Author: Oredigger 61

Bloomington Group Open Letter

September 29, 2009

An Open Letter to The 9-11 Working Group of Bloomington

I am Miles Kara, former professional staff member of both the 9-11 Commission and the Congressional Joint inquiry that preceded it.  Recently, I started my own website, www.oredigger61.org, as perhaps you have discovered.  If there are specific subjects you would like me to address I will consider doing that, with two caveats.  First, I have found the Q and A approach to be counter-productive and that is one of the reasons I started my own website.  Second, I am not interested in a debate over the facts of the day.

The primary reason I started my own site was that I knew when the Commission’s files were released that a great deal of my work would be made public.  I also knew that I had the opportunity to do additional research and work using my own files.  So, by starting my own site I am able to dictate the pace of my work and the subject matter.  I prefer to focus on the theoretical and for me that is Chaos Theory as is evident from the categories on my website.

However, the opportunity to delve further into specific issues is both useful and interesting.  Examples of such issues are my articles on Delta 1989, the Bobcats, and the so-called mystery plane.  I have requests from correspondents to write about the Otis Scramble and about UA 175.  I may or may not do that as I grapple with completing my re-look at the Scott Trilogy (https://www.oredigger61.org/?cat=20) which is fundamental to understanding why the public story was as it was when the Commission began its work.

Concerning your work, let me state at the outset that I appreciate this initiative: “This blog is now strictly private, viewable by members only.”    The ‘wild west’ nature of the web blog world is not conducive to the type work you are about.  Your publication of occasional public comments, however, caught my eye, this one in particular:  “9/11 MIND SWELL by Joel S. Hirschhorn”

Hirschhorn is valued added and I am sure his input has been cause for discussion.  Permit me to add my perspective.  My unsolicited advice to you and to correspondents who have emailed me is that if you seek a paradigm shift, such as Hirshhorn suggests, then you have at least three courses of action available.

First, seek publication in the main stream media; a serious article in something like the Sunday Washington Post magazine.  Michael Bronner had no problem telling the NEADS story in Vanity Fair, for example.  Second, file suit in the court of your choice, but make sure you are on solid legal ground.  I am aware of at least two attempts along this line in which the fundamental language of the baseline documents is flawed.  Third, seek a Congressional sponsor to task one of the statutory Inspectors General to conduct an investigation.

Concerning the latter approach, I personally worked on several cases where individuals and small groups successfully petitioned for a Congressional or Government-directed investigation.  For example, the private American citizen, Jennifer Harbury, caused the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) to direct several statutory Inspectors General, acting jointly, to investigate the death of her guerrilla husband, Bamaca, in Guatemala.  Another private citizen, a mother, petitioned Senator Shelby to direct several statutory Inspectors General, acting jointly, to determine why and how her Marine Corps son was killed in the Zona Rosa Massacre in El Salvador.  A private citizen, Jose Basulto, and his organization, Brothers to the Rescue, successfully petitioned Representative Dan Burton to direct the DoD Inspector General to investigate the shoot down of two of his aircraft by the Cuban Air Force.  Finally, the POW/MIA movement ultimately petitioned Senator Bob Smith to form an ad hoc Senate Committee to investigate the POW/MIA issue.  Not happy with the results the movement continued to petition Senator Smith and he directed the DoD and CIA Inspectors General to further investigate the issue.

As I said, I worked on all four investigations and of the four the one most relevant to you is the POW/MIA movement; its successes and failures.  The joint report of the Inspectors General is available through CIA FOIA: “A Review of the 1998 National Intelligence Estimate on POW/MIA Issues and the Charges Levied by ‘A Critical Assessment’ of the Estimate (29 February 2000).

From the beginning of my work on 9-11 (https://www.oredigger61.org/?page_id=598) I have noticed strong parallels between the POW/MIA movement and the 9-11 movements (plural is deliberate).  First, each started as strictly a matter of the families.  Second, the families themselves split into basically two factions; those who wanted to move on with their lives and those who demanded full accounting.  The latter faction further split into those who accepted new evidence and those who were convinced that nothing the government said or did was true.

Third, the movements attracted outsiders.  I over simplify here, but the attracted outsiders came in two flavors; those who had a genuine interest in the issue and a real empathy with the families, and those who sought nothing more than personal gain and fame/notoriety.  The fraud that bedeviled the POW/MIA movement and preyed on families who wanted to believe even beyond hope is well documented and sad.  I’m confident that the Bloomington Group is quite capable of separating those with genuine interest from the frauds, opportunists, and paper millers who serve primarily as a major distraction.

Penultimately let me say that no new investigation is needed.  The more the Commission’s work files are released the more the Commission’s report is validated.  If a new Commission is formed, or even two or more working in parallel, their findings will be no different than the Commission found.  The facts allow no other outcome.  A new Commission may come up with different recommendations and may tell the story differently, focusing on some things more than others.  But a new Commission will not come up with new findings the facts are not there to provide otherwise.

