Author: Oredigger 61

9-11: Impact Times; Infra-red Data Released by NSA

Addendum October 9, 2014

This addendum makes one correction and adds a PDF of my May 15, 2014 appeal letter. Based on the date of that letter it took NSA not quite five months to reconsider. Here is a link to my appeal.

IR Appeal Letter May 2014

Data Release

On October 4, 2014, I received a letter from the National Security Agency, Central Security Service, dated September 23, 2014.  The letter responded to Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) case 70401 (NARA case number NW 168), my appeal to an earlier complete denial of all infra-red related information.

The release authority has now provided graphic analysis of the data for all four impacts, as originally provided to the Commission. The times, in all cases, are consistent with the times established from radar files and air traffic control tapes.

Here is the transmittal letter for the information release.

NSA MDR Letter Sep 23 2014

I addressed the total denial of all infra-red related information in a short post on March 25, 2014 under “Current News.” It took just over six not quite five months for the National Security Agency to reconsider. I based my appeal narrowly, asking only for the infra-red impact times, and nothing else. That is perhaps a lesson learned  for researchers and historians, present and future.

Background

The 9/11 Commission Staff requested infra-red data concerning the impacts of the four hijacked airplanes on September 11, 2001.  The staff took that extra step because an analysis of seismic data by a separate individual reported a impact time for United Airlines Flight 93 three minutes after the 10:03 EDT impact time as determined from radar files and air traffic control tapes.

It is important to know that the later time, 10:06 EDT, was not a seismic data time. It was the extrapolation and interpretation of seismic data by a single individual. His coauthor and the sponsor of his article, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, chose not to validate and verify his work when asked to do so by the Commission Staff. Instead, they simply referred the Staff back to the person who had made the extrapolation. I addressed the seismic issue in detail in an article published in 2010.

In 2011 during a visit to the National Earthquake Center, Golden, Colorado, I informally asked the staff there to take a look at the interpretation that led to a time of 10:06 EDT. They, too, declined, and simply referred me back to the original author.

The Staff Request

The original request is “Document Request No. 4-34: Final data from the Defense Special Missile and Astronautics Center (DEFSMAC) that established the time of impact for each of the hijacked aircraft.” The response to the Commission was classified “SECRET//X1” and was titled (U//FOUO) NSA’S ANSWERS TO DoD DOCUMENT REQUEST No. 4-34.” The response is annotated NW#: 168 DocId: 8977.

The Response

There are two graphs that are accurate to the minute and the approximate seconds for each impact, if extrapolated. The following chart depicts my current extrapolations. The intensity measurement is in Kilowatts per microsteradian (KW/sr-μ).

Flight

Impact Time

Intensity
AA11 8:46:30+/- 250 KW/sr-μ
UA 175 9:03:10+/- 3500 KW/sr-μ
AA 77 9:37:30+/- 900 KW/sr-μ
UA 93 10:03:10+ 2000 KW/sr-μ

One graph depicts the times for all planes except UA 93. A second graph pertains to UA 93 and incudes a peak intensity time centered on 10:03:16-17+, and a dissipation time of 10:03:25+  Peak intensity was recorded as 5000 KW/sr-μ.  That graph provides an approximate measure of the time the fireball was observable, a period of about 15 seconds.

There is no data to indicate that DEFSMAC considered peak intensity for the other three impacts.

I do not recall making an extrapolation while on the Commission Staff. It was clear from the graphs provided that the infra-red times were consistent with other primary source data.  In particular, the infra-red data was conclusive for a 10:03 EDT impact time for UA 93, not 10:06 EDT, as had been speculated.

Here is the graph titled: “Aircraft Impacts – NY & DC, 11 September 2001 – IR Intensity vs Time (Zulu)”

IR impact times AA11 UA175 AA77

Here is the graph titled: “Impact of United Flight 93 – Pennsylvania, 11 September 2001 IR Intensity vs Time (Zulu)”

IR Data UA93

Conclusion

This completes my work on all speculation that the seismic extrapolated time is relevant to the impact on UA 93. It is not, now, and never was. All such speculation is based on the work of a single individual who informed the Commission Staff that the seismic data, itself, was not conclusive.

At some future time a scientist or engineer will examine the original raw data—seismic, radar, and infra-red—and will find that the three data sets are consistent.

9-11: Education; an update on the 13th Anniversary

Introduction

From time to time items of interest come to me via a Google Alert, “9/11 Commission.” Today, the alert surfaced an education-related article, “Remembering 9/11: Teachers evolve lesson to adapt to growing history,” Leslie Parrilla, San Bernadino (California) Sun. The target school audience in this case is 10th and 11th grade classes at Rancho Cucamonga High School, students who were preschoolers or younger on that eventful day.

9/11 in Transition

The article marks  the transition of the events of 9/11 from a news event to an historical event.  As Parrilla writes, “educators have transitioned teaching from the event as a shocking, traumatic, personal occurrence to a historical, social and cultural event. Each years class brings more detachment from the event to the point that in just a few years students exposed to the curriculum will have not yet been born.

The Commission Report

Teachers are now asking students to do their own literature searches and to begin asking about the “nitty gritty,” to search and learn in depth. At least one teacher is making assignments based on the 9/11 Commission Report.

“Government teacher William Reinhart at Verdugo Hills High School in the Tujunga area of Los Angeles said he continues to teach Sept. 11 as the evolving story that it is, from watching it unfold on television that day with students in his classroom, to making more detached generations connect dots by linking 9/11 to current airport restrictions and the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“That (history) didn’t exist in the year or two, three years after,” Reinhart said. “We as a nation were in the grieving process and there were orange alerts and red alerts and you could only bring liquids here or there and there were shoe bombers. We were kind of catching our breath. All the subsequent years after that it’s changed a little.”

Now Reinhart approaches instruction about that day through history and government, through counter-terrorism policy and the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. He hands out assignments about the 9/11 Commission report.

Personal Comment

I substitute taught at Thomas Jefferson high school in Northern Virginia for two years in the early 1990’s. It was two years of pure enjoyment watching students being challenged to critique and create and responding to that challenge.  I am confident that today’s high school (and college students) will be able to sort out fact from fiction as they deal with the events of 9/11 in historical perspective.

(Note: Thomas Jefferson is consistently the highest or among the highest rated high schools in the nation.)

 

 

9-11: The Hijacking of AA11; historical perspective

Background

The hijackings on September 11, 2001 were the first such events with domestic implication since the February 12, 1993 Trans-Atlantic hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 592. I recently found work I had done on the Commission Staff concerning the historical perspective of the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11 (AA 11) on 9/11.  I don’t have the NARA file reference. The compilation of work files suggests I did this research during my review of the Payne Stewart incident sometime after May 2003.

Comparison

Here is a replication of the data in my work files.

Comparison
Item Lufthansa 592 American 11
Date February 12, 1993 September 11, 2001
Goal Political Asylum Unknown
Type Trans-Atlantic Domestic
Hijackers 1 5
Nationality Ethiopian Saudi, Egyptian
Weapon Starter Pistol Knives, Spray
Method Pilot Hostage Crew Neutralized
Initial Reaction LE Presumed LE Issue
Air Defense Otis AFB Otis AFB
Lead Pilot Duffy Duffy
Battle Cab Marr (BC) Marr (FO)
Weapons Fox (WD) Fox (SD)
ID/MCC McCain (IT) McCain (MCC/T)

Here are the accompanying bullet points:

  • Lufthansa Flight 592, Frankfurt to Cairo, hijacked to New York
  • May Testimony: No domestic hijacking in last decade
  • Lufthansa: First hijacking since 1986
  • First trans-Atlantic hijacking since September 1976
  • Multi-agency conference 2 hours and 20 minutes after FAA first notified; FBI lead, on the ground
  • Otis AFB Air Defense fighters are scrambled, take handoff from Canadian jets and escort plane to JFK

Clarification

The acronyms are LE (Law Enforcement), BC (Battle Commander), FO (Fighter Officer, a position in the Battle Cab), WD (Weapons Director), SD (Senior Director), IT (Identification Technician), MCC/T (Mission Crew Commander/Technician).

The “May Testimony” reference is to the first air defense testimony to the Commission in May, 2003.

The hand-off from Canadian jets was standard procedure.

Discussion

The Commission Staff recognized early in our work that the hijacking protocol in existence on 9/11 was obsolete. Events of the day quickly bypassed existing procedures because no one really knew what the procedures involved. The key item in my work file matrix is the line “Initial Reaction.”

The mind set was, first, that AA 11 was experiencing major system failure and the air traffic control task was to clear the path.  When it became clear that there was a probable hijack the mind set changed to a perceived need to get air defense involved to intercept and escort the plane to its unknown destination where law enforcement would take over once the plane was on the ground, just as had been done with the Lufthansa flight nearly nine years earlier.

Exercises over the years played lip service to the hijacking protocol; it was never seriously tested.  Researchers can gain some sense of how events were handled at the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) by referring to my discussion of Exercise Vigilant Guardian.  In sum, higher echelons were played notionally by the exercise cell at NEADS.

Key Point

I have commented on this before in other articles. NEADS (and Otis) had the most experienced personnel possible on duty on 9/11 concerning hijackings. The lead pilot in both 1993 and 2001 was Lt Col Timothy Duffy (link is to Otis AFB).  Colonel Robert Marr, NEADS commander on 9/11, was the Fighter Officer, the key staff officer in the Battle Cab in 1993. Major Fox, Senior Director on 9/11, was the Weapons Director who controlled the fighters in 1993. MSGT McCain, the Mission Crew Commander/Technician on 9/11, was an Identification Technician in 1993, and would have been involved in locating and identifying the Lufthansa flight.

Longevity in service at one organization is typical of assignments in the Air National Guard.  For example, Brigadier General Dawne Deskins, the NEADS officer who received the first set of coordinates for AA 11 from Boston Center on 9/11, ultimately commanded NEADS. She was promoted to her current rank in March, 2014.

Perspective for Historians

There have been just four domestic hijackings in the last quarter century, all of them on September 11, 2001. Prior to 9/11, there had not been a domestic hijacking for years.  The single hijacking incident that tested the nation’s air defense was the Lufthansa case.  That turned out to be a test of routine procedures.

The routine procedure was that air defense would be tasked to intercept and escort and to “identify by type and tail” as was the case on 9/11. Boston Center was not looking for fighters to engage a target they were looking for fighters to intercept AA 11 and escort it somewhere.

The Battle of 9-11: An Act of War; the Principles of War, considered

Perspective

Heretofore, the conventional wisdom has been that the event known as 9/11 was a terrorist attack. Many analyses, including mine, have bounced along that road, poorly defined, with predictable results. The literature, published or web, has yet to come to grips with what happened that day.

In this article I take a new approach. After months of reflection, measured in years, my understanding is that the chaos of the day, in the days thereafter, and continuing to this day, is the aftermath of a deliberate military strike, an attack on two axes of advance, each axis with two prongs.  The purpose of such an attack is to cause confusion and chaos that becomes unmanageable for those who defend against it.

The purpose of this article, therefore, is to begin a new discussion, one that will ultimately lead us to chaos theory. We begin with a classical approach, consideration of the Principles of War.

The Principles of War

All students at the several military colleges and schools, to include the service academies, and ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) chapters at high schools, universities and colleges have learned these principles by studying significant battles of history, such as Gettysburg, for example. It is time to add the battle of 9/11 to the study list.

Here are the principles as published Army doctrine, as taught at the Worchester Military Institute. The order of listing provides a convenient memory aide MOOSE MUSS, the first letter of each principle.

9 Principles of War

The nine Principles of War, as defined in the Army Field Manual FM-3 Military Operations:

PRINCIPLE

DEFINITION
Mass Concentrate combat power at the decisive place and time
Objective Direct every military operation towards a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective
Offensive Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative
Surprise Strike the enemy at a time, at a place, or in a manner for which he is unprepared
Economy
of Force		 Allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts
Maneuver Place the enemy in a position of disadvantage through the flexible application of combat power
Unity of
Command		 For every objective, ensure unity of effort under one responsible commander
Security Never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage
Simplicity Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure thorough understanding

The Principles and the Battle of 9/11

Mass. The attackers concentrated combat power at the decisive place and time.  The matter of scale does not matter. The attack was small scale in terms of the actual mass; it was large scale in terms of the effect of that mass.  Grade: 100/100.

Objective. The attackers directed the operation towards two clearly defined, decisive, and obtainable objectives. The preliminary objective was to overwhelm the National Airspace System (NAS) by commandeering four commercial aircraft operating in that system.  The final objective was to use those four aircraft as missiles and damage or destroy four specific targets; the two towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Capitol. Grades: 100/100 and 75/100, respectively.

Offensive. The attackers seized, retained, and exploited the initiative. They successfully passed through every barrier to entry to the NAS, to include secondary screening at security checkpoints. A misstep occurred when Mohammed Atta became visibly angry when he learned he would have to pass through security a second time at Logan International. The attackers failed to retain and exploit the initiative after they seized United Airlines Flight 93 (UA 93).  Grade: 74/100.

Surprise. The attackers struck the enemy at a time, at a place, or in a manner for which he was unprepared. Surprise was near total, at all levels of government, highest to lowest. The attackers did not maintain the advantage of surprise aboard UA 93. The remaining crew and passengers on that flight learned enough of the battle plan to thwart the attack on the final target. Grade: 88/100. (half credit for UA 93, initial objective achieved, final objective not achieved)

Economy of Force. The attackers allocated no essential combat power to secondary efforts.  Further, retrospectively, they assessed that each attack element required 5 members; two in the cockpit, one to guard the cockpit door, and two to control the passengers. We know there were two in the cockpit based on the cockpit voice recording from UA 93. At some point, a tactical decision was made to allocate just four attackers to flight UA 93. This is an indicator that New York City was a higher priority than Washington D.C. Grade: 95/100.

