ELECT JOHN KERRY AS PRESIDENT AND
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF!
Don't Vote for a President who Covers
Up Major Military Mix-ups about 9/11
By Allan Keislar
Our military has given us gravely
conflicting testimonies about what happened on September
11, 2001. But Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush has let them go scot-free. No
one has even been reprimanded.
On September
13, 2001, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen Richard Myers testified
before the Senate Armed Services Committee that the order to scramble fighter aircraft on 9/11 had been given only
"after the Pentagon was struck." (A flight attendant reported the
first hijacked flight at 8:19 a.m., while the aircraft that
attacked the Pentagon crashed at 9:37, a full hour and 18 minutes
later--and 35 minutes after the second
WTC was hit, when the whole country, including the President, knew we were
under a terrorist attack.) Gen. Myers did not alter his admission of this
shocking defense failure, nor did he even try to explain this long delay, when
he was later asked: "You said earlier in your testimony that we had not
scrambled any military aircraft until after the Pentagon was hit. And so, my
question would be: why?" Further, when he was asked yet another time
"what happened to the response of the defense establishment" after
the two World Trade Center towers were hit and two more airliners had been
hijacked and were heading straight back towards Washington, Gen. Myers again
confirmed that "the decision…to start launching aircraft" was made
only after he had spoken to the commander of NORAD (North American Air Defense
Command)--which Myers earlier had told Armed Forces Radio and Television was
just after the Pentagon had been hit.
Gen. Myers' startling
confession agreed with U.S. National Guard statements, as reported on September
12: "Air defense around Washington is provided mainly by
fighter planes from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland near the District of Columbia border. The DC Air National
Guard is also based there and equipped with F-16 fighter planes, a National
Guard spokesman said. But the fighters took to the skies over Washington only after the devastating
attack on the Pentagon."
Marine Corps Major Mike
Snyder, a spokesman for NORAD, confirmed Gen. Myers' testimony. As reported on September
15: "[T]he command did not immediately scramble any fighters even though
it was alerted to a hijacking 10 minutes before the first plane...slammed into
the first World Trade Center tower.... The spokesman said the fighters remained
on the ground until after the Pentagon was hit."
According to Gen. Myers'
testimony, the Pentagon also acted slowly. Senator Levin, Chairman of the
Senate Armed Services Committee, asked Myers, "The time that we don't have
is when the Pentagon was notified, if they were, by the FAA or the FBI or any
other agency.…" Myers replied, "I
can answer that. At the time of the first impact on the World Trade Center, we stood up
our crisis action team. That was done immediately. So we stood it up." This means, as the New York Times explained on September 15:
"During the hour or so that American Airlines Flight 77 was under the
control of the hijackers, up to the moment it struck the west side of the
Pentagon, military officials in a command center on the east side of the
Pentagon were urgently talking to law enforcement and air traffic control
officials about what to do."
Yet they did not scramble planes for an hour. Astonishingly, on September 16
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in a PBS interview, "We
responded awfully quickly, I might say, on Tuesday. And in fact, we were
already tracking in on that plane that crashed in Pennsylvania [United Airlines Flight 93].
I think it was the heroism of the passengers on board that brought it down, but
the Air Force was in a position to do so
if we had had to."
Gen. Myers, too, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, testified that "we had launched on the one that eventually
crashed in Pennsylvania. I mean, we had gotten somebody close to it," but did not fire on it.
On September 18, however, NORAD
issued a press release with a different story: fighters were scrambled before
the Pentagon was struck, but they were still too late to intercept the hijacked
planes, and no fighter came nearer than 100 miles to Flight 93. NORAD stated
that the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) had notified it of the first three hijackings
only at 8:40, 8:43 and 9:24
a.m.,
and jets from Otis AFB in Massachusetts and Langley AFB in Virginia were in the air within 12, 9
and 6 minutes respectively of the notifications. Because of the distances from
the air force bases to the cities, although the jets flew towards New York and Washington at about 9 miles per
minute, they were 8 and 12 minutes away when the second and third hijacked
airliners struck their targets at 9:02 and 9:37. Also, the exact time NORAD
learned about the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was given as
"N/A," (not applicable), since the FAA and NORAD had already "established a line of open communication
discussing AA Flt. 77 and UA Flt. 93," but the fighters were 100 miles
away when the plane crashed. The earlier statements of the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs (the highest uniformed military officer in the U.S.), other military officers,
and the Deputy Defense Secretary, were due to "inaccurate information."
