Complete 911 Timeline
Military Exercises Up to 9/11
Project: Complete 911
Timeline
Open-Content project managed by Paul
Thompson
From http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=militaryExercises
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Time magazine reports in 1994, “During the Gulf War,
uniformed air-defense teams could be seen patrolling the top floor
[of the White House] with automatic rifles or
shoulder-mounted ground-to-air missiles.” [Time,
9/26/1994] While a battery of surface-to-air-missiles remains
permanently on the roof of the White House, the rest of these
defenses are apparently removed after the war is over. [Daily
Telegraph, 9/16/2001] Yet even though counterterrorism
officials later call the alerts in the summer of 2001 “the most
urgent in decades,” similar defensive measures will apparently
not be taken. [US
Congress, 9/18/2002]
At some point between 1991 and 2001, a regional NORAD sector holds
an exercise simulating a foreign hijacked airliner crashing into a
prominent building in the United States, the identity of which is
classified. According to military officials, the building is not the
World Trade Center or the Pentagon. The exercise involves some flying
of military aircraft, plus a “command post exercise”
where communication procedures are rehearsed in an office
environment. [CNN,
4/19/2004]
New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) was
created in 1996 by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to manage the city’s
response to catastrophes, including terrorist attacks (see 1996).
In the years preceding 9/11, it holds regular interagency training
exercises, aiming to carry out a tabletop or field exercise every
eight to 12 weeks. Mayor Giuliani is personally involved in many of
these. Scenarios drilled include disasters such as poison-gas
releases, anthrax attacks, and truck bombs. One exercise, which takes
place in May 2001, is based on terrorists attacking New York with
bubonic plague (see May
11, 2001). Another, conducted in conjunction with the New York
Port Authority, includes a simulated plane crash. Just one week
before 9/11, OEM is preparing a tabletop exercise with the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), to develop plans for
business continuity in New York’s Financial District—where
the World Trade Center is located—after a terrorist attack.
Jerome Hauer, OEM director from 1996 to February 2000, later
testifies, “We looked at every conceivable threat that anyone
on the staff could think of, be it natural or intentional but not the
use of aircraft as missiles.” He tells the 9/11 Commission: “We
had aircraft crash drills on a regular basis. The general consensus
in the city was that a plane hitting a building& was that it
would be a high-rise fire.& There was never a sense, as I said in
my testimony, that aircraft were going to be used as missiles.”
[Time,
12/31/2001; Jenkins
and Edwards-Winslow, 9/2003, pp. 30; 9/11
Commission, 5/19/2004; 9/11
Commission, 5/19/2004; 9/11
Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 283] OEM will be preparing for a
bioterrorism exercise the morning of 9/11 (see 8:48
a.m. September 11, 2001) (see September
12, 2001).
Secretary of Defense William Cohen issues a comprehensive
assessment of America’s defense requirements, called the Report
of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). This is a six-month analysis
of the “threats, risks and opportunities for US national
security,” and reviews all aspects of the US defense strategy.
[US
Department of Defense, 5/19/1997] Amongst other things, the
1997 QDR outlines the conversion of six continental air defense
squadrons to general purpose, training or other missions. It calls
for there being just four “alert” air defense sites
around the US: at Otis, Massachusetts; Homestead, Florida; Riverside,
California; and Portland, Oregon. [US
Department of Defense, 5/1997; Filson,
2004, pp. 348] Major General Larry Arnold, who is commanding
general of NORAD’s Continental Region on 9/11, later says, “The
QDR didn’t make any sense at all. [T]here was a fight
just to maintain the number of alert sites that we had. We felt we
could operate fairly reasonably with about 10 sites and thought eight
was the absolute highest risk we could take.” NORAD Commander
in Chief General Howell M. Estes III has written to the Joint Chiefs
of Staff that a minimum of seven alert sites are needed to maintain
America’s air sovereignty. In the end, three extra alert sites
are added to the four suggested in the QDR. These are at Hampton,
Virginia.; Panama City, Florida.; and Ellington, Texas. Larry Arnold
later says: “I didn’t feel particularly comfortable with
seven [alert sites] because there are great large distances
between the alert sites.” [Filson,
2004, pp. 36] Other bases will lose their NORAD air defense
functions over the next year, including those in Fresno, California;
Fargo, North Dakota; Duluth, Minnesota; Burlington, Vermont; Atlantic
City, New Jersey; Great Falls, Montana. [US
Department of Defense, 5/1997] Of these closed bases, the
most critical loss on 9/11 will be the Atlantic City, New Jersey,
base, located about halfway between New York City and Washington.
Boston air traffic control, apparently unaware the base has lost its
air defense function will try and fail to contact the base shortly
after learning about the first hijacking of the morning, Flight 11
(see (8:34
a.m.) September 11, 2001).
Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke chairs a
tabletop exercise at the White House, involving a scenario where
anti-American militants fill a Learjet with explosives, and then fly
it on a suicide mission toward a target in Washington, DC. Officials
from the Pentagon, Secret Service, and FAA attend, and are asked how
they would stop such a threat. Pentagon officials say they could
launch fighters from Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, but would need
authorization from the president to shoot the plane down, and
currently there is no system to do this. The 9/11 Commission later
states: “There was no clear resolution of the problem at the
exercise.” [Slate,
7/22/2004; 9/11
Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 345, 457-458]
According to USA Today, “In the two years before the Sept.
11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command
conduct[s] exercises simulating what the White House
[later] says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners
used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.”
