911 - The 9/11 Hijackers: Amateur Aviators Who Became Super-Pilots on September 11

The 9/11 Hijackers: Amateur Aviators Who Became Super-Pilots on September 11

"To hit something with an airplane is easy only if
you have been flying for 20 years."
- Boeing 767 pilot quoted in the Boston Globe

"The conspiracy apparently did not include
a surplus of skilled pilots."
- The Washington Post

In the days after 9/11, numerous pilots and aviation experts commented on the elaborate maneuvers performed by the aircraft in the terrorist attacks, and the advanced skills that would have been necessary to navigate those aircraft into their targets. The men flying the planes must have been "highly skilled pilots" and "extremely knowledgeable and capable aviators," who were "probably military trained," these experts said.

And yet the four alleged hijackers who were supposedly flying the aircraft were amateur pilots, who had learned to fly in small propeller planes, and were described by their instructors as having had only "average" or even "very poor" piloting skills. But on their first attempt at flying jet aircraft, on September 11, 2001, these men were supposedly able to fly Boeing 757s and 767s at altitudes of tens of thousands of feet, without any assistance from air traffic control. Three of them were apparently able to successfully navigate their planes all the way to the intended targets, which they hit with pinpoint accuracy.

For such poor pilots to carry out such skilled flying would surely have been extremely unlikely, perhaps impossible. And yet this is what is claimed in the official account of 9/11.

EXPERTS SAID HIJACKERS 'MUST HAVE BEEN EXPERIENCED PILOTS'
Numerous experts commented that the hijackers who flew the aircraft in the 9/11 attacks must have been highly trained and skillful pilots. Tony Ferrante, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration's investigations division, spent several days after 9/11 carefully piecing together the movements of the four aircraft targeted in the attacks. According to author Pamela Freni, Ferrante's "hair stood on end when he realized the precision with which all four airplanes had moved toward their targets." Ferrante said, "It was almost as though it was choreographed," and explained, "It's not as easy as it looks to do what [the hijackers] did at 500 miles an hour." [1]

Darryl Jenkins, the director of the Aviation Institute at George Washington University, told the New York Times that the men who carried out the attacks "knew what they were doing down to very small details." He said, "Every one of them was trained in flying big planes." The Times reported that a "number of aviation experts agreed" with Jenkins and had said that "the hijackers must have been experienced pilots." John Nance, an airline pilot, author, and aviation analyst, said that "the direct hits on the two towers and on the Pentagon suggested to him that the pilots were experienced fliers." Nance pointed to the "smooth banking of the second plane to strike the towers," and said that "precisely controlling a large jet near the ground, necessary for the Pentagon attack, also required advanced skill." Nance concluded, "There's no way an amateur could have, with any degree of reliability, done what was done" in the 9/11 attacks. [2]

A pilot who had been with a major carrier for more than 30 years told CNN that to "pull off the coordinated aerial attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon ... the hijackers must have been extremely knowledgeable and capable aviators." The pilot added, "They know what they were doing." [3]

Robin Lloyd, a Boeing 737 captain with a British airline, told The Telegraph that "the hijackers had to be experienced pilots with more than just a rudimentary knowledge of navigation." Lloyd, who co-runs the Professional Pilots' Rumour Network website, which is "regarded worldwide as one of the prime sources of accurate information for the aviation industry," said the terrorists at the controls of the hijacked aircraft "had to be 100 percent switched on people, 100 percent experienced pilots, probably military trained." He said someone like Osama bin Laden "wouldn't have access to pilots of the caliber needed to pull it off." [4]

John Roden, the president of Aviation Advisory Service, an Oakland, California, consulting firm, said the piloting necessary to navigate the planes to their targets "was very skillful. This is practically fighter pilot technique." [5] And a U.S. Air Force officer who flew over 100 sorties during the Vietnam War concluded that the hijacked aircraft "either had a crack fighter pilot in the left seat or they were being maneuvered by remote control." [6]

'CONSIDERABLE TRAINING' AND 'IN-DEPTH KNOWLEDGE' NEEDED TO FLY 757 AND 767 AIRCRAFT
Two of the aircraft targeted in the 9/11 attacks were Boeing 757s and the other two were Boeing 767s. Experts have commented how difficult it would have been for amateur pilots, like the alleged hijackers, to fly such aircraft.

Aviation experts told the Chicago Tribune, "Unlike a small private plane where pilots generally fly visually, a commercial plane like those hijacked [on September 11] requires a vast command of navigation techniques as well as in-depth knowledge of their myriad systems, from hydraulics to the autopilot." [7] Michael Barr, the director of aviation safety programs at the University of Southern California, and several commercial airline pilots told the Boston Globe that "they assumed that the terrorists were skilled pilots who had to have received some training in flying transport jets, particularly the Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft." [8]

Steven Wallach, an aviation consultant and former airline captain, said that if the hijackers "took the controls at high altitude and a long distance from their targets"--as allegedly happened--"then they likely had considerable training in a 767 or 757." Wallach said the hijackers "would have had to descend and navigate to Washington and New York. They would have had to know how to operate the autopilot, as well as other intricate functions." Boeing 767s and 757s have highly sophisticated "glass cockpits" that include video screens and digital readouts, which require the pilots to have an advanced level of computer skills. "To navigate with that glass cockpit, it can be pretty tricky," Wallach said. [9]

HITTING THE WTC LIKE 'THREADING THE EYE OF A NEEDLE'
Some experts commented specifically on the flying skills that would have been necessary to crash planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Kieran Daly, the editor of the Internet publication Air Transport Intelligence, said, "Flying an aircraft into a building is not as simple as it appears." He said the hijackers "would have needed some experience to have been able to steer the planes into the World Trade Centre." [10] Robin Lloyd compared the targets of the WTC towers to "narrow runways tipped vertically." From "switching off the autopilot," the hijackers "would have to know how to control the aircraft and be able to find the target," he said. Lloyd said that "rag-trousered terrorists with no flying experience could not have hit" the Twin Towers. [11]

Michael Barr said the hijackers who flew the planes into the WTC "had to change course ... had to know how to navigate." [12] Barr, who is a former Air Force fighter-bomber pilot, said the hijacker pilots "almost had to hit the towers like they were threading the eye of a needle." He commented on the difficulty the pilots would have had in synchronizing their attacks so they hit the two WTC towers about 15 minutes apart, saying: "The routes they were flying were very different--one plane coming from the north and the other coming from the south. That adds greatly to the complexity and it requires a degree of skill to prevent the planes from banking too much or descending too fast while keeping on course." Barr added that the piloting skills apparently exhibited by the hijackers indicated that "months and months of planning and training were involved." He concluded, "Unfortunately, these guys were good." [13]

A 767 pilot told the Boston Globe: "The perpetrators were trained pilots and trained to operate the 757-767 family of aircraft. ... [I]t did not seem to bother them that the flying was very demanding." This pilot noted that video showed that the second aircraft to hit the WTC was banked, or turning, as it struck the tower, "making the maneuver more difficult." He added, "To hit something with an airplane is easy only if you have been flying for 20 years." [14]

Niki Lauda, the former Formula One world champion who is also a pilot and owned his own airline, said on German TV that whoever flew the aircraft into the WTC must have been "properly trained to fly a plane like that." He said: "You have to know exactly what the turning radius of a plane like that is, if I am trying to hit the World Trade Center. That means, these had to be fully trained 767 or 757 pilots. ... It certainly could not be the case that some half-trained pilot tries it somehow, because then he will not hit it." [15]

AIRCRAFT THAT HIT THE PENTAGON 'WAS FLOWN WITH EXTRAORDINARY SKILL'
A particularly high level of skill would have been needed to fly an aircraft into the west wall of the Pentagon. CBS News reported: "Radar shows Flight 77 did a downward spiral, turning almost a complete circle and dropping the last 7,000 feet in two and a half minutes. ... [T]he complex maneuver suggests the hijackers had better flying skills than many investigators first believed." [16] A "top aviation source" called the maneuver "a nice, coordinated turn," which, according to one law enforcement official, was the work of "a great talent ... virtually a textbook turn and landing." [17] Other "aviation sources" told the Washington Postthat the aircraft that hit the Pentagon "was flown with extraordinary skill." [18]

According to the Chicago Tribune, authorities said the terrorist who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon displayed "proficiency in the aircraft's advanced navigation and automated flight systems. ... Such systems require pilots to program the desired course heading and altitude into an onboard computer, and the plane carries out the instructions." [19]

Dave Esser, the head of the aeronautical engineering department at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, told CNN that "the highest level of navigational ability would have been needed" with Flight 77. Roger Richie, a spokesman for Flight Safety Academy, a flight school in Vero Beach, Florida, added: "It's not that simple when you're heading over [Ohio], to come back and find the Pentagon. You need to know what you are doing." [20]

Ed Soliday, a highly qualified and experienced former airline captain, told the 9/11 Commission that he had been talking about piloting skills with a military officer at the Pentagon, and had remarked to the officer "how tough it would be for any pilot, including himself, to hit the Pentagon directly." Soliday said the "feel" to hit the Pentagon by flying a 757 manually would not have been easy, particularly because of the building's low profile, and would have required the pilot who undertook the task to have had significant "simulator time." Soliday told the Commission that "if he were going to do the Pentagon, he would try to do it all on the autopilot because of how difficult it was." [21] However, the autopilot on Flight 77 was disengaged at 9:29 a.m. and remained off for the final eight minutes the plane was in the air, according to a study of information from the plane's flight data recorder by the National Transportation Safety Board. [22]

The 767 pilot who talked to the Boston Globe similarly said hitting the Pentagon would have been "extremely difficult." He added, "One degree off and [the pilot] either overshoots it or undershoots it." [23] Gary Eitel, an experienced military pilot, said that "the maneuver performed by Flight 77, as described in official reports, was beyond the capabilities of 90 percent of even the best and most experienced pilots in the world." Eitel said that "he was amazed by the piloting skill used to steer Flight 175 into the second tower. Flight 77 boggled his mind." [24]

Niki Lauda said that "to fly downwards out of a curve and still hit the building in its core, I would have to be the best trained [pilot] of all." He speculated that "a normal airline pilot would have a hard time with that, because you are simply not prepared for things like that." Therefore, Lauda concluded, "They must have had some super-training to have been able to handle an airliner so precisely." [25]

While these experts indicated an extraordinary level of piloting skills would have been necessary to carry out the 9/11 attacks, the four men supposedly at the controls of the hijacked aircraft were in fact notable for their lack of such skills and for their limited flying experience.

FLIGHT 11 AND FLIGHT 175 PILOTS HAD 'AVERAGE' SKILLS
Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, allegedly the terrorists who flew American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 into the World Trade Center, were at best mediocre pilots, according to several accounts. They learned to fly between July and December 2000 at a flight school in Venice, Florida. They were enrolled in the school's Accelerated Pilot Program and trained in a Cessna 172, a small single-engine propeller plane. In mid-December 2000, the two men passed their commercial pilot tests and received their licenses. [26] Rudi Dekkers, the owner of the flight school, said he had "heard from the instructors" that Atta and Alshehhi "were average students," and "the examiner told me the same." [27]

The closest Atta and Alshehhi came to flying a jet aircraft before September 11 was the two days they spent at the SimCenter flight school in Opa-Locka, Florida, in late- December 2000, where they had six hours of training in a Boeing 727 simulator. Henry George, the owner of the SimCenter who trained Atta and Alshehhi in the simulator, said the two men were provided with "a mini, mini introduction" to jet flight. George found their flying skills to be unremarkable. He later recalled: "Looking back, they were average pilots for their experience level. Nothing particularly bad about their flying, but nothing remarkable either." [28]

FLIGHT 77 PILOT WAS 'TOTALLY CLUELESS' AND 'COULD NOT FLY AT ALL'
Of the four men supposedly at the controls of the hijacked aircraft on September 11, Hani Hanjour stood out for his particularly weak flying skills. This 29-year-old from Saudi Arabia is alleged to have flown Flight 77 into the Pentagon. That, as we have seen, would have been a particularly difficult task, even for the best pilots. Hanjour, however, was a hopeless pilot.

