Record­ed August 22, 2004
REALAUDIO
NB: This stream con­tains both FTR #s 473 and 474 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broad­cast.

Con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion of a Fifth Col­umn that Mr. Emory believes facil­i­tat­ed the 9/11 attacks, the pro­gram exam­ines a num­ber of pos­si­ble man­i­fes­ta­tions of such sub­ver­sion. (The pro­gram is a fol­low-up to FTR#’s 405, 433, 462, 464, 467.) It is Mr. Emory’s belief that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion is the pri­ma­ry ele­ment in this Fifth Col­umn and that the admin­is­tra­tions’ loy­al­ties are to the Under­ground Reich, not to the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. After set­ting forth the FBI’s sup­pres­sion of inves­ti­ga­tions into oper­a­tional links between Islamist and white-suprema­cist groups, the pro­gram high­lights infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that al-Qae­da is indeed seek­ing to uti­lize non-Arabs for exe­cut­ing oper­a­tions. Much of the pro­gram focus­es on the dis­clo­sure of the iden­ti­ty of an al-Qae­da mole. This dis­clo­sure per­mit­ted a num­ber of al-Qae­da sus­pects to escape. Was this dis­clo­sure a blun­der or an act of delib­er­ate sab­o­tage by the Fifth Col­umn?

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Dis­cus­sion of the Abu Hafs al-Mas­ri Brigades and their threat to unleash “earth­quakes” if Italy did not with­draw from Iraq; the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the al-Mas­ri Brigades’ threat may indi­cate that (as has been fore­cast) ter­ror­ist groups have gained access to Tes­la weapon­ry (see FTR#69); the arrest of Michael Wag­n­er (a con­vict­ed felon); Wagner’s claim to have knowl­edge of planned al-Qae­da attacks in the San Diego area; claims by numer­ous intel­li­gence experts that the dis­clo­sure of (al-Qae­da mole) Mr. Noor Khan’s iden­ti­ty was extra­or­di­nar­i­ly (per­haps sus­pi­cious­ly) fool­ish; the remark­able lev­el of con­fu­sion on the part of both the FAA and NORAD on 9/11; the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Ptech soft­ware may have account­ed for the strange behav­ior of air defense unites and the FAA on 9/11.

1. The pro­gram begins with an expose of the FBI’s sup­pres­sion of a vet­er­an agent’s rev­e­la­tions about devel­op­ing coop­er­a­tion between Islamist ter­ror­ists and home­grown white supremacist/militia types. (For more about Islamist/­neo-Nazi coop­er­a­tion in the exe­cu­tion of ter­ror­ist acts, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 330, 443, 456, 457. For more about the FBI’s sup­pres­sion of infor­ma­tion that could lead to the appre­hen­sion of ter­ror­ists and/or the inter­dic­tion of their oper­a­tions, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#’s 349, 454, 462, 464, 467.) Why is the bureau sup­press­ing this type of inves­ti­ga­tion?! “As a vet­er­an agent chas­ing home-grown ter­ror­ist sus­pects for the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion, Mike Ger­man always had a knack for worm­ing his way into places few oth­er agents could go. In the ear­ly 1990’s, he infil­trat­ed a group of white suprema­cist skin­heads plot­ting to blow up a black church in Los Ange­les. A few years lat­er, he joined a mili­tia in Wash­ing­ton State that talked of attack­ing gov­ern­ment build­ings. Known to his fel­low mili­tia mem­bers as Rock, he tricked them into hand­cuff­ing them­selves in a sup­posed train­ing exer­cise so the author­i­ties could arrest them.”
(“Anoth­er F.B.I. Employ­ee Blows Whis­tle on Agency” by Eric Licht­blau; The New York Times; 8/2/2004; p.1.)

