http://digwithin.net/2013/01/12/eberhart/
Posted on January 12, 2013

By Kevin Ryan

In a 2004 U.S. Senate hearing, Senator Mark Dayton remarked that “this country and its citizens were completely undefended” for “109 minutes” on 9/11.[1] Dayton went on to clarify that officials within the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) had covered up the facts about the lack of air defenses by lying to the 9/11 Commission, to Congress and to the American people. And they were not held accountable.

One man was most responsible for both the air defense failures and the lying that covered it up. U.S. Air Force General Ralph Edward Eberhart had taken over command of NORAD from General Richard Myers in February 2000. The position included leadership of all air defense operations in North America and, also, the U.S. Space Command. Therefore, on 9/11, Eberhart was the man most responsible for failure to intercept the four hijacked aircraft over a period of nearly two hours.

MEDIA ROOTS – This is the re-release of a special 2 hour 20 minute episode of Media Roots Radio about 9/11, now fully sourced and transcribed below. In this edition, Abby and Robbie Martin introduce how their political awakenings were prompted by 9/11, and break apart the official government and corporate media narrative of the 9/11 attacks by discussing the foreknowledge, government complicity, and gross inconsistencies regarding every aspect of the events. The show then delves into the aftermath: the psychological manipulation of the American psyche and the significance that this event continues to have in our nation and world.

***

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.

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.

From: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dr-gridlock/2010/07/norad_plans_washing...

The North American Aerospace Defense Command will conduct early morning exercises over the Washington area.

The exercises will take place between midnight and 2 a.m. Tuesday and Wednesday. Civil Air Patrol aircraft and Coast Guard HH-65 Dolphin helicopters will take part in the exercise.

These exercise flights have been conducted throughout the U.S. and Canada since the start of Operation Noble Eagle, the command's response to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

-- Associated Press

Recently Added Events
http://www.historycommons.org/project.jsp?project=911_project

Showing 1-20 of 100 recently added events:

* 6/28 - NEADS Instructs AWACS Plane to Return to Washington Area to Help It Communicate with Fighters, (11:25 a.m.) September 11, 2001, posted by matt
* 6/28 - Marine Fighters Arrive over Washington but Lack Correct Authentication Code, (11:25 a.m.) September 11, 2001, posted by matt
* 6/28 - Attorney General Ashcroft’s Plane Diverted to Richmond, Threatened with Being Shot Down, 11:11 a.m. September 11, 2001, posted by matt
* 6/28 - Attorney General Ashcroft Ignores FAA Order for His Plane to Land, 10:40 a.m. September 11, 2001, posted by matt
* 6/28 - Unarmed Fighters Find Target Is Just US Military Aircraft, (10:35 a.m.) September 11, 2001, posted by matt
* 6/27 - FAA Controller Passes on Shootdown Authorization to Toledo Fighters, Because NEADS Cannot Reach Them, (Shortly After 10:32 a.m.) September 11, 2001, posted by matt
* 6/27 - FAA’s Boston Center Declares ‘ATC Zero’, (Shortly After 10:20 a.m.) September 11, 2001, posted by matt

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

- Senator Mark Dayton

The famous document authorizing shoot down of planes dated 1 June 2001. It's been said this was changed just before 9/11, in June, to give the Sec of Defense authority to order shoot down aircraft. Actually it was updated from 1997 and hardly anything changed from the 1997 order but this is an important document nontheless..........

"1. Purpose. This instruction provides guidance to the Deputy Director for Operations (DDO), National Military Command Center (NMCC), and operational commanders in the event of an aircraft piracy (hijacking) or request for destruction of derelict airborne objects."

"NMCC is the focal point within Department of Defense for providing assistance. In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference d, forward requests for DOD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval."

"(1) When notified that military escort aircraft are needed in

Unacceptable.

By Agence France-Presse
Friday, November 20th, 2009

The government is to review an air defense system established after the September 11, 2001 attacks to determine whether the costly program is still necessary, the New York Times reported Friday.