Maneuver. The attackers placed the enemy in a position of disadvantage through the flexible application of combat power. Once the aircraft were commandeered their combat power resided in the transponders. We know, retrospectively, that each of the four transponders was manipulated differently and each manipulation provided a different problem to a separate Air Traffic Control Center.

Boston Center had to decide what to do with an airplane that ceased transponding before its turn towards target. Boston Center retained responsibility for American Airlines Flight 11, leaving the AA 11 flight plan in the system because the Center concluded it could not hand the plane off to New York Center.  New York Center, therefore, had to enter a new track, AA 11A, in order to follow the flight.

New York Center, while engaged in the hunt for AA 11/AA 11A, was confronted with a Mode C intruder, code 3020/3321. The intruder was United Airlines Flight 175, a transponding aircraft that did not correlate to anything in the air traffic control system.

Indianapolis Center had to decide what to do with an airplane that ceased transponding during its turn towards target. Further, Indianapolis Center lost the capability to display American Airlines Flight 77 as a radar target on its air traffic control scopes. Indianapolis Center concluded that the plane was lost, perhaps down, and it initiated rescue procedures by contacting its next higher headquarters while concurrently notifying the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center at Langley AFB.

Cleveland Center had to decide what to do with an airplane that ceased transponding after its turn toward target. Cleveland Center concluded that it could transfer control to Washington Center and did so by entering a new flight plan for United Airlines Flight 93 into the system.  Whereas Boston Center left the flight plan for AA 11 in the air traffic control system, Cleveland Center entered a new flight plan for UA 93. United 93 “landed” notionally at National Airport at 10:28 EDT.

The attackers ability to maneuver was transcendent. It did not matter whether or not they had any idea of what would transpire in the defense. It was sufficient for them to understand that four different situations presented to four different air traffic control centers would be problematic. Grade: 150/100. (bonus points awarded)

Unity of Command. The attackers, for every objective, ensured unity of effort under one responsible commander. The planners delegated significant authority to the attacking party. The attacking party responded to the leadership of Mohammad Atta. Even though the fourth pilot, Ziad Jarrah, designated pilot for UA 93, was consistently distracted that distraction did not detract from this principle of war. Grade: 100/100.

Security. The attackers, with the exception of those in the cabin of UA 93, never permitted the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage. With the exception of Atta’s anger, as discussed previously, not one attacker flinched or betrayed that attack at any point while entering the NAS. The attackers lost the advantage of security aboard UA 93 because they were short one member and those in the cabin did not deny the passengers contact with the outside world. Grade: 80/100.

Simplicity. With the understanding that this was not a simple attack, the attackers did prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure thorough understanding. Every attacker understood his job and everyone was well prepared for the task at hand. The Last Night document attests to the detail of the planning.

By extending the scope of the attack to include an assault on Washington D.C., the attackers introduced a level of complexity that, while unnecessary for an attack against New York City, was necessary to cause uncertainty and confusion in the defense. Atta’s pronouncement to the air traffic control world, “we have some planes,” was, in my estimation, deliberate.  The attackers disregard for simplicity in favor of complexity was intentional. They took their chances with this principle of war. Grades: 100/100 for execution, 75/100 for planning.

 Overall

Overall, in terms of the principles of war, the attackers met nearly every requirement for a high, but not perfect, score.  The attack was necessarily complex, it lacked focus in the southern axis of attack, and it lacked a 20th attacker to round out the fourth crew.

The battle of 9/11 was a preemptive military strike against an unprepared enemy and it caused chaos, the ripple effect of which is felt to this day.

What’s Next

I will publish two additional articles in this series. The next article will discuss the military aspects of the operation as they might have been drawn up by a planner or tactician using the staff officer’s tool of choice, a powerpoint. The final article will extend the discussion to chaos theory.

An attack on two axes each with two prongs is intended to cause confusion and chaos in the defense. And that is exactly what happened.

9-11: The August 6, 2001, PDB; in perspective

Prologue

On September 11, 2012, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, Anderson Cooper of CNN hosted a wide-ranging discussion about events of that day.  Among his guests were two that engaged in a verbal shoving match over the importance of the August 6, 2001, President’s Daily Brief (PDB).  Here is how Cooper introduced his guests.

Kurt Eichenwald joins us now. He’s a “Vanity Fair” contributing editor and author of “500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars.” Also with us is Ari Fleischer who is press secretary for President George W. Bush.

Eichenwald took the position that the August 6 PDB was one in a consistent series of such briefings to the President and that a higher level of alert should have been sounded.  Fleischer took the position that the PDB, in context, was not specific and that the thrust of reporting was a potential attack overseas.

None of the three–Cooper, Eichenwald, Fleisher–provided any context on what else was going on in the world that year.  It was as if that PDB and previous such briefs were the only thing that mattered in the months leading up to 9/11.

A “PDB” was and is a collection of articles, not a single item.  Further, the August 6 PDB and its expanded-distribution, executive level version, a August 7 SEIB (Senior Executive Intelligence Brief), did not energize either the President or the Intelligence Community as we might have wished, retrospectively.

Here is additional insight for academicians, historians, and serious researchers to help them understand how things happened in real time that summer.

Introduction

The August 6, 2001, President’s Daily Brief (PDB) item, “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US,” has had a long shelf life concerning the events of September 11, 2001. Much has been written and discussed, largely out of context, so that its place in the events leading up to the 9/11 attack has been misconstrued. My purpose here is to place that single PDB article in perspective based on my own work on the Congressional Joint Inquiry. I start, however, with the context provided by the 9/11 Commission in its final report.

The Commission Report.

The President’s Daily Brief is an accumulation of subjects, not a single topic as some of the discourse about the events of 9/11 suggests.  It is important, therefore, to explain in quantifiable terms where a single item fits in. Here is what the Commission reported:

Each PDB consists of a series of six to eight relatively short articles or briefs covering a broad array of topics; CIA staff decides which subjects are the most important on any given day. There were more than 40 intelligence articles in the PDBs from January 20 to September 10, 2001, that related to Bin Ladin. The PDB is considered highly sensitive and is distributed to only a handful of high-level officials.

The wording, “more than 40 intelligence articles,” implies a quantity that was not as great as it appears. Additional Commission report language allows a quantitative assessment.  Assuming that the PDB was provided six days a week there were 200 briefing days in the period specified. Given that the average number of articles was seven (Commission reported 6-8) there were 1400 “intelligence articles” briefed to the President, 40 of which were Bin Ladin-related. One of every 35 articles was Bin Ladin-related; not quite three in every 100. In the world of statistics and probability the odds were not good that any one article was Bin Ladin-related.

That revelation is not quite so stark, but still grim when we look at the frequency with which the President was briefed about Bin Ladin. Forty articles in 200 days is one in every five days. About once a week.  In sum, by measure of either frequency or number, the President was not briefed about Bin Ladin in any actionable, consistent way at his level.

So, what does all this mean and what was happening at a level of the intelligence community that was actionable?  And for that we turn to the Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs (SEIB).

Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs (SEIB)

Here is what the Commission report has to say about the SEIB.

The Senior Executive Intelligence Brief (SEIB), distributed to a broader group of officials, has a similar format and generally covers the same subjects as the PDB. It usually contains less information so as to protect sources and methods.

The phrase, “less information,” is a non-specific way of saying that the SEIB, an intelligence product, does not contain law enforcement information.  And it is in that specific aspect that the companion SEIB to the PDB, issued on August 7, 2001, contained the same intelligence information as was briefed to the President, but did not contain the last two paragraphs of the PDB concerning FBI information which included these statements:

    • …patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other type attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York
    • …a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.

The qualitative difference between the August 6 PDB and the August 7 SEIB has long been known in the public domain.  According to “Source Watch“, Associated Press reporter, John Solomon, had surfaced the existence of the August 7 document on April 13, 2004.  “Source Watch” went on to report the following:

Officials, who “would only discuss the senior executives’ memo on condition of anonymity because it remain[ed] classified,” reported that the August 7, 2001, brief did not mention

  • “70 FBI investigations into possible al-Qaida activity that the president had been told of a day earlier in a top-secret memo titled…”
  • “a threat received in May 2001 of possible attacks with explosives in the United States or taht that [corrected Mar 15 2014] the FBI had concerns about recent activities like the casing of buildings in New York”

All that begs an obvious question. How did the Intelligence Community react to the August 7 SEIB? The answer is it did not. We turn first to the work of the 9/11 Commission.

The Commission and the SEIB

The Commission was constrained in page count for its final report in order to meet publisher requirements. One result was that some information was pushed to the end notes and those notes, themselves, were reduced in font to allow increased content. It is in the end notes to Chapter 8, “The System Was Blinking Red” that the story of the August 6 PDB and August 7 SEIB is told.

Footnote 3 details the scope of the effort.”The CIA produced to the Commission all SEIB articles related to al Qaeda, Bin Ladin, and other subjects identified by the Commission as being relevant to its mission from January 1998 through September 20, 2001.”

Footnote 37 explains how the PDB, itself, was drafted.

The CTC [Counter-terrorism Center] analyst who drafted the briefing drew on reports over the previous four years. She also spoke with an FBI analyst to obtain additional information. The FBI material ws written up by the CIA analyst and included in the PDB. A draft of the report was sent to the FBI analyst to review. The FBI analyst did not, however, see the final version, which added the reference to the 70 investigations.

The footnote continued, “Because of the attention that has been given to the PDB, we have investigated each of the assertions mentioned in it.”  We learn, for example, that, “The only information that actually referred to a hijacking…was a walk-in at an FBI Office in the United States…The source was judged to be a fabricator.”

We further learn that, “The 70 full-field investigations number was a generous calculation that included fund-raising investigations…Many of these investigations should not have been included.”

Footnote 38 explains the difference between the PDB and the SEIB. “The Deputy Director of Central Intelligence testified that the FBI information in the PDB was omitted from the SEIB because of concerns about protecting ongoing investigations, because the information had been received from the FBI only orally, and because there were no clear, established ground rules regarding SEIB contents.”

We now turn to my work on the Joint Inquiry staff for additional insight into the impact of the difference between the PDB and the SEIB articles.

Congressional Joint Inquiry Staff Work

I was on the Other Agency team for the Inquiry. Teams were dedicated to and had office space at CIA, NSA, and the FBI. Another team did the historical review across all agencies. The Other Agency team responsibility included all of DoD, less NSA, and the Departments of Energy, State, Transportation and Treasury.

Early in our work, we determined that the volume of intelligence reporting on terrorism/counter-terrorism during 2001 was not great, on the order of a few percentage points, never more than five percent at peak. That fact caused one Representative to finally ask a rhetorical question to the room at large, “would someone please tell me what the other 95% is.” The Inquiry staff took that for action and I did the staff work.

We asked for and received all the SEIB for the period Mar 1-Sep 10, 2001. That universe of documents was a reasonable approximation of the PDB, less law enforcement information, as the Commission reported.  We did not have access to the PDB.  Concurrently, we asked for and received all the the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, intelligence briefings for the same period. My work was compiled in a memo to the Representative signed by the, then, Staff Director, Eleanor Hill.  A copy was archived in my staff work files at the conclusion of our work.

Earlier, I mentioned Commission Report footnote 3 to Chapter 8.  That footnote implies that I had a larger universe of SEIB reporting for the spring/summer 2001 available to me than did the Commission.  I had 100% of the SEIB during the period of my interest because the analytical question was what else was going on.  The Commission staff’s focus was different, they wanted to analyse analyze [Corrected  Mar 15, 2014] the narrower universe of reporting specific to Bin Ladin and al Qaeda.

SEIB Analysis

I looked at all articles in all SEIBs for the period of interest. I then counted each article in several different categories, mostly geographic (e. g. China, Southern Europe, Russia) but including a specific category for terrorism/counter-terrorism articles, including those mentioning Bin Ladin.

There were routinely articles of interest in areas where the US had troops in harms way; Operations Northern Watch and Southern Watch, for example. There were altogether about a dozen categories so no one category contained a majority of the reporting.  However, there was a strong plurality for one category, China.

An aggressive, assertive China was high on the interest list during 2001 prior to 9/11. Readers will recall that, apart for from [corrected Mar 15, 2014] economic and political concerns about China, there was a serious incident that year.  On April 1, 2001, China forced down a US reconnaissance aircraft and held the crew hostage for several days, a serious international event with potentially explosive ramifications.

There were many things on the nation’s intelligence plate.  Protection of US forces in harms way and concern about China competed with the emerging Bin Ladin threat for attention. As did a resurgent Russia. For insight into that threat we turn to the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) daily intelligence briefings.

CJCS Daily Intelligence Briefings

The Chairman’s briefings were provided to us by the Defense Intelligence Agency in power point form on compact discs, which were archived in my Inquiry work files. First, let’s consider how the subject of terror/counter-terror was briefed to senior military officials.

The terrorist threat was briefed on a single slide once a week. The content was static, unchanged, before the spike in terrorist threat reporting. As the reporting increased the content of the slide became dynamic, changing each week and then the frequency changed to more than once a week. That content and frequency change lasted through the period of peak intelligence reporting.

Thereafter, in August, the briefing item returned to its previous steady state. The immediate threat had passed and attention was turning elsewhere. JCS concerns during the peak reporting period were for the safety of US troops abroad, readiness (spread of hoof and mouth disease), and, unprecedented in recent memory, Russian military activities.

A Resurgent Russia

Typically, CJCS briefing items contain an assessment as the last bullet on the last slide. Such assessments for Russian military activities were alarming.  Examples included:

  • First such activity in a decade
  • First such activity since the end of the Cold War
  • First such activity since the collapse of the Former Soviet Union

Of concern were threats to US reconnaissance aircraft and, significantly, increased scope of activity of scheduled annual Russian military exercises. Of particular concern was the first ALCM (air-launched cruise missile) live-fire exercise in many years, scheduled for September 11, 2001. Even though the exercise was properly announced and a NOTAM (notice to airmen and marines) filed, the activity had the attention of the US Government, military and civilian.

