Sunday 24 October 2021

Federal Aviation Administration Failures on 9/11: Why Did Those Responsible for Responding to the Hijackings Get It So Wrong?

The FAA's Command Center
The actions of personnel at the headquarters of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on September 11, 2001, were marked by failures that likely hindered the U.S. government's response to the hijackings that day and may consequently have increased the chances that the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon would succeed.

Well-established procedures were meant to be followed in the event of a hijacking in American airspace. FAA headquarters was required to promptly call the National Military Command Center (NMCC) at the Pentagon about the incident and, if necessary, request fighter jets to follow the hijacked aircraft.

On September 11, though, this never happened. FAA headquarters learned that a plane--American Airlines Flight 11--had been hijacked at around 8:32 a.m. but subsequently made no attempt to contact the military about the incident. The NMCC consequently only learned that a hijacking had occurred almost half an hour later, after Flight 11 crashed into the World Center and an officer there called FAA headquarters seeking more information about the crash.

Furthermore, the FAA headquarters employee who answered the call gave a wildly inaccurate description of the hijacking. He said the pilot of Flight 11 had reported that everything was under control and the plane was going to land soon in New York, even though the pilot never communicated with anyone on the ground after the plane was hijacked, the terrorists had been in control of the plane after they hijacked it, and the plane had already crashed and so was never going to land in New York. He also made no request for military assistance, even though such assistance was surely essential.

FAA headquarters personnel subsequently set up a teleconference to help manage the crisis. The "primary net" was intended to connect the FAA to other government agencies so information could be shared and the participating agencies could coordinate their actions. The primary net, however, turned out to be practically worthless. It only began at 9:20 a.m., at least 48 minutes after FAA headquarters learned about the hijacking of Flight 11, by which time two hijacked planes had already crashed into the World Trade Center.

Additionally, the NMCC was inexplicably either not included in the primary net or only in it briefly early on after it was established. And yet the facility was meant to be the "focal point" within the Department of Defense for providing assistance in response to a hijacking in U.S. airspace. One senior FAA official noted that during the dozens of hijackings he had previously responded to, the NMCC was "always on the net"--but not on September 11, it seems. What is more, little information was shared over the primary net and the teleconference "played no role in coordinating a response to the attacks," according to two of its participants.

Although the failures of FAA headquarters personnel may have had serious consequences, little effort has been made to properly investigate these failures and find out what caused them. A possibility worth considering is that FAA headquarters personnel were participating in a training exercise on the morning of September 11, which may have been based around a scenario with similarities to the 9/11 attacks, like one featuring a hijacking. If such an exercise was taking place, the concurrence of events could have caused headquarters personnel to mistake the real-world hijackings for part of the exercise or in other ways hindered their response to the attacks.

FAA personnel had in fact previously participated in numerous exercises that included simulated hijackings. Aviation security personnel at FAA headquarters had actually participated in two exercises earlier in 2001 based around hijackings. It would therefore have been a fairly typical event if an exercise featuring a simulated hijacking was set to take place at FAA headquarters on September 11.

If an exercise was being held when the 9/11 attacks began, we would need to consider whether this unhelpful situation was brought about intentionally so as to hinder the response of FAA headquarters personnel to the attacks. But al-Qaeda--the group that supposedly perpetrated the attacks--would have been unable to influence what scenarios featured in FAA exercises. We would therefore also need to contemplate the disturbing possibility that rogue individuals in the U.S. government, who could indeed have influenced what these exercises involved, played a role in planning the attacks.

FAA HAD A KEY ROLE DURING A HIJACKING
The FAA had an essential role when it came to responding to hijackings in United States airspace. The agency is responsible for regulating civil aviation and operating a system of air traffic control. [1] On September 11, many air traffic controllers worked at its 21 Air Route Traffic Control Centers across the U.S. These centers were grouped under regional offices and coordinated closely with the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in Herndon, Virginia, which managed traffic flow within the entire airspace system. [2]

At FAA headquarters in Washington, DC, the civil aviation security division was responsible for dealing with "air piracy" and bringing a hijacking crisis to a safe resolution. [3] And the aviation command center (ACC), where FAA security personnel responded to a crisis, was responsible for directing the activities of law enforcement in response to a hijacking. [4]

The NMCC also had important responsibilities when a hijacking occurred. The facility comprises a labyrinth of rooms in the Pentagon basement, in the center portion of the building. It is a highly secure command and control complex equipped with sophisticated communications capabilities, which serves as the "nerve center" of the Pentagon. General Richard Myers, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 11, described it as "a switchboard connecting the Pentagon, the civilian government, and the combatant commanders."

While its primary task is to monitor worldwide events for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the NMCC also has a crisis response component. It is where the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff would run the Pentagon during a major emergency that could last for a prolonged period of time. This presumably meant it had an essential role to play as the U.S. military responded to the 9/11 attacks. [5]

The protocol for responding to a hijacking, and the key roles of the FAA and the NMCC, were described in documents published between 1998 and 2001. The administrator of the FAA had "exclusive responsibility to direct law enforcement activity related to actual or attempted aircraft piracy (hijacking) in the 'special aircraft jurisdiction' of the United States," a military instruction from June 2001 stated. And if the FAA required fighter jets to follow a hijacked aircraft, the hijack coordinator at FAA headquarters was responsible for requesting them from the military, according to an FAA order from November 1998.

The NMCC, meanwhile, was "the focal point within [the] Department of Defense for providing assistance." In the event of a hijacking, it was meant to be notified "by the most expeditious means" by the FAA. Furthermore, the FAA, the NMCC, and the deputy director for operations in the NMCC were required to "maintain coordination during the aircraft piracy situation." [6]

FAA HEADQUARTERS DID NOT CALL THE NMCC ABOUT THE FIRST HIJACKING
On September 11, however, FAA headquarters failed to contact the NMCC about the hijacking of Flight 11 after it learned of the incident and so the NMCC only heard that a hijacking had occurred later on, when an officer there called FAA headquarters as he tried to gather information about the crash at the World Trade Center.

American Airlines Flight 11 was the first of four commercial aircraft to be hijacked that day. The Boeing 767 took off from Logan International Airport in Boston at 7:59 a.m., bound for Los Angeles. The 9/11 Commission--the panel created by Congress and the president in 2002 to investigate the 9/11 attacks--concluded that it was likely hijacked by five Middle Eastern terrorists 15 minutes into its flight, at around 8:14 a.m. Just over half an hour later, at 8:46 a.m., Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. Everyone on the plane and many people in the tower were killed.

The first indication air traffic controllers had of a problem with Flight 11 was at 8:14 a.m., when the pilot failed to respond to an instruction from a controller at the FAA's Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center. All subsequent attempts to communicate with the flight were unsuccessful. Boston Center controllers concluded that the plane had been hijacked at 8:25 a.m. after hearing a couple of suspicious radio transmissions, apparently made by a hijacker, from the plane.

Managers at the center then started alerting their chain of command. At 8:28 a.m., they contacted the FAA's Command Center in Herndon and said they believed Flight 11 had been hijacked. In response, at 8:32 a.m., the Command Center contacted FAA headquarters and told the duty officer there about the hijacking. [7]

FAA headquarters was in fact already aware of the hijacking by that time, apparently because it had just been alerted to the incident by the FAA's New England Regional Operations Center (ROC). The ROC was contacted by the Boston Center at 8:30 a.m. and informed of the hijacking, and appears to have passed on the news to FAA headquarters right away. Therefore, when the Command Center called FAA headquarters at 8:32 a.m., the duty officer there said that "security personnel at headquarters had just begun discussing the apparent hijack on a conference call with the New England regional office," according to the 9/11 Commission Report. [8]

And yet no one at FAA headquarters subsequently contacted the NMCC about the hijacking. "FAA headquarters began to follow the hijack protocol but did not contact the NMCC to request a fighter escort," the 9/11 Commission Report noted. [9] Consequently, NMCC personnel only learned that this was something other than a normal day at the same time and in the same way as members of the public did, when they saw television networks reporting the crash at the World Trade Center in the minutes after it occurred. [10]

"We monitor the television networks in the center," Steve Hahn, an operations officer in the NMCC, described. "And along with the rest of America we saw the smoke pouring from the tower," he added. With no knowledge that a group of terrorists had recently hijacked an aircraft, however, it apparently never occurred to NMCC staffers that the crash was a terrorist attack. "At first, we thought it was a terrible accident," Dan Mangino, another operations officer, recalled. [11]

The NMCC only learned a plane had been hijacked at least 28 minutes after FAA headquarters was alerted to the incident, when Lieutenant Colonel Ryan Gonsalves, the senior operations officer there, called FAA headquarters, and the person he spoke to mentioned that Flight 11 had been hijacked and gave some details of what had happened. However, the poor response of FAA headquarters to the hijacking continued, as the person gave Gonsalves wildly inaccurate information about it.

FAA HEADQUARTERS EMPLOYEE GAVE INCORRECT DETAILS OF THE HIJACKING
Gonsalves had set about gathering information about the crash at the World Trade Center after NMCC personnel saw coverage of it on television and consequently, at 9:00 a.m., called FAA headquarters. [12] The person he spoke to briefed him on the "explosion" at the World Trade Center, which they said was "possibly" caused by an aircraft crash. They also mentioned the hijacking of Flight 11, which they said was a flight from Boston to Los Angeles. They apparently made no connection between the hijacking and the crash in New York, and never suggested to Gonsalves that the plane that hit the World Trade Center might have been Flight 11.

They also gave Gonsalves some incorrect details of the hijacked flight. They said it was still airborne, the pilot was still in control, and the plane was "now en route" to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. [13] The pilot "had called in and said everything was under control, and he was going to land at New York shortly," Captain Charles Leidig, the acting deputy director for operations in the NMCC on September 11, has explained. [14] In fact, according to the official narrative of 9/11, the terrorists took over the controls of Flight 11 from the original pilots when they hijacked the plane and Flight 11 was never en route to JFK International Airport. And rather than everything being under control, the plane had crashed about a quarter of an hour earlier. [15]

Furthermore, the person at FAA headquarters made no request for military help in dealing with the hijacking. Gonsalves told the 9/11 Commission that he didn't "recall that anyone asked for assistance." [16] Lieutenant Colonel John Sims, who was with Gonsalves at the time and listened to the call with FAA headquarters, corroborated this. When he was asked by the 9/11 Commission, "Did [the] FAA ask for assistance [from the] NMCC" regarding "scrambling fighters"? he replied, "There was none of that in the initial call." [17]

Gonsalves should have perhaps asked the caller if the FAA required military assistance. However, he made no such inquiry. "That isn't something he would do," he told the 9/11 Commission. [18] The scrambling of fighters to follow the hijacked aircraft "was not discussed" during the call, the 9/11 Commission Report noted. [19]

FAA TELECONFERENCE 'PLAYED NO ROLE IN COORDINATING A RESPONSE TO THE ATTACKS'
Other problems with the FAA headquarters response to the hijackings surround a teleconference headquarters personnel established called the "primary net." A primary net would be set up by the FAA to bring other federal agencies into the loop in an emergency and assemble decision makers to allow for coordinated action. It would be run from the ACC within the operations center on the 10th floor of the FAA headquarters building. [20] It was meant to be "the fundamental primary source of information" between participating agencies, according to Monte Belger, the acting FAA deputy administrator when the 9/11 attacks occurred, and would allow these agencies to "talk strategically." [21]

Before the primary net was set up on September 11, FAA headquarters established another important teleconference. It activated the "tactical net," an internal teleconference between various FAA facilities, at 8:50 a.m. and this had been run from the ACC since then. [22] A tactical net was intended to bring FAA personnel "up to speed" before they contacted other agencies. [23]

The primary net was activated by security personnel at FAA headquarters half an hour later, at about 9:20 a.m. [24] Michael Weikert, a crisis management specialist, instructed Sharon Battle, an operations officer, to activate the teleconference. [25] Using a checklist of agencies that were meant to be included, operations center personnel then added appropriate parties to the primary net. [26] The process involved using a PC-based conferencing system to speed dial the participating agencies. [27]

Key government agencies were brought into the teleconference. The FBI was added to it at 9:21 a.m.; the Secret Service at 9:22 a.m.; the Department of Justice at 9:23 a.m.; the CIA at 9:25 a.m.; the Defense Intelligence Agency at 9:27 a.m.; the State Department at 9:28 a.m.; and the White House at 9:29 a.m. Regional FAA division managers also participated. [28] Weikert ran the teleconference and when a new person joined it, he would announce who he was, identify the primary net, and then give updates. [29]

And yet the primary net turned out to be of little benefit. Major Charles Chambers, who represented the NMCC on the teleconference, recalled that either "nothing was being said" or "nothing of substance" was said over it. Communications were "intermittent" and there was "a lot of dead air," he commented. [30] Weikert said that while he gave out information, he received little back and so there was "not much traffic." [31] Both men said they believed the primary net "played no role in coordinating a response to the attacks," according to the 9/11 Commission Report. [32]

NMCC WAS POSSIBLY INITIALLY ABSENT FROM THE FAA TELECONFERENCE
Furthermore, the NMCC was, according to several accounts, either absent from the primary net or only on it briefly early on after it was activated. On the one hand, a couple of chronologies compiled by the FAA stated that the NMCC, or specifically Charles Chambers at the NMCC, was included in the primary net from the time it began, being added to it at 9:20 a.m. [33] And FAA headquarters employee Sharon Battle told the 9/11 Commission, "She remembers adding the NMCC to the primary net." [34]

But a report produced by the NMCC stated that the FAA "did not bring [the] NMCC into their hijack conference" as it responded to the hijacking of Flight 11. [35] This contention was supported by Lee Longmire, the FAA's director of civil aviation security operations on September 11, who said that while the NMCC should have been on the primary net from the outset, he "learned that this didn't occur" and "wasn't sure when the situation was rectified." [36] The NMCC was "absent for some undetermined length of time," he recalled. [37]

And, notably, Michael Weikert--the man who ran the primary net--said he was unable to recall the NMCC joining the teleconference or anyone from the military speaking to identify themselves. He said he remembered the military participating only "for a short period of time" before the attack on the Pentagon, which took place just before 9:38 a.m. He recalled FAA headquarters personnel "trying to raise" the NMCC "when we were tracking the plane that crashed [into] the Pentagon." And he said he was unable to recall "what was finally done to locate the military when it was learned no one in the ACC had [the NMCC] on the line." [38]

Monte Belger, meanwhile, said he became aware at some point that the NMCC was not included "in any meaningful way" in the primary net. "The most frustrating after-the-fact scenario for me to understand is to explain ... the communication link on that morning between the FAA operations center and the NMCC," he commented. He was very unhappy when he learned about the absence of the NMCC from the teleconference and uttered what has been described as "some rather colorful language" as he expressed his annoyance. "I know how it's supposed to work, but ... it's still a little frustrating for me to understand how it actually did work on that day," he remarked. [39]

Even after the primary net had been running for some time and the NMCC was presumably properly connected to it, the military command center was only involved in a limited way. Chambers estimated that he spent just 25 percent of his time listening to the teleconference. The primary net was only monitored periodically because there were a limited number of personnel available in the NMCC, he explained, and these people had a lot of tasks demanding their attention. [40]

SOME FAA PERSONNEL MAY HAVE BEEN UNAWARE OF THE HIJACKING
We surely need to determine why there was such poor communication between FAA headquarters and the NMCC on September 11, considering the key roles of the two facilities when a hijacking occurred. It was the job of aviation security personnel at FAA headquarters to deal with aircraft hijackings and bring them to a safe resolution. [41] And the NMCC was meant to be "the focal point within [the] Department of Defense for providing assistance" in response to hijackings in U.S. airspace. [42] The poor communication between the facilities might therefore have seriously hampered the U.S. government's response to the 9/11 attacks.