An Arizona flight school Hanjour attended in 1996 found the young Saudi to be a "weak student" who "was wasting our resources," according to the school's owner. [29] An instructor at another Arizona flight school who taught Hanjour for four months in 1998 later stated: "As a pilot, Hani Hanjour was very poor. His knowledge of the academic side of training was weak, his flying skills were marginal, but most significantly his judgment was very poor." The instructor recalled that Hanjour "was not well educated nor was he very intelligent." Hanjour had "a poor understanding of the basic principles of aviation" and "poor technical skills." [30]

Instructors at a flight school that Hanjour attended early in 2001 "found his piloting skills so shoddy and his grasp of English so inadequate that they questioned whether his pilot's license was genuine," according to theNew York Times. The staff at the school "feared that his skills were so weak that he could pose a safety hazard if he flew a commercial airliner." [31] An instructor at the school who trained Hanjour in a Boeing 737 simulator while he was there said Hanjour "proved to be such a bad pilot," and described Hanjour as "totally clueless." [32] One of the school's employees later said of Hanjour: "I'm still to this day amazed that he could have flown into the Pentagon. He could not fly at all." [33]

As the day of the attacks came closer, Hanjour's skills remained weak. An instructor at a Maryland flight school who provided flight lessons to Hanjour in mid-August 2001--less than a month before 9/11--found Hanjour to be "a poor student" who had "particular difficulty landing the aircraft." [34] After he was taken on three test flights at the school, Hanjour's request to rent a plane there was refused without more training. [35]

The Washington Post concluded that Hanjour's "limited flying abilities do afford an insight into one feature of the attacks: The conspiracy apparently did not include a surplus of skilled pilots." [36]

FLIGHT 93 PILOT'S SKILLS WERE 'A LITTLE BIT OUT THERE'
The terrorist allegedly at the controls of United Airlines Flight 93, which reportedly crashed in Pennsylvania after its passengers fought back against their plane's hijackers, was Ziad Jarrah, a 26-year-old from the Lebanon. While he was a better pilot than Hani Hanjour, Jarrah still appears to have had only mediocre flying skills.

Jarrah learned to fly during the latter half of 2000, spending about six months at a flight school in Florida where he trained in a Cessna 152, a small, two-seat propeller plane. [37] Jarrah became an "average" pilot, according to Arne Kruithof, the owner of the flight school. Kruithof said of Jarrah: "We had to do more to get him ready than others. His flight skills seemed to be a little bit out there." [38]

In June 2001, only three months before 9/11, Jarrah had two sessions of training at a flight school in Philadelphia, but his request to rent a plane from the school was denied due to his poor flying skills. Herbert Hortman, the owner of the flight school, told the 9/11 Commission he was surprised that Jarrah had qualified for his pilot's license, considering his limited flying ability. Hortman "speculated that a less than reputable flight school had issued the license." [39]

Despite his mediocre skills, Jarrah intended to crash Flight 93 into the White House or the U.S. Capitol building until he was stopped in his tracks by the plane's courageous passengers, according to the official account of 9/11. [40]

DID THE HIJACKERS JUST HAVE BEGINNER'S LUCK? 
We can see that the four men who were allegedly at the controls of the aircraft targeted in the 9/11 attacks had poor or mediocre skills and limited flying experience. So how could these amateur pilots, who had trained in small propeller planes, suddenly exhibit extraordinary proficiency in their first attempts at flying large jet aircraft? Was this the greatest example of beginner's luck in all history? Or is the official explanation of the 9/11 attacks wrong? A new investigation of those attacks is urgently required to address this question and find out the truth of what happened on September 11, 2001.

NOTES
[1] Pamela Freni, Ground Stop: An Inside Look at the Federal Aviation Administration on September 11, 2001. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, Inc., 2003, p. 76; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Tony Ferrante." 9/11 Commission, April 19, 2004.
[2] James Glanz, "Terrorists Were Well Trained, but not Necessarily in Flying." New York Times, September 13, 2001.
[3] "Hijackers 'Knew What They Were Doing.'" CNN, September 12, 2001.
[4] Nicole Martin and Andrew Hibberd, "Hijackers May Have Murdered the Pilots." The Telegraph, September 12, 2001.
[5] Henry K. Lee, "Experts Assess How Skilled Hijackers Were." San Francisco Chronicle, September 13, 2001.
[6] "September 11: U.S. Government Accused." Portugal News, August 3, 2002.
[7] Jon Hilkevitch, "Hijackers Flew Skillfully to Targets, Experts Say."Chicago Tribune, September 13, 2001.
[8] Matthew Brelis, "Pilots Say Crews Likely Overpowered, Slain." Boston Globe, September 12, 2001.
[9] Ken Kaye, "Questions Remain on Flight Training." South Florida Sun-Sentinel, September 22, 2001.
[10] Nicole Martin, "Pilots 'Must Have Been Murdered' Before Jets Were Aimed at Buildings." Irish Independent, September 12, 2001.
[11] Nicole Martin and Andrew Hibberd, "Hijackers May Have Murdered the Pilots."
[12] Matthew Brelis, "Pilots Say Crews Likely Overpowered, Slain."
[13] Jon Hilkevitch, "Hijackers Flew Skillfully to Targets, Experts Say."
[14] Matthew Brelis, "Pilots Say Crews Likely Overpowered, Slain."
[15] Webster Griffin Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA. Joshua Tree, CA: Progressive Press, 2005, p. 190.
[16] "Primary Target." CBS News, September 21, 2001.
[17] Amy Goldstein, "Hijackers Led by Core Group." Washington Post, September 30, 2001; Steve Fainaru and Alia Ibrahim, "Mysterious Trip to Flight 77 Cockpit." Washington Post, September 10, 2002.
[18] Marc Fisher and Don Phillips, "On Flight 77: 'Our Plane is Being Hijacked.'" Washington Post, September 12, 2001.
[19] Jon Hilkevitch, "Hijackers Flew Skillfully to Targets, Experts Say."
[20] "Experts Say Hijackers Needed Special Skills." CNN, September 14, 2001.
[21] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Captain Ed Soliday, Former Vice President of Safety, Security, and Quality Assurance for United Airlines." 9/11 Commission, November 21, 2003.
[22] John O'Callaghan and Daniel Bower, "Study of Autopilot, Navigation Equipment, and Fuel Consumption Activity Based on United Airlines Flight 93 and American Airlines Flight 77 Digital Flight Data Recorder Information." National Transportation Safety Board, February 13, 2002.
[23] Matthew Brelis, "Pilots Say Crews Likely Overpowered, Slain."
[24] Michael C. Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2004, p. 350.
[25] Webster Griffin Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror, p. 191.
[26] House Committee on the Judiciary, INS's March 2002 Notification of Approval of Change of Status for Pilot Training for Terrorist Hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi. 107th Cong., 2nd Sess., March 19, 2002; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 224, 227.
[27] Rudi Dekkers, interview by Quentin McDermott, A Mission to Die For. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, October 21, 2001.
[28] David Firestone and Dana Canedy, "FBI Documents Detail the Movements of 19 Men Believed to be Hijackers." New York Times, September 15, 2001; David A. Lombardo, "Hijack Pilots Showed Average Skills, Say Their Instructors." Aviation International News, November 2001.
[29] Amy Goldstein, Lena H. Sun, and George Lardner Jr., "Hanjour a Study in Paradox." Washington Post, October 15, 2001.
[30] Statement of [Name Redacted]. Canfield, Shapiro, Baer, Heller & Johnston, LLP, May 1, 2002.
[31] Jim Yardley, "A Trainee Noted for Incompetence." New York Times, May 4, 2002.
[32] [Name Redacted], interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 17, 2001.
[33] Jim Yardley, "A Trainee Noted for Incompetence."
[34] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of Benjamin L. Connor." 9/11 Commission, April 12, 2004.
[35] Justin Paprocki, "Airport Owners Panic Over Plummeting Profits." Capital News Service, September 19, 2001; Thomas Frank, "Tracing Trail of Hijackers." Newsday, September 23, 2001.
[36] Amy Goldstein, Lena H. Sun, and George Lardner Jr., "Hanjour a Study in Paradox."
[37] Der Spiegel Magazine, Inside 9/11: What Really Happened. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002, p. 12; "Statement for the Record, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry." U.S. Congress, September 25, 2002.
[38] Jere Longman, Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back. New York: HarperCollins, 2002, p. 91.
[39] "Profile: Ziad Samir Jarrah, DOB: May 11, 1975." Federal Bureau of Investigation, March 20, 2002; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview of Herbert Hortman, Owner of Hortman Aviation, Philadelphia, PA." 9/11 Commission, April 27, 2004.
[40] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 14.

911 - The Mystery of the Helicopter Flying Around the Pentagon Before the Attack There

The Mystery of the Helicopter Flying Around the Pentagon Before the Attack There on 9/11

A mysterious helicopter was seen flying near the Pentagon in the minutes before the attack there on September 11, 2001. Several witnesses have described seeing the helicopter, which circled the Pentagon and then apparently landed for a brief period on the helipad, near where the building was subsequently hit. It then flew off very shortly before the attack took place. And yet there has never been any public acknowledgement of this incident, or any official explanation of what the helicopter was doing at the Pentagon at that time.

While interviewing one of the witnesses to the incident, however, a Navy historian revealed that the helicopter belonged to the United States Park Police, and, the historian said, had been instructed to intercept the aircraft that was on a crash-course for the Pentagon.

Official accounts have claimed that Park Police helicopters only took to the air after the Pentagon was hit, to provide assistance in response to the attack. However, evidence casts doubt on this version of events. A woman who was dating one of the Park Police helicopter pilots has written an account of her experiences on September 11, which clearly supports the contention that the helicopters took off before the Pentagon attack occurred. And there are several contradictions between the various accounts describing the official narrative, indicating this narrative may, at least partly, have been fabricated. Furthermore, it appears there could have been a deliberate attempt to cover up the true details of what happened. The Navy historian in fact told the eyewitness he interviewed: "Don't tell anyone about that story. ... We don't want the press to get this."

WITNESSES SAW HELICOPTER BY THE PENTAGON
Several individuals have recalled seeing a helicopter flying near the Pentagon just before the attack there on September 11. Shortly after the attack occurred, a senior Air Force officer at the Pentagon told CNN's Chris Plante that he had seen "a helicopter circle the building," which had "disappeared behind the building where the helicopter landing zone is ... and he then saw [a] fireball go into the sky" when the Pentagon was hit. [1] Jennifer Reichert had been stuck in traffic on the road in front of the Pentagon. She described that "a helicopter [took] off from the heliport at the Pentagon." Then, "Minutes--maybe seconds--later," she heard the aircraft coming toward the Pentagon and then felt the explosion of the crash. [2]

Jeffrey Mark Parsons, an assistant chief patrol agent with the United States Border Patrol, saw the helicopter from a window on the 17th floor of his hotel, the Marriott Residence Inn in Arlington. Two or three minutes before the Pentagon was hit, Parsons recalled, he saw a blue and white helicopter flying in at "a weird angle" and circling "between the hotel and the Pentagon, going toward the landing pad [at the Pentagon] where that airliner ultimately hit." Parsons said he thought the helicopter "landed on the pad." He recognized the helicopter as a Huey from the noise it made, as he had flown Hueys and knew they made "a very distinct sound." [3]

HELICOPTER BELONGED TO THE PARK POLICE
The identity of this helicopter was revealed by John Darrell Sherwood, a Navy historian who interviewed Parsons about the incident. The helicopter's pilot had previously described what happened to a Marine Corps historian who was a colleague of Sherwood's. According to Sherwood, the helicopter was a Huey belonging to the Park Police that "had been directed to try to intercept that airline" that subsequently hit the Pentagon. The helicopter had been "in the area" of the Pentagon, when the pilot received a call telling him, "Try to intercept this plane, try to distract the plane, try to do something to, you know, prevent the plane from going into the Pentagon." The helicopter had then gone "to try to distract" the approaching aircraft. Although the helicopter had flown away from the Pentagon before the building was hit, its pilot "saw the plane go in, and then the next thing he started doing is medevacing people out of there," according to Sherwood. [4]

The Park Police Aviation Unit is located in Anacostia Park in southeast Washington, DC, across the Potomac River from the Pentagon. It has two Bell 412 helicopters, which are a modern version of the Huey. [5] These helicopters are colored blue and white, like the helicopter Parsons described. [6] The aviation unit's missions include the provision of aviation support for law enforcement, medical evacuation ("medevac"), search and rescue, and presidential and dignitary security. [7]

HELICOPTERS TOLD TO RESPOND TO PLANE HEADING FOR WASHINGTON
Sherwood's claim that at least one of the Park Police Aviation Unit's Hueys was launched prior to the attack on the Pentagon, and was instructed to intercept an approaching aircraft, has been supported by the account of Stephanie Hughes, a nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. At the time of the 9/11 attacks, Hughes was dating Sergeant Keith Bohn, one of the Park Police's helicopter pilots.

