NORAD/CIA 'LIVE FLY' EXERCISES SIMULATING MULTIPLE HIJACKED PLANES CRASHED INTO BUILDINGS ON THE MORNING OF 9/11 WHILE THE 'REAL THING' WAS GOING ON CAUSED AIRCOVER TO BE UNAVAILABLE AND FAA SCREENS TO HAVE A MIX OF EXERCISE PLANES AND REAL PLANES.
WHO TOOK ADVANTAGE OF THIS LAPSE IN AIR COVER AND COORDINATION?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/08/21/national1518EDT0686.DTL&type=printableAgency planned exercise on Sept. 11 built around a plane crashing into a building
JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, August 21, 2002
(08-21) 15:08 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) -- In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 inwhich an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism -- it was to be a simulated accident.
Officials at the Chantilly, Va.-based National ReconnaissanceOffice had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure.The agency is about four miles from the runways of Washington Dulles International Airport. Agency chiefs came up with the scenario to test employees'ability to respond to a disaster, said spokesman Art Haubold.
No actual plane was to be involved -- to simulate the damage from the crash, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building. "It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility," Haubold said. "As soon as the real world events began, we canceled the exercise.
"Terrorism was to play no role in the exercise, which had been planned for several months, he said. Adding to the coincidence, American Airlines Flight 77 -- theBoeing 767 that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon -- took off from Dulles at 8:10 a.m. on Sept. 11, 50 minutes before the exercise was to begin. It struck the Pentagon around 9:40 a.m., killing 64 aboard the plane and 125 on the ground.
The National Reconnaissance Office operates many of the nation's spy satellites. It draws its personnel from the military and the CIA. After the Sept. 11 attacks, most of the 3,000 people who work at agency headquarters were sent home, save for some essential personnel, Haubold said.
An announcement for an upcoming homeland security conference in Chicago first noted the exercise. In a promotion for speaker John Fulton, a CIA officer assigned as chief of NRO's strategic gaming division, the announcement says, "On the morning of September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his team ... were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way that day. "The conference is being run by the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute."
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National Law Enforcement and Security Institute
John Fulton - Intelligence Networking & Analysis
On the morning of September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his team at the CIA were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way that day.
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"Amalgam Virgo 01" NORAD exercise just prior to 9/11
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/09/149985_comment.phpAmalgam Virgo was a multiagency, bilateral air security exercise sponsored by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
http://sf.indymedia.org/uploads/tab_01_report_of_ftx_amalgum_virgo_01_30_june_2001.pdfThe one in this pdf report happend just prior to 9/11 in the summer of 2001. They didn't know about the attack? So they say.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2002/n06042002_200206043.html NORAD-Sponsored Exercise Prepares For Worst-Case Scenarios
This year's exercise is a commercial airliner-hijacking scenario -- planned before the Sept. 11 attacks, Snyder said. Last year's exercise, he said, was a scenario involving a cruise missile launched by "a rogue (government) or somebody" from a barge off the East Coast.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/AVE_STE.html - more on Amalgam Virgo and other pre-9/11 war games (military, biowar, financial crash)
from AMALGAM VIRGO 01 military exercise, June 1 - 2, 2001 (unclassified report)
note the obvious implication of a potential terrorist attack against the US Capitol building in the graphic on the right side
(most of the report is about the military response to a cruise missile launched by terrorists into the US - the picture of the Capitol building is the only photo of a potential "target" in the report, although there are graphics simulating
an attack on Gulf of Mexico area target)
cover page of Amalgam Virgo report
page 34 of report
Pentagon prepares for airline crash, October 2000 Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/ContPlanP.html archive of article by Military District of Washington on emergency response planning for a plane hitting the Pentagon
A plane crash is simulated inside the cardboard courtyard of a surprisingly realistic-looking model Pentagon. This "tabletop" exercise was designed to help emergency relief personnel better prepare for disasters when they occur.
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"Northern Guardian" and "Northern Vigilance" (NORAD exercises on 911/2001)
Copyright 2001 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
Toronto Star
December 9, 2001 Sunday Ontario Edition
SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. B05
LENGTH: 974 words
HEADLINE: The scene at NORAD on Sept. 11
BYLINE: Scott Simmie, Toronto Star
Original headline
"Northern Guardian": The Scene at NORAD on Sept. 11
Copyright 2001 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
Toronto Star
December 9, 2001
Sunday Ontario edition
by Scott Simmie HIGHLIGHT:
Playing Russian war games ... and then someone shouted to look at the monitor
BODY:
EARLY morning, Sept. 11. A lifetime before the attacks on New York and Washington.
Deep inside a mountain in Colorado and far beneath the granite of North Bay, members of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) are at full "battle staff" levels for a major annual exercise that tests every facet of the organization.
