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D. DEFENDANTS CONSPIRED TO AND DID ALLOW THE ATTACKS TO HAPPEN BY DELAYING MILITARY INTERCEPTION OF THE HIJACKED PLANES. WHETHER BY MULTIPLE CONCURRENT WAR GAMES OR ATTACK SIMULATIONS OR BY AN UNPRECEDENTED “GROUND STOP,” THE EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT THE AIR FORCE AND AIR NATIONAL GUARD WERE CAUSED TO “STAND DOWN” AS THE 9-11 HIJACKINGS BECAME KNOWN, AND THAT MOST OR ALL OF THE HIJACKED AIRCRAFT COULD HAVE BEEN INTERCEPTED BY A TIMELY RESPONSE.
216. People tend to excuse the military for not promptly responding to the attacks of 9-11 because they have been led to believe that the only military alternative was to shoot down planes carrying civilian passengers; but this is not the case. Standard military procedure when a plane deviates off course (something air controllers know immediately) is to send up fighter planes to locate the "lost" plane, fly beside it, peer into the windows to see what is going on, and try to guide it to safety. None of this was done with any of the four hijacked planes, despite ample time in each case. In the case of Flight 77, the military had nearly an hour to do it; yet fighters were never sent up to accompany or communicate with the airliner before it crashed into the Pentagon.
’s capital, and New York City, its most populous city and a primary media and financial center, would be at the top of the list for any intended terrorist attack, officially as of 9-11 there were only two bases in the northeastern U.S. that were part of NORAD’s defensive system. One was Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, about 188 miles distant from New York City. The other was Langley Air Force Base near Norfolk, Virginia, about 129 miles distant from Washington, D.C.
218. During the Cold War, the U.S. had literally thousands of fighters on alert. By 9-11, the number was supposedly reduced to only fourteen in the entire continental U.S. However, internet web pages for a number of Air National Guard units belie this, as the same boasted of five minute alert status, meaning that from the moment they were ordered into the air, they could be airborne within five minutes. These websites used terms like “combat ready,” “five minute alert,” “highest state of readiness” and so on. Indeed, the web site for Andrews Air Force Base, about ten miles from Washington, D.C., stated that it hosted two “combat ready” squadrons, “capable and ready response forces for the District of Columbia in the event of a natural disaster or civil emergency.” The District of Columbia Air National Guard – also stationed at Andrews – claimed that its mission was “to provide combat units in the highest possible state of readiness.” On September 12, 2001 -- as the Enterprise made haste to cover up that it had caused the U.S. military air defense system to “stand down,” permitting the 9-11 attacks to be carried out -- both websites were sanitized, with phrases suggesting quick response capability being expurgated.
219. Upon information and belief, F-15 fighters, with pilots onboard and ready to take off, were held on the tarmac at Otis AFB awaiting authorization to take off and to intercept one or both of the hijacked planes that were headed for New York. Plaintiff is informed and believes that the squadron was intentionally delayed by senior officials, with the knowledge and consent, express or implied, of defendants including but not limited to George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Myers, Rumsfeld, and Eberhart, for not less than fifteen minutes, whereupon the squadron leader took off on his own initiative.
220. Why were the fighters delayed? As of sunrise on the East Coast on 9-11, NORAD was taking part in “Vigilant Guardian,” the war game that had begun a few days before. Because of this, NORAD was fully staffed and alert, with senior officers manning stations throughout the U.S. when the first real-life hijacking was reported. Because of the war game, NORAD “had extra fighter planes on alert.” Colonel Robert Marr, in charge of NORAD’s northeastern U.S. sector, said “We had the fighters with a little more gas on board. A few more weapons on board.” Why were these fighter planes not immediately “scrambled” to intercept the off-course airliners? Was it because the “exercise” was specifically scheduled for that day as a cover, deterring a prompt response with the allegation that it was “only an exercise?” The simultaneous occurrence of the two events could not have been mere coincidence; and without their simultaneous occurrence, the hijacking attempt would have failed. How did the hijackers know of the exercise? Plaintiff submits that the defendants were and could only have been complicit in the deed.
1. FLIGHT 11 (NORTH TOWER WTC) COULD HAVE BEEN BUT WAS NOT INTERCEPTED.
221. Edited transcripts of cockpit transmissions from Flight 11 indicate that the last routine communication with Boston air traffic control was at 8:13:47 A.M. The loss of communications was quickly noticed; flight controllers can be heard discussing it at 8:15. Furthermore, “just moments” after radio contact was lost, Flight 11’s transponder was turned off as well. The transponder identifies the jet on the air traffic controller’s screen, gives its exact location and altitude, and permits an emergency hijack code to be sent. Boston air traffic manager Glenn Michael later said, “We considered [Flight 11] at that time to be a possible hijacking.”
222. Flight 11’s pilot, Captain John Ogonowski, did not press the Emergency Locator Transmitter button, nor did the pilots of Flights 77 and 93; it has been surmised that this was because hijackers were already in the cockpits (for example, as guest pilots sitting in the cockpits’ extra seats) when the hijackings began. Captain Ogonowski is believed however to have turned the “talk-back” button off and on, enabling flight controllers to hear some of what was being said, and also enabling them to learn that something was wrong. This continued intermittently most of the way to New York, until about 8:38 a.m.
’s ELT button had not been activated. At 8:20 a.m., however, Flight 11 stopped transmitting its IFF (“Identify Friend or Foe”) beacon signal and the plane was clearly off course by that time. As a result, at “about 8:20” Boston flight control decided that Flight 11 had probably been hijacked. Beginning at 8:24:38, Boston flight controllers heard what they understood to be the hijackers in Flight 11’s cockpit, broadcasting a message to the passengers: “We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you will be OK. We are returning to the airport.” A flight controller responded, “Who’s trying to call me?” The apparent hijacker continued, “Everything will be OK. If you try to make any moves you’ll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.” A Boston flight controller later said that, immediately after hearing this voice, “he knew right then that he was working a hijack.”
224. At 8:25 exactly, Boston flight control notified other flight control centers of the apparent hijacking of Flight 11. This was twenty-one minutes before the impact at the World Trade Center North Tower. Unbelievably, according to NORAD, it was not told of the hijacking until 8:40 A.M. — fifteen minutes after other flight control centers were notified that Flight 11 had been hijacked, and twenty minutes from the shutoff of Flight 11’s IFF beacon, which gave rise to suspicions that it had been hijacked.
225. Thus, the nation’s air defense system was somehow not working as from (at the latest) 8:20 A.M. on 9-11. FAA regulations in force at the time state, “Consider that an aircraft emergency exists . . . when . . . there is unexpected loss of radar contact with any aircraft.” The regulations state further, “If . . . you are in doubt that a situation constitutes an emergency or potential emergency, handle it as though it were an emergency.”
226. According to an MSNBC report, a significant course deviation is “considered a real emergency, like a police car screeching down a highway at 100 miles an hour,” and normally leads to fighters being quickly dispatched to see what the problem might be. However, for reasons as yet unexplained, on 9-11, “There doesn’t seem to have been alarm bells going off . . . There’s a gap there that will have to be investigated.”
227. This fifteen-minute gap from 8:25 to 8:40 is critical, since if NORAD had taken five minutes to process the alarm and scramble fighters at Otis AFB, the pilots had taken an additional five minutes to get aloft, and they had traveled the approximately 188 miles to Manhattan at slightly better than half of their F-15 fighters’ top rated speed of 1875 mph, fighters could have been in New York City before the North Tower was struck at 8:46. e. Those who perished in the strike and the collapse of the North Tower, thus might have been spared. Even if fighters from Otis could not have arrived in New York in time to intercept Flight 11, if they had been aware at 8:25 a.m. that Flight 11 was hijacked and was off course heading in the direction of New York City, fighters could have been scrambled before Flight 175 is alleged to have struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m. Allowing five minutes (from 8:25 to 8:30) for NORAD to confirm and forward the information to Otis, and six minutes (from 8:30 to 8:36) for the pilots to get aloft, they would have had 27 minutes to cover the 188 miles from Otis to New York City. That would have required the F-15s, which have a top speed of 1875 mph, to travel at an average speed slightly in excess of 6.96 miles per minute – or about 417 mph, an almost leisurely, subsonic speed for that aircraft.
228. Upon information and belief, as of the morning of 9-11, the commander on duty at Otis AFB was Brig. Gen. George W. Keefe (“Keefe”).
