# Fucking hell! NORAD LIED! Flight 93 might have been saved??? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 1, 2004, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802 "2004-08-01T01:47:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Equipoise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/equipoise/32/151_2.png) [@Equipoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Equipoise)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/1 "2004-08-01T01:47:52Z")
> **[The latest from the StarTribune](https://www.startribune.com/)** > > Follow the StarTribune for the news, photos and videos from the Twin Cities and beyond. > [@](#): > > Dayton: FAA, NORAD hid 9/11 failures > Greg Gordon, Star Tribune Washington Bureau Correspondent > July 31, 2004 DAYT0731 > > WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., charged Friday that the **Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) have covered up “catastrophic failures”** that left the nation vulnerable during the Sept. 11 hijackings. > > “For almost three years now, NORAD officials and FAA officials have been able to hide their critical failures that left this country defenseless during two of the worst hours in our history,” Dayton declared during a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing. > > During the hearing, leaders of the Sept. 11 commission urged Congress to promptly create a national intelligence chief to command a fragmented U.S. counterterrorism effort before Al-Qaida strikes again. > > “The intelligence community is not going to get its job done unless somebody is really in charge,” said the commission’s vice chair, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind. Hamilton and commission chairman Tom Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, also pressed for creation of a National Counterterrorism Center to end intelligence-sharing failures that may have enabled the Sept. 11 hijackers. > > “What we’re trying to do is force the sharing of information and then make one person responsible,” Kean said. > > … > > During the hearing, Dayton told leaders of the Sept. 11 commission, that, based on the commission’s report, a NORAD chronology made public a week after the attacks was grossly misleading. > > The chronology said the FAA notified the military’s emergency air command of three of the hijackings while those jetliners were still airborne. Dayton cited commission findings that the FAA failed to inform NORAD about three of the planes until after they had crashed. > > And, he said, a squadron of NORAD fighter planes that was scrambled was sent east over the Atlantic Ocean and was 150 miles from Washington, D.C., when the third plane struck the Pentagon – “farther than they were before they took off.” > > Dayton said NORAD officials “lied to the American people, they lied to Congress and they lied to your 9/11 commission to create a false impression of competence, communication and protection of the American people.” > > He told Kean and Hamilton that if the commission’s report is correct, President Bush “should fire whoever at FAA, at NORAD … betrayed their public trust by not telling us the truth.” > > … > > \*\*Using the chronology, Dayton argued that if the FAA had promptly sent a systemwide message about the hijackings, the pilot of the fourth plane seized, United Airlines Flight 93, might have been able to secure the cockpit doors and land the plane. > > Passengers, including Minnesota native Tom Burnett, Jr., “could very well be alive,” he said.\*\* > > “This is unbelievable negligence,” Dayton said. “It doesn’t matter if we spend $550 billion annually on our national defense, if we reorganize our intelligence or if we restructure congressional oversight if people don’t pick up the phone to call one another.” > > He also noted that NORAD could not find the hijacked jetliners because terrorists turned off their transponders and NORAD lacked adequate radar to locate them without that beamed signal. > > Dayton said NORAD also falsely claimed that during the hijackings, it had F-16 Combat Air Patrol planes in place at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and an AWAC command ship in the air to protect the nation’s capital. > > Dayton, a former Minnesota state auditor, called the FAA’s and NORAD’s failures “the most gross incompetence and dereliction of responsibility and negligence that I’ve ever, under those extreme circumstances, witnessed in the public sector.” I’m still trying to figure this out, what this means, but I’d imagine that the families of those people who died on Flight 93 are going to be screaming their heads off, as well they should! May they scream very very loud and very very long. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/2 "2004-08-01T01:58:38Z")
I’ going to withhold a snap judgement on this until I know more. Let me just offer the caveat that Senator Mark Dayton is one of the most radically liberal members of the Senate- not that there’s anything wrong with that, I voted for him and will vote for him again- but Mark can sometimes be…shall we say…a bit of a drama queen. He may have a valid point here, but he may also be overplaying it. Nobody seemed to know whether to shit or go camping that day. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that. ---
