The NORAD testimony I was noting is in fact contradicted by these NORAD tapes. To quote Vanity Fair's piece again: "In the chronology presented to the 9/11 com

The NORAD testimony I was noting is in fact contradicted by these NORAD tapes. To quote Vanity Fair's piece again: "In the chronology presented to the 9/11 commission, Colonel Scott put the time NORAD was first notified about United 93 at 9:16 a.m., from which time, he said, commanders tracked the flight closely. (It crashed at 10:03 a.m.) If it had indeed been necessary to "take lives in the air" with United 93, or any incoming flight to Washington, the two armed fighters from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia would have been the ones called upon to carry out the shootdown. In Colonel Scott's account, those jets were given the order to launch at 9:24, within seconds of NEADS's receiving the F.A.A.'s report of the possible hijacking of American 77, the plane that would ultimately hit the Pentagon. This time line suggests the system was starting to work: the F.A.A. reports a hijacking, and the military reacts instantaneously. Launching after the report of American 77 would, in theory, have put the fighters in the air and in position over Washington in plenty of time to react to United 93." But it didn't happen that way, and the two fighters that were over Washington that would have taken down United 93 were unarmed after recent training missions. If they had taken down the plane, it would not have been a shootdown, but a kamikaze mission: Marc H. Sasseville would take out the cockpit and Heather Penney would take out the tail, on the premise that just taking out an engine could leave them with a functioning glider.