Kean & Hamilton Explain U.S. Military Failure to Intercept Flight 77

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Sun Sep-24-06 09:39 PM
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Kean & Hamilton Explain U.S. Military Failure to Intercept Flight 77

�Without Precedent � The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission�, written by the two co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, is in their words �the compelling inside story of how the � 9/11 Commission managed to succeed against all odds in producing a report that made clear what went wrong and why.�

In this post I describe the authors� attempts to justify just one of their major findings � a finding that to many people, including me, is the most incredible of the whole incredible story of 9/11. That is the explanation of how the most expensive, powerful, and technologically advanced military that the world has ever known failed to prevent an attack on its capital city despite what appeared to be plenty of time to prevent it. For clarity, my editorial comments in response to various statements by the authors are in red.

�Without Precedent� � an explanation of the general approach of the 9/11 Commission

Kean sets the stage for the drama, thereby explaining the title of the book, in the Prologue:

President Bush said he would meet with us for as long as we wanted and that he would answer any questions � After the first few exchanges, I realized the magnitude of what was happening: ten independent citizens sitting in the White House and asking questions of the president and vice-president about a national catastrophe. It was without precedent�. This was precisely how democracy is supposed to work.

Huh? What part of that description was �without precedent�? Perhaps Kean was referring to Bush answering questions without a prepared script.

The authors then devote much of the early chapters of the book to explaining (or justifying, depending on how one looks at it) the methods of their investigation. Included in these explanations are descriptions of their extensive efforts to ensure that the investigation was cordial and not �partisan�, and a statement that a fundamental purpose of their investigation was NOT �to point fingers�. Noting that many of the victims� families were not happy about the decision not to �point fingers�, the authors explain, �We would be unyielding and comprehensive in uncovering facts, but our purpose was not to assign blame to individuals for 9/11.�

I can imagine the outrage if a state prosecutor announced that the purpose of an investigation into an unsolved inner city murder was �not to point fingers or assign blame�. But this investigation was different. The people responsible for preventing terrorist attacks on the United States were in general highly educated and wealthy government officials � certainly not the type of persons deserving of having fingers pointed at them, notwithstanding the need for �producing a report that made clear what went wrong and why.�

In line with the intended cordiality of their investigation, the authors provide extensive discussions on how they decided that they would issue subpoenas only in extraordinary circumstances. And this is followed later by an explanation as to why they decided NOT to issue subpoenas to the White House. Major considerations in making that decision were that issuing subpoenas to the White House �would have led half the country � to question our motives�, and �We were investigating a national catastrophe, not a White House transgression�. In other words it was decided before the investigation even began that the White House was not guilty of any �transgressions�.

Prelude to an explanation as to how the U.S. military failed to intercept Flight 77

The authors� explanation of this central event occurs in Chapter 12 of their fourteen chapter book. But prior to getting into the details of the main event they do some preparing of their readers.

In Chapter 4 the authors broach the fact that, despite their great reluctance to use their subpoena power they had to make an exception when it came to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). They don�t go into much detail at that point, rather they simply make it clear that both the FAA and NORAD provided so much false information to the Commission that it became apparent to them that neither agency could be trusted to cooperate without the pressure of a subpoena. The importance of establishing the unreliability of the FAA and NORAD would become evident later in the book, when it became clear that the FAA and NORAD version of events suggested purposeful failure to prevent the attack on the Pentagon by Flight 77.

Throughout the book the authors make snide comments about �conspiracy theorists�. Then, right before their attempt to explain why our military failed to get a fighter plane up in the air to intercept Flight 77 they get real heavy with dark warnings about �conspiracy theorists�. They begin by harking back to the Kennedy assassination:

Many people have reasonable questions about how Lee Harvey Oswald could have acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy; a smaller subset of conspiracy theorists propagate outrageous notions: Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA or by some shadowy secret society of the rich and powerful�

In other words, reasonable people may wonder about conspiracy theories, but it�s �outrageous� to think that the CIA or rich and powerful men might be involved in a dark conspiracy. I guess Kean and Hamilton think that assassinations of presidents are more likely to be carried out by crazy people acting alone than by the rich and powerful, and that it�s outrageous to think otherwise.