One of these imagined targets is the World Trade Center. According to
NORAD, these scenarios are regional drills, rather than regularly
scheduled continent-wide exercises. They utilize “[n]umerous
types of civilian and military aircraft” as mock hijacked
aircraft, and test “track detection and identification;
scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external
agency coordination; and operational security and communications
security procedures.” The main difference between these drills
and the 9/11 attacks is that the planes in the drills are coming from
another country, rather than from within the US. Before 9/11, NORAD
reportedly conducts four major exercises at headquarters level per
year. Most of them are said to include a hijack scenario (see
Before
September 11, 2001). [USA
Today, 4/18/2004; CNN,
4/19/2004]
At some point during the two-year period preceding 9/11, NORAD
fighters perform a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet
loaded with chemical poisons heading toward the US. [USA
Today, 4/18/2004]
A 1998 presidential directive gave the National Security Council
authority to designate important upcoming events as National Special
Security Events (NSSEs) (see May
22, 1998). The US Secret Service is in charge of planning and
implementing security for NSSEs, and the FBI and FEMA also have major
security roles. [CSO
Magazine, 9/2004; Scripps
Howard News Service, 1/11/2005] Louis Freeh, director of the
FBI for much of the 1990s until June 2001, will later tell the 9/11
Commission that in the years 2000 and 2001, the subject of “planes
as weapons” was always one of the considerations in the
planning of security for “a series of these, as we call them,
special events,” and “resources were actually designated
to deal with that particular threat.” He confirms that “the
use of airplanes, either packed with explosives or otherwise, in
suicide missions” was “part of the planning” for
NSSEs. [9/11
Commission, 4/13/2004] According to the Secret Service, “there
is a tremendous amount of advance planning and coordination”
for NSSEs, sometimes taking months or even years. Various training
initiatives are conducted, including “simulated attacks and
medical emergencies, inter-agency tabletop exercises, and field
exercises.” [United
States Secret Service, n.d.; US
Congress, 7/9/2002] Presumably the use of airplanes in
suicide missions is incorporated into some of these simulated
attacks.
A plane crash is simulated inside the cardboard courtyard of a model
Pentagon. [Source: Dennis Ryan, MDW News
Service]Pentagon and Arlington County emergency responders
assemble in the office of the Secretary of Defense’s conference
room in the Pentagon for a mass casualty exercise (“MASCAL”).
The exercise involves three mock-scenarios. One is of a commercial
airliner crashing into the Pentagon and killing 342 people, while the
other two involve a terrorist attack at the Pentagon’s subway
stop and a construction accident. The exercises are conducted using a
large-scale model of the Pentagon with a model airplane literally on
fire in the central courtyard of the building. An Army medic who
participates in the mock attack calls it “a real good scenario
and one that could happen easily,” while a fire chief notes: “You
have to plan for this. Look at all the air traffic around here.”
[MDW
News Service, 11/3/2000; Mirror,
5/24/2002; United
Press International, 4/22/2004; 9/11
Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 314]
The Joint Chiefs of Staff holds a large, worldwide exercise called
Positive Force, which focuses on the Defense Department’s
ability to conduct large-scale military operations and coordinate
these operations. [Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 8/14/2000 
]
The 2001 Positive Force exercise is a “continuity of operations
exercise,” meaning it deals with government contingency plans
to keep working in the event of an attack on the US. [Guardian,
4/15/2004] Over a dozen government agencies, including NORAD,
are invited to participate. The exercise prepares them for various
scenarios, including non-combatant evacuation operations, cyber
attacks, rail disruption, and power outages. It includes “a
series of simulated attacks against the maritime, surface and
aviation sectors” of America’s national security
transportation infrastructure. [US
Congress. Senate. Committee on Appropriations, 5/8/2001;
Provider
Update, 10/2001; GlobalSecurity
(.org), 6/9/2002] Apparently, one of the scenarios that was
considered for this exercise involved “a terrorist group
hijack[ing] a commercial airliner and fly[ing] it
into the Pentagon.” But the proposed scenario, thought up by a
group of Special Operations personnel trained to think like
terrorists, was rejected. Joint Staff action officers and White House
officials said the additional scenario is either “too
unrealistic” or too disconnected to the original intent of the
exercise. [Air
Force Times, 4/13/2004; Boston
Herald, 4/14/2004; Washington
Post, 4/14/2004; New
York Times, 4/14/2004; Guardian,
4/15/2004]
The Tri-Service DiLorenzo Health Care Clinic and the Air Force
Flight Medicine Clinic, both housed within the Pentagon, train for a
scenario involving a hijacked 757 airliner being crashed into the
Pentagon. It is reported that the purpose of the training is “to
fine-tune their emergency preparedness.” [US
Medicine, 10/2001]
The Joint Experimentation Directorate of the US Joint Forces
Command, in partnership with US Central Command and US Special
Operations Command, conducts a three-week exercise called Unified
Vision 2001 (UV 01). Over 40 organizations and 350 personnel from all
branches of the armed services and other federal agencies
participate. [US
Joint Forces Command, 6/25/2001; Aerospace
America, 12/2001; US
Congress. Senate. Armed Services Committee, 4/9/2002; Arkin,
2005, pp. 540] UV 01 tests the ability of the military’s
provisional Homeland Security Joint Force to respond, following “chemical,
biological, radiological, nuclear, and high yield explosives for the
48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia.” It is based
around the scenario of a major regional threat coming from the Middle
East, requiring a “global deployment into a landlocked country
with hostile terrain and a lack of basing and agreements with
neighboring countries for US access.” Dave Ozolek, assistant
director of the exercise, says, “The threat we portrayed was an
unstable and hostile state, but the primary enemy was not the state
itself but a transnational actor based out of that area, globally
connected, capable and willing to conduct terrorist attacks in the US
as part of that campaign.” As the American Forces Press Service
will later report, “real events similar to the Unified Vision
scenario unfolded in the attacks of Sept. 11. The al-Qaeda is a
global terrorist network hosted by an unstable, landlocked Central
Asian regime.” Many of the participants in UV 01 will,
following 9/11, become war planners and utilize their experiences
from the exercise in the resulting military operations. Ozolek will
later remark, “Nostradamus couldn’t have nailed the first
battle of the next war any closer than we did.& [T]his
time we got it right.” He will say, however, that UV 01 did not
foresee the severity of terrorist attacks that occurred on 9/11, and
involved terrorists attacking US military targets, rather than
civilian ones. The Joint Forces Command will refuse to say whether
the Pentagon was among these imagined targets. [American
Forces Press Service, 7/30/2002; Washington
Times, 9/11/2002]
New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), which
is located in World Trade Center Building 7, organizes a
bio-terrorism drill where militant extremists attack the city with
bubonic plague and Manhattan is quarantined. The “tabletop
exercise” is called RED Ex—meaning “Recognition,
Evaluation, and Decision-Making Exercise” —and involves
about seventy different entities, agencies, and locales from the New
York area. Federal legislation adopted in 1997 requires federal,
state, and local authorities to conduct regular exercises as part of
the Domestic Preparedness Program (DPP). The US Defense Department
chose New York City as the venue for RED Ex due to its size,
prominence, and level of emergency preparedness. Various high-level
officials take part, including Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, OEM Director
Richard Sheirer, Fire Commissioner Thomas Von Essen, and Police
Commissioner Bernard Kerik. Agencies and organizations that
participate include New York City Fire Department, New York City
Police Department, the FBI, and the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA). The exercise is supposedly so intense that, according
to one participant, “five minutes into that drill, everybody
forgot it was a drill.” [New
York City Government, 5/11/2001; New
York City Government, 9/5/2001, pp. 74 ;
New
York Sun, 12/20/2003; 9/11
Commission, 5/18/2004] According to OEM Director Richard
Sheirer, “Operation RED Ex provided a proving ground and a
great readiness training exercise for the many challenges the city
routinely faces, such as weather events, heat emergencies, building
collapses, fires, and public safety and health issues.”