230. Upon information and belief, F-15 fighters, with pilots onboard and ready to take off, were held on the tarmac at Otis AFB awaiting authorization to take off and to intercept one or both of the hijacked planes that were headed for New York. Plaintiff is informed and believes that the squadron was intentionally delayed by senior officials, with the knowledge and consent, express or implied, of defendants including but not limited to George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Myers, Rumsfeld, and Eberhart, for not less than fifteen minutes, whereupon the squadron leader took off on his own initiative.
231. Upon information and belief, U.S. Military and/or National Guard personnel, present on 9-11 at Otis AFB and/or at nearby Camp Edwards, who witnessed the long delay between the appearance of the F-15 fighters on the tarmac, and their takeoff, reported the foregoing allegations to Military Intelligence.
232. Upon information and belief, one or more U.S. Military and/or National Guard personnel, with long record(s) of honorable service, were retaliated against for having imparted the foregoing facts to Military Intelligence.
233. Upon information and belief, the “official” NORAD account that it was not notified of the hijacking of Flight 11 until 8:40 A.M. on 9-11 is false. ABC News reported that the FAA notified NORAD employee Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins at 8:31 A.M., not 8:40. A different version of the ABC News report has it that “Shortly after 8:30 A.M., behind the scenes, word of a possible hijacking reached various stations of NORAD. It is difficult to believe that the FAA would have delayed so long in informing NORAD of the diversion of Flight 11. And, so far as has been made public, no air traffic control or FAA employees have been fired, suspended, reprimanded or otherwise disciplined for failure to give timely notice to NORAD on 9-11.
234. Other, critical aspects of the NORAD account of its actions on 9-11 cannot withstand scrutiny. NORAD’s story was set forth in a press release on September 18, 2001. It claimed that after being told of the hijacking of Flight 11 at 8:40 A.M. on 9-11, it waited six minutes to give the scramble order to the pilots at Otis. Then, it took the pilots an additional 6 minutes to take off. Thus, according to NORAD, two fighter planes, F-15s, left Otis at 9:52 A.M., headed toward New York. A NORAD commander claimed the planes were stocked with extra fuel. One of the Otis pilots, Lt. Col. Timothy Duffy, stated that he flew “full-blower,” which is to say at top speed, all the way. An F-15 can travel over 1875 MPH. Lt. Col. Duffy later said that he flew at supersonic speeds, headed for the airspace over Kennedy Airport in New York City. Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold stated that the Otis pilots headed straight for New York City, at about 1100 to 1200 MPH. Maj. Gen. Paul Weaver, director of the Air National Guard, claimed that the Otis pilots headed toward New York “like a scalded ape” but could not arrive in time to prevent the South Tower from being struck at 9:03 A.M.
235. The complete untruth and cynicism of these statements is confirmed by simple arithmetic. To cover 188 miles in 11 minutes, the F-15s would have had to travel at an average speed of 17.09 miles per minute, or 1,025.45 MPH. Even if the F-15’s full listed maximum speed of 1,875 MPH may be unattainable given the complement of munitions, etc. normally carried, 1,025 MPH still falls woefully short of “full blower.” Thus, even leaving Otis as late as 8:52 A.M., it is inexplicable that the F-15s failed to reach New York before 9:03 A.M.
236. NORAD cannot reconcile its “scalded ape,” “full-blower” claims with its story that it took the F-15s from Otis nineteen minutes to reach New York City. Traveling 188 miles in 19 minutes means that these 1875 MPH fighters responded to this crisis flying at an average speed of about 594 MPH, a distinctly subsonic speed, a fraction of the F-15’s capabilities, and barely faster than the passenger airliner itself.
2. FLIGHT 175 COULD HAVE BEEN BUT WAS NOT INTERCEPTED.
237. Upon information and belief, Flight 175 took off from Boston Logan Airport at 8:16 A.M. Its last routine communication occurred four seconds before 8:42. One minute later, a Boston flight controller said of Flight 175, “He’s off about 9 o’clock and about 20 miles looks like he’s heading southbound but there’s no transponder no nothing and no one’s talking to him.” By this time, notifying NORAD of the hijacking of Flight 175 was redundant, because NORAD technicians had their headsets linked to Boston flight control to hear about Flight 11, and thus learned about Flight 175 at the same time Boston did. NORAD’s timeline, in its press release of September 18, 2001, admitted that it received notice about Flight 175 at 8:43 A.M. Any doubt that Flight 175 had been hijacked ought to have evaporated at 8:44:05, at which time Boston (with NORAD listening in) was told by a nearby airliner that it had heard Flight 175’s Emergency Locator Transmitter go off.
238. However, “testifying” (although not under oath) before the Commission on May 22, 2003, a NORAD spokesman made the bizarre claims (1) that NORAD learned only at 9:05 A.M. from the FAA of the “possible” hijacking of Flight 175, and (2) that Flight 175’s transponder was never turned off. As shown, NORAD was listening in at 8:43 A.M. when Boston was told that Flight 175’s radio had been cut off, the transponder had been turned off, and the plane was seriously off course.
239. Flight 175’s transponder, after being off briefly, was turned on again, but changed to a signal not designated for any plane on that day. This enabled controllers to track Flight 175 easily throughout the final 20 minutes before the South Tower was struck at 9:02:56 A.M. Indeed, neither Flight 11 nor Flight 175 was at any time lost to Boston flight control’s radar. When Flight 11’s transponder was turned off at 8:14 A.M., that only prevented Boston from determining the plane’s exact altitude, but it could still be tracked using primary radar. At some point before the plane turned south toward New York City at 8:28 A.M., the FAA had tagged Flight 11’s radar dot for easy visibility, and at American Airlines headquarters, “all eyes watched as the plane headed south.” Boston flight controller Mark Hodgkins later said that he had watched Flight 11 “all the way down.” Accordingly, from at least 8:28 A.M. until the North Tower (8:46 A.M.) and South Tower (9:03 A.M.) impacts, a number of persons watched as the planes diverged from their flight paths, and headed inexorably toward New York.
240. “Several minutes” after the first (North Tower) impact at 8:46 A.M., Boston flight control reported to NORAD that it was Flight 11 that had crashed into the North Tower. “Within minutes” of the first impact at 8:46 A.M., two open telephone conference calls were established among the FAA, NORAD, the Secret Service, and a number of other government agencies. Indeed, according to multiple news sources, even President Bush and Vice President Cheney were occasionally overheard on these open lines.
241. Based on the foregoing, it defies belief that, as NORAD claimed in testimony before the Commission on May 23, 2003, it was not notified of Flight 11 striking the North Tower of the World Trade Center until 9:05 A.M.
242. No less unbelievable is NORAD’s claim that it learned that Flight 175 had “possibly” been hijacked only two minutes after the impact at the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
243. NORAD, plainly, cannot keep its lies straight, and has acted throughout like an entity that, while having much to hide, is supremely confident of its impunity and that it will never have to account for its dereliction of duty, and its multiple falsehoods concerning the same. Indeed, its entire story of having scrambled planes first from Otis and, later, from Langley may well be a fabrication, intended to cover that — plaintiff alleges due to the effective equivalent of a “Stand Down” order, given with the knowledge and approval of Defendants including, at least, all of President George W. Bush, ex-president and presidential advisor George H. W. Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and Generals Myers and Eberhart – NORAD did nothing between 8:40 A.M., at which hour it admits receiving word that Flight 11 had been hijacked, for at least 57 minutes, until some time after the Pentagon was struck, at 9:37 A.M. Plaintiff alleges this failure to act was due to the effective equivalent of a “Stand Down” order, given with the knowledge and approval of Defendants including, at least, all of President George W. Bush, ex-president and presidential advisor George H. W. Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and Generals Myers and Eberhart. In other words, in order to deceive the public into thinking that attempts had been made to intercept Flight 175 (with fighters scrambled from Otis) and Flight 77 (with F-16s scrambled from Langley), NORAD quite possibly created a fiction that fighters were scrambled but, despite flying like “scalded apes,” could not prevent the South Tower and the Pentagon from being struck.
244. As shown above, even allowing for the improbable delays in NORAD being notified of the hijacking of Flight 11, it is not credible that planes were, in truth, scrambled, but were not able to reach their destinations in time.
