AA Flight 77 - Timeline and Shoot Down Order

[Steve Gardner]

From - THE ALL-SEEING i

At 9:37 EDT on September 11th 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 was reported to have crashed into the Pentagon building in Washington DC. More than five years have passed and there is still a great deal of confusion over what really happened.

Whilst the debate about whether or not an aircraft actually hit the building rages, a number of other issues have slipped under the radar. One - the matter of who knew what and when - is replete with troubling contradictions and loose ends. This is a brief look at some of them.

“We, to this day, don’t know why NORAD told us what they told us. It was just so far from the truth.” - Thomas H. Kean, 9/11 Commission Chairman

When NORAD’s Colonel Alan Scott gave evidence to the 9/11 Commission on 23rd May 2003, he explained that…

t 9:24 the FAA reports a possible hijack of 77. That’s sometime after they had been tracking this primary target. And at that moment as well is when the Langley F-16s were scrambled out of Langley.

Scott’s account is consistent with evidence provided by the FAA in the form of a written submission to the Commission entitled, ‘FAA Communications with NORAD on September 11th, 2001’. This was read out during the same hearing (emphasis mine).

Within minutes after the first aircraft hit the World Trade Center, the FAA immediately established several phone bridges that included FAA field facilities, the FAA command center, FAA headquarters, DOD, the Secret Service and other government agencies. The U.S. Air Force liaison to the FAA immediately joined the FAA headquarters phone bridge and established contact with NORAD on a separate line. The FAA shared real-time information on the phone bridges about the unfolding events, including information about loss of communication with aircraft, loss of transponder signals, unauthorized changes in course, and other actions being taken by all the flights of interest, including Flight 77. Other parties on the phone bridges in turn shared information about actions they were taken. NORAD logs indicate that the FAA made formal notification about American Flight 77 at 9:24 a.m. But information about the flight was conveyed continuously during the phone bridges before the formal notification.

NORAD’s logs do indeed corroborate the FAA’s claim. A news release, dated September 18th 2001, sets out the timelines for NORAD’s response to the hijackings, and includes the following information:

American Flight 77 - Dulles enroute to Los Angeles

FAA Notification to NEADS – 0924

Fighter Scramble - Order (Langley AFB, Hampton, Va. 2 F-16s) – 0924

Fighters Airborne 0930

Airline Impact Time (Pentagon) - 0937(estimated)

Fighter Time/Distance from Airline Impact Location - approx 12 min/105 miles

However, in its final report, the 9/11 Commission found that (emphasis mine)…

t the suggestion of the Boston Center’s military liaison, NEADS contacted the FAA’s Washington Center to ask about American 11. In the course of the conversation, a Washington Center manager informed NEADS: “We’re looking – we also lost American 77.” The time was 9:34. This was the first notice to the military that American 77 was missing, and it had come by chance. If NEADS had not placed that call, the NEADS air defenders would have received no information whatsoever that the flight was missing, although the FAA had been searching for it. No one at FAA headquarters ever asked for military assistance with American 77.

It explained these timeline discrepancies away by stating that the ‘notice NEADS received at 9:24 was that American 11 had not hit the World Trade Center and was heading for Washington, D.C.’ It goes on to point out that ‘n fact… NEADS never received notice that Flight 77 was hijacked’ but was reported simply as ‘lost’ at 9:34.

Thus the ‘phantom’ Flight 11 theory was born. No evidence was presented during any of the testimonial hearings to support this assertion; it was only uncovered by the Commission after studying taped conversations, logs and other records. Intriguingly, they were ‘unable to identify the source of this mistaken FAA information.’

These contradictions are perplexing. However, up to this point, the Commission’s timeline carries a greater degree of authority by virtue of our inclination to trust contemporaneous sources over oral testimony. But when you add the testimony of then US Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta to the mix, we must conclude that either the Commission’s findings are flawed; the veracity of its source material was questionable; or else Mineta’s account was not only inaccurate, but was a total fabrication.