We can start a discussion on common ground.  Everyone agrees there was an event on 9-11.  I have constructed a neutral framework for analysis (https://www.oredigger61.org/?page_id=10) that allows for anyone to call that event what they wish.  I call it a terrorist attack.  If someone wants to call it something different, that’s fine, but that person or group is obligated to provide an evidence-based pre-story to support its story of events on 9-11.  I have seen no articulation of a pre-story to support anything other than a terrorist attack.

Finally let me see that I am disappointed to see the number of shallow articles on the web (I’ve had a Google alert “9-11 Commission” since August 2004) that state that Dean John Farmer’s new book The Ground Truth says that the 9-11 Commission report, itself, is false.  I am confident that The 9-11 Working Group of Bloomington knows that what Farmer said was that the Commission’s report was accurate and what was not accurate was the Government’s reconstruction of events in the aftermath.

Sincerely,

Miles Kara

Chaos Theory: 9-11; a battle not a war

Summation to date

We have previously established that chaos is one descriptor of events on 9-11 by participants, researchers, and the media.  We have established that the Theory and its language can be used at least metaphorically to discuss events of the day.  In this article we will discuss the attack on 9-11 as a battle in a larger war and will continue to use the language of Chaos Theory to do so.

In an earlier article, we introduced the construct that NEADS and ZBW (Boston Center) were strange attractors in the sense that they become the focal point for the expedient exchange of information.  We also identified a third strange attractor but one with no DoD partner, the FAA’s Herndon Center.  It is at the level of the strange attractors that the battle should have been fought and was fought that day.

Relevant and non-relevant voices of the battle of 9-11

Considering the events of 9-11 as a battle allows us to identify four relevant voices of the day and, concurrently, allows us to set aside the national level voices as immaterial. The four relevant voices are Colonel MARR, NEADS Commander; Ben Sliney, the FAA’s National Operations Manager; General Arnold, CONR Commander; and Jeff Griffith, FAA’s senior Air Traffic Control voice on 9-11. The immaterial national level voices are the President, the Vice President, the Secretaries of Defense and Transportation, the Acting Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and CINC NORAD.

There is one additional voice of interest, another strange attractor, Richard Clarke. Clarke’s attempt to establish the White House Situation Room as a focal point failed to attract a meaningful flow of information. There is anecdotal evidence that Clarke’s effort was actually a detractor, destructive feedback in the language of Chaos. We know from FAA tapes that the FAA leadership was called away at one time (9:49-9:50) to participate in Clarke’s secure video conference. We also know from the interview of an NMCC staff officer that the senior military leadership was also called away at critical times to participate in the same conference.  Interestingly, that same staff officer referred to activity in the NMCC as “managed chaos.”

Battles and wars

There is a difference between fighting a war and fighting a battle. Generals (and Presidents), and their civilian equivalents in the case of FAA, do not fight battles, they fight wars.  Battles are fought by the rank and file.  And in the battles in the war on terror the rank and file includes civilians.  Battles are managed by some echelon between the rank and file and the senior leadership.

The Battle of 9-11was fought by NEADS and the Herndon Command Center but they were never in meaningful contact during the battle.  The battle was fought valiantly but ultimately ineffectively by Colonel Marr and Alpha and Delta flights at NEADS, and by Ben Sliney and his national traffic managers at Herndon.

The Battle was managed by the next higher echelons, CONR for NEADS and FAA Air Traffic Control for Herndon. The battle was never managed effectively despite the personal efforts of CONR, General Arnold, and Air Traffic Control, Jeff Griffith.

One reason is that chaos reigned and could not be harnessed. Chaos is deterministic, not random, and the flow of information and response that morning was going to inevitably follow the path of least resistance. Arnold and Griffith, acting separately and, themselves, never in contact were unaware that the path of least resistance was to/from NEADS and the en route air traffic control centers acting separately. For there to be any chance at all to interdict the attack that path of least resistance had to be between NEADS and Herndon. Even then, the only potential opportunity was to interdict the southern two-pronged attack against the nation’s capital.

For it to have been different, the warfighters—the generals, senior civilians and the National Command Authority—would have long before had to have identified the threat posed by the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center, and to have identified who it was that would fight a terrorist battle brought once again to American soil. That required a clear and early understanding that the attack would be from the air. Absent that understanding no one in a position of authority had the acumen to understand that a terrorist air attack on the East Coast would be fought by NEADS and Herndon.

The battle unfolds

Prior to 9:03 there was little awareness that a battle was in progress. ZBW/ZNY declared a hijacking in progress at 8:25, linear response processes kicked in and the event was managed accordingly. However, ZBW circumvented one linear process, the hijack protocol, and notified NEADS directly, an initiative that had the detrimental effect of short-circuiting the national level.

There was no awareness at any echelon that the attack was multi-pronged and the northern prong, itself, two-pronged. The traditional mindset that the hijacker would seek safe landing prevailed; institutions reacted accordingly. No one thought to connect NEADS to Herndon. Even if the national level at some point was prescient enough to have made the connection the opportunity to do so was pre-empted by ZBW.