Getting back to the subject at hand, the authors continue:

September 11 has generated its own share of conspiracy theorists� We often confronted questions about one conspiracy theory or another.

Then there were the more irrational theories. Did the U.S. government have foreknowledge of the attacks: Did the military issue a �stand-down� order on 9/11 to allow the attacks to take place? Did a missile hit the Pentagon instead of a plane?...

A brief time-line for the events involving Flight 77

In order to understand how the 9/11 Commission attempted to explain this most controversial issue we must first look at a general time line of the relevant events. The following is a brief time line taken right from the 9/11 Commission Report itself, with one very important exception, which is posted in blue for emphasis:

8:20 � Flight 77 leaves Dulles Airport in Washington D.C., headed West.
8:54 � Plane goes off flight plan
8:56 � Transponder is turned off, and flight is then lost FAA controllers
8:56 to 9:32 � Plane �traveled undetected for 36 minutes on a course heading due east, for Washington, D.C.�
9:24 � NORAD is notified by FAA of the missing plane (According to FAA the notification occurred earlier).
9:24 � NORAD gives order to scramble fighter jets for Langley AFB.
9:30 � Fighter jets from Langley become airborne.
9:37 � Pentagon is struck.

The one controversial part of this time line is crucial to an understanding of the whole controversy. If the notification of NORAD by the FAA really did occur at 9:24, as NORAD claimed in a press release on September 18th, and as they testified to at the 9/11 hearings twenty months later, then the question arises as to why NORAD didn�t immediately give an order to scramble planes to intercept Flight 77 (Yes, I know, it appears from the above time line that that is exactly what happened), since there was still plenty of time to do so. Indeed, since standard operating procedure would require that action, and since that would be the course of action expected of a military intent on preventing an attack on its capital city, the failure of the U.S. military to intercept Flight 77 is the major reason why many people believe that a �stand down� order was given by the U.S. military to prevent such an action, and why those people therefore believe that the U.S. military was complicit in the attacks.

Kean and Hamilton�s explanation

Here is what Kean and Hamilton have to say about this in their book:

Yet our staff determined that there was no notification to NORAD that American 77 was a hijacking before the crash time at 9:37; instead, at 9:34, there was notification that American 77 was lost �.

These inaccurate notification times explained in part the military�s puzzling account of its own actions on 9/11� At 9:24, NORAD scrambled air force jets from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, directing them to fly east over the Atlantic Ocean� NORAD claimed that the Langley jets were scrambled in pursuit of United 93 and American 77. Yet that was impossible. At 9:24, NORAD had not yet been notified that American 77 had been hijacked�

So why were air force jets scrambled from Langley at 9:24? � Our staff found that the people at NEADS had been told that American 11 had turned and was headed south toward Washington, when in fact American 11 had already crashed into the World Trade Center. The air force jets from Langley were thus pursuing a phantom aircraft � American 11, not United 93 or American 77.

Get it? In order to explain why NORAD gave an order to scramble jets from Langley at 9:24 (immediately after being notified of the missing Flight 77, according to NORAD) and why planes were up in the air by 9:30, and yet made no attempt intercept Flight 77, Kean and Hamilton claim that NORAD was responding NOT to notification of Flight 77 heading to Washington from the west, but rather to a phantom plane coming from the north. And furthermore, to make the point that those planes were nowhere in the vicinity by the time that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37, they claim that NORAD mistakenly ordered the planes to fly east over the Atlantic Ocean.

Several problems with Kean and Hamilton�s account

In order assess the accuracy of Kean and Hamilton�s account, as described above, one should consider all of the following:

1) First, believing the Kean/Hamilton account requires us to believe that the FAA personnel were so incompetent on that day that they couldn�t follow standard operating procedures. The 9/11 Commission says that the FAA first noted Flight 77 going off course at 8:54 (8:46 according to the FAA) and the transponder going off at 8:56. That should have given our military all the time in the world to protect our capital had the FAA notified them.