2. “So in ear­ly 2002, when Mr. Ger­man got word that a group of Amer­i­cans might be plot­ting sup­port for an over­seas Islam­ic ter­ror­ist group, he pro­posed to his boss­es what he thought was an obvi­ous plan: go under­cov­er and infil­trate the group. But Mr. Ger­man says F.B.I. offi­cials sat on his request, botched the inves­ti­ga­tion, fal­si­fied doc­u­ments to dis­cred­it their own sources, then froze him out and made him a ‘pari­ah.’ He left the bureau in mid-June after 16 years and is now going pub­lic for the first time—the lat­est in a string of F.B.I. whis­tle-blow­ers who claim they were retal­i­at­ed against after voic­ing con­cerns about how man­age­ment prob­lems had imped­ed ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tions since the Sept. 11 attacks.” (Idem.)

3. “ ‘What’s so frus­trat­ing for me,’ Mr. Ger­man said in an inter­view, a copy of the Sept. 11 com­mis­sion report at his side,’ is that what I hear the F.B.I. say­ing every day on TV when I get home, about how it’s remak­ing itself to fight ter­ror­ism, is not the real­i­ty of what I saw every day in the field.’ Mr. Ger­man refused to dis­cuss details of the 2002 ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tion, say­ing the infor­ma­tion was clas­si­fied.” (Idem.)

4. Among the groups seen by offi­cials as prob­a­ble col­lab­o­ra­tors of al-Qae­da or oth­er Islamist groups are white suprema­cist groups with­in the cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem. “But offi­cials with knowl­edge of the case said the inves­ti­ga­tion took place in the Tam­pa, Fla. area, where a domes­tic mili­tia-type group and a major but uniden­ti­fied Islam­ic ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, were con­sid­er­ing join­ing forces. A tape record­ing of the meet­ing appeared to lend cre­dence to the report, one offi­cial said. Law enforce­ment offi­cials have become increas­ing­ly con­cerned that mil­i­tant domes­tic groups could seek to col­lab­o­rate with for­eign-based ter­ror­ist groups like Al Qae­da because of a shared hatred of the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment. This has become a par­tic­u­lar con­cern in pris­ons.” (Idem.)

5. “The Tam­pa case is not known to have pro­duced any arrests. But Mr. Ger­man, in an April 29 let­ter to sev­er­al mem­bers of Con­gress, warned that ‘the inves­ti­ga­tions involved in my com­plaint con­cern very active ter­ror­ist groups that cur­rent­ly pose sig­nif­i­cant threats to nation­al secu­ri­ty.’” (Idem.)

6. “He also wrote ‘Oppor­tu­ni­ties to ini­ti­ate proac­tive inves­ti­ga­tions involved in my com­plaint con­cern very active ter­ror­ist groups that cur­rent­ly pose sig­nif­i­cant threats to nation­al secu­ri­ty.’ He also wrote, ‘Oppor­tu­ni­ties to ini­ti­ate proac­tive inves­ti­ga­tions that might pre­vent ter­ror­ist acts before they occur, which is pur­port­ed to be the F.B.I.’s num­ber one pri­or­i­ty, con­tin­ue to be lost, yet no one is held account­able.’” (Idem.)

7. “ . . . Mr. Ger­man, in his let­ter to law­mak­ers, cit­ed ‘a con­tin­u­ing fail­ure in the F.B.I’s coun­tert­er­ror­ism pro­gram,’ which he said was ‘not the result of a lack of intel­li­gence, but a lack of action.’ Offi­cials said Mr. Ger­man also com­plained inter­nal­ly about a sec­ond case in the Port­land, Ore., area in 2002 in which he said he was blocked from going under­cov­er to pur­sue a domes­tic ter­ror­ism lead. That case was also thought to cen­ter on a mili­tia group sus­pect­ed of plot­ting vio­lence.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

8. “In the Tam­pa case, offi­cials said Mr. Ger­man com­plained that F.B.I. offi­cials had mis­han­dled evi­dence con­cern­ing a sus­pect­ed domes­tic ter­ror­ist group and failed to act for months on his request in ear­ly 2002 to con­duct an under­cov­er oper­a­tion. That fail­ure, he said, allowed the inves­ti­ga­tion to ‘die on the vine.’ While Mr. Ger­man would not con­firm the loca­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion, he said in an inter­view at the office of his Wash­ing­ton lawyer, Lynne Bern­abei, that his prob­lems inten­si­fied after he com­plained about the man­age­ment of the case in Sep­tem­ber 2002. He said F.B.I. offi­cials whom he would not name back­dat­ed doc­u­ments in the case, fal­si­fied evi­dence and false­ly dis­cred­it­ed wit­ness­es in an appar­ent effort to jus­ti­fy their approach to the inves­ti­ga­tion. [Empha­sis added.] He cit­ed insti­tu­tion­al iner­tia, even after Sept