All that changed dramatically when UA 175 struck the south WTC tower and ZBW determined that Atta said, “we have some planes.” Linear processes were set in motion at all government echelons, military and civilian. However, no national level management process was capable of managing the fast moving chain of events. Only NEADS and Herndon were focal points for information and they weren’t talking to each other. NEADS relied on ZBW but also reached out quickly to four other air traffic control centers—ZNY, ZDC, ZID, and ZOB—New York, Washington, Indianapolis, and Cleveland. And that is where battle managers failed the battle commanders. Herndon was also talking to precisely the same set of sources.

No one had the situational awareness to redirect the flow of information. The battle managers got no help from higher up. At the most crucial time national level entities were pulling standard operating procedures off the shelf and attempting to jump start antiquated and outmoded linear processes. Not one of them was successful; not the NMCC’s significant event conference, not FAA’s primary net, and not Clarke’s secure video conference. Arnold and Griffith were left to their own devices. In Griffith’s case he established an air traffic control operations center separate from FAA’s Washington Operations Center. In Arnold’s case he only knew what Colonel Marr knew. Neither battle manager was value added because they weren’t talking to each other and they did not know that NEADS and Herndon were not exchanging information.

The battle escalates

We will likely never know how sophisticated the attack actually was but the record is clear that the first clues emerging at Indianapolis Center about a southern attack came at the same time UA 175 was identified as a problem and then flew into the south WTC tower. In the language of chaos theory the attack bifurcated into two prongs, each with two prongs. No one, battle commanders and battle managers alike, had any situational awareness of an attack of that complexity. Moreover, that double bifurcation was beyond the capability of any national level entity to grasp or manage. And no one at any level knew that the southern attack was two-pronged. The stark simplicity of the one-two punch thrown at New York City advertised a similar attack on the nation’s capital. No one saw that second combination punch coming and it is only in hindsight that we can now see the symmetry of it all.

No awareness at the national level

Neither President Bush in a classroom in Florida, nor Vice President Cheney, Norman Minetta, Donald Rumsfeld and General Myers in Washington, nor General Eberhart at his headquarters office away from Cheyenne Mountain had situational awareness nor should they be expected to. They fight wars, this was a battle and echelons well below them were struggling to gain situational awareness.

The only place awareness could have emerged was at NEADS and Herndon acting jointly. Both had the manpower and the wherewithal to act but the window of opportunity was brief. American Airlines flight 77 was bearing down on the nation’s capital and no one knew it. Retrospectively, we now know that by 9:10 NEADS, properly cued, had the capability of quickly tracking AA 77. No one told them where to look.

In a perfect world

Only with the clarity of hindsight can we see what might have been. ZID knew it had a problem and notified two higher authorities, one FAA and one DoD; neither one of them NEADS or Herndon. By 9:10, at the same time AA 77 showed up again in NEADS radar, ZID had notified the FAA’s Great Lakes Region and the DoD’s Rescue Coordination Center that AA 77 was lost.

It is by no means certain that NEADS and Herndon, acting jointly, would have made a difference. What we do know is that both Battle Commanders demonstrated the capability to make swift, transcending decisions. Ben Sliney, on his own recognizance, initiated a nationwide ground stop. Colonel Marr initiated an intensive effort to generate fighter sorties from wherever he could muster them. It is not unreasonable to expect that the two of them, knowing that AA 77 was lost, would have put out an all points bulletin by the most expeditious means.

Under this scenario NEADS surveillance technicians would have established a track on AA 77 in a matter of minutes. The identification technicians would have had critical information if the false report of AA 11 still airborne then surfaced. Even sooner, The Senior Director and Mission Crew Commander would have scrambled Langley to a specific target.

ROE

Our discussion now leads to the third article in the Scott Trilogy which speaks to the issue of Rules of Engagement. I am still sorting that article out in my mind. Scott speaks to the largely irrelevant Andrews fighters and not to the fighters who would have been charged to intercept AA 77, the Langley air defense fighters. All informal time-distance analyses that I have worked through in my mind indicate that AA 77 and the Langley fighters would have arrived over greater DC skies at about the same time. And the unanswered question is, “then what?”

Where we stand

In this article we have identified 9:10 as the critical time for the nation’s battle commanders to take positive action to protect the nation’s capital. Ironically, that is the same time that NEADS first considered scrambling Langley but changed the order to battle stations only. Only NEADS and Herndon, acting jointly, could have fought the battle and then only against the southern attack. The northern attack was over before anyone at any echelon had the situational awareness to counter it.

The ultimate irony

In the aftermath the two officials charged with reconciling the FAA and DoD/NORAD timelines were General Arnold and Jeff Griffith


9-11: Delta 1989; an addendum

Following is an MFR extract from the Commission Staff  interview with the Identification Technicians at NEADS.  It explains the confusion about a destination of either Los Angeles or Las Vegas.  The interview was recorded and the audio file will ultimately be made available by NARA

“They began looking for a Delta 89 (Note: the flight is actually Delta 1989) as another hijack. They found it on the scope and had him as a “confirmed hijack”. They originally believed Delta 89 was on a flight path to Las Vegas, but then realized it was to Los Angeles. They marked it as a “Special” flight for tracking purposes. They informed Cleveland Center of Delta 89’s status and that it was in Cleveland Center. They gave Cleveland Center the information that it was headed to Los Vegas, not Los Angeles. They were informed that it was actually Delta 1989, and they gave Cleveland Major Nasypany’s contact number.”