245. Gen. Richard Myers was acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9-11. Two days after 9-11, testifying under oath before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Myers was asked when the order to scramble planes was first given. Given the magnitude of the attacks, that the same had occurred on his watch, and that he was testifying at his own confirmation hearing, one would suppose that the General would come prepared, have the facts, and – if he could not testify truthfully – at least avoid egregious lies, that (at least in a country in which public officials are held to account) he might have to account for later. He responded, “That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck [at 9:37 a.m.]”
246. If Gen. Myers’ testimony just quoted was truthful and correct, then NORAD’S claim to have ordered the scrambling of jets at 8:46 a.m. is off by at least fifty-one minutes. So far as Plaintiff is aware, neither President George W. Bush, nor Vice President Cheney, nor Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, nor his deputy Mr. Wolfowitz, nor General Myers has been asked in public to explain (a) how Gen. Myers came to form the belief that no planes were scrambled until at least 9:37 a.m., and (b) whether it is true, and verifiably true, that fighters left Otis for New York City at 8:52 a.m., but arrived only nineteen minutes later.
247. While, again, it seems improbable in the extreme that, had fighters really been scrambled as NORAD now claims, General Myers would not have known of that fact when he appeared at his confirmation hearing on September 13th, NORAD spokesman, Marine Maj. Mike Snyder, also claimed that no fighters were scrambled until after the Pentagon was hit. Only then, according to Maj. Snyder, did the military realize the scope of the attacks, and order fighters into the air.
248. Consistent with Plaintiff’s analysis is that, while President Bush, Vice President Cheney, NORAD, the FAA, the Secret Service and other agencies had a conference call “within minutes” of 8:46 A.M., by which time all participating in the call had to know (1) that the North Tower had been struck; and (2) that Flight 175 was bearing down on New York City, from all indications it occurred to none of these devoted guardians of the public safety to notify New York City officials. As a result, from about 8:55 A.M. until shortly before the second impact, a public announcement was broadcast inside the South Tower of the World Trade Center, saying that the building was safe, and people could return to their offices. Again, the Enterprise did not want quite so much “shock and awe” as would result from twin strikes at Indian Point nuclear power plant, but it had definite notions regarding how much shock and awe – that is, how many dead bodies -- it needed to achieve its political and imperial aims.
249. Flight controllers in New York City complained afterward that the crash of Flight 11 was confirmed to them only a minute or two before Flight 175 crashed a few seconds before 9:03 A.M. They also were not told that there was a concern with Flight 175 until right before it crashed. Even the fighter pilots who may, or may not, have been en route to New York from Otis appear to have been uninformed. One pilot, Maj. Daniel Nash, stated that he could not recall actually being told of the Flight 11 crash. Both Lt. Col Duffy and Maj. Nash (the two supposed F-15 pilots from Otis) deny they were told of the hijacking of Flight 175 until after the South Tower impact. Maj. Nash suggested that, even if he had reached New York City before Flight 175, he could not have shot that plane down, because a decision to do so assuredly had to be made by the President, who by 9:03 A.M. was preoccupied with a classroom of children in Florida.
250. Even viewed in the light most favorable to the Enterprise Defendants, the foregoing timeline shows the following. There is a huge, unexplained gap between when NORAD should have learned of the diversion of Flight 11 — by 8:25 A.M. — and the time it claims to have learned of that event — 8:40 A.M. If, indulgently, we credit arguendo NORAD’s dubious claim that it learned of the Flight 11 hijacking only at 8:40 A.M., even then NORAD squandered a clear chance to intercept Flight 175, and a fighting chance to intercept Flight 11. NORAD’s “scalded ape” story is palpably false. F-15 fighters departing Otis as late as 8:52 A.M. could, without undue effort, have reached New York in time to intercept Flight 175. The discrepancies in NORAD’S (and Gen. Myers’) accounts are numerous, consequential, and highly suspect. If Presidential authority was needed to shoot down airliners aimed at large buildings, such authority could, and ought to have, been obtained during the conference call that began shortly after 8:46 A.M. It is shocking that, as Flight 175 approached the South Tower, announcements continued to be made that that building was safe. Given the number and seniority of participants in the conference call, it is at best difficult in the extreme to ascribe to confusion, or stress, the failure to notify New York City authorities that a second airliner (off course and out of touch with air traffic control) was bearing down on the city. Hundreds of lives might have been saved, had such notice been given. However, had not both World Trade Center towers been reduced to clouds of fine, airborne dust, if either tower had been left standing with only a few hundred dead, perhaps the public would not have been shocked into uncritical approval of military adventures and attacks on Constitutional freedoms that the Bush II Administration had had in the works long before 9-11, and has put into effect and kept in force ever since.
251. As has been shown, the defense system’s response on 9-11 to the diversion of Flight 11 and Flight 175 was so torpid, so inept, as to indicate that everyone comprising the top command (including at least President Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Myers and Eberhart) either wanted the attacks to succeed (or was taking orders from someone who did). Even independently of other factors (e.g., the abundant warnings, the wish by PNAC, composed largely of Bush II Administration insiders and even the President’s brother Jeb Bush, for a “new Pearl Harbor,” etc.). The response (or non-response) to Flights 11 and 175 was so shockingly inept as to raise deep suspicions that the government wanted the attacks to play out, and so did nothing to stop them. Even more suspicious was what happened concerning in respect of Flight 77.
3. BEFORE STRIKING THE PENTAGON, FLIGHT 77 NOT ONLY COULD HAVE BEEN INTERCEPTED BUT WAS IS ALLOWED TO FLY UNCONTESTED FOR ABOUT 50 MINUTES AFTER THE FIRST WTC STRIKE BEFORE STRIKING THE PENTAGON. THE GOVERNMENT’S ACCOUNT IS, AGAIN, INCONSISTENT AND NONSENSICAL.
252. Reportedly, Flight 77 took off from Dulles Airport near Washington at 8:20 A.M. Its last routine radio communication was made at 8:50:51, and then it failed to respond to a routine instruction. Within “a few minutes” after 8:48 A.M., and in all events by 8:56, at which time flight controllers repeatedly called Flight 77 over the radio and received no reply, “it was evident that Flight 77 was lost.”
253. NORAD’s failure to intercept becomes increasingly egregious and indicative of “Stand Down” orders intended to let the attacks proceed in proportion to the time available to it to mount an effective response. As we have seen, NORAD claims it learned of the hijacking of Flight 11 only at 8:40 A.M. whereas, if established procedures had been followed, it ought to have learned of this by 8:25 A.M. at the latest. In the case of Flight 77, whereas sometime between 8:48 A.M. and 8:56 A.M. air traffic controllers determined that it Flight 77 had been hijacked sometime between 8:48 A.M. and 8:56 A.M., yet NORAD claims it received word from the FAA only at 9:24 or 9:25 A.M., and even then only that it “may” have been hijacked.
254. This half-hour gap was disputed by the FAA in proceedings before the Commission. Jane Garvey, FAA Administrator on 9-11, in a statement released following her testimony, claimed that while formal notification was logged in by NORAD only at 9:24 A.M., “information about [Flight 77] was conveyed continuously during the phone bridges [among the FAA, NORAD, the Secret Service and other agencies] before the formal notification.”
255. A few days after 9-11, the New York Times reported, “During the hour or so that American Airlines Flight 77 was under the control of hijackers, up to the moment it struck the west side of the Pentagon, military officials in a command center on the east side of the building were urgently talking to law enforcement and air traffic control officials about what to do.” This seems more consistent with the FAA’s recent claim that NORAD and other agencies knew about the hijacking of Flight 77 long before 9:24 A.M.
256. If Ms. Garvey is correct, then NORAD, in the more than two years since 9-11, has still not managed — nor, apparently, in what can only be explained as utter contempt for the public and absolute confidence in its own impunity — perceived any need, to adopt a single, plausible, and coherent story and stick to it. If, hypothetically, NORAD had learned that Flight 77 had been hijacked, say, at 8:51 A.M., given that the Pentagon impact occurred at 9:38 A.M., NORAD would then have had about 47 minutes to get a fighter plane over Washington, D.C. Leaving aside the implausibility or the scandal (especially in light of the abundant warnings of a possible terror attack using airplanes) of the Capitol not being defended by fighters at Andrews Air Force Base ten miles distant, and accepting for the moment the story that the nearest high-alert status fighters available were at Langley, 129 miles from Washington, Langley is closer to Washington, D.C. than Otis is to New York (about 188 miles). At an average speed of 1200 MPH, which is 20 miles per minute, an F-16 fighter could have covered the 129 miles from Langley to Washington in about 6-1/2 minutes. But for the fact that the Commission has evidently accepted, without question, the dubious testimony from NORAD, and the major media (while persisting in reporting some facts not consistent with the Official Story) has not highlighted these facts or their implications, NORAD would have “a lot of explaining to do” concerning its failure to get a fighter plane over Washington (and nearby Arlington, Virginia) in the approximately 47 minutes it ought to have had for that task. Supposedly, at 9:09 A.M., NORAD ordered F-16s at Langley to battle stations alert. However, one pilot, code-named “Honey,” relates that he was in one of the first planes to take off from Langley, but that “battle stations alert” was not sounded until 9:24 A.M., a discrepancy of fifteen crucial minutes. NORAD claims that three F-16s were scrambled (ordered aloft) at 9:27 A.M. to intercept Flight 77, and took off three minutes later, at 9:30 A.M. Here again, the NORAD timeline is inconsistent with “Honey’s” recollection. Without giving exact times, he describes a series of events lasting much longer than six minutes, including waiting from “five to ten minutes” between two of these events.
