NORAD had drills of jets as weapons

USA Today.Com - Washington ^ | Posted 4/18/2004 10:22 PM | By Steven Komarow and Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY

[Bobby777]

WASHINGTON — In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon — but that drill was not run after Defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.

NORAD, in a written statement, confirmed that such hijacking exercises occurred. It said the scenarios outlined were regional drills, not regularly scheduled continent-wide exercises.

"Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft," the statement said. "These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures."

A White House spokesman said Sunday that the Bush administration was not aware of the NORAD exercises. But the exercises using real aircraft show that at least one part of the government thought the possibility of such attacks, though unlikely, merited scrutiny.

[Bobby777]

excerted according to rules ...

[Bobby777]

FReepmail me if you'd like to be on or off this ping list ...

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

The idea of using passenger jets as bombs was discussed at length on this board in 97 or 98. It's not that original an idea, the towelheads were just the first to act upon it.

[MeekOneGOP]

bump!

[WhiteyAppleseed]

In case there was a failure of imagination, Italy had just set an example two months before 9/11 on how to respond to a terrorist threat: After receiving a warning that a summit of world leaders in the city of Genoa would be targeted by al-Qaeda, they conspicuously defended the city with increased police, antiaircraft batteries, and constantly flying fighter jets. Apparently the press coverage of the defenses caused al-Qaeda to cancel the attack. President Bush could hardly have failed to notice, since he took the unusual step of sleeping on board a US aircraft carrier during the summit. [BBC, 7/18/01, CNN, 7/18/01, Los Angeles Times, 9/27/01]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1120310/posts

Apparently, war games pay off at times.

[Rebelbase]

6 months before 9/11 there was an episode of The Lone Gunman where a 727 is hijacked via its computer with the intent of flying it into the WTC, only to be diverted at the last moment. Play the video clip here: http://propagandamatrix.com/multimedia_priorknowledge_lonegumen.html

[BillM]

This is absolute nonsense. There is no computer system controlling the 727. Its control systems date to the 1960's. It is less automated than most Cessnas.

[LadyDoc]

Gee, someone in the Pentagon seems to have read Tom Clancey...except in Clancey's book, the jet flew into the Capitol building.

The REAL fear was a car or truck bomb a la Oklahoma City...which is why the Pentagon's walls were being reinforced during the renovation of the Pentagon---and luckily for us, the plane hit the reinforced/half empty side of the Pentagon...

Nor would it have had to be a deliberate crash, since the Pentagon is quite near the flight path of Washington Reagan National Airport...where planes traditionally come in down the Potomac...

We are actually lucky, since if the airplane had crashed in some of the other nearby office buildings the death rate would have been much worse.

[OXENinFLA]

In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks

Hummm AND WHO WAS THE PRES. THEN????

[risk]

Old news.
NORAD Trained for Hijacking Event Before Terrorist Attacks - 10/2001 NORAD timeline on 9/11 - 9/8/01
Statement of NORAD General Ralph E. Eberhart to the Armed Services Committee (on 9/11) - 3/02
Simulated hijackings included in training 02/04 report.

Lady Liberty

[Rebelbase]

Of course its nonsense it was a primetime sci-fi spinoff from the X-files.

That doesn't change the bizaare nature of the storyline, post 9/11.

[mdmathis6]

I've always wondered that the subrosa reality that lies beneath the everyday world in which we live isn't like a whispering gallery that if one could "tune in " just right one could hear the 'truth" of what did or will happen.
Jules Verne for example writing decades befoe of nuclear powered subs and directed energy weapons for example.
We have been warned...we aren't listening very well.

You know a month or so after the 9/11 bombings...a raid was done in the Netherlands on a muslim dominated school.

Muslim printed Calendars were found for 2001 with each month depicted with some kind of picture signifying the monthly events. The month of September showed an airliner flying towards the World Trade Center. I saw that picture from a link provided from FR...though I can't find it now. I remember the teacher when asked about it reportedly gasped"How did you find those"...then quickly shutting up!" I never did hear what the investigations turned up at that school.

In their arrogance they hide in plain site like trying to play hide and go seek on a tree less Oklahoma prairie...thinking that we are to stupid to figure out what they are up to. They abuse our good intentions and then claim we are racist when we speak up against that abuse...ie organisations like CAIR.

