Vigilant Guardian, I’m sure. Gumboot has the best rundown on all of this. I don’t recall what the specific hijack scenario was but I’ll keep an eye out for it. I’m still dealing with the aftermath of my spreadsheet/worksheet on exercises becoming viral over at 9-11blogger and at history commons. The fundamental problem is that I need access to the paper files from our office. Those are boxed separately by NARA and have not yet been released. It may be a while before I get my hands around all of this. I’ve told Erik Larson that and he understands, I think.

Miles

The uncertainty was over whether or not the exercise was cancelled, not what to do about the hijacks. Perhaps a better word for me to have used was “interfering”, not “intervening.” I accept that it can be construed as the latter.

Miles

All major government agencies have an Inspector General. The Inspector General position in the statutory IGs (e. g. DoD, State, CIA, DoJ) is filled with the advice and consent of the Senate. In other words the Executive Branch’s nominee must be approved just as Supreme Court nominees are; hearings are held. Since the statutory Inspectors General are approved by the Senate they are attentive to Congressional requests for reviews. The examples I cited are ones that I personally worked on.

Getting your Congressman or Senator to act is a matter of persistence and the presentation of a case that has some merit to it. I’m not sure the personal connection is mandatory, but it certainly helps. In your case, the statutory IG to query is problematic; perhaps the DoT (Transportation), perhaps Treasury or DoJ. Somehow you will need to make a national level connection beyond the City and State level.

In your case, you will have great difficulty in making the case because there is no credible evidence to support your hypothesis. Having said that, read my article on A Framework For Analysis. That is a neutral framework which mandates that an hypothesis or thesis be supported by substantial pre-event, event, and post-event facts. Note my use of the neutral term “event,” here. I used ‘attack’ in my article. However, everyone agrees that there was an event on 9-11.

So, if you are to argue that explosives or accelerants were used to bring down the WTC then it is incumbent on you to tell the back story–who, what, why, when, where, and how were the explosives or accelerants put in place and ignited.

I didn’t work on the WTC story so I can only tell you what I know and that is that 10 terrorist hijackers commandeered two civilian aircraft and flew them into the north and south towers fatally wounding the entire WTC complex.

Good luck in your quest and thanks for asking the question.

Miles

My thought process tells me that the overarching issue is something along the lines of “NORAD; could have or should have done more.” I wll address NRO separately as you likely have seen. That is a set piece distinct from NORAD, plus I was the only staffer that worked that issue. On the NORAD side, it was collaborative and I’m not even sure I was in on the session with Ken Merchant at NORAD.

Interesting times and circumstances that bring us together.

Miles

Couple of additional points to consider. First, the only reason we had any CONUS air defense capability at all is the Air National Guard carved out a niche mission for itself. There were just 14 aircraft available. The focus was outward despite what occasional MESL in some exercises might say, all of which were notional, by the way. The policy was that any transponding aircraft that departed from a CONUS airport was friendly, by definition. NEADS and NORAD didn’t monitor commercial civilian aircraft at all, they had no reason to and didn’t have the assets or the capability to do so.

Given the plot as it unfolded and the notifications that were given, what is it that NORAD was supposed to do? Were they, alone, supposed to have been aware of the plot ahead of time? I think not.

We can chat at some point at NARA this summer if convenient. I doubt anyone other than me will be blogging.

I may end up filing some FOIA requests of my own to get at some of the underlying information, by the way.

Miles

I can’t answer question 7 and 8 without refreshing my memory on our NORAD trip. I’m not even sure I was in on the Merchant interview. We split up duties and I was pursuing whether or not CMOC had tapes/files of the ‘forward tell’ feed from NEADS and also in tracking down Cheri Gott. In box 8 you will find a couple of briefings that Cheri put together. The sound bite in my head is that Merchant characterized all of the injects as notional, someone’s imagination, not real world inspired.

In regards to my question, yes that is the NORAD response that is out there, but it ignores the key question. Those four planes were going to come down somewhere and someone on the ground was going to die, perhaps me. No one has thought through the specifics of how diversion/shooting down/ramming was going to save lives on the ground. That is what I am looking for.

I don’t mind continuing our conversation via PM, your approach is reasonable in this mode.

Back to NARA, did you know that you can reclama withdrawal notices that aren’t caveated as classified information or closed by statute?

Miles

First, let me estabish the common ground. We are both interested in making public as much of the Commission’s files as possible. We both have the same reason for doing that, to establish the facts of the day. To that end I will do what I can to assist with NARA.

Second, as I told Jon Gold, Kyle Hence, and Kevin, I am not interested in debating the facts of the day. That is counterproductive to my own stated objectives but more important for your own endeavors. What will happen is we will enter an endless “do loop” where I answer questions and the answers are found wanting, which leads to more questions, on ad infinitum.

As I told one of the three, in two cases where I was the sole staffer working the issue–Payne Stewart and the seismic 10:06 time for UA 93–it didn’t matter. The answers were not “right,” and not accepted in some quarters. I have now done that in a 3d case, NRO. I was the sole staffer working that issue and as I’ve told you it is a non-issue.

Third, I have my own question on the table. What is it, exactly, that NORAD was supposed to do? Take it one step further, given perfect information and the time to respond, what is it, exactly, that NORAD was supposed to do? I have had in place a Google Alert “9-11 Commission” since late 2004. I am not aware of anyone who has ever tried to answer that question. It is, in your world, the ‘elephant in the room.’ Might be time to acknowledge that.

Finally, I have a suggestion to help you and your colleagues further your own work in a meaningful way. It is ultimately not productive for you to engage in a continuing exchange with a single staffer whose personal recall on many of the facts of the day is nearly five years removed from the relevant work files. I submit that many of your colleagues intuitively understand this and its futility. So, if you are truly serious in getting at the issues of the day here is my suggestion.

First, write an article in a mainstream publication outside the ‘blogosphere.’ I suggest the Washington Post sunday magazine as I example of where to publish. Or, do as Michael Bronner did and publish in a magazine such as Vanity Fair.

Second, file suit in a court of your choice. I’m sure there are lawyers in your group who can take on this task.

Third, petition a Congressman or Senator to task the statutory Inspectors General to open an investigation. This is the course of action I recommend. Any number of people have had success doing this. The mother of a Marine killed in El Salvador in the ‘Zona Rosa Massacre.’ petitioned Senator Shelby to find out why her son died. Senator Shelby tasked multiple statutory Inspectors General to answer that question, in detail. A private citizen, Jose Basulto, CEO of Brothers to the Rescue, petitioned Representative Dan Burton to find out why Cuba MiGs were allowed to pursue him within three nautical miles of the Continental US. Representative Burton tasked the DoD Inspector General to answer that question, in detail. You will be interested to know that Jose Basulto leveraged his own website to further his cause. The POW/MIA concerned citizens petitioned Senator Bob Smith to champion their cause. He caused an ad hoc special committee to convene and, unhappy with those results, caused the concerned statutory Inspectors General to conduct a detailed investigation. Finally, Jennifer Harbury, widow of a slain Guatemalan guerrilla leader caused the US Government to investigate the death of her husband. That was accomplished through tasking to the statutory Inspectors General by the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

Erik, I have given considerable thought and have taken the time to give you a detailed response so that you have some meaningful options beyond just nitter-nattering with a single Staffer who happens to have started a blog site to continue his work on the events of the day of 9-11. I need time to do that and engaging in endless questions and answers is not the way I choose to go.

Amicably,

Miles