**Author:** ![Brutus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Brutus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Brutus)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/3 "2004-08-01T02:02:13Z")
And if the F-16s _had_ intercepted Flight 93, what the fuck would have been different, **Equipoise**? How could they have ‘saved’ Flight 93, as you claim? ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/4 "2004-08-01T02:21:06Z")
**Brutus** , the claim is that they could have broadcast a warning to all pilots in the air about what was going on. This could have been done in time for the pilots of Flight 93 to not allow the takeover. The relevant part of the quote is bolded in the OP. I am just repeating the claim, not endorsing it. Haj ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Ed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Just\_Ed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Ed)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/5 "2004-08-01T02:56:08Z")
I’ve just recently begun reading the 9/11 Commission Report, but what comes across to me more than anything else for the first few pages (where the commission details the events of the hijackings and the reactions of the air traffic controllers, the FAA, and NORAD) is the general sense that nobody was prepared mentally to comprehend the extent of the hijackers’ plans. The people directly involved, starting with the air traffic controllers and continuing through their hierarchy eventually to the FAA and NORAD, did not fully understand exactly what was happening at the time. It _does_ appear, however, that United 93 was advised of the threat of a possible cockpit intrusion, but it was only mere minutes before it actually happened to them: > [@](#): > > United’s first decisive action to notify its airborne aircraft to take defensive action did not come until 9:19, when a United flight dispatcher, Ed Ballinger, took the initiative to begin transmitting warnings to his 16 transcontinental flights: “Beware any cockpit intrusion— Two a/c [aircraft] hit World Trade Center.” One of the flights that received the warning was United 93. Because Ballinger was still responsible for his other flights as well as Flight 175, his warning message was not transmitted to Flight 93 until 9:23. > > By all accounts, the first 46 minutes of Flight 93’s cross-country trip proceeded routinely. Radio communications from the plane were normal. Heading, speed, and altitude ran according to plan. At 9:24, Ballinger’s warning to United 93 was received in the cockpit.Within two minutes, at 9:26, the pilot, Jason Dahl, responded with a note of puzzlement: “Ed, confirm latest mssg plz—Jason.” > > The hijackers attacked at 9:28.While traveling 35,000 feet above eastern Ohio, United 93 suddenly dropped 700 feet. Eleven seconds into the descent, the FAA’s air traffic control center in Cleveland received the first of two radio transmissions from the aircraft. During the first broadcast, the captain or first officer could be heard declaring “Mayday”amid the sounds of a physical struggle in the cockpit.The second radio transmission, 35 seconds later, indicated that the fight was continuing.The captain or first officer could be heard shouting:“Hey get out of here—get out of here—get out of here.” Apparently the pilot himself either does not understand the warning, or doesn’t quite grasp the threat. All of the people involved in that day’s events were operating under extremely stressful circumstances, presented with situations they may never have contemplated. Yes, there were breakdowns in communication, and there were opportunities to do more sooner - and I’m not about to make excuses for them. But I’m hopeful the commission report will serve as a useful basis to retool the bureaucracy for the future. ---
**Author:** ![SmackFu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@SmackFu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmackFu)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/6 "2004-08-01T03:29:18Z")
How were the pilots supposed to secure the cockpit door? ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/7 "2004-08-01T03:57:10Z")
As a practical matter, there was no way for them to keep the hijackers out of the cockpit. Remember, back then cockpit doors weren’t much different from what was on the lav - in fact, the hijackers probably couldn’t keep the passengers out once they started their attack, which is why (it now seems) they crashed the plane rather than let it be retaken. A couple points: > [@](#): > > “What we’re trying to do is force the sharing of information and then make one person responsible,” Kean said. My personal opinion is that, since 9/11, one thing that has really bothered some people is that there is no person alive “responsible” and available to punish. > [@](#): > > Using the chronology, Dayton argued that if the FAA had promptly sent a systemwide message about the hijackings, the pilot of the fourth plane seized, United Airlines