# NORAD had drills of jets as weapons **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 20, 2004, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009 "2004-04-20T11:56:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2004, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/101 "2004-04-26T18:25:39Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > Now THATS a really good question that hasn’t been answered yet. The first 3 flights I think its reasonable to say that what was done was reasonable, considering how fast events moved and the shock and confusion. However, why weren’t fighters dispatched to at least intercept flight 93 and take a look at it or something?? After all, its conceivable that the target wasn’t DC or New York but, say the Sears building or something else. Anyone have a cite on whether fightes were dispatched, and if not (as seems to be the case) why they weren’t? > > -XT It looks like they were, but too late. The more I try to read this timeline [http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete\_911\_timeline&day\_of\_911=ua93](http://www.cooperativeresearch.net/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_911=ua93), the more I realize how conflicting all the different accounts are. It sounds like they weren’t ordered to intercept Flight 93, or at least not 'til later: > [@](#): > > (After 9:44 a.m.) > According to F-16 pilot Honey’s account, at some point after the F-16s had set up a defensive perimeter over Washington, the lead pilot receives a garbled message about Flight 93 that isn’t heard by the other two pilots. “The message seemed to convey that the White House was an important asset to protect.” Honey says he is later told the message is, “Something like, ‘Be aware of where it is, and it could be a target.’” The other pilot, codenamed Lou, says the unnamed lead pilot tells him, “I think the Secret Service told me this.” [Among the Heroes, by Jere Longman, 8/02, p. 76] Both Lou and Honey state they are never given orders to shoot down any plane that day. [Among the Heroes, by Jere Longman, 8/02, p. 222] But this seems really odd to me: > [@](#): > > (After 9:56 a.m.) > After flying off in Air Force One, Bush talks to Vice President Cheney on the phone. Cheney recommends that Bush authorize the military to shoot down any plane under control of the hijackers. “I said, ‘You bet,’” Bush later recalls. “We had a little discussion, but not much.” [Newsday 9/23/01; USA Today 9/16/01; Washington Post 1/27/02; CBS 9/11/02] Flight 93 is still in the air, and fighters are given orders to intercept it and possibly shoot it down. [ABC News 9/11/02] That seems like an _awfully_ long time to make the decision to authorize shooting down planes. Then: > [@](#): > > (After 9:56 a.m.) > At some point after the F-16s are in the air, someone from the Secret Service gets on the radio and tells the pilots, “I want you to protect the White House at all costs.” [New York Times, 10/16/01] So finally, it sounds like they were ordered to intercept, but too late: > [@](#): > > (After 9:56-10:06 a.m.) > Inside his White House bunker, a military aide asks Vice President Cheney, “There is a plane 80 miles out. There is a fighter in the area. Should we engage?” Cheney immediately answers “Yes.” [Washington Post, 1/27/02] An F-16 fighter near Washington heads in pursuit of Flight 93. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/01] However, a different explanation says, “The closest fighters are two F-16 pilots on a training mission from Selfridge Air National Guard Base near Detroit.” These are ordered after Flight 93, even though but they supposedly aren’t armed with any weapons. It is claimed they are supposed to crash into Flight 93 if they cannot persuade it to land. [ABC News, 8/30/02, ABC News, 9/11/02] In either case, as the fighter (or fighters) gets nearer to Flight 93, Cheney is asked twice more to confirm if the fighter should engage, and he responds yes both times. [Washington Post, 1/27/02] Montague Winfield, in charge of the Pentagon’s command center, later says, “At some point, the closure time [between the fighter and Flight 93] came and went, and nothing happened, so you can imagine everything was very tense at the NMCC.” [ABC, 9/15/02] Yet Major Gen. Paul Weaver, director of the Air National Guard, had previously claimed that no military planes were sent after Flight 93. [Seattle Times, 9/16/01] And the pilots flying over Washington that have spoken say that all of them didn’t even learn about Flight 93 or any plane crashing in Pennsylvania until they returned to base in the afternoon. [Among the Heroes, by Jere Longman, 8/02, p. 222] It leaves more questions than answers, doesn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2004, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/102 "2004-04-26T19:15:41Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > That seems like an awfully long time to make the decision to authorize shooting down planes. In my earlier cite it put the time for ‘official’ authorization to shoot down planes at 10am. Yours puts it at 9:56am. But I looked in your cite and also found this: > [@](#): > > 9:38 a.m. > Almost simultaneously, a call from someone else in the White House declares the Washington area “a free-fire zone.” Says one pilot, “That meant we were given authority to use