Air Force One on 9/11

This may have been discussed before, but...

I saw the documentary Inside 9/11. Nowhere did it mention about the terrorist threat to Air Force One. There were seven targets, all buildings, never Air Force One. And why bother? Any terrorist would know Air Force One is protected, and its not hard to shoot down a jumbo jet...regardless of the fact AFO didn't have any protection on the day, the terrorists wouldn't have known that.

Karl Rove said:

"They also made it clear they wanted to get us up quickly, and they wanted to get us to a high altitude, because there had been a specific threat made to Air Force One.... A declaration that Air Force One was a target, and said in a way that they called it credible."

Perhaps he thought IT would be hijacked:

Pilot Colonel Mark Tillman was told of the threat and he asked that an armed guard be stationed at the cockpit door.

RESOURCE

Personally, Bush's actions dont make sense. No fighter escort? Immediate takeoff? If the threat was so credible, why didnt he get fighter jets? If the threat was so credible, he was afraid his own aircraft would be hijacked?

[edit on 24-9-2005 by Mudja]

How many bases do you think had fighters armed sitting on the ramp on 9/11? It's a LOT lower than you think. It takes a minimum of two hours to arm a fighter and have it ready to go, then another hour to run engines and align your navigation system. The Inertial Navigation System can only hold its position for 24 hours and takes 45 minutes to an hour to align. So by the time they got the missiles to the planes, got them armed, got the INS aligned, Air Force One would be wherever they were going. The armed fighters were being held or scrambled in response to the hijacking reports and the reports of unknown planes entering our airspace.

Sorry Zaphod58, I just don't buy that hokum.

This is the POTUS we are talking about, you are saying that there were no fighters ready to take off and defend AF1? There would be fighters ready to take off, there is no doubt about that. There were most certainly fighters ready to defend the capital, the Pentagon, and most definately the White House!

Mudja, I agree that things don't add up here. I have heard (will try and find source) that AF1 had multiple threats against them on the morning of 9/11. What I find remarkable is that Bush was allowed to carry on his engagement on Booker Elementary school when everyone knew that planes had been hijacked and were crashing into WTC.
Wht did the Secret Service not evacuate Bush immediately upon hearing about the attacks? The White House had relesaed Bush's schedule days before, so the public knew where he was. Did the Secret Service know Bush wasn't in danger and there wasn't a plane heading for the school to take Bush out? How did they know?

www.abovetopsecret.com...

We are discussing similar items of interest on this thread including the alleged threats to AF1.

Mod Edit: Fixed link

[edit on 26/9/2005 by Mirthful Me]

There were SEVEN Air National Guard bases in the ENTIRE United States with armed fighters ready to launch. Most bases with fighters ready to go have 2-4 of them sitting at the end of the runway. Whether you believe it or not, these are easily researchable facts. To arm a fighter, you have to get into the weapons bunker, get the weapons out of storage, prep them by putting control fins on them, get them loaded on the trailer, get the trailer to the flight line where the fighters are, load them (each missile taking 10-20 minutes), get the nav systems aligned (45-60 minutes), then get the fighters launched.

The threat could be against GOD and it would STILL take that long. You simply CAN NOT do the mission with what you don't have. It's that simple. Believe it or not, there are NOT fighters sitting armed everytime AF1 is in the air. IF they need an escort they take it from the closest base that has armed fighters available.

There WERE fighters around AF1 as they were on the way to Offut, but it took a little time to get them there. At one time there were dozens of bases with armed fighters sitting alert, but as the Cold War ended they were drawn down and only the most vital areas had fighters on alert, and usually it was one base for several hundred miles of airspace, even up a THOUSAND miles in some cases.

[edit on 9/26/2005 by Zaphod58]

Originally posted by Zaphod58
There were SEVEN Air National Guard bases in the ENTIRE United States with armed fighters ready to launch. Most bases with fighters ready to go have 2-4 of them sitting at the end of the runway. Whether you believe it or not, these are easily researchable facts. To arm a fighter, you have to get into the weapons bunker, get the weapons out of storage, prep them by putting control fins on them, get them loaded on the trailer, get the trailer to the flight line where the fighters are, load them (each missile taking 10-20 minutes), get the nav systems aligned (45-60 minutes), then get the fighters launched.

