| Date: | Friday May 23, @06:01AM |
|---|---|
| Author: | ewing2001 |
| Topic: | News |
| from the dept. | |
(Updated Saturday May 24)
Major Gen. O. K. Steele (Former Associate Administrator for Civil Aviation Security) and Stephen McHale (Transportation) answered during the afternoon on questions regarding the timetable of September 11th- live on C|Span (Archive). Among the guests had been Maria Schiavo (former inspector general for the Transportation Department , also representing 47 passenger families in a lawsuit),who mentioned Condoleeza Rice in reference to some "specific warnings".(Archive:3:47:30)
The event was monitored by Watchgroup 911Citizens Watch and internet forum Democratic Underground.com.
Related AP-Stories of today:
"To avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, three members of the 10-member commission -- James R. Thompson, Gorelick and Ben-Veniste -- will not participate in writing recommendations for commercial aviation, chairman Thomas H. Kean said. The three work for law firms that represent airlines."
There are actually at least SIX commissioners with potential airline industry conflicts to the airline industry. In addition to the above three, Max Cleland has received $300,000 from the airline industry, Fred Fielding also works for a law firm lobbying for Spirit Airlines and United Airlines, and Tim Roemer represents Boeing and Lockheed Martin. So sidelining only three is not acceptable.
"I was not aware of any information about (planes) being used as weapons that was credible," former FAA Administrator Jane Garvey told the bipartisan committee.
Incredulous, panel member and former House intelligence committee member Tim Roemer recited a litany of warnings, threats and uncovered plots in the years leading up to Sept. 2001, "Why didn't the FAA do more to try and assess whether this (kind of plot) might be done in the United States?" he asked.
...Nonetheless, representatives of the victims' families said they were angry about Garvey's defensiveness, and asked why she had not refreshed her memory about the timeline.
"With someone like that running the FAA," Stephen Push, who lost his wife Lisa aboard flight 77," it's no wonder 9-11 happened ... She just kept fobbing off the questions."
Washington - The independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks grilled the former chief federal aviation regulator yesterday in a tense public exchange over whether the government bungled its response that day.
Jane Garvey, former head of the Federal Aviation Administration, was asked pointedly by commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste why the agency apparently took a half-hour to notify the country's air defense command about the hijackings.
Another commissioner, Fred Fielding, pressed Garvey about an FAA report from Sept. 11 that a hijacker on American Airlines Flight 11 fatally shot a passenger five minutes before the plane smashed into the World Trade Center. The federal government has said no guns were on any of the four planes and that hijackers had only box cutters.
Garvey disputed both reports, but the questions indicated a tough approach being taken by the 10-member commission established last year to find out what allowed the attacks to occur..."
Some problems:
1) A week after 9/11, NORAD claimed that the FAA notified them at 8:43 that Flight 175 had been hijacked:
Now, they say that the FAA notified them that Flight 175 was only "possibly" hijacked at 9:05! That's a difference of 22 minutes! Flight 175 crashed at 9:02.
2) They explained that this late notification was due to the fact that the transponder was never turned off. Yet the New York Times reported that at 8:42, a flight controller said of Flight 175, "... looks like he's heading southbound but there's no transponder no nothing and no one's talking to him." Other reports suggest the transponder was turned off for about 30 seconds, then changed to a signal that was not designated for any plane on that day. This "allowed controllers to track the intruder easily, though they couldn't identify it."
3) We know that the last radio transmission from Flight 11 happened at 8:13:47 exactly, according to the New York Times, and that "just moments" after that, the transponder was turned off and radio contact ended. Air traffic manager Glenn Michael later said, "We considered it at that time to be a possible hijacking." Yet, yesterday, NORAD said its transponder was turned off at 8:20.
4) CNN broke into regular programming with footage of the WTC burning at 8:48 (possibly 8:49). NORAD now claims that CNN first showed this at 8:57! Anyone can see at the Television Archives online that this is wrong! To me, this seems to be as blatant a lie one could make, designed to give NORAD an additional excuse to claim cluelessness for another ten minutes.
5) According to reporter Bob Woodward and others, Bush and Cheney decided to give a shootdown order for Flight 93 just after Air Force One took off at 9:55. Now, supposedly, that decision was made at 10:08 - two minutes after Flight 93 had crashed!