Numerous questions need to be addressed. To begin with, was there a lack of communication within FAA headquarters about what was happening on the morning of September 11, which hindered the ability of personnel there to respond to the crisis? The recollections of Lee Longmire and Michael Weikert suggest this could have been the case.

Longmire, who arrived at the ACC before 8:46 a.m., when Flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Center, recalled that even by 9:03 a.m., when a second hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center, he had not heard the word "hijack" mentioned in the ACC and he did not hear anyone in the ACC discuss seeking military assistance around that time. [43] Weikert similarly recalled that when he arrived at the ACC, apparently shortly after 8:50 a.m., when it was activated, no one in the facility was talking about getting military help. [44]

Were people in the ACC unaware that a plane had been hijacked? If so, why was this? Surely headquarters personnel needed to know about the hijacking and should have been openly discussing it. And could a failure to share the news of the hijacking of Flight 11 be one reason why no one at FAA headquarters contacted the NMCC about the incident?

A further question is when Ryan Gonsalves called FAA headquarters from the NMCC and was told about the hijacking, why did the person he spoke to make no request for military assistance? Although Flight 11 had already crashed by the time the call was made, the person Gonsalves spoke to seemed to believe it was still airborne and there had been numerous problems with the flight that surely meant military assistance was essential.

Radio contact with Flight 11 was lost at around 8:14 a.m. Then, at 8:21 a.m., the plane's transponder--which sends an aircraft's identifying information, speed, and altitude to air traffic controllers' radar screens--was turned off. The 9/11 Commission Report noted that "the simultaneous loss of radio and transponder signal would be a rare and alarming occurrence, and would normally indicate a catastrophic system failure or an aircraft crash." The severity of the crisis presumably became even clearer at around 8:26 a.m., when Flight 11 veered drastically off course as it began a sharp turn to the south. [45] And yet the FAA employee Gonsalves spoke to apparently thought it was unnecessary to request that fighter jets be launched to help deal with the situation.

FAA TELECONFERENCE WAS SLOW TO BE ACTIVATED
Another crucial question is why did it take the FAA so long to establish the primary net that would enable it to share information and coordinate its actions with other government agencies? The primary net was only activated at 9:20 a.m. according to one FAA chronology. Since it was titled "Operations Center Activity Report," this document was presumably put together by personnel from the operations center at FAA headquarters who would surely have been well placed to accurately determine when the teleconference began. [46]

From the beginning of the crisis on September 11, a fast response was essential. But if the Operations Center Activity Report is correct, by the time the primary net was activated, at least 48 minutes had passed since FAA headquarters was alerted to the hijacking of Flight 11 and around half an hour had passed since personnel there likely noticed the first crash at the World Trade Center being reported on television.

The time it took FAA headquarters to establish communication with the other agencies that were included in the primary net was in fact even longer than the 9:20 a.m. time implies, since, as Michael Weikert noted, it "took some time for other parties to get on the line." [47] Sharon Battle estimated that it took up to 10 minutes to set up the call. [48] According to the Operations Center Activity Report, it took until 9:29 a.m. for the participating agencies to be added to the teleconference. [49]

One claim about the primary net, if correct, is particularly concerning, this being the suggestion that the teleconference was requested around 30 minutes before it was activated. FAA civil aviation security operations representatives requested that "the primary communication net be established" at 8:50 a.m., an FAA timeline published six days after the attacks stated. [50] Consistent with this document, Weikert recalled instructing Sharon Battle to "open up the nets and fire up the [aviation] command center." [51] He was apparently implying that he asked for the ACC to be activated at the same time as he asked for the primary net to be activated. Since the ACC was activated at 8:50 a.m., this suggests that he asked for the primary net to be activated at 8:50 a.m. [52] And Robert McLaughlin recalled that when he went to the ACC at "around 8:55 a.m. or 9:00 a.m.," the primary net "was in the process of being activated." [53] If the primary net was requested at 8:50 a.m., then, what happened in the following 30 minutes to delay its activation?

NMCC WAS INITIALLY MISSING FROM THE PRIMARY NET
A further question regarding the primary net is why was the NMCC initially absent from the teleconference or only in it briefly? The NMCC should surely have been fully involved from the outset in light of its crucial role in responding to hijackings. Indeed, this is what some senior FAA personnel have said they expected to happen.

The NMCC was "supposed to be monitoring the [primary] net as a protocol," Weikert commented. [54] "The primary net should have included the NMCC," Jeff Griffith, the deputy director of air traffic, similarly stated. [55] Lee Longmire explained that the NMCC was meant to be "automatically included in that net." [56] It was "standard procedure to pull the military into the communications link as soon as possible so they could monitor the [hijacked] aircraft," he said. [57] The NMCC was then meant to stay in the background, monitoring the teleconference and providing information if requested, he explained. [58] And yet Weikert recalled the NMCC only being on the primary net "for a short period of time" before the Pentagon was hit, at around 9:38 a.m. [59]

The absence of the NMCC from the primary net was unprecedented. The facility was "always included in the communication net that was used to manage a hijack incident," according to Monte Belger. [60] Belger said that in 30 years working for the FAA, he had responded to "dozens of hijackings" before 9/11 and during every one of these incidents, the NMCC was "always there." "They were always on the net and were always listening in with everybody else," he recalled. [61] What happened on September 11, then, such that this wasn't the case that day?

A final question regarding the primary net is why did the NMCC treat this potentially invaluable resource with indifference? The primary net was meant to be "the fundamental primary source of information" between participating agencies, according to Belger. And yet it was regarded as being of only minor importance by NMCC personnel on September 11. It was "not viewed as urgent," Chambers commented. [62]

HIJACKING OF FLIGHT 11 COULD HAVE BEEN MISTAKEN FOR AN EXERCISE SIMULATION
When we try to determine what caused the lack of communication between FAA headquarters and the NMCC on September 11, a couple of factors worth considering are training exercises that had taken place before that day, which included simulated hijackings, and the possibility that the FAA and NMCC were involved in exercises on the morning of September 11 featuring scenarios that had similarities to the real-world attacks.

If FAA headquarters and NMCC personnel were taking part in exercises when the 9/11 attacks occurred based around scenarios resembling the real-world crisis, they could have mistaken real events for simulations in the exercises. Alternatively, they may have mistakenly thought real events were part of an exercise because these events resembled scenarios featured in exercises they had participated in on previous dates. If either of these situations was the case, this may have caused them to fail to respond to the real-world hijackings, respond to the hijackings inappropriately, or respond without the urgency that was required.

For example, if FAA headquarters personnel thought the reported hijacking of Flight 11 was part of an exercise, this might be one reason why it took them until 9:20 a.m. to set up the primary net. They would presumably have been unaware of the potentially catastrophic consequences of their inaction and would have felt little urgency to set up a teleconference with other agencies to deal with a hijacking that they thought was only a simulation.

Perhaps they were participating in an exercise that featured a simulated hijacking, but military assistance was unnecessary. If this was the case, it could help explain why no one called the NMCC after FAA headquarters was alerted to the hijacking of Flight 11.

FAA RAN EXERCISES BASED AROUND SIMULATED HIJACKINGS
FAA personnel certainly participated in numerous exercises before September 11 that included simulated hijackings. The FAA held various tabletop exercises in the years before 9/11 and its civil aviation security office may have exercised hijacks, Monte Belger told the 9/11 Commission. Additionally, "multi-agency exercises"--which the FAA presumably participated in--"addressed hijacks," he said. [63] Michael Weikert recalled that he had "worked a hijacking in training" before 9/11. [64]

One large exercise held by the FAA in 1995, called Twin Star, was based around the scenario of terrorists hijacking a plane bound from Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC, to Gander International Airport in Newfoundland, Canada. It involved a real commercial airliner playing the part of the hijacked plane and a fighter jet shadowing the aircraft. FAA headquarters personnel tested their teleconference bridge and use of the ACC. They also tested their ability to communicate with other FAA facilities and regional units. The "entire FAA system" was involved and the NMCC also participated, along with the FBI, the U.S. Air Force, the State Department, and airline industry personnel.

Although this exercise took place quite a long time before 9/11, similar exercises may have been held on subsequent occasions. Mae Avery, manager of the operations center at FAA headquarters on September 11, said she believed there were "a number of exercises of this type" before 9/11. [65]

An exercise was held by the FAA in December 2000 in which scenarios that were "pretty damn close to [the] 9/11 plot" were practiced. One scenario "may have had something to do with a chartered flight out of Ohio that had turned the transponder off," John Hawley, who worked for the FAA's intelligence division, recalled. [66] (This aspect of the scenario resembled the events of September 11 in that the transponder was turned off on three of the four hijacked planes that day. [67])

Exercises featuring hijack scenarios were held in the months preceding 9/11. The FAA civil aviation security operations division ran two "crisis exercises" early in 2001 based around hijackings, Robert McLaughlin recalled. These involved "traditional" hijacking scenarios that did not include suicide attacks. [68]

In the summer of 2001, the FAA held a hijack exercise as part of its efforts to update the "Common Strategy"--the doctrine and training materials it developed on how to deal with hijackings. The exercise made use of a Boeing 767--the type of aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11. Along with the FAA, participants included the FBI's Miami, Florida, field office, Miami-Dade County Police Department, a SWAT team, and Varig Airlines. [69]

Although no evidence has so far come to light showing FAA headquarters personnel were involved in a training exercise on September 11, it is worth noting that numerous government agencies and facilities, and also military organizations, were conducting or preparing for exercises that day. [70] It appears like different exercises may have been coordinated to occur at the same time. If this was the case, it is surely possible that the FAA planned to hold an exercise on September 11 too, so its exercise would be taking place at the same time as these other agencies held theirs.

MILITARY EXERCISE THAT INCLUDED A SIMULATED HIJACKING WAS TAKING PLACE ON SEPTEMBER 11
It is also worth noting that on the morning of September 11, at least one exercise was taking place that was set to include a simulated hijacking. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)--the military organization responsible for monitoring and defending U.S. airspace--was at the time several days into a major annual exercise called Vigilant Guardian. This exercise, described as a "simulated air war" and "an air defense exercise simulating an attack on the United States," was set to include "a range of scenarios" on September 11. Among them was a "traditional" hijacking "in which politically motivated perpetrators commandeer an aircraft, land on a Cuba-like island, and seek asylum," Vanity Fair reported. [71]

It is unclear if FAA personnel played any role in the exercise. While the FAA featured in scenarios in Vigilant Guardian exercises before September 11, apparently no FAA personnel usually took part and instead military personnel played a simulated version of the agency. A document that described Vigilant Guardian scenarios run in the days just before 9/11 specified, "Execution of these scenarios did not involve any agencies outside of the NORAD chain." [72] And documents that describe scenarios included in the Vigilant Guardian exercises held in September 2001 and October 2000 refer to a "simulated FAA" or a "sim FAA." [73]

Vigilant Guardian is curious, though, because before September 11 it had featured simulated hijackings with similarities to the hijacking described to Ryan Gonsalves when he called FAA headquarters to inquire about the plane crash at the World Trade Center. Most notable among these was a scenario run on October 20, 2000, in which a Boeing 747 bound from London, England, to Cairo, Egypt, was hijacked shortly after takeoff by religious fanatics. The hijackers demanded to be flown to New York. The FAA contacted the NMCC and requested a hijack conference, which the NMCC then convened. Fighter jets were tasked with providing "covert surveillance" of the hijacked aircraft, which eventually landed without incident at JFK International Airport in New York. [74]

The hijacking described to Gonsalves by the person he spoke to at FAA headquarters was certainly more like the one in this exercise scenario than to the actual hijacking that had occurred. It was a "traditional" hijacking in which the pilot was still in control of the plane and it involved the hijacked plane heading for JFK International Airport. [75]

This suggests that the person at FAA headquarters may have been describing to Gonsalves a mock hijacking in a training exercise that FAA personnel were participating in, rather than the actual hijacking of Flight 11. Maybe the FAA held exercises that were coordinated with NORAD exercises and consequently featured the same, or similar, scenarios. The person at FAA headquarters might have thought the call from Gonsalves, requesting information about a plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center, was part of the exercise and so he responded by providing details of the simulated hijacking.

NORAD EXERCISE PREVIOUSLY FEATURED SIMULATED HIJACKINGS
Additional scenarios in Vigilant Guardian exercises featured a simulated FAA, simulated hijackings, and other similarities to the events of September 11. On October 21, 2000, a scenario involved a group of Native American protesters hijacking a Boeing 737 bound from SeaTac, Washington, to Juneau, Alaska. The FAA convened a "hijack conference" in response and requested assistance from the military, including military aircraft to follow the hijacked aircraft. It contacted the NMCC which initiated a multi-agency teleconference. The hijacked aircraft eventually landed safely in Juneau and the hijackers were arrested.

And the 2001 Vigilant Guardian exercise included scenarios in the days before 9/11 that were based around hijackings. On September 6, a scenario featured a terrorist group hijacking a Boeing 747 bound from Tokyo, Japan, to Anchorage, Alaska, and threatening to "rain terror from the skies onto a major U.S. city." The FAA was involved in directing military aircraft to shadow the hijacked plane.

Then on September 10, a scenario was based around a group of Cubans hijacking a plane bound from Havana, Cuba, to Shannon, Ireland. It involved the hijackers, who were seeking political asylum, demanding to be taken to JFK International Airport--similar to the hijacking described to Gonsalves the following day, in which the hijacked plane was going to land at JFK International Airport. The FAA requested assistance from NORAD. Eventually, the plane landed safely at Dobbins Air Force Base in Georgia and the hijackers were apprehended. [76]

FAA headquarters personnel may have been aware of these NORAD exercises and the scenarios featured in them or could have trained for similar scenarios in their own exercises. If this was the case and--like some other government agencies--the FAA was running an exercise on September 11, they may have mistakenly thought the hijacking of Flight 11 was part of an exercise when they heard about it, since it resembled scenarios they had previously encountered in exercises. If so, the error could be one reason for their inadequate response to the real-world crisis.

