It was the CIA running a simulation crash on 911

[spooked]

http://www.nlsi.net/hs-alc-info.htm

John Fulton - Intelligence Networking & Analysis

On the morning of September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his team at the CIA were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way that day. Information is the most powerful tool available in the homeland security effort. At the core of every initiative currently underway to protect our country and its citizens is the challenge of getting the right information to the right people at the right time. How can so much information from around the world be captured and processed in meaningful and timely ways? Mr. Fulton shares his insights into the intelligence community, and shares a vision of how today's information systems will be developed into even better counter-terrorism tools of tomorrow.

John Fulton’s 25 years in the intelligence community has contributed to his recognition as an expert in risk & threat response analysis, scenario gaming, and strategic planning. He is on staff for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), currently serving as Chief of the Strategic War Gaming Division of the National Reconnaissance Office, and as a member of U.S. Joint Forces Command's Project Alpha - a prestigious "think tank" for advanced concepts related to such issues as homeland security. He formerly served as the mission director for our nation's satellite imagery program as well as replacing Army Astronaut Same Gemar as the Director of the National Security Space Master Plan for the U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence Space Communities under the auspices of the Deputy UnderSecretary of Defense (Space).

His counter-terrorism and homeland security responsibilities include advising the Director Central Intelligence Staff for Homeland Security, the U.S. Marshall's Office, and collaboration with the National Security Council.

In the private sector Fulton has developed a number of patents related to positioning, "smart GPS " applications, communications, and audio/video technology. He oversees the development of public & personal safety applications of these capabilities through SafeSTAR projects, and contributes to the strategic planning and conceptual design of the SafeSTAR Homeland Security Command Center.

http://www.nlsi.net/hs-alc-info.htm

This first came out from the publicity info. for a Homeland Security Event in Chicago in 2002, featuring Giuliani as a speaker. The info. about John Fulton, one of the featured speakers, is found toward the end of the page.

[frylock]

1. i'm sure it was just a coincidence..

like everything else that happened that day.

[Red_Viking]

2. I thought it was NORAD?

I saw the NORAD past and present commanders before the 9/11 Commission last year. They were talking about the same kind of exercise happening the day of the attacks, which caused much confusion when the calls about the hijackings started coming in. They testified they were running around asking, "Is this real or is it the exercise?"

Also, reading Clarke's book, I was struck by the number of people in positions of power in the administration who were BRAND NEW TO THEIR JOBS on 9/11. You know, what good luck for bin Laden! He's on dialysis, living in a cave, but managed to pull off an attack of this scale on the EXACT DAY there were training exercises planned, and the government had a bunch of new employees. Sounds like it was designed for maximum confusion.

I've been in the LIHOP camp for awhile, and the testimony of the folks before the 9/11 Commission has done nothing to dissuade me.

:dem:

RV

[sam sarrha]

3. probavly just a cover up for being caught actually controlling it.

[spooked]

4. There are reports of both NORAD and CIA running a simulation on 911

Strange isn't it??

There was definately an officer at NORAD who talked aout conducting the simulation, and then the "real thing" happening and she wasn't sure if it was part of the planned exercise.


And now, it looks like the CIA was planning the same thing for that very same day.

[DeepModem Mom]

6. NYT today: Norad says simulation proposal rejected --

WAR GAMES
Pentagon Rejected Pre-9/11 Hijacking Exercise
By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: April 14, 2004


WASHINGTON, April 13 — At least five months before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, air defense planners proposed a war-game situation in which a terrorist group hijacked an airliner and flew it into the Pentagon, but the Joint Staff rejected the idea, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

Pentagon officials on Tuesday played down the significance of the proposal, which they said was made at a planning conference before the training exercise in April 2001, and was not based on any specific threat. The exercise was intended to test the military leadership's ability to function at undisclosed sites outside Washington in an emergency, and the hijacking did not fit the war game's objectives, the officials said....