The review is expected to include a complete reassessment of the threat of a terror attack by air and will consider the cumulative effects of various security measures taken since the 2001 attacks.

"The fighter force is extremely expensive, so you always have to ask yourself the question 'How much is enough?'" Major General Pierre Forgues, the Canadian who currently serves as director of operations for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, commonly known as Norad, told the paper.

The Times notes that US "Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., the head of Norad and Northern Command, ordered the review in response to criticism this year by the Government Accountability Office that the command had failed to conduct 'routine risk assessments.' General Renuart expanded the scope of the review 'to refine how we allocate and request resources today,' said the commands’ spokesman, James Graybeal."

Transcript by Erik Larson- John Farmer, guest of Brad Friedman on Mike Malloy Radio Show, Sept 11, 2009

Brad Friedman- … John Farmer is the Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission, he served as the Attorney General of New Jersey, Chief Counsel to Governor Christine Todd Whitman, he’s now the Dean of Rutgers University Law School… and he joins us here tonight… very happily so- he is the author of a new book, ‘The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11’- John Farmer, welcome to the Mike Malloy program.

John Farmer- Thanks Brad, I really appreciate it- thanks for having me.

Attorney William Veal asked if I were interested in supporting April Gallop's lawsuit against Cheney, Rumsfeld and Meyers and if I could make some statements from my perspective and analysis being a pilot and former Air Traffic Controller. I agreed to do so and provided a lengthy [and less than professionally written] affidavit covering the aviation, NORAD, radar and other data research and conclusions which I have accumulated so far.

Its important to note that I believe that the FDR for AA77? has been tampered with and any conclusions based upon that data is subject to such errors, but I made some points based upon the FDR anyway. The same goes for the RADES radar data that I have been able to analyze...I believe that the RADES radar data has been scrubbed or compromised also. However, it is data that has been made available to us and we need to look at it for what it is.

D.C. Crash Kills General Who Scrambled Jets on 9/11

David F. Wherley Jr., the head of the Washington National Guard who scrambled jets over the city during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was among those killed in the worst commuter train crash in the city’s history, officials said.
Wherley’s wife, Ann, was also among the nine people killed when a train plowed into the rear of a stopped train during rush hour on June 22, Quintin Peterson, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department, said in a telephone interview. Both were 62 and lived in southeast Washington.

Wherley was commander of the 113th Fighter Wing at Andrews Air Force base in Maryland during the September 2001 terrorist attacks and sent up aircraft with orders to protect the White House and the Capitol, according to the 9/11 Commission report.

He commanded the District of Columbia National Guard from 2003 to 2008, the unit said in a statement.

The US military conducted a training exercise in the five days before the September 11 attacks that included simulated aircraft hijackings by terrorists, according to a 9/11 Commission document recently found in the US National Archives. In one of the scenarios, implemented on September 9, terrorists hijacked a London to New York flight, planning to blow it up with explosives over New York.

The undated document, entitled "NORAD EXERCISES Hijack Summary," was part of a series of 9/11 Commission records moved to the National Archives at the start of the year. It was found there and posted to the History Commons site at Scribd by History Commons contributor paxvector in the files of the commission's Team 8, which focused on the failed emergency response on the day of the attacks. The summary appears to have been drafted by one of the commission's staffers, possibly Miles Kara, based on documents submitted by NORAD.

I was going back through the NEADS tapes we released in 2007 and discovered something a little strange ...

DRM1 DAT2 Channel 4 ID Op

08:46:15: New York told me to hold on, you heard that, right?

08:46:36: Come on New York. (Dooley again) You know what, you know what, let's
get a tail number off of for American 11. (Roundtree) Call Boston, American 11 tail
number. (Dooley) Tell them we need the tail number of the aircraft, (male voice)
American one one. (Roundtree to New York) Yes it is, (right now he's primary only.)
Do you have Mode 3 or anything? Or a location? (Fm not showing anything, no.) Lat
Ion? (Hold on, I'll get a lat lon.) Good.

NORTH TOWER IS STRUCK AT 8:46:48.

