The Sep 11 Commission has released its staff report on its factual findings of certain events on the bright blue morning in question lo these several years ago. It makes for some fascinating reading and I highly recommend you check it out.
This particular statement, Staff Report 17, is titled Improvising a Homeland Defense. It details what the various agencies: the FAA, NORAD, DoD in general, and the White House all did to try to improvise a defense to tactics never seriously contemplated. This particular report is entirely event-based, contains to allocation of political blame, and in fact praises those involved for their attempts to innovate a homeland defense on the fly, and it really is worth reading all of it.
In its analysis, several interesting facts come to light.
First, I recall vividly that morning (among other things) brief rumors cited by the newsmen on the scene that, after the hits upon the two towers and the Pentagon, that another plane was inbound to Washington DC and was about 20 minutes away. I was flabbergasted that with a twenty-minute warning, we seemed to have such difficulty establishing a Combat Air Patrol over our own capital city. For a multibillion-dollar military, it seemed impossible that defending our own capital could take so long. Where the F*$% are my fighter jets? I remember saying, repeatedly, and with increasing agitation.
Turns out that, with the virtual elimination of the threat of incoming strategic bombers, we have also eliminated nearly all of our Early Alert Sites which were littered across the country, ready to scramble interceptors at a moments' notice. Only seven sites remain, each with a pair of fighters on alert. And the only reason NORAD knew anything was afoot at all was because the FAA called them on the telephone, and NORAD was utterly unable to locate any of the target planes, and didn't know Flight 93 had crashed until some time after the civilians reported it to them. For a military which is proud that it can project power anywhere in the world in 24 hours, I was surprised to learn that they couldn't project power onto a slowmoving unarmed plane travelling over Pennsylvania just like (snaps fingers) that.
The biggest technological change which is an obvious and salutary response to 9/11, in my opinion, is to adopt some form of satellite air traffic control system. Presently, aircraft are tracked by controllers primarily by a transponder on each aircraft, an active transmitter which gives the plane's identity and location. If that malfunctions (or as happened on 9/11) is turned off, the only thing left for controllers to use is ground-based radar to try to pick up a moving blip which is otherwise unidentified. There is nothing like 100% radar coverage of the US from ground-based radar stations (it's probably more like 10%), leaving huge holes where a hijacked plane can hide and no one can see it.
In one of those incidents which appear sort of poignant and ironic after the fact, in June 2001 Boeing made a sales pitch to the FAA to develop and deploy just such a satellite air traffic control system. Since the FAA can only actively "see" planes when they are near a ground-based radar site (primarily located at airports), a flight from Detroit to Chicago will likely be routed with a flight plan through Toledo first--not taking a crow's flight straight path. This (a) needlessly adds miles and time to the flight; and (b) needlessly adds traffic to the intervening cities' airspace, congesting and slowing down traffic taking off and landing at that airport. Boeing proposed a system which would all but obviate ground based radar in air traffic control, decreasing congestion at busy city airspaces and generally speeding air travel. Such a system, if its output were available to NORAD, would have reduced the confusion that morning and would enable future such incidents to be actively interdicted before impacting on major cities--if the president deems it appropriate and gives such orders.
The plan was generally panned as being too expensive and unnecessary besides. Needless to say, had Boeing's plan been approved and ordered deployed in June 2001, it would not have been operating in time to be of use on 9/11.
Second, while it demonstrated personal courage and tremendous dedication to the safety of his staff, Donald Rumsfeld had no business assisting with the rescue effort in the first moments after the attack on the Pentagon. He should have, like President Bush did, get himself to safety so that continuity of government and the chain of command could have persisted. The pilots of the Combat Air Patrol over Washington DC did not have clear orders to shoot down incoming aircraft for some 30 minutes after Vice President Cheney (authorized by President Bush) first told a military aide in the shelter that the shoot down was authorized.
This military aide instructed the National Military Command Center of the Vice President's order. NMCC informed the central command at NORAD in Colorado, which (supposedly) transmitted the order to the Continental Region of NORAD, which was supposed to thereafter the NEADS commanders. This chain was interrupted between central and regional NORAD, and the NEADS commanders learned of it only over a chat log. The order was so exceptional, and its mode of transmittal so unusual, that the NEADS commanders didn't actually inform the pilots at all. The first actual shootdown order which reached a pilot came in a manner which would have been comical if it weren't so tragic: Cheney repeated the order to a Secret Service agent at the White House, who called on the telephone another Secret Service agent at the FAA, who (holding a telephone to each ear to act as a relay) repeated the order to the commander of the 113th Air Wing of the National Guard, who finally ordered his departing pilots that they were "weapons free," meaning to shoot anything that wouldn't divert.
Secretary Rumsfeld should have remained in the chain of command, rather than participating in rescue efforts after the Pentagon attack. It's not clear that this would have prevented the confusion, and it was anyway too late to shoot anything down, as the passengers of Flight 93 had already knocked the plane out of the sky. But his proper function at that time was to maintain his role within the chain of command.
Third, it is a chilling thought to consider that Flight 93 was heading either for the White House or the Capitol. The latter target would have been much more devastating to America. Congress may be populated mostly with ineffective lifer politicos, and one could rather glibly make jokes about getting corruption out of politics and all, but try to imagine the chaos of having one branch of government incapacitated. If the Executive is all that is left standing, a declaration of martial law would not have been truly unexpected. Special elections would have to be held for perhaps 200 senators and/or representatives, assuming we were still following the niceties of the Constitution at all by that point. Liberals may, I suppose, make glib jokes that what we ended up with--the Bush/Ashcroft/Cheney/Rumsfeld reign of terror, as they see it--precisely that. Phoo on them, I say.
We owe a far larger debt of gratitude to the passengers of Flight 93 than we had realized all along.
Fourth, and finally, I would warrant that this entire affair should call into question this liberal notion of some omnipotent and omniscient industromilitaryintelligence complex, or whatever it is they call it these days. Picturing a Secret Service man repeating what he hears from the phone in his left hand, into the phone in his right hand, and this representing the only way to relay presidential orders, should disabuse even the most paranoid of this fairy tale.
There really is lots of work to do to be ready to deal with these fastmoving threats and attacks. I hope we are ready for the next one.
Posted by JKS at June 19, 2004 04:10 AM