![][1]
**[![Peak Oil][2]][3]** **[![9/11: the American Reichstag Fire][4]][5]** **[][6] [![World War IV][7]][6]**
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[ ![fascism][8]][9] [![rigged elections][10]][11] [![media manipulation][12]][13]**
**9/11: the American Reichstag Fire - allowed to happen & given technical assistance - some claims are not true**
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**"War Games" by the US military on 9/1****1
paralysis of air defenses that ensured the success of the attacks? who coordinated these efforts?**
* * *
**Seven Days in May / The Lone Gunmen -- fictional depictions
** **[Michael Ruppert][14] investigates the 9/11 wargames
** **9/11 wargames: no [coincidence][15]
** **[Air Force][16] wargames on 9/11: Vigilant Guardian, Vigilant Warrior, Northern Guardian, Northern Vigilance
** **[National Reconnaissance Office][17] "plane into building" exercise on 9/11
** **parallel examples: "Internal Look" simulation of Iraq invasion of Kuwait in [1990][18], NSA spying on United Nations masked by exercise**
**9/11 evidence**
**Official Stories** **Limited Hang Outs** **Best Evidence** **Distracting Disinformation**
**war games by the Air Force and National Reconnaissance Office on 9/11**
generally ignored by the official story, when pressed, the claim is made that some of the war games helped speed the response to the situation
The media and the official Commission report did not dare prepare a list of all of the war games underway on 9/11, even though all of them have been mentioned in some sort of official context or mainstream media article.
**Navy employee Barbara Honegger**, who is active in 9/11 conspiracy issues, **offers the piggy back theory -- the hijackers found out about the overlapping war games and timed their attack to take advantage of the confusion**. **This is probably a limited hang out designed to keep military officers from whistleblowing**, since the claim that al-Qaeda supposedly compromised US operational security procedures could be very effective at keeping insiders from explaining what they know about the exercises. Honegger has since made ludicrous claims that "shoe bomber" Richard Reid was really Osama and that the Pentagon was hit several minutes before it was struck by the plane (probably false leads designed to soak up time and energy on a wild goose chase).
**Michael Ruppert's book "_Crossing the Rubicon_"has the deepest analysis of the how the war games facilitated the attacks by paralyzing the air defenses. An excellent summary is: [Crossing the Rubicon: Simplifying the case against Dick Cheney][19] by Michael Kane**
**Paul Thompson's Center for Cooperative Research has the most complete [list][20] of 9/11 war games and exercises.**
**Webster Tarpley, _9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA_: "the most palpably subversive actions could be made to appear in the harmless and even beneficial guise of a drill."**
**The 9/11 war games are part of a [pattern][21] where exercise simulations have been used to mask real world events. The 1990 "Internal Look" exercise simulated Iraq's invasion of Kuwait at the exact moment that Iraq invaded Kuwait (Cheney was Secretary of Defense).**
Team 8 (a website from people who previously pushed the "[pod][22]" hoax, now focused on the war games issues)
fake news from Alex Jones / Infowars
www.prisonplanet.com/articles/
january2005/040105defenseshield.htm
9/11 Whispers: Washington Defense Shield Deactivated Due To Wargames?
**The most indepth analysis of the 9/11 war games is [Michael Ruppert][23]'s book "Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil" available at [fromthewilderness.com][24]**
**An excellent summary of the main points in the book is:**
[www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtml][19]
**Crossing the Rubicon:
Simplifying the case against Dick Cheney
by Michael Kane**
* * *
There has been virtually no mass media coverage of the issues of the 9/11 war games, the "amazing coincidence" of a "plane into building" exercise being conducted that morning, or the alleged role of Vice President Richard Cheney in overseeing the war games that morning.
![][25]
[**www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/030105_mckinney_question.shtml**][26]**
"Mr. Chairman, I have a question"
On-the-Record: [Representative Cynthia McKinney][27] Rocks Rumsfeld on War Games
and a follow-up: [www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/031505_mckinney_transcript.shtml][28]**
* * *
**The Center for Cooperative Research has the most comprehensive list of military exercises and operations on 9/11 at [www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=militaryExercises][20]**
**Required reading for everyone concerned about the "failure" of the Air Force to stop the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon.**
* * *
[www.margieburns.com/blog/_archives/2006/7/8/2093537.html][29]
"The Fog of War Games" -- the miraculous timing of the skyjackers, part 2
by margieburns on Sat Jul 8 2006
* * *
Four decades ago, the novel (and movie) **"Seven Days in May"** was a popular political thriller about a military coup d'etat in the United States against a President who sought to scale back the Cold War. In this story, a military cabal schemed to topple the government under the guise of a military communications exercise. This "war game" was to have been used as the cover for toppling the government and installing a General as President who would stop arms control treaties with the Soviet Union.
