9/11 What If

Great Debates
1

Since we are coming up on the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 I’ve been seeing a lot of shows on the History Channel, Discovery, TLC, Military Channel, etc etc concerning 9/11. It got me thinking about 9/11 again and I was wondering…what would have happened if the hijackers had really had things together and instead of going after the WTC and the Pentagon they had, instead, gone right for the Capital and the Whitehouse? IIRC, both the House and Senate were meeting in the Capital that morning. What if this had been the first strike, followed up almost immediately with a strike on the Whitehouse (IIRC, Chaney and Condie were both in the WH that morning, plus a lot of the staff) and maybe a follow up on one of the large federal buildings like Treasury, or maybe L’ Enfant Plaza, Crystal City or the like? What would the effect have been on the government with so many elected and appointed officials killed or in shock from such an attack? Let’s say that the terrorists managed to take out 90% of the Congress and Senate (no idea if that was possible) AND the VP…how chaotic would that have been? How would the succession have worked and how long would it have taken to get things back under control? What would have been the likely response by America, especially considering that Bush would have been one of the few elected officials to survive?

In retrospect this week ISTM we dodged a bullet on 9/11. It was certainly bad…one of the worst terrorist attacks in history…but it could have been much worse. Hell, even if they had hit the WTC buildings 10 stories lower in each building it would have killed a lot more people (or if they had hit more or less together). Had they picked one of the large federal buildings in DC instead of the Pentagon they could have killed 10’s of thousands of federal workers. And if they had gone after the Capital…well, I have no idea how bad it could have been in that case. Thus the thread. What are your thoughts?

-XT

2

Given how close everyone acted after the events, I’m guessing elections would have been held rather quickly. Honestly, I don’t think it would have been a whole lot worse than what happened. Probably the worse aspect would have been the inevitable delay while government was put back together.

3

Well, if they had targeted the White House and the Capitol, I think we probably would have seen casualties on the scale of what happened with the Pentagon attacks. After all, the White House is rather small and very few White House employees actually work in the White House – most work in the Executive Office Buildings in the immediate area.

Same with the Capitol – it isn’t like large numbers of senators and representatives all hang out in groups in one spot during most of the work day. Most of them would be in their office buildings across the street from the Capitol at any given moment – just turn on CSPAN and you’ll plainly see that the House and Senate floors are typically pretty empty throughout most of the day, especially before 10am.

There’s just no way that the casualty figures would be anywhere near as high as the WTC attacks resulted in. Plus, the odds of killing a significant number of high-ranking government leaders just wouldn’t seem that large, for the reasons I already mentioned.

Now, there would be a large psychological impact of having the Capitol and White House severely damaged. But when I think about the tragedy of 9/11, the one thing that is most shocking to me is the huge number of people who died, not the loss of the symbolic Twin Towers. Maybe people would be just as shocked at the attacks on government landmarks as they would be by the huge loss of life… but I’m not sure about that.

4

Come now, Xtisme. Surely the Illuminati and the lizard people aren’t going to blow up their most useful lackeys.

5

[QUOTE=Ravenman]
Well, if they had targeted the White House and the Capitol, I think we probably would have seen casualties on the scale of what happened with the Pentagon attacks. After all, the White House is rather small and very few White House employees actually work in the White House – most work in the Executive Office Buildings in the immediate area.

Same with the Capitol – it isn’t like large numbers of senators and representatives all hang out in groups in one spot during most of the work day. Most of them would be in their office buildings across the street from the Capitol at any given moment – just turn on CSPAN and you’ll plainly see that the House and Senate floors are typically pretty empty throughout most of the day, especially before 10am.
[/QUOTE]

I believe more people work at the White House than you think, Ravenman. IIRC it’s somewhere between 2000-3000 full time people there. And I think that if there was no warning a large percentage of them would have been killed in such a crash. The part of the Pentagon that was struck had recently been re-enforced, and the Pentagon is a much larger and more spread out building.

I’m not sure how many people work at the Capital, but I’m guessing it’s a lot more than at the White House. It’s a larger building, but I think that the building was much less suited to withstand that sort of attack than the part of the Pentagon hit. I have no idea of how many congressmen and senators were in the building at the time, or what percentages of their various staffs were there.

I disagree…I think it’s possible they could have killed more people than were killed in the WTC attacks. In the WTC attacks, most of the people who died were either killed immediately or trapped above the damage. Since the buildings took a while to fail it allowed most of the folks below the points where the planes struck to be evacuated. And the second tower was already partly evacuated before the second plane hit (granted, they were telling people they could come back in and some did, tragically).

The difference is I believe that had the WH been hit by a plane of that size it would have killed just about everyone in the initial destruction. I’m not sure about the Capital, but had they hit the dome there would have been a huge potential for loss of life there as well.