6) Speaking of which, NORAD still asserts Flight 93 crashed at 10:03, even though the US Army commissioned seismic studies which proved it crashed at 10:06.
7) The original NORAD timeline gave no time when NORAD was notified of Flight 93's hijack. Now, they finally give a number and claim it was 9:16. From my initial viewing of the NORAD testimony, it appears they gave contradictory answers about fighter response. At one point, they claim that no fighters were scrambled from Washington because none could be spared. That would mean that Flight 93 was allowed to fly 50 minutes after NORAD knew it was hijacked, without a fighter getting near it! At another point, they claim two fighters were scrambled from Andrews air force base towards Flight 93, but that these planes had no weapons (note that if this is true, the fighter still supposedly hadn't reached Flight 93 when it crashed, so the 50 minutes figure still stands). However, previous reports suggest that 3 fighters arrived from Langley, and that shortly afterwards 3 fighters took off from Andrews, one unarmed, and two lightly armed with "'hot' guns and 511 rounds of 'TP' -- nonexplosive training rounds." And it has been reported that all three of these immediately took up position over Washington. So the claim of two fighters heading towards Flight 93 is technically impossible, as there were not even two unarmed fighters in the area. Plus, it was stupid: there were three fully armed fighters over Washington by that time - why not send one of those?
8) It was mentioned that the fighters scrambled from Langley did NOT use afterburner mode, and so only headed towards Washington at about 600 mph. In addition, they didn't actually fly to Washington, but flew out over the Atlantic Ocean, supposedly because defending the landmass was not part of NORAD's jurisdiction! This is patently absurd. The fighters scrambled from Otis towards New York much earlier in the day did use afterburners and thus travelled twice as fast, according to NORAD's own numbers, and had no trouble travelling over land. The difference is hardly trivial: NORAD admitted that it was physically possible for the fighters to have reached Washington before Flight 77 had they travelled faster and headed directly there!
9) I'll have to find the exact quote, but I was shocked that one of the NORAD officials claimed that even after the Pentagon was hit at 9:37, it was still unclear if the US was under attack or not!!!
10) I can't leave out Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta's comment yesterday: "I don't think we ever thought of an aircraft being used as a missile," he said. "We had no information of that nature at all." I'm glad Richard ben-Veniste aggressively challenged him on that, but he could have said so much more, from the Bush briefing entitled "Bin Laden to Stike in US" from the month before, to the many foreign government warnings the commission seems to be ignorant of. For instance, the British warning that al-Qaeda had plans to use "commercial aircraft" in "unconventional ways", "possibly as flying bombs," the German warning two months before that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack "American and Israeli symbols which stand out," and so on. See this essay for many more:
11) Mineta also repeats the clear lie that he was the one who ordered all planes in the US to land. This article, for instance, thoroughly debunks that: http://slate.msn.com/id/2063935/
And Jane Garvey's testimony was even worse, consisting mostly of "I don't know."
I'm sure I'll find more problems with these testimonies as I look at them in closer detail, but these were the thoughts going through my head as I watched the C-SPAN broadcast..."
The 9/11 Timeline:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/completetimeline/
Abridged version (a good place to start):
'Cold War vestige' guided air defenses
Saturday, May 24, 2003
BY RON MARSICO -Star-Ledger Staff
WASHINGTON -- A top U.S. air defense official testified yesterday that an outdated "cold war" view of the world before the 9/11 attacks blinded the nation to mounting evidence that hijacked airliners were becoming the terrorist's weapon of choice.
Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said even the nation's radars were, in retrospect, turned the wrong way, looking out to sea for incoming invaders rather than searching the skies for threats from within the country.
"We had not positioned prior to September 11, 2001, for the scenario that took place that day," McKinley told members of the Commission on Terrorist Attacks, which was holding its second day of hearings into security failures in the nation's aviation system.
McKinley and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta conceded in retrospect that their units were unprepared to prevent the devastation of the attacks, which led to the deaths of more than 3,000 Americans.
"...Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste dug into the length of time it took the FAA to notify NORAD about American Airlines Flight 77 between the time it deviated from its flight path to the time it crashed into the Pentagon.