A different fictional treatment of the use of a "war game" to perpetrate covert objectives was described in "[The Lone Gunmen][30]," a television show aired on Fox TV in March 2001. In that show, a small cabal within the military-industrial complex used a wargame scenario as cover for remote control hijacking of a commercial flight and crashing it into the World Trade Center in order to boost military spending for the permanent war. This show was so close to the most likely scenario for 9/11 that it is plausible that this information was deliberately leaked in order to discredit the idea as merely part of a bad television drama, thereby inoculating people from contemplating the probability that 9/11 was a covert operation using remote controlled planes under the guise of a war game.
> **Lone Gunmen script excerpt**
BYERS: **We know it's a war game scenario. That it has to do with airline counter-terrorism.** Why is it important enough to kill for.
BYERS SNR: Because it's no longer a game.
BYERS: **But if some terrorist group wants to act out this scenario, then why target you for assassination?**
BYERS SNR: **Depends on who your terrorists are.**
BYERS: **The men who conceived of it the first place. You're saying our government is planning to commit a terrorist act against a domestic airline?**
BYERS SNR: **There you go again. Blaming the entire government as usual. In fact, a small faction ...**
BYERS: **For what possible gain?**
BYERS SNR: **The Cold War's over, John. But with no clear enemy to stockpile against, the arms market's flat. But bring down a fully loaded 727 into the middle of New York City and you'll find a dozen tinpot dictators all over the world just clamouring to take responsibility, and begging to be smart-bombed.**
BYERS: I can't believe this. This is about increasing arms sales?
On September 11, at least five different "war games" were being conducted by the military and intelligence agencies. These exercises included simulations of 9/11 type events, a plane into building scenario near Dulles Airport in Virginia, and deployment of fighters to northern Canada and Alaska (which reduced the number of fighters that were available to protect the US?). It seems that these exercises were the means used to paralyze the air defenses, thereby ensuring the success of the "attacks."
The British Navy was conducting exercises in the Indian ocean near the Middle East. A biowar exercise was also about to start in New York City. Who has the power to coordinate all of these exercises? Osama bin Laden? Saddam Hussein? Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah? Dick Cheney and the White House National Security Council?
It is difficult to believe that it is a bizarre "coincidence" that the military and CIA were conducting wargames similar to 9/11 on September 11, 2001. While it seems likely, if not blatantly obvious, that these war games were one of the means used to confuse the air defense system for sufficient time to allow the World Trade Center to be attacked, t**he war games do not answer the question of how the air defenses were suppressed for another half hour after the second tower was hit (at which time everyone knew that an attack was in progress). The Air Force had another half hour after the second tower to scramble interceptors to defend the Capitol** (the plane that is alleged to have hit the Pentagon made its 180 degree turn over Ohio to head back toward D.C. about the time that the second tower was struck).
Perhaps a complete investigation would reveal if the national order to ground all aviation (an unprecedented directive from the Transportation Department) also included military airplanes as well -- especially given the chaos and confusion that morning, a stand down of key fighter interceptors would have been easily concealed. But the information about the wargames suggests that a "stand down" order was NOT issued that morning -- the confusion from the war games was how the defenses of New York and Washington were interfered with sufficiently to ensure the success of the attacks.
It is unlikely that the "inside job" conspirators would have risked the success of the operation on whether fighter plane pilots would have obeyed orders to do nothing as American cities were burning. It would be like asking a firefighter who had trained their entire adult life to "stand down" when their neighbor's house was burning and the inhabitants trapped inside (or worse, asking that firefighter to "stand down" from protecting the next house on the block from catching fire from the first burning house). In this analogy, the firefighter would probably ignore orders from his or her boss to stand down, and would seek to rescue the neighbors without worrying about the consequences until later.
The wargames provide a much better explanation for why there was an apparent stand down and failure to respond in time.