Mineta testified that he entered the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) at 9:20am and found Vice President thingy Cheney already in charge. Here is a condensed version of Mineta’s exchange with Commission Vice Chairman, Lee Hamilton.

MR. HAMILTON: I wanted to focus just a moment on the Presidential Emergency Operating Center. You were there for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the vice president. And when you had that order given, I think it was by the president, that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be controlled by terrorists, were you there when that order was given?

MR. MINETA: No, I was not. I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane [was] coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, “The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to, “The plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the vice president, “Do the orders still stand?” And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” [during the course of his testimony, Mineta says that this series of exchanges began “Probably about five or six minutes” after entering the PEOC] Well, at the time I didn’t know what all that meant. And –

MR. HAMILTON: The flight you’re referring to is the –

MR. MINETA: The flight that came into the Pentagon.

MR. HAMILTON: Let me see if I understand. The plane that was headed toward the Pentagon and was some miles away, there was an order to shoot that plane down.

MR. MINETA: Subsequently I found that out.

Although Mineta’s Flight 77 timeline is at odds with the Commission’s findings, it is in strong agreement with the testimony given by Scott, the FAA and NORAD. It also appears to be supported by the NTSB’s ‘Flight Path Study - American Airlines Flight 77’, which is based upon an analysis of the Flight Data Recorder recovered from the scene. It states that…

t approximately 9:29 AM, when the aircraft was approximately 35 miles west of the Pentagon, the autopilot was disconnected (f) as the aircraft leveled near 7000 feet.

This ties in well with Mineta’s claim that the aircraft was 50 miles out at or around 9:26 and suggests he was indeed in the PEOC when he said he was. And, unless Mineta is inexplicably mistaken, Cheney must also have been present at that time. This leaves us wondering how the Commission reached the conclusion that ‘the Vice President arrived in the [PEOC] shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58.’ According to its ‘NOTES TO CHAPTER 1’, the source of this information was the Shelter Log. No mention is made of Mineta’s testimony throughout the whole of the Commission’s final report.

It also leaves us wondering about the true nature of what Lee Hamilton referred to as, ‘an order to shoot that plane down’. Based upon Mineta’s description of the exchange between Cheney and the aide, it is hard to believe that it was a shoot down order. If it had been, why would the aide have asked repeatedly if the order still stood? Surely such an order, having been given, would have stood until such time as the aircraft had either been shot down or else crashed.

A more logical conclusion is that Cheney gave a stand down order, perhaps at a time prior to Mineta’s arrival in the PEOC, when the aircraft’s destination was unclear. This would explain why the aide became increasingly anxious as the aircraft closed in on Washington. Furthermore, if this interpretation is correct, we can also infer that fighters were within striking distance of the inbound aircraft from at least 50 miles out; why else would the aide continue to ask if the order still stood unless the military were capable of acting upon a change to that order?

There is no public record of Cheney’s testimony to the Commission. It was given under the condition that he would not be required to take an oath; that his testimony would not be recorded; and that, whilst the Commission’s staff could take notes, they were not to be made public.

Which is a pity, because I feel sure he would have been able to shed some light on this episode.



NOTES:

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) describes itself as ‘a bi-national United States and Canadian organization charged with the missions of aerospace warning and aerospace control for North America.’

According to Wikipedia, The Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), is a component of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). It is responsible for providing detection and air defense for the U.S. states north of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri, with the sector's western perimeter running midway through the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and the western part of Kansas, slicing the panhandle of Oklahoma, and ending at the Red River on the northern border of Texas. The eastern perimeter of the sector is the Atlanta Ocean, and the northern perimeter is the Canadian border.

NEADS is operated by the Air National Guard (ANG) and reports to the Continental U.S. NORAD Region (CONR) headquarters, in Panama City, Florida, which in turn reports to NORAD headquarters, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lists Airspace and Air Traffic Management among its activities. Its role is to ensure ‘[t]he safe and efficient use of navigable airspace’ by operating ‘a network of airport towers, air route traffic control centers, and flight service stations.’ It also ‘develop air traffic rules, assign the use of airspace, and control air traffic.’