. 11.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

9. “ ‘Try­ing to get approval for an oper­a­tion like this is a bureau­crat­ic night­mare at the F.B.I.,’ he said. Mr. Ger­man said that begin­ning in late 2002, he took his con­cerns to his super­vi­sors at the F.B.I. and to offi­cials at head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton, includ­ing Mr. Mueller him­self in an e‑mail mes­sage that he said went unan­swered. He also went to the Jus­tice Department’s inspec­tor gen­er­al and, frus­trat­ed by what he saw as a lan­guish­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, brought his con­cerns this spring to sev­er­al mem­bers of Con­gress and the Sept. 11 com­mis­sion.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

10. “In the mean­time, Mr. Ger­man said, his career at the F.B.I. stalled, despite what he said was an ‘unblem­ished’ record and an award for his work in the Los Ange­les skin­head case. Soon after rais­ing his com­plaints about the 2002 ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tion, he was removed from the case. And, he said, F.B.I. offi­cials wrong­ly accused him of con­duct­ing unau­tho­rized trav­el, stopped using him to train agents in ‘proac­tive tech­niques’ and shut him out of impor­tant domes­tic ter­ror­ism assign­ments.” (Idem.)

11. “ ‘The phone just stopped ring­ing, and I became a per­sona non gra­ta,’ he said. ‘Because I wouldn’t let this go away, I became the prob­lem.’ For now he has no job and is uncer­tain of his future. ‘My entire career has been ruined, all because I thought I was doing the right thing here,’ he said.” (Idem.)

12. Next, the pro­gram exam­ines the arrest of one Michael Wag­n­er for pos­sess­ing devices pro­scribed to a con­vict­ed felon. Wag­n­er claims he has knowl­edge of al-Qae­da plans for ter­ror­ist acts inside the U.S. Who is Michael Wag­n­er? Is he a white suprema­cist? Is he asso­ci­at­ed with a prison white-suprema­cist gang? [See para­graph #4.] Is Wag­n­er rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the type of indi­vid­ual that Agent Ger­man was try­ing to inter­dict? “A dri­ver stopped on an Iowa high­way this month was found with flight-train­ing man­u­als, Ara­bic doc­u­ments and night-vision gog­gles, and he told troop­ers he knew of ter­ror­ist plans to shoot up trains in San Diego, accord­ing to court papers.”
(“Dri­ver Says He Knows of Ter­ror­ist Plans” [Mer­cury News wire ser­vice sto­ry]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 7/28/2004; p. 4A.)

13. “Michael Wag­n­er, 44, of San Diego said he had knowl­edge of ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties and peo­ple and groups tied to Al-Qae­da and the Tal­iban. Wag­n­er also said he knew about things in the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties in San Diego that would inter­est fed­er­al author­i­ties. Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors declined com­ment. Wag­n­er plead­ed not guilty Tues­day in U.S. Dis­trict Court to being a felon in pos­ses­sion of body armor and weapons.” (Idem.)

14. Appar­ent­ly, al-Qae­da is look­ing for non-Arabs to car­ry out mis­sions. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the pat­tern of coop­er­a­tion between Islamists and neo-Nazis cit­ed in pro­grams above may facil­i­tate al-Qaeda’s goals is not one to be too read­i­ly dis­card­ed. “Al-Qae­da allies are believed to be scout­ing U.S. tar­gets, and the ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion is using non-Arab recruits to avoid detec­tion, U.S. law enforce­ment and intel­li­gence offi­cials say. The FBI has coun­tert­er­rosim inves­ti­ga­tions in vir­tu­al­ly all 56 of its field offices but has not bro­ken up a known sur­veil­lance cell, either because agents are tail­ing sus­pects who have not com­mit­ted crimes or because they have descrip­tions but not iden­ti­ties. . . .”
(“Non-Arab recruits scout for Al-Qae­da” by John Dia­mond and Toni Locy; USA Today; 8/16/2004; p. 1A.)