Could you please post some links to back up these figures from 2001? Thx

The reason I ask for links is that I find it difficult to believe that it takes that amount of time to get a fighter in the air. Does it really take this amount of time on aircraft carriers as well?

I may believe that there weren't sufficient fighters within range of any of the hijacked planes....but that is at a stretch!

[edit on 26-9-2005 by celticniall]

Why Air NATIONAL GUARD? What, president aint important enough to use the proper air force?

If it was the Guard, I'd agree, it would take longer. The Guard have less experience.

And when does AF1 fly without fighter escort? Only on civilian trips. Once there is a crisis, let alone a direct threat, immediatly fighters join it. How about the fighters in Andrews Air Force Base? Arent they always on alert to accompany AF1 or NAOC in the event of a crisis? They could have been scrambled, especially if AF1 was flying north...

Some info on AF1 on 9/11
I have posted this before it's somewhere here on ATS, anyway here it is again I hope you can glean some info from it.

Air Force One Takes Off Without Fighter Escort

Where is the security covering Bush as he leaves Sarasota? Is a good public relations photo more important than security, minutes after the Secret Service was told Bush could be attacked as he left Sarasota? [AP]

Air Force One took off at either 9:55 or 9:57 a.m. [CNN, 9/12/01, New York Times, 9/12/01, Telegraph, 12/16/01, CBS, 9/11/02, Washington Post, 9/12/01, Washington Post, 1/27/02, AP, 9/12/01] Communications Director Dan Bartlett remembered, "It was like a rocket. For a good ten minutes, the plane was going almost straight up." [CBS, 9/11/02]

But, incredibly, Air Force One took off without any military fighter protection. This defies all explanation. Recall that at 9:03 a.m., one of Bush's security people said, "We're out of here. Can you get everyone ready?" [Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/10/02] Certainly, long before Bush left the elementary school at 9:35 a.m., arrangements would have been made to get fighters to Sarasota as soon as possible.

Not only would it have been advisable to protect Air Force One, but it would have been only sensible as another way to protect Bush on the ground from terrorist attack even before he left the school. In Florida, there were two bases said to have fighters on 24-hour alert, capable of getting airborne in approximately five minutes. Homestead Air Station, 185 miles from Sarasota, and Tyndall Air Station, 235 miles from Sarasota; both had the highest readiness status on 9/11. Presumably, as happened at other bases across the country, just after 9:03, base commanders throughout Florida would have immediately begun preparations to get their fighters ready. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/02] Fighters left bases on the same alert status and traveled similar distances to reach Washington, DC, well before 10:00, so why were the fighters delayed in Florida? [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/9/02]

Military planes should have been over Sarasota by the time Bush left Booker at 9:35 a.m. Yet, as will be described below, more than one hour after Air Force One took off, there were still no fighters protecting it!


Air Force One departs Sarasota. [AP]

An administration official claimed, "The object seemed to be simply to get the President airborne and out of the way." [Telegraph, 12/16/01] But without fighter cover this makes little sense, because the sky was arguably more dangerous than the ground. At the time, there were still over 3,000 planes in the air over the US [USA Today, 8/13/02 (B)], including about half of the planes in the region of Florida where Bush was. [St. Petersburg Times, 9/7/02] Recall, too, that the Secret Service learned of a threat to Bush and Air Force One "just minutes after Bush left Booker Elementary." Karl Rove, also on Air Force One, confirmed that a dangerous threat was known before the plane took off: "They also made it clear they wanted to get us up quickly, and they wanted to get us to a high altitude, because there had been a specific threat made to Air Force One.... A declaration that Air Force One was a target, and said in a way that they called it credible." [New Yorker, 10/1/01]

www.cooperativeresearch.net...

Were There Threats to Air Force One?