[QUOTE=Larry Borgia]
Come now, Xtisme. Surely the Illuminati and the lizard people aren’t going to blow up their most useful lackeys.
[/QUOTE]

Well sure…that’s obviously why they didn’t try and optimize their attack by going after the government. But, lets say that instead of Illuminati fronted lizard people it had been rabid mutant space peacocks launching the attack…what might have happened THEN?? :eek:

-XT

6

If they had managed to wipe out a substantial portion of Senators and Representatives I guess we would have seen state legislatures nearly instantly pass laws that allow the governor to appoint temporary replacements till an election could be held at the earliest opportunity (some states already do that I think).

The presidential succession goes pretty deep so it’d be hard to clear off that list and not have a president.

As for advisers there are lots of people out there who could step in and replace any of those who were killed.

In short I doubt the government would be hamstrung for very long at all.

The freak out over it may or may not have been worse than hitting the WTC.

Honestly bin Laden was smart going for what he did. The damage to the country was greater than taking out congress or Bush would have been.

7

This site says the total last year was 469.

8

I don’t think that figure is counting all of the people who work in the White House…just the executive staff. According to this:

I don’t know how accurate this is (it’s ‘unofficial’) but I’ve been in the White House to do IT work, and there are more than 469 people in there. A LOT more, not even counting pubic and private tours or guests.

-XT

9

errm, I know it’s been 10 years since the attack, but I do seem to remember that the White House was indeed a target. Wasn’t it flight 93’s intended target?

10

Not very, IMHO. Congress could hardly have deferred more to Bush after 9/11. If 90% of Congress were wiped out, then Bush would have governed by emergency measures until the new Congress could be elected. Replacing Congress wouldn’t be all that difficult. A mixture of previously retired members, other individuals with Federal experience, and people in the minor leagues, so to speak, would be elected. So you would lose some knowledge and experience, but there’s enough people to replace them.

Losing Cheney is the biggest difference. He was probably the biggest driver behind the Iraq war and other controversial programs. At this point you are off into butterfly effect territory.

11

I’ve been in the White House, I’ve been in the two Executive Office Buildings. Most of the White House staff work in the two Executive Office Buildings. It’s a fact. The White House is rather small – the West Wing holds about 50 people. Just look at it. There’s more that work in the building, of course, but you’re just waaaaay off in your expectations.

Somewhere around 12,000 people work for Congress, but very few of them work in the Capitol. The vast majority work in the six or seven office buildings that are scattered around Capitol Hill, and rather few senators or representatives have offices in the Capitol that are anything beyond a small room with no staff that they can go to between votes. My guess is that far more tourists would have been killed in such an attack than congressional leaders.

All you really have to do is look at any pictures of the interior of the Capitol to see that most of the area of the building is empty space – for example, the only thing in the large rotunda is tourists and tour guides, and there aren’t that many early in the morning.

Not sure about how damaged the White House would have been, but the rotunda would be about the least populated place in the Capitol in terms of congressional leaders. There’s probably a couple hundred tourists in there during peak times, but there are no offices in the Capitol dome. It’s just a dome covering a large open space.

12

[QUOTE=Ravenman]
I’ve been in the White House, I’ve been in the two Executive Office Buildings. Most of the White House staff work in the two Executive Office Buildings. It’s a fact. The White House is rather small – the West Wing holds about 50 people. Just look at it. There’s more that work in the building, of course, but you’re just waaaaay off in your expectations.
[/QUOTE]

You are right…a lot of those folks are in the other two Executive Office buildings. There is a lot of staff that are in parts of the WH that aren’t open to the public, however, and I still think the body count would be higher than just a couple hundred, and taking out the VP and Chief of Staff alone would be pretty big right there.

As with the WH (and as with you apparently) I’ve been in the Capital, both the parts open to the public and to the less accessible parts of it as well. Again, I think that a lot more people are in the service parts of the Capital than is commonly thought by looking at the vaulted public areas. And, again, I think that had they caught a large percentage of the house and senate in session (I THINK that at least one house was in session that morning) it would have been pretty devastating, body count aside. Sure, we have clear lines of succession, and I’m sure they would have been rapidly implemented, but it would have been a bigger disruption and a bigger blow, IMHO, than what the terrorist actually did.

Nope, no offices in the dome…but offices in both wings, and I assume that a jet loaded with fuel would have had a rather devastating effect on the entire building if it hit and exploded in the dome. Maybe I’m overestimating the resulting explosion and fire from a jet crashing in at several hundred miles per hour, but it seems like it would be pretty bad.

-XT

13

[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
The Pentagon is the world’s largest office building by floor area, with about 6,500,000 sq ft (604,000 m2), of which 3,700,000 sq ft (344,000 m2) are used as offices.[2][3] Approximately 23,000 military and civilian employees[3] and about 3,000 non-defense support personnel work in the Pentagon.
[/QUOTE]

I dunno, there’s tens of thousands of people in the Pentagon. And they’re the people most likely to come after the attack’s planners; killing them off in the opening moment would seem prudent.

I guess they’d have had more success using several planes on the Pentagon, but the more people and planes you coordinate, the likelier it is that some slip-up in your security brings the whole plan to naught.

