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—' (\ NEW KIND

HOMELAND ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

"This is a new kind of war."

• NORAD Mission Crew Commander

Technician Bianchi, at
9: a.m., on 9/11/01

I. INTRODUCTION

Few aspects of the history of September 11 have been so misunderstood as the story of how the
United States military responded to the terrorist attacks. The public record is a maze of inconsistent
timelines and conflicting recollections about what happened, when it happened, who informed the
military, when the military was informed, how the chain of command functioned, and how and when the
military responded once it was informed of the hijackings. To some extent this confusion is a result of
the complexities of the day's events, refracted through the imperfect lens of memory; to a great extent,
however, this monograph will demonstrate, the inconsistencies in the public record are traceable to
incongruities in the federal government's presentation before congressional committees, various media
outlets, and this Commission of its version of what happened.

This monograph sets forth the definitive history of the United States' response to the 9/11
attacks. It accomplishes this by establishing in detail the operational facts of the defense of the
homeland on the morning of 9/11. These facts have been reconstructed by Commission staff from
primary sources and corroborated by interviewing the key participants. Because there has been such
public confusion over the precise timing of events that morning, the monograph sets forth at length the
precise sequence in which critical events occurred and the evidence supporting the Commission staffs
reliance on specific times and sequences. It then contrasts the facts as we now know them to be with the
facts as presented publicly by the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, and
other administration officials.

A. Methodology

The challenge to Commission staff in relating the history of one of the most chaotic days in our
nation's history is to avoid replicating that chaos in writing about it. In order to accomplish this, and at
the same time to avoid oversimplifying events in the interest of clarity, Commission staff has availed
itself of three types of source material: primary sources, interviews, and public sources.
~-£~

First, staff has relied principally upon primary sources, jgbtained to a g«»t degree in response to
Commission subpoenas issued to the FAA and DoD.^tlie primary sources consist of (1) radar data from
both the Joint Surveillance System, shared by the Federal Aviation Administration and NORAD, and
FAA radar data; (2) tapes made of conversations occurring on the operations floor at the Northeast Air
Defense Sector and in various FAA Air Traffic Control Centers; and (3) logs that were maintained

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during the regular course of business at NORAD. Transcripts of some of the recordings were-
provided by both FAA and DoD. Commission staff has had to contract out the transcription of a great j
many of the tapes, however, particularly those provided in response to Commission subpoena^. For
purposes of this draft of the monograph, staff has cited to page numbers from the existing transcripts;
because the transcripts will not, in all likelihood, be authenticated prior to the Commission's expiration,
staff proposes to cite, in its final monograph, to specific data points on the individual tapes. Staff would
appreciate guidance on this point.

The second source relied upon by staff in reconstructing the events of 9/11 is interviews
conducted by staff with the principals involved in the events of that morning. Interviews have been
helpful in most cases in corroborating the facts that are apparent from reviewing the tapes, transcripts,
and logs. Where individual recollections differ from what is apparent on the tapes, transcripts, and logs,
this monograph notes the difference, but relies on the contemporaneous evidence as more likely to be
accurate.

The least valuable source of information for Commission staff has been the public record. As
noted above, the public record is replete with contradictory accounts of the times the hijacked planes
took off, the times at which they were hijacked, the times and nature of the notification to the military of
the hijackings, and the times and nature of the military's response to the attacks. This monograph makes
no attempt to rebut exhaustively every speculative account of the events of 9/11 that has appeared in the
public record; it does, however, attempt to dispel any misunderstandings that might exist as a
consequence of statements of government officials.

As of this writing (mid-February 2004), Commission staff has reviewed the bulk of documents
obtained prior to and as a result of the issuance of subpoenas (although responsive documents continue
to filter in from both FAA and DoD). Staff has completed interviews at the Northeast Air Defense
Sector in Rome NY and the Continental North American Region of NORAD at Tindall Air Force Base
in Panama City, Florida; at Langley and Otis Air Force Bases; and at FAA Air Traffic Control facilities
in Nashua, New Hampshire, Roncocoma, NY, Queens, NY, Indianapolis, Indiana, Oberlin, Ohio,
Leesburg, Virginia, and Chantilly, Virginia. Although much remains to done ~ staff must still complete
interviews at NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs (scheduled for the first week of March), at the
National Military Command Center, at Andrews Air Force Base, at the Herndon and Washington
Operations Centers of the FAA, and at the White House ~ staff is able to set forth in this draft
monograph the definitive sequence of operational facts of the morning of 9/11 as that sequence was
lived by those fighting the air defense battle.

