Archive for October, 2009

9-11: Air Defense Response; first things first, the Scott Trilogy (part 3)

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

This is the last article in the Scott series and it stands alone, independent of the other two articles.  Scott chose the week of the first anniversary of 9-11 to publish “F-16 Pilots Considered Ramming Flight 93,” September 9, 2002.  In his article Scott told the story of the Air National Guard at Andrews and literally set in stone a story contrary to the events of the day; one that has been difficult to unravel.

The Commission Staff thought we had put the Andrews story to rest when our final report was published.  The story was resurrected in Lynn Spencer’s Touching History which compelled three members of the Staff, including me, to publish an OpEd article in the “New York Times.”  I spoke to the Andrews Story in a previous article which should be read first.  With the understanding that the primary and secondary sources of the day do not support Scott’s narrative we can now look at the issue that Scott raises in his title, rules of engagement.

The Facts

At no time during the battle of 9-11 did any military aircraft have authenticated rules to engage a target.  NEADS, itself, did not have any such guidance until well after the fate of UA 93 had been determined.  That guidance was not passed to either the Otis or Langley pilots that morning.  No Andrews pilot had written “weapons free” authority until a pair of fully armed fighters lifted off after 11:00.

The Rationalization

Scott told us two things.  First, he addressed the title of his article by writing: “all three [Hutchison, Sasseville, Lucky] acknowledge they were prepared to ram a terrorist-flown aircraft, if necessary.”  Second, he further wrote: “Sasseville planned to fire from behind and ‘try to saw off one wing…and bring it down.”  There is no primary or secondary souce information to support either supposition.

Scott did not address the Langley pilots, but we do know that the stated NORAD rationalization by both Arnold and Marr was that they would take lives in the air to save lives on the ground.  That being said, they did not give the pilots in the air the authority to engage.

Since the circumstances never came to that Hobson’s Choice the ‘what if?’ is a matter of speculation.  What we do know is that only the Langley fighters had authentication tables with them; the Andrews pilots did not, according to what they told me during interview.  We also know that the Langley fighters were over the nation’s capital long before the Andrew’s fighters.  We also know that only the Langley (and Otis) fighters under any plausible scenario could have conceivably had to take terrible, swift action.

So, we can set the Andrew’s fighter story aside with one final point about Scott’s narrative turning again to an issue with all eyewitness and participant recall information, time compression

Time Compression

Scott wrote: “Within minutes of American airlines Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon on Sept. 11, Air National Guard F-16s took off from here [Andrews AFB, MD] in response to a plea from the White House to ‘Get in the air now’.”  That establishes a takeoff time prior to 9:45, which is not possible.  It is no wonder that Lynn Spencer had so much difficulty with time compression in her own narrative concerning the Andrews fighters.  Three of the available seven pilots were in the skies over North Carolina.. The other four had no planes immediately ready for use. The first Andrews fighter airborne, Hutchison just returning from North Carolina, lifted off a hour later than Scott’s narrative has it.

The Realm of Speculation

I leave it to the reader to rationalize what might have happened.  As you do so consider these points.

First, in my article on the Battle of 9-11 I make reference to rules of engagement and to my work on this last Scott article.  I wrote: “All informal time-distance analyses that I have worked through in my mind [given a scramble at 9:09] indicate that AA 77 and the Langley fighters would have arrived over greater DC skies at about the same time. And the unanswered question is, “then what?””

Second, I have worked through in my mind the time distance factors for both the Otis and Langley fighters and in the most perfect of worlds there is a slender chance that the Otis fighters would have arrived over a heavily populated area at the same time as did UA 175.  There is a slightly less slender chance that AA 77 and the Langley fighters would have also arrived over a heavily populated area at the same time.

Third, arriving on the scene and actually intercepting a target are two very different things.  It takes time, time the pilots would likely not have had.

Fourth, there is the issue of authority and authentication.  That, too, takes time.

Finally, there is the cognitive problem for the reader of where is it, exactly, the two hijacked airliners are going to go down?

With the possible exception of UA 93, NORAD was not going to take lives in the air to save lives on the ground, despite their rationalization.