[New
York City Government, 5/11/2001] In his prepared testimony
before the 9/11 Commission, Bernard Kerik later states: “The
City, through its OEM, had coordinated plans for many types of
emergencies; and those plans were tested frequently.” The types
of emergencies they prepared for, he states, included “building
collapses” and “plane crashes.” [9/11
Commission, 5/18/2004 ]
Considering Richard Sheirer’s comments, RED Ex appears to be
one example where the city tests for building collapses. Details
about training for airplanes crashing into New York City remain
unknown. The second part of this exercise, called Tripod, is
scheduled to take place in New York on September 12, 2001, but is
cancelled due to the 9/11 attacks.
The Pentagon’s police force, the Defense Protective Service
(DPS), conducts emergency drills throughout summer 2001. Some members
of the DPS subsequently assist in directing rescue efforts at the
Pentagon on 9/11. [Los
Angeles Times, 9/13/2001]
Bin Laden is pictured on the cover of the first Amalgam Virgo
exercise. [Source: NORAD]The US military conducts
Amalgam Virgo 01, a multi-agency planning exercise sponsored by NORAD
involving the hypothetical scenario of a cruise missile being
launched by “a rogue [government] or somebody”
from a barge off the East Coast. Bin Laden is pictured on the cover
of the proposal for the exercise. [American
Forces Press Service, 6/4/2002] The exercise takes place at
Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. [GlobalSecurity
(.org), 4/14/2002] The next Amalgam Virgo exercise, scheduled
to take place the following year, will involve two simultaneous
commercial aircraft hijackings. Planning for the exercises begins
before 9/11 (see Before
September 11, 2001).
A major training exercise based upon a simulated terrorist attack
is held in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, which neighbors
Somerset County where Flight 93 crashes on 9/11. The exercise, called
Mall Strike 2001, is conducted in Greengate Mall, Hempfield, and
involves over 600 emergency first responders and emergency managers
responding to the simulated release of a toxic chemical agent and the
simulated release of radiation and radiological contamination.
[Westmoreland
County Annual Financial Report, 2001 
;
Connellsville
Daily Courier, 9/11/2002] Mall Strike is organized by the
Pennsylvania Region 13 Working Group: a 13-county organization that
began preparing for terrorist attacks in 1998. When Flight 93 crashes
on September 11, the Region 13 Working Group’s chair
immediately contacts other members of the group and emergency teams
are quickly deployed to the crash site. The group’s four years
of preparing and working together “allowed them to develop and
train teams that could work efficiently together during an event of
this magnitude.” [Smart
Practices Spotlight, 3/12/2003 ]
A MASCAL (mass casualty) training exercise is held at Fort
Belvoir. It is “designed to enhance the first ready response in
dealing with the effects of a terrorist incident involving an
explosion.” [MDW
News Service, 7/5/2001]
A mass casualty exercise, involving a practice evacuation, is held
at the Pentagon. General Lance Lord of US Air Force Space Command,
one of the participants in the exercises, later recalls: “[It
was] purely a coincidence, the scenario for that exercise
included a plane hitting the building.” Lord will also say that
on 9/11, “our assembly points were fresh in our minds”
thanks to this practice. [Air
Force Space Command News Service, 9/5/2002]
The US Army is preparing to severely restrict public access to its
posts in the Washington, DC area. For decades, visitors have been
able to enter these bases freely. But now, as a probably permanent
change, barriers will be erected across many roads leading into them,
funneling traffic to a few roads staffed by guards. Drivers entering
without proper registration will be sent to a visitor’s center
to obtain a guest pass. [Washington
Post, 8/15/2001] The new measures will mean commanders know
who is entering their installations 24 hours a day, and give them the
capability to adjust security measures immediately if required.
[MDW
News Service, 8/3/2001] The changes will occur at all
installations belonging to the Military District of Washington (MDW).
[MDW
News Service, 7/2001] These include forts Hamilton, Meade,
Belvoir, Ritchie, Myer, and McNair. Several of these bases will be
reported as having implemented the changes in the following weeks,
prior to September 11 (see August
20, 2001)(see September
4, 2001)(see September
5, 2001). Whether the changes take place at the other MDW
installations prior to 9/11 is unknown. Part of MDW’s stated
mission is to “respond to crisis, disaster or security
requirements in the National Capital Region through implementation of
various contingency plans.” [Military
District of Washington, 8/2000; GlobalSecurity
(.org), 11/28/2001] It will therefore be much involved with
the rescue and recovery efforts following the 9/11 Pentagon attack.