On her personal blog, Hughes has written that on the morning of September 11, she was driving to the aviation unit to meet Bohn for a late breakfast after he finished work, having just been on the night shift. On the way, she heard reports on the radio about the first plane crashing into the World Trade Center. When she arrived at the unit, she saw its two helicopters taking off, but assumed that Bohn, having completed his shift, was not flying in either of them.

But, Hughes recalled, "When I got inside the hangar, he was not there." The only person around was the aircraft maintenance technician, who told Hughes that the unit had "just got a call to respond to the White House, that a plane was headed to Washington, DC, and that they were to go airborne." Bohn had left Hughes "a quickly scribbled note" that said, "Got called into the air, there is another plane headed this way, go home and wait for me to call." This clearly appears to have been before the Pentagon was hit. At that time, Hughes recalled, "CNN was on the TV and it was showing video of the World Trade Center." As she headed home, Hughes called her mother and sister, "to tell them what was going on, in case I was the only non-police person who knew a plane was headed to Washington, DC." After she arrived home, Hughes was "glued to the TV, and it was then [that] the Pentagon was being identified as being hit." [8]

However, official accounts told a different story to this. They made no mention of Park Police helicopters taking off to intercept a plane heading toward Washington, or flying around the Pentagon before it was attacked. Instead, these accounts claimed that the aviation unit only launched its helicopters after the Pentagon was hit.

AVIATION UNIT RESPONDED TO THE PENTAGON ATTACK
The morning of September 11, the Park Police Aviation Unit was holding a large training event, in preparation for the upcoming meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington. [9] Personnel there learned of the first attack in New York from television reports, but initially thought it was an accident. But when they saw the live coverage of the second plane hitting the WTC at 9:03 a.m., they realized it was a deliberate attack. [10]

Shortly after 9:37 a.m., when the Pentagon was hit, the aviation unit's "aircraft crash phone" started to ring. The crash phone is a direct communications line from the control tower at Washington's Reagan National Airport, which enables the aviation unit to respond quickly to incidents at the airport. Sergeant Ronald Galey, one of the unit's helicopter pilots, has said that he answered the call. The caller alerted the unit to the crash. [11]

According to official accounts, the Park Police Aviation Unit then became one of the first agencies to respond to the attack on the Pentagon. Its two Hueys were quickly prepared for takeoff, and then launched and arrived at the Pentagon within minutes. [12]

One of the helicopters, which has the call sign "Eagle I," was piloted by Galey. Also onboard were rescue technician Sergeant John Marsh and rescue team officer John Dillon. Flying in the other helicopter, "Eagle II," were Bohn and his copilot, Sergeant Kenneth Burchell, along with the aviation unit commander Lieutenant Philip Cholak and assistant commander Sergeant Bernard Stasulli, and two Defense Department medics who had been attending the training event: Keith Kettell and Jason Kepp. [13]

Eagle I reached the Pentagon within four minutes of the unit receiving the alert and Eagle II arrived two minutes later, according to Rotor & Wingmagazine. [14] Upon arrival at the Pentagon, Eagle II landed to conduct medical evacuations while Eagle I circled overhead. [15]

That the Park Police helicopters were at the Pentagon after the attack there is beyond doubt. They were caught on film and witnessed by reporters. For example, at 9:48 a.m., CNN's Chris Plante reported from the Pentagon, "There is a Park Police helicopter overhead." [16] And at 10:11 a.m., Dave Statter of CBS affiliate Channel 9 reported that medics at the Pentagon were taking a man suffering burn injuries "to the U.S. Park Police Eagle helicopter. ... The Eagle helicopter from [the] Park Police is landing, taking this man to the hospital." [17] Accounts only conflict over whether at least one of these helicopters had also been flying near the Pentagon in the minutes before the attack.

A POSSIBLE COVER-UP
Although official accounts have made no mention of a Park Police helicopter flying near the Pentagon before it was attacked, or being instructed to intercept a hostile aircraft approaching Washington, it is possible that this is because attempts have been made to suppress this information.

Supporting this contention is the fact that after Jeffrey Mark Parsons recalled seeing the helicopter during his interview with John Darrell Sherwood, and after Sherwood then revealed that the helicopter belonged to the Park Police, Sherwood told Parsons to keep quiet about the incident. He said: "Don't tell anyone about that story because that's one of our, I think that's one of the best stories that's going to come out of this. We don't want the press to get this."

Sherwood also seemed uncomfortable about answering why the helicopter was flying near the Pentagon before the attack. After Sherwood explained that the helicopter's pilot had been instructed to try and intercept the aircraft that subsequently hit the Pentagon, Parsons asked him, "Then they knew it was headed toward the Pentagon before it actually hit the Pentagon, then?" Sherwood immediately changed the subject and talked about a fighter jet that had been flying in from North Carolina. Finally, he said, "So, I guess that helicopter swung around, but, by the time he got around the plane was already into the building." [18]

CONTRADICTIONS IN OFFICIAL ACCOUNTS
Casting doubt on the official narrative is the fact that there are a number of contradictions in the various accounts in which that narrative has been put forward. For example, as previously mentioned, Ronald Galey has claimed he was still on the ground at the aviation unit at the time the Pentagon was hit, and he was therefore able to answer the call on the aircraft crash phone in which the crash was reported. [19] However, Galey has given conflicting accounts about what the air traffic controller at Reagan Airport, David Walsh, supposedly told him in the call. [20]

In November 2001, Galey recalled Walsh saying, "We have a 757 down somewhere in the vicinity of the 14th Street Bridge," which goes over the Potomac River, near the Pentagon. [21] Later that month, Galey gave a slightly different account, recalling that Walsh said the control tower had "lost a 757 somewhere in the vicinity of the Pentagon." [22] But in January 2002, Galey said that Walsh specifically mentioned a plane hitting the Pentagon. Walsh supposedly said that "they had a 757 go into the Pentagon and they needed us to respond to the incident." [23]

And then, later that year, Galey gave a very different account. He recalled Walsh saying, "We have a 757 down on the north end of the airport," referring to Reagan Airport, which is about a mile away from the Pentagon. [24] Galey's fellow pilot, Keith Bohn, had earlier given a similar account. In November 2001, he said that in the initial phone call the aviation unit received about the attack, it was told there was "an aircraft down at the end of the runway at National Airport." [25]

A possible explanation for these conflicting accounts is that Galey had taken off before the Pentagon attack took place and therefore did not answer the call on the aircraft crash phone. Perhaps because he was ordered to keep quiet about his actual experiences from that time, Galey had been uncertain over what he should say instead, and so gave differing accounts when interviewed.

CONFLICTING DESCRIPTIONS OF TAKEOFFS
Also casting doubt on the accuracy of the official narrative is the fact that there have been conflicting accounts of which of the Park Police Aviation Unit's Hueys took off first, and how long it took for the two helicopters to launch after the unit was called about the crash.

According to most accounts, Eagle I was the first of the helicopters to take off. [26] Eagle II reportedly took longer to prepare for takeoff, as a few minutes were required to install a mass casualty kit, which would allow it to carry four patients instead of two, and so it took off after Eagle I. [27] However, a couple of months after 9/11, Galey said in an interview that Eagle II in fact took off first, while Eagle I, which he had been piloting, "launched right after." [28]

According to National Park Service reports, Eagle I took off less than two minutes after the aviation unit received the alert over the crash phone and Eagle II followed it about a minute later. [29] However, the Arlington County After-Action Report on the emergency response to the Pentagon attack stated that Eagle I took off at "approximately 9:43 a.m.," five or six minutes after the attack occurred, and "Eagle II launched eight minutes later at 9:51 a.m." [30]

A possible reason for these conflicting accounts is that the Park Police helicopters took off earlier than was being claimed, but the unit's personnel had been told to keep quiet about this. Those personnel may have been uncertain about what they should instead be saying publicly, and so their false accounts of the order of events sometimes contradicted each other.

AVIATION UNIT DECIDED TO 'GET READY' AFTER SECOND WTC ATTACK
There is an additional problem with the official narrative of the Park Police Aviation Unit's actions on September 11. As previously mentioned, when personnel at the unit saw the live television coverage of the second plane hitting the WTC, they immediately realized it was a deliberate attack. At that point, according to Galey, "We just started talking, 'Hey, we'd better get ready.'" Also, Galey has recalled, "we started some further discussion as to what other potential targets might be." [31]

Galey said that when the Pentagon was hit, at 9:37 a.m., he "heard a tremendous explosion" and then saw smoke rising from the vicinity of the Pentagon. [32] He claimed he did not realize the smoke was coming specifically from the Pentagon, only from "some military installation over there." All the same, Galey said, when aviation unit personnel heard the explosion, "We just knew what it was." He said, "I mean we've all been expecting something like this, for an attack of some sort." [33]

And yet, according to the official narrative, the Park Police's two Hueys did not take off to defend potential targets in Washington, or at least keep watch for any approaching hostile aircraft, in the 34 minutes between the second attack in New York and the attack on the Pentagon. This in spite of the fact that the unit's personnel had been "expecting something like" the Pentagon attack to happen, and had decided, "we'd better get ready," right after seeing the second WTC tower being hit on television.

WHY WAS A HELICOPTER FLYING NEAR THE PENTAGON? 
As we can see, there is clear evidence that one of the Park Police's helicopters was flying close to the Pentagon, and possibly landing there briefly, very shortly before the attack there took place, and that attempts have been made to suppress this fact.

This leads to important questions that have so far been unaddressed. If, as John Darrell Sherwood and Stephanie Hughes indicated, one, or both, of the Park Police's helicopters were ordered to intercept the suspicious aircraft that was approaching Washington, who issued that order? And why did the helicopter fly away from the Pentagon before the attack there? Might there have been a different reason why the helicopter was flying near the Pentagon? If so, what was it?

Also, why has there been no official acknowledgement of the helicopter's presence near the Pentagon just before the attack there? No official explanation has been put forward as to what the helicopter was doing. And yet surely the authorities would have wanted to publicize what was apparently a courageous attempt at defending the Pentagon from the imminent attack? Why, then, does it appear that there has been a cover-up of this incident?

Clearly, this matter should be investigated further. To begin with, records pertaining to it need to be made public. These would include any unreleased transcripts and recordings of interviews with the relevant individuals, such as Park Police Aviation Unit personnel, the person who ordered the helicopter toward the Pentagon, and additional witnesses who saw the helicopter near the Pentagon. Pilots, crew members, and others connected with the aviation unit could also now be re-interviewed about their experiences on 9/11.

Logs and other records from the aviation unit might also clarify what happened. And the U.S. government reportedly has around 80 unreleased video tapes relating to the Pentagon attack. [34] If these were made public, perhaps one or more of them would show the helicopter and reveal exactly when it first arrived at the Pentagon.

As well as casting light on the mystery of the helicopter flying around the Pentagon, these records might reveal other important details relating to the Pentagon attack. Such information would surely take us closer to knowing the truth about 9/11.