AA 11 and UA 93

The Otis pilots had no chance to defend against AA11.  FAA declared a hijack at 9:25.  It took NEADS, once alerted, the Otis pilots, once scrambled, (edited Nov 1, 2009) on the order of thirteen minutes to get fighters (edited Nov 1, 2009) airborne.  Air defense fighters fly at ‘military power,’ maximum subsonic.  NORAD specified in its timeline a rate of advance of .9 mach.  That approximates 9 nautical miles per minute.  It is nearly 170 nautical miles from Otis to Manhattan according to Google Earth.  I leave it to the reader to do the math.

The Langley pilots were in position to do something about UA 93, but they had no authority to engage.  That is the one plane that could have been engaged to save lives on the ground.  Except the passengers and crew aboard UA 93 had already figured that out for themselves.

A Final Observation

We have now completed a review of the Scott Trilogy.  That body of work together with other published information in the aftermath of 9-11 established a story that was simply not true.  The quote at the top of my home page is the Staff’s summation of the situation as we found it.


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Chaos Theory: 9-11; NOIWON, a linear process you may not know about

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

In a previous article I said: “At the most crucial time national level entities were pulling standard operating procedures off the shelf and attempting to jump start antiquated and outmoded linear processes.”  That list of processes includes the FAA’s primary net, the NMCC’s significant event conference/air threat conference call, Richard Clarke’s secure video teleconference (hereafter SVTS), and something we have not previously discussed, NOIWON.

This is the first in a series of three articles that deal with  national level processes that worked but were either irrelevant or non-productive, or both on 9-11.  In the next two articles we will adress SVTS and a thing called CRITIC.

NOIWON

Sometime in the 9:20 timeframe on 9-11 the Central Intelligence Agency initiated a NOIWON conference call. That simple act accomplished what the NMCC’s Significant Event Conference and the FAA’s Primary Net could not do, it linked DoD and FAA together in a secure multi-agency conference.

The NOIWON (National Operational Intelligence Watch Officer’s Network) has been around for a long time. It is a hotline that allows the several WAOC (Washington Area Operations Centers) 24-hour alert centers to informally discuss things that go bump in the night. Among its subscribers on 9-11 were the CIA, NSA, DIA, State Department, NMCC, FAA, and the White House Situation Room (WHSR). I knew from previous experience as a user of the NOIWON that it was not a recorded line. Nevertheless, the Commission Staff persistently asked agencies, specifically DoD, if the line was recorded that day. The ultimate answer was that it was not.

Any node on the network could activate the line at any time. Typically it was used to quickly share information and ask questions about untoward events. It was, primarily, an intelligence/information sharing line not an operational line. Despite its fancy sounding name and despite the fact it linked multiple locations together it did not play a major role on 9-11.

Twice Activated

We know from secondary source information that the NOIWON hotline was at least twice used on the morning on 9-11. A Log from the FAA’s Intelligence Watch shows that the line was activated by the CIA sometime after 9:16 and before 9:25. According to interviews with concerned FAA personnel CIA was asking what was going on, the line was left open, and subsequent conversations consisted mostly of people asking questions; what little information was exchanged was second hand. None of the primary source information from NEADS or the FAA’s Herndon Center was directly fed into the NOIWON conference.

NSA initiated a second NOIWON conference at 10:20.  We will speak to that conference in a subsequent article on CRITICS.

NOIWON treated seriously by the NMCC

The NMCC considered the NOIWON link a primary source of information and devoted a general officer solely to the line. Brig Gen Seipe, himself a trained DDO, was present that day attending the same closed door promotion board meeting as did the designated DDO, BG Winfield. In fact the NMCC had four trained DDO’s available for duty that morning; Winfield, Seipe, Navy Capt Leidig (the ADDO), and Army Colonel Susan Kuehl, the supervisor of day-day operations at the NMCC.

The NOIWON line rang in the DDO’s office and later after Winfield relieved Leidig he always had line-of-sight contact with Seipe.

NOIWON not recognized by FAA as a secure line of communication

By contrast, the FAA’s node was in the Intelligence Watch several floors below the Washington Operations Center and there was no direct secure communication link even within FAA headquarters. The Watch did maintain a small secure room off of the Operations Center but that capability was not immediately activated.  The NOIWON conference was never a factor in FAA’s attempt to gain operational contact with FAA DoD (corrected Oct 22, 2009).

Chaos not managed

We have consistently shown that linear processes, the default government solution across the board that morning, were ineffective if not counter-productive.  The government’s habitual reference to checklists, SOPs, and established protocols was not just a ‘failure of imagination’ it was a failure of performance.  No one at any level solved the ’strange attractor’ equation and linked Herdon Command Center and NEADS together to fight the battle.