NMCC WAS LIKELY PARTICIPATING IN AN EXERCISE ON SEPTEMBER 11
NMCC personnel, too, may have been taking part in a training exercise on September 11, which could have caused confusion and hindered their response to the real-world crisis. Evidence suggests they might have been participating in a major exercise called Global Guardian. This annual exercise sponsored by the U.S. Strategic Command (Stratcom)--the military command responsible for the day-to-day readiness of America's nuclear forces--had been underway in the days preceding 9/11 and was still taking place on the morning of September 11.

Global Guardian was intended to test Stratcom's ability to fight a nuclear war and in 2001 featured the scenario of a fictitious Northeast Asian nation attacking the United States with nuclear weapons. It was held in cooperation with NORAD and linked with NORAD's Vigilant Guardian exercise. [77]

The NMCC was certainly involved in Global Guardian on the day before 9/11 since on that day it issued a "Global Guardian exercise message" stating that the U.S. president had been briefed on the Single Integrated Operational Plan--the United States' general plan for nuclear war. [78] If NMCC personnel were involved in Global Guardian on September 10, it seems plausible that they were participating in the exercise on the morning of September 11.

They may also have been participating in Vigilant Guardian on September 11, since the NMCC had previously featured in scenarios in the NORAD exercise. Some Vigilant Guardian scenarios prior to 9/11 included a "sim NMCC," presumably manned by non-NMCC personnel. However, on at least one occasion actual NMCC personnel took part. The script for a simulated "hijack conference" held on October 20, 2000, mentioned that the "actual NMCC will participate." [79]

Additional evidence indicates that NMCC personnel were participating in an exercise at the time of the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 Commission was told that the emergency action cell in the NMCC "was monitoring all ongoing exercises in the U.S." on the morning of September 11. [80] And Lieutenant Colonel John Brunderman recalled that he was in the emergency action cell, "working on [a] play sheet for [the] exercise," when the attacks began. [81]

If NMCC personnel were taking part in an exercise on the morning of September 11, they may have mistaken real-world events for part of the exercise and the error could have impaired their response to the terrorist attacks. If, for example, they thought the primary net was a simulated hijack conference, like the one they participated in during Vigilant Guardian on October 20, 2000, this could be why they treated it with indifference. Even though the teleconference was meant to be a crucial source of information for its participants, the primary net on September 11 was "not viewed as urgent" by NMCC personnel and participation in it was "not viewed" as being a task "of utmost importance," Charles Chambers noted. [82]

FAA CRISIS MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST WAS THE 'MASTERMIND OF THE SYSTEM'
In addition to examining the possible role of training exercises, it is worth scrutinizing the actions of a number of senior officials when we try to determine why FAA headquarters personnel responded so poorly to the 9/11 attacks. Three officials who likely had a significant influence over what happened at FAA headquarters on September 11 were Michael Weikert, Lee Longmire, and Pete Falcone. Did any of these men act in ways that prevented an effective response to the crisis? Or did things happen that stopped them from carrying out their duties?

Weikert, who was the duty officer in the FAA operations watch on September 11, appears to have been a particularly important figure. He likely had much influence over the primary net. He reportedly instructed Sharon Battle to activate the teleconference and then managed it throughout the day. [83] Apparently referring to Weikert's role in the primary net, Falcone called him the "mastermind of the system." [84]

Was Weikert therefore in any way responsible for it taking so long to set up the primary net? And was he in any way responsible for the teleconference being so ineffective that it "played no role in coordinating a response to the attacks"?

Longmire claimed that "part of the problem" with the FAA's response to the crisis was that "whoever was on [the] primary net, they were using headphones [and] wouldn't have known what was going on on the tactical net." [85] Presumably he was either referring to Weikert or to a number of people in the ACC, including Weikert, who were participating in the primary net.

If Longmire's allegation is correct, this gives rise to several questions. As the man running the primary net, should Weikert have been monitoring the tactical net so he could pass on any important information shared over it to the agencies on the primary net? Was it normal for the person running the primary net to wear headphones, such that they were unable to hear what was said on the tactical net? And if Weikert was failing to pick up information shared between FAA facilities on the tactical net, was this one reason why "nothing of substance" was said over the primary net, as Charles Chambers claimed?

Weikert also played a key role in training exercises at FAA headquarters. He "ran exercises for security" personnel there, according to Daniel Noel, manager of the emergency operations staff. [86] He "ran a lot of these exercises" at the FAA, John Hawley similarly commented. [87]

Therefore, if FAA headquarters personnel were participating in an exercise on September 11, was Weikert running it? And was he involved in designing the scenarios included in FAA exercises on earlier dates that had similarities to the 9/11 attacks and may consequently have led FAA headquarters personnel to mistake the hijackings on September 11 for simulations?

Additionally, Weikert may have affected the ability of FAA headquarters personnel to respond to the 9/11 attacks through his key role in designing the ACC, where FAA security personnel went to respond to the crisis and from where the primary net was run on September 11.

The ACC had apparently undergone some kind of upgrade shortly before September 11 and Weikert was "the lead for designing the facility," according to Longmire. [88] For example, there had previously been no computers in the ACC. [89] But, Weikert explained, "event recorders" had been "computerized" using "a software product designed in-house" that was "capable of tracking multiple events." [90]

The possibility that the recent changes to the ACC impaired the ability of FAA headquarters personnel to respond to the 9/11 attacks is surely worth looking into. Investigators could consider issues such as whether the changes were a factor behind the apparently poor connection between the ACC and the NMCC on the primary net.

FAA DIRECTOR WAS THE 'HIJACK COORDINATOR' ON SEPTEMBER 11
Longmire was another important figure. As the director of civil aviation security operations, he was responsible for coordinating the FAA's response to a hijacking. He was reportedly the "hijack coordinator" at FAA headquarters on September 11. He was also responsible for running the ACC in a crisis. [91]

As the hijack coordinator, Longmire had important duties. It was his job to request "an escort aircraft for a confirmed hijacked aircraft" if needed, according to FAA protocol. He was required to do this "by direct contact with the NMCC." [92]

Was he therefore in any way responsible for the failure of FAA headquarters to contact the NMCC to request that fighter jets be launched in response to the hijacking of Flight 11? Was he also in any way responsible for the FAA employee who told Ryan Gonsalves about the hijacking of Flight 11 making no request for military assistance when Gonsalves called FAA headquarters?

Falcone, meanwhile, was a manager in the civil aviation security operations division and ran the tactical net--the "internal" teleconference between various FAA facilities--on September 11. His duties presumably meant he could have had less influence than Weikert and Longmire potentially had on the failures of FAA headquarters in its response to the hijackings. All the same, it appears he may still have contributed toward them.

He "had the experience to make sure that [the] NMCC was on the net," Longmire claimed, presumably referring to the primary net. Was he therefore in any way responsible for the NMCC being absent early on during the teleconference? Curiously, he recalled that he "tried to reach [the] NMCC" but "couldn't reach them" and this "was surprising to him." [93] He surely needs to provide further details of this problem.

Falcone also "should have been taking the information from the tactical net" and passing it on to "the folks on the primary net," Monte Belger said. This was "his job as coordinator" of the tactical net, Belger added. [94] Did he do this on September 11? If not, was he therefore in any way responsible for either "nothing ... being said" or "nothing of substance" being said over the primary net?

HIJACKING PROTOCOLS WERE WELL ESTABLISHED
Since FAA headquarters had key responsibilities when a hijacking occurred in U.S. airspace, the way its employees responded to the hijackings on September 11 could have had a significant impact on the ability of the U.S. government and military to protect the nation that day. It is therefore of serious concern that these employees either failed to take necessary action or were alarmingly slow to respond.

It would be difficult to argue that the poor response of FAA headquarters personnel to the 9/11 attacks was due to a lack of awareness of the protocol for dealing with a hijacking, since the procedures that should have been followed on September 11 had been in place since the late 1990s, if not before then, and so were presumably well known. Indeed, Monte Belger commented that at the time of the attacks, "interagency response protocols were well established" and it was clear when the FAA should seek the assistance of other agencies to help deal with a hijacking. [95]

The FAA order that dealt with requesting military assistance in response to a hijacking had been effective for close to three years, since November 1998. [96] And while the military instruction that outlined how hijackings should be responded to was published just three months before 9/11, the previous version of the instruction that was published in July 1997--over four years before 9/11--was almost identical to it. This too stated that the administrator of the FAA was responsible for directing law enforcement activity in response to a hijacking; that the NMCC was the "focal point" within the Department of Defense for providing military assistance and should be "notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA" in the event of a hijacking; and that the FAA, the NMCC, and the deputy director for operations were required to "maintain coordination" until the hijacking situation was resolved. [97]

It would also be difficult to argue that the poor response of FAA headquarters personnel to the 9/11 attacks was due to incompetence, because these individuals had on numerous occasions practiced what to do in the event of a hijacking in training exercises. The civil aviation security operations division had even run two hijacking exercises earlier in 2001 and so, Robert McLaughlin noted, "everyone knew what to do." [98]

Why then did no one contact the NMCC about the hijacking of Flight 11 after FAA headquarters was notified of it? And since the NMCC only learned of the hijacking when one of its officers, Ryan Gonsalves, took the initiative to call FAA headquarters, what would have happened if that call wasn't made? Would someone at FAA headquarters have even contacted the NMCC about the hijacking?

Furthermore, why did the person at FAA headquarters who Gonsalves spoke to provide inaccurate and misleading information about the hijacked flight? Why was there no discussion of scrambling fighter jets between the two men? And who was the person at FAA headquarters who took Gonsalves's call? All Gonsalves has said on the issue is that he called the duty officer at FAA headquarters but "got patched into another office in [the] FAA." [99]

AGENCIES SHARED LITTLE INFORMATION OVER THE FAA TELECONFERENCE
It is also concerning that FAA headquarters took so long to establish the primary net and, after it did, the participants failed to share information over it. The teleconference could have played an invaluable role in the government's response to the attacks. It was intended to enable "decision makers" to take coordinated action, according to Robert McLaughlin, and "talk strategically," according to Monte Belger--surely important objectives under the unprecedented circumstances. [100] And yet, as the 9/11 Commission Report noted, it "played no role in coordinating a response to the attacks." [101]

Since some key agencies participated, including the White House, the Secret Service, the State Department, the CIA, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, a lot of important information could presumably have been shared, thereby enhancing the ability of the government to respond effectively to the crisis. And yet it appears that participants failed to pass on what their agencies knew. Michael Weikert recalled that he was "not receiving much information" over the teleconference. [102]

Who, then, were the people on the primary net? And why did they waste this opportunity to share what their agencies knew about the attacks?

WERE FAA PERSONNEL TAKING PART IN AN EXERCISE ON SEPTEMBER 11?
It is surely important to know if FAA headquarters personnel were participating in a training exercise on September 11. It would also be helpful to know if NMCC personnel were participating in an exercise, such as the Stratcom exercise Global Guardian, when the attacks occurred, as some evidence suggests.

If exercises involving FAA headquarters and the NMCC were taking place, we need to know more about them. Did they include scenarios, like hijackings or plane crashes, such that they resembled the real-world attacks? Did NMCC and FAA headquarters personnel mistakenly think real-world events were part of the exercises, and, if so, did this have a negative effect on how they responded to the attacks? And how long did it take before they realized the crisis was real, rather than part of an exercise?

Also, if exercises were being conducted at FAA headquarters and the NMCC, who was in charge of running them? At FAA headquarters, was it Michael Weikert, since he "ran a lot of these exercises" at the FAA, according to John Hawley? [103] Or was it Daniel Noel, who told the 9/11 Commission that he was responsible for "national disaster exercises"? [104]

And who designed the exercises? At FAA headquarters, was it Monte Belger? Mae Avery told the 9/11 Commission she believed the "deputy administrator staff" was responsible for developing FAA hijacking exercises, and Belger was the acting deputy administrator of the FAA in 2001. [105] (It is unclear, however, whether Avery was referring to the deputy administrator or to the deputy administrator's staff.)

WERE EXERCISES DESIGNED TO FACILITATE THE ATTACKS?
Importantly, if exercises were taking place that featured scenarios resembling aspects of the real-world attacks, was this a coincidence or was there something more sinister to it? Might exercise scenarios have been designed intentionally to resemble the 9/11 attacks by people who knew in advance what the attacks would involve? The goal of these people could have been to create confusion over what was real and what was simulated on September 11, thereby preventing honest and dedicated personnel from effectively responding to the attacks.

Al-Qaeda, the terrorist group blamed for 9/11, would have lacked the ability to influence what FAA and NMCC training exercises involved. If this was the case, then, it would suggest that the attacks were planned and perpetrated by a group other than al-Qaeda, one that likely included rogue individuals in the U.S. government and military. The attacks, however, must have been carefully designed to appear like they were perpetrated by al-Qaeda.

Too little attention has been paid to the numerous oddities and failures regarding the response of FAA headquarters to the crisis on September 11, despite the key role its personnel had in responding to hijackings. But what happened that day was the deadliest terrorist attack ever on American soil. These oddities and failures therefore need to be properly investigated, to determine exactly what occurred and uncover who was behind it.

