[TomGuy]

Article and video at ABC news website: Video/article

[backhoe]

I wonder how soon we'll see apologies and retractions from the Dowd Crowd?

[Bogie]

Good post. Thanks!

[Guenevere]

BTTT

[SusanUSA]

Truly chilling! Thanks for the post (and for the video link, TG). Hard to imagine what the effect of having the White House hit would have had on America's morale. Wonder if our response would have been swifter and more severe or if we would have been even more stunned and panicked?

[IronJack]

The story from a different perspective. That sense of frustration those controllers felt is the same engine that drives America now to seek revenge. I too sat there and watched ignorance and hatred destroy lives and buildings, and I wanted to do something -- anything -- to stop it. I'm sure most other Americans felt -- and feel -- the same way. All we can do now is stand together and declare "Never again!"

[Coop]

Have they started blasting this controller yet, calling her a nut and/or slut? [sigh]

Anyways, I didn't watch the show, but I saw the preview. I'm glad this came out to make the naysayers look even MORE foolish.

Were they targeting the White House and Air Force One? We'll probably never know for sure. Did the Secret Service and the Administration take prudent security measures. Darn right they did!

[ELS]

Bump

[Amore]

Here's what I said on last night's thread started on this same story:

"When Cheney appeared on Meet the Press the Sunday after the attack, he said at the time that that was what they theorized -- that the plane couldn't find the White House and therefore went after the Pentagon. Maybe 10 days after that, it was stated that that theory turned out to be incorrect. In fact, they said, radar established that, at all times, its target was the Pentagon. They believed that the plane was initially too high and too fast, so it had to loop around and hit the Pentagon from another direction."

I hope no one would interpret this as saying that the White House was NOT under attack. I think it's pretty clear he White House WAS. If it wasn't this plane, it was another one, that thankfully did not make it.

[ironman]

"The plane left Dulles heading west at 270 Deg and turned off its transponder which reads out the altitude and provides an ID which is translated to its flight number (like AA77 whatever) The controllers noticed right away and all by themselves, I can assure you. The little symbol just goes out. There is still a primary reflection from the plane (as it is not a Stealthy plane). The controllers were watching that primary reflection which is weak and without ID and without Altitude readout.

The media is simplifying the flight path that they actually took, but you can follow it like this... from the 270 heading they turned 180 deg to 90 deg heading east to DC. Coming in over DC at over 400 knots at low altitude, unless you pick up a reference point early, you start to see a blur of white buildings and green trees. The Mall doesn't even stand out, and as you get close to the Washington Monument, it disappears and starts to look like a golf tee.

He was most likely trained to look for the Potomac River to set a frame of reference. Now, this is where the 360 came in... he turned to the right to find the White House and could not ID it. Still turning to the right he completed a 360 circle in the general area of Downtown DC. Now his heading would again be 90 deg heading east, and he just gave up and picked out the Pentagon on the Potomac, as his secondary target. This jives with a local media report heard here in DC that morning. It mentioned a plane circling over the WH and going into the pentagon. That same media report mentioned a fire burning on the mall. The report of the fire has disapeared from the media, but I believe it was intended to be a more visible landmark recognizing that this problem might occur. (More later)"

138 posted on 10/24/01 11:28 PM Eastern by Stealthy

[suroc]

This is exactly what military planners protested to FDR over the shape of the new military headquarters.

(read about almost to the end)
Link

Coincidently, construction on the Pentagon began on September 11th.

[LTCJ]

I almost never watch 20/20 (if you wonder why, perhaps you caught the anti-gun commercial by the Ad Council sandwiched between segments), but I did watch last night's show.

The strong impression I was left with after watching this segment was that this was more than just a terrorist attack. The controller's story supports a strong argument that the actions on Flights 77 & 93 were intended to take out all the elected officials of two of the three branches of the federal government.

Speaking as an aviation-type, I don't believe these people had never run through an adequate simulation of the attack (thank God). Had they done so, I don't think they would have hit the Pentagon at all but would have hit the White House with Flight 93 going for the Capital chambers.

Now I'm the first to say I'm no big fan of the federal government but, by God, it's my government, and nobody but Americans are going to take it out (and through the ballot box, at that).

[LibertyGirl77]

Since the attack, [air traffic controller] O'Brien has been having nightmares. "I've sat up straight in bed many times, reliving it, reseeing it, rehearing it," she says. "And it's in the most absurd ways that only a dream could depict."

In her dreams, events unfold differently.

"The one that comes to mind most, dreaming of a green pool in front of me. That was part of the radar scope. It was a pool of gel, and I reached into the radar scope to stop that flight. But in the dream, I didn't harm the plane," she says. "I just held it in my hand, and somehow that stopped everything."

My prayers are with this woman. I think the air traffic controllers were some of the unsung heroes of 9/11. I can only imagine what it was like for them, but they competently--no, excellently--did what they had to do at breakneck speed. God bless them.

[kassie]

I always knew it was the target, but to read this, just makes me sick.

[GEC]

Will this prompt a double-reversal from Andrew Sullivan?