force, if the situation required it, in defense of the nation’s capital, its property and people.” Lt. Col. Marc H. (Sass) Sasseville and a pilot only known by the codename Lucky sprint to their waiting F-16s armed only with “hot” guns and 511 rounds of “TP”—nonexplosive training rounds. Definitely confusing. I suppose I could see politicians dithering about shooting down plane loads full of citizens though. Honestly, in retrospect this might have been a good thing, though, as if the FAA thought there were 11 planes hijacked we might have had some 22 year old Lt. get a bit twitchy and shoot down a plane full of civilians that WASN’T hijacked. However, I still fail to see why fighters weren’t dispatched to trail flight 93 sooner…nor why planes weren’t sent to inspect the other planes the FAA suspected had been hijacked. Definitely not an optimal response here IMO. > [@blowero](#): > > But this seems really odd to me: Probably accounted for by the stress of the moment (i.e. the pilots are remembering fragemetarily, like witnesses to a crime with different stories), as well as confusing and even contridictory orders coming in from various sources. > [@blowero](#): > > So finally, it sounds like they were ordered to intercept, but too late: Well, again there are contradictory timelines for this. I’ve seen cites that put this order at 9:30am or even 8 min. after the Pentagon was taken out. My guess is…there were multiple people ordering multiple contridictory or even conflicting orders…or ordering the same things by different people at different times. Also, I don’t think that the President is the only one who can authorize a shoot down. Wouldn’t the Defense Secretary also be able to do so…and maybe some of the other cabnet officials. JC’s? Who else? Secret Service if it was a direct threat to the president and the government? I know they have pretty wide powers when there is a direct threat to the Prez/VP/Senate/Congress. > [@blowero](#): > > It leaves more questions than answers, doesn’t it? To be honest the more we are digging into this in this thread the more questions crop up…and the fewer answers. I would REALLY like to know exactly what happened that prevented fighters from being dispatched in a timely manner to intercept and at least inspect flight 93. To me this is the most serious aspect of this, as it looks to me as there SHOULD have been time and certainly by this time there WAS awareness to do this. Not sure what, if anything they could have done, except be in position if the plane looked like it was headed to any metropolitian area…and grimly shoot it down. I’ll tell you…your cite kind of choked me up a bit with all those calls. I can’t imagine getting a call from my wife like that. -XT ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2004, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/103 "2004-04-27T00:52:45Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > And do you know for a fact that no one at either the FAA or NORAD was briefed in? _No one??_ Of course not. But that isn’t the point, is it? Did these agencies respond on 9/11 as if they had been aware that terrorists had made known their interest in hijacking airplanes as part of some sort of attack? No. I suppose you could argue that everybody got the memo, then forgot about it, but let’s use Occam’s Razor on this, for Pete’s sake. > [@](#): > > And no, I don’t think I’m starting the game clock too late…when emergencies happen they don’t follow some neat path as you seem to be making it. They are dirty and messy. I think its pretty reasonable to put the times I’ve seen so far down to shock and confusion…and fragementary data. You and others obviously disagree. True. But if in the midst of a fire in my kitchen, a flying saucer crashes into the back deck, I’m gonna notice that something off the scale has just happened. > [@](#): > > Going into speculation mode on some of the other things you brought up: Perhaps the people that HAD been briefed in weren’t available at the time in the various control towers? OK, but if relatively few people at NORAD were aware of the threat, then what’s the conclusion? That somebody named Bush didn’t get the memo about what his memo meant, and didn’t put any effort into making sure everyone else knew what to look for. > [@](#): > > Perhaps they were but they didn’t put the pieces together because they were recieving fragementary data? Or perhaps there was an oversight and the data wasn’t sent to the FAA or NORAD for whatever reason. Well, three hijackings in a relatively small amount of northeastern airspace…if you’re working for the agency charged with protecting the US against threats from the air, and you know terrorists may be planning hijackings, and you find out about one or two of them, it’s hard to believe you wouldn’t share the news at least with the guy working the adjacent chunk of airspace. > [@](#): > > As far as I can tell, at 8:43am NORAD only knew for sure that one, possibly two jets MIGHT have been hijacked. I’m working off the [timeline](http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&timeperiod=0:10am-11:50pm%2011%20Sept%202001). > [@](#): > > **8:31 a.m.