NOTES
[1] "Terrorism Strikes in the United States in a Massive Attack." Breaking News, CNN, September 11, 2001.
[2] "'A Constant Reminder.'" Washington Post, September 5, 2002.
[3] Jeffrey Mark Parsons, interview by John Darrell Sherwood. U.S. Naval Historical Center, December 13, 2001.
[4] Ibid. Although there is no mention of the name of the historian who interviewed Parsons in the transcript of the interview, the fact that Sherwood was the interviewer was revealed in Alfred Goldberg et al.,Pentagon 9/11. Washington, DC: Defense Department, Office of the Secretary, Historical Office, 2007, p. 258.
[5] Bill Wagstaff, "Aeromed Helos Find Little to do but Grieve." Aviation International News, October 1, 2001; Mark Forror, "Compassion Under Fire." Rotor & Wing, November 2001; "Aviation Unit." United States Park Police, n.d.
[6] Janet A. McDonnell, National Park Service: Responding to the September 11 Terrorist Attacks. Washington, DC: National Park Service, 2004, p. 24.
[7] "Aviation Unit."
[8] Stephanie Hughes, "Where Were You on 9/11?" A Ditchin' Time Quilts, September 11, 2010.
[9] Keith Bohn, interview by Gary Solis. U.S. Naval Historical Center, November 19, 2001; Janet A. McDonnell, National Park Service: Responding to the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, pp. 18-20.
[10] Ronald Alan Galey, interview by Gary Hall et al. U.S. Naval Historical Center, November 20, 2001; Ron Galey, interview by Mark Schoepfle. National Park Service, January 17, 2002.
[11] Ron Galey, interview by Mark Schoepfle; Janet A. McDonnell,National Park Service: Responding to the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, p. 20.
[12] Ron Galey, interview by Mark Schoepfle; Alfred Goldberg et al.,Pentagon 9/11, pp. 161-162.
[13] U.S. Congress. House. Commemorative Joint Meeting of the Congress of the United States in Remembrance of the Victims and Heroes of September 11, 2001. 107th Cong., 2nd sess., September 11, 2002; Bill Line, "National Capital Region Contributes to September 11th Help Efforts." National Park Service, September 21, 2002; Janet A. McDonnell, National Park Service: Responding to the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, p. 20.
[14] Mark Forror, "Compassion Under Fire."
[15] Janet A. McDonnell, National Park Service: Responding to the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, pp. 20-21.
[16] CNN, September 11, 2001.
[17] CBS 9, September 11, 2001.
[18] Jeffrey Mark Parsons, interview by John Darrell Sherwood.
[19] Ron Galey, interview by Mark Schoepfle.
[20] Air Traffic Division Event Summary. Federal Aviation Administration, September 18, 2001.
[21] Mark Forror, "Compassion Under Fire."
[22] Ronald Alan Galey, interview by Gary Hall et al.
[23] Ron Galey, interview by Mark Schoepfle.
[24] Bill Line, "National Capital Region Contributes to September 11th Help Efforts."
[25] Keith Bohn, interview by Gary Solis.
[26] Ibid.; U.S. Congress. House. Commemorative Joint Meeting of the Congress of the United States in Remembrance of the Victims and Heroes of September 11, 2001; "Helicopter Crews Were First on Scene Sept. 11." NBC 4, September 11, 2003.
[27] Janet A. McDonnell, National Park Service: Responding to the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, p. 20.
[28] Ronald Alan Galey, interview by Gary Hall et al.
[29] Bill Line, "National Capital Region Contributes to September 11th Help Efforts"; "9.11.01 Remembrance: Washington DC Area." National Park Service, October 22, 2002.
[30] Arlington County, Virginia, report, Titan Systems Corp., Arlington County: After-Action Report on the Response to the September 11 Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon. 2002, p. A-45.
[31] Ronald Alan Galey, interview by Gary Hall et al.; Ron Galey, interview by Mark Schoepfle.
[32] Ron Galey, interview by Mark Schoepfle; Janet A. McDonnell,National Park Service: Responding to the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, p. 20.
[33] Ronald Alan Galey, interview by Gary Hall et al.; "Helicopter Crews Were First on Scene Sept. 11."
[34] "The Stories Behind the Stories." On the Story, CNN, May 20, 2006.

911 - Distress Signals: The Time Discrepancy Oddity

The 9/11 Time Discrepancy Oddity: Distress Signals Indicated Planes Crashed Minutes BEFORE Flights 11 and 175 Hit the WTC

Radio transmitters that are carried aboard aircraft and that are supposed to activate only in the event of the aircraft crashing went off in the New York area several minutes before the two planes hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. In events that, according to the official account of 9/11, should have been impossible, emergency locator transmitters (ELTs), which are intended to help locate crashed aircraft by broadcasting a distinctive signal, were activated over two minutes before American Airlines Flight 11 hit the north WTC tower and over four minutes before United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower. And yet no ELTs went off at the times these planes hit the towers, when we might have expected them to have been activated.

EMERGENCY TRANSMITTER WENT OFF OVER TWO MINUTES BEFORE FLIGHT 11 CRASHED
American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. and 40 seconds. [1] But two and a half minutes earlier, David Bottiglia, an air traffic controller at the FAA's New York Center, had received an important message from one of the planes in the airspace he was monitoring. At 8:44 a.m., the pilot of U.S. Airways Flight 583 told Bottiglia: "I just picked up an ELT on 121.5. It was brief, but it went off." (121.5 megahertz is an emergency frequency that ELTs are designed to transmit their distress signals on.) A minute later--about 90 second before Flight 11 hit the WTC--another plane in the New York Center's airspace reported the same thing. The pilot of Delta Airlines Flight 2433 told Bottiglia: "We picked up that ELT, too. But it's very faint." [2] According to author Lynn Spencer, "several" facilities picked up the ELT signal around this time. [3]

Peter McCloskey, a traffic management coordinator at the New York Center, later recalled that the ELT had gone off "in the vicinity of Lower Manhattan." [4] And, around the time Flight 11 hit the WTC, a participant in an FAA teleconference stated, "We got a report of an ELT in the area that [the radar track for Flight 11] was in." (Before it disappeared from radar screens, the track for Flight 11 had indicated the plane was about 20 miles from New York's JFK International Airport.) [5]

However, while an ELT went off minutes before Flight 11 hit the WTC, it appears that no ELT went off at the time of the crash itself.

EMERGENCY TRANSMITTER WENT OFF OVER FOUR MINUTES BEFORE FLIGHT 175 CRASHED
United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m. and 11 seconds. [6] But, as with the first crash, an ELT was activated in the New York area several minutes before this plane hit the tower.

At just before 8:59 a.m., over four minutes before the Flight 175 crash, the pilot of Flight 583, who had reported the ELT signal before the North Tower was struck, told David Bottiglia at the New York Center that he had noticed another ELT going off. The pilot said, "I hate to keep burdening you with this stuff, but now we're picking up another ELT on 21.5." [7]

As with the previous crash, although an ELT went off minutes before Flight 175 hit the South Tower, it seems that no ELT went off at the time of the crash itself.

ELT SHOULD ONLY GO OFF IN EVENT OF A CRASH
An emergency locator transmitter is a battery-operated radio transmitter carried by aircraft, which can emit a distinctive signal on the emergency frequencies of 121.5 and 243.0 megahertz. When "armed," an ELT is designed to automatically activate in the event of a crash and then continually emit the emergency signal, thereby helping rescuers to locate the crashed aircraft. [8] ELTs are required to be installed in almost all U.S.-registered civil aircraft. [9]

Paul Thumser, an operations supervisor at the FAA's New York Center on 9/11, has over 20 years' experience as an air traffic controller and is also an experienced airline pilot. He provided the 9/11 Commission with detailed information about ELTs. Thumser said the ELT in a Boeing 767--the type of plane that hit both of the WTC towers--cannot be activated by a pilot. Therefore, with a 767, "impact would be the only way to trigger one." Furthermore, the sensitivity setting of the ELT in a 767 "is not low," and so it should be impossible for one to be set off by the plane making a hard turn or a hard landing. Thumser therefore judged that "it would have to be a serious impact to set the ELT off." [10] Terry Biggio, the operations manager at the FAA's Boston Center, similarly told the 9/11 Commission: "An ELT is not a signal sent by pilot operators. It is clearly indicative of a crash." [11]

This means that an ELT should not have been activated over two minutes before Flight 11 hit the North Tower, nor should one have been activated over four minutes before Flight 175 hit the South Tower. If such transmitters on Flights 11 and 175 had been set off, this should have happened when these planes struck the WTC, and yet that did not happen. It was perhaps for this reason that Mike McCormick, the air traffic control manager at the FAA's New York Center, told the 9/11 Commission that his "best hypothesis" was that the ELT signal transmitted "moments before the impact of AA 11" was "unrelated to the event" of the crash. [12]

McCormick also told the 9/11 Commission that ELT signals sometimes "happened accidentally," and that "the vast majority are false alarms." [13] However, this could not have been the case with the signals before the WTC crashes. None of the air traffic controllers who were involved with monitoring Flights 11 and 175 have reported any planes' ELTs going off by accident around that time. And for one plane in the New York area to have its ELT set off accidentally just before Flight 11 hit the WTC, and then the ELT on another plane in that area going off accidentally just before Flight 175 hit the WTC, would have been too big a coincidence to be plausible.

INEXPLICABLE EVIDENCE
The strange evidence of emergency locator transmitter signals being broadcast in the New York area before the World Trade Center towers were hit raises serious questions about the official account of the 9/11 attacks. According to that account, if ELTs had been activated, this should have been at the times the planes hit the towers, not several minutes beforehand. [14] The evidence appears inexplicable, and so proper investigation is imperative to make sense of it. But while a number of air traffic controllers mentioned the ELT signals in their interviews with the 9/11 Commission, the 9/11 Commission Report offered no explanation for this anomalous evidence.

Many questions remain unanswered. For example, were the sources of the ELT signals ever determined? If so, did the signals indeed come from the planes that hit the WTC, or were they from somewhere else? And were the transmitters themselves ever found? After all, according to the FAA, "In most installations the [ELT] is attached to the aircraft structure as far aft as practicable in the fuselage; or in the tail surface, in such a manner that damage to the beacon will be minimized in the event of a crash impact." [15] So the transmitters should have survived the crashes, if they were in the planes that hit the Twin Towers. If the ELTs were found, then, were they indeed in the rubble of the World Trade Center? Or were they somewhere else?

Paul Thumser told the 9/11 Commission that "credible" ELT signals (i.e. those not determined to be false alarms) had to be reported to the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center (AFRCC), which, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, was located at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. [16] So did the AFRCC locate the sources of the ELT signals or determine anything else about them? The only relevant information provided by the 9/11 Commission appears in one of its memorandums, which stated, "We visited the RCC and they receive all ELTs; so many, in fact, that they are a nuisance, and they have special procedures and software to manage that." [17]

We clearly need to know a lot more, since a proper investigation of these emergency signals could help determine what exactly happened on September 11, and point investigators toward those really responsible for perpetrating the terrorist attacks.

NOTES
[1] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 7.
[2] "Transcript of United Airlines Flight 175." New York Times, October 16, 2001; "Memorandum for the Record: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) New York Air Route Center Interview With David Bottiglia." 9/11 Commission, October 1, 2003; "Sensitive Security Information: Chronology of September 11, 2001." Federal Aviation Administration, n.d.
[3] Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11. New York: Free Press, 2008, p. 50.
[4] "Memorandum for the Record: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) New York Air Route Center Interview With Peter McCloskey." 9/11 Commission, October 1, 2003.
[5] FAA Audio File, Herndon Command Center, Position 14. Federal Aviation Administration, September 11, 2001.
[6] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 8.
[7] FAA Audio File, New York Center, Position R42, 8:51 a.m.-9:10 a.m. Federal Aviation Administration, September 11, 2001; "Memorandum for the Record: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) New York Air Route Center Interview With David Bottiglia"; "The Hunt for American Air Eleven After WTC 1 is Hit." 9/11 Commission, n.d.
[8] Christopher G. Morris (Editor), Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1992, p. 739; U.S. Army Field Manual FM 3-04.300: Airfield and Flight Operations Procedures. Washington, DC: Headquarters, Department of the Army, 2008, p. E-6.
[9] "Regulatory Brief: Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELTs)." Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, January 22, 2009.
[10] "Memorandum for the Record: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) New York Air Route Center Interview With Paul Thumser." 9/11 Commission, October 1, 2003.
[11] "Memorandum for the Record: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Interview With Terry Biggio, Facility Deputy Manager, Boston Center." 9/11 Commission, September 22, 2003.
[12] "Memorandum for the Record: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) New York Air Route Center (ZNY) Follow-up Interview With Mike McCormick." 9/11 Commission, December 15, 2003.
[13] "Memorandum for the Record: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) New York Air Route Center Interview With Mike McCormick, Air Traffic Manager." 9/11 Commission, October 1, 2003.
[14] Note that while ELTs are activated in a majority of aircraft crashes, they are not perfect, and have sometimes failed to go off when planes have crashed. See "Regulatory Brief: Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELTs)."
[15] "Emergency Locator Transmitters." Federal Aviation Administration, April 2, 1990.
[16] "Memorandum for the Record: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) New York Air Route Center Interview With Paul Thumser"; "Air Force Rescue Coordination Center." U.S. Air Force, November 12, 2008.
[17] "Memorandum for the Record: Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) New York Air Route Center Interview With Paul Thumser."

