FedEX 705 is no example of why there was no scramble for the 9/11 hijackings. This is really only marginally similar at best. Especially note that flight direction continues to be away from from populated areas until redirected by controllers, and then only on the assurance from the aircraft. All 9/11 hijacking were in the air much longer, out of contact of any sort for much longer (note how nervous the controllers were over their much more limited ability to contact the FedEX flight) and had redirected their flight patterns from filed flight plans directly toward the most intensely populated parts of the Eastern seaboard.

By all accounts SOP on 9/11 should have included an early NORAD scramble which didn’t happen. There has to be a scramble before any shootdown order can even be considered.

The KAL007 was different also in that it was the incursion of a foreign aircraft into militarily restricted airspace. The Soviets screwed up worst in not catching it any earlier than they did leaving them no alternative other than letting a potential spy plane escape or shooting it down at the last minute. As I understand, it earlier response would have been to attempt to force it to land, although that was problematic by the time the Soviets intercepted it. The KAL007 cockpit is also reported not to have responded to Soviet attempts to hail it, which might have forced a shootdown earlier had that also been the case earlier.

The dramatization is quite intense, but is really only a produced show. And it makes absolutely no comment on NORAD air space security nor any mention of it of any kind. FedEX 705 never became a threat to any population center either. Note that it was a foreign production which is not very likely to get the necessary security accesses anyway.

KAL007 and FedEX 705 are completely irrelevant to the fact that NORAD allowed a direct impact at the Pentagon. That is always the final sticker that shows NORAD air space security was out to lunch on 9/11.

Actually KAL007 shows that the Soviet air space security was pretty much out to lunch then, too.

A more similar case to the 9/11 hijackings was the attempted takeover of FedEx 705 (VIDEO). In that case, the crew was attacked by a disgruntled flight engineer who intended to crash the plane into FedEx headquarters. During the attempt, the DC-10 flew extremely erratically for a long period, undergoing extreme banking and diving, and at one point nearing the sound barrier. The FAA knew for quite some time that the aircraft was in danger of being taken over and the flight was not shot down, despite the fact that there were only 4 people aboard. I think it’s clear that the level of response that 9/11 conspiracy theorists claim would have standard would instead have been quite extraordinary.

Shooting down off course aircraft was not the standard response at the time, but interception (not specifically to shoot them down) especially of suspected hijackings was. By 9/11 shoot down orders had to come specifically from the Secretary of Defense himself on a case by case basis.

Interception also had a service function and that was to assist, if possible, in emergency cases of equipment failure or pilot incapacity. Part of that service had traditionally been to keep accidental crashes especially of the largest aircraft out of heavy population concentrations or important commercial areas which originally did include shoot down as a last resort. NORAD had both civic and security mandates, but all intercept planes are fully armed and are supposed to be in shoot down position in order to execute shoot down orders the instant they are given.

Of course there was a very narrow time frame, which is why there are always scramble pilots on duty and ready at all hours. As obviously the flying public doesn’t want to be informed that any off course aircraft that endangers major population centers or important facilities is subject to NORAD shoot down as the lesser of two evils even when there is no hijacking. You didn’t know that?

All your detected hijacking times are from official sources which are always later than reports from controllers who initiated the escalations. Somewhere along the line communications that are supposed to be next to instant got lost. Versions are so garbled that NORAD officially has its scramble after the FAA had already grounded all domestic flights. BTW Cheyenne Mountain has independent and up to the minute full monitoring of all US airspace; so NORAD didn’t even need to get FAA notification. There are not only communication failures, there are also backup systems failures that resulted in intercept craft staying on the ground when there was sufficient time to prevent impact with the World Trade Centers.

It is a matter of minutes from scramble orders to having interceptor jets from Langley over New York City which is the result of having the best and fastest planes available to the world’s best fighter pilots. NORAD and Air Guard unit websites used to have brag data about that capability. After 9/11 that was scrubbed from them. I suppose it would have been pretty embarrassing to have published performance standards in minutes but official 9/11 response time of well over an hour. The scramble for the first hijacking should not only have intercepted it but also then been in place to intercept the second hijacked plane.

Under no conditions should any commercial airliner have been allowed to impact the Pentagon. That is the most telling of all that security had been screwed up badly and that SOP had not been followed. The Pentagon impact is the most important red flag that air space security procedures were badly compromised on 9/11. That opens up the other three hijackings to similar concerns.