Ben Sliney, the Federal Aviation Administration’s National Operations Manger at the Air Traffic Control System Command Center was among those paying close attention.  081709 Oakland Sliney Russian Missile Shot

General Myers, Assistant Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, took the morning CJCS intelligence briefing. Included in the briefing file for that day was a slide depicting the ALCM threat to CONUS, complete with range arcs for fueled and un-fueled ranges for the launch aircraft. That was the threat to the Pentagon briefed to General Myers by 7:30 EDT that morning.

A little over two hours later a very different threat aircraft, a commercial airliner flown as a missile, slammed into the West side of the Pentagon. It was a “New Type of War,” unrecognized before the fact.

Recognition of the threat on 9/11 at the National Military Command Center (NMCC)

DoD released late last year (2013) a transcript of the Air Threat Conference convened by the NMCC on the morning of 9/11. Even though heavily redacted, the release provides explicit  detail of the national level awareness of the threat just before American Airlines 77 struck the Pentagon.

This is [redacted] DDO at the NMCC. An air attack against North America may be in progress. The vice Chairman is in this conference…NORAD, what is the situation? NORAD: Copy, National. This is NORAD. We have radar and visual indication of a possible threat to CONUS. Unknown country of origin.

By now the reader should still have this question in mind. Why was the Intelligence Community not energized by the 6 August PDB and the companion 7 August SEIB, concerning the actual threat, not the threat as perceived as late as 9:35 EST on September 11, 2011 2001 [corrected Mar 12, 2014]. The devil is in the details.

The SEIB Coordination Process

Senior Executive Intelligence Briefing items were generally coordinated in the evenings before publication with at least the five major agencies, three all-source agencies (CIA, DIA, State) and two single-source agencies (National Imagery Mapping Agency and National Security Agency). Articles could proceed to publication without coordination.  A line at the bottom of each article listed the coordination.

Neither DIA nor State Department coordinated on the 7 August SEIB article concerning Bin Ladin. Twice, on consecutive evenings, DIA refused to coordinate for specific reason.

There was no documentation for the State Department lack of coordination.  The evidence was that State was not listed on the coordination line.

The DIA refusal is documented in the logs of the National Military Intelligence Center (NMIC) for the desks of the Duty Director of Intelligence, Team Chief, and Terrorism Analyst as obtained by the Joint Inquiry Staff and archived in its document collection.

Joint Inquiry Staff twice interviewed DIA supervisors responsible for the refusal to coordinate. Their answer was straight forward, simple, and understandable.  There were two reasons.

  • The intelligence content was nothing more than an historical summary
  • The title did not match the content

The CIA used the same title for both the 6 August PDB and the 7 August SEIB.  Without the law enforcement content, the title made no sense to DIA and they could not concur in the SEIB article as presented to them for coordination.

It was the ultimate, even fatal manifestation of the “Wall” between intelligence and law enforcement information.  The President was briefed on a threat which the major players in the Intelligence Community did not receive.  The President and the Community did not, in military terms, share a common operating picture of the battlefield.

“For want of a nail…”

 

 

 

9-11: Gofer 06; Tape of Pilot Interview, transcribed

Transcript of Interview of Lt Col O’Brien

Transcribed by Miles Kara, March 4, 2014

Source is NARA file provided as ANG O’Brien-1.wav

Added, Mar 6, 2014. NARA advises that the interview was conducted on May 5, 2004. NARA will upload the audio file to its 9/11 archives in the next few weeks and it will be publicly available for anyone who wants to listen to the interview

Background.

Commission Staff arranged a telephone interview from an Air Force office where a STU-III (classified phone) was available.  That was neither efficient nor effective so I elected to conduct the interview unclassified and recorded it.  No MFR was made of the interview.

Following is a final draft transcript of the audio file, subject to additional editing for small segments marked [unclear]. No date was established during the actual recording. I’ve asked NARA to assist in determining the date of the interview. My recall is that the interview took place in 2004.

The Interview

Kara:  and how about Colonel Maheney (sp) can you hear me loud and clear?

Maheny: Yes I hear

Kara: OK, we understand the problem and that was part of the ah part of the background I was going into, at least [unclear] looking at events of the day of 9/11, and we are part of a staff of about 80 people sent out through out government. And that really brings us today to talk to you, Colonel O’Brien, and because we are collecting so much information, a wide variety of people we are talking to, our Commissioners have asked that we record our interviews as we move along, and with your permission we would like to record this session today

O’Brien: That’s fine with me

Kara: OK

Maheny: OK

Kara: And for the record, we’ll get everyone’s names.  I’m Mr. Miles Kara, 9/11 Commission.

Sullivan: Lisa Sullivan, 9/11 Commission

Air Force Rep: Tom [unclear] [Office of] Air Force General Counsel

Kara: Colonel Maheny go ahead

Maheny: Lt Col Paul Maheny, Staff Judge Advocate, 133d Air Lift Wing

O’Brien: and Lt Col O’Brien, 133d Air Lift Wing is also with you

Kara:  Colonel O’Brien let me just start with maybe a couple of sentences on your resume’. How long have you been a member of the Department of Defense and the position you held on 9/11.

O’Brien:  I’ve been with the Minnesota Air National Guard since December 1976, and the position I held on 9/11, I was the aircraft commander of Gofer 06.  I was also, my full time position here, I am a technician, federal civil service employee, and I was chief of stan/eval [standards and evaluation], in that time as well.

Kara: And for the record, I naively assumed Gofer was spelled G O P H E R, but I find out that may not be so. How is it spelled?

O’Brien: It’s spelled G O F E R.

Kara: Even though it’s from Minnesota, we’re going to do it that way I guess.

O’Brien:  Correct, they can only give us five digits in the prefix of our call sign, so we are limited to the F as opposed to the P H.

Kara: And, Colonel O’Brien, as we briefly discussed on the secure line, we are going to conduct this unclassified today, if at any point you feel that we are verging on classified, please let me know. And my reason for, my background for determining that we can talk unclassified is that we hold the air traffic system transcripts of that day, we hold the radar of that day, all of which is unclassified. And we also understand, Colonel O’Brien, and correct me if I’m wrong, you did an unclassified interview with the Department of Defense historian, is that correct?

O’Brien: Actually I did the interview, not with the historian, but I did it with ah, and forgive me for not knowing which one, it was one of the cable channels, The Learning Channel or The Discovery Channel, and that was after I was contacted by public affairs. I believe it was the Department of Air Force public affairs who contacted me, said they had a request to do some research for a [unclear]  of the Pentagon, and had cleared it through their staff  and they said that as long as I didn’t have a problem with it they were OK with me conducting an interview with them.  Since then, I have also done an interview with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which is a local newspaper here, strictly from a [unclear] on the effect on local people as far as 9/11 was concerned. Just about a week or two ago, I got a request to do an interview with a local public radio station, Minnesota public radio, just to follow up on that. And they just did a real basic interview on the incident that happened that day.

Kara: On that basis then, let’s proceed unclassified and, again, with the caveat that if you understand that we are going to talk about anything classified please let me know and we will adjust accordingly here.

Kara: And according to the mission debrief, Colonel, you were in Washington DC to simply, you were going to ferry some cargo back to Minneapolis, is that correct?

O’Brien: That’s affirmative. We had been on a Guard lift mission down to the Virgin Islands, prior to that. And as an add on to that mission we were supposed to pick up some parts that were supposed to be waiting for us at Andrews Air Force Base, something that only after a few phone calls that morning we found out that the parts had possibly wound up at Dover Air Force Base but they couldn’t verify that for sure. So at that point our Commander at Minneapolis told us just ah to come on home. So, we spent the evening of the 10th September at Andrews Air Force Base, [unclear] remaining overnight, and then we were scheduled to fly home on the eleventh from Andrews to Minneapolis.

Kara: And do you recall what your original flight plan time of departure was when you first decided to come back?

O’Brien: Well, I believe we were scheduled for a 10 o’clock departure, you know the mission was fragged [frag order], this was before we went to Minneapolis on the first day of our trip. And after the determination was made that we weren’t sure where the cargo was, at that point they cleared us to come home whenever we were ready. And so, we really you know didn’t try to make a hard takeoff time, it was just whenever we could get the airplane ready [unclear]. I believe we actually got off at about 9:30 local, Eastern time.

Kara: And what model C130 were you flying?

O’Brien: We fly a C130 H3

Kara: And how is, does, does that model, the H3, carry any armament on it at all?

O’Brien: No, we don’t have any armament on the H3 at all. We do have some defensive systems, we have the capability of chaff and flares, none were loaded on that day.

Kara: And the C130 H3, is, is it, does the H series have an armed model at all?

O’Brien: I’m not aware of any armed H model on the 130’s. I believe all the gunships are previous models to the H.

Kara: And it’s fair to say, then, if you were not carrying any armament that day, there’s no way that Gofer C130 that you were flying, C130H3 model, engaged either American 77 or United 93 that day.

O’Brien: Ah no, there was no way we would have had any way of engaging those aircraft.

Kara: Nor, as one of the popular myths out there on the fringes has you firing a missile into the Pentagon, you had no capability to do that either, is that correct?

O’Brien: That is correct

Kara: OK,  I just, and the reason I ask those questions simply is to get that on the record up front so that we can uh, we are working, Colonel O’Brien, to tell the story of 9/11 as accurately as we possibly can. And that involves us talking to controllers, to pilots, to anybody else who was involved that day, and we are trying to understand the events of the day almost as if we had been in their seat, that day. So that will explain some the questions I am going to ask you.

O’Brien: Understand.

Kara: What was your situational awareness of the events in New York before you took off?

O’Brien: We had no knowledge of anything that had taken place in New York. The first time we knew anything about the events that took place in New York were as we were departing the Washington DC area. It was a frustrating feeling because knowing we would have been in a better position to orbit over the Pentagon and possibly help out with any kind of rescue efforts, a birds eye view of maybe telling them of what was happening traffic wise or where they possibly effect the best rescue effort. And, when they asked us to depart the area one of the first things I did was direct one of our crew members to get on one of our navigational radios and call the [unclear] that shared the same frequency spectrum as the radio stations and so we attempted to get a Washington DC radio station on that radio to learn more about what was going on behind us. And the first thing we heard when we got the, to my recollection, first thing we heard when we got that [unclear] radio tuned up, was that the second aircraft had impacted the world trade center, or at least a aircraft had impacted, I’m not sure about the second one.  As soon as we heard that we knew that, our suspicions were that this was bigger than just an attack on the Pentagon.

Kara: And that was when you were in the air that you heard that?

O’Brien: That’s affirmative

Kara: OK, And on the ground, and Colonel, we pulled your flight strips from Andrews Tower, and we’ve got two flight strips on you. And the first one is at 1330, 9:30 Eastern Daylight Time, and we believe that was your original takeoff scheduled that was entered into the flight data system. And, then later, we have a second flight strip which is 1333, and we believe that is the flight strip that was executed when you actually got wheels up. And that seems to correspond with your recollection that you were up at about 9:31?

O’Brien: Correct

Kara: And what I’d like to do now for you, Colonel, is start playing for you some of the tapes we have from the air traffic control system. And the purpose of the first segment is to show that while you were on the ground at Andrews you were actually delayed for a couple of reasons as you took off and you actually got off a little bit later then you might have otherwise. So let me play that first segment, and I’ve got the recorder with the segment on it close to the telephone and hopefully you can pick it up at your end. So let’s try it. I’ll play it through until you are off the ground at Andrews and then we’ll stop and chat about that briefly. So here we go.

[played tape from Andrews Tower]

Kara: Could you hear that all right Colonel O’Brien?

O’Brien: Yes I did, some of it was a little garbled, but I got the gist of it.

Kara: Right, do you recall those conversations?

O’Brien: Yes, I do. First time I’ve heard them, and it’s a somewhat eerie to hear them again after all this time.

Kara: And it’s a little bit eerie in that the time frame we are talking about Colonel, and my apologies if it causes you to think in an emotional area, But had you not been delayed for three minutes you would have been out there in the flight path of American 77, as it turns out. And we know at that time you had no situational awareness that you knew that 77 was out there when you took off, is that correct?

O’Brien: That’s correct

Kara: And the reason that you were delayed, there are at least two, perhaps three reasons, and there, and, let me recount them as I understand them, and if that’s not correct let me know. You were first held because of the wake turbulence for a seven four heavy [Word 31] that was going off. That was one of the “kneecap” [NEACAP]. I think you were held briefly a second time because of a grass cutter. Not sure on that. And then third, there was a helicopter that was coming across and you were held up for that. Does that square with what you remember?

O’Brien:  That’s affirm. If you like I can elaborate a little bit on the seven four seven, but ah…

Kara: Yes, yeah, would you please?

O’Brien: Well, my recollections on the seven forty seven, and I remarked to the crew while we were starting our engines, as I remember the seven forty seven cranking up, we were facing them. We were headed, our aircraft was pointed southbound towards where they keep the seven forty seven, Air Force One, and the other aircraft. And uh I remarked to the crew that I thought it was unusual that that seven forty seven had gotten started up and had departed in a fairly short time span. I don’t remember the exact time, but I know that, for example, for our aircraft with a four-engine start, typically under normal circumstances, it might take us fifteen minutes or so to get all the engines started, all the check lists accomplished and [unclear]ready to taxi. Seemingly, this aircraft had departed a lot quicker than that, but not knowing anything else that was going on, you know, [unclear] that airplane got off fairly quickly.

Kara: Do you recall if he got priority over you, were you held up so that he could go first, or not?

O’Brien:  No, I don’t recall any priority like, you know, when we call for a taxi, I don’t recall any delays, you know, you have to stand by and wait for the seven forty seven. It may have happened, but I don’t recall that being any kind of conflict at all. It was just a matter of, you know, I think we maybe both started the starting engine sequence at about the same time. It’s just a guess because they don’t have propellers like we have, but ah, it seemed like they had gotten off much sooner than normal [unclear] departure would be.