B. Seeing Through The Fog, Part One: The Fog of War

As noted above, the day of 9/11 was extraordinarily chaotic asitlvas experienced by the
principals involved in defending the nation that morning. The sequence of coordinated attacks on 9/11
created operational confusion and a "fog of war" that hasrbcgmled^recise recollection. That chaos is
reflected in the primary source documents of the day; its effect on the air defense mission will be
described in detail below.

As it turns out, however, the touchstones for evaluating the effectiveness of the United States'
military response to the 9/11 attacks are matters of objective fact and can be identified with relative
precision: the points in time at which the military air defense operators received notice of each
hijacking, and the points in time at which each flight crashed. Identifying times of notification, and
comparing them to the times at which the flights were terminated, reveals how much time, for any given
flight, the military had to respond.

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With these points of reference as a guide, the fundamental operational reality for the military on
9/11 can be stated simply: the military officers charged with leading the air defense mission did not
receive notice of any of the four hijacked flights in time to enable them to respond to the threat before
the planes crashed. ,

The greatest amounTof notice the military received of any of the hijacked planes was the six
[eight?] minutes' notice the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) received of the first hijacked plane,
American Airlines Flight 11. The resulting scramble of fighters from Otis Air Force Base occurred at
8:46 a.m., almost simultaneously with the impact of AA11 into the North Tower of the World Trade
Center in Lower Manhattan at 8:46.40.

NEADS received notice of the second hijacked flight, United Airlines Flight 175, as it exploded
into the South Tower at 9:02.40.

NEADS received notice that American Flight 77 was missing five minutes before American
Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37.45. Three minutes prior to impact at the Pentagon,
NEADS received notice that an unidentified large plane was six miles southwest of the White House.

Finally, NEADS received notice that United Airlines Flight 93 was hijacked more than five
minutes after the flight had already crashed in Shenksville, Pennsylvania at 10:03.11.

To put the matter in the simplest terms, the Northeast Air Defense Sector had six [eight?]
minutes' notice on one flight, five minutes' notice on another, and was notified post-crash on the other
two. The notice that was received on the two planes prior to crash, moreover, did not specify the planes'
locations.

C. Seeing Through The Fog, Part Two: The Fog Of Public Accounts

Given the multitude of newspaper and other media accounts, congressional and Commission
testimony, and books and periodicals devoted to the government's response to the 9/11 attacks, what is
most remarkable about the operational sequence outlined above is that it has never been told, [under
discussion]

II. THE AIR DEFENSE OF AMERICA ON 9/11

A. Air Traffic Control and Continental Air Defense Pre-9/11

The defense of the United States' air space and homeland depended on 9/11, as today, on close
interaction between two federal agencies: the Federal Aviation Administration ("FAA"), which is
responsible principally for the safety of civilian commercial aviation; and NORAD, an agency that was,
in structure if not in mission, a relic of the Cold War, responsible for providing defense of American air
space against aggressor nations and the protection of America's air sovereignty against rogue intruders
such as drug smugglers. In order to understand how the two agencies interacted on 9/11, it is essential
to understand how the agencies had evolved in the years leading to 9/11, the nature of their command
and control structures, and the nature of their working relationship on the morning of 9/11.

1. The Federal Aviation Administration

a. Mission

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b. Structure and Organization

2. The Military: NORAD and the Declining Mission

a. The historic missions: air defense and air sovereignty

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a joint American-Canadian

command, was formed in 1958 in order to provide for the air defense of the North American continent.
[Kenneth Schaffel, The Emerging Shield: The Air Force and the Evolution of Continental Air Defense,
1945-1960 (U.S A.F. Air Combat Command, 1991), at 9; Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, at 6 (the
original name, North American Air Defense Command, was later changed to "Aerospace" command
after the advent of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles)] At the time NORAD was formed, the air defense
mission was a top priority of the Department of Defense because of the threat of Soviet bombers and,
later, ICBMs.