[Army,
10/2004] The restriction of access to MDW posts stems from
guidance from Army leadership and specifically from MDW Commander
Maj. Gen. James Jackson. [MDW
News Service, 7/2001] It is reportedly part of a nationwide
security clampdown due to concerns about terrorism, following such
attacks as the Oklahoma City bombing and the attack on the USS Cole.
[Washington
Post, 8/15/2001]
About 100 members of the 174th Fighter Wing, part of the New York
Air National Guard, are deployed to Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, to
patrol the no-fly zone over southern Iraq, as part of the ongoing
Operation Southern Watch. This is the unit’s second deployment
there, its first having been in March 2001. [Post-Standard
(Syracuse), 9/11/2001; Post-Standard
(Syracuse), 9/12/2001; US
Congress, 3/1/2005; 174th
Fighter Wing, 12/9/2005] The 174th FW is located at Hancock
Field Air National Guard Base, five miles north of Syracuse, in
Central New York State. It is currently equipped with 17 F-16
fighters. These are kept in a six-bay shelter where they are,
reportedly, “ready to fly in any weather, at a moment’s
notice.” [Airman,
1/2001; Post-Standard
(Syracuse), 9/25/2001; GlobalSecurity
(.org), 4/26/2005] However, Hancock Field is not one of NORAD’s
two “alert” sites in the northeast US. [9/11
Commission, 6/17/2004] The unit has 350 full-time staff and
650 part-timers, who work one weekend each month plus two full weeks
a year. [Post-Standard
(Syracuse), 9/25/2001; Post-Standard
(Syracuse), 10/24/2001] The 100 members of the unit who go to
Saudi Arabia are due to arrive back at Hancock Field at around 3 p.m.
on 9/11, but as a consequence of the day’s events are diverted
to Canada. [Post-Standard
(Syracuse), 9/14/2001] They will eventually arrive back at
the base on September 14. [Post-Standard
(Syracuse), 9/15/2001] In the months after 9/11, 174th FW
fighters are involved in flying combat air patrols over New York
City. [Post-Standard
(Syracuse), 12/8/2001; New
York State, 3/26/2003]
Fort Meade, a US Army installation located between Baltimore and
Washington, DC, begins strict new entrance restrictions. For decades,
visitors such as churchgoers and parents taking their children to
schools on the base have been able to enter the post freely. But the
Army is now closing seven access points, with only four points
remaining open full time and four others part time. The restrictions,
part of a security crackdown ordered by Army leaders concerned about
terrorism, will require visitors to stop at a visitor’s center
and obtain a day pass allowing them to enter and travel on the base.
[Washington
Post, 8/15/2001; Laurel
Leader, 8/23/2001; Laurel
Leader, 8/23/2001] Fort Meade is home to about 10,000
military personnel and 25,000 civilian employees. Its major tenant
units include the National Security Agency (NSA), the US Army
Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), and the US Air Force’s
694th Intelligence Group. [Military
District of Washington, 8/2000; GlobalSecurity
(.org), 4/9/2002] All other installations in the Military
District of Washington are currently implementing similar access
restrictions (see August
15, 2001). [MDW
News Service, 7/2001]
The Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) in Washington, DC
suffers a four-day power loss following an electrical transformer
fire on August 27. Backup generators ensure patient care is minimally
affected, but as a precaution 77 of the hospital’s roughly 100
patients are moved to other facilities until it regains full power.
Most go to the National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) in Bethesda.
According to Capt. Tom Sizemore, the acting commander of the NNMC,
precautionary measures are necessary due to the size of the patient
transfer. So on August 28 he sets the hospital into a mass casualty
condition. Usually such a condition is only set in response to a
major incident with many seriously injured people. Sizemore says, “This
most unfortunate opportunity has provided NNMC with a very special
opportunity. We were able to exercise our response system, with real
patients, but (thank God) not with patients involved in some mass
disaster.” [Stripe,
8/31/2001; Bethesda
Journal, 9/6/2001; Stripe,
9/6/2001; Office
of Medical History, 9/2004, pp. 146] Walter Reed is about six
miles from the Pentagon, and its ambulance teams will respond to the
attack there on September 11. Many believe that coping with the power
failure helps prepare them for this. One member of staff later says, “A
lot of the procedures that we used in the September 11 tragedy, we
had just come out of this power loss where we had implemented a lot
of what we did. We had good procedures in place that we had already
just executed. It was really eerie.” [NurseWeek,
9/17/2001; Office
of Medical History, 9/2004, pp. 145-146] A similar incident
also occurs around this time at DeWitt Army Community Hospital at
Fort Belvoir, an army base roughly 10 miles south of the Pentagon.
The details of this are unspecified. [Stripe,
9/20/2001] Ambulance teams from DeWitt will also be involved
in the emergency response to the Pentagon attack. [Office
of Medical History, 9/2004, pp. i]
In late August 2001, two-thirds of the 27th Fighter Squadron are
sent overseas. Six of the squadron’s fighters and 115 people go
to Turkey to enforce the no-fly zone over northern Iraq as part of
Operation Northern Watch. Another six fighters and 70 people are sent
to Iceland to participate in “Operation Northern Guardian.”
The fighter groups will not return to Langley until early December.
[Flyer,
7/1/2003] (Note that the word “operation”
specifies that Operation Northern Guardian and Northern Watch are not
exercises, but actual military actions or missions. [Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 4/23/1998 ;
US
Department of Defense, 11/30/2004] ) Operation Northern
Guardian is based at Naval Air Station Keflavik, Iceland, the host
command for the NATO base in that country. The US sometimes assists
Iceland with extra military forces in reaction to Russian military
maneuvers in the region. Approximately 1,800 US military personnel
and 100 Defense Department civilians are involved. [GlobalSecurity
(.org), 4/9/2002; Flyer,
6/4/2004; Iceland
Defense Force, 6/30/2004] The 27th is one of three F-15
fighter squadrons that make up the 1st Fighter Wing, the “host
unit” at Langley Air Force Base in Langley, Virginia. The other
two are the 71st and 94th Fighter Squadrons. [Langley
Air Force Base, 11/2003; GlobalSecurity
(.org), 8/2/2004] Langley is one of two “alert”
sites that can be called upon by NORAD for missions in the northeast
region of the US. [9/11
Commission, 6/17/2004] Langley’s 71st Fighter Squadron
also participates in Operation Northern Watch and Operation Northern
Guardian at some (unstated) time during 2001. [Air
Combat Command News Service, 6/13/2002] Whether this deployment
of fighters diminishes Langley’s ability to respond on 9/11 is
unknown. However, Air Force units are cycled through deployments like
operations Northern and Southern Watch by the Aerospace Expeditionary
Force (AEF) Center, which is at Langley Air Force Base.
[Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 4/23/1998 ;
GlobalSecurity
(.org), 4/26/2005] And according to NORAD Commander Larry
Arnold, “Prior to Sept. 11, we’d been unsuccessful in
getting the AEF Center to be responsible for relieving our air
defense units when they went overseas.” [Filson,
2004, pp. 99]
A tabletop exercise is held at the Department of Transportation
(DOT) in Washington, DC, as part of its preparations for the 2002
Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. According to Ellen Engleman, the
administrator of the DOT’s Research and Special Programs
Administration, this is “actually much more than a tabletop”
exercise, though she does not explain how. She will later recount, “During
that exercise, part of the scenario, interestingly enough, involved a
potentially hijacked plane and someone calling on a cell phone, among
other aspects of the scenario that were very strange when twelve days
later, as you know, we had the actual event [of 9/11].”
[Mineta
Transportation Institute, 10/30/2001, pp. 108] Further
details of this exercise are unknown. The DOT’s Crisis
Management Center will be heavily involved in the 9/11 crisis
response, acting as a focal point for the transportation response to
the attacks (see 9:00
a.m. September 11, 2001).
The US Army sharply restricts public access to Fort Belvoir, one
of its installations about 10 miles south of the Pentagon. After
being an open post for over 25 years, Belvoir has now erected
barriers across many of the roads leading into it, leaving only six
guarded gates as points of entry and exit. Twenty access points are
being permanently closed. Visitors must now register their vehicles
at a visitor’s center or get a day pass to enter the base.
[MDW
News Service, 7/2001; Washington
Post, 8/15/2001] The access restrictions will allow
commanders to know who is entering the base 24 hours a day and adjust
security measures immediately if needed. [MDW
News Service, 8/3/2001] All other Military District of
Washington (MDW) installations are implementing similar changes, due
to Army concerns about terrorism (see August
15, 2001). Fort Belvoir has about 20,000 workers and is home to
many different agencies, including the US Army Intelligence and
Security Command (INSCOM), plus the headquarters of the Defense
Logistics Agency and the Defense Technical Information Service.
[Military
District of Washington, 8/2000; Washington
Post, 8/15/2001; GlobalSecurity
(.org), 10/21/2001] Occupying over 500 acres at Belvoir is
Davison Army Airfield. The 12th Aviation Battalion, which is MDW’s
aviation-support unit, is stationed at Davison. This operates UH1 “Huey”
and UH60 Black Hawk helicopters in support of training and “contingencies”
for various MDW units. [Military
District of Washington, 8/2000; GlobalSecurity
(.org), 1/5/2002] The Washington Post has reported, “Fort
Belvoir will be holding exercises the next two Tuesdays to test the
changes” in access to the base. [Washington
Post, 8/15/2001] This will therefore include September 11 (a
Tuesday). Other reports will confirm an antiterrorism exercise being
conducted at Belvoir on 9/11 (see 8:30
a.m. September 11, 2001).
Fort Myer and Fort Lesley J. McNair, both within two miles of the
Pentagon, implement “full access control,” which means
they increase the level of military police surveillance of those who
enter them. Visitors are now required to register and sign in at a
visitor center, and obtain a temporary pass. The measures, part of a
security crackdown due to concerns about terrorism, will allow
commanders to know who is entering their installations 24 hours a day
and adjust their security measures immediately as needed.
[MDW
News Service, 8/3/2001; Washington
Post, 8/15/2001] All other Army posts in the Washington, DC
area are currently implementing similar access restrictions (see
August
15, 2001).
The future of “continental air sovereignty” over
America is in doubt. Discussions at the Air Force’s highest
levels call for the dismantling of NORAD’s seven “alert”
sites around the US and its command and control structure.
[Filson,
2004, pp. 149] Earlier in the summer of 2001, “a
reduction in air defenses had been gaining currency in recent months
among task forces assigned by [Defense Secretary] Rumsfeld to
put together recommendations for a reassessment of the military.”(see
Summer
2001)
NORAD begins Operation Northern Vigilance. For this military
operation, it deploys fighters to Alaska and Northern Canada to
monitor a Russian air force exercise in the Russian Arctic and North
Pacific Ocean, scheduled for September 10 to September 14. The
Russian exercise involves its bombers staging a mock attack against
NATO planes that are supposedly planning an assault on Russia.
[BBC
Worldwide, 2001, pp. 161; NORAD,
9/9/2001; Washington
Times, 9/11/2001] The NORAD fighters are due to stay in
Alaska and Canada until the end of the Russian exercise. At some time
between 10:32 a.m. and 11:45 a.m. on 9/11, Russian President Vladimir
Putin will call the White House to say the Russians are voluntarily
halting their exercise. [Washington
Post, 1/27/2002] It is unknown from which bases NORAD sends
fighters for Operation Northern Vigilance, and how many US military
personnel are involved. However, in December 2000, it took similar
action—called Operation Northern Denial—in response to a “smaller
scale” Russian “long-range aviation activity in northern
Russia and the Arctic.” More than 350 American and Canadian
military personnel were involved on that occasion. [Canadian
Chief of Defense Staff, 5/30/2001, pp. 6 ;
NORAD,
9/9/2001]
According to an FBI official interviewed by journalist Seymour
Hersh, for several years prior to 9/11, the US government reportedly
plans for “simulated terrorist attacks, including scenarios
[involving] multiple-plane hijackings.” This presumably
refers to more than just the Amalgam Virgo 02 (see Before
September 11, 2001) exercise, which is based on the scenario of
two planes being simultaneously hijacked. [New
Yorker, 9/24/2001] Similarly, NORAD will tell USA Today that
before 9/11, it normally conducted four major exercises each year at
headquarters level. Most of them include a hijack scenario, the
newspaper reports [USA
Today, 4/18/2004] , and some of them were apparently quite
similar to the 9/11 attacks (see Between
1991 and 2001) (see 1999-September
11, 2001).