Kara: And that’s normal to hold up for turbulence they cause when they take off?

O’Brien: That’s correct. There is a wake turbulence separation criteria that are in effect and they just hold us until they feel the wake turbulence from a departing heavy aircraft has dissipated enough to make it safe for departure.

Kara:  OK, the next segment I’m going to play for you, Colonel, is ah, I’m simply going to play it and see if you remember hearing it. It is not directed at you, but it is a conversation that occurs in the air between one of the two towers and another plane that is in the sky.

[side direction to Sullivan]

[Misplay of previous clip]

[side direction to Sullivan]

[A National Tower clip, a discussion of the situation in New York, but not clear, second plane into second tower]

Kara: Do you recall hearing anything like that while you were on the ground Colonel O’Brien?

O’Brien: No I don’t.

Kara: And you might have heard in the background Andrews calling for another release; that was the release on you. So this conversation was going on in the air. I think that’s Andrews, excuse me I think that’s National Tower and there was no reason for you to be on their frequency at that time. I just play that for you so that you have situational awareness as we now get you up in the air here.

Kara: Let me continue playing

[Played conversation between National Tower and Gofer 06 immediately after takeoff. Gofer 06 has the unknown in site and identifies it as a seven five seven. Gofer 06 is directed to follow the aircraft]

Kara: Colonel, let me just interject and I forgot to tell you that at the beginning, I have voice activated taped this so there are, the gaps that were there have been taken out and this is not in real time. [dead space and unrelated transmissions were removed to condense the information for the interview]

O’Brien: OK, I understand.

Kara: And, it uh, took you a while to get the tower to understand that you weren’t Gofer 86, you were Gofer 06.

O’Brien: Ah Yeah, that happens once in a while, it’s you know, not common, but it happens. So you just try and make sure that you correct them. It’s standard procedure to make sure there aren’t any confusions. Because sometimes there are similar call signs, either the suffixes are very close or the prefixes are close. And so, in case there was another 86 aircraft out there I didn’t want them to confuse us with them. So, consequently I am a little bit stubborn and try and make sure they have the right call sign.

Kara: And we appreciate that. And just for your situational awareness, you might have heard in the background, you’re on the Tyson at ah National Tower, and in the background you might have heard Krant position as they just became aware that they have a fast moving aircraft, so that’s going on in the background. And they’ve become aware, in real time, that they actually have a military aircraft up there that they can, that they can divert and that’s in fact what they did. So let me just continue this segment and then we can talk about it.

O’Brien: OK

[Continues playing tape from National Tower]

Kara: You recall that, Colonel?

O’Brien: Yeah I do, yes sir I do!

Kara: And, I have one clarification that I would ask. You make a report that the aircraft is down. And then later you say it’s into the Pentagon. When you use the phrase down, there, you mean down on the ground, is that correct?

O’Brien: That’s affirmative. I probably should have used some other terminology other than down, but that’s the first thing that came to mind. I witnessed an aircraft crash when I was back when I was in pilot training one of my class mates crashed in front of me on final and, so I’d seen that signature fireball and smoke [unclear] come up once before from a jet fuel explosion like that and I don’t think it happened quite that quickly. I don’t think it happened that quickly. You mentioned something about how you have the tape [unclear] off just a little bit. I recall it being a little bit of a delay from the first time I reported the aircraft until I reported the aircraft had went down.

Kara: And what I did Colonel was I compressed about three minutes of audio down into the segment that you heard hear. And I wanted to make you aware you are not hearing it in real time; I just simply did that in the interest of time.

Kara: When you identified the plane as a seven five seven did you have any indication at all of the company?

O’Brien: No, I didn’t at the time. And I remember when I debriefed with the folks in Youngstown, Ohio, that I was not able to really give them a commercial carrier. I think the aircraft was banked up, I recall, quite a bit steeper then what your typical aircraft, commercial airliner banks for a turn. I want to say it was between 30 and 45 degrees of bank constantly when he went by us at our 12 o’clock and passing through our one to two o’clock position. We were pretty much looking at the top of the airplane.  So, I remember seeing what appeared to be almost like a red stripe at the root, the wing root of the, ah, it would be the right wing, I guess, as they were passing by us. And in hindsight I realize now that it was probably the American Airlines, you know, their signature paint job that they have along the wing probably reflecting off the wing. But, all I remember is a silver 757 at that point and I believe that is what I debriefed to the Intel folks at Youngstown [unclear].

Kara: And it was clear to you that that was a seven five as opposed to either a seven six or a seven three?

O’Brien: It was definitely a 757 [unclear]. Where ah, where ah close enough, I guess the models are close enough. Seven six is obviously, you know, a little bit bigger than the seven fifty seven, but they’re fairly close in size and I guess I was correct in my initial assumption when ATC [air traffic control] asked me what type of aircraft that was. Subsequently, when I debriefed with the folks at Youngstown I, you know, said well I’m not quite sure, it was a seven fifty seven, possibly a seven fifty seven, but I guess my initial recognition of the aircraft in conversing with ATC was correct, that is was a seven fifty seven.

Kara: And it’s quite clear to us as we listen to these tapes that you gave a clear identification of the type aircraft to air traffic control in near real time. And as you are probably aware in the news it doesn’t get sorted out nearly as fast as you had it sorted out to air traffic control. And the question we have is, were you on the air with anybody else at that time? Were you with a military controller of any sort or talking to the military?

O’Brien: No we weren’t. Sometimes we are, we have our radios tuned up to the command post that we just departed, in order to give them a departure call so that they can plug it to the command and control system for the military. And that just updates our time so that the folks at our home station will have a better idea, you know, when to expect us for arrival. But we were not conversing with Andrews command post at that time.

Kara: And, the, so, the only military entity you would have been in contact with normally would have been a command post, in this case Andrews. And it was the case on that morning that you were not on freq with the Andrews command post?

O’Brien: Not at that time, no. No, we weren’t, we weren’t conversing with them at the time. And I can’t really recall whether or not we had made an off call to Andrews command post. Things were happening fairly quickly and any time you are operating an aircraft in the, in the Andrews area, you got a number of airports there, things are real, real busy. And my assumption is that we probably hadn’t even initiated our off call to command post just because things are a little bit more saturated as far as ATC calls and directions, it being a fairly busy environment there around Washington DC. You really have to listen up on the radios and not miss any calls to yourself because they are typically stepping you up in altitude only a thousand, two thousand feet at a time and giving you fairly precise vectors to keep all the traffic separated.

Kara: And when you say off call, what does that mean?

O’Brien: Departure call.

Kara: Departure. Oh, OK, I got it. And, a departure call, a courtesy back to the base command post, could have been done, but was not.

O’Brien: That’s, that’s to the best of my recollection. I don’t recall. A lot of times when we have a navigator on board we will delegate that to the navigator and let him make our departure call back to the command post so they can update the system. And I, I’m sorry I really don’t recall whether or not Colonel DeVito had made that call or not. I would have, I know the way I run things on an airplane, I would have delegated that to the navigator just because it is a busy area and it was the co-pilots [unclear] that day. Even though I was in the left hand seat as the aircraft commander I was working the ATC radios that day and I’m sure I would have delegated the UHF radio which we use to stay in contact with military command posts and the navigators, ah..

Kara: And that was Colonel Devito?

O’Brien: That’s correct

Kara: What’s his first name?  

O’Brien: Joseph

Kara: Joseph. And is that Lieutenant Colonel or Colonel?

O’Brien: He’s a Lieutenant Colonel

Kara: Lieutenant Colonel. And what ah, as you think back on that, what other traffic was there in the area that you can recall?

O’Brien: You know, I don’t recall, I’m sure there was other traffic. But, I don’t recall any other traffic, I mean it is just a very busy environment and to see, you know, traffic out there and to notice everything that’s in the area, you’re busier than you would want to be, especially when you are trying to listen up on the radio freq, ATC calls and all that, of course we are looking at things but we are not commenting and I’m not, you know registering and recording those things in my mind as far as, it would be unusual to see four or five different airplanes in that environment there, so you’re, for the most part, just clearing the area in front of you. And, of course, we’ve got a what we call a TCAS, it’s a, oh what should I say, it’s a piece of equipment that allows us to identify other aircraft out there that have transponder codes. And, between clearing out visually and using the TCAS equipment that we’ve got in the aircraft, and then [unclear] on ATC, that’s how we basically clear [unclear] other aircraft that might be in the area.

Kara: And the only traffic that was of concern to you for safety or safety reason was the traffic that was pointed out to you?

O’Brien: That’s correct. And I had ah, to the best of my recollection I had noticed him before the ATC call. I believe I first saw him about my ten o’clock position and then when the controller pointed the traffic out to us on the radios it was a, fairly obvious you know what airplane they were talking about, [unclear] sounded what should I say, kind of incredulous that we wouldn’t have seen that airplane because he was as close as he was to us. And that surprised us when he asked us to identify the airplane. Because, typically, ATC knows more about the aircraft than you do as far as the identity, they have an individual strip on each aircraft that identifies their call sign, type aircraft, the type carrier, the carrier that was operating that airplane, and so on and so forth, so when he asked us what kind of airplane,  it was it was a very unusual request.

Kara: And, based on our review of the radar and the air traffic control tapes and any other information we can get our hands on, the only other aircraft that we’re aware of that day that you may have been aware of either visually or on radar, first of all, did you see Word 31, the seven four, out in front of you?

O’Brien: I don’t recall that aircraft, I’m sorry.

Kara: And there was a helicopter that took off from the Pentagon oh a few minutes before you came across the Potomac, and he was headed northbound. You recall seeing a helicopter in the area?

O’Brien: No I don’t.

Kara: And the only other two airplanes that I’m aware of that are of interest, there were two Bobcats, and I think those were Air Force [unclear] out of Dover, but they were well at altitude, the were at 17 and 21 thousand on top of you, you recall either talking to them or being aware of them at all?

O’Brien: No we were not, we were certainly not communicating with them and we didn’t recognize, or I shouldn’t say didn’t recognize, but we didn’t see them as a crew, being down at 3 thousand feet or so we were our scan wouldn’t have gone up that high.

Kara: And then as ah you were, how many minutes or miles were you behind the plane you followed? Behind seventy seven?

O’Brien: Oh, behind flight 77?

Kara: Yeah

O’Brien: There was a delay from the time that they asked or that I offered to them, you know the aircraft rolling out on a northeasterly heading and still in a descent, I’m not sure how long of a time frame that was, but as fast as that airplane was going, I’m sure there was quite a bit of separation that took place between us and that aircraft before they then asked us to turn and follow that aircraft. And I remember, vaguely remember, trying to keep the aircraft in sight. And every once in a while we would get a glimpse off of the wing tip or whatever, but it was early in the morning, [unclear] practically 9:30 or 9:40 or so, and the sun was still somewhat low on the horizon. And with the east coast typically being hazy with just moisture and pollutants and things like that, it becomes a little bit more difficult when you are looking for the traffic eastbound, you know looking toward the east looking for traffic through the sun haze it becomes difficult and so we were really straining to keep that airplane in sight until the impact on the ground there and it became obvious where the aircraft was down.

Kara: And we have the radar reduction files from the 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron at Hill Air Force Base and it looks to us as, as though, we analyzed that data, that it looks like you were about two minutes behind the aircraft. When you were able to make your turn and come and vector behind him it looks like you were about two minutes behind. I just point that out to you so that you are aware of it.

O’Brien: OK

Kara: And then you were asked to orbit the Pentagon as I recall, but you were called off of that. Could you walk us through that for a minute or so?

O’Brien: Well, initially, they gave us that heading of two seven zero, and, I can’t remember exactly when I took the aircraft from my co-pilot but I believe it was after that instruction. We were getting closer and closer to the Pentagon and I could see that the vector they were giving us could possibly take us through the plume of smoke that was coming up from the Pentagon. And, for what ever reason, I still didn’t know anything about the aircraft menacing the World Trade Center, but it was somewhat obvious to me that a pilot worth his salt would not have taken a disabled airplane into the Pentagon. And so, right away my suspicions began to, you know, rise that this was possibly a deliberate act and not knowing, you know, what might be coming up in that smoke, whether or not they had any kind of nuclear, biological, or anything like that on board the airplane, for a terrorism situation like that, I thought it was not a good idea to fly through that plume of smoke coming up from the Pentagon. And so I believe that’s when the notion came to me that I should not take the airplane, I had taken the airplane and I realized that at that point I would have to turn back to the right a little bit. We were heading approximately zero nine zero, you know heading still heading toward the Pentagon when we got that request from or direction from ATC to turn to a two seven zero heading. At that point I made the decision that we were going to turn a little bit to the South and basically enter a left hand orbit around the Pentagon, around the side of the Pentagon, which would keep it on my side of the airplane. I thought that was best since I was flying the airplane now. Then I thought, you know, about possibly trying to set up an orbit around the Pentagon to effect some kind of rescue attempt or whatever, and, or help out with any other information. I could possibly give them a birds eye view there and they were fairly emphatic about asking us to depart the area there at two seven zero at my [unclear] altitude. So, at that point I thought I’m not going to argue with ATC, we’ll just follow their direction and go ahead with whatever they wanted us to do.

Kara: Yeah. And for those of us who are not pilots, or rated, when you say your side is that the right side or the left side of the aircraft.

O’Brien: It’s the left side

Kara: Left side. And the time you’re in the vicinity of the Pentagon, and that’s just around 9:40 Eastern Daylight time. We you aware of or did you see any fighter aircraft or other military aircraft?

O’Brien: No, no we weren’t aware of any fighter aircraft?