Around 10:55 a.m., there was yet another threat to Air Force One. The pilot, Colonel Mark Tillman, said he was warned that a suspect airliner was dead ahead. "Coming out of Sarasota there was one call that said there was an airliner off our nose that they did not have contact with." Tillman took evasive action, pulling his plane even higher above normal traffic. [CBS, 9/11/02 (B)] Reporters on board noticed the rise in elevation. [Dallas Morning News, 8/28/02, Salon, 9/12/01] The report was apparently a false alarm, but it shows the folly of having Bush fly without a fighter escort.

The threat or threats to Air Force One were announced on September 12, after mounting criticism that Bush was out of sight in Louisiana and Nebraska during most of the day and did not return to Washington until 10 hours after the attacks. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said there was "real and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were targets." [White House, 9/12/01] On September 13, New York Times columnist William Safire wrote - and Bush's political strategist Karl Rove confirmed - that there was an "inside" threat that "may have broken the secret codes [showing a knowledge of presidential procedures]." [New York Times, 9/13/01] Had terrorists hacked their way into sensitive White House computers? Was there a mole in the White House?

No. It turned out the entire story was made up. [Washington Post, 9/27/01] The press expressed considerable skepticism about the story. For instance, one Florida newspaper thought Fleischer's disclosure was "an apparent effort to explain why the president was flown to Air Force bases" before returning to Washington. [St. Petersburg Times, 9/13/01] When asked on September 15 about the "credible evidence," Fleischer said, "we exhausted that topic about two days ago." [White House, 9/15/01] On September 26, CBS News reported: "Finally, there is this postscript to the puzzle of how someone presumed to be a terrorist was able to call in a threat against Air Force One using a secret code name for the president's plane.

Well, as it turns out, that simply never happened. Sources say White House staffers apparently misunderstood comments made by their security detail." [CBS, 9/26/01] One former official who served in George Bush Sr.'s administration told Human Events Online, which bills itself as "the national conservative weekly," that he was "deeply disappointed by [Bush's] zigzagging across the country." [Human Events Online, 9/17/01] At the end of the month, Slate magazine awarded its "Whopper of the Week" to Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, and Dick Cheney. [Slate, 9/28/01]


www.cooperativeresearch.net...

Mudja I used the source you have linked in your opening post it seems to do a very good job of reporting on Bush and AF1 that day. I use it often and is one reasons I believe the Bush Cabal where involved in 9/11.




[edit on 26/9/2005 by Sauron]

Mudja have you studied the military force structure in the US since shortly before 9/11? The Air National Guard and the US Air Force Reserve have been taking over more and more missions from the "Regular" Air Force. A large portion of the tankers, and more and more bomber wings are Air National Guard The ANG has most of the responsibility for air defense in the US because they are less likely to be deployed in the big numbers that the "regluar" Air Force squadrons are. Not to mention that there are areas where there aren't any "regular" fighter squadrons. Where I live is a good example. Our "regular" squadron is a VIP transport squadron. Our ANG unit is responsible for area defense, tanker support, and airlift. We're just about to add a consolidated C-17 squadron that will be USAF/ANG.

And before you start knocking them the ANG is JUST AS GOOD and in some cases BETTER than the USAF squadrons. Just because you hear them called "weekend warriors" doesn't mean they don't train just as hard, or that there aren't full time troops that work every day just like the "regular" USAF squadrons.

Whether it's ANG or not, it's going to take just as long. You simply CAN NOT RUSH when it comes to weapons. There's a great interview with the commander of a "regular" squadron at Andrews AFB where he comes out and says point blank that it would take them AT LEAST 45 minutes to get planes launched with just the canon and no missiles, and up to two hours with a full loadout. And they were "regular" AF.

"The Air National Guard exclusively performs the air sovereignty mission in the continental United States, and those units fall under the control of the 1st Air Force based at Tyndall Air Force Base (AFB) in Panama City, Florida. The Air National Guard maintains seven alert sites with 14 fully armed fighters and pilots on call around the clock."

Another thing I'd like to point out is that the Air Force will not automatically launch fighters to escort AF1, even if they hear about a threat to it. The escort must be REQUESTED before it is launched. There are certain rules about AF1 that are written in stone and not changed.

[edit on 9/26/2005 by Zaphod58]

[edit on 9/26/2005 by Zaphod58]

Zaphod58...have you any sources or links to back these "facts" up? The reason I am asking again is that I find it hard to believe that at least some fighters would not be ready to protect the President of the United States.