2) There is a memo from an FAA employee, Laura Brown, to the 9/11 Commission, which states that a phone bridge was established between NORAD and FAA within minutes of the first strike, and that the FAA shared information continuously with NORAD about all flights of interest during this teleconference, including Flight 77.

3) Richard Clarke describes another teleconference which included the White House and the FAA Administrator Jane Garvey, also initiated long before 9:24. (The 9/11 Commission report claimed (based on logs) that Clarke�s teleconference didn�t begin until after Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, but Clarke�s account is so clear on this matter that he would have had to have been lying if the 9/11 Commission claim is correct.)

4) As noted above, NORAD�s claim that they were notified of Flight 77 at 9:24 was initially made in a press release, and then repeated in testimony before the 9/11 Commission. Furthermore, as Kean and Hamilton note in their book, even after the 9/11 Commission issued their revised time lines NORAD officials �insisted that their original timelines had been correct�. Why would NORAD officials be insistent on this point if it weren�t true (or if they had been notified even earlier, as maintained by FAA), given that the later time takes them off the hook for their inaction? If FAA�s version of an earlier notification is correct it makes sense that NORAD might want to claim a later notification. But why claim an earlier notification if they wanted to protect themselves?

5) But even if the FAA was totally negligent in its duty to warn NORAD of the hijacking of Flight 77, shouldn�t the military have sent up fighter jets anyhow, given that they knew that our country was under attack for almost an hour before the Pentagon was hit?

6) And even if they didn�t get a plane up in the air long before they did, shouldn�t they have been watching closely and have been able to track Flight 77 heading for Washington D.C. (IF indeed that flight did head for Washington D.C.) long before it hit the Pentagon at 9:37?

7) It seems incredible that, of the four hijacked flights on September 11th, the only one which elicited a timely scramble order was a phantom plane (Flight 11, which had already crashed into the World Trade Center building in New York, according to the 9/11 Commission.)

8) It also seems incredible that the FAA mistakenly would have ordered the pilots from Langley AFB to fly east over the Atlantic Ocean, whether they were responding to Flight 77 coming from the west or Flight 11 coming from the north.

9) Supporting evidence for the theory that orders were given to prohibit any military response to Flight 77 comes from testimony before the 9/11 Commission of Norman Minetta, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, regarding a meeting he was having with Dick Cheney shortly before the Pentagon was hit. Here is Mineta�s account:

During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, �The plane is 50 miles out.� �The plane is 30 miles out.� And when it got down to �the plane is 10 miles out,� the young man also said to the Vice President, �Do the orders still stand?� And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, �of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?�

Conclusion

Kean and Hamilton devote much discussion to warning about conspiracy theories, at times blaming the abundance of conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 on inaccurate information put out by the FAA and NORAD, and at other times blaming it on psychological weaknesses of unbalanced individuals. Thus, they imply that one important reason for writing their book is to address that problem:

We established core principles for our inquiry in part to avoid the kinds of conspiracy theorizing that have followed in the wake of other inquiries. So we decided to be open and transparent so that people could see how we reached our conclusions about 9/11�. If, in the course of our inquiry, we could address or knock down a particular conspiracy theory, we did so.

Therefore, one would suppose that they would have tried to address the issues raised by perhaps the best known and well regarded of the so-called conspiracy theorists, David Ray Griffin, in his book, �The 9/11 Commission Report, Omissions and Distortions�. Griffin raised all the issues that I have raised in this post, and more, in considerably more detail than I have. And yet, Kean and Hamilton�s book not only fails to answer any of Griffin�s points regarding Flight 77, but they don�t even acknowledge them.

Thus, far from clarifying or strengthening the 9/11 Commission�s claims regarding Flight 77, it seems to me that �Without Precedent� emphasizes the weaknesses of its claims.