Kara Ok. And then you proceed on your way, a heading of three ten, eventually, and you’re headed up towards Pennsylvania and I’d just like to play a little more audio for you. And what we have is, well the Tyson position is vectoring you as we just learned. The Krant position, on the other hand, is picking up situational awareness and a little bit of that was in the background. But I’d just like to play for you the other side of the conversations that were going on in the Tower that day. So, if you’ll just bear with me a minute.

Kara: Should be able to start it up.

[An audio compilation. The Dulles TRACON clip sounding the alert, conversation at National and Andrews ATC facilities, to include Venus 77]

Kara: OK let me stop it there. Colonel, that was the other side. What you heard in the background is a, a voice, a female voice said, National, anybody. That was the first identification of a fast moving aircraft approaching the DC area, and that was at about 9:33. And that’s just about the time you took off, so we have Dulles reporting that to National Tower and at the same time they are lifting you up. And we got both planes, if you will, coming toward the DC area, or toward the Pentagon area from different directions. At one point, and I don’t think you heard it, but the original point out on the 757, a voice in the background said, oh, you mean that Gofer guy. And he says, no, no, it’s ah it’s the “look” point out that I gave you.

[Comment. Researchers familiar with the National TRACON radar can correlate the “look” point out to the “S” tag which shows up on the primary only track of AA 77 in this time frame]

 Kara: Either that day or afterwards were you aware of any of that juxtaposition of your flight with the fast moving aircraft coming in bound?

O’Brien: When you refer to the fast moving aircraft are you referring to flight seven seven?

Kara: That’s correct. It’s not, no one knows it’s that it’s seventy seven, so when Dulles first gives that point out there, they pick up a primary only coming in, and that’s how it’s announced over the air traffic network.

O’Brien: OK, no, I was not aware of that fast moving aircraft. And like I said earlier, I believe I had first picked the airplane up, and I’m guessing we were ah at 3,000 feet, maybe had just been cleared up to 4000 feet, when I noticed the airplane. He was up a little bit higher than us at that point and then when ATC asked us again if we had the airplane in sight he had continued his descent down, was in a fairly, like I said, steep bank turn to the right at about our 12 o’clock position and at about the same altitude, I would say was about 3500 feet or so.

Kara: And as you may have heard, shortly after you reported the Pentagon crash and it became aware there was a ground stop in the DC area. And had you been further delayed until after that you wouldn’t have gotten off the ground.

O’Brien: I understand that.

Kara: Did you hear that ground stop come out over the frequency?

O’Brien: You know, I don’t recall hearing a ground stop, per se, over the frequency. If I did, it’s been so long that, you know, that memory has faded. There’s only certain things that really that stick out vividly in my mind.

Kara: Let’s take you up now on the three ten leg, and at some point in time you’re made aware of another situation that’s developed. And I don’t have the page with me from Cleveland Center who I believe was talking to you but what you recall [side comment to Sullivan], what you recall about the second event that day?

O’Brien: Well the second event, I had asked the crew if everyone was OK to continue on. This was after the witnessing the crash at the Pentagon. All the crew members came back and reported that they were OK to press on. That was my biggest concern at that point was how was everyone was doing. So we decided to continue on back to Minneapolis. We had been handed off from departure control to center [Cleveland]. And I believe it was the first center controller, Cleveland Center, who had pointed out traffic to us at our 12 o’clock. Couldn’t give us an altitude. And so we did our normal scan looking for traffic, go out [unclear], you know, increasing above and below. We really couldn’t pick any thing out as far as, you know, the traffic was concerned. And at that point we reported back to him that we didn’t have any traffic in sight. So he gave us a vector, about three six zero, basically a right 90 degree turn to head us to the north to deconflict with, should that traffic, you know, happen to be at our altitude. Shortly after we rolled out of the turn that another crew member [unclear] in the back of the aircraft reported to me smoke off the left side of the aircraft. And I turned I looked right away and saw, you know, the black smoke coming up from the ground.  This one wasn’t right after the impact, so I personally I didn’t see [unclear] you know, that yellow plume of flame or anything like that, all I saw was the smoke coming up from the ground. And at that point I reported that smoke to Center and gave them an approximate position, you know Paul and I [unclear] just about 20 miles away. And I think he came back and replied that he had lost the traffic that he was pointing out to us, about seventeen or eighteen miles, the two were close enough that I was sure that you know what he was pointing out to us possibly could [unclear relate]  to the smoke coming off the ground.

Kara: We have you from the 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron, uh air traffic was accurate. The inbound path of a primary only, which we now know to be United 93, was at your twelve o’clock. It crashes near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 and at about that time I have you on radar evaluation reduction as just crossing from Maryland into that narrow projection of West Virginia and you are not quite in Pennsylvania, yet. And, at that point that you were vectored 90 degrees to the right, was that when you were 40 miles away, or was it further up?

O’Brien: Ah no, it was about 20 miles away, was my estimate that we saw this smoke, and that was just a rough guess on my part when I reported back to Cleveland Center, told them that we had smoke coming off of the ground. I estimated it to be about 20 miles.

Kara: Off the port side, right?

O’Brien: That’s correct, off the left wing tip, our nine o’clock position.

Kara: We have, he vectored you, at about 10:04 he vectored you 90 to the right and at 10:07 the controller brought you back again on course, at about 10:07, that’s about four minutes after the impact of United 93 into the ground. What was your awareness of other aircraft in the sky?

O’Brien: Well, ah the only thing I saw that I, you know, vaguely remember and I didn’t think it was significant at all, I saw a smaller white aircraft at a lower altitude and we were up high enough that it would have be difficult for me to, you know, give an exact altitude. But, if I had to guess right now, trying to remember what it looked like, I’d say it was, you know, below ten thousand feet, possibly down around five or six thousand feet, and if I remember correctly it looked like a white business jet and I believe it was north bound when I saw it. That’s the only other traffic that I recall seeing in the area beside the, you know, the smoke plume coming off of the field.

Kara: Let me come back to that business jet in a moment. But let me just simply ask you, do you recall seeing any fighter aircraft or any other military aircraft in the vicinity or on your flight path that day?

O’Brien: No I don’t.

Kara: OK, and I appreciate that. That’s helpful to us that you have that good recall.

Kara: The business jet, again, thanks to the 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron, we believe that to be a Falcon jet, November 20VF that was, it was at altitude coming up oh it was at about zero three zero [azimuth] coming across the Pennsylvania border from Ohio, and was vectored by air traffic control from altitude down to, and I’m going on memory here, but it seemed to me eight thousand feet, which would square with your recall. That airplane actually did one three sixty loop just, just above the crash site and at uh at10:14 EDT, this would be ten, eleven minutes after the impact. It was immediately at nine o’clock from your left hand seat, which, you said you were on the left side, right?

O’Brien: That’s affirmative

Kara: That aircraft would have been at, uh, let me get my clock right, would have been at nine o’clock if you had looked out the window. And you think you saw him at about that time, perhaps?

O’Brien: That’s affirmative

Kara: And you were not then vectored to do anything else concerning that crash, and you continued on and landed uneventfully at Youngstown, Ohio.

O’Brien: That’s affirm. We get handed off, I believe, to another Cleveland center controller shortly after that. And it was then that he was somewhat hesitant in asking us, you know, what we should be doing at that point. I can’t remember his exact terminology, but it was something to the effect, I’m not sure if  I can ask you this but can you tell me what you guys are doing? And I just, you know, basically relayed to him that we were an air national guard aircraft heading back to Minneapolis. And he came back with something to the effect that well I’ve been told to get all commercial aircraft on the ground. And you’re a military aircraft so, you know, might want to check with your folks and see, you know, what they want you to do. And so I checked, I looked at one of our navigational charts and saw that Youngstown Ohio was the closest, or to me it appeared like it would be the best divert base if in fact if we had to divert someplace because [unclear] was going on. So I initiated contact there with command post there at Youngstown and they gave us instructions to the effect that we should land at their location, there.

Kara: As I listen to the tape from the Cleveland controller, it seemed like he was a bit challenging of you. He knew that all our planes were supposed to be on the ground and he was a bit challenging of you of why you were even in the air. Do you recall that?

O’Brien: Yeah, I don’t know if he was challenging us or if he was just uncomfortable with asking us, you know, and I thought back in hindsight that if he was, you know obviously he had must have had a strip on us, just like every other controller has, you know, with basic information of departure point and destination. And, you know, my initial reaction was well if he saw us departing out, out of Washington DC, out of Andrews Air Force Base, at approximately the same time that the terrorist incidents were taking place at New York and the Pentagon that we might be some kind of an evacuation airplane. And so, that’s the, I guess, the hesitancy I heard in his voice, not so much a challenge as he was somewhat uncomfortable even in asking us what we were, you know, doing. And, when I relayed to him that we were just an air national guard C130 heading back to Minneapolis that is when he made the recommendation that we probably contact someone in our command and control to, you know, see if they had further instructions for us.

Kara: By this time in the Washington area, and perhaps elsewhere, Andrews Tower, specifically, and later Dulles Tower, were making the following kinds of announcements. At 10:05 EDT, and at that point you would have been just crossing,  you would have just turned right vectored to 90, 90 right and crossing into Pennsylvania, Andrews Tower broadcast on guard that any airplanes violating Class B airspace would be shot down. And then, about ten minutes later, at 10:15, there’s a similar call for Washington, excuse me Dulles Tower making the exact same pronouncement to all airplanes in the sky, any airplanes approaching Washington DC. Do you recall hearing any of those announcements on guard or any other frequency?

O’Brien: No I don’t. And, I hate to, because it’s been two and one half years and I know you are playing back all the tapes, but, and I could have, you know I hate to say this, I could have imagined this after the fact. But when we were initially pulled to turn to the 270 heading, and I can’t remember how many radio transmissions it was after this, I vaguely remember one of the [unclear] guys saying that, you know, we have fast movers coming into the area and that is why they needed us to get out and the assumption that I made was, if in fact this is a terrorist incident, they just want us, you know, have the proper sorting out, good guys from bad guys, they just wanted all the airplanes they were talking to, to vacate the area. And I don’t know for sure if that was on the tapes or if they gave that to us, but I vaguely remember, you know,   remember something to that effect.

Kara: And the announcements that are referred to, we pick up on Washington area air traffic control towers. And I don’t remember whether center, Washington Center put that out or not, they might have. But at that time you were well within Cleveland Center’s airspace, and I don’t recall Cleveland doing that and that’s why I simply asked you if you,  you had heard a very precise announcement from any center or any tower that you might be shot down if you went back to Washington.

O’Brien: No, I don’t recall hearing anything like that at all.

Kara: OK and ah, let me just ask you squarely again Colonel, in reference to your proximity to the crash site of United 93 near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, it’s a fact that you in no way, shape, or form, were armed that day, and you did not see any armed military aircraft, air defense fighters, or other aircraft that could have been involved in the downing of that aircraft.

O’Brien: No I didn’t

Kara: And, again, I thank you for that kind of precise statement because that will be very helpful to us.

Kara: As I go back over your mission debriefing there’s just a couple of points I’d like to ask you about. In one there was an inference that you were going to be or might have been interviewed by the FBI, were you so interviewed?

O’Brien: Yes we were. When we arrived at Youngstown, Ohio, I immediately asked to talk to the senior ranking person at the base operations building there, and I believe it was the Ops Group Commander that I talked to, but I couldn’t be for certain who that was right now, and basically told him that I think we should go to some place and discuss what we had seen. And, at that point I think we got a real basic debrief with the intel folks at Youngstown, Ohio, the military intelligence section at Youngstown. And then it was shortly after that that they said that the Cleveland, I don’t know if it was Cleveland, but they said the FBI wanted to come down and do an interview with some of the crew members, I thought they said they were coming from Cleveland.

Kara: And do you recall when and where that interview was conducted?

O’Brien: The interview was conducted back in the base operations building, actually, back in, but I believe it was right in the same intel, the secure area inside the intelligence section at Youngstown, the FBI [unclear]

Kara: That was on 9/11 and that [unclear]. Do you recall how long that interview lasted?

O’Brien: No I don’t, I would just guess that it was about15 to 20 minutes.

Kara: And then you used nomenclature that is interesting to me and that I am not familiar with. And I’ll just give you the nomenclature that you used and maybe you can tell me a little bit about it. I think you are talking about the modes on the airplane and you talk about “stick paint.”

O’Brien: That was a typo. And I commented, it was interesting to read the transcribed transcript of the taped interview that was done by our folks here at the Intelligence Section here at the 133d, because that was meant to say skin paint, S K I N.

Kara: That makes, in other words primary radar.

O’Brien: That’s affirm. We have a fairly sophisticated radar in the H3 model that we hadn’t had prior to this, and its got various modes in it, its got a weather mode, and its got a [unclear] mode, and its, one of the modes happens to be skin paint that we can range out to approximately 20 miles for primary targets. In other words if the aircraft is made of metal we’re going to pick it up on our radar. And we have various gates, air speed gates that we can set up to illuminate slow moving traffic or fast moving traffic, whichever. And so, typically we operate we call a skin paint medium mode. Where, what it basically does is eliminate all the ground clutter because it will actually pick up if you leave it at low mode, it will actually pick up traffic on highways, things like that. So the skin paint was a reference to the low mode radar.

Kara: And you can only go out 20 miles with that?

O’Brien. That’s affirm, that’s the maximum, if we’re really tight to you know, be very precise it’s got lower settings, we can get it all the way down to a mile and a half, where the bottom of the scope, top of the scope is a mile and a half out.

Kara: And in its, in its final minutes United 93 was at 8000 feet, and its altitude, or altitude above ground was probably [unclear] beyond your skin paint capability?

O’Brien: Well, you see, there’s a beam of radar, so it’s not, you know it can’t paint from the ground up to infinity, anything like that.  I’d have to get my tech order manual out to give you an exact, you know how big the slice of airspace it was looking at based on a certain distance as far as the maximum range of the radar is concerned. It’s not looking at a very wide slice of airspace, to my understanding.

