Thomas McGuinness, the co-pilot of American Airlines Flight 11 before it became the first plane to be hijacked in the 9/11 attacks, only assigned himself to be on the flight the afternoon before September 11, 2001, and pushed from it the original co-pilot, who had put his name down for the flight less than half an hour earlier. This new information means that, curiously, half of the pilots and co-pilots originally at the controls of the four aircraft involved in the attacks are now known to have been assigned to the doomed flights at the last minute, very shortly before September 11. Additionally, more than half of the flight attendants and many of the passengers are known to have, similarly, not originally been booked onto those flights.

The details of McGuinness's late assignment to Flight 11 were revealed recently by Steve Scheibner, who was originally going to be the plane's co-pilot. In a short film released on the Internet just before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Scheibner described how McGuinness came to replace him on Flight 11 and thereby saved his life.

FLIGHT 11 HAD 'NO PILOT ASSIGNED TO IT YET'
At the time of the 9/11 attacks, Scheibner was a fundamentalist Baptist pastor and a commander in the Naval Reserves, but he also worked part-time as an on-call pilot for American Airlines. [1] He had been available to fly on September 11. "So at about three o'clock in the afternoon of September 10," Scheibner recalled, "I sat down at the computer and I logged in like I normally do, to check to see if there was any unassigned flying for the next day. And sure enough there was one trip that was available on September 11. It was American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston's Logan Airport to Los Angeles." Scheibner looked at the flight and could see that "there was no pilot assigned to it yet."

From the History Commons Groups blog:

Numerous new entries have been added to the Complete 9/11 Timeline at History Commons, many of which deal with the US military's actions around the time of--and in response to--the 9/11 attacks, while other new entries provide important information about the military's responses to suspicious aircraft prior to 9/11.

New timeline entries describe how NORAD--the military organization responsible for defending US airspace--regularly launched fighter jets in response to suspicious aircraft in the years before 9/11, with fighters able to take off within minutes of a scramble order.

While September 11, 2001 is well known as the day when the U.S. suffered its worst terrorist attack, what is little known is that it was also a day when large sections of the armed forces around the nation had been preparing to fight a simulated nuclear war, as part of major training exercises being conducted at the time. In their annual exercises "Vigilant Guardian" and "Global Guardian," the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the United States Strategic Command (Stratcom) were scheduled to carry out what has been described as a "simulated air war," a "full-blown nuclear war" exercise, a "fictional nuclear war," and a "practice Armageddon."

No official attempts have been made to fully investigate these exercises and what effect they had on the military's response to the 9/11 attacks. But evidence indicates they caused at least some confusion over what was "real-world" and what was simulation, and they may also have been a factor behind the communication problems experienced by military personnel that day. Other evidence suggests that some actions that have been presented as reactions to the terrorist attacks may actually have been related to these exercises--actions such as raising the alert status of American armed services to Defcon 3 and closing the huge "blast doors" to NORAD's operations center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. There is also evidence that other "practice Armageddon" exercises were being conducted at the time of the 9/11 attacks, but details of these are unknown.

AMERICA'S AIR DEFENDERS WERE SET TO FIGHT A 'SIMULATED AIR WAR' ON SEPTEMBER 11
Perhaps the most important exercise to consider is NORAD's exercise called "Vigilant Guardian." Close examination of this exercise is imperative due to the crucial role NORAD had to play in responding to the 9/11 attacks.

From the History Commons Groups blog:

A large number of new entries have been added to the Complete 9/11 Timeline at History Commons describing important events that took place on the day of 9/11, while other new entries add to the growing body of information about 9/11-related training exercises.

One new entry describes how, from 1998, the US Secret Service included computer simulations of planes crashing into the White House in its training exercises. Another notable exercise was held early on the morning of September 11 in the White House Situation Room, based on the scenario of a terrorist bombing in the Middle East.