NOTES
[1] Federal Aviation Administration: Stronger Architecture Program Needed to Guide Systems Modernization Efforts. United States Government Accountability Office, April 2005, p. 3; "What We Do." Federal Aviation Administration, June 27, 2016.
[2] Administrator's Fact Book. Federal Aviation Administration, July 2001, p. 36; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 14-16; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Benedict Sliney." 9/11 Commission, May 21, 2004.
[3] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With May Avrey." 9/11 Commission, March 25, 2004; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Dan Noel, Manager, Emergency Operations Staff." 9/11 Commission, April 28, 2004.
[4] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Morse, FAA National Security Coordination Staffer." 9/11 Commission, September 15, 2003; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With May Avrey."
[5] "Memorandum for the Record: Orientation and Tour of the National Military Command Center (NMCC) and National Military Joint Intelligence Center (NMJIC)." 9/11 Commission, July 21, 2003; Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon: Serving on the Front Lines of National Security. New York: Threshold Editions, 2009, p. 151; Tyler Rogoway, "Trump Said He Found the Greatest Room He'd Ever Seen Deep in the Pentagon, Here's What He Meant." War Zone, January 3, 2019.
[6] Federal Aviation Administration, Order 7610.4J: Special Military Operations. Washington, DC: Federal Aviation Administration, November 3, 1998, paras. 7-1-1, 7-1-2; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CJCSI 3610.01A: Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects. Washington, DC: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, June 1, 2001.
[7] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 4, 7, 18-19; Staff Report: The Four Flights. 9/11 Commission, August 26, 2004, pp. 6-8, 10-11, 15.
[8] "Quality Assurance Bulletin: Boston Center Bulletin." Federal Aviation Administration, September 20, 2001; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 19.
[9] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 19.
[10] John A. Brunderman, "NMCC Report on 11 Sep. 01 Response to Terrorist Attack." U.S. Department of Defense, October 4, 2001.
[11] Jim Garamone, "9/11: Keeping the Heart of the Pentagon Beating." American Forces Press Service, September 8, 2006.
[12] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 35; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Captain Charles Joseph Leidig, USN, Commandant of Midshipmen, U.S. Naval Academy." 9/11 Commission, April 29, 2004; Commander Patrick Gardner, 9/11 Commission Interview Part I, Handwritten Notes. 9/11 Commission, May 5, 2004.
[13] "Senior Operations Officer Log." U.S. Department of Defense, September 11, 2001; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 462; Admiral Charles Joseph Leidig, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes. 9/11 Commission, April 29, 2004.
[14] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Captain Charles Joseph Leidig, USN, Commandant of Midshipmen, U.S. Naval Academy."
[15] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 5, 7.
[16] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Lt. Col. Ryan Gonsalves." 9/11 Commission, May 14, 2004.
[17] Lt. Col. John Sims, U.S. Army, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes (1). 9/11 Commission, May 12, 2004; Lt. Col. John Sims, U.S. Army, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes (2). 9/11 Commission, May 12, 2004.
[18] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Lt. Col. Ryan Gonsalves."
[19] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 35.
[20] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Dan Noel, Manager, Emergency Operations Staff"; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Robert C. McLaughlin, FAA HQ Security Operations on 9/11." 9/11 Commission, June 3, 2004.
[21] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Monte Belger, Former Deputy Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration." 9/11 Commission, November 24, 2003; National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Twelfth Public Hearing. 9/11 Commission, June 17, 2004.
[22] "ADA-30 Operations Center Activity Report, September 11-14, 2001." Federal Aviation Administration, September 2001; "Summary of Air Traffic Hijack Events: September 11, 2001." Federal Aviation Administration, September 17, 2001; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Weikert, Federal Air Marshal Service of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service." 9/11 Commission, May 7, 2004; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Pete Falcone, TSA." 9/11 Commission, May 11, 2004.
[23] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Dan Noel, Manager, Emergency Operations Staff."
[24] "ADA-30 Operations Center Activity Report, September 11-14, 2001"; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 36.
[25] Sharon Battle, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes. 9/11 Commission, March 25, 2004; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Weikert, Federal Air Marshal Service of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service."
[26] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Weikert, Federal Air Marshal Service of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service"; Mike Weikert, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes. 9/11 Commission, May 7, 2004.
[27] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Sharon Battle." 9/11 Commission, March 25, 2004; Sharon Battle, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes.
[28] "ADA-30 Operations Center Activity Report, September 11-14, 2001"; "Chronology of Events on 9/11/01." Federal Aviation Administration, September 11, 2001; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Robert C. McLaughlin, FAA HQ Security Operations on 9/11."
[29] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Weikert, Federal Air Marshal Service of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service"; Mike Weikert, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes.
[30] Major Charles Chambers, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes. 9/11 Commission, April 23, 2004.
[31] Mike Weikert, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes.
[32] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 36, 462.
[33] "ADA-30 Operations Center Activity Report, September 11-14, 2001"; "Chronology of Events on 9/11/01."
[34] Sharon Battle, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes.
[35] John A. Brunderman, "NMCC Report on 11 Sep. 01 Response to Terrorist Attack."
[36] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Lee Longmire." 9/11 Commission, October 28, 2003.
[37] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Monte Belger, Former Deputy Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration." 9/11 Commission, November 24, 2003.
[38] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 36, 462; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Weikert, Federal Air Marshal Service of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service"; Mike Weikert, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes.
[39] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 36; National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Twelfth Public Hearing.
[40] Major Charles Chambers, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes.
[41] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With May Avrey"; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Dan Noel, Manager, Emergency Operations Staff."
[42] Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CJCSI 3610.01A: Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects.
[43] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Lee Longmire"; Lee Longmire, 9/11 Commission Interview, Typed Notes. 9/11 Commission, April 30, 2004.
[44] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Weikert, Federal Air Marshal Service of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service."
[45] "Summary of Air Traffic Hijack Events: September 11, 2001"; "Flight Path Study: American Airlines Flight 11." National Transportation Safety Board, February 19, 2002; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 4, 16, 18; Staff Report: The Four Flights, pp. 7, 9.
[46] "ADA-30 Operations Center Activity Report, September 11-14, 2001."
[47] Mike Weikert, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes.
[48] Sharon Battle, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes.
[49] "ADA-30 Operations Center Activity Report, September 11-14, 2001."
[50] "Executive Summary: Chronology of a Multiple Hijacking Crisis, September 11, 2001." Federal Aviation Administration, September 17, 2001.
[51] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Weikert, Federal Air Marshal Service of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service."
[52] "ADA-30 Operations Center Activity Report, September 11-14, 2001"; "Executive Summary: Chronology of a Multiple Hijacking Crisis, September 11, 2001."
[53] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Robert C. McLaughlin, FAA HQ Security Operations on 9/11."
[54] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Weikert, Federal Air Marshal Service of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service."
[55] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Jeff Griffith, Former FAA Assistant Director of Air Traffic Control." 9/11 Commission, March 31, 2004.
[56] Lee Longmire, 9/11 Commission Interview, Typed Notes.
[57] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Lee Longmire."
[58] Lee Longmire, 9/11 Commission Interview, Typed Notes.
[59] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 36; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Weikert, Federal Air Marshal Service of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service."
[60] "Prepared Statement of Monte R. Belger to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States." 9/11 Commission, June 17, 2004.
[61] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Twelfth Public Hearing.
[62] Major Charles Chambers, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes.
[63] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Monte Belger, Former Deputy Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration." 9/11 Commission, November 24, 2003; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Monte Belger, Former Deputy Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration." 9/11 Commission, April 20, 2004.
[64] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Weikert, Federal Air Marshal Service of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service."
[65] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Major Paul Goddard (Canadian Forces) and Ken Merchant." 9/11 Commission, March 4, 2004; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With May Avrey"; "Dean Resch, U.S. Army (Retired), Panama City Beach, FL." Florida Veterans' Hall of Fame Society, Inc., n.d.
[66] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With John Steven Hawley, TSA Liaison to the Department of State (DSITA) Diplomatic Security/Intelligence and Threat Analysis." 9/11 Commission, October 8, 2003.
[67] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 16.
[68] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Robert C. McLaughlin, FAA HQ Security Operations on 9/11."
[69] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Morse, FAA National Security Coordination Staffer."
[70] See "Complete 911 Timeline: Training Exercises on 9/11." History Commons, n.d.
[71] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America: Sept. 11 Alters Face of Air Defense Mission. Tyndall Air Force Base, FL: 1st Air Force, 2003, pp. 55, 122; William M. Arkin, Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World. Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2005, p. 545; Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes." Vanity Fair, August 2006.
[72] "Point Paper on Training and Exercises." North American Aerospace Defense Command, October 13, 2001.
[73] "NCOTA: Exercise Data." North American Aerospace Defense Command, July 25, 2003.
[74] Ibid.; "NORAD Exercises: Hijack Summary." 9/11 Commission, n.d.
[75] "Senior Operations Officer Log"; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Captain Charles Joseph Leidig, USN, Commandant of Midshipmen, U.S. Naval Academy"; Admiral Charles Joseph Leidig, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes.
[76] "NCOTA: Exercise Data"; "NORAD Exercises: Hijack Summary."
[77] Nuclear Weapon Systems Sustainment Programs. Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, May 1997; Joe Dejka, "Inside Stratcom on Sept. 11 Offutt Exercise Took Real-Life Twist." Omaha World-Herald, February 27, 2002; William M. Arkin, Code Names, p. 378; Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al-Qaeda. New York: Times Books, 2011, p. 22.
[78] Wayne M. Rezzonico, "POTUS SIOP Brief." E-mail message to Pat Downs, April 2, 2004.
[79] "NCOTA: Exercise Data."
[80] "Memorandum for the Record: Orientation and Tour of the National Military Command Center (NMCC) and National Military Joint Intelligence Center (NMJIC)."
[81] Col. John Brunderman, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes. 9/11 Commission, May 17, 2004.
[82] Major Charles Chambers, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes.
[83] Sharon Battle, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Weikert, Federal Air Marshal Service of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service."
[84] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Pete Falcone, TSA."
[85] Lee Longmire, 9/11 Commission Interview, Typed Notes.
[86] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Dan Noel, Manager, Emergency Operations Staff."
[87] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With John Steven Hawley, TSA Liaison to the Department of State (DSITA) Diplomatic Security/Intelligence and Threat Analysis."
[88] Lee Longmire, 9/11 Commission Interview, Typed Notes.
[89] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Pete Falcone, TSA."
[90] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Weikert, Federal Air Marshal Service of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service"; Mike Weikert, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes.
[91] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Lee Longmire"; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Monte Belger, Former Deputy Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration." 9/11 Commission, November 24, 2003.
[92] Federal Aviation Administration, Order 7610.4J: Special Military Operations, paras. 7-1-1, 7-1-2; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CJCSI 3610.01A: Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects.
[93] Lee Longmire, 9/11 Commission Interview, Typed Notes; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mike Weikert, Federal Air Marshal Service of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service"; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Pete Falcone, TSA."
[94] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Monte Belger, Former Deputy Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration." 9/11 Commission, April 20, 2004.
[95] Ibid.
[96] Federal Aviation Administration, Order 7610.4J: Special Military Operations.
[97] Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CJCSI 3610.01: Aircraft Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects. Washington, DC: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 31, 1997.
[98] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Robert C. McLaughlin, FAA HQ Security Operations on 9/11."
[99] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Lt. Col. Ryan Gonsalves."
[100] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Monte Belger, Former Deputy Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration." 9/11 Commission, November 24, 2003; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Robert C. McLaughlin, FAA HQ Security Operations on 9/11."
[101] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 36.
[102] Mike Weikert, 9/11 Commission Interview, Handwritten Notes.
[103] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With John Steven Hawley, TSA Liaison to the Department of State (DSITA) Diplomatic Security/Intelligence and Threat Analysis."
[104] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Dan Noel, Manager, Emergency Operations Staff."
[105] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With May Avrey."

Tuesday 1 December 2020

Time-Waster in Chief: General Richard Myers, the Highest-Ranking Military Officer in the U.S. During the 9/11 Attacks

Richard Myers
General Richard Myers was the highest-ranking military officer in the country when America came under terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and yet he appears to have done nothing that would have helped protect the nation while the attacks took place.

Myers was, in September 2001, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff--the second-highest-ranking officer in the U.S. military. However, when the 9/11 attacks occurred, General Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was out of the country and so Myers was the acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and took on the chairman's responsibilities until Shelton returned to the United States late in the afternoon of September 11.

Despite learning of the two plane crashes at the World Trade Center and the crash at the Pentagon shortly after they occurred, Myers did nothing of particular value in response to the attacks while they were taking place. His poor performance continued in the hours following the attacks and the few things he did that might have helped protect America from terrorists came well after the attacks ended, too late to influence the outcome of the crisis. Furthermore, he appears to have been, at times, deliberately time-wasting, engaging in unnecessary activities and thereby avoiding doing anything helpful.

Myers was on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, for a 9:00 a.m. meeting with a senator when he learned of the first crash from television. He was less than five miles from the Pentagon, which was where he ideally needed to be to respond to the crisis, and yet he only headed there after 9:37 a.m., shortly after the Pentagon was attacked and more than 50 minutes after the first attack on the World Trade Center.

He made no decisions and took no action between 9:03 a.m., when the second hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center, and 9:37 a.m., when the Pentagon was struck, even though he could easily have done so during this period when he talked over the phone with his executive assistant at the Pentagon and the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado.

He only reached the Pentagon's National Military Command Center (NMCC)--which he described as his "battle station when things are happening"--close to 10:00 a.m., only minutes before United Airlines Flight 93--the fourth and final plane hijacked that day--crashed in a field in Pennsylvania and the attacks were therefore over. Then, almost immediately after arriving at the NMCC, he abandoned his post, wandering off to search for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He was apparently away from the NMCC for close to 18 minutes while he carried out this needless task.

No attempt has been made to explain Myers's poor response to the 9/11 attacks. It is difficult to attribute the vice chairman's behavior to incompetence, though. Myers had decades of experience in the U.S. Air Force and had held a number of senior posts in the military. Notably, immediately before being appointed vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was commander in chief of NORAD. Since NORAD is the military organization responsible for monitoring and defending U.S. airspace, this role surely provided him with the ideal experience to respond effectively to attacks from the air, like those that took place on September 11.

We therefore need to consider if there were more sinister reasons for Myers's behavior. Did Myers perhaps have foreknowledge of what was going to happen on September 11? Were his inaction, time-wasting, and other failures intentional, carried out because he wanted the terrorist attacks to succeed? Was he trying to impair the U.S. military's response to the crisis so the attacks would progress unimpeded?

Could Myers have even been involved with planning 9/11? If so, he could have carefully prepared to act with negligence when the attacks took place.

MYERS WAS ACTING CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS ON SEPTEMBER 11
Richard Myers, an Air Force veteran and former fighter pilot, had been vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since March 2000. [1] Just over two weeks before 9/11, then-President George W. Bush in fact nominated him to be the nation's next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, although he would only take over that position on October 1 after being confirmed by the Senate on September 14. [2]

However, while the 9/11 attacks were taking place, he was in the position of acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This was because Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time, had taken off early in the morning of September 11 to attend a NATO meeting in Europe and was consequently out of the country, flying over the Atlantic Ocean, when the attacks occurred. [3] "By law, as vice chairman, I was designated acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs during his absence," Myers noted. [4]

After his plane landed back at Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, at 4:40 p.m., Shelton finally reached the NMCC at 5:40 p.m. that afternoon and was then able to resume his duties as chairman. [5] But, he noted, "Until I crossed back into United States airspace, all the decisions would be [Myers's] to make, in conjunction with Secretary [of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld and the president." [6]

As acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Myers was the nation's highest-ranking military officer, in the position of principal military adviser to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council. [7] He spent much of September 11 with Rumsfeld and consequently provided the "primary advice" to the secretary of defense throughout the day. [8]

MYERS LEARNED OF THE FIRST CRASH FROM TELEVISION
On September 11, Myers was scheduled to have a series of meetings with senators in preparation for his confirmation hearing to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 13. [9] His first meeting was to be with Georgia Senator Max Cleland at 9:00 a.m. in Cleland's office in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill. [10]

At 8:46 a.m., however, American Airlines Flight 11, which had been hijacked by terrorists, crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center and this was reported on television three minutes later, when CNN began showing video of the burning building. [11]

Myers learned of the incident as he was waiting in Cleland's outer office, prior to his meeting with the senator. He saw the coverage of what had happened on the television there and noticed text across the bottom of the TV screen stating that a plane had hit the North Tower. [12] He heard a reporter saying something like: "We think it was an airplane. We don't know if it's a big one or a little one." [13] "Must have been a light aircraft ... maybe on a sightseeing flight," he thought.