9-11: Delta 1989; relationship to UA 93

Recently, Fox News aired a special, “9/11: Timeline of Terror” on the 8th anniversary of 9-11.  Major General Larry Arnold was among the voices heard describing the events of the day.  It is not clear if the clips featuring General Arnold were made for the special or were file footage.  My speculation is that it was file footage since General Arnold misspeaks about NORAD knowledge of UA 93.  The plane he is heard describing was Delta 1989.  NORAD had no knowledge of UA 93 in the time frame to which General Arnold refers.

The Commission Staff spent time with General Arnold explaining to him, using a radar presentation based on 84th RADES radar files, that the plane they observed meandering that day was, in fact, Delta 1989.  He acknowledged that fact.

As I have stated elsewhere, the only hijacked plane track forward told (electronically linked) by NEADS that morning was track B-89.  That was the track for Delta 1989.  That fact that it was track number 89 is coincidental.

Here is a graphic, based on 84th RADES radar files showing the relationship of Delta 1989 and UA 93.  The graphic was created on September 16, 2009. UA93 and Delta 1989

9-11: NRO Exercise; a case of over-analysis

In the Bobcat article I made the following observation: “Snapshots of the Commission’s work are prone to misinterpretation…the imposition of post facto understanding and awareness on facto and pre-facto conditions. Discrete pieces of staff work are just that, pieces of a vastly larger puzzle; sometimes they fit, sometimes they don’t.” In this article we will consider another piece of the puzzle that did not fit, the radar track of the early morning DC-area traffic helicopter and its relationship to the NRO exercise. There was no relationship.

The NRO Exercise, a first order of business

High on my list of early things to do was to get to the bottom of the NRO exercise scheduled for the morning of 9-11. Without access to the scenario assessing the NRO exercise was problematic. The 84th RADES radar files were the first delivery of actual data; they included a RADES workup of an aircraft which not only flew near the NRO, it flew near the Pentagon, CIA Headquarters, NSA, NIMA, Ft Belvoir and Quantico. It also appeared to have taken off from Andrews AFB. It got my attention for a time. Following is a screen print of the flight.Traffic HelicpoterIt took off from near Andrews at 6:46 and landed at the same site at 7:27; it flew between 0900 and 1200 feet.  The green returns are reinforced (radar and beacon), the red returns are beacon only.  The reason so much of the flight was picked up as beacon only was its altitude.

The Traffic Helicopter

Intuitively obvious in hindsight, it was not immediately apparent that the track of interest to the 84th RADES was the early morning traffic helicopter. So I spent time reviewing the radar files and comparing the track to 1:250,000 maps. I focused on agencies and facilities and overlooked the fact that the aircraft was also following, in general, the I95/395 and I66 corridors and the 95/495 beltway. I discussed the track with DoD and FAA personnel at several locations. No one had any particular insight or knew of anything operational that morning that was relevant. In a discussion with Andrews Tower personnel it occurred to them that the morning traffic helicopter lifted off early every morning from a private pad in the area. And that was the end of that.

Snapshots in the work  files

One snapshot is a comment in the Andrews MFR, linked above.   A second snapshot is a coversheet filed with the NRO exercise scenario, itself. That cover sheet was applicable to RADES  radar track screen prints and to 1:250,000 maps hung throughout our office to plot planes and areas of interest. It had no relation to the NRO exercise scenario itself.

Even though I had handwritten “NRO” on it at an early stage in our work it was not a piece of the puzzle that fit anywhere.  I over-analyzed a non-event.

9-11: Teaching History; California, two different approaches

Today is the 8th anniversay of the 9-11 attack and it has been over five years since the Commission published its report.  Since that time (August, 2004) I have run a continuous Google Alert, “9-11 Commission,” to monitor news and commentary on events of that day. Yesterday, September 10, 2009, an alert popped up in my queue which prompted me to address the subject of teaching the history of 9-11.

In this Google alert. The author, Zach Milners, speaks to a program named the “September 11th Education Program: A National Interdisciplinary Curriculum, provid[ing] seven lesson plans, which can be taught as independent lessons or as a semester-long course of study. A website [is] devoted to the program, learnabout9-11.org.”

This morning, on the front page above the fold, the Washington Post featured an article by Eli Saslow titled; “9/11 as a Lesson, Not a Memory.”   The article also refers to the National Interdisciplinary Curriculum and lists six high schools among those across the nation piloting the curriculum.  One high school listed is Hollywood High School, Los Angeles, California.

Yesterday my Google alert also surfaced this article.  The author, Carl Herman, states he is a “teacher of high school US History courses.”  A Google search indicates he is most likely employed by La Canada Unified School District, La Canada, California.  His approach is different as the article title suggests: “Who are 9/11 Truthers? What is the 9/11 Truth Movement?”

Presumably, the California Department of Education realizes the two quite different approaches at two different California high schools and will monitor and report on the progress of each.



9-11: Air Defense Response; first things first, the Scott Trilogy (part 2)

This is the second in a series of three articles concerning the Scott trilogy.  To set the stage, I recommend a reading of the short introductory article and the article concerning the first of William Scott’s three articles published in 2002.  In this article we will consider Scott’s second article, “Command Cells Speed Airspace Reactions,” published June 10, 2002.