Sauron has shown us a link with some good points that back up the fact that there were fighters capable of protecting AF1 within a short time.

I am not saying you are wrong Zaphod58, but why would there not be at least one or two fighters already armed and flight-ready in case of emergency around the White House or Washington. In Sauron's post it lists several bases where these fighters could have come from.

I doubt you'll believe most of them, but read em anyway.

www.9-11commission.gov...
www.vialls.com...
www.globalsecurity.org...
www.nydailynews.com...

The rest, about escorting AF1 in flight is from personal experience from talking to the flight crew, and the little bit that the Secret Service would let them talk about.

www.globalsecurity.org...

“On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen,” the report will say, according to a Wednesday New York Times account. “What ensued was a hurried attempt to create an improvised defense by officials who had never encountered or trained against the situation they faced.”

This is really surprising as we have heard that NORAD were running drills where the scenarios were very close to what happened on 9/11.
www.oilempire.us...

There are reports of fighters being launched, but not topping out at max speed, so had no chance to catch and shoot down the planes:

"Two F-15s take off from Otis Air Force Base. [Washington Post, 9/15/01] They go after Flight 175. Major General Paul Weaver, director of the Air National Guard, states "the pilots flew like a scalded ape, topping 500 mph but were unable to catch up to the airliner. We had a nine-minute window, and in excess of 100 miles to intercept 175,'' he said. ''There was just literally no way.'' [Dallas Morning News, 9/15/01] F-15's fly at up to 2.5 times the speed of sound [1875 mph or 30+ miles a minute or 270+ miles in nine minutes] and are designed for low-altitude, high-speed, precision attacks. [BBC]"

www.wanttoknow.info...

If the fighters got into the air 9 minutes before flight175 crashed, then there was a capability to get fighters off the ground in time.

"If NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) hears of any difficulties in the skies, they begin the work to scramble jet fighters [take off and intercept aircraft that are off course]. Between Sep 2000 and June 2001 fighters were scrambled 67 times. [AP, 8/12/02] When the Lear jet of golfer Payne Stewart didn’t respond in 1999, F-16 interceptors were quickly dispatched. According to an Air Force timeline, a series of military planes provided an emergency escort to Payne’s stricken Lear about 20 minutes after ground controllers lost contact with his plane.[Dallas Morning News, 10/26/99]"

www.wanttoknow.info...

So, there appears to be conflicting reports as to the response capability of the American Air Defence Systems around 9/11. Every-which-way we turn, there is a report that contradicts another. Why are we hearing that there were fighters in the air in time to intercept the hijacked planes, then hearing that this was impossible? Who is telling the truth, and will we ever find out?

I guess it's just who you believe...the US Government or the People.

99% of NORAD drills DO NOT involve real planes. They are done on computer screens, for the controllers. This was almost definately the case on 9/11 as well. Just because they were running drills similar to what happened, doesn't mean the real world controllers and the FAA were prepared for what happened. NORAD was runing the drill, but it wouldn't involve the FAA, or actual Air Traffic Controllers. See point 3 for more information on this.

Sure there WERE planes that were capable of getting off the ground on time. HOWEVER, there are a few catches.
1. A fighter CAN NOT go at its top speed with external fuel tanks and weapons pylons. The top speed is in a totally clean configuration, and higher altitudes, where the air is thinner, and they can go faster. With external stores mounted, there is too much drag for them to reach their top speed. An F-15 has a rated top speed of Mach 2.5 (1,665 MPH). With two to three fuel tanks, and 8 missiles mounted, it is in the high transonic range, which is near 5-600 mph ar sea level.