***

The proposal was described in an e-mail message disclosed on Monday by the Project on Government Oversight, an advocacy group, and was confirmed by military officials. The message was written Sept. 18, 2001, by Terry Ropes, identified as a former member of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, which is responsible for defending United States airspace....

***

The message also said that the Navy's Pacific Command also balked at using the hijacking, but a spokesman for the command said it had never taken a position on it.

An investigator for the advocacy group, Peter Stockton, said the hijacking proposal was suggested by Special Operations personnel trained to think like terrorists.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/politics/14PENT.html?ex=1082520000&

[damnraddem]

5. Unfortunately, some Saudi guys they'd hired to help with the simulation ..

didn't show up for work that day -- they were on other flights.

[Minstrel Boy]

7. More info on this "bizarre coincidence"

From an archived thread here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1298401



Think about this: What if you were getting ready to pull off the biggest "sneak attack" since Pearl Harbor. What if you needed a plausible "cover story" in case some innocent "paper pusher" happened to discover some of your plans?

Would this simulation of a plane crashing into a building answer all the questions that an innocent reporter or junior officer would have if he/she happened to discover any part of the plan?
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=22437

The story - a "limited hangout", I believe (that is, there was no simulation; it is a cover-story to explain otherwise inexplicable activity by senior leadership) - was first quietly put out there in this announcement of a Homeland Security event to mark the first anniversary of the attacks. Regarding one speaker, John Fulton:

On the morning of September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his team at the CIA were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way that day.
http://www.nlsi.net/hs-alc-info.htm

The story was then picked up by Associated Press:

AP story:

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....

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.

...

"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."

...

The National Reconnaissance Office operates many of the nation's spy satellites. It draws its personnel from the military and the CIA.
http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm

Another "bizarre coincidence": the pilot of Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, had helped draft the response plans to the crashing of a commercial airliner into the, er, Pentagon:

Barbara Honegger, who worked in the White House under Reagan, points out another coincidence. Researching press reports, she found a 9/16/01 Washington Post story about the pilot of AA flight 77 that, on the morning of 9/11, was said to have crashed into the Pentagon.

The pilot, Charles Burlingame, an ex- F4 Navy flyer, had, as his last Navy mission, helped craft Pentagon response plans in the event of a commercial ariliner hitting the Pentagon.

Pilot drafts plan for response to Pentagon hit. Pilot winds up on plane that hits Pentagon.

Honegger states that Dick Cheney was ultimately in charge of the NRO exercise on the morning of 9/11. He was in the White House Situation Room for that purpose.
http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/0514_coincidence.html

Here's Barbara Honegger:

...the main pilot of the 9-11 Pentagon plane, former Navy and then Navy Reservist pilot Charles Burlingame, had recently, in a Reserve assignment at the Pentagon, been part of a Task Force that drafted the Pentagon's emergency response plan on what to do in case a plane hit the building - which his own plane then did. It is therefore very possible - in fact extremely likely, if not certain - that this 'task force' that Flight 77 pilot "Chick" Burlingame was part of was the Cheney counterterrorism preparedness task force, and that the Pentagon plane pilot, therefore, directly knew and even worked with/for Cheney. and

Burlingame's 9-11 Pentagon plane not only hit the Pentagon that morning, it struck a Command and Control center for that morning's counterterrorism "game" exercise, killing most, if not all, of the "players". We know this because Army personnel from Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey were on special duty assignment at the Pentagon that morning for an emergency response exercise and were killed when Burlingame's plane hit. Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey also happens to be the headquarters for White House/Presidential communications, including therefore probably also for Air Force One (this is discoverable) -- and recall the warning "Air Force One is next" and the 'secret code' which was called into the White House that morning which WH press secretary Ari Fleischer revealed as a means of explaining why Pres. Bush left Florida for a military base and did not return to the White House. This "warning" was probably called into the White House, if true, by either the Ft. Monmouth White House communications headquarters and/or the Ft. Monmouth counterterrorism exercise "game" players temporarily at the Pentagon that morning.

This nexus is completely and totally beyond coincidence....
http://anderson.ath.cx:8000/911/pen08.html