15. Next, the pro­gram high­lights an obscure Islamist group that claims affin­i­ty with al-Qae­da. The Abu Hafs al-Mas­ri Brigades (as dis­cussed in FTR#443) has made claims in the past that dove­tail with some of the activ­i­ties set forth in the neo-Nazi tract Serpent’s Walk. Their threat to bring “earth­quakes” to Italy may well be noth­ing more than a rhetor­i­cal flour­ish, with the word “earth­quakes” being a metaphor. Among the pos­si­bil­i­ties to be eval­u­at­ed, how­ev­er, is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some of the Tes­la-based tech­nol­o­gy dis­cussed in FTR#69 might be in the pos­ses­sion of the group. Time will tell. “An al-Qae­da-linked Islamist ter­ror group gave Italy anoth­er 15 days to with­draw its troops from Iraq before send­ing ‘waves of earth­quakes to erase your coun­try,’ accord­ing to a state­ment sent to an Ara­bic news­pa­per Sun­day. It was the fourth threat in two weeks against the coun­try. The state­ment was by the Abu Hafs al-Mas­ri Brigades and sent to the Lon­don-based Al-Quds Al-Ara­bi news­pa­per via e‑mail. Prime Min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlus­coni has that Ital­ian troops would stay in Iraq until democ­ra­cy takes hold. The brigade has claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for a num­ber of attacks on West­ern tar­gets, includ­ing the train bomb­ings in Madrid on March 11.”
(“Group Gives Ital­ians 15 Days to Leave Iraq” by Smi­ta P. Nord­wall with wire reports; USA Today; 8/2/2004; p. 9A.)

16. Next, the pro­gram sets forth sev­er­al arti­cles dis­cussing the pub­lic dis­clo­sure of the iden­ti­ty of a mole in the ranks of al-Qae­da. Although one can­not dis­miss the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the dis­clo­sure was sim­ply incom­pe­tence born of over-politi­ciza­tion in this cam­paign sea­son, one won­ders if the dis­clo­sure may be the work of Fifth Colum­nists, seek­ing to under­mine U.S. secu­ri­ty. What­ev­er the rea­son, the pub­li­ca­tion of Muham­mad Naeem Noor Khan’s iden­ti­ty per­mit­ted oth­er al-Qae­da sus­pects to escape, and elim­i­nat­ed Khan’s future util­i­ty as a tool against al-Qae­da. “Pres­i­dent Gen. Per­vez Mushar­raf says Pak­istan has been ’90 per­cent suc­cess­ful in arrest­ing sus­pects behind a series of high-pro­file ter­ror attacks, includ­ing against key gov­ern­ment lead­ers. Yet senior offi­cials said Tues­day that some al-Qae­da fugi­tives escaped after news reports revealed the arrest of a com­put­er expert for Osama bin Laden’s net­work who was coop­er­at­ing with inves­ti­ga­tors. Muham­mad Naeem Noor Khan, a 25-year-old Pak­istani, was nabbed in a July 13 raid in the east­ern city of Lahore. His cap­ture was a sig­nal vic­to­ry for Pak­istan, a key U.S. ally in the war on ter­ror­ism. He led author­i­ties to a key al-Qae­da fig­ure and sent e‑mails to ter­ror­ists so inves­ti­ga­tors could trace their loca­tions. . . .”
(“Leak allowed al-Qai­da Sus­pects to Escape” by Matthew Pen­ning­ton [AP]; Yahoo.com; 8/10/2004; p. 1.)