Kara: Do you recall then, you never had United 93 on your TCAS or any kind of radar display?

O’Brien: Now, refresh my memory, 93 was

Kara: That’s the plane that crashed that you observed the smoke.

O’Brien: OK, no, that one we were not painting on skin paint nor were we painting it on TCAS.

Kara: OK

Kara: Colonel, we’ve covered quite a few items today, and based on my, ah [unclear] that I’ve given you in terms of some of the radar reductions I have and the tapes that you’ve listened to, is there anything I haven’t asked you about that I should know about in your observations that day?

O’Brien: No I can’t say that there’s anything at all, it’s interesting to listen to it again and kind of relive it.

Kara: It was my pleasure, Colonel, to play back for you your own voice that day. Have you been interested at some point in time that we were going to call you?

O’Brien: Had I been interested?

Kara: Had you been interested or not in whether or not the 9/11 Commission was going to reach out and talk to you?

O’Brien: You know, it hadn’t really crossed my mind, although you know ever once in a while when I think it has died down, I’ll get a request to you know do another interview or whatever, so nothing ever surprises me anymore.  It was interesting to hear from the 9/11 Commission, because I didn’t know how you know thorough they were going to be. And, so, anyway.

Kara: And your specific assistance to us today, as you’re well aware, Colonel, the public stories that are out about the day of 9/11 are loaded with myths, and mythologies, and incorrect interpretations, and just plain wrong stories out there. And part of it has to do with the ultimate fate of 77 and 93. And you’re an eye witness that day in both instances and your clear recollection has been extremely helpful to us and we thank you for that.

O’Brien: OK, I’m glad I was able to help the Commission out.

That concluded the interview. Kara, Sullivan and O’Brien talked briefly at the end, nothing substantive.

9-11: UA93; The Gofer 06 story, explained

Addendum added Feb 27, 2014

Here are links that provide additional insight into my work on the UA 93 story.

Seismic data considered

A 2009 article with a graphic showing tracks

Introduction

A correspondent recently contacted me to discuss the relationship of United Airlines flight 93 (UA 93) and Gofer 06, the Minnesota Air National Guard C130H.  The correspondent speculated that there was an important relationship which was crucial to an incident time of 10:06 for UA 93.  The 10:06 time was an extrapolation from seismic data by a single individual who, when queried by the 9-11 Commission Staff, agreed that the seismic data was not conclusive concerning UA 93.

Nevertheless, the correspondent concocted this explanation:

I need to review the testimony of C-130 pilot Captain Steve O’Brien before the 9/11 Commission. What he had to say is highly relevant. Why? Simple. That morning, O’Brien had a bird’s eye view of the Shanksville crash site – and was in position at the right moment to be a witness to whatever happened at 10:06 AM, which is the crash time indicated by the seismic signal.

At that very moment, he was in the cockpit of his C-130 looking straight at the crash site from 24,000 feet, after being prompted by the Cleveland ATCs.

Are you aware of what O’Brien told the commission? Do you know if his testimony has been released? I have searched for it without success. Did the commission ask him what he saw at Shanksville?

The issue looks to be of primary interest, because it does appear that someone tampered with the 20-page transcript of the real time conversation that O’Brien had with ZOB Cleveland ATCs, on the morning of 9/11.

I believe that transcript offers some powerful clues about what transpired. I am attaching the file below. It’s pretty big — apologies for the size. Or you can download it at [https://www.911datasets.org/]

The file includes a number of transcripts. The relevant ATC transcript has 20 pages. The key page is 18 of 20. You will notice that at 1405:45 O’Brien mentions that he sees smoke at the site. But, notice, he says the smoke is at 3,000-5,000 feet. There is no indication it rose from the ground, i.e., from a crash. This is an extremely important detail, as we shall see.

Then, after 1406:27, something strange happens. Four minutes of the transcript, from 1407-1411, appears to have been deleted. It’s gone!

Why do you think?

Could it be because O’Brien saw the unspeakable, i.e., saw a cruise missile crash at 10:06 AM — and reported this to the ATCs? This observation, had it been reported to the commission and/or made public, would have exposed the entire official 9/11 story as a HUGE lie, and at the same time would have revealed a criminal conspiracy in the act of “cleaning up” flight UAL 93, which had turned into a fiasco.

I now suspect that the Shanksville witness [redacted] saw a cruise missile just before it crashed — not a UAV. She told me it was “tubular” and “cylindrical” and had fins — but no wings. This sounds like a missile.

But why a cruise missile? Well, if the perpetrators decided to terminate UAL 93 by detonating explosives which had been pre-planted on the aircraft — they still needed a crater in the ground to serve as the basis for a cover story that UAL 93 had crashed, when in fact it was exploded at 3-5,00 feet.

Any help you can provide in locating O’Brien’s testimony before the commission would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely for 9/11 truth,

Perspective

I interviewed Lt Col O’Brien by telephone. The interview has not been released, according to the National Archives. My contact there reports that they have found a pointer to the interview and they will have it reviewed for release. I do not recall if the report of interview was an MFR or a recording.

O’Brien was asked the key questions.  Did he at any time at all see a military aircraft and/or any evidence of a missile?  Was he armed, had his C130H ever been armed, had any C130H model ever been armed? O’Brien responded in the negative to that round of questions.

I have again reviewed the transcript, the radar, and the audio files.  The correspondent distorted the story.  O’Brien never had a birds eye view. He was never prompted by air traffic control.  He initiated the report of smoke.  He was briefly considered as a candidate aircraft to circle the crash site but was not so tasked. A civilian aircraft was vectored to circle the crash site and provide GPS coordinates.

This is an old story, recycled.  Now is a good time to set the record straight.

Air Traffic Control Communications

The tape of interest is file 148-911-03003840k.s1, the Cleveland Air Traffic Control Center tape of Imperial Sector for the period 1340-1418 UCT (0940-1018 EDT).

Gofer 06 checked in, routinely, shortly before 10:03 EDT reporting an altitude of “two four zero” (24,000 feet.) Here is that exchange.

1002 Gofer 06 Checks in

A minute later, air traffic control turned Gofer 06 to a heading of 030 (North North East) away from the projected path of UA 93. Concurrently, Cleveland Center was losing UA 93 on radar, telling Gofer 06 that he was heading east, but now turned to the south.

The radar clearly shows the turn to the south to be the plunge to earth. UA 93 impacted during this conversation with Gofer 06.

1003 Gofer 06 Turned to 030

Over a minute later, Gofer 06 was told he would be run north about 26 miles before a return to original heading.  Gofer 06 then volunteered a report of black smoke at his “9 o’clock” (easterly).  The pilot could not tell if the smoke originated from the ground or from the air. Air traffic control was satisfied with the report and cleared him “direct Dryer,” about 10:06. The radar shows that Gofer 06 did return to original heading at that time.

1005 Gofer 06 reports black smoke

None of O’Brien’s report or subsequent conversation with air traffic control correlates to a speculated crash time of 10:06.  It is clear from this primary source information that UA 93 was down well before that time.  O’Brien was not queried further by air traffic control about anything that might have happened in the 10:06 time frame.

The Next Five Minutes

The Correspondent claimed, “Four minutes of the transcript, from 1407-1411, appears to have been deleted. It’s gone!”  That is a misinterpretation of the transcript. Here is what the certified transcript (ZOB-ARTCC-287 N591UA(UAL 93) for Imperial Sector actually contains:

1406:27 GOF06 ok direct dryer gopher zero six
1407
1408
1409
1410
1411
1411.11 UNKN (unintelligible)

Here is the actual audio for that nearly five-minute period during which there were no transmissions. All the transcriber was doing was noting, for the transcipt record, the minutes that were passing with nothing to transcribe.

1007 Five Minutes no transmission

Crash Site Confirmation, Gofer 06 Considered, Not Tasked

Once Gofer 06 returned to original heading its path took it a few miles north of the crash site. The controller advised another controller that he could vector Gofer 06 to verify the crash site. This next conversation, an internal one at Cleveland Center, confirms that Cleveland had used a different plane and that the “lat long” of the crash site had been verified.

1011 Positive ID Gofer 06 not tasked

Grounding all flights

The order by the FAA’s Air Traffic Control System Command Center to ground all airplanes played out differently at different locations.  The emphasis was on grounding commercial traffic.  There was initial confusion as to whether or not the order pertained to military and emergency response aircraft. Here is how that order played out in the airspace controlled by Cleveland Center that included Gofer 06.

 1015 Only One in Air is a Military Plane

After that internal Cleveland Center conversation, the controller thought that he should ask Gofer 06 why he was still in the air.  Gofer 06 responded, no one told me to land. Gofer 06 then asked if anyone else was in the air. The last thing heard on the tape is the Cleveland controller telling Gofer 06 that “he would expand,” meaning he would zoom out so his scope would display a larger area.

 1017 No One Told Me to Land

Grounding of All Traffic, A Comment

One air traffic control facility posed a direct question about the status of military and emergency response flights.  I believe the question came from National TRACON and that the answer was that such flights would be allowed. I will update with that audio clip when I find it.

At no time was Gofer 06 told to land, nor were other military aircraft in the air. The only specific restriction to all flights, regardless of status, was a warning not to enter Class B airspace in the DC area. Those warnings started after 10:05 EDT.

9-11: The Andrews Fighters; A Complex Story, itself chaotic

[NOTE: blockquote html errors were corrected on Feb 27, 2014]

Introduction

The Washington Post series, “Mission: Unimaginable,” by Steve Hendrix, featured on page 1 of the “Style section, September 9 and September 15, 2011, speaks to the Major Heather Penney story, a very personal account of events on the morning of September 11, 2001.  Major Penney was wingman for the Caps flight, the first Andrews fighters airborne with verbal “weapons free” shootdown authority, an authority the Langley fighters already in a combat air patrol over the nation’s capital did not have. The emergence of Penney’s story resurfaced with it the complicated story about the national level response that day.

Commission Staff determined that the Andrews fighters were not involved in the actual defense that morning. By the time any Andrews fighter was airborne the attack was over. Nevertheless, the fighter wing at Andrews perceived that it had been involved and their story reemerged in 2008 with the publication of Touching History by Lynn Spencer.  Now, the story has reemerged a second time in the Washington Post articles. The story was, and still remains complex and poorly understood.

Writers such as Summers and Swan, The Eleventh Day, have detailed the complexity of the day and aftermath, the story of which remains unfinished.  Before them, Creed and Newman, Firefight, Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11, touched on the Andrews Air Force Base story.  The Air Force, itself, published an accounting of the Air Force story,  Air War Over America, in 2004. Lynn Spencer provided additional insight into the United States Air Force response, including the Andrews story.  The collective literature of 9/11, including the authors mentioned, has not yet provided a theoretical construct to place stories such as Major Penney’s in context.

One way, therefore, to tell the Andrews story is to provide an overarching thesis, a construct that is grounded in theory.  I have chosen chaos theory. That theory provides a language suited to the events of the day and the aftermath, a language that enlightens in a way not possible otherwise.

The one word used ubiquitously on the day of 9/11 and in the telling in the aftermath is “chaos.”  The word is never defined; it is simply used to describe events in a way that allows one to understand that which cannot be otherwise understood.  Given that ubiquity, it is a logical extension to apply the theory, itself.

The Andrews Connection

The Andrews story is inextricably tied to the story of United 93, the one plane that the air defenders could have had a chance to do something about, and which the Andrews expeditionary force, pressed into an air defense role, thought they could do something about.  Summers and Swan, in their discussion of United 93 wrote, “Far below, all was chaos.  At the very moment that the attendant in 93’s cockpit had fallen ominously silent…Flight 77 had slammed into the Pentagon.” In that passage, Summers and Swan linked together the two hijacked planes that would confound those who attempted to set the record straight concerning the attack on the nation’s capital.

During testimony on May 22 and 23, 2003, FAA Administrator, Jane Garvey could not, Transportation Secretary Mineta could not, and the NORAD delegation that followed them could not set the record straight.

The two prongs of the southern axis of a two-axis attack became the story that could not and would not be told accurately. “All was chaos,” at the time, in the aftermath and even today.  Major Heather Penney took to the sky with orders to “bring down United Flight 93.”  But that is not what transpired once the Andrews fighters took to the air and discovered the reality of the situation.

The fact that Penney’s memories, as told by Hendrix, don’t line up with the chronology of events is a reflection of the chaos of the morning and the misinformation that may have been available to her, then or since.  It does not constitute a judgement that Penney was anything but a heroine for her actions that morning.  She was heroic.

Chaos Theory, briefly considered

I have written about chaos theory in other articles.  Here, a brief summary is in order.  It is understood in the literature that the mathematics and science of chaos theory cannot be rigorously applied to an event such as 9/11.  The literature does allow, however, the use of chaos theory metaphorically.  Further, the language of chaos theory is useful to describe and correlate events in some sensible manner.  Specifically, I use four terms from chaos theory: strange attractors; non-linearity, cascading bifurcation, and disruptive feedback.

Strange Attractors. There are at least two pair of strange attractors that emerged from 9-11, both predicable in retrospect, but their dominant role could not be and was not predicted.  One pair, the Northeast Air Defense Sector and the FAA’s Boston Center, is not germane to this article.  The other pair, the Secret Service and Andrews Air Force Base, is.

Nonlinearity. Chaos is nonlinear, most of the responses to the attack, especially at the national level, were linear; by rote, SOP, or TTP (tactics, techniques and procedures). The Secret Service rote response was to protect the President, the Vice President, and the White House.  To do that it reached to the assets it knew, the air wing at Andrews.  The Service did not pick up the phone and call the National Military Command Center.

Cascading bifurcation. The attack itself was a double bifurcation, a two-axis attack each axis with two prongs.  Any student at any of the senior military schools can draw arrows depicting such an attack.  However, the situational awareness of the attack continued to bifurcate far beyond the simple military elegance of the attack. The saga of United 93, the most vulnerable of the four hijacked aircraft, became unmanageable.

