Particularly notable in The War on Freedom is a chapter titled The Collapse
of Standard Operating Procedure on 9-11. One incredibly striking detail is
the change in the official story of Air Force procedures. Ahmed details
how, on Sept. 13, Joint Chief of Staff Richard Myers stated that no planes
were scrambled (i.e., sent up into the air to intercept the hijacked
planes) until after the Pentagon was hit. Tim Russert, Ahmed notes, also
made this same statement on Meet the Press with VP Dick Cheney, and Cheney
did not dispute it. Ahmed leads his reader into an examination of FAA
flight procedures, which state that the moment a plane deviates from its
flight path, the air traffic controllers must attempt to make contact. If
no contact can be made, planes are to be scrambled.
Ahmed deduces that, if no planes were scrambled until after the Pentagon
was hit, this leaves approximately 95 minutes between the time the first
United Airlines flight deviated from flight path and the time planes were
scrambled, which would be a blatant violation of protocol. The author
describes how, on Sept. 14, this official story changed. Air Force and
government officials reneged on their own testimonies, Ahmed writes,
telling CBS that a scramble was launched from Otis Air National Guard Base
on Cape Cod and that planes were headed to New York by 8:56 a.m. Ahmed
takes this official testimony to task with these words: This story raises
more questions than it answers F-16s can travel at 1500 mph. If it took the
F-16s half an hour to cover 150 miles, they could not have been traveling
at more than 300 mph at 20 percent capacity. Boeing 767s and 757s have
cruising speeds of 530 mph. Talk about a lack of urgency! Ahmed also
questions why planes were sent to protect D.C. from Langley Air Force Base,
129 miles from Washington, when, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune
and the authoritative U.S. military information Web site, demilitary.com,
fighters could have been sent from Andrews Air Force Base, only 15 miles
from Washington. From this, Ahmed draws the inference that these
peculiarities make the Sept. 13 explanation more believable than the Sept.
14 statement. However, Ahmed notes, even in the case of the second
explanation, there would still be 24 minutes to account for between the
time the first plane deviated from flight path without contact and the time
a scramble was issued. According to the author, FAA manuals would note this
as a violation of standard operating procedure.
Ahmed goes after the White House with tenacity. He uses a Dick Cheney press
conference in which Tim Russert asks Cheney what the most important
decision President Bush had to make on Sept. 11 was. Cheney responded,I
suppose the toughest decision was the question of whether or not we would
intercept incoming commercial aircraft We decided to do it. Ahmed pins
Cheney down in an uncomfortable position here. Citing FAA regulations,
Ahmed notes that hijacked planes are automatically to be intercepted by
scramblers if they deviate from flight path and contact can't be made.
Thus, Ahmed writes, the decision to intercept aircraft shouldn't have had
anything to do with the White House, nor should it have been a decision.
Ahmed concludes that Cheney's statement indicates that the White House, not
the FAA, was in control regarding scrambling on Sept. 11, making the White
House responsible for standard operating procedure failure. Eerily then,
Ahmed pieces together an argument that the White House took the authority
to call the shots on Sept. 11 and then didn't actually call any until well
after the FAA was required to scramble planes.
http://www.missoulanews.com/AE/News.asp?no=2858