17. “ . . . But on Tues­day, two senior offi­cials expressed dis­may that the arrest of Khan made it into the media too soon—reported first in Amer­i­can news­pa­pers on Aug. 2 after it was dis­closed to jour­nal­ists by U.S. offi­cials in Wash­ing­ton. ‘Let me say that this intel­li­gence leak jeop­ar­dized our plan and some al-Qae­da sus­pects ran away,’ one of the Pak­istani offi­cials said on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty. . . .” (Idem.)

18. More about the dis­clo­sure of Khan’s iden­ti­ty: “The rev­e­la­tion that a mole with­in al-Qae­da was exposed
after Wash­ing­ton launched its ‘orange alert’ this month has shocked secu­ri­ty experts, who say the out­ing of the source may have set back the war on ter­ror. Reuters learned from Pak­istani intel­li­gence sources on Fri­day that com­put­er expert Moham­mad Naeem Noor Khan, arrest­ed secret­ly in July, was work­ing under cov­er to help the author­i­ties track down al-Qae­da mil­i­tants in Britain and the Unit­ed States when his name appeared in U.S. news­pa­pers.”
(“Unmask­ing of Qae­da Mole a U.S. Secu­ri­ty Blun­der-Experts” by Peter Graff [Reuters]; 8/1/2004; p. 1.)

19. “ ‘After his cap­ture he admit­ted being an al-Qae­da mem­ber and agreed to send e‑mails and received encod­ed replies. He’s a great hack­er and even the U.S. agents said he was a com­put­er whiz.’ Last Sun­day, U.S. offi­cials told reporters that some­one held secret­ly by Pak­istan was the source of the bulk of the infor­ma­tion jus­ti­fy­ing the alert. The New York Times obtained Khan’s name inde­pen­dent­ly, and U.S. offi­cials con­firmed it when it appeared in the paper the next morn­ing.” (Idem.)

20. “None of those reports men­tioned at the time that Khan had been under cov­er help­ing the author­i­ties catch al-Qae­da sus­pects, and that his val­ue in that regard was destroyed by mak­ing his name pub­lic. A day lat­er, Britain hasti­ly round­ed up ter­ror­ism sus­pects, some of whom are believed to have been in con­tact with Khan while he was under cov­er. Wash­ing­ton has por­trayed those arrests as a major suc­cess, say­ing one of the sus­pects, named Abu Musa al-Hin­di or Abu Eis­sa al-Hin­di, was a senior al-Qae­da fig­ure.” (Idem.)

21. “But British police have acknowl­edged the raids were car­ried out in a rush. Sus­pects were dragged out of shops in day­light and caught in a high speed car chase, instead of the usu­al pro­ce­dure of catch­ing them at home in the ear­ly morn­ing while they can offer less resis­tance. Secu­ri­ty experts con­tact­ed by Reuters said they were shocked by the rev­e­la­tions that the source whose infor­ma­tion led to the alert was iden­ti­fied with­in days, and that U.S. offi­cials had con­firmed his name.” (Idem.)

22. An expert with Jane’s defense pub­li­ca­tions has tak­en stock of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that some­thing “worse” than incom­pe­tence may under­lie the dis­clo­sure of Khan’s iden­ti­ty: “ ‘The whole thing smacks of either incom­pe­tence or worse,’ said Tim Rip­ley, a secu­ri­ty expert who writes for Jane’s defense pub­li­ca­tions. [Empha­sis added.] ‘You have to ask: what are they doing com­pro­mis­ing a deep mole with­in al-Qae­da, when it’s so dif­fi­cult to get these guys in there in the first place? ‘It goes against all the rules of counter-espi­onage, counter-ter­ror­ism, run­ning agents and so forth. [Empha­sis added.] It’s not exact­ly cloak and dag­ger under­cov­er work if it’s on the front pages every time there is a devel­op­ment, is it?’” (Idem.)

23. “A source such as Khan—cooperating with the author­i­ties while stay­ing in active con­tact with trust­ing al-Qae­da agents—would be among the most prized assets imag­in­able, he said. ‘Run­ning agents with­in a ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion is the Holy Grail of intel­li­gence agen­cies. And to have it blown is a major set­back which negates months and years of work, which may be dif­fi­cult to recov­er.’” (Idem.)

