RawStory.com has published an article about Jesse Ventura's 9/11 documentary and as one would expect the conspiracy nuts are coming out of the woodwork and squirming around. 911blogger.com user Robert Rice has the low down:
"Excellent debate raging over there in the comments section.
Please post, as a member or as a guest there when you have the opportunity, but present really compelling evidence without too much mud slinging, and we'll continue to utterly dominate and triumph in the debate, as our side has so far.
The whole climate really has changed, thanks to the Internet. We are no longer a fringe element - the OCT (Official Conspiracy Theory) Myth supporters are now. THEY are now the "tinfoil" hat wearing loons, for supporting and trying to defend the indefensible!
Good work all! Keep it up."
Speaking of defending the indefensible, 911blogger user "brian78046" shares his comment at RawStory:
"Contrary to what Popular Mechanics claims about NORAD (that NORAD monitored aircraft over American skies that originated outside of America only), NORAD and the Air Force says they didn't monitor the airspace of the United States at all on 9/11:
In 2004 the Air Force said, 'Before 2001, 1st Air Force was charged with keeping an eye on the nation’s borders, usually looking for threats in the form of Russian aircraft skirting too close for comfort to the mainland. In those few hours, the command’s mission went from looking outward to looking inward.'
In 2008 NORAD said, 'Since the tragic events of 9/11, NORAD’s role which previously was outward-looking now includes monitoring airspace within North America.'
However, in 1997 NORAD contradictorily said they insure, 'Aircraft flying over our air space are monitored seven days a week, 24 hours a day.'
And the April 2000 Air Force Instruction on air defense, as in effect on 9/11/01, said, 'The First Air Force Commander...provides SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL OF THE AIRSPACE OF THE UNITED STATES...'
Popular Mechanics and the military should get their stories straight on NORAD! As it is, we have caught Popular Mechanics and the military lying about NORAD's true capabilities on 9/11."
Dean Jackson/Editor-in-Chief DNotice.org
Washington, DC
Air Defense: The Changing Stories
Official accounts of the military's response to the attack on 9/11/01 -- or lack thereof -- has gone through at least three mutually contradictory versions, a fact that has remained virtually un-noticed by mainstream news organizations.
Three Versions of the Official Story
Version 1: No Scrambles
In his confirmation hearing two days after the attack, General Myers, acting head of the Joint Cheifs of Staff on the day of the attack, said he thought that no interceptors were scrambled until after the Pentagon was attacked.
LEVIN: Was the Defense Department contacted by the FAA or the FBI or any other agency after the first two hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center, prior to the time that the Pentagon was hit?
MYERS: Sir, I don't know the answer to that question. I can get that for you, for the record.
LEVIN: Thank you. Did the Defense Department take -- or was the Defense Department asked to take action against any specific aircraft?
MYERS: Sir, we were . . .
LEVIN: And did you take action against -- for instance, there has been statements that the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down. Those stories continue to exist.
MYERS: Mr. Chairman, the armed forces did not shoot down any aircraft. When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS, radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked. But we never actually had to use force.
LEVIN: Was that order that you just described given before or after the Pentagon was struck? Do you know?
MYERS: That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck.
General Myers Confirmation Hearing 9/13/01
Version 2: NORAD's Timeline
On September 18, 2001 NORAD issued a press release containing a timeline which listed scramble times for fighters stationed at Otis and Langley bases.
The document, NORAD'S Response Times 9/18/01, contains the following description of times of events:
AA
Flight 11 UA
Flight 175 AA
Flight 77 UA
Flight 93
FAA notification of NEADS 08:40 08:43 09:24 N/A
Fighter Scramble Order 08:46 09:24 --
Fighters Airborne 08:52 09:30 --
Originating Base Otis ANGB
Falmouth, MA Langley AFB
Hampton, VA
Fighter Distance /
Time to Impact Location not airborne
153 miles 8 min /
71 miles 12 min /
105 miles 11 min /
100 miles
Version 3: The 9/11 Commission Report
AA
Flight 11 UA
Flight 175 phantom
Flight 11* AA
Flight 77 UA
Flight 93
Notification of NEADS 08:38 09:15 -- 09:34 10:07
Fighters Scrambled 08:46 09:24
Fighters Airborne 08:53
Originating Base Otis, MA Langley, VA
*Phantom Flight 11 refers to the Commission's assertion that the F-16s scrambled from Langley were sent up, not to intercept Flight 77, but to look for Flight 11, under the erroneous belief that it had bypassed New York City and was headed for the capital." - Source: http://911review.com/coverup/airdefense_stories.html
9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon
Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.
Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.
In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said.
"We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. "It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied." - Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html
Scapegoating Norad
...What the Washington Post article fails to mention is that 5 or more war games were being conducted by several U.S. defense agencies, including:
• At least one "live fly" exercise using REAL planes
• At least one "plane into building" exercise
• Injection of false radar "blips" onto the screens of air traffic controllers
• Monitoring of the exercises and the 9/11 events by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Indeed, Secretary of Transportation Norm Minetta testified to the 9/11 Commission that Cheney monitored flight 77 for many miles as it approached the Pentagon, and was in charge of the military's (non) response to flight 77.
So the Washington Post article completely misses the other half of the story: that the dedicated rank-and-file personnel at Norad were misled, intentionally, by the planners of 9/11. Specifically, the good and dedicated lower-level military people were confused by the events of 9/11 because 9/11 occurred at the same time as the multiple war games with their live fly exercises, plane into building scenarios, false radar inserts, and apparent interference by Cheney.
The prevailing spin from the Washington Post article and the related Vanity Fair article is that Norad lie to the Commission simply to cover up its incompetence on 9/11.
But stop and think about it for one minute. Is it more likely that a government agency would lie to an official government commission simply to cover up incompetence? Or to hide classified information regarding 5 military war games occuring that day, and the the interference which those war games caused with FAA and Norad's normal response to hijackings? Remember that this administration routinely lies, and in fact authorized governmental agencies to lie about 9/11...
Norad has already changed its story numerous times, apparently to address impossibilities with the official story pointed out by 9/11 skeptics.
Therefore, it is obvious that Norad lied for more important reasons that covering up incompetence. Norad lied in a desperate attempt to save the official story from that myth's glaring inconsistencies and, moreover, to cover up treason by certain people within the U.S. government and military." - Source: http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/08/scapegoating-norad.html
In his article "9/11 Live or Fabricated: Do the NORAD Tapes Verify The 9/11 Commission Report?" David Ray Griffin compares and contrasts the two choices we are left with, he states:
"If our military had been guilty only of confusion and incompetence on 9/11, it would have been strange for its officials, by saying that they had been notified by the FAA earlier than they really had, to open themselves not only to the charge of criminal fraud but also to the suspicion that they had deliberately not intercepted the hijacked airliners. We are being asked to believe, in other words, that Scott, Arnold, and the others, in telling the earlier story, acted in a completely irrational manner--that, while being guilty only of confusion and a little incompetence, they told a lie that could have exposed them with being charged with murder and treason."
Griffin also points out that even if we accept the 9/11 Commission's third version of the day's events that in the end it is inconsequential because, as Laura Brown of the FAA reported to the 9/11 Commission:
"Within minutes after the first aircraft hit the World Trade Center, the FAA immediately established several phone bridges that included FAA field facilities, the FAA Command Center, FAA headquarters, DOD [meaning the NMCC in the Department of Defense], the Secret Service. . . . The US Air Force liaison to the FAA immediately joined the FAA headquarters phone bridge and established contact with NORAD. . . . The FAA shared real-time information on the phone bridges about the unfolding events, including information about loss of communication with aircraft, loss of transponder signals, unauthorized changes in course, and other actions being taken by all the flights of interest. . . ."
"Excellent debate raging over there in the comments section.
Please post, as a member or as a guest there when you have the opportunity, but present really compelling evidence without too much mud slinging, and we'll continue to utterly dominate and triumph in the debate, as our side has so far.
The whole climate really has changed, thanks to the Internet. We are no longer a fringe element - the OCT (Official Conspiracy Theory) Myth supporters are now. THEY are now the "tinfoil" hat wearing loons, for supporting and trying to defend the indefensible!