257. Even crediting NORAD’s account, however implausible, that it learned of the hijacking only at 9:24 A.M. and, but had planes taking off from Langley at 9:30 A.M., at 1200 MPH the F-16s still could have arrived on time, albeit with only 1-2 minutes to spare. Presumably, the pilots were motivated to travel quickly; Maj. Dean Eckmann, who was one of them, said he was told before scrambling that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Yet, astoundingly, in their May 2003 testimony, NORAD officials said that the F-16s did not use their afterburners, and flew at about 660 MPH to Washington. Using a calculator it can be determined that, if NORAD’s timeline is to be believed, the F-16s were still 105 miles distant from Washington when Flight 77 crashed. If so, that means the planes covered a distance of only about 24 miles in the eight minutes from takeoff (9:30 A.M.) to the time Flight 77 crashed (9:38 A.M.). Twenty-four miles in eight minutes means the F-16s flew at 3 miles per minute. Three miles a minute times sixty minutes indicates an average speed of only 180 MPH, far from the 660 MPH the NORAD witnesses claimed.
258. Indeed, NORAD and the pilots who supposedly scrambled from Langley cannot even agree on where they were headed. “Honey,” claimed that the F-16s were flying toward New York City, not Washington. They were 30-40 miles to the east of Washington, not south of it, when they saw a black column of smoke coming from the city. They then changed course and headed to Washington instead.
259. At the May 2003 hearing, NORAD claimed the fighters from Langley were sent to fly over the Atlantic Ocean instead of heading directly toward Washington and the Commission astonishingly, accepted this account. The account is consistent with “Honey’s” account of the fighters being too far east. NORAD officials admitted that, had the fighters traveled faster and headed directly toward Washington, D.C., they were capable of arriving there before Flight 77. NORAD’s excuse was that hijacked airliners taking off within the United States were a “law enforcement issue,” and that NORAD’S mission “was to protect [against] things coming towards the United States” from without.
260. Supposedly, then, we are to believe that F-16s were scrambled from Langley to pursue and intercept hijacked Flight 77, which had made a U-turn roughly where West Virginia borders Kentucky, and was headed toward Washington, D.C. It was known that two planes had been flown into the World Trade Center in New York City during the preceding 45 minutes; yet the U.S. government, which admits to spending $40 billion annually on intelligence, was unable to figure out: (1) that Flight 77 was not headed in the opposite direction from its scheduled route to Los Angeles due to pilot error; (2) that whoever was in control of Flight 77 probably intended to fly it into a landmark building; and (3) that Washington, D.C. -- the nation’s capital and site of numerous landmark buildings, toward which Flight 77 was headed -- was the likely site of the intended attack.
261. To cover what plaintiff alleges was the functional equivalent of a “Stand Down” order, (i.e. that NORAD was caused to allow Flight 77 to continue until the impact with the Pentagon), NORAD offers the feeblest of fictions: that it had no jurisdiction over land; and that it was the responsibility of law enforcement, not NORAD, to deal with aircraft headed toward Washington from the interior, NORAD’S task being limited to stopping hostile planes coming in from outside the U.S., presumably from over the Atlantic. This story makes no sense. First, the planes scrambled from Otis reportedly flew over land to reach New York City. Second, few “law enforcement” agencies have fighter aircraft, or any effective means (unaided by the military and/or the Air National Guard) to contest attacks by jet aircraft originating from within the U.S., and about to be flown into buildings. Third, if NORAD can protect Washington, D.C. only from air attacks originating outside the U.S., it would make no sense to have the closest and (but for far-off Otis AFB on Cape Cod) the only available fighter aircraft at Langley, which is to say well inland, rather than at Andrews (or some other base closer to the coastline). The failure to stop the strike on the Pentagon becomes all the more suspicious if one considers that, as calls poured in from fighter units volunteering assistance, it was not necessary to limit possible responses to Langley or Otis. Within minutes of the second crash at the World Trade Center, it was obvious to everyone that the nation was under attack. Calls started “pouring into NORAD and sector operations centers, asking ‘What can we do to help?’” The Air National Guard commander in Syracuse, New York, told Col. Robert Marr, in charge of NORAD’s Northeastern US sector, “Give me 10 minutes and I can give you hot guns. Give me 30 minutes and I’ll have heat-seeker [missiles]. Give me an hour and I can give you slammers [Amraamsza].” Marr replied, “I want it all.”
262. Reportedly, Col. Marr said, “Get to the phones. Call every Air National Guard unit in the land. Prepare to put jets in the air. The nation is under attack.” Another NORAD commander, Maj. Gen. Eric Findley, claims he had his staff immediately order as many fighters in the air as possible. Yet, however sincere Col. Marr and Gen. Findley might be, the performance did not live up to the rhetoric. Col. Marr’s response to Syracuse ANG — suggesting that he “wanted it all” -may- may well have been interpreted as ordering that only fully-armed planes be dispatched, thus actually delaying planes from taking off, whereas ostensibly Syracuse ANG could have had planes with some weapons heading toward Washington by 9:20 A.M., which could have reached Washington before Flight 77 did.
263. Another account says, “By 10:01 A.M., the command center began calling several bases across the country for help.” A base in Toledo, Ohio, was one of those called at that time, and Toledo appears to have been the first base other than Otis, Langley, or Andrews to send up any fighters, which Toledo did at 10:16 A.M. Syracuse may have been next, finally putting fighters in the air at 10:44 A.M., one hour and fifty-eight minutes after the impact at the North Tower.
4. AN UNPRECEDENTED NATIONWIDE “GROUND STOP” ORDER, WHICH MUST HAVE HAD WHITE HOUSE APPROVAL, PREVENTED EVEN THE MILITARY FROM FLYING AND ALLOWED AND MAY HAVE BEEN THE FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENT OF AN ORDER FOR THE MILITARY TO “STAND DOWN” AND ALLOW THE ATTACKS TO PROCEED.
264. FAA Administrator Jane Garvey, “almost certainly after getting an okay from the White House, initiated a national ground stop” at 9:26 A.M. That measure forbade takeoffs, and required planes in the air to get down as soon as reasonable. The order – never implemented since the Wright Brothers first flew – “applied to virtually every single kind of machine that can take off – civilian, military, or law enforcement.” Note the inclusion of military planes. Military and law enforcement flights were allowed to resume takeoffs at 10:31 A.M. A limited number of military flights were allowed to fly during the nationwide ground stop from 9:26 A.M. until 10:31, but the FAA has refused to reveal details.
265. Later, USA Today claimed that Ben Sliney, FAA National Operations Manager, made the ground-stop decision. If true, this was indeed an audacious judgment call to have been made by Mr. Sliney on his very first day on the job as the “chess master of the air traffic system.” The obvious queries, which so far as known to plaintiff have been assiduously avoided by the Commission and the media, are these. First, is it true that Mr. Sliney made that judgment call on 9-11? If he did, did he have any orders or instructions, whether on 9-11 or at any time before 9-11, concerning any order of that momentous kind? Who caused Mr. Sliney to be inserted into this position? Does Mr. Sliney have connections to any of the defendants, or to FEMA, the CIA, or any intelligence or “black budget” agencies of the U.S. government?
266. A further point of interest concerns Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction CJCSI 3610.01A dated June 1, 2001. Reportedly, this document was issued by Vice Admiral S. A. Fry, USN, was issued ostensibly for the purpose of providing “guidance to the Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), National Military Command Center (NMCC), and operational commanders in the event of an aircraft piracy (hijacking) or request for destruction of derelict airborne objects.”