24. “Rolf Tophoven, head of the Insti­tute for Ter­ror­ism Research and Secu­ri­ty Pol­i­cy in Essen Ger­many, said allow­ing Khan’s name to become pub­lic was ‘very unclever. If it is cor­rect, then I would say it’s anoth­er deba­cle of the Amer­i­can intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. Maybe oth­er seri­ous sources could have been detect­ed or guys could have been cap­tured in the future’ if Khan’s iden­ti­ty had been pro­tect­ed, he said. . . .” (Idem.)

25. “Height­ened ter­ror alerts and high-pro­file arrests of sus­pect­ed Islam­ic extrem­ists have inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty experts and offi­cials con­cerned that the Bush administration’s actions could jeop­ar­dize inves­ti­ga­tions into the al-Qae­da net­work. Euro­pean ter­ror­ism ana­lysts acknowl­edge that the U.S. and its allies are under threat by al-Qae­da, but some sug­gest that the White House is unnec­es­sar­i­ly adding to pub­lic anx­i­ety with vague and dat­ed intel­li­gence about pos­si­ble attacks. Some in West­ern Europe sus­pect the admin­is­tra­tion is using fear to improve its chances in the Novem­ber elec­tion.”
(“White House Has Some Ter­ror Experts Wor­ried” by Jef­frey Fleish­man [Los Ange­les Times]; Los Ange­les Times; 8/11/2004; p. 1; accessed at: http://www.latimes.com .)

26. “Ter­ror­ism experts say too much pub­lic­i­ty about pos­si­ble plots and raids of Islam­ic extrem­ist net­works, includ­ing the arrest of 13 sus­pects in Britain last week, could hurt wider inves­ti­ga­tions. Amer­i­can politi­cians have called for an exam­i­na­tion of that con­tention. Offi­cials in Pak­istan report­ed­ly said Tues­day that Washington’s recent dis­clo­sure of the arrest of a sus­pect­ed Al Qae­da oper­a­tive, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, allowed oth­er extrem­ists under sur­veil­lance to dis­ap­pear.” (Idem.)

27. “ ‘It caus­es a prob­lem. There’s no doubt about that,’ said Charles Hey­man, edi­tor of Jane’s World Armies. ‘The moment you make any announce­ment, you tell the oth­er side what you know. As a rule of thumb, you should keep qui­et about what you know.’ British secu­ri­ty offi­cials are angry over recent U.S. rev­e­la­tions of ter­ror­ist threats and arrests, said Paul Beaver, an inter­na­tion­al defense ana­lyst based in Lon­don. He said the atti­tude among some British intel­li­gence offi­cials was that the ‘Amer­i­cans have a very strange way of thank­ing their friends, by reveal­ing names of agents, details of plots and oper­a­tions.’” (Idem.)

28. In FTR#’s 462, 464, 467, we exam­ined the links between al-Qae­da, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, the bank al-Taqwa and the Ptech firm. Ptech man­u­fac­tured key threat assess­ment soft­ware for both the FAA and Air Force. A care­ful exam­i­na­tion of the behav­ior of air defense units and the FAA on 9/11 sug­gests that there was a fun­da­men­tal dis­rup­tion of the U.S. air defense networks—more wide­spread than any­thing that a mil­i­tary order could have engen­dered. Some crit­ics have attrib­uted the fail­ure to inter­dict the hijacked planes to a “stand-down order” issued by the mil­i­tary. Such an order would not have affect­ed the civil­ian insti­tu­tions, such as the FAA. Could a Fifth Col­umn with­in the U.S. have used Ptech to dis­rupt U.S. air defens­es? “At long last, one mem­ber of the U.S. Sen­ate has spo­ken out about the 9/11 report. Last Fri­day, dur­ing a Gov­ern­men­tal Affairs com­mit­tee meet­ing, Mark Day­ton, a Demo­c­rat from Min­neso­ta, direct­ly attacked the gov­ern­ment for dis­tort­ing facts and cov­er­ing up what hap­pened that day. High­lights of his nar­ra­tive: Refer­ring to the peri­od between the first hijack­ing, at 8:14 a.m. and the crash of the fourth plane, at 10:03 a.m., Day­ton said: ‘Dur­ing those entire 109 min­utes, to my read­ing of this report, this coun­try and its cit­i­zens were com­plete­ly unde­fend­ed.’”
(“The Day­ton Dis­cord” by James Ridge­way; The Vil­lage Voice; 8/2/2004; p. 1.)