On Oct. 25, 2001, the Commander-in-Chief of NORAD, Gen. Ralph
Eberhart, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He confirmed
that the FAA had informed NORAD that
Flight 77 was "probably hijacked" at 9:24 a.m., even though it had deviated
from its course and turned back towards Washington about 8:55.
("I do not know, sir," he testified, "why it took that amount of
time for the FAA [to inform NORAD]. I hate to say it, but you'll have to ask
FAA.") Gen. Eberhart was also asked, "And then you had the other two
planes heading out. Then FAA continued to notify NORAD that you had two other
potential hijackings, these headed for Washington; is that correct?"
Gen. Eberhart replied, "Yes, sir.
The initial hijacking of the one, I think it's 77 that crashed into the
Pentagon, we were working that with the FAA and we launched the airplanes out
of Langley Air Force Base as soon as they notified us about the
hijacking." Gen. Eberhart also explained that the reason the fighters flying
straight to New York from Otis AFB, and the ones flying to Washington from
Langley AFB, reached their destinations too late was simply that there was not
enough time: "…so we’re moving the two F-15s and we continue to move them.
They’re flying toward New York City…. Again, it's time and
distance…. Tragically, there was just too much distance between Otis and New York City to get there in time to...."
Nearly two years later, in
public testimony before the 9/11 Commission, military officials repeated this
same story. On May 23, 2003, NORAD
official Larry Arnold testified that NORAD had received notification of the
hijacking of American 77 at 9:24 a.m., and the same day another NORAD official,
William Scott, testified that NORAD had received hijack notification of United
93 from the FAA at 9:16 a.m. (see 9/11 Commission Report, p. 34 and
footnotes).
However, the 9/11 Commission
finally concluded that many of these statements by our top military personnel
and NORAD officials were "incorrect." Although NORAD’s September 18,
2001 press release said NORAD and the FAA had "established a line of open communication discussing AA Flt. 77 and UA
Flt. 93," and NORAD officials confirmed this in May, 2003, the 9/11
Commission Report asserts that NORAD "never
received notice that American 77 was hijacked," and that "by the time the military learned about the
flight [United 93], it had crashed" (p. 34). Contradicting Gen.
Eberhart, it further states that the interceptors were NOT moved directly
towards New York and Washington, but instead--because NORAD was “uncertain
about what to do”--the Otis AFB fighters were placed in a "holding pattern"
(p. 20) while the Langley AFB jets “incorrectly…flew due east for 60 miles” (p.
27). Why is there so much discrepancy here? The President must be held responsible.
He should have called somebody to account. He should have seen that those who
made such glaring errors were disciplined. Don’t vote for a Commander-in-Chief who
can’t or won’t correct those who have spread such confusion! Stop this
President who goes on covering up such major military mix-ups about 9/11!
VOTE FOR
JOHN KERRY! Contact your local
Democratic Party Headquarters to volunteer.
About the Author:
Allan Keislar was born and raised in South Asia of American
parents. After getting his Ph.D. in South and Southeast Asian Studies from the
University of California at Berkeley in 1998, he taught as an adjunct professor
at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and now on the faculty of Forman
Christian College, in Lahore, Pakistan, as professor of History and Pakistan
Studies (but in 2004 is on leave, and is living in Berkeley with his wife and
three children).
He is a registered Democrat, but says
he has not voted straight party line, and really is more of an independent. About
this election he says; “I definitely plan to vote for Kerry, mainly because
Bush is so antithetical to everything America, at its
best, stands for.”