NORAD plans for the Amalgam Virgo 2 exercise. The exercise,
scheduled for June 2002, involves two simultaneous commercial
aircraft hijackings. One, a Delta 757, with actual Delta pilots and
actors posing as passengers, will fly from Salt Lake City, Utah, to
Honolulu, Hawaii. It will be “hijacked” by FBI agents
posing as terrorists. The other will be a DC-9 hijacked by Canadian
police near Vancouver, British Columbia. US and Canadian fighters are
to respond and attempt to escort the hijacked planes to airfields in
British Columbia and Alaska. But they possibly could “mock”
shoot down the aircraft. [CNN,
6/4/2002; American
Forces Press Service, 6/4/2002; USA
Today, 4/18/2004] USA Today will note that this is an
exception to NORAD’s claim that the agency focused only on
external threats to the US and did not consider the possibility of
threats arising from within the US. [USA
Today, 4/18/2004] 9/11 Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste will
similarly comment that this planned exercise shows that despite
frequent comments to the contrary, the military considered
simultaneous hijackings before 9/11. [9/11
Commission, 5/23/2003]
NORAD’s war room in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado
[Source: Val Gempis]Lieutenant Colonel Dawne Deskins
and other day shift employees at NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense
Sector (NEADS) in Rome, NY, start their workday. NORAD is conducting
a week-long, large-scale exercise called Vigilant Guardian.
[Newhouse
News Service, 1/25/2002] Deskins is regional mission crew
chief for the Vigilant Guardian exercise. [ABC
News, 9/11/2002] Vigilant Guardian is described as “an
exercise that would pose an imaginary crisis to North American Air
Defense outposts nationwide”; as a “simulated air war”;
and as “an air defense exercise simulating an attack on the
United States.” According to the 9/11 Commission, it “postulated
a bomber attack from the former Soviet Union.” [Newhouse
News Service, 1/25/2002; Filson,
2004, pp. 55 and 122; 9/11
Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 458] Vigilant Guardian is
described as being held annually, and is one of NORAD’s four
major annual exercises. [GlobalSecurity
(.org), 4/14/2002; Filson,
2004, pp. 41; Arkin,
2005, pp. 545] However, another report says it takes place
semi-annually. [Aviation
Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002] Accounts by participants
vary on whether 9/11 was the second, third, or fourth day of the
exercise. [Code
One Magazine, 1/2002; Newhouse
News Service, 1/25/2002; Ottawa
Citizen, 9/11/2002] Vigilant Guardian is a command post exercise
(CPX), and in at least some previous years was conducted in
conjunction with Stratcom’s Global Guardian exercise and a US
Space Command exercise called Apollo Guardian. [US
Congress, n.d.; GlobalSecurity
(.org), 4/14/2002; Arkin,
2005, pp. 545] All of NORAD is participating in Vigilant
Guardian on 9/11. [Aviation
Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002] Vanity Fair reports that
the “day’s exercise” (presumably Vigilant Guardian)
is “designed to run a range of scenarios, including a ‘traditional’
simulated hijack in which politically motivated perpetrators
commandeer an aircraft, land on a Cuba-like island, and seek asylum.”
[Vanity
Fair, 8/1/2006] However, at NEADS, most of the dozen or so
staff on the operations floor have no idea what the exercise is going
to entail and are ready for anything. [Utica
Observer-Dispatch, 8/5/2004] NORAD is currently running a
real-world operation named Operation Northern Vigilance (see
September
9-11, 2001). It may also be conducting a field training exercise
calling Amalgam Warrior this morning (see 9:28
a.m. September 11, 2001). NORAD is thus fully staffed and alert,
and senior officers are manning stations throughout the US. The
entire chain of command is in place and ready when the first
hijacking is reported. An article later says, “In retrospect,
the exercise would prove to be a serendipitous enabler of a rapid
military response to terrorist attacks on September 11.”
[Aviation
Week and Space Technology, 6/3/2002; Bergen
Record, 12/5/2003] Colonel Robert Marr, in charge of NEADS, says,
“We had the fighters with a little more gas on board. A few
more weapons on board.” [ABC
News, 9/11/2002] However, Deskins and other NORAD officials later
are initially confused about whether the 9/11 attacks are real or
part of the exercise. (see (8:38
a.m.-8:43 a.m.) September 11, 2001).
Sergeant Matt Rosenberg, an army medic at the Pentagon, is
studying “a new medical emergency disaster plan based on the
unlikely scenario of an airplane crashing into the place.”
[Washington
Post, 9/16/2001] The day before, Rosenberg later recalls in
an interview with the Office of Medical History, he called the FBI
with questions about who would have medical jurisdiction if such an
event were to take place. “Believe it or not, the day prior to
the incident, I was just on the phone with the FBI, and we were
talking ‘so who has command should this happen, who has the
medical jurisdiction, who does this, who does that,’ and we
talked about it and talked about it, and he helped me out a lot. And
then the next day, during the incident, I actually found him. He was
out there on the incident that day.” [Office
of Medical History, 9/2004, pp. 9]
An “emergency drill” has been scheduled for today, to
take place on the 97th floor of the WTC south tower. [New
York Times, 3/31/2006; New
York Times, 4/1/2006] A team of technology consultants from
California is visiting investment firm Fiduciary Trust for this
drill. (Fiduciary Trust has offices on the 97th floor.)