FAA/Military Interface

Government functions because agencies establish relationships with each other to facilitate work and the flow of information.  Since the military is a constant presence in air space controlled by the FAA it is natural that such relationships would have developed over time between the military services and the FAA. In this article we will identify and discuss three such relationships in existence on 9-11.  The three are the Air Traffic Services Cell (ATSC), the Central Altitude Reservation Function (CARF) and the exchange of liaison officers.

Some have speculated that because of these relationships the FAA had direct, immediate, and responsive communication with the military concerning the events of the day, in other words what FAA knew in real time the military, especially NORAD, also knew in real time.That was not the case as we shall see. None of the three relationships was structured to help with the battle that morning.

Two, the CARF and the liaison function, were ultimately helpful in establishing a secure communications link between the NMCC and FAA, but not until the fate of all four hijacked aircraft had been determined.  All three, especially the ATSC, were extremely helpful the rest of day as the nation transitioned to military control of the sky; they were not helpful in fighting the battle itself.

Scott’s first article, setting the stage

Scott’s first article is a departure point for our discussion.  In that article Scott stated, “the…hijack notification was being passed by phone to a Norad [sic] command center…and the joint FAA/Defense Dept. Air Traffic Services Cell (ATSC) colocated with the …Command Center in Herndon…”  Scott provided no antecedent to tell us who made those two passes.

Moreover, Scott’s own reference is to a page in a December 2001 AW&ST article which simple shows the floor layout at Herndon.  There is a desk specifically designated for the DoD/CARF, but not the ATSC.  It was not a desk normally occupied except when needed, according to Herndon managers who briefed the Commission Staff.  Two desks in the immediate vicinity were for the Air Traffic Association and the National Business Aircraft Association.  Scott’s source article stated that the latter two organizations were represented on the operations floor and “in a fluke, so was what Herndon called the ‘military cell’.”

Scott set up his second article with this passage in his first article: “The Air Traffic Services Cell [was]created  by the FAA and the Defense Dept. for use when needed to coordinate high priority aircraft movements during warfare or emergencies.  The Pentagon staffs it  only three days per month for refresher training, but Sept. 11 happened to be one of those days.”

He segued smoothly into a discussion of a small office “established after the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War to facilitate movements of military aircraft in U.S., Pacific and European airspace.  Reservists assigned to ATSC have strong backgrounds in fighter, tanker, AWACS and strategic airlift operations.  Many were also pilots.”  This was not a crisis management operation, it was simply a routinized process set in place to manage significant military use of domestic and foreign airspace.

Scott goes astray

As we discussed in the first article, Scott had little help to validate what he was being told.  He clearly gained the impression that the ATSC was something more than it turned out to be.  He assessed it this way.  “That experienced cadre…paid dividends on Sept. 11, when the cell quickly became a key communications node during the military’s response to terrorist attacks.”  Scott then goes on to give a reasonable account of how valuable the ATSC was, except that value came in the aftermath, well after the battle was over.  The ATSC played no role in the response to the four hijacked aircraft that morning.  Before we can establish what actually happened we first need to consider the other two interface functions, the CARF and the liaison officers, and we start with the CARF.

Central Altitude Reservation Function

The CARF operated a secure facility co-located with the ATSC.  Its function is further described in the Robert Williams MFR. Among other activities, “the primary space they reserve is for military movement overseas, and for mass military movements.  They also handle ‘more unusual’ circumstance [sic] like the dropping of rocket boosters for a space shuttle launch..”

As a secure facility it had phone lines capable of linking to the NMCC.  The Commission Staff determined that sometime in the 10:15 time frame a CARF member, Rayford Brooks, was monitoring the Air Threat Conference Call.  Brooks and Williams, both civilian, were two people on duty in the CARF that morning.  Although the CARF mission was to provide military interface its work force was civilian, no military personnel were assigned.  ATSC was the military cell which, according to the Williams MFR, “co-join[ed] the CARF office for the practicality of proximity for secure information.”

In order to find out how the CARF ended up as the FAA node on the Air Threat Conference Call we first need to discuss the last of the three interface functions, liaison officers. Scott did not discuss the liaison function in his article.

Liaison between FAA and NORAD

A long-established liaison relationship existed between FAA and NORAD.  At FAA Headquarters that relationship was formalized as “Detachment Two,” the military liaison office at FAA headquarters, commanded that day by Colonel Sheryl Atkins.  Each service had its own liaison officer who reported to his/her service directly but worked administratively under Atkins.

FAA regional offices also had military liaison officers assigned.  In the Northeast those officers were accredited to both the New England Region and the Eastern Region and split their time between the two.  None of the liaison officers at any level had crisis management responsibilities.

In Atkins case she was en route work when AA 11 struck the North tower and was at FAA Headquarters by the time the second plane struck. She went to the 10th floor shortly after AA 77 struck the Pentagon, but reported to the Air Traffic Situation Room not the Washington Operations Center.  Atkins and the other liaison officers were effective in the management of airspace in the aftermath but were not engaged in the crisis, itself.