Good work all! Keep it up."
Speaking of defending the indefensible, 911blogger user "brian78046" shares his comment at RawStory:
"Contrary to what Popular Mechanics claims about NORAD (that NORAD monitored aircraft over American skies that originated outside of America only), NORAD and the Air Force says they didn't monitor the airspace of the United States at all on 9/11:
In 2004 the Air Force said, 'Before 2001, 1st Air Force was charged with keeping an eye on the nation’s borders, usually looking for threats in the form of Russian aircraft skirting too close for comfort to the mainland. In those few hours, the command’s mission went from looking outward to looking inward.'
In 2008 NORAD said, 'Since the tragic events of 9/11, NORAD’s role which previously was outward-looking now includes monitoring airspace within North America.'
However, in 1997 NORAD contradictorily said they insure, 'Aircraft flying over our air space are monitored seven days a week, 24 hours a day.'
And the April 2000 Air Force Instruction on air defense, as in effect on 9/11/01, said, 'The First Air Force Commander...provides SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL OF THE AIRSPACE OF THE UNITED STATES...'
Popular Mechanics and the military should get their stories straight on NORAD! As it is, we have caught Popular Mechanics and the military lying about NORAD's true capabilities on 9/11."
Dean Jackson/Editor-in-Chief DNotice.org
Washington, DC
Air Defense: The Changing Stories
Official accounts of the military's response to the attack on 9/11/01 -- or lack thereof -- has gone through at least three mutually contradictory versions, a fact that has remained virtually un-noticed by mainstream news organizations.
Three Versions of the Official Story
Version 1: No Scrambles
In his confirmation hearing two days after the attack, General Myers, acting head of the Joint Cheifs of Staff on the day of the attack, said he thought that no interceptors were scrambled until after the Pentagon was attacked.
LEVIN: Was the Defense Department contacted by the FAA or the FBI or any other agency after the first two hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center, prior to the time that the Pentagon was hit?
MYERS: Sir, I don't know the answer to that question. I can get that for you, for the record.
LEVIN: Thank you. Did the Defense Department take -- or was the Defense Department asked to take action against any specific aircraft?
MYERS: Sir, we were . . .
LEVIN: And did you take action against -- for instance, there has been statements that the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down. Those stories continue to exist.
MYERS: Mr. Chairman, the armed forces did not shoot down any aircraft. When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS, radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked. But we never actually had to use force.
LEVIN: Was that order that you just described given before or after the Pentagon was struck? Do you know?
MYERS: That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck.
General Myers Confirmation Hearing 9/13/01
Version 2: NORAD's Timeline
On September 18, 2001 NORAD issued a press release containing a timeline which listed scramble times for fighters stationed at Otis and Langley bases.
The document, NORAD'S Response Times 9/18/01, contains the following description of times of events:
AA
Flight 11 UA
Flight 175 AA
Flight 77 UA
Flight 93
FAA notification of NEADS 08:40 08:43 09:24 N/A
Fighter Scramble Order 08:46 09:24 --
Fighters Airborne 08:52 09:30 --
Originating Base Otis ANGB
Falmouth, MA Langley AFB
Hampton, VA
Fighter Distance /
Time to Impact Location not airborne
153 miles 8 min /
71 miles 12 min /
105 miles 11 min /
100 miles
Version 3: The 9/11 Commission Report
AA
Flight 11 UA
Flight 175 phantom
Flight 11* AA
Flight 77 UA
Flight 93
Notification of NEADS 08:38 09:15 -- 09:34 10:07
Fighters Scrambled 08:46 09:24
Fighters Airborne 08:53
Originating Base Otis, MA Langley, VA
*Phantom Flight 11 refers to the Commission's assertion that the F-16s scrambled from Langley were sent up, not to intercept Flight 77, but to look for Flight 11, under the erroneous belief that it had bypassed New York City and was headed for the capital." - Source: http://911review.com/coverup/airdefense_stories.html
9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon
Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.
Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.
In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said.