29. “ ‘Accord­ing to [the 9/11 Commission’s] find­ings, FAA author­i­ties failed to inform mil­i­tary com­mand, NORAD, the North Amer­i­can Aero­space Defense Com­mand, about three of the f

our hijack­ings until after the planes had crashed into their tar­gets at the sec­ond World Trade Cen­ter, the Pen­ta­gon, and the ground in Penn­syl­va­nia, which was not their tar­get. NORAD then scram­bled one of only two sets of fight­er planes on alert in the entire east­ern third of the coun­try, one in Mass­a­chu­setts and one in Vir­ginia, but it didn’t know where to send them—because the hijack­ers had turned off the plane’s transpon­der so NORAD couldn’t locate them on their radar, and they were still look­ing for it when it explod­ed into its tar­get at 8:46 a.m.’” (Idem.)

30. “ ‘The sec­ond hijack­ing began, accord­ing to [the commission’s] report, one minute lat­er. NORAD wasn’t noti­fied until the same minute the same plane struck the sec­ond World Trade tow­er. It was five more min­utes before NORAD’s mis­sion com­man­der learned about that explosion—which was five min­utes after thou­sands of Amer­i­cans saw it on live tele­vi­sion. By this time, the third plane’s transpon­der was off. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion had been sev­ered, yet it was 15 min­utes before the flight con­troller decid­ed to noti­fy the region­al FAA cen­ter, which in turn did not inform FAA head­quar­ters for anoth­er 15 min­utes.’” (Idem.)

31. “At 9:25 a.m. on Sep­tem­ber 11, Day­ton said, ‘FAA’s Nation­al Com­mand Cen­ter knew that there were two hijacked planes that had crashed into the two World Trade Cen­ters, and a third plane had stopped com­mu­ni­cat­ing and dis­ap­peared from its pri­ma­ry radar, yet no one in FAA head­quar­ters asked for mil­i­tary assis­tance with that plane, either. NORAD was unaware that the plane had even been hijacked until after it crashed into the Pen­ta­gon at 9:34.’” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

32. “ ‘The NORAD mis­sion com­man­der ordered his only three oth­er planes on alert in Vir­ginia to scram­ble and fly north to Bal­ti­more. Min­utes lat­er, when he was told that a plane was approach­ing Wash­ing­ton, he learned that the planes were fly­ing east over the Atlantic Ocean, away from Bal­ti­more and Wash­ing­ton, so that when the third plane struck the Pen­ta­gon, NORAD’s fight­ers were 150 miles away—farther than they were before they took off.’” (Idem.)

33. “ ‘By then, FAA’s com­mand cen­ter had learned of the fourth hijack­ing and called FAA head­quar­ters, specif­i­cal­ly ask­ing that they con­tact the mil­i­tary, at 9:36 a.m. At 9:46 a.m., the FAA com­mand cen­ter updat­ed FAA head­quar­ters that Unit­ed flight 93 was ‘29 min­utes out of Wash­ing­ton, D.C.’ Three min­utes lat­er, [the commission’s] doc­u­ment records this fol­low­ing con­ver­sa­tion between the com­mand cen­ter and FAA head­quar­ters: ‘Com­mand cen­ter: ‘Uh, do we want to, uh, think about scram­bling air­craft?’ ‘FAA head­quar­ters: ‘Oh God, I don’t know.’ ‘Com­mand cen­ter: ‘Uh, that’s a deci­sion somebody’s going to have to make prob­a­bly in the next 10 min­utes.’ ‘FAA head­quar­ters: ‘uh, yeah, you know, every­body just left the room.’” (Idem.)