** > NORAD employee Lt. Colonel Dawne Deskins later says that Boston flight control notifies NORAD of Flight 77’s hijacking at this time, not at 8:40 as has been widely reported, even by Deskins previously (see 8:40 a.m.) or another account claiming 8:34 (see 8:34 a.m.). > > \*\*8:34 a.m. \*\* > > FAA Administrator Jane Garvey later testifies that NORAD is notified Flight 11 has been hijacked. [New York Times, 12/30/03] This contradicts both the account of one NORAD employee who says it happens three minutes earlier (see 8:31 a.m.), and NORAD’s official account, which claims it happens six minutes later (see 8:40 a.m.). > > **8:43 a.m.** > > NORAD is notified that Flight 175 has been hijacked. [8:43, NORAD, 9/18/01, 8:43, CNN, 9/17/01, 8:43, Washington Post, 9/12/01, 8:43, AP, 8/19/02, 8:43, Newsday, 9/10/02] Apparently NORAD doesn’t need to be notified, because by this time NEADS technicians have their headsets linked to the FAA in Boston to hear about Flight 11, and so NORAD learns instantly about Flight 175. [Newhouse News, 1/25/02] So that’s 11, 77, and 175, all by 8:43 a.m. Also: > [@](#): > > Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins and other NORAD employees at NEADS (NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector that covers the Washington and New York areas) are starting their work day. NORAD is unusually prepared on 9/11, because it is conducting a week-long semiannual exercise called Vigilant Guardian. [Newhouse News, 1/25/02] NORAD is thus fully staffed and alert, and senior officers are manning stations throughout the US. The entire chain of command is in place and ready when the first hijacking is reported. > [@xtisme](#): > > Well, from my own read I don’t think there was anything that could have been done to prevent 77 from hitting the Pentagon. On this issue I’m willing to cut the Administration, the FAA and NORAD some slack as I can understand the very human problems associated with such an emergency. Exactly. But just because “forewarned is forearmed” is an old saying, doesn’t mean it’s any less true. If you have some idea of what might be coming, you react with greater alacrity when it arrives. This is why the apparent failure to spread the word about the threats listed in the PDB upsets me so much. Not knowing that something’s coming, of course there’s a great deal of fog-of-war in people’s reactions. But if FAA and NORAD had known ahead of time that the same outfit that had bombed the WTC in 1993 and blown up two of our embassies in 1998 was planning to hijack planes here in America, people at those agencies, when faced with a hijacking, might’ve had the thought balloon, “this is it!” I have not said I believe forewarning would have enabled them to take down Flight 77. It’s definitely a _might_-have at best. But I can’t see anything out of this other than that the response should have been more knowledgeable, and therefore more rapid. Even if it didn’t prevent anything. _Then_ I would have said they’d done the best they could do that day. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2004, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/104 "2004-04-27T03:50:09Z")
I guess, RTFirefly, that its all how you look at it. The way I’m seeing it, especially after this thread, the mistakes made were understandable…and very human. The one real question I have is why nothing was sent after flight 93…to me thats the one area of true question, and if a major preventable mistake happened thats probably it. Luckily for us all it was a moot point, and we dodged a bullet there. Obviously you don’t agree. There really isn’t much point in going around and around further on this thing to my mind unless some new data is injected in that changes the equation (for me at least)…its all been pretty well layed out, and looking at the same data we are drawing different conclusions. I think I’ll limit myself to responding to your previous post here then bow out unless new data comes to light. I enjoyed the debate with you and blowero and the others on this…I really learned a lot here, a lot of stuff I didn’t know before this thread. > [@RTFirefly](#): > > Did these agencies respond on 9/11 as if they had been aware that terrorists had made known their interest in hijacking airplanes as part of some sort of attack? No. I suppose you could argue that everybody got the memo, then forgot about it, but let’s use Occam’s Razor on this, for Pete’s sake. Alternatively (since we are both just speculating at this point), maybe only the most upper management had been briefed in, and it hadn’t filtered down to everyone else. And we were talking about events that took place between 8-10am est…thats 6-8pm mountain time (where NORAD’s HQ is…or at least used to be). Even between 8-10am on the east coast, there is no guarentee that the folks who had been briefed in were available, or that they were seeing the big picture (assuming that ANYONE at the FAA or NORAD was ever briefed in of course). Remember, multiple different technicians were working separately on various problems as they occured. No one was looking at the big picture and seeing all the data. We are only seeing it all NOW. So, using MY Occam’s Razor is giving me different results that you using your own. Different perception, different filters…and different experiences in life no doubt. > [@RTFirefly](#): > > True. But if in the midst of a fire in my kitchen, a flying saucer crashes into the back deck, I’m gonna notice that something off the scale has just happened. Well, not sure what