2. For a fighter to REACH top speed, it must be in afterburner. An engine in afterburner has a fuel consumption of approximately 125% of normal. An F-15 has an internal fuel capacity of 13, 455 pounds (approx 2000 gallons) , with the capacity to add an additional 12,920 pounds (1900 gallons) in three exteral fuel tanks. The ferry range, with all three external, and full internal fuel load is over 2,000 miles. The COMBAT range is about 600 miles.. This is because at least part of the flight during combat missions is in afterburner. To give you an idea of how an afterburner affects fuel consumption, again using an F-15, the military thrust for the Eagle (full power minus afterburner) is 14, 590 pounds, or 7,295 pounds of thrust per engine. FULL power, with afterburner is 23,770 pounds, or 11,885 pounds per engine. That's almost the entire rated thrust at military power for BOTH engines. PER engine. To have almost double the thrust, you have to have almost double the fuel flow. A fighter doing Air Combat manuvering, which involves lots of afterburner use, has a flight time of approximately 45 minutes before they have to either refuel from a tanker or return to base.

Now, for at least part of the time the hijacked flights were NOT tracked by ATC radar, which means they were NOT tracked by NORAD. Somewhere around 90% of the radars in the entire US are civilian ATC radars, that are connected to the screens in NORAD, with the exception of the early warning radars at different points along the coasts. You would have had to get the fighters to the area you last had contact with the flights, and they would have to start a search pattern using their own radars. This requires time. Time you aren't going to have if you go screaming in at full afterburner.

3. NORAD WILL NOT LAUNCH to intercept a hijacking, unless the FAA calls them directly and requests them to. They will ONLY automatically launch if something enters the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) without proper id/authorization, which happens probably a couple hundred times a month. And contrary to popular myth we have NOT had airborne fighter patrols in the ADIZ in many many mnay years. Too costly, put too many hours on the airframes, caused too many maintenance problems, too much potential for accidents. If the FAA takes 30 minutes to decide that a flight is a hijacking, and not a technical problem with the IFF, or radio, then it will add 30 minutes to the time it takes the fighters to get airborne.

For more information on the Eagle, you can see it here.
www.airtoaircombat.com...

Almost all of this information is from either personal research, most of it offline, so no you won't get links to it, but I'm sure you can find it on the net if you're willing to do a little work for it. I've got other issues to deal with, and don't have the time to hunt it all down for you.

Originally posted by celticniall
What I find remarkable is that Bush was allowed to carry on his engagement on Booker Elementary school when everyone knew that planes had been hijacked and were crashing into WTC.
Wht did the Secret Service not evacuate Bush immediately upon hearing about the attacks? The White House had relesaed Bush's schedule days before, so the public knew where he was. Did the Secret Service know Bush wasn't in danger and there wasn't a plane heading for the school to take Bush out? How did they know?

Yeah, I know. The dude just sat there reading My Pet Goat. While there was a national emergency going on. If it were me, I would have politely excused myself and told what was going on. Pronto.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
99% of NORAD drills DO NOT involve real planes.

Well, 9/11 must've been one of those 1%'s.

Operations Vigiliant Warrior and/or Vigilant Guardian:

These were apparently a pair of war games (attacker versus defender) which involved live-fly simulations of hijackings. Both this pair of operations and Northern Vigilance probably involved the use of "injects" into screens to simulate aircraft. These games apparently resembled the actual attack sufficiently to confuse military officers, as suggested by the following transcript.

FAA Boston Center contacts NEADS, saying, "We need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out."

“Is this real world or an exercise?” asked the military liaison officer?

"No, this is not an exercise," responded the FAA official. "Not a test." 2

The quote referencing footnote "2" cites BBC News, 6/18/04.
Source.

Further tesimony confirming Vigiliant Guardian being live-fly:

This exercise simulated hijacked planes in the north eastern sector and started to coincide with 9/11. Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins, NORAD unit's airborne control and warning officer, was overseeing the exercise. At 8:40am she took a call from Boston Center which said it had a hijacked airliner. Her first words, as quoted by Newhouse News Service were, "It must be part of the exercise." This is another example of how the numerous drills on the morning of 9/11 deliberately distracted NORAD so that the real hijacked planes couldn't be intercepted in time.

Deskins' comment is from a Newhouse News Service article, dated January 25, 2002.
Source.

Does this sound like confusion over computer simulations? Someone outside of NORAD contacts NORAD about a hijacking, and a colonel responds that it must be a part of an excercise. If it was a computer simulation, I don't think the Boston Center would've been contacting NORAD.


