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Guest Commentary: More about those 7 minutes

This entry was commissioned after an e-mail exchange with the author, and was written by MOOREWATCHer dougte.  You can obtain your own copy of the 9/11 Commission report here (PDF format) and follow along.

Michael Moore would have us believe that on 9/11 George Bush threw away seven minutes reading “My Pet Goat” to school children—seven minutes that, had he acted, could have saved hundreds. He’s wrong. But don’t take my word for it—take the 9/11 bi-partisan commission’s word for it (Unless of course you’re a conspiracy theorist, in which case the report has probably exacerbated your paranoia).

George Bush could not have saved lives in seven minutes. George Bush could not have saved lives with seven hours. In the words of the commission: “On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen” (18).

The systemic failures of 9/11 are too numerous to count. This is not because the FAA or NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) didn’t have a plan for protecting US citizens, but because no one had conceived of hijackers turning transcontinental flights filled with 11,400 gallons of jet fuel, essentially, into missiles. Not only did all 19 hijackers defeat multiple layers of security—which had the sole purpose of stopping a hijacking from occurring in the first place—but, once successful, they “invented a new kind of war,” as one military commander put it. “No one at the FAA or the airlines that day had ever dealt with multiple hijackings.  Such a plot had not been carried out anywhere in the world in more than 30 years, and never in the United States.  As news of the hijackings filtered through the FAA and the airlines, it does not seem to have occurred to the leadership that they needed to alert other aircraft in the air that they too might be at risk” (10).

Some of you will want timelines. This is not a surprise since you’ve been so concerned with “seven minutes” in the first place. What I’m telling you is: forget the timelines. This is not because they invalidate what I’m saying (they most certainly do), but because the chaos that ensued because of this new kind of warfare made certain those planes were going to crash. The following are key factors in contributing to this chaos:

     a.) NORAD Mission and Structure. NORAD was structured to counter a Soviet threat, not hijackers flying plans into downtown Manhattan. As one of the fighters originally scrambled from Langley said, “I reverted to the Russian threat…I’m thinking cruise missile threat from the sea. You know you look down and see the Pentagon burning and I thought the bastards snuck one by us…You couldn’t see any airplanes, and no one told us anything” (45).

     b.) Interagency Collaboration. The FAA and NORAD had a system in place for dealing with a hijacking—a “routine” hijacking. Normally, in the event of a hijacking a pilot would notify FAA controllers by “squawking” a transponder code of “7500” (17). This would set in motion the proper procedures for dealing with such a situation. Those procedures, which include sending information up the chain of command and waiting for orders to come back down, takes time. On 9/11 they didn’t have time. Because the terrorists turned off the aircrafts’ transponders, FAA officials were left scratching their heads (for much longer than seven minutes). As one official said on 9/11: “I don’t know where I’m scrambling these guys to. I need a direction, a destination” (20). One needs to simply read page 27 of the report to see the consequences turning off the transponders had on the outcome of September 11th: “The Langley fighters were heading east, not north, for three reasons. First, unlike a normal scramble order, this order did not include a distance to the target or the target’s location. Second, a “generic” flight plan--prepared to get the aircraft airborne and out of local airspace quickly—incorrectly led the Langley fighters to believe they were ordered to fly due east (090) for 60 miles. Third, the lead pilot and local FAA controller incorrectly assumed the flight plan instruction to go “090 for 60” superseded the original scramble order...The time was 9:38. The Pentagon had been struck by American 77 at 9:37:46. The Langley fighters were about 150 miles away” (27).

Finally, let us assume that for some reason George Bush was able to give the “engage” order to the proper military commanders as he sat in front of the school children reading “My Pet Goat.” Would it have helped? No. Even after the order to engage civilian aircraft was authorized and passed to NEADS (NORAD’S Northeast Air Defense Sector), the commanders in charge of passing along the order to their pilots refused! “The NEADS commander told us he did not pass along the order because he was unaware of its ramifications.  Both the mission commander and the senior weapons director indicated they did not pass the order to the fighters circling Washington and New York because they were unsure how the pilots would, or should, proceed with this guidance. In short, while leaders in Washington believed that the fighters above them had been instructed to “take out” hostile aircraft, the only orders actually conveyed to the pilots were to ‘ID type and tail’” (43).

(Some of you will ask about the “interceptor” plane that arrived two minutes after flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania. Sorry, it wasn’t an interceptor—it was an unarmed C-130 Cargo plane.)

I’m sure that many Moore fans are still unconvinced. It won’t matter that, “As it turned out, NEADS air defenders had nine minutes’ notice on the first hijacked plane, no advance notice on the second, no advance notice on the third, and no advance notice on the forth” (31). It won’t matter that commanders ignored to pass the “engage” order on, even after the President sent the order. All that will matter is that Moore says otherwise. Some will concede that nothing could have been done, but that the president still looked indecisive. Here is what the 9/11 Commission reports:

“The president told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis. The press was standing behind the children; he saw their phones and pagers start to ring. The President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening” (38).

This seems logical, but then again logic doesn’t matter when you’re fueled by blind ideology or hate. The report expands on the President’s actions on 9/11, but I’ll refrain from posting any more—I’m sure there’s an ample amount of content here to discuss.

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