The resources allocated to the NORAD command reflected the priority of its mission. In 1958,
at the peak of NORAD's Cold War alert, the command controlled 2,200 active United States and
Canadian fighter interceptor aircraft, stationed at 26 alert sites. [Filson, Air War Over America, at 11]
In addition, the command had access to approximately 3,600 reserve aircraft. [Id.] By the mid-sixties,
however, the fighter-interceptor mission had been devalued by the advent of the ICBM threat. Secretary
of Defense McNamara testified in a 1966 hearing before the House Subcommittee on Department of
Defense Appropriations: "The elaborate defenses which we erected against the Soviet bomber threat...
no longer retain their original importance. Today, with no defense against the major threat, Soviet
ICBMs, our anti-bomber defenses alone would contribute very little to our damage-limited objective.
..." [Quoted in Filson, Air War Over America, at 13]

By 1971, there were 12 regular Air Force fighter-interceptor squadrons operating in the air
defense mission, along with 3 from the Canadian forces and 15 in the Air National Guard. [Air Force
Space Command, NORAD Dedicated Interceptor Squadrons, 1957-85] With Department of Defense
priorities focused on the ICBM and the war in Vietnam, "air defense really changed. When there were
multiple warheads on missiles, it made a little radar site sitting at the tip of Florida somewhere kind of
insignificant, and we all accepted that as the mission drew down and went to the Guard." [Retired Air
Force Col. Harry Birkner, quoted in Filson, at 14-15] Another retired Air Force Colonel, Connie Mac
Hostetler, recalls that "[m]any of the fighter-interceptor assets went to the Guard and a lot of the fighter-
interceptor squadrons folded. The perimeter air defense idea came in and a lot of the internal air defense
squadrons closed down. The rationale was: 'Who is going to attack Kansas City; Lockbourne, Ohio; or
Big Spring, Texas? So as the restructuring of air defense began, everyone realized that the Guard could
do the same job as the active duty units and the active duty units could be used for active duty needs."
[Quoted in Filson, Air War, at 14-15]

b. The missions' decline: from 26 alert stations to 7

Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the NORAD air defense mission had been
declining due to the predominance of the ICBM threat; after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the air
sovereignty aspect of NORAD's mission became more prominent. "Bottom line," according to retired
Maj. Gen. Philip Killey, commander of the 1st Air Force in the early nineties, "air sovereignty means we
need to know who's flying in our airspace. We can't afford to have our skies, our borders of our

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airspace, wide open to whoever wants to fly in. We need to know what that traffic is. And we need to
have a system of identifying unknown aircraft." [Quoted in Filson, Sovereign Skies: Air National
Guard Takes Command of 1st Air Force (1st Air Force, 1999), at 17]

Not everyone in the defense establishment shared Gen. Killey's view of the importance of the air
sovereignty mission. Retired General Navin recalls that "It was clear to many people in the military, at
least in their own minds, that the need for a robust air sovereignty fighter force structure was not
necessary. We didn't all necessarily share that opinion, but there were enough people in the Department
of Defense - at the decision-making level - who didn't see it as necessary." [Quoted in Filson, Air War
Over America, at 15-16] Killey and others were faced with a major challenge, then, as the Cold War
ended: "American defense priorities were changing. A manned bomber attack against the United States
was unlikely. But... America's skies did need protection against any unknown airborne target that
could penetrate sovereign airspace; America needed an air sovereignty force." [Filson, Air War Over
America, at 16-17]

1. invoking the threat of terrorism in order to preserve the mission

3. Agency Interaction: FAAandNORAD

a. "Free-standing silos"

1. different languages

2. absence of joint training

3. differing radar capacities

4. bureaucratic battle over phasing out radar

b. The Protocols for interception emergencies: how it should have worked

1. command and control in hijack situations: the WOC and the NMCC

2. the command structure of NORAD and the Northeast Air Defense

Sector

3. a precursor: Payne Stewart?