Operation Northern Vigilance, planned months in advance, involves deploying fighter jets to locations in Alaska and northern Canada. Part of this exercise is pure simulation, but part is real world: NORAD is keeping a close eye on the Russians, who have dispatched long-range bombers to their own high north on a similar exercise.
Everything is going as planned when Capt. Mike Jellinek arrives for his 6 a.m. shift. The Canadian will be overseeing the crew staffing a crucial post inside the mountain - NORAD's command centre.
Whether it's a simulation or a real-world event, the role of the centre is to fuse every critical piece of information NORAD has into a concise and crystalline snapshot.
An hour into his shift, something unscripted happens. NORAD's Northeast Air Defence Sector (NEADS), based in Rome, N.Y., contacts the mountain.
The Federal Aviation Administration has evidence of a hijacking and is asking for NORAD support. This is not part of the exercise.
In a flash, Operation Northern Vigilance is called off. Any simulated information, what's known as an "inject," is purged from the screens.
Someone shouted to look at the monitor displaying CNN.
"At that point, we saw the World Trade Center, one of the towers, smoke coming out of it. And a minute later, we watched the live feed as the second aircraft swung around into the second tower," says Jellinek.
note: this assumes that NORAD wasn't contacted for about 40 minutes into the hijacking (second tower hit 9:03 am), which is not believable - see the timelines of the "stand down" for details at
http://www.oilempire.us/standdown.html He had one question for the people on the line from NEADS: "Was that the hijacked aircraft you were dealing with?" he asked.
Yes, it was, came the reply.
And then, Jellinek says, "it got really, really busy."
Maj.-Gen. Rick Findley, director of NORAD operations, had just completed the night shift. Usually, Findley would be across town at NORAD headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base. But because of the exercise and the time difference with Russia, he'd been working nights in the mountain. He was just preparing to leave when the disaster began unfolding.
It was a scenario unlike any NORAD had trained for.
"Lots of other reports were starting to come in," Findley recalls. "And now you're not too sure. If they're that clever to co-ordinate that kind of attack, what else is taking place across North America? So we were in a very high-tempo mode, trying to stay one step ahead.
"In the face of all this tragedy, people seemed to know what to do. Everyone seemed to understand that there was a crisis that was not well-defined yet."
Orders were quickly given to get more combat aircraft in the sky. Tankers for in-flight refuelling were at the ready.
Combat aircraft were dispatched to escort Air Force One in case the president was at risk. AWAC jets, designed to track air traffic and offer targeting information to combat aircraft, were deployed.
Because no one yet knew who was behind the attack - or what else might be en route - the giant blast doors designed to protect the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center from a nuclear blast were sealed.
The massive steel slabs, weighing 25 tonnes each, had not been closed in a non-exercise event since the Cold War.
At the Peterson base, staff began covering windows with tape and paper to minimize flying glass should an explosion occur.
The base, NORAD's administrative headquarters, went to a security status known as Threatcon Delta. It's the highest state of alert and had not been in effect since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
"It was very eerie here," says Helen Booth, who co-ordinates services for the base's Canadian contingent.
"There was a real sense of crisis."
As that crisis unfolded, NORAD set up a secure line so it could brief key officials and act on their decisions.
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Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks
by William B. Scott
Aviation Week and Space Technology
June 3, 2002
http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm (link scrubbed but mirrored)
http://billstclair.com/911timeline/2002/aviationweekspacetechnology060302.html (this one still works)
On-the-fly innovation, backed by excellent training, 'probably saved many lives' when terrorists struck the U.S. Sept. 11, 2001: "American 11 heavy, Boston Center. Your transponder appears to be inoperative. Please recycle. . . . American 11 heavy, how do you read Boston Center? Over.
Air National Guard F-15s from Otis ANGB, Mass., scrambled in response to the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11. They flew supersonically to New York, then intercepted about 100 aircraft during the next 5.5 hr.
"Watch supervisor, I have a possible hijack of American 11 heavy. Recommend notifying Norad." At 8:40 a.m. EDT, Tech. Sgt. Jeremy W. Powell of North American Aerospace Defense Command's (Norad) Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) in Rome, N.Y., took the first call from Boston Center. He notified NEADS commander Col. Robert K. Marr, Jr., of a possible hijacked airliner, American Airlines Flight 11. "Part of the exercise?" the colonel wondered. No; this is a real-world event, he was told. Several days into a semiannual exercise known as Vigilant Guardian, NEADS was fully staffed, its key officers and enlisted supervisors already manning the operations center "battle cab."
war games before, during and after the morning in question?
>snip<
more...
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Commissioner Jamie Gorelick did ask Secretary Rumsfeld, while under oath, a very specific question of exactly when an order was given authorizing fighter pilots to shoot down aircraft on the morning of 9-11. Rumsfeld complicated and confused his answer by giving an account of how they had modified the rules of engagement. General Myers clarified by stating to the best of his recollection the shoot-down order was communicated directly to the pilots shortly after the president issued it.