NOIWON was one status quo linear process available to share information.  It was not value added to the battle fought by  Colonel Bob Marr at NEADS and Ben Sliney at the Herndon Command Center.

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9-11: Exercises; additional information

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

A researcher has posted exercise-related information gleaned from the universe of available interviews conducted by the Commission Staff.  This is valuable qualitative analysis now available to other interested researchers.  The researcher caveats that this is a work in progress and should be treated accordingly.  It is a significant level of effort, one that avoids the ’snapshot’ analysis pitfall.  I do have additional insight that may be helpful.

Still to be released by NARA are the audio files of the interviews.  It is possible that not all recorded interviews were memorialized in MFRs.  In most cases MFRs were created using both the notes of interviews and the recordings.  My recall is MFRs were made of all unrecorded interviews.

Also still to be released are the database files of the Commission.  All documents provided to the Commission were catalogued, stored and maintained in classified and unclassified holdings.  Staff members copied docuemts from the master files as needed and some of those copies became part of the staff work files which have been released by NARA.

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Response to Ryan

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Dear Kevin,

I took the time to listen to your March 15, 2006 lecture “A 9-11 Whistleblower Examines the Official Conspiracy Theory“ to gain an appreciation of your point of view. Let me say at the outset that your lecture of that date is not debatable at any level. I would be interested in viewing an updated version to see if your vision has matured, especially now that the files of the 9-11 Commission are becoming available. Absent an update, let me address a few points.

Your Response

Here I will address some of the topics you mention and, for convenience, in the order you introduce them.

First, I did not work on the New York issue except as it concerned FAA and NEADS.  However, I  have read enough of the NIST report to know that it is not “dismally weak, highly inconsistent, and complete false,” as you have it.  Further, I know of no verification of the “independent discovery of explosive residues in the WTC dust.“  I find that supposition tenuous, misleading, and scientifically ungrounded.

Second, let me clarify a point. You site my “stated appreciation for Joel Hirschhorn.”  I mentioned Joel Hirschhorn for one reason and one reason only. He is trying, within your movement, to point out some essential issues and to move you out of a “do loop.”   I hope you see that and understand what he is telling you. I don’t subscribe to his basic point of view any more than I do yours.

Third, you mention that you have met with your own Congressman.   Ironically, it was such a Congressman, Representative Burton, who directed the DoD IG to investigate the Cuban shoot down of two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft.  Either your Congressman–perhaps it is Burton–or Lee Hamilton could compel a similar inquiry for you were your issue sufficient.  As you are also aware Hamilton has a new public platform for action, the National Security Preparedness Group.   You might consider approaching that group.

Fourth, since you have not read Dean John Farmer’s new book I suggest you do so and verify in your own mind that Ekonomou’s characterization of “flat-out misrepresentation” is valid.  I am confident you will find differently.

Fifth, I gather from your site logo and your statement “we know it was a terrorist attack” that you accept the fact that four planes were hijacked and used to attack New York City and Washington D.C., and that you distance yourself from any suggestion to the contrary.  Your hypothetical statement/question “What we don’t know is: Who were the terrorists?” does in fact beg a question.  If not Atta and company, then who?

Sixth, you speak to FOIA, a lack of transparency and the extreme redaction that is involved.  I share your concern and do what I can to pry more out into the public domain.  I archived my work files so that I could get at them and continue to explore the events of the day.  The lack of some information is frustrating.  What we do know is that NARA has second and third levels of effort in the offing, but that will take time.  By their own accounting they have released about 35% of the holdings.  Still to come are the master paper files, the audio files of recorded interviews, and the electronic files on the two servers, one classified and one unclassified.  NARA does have a mechanism for requesting release of redacted information if a case can be made; you might want to selectively pursue that.  I understand that approach was successful in obtaining the redacted phone number concerning the Olson call, for example.

Finally, let me speak briefly to a non-issue, “we have some planes.”  The convergence of evidence, a term with which I am sure you are familiar, is that the term from air traffic control primary sources correlates to American Air 11 and Mohammed Atta.  There is no credible evidence to suggest otherwise.   I am puzzled that a simple analytical problem such as this causes you any degree of consternation.

Additional Comments

Independent of the construct of your letter and considering your 2006 presentation, let me address a few other things that caught my eye.