911 - The Many False Hijackings of 9/11

The Many False Hijackings of 9/11

"There were a number of false reports out there. What
was valid? What was a guess? We just didn't know."

- Colonel Robert Marr, battle commander at
NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector on 9/11

Although it has been widely reported that four commercial aircraft were hijacked over the United States on September 11, 2001, what is less well known is that while the terrorist attacks were taking place and for many hours after, numerous additional aircraft gave indications that they had been hijacked or, for other reasons, were singled out as potential emergencies. More than 20 aircraft were identified as possible hijackings, according to some accounts, and other aircraft displayed signs of emergencies, such as losing radio communication with air traffic controllers or transmitting a distress signal.

Reports about these false alarms have revealed extraordinary circumstances around some of the incidents and bizarre explanations for how they arose. For example, it has been claimed that the pilots of one foreign aircraft approaching the U.S. set their plane's transponder to transmit a code signaling they had been hijacked simply to show authorities that they were aware of what had been taking place in America that morning. [1] Another aircraft reported as transmitting a distress signal while approaching the U.S. was subsequently found to have been canceled, and still at the airport. [2]

There may be innocent explanations for some of the less serious false alarms, such as those simply involving the temporary loss of radio communication with the plane, which is a common occurrence and happens on a daily basis. [3] But, viewed in its entirety, the evidence appears highly suspicious and raises serious questions. Why, for example, were there so many false alarms on September 11? Why did so many of them involve false reports of hijackings or aircraft falsely signaling that they had been hijacked? The details of specific incidents that have been reported, which I describe below, show that these false alarms must have been something more than just the results of confusion caused by the terrorist attacks.

MILITARY EXERCISES INCLUDED SIMULATED HIJACKINGS
One possibility to consider is that some of the false alarms related to training exercises taking place on September 11. There is evidence supporting this contention. For example, shortly after 9/11, the New Yorker reported, "During the last several years, the government regularly planned for and simulated terrorist attacks, including scenarios that involved multiple plane hijackings." [4] And we know that the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the military organization responsible for defending U.S. airspace, was in the middle of a major exercise called Vigilant Guardian on September 11. [5] This exercise is known to have been scheduled to include at least one simulated plane hijacking on the morning of 9/11. [6] And in the week before 9/11, it included at least four simulated plane hijackings. [7]

The possibility that these false alarms were deliberate and intended to fulfill a sinister purpose needs to be seriously examined. Were they coordinated and pre-planned by rogue insiders working in the military and other U.S. government agencies, so as to ensure the attacks succeeded?

Were the false alarms that occurred at the same time as the attacks intended to cause confusion, and divert personnel and resources, thereby impairing the emergency response to the attacks? Colonel Robert Marr, the battle commander at NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) on 9/11, has indicated that this is what they achieved. He recalled: "There were a number of false reports out there. What was valid? What was a guess? We just didn't know." Major General Larry Arnold, the commander of the Continental United States NORAD Region (CONR) on 9/11, similarly recalled, "A number of aircraft [were] being called possibly hijacked ... there was a lot of confusion, as you can imagine." [8]

And were the false alarms that occurred after the attacks ended intended to prevent principled and honest military or government employees from promptly assessing what had happened, and determining how, against the odds, the attacks had succeeded? As Vanity Fair reported, tape recordings of the operations floor at NEADS reveal that "there was no sense that the attack was over with the crash of United 93," the last of the four hijacked aircraft. Instead, "the alarms go on and on. False reports of hijackings, and real responses, continue well into the afternoon. ... The fighter pilots over New York and DC (and later Boston and Chicago) would spend hours darting around their respective skylines intercepting hundreds of aircraft they deemed suspicious. ... No one at NEADS would go home until late on the night of the 11th." [9]

By tying up personnel, the false alarms could also have prevented anyone from making public information that contradicted the official 9/11 story that was being put out, and that would raise questions about who was actually responsible for the attacks. By the time a person with such information was free to reveal it, after the crisis calmed down, the official story would already have been extensively promoted to the public and generally accepted as true, and so it would be too late to effectively disclose information that would cast serious doubt on that account.

UP TO 29 PLANES REPORTED AS HIJACKED
Several accounts have indicated the large number of false alarms that occurred on September 11. For example, sometime between the attack on the Pentagon and the crash of Flight 93 in rural Pennsylvania, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) administrator, Jane Garvey, received a call from Leo Mullin, the CEO of Delta Air Lines. Mullin complained: "We can't find four of our planes. Four of our transponders are off." [10] (A transponder is a device that sends an aircraft's identifying information, speed, and altitude to air traffic controllers' radar screens.)

After the World Trade Center was hit the second time at 9:03 a.m., the FAA told all air traffic control facilities around the U.S. to notify it of anything unusual that occurred. In response, facilities reported numerous incidents. [11] According to author Pamela Freni, "Upward to two-dozen [aircraft] were listed at one time, but ultimately the number was whittled to 11 highly suspicious cases." The list included the third and fourth aircraft targeted in the attacks--American Airlines Flight 77 and United Airlines Flight 93--and nine false alarms. [12]

Regarding, specifically, incorrect reports of planes being hijacked, the 9/11 Commission Report stated, "During the course of the morning, there were multiple erroneous reports of hijacked aircraft." [13] Defense Department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke, who was in the Pentagon during the attacks and for most of the rest of September 11, has recalled: "There were lots of false signals out there. There were false hijack squawks, and a great part of the challenge was sorting through what was a legitimate threat and what wasn't." [14] Larry Arnold has said, "By the end of the day, we had 21 aircraft identified as possible hijackings." [15] Robert Marr recalled, "At one time I was told that across the nation there were some 29 different reports of hijackings." [16]

I describe below details of some of the flights that were among the false alarms on September 11. Firstly, I examine nine flights that were mistakenly considered to have been hijacked. I then examine flights for which we either do not know the nature of the false alarm, due to the lack of available information (so the aircraft may have been a suspected hijacking, but this fact has not been reported), or the emergency is known to have been something other than a suspected hijacking, such as a loss of radio contact with the aircraft.

AIRCRAFT FALSELY REPORTED AS HIJACKED ON 9/11

• Flight 11 Reported as Still Airborne After Hitting WTC
The first of the "multiple erroneous reports of hijacked aircraft," according to the 9/11 Commission, was a report that American Airlines Flight 11 was still airborne and heading toward Washington, DC, more than half an hour after this plane crashed into the World Trade Center. [17]

Colin Scoggins, the military liaison at the FAA's Boston Center, called NEADS at 9:21 a.m. and said: "I just had a report that American 11 is still in the air, and it's on its way towards--heading towards Washington. ... It was evidently another aircraft that hit the tower." However, Boston Center controllers were not tracking this alleged flight, heading toward Washington, on radar. Instead, according to Vanity Fair, "The plane's course, had it continued south past New York in the direction it was flying before it dipped below radar coverage, would have had it headed on a straight course toward DC." Scoggins has claimed he got the erroneous information about the flight from an FAA teleconference he was monitoring. He said he thought someone was overheard "trying to confirm from American [Airlines] whether American 11 was down," and that "somewhere in the flurry of information zipping back and forth during the conference call this transmogrified into the idea that a different plane had hit the tower, and that American 11 was still hijacked and still in the air." [18]

• United Airlines Plane Reported as Hijacked, but Still at Airport
Another early false report of a hijacking occurred at 9:25 a.m., when Marcus Arroyo, the security division manager for the FAA's eastern region, called Mark Randol, the manager of the FAA's Washington, DC, Civil Aviation Security Field Office, and alerted him to several hijackings. Arroyo mentioned Flight 175 and Flight 77 (the second and third aircraft actually targeted that morning), but also said, incorrectly, that another aircraft, United Airlines Flight 177, had been hijacked. Randol's staff soon discovered that Flight 177 was still on the ground at Logan International Airport in Boston, being held at the gate there. [19] No explanation has been given for why Flight 177 was falsely reported as a hijacking.

• Delta 1989 Gave Numerous Indications of Being Hijacked

SEE ALSO OUR OTHER EXCLUSIVE POSTDelta Air Lines Flight 1989 was a Boeing 767 bound from Boston to Los Angeles, which repeatedly acted suspiciously and was repeatedly suspected of being hijacked. The aircraft was first suspected of being hijacked at around 9:30 a.m. when controllers at the FAA's Cleveland Center who were monitoring it mistakenly thought the sounds of Flight 93 being hijacked, heard over radio, had come from Delta 1989. But they soon decided that Flight 93 was the source of the communications and that Delta 1989 was not hijacked. [20]

However, at around 9:40 a.m., Colin Scoggins at the FAA's Boston Center called NEADS and said the Boston Center believed Delta 1989 was a hijacked aircraft. [21] It is unclear why Scoggins made this claim, and also why he considered it his responsibility to call NEADS about Delta 1989, since the flight was at that time being tracked by the Cleveland Center, not the Boston Center. [22] The 9/11 Commission Report suggested that Boston Center managers had noted the similarities between Delta 1989 and the two aircraft that had hit the WTC: all were 767s flying from Boston to Los Angeles, which had taken off around the same time. The managers also remembered a radio transmission the center heard, apparently made by a hijacker on Flight 11, saying, "We have some planes," and consequently "guessed that Delta 1989 might also be hijacked." [23]

Over the next 30 to 35 minutes, Delta 1989 repeatedly behaved strangely, creating further suspicion that it might have been hijacked. Delta Air Lines instructed the flight to land in Cleveland, but did not inform air traffic control of this. Consequently, Cleveland Center controllers became suspicious when the plane's pilot contacted them, requesting an immediate change of course. Their level of concern increased when he failed to respond to a message as his plane descended toward Cleveland. [24] Then controllers at another facility had their suspicions of the flight increased when the pilot failed to use standard, and highly important, terminology in his radio communications with them. [25]

Delta 1989 landed at Cleveland Hopkins Airport at around 10:18 a.m. and was directed to a remote area. [26] FBI agents and a police SWAT team approached it, in case any problems arose. [27] It was about two hours after the plane landed that the passengers were allowed off, and it was around mid-afternoon before it was finally confirmed that the flight had never been hijacked. [28]

• Continental Airlines Plane Transmitted Hijack Signal Three Times
Another incident appears to have occurred at around 9:35 a.m., as it was reported at 9:36 a.m., in a phone call between John White, a manager at the FAA's Command Center in Herndon, Virginia, and Doug Davis, the special assistant for technical operations in air traffic services at FAA headquarters. White told Davis that Continental Airlines Flight 321, which was "en route from Cleveland to Denver," had "squawked hijack three times." In other words, the pilot had set the plane's transponder to transmit the code of "7500," which signals that the flight has been hijacked. But, White added, "we have made contact with the pilot and the pilot has told us everything is okay." Just over an hour later, White informed Davis that Flight 321 was "on the ground at Peoria," Illinois, and the FBI was "approaching the aircraft at this time." Although White told Davis, "We are trying to determine why he squawked hijack," further details of this false alarm are unreported. [29]

• American Airlines 189 Sent Text Message Signaling a Hijacking
Employees at the American Airlines System Operations Control (SOC) center in Fort Worth, Texas, became concerned when they temporarily lost communication with one of their planes, and the center also received a message from that plane incorrectly signaling it had been hijacked. Radio contact was lost with the Boston-to-Seattle flight at 9:45 a.m. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Everyone in the room [at the SOC] was convinced it was a ... hijacking." [30]

Evidence indicates this aircraft was American Airlines Flight 189. [31] Donald Robinson, a dispatcher at the SOC, received what he has called a "hijack message" from Flight 189, via the ACARS text messaging system. Robinson then sent a text message back to the plane's pilots, asking them if they were "squawking" the universal code for a hijacking. Ten minutes after communication with Flight 189 was lost, contact was restored. The problem, according to the Wall Street Journal, was due to a "radio glitch." Though Robinson suggested that the pilots may have sent the "hijack message" accidentally, he admitted that it was "unknown why the cockpit sent this message." [32]

• Possible Hijacked Aircraft Heading to U.S. from Canada
Around 10:00 a.m., a Canadian NORAD unit called NEADS and told it that a suspected hijacked aircraft was heading south from Canada, toward Washington, DC. [33] Few details were revealed about this plane. A member of staff at NEADS informed their colleagues that it was from an "unknown departure airport," and they did not "know any codes or anything" else about it. [34] When someone at NEADS then called the Canadian unit for more information, the person who answered the call only said they had seen "something on the chat"--meaning NORAD's computer chat system--about a "possible" aircraft. A few minutes later, the Canadian unit called NEADS again and said the suspected hijacking was a false alarm. The caller said the unit's intelligence team was "not assessing that there's an actual aircraft problem. It's just that there could be problems from our area." He added, "There's no actual aircraft that we suspect as being a danger." [35]

• Korean Airlines 85 Repeatedly Indicated it was Hijacked

SEE ALSO BELOWOne of the aircraft mistakenly suspected of being hijacked on September 11 about which most has been reported is Korean Airlines Flight 85. This plane gave several indications that it had been hijacked, was tailed by fighter jets, and was even threatened with being shot down by the military.