Sometimes I am not sure I can be held responsible for my own reactions should another Islamic attack occur in the US and so-called "Moderate" religion of peace Muslims state they "deplore" the blood shed while refusing to actually condemn the fellow muslims who did the deeds. Muslim Americans need to be AMERICAN or leave the country...there is no middle ground!

No warnings! The very rocks around us are crying out the warnings!

[JimRed]

Muslim printed Calendars were found for 2001 with each month depicted with some kind of picture signifying the monthly events. The month of September showed an airliner flying towards the World Trade Center.

The problem with that is that many people (including a number of FReepers) are capable of creating that calendar. Consequently, we have no way to be sure that it is real. You just can't believe your own eyes any more if the event is filtered through any sort of media.

Would one of us do that? I would hope not; but then some of us vote multiple times on polls...

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[Elsie]

NORAD had drills of jets as weapons.... I seem to remember something in WWII about Japanese pilots using THEIR planes as bombs........

And did some of those triemes get used as a crashing into kinda thing?

[mikegi]

I seem to remember something in WWII about Japanese pilots using THEIR planes as bombs........

Truman KNEW!

[mdmathis6]

It was an AP reported raid, the calendar was printed from a company that prints for Madrassahs and other Islamic organizations for all over the world. I saw the calendar, it was printed from press reports at the time.

[JimRed]

That sounds like it is authentic, then.

The next question is, did anyone at any level pick up on it pre-9/11 and pass the intel along? I'm guessing not; we probably don't have them infiltrated to that degree.

We are probably sorely lacking in deep cover agents within Islam.

[Bobby777]

yep, Islamic terrorists have been hijacking airliners since at least the early 1970's ...

[mdmathis6]

My main point was that they hide what they do out in plain sight figuring that liberal western democracies are too kind hearted and weak to deal with a stout hearted 7th century ideology that wants to destroy it. Our denial of the existence of good and evil is they cover they use. We are guilty of employing kindergarten sensibility..."if we are good and kind to them they will be good and kind to us" in our diplomacy.

They speak of acheiveing the "peace of Saladin" with Israel and the west(which was a duplicitous slaughter of crusaders who had thought they had negotiated a
peaceful withdrawal from the Holy Land,then laid down their weapons and started to leave when they were set upon and destroyed). You saw that kind of mentality when the Israelis tried to withdraw peacefully from Lebanon(under Clintonian pressure) and were attacked and harried from the rear as they did so;at least they were wise to keep their weapons.

They see Americans as insouciant, caught up in our moral decadence and material goods(which many of us may well be). What they don't get is that America is a little more complicated than the stereotypes picked up from old American sitcom reruns picked up from sattelite.

These Muslims see the west as weak, being harried and ruled by women...even the most "moderate" Islamic groups are very conservative in what women are allowed to do and act and dress. They figure that the men in the west are too affeminate to ever prevail against them.

I'm afraid to defeat them, you would have to destroy their icons of worship and erase Mecca from the face of the earth and to "shermanize" them...literally create a hell on earth for them so that they would never raise a weapon against us again...and that is what these radicals figure the west is too soft to ever contemplate!

[mdmathis6]

WhstlingPastTheGraveYard at freerepublic has a picture of the calendar on his profile page.

http://www.freerepublic.com/~whistlingpastthegrav/

This image was widely known in the Arab world prior to 9/11
and they figure we are so stupid and as we don't speak arabic they can just discuss it all openly in their Mosques and schools.

Their leaders speak half truths to westerners because we want them to "love and accept us" so much. If we get hit with a terrorist attack then their diplomats gently chide us while "commiserating" with us over our losses. It's all the West's fault they claim, that the average Islamic person hates us and if we would just agree with them over the destruction of Israel then the Islamics won't hurt us and give us "boo boos" up our collective anuses any more!
Even if Israel was conquered the Islamics would be gunning for the rest of us next.

Their psychology is such that perhaps the next Hitler or even the Antichrist himself will appear amongst them to galvanize them into a potent military force. Their potential garrisons already are stationed thru the mosques and maddrassah schools in just about every country on earth!