The liaison relationship was a two-way arrangement.  FAA liaison officers were accredited to key NORAD echelons, including NEADS.  At NEADS, Steve Culbertson was at the Headquarters when the World Trade Center was twice struck. (Note: Leslie Filson’s notes at one point have Culbertson at the Headquarters after the second plane struck and, later, headed for the SOCC before the second plane struck.)  My recall is that when he learned that FAA was having difficulty communicating with the military he went to the Sector Operations Center to help.  That would be closer to 9:30 and that initiative is documented in the primary sources of the day.  The NEADS tapes show that a few minutes after 9:30 Steve Culbertson was looking for a STU-III (secure telephone) and Major Nasypany is heard asking the SOCC Director if Culbertson can use his STU-III.  According to the Staff’s interview with Culbertson he estimated that the line was established around 10:15.

Culbertson and Bill Ayers, the DoD Airspace Manager for NEADS, are among the unsung group of people who struggled that day to bring order out of chaos.  Their effort, according to Filson’s notes, became the Domestic Events Network (DEN).

Back to William Scott

Scott, in his second article discusses only the ATSC.and that’s OK, given the time at which he was writing.  He focused on the visible and the tangible and that was the ATSC embedded with the Herndon Center.  Our treatment here of the CARF and the Liaison Function between FAA and NORAD completes the record.  He teed up the ATSC in his first article and made it the centerpiece for his second article.  In his opening sentence to the second article he gets the story right, “a small group of Air Force reservists and FAA air traffic experts [including CARF] started working on the inevitable next phase–how to restore the National Airspace System.”

And that was their proper role.  There should be no expectation that the three linear process in existence discussed in this article could have or should have been engaged earlier than they ultimately were.  I will add these three processes/functions to the growing list of identifiable linear procedures in effect on 9-11.

Chaos Theory: 9-11 Linear Processes/Functions, a listing

Added cockpit notifications on Feb 23, 2010

The list of linear processes or functions in place on 9-11 is growing; a running list is needed. A qualitative analytic approach using descriptors may be appropriate, TBD.

  1. Air Traffic Control procedures for airplanes that deviated from the norm. Ineffective
  2. Airline lock-down procedures. Counter-productive
  3. The Hijack Protocol between FAA and DoD. Irrelevant
  4. Rescue Coordination Center Procedures. Counter-productive
  5. FAA Primary Net. Ineffective
  6. Air Threat Conference Call. Ultimately dominated
  7. NOIWON Conference. Irrelevant
  8. SVTS Conference. Disruptive
  9. Air Traffic Service Cell Function, Effective later in the day, not relevant during the battle
  10. Central Altitude Reservation Function, Effective later in the day, became the FAA secure node on the Air Threat Conference Call
  11. FAA/NORAD Liaison Officer Function, Effective later in the day, facilitated the linking of FAA to the Air Threat Conference Call
  12. Secret Service VIP Protection. Disruptive
  13. COOP/COG. Counter-Productive
  14. Cockpit notification, belated (added this item on Feb 23, 2010

9-11: The Bobcats; a teachable moment

Several correspondents have alerted me to recent interest in the Bobcats by current day 9-11 researchers. My first instinct was to simply dismiss this interest as transient, one of many analytical cul-de-sacs concerning the events of 9-11.   However, as I reviewed the files and recalled my own work it occurred to me that the Bobcats are as good a subject as any to address the apparent dichotomy between the work of the Commission Staff and the notion held by some that the work of the Commission was somehow deficient.

The Commission Staff considered many things in its work. Anyone who has perused the substantial Commission files posted to the web by NARA, History Commons, and 9-11myths will recognize that the effort was massive, diverse, and often complicated. As a reminder, at most, NARA has released only 35% of Commission files, mostly desk files and MFRs. Still to come are the paper files (the originals received via document requests, both classified and unclassified) the electronic files on the classified and unclassified servers, and the audio files, both those received and those from our recorded interviews.

Snapshots of the Commission’s work are prone to misinterpretation. In the introduction to the Scott Trilogy I refer to this tendency as the imposition of post facto understanding and awareness on facto and pre-facto conditions. Discrete pieces of staff work are just that, pieces of a vastly larger puzzle; sometimes they fit, sometimes they don’t. Consideration of the Bobcats is one such piece of work, one that seemed to fit, yet didn’t.

The Bobcats, briefly an item of interest

The Bobcats became, briefly, an item of interest to the Commission Staff because of a single analytical question. Given that the military was a significant daily user of the nation’s airspace; and given that the formal air defense response was not effective; and given that FAA controllers vectored the Air National Guard C-130H, Gofer 06, to follow AA 77; what, if any, other military aircraft already in the air might have been used in some manner in response to the attack on the nation’s capital?

Primary source (radar and air traffic control transmissions) analysis revealed five military aircraft airborne in the area of the Pentagon, shown in this circa July 2003 staff workup.

bobcats

The  depiction is a screen print of 84th RADES radar data filtered to show  specific aircraft and all primary returns in the DC area for the 13 minute period beginning at 9:25.  “Sword 1” is actually “Word 31.”

