Reply #54: Richard Clarke's book confirms this AND NORAD's Vigilant Warrior exercise.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

from 'Against All Enemies' page 5 describing the morning of 9/11-

"The air traffic manager," Jane went on, "says there are 4400 birds up now. We can cancel takeoffs quickly, but grounding them all that are already up...Nobody's ever done this before. Don't know how long it will take. By the way, its Ben's first day on the job." Garvey was referring to Ben Sliney, the very new National Operations Manager at FAA.

>snip<

I turned to the Pentagon screen. "JCS, JCS. I assume NORAD has scrambled fighters and AWACS. How many? Where?"
"Not a pretty picture, Dick." Dick Myers, himself a fighter pilot, knew that the days when we had scores of fighters on strip alert had ended with the Cold War. "We are in the middle of Vigilant Warrior, a NORAD exercise, but...Otis has launched two birds toward New York. Langley is trying to get two up now. The AWACS are at Tinker (AFB) and not on alert."
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http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm

As reported by the Associated Press in 2002, the CIA and NORAD were in the middle of an exercise to prepare for multiple hijacked planes flying into buildings on the morning of 9/11 while it was actually happening.

Now that's worth screaming WTF!
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Agency planned drill for plane crash last Sept. 11
Associated Press
August 22, 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 crashed 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 crashed 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. To simulate the damage from the plane, 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."

Terrorism was to play no role in the exercise, which had been planned for several months, he said.

Adding to the coincidence, American Airlines Flight 77 -- the Boeing 767 that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon -- took off from Dulles at 8:10 a.m. on Sept. 11, 50 minutes before the exercise was to begin. It struck the Pentagon around 9:40 a.m., killing 64 aboard the plane and 125 on the ground.

The National Reconnaissance Office operates many of the nation's spy satellites. It draws its personnel from the military and the CIA.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, most of the 3,000 people who work at agency headquarters were sent home, save for some essential personnel, Haubold said.