[USA
Today, 9/13/2001; Dwyer
and Flynn, 2005, pp. 77; New
York Times, 3/30/2006] No further details are reported as to
what it entails, or who the technology consultants are. However,
California-based software company Oracle Corp. will later report that
six of its consultants were working on the 97th floor of the south
tower on 9/11 and are subsequently missing. So presumably these were
the workers involved with the drill. [InfoWorld,
9/13/2001; Associated
Press, 9/14/2001]
The September 11, 2001 attacks. From left to right: The World Trade
Center, Pentagon, and Flight 93 crash. [Source:
unknown] (click image to enlarge)The 9/11 attack: Four
planes are hijacked, two crash into the WTC, one into the Pentagon,
and one crashes into the Pennsylvania countryside. Nearly 3,000
people are killed.
At Fort Belvoir, an army base 10 miles south of the Pentagon, Lt.
Col. Mark R. Lindon is conducting a “garrison control exercise”
when the 9/11 attacks begin. The object of this exercise is to “test
the security at the base in case of a terrorist attack.” Lindon
later says, “I was out checking on the exercise and heard about
the World Trade Center on my car radio. As soon as it was established
that this was no accident, we went to a complete security mode.”
Staff Sgt. Mark Williams of the Military District of Washington
Engineer Company at Fort Belvoir also later says: “Ironically,
we were conducting classes about rescue techniques when we were told
of the planes hitting the World Trade Center.” Williams’
team is one of the first response groups to arrive at the site of the
Pentagon crash and one of the first to enter the building following
the attack. [Connection
Newspapers, 9/5/2002] A previous MASCAL (mass casualty)
training exercise was held at Fort Belvoir a little over two months
earlier (see June
29, 2001). It was “designed to enhance the first ready
response in dealing with the effects of a terrorist incident
involving an explosion.” [MDW
News Service, 7/5/2001] Located at Fort Belvoir is Davison
Army Airfield, from where UH-1 “Huey” and UH-60 Black
Hawk helicopters fly. Davison’s mission includes maintaining “a
readiness posture in support of contingency plans,” and
providing “aviation support for the White House, US government
officials, Department of Defense, Department of the Army, and other
government agencies.” [Pentagram,
5/7/1999; Military
District of Washington, 8/2000]
USA Today reports that at this time, “a joint FBI/CIA
anti-terrorist task force that specifically prepared for this type of
disaster” is on a “training exercise in Monterey, Calif.”
Consequently, “as of late Tuesday, with airports closed around
the country, the task force still [hasn]‘t found a way
to fly back to Washington.” [USA
Today, 9/11/2001] The US politics website evote.com adds that
the FBI has deployed “all of its anti-terrorist and top special
operations agents at a training exercise (complete with all
associated helicopters and light aircraft) in Monterey, California.”
So at the time of the attacks, “the chief federal agency
responsible for preventing such crimes [is] being AWOL.”
[Evote
[.com], 9/11/2001]
Offutt Air Force Base control tower during Global Guardian
̢€™98 [Source: Jeffery S.
Viano]As the 9/11 attacks are taking place, a large military
training exercise called Global Guardian is said to be “in full
swing.” It has been going on since the previous week.
[Omaha
World-Herald, 2/27/2002; Omaha
World-Herald, 9/10/2002] Global Guardian is an annual exercise
sponsored by US Strategic Command (Stratcom) in cooperation with US
Space Command and NORAD. One military author defines Stratcom as “the
single US military command responsible for the day-to-day readiness
of America’s nuclear forces.” [Arkin,
2005, pp. 59] Global Guardian is a global readiness exercise
involving all Stratcom forces and aims to test Stratcom’s
ability to fight a nuclear war. It is one of many “practice
Armageddons” that the US military routinely stages.
[Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, 11/12/1997; Associated
Press, 2/21/2002; Omaha
World-Herald, 2/27/2002; Omaha
World-Herald, 9/10/2002] It links with a number of other military
exercises, including Crown Vigilance (an Air Combat Command
exercise), Apollo Guardian (a US Space Command exercise), and NORAD
exercises Vigilant Guardian and Amalgam Warrior [US
Department of Defense, 5/1997; GlobalSecurity
(.org), 10/10/2002] Global Guardian is both a command post
and field training exercise, and is based around a fictitious
scenario designed to test the ability of Stratcom and its component
forces to deter a military attack against the US. Hundreds of
military personnel are involved. [US
Congress, n.d.; Collins
Center Update, 12/1999 ;
Times-Picayune,
9/8/2002] According to a 1998 Internet article by the British
American Security Information Council—an independent research
organization—Global Guardian is held in October or November
each year. [Kristensen,
10/1998] In his book Code Names, NBC News military analyst
William Arkin dates this exercise for October 22-31, 2001.
[Arkin,
2005, pp. 379] And a military newspaper reported in March
2001 that Global Guardian was scheduled for October 2001.
[Space
Observer, 3/23/2001, pp. 2 ]
If this is correct, then some time after March, the exercise must
have been rescheduled for early September. Furthermore, there may be
another important facet to Global Guardian. A 1998 Defense Department
newsletter reported that for several years Stratcom had been
incorporating a computer network attack (CNA) into Global Guardian.
The attack involved Stratcom “red team” members and other
organizations acting as enemy agents, and included attempts to
penetrate the Command using the Internet and a “bad”
insider who had access to a key command and control system. The
attackers “war dialed” the phones to tie them up and sent
faxes to numerous fax machines throughout the Command. They also
claimed they were able to shut down Stratcom’s systems.
Reportedly, Stratcom planned to increase the level of computer
network attack in future Global Guardian exercises. [IAnewsletter,
6/1998 ]
It is not currently known if a computer attack was incorporated into
Global Guardian in 2001 or what its possible effects on the country’s
air defense system would have been if such an attack was part of the
exercise.