Despite claims by the U.S. government that the events of 9/11 were unexpected, from 1998 the Secret Service was "crashing planes into the White House ... on a simulation program provided by the military" during training exercises, according to a retired Secret Service agent who had been involved with running those simulations. When this individual and his Secret Service colleagues learned that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001, one of those colleagues pointed to him and commented, "You know all about that." [1]

The existence of these plane crash simulations was revealed by Paul Nenninger, who worked for the Secret Service for 26 years, in a chapter he wrote for a book published in 2005. In 1997, Nenninger had been assigned to the Secret Service's James J. Rowley Training Center, just outside Washington, DC, in Beltsville, Maryland, where he served as program manager in charge of the Security and Incident Modeling Lab (SIMLAB). [2]

A thriller novel published in February 2000 predicted the possibility of a commercial aircraft crashing into the World Trade Center in a terrorist attack, and described other scenarios closely resembling aspects of the 9/11 attacks. Indeed, the similarity between these scenarios and events in the United States 19 months after the book's release suggests that someone--perhaps an individual working in the U.S. military or intelligence community--might have had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and passed on some of what they knew to the book's author as storyline ideas, maybe as an attempt at warning people of the impending catastrophe.

The novel, Blackout, was written by New York Times best-selling author John J. Nance, who is "arguably the king of the modern-day aviation thriller," according to Publishers Weekly. [1] The book's plot revolves around the two main characters, Washington Post reporter Robert MacCabe and FBI agent Kat Bronsky, investigating what has caused two American jumbo jets to crash. It appears that terrorists are using a special ray gun stolen from the government to blind or kill pilots in flight, thereby leading to their planes crashing. [2]

TERRORISTS COULD CAUSE A PLANE TO CRASH INTO THE WTC
At one point in the story, Bronsky describes a scenario chillingly similar to what happened in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when two Boeing 767s were crashed into the World Trade Center. She is explaining to MacCabe her fear that the terrorists will cause another plane crash. She says: "They're going to shoot down another airliner somewhere. You know that, don't you?" She continues: "So who's next? Are we going to get a seven-forty-seven impacting the World Trade Center in New York because the two pilots were neutralized on takeoff from Newark [Airport] or Kennedy [Airport]?" [3]

What is more, one of the terrorists responsible for causing the plane crashes in Blackout is called "Ben Laren"--a name similar to that of (Osama) bin Laden, who, according to the official story, ordered the 9/11 attacks. [4]

From the History Commons Groups blog:

Many new entries have been added to the Complete 9/11 Timeline at History Commons, most of them describing events that took place on the day of 9/11.

Two important entries deal with events before 9/11, specifically regarding military training exercises. One entry reveals that prior to 9/11, NORAD practiced for hijackings five times per month at its operations center in Colorado. The other entry describes how, in the days before 9/11, the Army had been planning an exercise for the week after 9/11, based, remarkably, on the scenario of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center.

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.

Here is a short video by the German freelance journalist and author Paul Schreyer, based on his new book Inside 9/11, which "contains a short summary of the publicly available--but still widely unnoticed--evidence for a supposed attempt to obstruct the air defense on September 11th, 2001." The video focuses in particular on the actions of Colonel Robert Marr, the battle commander at NEADS on September 11, 2001.

Hopefully an English translation of Schreyer's book will be published at some point.

More information about Paul Schreyer and his new book is here:
http://inside-911.de/index.html

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.

In this incredible video clip, British hedge fund manager David Yarrow openly describes how he profited from the 9/11 attacks by short selling key shares in the minutes after the first attack on the World Trade Center. Yarrow also admits having similarly profited in response to the 2004 Madrid train bombings and the July 7, 2005 London bombings.

From the History Commons Groups blog:

A large number of new entries have been added to the Complete 9/11 Timeline at History Commons. Most of these describe events from the day of 9/11 itself, although a few entries look at pre-9/11 and post-9/11 events.

One new entry reveals that in April 2001, CIA counterterrorism chief Cofer Black warned that "something big [is] coming and that it very likely could be in the US." Then, about a month before 9/11, White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke visited Wall Street, to investigate the security precautions there.

"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.

Army officers at the Pentagon were planning a training exercise that would take place less than a week after 9/11 and that would, extraordinarily, be based around the scenario of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. Preparations for the exercise were being made about a week before September 11.

The existence of the planned exercise was revealed by Major General Peter Chiarelli, who on September 11, 2001, was the Army's director of operations, readiness, and mobilization. In that position, which he had moved into about a month before 9/11, Chiarelli was in charge of current operations in the Army Operations Center (AOC) at the Pentagon.