NORAD's McKinley said the FAA alert came at 9:24 a.m., 22 minutes after the second plane hit the World Trade Center. But Jane Garvey, former head of the Federal Aviation Administration, said in supplemental answers she submitted to the commission after her testimony on Thursday that the FAA made informal telephone contact with NORAD before 9:24.
At issue is whether a faster response by military jets could have averted the strike on the Pentagon. ``It's so important for our job to get that timeline right and to get those questions answered,'' Kean said.
Also Friday, former Transportation Department Inspector General Mary Schiavo said the aviation industry escaped accountability when Congress bailed out airlines and federalized airport security after Sept. 11.
Those actions, she said in written testimony, ``guaranteed aviation will again be attacked by terrorism.'' Now a transportation disaster attorney, Schiavo and her firm represent the families of 47 passengers killed on Sept. 11.
Rules 'Watered Down,' Former Official Testifies
By Sara Kehaulani Goo -Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 24, 2003; Page E01
Two former government transportation officials said yesterday that the Federal Aviation Administration did not strengthen airline security before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks because of pressure from the airline industry.
The criticism came during a hearing here by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which is investigating how the government responded to the attacks.
Michael A. Canavan, former FAA associate administrator for civil aviation security, said the industry put heavy pressure on agency administrator Jane Garvey to reduce fines or relax security rules. "Some of these things would get watered down," Canavan said.
The FAA fined some airlines that violated security rules, a task now assigned to the new Transportation Security Administration. But the fines were often reduced and the penalty was like a slap on the wrist, former Transportation Department inspector general Mary Schiavo said.
"It turned out to be 10 cents on the dollar," she said. "What we've seen time and time before, there really isn't any accountability."
Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste pressed several witnesses for information on whether the FAA failed to promptly notify the North American Aerospace Defense Command when it learned that American Airlines Flight 77 had been hijacked.
Ben-Veniste suggested that NORAD might have been able to scramble a fighter jet to intercept the airliner before it hit the Pentagon.
Ben-Veniste received confusing answers all day.
Garvey said in written testimony that FAA officials were in a conference call with NORAD after the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. But a NORAD official indicated that the command was not notified until about 30 minutes after the FAA first reported Flight 77 off course. Another military official said a regional NORAD office talked with the FAA much earlier.
The commission chairman, former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean, said it became evident during the hearings that before the attacks, the nation had fallen into a pattern of reacting to tragedy, then slipped back into complacency.
==================
Lawyer for 32 passengers' families from all 9/11 hijacked planes. Former Inspector General, U.S. Dept. of Transportation ('90-'96) . Former Assistant U.S. Attorney; Author of "Flying Blind, Flying Safe".
At a June 2002-press conference of unansweredquestions.org (->), Schiavo supported an independent investigation. She found out, "that the airlines approached members of Congress and the Senate to get their bailout and their immunity and their protection starting on 9/11. They sent their first lobbyist up to the Hill on 9/11...
...In the last thirty years we have had 682 hijackings. 682. Here's an interesting statistic.
When we had the United States saying, "Oh, we couldn't have known this." And even when passengers were getting calls out to their family what information went back to them? Guess what, of those 682 hijackings in the last thirty years, 101 times passengers fought to defend themselves and took down the hijackers..."
(->FAA)
(Norman Mineta lied, when he said, "that, prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, aviation security officials had not considered that a hijacker might commandeer an airplane for any reason other than taking hostages." Source: CNS News.
Prior to joining the Commerce Department, Mineta was a vice president at Lockheed Martin Corporation, who was involved in the following Exercises:
In late 2000, the Pentagon simulated a plane crash into a miniature model of their own building!
Also the US Intelligence Agency was to simulate a plane crash into a government building. on September 11, 2001!!
==============================================
(Originally released on Ground Zero Forum NYC-> in 2002)
The Pentagon was worried, since at least seven years, that they would be target of a terrorist attack, therefore the incompetence theory (->) seems to be bogus.