Even though Cleveland Center provided clear and explicit reporting in near real-time all the way to FAA headquarters, that clarity became myopic almost immediately.  The flight was confused with Delta 1989 and was thought at one point to have landed in Cleveland. Once Cleveland changed the UA 93 flight plan to assist Washington Center, that change confused non-air traffic control observers who watched the “track” continue towards Washington on a traffic situation display, similar in every respect to the flight tracker that the general public uses to follow commercial airplanes of specific interest.

That “track” faded at 1028 when the notional United 93 “landed” at Reagan National.  Even the impact of United 93 bifurcated into two reports, one accurate, one false.  The false report that it crashed at Camp David came from the Secret Service, the very organization that was providing information to the Andrews unit.

Disruptive Feedback

Disruptive feedback becomes, literally, white noise to anyone who has had an amplifier or other audio device go haywire.  Two major disruptive events of the day were the false report that AA 11 was still airborne and the understandable but inaccurate report that Delta 1989 was hijacked.

However, there was a third disruptive event the one we just discussed and the one that concerns us here, the fact that United 93 was perceived to be rapidly approaching the nation’s capital.

Despite explicit information from Cleveland Center that United 93 was down, Monte Belger provided specific data points to Secretary Mineta, then in the PEOC, concerning the approach of United 93.  Here is the ground trace of the Hagerstown to Reagan National flight plan entered by Cleveland Center.

The graphics were created by Brian Stark (Boone870 on the web). Here is a YouTube link to Brian Stark’s assessment, including some audio. Here is a YouTube link to Stark’s post on the UA 93 flight plan change, at the controller level.

Here is the recording of Cleveland Center Traffic Management Unit (TMU) notifying Washington Center TMU via Herndon Center of the UA 93 flight plan change.  ZOB to ATCSCC on UA93 flight plan change

All of that primary source information establishes that the perceived flight of UA 93 was being followed on a Traffic Situation Display (TSD), was apparently noticed near Dulles, and was lost.  By 1028 UA 93 was both known down, actually, and known lost, notionally, as a TSD track by air traffic control.

“The four data points: Great Falls, USA Today building, down river approach (red), and National Airport are taken from a 2002 MSNBC interview with Transportation Secretary, Norman Mineta.  Even though Belger said he was watching radar he had no access to an air traffic control scope.  The one thing he could watch was a TSD.  Mineta was in the PEOC (President’s Emergency Operations Center) at the time.  This threat, even though notional, was the likely threat passed by the Secret Service to General Wherley at Andrews and thereafter to the Andrews pilots.

At that time, 1028, the Secret Service first made sure they were in contact with Quit 25, the Langley lead pilot, via National TRACON on the DCA approach frequency.  Quit 25 changed frequency to allow that.  Once Quit 25 came up on frequency the DCA controller broke off, most likely to talk to the Secret Service.

The controller came back with a question, “you are in contact with the companies (reference to Langley fighters) that are flying around at 240 and 250 just north and east of you? Quit 25 responded, “affirmative that’s my number 2 and number 3 wingmen.”  In the same time frame, Bully One was “cleared for visual” to land at Andrews. 102838 Quit Secret Service Wash Tower

The DCA controller was careful to document the presence of three Langley fighters and the absence of a target.  As a result the Secret Service had clear and explicit knowledge that three air defense fighters, two fully armed, were in a combat air patrol over the National Capital Authority with no actionable target.  Yet the Service still pressed Andrews to launch.

Why?  The one reason that makes sense is that the Secret Service could pass shootdown authority to the Andrews fighters over whom they had some control.  That was not possible with the Langley fighters without going through the Department of Defense.

Andrews, the developing story.

Here, in the voices of the day, is how events transpired. There is no mention of United flight 93, but Andrews Air Force Base was taking things seriously. We pick up the story with one of a series of broadcasts on frequency warning any aircraft listening to Andrews to stay out of Class Bravo airspace or be shot down.

That example of broadcasts that began at 1005 is followed by the launch of Bully One (Hutchison) followed by Caps 1 and 2 (Sasseville and Penney). Bully One has just returning from a training flight to a range in North Carolina. Both flights soon learned, once in the air and away from the misinformation flowing from the Secret Service to Andrews, the real story. Each audio clip is partially transcripted.

1015

Andrews Position T-4: Attention, all aircraft monitoring Andrews Tower. This is a warning. I repeat, all aircraft monitoring Andrews Tower frequencies, this is a warning. All aircraft are warned to remain clear of Class Bravo airspace. Any aircraft intruding into Class Bravo airspace will be shot down. 101557 Andrews Maddox Warning from Tower Local Control

1033

Krant: Swan 91 line

Swan: Swan

Krant: Yeah, we’re trackin’ some primary targets 10 miles northwest and 14 miles northwest of Washington if you can tell your F-16s about them, we don’t know who they are

Swan: [indistinct] Quit 25 come over to you, did he come over?

Krant: We’re talking to him now, thanks.

Unknown: [indistinct] 62

Krant: [indistinct]

Unknown: [indistinct] military aircraft can go back to their base, this guard helicopter, for example, he got authorization to go back to Davison to his base

Krant: Alright, Thanks

Unknown: Keeping him on my side, when he gets abeam Davision go directly to it

Krant: Where is he now

Unknown: He’s about 20 north of Dulles right now

Krant: Alright 1033 primary targets northwest

Those recordings establish three things.  First, the Secret Service and, by extension, Andrews, was serious about protecting the airspace immediately above the nation’s capital.  Here is a conversation recorded at the Air Traffic Control System Command Center (Herndon Center) just prior to the commencement of periodic warnings broadcast by Andrews Tower.  0911100443 Secret Service going to start shooting

Second, the presence of the Langley fighters in the area was known.  Third, there were unknown tracks to the northwest and at least one helicopter had been given approval to return to base, a southerly route from north of Dulles airport to Davison Airfield at Fort Belvoir.

1035

Andrews Tower: Bully One, I’ve lost your transmission, I’m sorry. Turn right, when able, taxi to parking

Bully One: And Tower, be advised Bully One will be, Bully One and Two will be parking on Echo and arming with live

Andrews Tower: Bully One, understood, Echo is yours

Bully One: Bully One  1035 Andrews Arming with Live

1036

Krant: Just let us know about anybody you have going in or out so these F-16’s don’t shoot them down

Unknown: Baltimore will tell you who it is

Krant: Baltimore, 36 line. Make sure your coordinate anybody prior to entering the airspace, the medevac helicopters, like that 1036 Krant coordinate anyone entering airspace

1037

Bully One: Andrews Ground, this is Bully One

Andrews Tower: [indistinct]

Bully One: Yes sir, I was just given instructions by the Commanding General that I need to take back off immediately for an aircraft coming up the river 1037 Andrews Instructions from Commanding General

1039

Krant:  Bully One, you taking off as a flight of two or just a single?

Bully One:  Bully One, single ship

Krant:  Bully One, change direction  and approved

Krant: [indistinct} Bully One departure…for radar intercept 1039 Bully One radar intercept

1040

Krant: Bully One, Washington  departure

Bully One: Yes sir, go ahead this is Bully one

Krant: I just thought you checked in, go ahead

Bully: Yes sir, I was given instructions that there is an aircraft flying down the river, and I was given instructions to take a look at what aircraft it is

Krant: Bully One, All right let me find out….Head towards Georgetown, Bully One 1040 Krant aircraft flying down river

These clips establish that Bully One, on landing, understood he was to get armed and refueled, but not to go back up in the air.  That plan was superseded at about 1036 by orders from General Wherley to get back up in the air immediately.

The immediacy of that order is likely the combined result of the Belger-Mineta conversation about 93 and the Secret Service Joint Operations Center direct contact with DCA and learning about the unknowns up river.  Based on the consistent story told by Andrews pilots, the predominant cause of the order was the perceived approach of United 93.

NEADS notified

Concurrently, at 1039, Colonel Brooks from the Air National Guard  Crisis Action Team (CAT) called NEADS to provide notification that two Andrews fighters from the 113th [Caps One and Two]  would be airborne.  The Brooks call reached the weapons controllers.  NEADS was told, “these guys don’t have a clue who they’re talking to and who [is] your command and control.”  He was referred to the Senior Director.  1039 Andrews CAT checks in with NEADS

Just as he did two hours earlier when Boston Center called sounding the intial alarm of the morning to NEADS, Sergeant Powell answered the phone, “HUNTRESS Weapons, Sergeant Powell.” Powell advised that the fighters would “stay under FAA control for now.”

Then Powell asked, “and the 113th, I hate to ask, where’s that?”  That matter-of-fact statement signaled that the merge of air defense and expeditionary force fighters would not be easy.  1039 Huntress Weapons Sergeant Powell

Back to the Andrews Chronology

1041

Krant: Bully One, the airspace belongs to the military for the operation right now, I showed several helicopters northwest of the airport if you’d like to perhaps [indistinct] south of the airport and go up towards Gerogetown, I don’t see anything else right now.

Bully One. I understand. According to shop, we were given instructions for me to launch immediately [overridden by Caps One checking in]

Krant: Bully One proceed where ever you need to go. Like I say, that information probably came through your source not ours.

Bully One. Right now I’m about two miles, three miles west of National Airport at about three point five 1041 Krant info from your source not ours

Fighter Disposition 1042 EDT

At 1042 EDT, Major Hutchison, Bully One, overflew the Pentagon, east to west, at 600 feet altitude.  That event was described by Patrick Creed and Rick Newman in Firefight, Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11, as follows:

The FAA was no longer able to track the precise location of the plane; somehow it seemed to have slipped beneath radar coverage. But based on its last known position, heading, and airspeed, the FAA was estimating the time until it reached Washington…[FBI Agent] Rice had been giving [FBI Agent] Combs updates every five minutes…Then Rice broke the pattern. ‘Chris you got four minutes,’ he said somberly….T-minus-zero came and went…[then] in the distance there was a buzz..it was the unmistakable roar of a jet engine winding up…Then an Air Force F-16 zoomed low and fast over the courtyard…On Washington Boulevard, frustration was suddenly transformed into jubilation. When the F-16 flew over, it appeared to dip its wing, as if signaling to the people on the ground that the cavalry had arrived.

The picture of Hutchison’s flyover became iconic and the story is a good one, except that Hutchison was not the cavalry.  Not quite 45 minutes earlier, the Langley fighters arrived and set up an east-west combat air patrol protecting the nation’s capital.  In fact, a couple minutes prior to Hutchison’s 1042 flyover the Langley wingman, Quit, 26 was at 23000 feet over the Pentagon, unseen by those below.  To the east, one minute prior, Caps One and Two, Major Sasseville and Captain Penney, took off from Andrews.

So, at the moment the Sasseville/Penney flight began its quest for UA 93, according to the Post article, there were a total of six fighters in the sky over Washington D.C.: three air defense fighters with weapons, authentication tables, and no delegated authority; and three expeditionary force fighters with no weapons, no authentication tables, and delegated oral “weapons free” authority.

That jumble of fighters was yet another chaotic situation of the day, one with no national level control or supervision.  Here is a graphic showing the relationship of five of the six fighters (Quit 27 is not shown for simplification)

The narrative continues in the words of Creed/Newman.

At the command post, Chris Combs was on the radio again to Jim Rice, his FBI boss, who had an official update on the second hijaked aircraft. ‘You’re all clear,’ Rice informed him. “The plane hit Camp David.’ …. [Two other individuals] were getting the same information from the tower at National Airport…[one relayed] ‘Per the airplane operations center, there is no additional threat. No additional threat per the airport operations center. Okay?’

The “Camp David” report was accurate as to the fate of UA 93, but wrong on the location.  More important, Reagan National TRACON and FAA’s Washington Center, the controllers for the Sasseville/Penney flight knew that there was no further air threat.

Hutchison was near his maximum altitude he would fly that morning, “three point five” (3500 feet).  He descended and flew over the Pentagon at 600 feet, turned left and climbed back to his maximum altitude and then descended and landed at Andrews. We pick up the real time audio with the arrival of the Caps flight on the scene and the concurrent return to base by Bully One.

1042 (nearly 3 minute conversation)

Krant: Swan

Swan: You talking to that four six six five code, south of the airport about..

Krant: Yeah, that’s a Bully aircraft he’s going to check out a report of an aircraft going in by the river or something

Caps One: Caps one airborne passing two thousand with two

Caps one: Caps one

Krant: Caps one, go ahead

Caps One. I’m out of Andrews with two fighters.

Caps One. Caps One

Krant: Caps One, roger, proceed as requested

Caps One. I need a vector for that unknown, unidentified aircraft inbound

Krant: Caps one, not as far as we know, we have reports of a C-130 west, I’m sorry, west of the airfield, it’s a friendly

Caps One: Copy that, are you in contact with the national command authority

Krant: Caps one, affirmative

Caps One: We will [go to] whatever location you desire, at whatever alititude

Krant: Caps one, roger, fly direct to an orbit about 10 miles to the northwest of Washington at six thousand, what’s good for you eleven thousand?

Cap One: That will be fine

Krant: Roger. Bully One I’m not able to provide you service in that area due to the helicopter traffic

Bully One: I have no other aircraft on my radar. All we have out here are helicopters out here so I’m going to proceed back to Andrews

Krant: Bully One, thank you, and Caps departed, they are going to hold northwest of Washington at eleven thousand 1042 Krant You in contact with NCA

Sasseville and Penney, however, continued their mission.  And the radar does show, in fact, that on their first leg they did go north, “up river,” for about three minutes, something Hutchison before them did not do.  Here is a graphic depicting the spatial relationship between the Cap flight and Quit 26.

At the moment the Cap flight turned back, Quit 26 was due south a few miles.  That relationship is important as we pick up the story at the Northeast Air Defense Sector.

