9/11: NYPD warned 9:10 AM after 1st attack: "A criminal act"

This is BEFORE Bush left the school where he was reading to the kiddies about goats

Transcript Updates (12/30)

Newsday -December 29

NEW YORK -- Minutes after hijackers slammed into the World Trade Center, police alerted airport control towers that they considered it "a criminal act," according to newly released Port Authority transcripts.

The agency on Monday released the final set of transcripts from emergency communications during the Sept. 11 terror attack. The disclosure comes four months after the Port Authority released 2,000 pages of documents detailing what was said in thousands of other emergency calls that day.

In the newly disclosed transcripts, a caller from the Port Authority police desk tells Chris McCary, a La Guardia Airport control tower employee, that "they are considering it a criminal act."

"We believe that, and we are holding all aircraft on the ground," McCary answers. The exchange, reported at 9:10 a.m., came seven minutes after the second plane struck the twin towers.

NY Times -December 30

...Military officials have said that the F.A.A. notified them about one of the four hijackings only after that plane had crashed into the second tower at the trade center, but F.A.A. authorities have given different chronologies. Because of incomplete answers from both military and civil authorities, the commission said, it has been forced to issue subpoenas for information.

The fourth hijacked plane took off from Newark at 8:43, after two of the earlier planes had been seized. That has led the 9-11 Commission and others to question how the F.A.A. shared information as the crisis unfolded.

"What were the breakdowns in communication between the control towers, the F.A.A., Norad, and other government agencies?" Mary Fetchet, the mother of Bradley Fetchet, 24, who was killed in the south tower of the trade center, asked the commission in March.

At La Guardia, the tapes make clear, officials in the tower knew very little. Just after 9 a.m., shortly before the second plane hit the trade center, an unidentified woman in the La Guardia control tower spoke by phone with a Port Authority police officer, also unidentified on these transcripts.

"Do you know what happened at the World Trade Center?" the woman in the tower asked the policeman.

"Yeah, we . . . we just got it from what we are getting on the news," he responded. "We are sending a whole bunch of people down there, just so you guys know. We think a plane crashed into it."

"A plane crashed into it?" she asked.

"A plane crashed into the World Trade Center, yeah," the police officer answered.

The trade center and the billowing smoke could be seen from La Guardia, and as one supervisor looked at Lower Manhattan through binoculars, he saw the second plane circling around the towers, according to a federal aviation official.

At that moment, fighter jets that had been scrambled from Otis Air Force base in Massachusetts were racing toward the city and were about 71 miles from the trade center, eight minutes' flying time, according to testimony at a 9-11 Commission hearing.

(There was conflicting testimony on when the military was alerted to the first hijacking. Col. Alan Scott, retired, testified that the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, had been notified at 8:40 a.m., 20 minutes after the F.A.A. learned of the hijacking. The former F.A.A. administrator, Jane Garvey, testified that the notification took place six minutes earlier, at 8:34.)

Nothing on the tapes shows that the La Guardia controllers knew that the planes flying into their airspace had been seized by terrorists, or that military aircraft were screaming in pursuit over the Hudson River. Commercial airliners continued to line up on the La Guardia runways for takeoff, the transcripts show, as the second hijacked plane plunged into the south tower of the trade center at 9:02. Four minutes later, the air traffic in the area was grounded, and the word moved through the lines of planes waiting to leave La Guardia, according to an F.A.A. chronology.

At 9:07, an F.A.A. ground controller contacted planes getting ready for departure. "There's nobody that's going to be leaving La Guardia. Everybody just stand by," the dispatcher said. "I'm going to call you all back shortly. Everybody please maintain radio silence."

Police from the Port Authority, who patrolled both the trade center and the airports, sought information from the controllers about the hijackers. But the controllers, who were busy with airplanes suddenly returned for landing and others that had to go back to the gates, could not offer any news.

At 9:13, an air traffic controller, Chris McCary, took a phone call from a Port Authority police officer identified in the transcripts as Lusardi. "They are inquiring whether or not you can call Kennedy's tower," Officer Lusardi said, "because they can't get through, and inquire whether or not they had any contact with these aircrafts."

Mr. McCary answered, "At this time, we do not think that anyone in the F.A.A. had any contact with them."

At 9:37, a controller in the tower reported that the last La Guardia flight was returning to the gate. `My taxiways are clear," he said. "My runways are clear. And my airspace is clear."

The final recorded conversation in the tower that morning came at 9:47, when a supervisor called in and instructed a controller to get in touch with the police aviation unit.

"We are evacuating the tower," the supervisor said.

NY Post -December 30

NY Post - December 30, 2003 -- Worried that the Sept. 11 attacks could escalate, jittery Port Authority cops asked La Guardia Airport traffic controllers if any other planes were headed the city's way, newly released police communications transcripts reveal.

The first plane hit the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m., the second at 9:03 a.m.

At 9:10 a.m., a PA police officer based at La Guardia called the airport's control tower.

"They are considering it a criminal act," the police officer said.

"We - we believe that, and we are holding all aircraft on the ground," said FAA employee Chris McCary.

After some confusing back-and-forth, the police officer asked, "Do you have any - any incoming at this point?"

"No," McCary answered. "We - we're taking whatever is immediately in the vicinity . . . so that we can eliminate any other questionable aircraft . . . We think we don't have anything that we might have targeted."

The officer asked, "Can you also let us know when that's done? Give us a call back when you know that there are no more in the area?"

"Yes, sir," McCary replied.

In a subsequent call, McCary told police that nobody in the FAA had any contact with the hijackers.

The FAA grounded all air traffic around New York at 9:09 a.m. But according to the police transcripts, La Guardia controllers banned takeoffs about two minutes before that.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/v-pfriendly/story/150323p-132526c.html New York Daily News

PA tapes reveal rescuers' anxiety

NY Daily News -Tuesday, December 30th, 2003

Frantic rescue workers watched as jet fuel rained from the upper floors of the twin towers as they battled through chaos to rescue people on Sept. 11, 2001.

"I think we have jet fuel coming down from the upper floors. I can smell the fumes," one Port Authority police official said over his radio, according to transcripts of emergency communications released yesterday.

"It's interfering with our breathing a little bit," the man added.

The transcripts were the last of a set the Port Authority began releasing four months ago after losing a court battle to keep them sealed.

In another section of the taped conversations, a PA worker calls out for help on his radio, saying he and others are trapped near the northwest corner of the World Trade Center complex.

"We're trapped ... U.S. Customs House on the east wall, about 100 yards into the east wall on the plaza level. Mayday!" the man said.

"I've got one down. One man went down with the NYFD," he said at another point in the transcripts, which came from communications taped at LaGuardia Airport.

Officials also can be heard discussing how all flights at LaGuardia Airport were grounded 20 minutes after the attacks.

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printed from 9/11: NYPD warned 9:10 AM after 1st attack: "A criminal act" on 2004-02-23 11:48:12