you are getting at here exactly. If all those things happened at your house at the same time I doubt you’d be thinking very coherently, nor would you know exactly what was going on, though as you say you’d probably be on to the fact something strange was afoot. But say you were some radar technician (well, air traffic controller) in New York handling one of the flights. You are focused on running that flight as well as several others. Something funny happens (i.e. the transponder goes off) and you here a garbled radio transmission. Sure, you realize something has gone wrong…but what? You don’t know about the OTHER flights, because you are working this flight. You know some things about your little piece of the puzzle. At NORAD you have technicians that also are tracking various things…but no one technician is tracking everything. Rememer, they have OTHER jobs (just like those air traffic controllers at the FAA) that they are doing at the same time this is all going down. Briefing upper management in on all the various things going wierd takes time you know. Sure, this supervisor, or that administrator knows that there are multiple events…but what exactly? Your own cite bears this out…look at the confusion in the times. One guy says NORAD was informed at 8:40…another 8:30…another 8:34. Maybe they are ALL right and different people got the word at different times because the information was fragementary, coming in from different sources at different times, and that folks became aware of it variably. It takes time for individual technicians to relate the problems and the details they are focused on and begin building a coherent picture in such a situation. I find this scenerio, using my Occam’s Razor, to be perfectly logical as I’ve been in crisis before and this is pretty much how shit happens. I might have some details wrong, but in broad strokes this is how I’m seeing this thing having gone down. > [@RTFirefly](#): > > I have not said I believe forewarning would have enabled them to take down Flight 77. It’s definitely a might-have at best. But I can’t see anything out of this other than that the response should have been more knowledgeable, and therefore more rapid. Even if it didn’t prevent anything. There are a lot of ‘what-ifs’ and ‘might have beens’ in this whole scenerio. If only intellegence agencies had of shared data and cooperated more. If only someone would have been smart enough to put it all together ahead of time. If only someone had of gotten lucky and gotten a lead about the training and the terrorist opperating in the US…and seen it for what it was. But sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. Sometimes the bad guys get the breaks. And when shit starts happening like what happenend on 9/11 people get confused because they simply aren’t prepared for something so unexpected. You see it as a major failure of the President and maybe the system itself. I see it as a failure, but a very human failure. We will just never see eye to eye on this thing. -XT ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2004, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/105 "2004-04-27T18:03:48Z")
> [@](#): > > xstime: > Well, again there are contradictory timelines for this. I’ve seen cites that put this order at 9:30am or even 8 min. after the Pentagon was taken out. My guess is…there were multiple people ordering multiple contridictory or even conflicting orders…or ordering the same things by different people at different times. And don’t forget just plain sloppy news reporting. I’m sure a lot of these sources hastened the fact-checking process in order to be the first one to break a story. But then it also makes you wonder how much got changed after the fact by people in government who were trying to cover their ass. The cite I quoted before had an amusing example where one of the air bases that took a long time to get their fighters off the ground, actually changed the mission statement that appears on their website. Their original mission statement was constant readiness, and after 9/11 they changed it to something more neutral, after the fact. I’ll try to find that cite when I have time. The other problem is that all these homemade websites, while many have a lot of great info and meticulous citations, they tend to go too far in playing up the conspiracy angle, so a lot of the conclusions these guys are drawing are really suspect. > [@](#): > > Also, I don’t think that the President is the only one who can authorize a shoot down. Some cites say the president IS the only one who can, while others say that the military ALWAYS has implicit permission to do so if necessary. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2004, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009/106 "2004-04-27T18:37:25Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > Some cites say the president IS the only one who can, while others say that the military ALWAYS has implicit permission to do so if necessary. I wonder which is true…or if its even something thats formally listed. Is there a precidence, I wonder, setting out who all has the authority to order such a thing? I actually looked a bit for this a few days ago but didn’t find anything helpful. -XT [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/norad-had-drills-of-jets-as-weapons/241009.md?page=5)