GORELICK: May I ask one more question, Mr. Chairman?
We can't go into the content of the PDDs and the SEIBs here. And I can't even characterize them in order to ask you the next question that I would ask. So let me ask you this: Was it your understanding that the NORAD pilots who were circling over Washington D.C. that morning had indeed received a shoot-down order?
RUMSFELD: When I arrived in the command centre, one of the first things I heard, and I was with you, was that the order had been given and that the pilots -- correction, not the pilots necessarily, but the command had been given the instructions that their pilots could, in fact, use their weapons to shoot down a commercial airliners filled with our people in the event that the aircraft appeared to be behaving in a threatening way and an unresponsive way.
GORELICK: Now, you make a distinction there between the command and the pilots. Was it your understanding that the pilots had received that order?
RUMSFELD: I'm trying to get in time because...
MYERS: Well, I think -- my understanding, I've talked to General Eberhart, commander now of NORAD, and I think he's briefed the staff. And I think what he told the staff, what he told me, as I recall, was that the pilots did -- at the appropriate point when the authority to engage civilian airliners was given, that the pilots knew that fairly quickly. I mean, it went down through the chain of command.
RUMSFELD: It was on a threat conference call that it was given, and everybody heard it simultaneously. The question then would be -- the reason I am hesitant is because we went through two or three iterations of the rules of engagement. And in the end, we ended up delegating that authority to, at the lowest level, I believe, to two stars.
MYERS: Right.
RUMSFELD: And the pilot would then describe the situation to that level. To the extent that level had time, they would come up to General Eberhart. To the extent Eberhart had time, he would come up to me. And to the extent I had time, I might talk to the president, which in fact, I did do on several occasions during the remainder of the day with respect to international flights heading to this country that were squawking "hijack."GORELICK: I'm just trying to understand whether it is your understanding that the NORAD pilots themselves, who were circling over Washington, as you referred to in your statement, whether they knew that they had authority to shoot down a plane. And if you don't know, it's fine to say that. You mentioned them in your statement, and I would like to know if you know the answer.
RUMSFELD: I do not know what they thought. In fact, I haven't talked to any of the pilots that were up there. I certainly was immediately concerned that we did know what they thought they could do.
RUMSFELD: And we began the process quite quickly of making changes to the standing rules of engagement, Dick Myers and I did, and then issuing that. And we then went back and revisited that question several times in the remaining week or two while we were still at various stages of alert. And we have since done that in connection with several other events such as the Prague summit.
GORELICK: As you know, we were not intending to address the issues of the day of in this hearing. And it is the subject of a full additional hearing, and we may be back to you with these questions with a more precise time line for you to look at.
Thank you very much.
KEAN: Thank you.
(For complete transcript of Rumsfeld's testimony:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/COM403B.html )
At first glance this seems like semantics, but in the context of what was really happening that morning it may be quite significant. Whether or not a pilot has a shoot-down order directly communicated to him is of the highest significance when considering the fact that the pilot may not know if they are still involved in a war game exercise.
Officials at NORAD have stated when the hijackings first occurred they initially thought it was part of the Vigilant Guardian drills running that morning. Despite some confusion, once Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center at 8:45 am, everyone should have known it was not a test. However, this is still an assumption because we do not know what the fighter jocks in the air at the time did and did not know, we do not know the full extent of the orders they received and it has yet to be explained why scrambled fighter jets were unable to intercept even one of the 4 hijacked airliners.
Scrambling Fighter Jets
Standard operating procedure of both FAA & NORAD dictates that once an aircraft is off course and/or its transponder is not responding, within 10 minutes Air Force jets are scrambled to re-establish physical contact with the wayward plane.
Scrambling Air Force interceptors does not mean shooting down any aircraft. It simply means that an Air Force jet is dispatched to fly next to the off course aircraft, attempt to communicate with the its pilots, look inside the cockpit, see who is in control of the plane and report back to flight control what is actually happening. In the year prior to 9/11 this automatic procedure was triggered a total of 67 times (AP, 8/13/02). On the morning of 9/11, it was not successfully applied even once in the well over an hour-long period in which the four separate hijackings occurred. Why?
The most egregious case is that of Flight 77, reported to have struck the Pentagon. At 8:50 am there was a loss of contact with this plane that was now well off course and hurtling toward the nation’s capital, but it was not until 9:24 am that fighter jets were scrambled. That’s 34 minutes after flight control lost contact with the plane and well after 2 hijacked aircraft had already crashed into both World Trade Center towers.
Fighter Planes were dispatched extremely late to the World Trade Center as well, and only made it there after Flight 175 had crashed into WTC 2, too late to be effective. Those planes were then sent back to base, instead of being sent in pursuit of an aircraft, which by that time was widely known to have been well off course. Why?
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http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm(CIA Running Simulation of Plane Crashing into Building)
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