Flight 93, might have been able to secure the cockpit doors and land the plane. This _totally_ ignores the fact there was _no system in place_ to either generate or disseminate a “systemwide message” of that sort. A need for such was never anticipated, therefore the mechanism did not exit on that day. Also, a “land NOW” order _was_ disseminated via an ad hoc relay system that had air traffic broadcasting on all aviation frequencies, but even that had problems with people “stepping on” transmissions, and the time delay involved in diseminating the message. It took several hours to relay just that one simple item. Even today, I’m not sure the FAA could broadcast a “systemwide” emergency alert any quicker. Yes, there’s a system, but it’s not a system that was ever intended or set up to do such a thing. The air traffic control system in this system is geared to just that _air traffic control_, not national defense. > [@](#): > > Passengers, including Minnesota native Tom Burnett, Jr., “could very well be alive,” he said. Bullshit. Let’s, for just a moment, assume the Air Force HAD intercepted Flight 93. Do you think the hijackers would A) Surrender meekly B) Crash the airplane in preference to being caught I believe the outcome - everyone aboard dead post-crash - would be the same. > [@](#): > > “This is unbelievable negligence,” Dayton said. “It doesn’t matter if we spend $550 billion annually on our national defense, if we reorganize our intelligence or if we restructure congressional oversight if people don’t pick up the phone to call one another.” Leaving aside for the moment the whole issue of phones on airplanes (or lack thereof) this just demonstrates that this man is ignorant of how aviation communication presently works. Again, the FAA is NOT a division of “national defense”. Even now it’s not - that aspect of transportation is handled by the Transportation Security Administration. The FAA cooperates with them, of course, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same thing. > [@](#): > > He also noted that NORAD could not find the hijacked jetliners because terrorists turned off their transponders and NORAD lacked adequate radar to locate them without that beamed signal. Um… gosh… See, the transponder works with _secondary_ radar, which is useful for picking out individual airplanes. They still had _primary_ radar, on which the hijacked airplanes showed up just fine - along with every other airplane out there, and a bunch of other stuff like flocks of migrating birds. Secondary radar was, in fact, the solution to the problem of too many radar returns… I don’t think this is a problem that can be resolved in such a manner as to make this gentleman happy. The military may use computers to filter out non-airplane returns from primary radar, but that won’t identify a _particular_ airplane without some sort of marker/tag. Which is what the transponder is for. Which the Bad Guys turned off… and any substituted might be something that could be disabled/masked/elminated as well. > [@](#): > > Dayton, a former Minnesota state auditor, called the FAA’s and NORAD’s failures “the most gross incompetence and dereliction of responsibility and negligence that I’ve ever, under those extreme circumstances, witnessed in the public sector.” I can’t speak for NORAD (actually, I don’t speak for the FAA, either ) but I’m not sure you could classify what happened as a “failure” on their part. It is NOT the job of the FAA to gather or interpret intelligence data, and they aren’t the military or charged with the defense of the nation. They’re job is to keep aviation running as smoothly and safely as possible in this country. ---
**Author:** ![NurseCarmen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5daacb/32.png) [@NurseCarmen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NurseCarmen)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/8 "2004-08-01T04:02:33Z")
> [@Brutus](#): > > And if the F-16s _had_ intercepted Flight 93, what the fuck would have been different, **Equipoise**? How could they have ‘saved’ Flight 93, as you claim? Reading is a breeze if you don’t sweat comprehension. ---
**Author:** ![The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@The\_King\_of\_Soup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_King_of_Soup)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/9 "2004-08-01T04:37:19Z")
So far, there are two things to be learned here: 1. **Broomstick** has done his homework and knows how to think, and 2. Mark Dayton, like too many junior legislators, is louder than he is smart. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/10 "2004-08-01T04:42:04Z")
> [@The King of Soup](#): > > So far, there are two things to be learned here Three. The third being **Broomstick** is a woman with a pilot’s license. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![GusNSpot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gusnspot/32/436_2.png) [@GusNSpot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GusNSpot)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/11 "2004-08-01T16:28:18Z")
