THE pilots of scrambled US Air Force jets were heading out to sea, believing that the Pentagon had been hit by Russian missiles. Vice-President Cheney thought that two passenger aircraft had been downed by US fighter planes. President Bush’s motorcade was speeding in the wrong direction.
Such was the chaos on September 11, 2001, painted in vivid and unsettling detail by the commission investigating the terrorist attacks.
The panel’s reconstruction of three hours as the hijackings unfolded is a story of mistakes and misunderstandings, communication failures and a chain of command that broke.
The second hijacked aircraft was missed for vital minutes because the air traffic controller responsible had diverted his attention to the first. The third was “lost” for 36 minutes.
Even though Mr Bush, through Mr Cheney, had approved an order for US Air Force jets to shoot down any passenger aircraft that failed to respond, the order was not passed on to pilots. The only pilots who did receive such orders were part of a National Guard squadron scrambled by an improvising Secret Service operating outside the military chain of command. But that was well after the fourth hijacked airliner had crashed into a Pennsylvania field.
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“There were a lot of things that should have been done that weren’t done,” Thomas Kean, the commission chairman, said.
The most serious failing was between the civilian and military bodies charged with watching over US airspace. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had virtually no contact with the North American Air Space Defence Command (Norad) or the National Military Command Centre in the Pentagon.
The FAA did not “meaningly participate” in telephone conference calls because of problems with its secure line, according to the panel’s last interim report. It had “practically no contact” with the military at the highest levels.
The military command centre was told of the fourth hijacking not by the FAA but by the White House. The White House had received word from the Secret Service’s contacts with the FAA.
The commission will publish its final report on July 26, coincidentally on the opening day of the Democratic Party’s convention in Boston, the city from where two of the hijacked airliners took off.
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It has been issuing exhaustive interim reports of its findings, the last of which was published on Thursday, the final day of open hearings. Reconstructing the events, minute by minute, told from every viewpoint, it tells a story that has never been heard before.
The calm before the storm came at 8.13am when air traffic control instructed American Airlines Flight 11, bound for Los Angeles, to adjust its course slightly to the right.
The pilot quickly acknowleged. Sixteen seconds later, when the controller directed the pilot to climb, the line went dead. After failing to make contact via emergency frequencies, the controller told superiors there was something “seriously wrong” with the flight. It had changed course.
At 8.24am controllers had their answer. A voice, believed to be that of Mohammed Atta, leader of the 9/11 plotters in the US and assumed to be piloting the airliner, came over the airwaves: “We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you’ll be OK. We are returning to the airport.”
The controller did not hear the whole statement, but it was followed within seconds by another. “Nobody move. Everything will be OK. If you try to make any moves you’ll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”
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Aviation officials in Boston told superiors in Herndon, Virginia, that Flight 11 had been hijacked and was heading for New York City.
At 8.34am Atta directed a third transmission to Boston. “Nobody move, please. We are going back to the airport. Don’t try to make any stupid moves.”
Only at 8.37am, 13 minutes after concluding that the aircraft had been hijacked, did anyone tell Norad, based in Rome, New York.
“We need someone to scramble some F16s or something up there,” said an FAA manager.
“Is this real-world or exercise?” asked a military official.
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“No, this is not an exercise, not a test,” they were told.
At 8.53am two F15 jets took off from Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, some 150 miles from New York City.
But seven minutes earlier Flight 11, carrying 81 passengers and 24,000 gallons of jet fuel, had crashed into the northern tower of the World Trade Centre.
In the meantime, United Airlines Flight 175, which had also taken off from Boston, had begun to behave erratically. It turned off its transponder, cutting communication with the ground, and changed course. But it was six or seven minutes before anyone noticed because the controller responsible for the flight was also dealing with the hijacked Flight 11.
By 8.48am an FAA manager in New York reported that an attendant on Flight 11 had been stabbed, unaware that it had ploughed into the World Trade Centre moments earlier.
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At about the same time air traffic controllers in Indianapolis took over responsibility for American Airlines Flight 77, which had taken off from Dulles airport outside Washington.
Minutes later, the controller tried to find the flight after losing contact. Unaware that two aircraft had already been hijacked, the controller assumed that Flight 77 had crashed. Five minutes later Indianapolis started to tell other agencies, but it took nearly 20 minutes for the controllers to tell the FAA regional centre that it had lost the flight.
