Posted on 08/12/2002 12:50:43 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
FAA says it had 11 other suspect planes on Sept. 11
Monday August 12, 2002
By RICHARD PYLE Associated Press Writer
WESTBURY, N.Y. (AP) In the tense minutes after two hijacked jetliners smashed into New York's World Trade Center and another hit the Pentagon, air traffic controllers had as many as 11 other suspect aircraft on their screens, federal aviation officials said Monday.
The concern over possible additional hijackings did not end until 12:15 p.m. on Sept. 11 3{ hours after the first attack on the twin towers when the last of 4,546 commercial aircraft were safely on the ground nationwide.
``Somewhere in the first hour after the first plane hit, we were receiving reports of additional confirmed hijackings. The list at that point in time started to grow,'' said Frank Hatfield, Eastern Region division manager for FAA air traffic control operations.
``All reports were treated as unconfirmed hijackings until we eliminated that as a possibility. We were not satisfied that the last number was four until 12:15 p.m., and every airplane in the country was on the ground,'' he said.
``No one had ever envisioned a scenario where the United States would land every plane in the sky.''
Airports became jammed with the unexpected aircraft, yet there were no mishaps, he said.
Hatfield and other FAA officials briefed news media on Monday at the New York Terminal Approach Control Center, known as TRACON, on Long Island.
Mike McCormick, air traffic control manager at New York Center the main traffic control center for New York area airports made the unprecedented decision at 9:04 a.m. to declare ``ATC Zero,'' meaning that normal services were suspended and no aircraft could fly into, out of or through the region's airspace.
At that time there were still hundreds of aircraft in the skies around New York and the western Atlantic, for which the Long Island-based center had responsibility.
The decision came just after the second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, struck the south tower of the World Trade Center, confirming that the country was under terrorist attack.
Unlike the first hijacked plane, American Airlines Flight 11, the second Boeing 767's transponder was working and he knew where it was headed, McCormick said, even before the Newark Airport control tower picked it up visually as it flew south along the Hudson River, turned and headed back toward the twin towers.
``I wanted to make sure everyone understood that this (attack) was not a single aircraft, that this was not a single event. There was at least one other aircraft involved and there could be many more, and we needed to prepare for all eventualities,'' McCormick said.
The officials said many changes have been effected in emergency procedures since Sept. 11 but declined to go into detail for security reasons.
Hatfield said, however, that the time frame for the FAA to make contact with the military in an emergency ``has been shaved from minutes to seconds.''
On that day, the first two military interceptors, Air Force F-15 Eagles from Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts, scrambled airborne at 8:52 a.m., six minutes after the first attack, but too late to do anything about the other jets heading for the Trade Center or Pentagon.
Those struck at 9:02 and 9:40 a.m., respectively. The fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed near Somerset, Pa., at 10:07 a.m.
McCormick said that under the new procedures, ``We are in direct instantaneous communication with our military and those people responsible for defending our country.''
Hatfield said security now has a much higher priority than it did before Sept. 11.
``We have searched our souls and tried to figure out what we could have done differently on that day,'' he said. ``Probably the best thing we could have done was to improve our communications, and over the last year we have aggressively addressed that issue.''
FBI probes 5th flight for hijackers, Chicago Tribune, September 18, 2001,by Stephen J. Hedges and Naftali Bendavid (posted by newzjunkey).
WASHINGTON -- The FBI is investigating the possibility that suicide hijackers were on board a fifth transcontinental airline flight last Tuesday, one that was cancelled just minutes before its scheduled 8:10 a.m. departure from Boston due to a mechanical problem, according to sources familiar with the investigation.Federal agents are searching for an undetermined number of passengers who were on board American Airlines Flight 43, according to one source familiar with the passenger manifest. The flight was to have departed Boston 25 minutes after American Flight 11, which struck New York's World Trade Center, this source said.
In addition, one of the sources said that the FBI was "very interested" in passengers whose names appeared on the manifests of "several" other American flights that were in the air when the first attacks occurred. Those planes landed prematurely when air traffic controllers, responding to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, ordered all flights in the U.S. to touch down as soon as possible.
None of the passengers in whom the FBI has expressed interest reappeared to continue their journeys after commercial flights resumed late last week, one of the sources said.