First, there is no such thing as an ‘Official Conspiracy Theory.”  As I said in my initial letter the facts of the day are straight forward and tell a consistent story.   If it is your purpose to tell a different story then you are obligated to establish what that story is and provide a body of evidence—pre-event, event, and post-event—that supports your story. You have not done that.

Second, your presentation is wrong on so many levels that it defies analysis.   For example, the facts are compelling, conclusive, and definitive that American Airlines flight 77 impacted the Pentagon.  To argue otherwise does a disservice to the men, women and children who died there that day.  Visit the Pentagon Memorial and sit on the bench of the youngest victim.  Look around and ask yourself why the Memorial is constructed as it is and reflect on the story the Memorial tells you.

Third, ask yourself one simple question.  Why is it that you have not been successful in the media, the courts, and the Congress?  If your postulation has any credibility at all it would gain some traction, somewhere.  You can endlessly speak about the need for a new investigation as a mantra but without Congressional will, jointly or individually, that won’t happen.  It will be helpful if you can gain a Senate sponsor, but the work of Dan Burton shows that you can also work at the Representative level.

Last, on the subject of your position and your perspective, I take your letter to be a singular voice and not necessarily the consensus voice of the Bloomington Group.  I would be very much interested in hearing other voices; surely there is diversity of view, exposition and discussion.  I cannot believe that all members take, for example, your 2006 presentation as gospel.  Having said that let me shift gears back to my own perspective.

My Perspective

First, read my Welcome and my page on Becoming a Commission Member.  It was my pleasure to associate with two hard working and dedicated staffs during my tenure with the Congressional Joint Inquiry and the 9-11 Commission.   Both endeavors and their final reports were fact-based, verifiable, and definitive.   Both staffs wrote the reports, by the way.

Can more be learned?  Certainly.  Will finer-grained and more complete analysis be done?  Inevitably.  One example is the Creed/Newman work on Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11. I paraphrase the authors here, but one key point they made was once AA 77 touched the Pentagon the laws of physics and chemistry took over.  We can extend that statement to the World Trade Center complex.  Once AA 11 and UA 175, separately, touched the Towers, the laws of physics and chemistry took over.  And those laws explain everything that happened subsequently, including the collapse of buildings one, two, and seven.

Second, as I said before, I am beyond debate and Q&A in my own continuing work.  I have expanded on specific subjects such as Delta 1989 and the Bobcats as the occasion warranted and, based on my work files, will place other things in perspective on request, such as the Otis Scramble.   Further, it remains my intention to set the Scott Trilogy in context.  That Trilogy is a primary source for the public record concerning events of the day as the Commission Staff understood it when we began work. I am two-thirds done and am now looking at the rules of engagement issue which is the subject of Scott’s third article.

Third, and most important to me, I am continuing to look at events of 9-11 through the lens of Chaos Theory and that is where I try to devote the most time.  That focus has led me, for now, squarely back to the final episode in the Scott Trilogy.

Finally, the facts of the day and events leading up to that day have been credibly established by the Congressional Joint Inquiry and the 9-11 Commission.  Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and flew them to a grim fate.  n the process the World Trade Center was destroyed, the Pentagon damaged, and a final target saved by the only people that day, ultimately, who could make a difference, the passengers and crew aboard UA 93.

Amicably,

Miles Kara

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Ryan Response

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Dear Mr. Kara,

Thank you for your “Open Letter to the 9-11 Working Group of Bloomington.”  As a member of that group, I’m glad to see you express interest in our work and I appreciate your invitation to further discuss the 9/11 Commission report in a public forum.  It’s unfortunate that you’re not willing to engage in Q&A, however, as the questions are many and, to this day, the answers are very few.  It is also unfortunate that you are not willing to debate the facts, because we would be happy to have you come to Bloomington for a public debate.  But a dialogue of any sort is a welcome start.

For six years now, I’ve been focused on the work of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the ongoing independent investigation into what happened at the World Trade Center (WTC).   The WTC reports finally generated by NIST have been shown to be dismally weak, highly inconsistent, and completely false.  Frankly the NIST reports are a shameful excuse for science.  Add to this the independent discovery of explosive residues in the WTC dust, which NIST did not test for or even consider, and we must suspect that a cover-up has been intended with regard the events of 9/11.

