Confusion hindered response to attacks

WASHINGTON – Confusion, bad information and a chaotic response by civilian and military officials on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, hampered efforts to intercept the hijacked airliners, an independent panel said Thursday.

The findings by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States illustrated a recurring pattern: The government had never seriously contemplated or prepared for the kind of attack that took place on Sept. 11.

“The details of what happened on the morning of Sept. 11 are complex. But the details play out a simple theme,” the panel said. The North American Aerospace Defense Command “and the FAA were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States.”

The panel also released for the first time chilling cockpit voice recordings of hijack leader Mohamed Atta, who ordered passengers to stay in their seats on the doomed American Airlines Flight 11 minutes before he crashed the plane into the World Trade Center.

Atta’s orders were inadvertently radioed to air controllers 24 minutes after take-off, providing authorities with the first indication that the terrorist plot was under way.

The panel, in its 12th and final public hearing, also disclosed for the first time that President Bush had given the order to shoot down the hijacked commercial planes around 10 a.m.

But by then it was too late – the last of the hijacked airliners crashed outside of Shanksville, Pa., at 10:03 and air defense officials hadn’t even been notified that it had been hijacked.

At virtually every level of command, the commission found that there was a paucity of reliable information.

Military jets might have had time to intercept two of the hijacked planes. But air defense officials at NORAD didn’t get information about American Airlines Flight 77 until a few minutes before it crashed into the Pentagon, and the agency wasn’t told about United Airlines Flight 93 until after it had crashed in Pennsylvania.

In its detailed look at the hijackings, the panel identified quick, heads-up reactions by individual air traffic controllers and military personnel as the plot unfolded.

One air traffic controller out of Boston concluded, based on an inadvertent cockpit broadcast from Flight 11 within minutes of the first hijacking, that the plane had been taken over, and NORAD commanders at Otis Air Force Base on Cape Code were quickly notified.

The panel praised the FAA for acting to ground all commercial airplanes once it became clear the nation was under attack, a technically demanding task involving about 4,500 planes.

But the commission also found that the FAA performed erratically.

It said the FAA failed to pass along information that might have helped the military respond. FAA officials, for example, became aware that there might be a problem with American Flight 77 around 8:50 a.m., by which time the hijackers apparently had turned off the plane’s transponder.

Transponders emit unique radio signals, enabling air traffic controllers to precisely track a plane’s path.

For the next 47 minutes, air traffic controllers searched for the plane and tried to contact it, to no avail, showing among other things that their backup radar was inadequate.

By 9:25 a.m., according to the panel, FAA officials knew that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center, that a hijacker on one of the planes had announced “we have planes” and that Flight 77 was missing.

Yet they didn’t contact the military for possible assistance until a few minutes before the plane crashed into the Pentagon, the panel said.

In one instance, the FAA told NORAD that Flight 11 was on its way to Washington after the plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Based on that information, NORAD jets were scrambled out of Langley Air Force base in a misguided attempt to intercept what they thought would be Flight 11 coming in from New York.

When NORAD commanders learned that in fact a flight was coming toward Washington from the west, American 77, they ordered their fighters to turn around.

“OK, we’re going to turn it … crank it up … run them to the White House,” a NORAD commander said on a recording released by the commission. “I don’t care how many windows you break.”

NORAD is responsible for defending the nation from attack by hostile aircraft. Its primary mission was established during the Cold War, when it focused on the possibility of an attack by the former Soviet Union.

But with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the number of NORAD bases was sharply reduced. On the morning of Sept. 11, only four military jets were at the ready to respond in the northeast, the panel said.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the commission that communication between military commanders and the FAA had been vastly improved since the attacks.

Yet Lee Hamilton, the vice chairman of the panel, said after the hearing that the panel remains skeptical of assurances by the government that holes in the national security system had been plugged following the attacks.

“I can think of a list of 10 things” that he says still are causes for concern, he said.