On Thursday, the FBI sent a list of several dozen Arabic-sounding names to state and local police with the request that those on the list be located for questioning. At least some of the passengers being sought are believed to be among those listed, according to one of the sources. An American Airlines spokesman said he was not immediately able to confirm the sources' accounts.
About 35 minutes after Flight 43 was due to depart, American Flight 11, which was bound for Los Angeles, struck the Trade Center's north tower. A hijacked United flight from Boston hit the center's south tower about 20 minutes later. A third American flight that left Washington's Dulles International Airport struck the Pentagon at 9:39 a.m. A fourth plane, United Flight 93, crashed in a field southeast of Pittsburgh at 10:10 a.m.
Urgent request for help
Federal authorities were holding 49 individuals in connection with last week's terrorist attacks, nearly twice as many as two days ago, and the FBI sent out an urgent request Monday for Arabic and Farsi speakers to help with its investigation of the hijackings.
French government officials confirmed Monday that one of the people being held by the FBI for questioning in connection with last week's attack is considered a dangerous, well-known militant associate of Osama bin Laden.
Habib Zacarias Moussaoui, a dual French-Algerian national, was detained last month after instructors at a flight school he attended in Minnesota grew suspicious that Moussaoui, an inexperienced pilot, wanted to learn only how to steer and turn passenger jets, not take off or land.
... FBI officials acknowledged that the bureau is being hampered by a severe shortage of investigators fluent in Arabic or Farsi, which is spoken in Iran. "This has been a perpetual problem for everybody," said FBI spokesman John Collingwood.
... "There has been credible evidence gathered since Tuesday that Tuesday's attacks were not designed to be a one-day event," [Sen. Bob] Graham [(D-Fla.)] told the Orlando Sentinel. "There were other acts of terrorism in the United States and elsewhere that were part of this plan."
This actually says alot about the efficency and skill of the air traffic controllers in this country.
Using an obsolete system with some components using 1950s vintage computers with vacuum tubes. If we had a state of the art system, the computers would have notified controllers that the aircraft had deviated from their flight plans as soon as hijackers took control and maneuvered them.
He used an ID which somehow is related to another story that was posted here, about some middle-Easteners who had success in obtaining ID's from the State of Tennessee's Dept. of Motor Vehicles.
This was some months ago ... maybe in February or March, those stories ran here.
It was theorized that the middle-Eastener who had gotten the pass(es) which affected his way around the World Trade Center, had managed to shut down some of the emergency water supply, either manually or had planted a bomb.
The FEMA Report does not explain how the sprinkler system was disabled, based on their investigation they concluded it was disabled. Many simply conclude that the crash itself disabled the sprinkler systems. However, I have too much confidence in the design engineers to readily assume there was no redundancy in the sprinkler system so that the system could still function in the event of a localized catastrophic event such as an explosion or plane crash.
You combine that with the story of the criminal Muslim unlicensed plumber admitting to working on the sprinkler system days prior with no record at the Port Authority and you get my attention. Additionally, the company that Sakhera Hammad supposedly worked for, Denko Plumbing, doesn't exist, even though it is registered to a man using an alias with the State of New York.
Additionally you have the murder of Katherine Smith, a Hammad co-conspirator in the driver's license fraud. It's an interesting story that you can read more about at the above link.
It's just too damn bad that FR isn't functionally searchable anymore, isn't it?
Correction: should be Denko Mechanical,Inc.
A photo ID pass for Sept. 5 found on one of the men charged with fraudulently obtaining a Tennessee driver's license from a Memphis woman gave him access to the six underground levels of the One World Center building.But which tenant hired Sakher 'Rocky' Hammad, 24, to work on its sprinklers is lost, said Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman Alan Hicks on Friday.
Hammad told federal authorities that he was working on the sprinklers six days before the twin towers were brought down by terrorists, court testimony revealed this week.
But Hicks said the Port Authority, which owned the building, did its own sprinkler work, and that any other work involving sprinklers would have been arranged by an individual tenant.
"We don't know (which one) because all our records were destroyed in the World Trade Center, as were some of the people who know that," Hicks said.