14

It’s curious to wonder if the reaction, both short and long term, would have been the same since all the targets would now be US Government targets: Pentagon, Capital, White House. You would no longer have an intentional attack against a pure civilian target (excluding the actual aircraft/passengers).

However, since you can’t take the airplane out of the equation, the reaction to the attack and our response would be similar (and justified).

15

[QUOTE=Sailboat]
I dunno, there’s tens of thousands of people in the Pentagon. And they’re the people most likely to come after the attack’s planners; killing them off in the opening moment would seem prudent.
[/QUOTE]

There are a lot of folks in the Pentagon, no doubt, but they aren’t concentrated. They are really spread out, since though the Pentagon is a huge building it is only a few stories tall, as it were (the Pentagon also had a pretty tough facade, not being like most office buildings). So hitting any one place in the Pentagon you are only killing people on the floors of the impact and the immediate surrounding area. It was also good luck (or bad I guess if you are a terrorist) that they hit one of the wedges that had been renovated and reenforced, since the plane did a lot less damage because of that.

The Pentagon was probably more a symbolic target than any real attempt at a high body count. They also didn’t go for the part of the building with all the brass in it, just a random part of the building. In my what if they probably still would have gone for the Pentagon, but maybe actually tried to overfly the facade and hit the inner A ring…perhaps in the area where the Joint Chiefs were, if possible.

-XT

16

just a minor observation: the Capitol and White House are low-rise buildings. A lot of people could jump out of the windows, even if the whole place is in flames.

17

That’s a good point. My assumption was that most would be killed in the initial impact and explosion, but certainly if they survived they could more easily get away.

-XT

18

It’s pretty clear that the hijackers did not have adequate planning to maximize the effect of their attacks. As was previously stated, hitting the towers on lower floors would have resulted in more casualties. As it was, the hijacker who attacked the Pentagon apparently had no clue where the leadership of DOD worked in the building. Why is it that you would expect a hijacker to specifically target the West Wing, where the leaders would be?

First of all, one plane could not attack the House and the Senate simultaneously. They are 200 yards apart. Second, look at CSPAN – the chambers aren’t like a packed basketball arena. Most of the time, there’s barely any senators or representatives there.

Okay, it’s hard to compare apples and oranges, but the hole in the Pentagon was about 65 feet wide. The Capitol is about 250 yards wide, whereas the Pentagon is about 300 yards on each side, and the Towers were 65 yards a side. You seem to be saying that the interior of the Capitol would be obliterated with one plane, but that seems to be arguing that the damage to the Capitol would be instantaneously worse than the damage that either of the other buildings sustained. I’m not finding your claims of massive destruction to the Capitol to be convincing in the least.

19

[QUOTE=Ravenman]
It’s pretty clear that the hijackers did not have adequate planning to maximize the effect of their attacks. As was previously stated, hitting the towers on lower floors would have resulted in more casualties. As it was, the hijacker who attacked the Pentagon apparently had no clue where the leadership of DOD worked in the building. Why is it that you would expect a hijacker to specifically target the West Wing, where the leaders would be?
[/QUOTE]

It’s a ‘what if’…i.e. what if the hijackers WERE better prepared and were able to have a more focused and coordinated attack. Obviously they didn’t, and were basically winging it and going for the most visible and easy to hit targets.

Yes, I’ve been inside actually. My assumption (possibly incorrect) is that in such a space it WOULD have caused more wide spread damage due to the impact and fireball. I don’t know how true that is…possibly my conception of how dangerous a plane filled with jet fuel would be in the Capital is a bit overstated.

Well, they aren’t claims, per se, more guesses. The Pentagon (especially the part impacted) was a brick and concrete reenforced structure with large steel beams making up the interior structure. Flying a plane into it was rather like flying a plane into a large brick and concrete wall. The Capital is a more fragile structure, IIRC, with a stone and marble facade and iron framework (again, from memory…it could be solid titanium with adamantium superstructure for all I know), so my guess is that a plane would do more wide spread damage. Also, because much of the dome is hollow (being a dome), my GUESS is that this would allow the fireball of the initial impact to propagate better, and cause more widespread destruction.

But really what the thread was supposed to be about was the ‘what if’ aspect…what if the terrorists HAD gotten a large percentage of the government and possibly also gone after some of the large, key government buildings such as the Forrestal building, Treasury, some of the large buildings in Crystal City, etc? What effect would that have had?

-XT

20

I’m not seeing it. The government wouldn’t be decapitated by the attacks, because W was out of state anyway. A strike on the Capital building at that hour would get some staffers and tourists, but not many Senators or Congressmen. Impacting the dome wouldn’t give you all that much destruction unless the plane was headed straight down. The dome is light enough that most of the plane debris would punch through the other side. Take out the WH and all you get is Cheney, maybe. The Pentagon strike was stupid. Anything less than a nuke just isn’t going to do enough damage to that place. But, I thought the Pentagon wasn’t the first choice of target, that the hijacker was looking for the WH and couldn’t find it.

No, the only way you get an efficient decap strike using aircraft is to hit the Capital during the State of the Union address. That’s really the only time most of the leadership is really concentrated.