Posted on 09/11/2016 9:41:52 PM PDT by Enlightened1
When chief of staff Andrew Card knelt down and told George Bush “America is under attack” 15 years ago Sunday, the words he whispered in the president’s ear in a Florida classroom launched what was supposed to be a planned, orderly response to a national emergency.
But what followed instead was chaos, a breakdown in communication and protocol that risked international conflict and could have made Sept. 11, 2001, a still bigger tragedy. There were live nukes on the tarmac at U.S. airbases, a failed communications system, and a security protocol for the president and his potential successors — the “continuity of government” plan — that only one top official followed.
Based on a review of newly unclassified documents, memoirs and other published accounts, and interviews with U.S. officials, NBC News has learned that:
Three dozen live nuclear weapons were aboard U.S. Air Force bombers at three airbases when al Qaeda struck New York and Washington. Because of inadequate communications equipment and procedures, top U.S. officials couldn’t talk to each other or to anyone else. Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to speak to Bush to know why the U.S. was preparing to go to DEFCON 3 — but the White House couldn’t put him through to Air Force One. Bush had no way to receive phone calls. After Bush left Florida, where he had been reading a book to schoolkids, his plane was low on fuel but for hours had nowhere to land. Most of the top 10 people in the president’s line of succession, including Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, either refused to follow the protocol and go to their designated secure sites, or were out of the country, or were never contacted.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Nothing really new or explosive. Depending on .gov to keep ya safe will always fail ya. Nor is everyone on a sop or follows it. One would hope .gov has a ‘real’ plan now for various contingencies and various problems resolved.
it
I was watching the news coverage of the day. There was no fighter cover over DC. That is not arguable.
“I was watching the news coverage of the day. There was no fighter cover over DC. That is not arguable.”
Our defense posture at that time was for an external threat. We never suspected this type of attack would be launched internally.
A friend of mine flew sky cap over DC for some months after 9-11. We were then prepared for internal threats. His job was to shoot down any threat regardless of where it came from.
Yeah, Putin wanted to know why we went to DEFCON3.
Because neither he nor anyone else in Russia had a TV that day. And none of his briefers were contacted immediately after the incident, including his spies.
so stupid.
That's definitely unsurprising. Senior people tend to have a real problem following contingency plans like that. They usually just go off and do what they want.
Nothing but fanciful speculation in fifteen years of retrospect. NBC = Nothing But Crap
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/were-the-only-plane-in-the-sky-214230
And yet there was a female pilot in an F-16 who was supposedly sent on a kamikaze mission to intercept Flight 93 because there wasn't a single armed fighter jet at Andrews Air Force Base.
I assume that every story we hear about what transpired that morning is at least 80% bullsh!t.
RE: Only one film so far has been found that showed the plane hitting the Pentagon
About 6 months after 911 Campus Crusade for Christ/Bill Bright came out with a film that purported to show actual footage of both NY and DC.
The footage of Flight 93 and Todd Beamer and of the terrorists before they boarded, and of FAA people was said to have a lot of re-enactment in it.
It is a great movie. Where is that movie now?
“There were live nukes on the tarmac at U.S. airbases”
Gee, do ya think?
“And yet there was a female pilot in an F-16 who was supposedly sent on a kamikaze mission to intercept Flight 93 because there wasn’t a single armed fighter jet at Andrews Air Force Base.”
What was her home base and flying unit? There were other ANG F-16s up from another base but they were not configured as interceptors and were supposedly so low on fuel that there was no chance that they could have caught up to and rammed United 93.
Oh, bull.
I neither hate nor love Putin, but all he had to do was turn on his TV and see the scenes LIVE from New York City, the Pentagon, and the fact that a no-responsive to air traffic control aircraft went down somewhere in Pennsylvania, when radar saw it approaching Washington DC at 500 MPH.
At the time, no one really knew how extensive the attack was; who planned it; or what other shoes were about to drop.
I would expect far MORE criticism if we didn’t heighten DEFCON that day.
“Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to speak to Bush to know why the U.S. was preparing to go to DEFCON 3 — but the White House couldn’t put him through to Air Force One. Bush had no way to receive phone calls.”
I was watching a documentary yesterday on the history channel where Condi Rice claimed to have called Putin and discussed exactly that. Condi claimed she had a moment of reflection during that conversation that the cold war was truly over because Putin had stopped some planned military exercises, and was watching the events unfold on the news waiting to hear from someone in our government.
I’ll tell you something I learned: I watched the replay of the Today show from 9/11. That morning, David Gregory gave a very “official sounding” report saying that Bush was informed of the attack on his way to the school for an education event.
We now know, from the video tape, that this was flat out wrong.
Gregory was SUPPOSED To be covering Bush, but obviously wasn’t with him. So, he had to make up some kind of report, when asked by his bosses.
What a putz.
bump
I see what you did there. :-)
"We're the Only Plane in the Sky."
That article gave a much more detailed view of the communications methods. Here's a relevant excerpt:
Master Sgt. Dana Lark: We had limited communications, that’s for sure, but the president and Air Force One were never without secure communications. We just had two lines—one for the president and one for the mil aide. We were never out of touch entirely. All the other staff or the other Secret Service agent, we just couldn’t provide them the calls they needed. There were a couple times when the vice president wasn’t available, but we never lost communications with the ground.Andy Card: One of the president’s first thoughts, from Sarasota to Barksdale, was Vladimir Putin.
Gordon Johndroe: [Putin] was important—all these military systems were all put in place for nuclear alerts. If we went on alert, we needed Putin to know that we weren’t readying an attack on Russia. He was great—he said immediately that Russia wouldn’t respond, Russia would stand down, that he understood we were under attack and needed to be on alert.
Ari Fleischer: Putin was fantastic that day. He was a different Vladimir Putin in 2001. America could have had no better ally on September 11th than Russia and Putin.
In 2001 we weren’t supporting a coup in the Ukraine to cut off Russia, but I digress.
A friend of mine flew sky cap over DC for some months after 9-11. We were then prepared for internal threats. His job was to shoot down any threat regardless of where it came from.
I don’t know which is more frightening, the fact that our armed forces are so inflexible they cannot say “the nation is under aerial attack, fly cover and shoot to kill anyone that does not answer or approaches _________.” Or that they never thought of an internal threat even after war games FROM EVERY ANGLE are supposed to be practiced for.
In my opinion, it was a stand down order, they knew it was coming and wanted it to happen. Nobody they gave a care about died.
I was not talking Russia-U.S. relations. I was illustrating the contrast in the tone of the two “news” accounts of the communications situation, and also the reason for calling Putin to avert an international incident.
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