He took no action in response to the incident and proceeded into Cleland's office for his meeting. He then chatted with the senator about what had happened in New York for a short while. [14] Having noted that it was a beautiful, clear day, he wondered aloud, "How could a pilot be that stupid, to hit a tower?" [15] However, he supposedly assumed the crash was an accident and never considered that it could have been a terrorist attack. "It didn't click yet that it might have been intentional," he recalled. [16] He therefore went ahead with his meeting as if nothing unusual had occurred. [17]

SECOND HIJACKED PLANE CRASHED WHILE MYERS WAS MEETING CLELAND
But at 9:03 a.m., three minutes after the meeting began, a second hijacked aircraft, United Airlines Flight 175, crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. [18] Millions of people saw the incident live on television. Two crashes at the Twin Towers within minutes of each other could not have been a coincidence. It was now clear that America was under attack.

Meanwhile, Myers and Cleland had been discussing national security. [19] "By pure coincidence," according to the Washington Post, this included talking about terrorism. [20] They had talked about the country's need "to look at the question of terrorism and attacks on the United States," Cleland recalled. [21] "Ironically, we were discussing how best to defend the nation," he has written.

The two men learned of the second crash when they saw it on television, according to Cleland. While they were talking, Cleland's secretary, Elaine Iler, burst into the room in an agitated state and said, "You've gotta see the TV." Myers and Cleland followed her out to where the television was. "Almost as soon as we got into the room, we saw the second plane hit the tower at the World Trade Center," Cleland described. "For a moment, I thought it was a replay of the first plane hitting the tower, but it quickly became apparent there were two planes involved and neither of them was little," he added. [22]

Myers, however, recalled that he and Cleland learned of the second crash sometime after it occurred. On most occasions, he stated that they learned of it when someone interrupted their meeting and told them what had happened, rather than from seeing it on television.

On some occasions, Myers indicated that he and Cleland were notified very shortly after the crash took place. "[Cleland] had started preparing a pot of tea, but we hadn't taken a sip when a staff person came in from the outer office and informed us that the second tower had been hit," he described in 2009, in his memoir. [23] "We were about ready to get down to some serious conversation when a word came in from the outer office that they said the second tower had been hit," he told an interviewer in September that year. [24] "A couple of minutes into the meeting, one of the aides came in and said the second building had been hit," he recalled in 2011. [25] But on another occasion Myers indicated that he and Cleland may have learned of the second crash at a later time. Someone came in and alerted them to it "somewhere in the middle of that meeting," he said in 2002. [26]

However, in the first interview in which he described his experiences on September 11, five weeks after the attacks took place, Myers had contradicted these accounts, claiming that no one interrupted the meeting to alert him and Cleland to the second crash. "Nobody informed us of that, but when we came out, that was obvious," he said. [27]

Upon learning of the second crash, Myers realized this was a terrorist attack. "That's when we figured out something: that America, or at least the World Trade Center, is under attack," he recalled. [28] The crash was "no light aircraft accident, but certainly an act of unthinkable terrorist savagery," he wrote. [29]

If Myers was alerted to the second crash during his meeting with Cleland, it is unclear how long he remained with the senator after learning the extraordinary news. In his memoir, he wrote only that, after they were alerted to the second crash, he and Cleland "knew the interview was over and started out to the TV to see the South Tower erupting with smoke and flame." [30] And during a public event in 2006, he said only that the meeting "was over very quickly" after the crash occurred. [31]

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TALKED TO MYERS ABOUT THE ATTACKS
While Myers was with Cleland, sometime before 9:29 a.m., Colonel Matthew Klimow, his executive assistant, called him. Klimow, who was back at the Pentagon, had just been called by General Ralph Eberhart, the commander of NORAD, who'd said he urgently wanted to talk to Myers. [32]

Eberhart was is in his office at NORAD's headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and had realized a coordinated terrorist attack was underway when he saw the second crash on television. In response, he initially tried to contact Henry Shelton but, since the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was airborne, had been unable to reach him. He therefore tried to contact Myers instead. [33]

He called Myers's office and Klimow answered the phone. When he asked to speak to Myers, Klimow explained, "Sir, he's on Capitol Hill." "Man, it's urgent," Eberhart said. He then told Klimow, "Get hold of him, get him to a phone" and Klimow replied, "I'm on it."

Klimow then set about contacting Myers. He called the cell phone of Captain Chris Donahue, Myers's military aide, who was with the vice chairman on Capitol Hill. When Donahue answered, Klimow told him, "Chris, get the old man on the phone." Myers was apparently still in Cleland's office at the time, since Donahue asked, "Do you really want me to interrupt the senator?" "It's urgent!" Klimow exclaimed and he ordered Donahue, "Get in there!" Donahue then went and found Myers, and put him on the line.

Klimow asked the vice chairman if he was aware of what happened in New York and Myers said he had just been briefed on it by Cleland's staff. "It looks like there's a major hijacking underway and I recommend that you return to the Pentagon as soon as possible," Klimow said. He also told Myers: "NORAD needs to talk. It sounds pretty bad." He then asked, "Can you get back to the Pentagon?" "We're on our way back to the Pentagon now," Myers said. "I'll call NORAD from my sedan; I'll be there in 15 minutes," he told his executive assistant. Myers ended the call and Klimow then started preparing for his return to the Pentagon. [34]

The exact time when this call occurred is unknown. However, it apparently took place sometime before 9:29 a.m., since Klimow recalled that after he made it, he received a call inviting him to join the "significant event conference" and this conference call is known to have been convened at 9:29 a.m. [35]

NORAD COMMANDER TALKED TO MYERS
Presumably after he spoke to Klimow, Myers received a call from Eberhart. [36] Donahue approached him as he was leaving Cleland's office, and said Eberhart was on his cell phone and wanted to talk to the vice chairman. Myers then took Donahue's cell phone and spoke to the NORAD commander. [37]

The call was brief. "It was a short conversation," Myers commented. Eberhart updated Myers on what was happening and what NORAD was doing in response. He said both of the Twin Towers had been hit and there were "several hijack codes in the system." [38] He said the situation in the air was "confused" and there were "aircraft squawking that they had been hijacked." [39]

(He was referring to the fact that pilots can discretely notify authorities on the ground that their plane is being hijacked by punching a special four-digit code into the plane's transponder. However, none of the pilots of the four planes hijacked that morning did this, so it is unclear why Eberhart implied they had. [40])

Eberhart told Myers he was going to land aircraft at "the nearest suitable base" to sort things out. [41] "The decision I'm going to make is, we're going to land everybody and we'll sort it out when we get them on the ground," he said. [42]

He also told Myers that NORAD was scrambling fighter jets in response to the hijackings. [43] He would have been referring to two F-15s that were launched from Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, at 8:46 a.m. and three F-16s that were launched from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia at 9:24 a.m. [44] However, after hearing this, Myers did not discuss with Eberhart what "rules of engagement" the pilots of the fighters should follow.

Myers in fact said little during the call. He "mainly listened," he recalled. He told Eberhart he could not communicate with him over a cell phone, presumably because it was an unsecured line, and said he needed to get to the NMCC. [45] He said he was going to head back to the Pentagon and would talk to Eberhart again when he got there. [46]

It is unclear exactly when this call occurred. Eberhart mentioned the call when, in 2004, he spoke to the 9/11 Commission--the investigation created by Congress and the president in 2002 to examine the 9/11 attacks--about his actions on September 11, but failed to provide a specific time for it. He only placed it between when he saw the second crash on television--i.e. 9:03 a.m.--and around 9:30 a.m., when he left his office at Peterson Air Force Base to head to NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center. [47] Myers has been equally unspecific. He told the 9/11 Commission only that he thought the call occurred sometime after the second crash at the World Trade Center, between 9:03 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. [48]

MYERS LEARNED OF THE PENTAGON ATTACK FROM HIS DRIVER
Myers recalled that "immediately" after the call with Eberhart ended, he set out from the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where Cleland's office was located, to return to the Pentagon. [49] As he was doing so, he learned there had been a third terrorist attack, this one at the Pentagon.

He was alerted to it by Dan Downey, his driver. Downey said: "Sir, just got a call from the office. The Pentagon's been hit." He apparently provided no further details of what had happened. [50]

Since the Pentagon was hit at 9:37 a.m., Myers presumably learned of the attack shortly after that time. It is unclear, however, where he was and what he was doing at the time. He learned of the Pentagon attack "as we're leaving the building" on Capitol Hill, he said in an interview in 2002. [51] He told the 9/11 Commission he was notified about it "as he was getting into his car." [52] But in his memoir, he recalled being alerted to it during the drive to the Pentagon--"as we raced away from Capitol Hill." [53]

Myers promptly called Klimow to ask about what had happened at the Pentagon. Klimow told him that all the fire alarms were going off, and people were running around and shouting in the E Ring--the outermost corridor of the Pentagon. Myers asked Klimow if he was alright and Klimow said he was. He explained that the Pentagon must have been hit "on the west side of the building, near the helo pad."

He told Myers that the White House had said the combatant commanders would probably want to raise the threatcon--the terrorist threat condition--as they saw fit. He also said that "the FBI had been designated the lead civilian agency in the crisis, with the military standing by as needed if the terrorist attacks involved weapons of mass destruction," meaning chemical, biological, or radiological weapons.

Myers asked Klimow if the NMCC was up and running and Klimow said it was. "We're coming in," Myers told Klimow. "I'll be there in three minutes," he said and then instructed his executive assistant to meet him at the Pentagon's River Entrance. [54]

MYERS STOPPED TO TALK TO THE DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY
Myers's car drove across the Potomac River and subsequently pulled up outside the Pentagon. There, Myers found the steps of the River Entrance crowded with people who had evacuated and Klimow waiting calmly near the door. [55]

Myers had been thinking that he needed to "quickly get to the ... National Military Command Center." [56] And yet he did not immediately join his executive assistant and head there. Instead, he stopped to talk with Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense. [57] Wolfowitz had been evacuated from the Pentagon shortly after it was attacked and joined other Pentagon employees on the parade ground in front of the building. [58]

What the two men talked about is unknown. However, Myers soon continued on his way. He recalled that he only "stopped briefly" to talk to Wolfowitz. [59] He then grabbed Klimow by the arm, and the two men headed to the inner rings of the Pentagon and the NMCC. [60] They reached the command center by 9:58 a.m.

MYERS REACHED THE NMCC BEFORE 10:00 A.M.
The National Military Command Center is "the nerve center of the Pentagon," according to Klimow. [61] Myers described it as the U.S. military's "worldwide monitoring, crisis response center." [62] It is "a communications hub, a switchboard connecting the Pentagon, the civilian government, and the combatant commanders," he wrote.

The large Current Actions Center (CAC) within the NMCC was filled with computer cubicles, and when Myers and Klimow arrived there they found members of the armed forces at "their consoles, their telephones, and their computers, manning communication links around the world."

The two men then headed to the deputy director for operations' office--a small, windowless room located at one end of the CAC, which had several desks, a conference table, and lots of telephones. There, they found Captain Charles Leidig, the acting deputy director for operations, participating in the "air threat conference," which had been initiated by the NMCC at 9:37 a.m. and linked the command center to the White House, NORAD, and other agencies. [63]

Myers estimated that he reached the NMCC between 10:00 a.m. and 10:10 a.m. when he was interviewed by the 9/11 Commission. [64] Evidence shows, though, that he was there by 9:58 a.m. At that time, Leidig said over the air threat conference that Myers had recommended evacuating the Sears Tower in Chicago. [65] And Leidig told the 9/11 Commission he was "certain that the vice chairman was in the room" when the "Sears Tower issue" was discussed over the air threat conference. [66]

MYERS LEFT THE NMCC TO LOOK FOR RUMSFELD
Myers has acknowledged that the NMCC needed to be his command post that morning and described it as "essentially my battle station when things are happening." [67] And yet he left it soon after arriving. He decided to go all the way from the NMCC, in the basement of the Pentagon, to the office of Donald Rumsfeld, on the third floor of the E Ring, to see if he could find the secretary of defense.

He found thick smoke in the E Ring corridor and similar conditions in Rumsfeld's office suite, but no sign of Rumsfeld. [68] Rumsfeld had been in his office when the Pentagon was attacked but promptly headed out to inspect the crash site and help carry an injured person on a stretcher. [69] One of his aides therefore explained to Myers that the secretary of defense was outside, helping the wounded. Myers left a message for Rumsfeld, stating that he was returning to the NMCC, and then headed back to the command center. [70]

Myers appears to have spent up to 18 minutes away from the NMCC while he searched for Rumsfeld. He recalled seeing the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsing on television as he was leaving the CAC, which means he left there at 9:59 a.m., when the collapse occurred--perhaps only a minute or so after he arrived at the NMCC. [71] And he was apparently back in the NMCC by 10:17 a.m., since at that time Leidig mentioned over the air threat conference that the "vice chairman would like to know who's controlling the aircraft over Washington, DC." [72]

MYERS WORKED ON RULES FOR FIGHTER PILOTS WITH THE NORAD COMMANDER
Apparently after arriving back at the NMCC from his search for Rumsfeld, Myers spoke over the phone for the second time that morning with NORAD commander Ralph Eberhart. The focus of the call was establishing rules of engagement for fighter pilots defending U.S. airspace.

Myers and Eberhart had two immediate issues to resolve during the call, according to Matthew Klimow, who was with the vice chairman at the time. These were, "First, to determine when to pull the trigger for the shootdown of an airliner and, second, to clarify who would have the ultimate authority to give that command to shoot." It was important to settle these issues, since the two men "didn't want to put the burden of killing innocent passengers on the shoulders of a single fighter pilot," Klimow commented. [73]

By 10:30 a.m., Myers and Eberhart had agreed on the rules of engagement. Fighter pilots would "try to persuade a potentially hijacked plane to land, but if it was headed to a large city, take it down." [74] They decided to delegate the authority to order the shootdown of a suspicious aircraft to "the regional air defense commander," Klimow recalled. [75] Klimow was presumably referring to Major General Larry Arnold, the commander of the Continental United States NORAD Region.

And yet, after devising these rules, Myers and Eberhart made no effort to pass them on to the fighter pilots involved in the air defense response. Myers told the 9/11 Commission that in the "initial period"--apparently referring to the hour after he first arrived at the NMCC--he "did not do anything to ensure that effective rules of engagement were communicated to pilots." [76] And Eberhart said only that he "assumed" the rules were "passed to the level of the fighter pilot." [77]

Furthermore, during the call, Myers failed to tell Eberhart that Vice President Dick Cheney had just given his authorization for fighters to shoot down suspicious aircraft, despite the obvious relevance of this information to their discussion.

