:11 FAA reports a crash into the South Tower. You can see now that lag time has increased from seven minutes from impact to report; now it's nine minutes from impact to report. You can only imagine what's going on on the floors of the control centers around the country. At 9:11 -- I just mentioned that -- 9:16, now FAA reports a possible hijack of United Flight 93, which is out in the Ohio area. But that's the last flight that is going to impact the ground.....
..........And 9:40, immediately following that, is when 93 up north turns its transponders off out in the West toward Ohio, and begins a left turn back toward the East...........
...............At 10:02, United 93 last radar data and the estimated impact time for United 93 is 10:03.
At 10:07 FAA reports there may be a bomb on board 93 -- that's four minutes after the impact. At 10:15 they report that it's crashed.
MR. MINETA: I didn't know about the order to shoot down. I arrived at the PEOC at about 9:20 a.m. And the president was in Florida, and I believe he was on his way to Louisiana at that point when the conversation that went on between the vice president and the president and the staff that the president had with him.
MR. ROEMER: So when you arrived at 9:20, how much longer was it before you overheard the conversation between the young man and the vice president saying, "Does the order still stand?"
MR. MINETA: Probably about five or six minutes.
MR. ROEMER: So about 9:25 or 9:26. And your inference was that the vice president snapped his head around and said, "Yes, the order still stands." Why did you infer that that was a shoot-down?
MR. MINETA: Just by the nature of all the events going on that day, the scrambling of the aircraft and, I don't know; I guess, just being in the military, you do start thinking about it, an intuitive reaction to certain statements being made.
MR. HAMILTON: I just want to clarify a few things after listening to all this testimony. It's not all that clear to me. As of September 11th, only the president had the authority to order a shootdown of a commercial aircraft.
GEN. ARNOLD: That's correct, sir.
MR. HAMILTON: And today who has the authority?
GEN. MCKINLEY: We see the president delegated to the secretary of Defense, delegated to the combatant commander of Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Command, and there are emergency authorities if that fails.
MR. HAMILTON: So you have the authority?
GEN. MCKINLEY: Yes, sir, and others.
MR. HAMILTON: And how many others?
GEN. MCKINLEY: I prefer not to say in this forum, sir, but I can provide it for the record.
MR. HAMILTON: And you do not have to go up the chain of command at all in the event of a --
GEN. MCKINLEY: We certainly will try, we will make every effort to try.
MR. HAMILTON: I'm sure you would. But you don't have to?
GEN. MCKINLEY: In an emergency situation we can take appropriate action, yes, sir.
MR. HAMILTON: Now, one of the things that's curious to me, General Arnold, you said that you did not learn of the presidential order until after United 93 had already crashed. That was about a little after 10 o'clock in the morning. The first notice of difficulty here was at 8:20 in the morning when a transponder goes off on the American Flight 11. I don't know how significant that is, but 20 minutes later you had notification of the possible hijack. So there's a long lapse of time here between the time you are initially alerted and you receive the order that you can shoot that aircraft down. Am I right about that?
GEN. ARNOLD: That's correct.
MR. HAMILTON: In your timeline, why don't you put in there when you were notified?
GEN. ARNOLD: Of which flight, sir?
MR. HAMILTON: Getting the notification from the president of the United States that you had the authority to shoot a commercial aircraft down is a pretty significant event. Why would that not be in your timeline?
GEN. ARNOLD: I don't know when that happened.
MR. HAMILTON: Had you ever received that kind of a notice before?
GEN. ARNOLD: Not to my knowledge.
MR. HAMILTON: So this is the first time in the history of the country that such an order had ever been given, so far as you know?
GEN. ARNOLD: Yes, sir. I'm sure there's a log that would tell us that, and I appreciate the question.
MR. HAMILTON: Maybe you could let us know that.
And then, finally, as I understand your testimony, it was not possible to shoot down any of these aircraft before they struck. Is that basically correct?
GEN. ARNOLD: That is correct. In fact, the American Airlines 77, if we were to have arrived overhead at that particular point, I don't think that we would have shot that aircraft down.
MR. HAMILTON: Because?