"We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us," said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. "It was just so far from the truth. . . . It's one of those loose ends that never got tied." - Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html
Scapegoating Norad
...What the Washington Post article fails to mention is that 5 or more war games were being conducted by several U.S. defense agencies, including:
• At least one "live fly" exercise using REAL planes
• At least one "plane into building" exercise
• Injection of false radar "blips" onto the screens of air traffic controllers
• Monitoring of the exercises and the 9/11 events by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Indeed, Secretary of Transportation Norm Minetta testified to the 9/11 Commission that Cheney monitored flight 77 for many miles as it approached the Pentagon, and was in charge of the military's (non) response to flight 77.
So the Washington Post article completely misses the other half of the story: that the dedicated rank-and-file personnel at Norad were misled, intentionally, by the planners of 9/11. Specifically, the good and dedicated lower-level military people were confused by the events of 9/11 because 9/11 occurred at the same time as the multiple war games with their live fly exercises, plane into building scenarios, false radar inserts, and apparent interference by Cheney.
The prevailing spin from the Washington Post article and the related Vanity Fair article is that Norad lie to the Commission simply to cover up its incompetence on 9/11.
But stop and think about it for one minute. Is it more likely that a government agency would lie to an official government commission simply to cover up incompetence? Or to hide classified information regarding 5 military war games occuring that day, and the the interference which those war games caused with FAA and Norad's normal response to hijackings? Remember that this administration routinely lies, and in fact authorized governmental agencies to lie about 9/11...
Norad has already changed its story numerous times, apparently to address impossibilities with the official story pointed out by 9/11 skeptics.
Therefore, it is obvious that Norad lied for more important reasons that covering up incompetence. Norad lied in a desperate attempt to save the official story from that myth's glaring inconsistencies and, moreover, to cover up treason by certain people within the U.S. government and military." - Source: http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/08/scapegoating-norad.html
In his article "9/11 Live or Fabricated: Do the NORAD Tapes Verify The 9/11 Commission Report?" David Ray Griffin compares and contrasts the two choices we are left with, he states:
"If our military had been guilty only of confusion and incompetence on 9/11, it would have been strange for its officials, by saying that they had been notified by the FAA earlier than they really had, to open themselves not only to the charge of criminal fraud but also to the suspicion that they had deliberately not intercepted the hijacked airliners. We are being asked to believe, in other words, that Scott, Arnold, and the others, in telling the earlier story, acted in a completely irrational manner--that, while being guilty only of confusion and a little incompetence, they told a lie that could have exposed them with being charged with murder and treason."
Griffin also points out that even if we accept the 9/11 Commission's third version of the day's events that in the end it is inconsequential because, as Laura Brown of the FAA reported to the 9/11 Commission:
"Within minutes after the first aircraft hit the World Trade Center, the FAA immediately established several phone bridges that included FAA field facilities, the FAA Command Center, FAA headquarters, DOD [meaning the NMCC in the Department of Defense], the Secret Service. . . . The US Air Force liaison to the FAA immediately joined the FAA headquarters phone bridge and established contact with NORAD. . . . The FAA shared real-time information on the phone bridges about the unfolding events, including information about loss of communication with aircraft, loss of transponder signals, unauthorized changes in course, and other actions being taken by all the flights of interest. . . ."
So in the end "the formal notification was primarily a formality and hence irrelevant to the question of when the military" knew about the flights.
"I knew within hours of the attacks on 9/11/2001 that it was an inside job. Based on my 11-year experience as an FAA Air Traffic Controller in the busy Northeast corridor, including hundreds of hours of training, briefings, air refuelings, low altitude bombing drills, being part of huge military exercises, daily military training exercises, interacting on a routine basis directly with NORAD radar personnel, and based on my own direct experience dealing with in-flight emergency situations, including two instances of hijacked commercial airliners, I state unequivocally; There is absolutely no way that four large commercial airliners could have flown around off course for 30 to 60 minutes on 9/11 without being intercepted and shot completely out of the sky by our jet fighters unless very highly placed people in our government and our military wanted it to happen." - Robin Hordon, Former FAA Air Traffic
Controller at the Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center, located in Nashua, NH, 1970 - 1981. FAA certified commercial pilot. FAA certified Flight Instructor and certified Ground Instructor
Confirmed: 9/11 Planes Were Tracked even With Transponders Turned Off
"One of the most important parts of the official story is that the government couldn't track the location of the hijacked planes because the hijackers had turned the transponders off. The official version is that, with transponders turned off, only 'primary radar' was available to civilian air traffic controllers. Primary radar can track location, but not altitude.