08:47:05: (Dooley?) We're going to get an updated lat Ion now. (to background
question) We called Boston his filed one [Mode 3] was 1443, but he's not working that,
he's primary only, we're getting an updated lat Ion position. (I'm showing 40 39 North.)
40 39 North. (74 03 West) 74 03 West.

08:47:35: End of HUNTRESS call to NY AMIS

---

If you input that Lat/Long into Google Maps ...

Langley Air Force Base was the second military base that launched fighter jets to defend America in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Three of its F-16s were ordered to take off toward Washington at 9:24 a.m. that morning, but by the time they were airborne, more than 40 minutes had passed since the first attack on the World Trade Center, and almost half an hour since the second.

Furthermore, the pilots were hindered by an extraordinary combination of confusion, communications problems, conflicting orders, breaches of protocol, and other difficulties. Consequently, when the Pentagon was hit at 9:37 a.m., the jets were further away from it than they'd been when they took off. According to witnesses on the ground, fighters did not arrive over the Pentagon until around 10:40 a.m.--more than an hour too late to protect it from the attack.

A close examination of publicly available accounts raises the possibility that deliberate attempts were made to sabotage the ability of the Langley jets to respond to the 9/11 attacks, thereby paralyzing normal, well-practiced procedures. In this article, I focus on three particular aspects of the jets' response.

Jon Gold
5/7/2009

Today, Rawstory reported on New York Times columnist Frank Rich, and his belief that the Defense Department Inspector General's office's investigations over the years may have been cover-ups that were "carried out in response to "orders from above." He said that any report "over the past five or six years during the war in Iraq" may be suspect, and that "there may be a much bigger story here."

Really?

Retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers has published a memoir. Predictably, Eyes on the Horizon carries an impressive payload of military-industrial propaganda in support of the “War on Terror”. But most interesting is Myers’ chapter recollecting the “defining moment” of September 11, which begins thusly:

"My driver, Dan Downey, braked hard at the Pentagon River Entrance, and we jumped from the car. The steps were crowded with men and women fleeing the building, many still coughing from the smoke inside."

From what is this thrilling Doc Savagesque prose meant to distract us?

On September 11, 2001 Air Force General Richard Myers was the Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and yet his tale of that day begins some time after the Pentagon was officially attacked at 9:38 a.m. What about the 35 minutes after the South Tower was hit, announcing a coordinated operation to the world? What about the 52 minutes after F-15s were finally scrambled from Otis to intercept a hijacked airliner at that moment striking the North Tower?

In April 2006, journalist Michael Bronner received in the post 30 hours of recordings he had requested from the Pentagon. These recordings, which came as a series of computer audio files on three CDs, had captured events on the operations floor at NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector throughout the day of September 11, 2001. [1] NORAD--the North American Aerospace Defense Command--is the military organization responsible for monitoring and defending the airspace of North America. Its Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), based in Rome, New York, is responsible for monitoring and protecting 500,000 square miles of airspace above the northeast U.S., including the airspace over New York City and Washington, DC. [2] It was within this airspace that the 9/11 attacks occurred, and from the NEADS operations floor that the U.S. military's response originated. Evidence of what happened there that day is clearly in the public interest and of obvious importance for attempts to unravel how the attacks were able to succeed. In an August 2006 Vanity Fair article based on the recordings, Bronner therefore referred to these "NORAD tapes" as "the authentic military history of 9/11." [3]

This comes from DNotice.org, in a piece entitled 'The NORAD Papers III,' which follows two other informative reports from them about NORAD that people have submitted to 911bloggger.

Their article begins:

In The NORAD Papers and The NORAD Papers II we learned from government/military documents, media reports, university curricula, etc. dating from before 1995 to 1999 that NORAD since its founding in 1958 was tasked with three missions:

1. surveillance and control of the airspace covering the United States and Canada;

2. providing the NCAs [National Command Authorities] with tactical warning and attack assessment of an aerospace attack against North America; and

3. providing an appropriate response to any form of an air attack.1

The Officiial Excuse for 9/11, 'Failure To Imagine' Excuse Debunked!