In Sarasota, Florida, where Mr Bush was listening to a class of seven-year-olds read, the entourage was told of the second crash, of Flight 175, into the southern tower of the World Trade Centre.
Andy Card, Mr Bush’s Chief of Staff, whispered the development into Mr Bush’s ear, adding: “America is under attack.”
But Mr Bush stayed in the classroom for up to seven minutes. He has told the commission that his instinct was not to be seen to panic. “The President felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening,” it said.
When Mr Bush was eventually hustled into his limousine, the motorcade roared off in the wrong direction.
By 9.21am aviation officials concluded that Flight 77 had been hijacked. It had done an about-turn and flown for 36 minutes towards Washington without detection.
The information was not passed to the military. Defence chiefs were told only by chance that Flight 77 was heading for Washington a minute before it slammed into the Pentagon. The FAA had not asked the Pentagon for help.
Defence chiefs knew nothing of the frantic search for Flight 77. They were looking for an aircraft that no longer existed after the FAA had wrongly told them that Flight 11, the first to crash into the World Trade Centre, was heading for Washington.
Military fighters scrambled from Langley Air Force base in Virginia had headed east into the Atlantic instead of north towards Baltimore, partly because of a confusing flight plan.
The lead fighter pilot told the commission he was not told why he had been scrambled. “I reverted to the Russian threat. I’m thinking cruise missile threat from the sea. You know, you look down and see the Pentagon burning and I thought the bastards snuck one by us. You couldn’t see any airplanes, and no one told us anything.” At the moment the Pentagon was hit, the fighters were 150 miles out to sea.
Just before the Pentagon crash, an air traffic controller in Cleveland heard what sounded like a struggle on board United Flight 93, which took off from Newark.
It was “a radio tramsmission of unintelligible sounds of possible screaming or a struggle from an unknown origin,” the report said. A second transmission soon followed, in which the controller heard screaming and someone yelling: “Get out of here, get out of here.” There was a third at 9.32am, in which someone was saying: “Keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board.”
Seven minutes later a voice thought to belong to Ziad Samir Jarrah, who, it is believed, was piloting the plane, said: “Uh, is the captain. Would like you all to remain seated. There is a bomb on board and are going back to the airport, and to have our demands (unintelligible). Please remain quiet.” Flight 93 crashed into woodland in Pennsylvania at 10.03am.
At 10.07am , after the Pentagon crash, a Norad official said he had “no indication of a hijack heading to Washington”.
On Air Force One, Mr Bush had to use a mobile phone to talk to Mr Cheney. Mr Bush gave the order that US fighter jets could shoot down passenger aircraft. At about 10.10am Mr Cheney, in the White House bunker, gave military chiefs authority to shoot down a commerical aircraft that appeared to be heading for Washington. At 10.31am Norad sent out the order that the “Vice-President has cleared to us to intercept tracks of interest and shoot them down if they do not respond”. But the Northeast Air Defence Sector commander did not pass on the order because he was unaware of the context. The only aircraft primed to shoot belonged to the Washington National Guard.
TRACKING THE HIJACKERS
AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 11
8am: Takes off from Logan Airport, Boston
8.13: Fails to respond to air traffic control command
8.21: Flight transponder, which reports on identity and altitude, turned off
8.24: Two radio messages from the aircraft alert controllers to a hijacking
8.37: US air defence is informed of the hijacking
8.46: F15s ordered to be scrambled, but no details of hijacked plane’s position
8.46.40: Flight hits World Trade Centre northern tower
UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 175
8.14am: Flight takes off from Logan Airport, Boston
8.47: Transponder code alters. Air traffic controller does not notice as he is tracking American 11
8.52: Controller begins repeated attempts to contact United 175
8.55: Controllers conclude United 175 is hijacked
9.03: Air defence informed of second hijacking
9.03.02: Flight hits World Trade Centre southern tower
9.05: New York airspace closed. All aircraft told to increase cockpit security
AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 77
8.20: Flight takes off from Dulles International Airport
8.54: Plane disappears from Indianapolis radar
8.56: Flight transponder turned off
9.08: Indianapolis air traffic control reports that flight may have crashed
9.32: Unidentified radar pattern found. Military cargo plane rerouted to identify suspicious aircraft
9.38: Plane crashes into Pentagon
UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 93
8.42: Flight leaves Newark
9.28: Controller hears screaming over the radio
9.32: Hijackers tell traffic controllers bomb on flight
10.03: United 93 crashes in Pennsylvania