ZDC INTERVIEW 12/4/03

DENNIS O'HARA (ZDC Controller Supervisor for Area 4, outbound + inbound AA77)

• No objection to recording.

• FAA employee since 1982. 13yrs at NY Center (controller, TMU, QA,

Command Center), selected for ZDC Operations Supervisor July 1998 (Area 8,
4,1) Currently in Area 1.

• Role of Supervisor pre-9/11 for a HJ: Would receive verbal codeword or

transponder, notify the "watch desk." Would also notify the next facility that I
would have handed the hj ac off to. Main focus would be on where is the hj ac
going - coordinate with other centers.

• HJ training: Can't recall any specific training other than the pubs that guide hj
response. We monitor the hj, no role in the scramble of military ac. Not in our
protocol to contact the military - none whatsoever (supervisor role or controller
role).

• 9/11: Traffic was not crazy - a good steady day. Area 4 has sector 4, 3, and 6
(low), 15 (arrival to DC metro area), 1 (normally combined with 15 when traffic
was light). Very mild morning. Was conducting training in Sector 3.

• Dave West came through (Area manager) low key that an ac had hit a WTC
tower, began re-routing ac. Told our sectors that abut NY sectors, to be aware
and they (NY) may need some support. 2nd WTC strike. Not sure about the all-
land order was given, but obviously began that action. Heard of the second hit
from someone coming back from the cafeteria.

• Someone told the supervisors to "pull up the primaries" - can't recall exactly
who that was. FLT

• 77 hit notification probably came from the front desk. Everyone was in the
aisles that day, all walking up and down. At that point we had everyone "belly-
up" on the Areas.

• Did communicate with Secret Service later in the day - to coordinate Attorney
General's arrive to DC, this was after UA93 had crashed. Believe that they
contacted us.

• UA93: We were told that Pittsburg was evacuating their tower. We got a short
automated handoff "flash", I believe it was on Primary... never got an official
handoff, and it quickly disappeared. We had a data block for a short period of
time - well less than a minute, on a Primary target. Assume that someone at
Cleveland Center had assigned it a flight ID that would have stayed with the
 Primary target - "put a track on it, probably would have to be updated manually
b/c it wouldn't have a flight plan." Probably would have come into Sector 4,
Area 4 (below 33K would have been Sector 6). UA93 never made it to ZDC's
airspace. Did not speak to any supervisors in Cleveland about UA93. If they
had officially handed off UA93, the next step would have been to initiate contact
btw controllers - Clev Center would have passed along information about it that
it was a hj ac. Don't believe that was ever done, other than my controller may
have had a brief discussion with Clev Center's controller about it. Ultimately,
his Area would have been involved with giving info to fighters on where UA93
was. And we only would have been able to vector them into the general position,
b/c we didn't have a transponded location.

• Langley scramble, any information on it? No. Would have been Area 8 (the DC
Metro area). If Langley fighters would have been vectored to UA93, it would
have required a handoff btw the Area 8's sector to Area 4's sector.

• How did communication between the supervisors work? Mainly working within
their Areas and with their controllers. No interactions with other Area
supervisors.

• Sector 6, Area 4 also has Camp David. He heard no reports of any ac crashing
there, nor were they asked to confirm any report of a crash there

• Played tape of Mr. Kerry Johnson making an announcement to the floor

supervisors. Response to the tape: That was a conference call on VSCS with all
of the supervisors- main comms system on the floor. Person asking questions
was Hal Albert, probably Area 7. I don't remember that call at all. My direction
to look at primaries probably well before that call, "look out for limited data
tag" - means all you'll get is the "slash and the code" - once it enters your
sector you'd get the Mode C Intruder "I".

• I instructed the controllers in my area to turn on their primaries.

• Have seen the radar data about 1-2 weeks later. Secret Service or FBI came in
to interview all of us on what happened - asking about procedures for losing
secondary contacts. They showed us the flight path out, and the primaries on it's
inbound - tracked roughly alone the boundry Area 3 and 4 (Sectors ??).

• Did your controllers see anything? Well, it was just crazy in terms of trying to
get all of the ac to land. Focus was on the Clev areas and on flights we were all
trying to land in Pittsburgh. If not there, then to coordinate the flights in this are
to land in DC or Baltimore - involves putting flight plans in etc. All of our
stations were manned - all had been called back in.

• No one called out any unidentified primary targets of interest.

• Area 4's : Sector 3 (Sloan) and Sector 4 (Majtyka - Rside). Would have been
where AA77 entered.

• Controllers should have seen primary on AA77? The mosaic doesn't get raw
data, Secondary tracks often drop off, and get lost, for a moment or two. Don't
think the Primary on 77 was going to get picked up. Our focus was on
Cleveland and NY dealing with landing ac. I don't recall our focus was on
finding FLT 77. No real knowledge of it until after it crashed. Had someone
been totally focused on finding it, without any other roles in controlling and
landing other ac, they probably would have seen it.

• AA77 came inbound "between" two different traffic routes, and no information
was passed along from other flights in those routes on AA77.

• Around this point in time, when AA77 hit, there were outside reports made that
we here at ZDC were hit.

• Recommendations: Heightened awareness is good. We report everything now,

any radio comms now are an immediate priority. East Coast Plan for controllers
pre-9/11 was rigid in terms of controllers' focus only on their areas and sectors,
has since been changed to a more flexible set of guidelines and letters of
agreement with the military (CAPs and scrambles).

• No notes or records from that day.

• Dave West, Rameriez, and Kerry Johnson were waling the aisles morning of
9/11.
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