Although I have not had as much time to evaluate the 9/11 Commission report, my understanding is that it too is mostly, if not entirely, false.  This is evident from the very start, where the report states its primary aim to “provide the fullest possible accounting of the events surrounding 9/11.”   It is now widely known that many of the most important events of 9/11 were never mentioned in the 9/11 Commission report at all, let alone presented in the fullest possible accounting.  These complete omissions include the destruction of WTC building 7, the testimony of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta’s testimony concerning the Vice President and the approach of Flight 77, the connections between al Qaeda and the Pakistani ISI, and many other examples.  A number of the omissions and distortions in your report have been detailed by Dr. David Ray Griffin in an easy to reference book.

Considering these facts, our group’s excitement about your offer to collaborate with us is tempered by the suspicion that you might continue to engage in the same “exacting investigative work” that the Commission report attributes to you.  For my own part, this suspicion is aggravated by your stated appreciation for Joel Hirschhorn, who you claim is “value added.”  My experience with Hirschhorn, someone I’ve met and presented with, is that he does not strive for a “paradigm shift” by any means.  In fact, he appears to promote a futile pandering to the status quo that would result in the 9/11 Truth movement becoming as useless as a concrete parachute.  Worse yet, Hirschhorn was involved with misrepresenting an honest group of investigators and promoting a poorly considered draft bill for Congress that called for investigation of WTC theories that literally no one supports.

Therefore I’m not encouraged by your suggestion that we subscribe to a new three-part plan of action, which in fact is not new.  There have been countless attempts at engaging corporate media sources in reporting the basic facts about 9/11, and most of those attempts have failed.  There have also been a number of 9/11 lawsuits filed, and to date, all of those have been rejected before the evidence could be discovered or presented.  Finally, there have been many attempts to reach Congress with the facts.  The 9/11 Working Group has met with the staff of our own congressman, and also with our former congressman, 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton.  Unlike you, Mr. Hamilton was not opposed to a new investigation, and he gave us a long list of excuses for why your 9/11 Commission investigation report was not sufficient.

We can no longer afford to ask our politicians and media to cure our corrupt system.  It is the corporate media itself, and the corporate-funded politicians that maintain the corrupt system, and that are the problem.  We must rebuild our media and our government, and the truth about 9/11 has the power to do just that.  In doing so we will need to be aware, as you wrote, of “the frauds, opportunists, and paper millers who serve primarily as a major distraction.”

This brings me to John Farmer and his new book, which I agree does not intend to state that the 9/11 Commission report is completely false.  To the contrary, although I have not read the book I understand from others that its approach is much the same as that of the Commission’s report.  I learned this through attorney John Ekonomou, who wrote to Farmer a few weeks ago and later copied me on his message.  Ekonomou purchased the Farmer book and was appalled at how quickly he realized that it was a “flat-out misrepresentation” of the facts.

But getting back to the struggle for truth, and your offer to help, we should see if there is common ground as you mentioned.  You say that an event occurred on 9/11, and you call it a terrorist attack.  Having met many of the Americans around the country who are alarmed by the lack of truth about 9/11, I can tell you that this appraisal is shared by almost all of them.  We know it was a terrorist attack.  What we don’t know is:  Who were the terrorists?

You can help us continue building an honest answer to that question.  As you’re no doubt aware from our website, our group has received a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) responses from government agencies.  Some of those responses are enlightening, while others are not particularly useful due to the ongoing lack of transparency surrounding the events of 9/11, and the extreme redaction that is involved.  But among the documents we received, we have noticed many facts that do not support your Commission’s report, and we’ve noticed a number of surprising things that should have been in your report but were not.

Starting out in a small way, let’s talk about “We have some planes.”  Can you tell us where this phrase originated from, in terms of records made by air traffic controllers or others involved in the events of 9/11, and how you attributed it to the alleged hijackers?   It is the title of one of the chapters of the 9/11 Commission report, and I believe you have taken credit for that analysis to some degree.

With a small step such as this, I think we might be able to begin working together for the benefit of all.

Sincerely,

Kevin R. Ryan

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Bloomington Group Open Letter

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

September 29, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,

Miles Kara

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

Monday, October 5th, 2009

Summation to date

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

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

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

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

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

Battles and wars

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

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

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

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

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

The battle unfolds

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

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

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

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

The battle escalates

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

No awareness at the national level

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

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

In a perfect world

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

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

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

ROE

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

Where we stand

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

The ultimate irony

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


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9-11: Delta 1989; an addendum

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

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

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

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