GEN. ARNOLD: Well, we had not been given authority --
MR. HAMILTON: You didn't have authority at that point.
GEN. ARNOLD: And, you know, it is through hindsight that we are certain that this was a coordinated attack on the United States.
MR. LEHMAN: But had you gotten notified earlier, 77's deviance, about when it turned east, for instance, certainly you could have gotten the F-16s there, and certainly there would have been time to communicate to either get or deny authority, no? -- for 77?
GEN. ARNOLD: I believe that to be true. I believe that to be true. That had happened very fast, but I believe that to be true.
MR. BEN-VENISTE: What efforts were made that day to contact the president to seek that authority?
GEN. ARNOLD: I do not know.
MR. BEN-VENISTE: Who would have been in the chain of command seeking authority from the president with whom anyone at NORAD was communicating? GEN. ARNOLD: Can you answer that?
GEN. MCKINLEY: The command director in Cheyenne Mountain is connected with the combatant commander who would have had the telephone lines open at that point. But I don't have knowledge of what happened that day. But that would be the way it would be done.
GEN. ARNOLD: The flow would be through the secretary of Defense obviously, and to --
MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, the secretary of Defense was under attack in the Pentagon.
GEN. ARNOLD: He was evacuating, yes, sir.
MR. BEN-VENISTE: Now, in terms of anything you know today looking backwards, including all the after-action reports and various studies which I am sure have been conducted internally, and I am sure which we will wish to review, can you not tell us whether there was any effort made to contact the president to seek authority in dealing with what appeared to be a coordinated attack?
GEN. MCKINLEY: I don't have knowledge at this time to make a comment, sir.
GEN. ARNOLD: I don't have knowledge of that. Our actions were to try to get aircraft in position to intercept if necessary.
MR. BEN-VENISTE: Now, just going back, because now I'm confused by on the one hand your statement that the closing of the airspace over Washington provided de facto authority to take whatever measures were necessary to deal with hostile aircraft, and your statement that we probably would not have shot down 77 if we had arrived in time.
GEN. MCKINLEY: The airspace had not been shut down over Washington, D.C. at that time.
MR. BEN-VENISTE: But what time was that? Is that on the timeline?
GEN. MCKINLEY: I believe it is. I believe it was reported by Secretary Mineta ,the timeline that that occurred.
MR. BEN-VENISTE: It's not on your timeline?
MR. SCOTT: No, sir, it's not.
MR. BEN-VENISTE: But do you know what time that was?
MR. SCOTT: Sir, the only thing I've seen is we have a copy provided by General Worley (ph) of an Andrews tower transmission that announced to all aviation traffic that the Class B airspace was closed and that air traffic that did not cooperate would be shot down.
MR. BEN-VENISTE: What time was that, Colonel Scott?
MR. SCOTT: Sir, we'd have to go to the tower logs. We can get that for you. The tower log will show us what time that transmission was made. I don't know what time it was made.
MR. BEN-VENISTE: And on whose order was that directive given, that any plane in this sector would be shot down?
MR. SCOTT: Unknown to me, sir.
MR. LEHMAN: Would you be able to provide that to the best of your abilities to --
GEN. MCKINLEY: We'll do everything we can to provide that for the record, sir.
MR. LEHMAN: From higher authority as well, so we can get on the record the chain of command during that period.
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<b>[7]</b>
Quote:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5233007/
Updated: 10:17 a.m. ET June 17, 2004
9/11 commission staff statement No. 17
The text as submitted to the National Commission
on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States
.......The following is a time lapsed depiction of United 93. To provide an overview of the materials presented thus far, the following is a time lapsed depiction of all four hijacked flights and the military's response.
Conflicting Accounts
In May 2003 public testimony before this Commission, NORAD officials stated that, at 9:16, NEADS received hijack notification of United 93 from the FAA. This statement was incorrect. There was no hijack to report at 9:16. United 93 was proceeding normally at that time.
In this same public testimony, NORAD officials stated that, at 9:24, NEADS received notification of the hijacking of American 77. This statement was also incorrect. The notice NEADS received at 9:24 was not about American 77. It was notification that American 11 had not hit the World Trade Center and was heading for Washington, DC. A 9:24 entry in a NEADS event log records: “American Airlines #N334AA hijacked.” This is the tail number of American 11.
