9-11 Commission Votes to Subpoena Pentagon

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON -- A federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks voted Friday to issue a subpoena to the Pentagon for documents related to the activities of U.S. air defenses on the day of the terrorist hijackings.

"In several cases we were assured that all requested records had been produced but we then discovered, through investigation, that these assurances were mistaken and that records of importance to our investigation had not been produced," the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States said in a statement.

The 10-person, bipartisan panel said it raised its concerns with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who pledged to help and "has already taken strong steps to back up this pledge."

more.................

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-sept.-11-commission,0,372881.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[arcane1]

1. uh-oh, this is gonna get interesting...

isn't it considered un-American to ask where NORAD was? :shrug:

it will be!

[Cocoa]

2. they're politicizing Sept. 11!!!!

oh, wait, Kean is a republican. never mind...

[stevedeshazer]

3. These are the questions I want answered

What happened to NORAD, and why did they not act, given that procedures and protocol were in place? Why weren't jets scrambled? Nothing but silence on this so far. I hope this goes somewhere.

[arcane1]

6. two words (kind of)

Payne Stewart

[stevedeshazer]

9. Excellent two words

Glad you mentioned that. Time for a goldie oldie from October 26, 1999: http://www.cnn.com/US/9910/25/wayward.jet.07/

<snip>
Troubled plane shadowed by military jets (CNN)

An Air Force spokesman says two U.S. Air Force F-15s from Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, intercepted the plane shortly after it lost contact with aircraft controllers, and followed it to Missouri.

Pilots reported the plane's crew was "non-responsive" and that the cockpit windows were obscured by condensation or frost, an indication the aircraft may have lost cabin pressure.

Over Missouri, four F-16s from an Air National Guard unit based in Fargo, North Dakota, took over the escort mission, and stayed with the plane until it crashed.

The Air Force says additional F-16s were also scrambled from the Oklahoma Air National Guard unit in Tulsa, but were not used because the Fargo planes arrived first.

____________________________________________________________________

Now, someone has yet to explain to me why the learjet carrying Payne Stewart was tailed within minutes of loss of communications in the cockpit all the way to conclusion in crashing in South Dakota, yet while four highjacked commercial jetliners were in the air over the busiest air corridors in the U.S., there was NO response, save the potential downing of Flight 93.

[davekriss]

18. If you check the NTSB records...

...you'll see that it took 1 hour and 18 minutes (or thereabouts) to get an F16 alongside Payne Stewart's jet. Read the text carefully and you'll see the author switches from eastern time to central time in the discussion. I've made this same mistake before.

However...

On 9-11, 113 minutes elapsed between the moment the FAA lost contact with Flight 11 and when Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania. Nearly two hours. Yet the mightiest security apparatus ever known to man failed to defend against a single hijacked plane. Even though they conceived of the threat before. Even though they were aware of the Al Qaeda threat for the week of September 9. This just stretches credibility!

Edited to add NTSB link,

Source: http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/2000/AAB0001.htm

[conservdem]

12. What do the two words mean?

[arcane1]

13. see the link in post #9

when Stewart's tiny plane was escorted by fighter jets in no time, compared to the 90 minutes that we were undefended while FOUR AIRLINERS had been hijacked and were crashing into buildings (especially in light of Bush's PDB on Osama's hijacking plans...)

[davekriss]

15. Adding to your questions...

...and why, after hearing that a plane crashed into the WTC, did General Meyers go in to Max Cleland's office for a friendly chat over coffee, only to come out after the second WTC hit and the third jet plowed into the Pentagon?

...and why, after hearing about the first hit on the WTC, did Bush continue to the school? Why, after hearing of the second hit, did Bush remain at the school for 20 minutes placidly listening to a story about a pet goat?

It certainly appears that these two stood down from their responsibilities that morning. Maybe it's just me, but if I were either of them I would have been on top of things like bees onto honey. Especially since I received a briefing on August 8 that Al Qaeda had been planning a major attack for the week of September 9, that it would involve hijackings, and hey I'd heard before that terrorists might plan to drive hijacked jets into buildings.

So here we are: Wouldn't you or I launch a full public hearing on September 12? With no arbitrary deadlines? Without pauperizing its budget? Hell, we can spend $57 million on Whitewater even after the first Republican Special Prosecutor reported there was no evidence of wrongdoing, why then budget a paltry $3 million to investigate 9-11?

I grant you that the truth most likely lies somewhere between Incompetence-LIHOP-MIHOP, but note that there's nothing positive on that continuum. Why has no one been fired? Why has no one even been reprimanded?

Maybe it's just me. Just the tinfoil. Just my left progressive way of interpreting events. But where there's smoke there's often fire! The question is, will we ever know? It's the conquerors who get to write the history books. And it does appear we've been conquered, folks!

[stevedeshazer]

19. Agree with all but your last point

I'm still intoxicated with hope.

[many a good man]

4. Finally!

They should have demanded those documents on 9/12!