Small details about the five Middle Eastern men arrested Feb. 5 with Tennessee driver's license examiner Katherine Smith are slowly surfacing. Smith died Sunday in a fiery car crash, a day before she was to appear in court. It appears that Khaled Odtllah of Cordova shared the same 2840 Morning Lake Drive address at different times over the past year with Rocky Hammad, according to an online people finder database.
Odtllah and Hammad also spent time in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn in 2000 and lived about 22 blocks apart near New York Harbor.
Calls to the telephone number for Magic Plumbing and Heating Inc. on 93rd Street in Brooklyn were answered Thursday and Friday by a recording that said "Rocky's" voice-mail box was full. Hammad had the firm's business card, according to a government exhibit introduced at this week's detention hearing.
Hammad also had a New York City Police Benevolent Association card, a plastic Detectives Endowment Association Inc. for the Police Department of the City of New York card, two video rental cards, an ATM card and a First Consumers National Bank MasterCard.
Hammad's cousin, Abdelmuhsen Mahmid Hammad, also obtained a Tennessee driver's license last year. He's in the country illegally after overstaying a visa.
Venezuela-born Mohammed Fares, 19, allegedly told authorities that he needed a Tennessee driver's license to drive for Big Boss, an export-import clothing store in New York's garment district. Big Boss Enterprises bookkeeper Hussein Nasser said by phone Friday that he had received several recent inquiries about Fares, but that he'd never worked there. [CYA? Or did he apply for a job there?]
So far almost nothing is known of Mostafa Said Abou-Shahin, 26, a self-employed Egyptian carpenter living in the United State illegally.
All five men are being held without bail at the pretrial facility of the Federal Correctional Institution in Memphis.
The coverage of this incident that I read several months ago (if it was the same incident) said that when it was announced that the flight was cancelled, the four Arabs at first refused to leave and demanded that the plane take off. After a vehement argument where the Arabs argued the importance of their "mission" (my word) with I think the pilot and flight attendents, they seemed to have a sudden change of heart and literally ran off the plane and disappeared into the airport crowd.
But the more I think about it, I seem to remember that that report was about another flight from Boston's Logan - where 3 of the 4 hijacked planes originated. This Dallas report may be a totally seperate incident.
Anyone out there remember??
From the article:
"Fifteen million dollars was looted from the city's Municipal Credit Union by its own members - including city employees, health care professionals and education workers - when a computer failure caused by the collapse of the World Trade Center allowed virtually unlimited access to money in automated teller machines ... Sixty-six people who withdrew $7,500 or more beyond what was in their accounts have been arrested ... and 35 are being sought for arrest ... "
From Tom Ridge, President's Bush's top man at the HomeLand Security Operation in Washington, DC, in an article at The Washington Times, August 1, 2002:
Department of Hollow Security? (scroll down to paragraph no. 7)" ... The vast majority of federal employees are capable, dedicated public servants. ... "
Sure. The article above, may as well have read:
from the Federal Credit Union by its own members - including government employees, federal health care professionals and federal public education workers, members of the N.E.A. -
"Reliable" people, from whom you could probably gain credentials.
The same was true of the pentagon. If that 4th plane had hit the other side of the Pentagon the entire Pentagon would have gone up in smoke. Our entire headquarters for our military would have been destroyed. That includes all the records. Had it succeeded there would not have been the rapid response to Afghanistan. The resourses stored in the pentagon would have had to be recreated first.
The first step in defeating a nation is to take out its military command and control. It is what we did to Sadam in the Gulf war. The worlds 4th largest military became a joke once we destroyed its command and control.
If we had lost our primary command and control we would not be so safe today.
Conversely if only one plane had hit the WTC only a few hundred would have died. You'll recall the tower that was hit last went down first. The first tower was going to make it with the sprinkler system beating down the fire. When the second tower was hit and its sprinklers ativated, there was not enough pressure and capacity to send water to the top of either building. The second building never got any water and fell first.
Do you have any information about how the fire suppression system that included water storage tanks on the top of both towers was effected?
I think the bolded part is important.
I don't think any of the hijackers of the planes that actually did the attacks knew of the other ones.
That is the way they play this type of thing, on a need to know basis.
I think the box cutters were a dead giveaway, after all they were used on all of the hijackings.
I doubt if these guys just happened to have forgotten they had the boxcutters in their possesions cause they just got off work at the local 7-11...
Interesting information. I would appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction to find a source for the information.
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