267. The Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction CJCSI 3610.01A, superseding a prior instruction that dated back to July 1997, states in part that “[I]n the event of a hijacking, the [National Military Command Center] will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference “D”, forward requests for DOD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval.” Reference “D” mentioned in the foregoing cross-references a 1997 Defense Department directive that allows for commanders in the field to provide assistance to save lives in an emergency situation. However, “potentially lethal support,” presumably inclusive of authorization to shoot down a hijacked civilian airliner, requires approval of the Secretary of Defense. Two critical questions concerning the June 2001 directive are whether field commanders were bureaucratically, but effectively, prevented from reacting to the 9-11 hijackings in a timely fashion, and what testimony or statements the Commission elicited from Vice Admiral Fry and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld concerning the promulgation of CJCSI 3610.01A and the reasoning behind it, and what effect, if any, the requirements of CJCSI 3610.01A had in delaying or inhibiting an effective reaction to the diversions of aircraft on 9-11.
268. It appears NORAD was unwilling to use fighters from any but the two bases in the Northeast sector that they directly controlled, even if there were other bases or fighters already in the air that were closer. There was no legitimate reason for this. In 1999, it was widely reported that when golfer Payne Stewart’s Learjet went off course, NORAD used fighters from a number of bases outside of NORAD’s “official” seven bases to follow the aircraft as it crossed over several states before crashing. But on 9-11, NORAD appears to have been adamantly unwilling to use fighters from bases such as Andrews, even though Andrews is just ten miles from Washington, D.C. Andrews personnel learned about the national emergency through news coverage, and then a pilot called a friend in the Secret Service for more information. Shortly after the second crash at 9:03 A.M. (actually 9:02:56), it was the Secret Service – not NORAD – that called Andrews, asking that they get fighters ready. Again, a few minutes after the Pentagon crash at 9:38, it was the Secret Service that called Andrews, and said the fighters needed to “Get in the air now!”
269. Yet, despite Andrews’ website claim to have “combat ready” fighters “in the highest possible state of readiness” when the command came to “get in the air,” the fighters were not fully ready to take off. They had ammunition for “hot” guns, but AIM-9 missiles were located in a bunker on the other side of the base, and even though base commanders began the process of loading them shortly after 9:00 A.M., they still had not finished until about 40 minutes later. The next two fighters to take off from Andrews after Major Billy Hutchison were armed only with “hot” guns and non-explosive training rounds. Even though the Secret Service and NORAD had been sharing a conference call since shortly after the first, North Tower impact at 8:46 A.M., NORAD claims it was unaware that the Secret Service ordered any planes into the air from Andrews.
270. Lack of communication among Administration and military personnel on 9-11 would be comical, were the consequences not so tragic. In May 2003 testimony, Transportation Secretary Mineta claimed that at about 9:25 or 9:26 A.M., a few minutes after his arrival at the bunker beneath the White House, he overheard an aide tell Vice President Cheney that a hijacked plane headed toward Washington was 50 miles away, then 30 miles away. When the plane was announced as being ten miles away, the aide asked the Vice President, “Do the orders still stand?” Cheney replied, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” Mineta inferred that the order was an order to shoot down the plane.
271. Strange to say, if the President or the Vice President ordered incoming Flight 77 to be shot down before it reached Washington, none of the pilots from Langley or Andrews appear to have been aware of any such orders! One article pointed out, “If the airliner had approached much nearer to the White House it might have been shot down by the Secret Service, who are believed to have a battery of ground-to-air Stinger missiles ready to protect the President’s home.” Given that the Pentagon is only two miles from the White House, the failure to use Stinger missiles to shoot down Flight 77 suggests that the Enterprise was quite certain that the White House was not the intended target. 278. Reports indicate that Washington, D.C. air traffic controllers were also kept in the dark concerning Flight 77, and did not learn of its approach until the last minute. One flight controller claimed she was the first to notice Flight 77 when it was about 12 to 14 miles away, and that Vice President Cheney learned of it only after that. The head Washington flight controller claimed the Secret Service first alerted his tower of a hijacked plane coming his way when it was only five miles away. According to another account, flight controllers detected Flight 77 just before 9:30 A.M., and told the Secret Service. Another account stated radar detected Flight 77 when it was 30 miles away at 9:30 A.M., and still another account claimed detection at 9:33 A.M. An unanswered question is that, if Washington, D.C. flight control’s radar did not detect Flight 77’s approach from 9:24 A.M. and before, then whose radar did?
272. NORAD admits official notice that Flight 77 was headed toward Washington at 9:24 A.M., and FAA Administrator Jane Garvey claimed a conference call discussed Flight 77 well before that time. It was not, however, until well after the Pentagon was hit, at 9:38 A.M., that orders were given to evacuate additional likely Washington targets such as the White House, the Capitol Building, the State Department and, indeed, the Pentagon itself. Had Flight 77 struck the Capitol instead of the Pentagon, most of the legislators would still have been inside. It is claimed that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his top aides in their Pentagon offices remained unaware of any danger until after the Pentagon was actually hit. This claim is belied by the fact that the conference call discussing Flight 77 was being run out of the National Military Command Center inside the Pentagon itself. Vice President Cheney (according to Transportation Secretary Mineta) knew, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld certainly ought to have known, of the approach of Flight 77. Why were no evacuation orders given for other Washington landmarks until after 9:38 A.M.? This remains unexplained. Had orders been given to begin evacuating the Pentagon at the time of the exchange between Vice President Cheney and the aide reported by Secretary Mineta, perhaps many of the 125 people who died inside the Pentagon on 9-11 would be alive today.
273. In addition to the foregoing, there is an impressive body of research that, while again not unanimous in every detail, concurs generally that what struck the Pentagon could not have been a Boeing 757, and was therefore not Flight 77. 281. Just six items ought to suffice to imbue the moderately critical student of 9-11 with enormous skepticism concerning the Official Story. That the Commission never deviated from the “established truth” (that it was Flight 77, piloted by Arabs, that struck the Pentagon, after departing from Dulles Airport and then flying west to roughly, the West Virginia-Kentucky border before circling back to attack Washington) or saw any need to address the following facts is a further indication of a coverup. The six items are these: Additional facts casting doubt on the Official Story and indicating a coverup are:
a. Given even that supposed terror pilot Hanjour by
all reports was, at best, a marginal pilot, and was supposedly on a
suicide mission, it is simply not believable astounding that he found
both the skill and the sang froid to execute a 270-degree turn, while
descending some 7000 feet in an unwieldy Boeing 757, at a speed
of 270 knots or more.
b. Just as the WTC hijackers were “good” enough to hit the Twin Towers just as most occupants were arriving for work (rather than in mid-morning, when the death toll would have been higher) It is equally unbelievable that the “terrorist” flying Flight 77 would take took the trouble, in his life’s last moments, to execute an impossibly acrobatic maneuver, a professional courtesy as it were, to avoid striking the section of the Pentagon where Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has his office, preferring instead to strike precisely that section of the structure which, having been recently remodeled, was thinly populated. Similarly, the WTC hijackers were “good” enough to hit the Twin Towers just as most occupants were arriving for work (rather than in mid-morning, when the death toll would have been higher).
c. Supposedly, Flight 77 departed Dulles Airport near Washington, flew west to near, roughly, the West Virginia-Kentucky border, then described a loop to amble back eastward to attack the Pentagon. Why would “terrorists” with sufficient skill to divert four aircraft in rapid succession, and a pilot in Flight 77 capable of the exploits just described, virtually beg thus beg to be intercepted, by remaining aloft for so long? Why would they not circle back not long after takeoff, and crash the plane into the Pentagon? In addition to the improbably extended flight pattern, there are further difficulties with Flight 77’s timeline. The plane was reportedly seriously off-course by 8:46 A.M., 26 minutes after takeoff. The erratic course flown over West Virginia is suggestive of the diversion having occurred within a few minutes thereafter (the last radio communication was reportedly at 8:50 A.M. and the plane’s transponder was turned off at 8:56 A.M.). Why did it take the plane roughly 45 to 55 minutes (depending on when the impact really occurred, sometime between 9:37 A.M. and 9:48 A.M.) to circle back and fly into the Pentagon?
d. If one looks at photographs of the “entrance wound” inflicted on the Pentagon, plainly it is unbelievably small, if what hit the Building was a Boeing 757; and
e. As in the case of the World Trade Center, the evidence at the crime scene was removed, under cover and with amazing rapidity, precluding any accurate and transparent investigation.