Shortly after 10:10 a.m., Cheney, who was at the White House, had been alerted to an unidentified aircraft approaching Washington that was believed to be hijacked. He was asked for authorization for the military to engage the aircraft and immediately gave it. Subsequently, at 10:14 a.m. and again at 10:19 a.m., someone at the White House relayed over the air threat conference that the vice president had confirmed that fighters were cleared to engage an aircraft if they could verify that it was hijacked. [78]

While it is unclear whether, at 10:14 a.m., Myers had arrived back at the NMCC from his search for Rumsfeld, he was there before 10:19 a.m. and therefore ought to have heard about Cheney's action when it was reported over the air threat conference for a second time. Indeed, he indicated in his memoir that he heard about it over the conference call. He described a military aide at the White House stating, "Vice President Cheney has forwarded the president's authorization to go weapons free if that plane is confirmed hijacked and threatens the White House or the Capitol." [79]

Even if Myers did not hear about Cheney's shootdown authorization over the air threat conference, someone in the NMCC who was monitoring the conference call presumably ought to have passed such important information on to him, considering he was the highest-ranking military officer in the country at the time.

And yet Myers apparently failed to tell Eberhart about Cheney's action. When the 9/11 Commission asked him if he communicated with NORAD "to inform them of the vice president's authorization and ensure that they understood their instructions," his answer was confused and inexplicit. "I'm not sure I didn't have that conversation with Eberhart on this," he said, adding, "I don't remember ... that being a simple issue we worked our way through." [80]

And Eberhart implied that Myers failed to tell him about Cheney's action. He told the 9/11 Commission that he believed he learned of the vice president's shootdown authorization from Major General Rick Findley, the director of operations at NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center, and made no mention of Myers telling him about it. [81]

MYERS CONTINUED WORKING ON THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT WITH RUMSFELD
Donald Rumsfeld, after leaving the building to visit the crash site, finally went back inside and then joined Myers in the NMCC at around 10:30 a.m. [82] He immediately asked for an update, especially on the rules of engagement for fighters, and was told the policy Myers and Eberhart had just agreed on. [83]

Myers and Rumsfeld were then together for much of the day. "We joined up and we stayed joined the rest of the day," Myers recalled. [84] They were "never more than a few inches from each other," Victoria Clarke, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, who was at the Pentagon that day, wrote. [85]

At around 10:39 a.m., Rumsfeld, with Myers beside him, spoke over the air threat conference with Cheney and the vice president let him know he had authorized the military to shoot down suspicious aircraft. "There's been at least three instances here where we've had reports of aircraft approaching Washington--in a couple of those cases they were confirmed as hijacked aircraft--and, pursuant to the president's instructions, I gave authorization for them to be taken out," Cheney said. Rumsfeld asked, "Has that directive been transmitted to the aircraft?" and Cheney replied, "Yes it has." [86]

Rumsfeld's thoughts then "went to the pilots of the military aircraft who might be called upon to execute such an order." "It was clear that they needed rules of engagement telling them what they could and could not do--they needed clarity," Rumsfeld commented.

There were already "standing rules of engagement," he noted. [87] However, "There were no rules of engagement on the books about when and how our pilots should handle a situation in which civilian aircraft had been hijacked and might be used as missiles to attack American targets." "I'd hate to be a pilot up there and not know exactly what I should do," he told Myers. [88]

Even though rules of engagement had already been established by Eberhart and Myers, apparently due to Rumsfeld's concerns, the vice chairman and the secretary of defense "returned to further refine those rules." [89]

Rumsfeld has described some of the discussion they had as they worked on the rules. They talked about the possibility of a fighter pilot making "hand signals and communications, and flying in front [of a suspicious aircraft] and waving at them, and getting them to go in a direction that's not dangerous." The two men determined that if a suspicious aircraft was "going in a direction that's dangerous," meaning toward "a high value target on the ground," the fighter pilot would "have to shoot them down." [90]

Myers told Rumsfeld that "even a plane that appeared to be descending toward an airport in the Washington metropolitan area with no prior sign of hostile intent could suddenly veer off and strike any federal building in the DC area." By the time the plane crashed, he noted, "it's too late." He suggested that any plane within 20 miles of the White House that failed to land when ordered to do so might have to be shot down. [91]

The two men continued discussing rules of engagement for fighter pilots during a secure video teleconference that began at 11:00 a.m. For this, they moved from the deputy director for operations' office to the Joint Chiefs of Staff conference room--more commonly known as "the tank." [92] This tiny room was "the NMCC facility for secure teleconferences," according to Myers. They were joined there by Matthew Klimow; Victoria Clarke; Vice Admiral Edmund Giambastiani Jr., Rumsfeld's senior military assistant; Stephen Cambone, Rumsfeld's closest aide; and William Haynes, the general counsel of the Department of Defense.

The teleconference was intended to link the Defense Department's civilian and military leadership with the rest of the government. "The main issue under discussion," Myers recalled, "was rules of engagement for NORAD to follow should there be more hijackings." [93]

RUMSFELD APPROVED THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
At 12:19 p.m., Myers, Rumsfeld, and the other officials who had been in the tank for the teleconference moved to the Executive Support Center, a secure communications hub with a video teleconference facility on the third floor of the Pentagon. This was because they had started feeling unwell and then found that this was because the oxygen level in the room was dangerously low. [94] Even then, Myers and Rumsfeld's work developing rules of engagement was incomplete.

The vice chairman and the secretary of defense appear to have finished working on the rules at around 12:40 p.m., when Myers gave Rumsfeld an update on what he knew about the crisis and the military's response to it. Myers told Rumsfeld, among other things, that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had reported that five airliners inbound to the United States from the Far East--one of which had possibly been hijacked--had come too far on their journeys to head back due to low fuel and fighter jets had been scrambled to escort them. He also said NORAD had requested an additional Reserve call-up of air defense units and this request was going to be routed through the secretary of defense's office to the president. [95]

Rumsfeld brought up the subject of rules of engagement for fighter pilots. "I want to tie up the rules of engagement," he told Myers. He explained: "We need granularity here. This is not simple for a pilot, especially if he knows he's shooting down a plane over a civilian area like Washington." [96]

Myers told Rumsfeld he had received the final recommended rules of engagement from Ralph Eberhart. These were, he said, "If our fighters intercept an aircraft obviously heading for a runway, they will let it land, but if a plane is on a glide path toward a possible government target or civilian installation, they will shoot it down." Rumsfeld approved these rules. [97]

However, the rules were apparently only sent out about an hour later. The Department of Defense "did not circulate written rules of engagement until sometime after 1:00 p.m.," according to the 9/11 Commission Report. It in fact may have only done so at 1:45 p.m. At that time, it faxed a memo that included the rules to Andrews Air Force Base. [98] This was three and a half hours after Myers and Eberhart likely started work on the rules, and five hours after the first attack on the World Trade Center.

Since the attacks were long over by the time the rules of engagement were distributed, the hours Myers and Rumsfeld spent working on them were wasted. Their efforts were "an irrelevant exercise," journalist and author Andrew Cockburn noted, as the times at which the rules were completed and issued were "hours after the last hijacker had died." [99]

MYERS SHOULD HAVE CONSIDERED THE FIRST CRASH A POSSIBLE TERRORIST ATTACK
The behavior of Richard Myers appeared suspicious on numerous occasions on September 11. The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sometimes responded to the unfolding crisis with alarming inaction when he should have been responding with urgency; on other occasions, he appeared to be wasting precious time on pointless or unnecessary activities.

Evidence indicates that he did nothing to protect the United States while the 9/11 attacks were underway. And yet he was the highest-ranking military officer in the country for much of the day and so it was surely essential that he responded promptly and effectively. With his poor performance, he may have impaired the U.S. military's ability to respond to the terrorist attacks. His actions therefore require close scrutiny.

A couple of questions worth considering are why did Myers fail to take action after seeing on television that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center? and why did it apparently never occur to him that the incident may have been the result of terrorism?

Myers's response to the first crash was particularly odd considering that, during the period when he was its commander in chief, NORAD held exercises based around the possibility of terrorists crashing planes into buildings. An exercise in January 1999 called Falcon Indian was based around the scenario of suicidal terrorists planning to crash a stolen Learjet into the White House. Another Falcon Indian exercise in June that year was based around the same scenario. [100] And a Falcon Indian exercise in November 1999 was based around the scenario of terrorists hijacking an aircraft with the intention of crashing it into the United Nations headquarters building in New York. [101]

Since he was presumably aware of these exercises, Myers ought to have believed it possible that terrorists would deliberately crash a plane into a building and should therefore have acted as if the crash in New York might have been a terrorist attack when he saw it reported on television. He could easily have phoned his colleagues at the Pentagon to see if they knew anything about the incident. And his prearranged meeting with Max Cleland was relatively trivial and could have been canceled so he could return to the Pentagon right away in case a military response was necessary.

And yet Myers acted as if the unexplained crash of a plane into the World Trade Center was of no concern to him. After spending a short time reflecting on it, he simply thought, "Well, whatever" and then proceeded with his scheduled meeting. [102] "Maybe we should have known after the first one [that this was terrorism]," he has commented. However, his justification for doing nothing was that following the first crash but before the second one, "people still couldn't agree on what had actually happened." [103]

MYERS TOOK NO ACTION AFTER THE SECOND CRASH
Another important question is what did Myers do in the 34 minutes between 9:03 a.m., when Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower, and 9:37 a.m., when the Pentagon was attacked? Evidence indicates that he did alarmingly little during this critical period of time.

According to most accounts, Myers learned of the second crash at the World Trade Center when it took place or very shortly after. Cleland said he and Myers saw the crash on television, and Myers indicated on several occasions that he and Cleland learned of the crash soon after it occurred when someone interrupted their meeting and told them what had happened.

Myers should surely have headed back to the Pentagon right away after he learned of the second crash to help the military respond to the crisis, since it was then indisputable that America was under attack. And yet instead of doing so, he remained at the Dirksen Senate Office Building for a significant time.

The next things we know he did after finding out about the second crash were talking to Matthew Klimow, who called him from the Pentagon, and talking to Ralph Eberhart at NORAD headquarters. These calls appear to have taken place a significant time after the second crash. Myers apparently spoke to Klimow shortly before 9:29 a.m. and to Eberhart soon afterward.

This leaves a period of perhaps over 20 minutes unaccounted for. What did Myers do during that time? Did he continue talking to Cleland after he learned of the second crash? Did he watch the coverage of the crashes on television? If he did either of these things, it would have been the first of the numerous instances when he wasted time rather than responding effectively to the attacks.

Even when he talked over the phone with Klimow and Eberhart, Myers wasted the opportunities the calls provided to do something useful, such as issuing orders, in response to the attacks. He inadvertently admitted this when he was interviewed by the 9/11 Commission in 2004. He said that he "did not recall making any decisions or taking any actions between the time the second tower was hit and the time the Pentagon was struck," at 9:37 a.m. [104]

Furthermore, neither of the calls were initiated by him. Eberhart set about getting in touch with the vice chairman after he saw the second crash on television and Klimow phoned him after being called by Eberhart. Without Eberhart making the effort to contact him, therefore, Myers may have done nothing in response to the crisis before the Pentagon was hit.

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT FAILED TO CONTACT MYERS ABOUT THE CRASHES
Aside from the numerous questions regarding Myers's behavior on September 11, it seems odd that Klimow--as Myers's executive assistant--made no effort to contact the vice chairman of his own initiative following the second crash at the World Trade Center. He presumably would have learned of the incident when it was shown live on television or very shortly afterward. He has not explicitly stated this. However, he has mentioned that the television was on in his office on the morning of September 11 and he saw the coverage of the first crash shortly after it occurred. "I looked up from my desk across the room to the television screen and there was that image of the World Trade Center smoking, and I was dumbfounded," he recalled. He thought the crash "must be an accident." [105] He presumably therefore would have seen Flight 175 crashing into the South Tower and realized immediately that this was a terrorist attack. Even if for some reason he did not, a colleague ought to have quickly alerted him to what had happened.

Why then did he subsequently fail to promptly contact the vice chairman to make sure he knew America was under attack, see what actions he wanted to take in response, and arrange for him to return to the Pentagon right away? Klimow has never recalled trying to get in touch with Myers of his own accord after the second crash and is instead only known to have contacted the vice chairman sometime later, after Eberhart called and ordered him to "get hold of [Myers], get him to a phone." [106]

MYERS MAY HAVE DAWDLED ON THE WAY TO HIS CAR
Another question worth asking in light of his general slowness in responding to the attacks on the World Trade Center is how long did it take for Myers to walk from the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where Max Cleland's office was located, to his car, in order to be driven back to the Pentagon?

Myers started making his way back to the Pentagon following his call with Eberhart, which presumably ended sometime before 9:30 a.m.--the time at which Eberhart left the NORAD headquarters building to head to the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center.

He apparently reached his car shortly after the Pentagon was hit. Although he has given vague and contradictory accounts of when he learned of the Pentagon attack, it seems likely that what he told the 9/11 Commission--that he was informed of it "as he was getting into his car"--is correct, since he has also stated that he learned about the attack from Dan Downey, his driver. Being as the Pentagon was hit at 9:37:46 a.m., he must have been told of the attack at 9:38 a.m. at the earliest.

Evidence therefore indicates that it took him eight minutes, at the very least, to get from the area outside Cleland's office to his car. Should the walk really have taken that long or was Myers time-wasting as he headed to his car, perhaps walking slowly when he should have been hurrying?

MYERS TOOK NO ACTION AS HE TRAVELED TO THE PENTAGON
As previously mentioned, Myers told the 9/11 Commission that he "did not recall making any decisions or taking any actions between the time the second tower was hit and the time the Pentagon was struck." But it appears he also failed to make any decisions or take action immediately after the Pentagon attack, while he was being driven to the Pentagon, even though the journey provided him with valuable minutes to make phone calls in which he could have carried out important tasks, such as issuing orders. Although he made one call during the journey--to Matthew Klimow--all he did in it was listen as Klimow gave a brief update on what had happened at the Pentagon and how the government was responding to the attacks.

The need for prompt action was even clearer by then, since the attack on the Pentagon showed that Washington, and not just New York, was a target. Perhaps the White House or the Capitol building would be attacked next. So why did Myers still do nothing in response to the crisis?

MYERS DELAYED GOING TO THE NMCC BY TALKING WITH THE DEPUTY DEFENSE SECRETARY
Myers continued behaving with a lack of urgency when he arrived at the Pentagon. This is particularly odd because he has on numerous occasions acknowledged that he needed to be in the NMCC on the morning of September 11, as it was the best place for him to be to respond to the crisis, and he needed to get there as soon as possible after he realized America was under attack.

"In the event of an attack, standing procedures called for the vice chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] to move to an alternate command post at a remote location ... while the chairman held the fort at the National Military Command Center," he noted. However, since Henry Shelton, the chairman, was out of the country, Myers was the acting chairman and so "my command post had to be in the burning Pentagon," he wrote. [107]

After he learned the Pentagon had been attacked, while leaving Capitol Hill, his "first instinct was to get back to the Pentagon, to the National Military Command Center, as quickly as possible," he said. [108] "I felt I needed to get there as soon as I could," he commented.