4. the morning of 9/11: Vigilant Guardian

B. 9/11 Part One: The New York Attacks

1. American Airlines 11: Notification at 8:38, Impact at 8:46

a. FAA Awareness
[under discussion]

b. Military Notification and Response

The United States' defense of its homeland on 9/11 began with the decision of the Boston Air

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Traffic Control Center to contact the Northeast Air Defense Sector of NORAD. At 8:38 [8:40?]
a.m., a tracking technician in the Weapons Section at NEADS answered a call from Boston Center:

[under discussion]

c. Analysis

The interplay of the FAA and NEADS regarding American Airlines 11 prefigured, in many
respects, their interactions throughout the critical morning hours of 9/11.
[under discussion]

2. United Airlines Flight 175: Notification At Impact At 9:02.40 a.m.

a. FAA Awareness

[under discussion]

b. Military Notification and Response

The first indication that the NEADS air defenders had of the second hijacked aircraft, United
175, came in a phone call from New York Center shortly after 9:00 a.m., reporting that United 175 was
a "possible second hijack." [ID Op, Ch., 4, at 13]

[under discussion]

c. Analysis

The most noteworthy aspect of the time sequence recounted above is a time that is not
mentioned: 8:43 a.m. In the days immediately following 9/11, both NORAD and FAA identified 8:43
as the time at which NORAD was notified of the hijacking of United 175; this time was picked up by
The Washington Post and other prominent media outlets, and widely disseminated in the public record.
The tapes and transcripts, corroborated by witness interviews, show, however, that 8:43 could not have
been the time of notification. The FAA controller did not notice the change in transponder signal from
United 175 until 8:51; there is no way that FAA could have notified NORAD of the hijacking at 8:43
when it did not even realize there was a problem with the flight until eight minutes later.

[under discussion]

C. 9/11 Part Two: A Critical Mistaken Report

1. FAA Awareness

[under discussion]

2. Military Notification And Response

At 9:20, the military officer at Boston Center, who had been listening in on an FAA
teleconference, called the NEADS ID Technician Unit:

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FAA: Military, Boston Center. I just got a report that American

11 is still in the air, and it is on its way towards - heading toward
Washington.

[under discussion]

3. Analysis

The sequence outlined above is again noteworthy for its omission of notification times that have
been widely circulated.

[under discussion]

D. 9/11 Part Three: The Washington, DC Attacks

1. American Airlines 77: Notification at 9:33, Impact at 9:37.45

a. FAA Awareness

[under discussion]

b. Military Notification and Response

[under discussion]

c. Analysis

[under discussion]

2. Another Mistaken Report: Delta 1989, Reported 9:39 a.m.

a. FAA Awareness

Having experienced the two hijackings from Logan Airport earlier in the morning,
and hearing the reports of a third missing aircraft, Boston Center became proactive. After the second
plane crashed into the World Trade Center, Boston Center ground-stopped all pending departures and
then attempted to identify other potential flights that had already taken off and might be candidates for
hijacking. [Biggio MFR at ] In particular, Boston Center began to look for transcontinental flights
taking off from Boston and to attempt to contact those flights to ensure that everything was normal. One
flight in particular, Delta 1989, from Boston to Las Vegas, attracted Boston Center's attention,
[reasons?] [Biggio MFR at ]

b. Military Notification and Response

[under discussion]

c. Analysis

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Because its transponder was never turned off, the Delta 1989 flight was the first reported
hijacking from 9/11 that NEADS controllers were able to follow as it headed west, and ultimately turned
around and landed at Cleveland. When confronted with the evidence developed below that they had
never tracked United 93, many witnesses - including General Arnold and Col. Marr -- admitted that they
must have conflated the two flights in their recollections.

3. United 93: Notification at 10:07, 5 minutes after impact

At 10:03.11

a. FAA Awareness

[under discussion]

b. Military Notification and Response

[under discussion]

The time of notification of the crash of United 93 was 10:15 [see also MCCT Log]; the
actual time of the crash was 10:03.01. The NEADS air defenders never located the flight or
followed it on their radar scopes. The flight had already crashed by the time they were notified
that it was hijacked.

c. Analysis

[under discussion]

E. 9/11, Part Four: Washington Weighs In: The Shoot-Down Order, The Andrews
Scramble, and DEFCON 3

1. The Shoot-Down Order

[under discussion]

2. The Andrews Scramble: 10:40[?]

[under discussion]

3. DEFCON 3

[under discussion]

III. NATIONAL LEADERSHIP ON 9/11

[To be added]

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