5. THE CRASH OF FLIGHT 93 IN SOMERSET COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA, RAISES SERIOUS UNANSWERED QUESTIONS.
274. There are also many unanswered questions concerning Flight 93, the last of the four planes to be hijacked on 9-11. Flight 93’s takeoff was delayed about 40 minutes, until 8:42 A.M. The FAA told NORAD at 9:16 A.M. that Flight 93 had been hijacked. The basis of that report is uncertain, as the transponder turned off only about 9:30 or 9:40 A.M., and Flight 93 did not go off course until much later.
275. The “timeline” for Flight 93 is the subject of concealment, secrecy and dispute. NORAD maintains that this plane crashed at 10:03 A.M., notwithstanding a seismic study, commissioned by the Army that determined the time of the crash to be 10:06:05.
276. Even murkier is when, or if, fighters were flown toward Flight 93 charged with intercepting it. NORAD’S first timeline said only that a fighter was 100 miles, or 11 minutes, away when Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. That means the fighter was traveling about 545 MPH – again, inexplicably slow. NORAD’s initial timeline also implies that the fighter allegedly in pursuit of Flight 93 had only traveled about 80 miles from Washington when Flight 93 crashed. If we assume the 545 MPH as a correct average, that means the fighter left Washington about nine minutes before the crash, or 9:57 A.M. Consider the implications: before Flight 93 was reported hijacked at 9:15 A.M., two planes had been steered into the World Trade Center, the nation’s defenses were in an uproar, and base commanders all around the country were phoning in, asking what they could do to help. Yet – if NORAD is to be believed – about 41 minutes elapsed before anyone got a plane into the air, heading in the direction of hijacked Flight 93.
277. Secretary Mineta’s impression that Cheney had given a shoot down order for Flight 77 at about 9:26 A.M. has been mentioned. It has also been claimed that, sometime after Flight 77 crashed, someone from the White House spoke directly with pilots over Washington, and declared the Washington area a “free-fire zone.” In another account, the Secret Service told the pilots, “I want you to protect the White House at all costs.” Yet, it has been reported also that it was not until President Bush took off from Sarasota, Florida, at about 9:56 A.M., that he had a short discussion with Vice President Cheney, and it was then that the President authorized the military to shoot down any plane under the control of hijackers. Strange to say, none of the pilots over Washington claim to have heard any such order. “Honey,” the lead pilot, claimed to have heard a garbled message about Flight 93 that the other pilots did not hear. He said, “The message seemed to convey that the White House was an important asset to protect . . . something like, ‘Be aware of where [Flight 93] is, and it could be a target.’” Both “Honey” and another pilot code-named “Lou” stated they were never given orders to shoot down any plane that day.
278. All six of the first pilots to arrive over Washington were quoted in the press, and none of them indicated that he flew in pursuit of Flight 93. One article does say that Billy Hutchison’s fighter from Andrews AFB “was to do ID that unknown [aircraft] that everybody was so excited about.” But the article containing that quote goes on to describe how Hutchison began patrolling over Washington in low-flying loops instead.
279. Furthermore, Hutchison’s was the only fighter of the six that claimed to have been unarmed, but NORAD’s most recent claim is that two unarmed fighters from Washington were sent after Flight 93. NORAD previously claimed that, at some point after Flight 77 crashed at 9:38 A.M., two unarmed fighters in Michigan were ordered after Flight 93. These last-mentioned fighters are claimed to have been in the air since the time of the first attack at 8:46 A.M., raising the obvious question of why they were not recalled to be armed an hour earlier. NORAD seems to have forgotten these two fighters in its most recent timeline. Major General Paul Weaver, director of the Air National Guard, claimed that no fighters were sent after Flight 93 at all.
280. Contradicting Gen. Weaver’s claim of no fighters having been sent in pursuit of Flight 93, the day following 9-11, a New Hampshire flight controller claimed “that an F-16 fighter closely pursued Flight 93 . . . the F-16 made 360-degree turns to remain close to the commercial jet the employee said, ‘He must’ve seen the whole thing,’ the employee said of the F-16 pilot’s view of Flight 93’s crash.” Details have been reported, too, of how Vice President Cheney was given notice when a fighter was 80 miles from Flight 93, when it was within 60 miles, and at least one additional notice. The Vice President reportedly confirmed his order to shoot down Flight 93 after every update.
281. Plaintiff submits that, where a purported investigation is being carried out at taxpayer expense of events that caused the deaths of 2,993 persons, it is conclusive proof that the proceedings are a farce, a cover-up and a public-relations sham that any significant proof is received without the witnesses being sworn to testify truly, and under the penalties of perjury. Such laxity has been the practice of the Commission, generally and particularly with respect to the NORAD commanders who testified (and to President Bush and Vice President Cheney). NORAD representatives lied so brazenly, their accounts were so internally inconsistent and patently unbelievable, that the only reasonable conclusion is that they recognized the Commission for what it is -- a “disinfotainment” comedy produced for C-Span, a bone tossed contemptuously in the direction of activist groups of victims’ families, and a means to forestall any true investigation, if not forever then at least until after the 2004 presidential election. Judging by their conduct, the NORAD commanders were well aware that the Commissioners — or a majority of them at least — had no expectation of being told even a plausible, roughly consistent set of lies, much less the truth.
282. Late in 2001, for example, defendant Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold wrote how NORAD’s response on 9-11 was “immediate” and “impressive.” Gen. Arnold claimed, “we were able to identify, track and escort suspected hijacked aircraft after the initial attacks,” “our reaction time outpaced the process in some instances,” “our well-practiced rapid response capability may very well have prevented additional surprise attacks on the American homeland saving countless lives.” Apart from the absurdity of such claims in light of such facts as are known and, of course, the outcome of the attacks, Gen. Arnold was flatly contradicted by current NORAD Commander Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley who, testifying to the Commission in May 2003 with Gen. Arnold seated at his side, admitted “We had not positioned prior to September 11, 2001, for the scenario that took place that day.” “McKinley admitted,” another report stated, “that NORAD was utterly unprepared for the attack.” Gen. McKinley called NORAD’s 9-11 stance “a Cold War vestige.”
283. Not only did Gen. McKinley squarely contradict Gen. Arnold’s referenced article that had boasted of NORAD’s response, but Gen. Arnold himself testified lamely before the Commission that he did not think Flight 77 would be shot down on its approach to Washington, because even at that point, it was only “through hindsight that we are certain that this was a coordinated attack on the United States.”
284. Gen. Arnold’s last-quoted statement is astonishing. At the time in question, roughly 9:26 A.M., about 40 minutes had elapsed since a hijacked plane had crashed into the WTC North Tower. Nearly half an hour had passed since the second impact at the South Tower. Flight 77, having made a “U” turn from its projected flight path, had been out of radio contact with controllers for about 35 minutes, and was bearing down on the nation’s Capitol. Yet, Gen. Arnold is suggesting that he (and perhaps other military and civilian leaders, as he employs the pronoun “we”) was unsure that a “coordinated attack on the United States” was in progress. Plaintiff submits that either the General has engaged in massive perjury, or his acuity is so feeble that he should have been dismissed from service in the wake of the attacks.
285. Drawing inspiration, perhaps, from the memory of how Lt. Col. Oliver North used brazen perjury to cover up massive illegal sales of weapons (and drugs) and the creation and use of an extra-Constitutional parallel government to thwart laws passed by Congress, parlaying this perjury into wealth and a lucrative career as a pro-Enterprise commentator and profiteer, NORAD witnesses appearing before the Commission evidently did not feel the need even to avoid lies that could readily be refuted – stating, for example, that CNN first began showing images of the North Tower of the World Trade Center on fire at 8:57 A.M., when it is easily verifiable that CNN began doing so at 8:48 A.M. . Regardless of whether NORAD’S story of convenience at a given moment entails fighters flying toward Flight 93 from Michigan on the one hand, or Washington on the other, its account cannot withstand scrutiny. Three fully-armed fighters reached Washington before the one unarmed or the two partially-armed fighters did. So why was not one of the first three, fully-armed fighters sent after Flight 93? It is an affront to every American with moderate analytical powers to propose, as NORAD has, that Surely, an hour and a half after NORAD was first notified of the diversion of Flight 11, it had not the capacity to overtake Flight 93 with an armed fighter!