KAL 85 was a Boeing 747 with 215 people on board, flying from Seoul, South Korea, to New York. It had been due to land in Anchorage, Alaska, for a refueling stop when problems began. Shortly before midday, it was discovered that the plane's pilots had sent a text message that included the letters "HJK," the code for a hijacking. [36] Then, after KAL 85 entered their airspace at around 1:00 p.m., Anchorage air traffic controllers asked the pilots coded questions over radio to see if the plane had indeed been hijacked. But instead of giving reassurance that the plane was safe, the pilots switched their transponder to "7500," the code signaling a hijacking. KAL 85 continued transmitting this code for the next 90 minutes, until it landed. [37] In fact, according to an official report, "There were five separate and ongoing indicators of a hijacking situation" on KAL 85, although the report did not specify what those indicators were. [38]

NORAD launched fighter jets to follow KAL 85, ordered that the plane be directed away from Anchorage, and threatened to have it shot down if it refused to change course. [39] KAL 85 was redirected to Whitehorse Airport in Canada. It was escorted there by fighters and landed without incident at 2:54 p.m. [40] Only on the following morning, after a bomb-sniffing dog searched the plane and its cargo was checked, did the Royal Canadian Mounted Police finally confirm that KAL 85 was never hijacked. [41]

KAL 85 has subsequently been treated with much secrecy. The FAA, NORAD, and Transport Canada have declined to answer questions about it. [42] Korean Airlines refused to make available a tape recording of conversations between the pilot and airline officials in Anchorage, and has not even revealed the names of the members of the plane's flight crew on September 11. [43]

In light of the possibility that some of the false alarms on September 11 related to training exercises taking place that day, it is notable that, a few days earlier, one of those exercises included a scenario where an aircraft remarkably similar to KAL 85 was hijacked. On September 6, NORAD's exercise Vigilant Guardian included a simulated scenario in which a plane, Korean Airlines Flight 357, was taken over by terrorists. KAL 357, like KAL 85, was a Boeing 747 flying from Seoul to Anchorage. And on September 6, similar to what it did in response to KAL 85 five days later, NORAD ordered its Alaskan region to intercept and shadow the hijacked plane, and directed fighter jets to get in a position to shoot the plane down if necessary. [44]

• San Diego to Denver Flight Suspected as Hijacked
At some unspecified time, apparently early in the afternoon, it has been reported that NORAD's operations center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, was receiving "reports of a hijacking out of San Diego, California," that was "headed to Denver." Eventually, the aircraft identified itself and landed uneventfully. Further details of this flight are unknown. [45]

• Possibly Hijacked U.S. Airways Flight Approaching From Spain
The last aircraft incorrectly suspected of being hijacked on September 11, according to CONR's Larry Arnold, was a U.S. Airways flight approaching the United States from Madrid, Spain. [46] At 3:20 p.m., it was reported over an FAA teleconference that the White House was saying this flight was heading to Philadelphia International Airport, and the military was scrambling fighter jets in response to it. Accounts conflict over whether the U.S. Airways plane was Flight 930 or Flight 937. [47] Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, who was in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center below the White House, has recalled, "When we first got word [of the flight], we got word that it was only 30 minutes or so outside of U.S. airspace." Libby indicated that the plane's transponder had been transmitting the code for a hijacking, saying, "I think it was one of those ones where there was an actual report that it was showing hijacking through some electronic signal." [48]

After a short time, the flight was found to be secure. Arnold has recalled that Robert Marr called him from NEADS and said, "We just talked to the airline, and that aircraft is back on the ground in Madrid." [49] According to Libby, "It turned out that, I think, it was only 35 minutes out of Spanish airspace, not out of our airspace." [50]

OTHER AIRCRAFT EMERGENCIES, AND UNSPECIFIED AIRCRAFT EMERGENCIES, ON 9/11

• Coast Guard Reported Three Suspicious Aircraft, but One Flight 'Never Existed'
As previously mentioned, there were some false alarms on September 11 for which the specific nature of the emergency is unstated. These may have been suspected hijackings or they may have been something else, like the loss of radio contact or the loss of a transponder signal. An example of this is an incident that occurred shortly after 11:00 a.m., when three suspicious flights were reported as approaching the U.S.

At 11:18 a.m., it was reported on an FAA teleconference that the Coast Guard in Norfolk, Virginia, had received distress signals from Air Canada Flight 65, Continental Airlines Flight 57, and United Airlines Flight 947. Whether these distress signals were the "7500" transponder code signaling a hijacking, or something else, is unreported. The three aircraft were reported as being over the Atlantic Ocean. Jeff Griffith, the deputy director of air traffic at FAA headquarters, subsequently instructed John White at the FAA's Command Center to alert NORAD to the aircraft, and to also notify the Air Traffic Services Cell (ATSC), an office at the Command Center manned by military reservists.

By 11:46 a.m., it was determined that the distress signals were false alarms. It was reported on the FAA teleconference that "all three aircraft ... are accounted for" and "all are OK." The United Airlines plane returned to Europe and the Continental Airlines flight landed in Gander, Canada. Remarkably, it was discovered that Air Canada 65 hadn't even been airborne. White reported that it "landed last night and was scheduled to depart today, but the flight's canceled." [51] According to an ATSC chronology of the events of 9/11, this flight "never existed." [52]

• FAA Command Center Compiled List of 11 Suspicious Aircraft
As mentioned earlier, following the second attack in New York, the FAA's Command Center instructed air traffic control facilities to notify it of anything unusual. In response, according to Linda Schuessler, the deputy director of system operations at the Command Center, "we started getting more and more calls about bomb threats, about aircraft that we had lost communication or radar identification with." This led to the center compiling a list of 11 aircraft "that we had gotten unusual information on, that we thought seemed worthy of keeping a closer eye on." The list included two of the planes targeted in the terrorist attacks, Flight 77 and Flight 93. [53]

Various accounts have indicated details of the other flights singled out by the Command Center. A 9:10 a.m. entry in a chronology of events at the Command Center on September 11 mentioned seven aircraft for which the center was providing "coordination to assist in finding," although evidence indicates that at least some of these aircraft only aroused suspicion later on than 9:10 a.m. One of the aircraft was Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 (see above). The other six, and the few details we know about them, are as follows:

- American Airlines Flight 2247: At 10:04 a.m., the FAA's Fort Worth Center reported this flight to the Command Center. The aircraft, going from Orlando, Florida, to Shreveport, Louisiana, was "NORDO," meaning radio contact with it had been lost. Communication was restored by 10:17 a.m.

- U.S. Airways Flight 41: The FAA's Memphis Center reported this plane, going from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Los Angeles, to the Command Center. The reason for the report is unknown.

- Northwest Airlines Flight 197: The Command Center appears to have been alerted to this plane, en route from Lansing, Michigan, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, at 10:03 a.m. The reason for the report is unknown. Flight 197 subsequently landed in Marquette, Michigan.

- United Airlines Flight 641: United Airlines lost contact with this plane at around 10:00 a.m., but persistent attempts to communicate with it were eventually successful. The flight subsequently landed in Detroit, Michigan.

- United Airlines Flight 57: This aircraft was reported as missing sometime between 10:55 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. It appears to have been reported to the Command Center by controllers at Denver International Airport, for reasons that are unknown. It subsequently landed in Garden City, Kansas.

- U.S. Airways Flight 633: At 10:55 a.m., controllers at Philadelphia International Airport reported that they had "lost" this flight, which was heading to Las Vegas. The Command Center chronology indicated that the plane subsequently landed at the Philadelphia airport, at 11:14 a.m. [54]

Other accounts have mentioned three additional suspicious aircraft that were on the Command Center's list. (However, if these accounts are correct, it would indicate that the list included 12 aircraft, not 11.) One of the aircraft was a U.S. Airways flight heading to Chicago that was not communicating with air traffic controllers. [55] Another was a TWA flight that was refusing to land in Pittsburgh, and instead wanted to fly on to Washington. The third was a Midwest Express flight that disappeared from radar over West Virginia. [56]

Schuessler has recalled that Command Center personnel later "continued to say [they had] a little discomfort about the information [they] received" about these suspicious flights. But, she said, "We followed up with the security people and got enough information that the specialists here felt very comfortable that they understood the situation." [57]

• United Airlines Worker in England Received Suspicious Call from Pilot
At around 11:16 a.m. (U.S. Eastern time), a United Airlines aircraft maintenance officer at a facility in London, England, received a brief but suspicious phone call from an unidentified aircraft, in which the caller--apparently the plane's pilot--sounded distraught, possibly as if he was being choked. The maintenance officer recognized the call as coming from a particular type of satellite phone that is available on Boeing 767s and 777s, although he believed it was most likely from a 777. He told the 9/11 Commission that the caller sounded strange, and that this was the "only phone call that he'd ever received of that nature in the 10 years he's been on the job for United."

The maintenance officer contacted a United Airlines maintenance facility at San Francisco International Airport to report the suspicious call, and it in turned notified the FBI. The FBI was told that the maintenance officer had said the caller from the plane "sounded as if they were being choked," although the maintenance officer later claimed he was unsure whether this had been the case. [58]

• Other Suspicious Flights
We know of numerous other flights on September 11 that raised concern, although the reported details of these are scant. Andrew Studdert, United Airlines' chief operating officer at the time of the attacks, told the 9/11 Commission that at around 10:00 a.m., as well as losing contact with Flight 641 (see above), United lost contact with two more of its planes, Flights 399 and 415. Studdert also said that between 10:55 a.m. and 11:15 a.m., as well as Flight 57 (see above), eight other United planes were reported as missing. These were Flights 103, 634, 1211, 1695, 2101, 2102, 2256, and 2725. All of them were eventually located at various airports. [59] Furthermore, a Secret Service timeline stated that at 10:55 a.m., United Airlines Flight 182, from Boston to Seattle, was "unaccounted for." [60]

As previously mentioned, the temporary loss of radio contact with aircraft is a common occurrence. [61] And an order issued by the FAA at 9:45 a.m., for all aircraft over the U.S. to land at the nearest airport, presumably complicated interactions between pilots and air traffic controllers. [62] But can these factors account for a single airline losing communication with so many of its planes, all on the same day, and all within such short spaces of time? And on September 11, 2001, of all days, when two of the aircraft targeted in the terrorist attacks belonged to that particular airline?

Additionally, Studdert told the 9/11 Commission that throughout the morning of September 11, United Airlines received "a torrent of reported bomb threats; explosions are reported at two airports, and there are reports of other threats and other hijackings." These turned out to be "misunderstandings or hoaxes," but, Studdert commented, "the presumed threats cannot be dismissed in the high uncertainty of the moment." [63]

It seems reasonable to assume there were other false alarms that have not yet come to light. If Larry Arnold's claim of "21 aircraft identified as possible hijackings" or Robert Marr's claim of "29 different reports of hijackings" are anywhere near accurate, then there must have been additional false reports of hijackings beyond what I have described.

Who or what caused these false alarms? What effect did they have on the ability of the military and other U.S. government agencies to respond to the actual attacks, and to then assess how those attacks had been able to succeed? These questions have not yet been adequately addressed, and need to be investigated thoroughly.