The Bobcats

Radar files and air traffic control communications clearly show that a pair of aircraft in trail formation, Bobcat 14 and Bobcat 17, transited the DC area northeast to southwest in the same time frame that AA77 was approaching the area from the West.  Bobcat Flight PathThis image depicts their transit as recorded in 84th RADES files. Their path is consistent with the established flight plan as depicted on en route flight strips.

According to ZDC flight strips the Bobcats were a scheduled flight of T-2 aircraft from Dover Air Force Base to Knoxville, TN. The T-2 is a two-seat jet trainer used by the Navy.

The pair took off around 9:15 and headed westerly  to a navigational point near Baltimore at which time they turned south and checked in with DCA TRACON, Bobcat 14 at 9:31:30 and Bobcat 17 at 9:32:16.  They proceeded through DCA airspace and were handed off to ZDC on a heading of 245; Bobcat 14 at 9:35 and Bobcat 17 seven minutes later.  There is nothing unusual about their flight plan, their route which followed the flight plan, or their presence in DC airspace.

No Involvement

There is no primary or secondary source information that links the Bobcats in any way to events of the day. They were simply two more aircraft in the sky that just happened to be military aircraft. They did not dwell in the area, were at altitude, and were not an issue to pursue. DCA TRACON did not vector them when controllers learned at 9:33 of an unknown aircraft approaching. Gofer 06 was the better, in fact only, choice.  And that answered the analytical question.

Another example of a snapshot

In an MFR addendum after our visit to Reagan National I wrote the following: “[Note: flight strips and other information indicate that Bobcat 14 and Bobcat 17 originated out of Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. JSS radar data shows that they flew in trail at 21,000 feet and were overhead during the last few minutes of the flight of American Air 77. It is possible, but not confirmed, that they were Air Force corporate passenger jets.]”

That estimate was based on the fact the flight originated from an Air Force Base, that an Air Force squadron used the Bobcat call sign, and that FAA in the cover sheet of the DCA TRACON partial transcript labeled them as Air Force. Retrospectively, knowledgeable Air Force sources inform me that the fact that the flight was “TACAN” only is sufficient to rule out that they were Air Force passenger aircraft. Those sources also inform me that the flight strips clearly indicate these were not VIP aircraft.

A question begged, what about the other three hijacked aircraft?

For those who are wondering about the other hijacked flights, here is the answer.  I recall checking the radar concerning AA 11 and UA 175. The fact that I did not make screen prints is a strong indication that I found nothing remarkable.  I did, however, make a screen print for UA 93 but the analytical question was different.

Given the Rumsfeld statement and given the speculation that UA 93 was shot down, what planes were in the vicinity of UA 93 in its last moments?  A circa summer 2003 staff workup, UA 93 crash site based on 84th RADES radar files, shows the spatial and time relationship among UA 93, Gofer 06, and the Falcon jet vectored by air traffic control to use its GPS to obtain the crash site coordinates, which it did.  The slow moving aircraft, labeled 0572C and tracking northward, was the only other plane in the general area; it was not a factor.

In sum

With the crystal clarity of 20-20 hindsight we can establish that the Bobcats were military jets on a routine, pre-scheduled flight. They were not an issue concerning the events of that morning.

There will not be a test.

9-11: Air Defense Response; first things first, the Scott trilogy, (part 1)

In an introductory article we established three barriers to analyzing events of 9-11; time compression, event conflation, and the application of post facto awareness and understanding to facto and post-facto events.  William Scott’s work must be considered with due regard to the latter barrier. In his first article, “Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks,” he reported what he was told  by participants and what he learned from the public record of the day.  The fact that his narrative compressed time and conflated events is not his doing.    It was his sources who compressed  and conflated, and Scott did not have the primary and secondary source information available for validation.

Two different Scotts

William B. Scott (not the same Scott who briefed the Commission on May 23, 2003) wrote a series of three articles in 2002 for Aviation Week & Space Technology. That trilogy was one of the early detailed accounts of the events of the day and it served as a starting point for Staff work concerning FAA and NORAD. The Staff began with a LexisNexis literature search, a portion of which is available at NARA. The Scott trilogy immediately came to light as did the NORAD September 18, 2001, time-line, replicated in Scott’s first article published June 3, 2002.

The Commission Staff knew what the public knew but had reason to believe that the account of the day was flawed.  That belief was confirmed when the other Scott, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Scott,–who had been researching events of the day for several months–briefed the Commission.

Documents of the day told a different story

One of the first primary source documents the Staff received was the set of radar files from the 84th RADES,followed in short order by the first document delivery from NEADS which included a partial transcript and a copy of the MCC/T log.  None of that information–one primary source file and two secondary source documents–supported the public story as related by William Scott.  Simply put, the actual tracks of the air defense fighters did not correspond to what Scott reported.  Further, the primary and secondary source records of the day supported neither the September 18, 2001, NORAD time-line nor Lieutenant Colonel Alan Scott’s revision as briefed to the Commission.