The Situation

At 1043,  Bully One was landing and Caps One, Sasseville, had learned, as did Hutchison before him, there was no target, as both were told.  Sasseville deferred to an air traffic control request to hold at eleven thousand feet.  As the Caps flight flew back southeasterly in their holding pattern they came to the attention of the very busy military controllers at NEADS.

NEADS Enters the Picture

Neads was working tanker support across its entire sector and specifically to the West.  In the midst of that work the Weapons Controller Technician for the Langley fighters was told “Quit 26, BRA, 5 miles.  He immediately issued the order, “Quit 26, stranger BRA 060, 7 miles, estimate 13,000 thousand feet.” Mission is “ID by type and tail.”

That is a direct reference to the Caps flight which was ten thousand feet below and in the same area.  The recording of that order shows how dynamic the situation in the air was.  What the Weapons Controller saw as 5 miles became 7 miles in seconds when the Technician gave the order. 1047 Stranger ID Type and Tail

Quit 26 reported that he was descending and the controller told him to look east for a target tracking southeast, now showing fourteen thousand (altitude), another specific reference to the flight path of the Caps flight. 1047 Look East Tracking Southeast

Quit 26 reported back ten minutes later after apparently sorting the situation out with air traffic control and reported that “we don’t know who he is, but Washington has a handle on it and he’s part of the package,” a military working with us. 1056 Military working with us don’t know who

At 1102 Caps Two, Penney contacted Huntress.  The Technician immediately asked her for her mode 3 and intentions. 1102 Caps 2 contacts Huntress

Penney did not respond and as the Technician attempted to contact her a different mission came along.  A tanker needed to orbit overhead Andrews to refuel an arriving E-3, Sentry 40, Mission Crew, Bandsaw Kilo.  NEADS arranged that with no resolution of the Caps mission. 1102 Nothing from Caps but E-3 on the way

At some point, perhaps over ridden by continuous communications about tankers, NEADS must have gotten a mode 3 from Caps 2.  In this next clip we hear the technician deciding that “if this is Caps 2 then this must be Caps 1. 1109 Caps Two is here

Apparently, he also learned that both Caps fighters were squawking the same mode 3 and he tried to direct a change as he apparently unplugged from the console.  According to 84th RADES radar files, Caps 1 and Caps 2 were squawking mode 3 4605 and the same mode 2.  They were indistinguishable by NEADS controllers who were trying to change that. 1110 Change mode 3

Eventually, training and professionalism took over and the CAP over the nation’s capital sorted itself out.

CAP Established

After 11:15 EST, once a fully armed pair of Andrews fighters finally got airborne, the CAP was complete, responsibilities were allocated and all fighters were on the same frequency.

We first learn of the final CAP configuration at 1046 when Wild One (Major “Raisin” Caine)  advised Andrews Tower of his impending takeoff in five minutes. It would be a full armed pair of fighters with “weapons free” authority.  In that same conversation we learn that Bully One was to be armed. 1046 Wild One status report.

The Wild flight did not take off until 11:07 EDT, despite Wild One’s five minute estimate. This is an example of the fact that it took time, measurable time, for each aspect of the nation’s reaction time that morning. In this instance the estimated departure time was 1051 EDT. The actual time was 16 minutes later.

The air traffic control tapes from Andrews provide perspective. Concurrently, Andrews Tower was working Continuity of Government/Continuity of Operations issues as heard in this next audio file. 1107 Wild takeoff sequence

Once airborne, Major Caine took pains to let the National Command Authority know that he was “fully configured.”  He passed instructions to air traffic control to so inform the “NCA.”1112 Wild fully configured

Shortly thereafter, the voice of Caps 2, Penney is heard, apparently on the same frequency as Caps 1 and Wild 1. The audio continuity is erratic, but here is Penney’s voice.1113 Penney voice heard

Major Caine ultimately established CAP discipline and got things organized, but not without a hiccup.  The Langley fighters, not knowing who the Andrews fighters were, “spiked” (illuminated with a target acquisition radar) one of the Andrews fighters as the Langley fighters were completing refueling.

This next audio clip contains that vignette and also provides some insight into CAP defensive measures.  Tankers were present and acknowledged, but Caps 1 cautioned Wild 1 about a ‘bait and switch’ danger.

1115 Stop Spiking Me

Summation

Once the Andrews fighters became airborne they quickly found they had no search mission. The battle was over and National TRACON had no targets for them.

Ultimately, they had to organize an efficient combat air patrol over the nation’s capital integrating 7 fighters with disparate armament, rules of engagement, and command and control. Major Caine, Wild 2, forcefully and persuasively got all parties in sync.

That was a job well done, thanks in large part to the key role played by the air traffic controller at National TRACON. That was the Andrews story; it got lost in the telling.

Major Heather Penney played an integral part in bringing order out of chaos.  In conclusion, we hear her voice calmly going about her mission.

1138 Caps 2 Medstar flight

 

 

9-11: United Flight 175; Transpoder Code 3321, an interesting anomaly.

Introduction

Retrospectively, the attack against New York City was well planned and well executed.  Both hijacked aircraft, American Airlines flight 11 (AA 11) and United Airlines flight 175 (UA 175), took off within a few minutes of each other from the same airport, Logan in Boston, thus increasing the likelihood that both planes, if delayed, would be delayed the same amount of time.

The narrow exit corridor from Logan increased the likelihood that both planes would be on the same frequency at the same time.  It was possible, but not a given, that Marwan Al Shehhi, as a passenger on UA 175 could listen to the air traffic control communications from the cockpit and hear the voice of Mohammed Atta.

(See “9-11 United Airlines; Cabin Channel 9, a policy change,” for perspective.)

Al Shehhi, in the cockpit, knowing that Atta was flying AA 11 and knowing where to look, would have easily seen the fireball from the impact of AA 11. At that moment the transponder code on UA 175 changed to 3020, thus creating an unknown radar target in the sky, a Mode C intruder, for air traffic control.  That was tactical planning, well executed.  There was no need for a second code change, but there was one a minute later.

Why that second, tactically unnecessary, code change was made has never been and may never be explained. But happen it did.  For a possible explanation we turn to the hijackers’ preparation prior to the attack.

The Final Hours
(link updated Feb 7, 2014 to prosecution exhibit BS01101T for the Moussaoui trial)

The coordinated attack against the World Trade Center was swift, violent, and devoutly executed.  That devotion was revealed in the “The Last Night” instructions to the hijackers.  Those detailed, explicit instructions contained many Quran references.  Such devotion, in meticulous detail, to the final hours suggests that such devotion, detail, and meticulous planning also pertained to the planning for the actual attack.

Mohammed Atta and Murwan al Shehhi had countless quality hours together, measured in days, weeks and months prior to the attack against New York City to plan each and every detail and to do so in light of the Quran.

A Key Observation

A significant clue to that devotion and detail was found by a correspondent, Tom Lusch, during an extended email conversation about hijacker tactics and techniques.  Tom was of the opinion that the code change on United Airlines flight 175 was a matter of cockpit unfamiliarity on the part of the hijackers.  My view was different, based on an in-cockpit demonstration by the senior United Airlines pilot.  I thought the code changes to be intentional, but had no understanding of why the particular code, 3 3 2 1, came about.

Tom consulted an informed website and observed that Chapter 33 (The Combined Forces), Verse 21 of the Quran offered an explanation.  Here is a translation by Yusef Ali, take from the “Quranic Arabic Corpus.”

“Ye have indeed in the Messenger of Allah a beautiful pattern (of conduct) for any one whose hope is in Allah and the Final Day, and who engages much in the Praise of Allah.”

And one by Muhammad Sarwar from the same source:

“The Messenger of God is certainly a good example for those of you who have hope in God and in the Day of Judgment and who remember God very often.”

Those and other translations of that chapter and verse speak specifically to the “Day of Judgment,” the “Last Day,” the “Final Day.”

The correlation to the events of September 11, 2001, is chilling, especially so when we consider Mohammed Atta’s choice for his lead plane that day.

American Airlines Flight Eleven.

American Flight Eleven was, in this context, “America, Quran Chapter 1 (The Opening), Verse 1.”

“In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful”

And the choice of planes for Marwan al Shehhi was equally chilling

United Airlines Flight One Seventy Five

In the context of the Quran, United Flight One Seventy Five was “United [States] Quran Chapter 17, Verse 5, rendered in the Yusef Ali translation as:

“When the first of the warnings came to pass, We sent against you Our servants given to terrible warfare: They entered the very inmost parts of your homes; and it was a warning (completely) fulfilled.”

And in the Mohsin Khan translation

“So, when the promise came for the first of the two, We sent against you slaves of Ours given to terrible warfare. They entered the very innermost parts of your homes. And it was a promise (completely) fulfilled.”

Assessment

So what do we make of this?  I asked Robbyn Swan, coauthor of The Eleventh Day, a correspondent with ties to scholars specializing in Islam to help.  Two scholars responded to her.  They both agreed that the hijackers were “rational actors” and “practical in the extreme.”  One doubted that they would “get carried away with such numerological mysticism.” The other observed that the change “increased the difficulty and complexity of the operation.”

And that latter observation is precisely the point.  The second code change from 3 0 2 0 to 3 3 2 1 was tactically unnecessary and while not difficult did add an additional task that wasn’t needed.  So why would Al Shehhi take the time to do that as he was preparing to turn UA 175 around and plummet into the World Trade Center from high altitude?  It was not the act of a “rational actor,” but someone motivated beyond the tactical necessity of the day.

The scholars and I are in agreement that the hijackers knew what they were doing and were rational and “practical to the extreme.”  One scholar made the additional observation that there are hundreds of verses that refer to “final judgment” or “final day.”  We do not know why that particular chapter and verse, but the demonstrable evidence is that Al Shehhi took a measured action to transmit that particular code.

And that leads us to the impact on air traffic control.

A Message for Air Traffic Control and History

The numbers of the code changes had no special meaning to air traffic control except that they did not belong in the scheme of things. An “intruder” is not unusual and typically resulted from pilot error or inattention.  The method of handling an intruder was simple; ask the pilot to recycle his transponder.

Which was done, except that UA 175 had become a Mode C intruder, 3 3 2 1. The intruder came to the attention of air traffic control. According to a Washington Post article on September 17, 2001, “a controller…shouted, There’s an intruder over Allentown.” (Lane, et al, “A Sky Filled With Chaos, Uncertainty and True Heroism”)

Any message intended by the code change was not for air traffic control. It was an enduring message for history.

 

9-11: UA175; 42d Street, the Allentown PA story

Introduction

The female lead in the stage play “42d Street” was a young woman from Allentown, PA. She was sometimes referred to as “Allentown.” I use the 42d Street reference to remind me of the story of three planes in the skies over Allentown on the morning of September 11, 2001.

The Three Planes

It has long been known that two of the hijacked planes on 9-11, United 93 and United 175, crossed paths on 9-11.The location has never been given much thought, but it was over Allentown. What is not known is that a third commercial aircraft of note also crossed paths with both planes in the same time frame over Allentown.

The three planes were well separated in altitude, but closely spaced, in time, United 93 westbound, United 175 southbound and a third plane eastbound.  United 93 was still climbing, United 175 was at altitude, and the third plane was midway between the two, altitude-wise. None of the three aircraft were a danger to the others and none were aware of their proximity.

The third plane was Midwest Express Flight Seven (MIDEX 7) the centerpiece of Lynn Spencer’s book Touching History.

Midwest Express Flight Seven

I will tell the MIDEX-7 story in an article currently in draft. For now, let me just sketch in the details.

According to the pilot’s account as told to Spencer, the path of MIDEX-7 was intertwined with and integral to the final moments of the descent of United 175 into the World Trade Center, South Tower. The story as told was sufficient compelling that Darlow Smithson Productions wanted to make it a vignette in its “Voices From the Air” production for National Geographic.

I was the consultant for Darlow Smithson and they tasked me to pull together the audio communications supporting the MIDEX-7 story. I found little of substance in the collection of air traffic control files provided to the 9/11 Commission and reported to Darlow Smithson that the vignette should not be used.

So, what happened?  As with many eyewitness and participant accounts of the day, the pilot’s recall compressed time and conflated events. He had internalized what he recalled, but what he recalled is not quite what happened, a story for another day.

The MIDEX 7 story is an interesting one, but it is not the story that Spencer told. MIDEX 7 was still over New Jersey when United 175 impacted.

MIDEX 7 actually crossed paths twice with UA 175, but it is the first crossing that concerns us here. So, back to Allentown we go.

United 175

At the moment American Airlines 11 impacted the World Trade Center, North Tower, the transponder code for United 175 changed to 3020.  That one change was all that was tactically necessary to introduce a Mode C intruder into the national airspace system. Such an intruder, a transponding plane without an associated data block, is not uncommon and controllers deal with the situation by asking the pilot to recycle the transponder. That is what the controller did that morning, except nothing happened.

By that time, the transponder code had changed to 3321, an unnecessary and extraneous tactical move by the hijacker pilot.  I am drafting an article to help us understand why the second code change was made.

Thus, by the time UA 175 was asked to recycle its transponder the code had twice changed but not to the original code as instructed.  The plane was a dangerous intruder into the National Air Space System and that fact was noted by an air traffic controller  when United 175 was over Allentown, PA.

“A Sky Filled With Chaos, Uncertainty and True Heroism”

On Monday, September 17, 2001, Charles Lane, Don Phillips and David Snyder, Washington Post Staff Writers published an article with the title, above. It was about specific hijacked planes but the skies over Allentown suddenly became the focus.

The authors report that while the controllers were looking for American 11, “a controller glanced at another radar screen and shouted, “Look. There’s an intruder over Allentown.”

That was a reference to United 175 under its new code of 3321, a lethal intruder which made a broad U-turn over New Jersey and then plummeted at 6000 feet per minute in the direction of 42d Street. Intruder code 3321 impacted the World Trade Center, South Tower at 9:03 EST.