If a genuine investigation with subpeona power is ever held, the full details of the 9/11 wargames will need to be declassified and discussed in public -- who scheduled them, who set up the scenarios, the full communications records from the participants, the radar tapes (if they still exist) that were used as part of the simulations, and the identities of those officials who deployed part of the fighter defense fleet to northern Canada and Alaska at the very time that warnings were being sounded that a terrorist attack was imminent.
**9/11 War Game** **Attribution** **Description**
**CIA / National Reconnaissance Office "plane into building" exercise** Associated Press, August 21, 2002 simulation of a plane crash into the NRO headquarters (near Dulles Airport, Virginia) - this was not a "terrorism" exercise but it did result in the evacuation of most NRO employees just as the "real" 9/11 was taking place, making it more difficult for the nation's spy satellites to be used to track the hijacked planes
**Vigilant Guardian** Aviation Week & Space Technology, June 3, 2002, Newhouse News, others (these articles are reproduced below) The publicly available mass media articles about these exercises state that they were similar enough to the actual events that top NORAD personnel were confused, not sure if 9/11 was "part of the drill" or a real world event.
**Vigilant Warrior** Richard Clark, "Against All Enemies" (March 2004) referenced by Richard Clark.
**Northern Vigilance** Toronto Star, December 9, 2001 "Operation Northern Vigilance, planned months in advance, involves deploying fighter jets to locations in Alaska and northern Canada." This ensured that there would be fewer fighter planes available to protect the East Coast on 9/11. Simulated information was fed into radar screens - is this what confused the air defenses that morning?
**Northern Guardian** Toronto Star, December 9, 2001 only mention was in the early edition of this article, no details publicly available (probably related to Northern Vigilance)
**Tripod II
** US Department of Justice and City of New York Rudolph Giuliani's testimony to the 9/11 Commission, May 2004 biowar exercise in New York City scheduled for September 12, 2001
**the one time the "war games" were mentioned during the official 9/11 Commission hearings (on the final day of the hearings)**
Nicholas Levis posts:
Ha, I finally got into the Official Record
> KEAN: Three questions, then I know the general has to leave.
>
> **AUDIENCE MEMBER: Ask about the war games that were planned for 9/11.**
>
> KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick?
>
> **AUDIENCE MEMBER: Tell us about the 9/11 war games.**
>
> **GORELICK: Could you please be quiet?** We have only a few minutes with General Myers, and I'd like to ask a question. General Myers, the -- I'm sorry.
>
> KEAN: I would ask please people in the audience to be quiet if you want to stay here.
Wimpy of me, but I stayed quiet. The cops that came up to "calm me down" were a bit too beefy. So I "calmed down." Apparently, this was also sent out on CNN and audible over TV. The transcript doesn't include the walk-out by another guy...
They introduced The Emperor's New Timeline, in which all the times are now consistent and the blame is laid on the FAA. It's completely ridiculous and we can dismantle it, but I suspect the straightforward way to do is to concentrate on UA93. The new timeline shifts FAA notification to NORAD of the UA93 diversion from 9:16 to 10:07 (after the crash), the crash time from 10:06 (according to the Army's seismic study) to 10:03 and the Cheney shootdown order for UA 93 from 9:55 (according to Wash. Post) to somewhere between 10:10 and 10:20. If we can convincingly promote the evidence we already have of the [UA93 shootdown][31], all this falls completely apart. And it's an emotionally compelling and easy-to-understand matter.
Best from DC, still,
Nicholas
* * *
[http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/09/riddle-of-transponders.html][32]
Monday, September 20, 2004
The Riddle of the Transponders
> What was the value-added benefit for the 9/11 hijackers in turning off their transponder signals?
The planes remained visible to radar; the transponders merely ID'd the flights. And yet the transponders of all four flights were switched off. What was gained?
I think the answer is found in the proliferation of wargames on September 11, particularly the exercise called "Vigilant Guardian": the live-fly simulation of hijackings in the US Northeast staged by the Joint Chiefs and NORAD the very morning of the attacks. (Health advisory to coincidentalists: chew carefully before digesting.)
**At one time on 9/11, as many as 22 aircraft appeared to be hijacked. Suddenly, the virtue, now verging on necessity, of switching off the transponders becomes evident. With loss of transponder signals the planes became bogies, and discriminating real from simulated hijackings became next to impossible.**
This confusion compounded the paralysis already introduced to the system by drawing most of the Eastern seaboard's combat-ready interceptors into Northern Canada for the wargame "Northern Vigilence," and changing the standing orders for a shootdown in June 2001 by removing the discretion of field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the Secretary of Defense.