In a 1993 study they compiled a panel of 41 intelligence/security experts that included former ranking CIA, FBI, State Department and Rand Corporation officials, as well as an ex-KGB general and Israeli intelligence agent. http://www.infowar.com/class_3/class3_081398a_j.shtml
Then in November 2000, they finally simulated a crash with some planes on a miniature model of the Pentagon.
http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/Contingency_Planning.html
http://mdwweb.mdw.army.mil/news/Contingency_Planning.html
Other pictures:
On this website you can read the following info: "...The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense Protective Services Police seal the crash sight. Army medics, nurses and doctors scramble to organize aid. An Arlington Fire Department chief dispatches his equipment to the affected areas.
Don Abbott, of Command Emergency Response Training, walks over to the Pentagon and extinguishes the flames. The Pentagon was a model and the "plane crash" was a simulated one...." Don Abbott is responsible for Emergency Response Training at the efilmgroup who who works on emergency videos and produced "ICS" (=Incident Command System) .
Efilmgroup is also known as Institute of Makers of Explosives and Emergency Film Group.
"I.C.S." is a 25-minute program designed for law enforcement, firefighters, emergency managers, emergency medical personnel, government agencies, the military, security, and facility management personnel who may respond to incidents or be involved in joint response operations.
One of their committee members was New Yorks Fire Department Chief Donald Burns, who later tragically died in the Twin Towers. http://www.courageandvalor.org/in_memory.cfm
Other specialists included Tom Abbott, Tempe Fire Dept. ("Anthrax Threats"), Manny Aljazireh, Refinery Fire Chief (Bomb Threat), Bob Andrews, Industrial Emergency Services (Petroleum Storage Tanks) , Maria Duazo (Fun With Chemistry), Rick Emery (Anthrax Threats) or Jerry Grey, HazTech Systems (Hazardous Waste, Inorganic Oxidizers etc..) and many many more. http://www.efilmgroup.com/videos/ics.html
Don Abbott used the FEMA and CERT-softwares FDonScene and PDonScene by Fieldsoft. http://www.fieldsoft.com/newsrelease/2000/abbottville.html
CERT training revolves around "Abbottville", a 12-foot by 18-foot training tool that is an HO scale diorama, built by Division Chief (retired) Don Abbot.
The tabletop town is used to teach fire, law enforcement, emergency medical, and other emergency response personnel. Actual fire, smoke, chemicals, and background noise are used during training exercises (->) to simulate as closely as possible, real life situations and distractions faced by emergency response personnel and incident commanders.
Division Chief Abbott and Bev Abbott planned to use FDonScene to monitor exercise events real time and prompt students to take key actions pertaining to strategy mode evaluation and responder accountability Basically, FDonScene is an automated COTS tool (commercial off-the-shelf software) that actively facilitates control and coordination of people, procedures, events, and other resources with the touch of a finger.
Coincidentally, a new trial software of FDonScene was installed in time on the morning of September 11th. In a report on the Fieldsoft website, you can read, how it was used: "...Over 700 victims passed through the Atlantic Highlands Ferry Port in New Jersey following the September 11, 2001 WTC attack. Two fire departments, three local police departments, as well as representatives from county, state, and federal agencies were on hand to assess and assist the victims as they embarked. Emergency units on the scene included 40 ambulances, an FD communications unit, a decontamination unit, and 10 pieces of fire apparatus. A communications unit member on scene at the Port, who had seen a ninety minute demonstration of the software a few days earlier, brought a trial copy of FDonScene on line and used it to track people, resources, and events. A second person watched how the software was being used, and took over operation of it a few hours later. Overall, the software was operated successfully for 14 hours....." http://www.fieldsoft.com/success.html#wtc (More at "911Skeptics Unite")
Amalgam Virgo was a multiagency, bilateral air security exercise sponsored by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)- a few weeks before Sep11th!
From June 2001: "... NORAD-Sponsored Exercise Prepares For Worst-Case Scenarios. This year's exercise is a commercial airliner-hijacking scenario.."
One of the situations in the exercise, called Amalgam Virgo ‘01, was the firing of a cruise missile from a nondescript merchant ship in the Gulf of Mexico. Interestingly, Bin Laden was included in an official logo.
