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The FAA NORAD tapes from 9/11 is available on YouTube. I found it shocking how unprepared everyone seemed to be. I'm reading the Vanity Fair article, it adds c

The FAA NORAD tapes from 9/11 is available on YouTube. I found it shocking how unprepared everyone seemed to be. I'm reading the Vanity Fair article, it adds context missing from the raw communication. It helps to understand why it sounded so chaotic. Is the movie worth watching? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYBhgEm3j7A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYBhgEm3j7A

AndrewBissell 5y ago
A major reason for that "unpreparedness" is that an improbably large number of exercises and drills just happened to be scheduled on that day: https://twitter.com/marina0swald/status/1435727546834989058 https://twitter.com/marina0swald/status/1435727546834989058
- patentatt 5y ago
  I’ve always heard this line of reasoning/evidence, but never seen a break down of how improbable all of these events were, or how publicly known any of these could have been. For example, was the one large training exercise the impetus for many of the smaller exercises to be done simultaneously, and also somewhat knowable to an interested outsider? If so, it could be that the attack was planned at that time to take advantage of it. Or, is it the case that all of these exercises were super secret, rare, and independently planned, which would be much stranger and/or more suspicious. Seems like this is still somewhat knowable and relevant analysis that some enterprising journalist could undertake.
shadowgovt 5y ago
Al-Qaeda hit upon a weakness of US response (partially through luck and partially through their own strategizing): the US intelligence community was still thinking about threats in the Cold War model and hijackings were a blind spot. They generally weren't anticipating hijackings to weaponize the plane, and they weren't anticipating an organized multi-hijacking scenario. Partially because both scenarios are militarily ineffective... Intelligence community thinking hadn't come around to the idea of warfare directed at civilian targets purely to demonstrate that the government was an ineffective defender (as opposed to warfare directed at military targets to damage and diminish military capacity).
ethbr0 5y ago
For splicing together a bunch of different conversations, it sounds pretty methodical to me. @ 8:14 AM, original ATC (Boston Center) loses contact, attempts to reestablish contact, alerts various parties of no radio flight, makes them aware its flying without transponder, and clears traffic on its presumed heading. There's a lot of work to search on radars to fix the plane's exact position. @ 8:20, word comes in (from American) that confirms it's a hijacking, and related centers spin up to work that. Note, they're initially calculating endurance, given that hijackers typically want to fly somewhere. @ 8:34, the local Air National Guard is alerted, with a heads up that an official request will be coming shortly. @ 8:37, position is confirmed visually by another plane, with the hijacked plane descending. @ 8:38, NORAD (NEADS) is officially contacted, to report the flight has been hijacked and requesting an intercept. @ 8:41, military pilots are readying. @ 8:47, the World Trade Center is on fire. 33 minutes, to react to a situation that hasn't really happened in American airspace for a long, long time (ever?). The only gap I could fault all involved with would be somehow expecting the unexpected -- that plane hijackers wouldn't be interested in flying the plane to safety, but would instead intentionally fly it into a building. If that had been in the realm of considered possibilities, I assume fighters would have been scrambled much earlier. Edit: Casting about for an analogy. Imagine I called you up one morning, and I told you that you needed to have a VP or higher in your company authorize an action that might have serious legal ramifications, and needed to be coordinated with VP+ counterparts in 2 separate companies you've had some dealing with. We'll even put aside uncertainty and doubt. You trust me, and want to make it happen. Where do you think we'd be in 33 minutes?
- sofixa 5y ago
  > The only gap I could fault all involved with would be somehow expecting the unexpected -- that plane hijackers wouldn't be interested in flying the plane to safety, but would instead intentionally fly it into a building. Sadly it really shouldn't have been unexpected. > ...between 1994 and 2001 CTC [CIA Counter Terrorism Center] collated no less than twelve specific reports warning that terrorists were scheming to hijack an airliner and fly it into a prestige target. Several of the reports actually named bin Laden and al Qai'da.. (from the book Military Intelligence Blunders and Cover-Ups by John Hughes-Wilson) The amount of intelligence collected really shouldn't have been missed. There was tons of it, from all sorts of sources, including suspected terrorists on lists that were taking flying courses and asking about flying big airliners, who didn't have any interest in landing or taking-off It was an epic failure on the scale of the US intelligence epic failure of Pearl Harbor.