Secondly, Operation Northern Vigilance diverted planes usually in the North-Eastern US into Alaska and Canada:

September 9, 2001

NORAD Maintains Northern Vigilance

Contact: (719) 554-5816

CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN AFS, Colo. – The North American Aerospace Defense Command shall deploy fighter aircraft as necessary to Forward Operating Locations (FOLS) in Alaska and Northern Canada to monitor a Russian air force exercise in the Russian arctic and North Pacific ocean.

“NORAD is the eyes and ears of North America and it is our mission to ensure that our air sovereignty is maintained,” said Lieutenant-General Ken Pennie, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of NORAD. “Although it is highly unlikely that Russian aircraft would purposely violate Canadian or American airspace, our mission of vigilance must be sustained.”

NORAD-allocated forces will remain in place until the end of the Russian exercise.

NORAD conducted operation Northern Denial from December 1 to 14, 2000 in response to a similar, but smaller scale, Russian deployment of long-range bombers at northern Russian air bases. NORAD-allocated forces were deployed to three FOLS, two in Alaska and one in Canada. More than 350 American and Canadian military men and women were in involved in the deployment.

Source (taken directly from NORAD's own site).

Are these live-flies another coincidence we are to believe in?

So what if it was live fly. ALERT FIGHTERS DO NOT PARTICIPATE. It's that simple. If a base has alert fighters they NEVER participate in an exercise. Their SOLE purpose is to stand by in case they need to launch to intercept someone. And if they DON'T have Alert Fighters, it will STILL take up to two hours to get them armed and scrambled. Even if it's an entire WING exercise, the Alert Fighters NEVER LEAVE THE GROUND.

I would rather argue the point that the wargames caused confusion, and inhibited our air response. Colonel Deskins' misguided judgment alone is testimony to this.

But let's take your two-hour figure. What relevance does this have to a reasonable air response to a flight such as 11 or 175 or 77 or 93 on 9/11? Because all of these flights are known to have had responses much sooner than anything even close to two hours. More like 6 minutes in regards to flights 11 and 77.

According to NORAD, the FAA notified NEADS of Flight 77's hijacking at 9:24 AM. By 9:30, F-16s were airborne for this specific flight from Langley AFB. That's 6 minutes. This is what one would expect from the world's military giant.

There was also only a 6-minute response for Flight 11, but what makes Flight 77 special is that (a) the planes were scrambled from Langley AFB, about 130 miles to the South of the Pentagon, rather than Andrews AFB, some 10 miles from the Pentagon, and (b) two planes with similar behaviors (way off-course, transponders off, no contact with pilot, etc.) had already crashed into the WTC Towers in an obvious attack on American civilians, and this plane is also heading towards Washington when it should be heading towards California.

Uh, because the thread has to do with how long it took for AIR FORCE ONE to get fighter escort. NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TWIN TOWERS OR THE PENTAGON OR FLIGHT 93!

...if I were the President, I'd want to get up in Airforce One ASAP, escort or not. I would think it would be easier to avoid problems there then sitting on the ground somewhere in Florida. I would expect AF1 is one of the safest places on the planet, ground or air, when it comes to a security issue.

We now know that our defenses were lower then they should have been, but hind sight is 20/20. Do people really think that we have planes, fully armed, warmed up waiting on every other runway in the country? Even IF we did, people would have complained & deemed it a waste before 9-11.

People also forget that when the first plane hit the WTC, most people didn't think "terrorists", but a stupid pilot. This monday morning quarter backing isn't very productive, because you can bet that the same people complaining now will be around next time too, no matter what we do or they do.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
Uh, because the thread has to do with how long it took for AIR FORCE ONE to get fighter escort. NOTHING TO DO WITH THE TWIN TOWERS OR THE PENTAGON OR FLIGHT 93!

Then I apologize for being off-subject.

And here's a friendly, non-homosexual kiss for you, Zaphod, as a token of my apologies.

I'm sorry if I lost it a little bit today, but things have not been good here for me lately. My fiancee tried suicide the other day, and things have been really ahrd between us for about a month now. We're so far apart that it's hard to put things back together, since we can only talk online for now. So I was a little stressed out earlier, and took it out here.