General Ralph Eberhart
To think Eberhart and Myers couldn’t get fighter jets in the air because they feared reprimand by Rumsfeld …
F.A.A.
“Washington Air Traffic Control Center knew about the first plane before it hit the World Trade Center. Yet the third plane was able to fly loop-de-loops over Washington, DC one hour and 45 minutes after Washington Center first knew about the hijackings. After circling in this restricted airspace, controlled and protected by the Secret Service who had an open phone line to the FAA, how was it possible that the plane was then able to crash into the Pentagon”
Testimony of 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser before the Joint Senate House Intelligence Committee, Sept.18, 2001
"The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8:20 AM, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10:06 AM. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the Andrews Air Force Base, just 10 miles from Washington, DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9:38 AM. Why not?
There were standard FAA intercept procedures for aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the U.S. military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13,2002). It is a U.S. legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate.
Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could U.S. air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority"
Former British Environmental Minister and MP Michael Meacher, The Guardian, September 6, 2003
Normal FAA procedures for responding to even minor deviations from air traffic control protocols were followed routinely and without complication 67 times between September 2000 and June 2001 before a new convoluted order was released by the Pentagon on June 1, 2001. That order inserted the Secretary of Defense into a decision-making and action protocol, normally the domain of senior military commanders. Why?
All commercial airliners are equipped with transponders �?? devices that emit radio signals at frequencies selected by air traffic controllers (ATC) and pilots so that each aircraft can easily be identified on radar screens that are often very crowded.
When a transponder is turned off, several things happen to civilian (FAA) radar screens that do not affect military radar. First, a small identifying symbol on the blip on the controller’s radar screen goes out. Second, although the civilian ATC still has the ability to track the aircraft in two dimensions, he or she is no longer able to pinpoint its altitude. Third, as reported in an on-the-record statement by a veteran pilot (and confirmed by at least a dozen others), when an aircraft under ATC control goes silent, the blip for that aircraft is instantaneously inserted in a conspicuous manner on the screens of every other ATC in the region. Everybody sees it.
Michael Guillaume
[In re] scrambling
Sun Jun 9 13:11:30 2002
[i]"I am a pilot and I know what happens to me when I lose my transponder. The conrollers’s console immediately alerts him to the fact, since he no longer has my transponder code and altitude. This causes him a great deal of trouble, and very shortly I get trouble also. I am usually instructed to stay below 3,500 feet and return to the airport. The reason for the concern is that I am a hazard to navigation. Now imagine the situation in the Air Route Traffic Control Center (commonly abbreviated to 'center). This is in the northeast corner of the U.S., the busiest airspace on the planet. Each controller has a wedge-shaped sector that he is responsible for. His airspace is also bounded by altitude limits. Commercial flights, referred to as heavies, are always under positive control.
They must constantly be in communication with the controllers in order to maintain legal separation. If one of these heavies loses its transponder, it causes instant problems for more than one controller since altitude information is lost. The controllers still have a skin paint, or passive echo from the airframe, but the blip now shows up on all consoles for that sector, not just the original one that was handling the altitude range of the flight. If that same flight loses communication with the controllers as well, the controller workload takes another giant step upward.
Keep in mind that this is in an area that is normally stretched to the breaking point with controller overload. This flight is now a hazard to air navigation, and the controllers’ primary function of separating the planes is in jeopardy. The procedure for lost communication emergencies is simple: follow your last clearance. If the flight under discussion follows it last clearance, the controllers can predict where it will go and can still keep other flights out of harm’s way. If in addition to losing communication and transponder the flight starts to deviate from its last clearance, the whole system is in an emergency condition. Alarms all over the country would be going off.
One interesting piece of information is the recording of controller and pilot conversations. These tapes are a matter of public record and are written over after a few days unless something interesting happens. These tapes would show the response of the system. Where are they?
So we know that the traffic control system would be in panic mode within two to three minutes of the initial events. We know that Otis Air Force Base is only five minutes from Manhattan by F15. We know that the controllers always had a passive return from the planes and could vector an intercept. The last Airman�??s Information Manual I bought has a date of 1989 and it describes intercept procedures. So we know that intercepts have been routine low-level events since at least that time.
We know that there is an Air Defense Intercept Zone just offshore for the entire Atlantic Coast. This zone is constantly being patrolled. In general fast movers (fighter aircraft) would not need to be scrambled. They can be diverted from routine patrol and training flights for the intercept. The odds are that many flights would be on patrol just offshore. It would be most improbable that even one commercial flight could go (astray) more than ten minutes without being intercepted.
Interceptions are routine daily occurences. The fact that they didn’t happen under extreme provocation raises some serious questions. I hope [former FAA Inspector General] Mary Schiavo will ask them."[/i]
The major media have failed to disclose or discuss the fact that military radars, which are capable of determining the altitude of targets without transponders, are always tracking all commercial traffic inside the country as well. Investigative reports that became public after the equally suspicious 2000 crash of Egypt Air 990 off the Eastern seaboard establish this.
�?� all commercial airliners are equipped with Identify Friend or Foe (IFF) buttons on the control yoke which emit special frequencies to silently alert the FAA and military to specific emergencies. Once tripped, these transponder codes activate an SSR radar system that directly and continuously transmits the airplane’s altitude above sea level. At least one press report from 9/11 confirmed that one or more of the hijacked pilots had pressed his button.
Atlantic City, NJ is an Air National Guard Base and half the distance from New York City as compared to Cape Cod.
Naval Air Station Willow Grove has a Marine Fighter/Attack Group and is considerably closer to New York City than Otis Air National Guard
Andrews Air Force Base is ten minutes outside Washington, DC
(all extracted from Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Ruppert, ©2004)