The original Powerpoint Slideshow included the words "Based on Perceived Threats", "Aerospace Control provides surveillance and control over North American airspace. This includes the capability to detect , identify , monitor and, if necessary , take appropriate action (ranging from visual identification to destruction ) against manned or unmanned air", "EXECUTION PLANNING/ORDER", "TERRORIST ATTACK", "Phoenix Air (Surrogate UAVs)" "FOR EFFECTIVE POST TERRORIST ATTACK ACTIONS NORAD UNITS OTHER MILITARY DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT SUICIDE"
(from "911Skeptics Unite"):
Ben Sliney was the National Operations Manager for the FAA on Sept 11 and Sept 11 was his FIRST day on the job. Sliney seems to be the guy who initially gave the order to ground ALL planes stateside.
Sources:
http://baylink.pitas.com/20020822.html
http://my.metafilter.com/search_comments.cfm?user_ID=3063
http://www.davidrhenderson.com/articles/0902_mrwhitehouse.html
From an report by David R. Henderson, Monterey:
"I teach at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey (->), meaning that I instruct young military officers who are generally smart, hard working and curious.
On Aug. 27, I realized that I might well have one of the best jobs in America. That afternoon, the school's guest speaker was President Bush's White House counsel, Alberto Gonzalez, widely believed to be on the short list for the next Supreme Court appointment. What happened spoke volumes, not just about Gonzalez and his likely positions on the Constitution, but also about the students at the Naval Postgraduate School.
Let me explain. I went to the talk prepared to ask Gonzalez how he could justify the president's making war without a congressional declaration, and took my pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution in case he needed reminding of the its words. Unfortunately, he did. Fortunately, I didn't need to be the one to remind him: The students did the job and much more.
In his speech, Gonzalez tried to justify not just war without a congressional declaration, but the government's decision to imprison U.S. citizens such as Jose Padilla, the alleged "dirty bomber," without charging them with a crime or allowing them a lawyer. Padilla is now in a military prison in South Carolina.
Bush needed power to make quick decisions, Gonzalez said, and Congress would take too long. Among the examples he cited was the Sept. 11 decision to close down U.S. airspace and force commercial and private planes to land or remain grounded. But that example was, to put it mildly, a reach. The person who made that decision, and who didn't need even Bush's consent to do so, was Ben Sliney, the FAA's national operations manager."
In addition to his duties at the Naval Postgraduate School, David R. Henderson is a research fellow with the Hoover (->) Institution and author of "The Joy of Freedom: An Economist's Odyssey" (Prentice Hall, 2002).
(-> Stand down)
Bob Woodward claimed it in his book, it was Mineta who "shouted into the phone to Monte Belger at the FAA: "Monte, bring all the planes down."
However this seems to be overexaggerated or just a lie.
It was not Mineta or former FAA administrator Jane Garvey, also not deputy Monte Belger, who only closed "airspace over major cities":
Throughout the morning, FAA Administrator Jane Garvey has witnessed the most painful hours in the agency's history.
She and her deputy, Monte Belger, approved orders to close airspace over major cities. Then they approved stopping takeoffs nationwide. When Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:38 a.m., they seconded the decision of managers in Herndon to order every flight to land.
But the reports of more suspicious flights didn't stop.
A bomb is reported aboard a United Airlines jet that just landed in Rockford, Ill. Another jet disappears from radar and might have crashed in Kentucky.
The reports are so serious that Garvey notifies the White House that there has been another crash. Only later does she learn the reports are erroneous.
Now, almost 1,000 planes remain in the air. And at FAA headquarters in Washington, Garvey and Belger try to focus on what to do next. Still, they can't avoid another thought: Whoever hijacked the four jets that crashed somehow got past the airport security forces they oversee.
What could we have done? Garvey thinks. What did we miss?
In Belger's office, the phone rings. It's the Herndon command center. For once it's good news. Every commercial flight in U.S. airspace — about a quarter of the planes still in the air — is within 40 miles of its destination. The others are still over the oceans, and many are heading toward Canada. But at least all the flights over the United States are accounted for and complying with controllers.
"Thank God," Garvey says.
A battle won
It seems small consolation, but Ben Sliney can't help thinking it: At least no one has run into anything in a couple hours.
When he accepted the job overseeing the nation's airspace a few months earlier, Sliney wanted to be sure he had the power to do the job as he saw fit.
"What is the limit of my authority?" he asked the man who had promoted him. "Unlimited," he was told.
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printed from 911 Commission -Day 4 live on C|Span on 2004-05-31 09:36:35