> [@Jeff Olsen](#): > > Three. The third being **Broomstick** is a woman with a pilot’s license. 🙂 And she writes pretty good… ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/12 "2004-08-01T20:14:38Z")
Is it known whether or not there was a struggle with the flight controls prior to the descent? Meaning, did the plane exhibit increases and decreases in altitude prior to the ultimate outcome? Is this info known by the NTSB? ---
**Author:** ![Curate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/49beb7/32.png) [@Curate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Curate)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/13 "2004-08-02T00:39:42Z")
I can’t find a cite for this, but I recall a report that the black box recording suggested that the hijackers believed they would lose control of the aircraft to the passengers and decided to crash while they were still in charge. ---
**Author:** ![BJMoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@BJMoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BJMoose)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/14 "2004-08-02T18:25:27Z")
> [@Curate](#): > > I can’t find a cite for this, but I recall a report that the black box recording suggested that the hijackers believed they would lose control of the aircraft to the passengers and decided to crash while they were still in charge. That would be the report of the 9/11 Commission. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Llama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@The\_Llama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Llama)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/15 "2004-08-02T18:50:53Z")
> [@](#): > > The military may use computers to filter out non-airplane returns from primary radar I’m pretty sure that the E-3 radar automatically filters out anything below 80mph. ---
**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/16 "2004-08-02T19:17:13Z")
**Dayton** for Director, Hooked on Histrionics. **Broomstick** for junior Senator from Minnesota. ---
**Author:** ![E72521](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dbc845/32.png) [@E72521](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E72521)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/17 "2004-08-02T19:17:38Z")
> [@SmackFu](#): > > How were the pilots supposed to secure the cockpit door? I read in an interview with a commercial airline pilot shortly post 9/11 that if he had notice of what was going on with the other three planes and he thought that someone was trying to break into his cabin, he could easily make maneuvers, such as rolling the aircraft several times, that would incapacitate pretty much anyone in the back of the plane not strapped down. IANA pilot and I have no idea how feasible such a tactic would be. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/18 "2004-08-02T20:26:10Z")
The revised chronology clears up one thing for me: why NORAD didn’t ring all the alarm bells it had (and given NORAD’s historical mission, its alarm bells must be considerable) once it had reason to believe we had a way-unprecedented _three_ hijackings going on simultaneously. The answer: it didn’t know about them before they crashed. I’m still kinda puzzled, though, that **no one** was in a position to realize we had multiple hijackings while the planes were still in the air. Given the sort of event a hijacking was before 9/11 (rare but a big deal if it happened) you’d think that even within the air-traffic control system and the FAA, word of each hijacking would have been relayed up the line in a hurry, until word reached _someone_ who’d realize that we’d passed from happenstance to coincidence to enemy action, and would have woken up their boss’s boss if necessary to get the word relayed to the top. After all, even if 9/11 hadn’t been what it turned out to be, you _still_ wouldn’t have wanted the President to find out from CNN that three planes had been hijacked at once. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2004, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/19 "2004-08-03T00:11:58Z")
> [@](#): > > I read in an interview with a commercial airline pilot shortly post 9/11 that if he had notice of what was going on with the other three planes and he thought that someone was trying to break into his cabin, he could easily make maneuvers, such as rolling the aircraft several times, that would incapacitate pretty much anyone in the back of the plane not strapped down. [The Master speaks.](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_262.html) ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2004, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802/20 "2004-08-03T04:07:22Z")
Full aerobatic manoeuvres wouldn’t be necessary to incapacitate someone in the back of an airliner. A series of 3 G pulls followed by -1 G bunts would be entirely sufficient to at least keep people from moving purposefully around the cabin. However, at some stage you’re going to have to calm down and land, you’d better hope the hijackers are unconscious or under Pax Control. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fucking-hell-norad-lied-flight-93-might-have-been-saved/257802.md?page=2)