A special backup network that allows communications between government and military agencies to continue during emergencies was "miraculously" switched on the day before 9/11, and so was already operational when the terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon took place. The Special Routing Arrangement Service (SRAS) was, for reasons unknown, turned on for "exercise mode" on September 10, 2001, and was therefore ready to be utilized the following day, when there was a national emergency like that for which it was intended.

The SRAS is the responsibility of a little-known government agency called the National Communications System (NCS), which works to keep critical telecommunications functioning during emergencies and played a crucial role in the government's response to the 9/11 attacks, helping to maintain and restore communications networks. Furthermore, the SRAS is related to "Continuity of Government"--a plan that was activated for the first time during the attacks.

Here is another oddity surrounding the 9/11 attacks. Two new entries in the Complete 9/11 Timeline reveal that a New York air traffic controller mistakenly reported over an FAA teleconference that the first aircraft to crash into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was a helicopter, and this hit the north WTC tower at 8:27 a.m., almost 20 minutes before the attack there actually occurred.

The National Military Command Center (NMCC) is the most secure part of the Pentagon and, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, was "the focal point within [the] Department of Defense for providing assistance" to law enforcement efforts in response to aircraft hijackings in U.S. airspace, according to military instructions. [1] In response to the attacks on New York and Washington, the job of the NMCC, according to the 9/11 Commission, was "to gather the relevant parties and establish the chain of command between the National Command Authority--the president and the secretary of defense--and those who need to carry out their orders." [2]

Check out this curious incident relating to the 9/11 attacks. According to a new entry in the Complete 9/11 Timeline, at around 9 p.m. on the evening before 9/11--less than 12 hours before the attacks began--the U.S. military lowered its "Infocon" threat level to the lowest possible level, supposedly because of "reduced fears of attacks on computer networks."

The Infocon system is intended as "a structured, coordinated approach to defend against and react to attacks on Defense Department systems and networks." General Ralph Eberhart, the commander of NORAD, was responsible for issuing Infocons to the US military, and so he was presumably responsible for lowering the Infocon level on September 10. (See my previous blog entry for details of Eberhart's suspicious actions on the day of 9/11 itself.)

The Infocon level was raised again after the second plane hit the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Yet another strange "coincidence."

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

Military personnel responsible for defending U.S. airspace had false tracks displayed on their radar screens throughout the entire duration of the 9/11 attacks, as part of the simulation for a training exercise being conducted that day. Technicians at NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) were still receiving the simulated radar information around the time the third attack, on the Pentagon, took place. Those at NORAD's operations center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, were still receiving it several minutes after United Airlines Flight 93 apparently crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

No one has investigated why false tracks continued being injected onto NORAD radar screens long after the U.S. military was alerted to the real-world crisis taking place that morning. And yet we surely need to know more about these simulated "inputs" and what effect they had on the military's ability to respond to the 9/11 attacks.

NEADS TECHNICIANS TOLD TO TURN OFF 'SIM SWITCHES'

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) held a major training exercise in October 2000 that included the scenario of a person stealing a large jet plane, which they planned to crash into the United Nations headquarters building--a 39-story high-rise in New York, just a few miles away from the World Trade Center. Furthermore, a NORAD exercise in June that year included one scenario in which a plane was hijacked with the intention of crashing it into the White House, and another in which a transcontinental flight was hijacked with the intention of crashing the plane into the Statue of Liberty, only a short distance from where the WTC stood.

The existence of these exercise scenarios was revealed in August 2004 by General Richard Myers, at that time the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senator Mark Dayton (D-MN) asked, "Did NORAD"-- the military organization responsible for defending U.S. airspace--"conduct exercises or develop scenarios, prior to September 11, 2001, to test a military reaction to an aircraft hijacking which appeared destined to result in a suicide crash into a high-value target?" In response, Myers outlined "five exercise hijack events" that NORAD had practiced for between November 1999 and October 2000, which all "included a suicide crash into a high-value target." [1] Yet the details of these chilling scenarios, which were like premonitions of the attacks on New York and Washington that lay ahead, failed to receive the public attention they deserved.

Check out this excellent recent documentary, which has just been posted on the Internet, about Nato's secret armies that were set up across Western Europe after the Second World War. While these "stay-behind" armies were supposedly intended to help put together a resistance if the Soviet Union invaded their countries, they went on to commit terrorist attacks against their own populations, so as to influence domestic politics.