Some Things William Scott got right

Scott’s title for his first article is consistent with what the Commission Staff found.  Scott elaborated: “In retrospect, the exercise would prove to be a serendipitous enabler of a rapid military response….Senior officers involved in Vigilant Guardian were manning Norad [sic] command centers…and [were] available to make immediate decisions.”  The problem was there were few immediate decisions to be made.  As the Commission determined and reported there was no timely notification concerning any of the hijacked airplanes.

Scott’s account of General Arnold telling Marr to “scramble; we’ll get clearances later,” is also accurate.  As the Commission Staff briefed at the June 2004 hearing, the formal hijack notification procedures were unsuited in every respect for the events of 9-11.  Boston Center abandoned the procedures; NEADS/CONR followed suit.

His  account remains reasonable as the Otis pilots are introduced.  They heard the word even before NEADS because of their working relationship with Cape TRACON.  The pilots were in action before they were scrambled; they literally put themselves on battle stations.

The Account Starts to Drift

Then Scott’s account starts to deviate from what actually happened.  The Otis pilots did not do what they told Scott they did. “Consequently he [the lead pilot] jammed the F-15’s throttles into afterburner and the two-ship formation devoured the 153 mi.. to New York City at supersonic speeds.  It just seemed wrong.  I just wanted to get there.  I was in full-blower all the way.”

Except they didn’t go to New York City and they did not proceed supersonic.  The “NORAD RESPONSE TIMELINE,” which Scott discussed, states: “Flight times calculated at 9 mi./min. (Mach 0.9).”  It is reasonable to infer that the Otis pilots, by the time Scott interviewed them, had internalized the events of the day in a way differently than they occurred and that is the story they told Scott and others.

Concerning the Langley scramble, Scott did not address the fact that the actual path of the fighters after takeoff was orthogonal to their intended direction.  Scott stated, simply, that the “alert F-16s were scrambled and airborne in 6 min., headed for Washington.”  That remained the official story until the Commission staff learned the actual path from the 84th RADES radar files.  Lieutenant Colonel Alan Scott, was supposed to put that straight at the May 23, 2003, hearing; he did not.  Instead, he blurred the paths of both the Langley and the Otis fighters in his briefing charts.  I told that story in a separate article.

Conflation and Compression, two  examples

Scott reported that the alert was being passed simultaneously to NORAD/Cheyenne Mountain and to the DoD Air Traffic Services Cell (ATSC) at the FAA Herdon Command Center. Indeed, Colonel Marr was immediately able to talk to General Arnold. The Battle Cabs at all echelons in NORAD were fully manned because of the scheduled exercise.That was not the case for the ATSC. Scott’s reference is to a December 17, 2001, Aviation Week & Space Technology article: “Crisis at Herndon: 11 Airplanes Astray.” That article gives the erroneous impression that the ATSC was immediately represented on the Herndon operational floor.

In another example, at NORAD, according to Scott’s interviews, “A bunch of things started happening at once…We initiated an Air Threat Conference [call].”  It didn’t go quite as Scott told it, but the lead was particularly helpful; this was the Commission staff’s first awareness that there was such a call and a request for any tapes of that call was among our first document requests.  Because of its importance that call will be discussed in a separate article.

Scott’s narrative thereafter is a conflation of events on multiple levels; participants told him what they remembered or what they had internalized.

Some more examples

Delta 1989.  Scott discussed a fifth hijacked aircraft–although no airplane is mentioned the implication is that it is Delta 1989–before he talks about the discovery and immediate loss of AA 11 at 8:46.

Search for additional fighter support.  Scott introduced this activity before he mentions the Langley fighters on battle station at 9:09.

FAA reports 11 aircraft amiss. Scott interjected this fact while discussing  the Langley battle station/scramble sequence.  That was the time frame for the erroneous report that AA 11 was still in the air.

AA 77 impact 9:41. This is interesting since Colonel Scott, with great stress that all his times were log times, briefed the Commission that the time was 9:43.

Scatana/Mineta. Scott perpetuated Mineta’s contention that he gave the order to bring all the planes down and conflates it with a discussion that occurred later in the day about implementing Scatana.  General Eberhart was in his office at NORAD Headquarters and did not arrive at the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center until later in the morning.

Prepared to shoot down UA 93.  Scott reported that, “F-16s…were prepared to shoot down United 93.”  They were in position but had no authority to shoot and were never vectored to intercept the airplane.

Escorting Air Force One. Scott quoted General Arnold as saying, “We scrambled available airplanes from Tyndall and then from Ellington…We maintained AWACS overhead the whole route.”  What we now know from the radar files is that only the Ellington fighters caught up with Air Force One and only briefly before it landed at Barksdale AFB.  In the Mystery Plane article I show that the mystery plane, Venus 77, was in position to monitor the flight of Air Force One.

The Staff picks up the pieces and moves on
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Prior to the May 23, 2003 hearing the Staff sensed that the official story of the day was at odds with primary source information.  We anticipated that NORAD’s testimony would help clarify matters; it turned out just the opposite.  Thereafter, we set aside existing time lines of the day and built our own.  We used that time line and the primary and secondary sources [e.g. transcripts, logs} as an aid during interviews.  We found that participant recall was like eye witness accounts, subject to event conflation and time compression.  There is no better example than Scott’s first article.