NOTES
[1] Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11. New York: Free Press, 2008, p. 196.
[2] Draft: The Air Traffic Organization's Response to the September 11th Terrorist Attack: ATC System Assessment, Shutdown, and Restoration. Federal Aviation Administration, March 21, 2002, p. S-26; "Full Transcription; Air Traffic Control System Command Center, National Traffic Management Officer, East Position; September 11, 2001." Federal Aviation Administration, October 21, 2003.
[3] See Donald A. Robinson Jr., interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 11, 2001; "Memorandum for the Record: Staff Visit to the Boston Center, New England Region, FAA." 9/11 Commission, September 22-24, 2003.
[4] "September 11, 2001." New Yorker, September 24, 2001.
[5] William M. Arkin, Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World. Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2005, p. 545.
[6] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes." Vanity Fair, August 2006.
[7] "NORAD Exercises: Hijack Summary." 9/11 Commission, n.d.
[8] Leslie Filson, Air War Over America: Sept. 11 Alters Face of Air Defense Mission. Tyndall Air Force Base, FL: 1st Air Force, 2003, p. 73.
[9] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live."
[10] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Jane Garvey." 9/11 Commission, October 21, 2003; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 186.
[11] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 125-126.
[12] Pamela Freni, Ground Stop: An Inside Look at the Federal Aviation Administration on September 11, 2001. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, Inc., 2003, p. 65.
[13] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 28.
[14] "Chilling Audio From 9/11 Hijack Played at Hearing." Paula Zahn Now, CNN, June 17, 2004.
[15] "Conversation With Major General Larry Arnold, Commander, 1st Air Force, Tyndall AFB, Florida." Code One, January 2002.
[16] Robert A. Baker, "Commander of 9/11 Air Defenses Retires." Newhouse News Service, March 31, 2005.
[17] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 26, 28.
[18] Ibid. p. 26; Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live."
[19] "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Mark Randol, Former Manager of the Civil Aviation Security Field Office in Washington, DC." 9/11 Commission, October 8, 2003.
[20] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board." USA Today, August 12, 2002;"Memorandum for the Record: Interview With John Werth, Air Traffic Controller, Area 4, Lorain Sector." 9/11 Commission, October 1, 2003;"Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Kim Wernica, Operations Manager at Cleveland ARTCC on 9/11." 9/11 Commission, October 2, 2003.
[21] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live"; Untitled Chronology of FAA and NEADS Communications on September 11, 2001. 9/11 Commission, n.d.
[22] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board"; Alan Levin, "For Air Controller, Terror Still Vivid 7 Years Later." USA Today, September 11, 2008.
[23] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board"; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 27-28.
[24] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 167-168.
[25] "DAL 1989 Order of Events." Federal Aviation Administration, September 16, 2001.
[26] Ibid.; Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board."
[27] Michael O'Mara, "9/11: 'Fifth Plane' Terror Alert at Cleveland Hopkins Airport." WKYC, September 11, 2006; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 270.
[28] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board." For more information about Delta Airlines Flight 1989, see "Was Delta 1989 Part of a Live-Fly Hijacking Exercise on 9/11?" Shoestring 9/11, July 22, 2009.
[29] "Full Transcription; Air Traffic Control System Command Center, National Traffic Management Officer, East Position; September 11, 2001";Miles Kara, "Transcript of East NTMO, Line 4530, Admin Line." 9/11 Commission, November 4, 2003.
[30] Donald A. Robinson Jr. interview by the FBI; Scott McCartney and Susan Carey, "American, United Watched and Worked in Horror as Sept. 11 Hijackings Unfolded." Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2001.
[31] For example, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics database of "Airline On-Time Data" reveals that Flight 189 was the only American Airlines plane going from Boston to Seattle that day.
[32] Donald A. Robinson Jr. interview by the FBI; Scott McCartney and Susan Carey, "American, United Watched and Worked in Horror as Sept. 11 Hijackings Unfolded."
[33] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live."
[34] NEADS Audio File, Mission Crew Commander Position, Channel 2. North American Aerospace Defense Command, September 11, 2001.
[35] NEADS Audio File, Identification Technician Position, Channel 4. North American Aerospace Defense Command, September 11, 2001;"NEADS CDs." 9/11 Commission, n.d.
[36] Alan Levin, "Korean Air Jet May Have Narrowly Missed Disaster."USA Today, August 12, 2002; Zaz Hollander, "High Alert." Anchorage Daily News, September 8, 2002.
[37] Alan Levin, "Korean Air Jet May Have Narrowly Missed Disaster"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 277-278.
[38] September 11, 2001, Whitehorse International Airport Emergency: Public Findings Report. Whitehorse, Yukon: Yukon Government, November 13, 2001, p. 17.
[39] Alan Levin, "Korean Air Jet May Have Narrowly Missed Disaster"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 278.
[40] Alan Levin, "Korean Air Jet May Have Narrowly Missed Disaster";Zaz Hollander, "High Alert."
[41] September 11, 2001, Whitehorse International Airport Emergency, p. 18.
[42] Zaz Hollander, "False Sept. 11 Hijack Signal Put Air Force on Alert."Anchorage Daily News, September 29, 2001; September 11, 2001, Whitehorse International Airport Emergency, p. 27; Alan Levin, "Korean Air Jet May Have Narrowly Missed Disaster."
[43] Zaz Hollander, "False Sept. 11 Hijack Signal Put Air Force on Alert";Stephanie Waddell, "9/11 Documentary to be Released Next Year."Whitehorse Daily Star, December 31, 2010.
[44] "NORAD Exercises: Hijack Summary." For more details about Korean Airlines Flight 85, see "Was Korean Airlines Flight 85 a Simulated Hijack in a 9/11 Training Exercise?" Shoestring 9/11, April 18, 2010.
[45] Rebecca Grant, The First 600 Days of Combat. Washington, DC: IRIS Press, 2004, p. 26.
[46] "Chronology of Events (All Times are Local Eastern Daylight Time)." Federal Aviation Administration, September 11, 2001; "Conversation With Major General Larry Arnold."
[47] "ADA-30 Operations Center Activity Report, September 11-14, 2001." Federal Aviation Administration, September 2001; "Chronology of Events (All Times are Local Eastern Daylight Time)"; "Eastern Region Operations Center Log: Chronological Events of Hijacking Crisis." Federal Aviation Administration, January 2, 2002.
[48] Lewis Libby, interview by Newsweek magazine. White House, November 16, 2001.
[49] "Eastern Region Operations Center Log"; Leslie Filson, Air War Over America, p. 88.
[50] Lewis Libby, interview by Newsweek magazine.
[51] Draft: The Air Traffic Organization's Response to the September 11th Terrorist Attack, pp. S-26, S-29, S-33; "Full Transcription; Air Traffic Control System Command Center, National Traffic Management Officer, East Position; September 11, 2001."
[52] Untitled Air Traffic Services Cell Chronology of Events. U.S. Air Force, September 11, 2001.
[53] David Bond, "Crisis at Herndon: 11 Airplanes Astray." Aviation Week & Space Technology, December 17, 2001.
[54] Untitled FAA Command Center Chronology of the Events of September 11, 2001. Federal Aviation Administration, September 11, 2001; "Statement of Andrew P. Studdert to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States." 9/11 Commission, January 27, 2004; "Suspect Aircraft of September 11, 2001." 9/11 Commission, n.d.
[55] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 126.
[56] Marilyn Adams, Alan Levin, and Blake Morrison, "Part II: No One Was Sure if Hijackers Were on Board."
[57] David Bond, "Crisis at Herndon."
[58] Ray Kime, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 11, 2001; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With Rich Belme, Manager of United Airlines SAMC in San Francisco, CA." 9/11 Commission, November 21, 2003; "Memorandum for the Record: Interview With [Name Redacted], United Airlines." 9/11 Commission, November 21, 2003.
[59] "Statement of Andrew P. Studdert to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States."
[60] "Secret Service Timeline, Unclassified Extract." United States Secret Service, September 11, 2001.
[61] See Donald A. Robinson Jr., interview by the FBI; "Memorandum for the Record: Staff Visit to the Boston Center, New England Region, FAA."
[62] U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Statement of Jane F. Garvey, Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration, Before the House Subcommittee on Aviation, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. 107th Cong., 1st sess., September 21, 2001; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 29.
[63] "Statement of Andrew P. Studdert to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States."

-------------------------------------------------

Was Korean Airlines Flight 85 a Simulated Hijack in a 9/11 Training Exercise?

Several hours after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington occurred, a passenger aircraft heading to the U.S. from Seoul, South Korea, was mistakenly considered hijacked. In a little-reported series of events, the pilots of Korean Airlines Flight 85 gave numerous indications that their plane had been taken over by hijackers, even though it had not. KAL 85, a Boeing 747 that had been due to land in Anchorage, Alaska, for a refueling stop, was consequently diverted to an airport in Canada. The military launched fighter jets to tail it and, with authorization from the Canadian prime minister, threatened to shoot the plane down if it refused to change course. Only after KAL 85 landed were officials able to confirm that no hijacking had taken place.

While a person might suggest this crisis was just the result of confusion due to the unprecedented events earlier that day, the number of indications the pilots gave that their plane was hijacked, and their repeated failure to confirm that this was not the case, raises another possibility: Could KAL 85 have been playing the part of a hijacked aircraft in a military training exercise?

This explanation would make sense of the pilots' otherwise inexplicable actions. And there is additional evidence supporting this possibility: On September 11, NORAD--the military organization responsible for defending North American airspace--was in the second week of a major exercise. Five days earlier, that exercise included two scenarios with remarkable similarities to the apparent crisis involving KAL 85. In one scenario, members of a fictitious terrorist group hijacked a Korean Airlines 747 bound from Seoul to Anchorage; in the other, a 747 bound from Japan to Anchorage was hijacked, and changed course for Canada.

We know that the U.S. and Canadian military were in fact conducting several exercises on the morning of September 11. Those exercises were supposedly canceled promptly in response to the attacks. But if KAL 85 was a simulated hijacking, it would mean at least one exercise continued well into the afternoon, hours after the attacks took place. This would raise serious questions: When exactly did the military exercises really end that day? If they were called off promptly, as has been claimed, how many people were aware of this? Did some believe the exercises were continuing in spite of the real-world attacks? And was there a sinister but as-yet-uninvestigated relationship between the real-world attacks and the military exercises they coincided with?

KOREAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 85
Korean Airlines Flight 85 was a Boeing 747 with 215 people on board, flying from Seoul to New York. It was heading for a refueling stop in Anchorage when it began behaving suspiciously. Beginning shortly after 11:00 a.m. (this and all other times given are Eastern time), its pilots gave repeated but inconclusive indications that their plane had been hijacked, even though no hijacking had taken place. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was alerted to the suspect flight shortly before noon, and it in turn notified NORAD. [1]

Concerns over whether KAL 85 had been hijacked led to the plane being diverted away from Anchorage. It was first redirected toward the remote airport at Yakutat, Alaska. But because of deteriorating weather around Yakutat and because the plane was running low on fuel, the decision was made to instead have KAL 85 land at Whitehorse Airport in Canada's Yukon Territory. [2]

KAL 85 landed at Whitehorse Airport safely and without incident at 2:54 p.m. But only after the co-pilot was escorted off the plane and interrogated were officials able to determine that the flight had not been hijacked. [3]

PILOTS INDICATED PLANE WAS HIJACKED
The first indication of a possible hijacking was at 11:08 a.m., while KAL 85 was flying across the Pacific Ocean and hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska. The pilots sent a text message to Korean Airlines headquarters, which included the letters "HJK." These three letters were a known code for signaling a hijacking. The message did not immediately raise any concerns. However, ARINC--a company that airlines pay to transmit text messages to and from their planes--had begun scanning all the communications it transmitted that day to search for any additional hijacked aircraft, and one of its technicians came across the message, apparently shortly before noon. Concerned that it was a coded plea for help, ARINC officials notified the FAA of the message.

KAL 85 showed its next indications of being hijacked after it entered the airspace of the FAA's Anchorage Center at around 1:00 p.m. An Anchorage Center air traffic controller, aware of the concerns about KAL 85, asked the pilots about the status of their aircraft. In his radio transmissions, the controller included the code word that indicated a query as to whether the plane had been hijacked, in case the pilots were unable to acknowledge this freely. (Pilots are trained how to respond to such coded messages.) However, the pilots of KAL 85 offered no reassurance that their flight had not been hijacked. Instead, at 1:24 p.m., they switched their plane's transponder (a device that sends information about an aircraft to controllers' radar screens) to "7500," which is the universal code meaning a plane has been hijacked. As USA Today put it, "Suddenly ... a routine flight became a potential new attacker."