"During those entire 109 minutes ... this country
and its citizens were completely undefended." 

- Senator Mark Dayton

New York real estate developer Larry Silverstein and several key individuals associated with his firm, Silverstein Properties, appear to have had remarkable luck on September 11, 2001, when changes in their schedule or coincidental circumstances saved them from being high up in the World Trade Center when it was attacked.

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?

On September 11, 2001, Richard Clarke served in the crucial position of national coordinator for security and counterterrorism, and he ran the U.S. government's response to the terrorist attacks from the White House Situation Room. It was not until March 2004, though, that Clarke came to wider attention, when he went public with his complaints about members of the Bush administration, who, he said, ignored the threat posed by al-Qaeda before September 11, despite his attempts at alerting them to it. [1] Clarke received praise from some quarters for his various criticisms of then-President Bush.

What is little known, however, is that in 1994 Richard Clarke was one of the key individuals responsible for the lack of international response to the genocide in the small African nation of Rwanda, where an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed in just 100 days. At the time of the genocide, Clarke was head of the office of global issues and multilateral affairs on the National Security Council, and was therefore in charge of the White House response to Rwanda issues.

CLARKE CLAIMS U.S. 'DID THE RIGHT THING' OVER RWANDA

Shortly after the second World Trade Center tower was hit, at 9:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001, an officer at Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington, DC, was notified that the Secret Service wanted fighter jets launched over the nation's capital. It was now obvious the U.S. was under terrorist attack, and Washington would have been an obvious potential target. And yet the Secret Service's request came to nothing.

No fighters had taken off from Andrews by 9:37 a.m., when the Pentagon was hit. Nor had any launched by the time Flight 93 apparently crashed in Pennsylvania, shortly after 10:00 a.m., while flying toward Washington. In fact, fighters did not launch from Andrews until over 90 minutes after the second attack in New York. The first fully armed fighters did not launch from there until more than two hours after that attack. So why was the Secret Service's early request for help not acted upon? Why did fighter jets only take off from this massive Air Force base to defend the capital well after the morning's attacks had ended?

SECRET SERVICE CALLS FAA HEADQUARTERS

Why did airplanes fly around for an hour and a half without interceptors being
scrambled from Andrews [Air Force Base] ... right next to the capital?

- Paul Hellyer, Canadian minister of national defense, 1963-1967

Many aircraft at a military base just outside Washington, DC, were taking part in training exercises around the time the terrorist attacks occurred on September 11, 2001, it has been revealed. But whether these exercises impaired the ability of the various units at the base to effectively respond to the attacks has never been properly investigated.

From the History Commons Groups blog:

9/11 Training Exercise Planned for Simulated Plane Crash Five Minutes before Pentagon Attack Took Place

Five minutes before the Pentagon was hit on September 11, 2001, a training exercise being run by a US intelligence agency just over 20 miles from the Pentagon was set to include the scenario of a small private jet plane crashing into a building. It is unclear whether the scenario was played out, or if the exercise had been called off by that time.

Important details of the exercise, which was being conducted by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) at its headquarters in Chantilly, Virginia, are revealed in a document obtained by the 9/11 Commission. The document, titled "Early Morning Flight Activity September 11, 2001," was part of a series of 9/11 Commission records moved to the US National Archives at the start of this year. It was found there, and posted online, by History Commons contributor paxvector.

Two military aircraft were flying at high altitude near the Pentagon around the time it was hit on 9/11, but the identities of these aircraft and what they were doing over the Pentagon are unknown.

The planes had the call signs "Bobcat 14" and "Bobcat 17." A partial transcript of air traffic controller communications reveals they were communicating with the control tower at Washington's Reagan National Airport, which is less than a mile from the Pentagon, between at least 9:31 a.m. and 9:40 a.m. on September 11. [1] (The attack on the Pentagon took place at 9:37 a.m. [2]) Radar data has shown that the two aircraft flew "in trail" (in single file, with one directly behind the other) at an altitude of 21,000 feet, and were overhead in the few minutes before the Pentagon was hit. [3]

LAUNCHED FROM DOVER AIR BASE