NORAD's “Failure”
General Myers, in his the previously mentioned testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Sept. 13, said: “When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft.” When asked if the order was given “before or after the Pentagon was struck,” Mayers replied: “That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck.” An obvious problem exists. At minimum, the “threat” would have become clear at 8:46, which was the plane hit WTC and the other was headed in it's direction. Then, of course, is that officials at NORAD did not need to fully understand “what the threat was” in order for there to be jets up in the air, to intercept the aircraft.
Then, a story by Boston Globe appears on Sept. 15, where Major Mike Snyder, speaking for NORAD says that no fighters were scrambled until after the Pentagon was hit. On Sept. 16, when Tim Russert, during his interview with Cheney [“Meet the Press”], expressed surprise that, although we knew about the first hi-jacking by 8:20, “it seems we were not able to scramble fighter jets in time to protect the Pentagon,” Cheney did not dispute the statement. Afterwards, NORAD began saying that it did have planes scrambled, but they arrived too late. This version is just as unbelievable as the prior.
There are some obvious problems with the official account now, as you can plainly see. The major one being that the military behavior seemed to completely contradict standard procedures. It has been pointed out, though, that an order for them not to be scrambled is what would require a command from on high. Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel, commenting on the NORAD failure, say: “This could only happen if individuals in high positions worked in a coordinated way to make them fail.”
According to this version, NORAD was not notified by the FAA of Flight 11 until 8:40. That would be 26 minutes after the plane's radio / transponder went off and 20 minutes after it had gone off course. Allan Wood and Paul Thompson write:
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Is NORAD's claim credible? If so, the air traffic controllers should have been fired and subject to possible criminal charges for their inaction. To date, howere there has been no word of any person being disciplined.... If NORAD's claim is false, and it was indeed informaed withing the time frame outlined in the FAAA regulations...,that would mean NORAD did absolutely nothing for almost thirty minutes while a hijacked commercial airliner flew off course through some of the most congested airspace in the world. Presumably, that would warrant some very serious charges. Again, no one associated with NORAD or the FAA has been punished.
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This bears the question: If no disciplinary action was followed, does this suggest that the official account is simply false or does it imply that FAA/NORAD did what they were instructed to do? Also, take into consideration the fact
that some were actually promoted.
Now to add onto the hysteria. The official account provides more anomalous features. It's been told that the scramble order was not given until 8:46. This is six minutes after it had been notified. Furthermore, NORAD inexpliciably gave this order to Otis Air National Guard Base in Cape Cod, which is approx.
180 miles away. This again, begs another disturbing question. Why was this order not given to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, which is only
70 miles from NYC?
NORAD, however, said that it recieved notification at 8:43 from the FAA of Flight 175's hijacking, so the two F-15s that were given the scramble order at 8:46, were sent after this flight instead. However, the F-15s are said not to have taken off until 8:52.