Major Kevin Nasypany. [Source: CBC]When Boston
flight control first contacts NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense
Sector (NEADS) to notify it of the hijacking of Flight 11 (see
(8:37
a.m.) September 11, 2001), personnel there initially mistake it
for a simulation as part of an exercise. Lieutenant Colonel Dawne
Deskins, mission crew chief for the Vigilant Guardian exercise
currently taking place (see (6:30
a.m.) September 11, 2001), later says that initially she and
everybody else at NEADS thought the call was part of Vigilant
Guardian. [Newhouse
News Service, 1/25/2002] Although most of the personnel on
the NEADS operations floor have no idea what the day’s exercise
is supposed to entail, most previous major NORAD exercises included a
hijack scenario. [USA
Today, 4/18/2004; Utica
Observer-Dispatch, 8/5/2004] The day’s exercise is in
fact scheduled to include a simulated hijacking later on. Major Kevin
Nasypany, the NEADS mission crew commander, had helped design it.
Thinking the reported hijacking is part of this exercise he actually
says out loud, “The hijack’s not supposed to be for
another hour.” In the ID section, at the back right corner of
the NEADS operations floor, technicians Stacia Rountree, Shelley
Watson, and Maureen Dooley, react to the news. Rountree asks, “Is
that real-world?” Dooley confirms, “Real-world hijack.”
Watson says, “Cool!” [Vanity
Fair, 8/1/2006] NORAD commander Major General Larry Arnold,
who is at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, also says that when he
first hears of the hijacking, in the minutes after NEADS is alerted
to it, “The first thing that went through my mind was, is this
part of the exercise? Is this some kind of a screw-up?”
[ABC
News, 9/11/2002; 9/11
Commission, 5/23/2003] At 8:43 a.m., Major James Fox, the
leader of the NEADS Weapons Team, comments, “I’ve never
seen so much real-world stuff happen during an exercise.”
[Vanity
Fair, 8/1/2006]
At the time of the first WTC crash, three F-16s assigned to
Andrews Air Force Base, ten miles from Washington, are flying an
air-to-ground training mission to drop some bombs and hit a refueling
tanker, on a range in North Carolina, 207 miles away from their base.
However, it is only when they are halfway back to Andrews that lead
pilot Major Billy Hutchison is able to talk to the acting supervisor
of flying at Andrews, Lt. Col. Phil Thompson, who tells him to return
to the base “buster” (as fast as his aircraft will fly).
After landing back at Andrews, Hutchison is told to take off
immediately, and does so at 10:33 a.m. The other two pilots, Marc
Sasseville and Heather Penney, take off from Andrews at 10:42 a.m.,
after having their planes loaded with 20mm training rounds. These
three pilots will therefore not be patrolling the skies above
Washington until after about 10:45 a.m. [Aviation
Week and Space Technology, 9/9/2002; Filson,
2004, pp. 56] F-16s can travel at a maximum speed of 1,500
mph. [Associated
Press, 6/16/2000] Traveling even at 1,100 mph (the speed NORAD
Major General Larry Arnold says two fighters from Massachusetts
travel toward Flight 175 [MSNBC,
9/23/2001; Slate,
1/16/2002] ), at least one of these F-16s could have returned
from North Carolina to Washington within ten minutes and started
patrolling the skies well before 9:00 a.m.
Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana is an important node in the
US Strategic Command (Stratcom) exercise Global Guardian (see
8:30
a.m. September 11, 2001) on 9/11. Colonel Mike Reese, director of
staff for the 8th Air Force, is monitoring several television screens
at the base as part of the exercise when he sees CNN cut into
coverage of the first World Trade Center crash, two minutes after it
happens. He watches live when the second plane hits the World Trade
Center at 9:03 a.m. Reese says that at this point, “we knew it
wasn’t a mistake. Something grave was happening that put the
nation’s security at risk.” An article in the New Orleans
Times-Picayune later recounts how awareness of the real attacks
impacts those participating in the exercise: “Immediately
[the Barksdale staff’s] focus turned to defense,
securing Barksdale, Minot [North Dakota], and Whiteman
[Missouri] air force bases, where dozens of aircraft and
hundreds of personnel were involved in the readiness exercise ‘Global
Guardian.’ The exercise abruptly ended as the United States
appeared to be at war within its own borders. Four A-10s, an aircraft
not designed for air-to-air combat, from Barksdale’s 47th
Fighter Squadron, were placed on ‘cockpit alert,’ the
highest state of readiness for fighter pilots. Within five minutes,
the A-10s, equipped only with high intensity cannons, could have been
launched to destroy unfriendly aircraft, even if it was a civilian
passenger airliner.” Lt. Col. Edmund Walker, commander of the
47th Fighter Squadron, a novice pilot still in training, is sitting
in his fighter along with other pilots in other fighters, ready to
take off, when they are ordered back to the squadron office. They are
told they are no longer practicing. Walker recalls, “We had to
defend the base against any aircraft, airliner or civilian. We had no
idea. Would it fly to the base and crash into the B-52s or A-10s on
the flight line?” [Times-Picayune,
9/8/2002] When President Bush’s Air Force One takes off
from Sarasota, Florida, at approximately 9:55 a.m., it has no
destination, and circles over Florida aimlessly. But around 10:35
(see (10:35
a.m.) September 11, 2001), it begins heading towards Barksdale
Air Force Base. [Washington
Post, 1/27/2002; CBS
News, 9/11/2002] It finally arrives at Barksdale around 11:45
a.m. [Daily
Telegraph, 12/16/2001; CBS
News, 9/11/2002] It’s never been explained exactly why
Bush traveled from Florida to Barksdale. The Daily Telegraph has
reported, “The official reason for landing at Barksdale was
that President Bush felt it necessary to make a further statement,
but it isn’t unreasonable to assume that—as there was no
agreement as to what the President’s movements should be—it
was felt he might as well be on the ground as in the air.”
[Daily
Telegraph, 12/16/2001]
John Odermatt [Source: Queens Gazette]New York City’s
Office of Emergency Management (OEM) is responsible for coordinating
the city’s response to major incidents, including terrorist
attacks. [9/11
Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 283-284] Its offices are in
Building 7 of the World Trade Center. Today is reportedly “going
to be a busy day at the OEM,” as staff members have come to
work early to prepare for Tripod, a major biological-terrorism
training exercise scheduled for September 12 (see September
12,
)