* * *
[http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/02/sibels-way.html][33]
Monday, February 28, 2005
Sibel's Way
> The Power Control Group (Richard E Sprague's evocative term from [The Taking of America, 1-2-3][34]) occasionally chooses to tip its hand to us as a mechanism of control. In nature it would be a threat display, except the threat implied here is the confirmation that things are really as bad as we think, and _we can't do a damn thing about it._
>
> I'm thinking, for instance, of the casual [bombshell][35] that dropped a year after 9/11, that on the morning of the attacks the National Reconnaissance Office was running a simulation of a plane crashing into a government building. A "bizarre coincidence," it was called. Though I believe the "simulation" likely a cover story, it's not exactly a limited hang out, since they hung it out there all by themselves in an announcement for a Homeland Security conference. ("On the morning of September 11th 2001, [the CIA's John] Fulton and his team ... were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way that day.") Until then, no one was pressing the 9/11 wargames angle. Since, Mike Ruppert and others have discovered about a half-dozen more, suspiciously and opportunely timed to the attacks. **Letting slip the "simulation" story is a bit like Jack the Ripper writing Scotland Yard and enclosing a portion of his victim's liver.** _Catch me if you can!_
>
> I'm thinking of the FBI promoting agents who deliberately inhibited pre-911 investigations, and its punishing those who saw it coming and tried to stop it. What message did this send, and could it be anything but the one intended?
>
> I'm thinking of Michael Chertoff's appointment to Homeland Security, though he was accused of [sabotaging][36] the Department's "Greenquest" investigations into terror financing. I'm thinking of the appointment of Porter Goss to CIA directorship, though we know he'd met with 9/11 financier ISI Chief Mahmood Ahmed the morning of Sept 11, and his congressional seat encompassed the hijackers' Florida flight schools.
>
> No administration has thumbed its nose more often, nor with as much feeling in our general direction, as this one. Its macabre arrogance contributes to a legend of invulnerability. That the White House can not only get away with it, but appear to revel in it, makes them seem untouchable. And yet, they aren't. And one of the reasons I believe this is [Sibel Edmonds][37].
>
> She can hurt them, and they know it. And they don't want you to know it.
* * *
**Michael Ruppert investigates the 9/11 wargames**
**See "[Crossing the Rubicon][24]: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil"**
[http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/060704_tripod_fema.html][38]
TRIPOD II AND FEMA
Lack of NORAD Response on 9/11 Explained
by Michael C. Ruppert
> ... For six weeks I have been investigating a number of other 9/11 wargames that link directly to the work done by Global Free Press on Tripod II and other wargames. I am not exaggerating when I say that we may be close to the Holy Grail of 9/11.
I am certain that it will not be too long before these wargames receive serious coverage in the mainstream press. If they are reported on while still linked to the FEMA myth _[note: the false claim that FEMA was in New York the day before to assist with cleaning up after 9/11]_, the Bush administration will have a free shot to discredit the Tripod story (and all of the wargame stories) by disproving the FEMA part to the press and then asking, "Why should we even respond to the rest?"
_**The wargames will tie Bush and/or Cheney and Rumsfeld directly into a complete paralysis of fighter response on 9/11.**_ I have gone directly to many NORAD, DoD, NRO, and other sources directly and questioned them. I have knocked on many doors and I have even obtained some documents. I have obtained an on-the-record statement from someone in NORAD, which confirmed that **on the day of 9/11 The Joint Chiefs (Myers) and NORAD were conducting a joint, live-fly, hijack Field Training Exercise (FTX) which involved at least one (and almost certainly many more) aircraft under US control that was posing as a hijacked airliner.** That is just the tip of what I have uncovered.
**There never was a [stand down order][39] issued. That would have been way too incriminating and risky a piece of incriminating evidence. And it also might have been ignored by eager fighter pilots who had trained their whole lives to respond to a hostile aircraft killing Americans.** There are several statements that the "new" NORAD procedures transferring scramble authority to Rumsfeld on June 1, 2001 were ignored by several NORAD commanders on 9/11 including General Larry Arnold. That's exactly what I would have expected. ....