286. In light of the inspiring (albeit improbable) story that passengers on Flight 93 fought the hijackers and may have recaptured control of the aircraft, Enterprise spinmeisters have sought to keep armed aircraft far, far away from Flight 93 in their accounts of the moments preceding its crash. However, there is significant evidence that Flight 93 was shot down. The Enterprise, NORAD, and the Bush II Administration cannot have it both ways. Either the brave passengers who allegedly exclaimed, “Let’s roll!” were blown out of the sky by military (or CIA or other Enterprise) fire, or Flight 93 flew for fifty minutes, uncontested, after two planes had struck the WTC, and the government knew it had been hijacked. Small wonder, then, that NORAD continues to hide behind lies and vague stories of unarmed fighters, with the timeline kept as fuzzy as possible. NORAD Commander Craig McKinley newly claimed at the May 2003 hearings that NORAD was unaware of any shoot down order until five minutes after Flight 93 had crashed.
287. There is evidence that Flight 93, and that it was tailed by a private jet owned by an enormously wealthy businessman, involved also in the development of pilotless aircraft, who happened to be hosting a charity event at the secure Air Force facility in Nebraska to which President Bush was flown on 9-11. (The coincidences just keep coming.) According to one report, which while (unconfirmed but is alleged by plaintiff upon information and belief), is that fighter pilots of the 119th Fighter Wing of the North Dakota Air National Guard, a unit temporarily assigned to Langley AFB in Virginia, were scrambled at 9:38 A.M. on 9-11, and directed to pursue Flight 93. The squadron, comprising Major Rick Gibney, Maj. Brad Derrig, Maj. Dean Eckman, and Capt. Craig Borgstrom, overtook the diverted plane and one of them, reportedly Major Gibney, was ordered to and did shoot the plane down. Reportedly, the members of this squadron, from a unit nicknamed the “Happy Hooligans,” were later awarded medals (and several pilots of the squadron were promoted) for meritorious service in carrying out the tragic orders to shoot down Flight 93.
288. Further reports of anomalies worthy of investigation, but which to plaintiff’s best knowledge have not been investigated, are these. One is that while military and government sources have persistently denied the presence of military aircraft within range of Flight 93 on 9-11, a sonic boom — indicative of a military aircraft, as passenger aircraft generally do not “break the sound barrier” — was recorded at 9:22 A.M., at an earthquake monitoring station in southern Pennsylvania, approximately 60 miles from the crash site of Flight 93.
289. An article by Robb Magley suggests that this sonic boom is consistent with fighters from the 112th Fighter Squadron, part of the 180th Fighter Wing (a/k/a the “Stingers”), known to have been scrambled from the Toledo Express Airport in Ohio, doubling back after being initially ordered to New York, causing the sonic boom over the southern Pennsylvania seismic station at 9:22 A.M., and intercepting (and possibly shooting down) Flight 93 at about 10:06 A.M.
290. Rodriguez does not endorse or reject Magley’s theory, but finds it remarkable that it appears not to have interested the Commission in the slightest. Certainly, the sonic boom, certainly, recorded only about 60 miles from Flight 93’s crash site, appears to belie claims by Maj. Gen. Paul A. Weaver, Jr., Director of the Air National guard, that National Guard aircraft “weren’t even close” to Flight 93.
291. Another matter worthy of explanation is the possibility that Flight 93 was brought down not by rebellious passengers, nor by suicidal Arabs, but by ultra high-tech United States weaponry, namely microwave weapons emitted from a C-130 aircraft. Especially in light of the inspiring (albeit improbable) story that passengers on Flight 93 fought the hijackers and may have recaptured control of the aircraft, Enterprise spinmeisters have sought to keep armed aircraft far, far away from Flight 93 in their accounts of the moments preceding its crash.
292. If the facts are viewed critically, however, the Enterprise, NORAD, and the Bush II Administration cannot have it both ways. Either the brave passengers who allegedly exclaimed, “Let’s roll!” were blown out of the sky by military (or CIA or other Enterprise) fire, or Flight 93 flew for fifty minutes, uncontested, after two planes had struck the WTC, and the government knew it had been hijacked. Small wonder, then, that NORAD continues to hide behind lies and vague stories of unarmed fighters, with the timeline kept as fuzzy as possible. NORAD Commander Craig McKinley newly claimed at the May 2003 hearings that NORAD was unaware of any shoot down order until five minutes after Flight 93 had crashed.
293. Additional questions are raised by the failure to escort Air Force One when, at last, President Bush tore himself away from the schoolchildren’s “goat story,” and left the Sarasota airport about 9:56 A.M. Interestingly, one of the President’s security detail at the elementary school saw the second WTC crash at 9:03 A.M. and immediately exclaimed, “We’re out of here. Can you get everyone ready?” Two air bases in Florida (Homestead and Tyndall) were among the seven in NORAD’S system. One would think that, during the approximately 32-minute delay between the second WTC impact, and the time that the Commander-in-Chief (his indispensable “briefing” regarding the pet goat having been completed) left with his motorcade about 9:35 A.M., the President’s security would have arranged for an armed fighter escort to accompany Air Force One. It appears, however, that no fighters reached Air Force One until sometime between 11:00 A.M. and 11:30 A.M. (NORAD has not released full details). Reportedly, the first fighters to reach Air Force One came from Ellington, near Houston, Texas, long after Air Force One left Florida. If, somehow, the 9-11 attacks were not an “inside job,” carried out with the secret blessing of high officials in the Bush II Administration and the military and “national security” agencies, the President’s initial conduct following word of the attacks was bizarre, and those responsible for his safety were remarkably casual, unless the .9-11 attacks were an “inside job” carried out with the secret blessing of high officials in the Bush II Administration and the military and “national security” agencies.
6. SOME ADDITIONAL REASONS TO DOUBT THE OFFICIAL STORY OF 9-11.
294. One columnist wrote in May 2003, “The great majority of people, sickened and overwhelmed by the horror of the attacks, unquestioningly accepts the White House version [of what happened on 9-11]. Many thousands, however, are patiently stitching together the documented evidence and noting the holes in the fabric of that official story.” A Florida columnist called the “restrained – even failed – standard US military air defense protocols while the attacks were occurring” a “real mystery” deserving a serious investigation. But whether through fear or collusion, few major media organizations have had the temerity to challenge the Official Story or even acknowledge the discrepancies.
295. There are a myriad of other facts, reported by mainstream media but not as a coherent whole, which suggest that the Official Story is a falsehood, and that failure to carry out a complete criminal investigation addressed not to “intelligence failures” but the actual events of 9-11 and criminal responsibility therefore, attests eloquently to Enterprise and U.S. government complicity. Besides those listed above, here are just a few additional examples:
(a) The alleged hijackers were identified implausibly early after the attacks. No Arab names – let alone those of the accused hijackers – appear on the public passenger manifests. A supposedly definitive technical study concerning the collapses of World Trade Center 1 and 2 (the North Tower and South Tower) appeared just two days after 9-11, but the actual evidence (the rubble from the destroyed buildings, especially the structural steel) was kept under the exclusive control of FEMA, removed form the site, and shipped overseas with haste that dismayed engineers, and astonished everyone. Called by its right name, this was the destruction of evidence, and an obstruction of justice, brazenly carried out in plain view.
(b.) Most purported “evidence” that hijackers were on any of the four airplanes, and that they may have been Arabs, is attributed to purported cell phone conversations between flight attendants and passengers and persons on the ground. Given the state of cell phone facilities and technology as of September 2001, it is highly unlikely that most of these communications would have gotten through to the ground. In some cases – e.g., the conflicting and timeline-inconsistent conversations involving attendants on Flight 11 -- the conversations are implausible, or at best inconclusive, when their content is compared with other facts and allegations. Most of the communications are doubtful, also, in that technically it is unlikely that, given the state of cell phone facilities and technology as of September 2001, passengers on the airplanes would have been able to communicate with the ground via cell phones.
(c.) Astonishingly, although from the very day of 9-11 (e.g., remarks by Sen. Orrin Hatch) to the present, government and Commission officials have claimed to have firm evidence of membership in al-Qaeda of the nineteen accused hijackers, and to have reconstructed their movements and their activities in furtherance of the plot, more than seven months after the attacks FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III stated flatly:
In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper — either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere — that mentioned any aspect of the September 11 plot.