"I had to ... quickly get to the command center, the National Military Command Center," he recalled thinking as he crossed the Potomac River on his way to the Pentagon. [109] He asked Klimow if the NMCC was up and running when he called him around this time because he knew he'd "need to be where we had the appropriate command and control apparatus." [110] Then, when he reached the Pentagon, his concern was, "Where can you best discharge your duties?" "Well, my battle station was in the National Military Command Center," he said. [111]

And yet after his car pulled up outside the Pentagon, instead of heading straight to the NMCC, Myers stopped outside the building to speak to Paul Wolfowitz. Why did he do this? Was it really necessary? Although Myers only "spoke briefly" with the deputy secretary of defense, he surely needed to get to the NMCC as soon as possible to help the military respond to the crisis and should therefore have foregone the opportunity to stop and talk to another senior official at this time. With the nation in the middle of a massive terrorist attack, every moment was precious and even the smallest delay could have had catastrophic consequences.

MYERS LEFT HIS 'BATTLE STATION' TO SEARCH FOR RUMSFELD
Myers did at least join Klimow at the River Entrance and go to the NMCC right after he finished talking to Wolfowitz. But why did he subsequently leave the command center almost immediately after he arrived there, simply to go and search for Donald Rumsfeld?

The 9/11 Commission pointed out to Myers that the first hour after he reached the NMCC would have been "life or death minutes." [112] There may have been essential tasks that, as acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he alone was able to carry out. Searching for Rumsfeld, in contrast, was a relatively trivial undertaking. Furthermore, Myers could have just phoned Rumsfeld's office and asked where Rumsfeld was or sent a junior staffer from the NMCC to look for the secretary of defense. Why did he forego these options?

The NMCC is in the basement of the Pentagon and, according to Myers, is "more or less" in "the center portion of the building." [113] It was surely a long walk from there to Rumsfeld's office, on the third floor of the outermost ring of the Pentagon. Myers was consequently away from the NMCC for up to 18 minutes while he went to the office to see if he could find the secretary of defense. During that time, he was presumably unable to do anything in response to the terrorist attacks.

The justification Myers gave for leaving the NMCC at this critical time was that he had determined it was acceptable for him to do so since the NMCC's deputy director for operations "was doing a good job of managing the information flow and keeping the chain of command plugged in." [114] But did this excuse him abandoning his post while the nation was under attack? The NMCC was, after all, "the duty station ... when you need to coordinate with lots of people and figure out what's happening," as Myers himself noted. [115] It was where he needed to be.

Indeed, Myers has inadvertently acknowledged why he should have stayed in the NMCC at the time. He told the 9/11 Commission his first thought when he reached there was, "What's next?" which implied that he'd recognized that additional attacks could be imminent. [116]

"Terrorists had staged major attacks in New York and Washington. Although we did not yet have reliable intelligence on when and where they would strike next, it seemed likely that they would," he wrote. [117] "We didn't know at that time if we were in the middle of a several-day long attack, what kind of attacks could come next, or who and what might be targeted," he commented. [118] If he believed more attacks were likely, Myers surely ought to have stayed in the NMCC so he would be in the best position to respond to them if they occurred.

By stopping outside the Pentagon to talk to Wolfowitz and then leaving the NMCC very shortly after arriving there to search for Rumsfeld, Myers appears to have been time-wasting again. By doing so, he delayed getting involved in the military's response to the attacks and may thereby have weakened the military when it was urgently needed, to protect the nation against terrorists.

MYERS WASTED TIME REFINING THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
There are questions about the actions of Richard Myers after he returned to the NMCC following his unsuccessful search for Rumsfeld that need to be addressed. In particular, why did the vice chairman spend so much time working on rules of engagement for fighter pilots? After all, Dick Cheney had given the military authority to shoot down hostile aircraft shortly after 10:10 a.m. This authorization was surely adequate for the time being, such that Myers could have focused on other tasks.

Even if Myers was unaware of Cheney's action, he himself had established rules of engagement with Ralph Eberhart by 10:30 a.m. Why, then, did he subsequently spend perhaps over two hours refining these rules in collaboration with Rumsfeld, such that they were only approved by the secretary of defense at around 12:40 p.m.?

Rules of engagement for fighter pilots were even "the main issue under discussion" during the 11:00 a.m. secure video teleconference Myers participated in that linked the Defense Department's leaders with the rest of the government. There were presumably numerous important subjects that needed to be addressed during the teleconference. Why then did the participants focus on something that had already been adequately dealt with?

It appears that in devoting so much time to refining the rules of engagement, Myers was yet again time-wasting. While he directed his attention to this likely unnecessary task, however, he avoided crucial activities, such as protecting America from further attacks that could have occurred at any moment.

Indeed, in the middle of refining the rules, Myers inadvertently revealed that he recognized more attacks might happen. Apparently shortly before midday on September 11, as he was leaving the Joint Chiefs of Staff conference room with Rumsfeld following the secure video teleconference, Rumsfeld suddenly stopped and called out to the officers in the NMCC, "Okay everybody, what else can the enemy do?" Myers immediately responded, "NBC," meaning a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack. [119]

If Myers thought the terrorists were capable of carrying out something as devastating as an attack involving nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, his priority surely ought to have been preventing further attacks rather than wasting time refining rules of engagement that had already been agreed upon.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT WERE NOT PASSED ON TO FIGHTER PILOTS
Another question on this matter is why did Myers fail to issue the rules of engagement he developed with Eberhart once the two men agreed to them, shortly before 10:30 a.m.? Even if he wanted to refine these rules, he could surely have issued them at 10:30 a.m. and then sent out the refined rules once they were completed, with the instruction that they supersede the earlier rules. Instead, as he recalled, in the "initial period"--apparently meaning the first hour after he reached the NMCC--he "did not do anything to ensure that effective rules of engagement were communicated to pilots." [120]

Myers and Eberhart have inadvertently made clear the potentially catastrophic consequences of their failure to issue the rules of engagement as soon as they agreed to them. "Clearly, shooting down a civilian airliner with innocent men, women, and children on board was not a good option, but given the circumstances, it was really the only course of action to minimize the death and destruction planned by the hijackers," Myers wrote. [121] But, Eberhart pointed out, "Rules of engagement are only good if those engaged know the rules." And, he said, "No matter what the circumstance, the pilot would look toward his command for an indication of what to do." [122]

In other words, if a fighter pilot had received no rules of engagement, was therefore unsure whether they should shoot down suspicious aircraft, and consequently allowed a suspicious aircraft to continue on its course, countless people in addition to the plane's passengers and crew would have been killed if that aircraft subsequently crashed into another target like the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.

MYERS WASTED TIME RAISING THE DEFENSE READINESS CONDITION
A further issue of concern is Myers's involvement in making the decision and giving the order to raise the defense readiness condition. The defense readiness condition, according to the Department of Defense, is a "uniform system of progressive alert postures for use between the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commanders of unified and specified commands, and for use by the [armed] services." [123] It can be one of five levels, with the lowest, Defcon 5, representing normal peacetime readiness and the highest, Defcon 1, representing maximum force readiness. [124]

Donald Rumsfeld gave the order to raise the defense readiness condition on September 11, according to the 9/11 Commission Report. However, Rumsfeld recalled that he discussed the issue with Myers before doing so. "It's a huge move, but it's appropriate," Myers had advised him. [125]

Apparently about 10 minutes was spent dealing with the task. The decision to increase the defense readiness condition was announced over the air threat conference at 10:43 a.m. The NMCC's deputy director for operations stated that the "secretary of defense has directed that we go to worldwide Defcon 3," which was an intermediate level that represented an increased state of military readiness. At 10:45 a.m., however, those on the conference call were instructed to "hold off on Defcon 3." But a minute later that instruction was overridden and it was announced that Myers was "directing worldwide Defcon 3." Finally, at 10:52 a.m., an emergency action message was released that directed going to Defcon 3. [126]

While the raising of the defense readiness condition on September 11 may appear like a serious attempt to protect the nation, some people have claimed it was unhelpful and possibly counterproductive. Increasing the defense readiness condition was "suited more to a Cold War conflict than to al-Qaeda's attack," some 9/11 Commission staffers commented. [127] John Farmer, the senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, pointed out that the defense readiness condition was "devised to respond to a nuclear threat." [128] And Ralph Eberhart said Defcon 3 was "not intended for [events like] the attacks of 9/11." He said he thought raising the defense readiness condition would have had no benefits within the continental United States and could in fact have complicated the response to the attacks. [129]

If these criticisms were correct, why did Myers devote his time and energy to such an inappropriate task? Was this another instance of him time-wasting and thereby avoiding carrying out actions better suited to the problems at hand?

MYERS'S APPARENTLY BENEFICIAL ACTION WAS SOMEONE ELSE'S INITIATIVE
There appears to have been one exception to Myers's failure to do anything useful in response to the crisis on September 11 before Flight 93 crashed and the terrorist attacks ended. However, evidence shows that this action was in fact the initiative of someone else, which Myers simply endorsed.

At 9:58 a.m., Charles Leidig said over the air threat conference that Myers "recommends evacuating" the Sears Tower in Chicago "based on the flight plan of one of the possible hijacked aircraft." [130] The Sears Tower was then evacuated at around 10:02 a.m. [131] Had a hijacked aircraft subsequently crashed into it, the recommendation to evacuate the tower could have meant countless lives were saved.

However, Leidig later revealed that the recommendation was actually made by someone other than Myers. He told the 9/11 Commission that he recalled telling Myers there was a recommendation to evacuate the Sears Tower, and Myers said this was a good idea and the military supported it. [132]

MYERS ONLY TOOK ACTION TO PROTECT MILITARY FACILITIES AFTER THE ATTACKS ENDED
Richard Myers took a few actions on September 11 that might genuinely have been helpful as part of the nation's response to the terrorist attacks. However, all of them were taken after the attacks ended, too late to influence the outcome of the crisis.

The first of these actions was discussing with Donald Rumsfeld raising the force protection condition (FPCON) to the highest level. The force protection condition--known as the terrorist threat condition, or "threatcon," until June 2001--is a "standard for identification of, and recommended responses to, terrorist threats against U.S. personnel and facilities," according to the Department of Defense. [133]

It can be one of five levels. The highest level, Delta, means a terrorist attack has occurred or intelligence has been received indicating that action against a specific location is likely. A declaration of FPCON Delta on September 11 would have led to placing more guards on duty at military installations, having all vehicles on installations identified, and having all personnel positively identified, among other things. It would presumably therefore have meant U.S. military facilities were better defended against terrorist attacks.

Myers recalled that at some point after he arrived at the NMCC, he "recommended that all American military commands and units worldwide go to [FPCON] Delta." [134] And Rumsfeld recalled that after he arrived at the NMCC, he and Myers "discussed and I recommended raising ... the force protection level." [135] "If terrorists were executing a complex and massive attack ... our isolated naval, air, and ground bases overseas might be especially vulnerable, so raising the threatcon was essential," Myers has commented. [136]

It is unclear exactly when the decision to raise the force protection condition was made. It must have been after around 10:30 a.m., since that was when Rumsfeld entered the NMCC, and it was apparently before 10:38 a.m., since at that time Rumsfeld told Dick Cheney over the air threat conference that U.S. forces were "on Threatcon Delta." [137] The decision therefore appears to have been made roughly half an hour after the final hijacked plane--Flight 93--crashed. In other words, it was only made well after the terrorist attacks ended.

Furthermore, the decision may have been made in response to prompting by the White House rather than something Myers and Rumsfeld did of their own initiative. As Myers was being driven from Capitol Hill to the Pentagon, Mathew Klimow told him that "the White House advised that the combatant commanders will probably want to increase threatcon as they see fit." [138] It is surely possible that the decision to raise the force protection condition was only made as a result of Myers receiving this information.

DECONTAMINATION UNITS WERE ONLY SET UP AFTER MIDDAY
Another potentially useful action Myers took was arranging for decontamination units to be set up in case there was an attack involving weapons of mass destruction. However, as with making the decision to raise the force protection condition, he only did this well after the terrorist attacks ended. And, again, his action appears to have been the result of something other than his own initiative. In this case, it came about in response to an off-the-cuff enquiry by Rumsfeld.

As previously mentioned, after Rumsfeld asked, "What else can the enemy do?" as he and Myers were leaving the Joint Chiefs of Staff conference room following the 11:00 a.m. secure video teleconference, Myers responded, "NBC," meaning a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack. This interaction apparently prompted Myers to give the order for special decontamination units to be positioned outside Washington and New York, ready to be used if there was a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack against one of these cities.

This was surely a sensible thing to do to prepare the nation for possible further acts of terrorism. However, the decontamination units were apparently only set up in the afternoon of September 11 since, in his memoir, Myers placed the question from Rumsfeld that prompted him to take action at just before midday. [139]

The exact time when the units were set up is unclear, but it must have been before 6:30 p.m. At that time, the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council held a teleconference during which it was "verified that counter-NBC decontamination units had been called out and deployed, standing by in case al-Qaeda decided to follow up with [weapons of mass destruction] attacks on our cities," Myers wrote. [140] By 6:30 p.m., of course, many hours had passed since the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked, during which a weapons of mass destruction attack could have occurred.

MYERS PASSED ON AUTHORIZATON FOR A PARTIAL RESERVE CALL-UP
One more potentially useful action Myers took was passing on authorization Rumsfeld had given for a partial call-up of the Air Force Reserves. Those activated included fighter pilots, air tanker crews, and communications specialists. "With the country suddenly at war, we would need all the help we could muster, and much of that help was in the Reserve and National Guard," Myers has commented.

The vice chairman's action presumably put the military in a better position to defend the nation against further attacks from the air, should any have occurred. However, like the two actions described above, it was done too late to make a difference to the outcome of the crisis. Myers only passed on Rumsfeld's authorization more than two hours after the attacks ended, following his move to the Executive Support Center at 12:19 p.m. [141]

Furthermore, by the time he took this action, U.S. airspace had been cleared of all air traffic except military and emergency flights as a result of the FAA ordering all airborne aircraft to land at the nearest airport, at 9:45 a.m. [142] This meant the danger of further hijackings or attacks from the air had been massively reduced and so the benefits of the partial Reserve call-up were presumably much less than would have been the case if it had been authorized earlier on.

EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE MEANT MYERS WAS WELL PREPARED TO HANDLE THE ATTACKS
Close examination of the actions of Richard Myers on September 11 reveals a pattern of negligence. In the most important hours of his military career, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff repeatedly either did nothing or wasted time engaging in unhelpful or unnecessary activities. What was the reason for this?