>
> Question 1 - Prior to 9/11, when various military commands were conducting multiple simultaneous training exercises across various commands and services, what office or person at the Department of Defense was charged with coordinating all of them so that they did not overlap or interfere with each other, or occupy enough military assets at one time to jeopardize operational readiness?
Question 2 - Since the Tripod II biowarfare exercise was a joint New York-Department of Justice exercise we now must ask: Prior to 9/11, under US government Executive Branch procedure, **what part of the government or official was responsible for and had the authority to coordinate and act as liaison between the military, federal agencies and state and local agencies and private corporations so that they did not overlap or interfere with each other, or occupy enough essential assets at one time to jeopardize operational readiness or impair the national security of the United States?** Was it the White House? Was it the Office of National Preparedness? Was it the National Security Advisor? Was it the CIA?
Only official documents and records or on-the-record statements from qualified experts will suffice.
I ask everyone who reads this - every veteran, every former government official and all the remaining decent and honest military personnel and law enforcement officers - to help answer these questions. It is obvious how important they are.
* * *
**Mike Ruppert**
[http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/oct152001.html][40]
> **Pre-Planning For September 11th**
Like all of the major wars of the last century, this one too has had a hidden but very real and undeniable phase of preparation. International Law Professor Francis A. Boyle, of the University of Illinois wrote on October 12, "**Obviously, the war against Afghanistan was planned for quite some time. We know for a fact that it had been war-gamed by the Pentagon going back to 1997. Right around September 11, two US Aircraft carrier task forces conveniently arrived in the Persian Gulf right at the same time on "rotation." Obviously, preplanned. Just before September 11, the UK had put together what was billed as the "largest armada since the Falklands War" and had it steaming towards Oman, where now 23,000 UK troops are on maneuvers. This had been planned for at least 3 years. Also, the US "Bright Star" operation is currently going on in Egypt. 23,000 US troops plus an additional 17,000 from NATO and its associates. This had been planned at least two years ago. Finally, NATO just landed 12,000 troops into Turkey. This had been planned for at least two years. It is obvious that we are seeing an operational War Plan being executed here that had been in the works for at least the past four years. September 11 is either a pretext or a trigger or both**."
In light of the known available intelligence information that we have previously presented in these pages, and the hard data on insider trading that we present in this issue, there can be no doubt that the Bush Administration awaited the attacks as a pretext for the massive military operations that we see occurring now. In the words of retired Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff - who taught military science at West Point - "I can't help but conclude that the actions we are seeing put into motion now are part of a pre-September 11th agenda. I'm absolutely sure of that, in fact. The planning alone for operations, of this scale, that are now taking shape, would take many months. And we are seeing them take shape in mere weeks."
* * *
**Mike Ruppert**
> **From the moment the first plane hit the World Trade Center all suggested confusion caused by a reported drill became a moot and dead issue. That's why this scenario explaining the hijackers' success fails the critical test.**
>
> In my forthcoming book I have a fully footnoted, six-foot flow chart/timeline which demonstrates this irrefutably. Decisions were made and multiple delays and inexplicable actions were taken to delay fighter response that cannot be explained by the exercise distraction theory. Furthermore, I have traced all the key decision making to one person: The FAA national hijack coordinator who has never been identified publicly but was, like FBI-HQ Supervisory Special Agent Dave Frasca (who suppressed five separate investigations that could have prevented the attacks), probably promoted right after 9/11. What is clear from the NORAD/FAA records, as released, is that this person knew that real hijackings had taken place even before Flt 11 became the first plane to hit the WTC. There is no justifiable reason to argue that a drill overrode common sense and duty from that point on, even though there was almost two hours of inactivity and violation of SOP which followed.
* * *
**Webster Tarpley - 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA**
> "Staff exercises or command exercises are perfect for a rogue network which is forced to conduct its operations using the same communications and computer systems used by other officers who are not necessarily party to the illegal operation, coup or provocation as it may be. A putschist officer may be working at a console next to another officer who is not in on the coup, and who might indeed oppose it if he knew about it. The putschist's behavior is suspicious: what the hell is he doing? The loyal officer looks over and asks the putschist about it. The putschist cites a staff maneuver for which he is preparing. The loyal officer concludes that the putschist's activities are part of an officially sanctioned drill, and his suspicions are allayed. The putschist may even explain that participation in the staff exercise requires a special security clearance which the loyal officer does not have. The conversation ends, and the putschist can go on with his treasonous work."