IMO the “official” timelines are no more credible than most of the “insider” conspiracy theories. The whole thing stinks worse than last week’s dead fish.

KAL007 is irrelevant to 9/11 due to the extreme differences in the national security protocols involved, although admittedly both NORAD and Soviet surveillance did a damn poor job of tracking that plane, but that was also in 1983, nearly two decades before 9/11, and by all accounts KAL007 failed to respond to all Soviet attempts to communicate with it.

That’s not accurate. First of all, it was never standard procedure to scramble fighters every time an airliner strayed from its flight path or broke communication. If that had been the protocol, we would have been scrambling fighters every day.

And with hindsight you might be able to say that we should have shot down every hijacked airliner, every airliner out of communication, and every airliner off its flight path, but that would never have been practical. The first time such a protocol was enacted, it would likely have been on a flight that had just strayed off course (like KAL 007), and the subsequent outcry would have led to procedures that ensured that airliners would never again be shot down.

Just look at what happened to KAL 007. At the height of the cold war, it violated Soviet airspace near an extremely sensitive military base, where experimental nuclear submarines were stationed. And the Soviets gave KAL 007 much more time to respond than you would have us give our own airliners. That might make sense now, but I don’t think you’d have found anyone endorsing a “Quckdraw McGraw” policy back in 2000.

And for the record, there wasn’t much time between when the authorities became aware of the hijackings and when they were crashed:

AA 11 Hijacked: 8:14 Detected: 8:24 Crashed: 8:46
UA 175 Hijacked: 8:44 Detected: 8:58 Crashed: 9:02
AA 77 Hijacked: 8:51 Detected: 8:56 Crashed: 9:37
UA 93 Hijacked: 9:28 Detected: 9:38 Crashed: 10:03

Note that AA 77 was reported shot down when the hijackers turned off its radio and transponder at 9:09, and authorities did not realize it was still in the air until 9:28.

The bottom line is that there was a very narrow time frame in which to respond, keeping in mind that shooting down the aircraft was not the standard response to a hijacking at that time.

Tommy–

I don’t think there’s any question that war with Afghanistan was inevitable, no matter who was president. I think that there was a chance, albeit not a very good one, that the Afghan government would have handed over bin Laden, if we had produced evidence of his involvement. But Bush and Blair refused to produce any evidence, and simply told the Afghans to take our word for it. Under those conditions, it’s not very surprising that they refused to hand him over.

I noticed that the US responded to the Taliban’s request for proof with an ultimatum, too. There was probably no surer way to get them to refuse to hand over bin Laden.

For starters there can be nothing but fault for the military allowing a commercial jet liner to impact the Pentagon.

Secondly intercept procedures are in place for all commercial flights that stray off course. It takes some 15 minutes to scramble and fly from Langley to New York which still puts NORAD jets in place 15 minutes before the first hijacked aircraft arrives. That is all without the necessary Secretary of Defense permission to use lethal force to keep such aircraft from accidentally impacting in high density residential and commercial areas. Part of the intercept mandate is actually assistance to malfunctioning aircraft and/or incapacitated pilots, if possible. So the intercept has both service and security missions. Granted shoot down takes specific authorization from the Secretary of Defense. Rumsfeld didn’t issue it obviously, although there is some evidence that the last plane was shot down in Pennsylvania. All supporting hard evidence has since been recycled overseas, however.

All failed intercepts generally cited are for small private craft that do not necessarily file ironclad flight plans or follow those they do file. That is quite different from commercial aircraft that are pretty much in iron bound destination routing, and operated by extremely experienced pilots and co-pilots.

All 9/11 aircraft were in the air for well over half an hour each beyond initial notation that things were not proceeding normally with that flight; alarms were first raised by Boston Logan tower before it passed the first plane over to national air traffic control operators and passed on immediately to the FAA and NORAD. Note that any emergency is treated as a full emergency. Air traffic controllers were convinced they were working a hijacking as early as 8:15 to 8:20. The escalation path for that is immediately into a conference call where all ends are manned and live 24/7. There isn’t so much as a delay involved from walking or running around to find a supervisor. Furthermore live pilots are on duty 24/7 and can be in the air in just about 1 minute from scramble orders. Somewhere between initial alarms and scramble orders something got lost on at least three of the four hijacked aircraft.