It might be claimed that Myers was simply incompetent. However, this seems unlikely in light of his decades of military experience and considerable accomplishments prior to 9/11. As a fighter pilot, he accumulated over 4,100 flying hours, including 600 hours of combat experience in the Vietnam War. He had also held significant positions in the military. During the 1990s, he served as commander of U.S. forces in Japan and commander of U.S. air forces in the Pacific. And from August 1998 to February 2000 he was commander in chief of NORAD--the military organization responsible for defending U.S. airspace. [143]

He clearly possessed skills and experience that should have enabled him to competently respond to the 9/11 attacks. Matthew Klimow noted that his 600 hours of combat experience in Vietnam and his experience as NORAD commander meant Myers "understood the air defense scenario playing out" on September 11. [144] And during a 9/11 Commission hearing on the subject of national defense and crisis management on September 11, 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman pointed out to Myers, "Your service from '98 to 2000 commanding NORAD gives you particular authority in talking about this." [145]

MYERS QUICKLY INITIATED RETALIATION AGAINST AFGHANISTAN
It is also difficult to attribute Myers's inaction and time-wasting to incompetence since, in contrast to his slow and inadequate response when it came to protecting his country, Myers initiated preparations for military action against Afghanistan in retaliation for the terrorist attacks remarkably quickly. When it came to this task, therefore, he appeared highly competent.

At around midday on September 11, Vice Admiral Tom Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, confirmed to Myers and others in the NMCC that the day's attacks had undoubtedly been committed by al-Qaeda. [146] This prompted Myers and his colleagues to immediately start considering "some sort of response." [147]

Myers noted that Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership were in Afghanistan, a country in the area of responsibility of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which controlled U.S. operations in the Middle East. However, General Tommy Franks, commander in chief of CENTCOM, was out of the country that day, on the Greek island of Crete.

Myers therefore set about quickly getting him back to America to prepare a response to the attacks. He told Klimow to contact Franks and "ask him to get back to CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, Florida, as soon as possible." "I want General Franks to start looking at options for al-Qaeda," he added. [148]

Presumably in response to Myers's instructions, Franks spent the evening beginning preparations for the military's response to the terrorist attacks from his hotel in Crete and flew back to America the following day. [149] Reflecting on the instructions for Franks he gave on September 11, Myers agreed that planning for a military response to the 9/11 attacks "began almost immediately." [150]

WAS MYERS COMPLICIT IN 9/11?
Since incompetence seems an unlikely explanation for Myers's behavior, we surely need to consider more disturbing possibilities. Did Myers perhaps have foreknowledge of what was going to happen on September 11 and also, for unknown reasons, want the terrorist attacks to succeed? If so, his inaction and time-wasting could have been deliberate attempts to impair the U.S. military's ability to respond to the attacks and thereby increase the likelihood that the attacks would be successful.

Could Myers have even been involved with planning the 9/11 attacks? If he was, he could have carefully arranged to engage in repeated time-wasting and inaction on September 11 when a fast, competent response would be imperative.

The apparently serious negligence of such a key figure during the worst attack on American soil since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941 is surely cause for serious alarm. It is one of the numerous aspects of 9/11 that need to be fully investigated as part of a new and unrestrained investigation of the terrorist attacks.

NOTES
[1] "General Richard B. Myers." U.S. Air Force, October 1, 2005; "Former Top U.S. General Gets $200,000-a-Year Board Gig." Chicago Tribune, March 15, 2006; Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon: Serving on the Front Lines of National Security. New York: Threshold Editions, 2009, p. 7.
[2] "Bush Nominates Myers as Joint Chiefs Chairman." CNN, August 24, 2001; "Pentagon Chiefs' Records Reflect Modern Military." CNN, October 1, 2001.
[3] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski. NBC News, September 11, 2002; Hugh Shelton with Ronald Levinson and Malcolm McConnell, Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2010, pp. 430-432.
[4] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 10.
[5] "9/11 Documentation, Andrews Air Traffic Control Tower." Andrews Air Force Base, September 11, 2001; Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 159.
[6] Hugh Shelton with Ronald Levinson and Malcolm McConnell, Without Hesitation, p. 432.
[7] Office of the Federal Register/National Archives and Records Administration, The United States Government Manual 1999/2000. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999, p. 178; "Our Leaders." U.S. Department of Defense, n.d.
[8] Edmund P. Giambastiani Jr., interview by Alfred Goldberg and Rebecca Cameron, part II. Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, August 1, 2002; National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Twelfth Public Hearing. 9/11 Commission, June 17, 2004.
[9] "Interview, General Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, With Petty Officer Quinn Lyton, USN." Armed Forces Radio and Television Service, October 17, 2001; Matthew Klimow, "Marshall Center STACS Graduation Speech." Speech, George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, August 3, 2012.
[10] "Larry King Interviews Bob Dole, Max Cleland." Larry King Live, CNN, November 20, 2001; Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.
[11] "CNN Sept. 11, 2001, 8:48 a.m.-9:29 a.m." CNN, September 11, 2001; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 4-7.
[12] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, pp. 7-8.
[13] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.
[14] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 8.
[15] "HBO History Makers Series: Richard B. Myers." Council on Foreign Relations, June 29, 2006.
[16] "General Richard B. Myers." Veterans Chronicles, Radio America, April 14, 2009.
[17] "HBO History Makers Series: Richard B. Myers."
[18] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 8.
[19] "HBO History Makers Series: Richard B. Myers."
[20] Peter Carlson, "Political Veteran." Washington Post, July 3, 2003.
[21] U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) Holds Hearing on Nomination of General Richard Myers to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 107th Cong., 1st sess., September 13, 2001.
[22] Max Cleland with Ben Raines, Heart of a Patriot: How I Found the Courage to Survive Vietnam, Walter Reed, and Karl Rove. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009, p. 170.
[23] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 8.
[24] "General Richard Myers on 9/11." Federal News Network, September 11, 2009.
[25] Jim Garamone, "Former Chairman Myers Recalls 9/11 Pentagon Attack." American Forces Press Service, September 9, 2011.
[26] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.
[27] "Interview, General Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, With Petty Officer Quinn Lyton, USN."
[28] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.
[29] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 9.
[30] Ibid. p. 8.
[31] "HBO History Makers Series: Richard B. Myers."
[32] Matthew Klimow, "Marshall Center STACS Graduation Speech."
[33] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With CINC NORAD (Commander in Chief NORAD), General Edward 'Ed' Eberhart." 9/11 Commission, March 1, 2004; "Kevin's NORAD HQ Notes: Interview With General Ralph Eberhart." 9/11 Commission, March 1, 2004; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 465.
[34] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 9; Matthew Klimow, "Marshall Center STACS Graduation Speech."
[35] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 37; Matthew Klimow, "Marshall Center STACS Graduation Speech."
[36] However, in his memoir, Myers claimed that he spoke to Eberhart before he was called by Klimow. See Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 9.
[37] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 9.
[38] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers." 9/11 Commission, February 17, 2004.
[39] Jim Garamone, "Former Chairman Myers Recalls 9/11 Pentagon Attack."
[40] "Government Official Has New Evidence Regarding Hijacked Airlines." Live Event/Special, CNN, September 11, 2001; Sylvia Adcock, "Voices Reveal 'Problem' on One Doomed Flight." Newsday, September 13, 2001.
[41] Jim Garamone, "Former Chairman Myers Recalls 9/11 Pentagon Attack."
[42] "HBO History Makers Series: Richard B. Myers."
[43] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers"; Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.
[44] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America: Sept. 11 Alters Face of Air Defense Mission. Tyndall Air Force Base, FL: 1st Air Force, 2003, pp. 57, 63; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 20, 27.
[45] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers."
[46] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.
[47] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With CINC NORAD (Commander in Chief NORAD), General Edward 'Ed' Eberhart"; "Kevin's NORAD HQ Notes: Interview With General Ralph Eberhart."
[48] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers."
[49] "Interview, General Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, With Petty Officer Quinn Lyton, USN."
[50] "General Richard B. Myers."
[51] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.
[52] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers."
[53] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 9.
[54] Ibid. pp. 9-11; Matthew Klimow, "Marshall Center STACS Graduation Speech."
[55] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, pp. 11, 151.
[56] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.
[57] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers"; "Statement of General Richard Myers, USAF, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States." 9/11 Commission, June 17, 2004.
[58] Paul Wolfowitz, interview by PBS, Campaign Against Terror. PBS, April 22, 2002; "Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview With Sam Tannenhaus, Vanity Fair." U.S. Department of Defense, May 9, 2003.
[59] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers."
[60] Matthew Klimow, "Marshall Center STACS Graduation Speech."
[61] Ibid.
[62] "Statement of General Richard Myers, USAF, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States."
[63] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, pp. 151-152; Matthew Klimow, "Marshall Center STACS Graduation Speech."
[64] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers."
[65] Air Threat Conference and DDO Conference, Transcript. U.S. Department of Defense, September 11, 2001; Air Threat Conference Call, Transcript. U.S. Department of Defense, September 11, 2001.
[66] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Captain Charles Joseph Leidig, USN, Commandant of Midshipmen, U.S. Naval Academy." 9/11 Commission, April 29, 2004.
[67] U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) Holds Hearing on Nomination of General Richard Myers to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 10.
[68] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 152.
[69] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 37; Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy. New York: Scribner, 2007, pp. 1-2; Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11. Washington, DC: Defense Department, Office of the Secretary, Historical Office, 2007, p. 130.
[70] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, pp. 152-153.
[71] Ibid. p. 152.
[72] Air Threat Conference and DDO Conference, Transcript; Air Threat Conference Call, Transcript.
[73] Matthew Klimow, "Marshall Center STACS Graduation Speech."
[74] Garrett M. Graff, The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2019, p. 236.
[75] Matthew Klimow, "Marshall Center STACS Graduation Speech."
[76] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers."
[77] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With CINC NORAD (Commander in Chief NORAD), General Edward 'Ed' Eberhart."
[78] Air Threat Conference Call, Transcript; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 41-42.
[79] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 152.
[80] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers."
[81] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With CINC NORAD (Commander in Chief NORAD), General Edward 'Ed' Eberhart"; "Kevin's NORAD HQ Notes: Interview With General Ralph Eberhart."
[82] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 43-44; Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11, pp. 130-131.
[83] Garrett M. Graff, The Only Plane in the Sky, p. 236.
[84] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Twelfth Public Hearing.
[85] Torie Clarke, Lipstick on a Pig: Winning in the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game. New York: Free Press, 2006, p. 225.
[86] Air Threat Conference and DDO Conference, Transcript; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 43.
[87] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Eighth Public Hearing. 9/11 Commission, March 23, 2004.
[88] Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir. New York: Sentinel, 2011, p. 340.
[89] "Testimony of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld Prepared for Delivery to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States." 9/11 Commission, March 23, 2004.
[90] "Secretary Rumsfeld Interview With the Washington Post." U.S. Department of Defense, January 9, 2002.
[91] Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, p. 340.
[92] Joseph M. Wassel, interview by Alfred Goldberg and Rebecca Cameron. Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, April 9, 2003.
[93] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 155.
[94] Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11, p. 132; Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, pp. 340-341; Garrett M. Graff, The Only Plane in the Sky, pp. 277-278.
[95] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 157.
[96] Torie Clarke, Lipstick on a Pig, p. 225.
[97] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, pp. 157-158.
[98] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 465.
[99] Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, p. 7.
[100] "NEADS AOR Hijack/WMD Scenarios." U.S. Air Force, 2003.
[101] U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Armed Services, Implications for the Department of Defense and Military Operations of Proposals to Reorganize the United States Intelligence Community. 108th Cong., 2nd sess., August 17, 2004.
[102] "HBO History Makers Series: Richard B. Myers."
[103] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.
[104] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers."
[105] Matthew Klimow, "Marshall Center STACS Graduation Speech."
[106] Ibid.
[107] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 10.
[108] Jim Garamone, "Former Chairman Myers Recalls 9/11 Pentagon Attack."
[109] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.
[110] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 11.
[111] "Interview, General Richard B. Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, With Petty Officer Quinn Lyton, USN."
[112] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers."
[113] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.
[114] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 152.
[115] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.
[116] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers."
[117] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 153.
[118] "Statement of General Richard Myers, USAF, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States."
[119] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 156; Matthew Klimow, "Marshall Center STACS Graduation Speech"; Garrett M. Graff, The Only Plane in the Sky, p. 302.
[120] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers."
[121] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 157.
[122] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With CINC NORAD (Commander in Chief NORAD), General Edward 'Ed' Eberhart."
[123] Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. Washington, DC: Joint Staff, November 8, 2010, as amended through April 15, 2011.
[124] "DEFCON DEFense CONdition." Federation of American Scientists, April 29, 1998.
[125] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Eighth Public Hearing; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 326; Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, p. 338.
[126] Air Threat Conference and DDO Conference, Transcript; Air Threat Conference Call, Transcript; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 554.
[127] John Farmer et al., "A New Type of War: The Story of the FAA and NORAD Response to the September 11, 2001 Attacks." Rutgers Law Review, September 7, 2011.
[128] John Farmer, The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11. New York: Riverhead Books, 2009, p. 235.
[129] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With CINC NORAD (Commander in Chief NORAD), General Edward 'Ed' Eberhart."
[130] Air Threat Conference and DDO Conference, Transcript; Air Threat Conference Call, Transcript.
[131] "CNN Sept. 11, 2001, 9:29 a.m.-10:11 a.m." CNN, September 11, 2001; "Terrorists Attacks in Both Washington, DC, and New York." Breaking News, CNN, September 11, 2001.
[132] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Captain Charles Joseph Leidig, USN, Commandant of Midshipmen, U.S. Naval Academy."
[133] William M. Arkin, "Building up a False Sense of Security?" Los Angeles Times, January 22, 2002; Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms.
[134] "What is Threatcon Delta?" Slate, September 12, 2001; Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 153.
[135] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Eighth Public Hearing.
[136] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 10.
[137] Air Threat Conference and DDO Conference, Transcript; Air Threat Conference Call, Transcript.
[138] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 10.
[139] Ibid. p. 156; Matthew Klimow, "Marshall Center STACS Graduation Speech."
[140] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 160.
[141] Ibid. p. 157; Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, p. 342.
[142] U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Statement of Jane F. Garvey, Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration, Before the House Subcommittee on Aviation, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 107th Cong., 1st sess., September 21, 2001; "Chronology of the Attacks of September 11, 2001, and Subsequent Events." Federal Aviation Administration, April 15, 2002; Alan Levin, "For Air Traffic Controllers, a Historic Achievement." USA Today, August 12, 2002.
[143] James Dao, "A Low-Key Space Buff: Richard Bowman Myers." New York Times, August 25, 2001; "Pentagon Chiefs' Records Reflect Modern Military"; "General Richard B. Myers."
[144] Matthew Klimow, "Marshall Center STACS Graduation Speech."
[145] National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Twelfth Public Hearing.
[146] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 156.
[147] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.
[148] Richard Myers with Malcolm McConnell, Eyes on the Horizon, p. 156.
[149] Tommy Franks with Malcolm McConnell, American Soldier. New York: HarperCollins, 2004, pp. 243, 247-248.
[150] Richard Myers, interview by Jim Miklaszewski.