>
> "The best working hypothesis is that Amalgam Virgo was the cover story under which the 9/11 attacks advanced through the bureaucracy. Preparations for carrying out 9/11 were conducted under the cover of being preparations for Amalgam Virgo. Most of those who took part in Amalgam Virgo could hardly have been aware of this duplicity.... Here was an exercise which included many of the elements which were put into practice on 9/11. Amalgam Virgo thus provided the witting putschists with **a perfect cover for conducting the actual live fly components of 9/11 through a largely non-witting military bureaucracy.** Under the cover of this confusion, **the most palpably subversive actions could be made to appear in the harmless and even beneficial guise of a drill.**"
>
> [9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley, 3/05]
* * *
[http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=387][41]
**9/11 War Games - No Coincidence
by Michael Kane** -June 08, 2004
> "I have an on-the-record statement from someone in NORAD that on the day of 9/11 The Joint Chiefs of Staff (Richard B. Myers) and NORAD were conducting a joint, live-fly, hijack Field Training Exercise (FTX) which involved at least one (and almost certainly many more) aircraft under US control that was posing as a hijacked airliner".
Mike Ruppert - June 5, 2004, editor of FTW www.fromthewilderness.com
On September 11, 2001, Richard B. Meyers, the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has thus far claimed he was in a meeting with Senator Max Cleland, and was "unaware" of the ongoing 9/11 attacks until after the Pentagon was struck.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld claims that he was in the Pentagon giving a lecture to members of Congress about the need for America to "be prepared for the unexpected" pertaining to future terrorist attacks. As the 9/11 plot unfolded, Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claims he was effectively out of the loop while inside the Pentagon until it was struck at 9:38 am. That comes from his testimony to the 9/11 Commission on March 25, 2004, while under oath.
On September 11, 2001, the Air Force was in its second day of annual wargame drills, titled VIGILANT GUARDIAN, designed to test national air response systems, which incidentally involved hijacking scenarios. In addition the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) which is staffed by military and CIA personnel, and is in charge of most American spy satellites, was running a drill for the scenario of an errant aircraft crashing into its headquarters. NRO headquarters also happens to be located just four miles from Washington's Dulles airport - where Flight 77 (the flight said to have hit the Pentagon) originated...
On March 25, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld testified before the Commission, not one question was asked with regard to the multiple wargames confirmed to have been in progress that morning.
Why?
It is possible that Phillip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, has classified certain wargames running on 9/11 so the Commission can't address them publicly. The fact that the war games are open source, having been reported in mainstream publications including the Associated Press, UPI, and Aviation Weekly Magazine would make such a classification part & parcel to a cover-up. Hopefully the Commission will address, in public hearing, the impact these wargames apparently had on the NORAD response on 9/11.
For example, we know that Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins, regional Mission Crew Chief for the VIGILANT GUARDIAN exercise, said that everyone at the North East Air Defense Sector (NEADS), part of NORAD, initially thought the first call she received about the real 9/11 hijackings was part of the wargames scenario (Newhouse News, 1/25/02).
This is the question. Did VIGILANT GUARDIAN cause enough confusion to allow three successful suicide hijackings to occur over an hour and twenty minute period? The answer would appear to be - no.
NORAD's recent admission to investigative journalist Mike Ruppert that they were running a live-fly Field Training Exercise that involved at least one aircraft under US control posing as a hijacking shows VIGILANT GUARDIAN is merely the tip of the iceberg. Especially when considering that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were directly involved with this "drill".
....
Moreover, we now must examine the NRO emergency evacuation drill running that same morning. NRO spokesman Art Haubold told UPI, "It was just a coincidence. It wasn't an anti-terrorism exercise. It was an emergency response exercise. It was just a strange coincidence". The NRO's internal war-gaming division planned the drill.
Was the NRO's war-gaming division working in conjunction with NORAD and/or the Joint Chiefs of Staff that morning? On page 5 of former White House counter-terrorism official Richard Clarke's new book, "Against All Enemies", he mentions a war game titled VIGILANT WARRIOR. Is this yet another wargame running on 9/11? In addition, yet another drill titled NORTHERN VIGILANCE, was running on 9/11 simulating an air attack coming from Russia. Just how many war games were running on September 11, 2001?