In their testimony, and in other public statements, NORAD officials also stated that the Langley fighters were scrambled to respond to the notifications about American 77 and/or United 93. These statements were incorrect as well. The report of American 11 heading south as the cause of the Langley scramble is reflected not just in taped conversations at NEADS, but in taped conversations at FAA centers, on chat logs compiled at NEADS, Continental Region headquarters, and NORAD, and in other records.
Yet this response to a phantom aircraft, American 11, is not recounted in a single public timeline or statement issued by FAA or DOD. Instead, since 9/11, the scramble of the Langley fighters has been described as a response to the reported hijacking of American 77, or United 93, or some combination of the two. This inaccurate account created the appearance that the Langley scramble was a logical response to an actual hijacked aircraft.
Not only was the scramble prompted by the mistaken information about American 11, but NEADS never even received notice that American 77 was hijacked. It was notified at 9:34 that American 77 was lost. Then, minutes later, NEADS was told that an unknown plane was six miles southwest of the White House. Only then did the already scrambled airplanes start moving directly to Washington, DC.
Thus the military did not have 14 minutes to respond to American 77, as testimony last year suggested. It had at most one or two minutes to respond to the unidentified plane approaching Washington, and the fighters were in the wrong place to be able to help. They had been responding to a report about an aircraft that did not exist.
Nor did the military have 47 minutes to respond to United 93, as would be implied by the account that it received notice about it at 9:16. By the time the military learned about the flight, it had crashed.
At one point the FAA projected that United 93 would reach Washington, DC at about 10:15. By that time the Langley fighters were over Washington. But, as late as 10:10, the operating orders were still “negative clearance to shoot” regarding non-responsive targets over Washington, DC. The word of the authorization to shoot down hijacked civilian aircraft did not reach NEADS until 10:31.
We do not believe that an accurate understanding of the events of that morning reflects discredit on the operational personnel from NEADS or FAA facilities........
.....News of an incoming aircraft (later discovered to be American 77) prompted the Secret Service to order the evacuation of the Vice President just before 9:36. The Vice President entered the underground tunnel that led to the shelter at 9:37.
Once inside, Vice President Cheney and the agents paused in an area of the tunnel that had a secure phone, a bench, and a television. The Vice President asked to speak to the President, but it took time for the call to be connected. He learned in the tunnel that the Pentagon had been hit, and saw television coverage of smoke coming from the building. .....
.........United 93 and the Shootdown Order
There was not an open line of communication between the President and Vice President on the morning of 9/11, but rather a series of calls between the two leaders. The Vice President remembered placing a call to the President just after entering the shelter conference room. There is conflicting evidence as to when the Vice President arrived in the shelter conference room. We have concluded, after reviewing all the available evidence, that the Vice President arrived in the shelter conference room shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58.
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<b>[8]</b>
<b>[9]</b>
<b>[10]</b>
<b>Give the above material a thorough read, and then try to persuade me that it was proper to bury Mineta's testimony about when he arrived at Cheney's side on 9/11, when Flight 93 took off, when it's hijacking was reported to NORAD by the FAA, that the War Games and "exercises" on 9/11 were just coincidental, but needed to be concealed from the public and from accurate disclosure in the 9/11 Commission Report, or that the Commission members delivered the facts about Cheney and the shootdown order and the quality of the NORAD air defense response to the 9/11 attacks, to the American people in a sincere, complete, and straightforward manner.
Tell me why, given this sad record of blatant distortion and misinformation, accompanied by the fact that not one of the four hijacked airliners was intercepted, that I should change my mind that the U.S. east coast air defense response on the morning of 9/11 was intentionally "staged" to underperform, by the responsible officials in charge. The only other possibility, if they are not liars and suspected traitors, is that they are too stupid, incompetent, and or delusional to still be in positions of governance or other responsibility. No one was demoted, disciplined, or fired !
Last edited by host; 02-28-2006 at 05:36 AM..
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