AndrewBissell 5y ago

A major reason for that "unpreparedness" is that an improbably large number of exercises and drills just happened to be scheduled on that day: https://twitter.com/marina0swald/status/1435727546834989058 https://twitter.com/marina0swald/status/1435727546834989058

patentatt 5y ago
I’ve always heard this line of reasoning/evidence, but never seen a break down of how improbable all of these events were, or how publicly known any of these could have been. For example, was the one large training exercise the impetus for many of the smaller exercises to be done simultaneously, and also somewhat knowable to an interested outsider? If so, it could be that the attack was planned at that time to take advantage of it. Or, is it the case that all of these exercises were super secret, rare, and independently planned, which would be much stranger and/or more suspicious. Seems like this is still somewhat knowable and relevant analysis that some enterprising journalist could undertake.

shadowgovt 5y ago

Al-Qaeda hit upon a weakness of US response (partially through luck and partially through their own strategizing): the US intelligence community was still thinking about threats in the Cold War model and hijackings were a blind spot. They generally weren't anticipating hijackings to weaponize the plane, and they weren't anticipating an organized multi-hijacking scenario. Partially because both scenarios are militarily ineffective... Intelligence community thinking hadn't come around to the idea of warfare directed at civilian targets purely to demonstrate that the government was an ineffective defender (as opposed to warfare directed at military targets to damage and diminish military capacity).

ethbr0 5y ago

For splicing together a bunch of different conversations, it sounds pretty methodical to me. @ 8:14 AM, original ATC (Boston Center) loses contact, attempts to reestablish contact, alerts various parties of no radio flight, makes them aware its flying without transponder, and clears traffic on its presumed heading. There's a lot of work to search on radars to fix the plane's exact position. @ 8:20, word comes in (from American) that confirms it's a hijacking, and related centers spin up to work that. Note, they're initially calculating endurance, given that hijackers typically want to fly somewhere. @ 8:34, the local Air National Guard is alerted, with a heads up that an official request will be coming shortly. @ 8:37, position is confirmed visually by another plane, with the hijacked plane descending. @ 8:38, NORAD (NEADS) is officially contacted, to report the flight has been hijacked and requesting an intercept. @ 8:41, military pilots are readying. @ 8:47, the World Trade Center is on fire. 33 minutes, to react to a situation that hasn't really happened in American airspace for a long, long time (ever?). The only gap I could fault all involved with would be somehow expecting the unexpected -- that plane hijackers wouldn't be interested in flying the plane to safety, but would instead intentionally fly it into a building. If that had been in the realm of considered possibilities, I assume fighters would have been scrambled much earlier. Edit: Casting about for an analogy. Imagine I called you up one morning, and I told you that you needed to have a VP or higher in your company authorize an action that might have serious legal ramifications, and needed to be coordinated with VP+ counterparts in 2 separate companies you've had some dealing with. We'll even put aside uncertainty and doubt. You trust me, and want to make it happen. Where do you think we'd be in 33 minutes?

sofixa 5y ago
> The only gap I could fault all involved with would be somehow expecting the unexpected -- that plane hijackers wouldn't be interested in flying the plane to safety, but would instead intentionally fly it into a building. Sadly it really shouldn't have been unexpected. > ...between 1994 and 2001 CTC [CIA Counter Terrorism Center] collated no less than twelve specific reports warning that terrorists were scheming to hijack an airliner and fly it into a prestige target. Several of the reports actually named bin Laden and al Qai'da.. (from the book Military Intelligence Blunders and Cover-Ups by John Hughes-Wilson) The amount of intelligence collected really shouldn't have been missed. There was tons of it, from all sorts of sources, including suspected terrorists on lists that were taking flying courses and asking about flying big airliners, who didn't have any interest in landing or taking-off It was an epic failure on the scale of the US intelligence epic failure of Pearl Harbor.