The NRO is, effectively, the "eyes of the world". With the majority of American spy satellites at its fingertips, it can reasonably be assumed that NRO headquarters was an indispensable resource to NORAD and the Air Force from 8:28 when Flight 77 made its unplanned 180-degree turn over Pennsylvania, until 9:38 when it is said to have struck the Pentagon. The NRO claims as soon as the real world events "began to unfold" the drill was called off and all but the most essential personnel were sent home. (UPI, Aug 22, 2002)
Read that last sentence again.
**Why was the NRO sending home personnel during what was likely the biggest military crisis on American soil in recent history? Who were the "most essential" personnel and what did those individuals do as events unfolded?**
What role did Secretary Rumsfeld & Richard B. Meyers play in any of the multiple war game scenarios on the morning of September 11, 2001? What briefings did they receive about these war games before, during and after the morning in question?
These are the questions that must be addressed by the 9/11 Commission, and yet they have not been mentioned even once.
Questions, Questions, Questions…
Commissioner Jamie Gorelick did ask Secretary Rumsfeld, while under oath, a very specific question of exactly when an order was given authorizing fighter pilots to shoot down aircraft on the morning of 9-11. Rumsfeld complicated and confused his answer by giving an account of how they had modified the rules of engagement. General Myers clarified by stating to the best of his recollection the shoot-down order was communicated directly to the pilots shortly after the president issued it.
GORELICK: May I ask one more question, Mr. Chairman?
We can't go into the content of the PDDs and the SEIBs here. And I can't even characterize them in order to ask you the next question that I would ask. So let me ask you this: Was it your understanding that the NORAD pilots who were circling over Washington D.C. that morning had indeed received a shoot-down order?
RUMSFELD: When I arrived in the command centre, one of the first things I heard, and I was with you, was that the order had been given and that the pilots -- correction, not the pilots necessarily, but the command had been given the instructions that their pilots could, in fact, use their weapons to shoot down a commercial airliners filled with our people in the event that the aircraft appeared to be behaving in a threatening way and an unresponsive way.
GORELICK: Now, you make a distinction there between the command and the pilots. Was it your understanding that the pilots had received that order?
RUMSFELD: I'm trying to get in time because...
MYERS: Well, I think -- my understanding, I've talked to General Eberhart, commander now of NORAD, and I think he's briefed the staff. And I think what he told the staff, what he told me, as I recall, was that the pilots did -- at the appropriate point when the authority to engage civilian airliners was given, that the pilots knew that fairly quickly. I mean, it went down through the chain of command.
RUMSFELD: It was on a threat conference call that it was given, and everybody heard it simultaneously. The question then would be -- the reason I am hesitant is because we went through two or three iterations of the rules of engagement. And in the end, we ended up delegating that authority to, at the lowest level, I believe, to two stars.
MYERS: Right.
RUMSFELD: And the pilot would then describe the situation to that level. To the extent that level had time, they would come up to General Eberhart. To the extent Eberhart had time, he would come up to me. And to the extent I had time, I might talk to the president, which in fact, I did do on several occasions during the remainder of the day with respect to international flights heading to this country that were squawking "hijack."
GORELICK: I'm just trying to understand whether it is your understanding that the NORAD pilots themselves, who were circling over Washington, as you referred to in your statement, whether they knew that they had authority to shoot down a plane. And if you don't know, it's fine to say that. You mentioned them in your statement, and I would like to know if you know the answer.
RUMSFELD: I do not know what they thought. In fact, I haven't talked to any of the pilots that were up there. I certainly was immediately concerned that we did know what they thought they could do.
RUMSFELD: And we began the process quite quickly of making changes to the standing rules of engagement, Dick Myers and I did, and then issuing that. And we then went back and revisited that question several times in the remaining week or two while we were still at various stages of alert. And we have since done that in connection with several other events such as the Prague summit.
GORELICK: As you know, we were not intending to address the issues of the day of in this hearing. And it is the subject of a full additional hearing, and we may be back to you with these questions with a more precise time line for you to look at.
Thank you very much.
KEAN: Thank you.
(For complete transcript of Rumsfeld's testimony: [http://globalresearch.ca/articles/COM403B.html][42]
At first glance this seems like semantics, but in the context of what was really happening that morning it may be quite significant. Whether or not a pilot has a shoot-down order directly communicated to him is of the highest significance when considering the fact that the pilot may not know if they are still involved in a war game exercise.