In my opinion, NORAD's completely inept response is the most puzzling question about the whole thing.

[ozone_man]

14. Exactly!

These are the right questions, but what took so long?

Well, putting HK in charge of the investigation would explain a few things.

I hope this goes somewhere.

[Military Brat]

5. It's time for bush's dog & pony show!

Let's see what distraction Rove comes up with next.

Personally, I hope the 9-11 Commission grows some very very long fangs and sinks them right into the bush administration throat.

[many a good man]

10. Brat, you have a GREAT sig line!

The best I've seen.

[denverbill]

7. The strong steps he took involved shredding documents I'm sure.

I hope they get the document where Rumfilled ordered the Pentagon to start making plans to invade Iraq on 9-11.

[ChompySnack]

8. Finally!

I think that this is the most obvious and unexplainable inconsistency. People should have been relieved of duty for the lapses, or jailed. In fact there probably weren't lapses, someone would have had to deliberately countermanded the standing orders in order for what happened to have happened.

In my opinion this is the one key issue that they can't explain away easily.

[BringEmOn]

11. Full employment act

for Ollie North



and other paper shredders!

[stevedeshazer]

20. LOL

Nice!

[Minstrel Boy]

16. As Rumsfeld would say, "Was there a stand down? You bet!"

This is John Judge:

Is it the case, then, perhaps, that there was some sort of a stand down? I have a few indications of that. There is a 177th Air National Guard based out of Pomona, New Jersey, near Atlantic City at the Atlantic City Airport. They're about equidistant, actually a little closer to DC. They could cover both Manhattan and DC. They have fighter-ready intercept jets. But one investigator that talked to them said that they were told two weeks prior to the event to stop putting the jets up in the air on a regular basis.

I also talked to an independent journalist investigator at the Pentagon whose response to my stand down thesis that I'm giving you, he said, "Didn't you read in the New York Times" -- and I've not been able to find this article so it may be he mis-cited it -- "that three days before September 11th half of the combat ready planes in the United States were taken down offline." I said, "I did not. Are you making your argument or mine?"

And then there's a third indication I have from someone whose son is stationed at Otis Air Force Base. The son has talked to pilots who were in the air the hour that the second plane was hit, scrambled out of Otis, who turned their attention to Flight 77 (the Pentagon flight) and made clear that they were going to go to try to intercept that flight coming back across from Ohio to DC and were called back -- according to these pilots -- were called back off the flight by the Command.

So was there a stand down and no response? Were there call backs? These are not questions that I ultimately have the resources to answer but they're questions that stand and that raise, for me, a much deeper level of this scenario than is being addressed. But was there a point at which they knew ahead? There certainly was and for forty minutes everybody in DC knew the plane was coming and we didn't do a thing.
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/UQPC061002.html


:mad:

[leesa]

17. I hope they subpoena the fighter jet pilots who flew at reduced speeds

those who were on alert on the bases. Tell us what happened that day.

[Oilwellian]

21. Here's why NORAD didn't respond

He has a busy schedule. He's been in court, all last week and all this week. We had him on about a year ago. He's Stanley Hilton. He was brutally attacked by the big government pimps Hannity and Colmes. He was a senior advisor for Bob Dole, counsel for Bob Dole and others in the Republican Party. He's an expert on government-sponsored terrorism and has written a book about it, throughout history. And he now has new revelations never before revealed from his depositions of witnesses involved in and around 9/11. He represents over 400 of the victims of 9/11's families and he has been given almost no attention. While some of the other groups headed by well-known PR bureaucrats, we've had them on the show, as well, are trying to suppress this information. Joining us is Stanley Hilton. We are honored to have you on the show Stanley.

<snip>
Suddenly, they had a cover story and two AP articles in the New York Daily News, all in the film, where they said, "Lo and behold, 8:30 in the morning, the CIA was running a drill of flying jetliners into buildings in New York and D.C." It just so happened at that very minute they were running this that NORAD stood down for an hour and half, the 58 minutes in different cases. . . .
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/SH031403.html

And then there's this:
Agency planned exercise on Sept. 11 built around a plane crashing into a building
By John J. Lumpkin, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism -- it was to be a simulated accident.

Officials at the Chantilly, Va.-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure.

The agency is about four miles from the runways of Washington Dulles International Airport.

Agency chiefs came up with the scenario to test employees' ability to respond to a disaster, said spokesman Art Haubold. No actual plane was to be involved -- to simulate the damage from the crash, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building.

"It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility," Haubold said. "As soon as the real world events began, we canceled the exercise."
http://www.boston.com/news/packages/sept11/anniversary/wire_stories/0903_plane_exercise.htm

[aeon flux]

22. Whitewater Redux

The last major investigation of the WH (maybe not quite the last) also involved Pentagon documents (the 'Pentagon Papers') that lead up to the impeachment of the Republican President.

I hope they make Chimpy squirm real good.