As KAL 85 continued toward Anchorage, controllers again sought clarification of its situation. But, as author Lynn Spencer described, "each time controllers query the aircraft, the pilots offer no reassurance that they are not, in fact, hijacked." Instead, KAL 85 transmitted the beacon code indicating it had been hijacked for 90 minutes, from 1:24 p.m. until 2:54 p.m., when it landed in Canada. [4] A report published by the government of Yukon in November 2001 in fact stated, "There were five separate and ongoing indicators of a hijacking situation" on KAL 85, although the report did not specify what each of those indicators was. [5]

And yet KAL 85 was never hijacked. The FAA's Command Center in Herndon, Virginia, was in contact with Korean Airlines headquarters, which emphatically maintained it had received no indication that the flight was in trouble. [6] Might the "indicators of a hijacking situation" therefore have been because KAL 85 was playing a hijacked aircraft in a training exercise?

POSSIBLE HIJACKING TAKEN SERIOUSLY
The military and other government agencies took the indications of a possible hijacking very seriously. After the FAA was notified of the letters "HJK" appearing in a text message from KAL 85, it alerted NORAD. [7] NORAD then ordered Elmendorf Air Force Base, near Anchorage, to launch two armed fighter jets to intercept the suspicious plane. [8] These jets flew about a mile behind KAL 85, shadowing it so its crew and passengers would not realize there were fighters close by. Two Royal Canadian Air Force fighters were also launched in response to KAL 85. Fighters escorted the plane until it landed at Whitehorse Airport. They then remained circling overhead, in case the plane tried to depart suddenly. [9]

Lieutenant General Norton Schwartz, the commander of the Alaskan NORAD Region, has recalled his concerns about KAL 85, saying: "[W]e just had three attacks on the East Coast and perhaps a fourth. It was completely plausible to me that so sophisticated an operation on the East Coast could be replicated on the West Coast. So this was a plausible threat." [10]

KAL 85 was even threatened with being shot down. Schwartz told controllers at the FAA's Anchorage Center that the plane would be shot down if it refused to divert and remained on course for Anchorage. [11] A NORAD commander contacted Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and asked for authorization to shoot down the plane. As Chrétien later recalled, he "authorized it in principle," telling the commander: "Yes, if you think they are terrorists. You call me again, but be ready to shoot them down." [12]

Other agencies also took the possible hijacking seriously. When KAL 85's pilots switched their plane's transponder to the "7500" hijack code, it led to what USA Today described as "a frenzy of activity." The governor of Alaska ordered the evacuation of federal buildings and large hotels in Anchorage, along with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline terminal. [13] After learning that KAL 85 was heading for Whitehorse Airport, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) removed children from local schools and evacuated buildings considered likely terrorist targets, such as Whitehorse City Hall. Part of the Alaska Highway was closed, a security perimeter was established around Whitehorse Airport, and non-essential staff members were evacuated from the airport terminal building. [14]

KAL 85 continued being treated as a potential threat even after it landed at Whitehorse. After touching down, the plane was directed to a secluded area on the tarmac. It was surrounded by heavily armed RCMP emergency response officers. After an officer asked to speak with a member of the flight crew, the co-pilot emerged and was escorted off the plane at gunpoint. According to a local resident who saw the incident, the co-pilot had his hands up and "had everyone drawing down on him, and he had to take some clothes off, wave his shirt in the air and all that." [15] The passengers were not allowed off the plane until more than two hours after it landed.

The following morning, the RCMP had a bomb-sniffing dog search the aircraft. The plane's cargo was also searched for any threats, but none were found. It wasn't until a couple of hours later, still early in the morning of September 12, that the RCMP finally confirmed that KAL 85 had never been hijacked. [16]

CONFUSED EXPLANATIONS WHY PILOTS SIGNIFIED A HIJACKING
One thing that is suspicious is the way Korean Airlines and the government agencies involved with these incidents were subsequently reluctant to explain why KAL 85 had given indications of being hijacked, or they gave conflicting explanations. Could this have been because these organizations needed to cover up the fact that--despite the attacks earlier on in New York and Washington--a hijacking simulation was still being carried out on the afternoon of 9/11, in which KAL 85 played the hijacked aircraft?

Apparently the first explanation for the series of events involving KAL 85 was offered several hours after the plane landed at Whitehorse Airport. An airport spokeswoman announced simply, "There was a communications problem aboard the plane so [the pilots] were unable to communicate and respond properly to the [air traffic control] tower anywhere they went." [17]

The Anchorage Daily News later reported: "At the time of this September 11 incident, little was publicly disclosed about the wayward signals from the Korean pilot. The airline and flight crew have kept mum about what happened that day." But, to explain why the pilots included the letters "HJK," signaling a hijacking, in a text message, Korean Airlines administrator Michael Lim suggested they had intended this as a question rather than a warning, but this was unclear to those who read the message, because pilots are unable to type question marks into their texts. [18]

However, the airline's operations chief, David Greenberg, gave a different explanation. He said the pilots' text message was "innocent, part of a routine discussion on where to divert the flight after airspace in the United States had been closed." Greenberg said the pilots used the three-letter hijack code "to refer to the hijackings that day." [19] Author Lynn Spencer pointed out that this was "an odd idea for the pilots to have, and contrary to their training. But for whatever reason ... they made a very dangerous bad call." [20]

The reason why the pilots switched their transponder to the code signaling a hijacking is, as the Anchorage Daily News put it, "not entirely clear." [21] Eleven months after 9/11, USA Today reported: "To this day, no one is certain why the pilots issued the alert. Airline sources say that exchanges between pilots and controllers were tense that morning. Some pilots objected to orders to reroute their planes. The Korean pilots may have misinterpreted the controller's comments as an order to reset the transponder." [22]

The military reportedly blamed the false alert on "muddled communications between air traffic controllers and the flight crew aboard the plane." But Korean Airlines claimed that the pilot of KAL 85 "believed he was directed by air traffic controllers at the FAA's Anchorage flight control center to send out the hijack signal." The airline's administrator, Michael Lim, said: "Our captain was following their instruction. [The Anchorage Center] even told the captain to transmit code 7500, hijack code. Our captain, who realized how serious it is, they were just following instructions."

Adding to the mystery, two weeks after 9/11 it was reported that Korean Airlines had "declined to make available a tape recording of conversations between the pilot [of KAL 85] and KAL officials on the ground in Anchorage," and that the "FAA won't discuss any details of the case." [23]

There was even some uncertainty and secrecy over why Whitehorse Airport was chosen as KAL 85's new destination after it was diverted. The report published by the government of Yukon in November 2001 stated: "The question of why this potentially dangerous aircraft was directed to Whitehorse rather than another airport remains unanswered by senior national agencies, the [FAA], NORAD, and Transport Canada. ... [Q]uestions about the decision-making process to re-direct [KAL 85] to Whitehorse have not been answered in any significant detail." The report added, "It is expected that greater detail on this will not be forthcoming from these agencies in the short-term." [24]

WAS KAL 85 PART OF AN EXERCISE SIMULATION?
This secrecy and confusion would certainly make sense if these agencies were trying to cover-up KAL 85's involvement in a training exercise. What makes this possibility seem even more likely is that, five days before 9/11, NORAD practiced two exercise scenarios with an uncanny resemblance to the apparent crisis involving KAL 85. Those scenarios were part of its annual exercise, "Vigilant Guardian," which was still taking place on September 11.

In one of the scenarios on September 6, 10 members of a fictitious terrorist group called "Lin Po" hijacked Korean Airlines Flight 357, a Boeing 747 flying from Seoul to Anchorage--in other words, a plane resembling KAL 85. The terrorists issued demands and threatened to blow up the plane if these were not met. They also killed two passengers. NORAD directed fighter jets to get in a position to shoot down the hijacked 747, and ordered its Alaskan region to intercept and shadow the plane--similar to what it did in response to KAL 85 on September 11. The scenario involved the plane eventually landing in Seattle, Washington. [25]

In the other exercise scenario on September 6, a Boeing 747, also bound for Anchorage, was hijacked by terrorists, although in that case the plane had taken off from Tokyo, not Seoul. A fictitious terrorist group called "Mum Hykro" was threatening to "rain terror from the skies onto a major U.S. city unless the U.S. declares withdrawal from Asian conflict." Some of the plane's passengers were killed. The plane changed its course to Vancouver, Canada, and then to San Francisco, California. The military was directed to respond, by providing "covert shadowing" of the hijacked aircraft, presumably by fighter jets. NORAD had to liaise with the appropriate air traffic control center. Its Alaskan region and Canadian region participated in the scenario. Again, we see similarities to the events involving KAL 85 five days later. [26] Might the apparent hijacking of KAL 85 on 9/11 have therefore been a simulation intended as a follow-up to these two previous scenarios?

Clearly, the actions of KAL 85 and the plane's possible involvement in a military exercise require more investigation. But the fact that exercises resembling the real-world attacks were taking place on September 11, and--if my conclusions about KAL 85 are correct--at least one of those exercises was still going on hours after the attacks in New York and Washington took place, should be of concern to us all.

NOTES
[1] Alan Levin, "Korean Air Jet May Have Narrowly Missed Disaster." USA Today, August 12, 2002; Patty Davis, "Korean Jet in 9/11 'Hijack' Scare." CNN, August 14, 2002; Lynn Spencer, Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11. New York: Free Press, 2008, pp. 256-257. 
[2] Alaska Legislature Joint Senate and House Armed Services Committee,Presentations by Lieutenant General Norton Schwartz and Major General Willie Nance Jr. 22nd Leg., 2nd Sess., February 5, 2002; Zaz Hollander, "High Alert." Anchorage Daily News, September 8, 2002.
[3] Alan Levin, "Korean Air Jet May Have Narrowly Missed Disaster"; Zaz Hollander, "High Alert"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 278-279.
[4] Alan Levin, "Korean Air Jet May Have Narrowly Missed Disaster";Patty Davis, "Korean Jet in 9/11 'Hijack' Scare"; Zaz Hollander, "High Alert"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, pp. 257, 277-278.
[5] September 11, 2001, Whitehorse International Airport Emergency: Public Findings Report. Whitehorse, Yukon: Yukon Government, November 13, 2001, p. 17.
[6] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 278.
[7] Alan Levin, "Korean Air Jet May Have Narrowly Missed Disaster."
[8] Zaz Hollander, "High Alert"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 257.
[9] "Stranded Passengers Flood Canadian Airports." CBC News, September 12, 2001; Zaz Hollander, "False Sept. 11 Hijack Signal Put Air Force on Alert." Anchorage Daily News, September 29, 2001; Alaska Legislature Joint Senate and House Armed Services Committee, Presentations by Lieutenant General Norton Schwartz and Major General Willie Nance Jr.; Zaz Hollander, "High Alert."
[10] Alaska Legislature Joint Senate and House Armed Services Committee, Presentations by Lieutenant General Norton Schwartz and Major General Willie Nance Jr.
[11] Alan Levin, "Korean Air Jet May Have Narrowly Missed Disaster"; Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 278.
[12] Shawn McCarthy, "PM Says U.S. Attitude Helped Fuel Sept. 11." Globe and Mail, September 12, 2002; Sheldon Alberts, "PM Links Attacks to 'Arrogant' West." National Post, September 12, 2002.
[13] Alan Levin, "Korean Air Jet May Have Narrowly Missed Disaster";Patty Davis, "Korean Jet in 9/11 'Hijack' Scare."
[14] September 11, 2001, Whitehorse International Airport Emergency, pp. 14-15.
[15] "Korean Passenger Jet Diverted to Whitehorse Treated as Hijacking: RCMP." Canadian Press, September 12, 2001; "Korean Planes Make Emergency Landings." United Press International, September 12, 2001;Zaz Hollander, "False Sept. 11 Hijack Signal Put Air Force on Alert."
[16] September 11, 2001, Whitehorse International Airport Emergency, pp. 17-18.
[17] "Korean Passenger Jet Diverted to Whitehorse Treated as Hijacking: RCMP."
[18] Zaz Hollander, "High Alert."
[19] Alan Levin, "Korean Air Jet May Have Narrowly Missed Disaster."
[20] Lynn Spencer, Touching History, p. 279.
[21] Zaz Hollander, "False Sept. 11 Hijack Signal Put Air Force on Alert."
[22] Alan Levin, "Korean Air Jet May Have Narrowly Missed Disaster."
[23] Zaz Hollander, "False Sept. 11 Hijack Signal Put Air Force on Alert."
[24] September 11, 2001, Whitehorse International Airport Emergency, p. 5.
[25] "NORAD Exercises: Hijack Summary." 9/11 Commission, n.d.
[26] Ibid.

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