The Bush Administration offered up the 'failure to imagine' excuse for the response to 9/11.
President Bush: "We knew he [Osama bin Laden] had designs on us, we knew he hated us. But there was nobody in our government, and I don't think [in] the prior government, that could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale," he said.

Well according to NORAD's own statements, Project Positive Force, a Special Operations unit tasked with thinking like a terrorist and how they might attack the United States, "imagined" that a hijacked plane would be crashed into the Pentagon.

Terry Ropes, the Special Operations officier, defended the idea, but Pacific Command thought it was too unrealistic. Numerous warnings in the late 1990's also included a possible plot to fly an explosive laden aircraft into an American city.

The information contained in the explosive report, also discusses NORAD's regular intercept exercises of hijack aircraft prior to 9/11!

Read the full article from the Guardian Unlimited: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/apr/15/usa.september11

feedback, ideas, link/logic/fact checking, etc. appreciated. This one is too long, i think, and i still could've put a lot more stuff into it, but my goal is mainly to introduce info to new people and interest them in following the links, i'm just summarizing research others have done.

9/11 Truth, Part 6 of 11: Air Defense “Failures”, Simultaneous War Games & Continuity of Government
http://911reports.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/911-truth-part-6-of-11-air-defense-“failures”-simultaneous-war-games-continuity-of-government/

Click here for all the articles in the 9/11 Truth Overview Series
http://911reports.wordpress.com/911-truth-overview-series/

OpEdNews.com http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=8800

This article summarizes some of the events concerning the 4 hijacked flights on 9/11, provides information on standard air defense procedures and warnings received prior to 9/11 and gives a brief overview of the multiple war games and military operations surrounding 9/11, including Continuity of Government planning. Links are provided for more in depth research.

Air Defense “Failures”:

Flight 11:

Some more A5 booklet PDFs free to download:

The First 15 Minutes of September 11th. Former Air Traffic Controller Robin Hordon tells Jeremy Baker

what should have happened. US and UK editions available.

Open Civil Engineering Journal - 14 Points scholars' paper. UK edition. US edn. to follow.

Usual URL: http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=ac1039fd00817eecd2db6fb9a8902bda

This is one of the MAJOR problems with the official account, and NEEDS to be resolved.

http://deanjackson60.googlepages.com/thenoradpapersii

In The NORAD Papers we learned from documents dating from the 1990s that NORAD had three core missions since its creation in 1958. These are:

a. surveillance and control of the airspace of the United States and Canada;

b. providing the NCAs with tactical warning and attack assessment of an aerospace attack against North America; and

c. providing an appropriate response to any form of an air attack.

The last two missions constitute NORAD’s "outward" search for hostile aircraft approaching the North American continent. NORAD’s first mission, however, tasks the agency to monitor and control all aircraft within the United States’ and Canada’s air space. This is what NORAD calls "air sovereignty". Let’s take a closer look at what constitutes "air sovereignty".

As reported by the Government Accountability Office in 1994 "NORAD defines air sovereignty as providing surveillance and control of the territorial airspace, which includes:

1. intercepting and destroying uncontrollable air objects;

Wait; are they suuurre that wasn't a missile surrounded by a hologram? Well, it's just establishment propaganda anyway; i do hope someone or many are checking it for new info, contradictions, lies, distortions, slip-ups and the like, i don't have the time (or the brains)

http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/21411024.html

Midwest Pilot Almost Hit Plane On 9/11
Associated Press

MILWAUKEE - Midwest Airlines pilot Gerald Earwood was flying about 100 miles west of New York when he first noticed what seemed like wisps of smoke coming off the World Trade Center.

Roughly 15 minutes later, Earwood and co-pilot Eric Fjelstad were frantically maneuvering their DC-9 jet to avoid colliding with United Airlines Flight 175, the second airplane to hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Their work, following orders from air traffic controllers, saved the lives of about 30 passengers and five crew members of Midwest Flight 7.

A minute or so later, United 175 -- which also came close to colliding with other planes that morning -- struck the south tower of the World Trade Center.