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Why did Gen. Richard Myers and the Bush Administration say they never thought about hijacked planes crashing into the Pentagon or any other building even though they practiced twice for a passenger aircraft accidentally crashing into the Pentagon 11 months earlier and NORAD was even going to specifically practice for a hijacked commercial jetliner crashing into the Pentagon five months earlier?
"You hate to admit it, but we hadn't thought about this," Air Force Gen. Richard Myers said. -DoD 10/23/01
"Never did anybody's thought process about how to protect America did we ever think that the evil-doers would fly not one, but four commercial aircraft into precious U.S. targets - never," said Bush. -White House (9/16/01)
► Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies "The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense Protective Services Police seal the crash sight. Army medics, nurses and doctors scramble to organize aid. An Arlington Fire Department chief dispatches his equipment to the affected areas.
Don Abbott, of Command Emergency Response Training, walks over to the Pentagon and extinguishes the flames. The Pentagon was a model and the "plane crash" was a simulated one.
The Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise, as the crash was called, was just one of several scenarios that emergency response teams were exposed to Oct. 24-26 in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense conference room.
On Oct. 24, there was a mock terrorist incident at the Pentagon Metro stop and a construction accident to name just some of the scenarios that were practiced to better prepare local agencies for real incidents.
"The most important thing is who are the players?" Geiling said. "And what is their modus operandi?"
Brown thought the exercise was excellent preparation for any potential disasters.
"This is important so that we're better prepared," Brown said. "This is to work out the bugs. Hopefully it will never happen, but this way we're prepared."
"You get to see the people that we'll be dealing with and to think about the scenarios and what you would do," Sgt. Kelly Brown said. "It's a real good scenario and one that could happen easily."
A major player in the exercise was the Arlington Fire Department. "Our role is fire and rescue," Battalion Chief R.W. Cornwell said. "We get to see how each other operates and the roles and responsibilities of each. You have to plan for this. Look at all the air traffic around here."
Burrell has coordinated these exercises for four years and he remarked that his team gets better each year.
Abbott, in his after action critique, reminded the participants that the actual disaster is only one-fifth of the incident and that the whole emergency would run for seven to 20 days and might involve as many as 17 agencies.
"The emergency to a certain extent is the easiest part," Abbott said. He reminded the group of the personal side of a disaster. "Families wanting to come to the crash site for closure."
In this particular crash there would have been 341 victims." -MDW (11/02/00)
► "Over the years, accidental aircraft crash landings into the Pentagon have occasionally been simulated.
Prior planning and training allowed responders to effect a large, multijurisdictional response. The ACFD routinely participates in Pentagon mass casualty tabletop exercises such as “Abbottsville” in May 2001, and full-scale exercises such as “Cloudy Office” in 1998.
DTHC participation in an Arlington County EMS tabletop exercise with Arlington County EMS in May 2001 helped response preparation for the Pentagon attack. The scenario in that tabletop exercise featured a commuter airplane crashing into the Pentagon. Additionally, Major Brown and other DTHC staff had recently conducted a detailed disaster plan review. The familiarity with its content helped adapt the DTHC disaster plan to this situation.
The DPS was able to draw on the experience of previous interaction with many of the responding agencies. The USSS, DC Metropolitan Police Department, Virginia State Police, ACPD, and MDW frequently work together when dignitaries visit the Pentagon. Area fire, rescue, medical, and law enforcement agencies regularly participate together in tabletop and full-scale exercises." -Arlington County After-Action Report
► "Five months before Sept. 11, 2001, the officers responsible for defending American airspace wanted to test their ability to prevent a hijacked airliner from being crashed into the Pentagon, but the scenario was rejected by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as impractical, a Joint Chiefs spokesman confirmed yesterday.
The disclosure was made after a government watchdog group released a leaked e-mail from a former official at the North American Air Defense Command. In the message, the official told colleagues a week after the attacks that in April 2001 NORAD requested that war games run by the Joint Chiefs include an ''event having a terrorist group hijack a commercial airline . . . and fly it into the Pentagon."
Last night, Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Commander Dan Hetlage confirmed the account, saying: ''That scenario was rejected because it would have become a whole exercise in and of itself. It wasn't looked on at the time as being practicable."
The NORAD proposal is the clearest sign yet that national security officials were worried before 9/11 about terrorists using hijacked airliners as missiles, despite testimony that senior leaders, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, didn't know of such concerns.
Officials at NORAD apparently were concerned. But the e-mail said, the US Pacific Command, which was overseeing the exercises simulating a war with North Korea, ''didn't want it because it would take attention away from their exercise objectives, and Joint Staff action officers rejected it as too unrealistic."
Peter Stockton, chief investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, said yesterday he was told by the source who provided the memo that a special forces officer attached to the NORAD command at the time had first proposed the Pentagon scenario be practiced.
Concerns that terrorists might use hijacked airliners as missiles dates back to the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, when jets were placed on patrol to guard against such a threat." -Boston Globe (4/14/04)
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