296. Based on these and a great many other contradictions, impossibilities and implausibilities concerning the Official Story, to be presented at the trial, Rodriguez alleges upon information and belief that the Principal Defendants and each of them had express foreknowledge of the 9-11 attacks, and that the same would involve the hijacking or diversion of commercial aircraft and attempts to steer commandeered aircraft into landmark buildings in New York City and Washington, D.C. or environs.
297. Upon information and belief, the Principal Defendants and each of them engaged and/or collaborated with military, paramilitary, intelligence and/or secret service personnel of one or more of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and/or other nations, which personnel participated in the recruitment, training, instruction, entry into the United States, financing and protection of the persons who actually carried out the attacks of 9-11.
298. From and after the time that each of them first learned that the 9-11 diversions of aircraft and attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had occurred or were in progress, each of the Principal Defendants knew, or became aware not later than the day following the attacks, that (1) the same had been permitted to occur as the same would furnish a pretext to justify military attacks against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq; (2) the Enterprise demanded of each of them adherence to the “Official Story,” essentially that the attacks were planned and executed solely by foreign terrorists, Islamist extremists under the direct or indirect control of Osama bin Laden; (3) the Enterprise demanded that each of the Principal Defendants conceal and continue to conceal the truth concerning Bush II Administration and U.S. military and government complicity in the attacks, and that they commit any such act(s), including perjury, the destruction and/or falsification of records, and the concealment of evidence under the pretext of “national security,” as might be or become necessary or convenient to prevent or delay the truth from becoming known to the public at large; and (4) the Enterprise demanded that each of the Principal Defendants do whatever might be asked of them, including but not limited to the commission of crimes including wire fraud, perjury, the giving of knowingly false testimony to Congress, in order to falsify, obscure and conceal the relationship between the 9-11 attacks, the complicity of Enterprise actors in carrying out the attacks and/or permitting the same to occur, and the objectives of the Enterprise enumerated in this complaint.
299. Upon information and belief, each and every one of the Principal Defendants, if any there were, who may be shown not to have been, prior to the 9-11 attacks, active co-conspirators with the persons who carried them out, became aware at or shortly following the attacks of their true character, and that they had been planned or permitted to occur by the Enterprise, and knowingly and actively participated in the concealment of the truth from Congress and the American public concerning (a) Bush II Administration and U.S. military and government complicity in the attacks; (b) the agenda that the Enterprise intended to promote and to further (and in fact has promoted and furthered with considerable success, and with attendant monetary and political gain to the Enterprise, the Principal Defendants, and their allies), and (c) the relationship between the 9-11 attacks and such agenda.
300. In the cover-up and concealment of the true character of the 9-11 attacks, complicity in the same on the part of Enterprise, Bush II Administration, and U.S. military and government personnel, and the relationship of the attacks to the Enterprise Agenda, each of the Principal Defendants has committed, or conspired to commit, one or more crimes including but not limited to mail fraud, wire fraud, perjury and/or the subornation of perjury, the destruction and/or the concealment of evidence, the killing, threatening, harassment, and/or otherwise tampering with witnesses, and obstruction of justice.
301. By carrying out the 9-11 attacks; causing the diversion of four commercial airline flights on 9-11 and the murder of all or many of the persons on board; by causing the planes or other aircraft, missiles or projectiles into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center; causing the demolition of WTC-7; and causing anthrax to be mailed to not fewer than five persons in October 2001, the Enterprise and its members are guilty of multiple crimes constituting “domestic terrorism,” within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 2331.
302. By causing the diversion of Flight 11, Flight 175, Flight 77 and Flight 93 on 9-11, the persons on board said flights being willfully transported in interstate commerce, and such acts being committed within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States (as defined in 49 U.S.C. § 46501), the Enterprise and its members are guilty of kidnapping, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1201.
303. By reason of having taken control of, diverted, and destroyed the aircraft involved in the 9-11 attacks, the Enterprise and its members are guilty of the willful destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 32.
304. In connection with the diversion of four aircraft on 9-11, the Enterprise and its members are guilty of the crime of interference with commerce by threats or violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951.
305. The Enterprise and each of its members is guilty, by reason of having supplied currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safe houses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel, transportation and other physical assets (except medicine or religious materials) to persons who carried out the 9-11 attacks, of violating 18 U.S.C. § 2339A, which prohibits providing material support to terrorists.
306. Defendants and each of them, by kidnapping and/or murdering approximately 2,993 persons in the attacks of 9-11 (including all of the persons on the four diverted aircraft, and persons killed when the aircraft, or other aircraft, missiles or projectiles, were flown into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and when explosives in the Twin Towers were detonated) and maiming additional persons injured in the attacks, did so in consideration for the receipt of, or as consideration for a promise or agreement to pay something of pecuniary value from an enterprise engaged in racketing activity, or for the purpose of gaining entrance to or maintaining or increasing position in such an enterprise, are therefore guilty of violating 18 U.S.C. § 1959, which prohibits violent crimes in aid of racketeering activity.
307. In connection with the acts aforementioned in the last preceding paragraph, the Enterprise and its members are guilty of using interstate commerce facilities in the commission for murder for hire, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1958;
308. By supplying funds that were used, in full or in part, to carry out the 9-11 attacks, the Enterprise and its members violated 18 U.S.C. § 2339(C), which prohibits the financing of terrorism (including inter alia acts “intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian . . . when the purpose of such act . . . is to intimidate a population . . .”)
309. If and to the extent that the Enterprise and its members may have, in the course of carrying out, enabling, or aiding and abetting the 9-11 attacks, provided any funds (or other material support or resources) to any organization designated a “terrorist organization” under 8 U.S.C. § 1189, they are guilty of violating 18 U.S.C. § 2339B, which prohibits providing material support or resources to designated terrorist organizations;
310. The Enterprise and each of its members are guilty, by reason of the anthrax attacks on Senators Daschle and Leahy, of violating 18 U.S.C. § 372, Conspiracy to impede or injure [an] officer;
311. The Enterprise and each of its members are guilty, by reason of sending anthrax bacteria via the U.S. Postal Service to not fewer than five individuals in October 2001, of violating 18 U.S.C. § 1716, which prohibits mailing “injurious articles” including “ all kinds of poison, and . . . all disease germs or scabs;”
312. The Enterprise and each of its members are guilty, by reason of abducting and/or aiding in and facilitating the abduction of minor children and young women, and providing them (by “sale” or otherwise) to government officials, members of the CIA and U.S. security organizations, and citizens of foreign nations including but not limited to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, of violating one or more of the following statutes: Title 18 U.S. Code §§ 2251, 2251A, 2252 and 2260 (relating to the sexual exploitation of children; 18 U.S.C. §§ 1581 through 1588 (relating to peonage and slavery); and/or 18 U.S.C. §§ 2421 through 2424 (relating to white slave traffic);
313. The Enterprise and each of its members are guilty, in connection with their extensive, worldwide and prolonged involvement with trafficking in cocaine, heroin, marihuana, and other drugs, of multiple acts of money laundering, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1956 and 1957;
314. The Enterprise and each of its members, and the Special Riot Defendants and each of them, by reason of having traveled to Florida in interstate commerce to commit riot (as defined in Fla. Stat. 836.05) in order to stop the recount of votes in the 2000 presidential election, are guilty of the federal crime of riot, as proscribed under 18 U.S.C. § 2101.
315. In the alternative, as to any of the Defendants who may not be guilty of themselves carrying out the felonies enumerated in this Count, such Defendants are guilty of conspiring to commit such acts, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371, or as accessories after the fact who by reason thereof are guilty as if they were principals, see United States v. Patriarca, 912 F.Supp. 596, 627 (D. Mass. 1995).
316. By their acts described in foregoing paragraphs 257 through 277, the Principal Defendants, and others of the Defendants, knowing that multiple offenses against the United States had been committed, received, relieved, comforted, and/or assisted the offenders in order to hinder or prevent their apprehension, trial or punishment, and by so doing became accessories after the fact to multiple crimes including, but not limited to, kidnapping, arson, and murder, domestic terrorism, the willful destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities, interference with commerce by threats or violence, violent crimes in aid of racketeering activity, using interstate commerce facilities in the commission for murder for hire, the financing of terrorism, and riot in connection with the forcible stopping of the recount of ballots in Florida following the 2000 presidential election. Insofar as the crimes enumerated are crimes within the jurisdiction of the United States, every defendant who was or became an accessory after the fact to such crime by so doing violated 18 U.S.C. § 3.
RICO Complaint Part 10 here |