This isn’t tinfoil hat stuff. 9/11 was a breakdown in national security, and not just a single one. The official story has so much lead time that I actually get better response from the mainframe printer repair contracts at work, despite my having to call out of the country for that repair.

It wasn’t just one plane that got through, three relatively slow and clumsy commercial airliners struck three of the most sensitive targets on the East Coast, which may be one of the most intensely guarded coastal regions in the world.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory, and it points no fingers at the top levels of the Bush administration. The military response was badly flawed for some reason, since SOP would have intercepted all three planes, before any impact even without shoot-down authorization. NORAD went missing in action. That should be grounds for courts-martial somewhere along the line.

“George W. Bush, who ignored an August 6 presidential daily briefing entitled, “Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S.”

Pretty standard left wing hogwash from the Kossies; just say it often enough and even the vast majority of the American people who know better will finally get tired of responding to it.

That statement was absolutely, 100% true. I can’t believe you’re trying to deny the fact that Bush got a PDB on August 6 with that title.

As I’ve pointed out before, when Clinton was warned of an impending attack in 1999, he ordered tighter security at our borders and at our airports. The heightened vigilance paid off when Ahmed Ressam was arrested in Port Angeles, Washington, with nitroglycerin and four timing devices.

He was not tortured, but did tell of an impending attack involving several hijackings. That information formed some of the basis for the August 6 PDB.

When Bush was warned of an impending terror plot, he went on the longest vacation in the history of the US presidency. It’s too bad he didn’t order increased vigilance, because several of the hijackers were selected for extra scrutiny by the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS) system, and two set off metal detectors, but were allowed to board the aircraft even though airport security officers never determined what had set off the detectors. Also, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s final approval of the plan was intercepted by the NSA on Sept. 10, but the NSA failed to translate the call until well after Sept. 11.

If Bush hadn’t gone on vacation in response to the warning, but had instead ordered increased vigilance, I think it’s likely that KSM’s message would have been translated immediately, and that the hijackers who set off the various security red flags would have been thoroughly search. And that’s just the most obvious, last-minute steps that could have been taken. I think that it’s quite possible the 9/11 plot could have been broken up, if the Bush team had known what they were doing.

As for Clarke, he began warning the Bush administrators of the danger posed by al-Qaeda from day one. He repeatedly requested meetings with Cheney and the president, and was repeatedly rebuffed. The August 6 PDB was not a “CYA memo” sent by Richard Clarke, it was a CIA presidential daily briefing.

Tommy–

I don’t think there’s any question that war with Afghanistan was inevitable, no matter who was president. I think that there was a chance, albeit not a very good one, that the Afghan government would have handed over bin Laden, if we had produced evidence of his involvement. But Bush and Blair refused to produce any evidence, and simply told the Afghans to take our word for it. Under those conditions, it’s not very surprising that they refused to hand him over.

We can finger point and trade accusations all we want, but there are steps both the Clinton and the Bush administrations could have taken that would have stopped 9/11 cold in its tracks. For instance, requiring that airplane cockpits be secured and better screening of visa applicants who were from Muslim countries.

Sad to say though, it took an attack of 9/11 proportions to galvanize support for a military intervention in Afghanistan. We could not have done it unilaterally before 9/11. And let’s be honest. If Gore was in the White House on 9/11, he would have sent us into Afghanistan as well.

Pretty standard left wing hogwash from the Kossies; just say it often enough and even the vast majority of the American people who know better will finally get tired of responding to it.

Just grind ‘em down on all fronts, that’s the key to getting a sick moonbat meme to stick.

George Bush was in office for 8 months(even a moonbat mama needs a full 9 months to deliver) when he received the increasingly infamous Cover your Ass On the Way Out memo from Dickie “Do Nothing” Clarke who had a full 8 fucking years in the Clinton administration to GET Bin Laden years before he was able to start all this crap-”this crap” meaning the slaughter of over 4,000 Americans on 9/11 that launched this country into the fully justified war that moonbats spend countless hours banging away on attic keyboards and lying about even today.

“Welcome to the White House George-here are the keys to the men’s room.

Oh and by the way–!!!”

Lying, totally incompetent, finger pointing bureaucratic pebble throwing left wing pricks.,..