This makes no sense, because America's air defenses need to protect our nation against foreign fighter jets and other airplanes invading our country. Is our trillion-dollar defense system set up so that a Russian or Chinese pilot can invade undetected if he just turns off his transponder? Darn! Why didn't we think of that?!" - Source: http://911blogger.com/node/14583
Confirmed: 9/11 Planes Were Tracked even With Transponders Turned Off
"One of the most important parts of the official story is that the government couldn't track the location of the hijacked planes because the hijackers had turned the transponders off. The official version is that, with transponders turned off, only 'primary radar' was available to civilian air traffic controllers. Primary radar can track location, but not altitude.
This makes no sense, because America's air defenses need to protect our nation against foreign fighter jets and other airplanes invading our country. Is our trillion-dollar defense system set up so that a Russian or Chinese pilot can invade undetected if he just turns off his transponder? Darn! Why didn't we think of that?!" - Source: http://911blogger.com/node/14583
"Helpful background information on the significance of transponder signals is provided in journalist and 9/11 critic Michael Rupert's Crossing the Rubicon. Ruppert explains that all commercial airliners are equipped with transponders--devices that identify the altitude and position of planes by means of radio signals to air traffic controllers (ATCs). When transponders go off, the plane can still be tracked in two dimensions, but the ATC can no longer pinpoint its altitude. At that point, the system is in emergency status and the offending plane appears on the consoles of all the local ATCs. Ruppert goes on to quote from the statement of a pilot, one Michael Guillaume, who explains that such a plane...
'...is now a hazard to air navigation, and the controller's primary function of separating planes is now in jeopardy... If in addition to losing communication and transponder the flight starts to deviate from its last clearance, the whole system is in emergency condition. Alarms all over the country would be going off...
So we know that the traffic control system would be in panic mode within two or three minutes of the initial events. ... The odds are that many flights would be on patrol just offshore. It would be most improbable that even one commercial flight could go [astray] more than ten minutes without being intercepted...
Interceptions are routine daily occurrences. The fact that they didn't happen under extreme provocation raises some serious questions...'" - Source: http://www.bushstole04.com/911/david_ray_griffin911.htm
Payne Stewart
"There's an argument that says the 9/11 attacks couldn't have succeeded if the FAA and NORAD had only followed standard procedures, as at least some of the planes would have been intercepted in time. The 1999 case of Payne Stewart is occasionally used as an example of just how fast intercepts can be.
It's certainly true that there were initial media reports suggesting Air Force jets intercepted the plane only around 20 minutes after contact was lost. But this isn't actually what happened.
Read this carefully and you'll notice a change of time zone, from Eastern to Central time. CDT is one hour on from EDT, so the lack of contact was first noticed at around 09:34, accepted as a loss of contact at 9:44, and the fighter didn't get to within 2000 feet of Stewart’s jet until 10:54. That's well over an hour between the controllers realising there’s a problem, to intercept taking place." - Source: http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Payne_Stewart
"Let's keep it in context. The Payne Stewart flight was not hijacked. It was not a commercial airliner with hundreds of people on board. It was not of the size or fuel capacity that would enable it to be used as a weapon of mass destruction.
Yet it was still intercepted by the airforce. Viewed in context, it still boggles the mind that we apparently could not get it together on the morning of 9/11."
"...They are totally different scenarios. The Stewart plane stopped responding and basically kept flying straight. There were no known hijackings taking place and the plane was not actively diverted. It wouldn't surprise me if given these fatcs there was not a sense of urgency about intercepting it. On 9/11 however, we were presumably UNDER ATTACK. Planes were known (believed anyway) to have been hijacked and diverted, and if memory serves, their transponders turned off. The difference in the situiations makes a comparison unreasonable as a defense of the failure to intercept on 9/11." - Source: 911blogger.com: Payne Stewart