Officials at NORAD have stated when the hijackings first occurred they initially thought it was part of the Vigilant Guardian drills running that morning. Despite some confusion, once Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center at 8:45 am, everyone should have known it was not a test. However, this is still an assumption because we do not know what the fighter jocks in the air at the time did and did not know, we do not know the full extent of the orders they received and it has yet to be explained why scrambled fighter jets were unable to intercept even one of the 4 hijacked airliners.
Scrambling Fighter Jets
Standard operating procedure of both FAA & NORAD dictates that once an aircraft is off course and/or its transponder is not responding, within 10 minutes Air Force jets are scrambled to re-establish physical contact with the wayward plane.
Scrambling Air Force interceptors does not mean shooting down any aircraft. It simply means that an Air Force jet is dispatched to fly next to the off course aircraft, attempt to communicate with the its pilots, look inside the cockpit, see who is in control of the plane and report back to flight control what is actually happening. In the year prior to 9/11 this automatic procedure was triggered a total of 67 times (AP, 8/13/02). On the morning of 9/11, it was not successfully applied even once in the well over an hour-long period in which the four separate hijackings occurred.
Why?
The most egregious case is that of Flight 77, reported to have struck the Pentagon. At 8:50 am there was a loss of contact with this plane that was now well off course and hurtling toward the nation's capital, but it was not until 9:24 am that fighter jets were scrambled. That's 34 minutes after flight control lost contact with the plane and well after 2 hijacked aircraft had already crashed into both World Trade Center towers.
Fighter Planes were dispatched extremely late to the World Trade Center as well, and only made it there after Flight 175 had crashed into WTC 2, too late to be effective. Those planes were then sent back to base, instead of being sent in pursuit of an aircraft, which by that time was widely known to have been well off course.
Why?
Did war games conducted by the Air Force, NORAD, NRO and others on 9/11 unintentionally cause this unprecedented 'confusion', or does all of this point to more disturbing conclusions about what happened that tragic morning?
Hopefully, Commissioner Jamie Gorelick's statement that Secretary Rumsfeld may be called back to testify to the Commission regarding the day of 9/11 itself will happen - and in public.
* * *
**Air Force wargames on 9/11**
**"Vigilant Guardian" (NORAD exercise on 9/11/2001)**
**from "The Failure to Defend the Skies on 911" [http://www.unansweredquestions.net/timeline/main/essayairdefense.html][43]**
> Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins figured it would be a long day.
**Sept. 11 was Day II of "Vigilant Guardian," an exercise that would pose an imaginary crisis to North American Air Defense outposts nationwide.** The simulation would run all week, and Deskins, starting her 12-hour shift in the Operations Center as the NORAD unit's airborne control and warning officer, might find herself on the spot.
Day I of the simulation had moved slowly. She hoped the exercise gathered steam. It made a long day go faster.
8:40 A.M.: REAL WORLD
In the Ops Center, three rows of radar scopes face a high wall of wide-screen monitors. Supervisors pace behind technicians who peer at the instruments. Here it is always quiet, always dark, except for the green radar glow.
At 8:40, Deskins noticed senior technician Jeremy Powell waving his hand. Boston Center was on the line, he said. It had a hijacked airplane.
**"It must be part of the exercise," Deskins thought.**
**At first, everybody did.** Then Deskins saw the glowing direct phone line to the Federal Aviation Administration.
- "Amid Crisis Simulation, 'We Were Suddenly No-Kidding Under Attack'"
by Hart Seely, Newhouse News Service, January 25, 2002
[http://www.unansweredquestions.net/timeline/2002/newhousenews012502.html][44]
>
>
> **Aviation Week & Space Technology:
June 3, 2002 Exercise Jump-Starts Response to Attacks
** [http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm][45]
>
> At 8:40 a.m. EDT, Tech. Sgt. Jeremy W. Powell of North American Aerospace Defense Command's (Norad) Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) in Rome, N.Y., took the first call from Boston Center. He notified NEADS commander Col. Robert K. Marr, Jr., of a possible hijacked airliner, American Airlines Flight 11.
**"Part of the exercise?" the colonel wondered. No; this is a real-world event, he was told. Several days into a semiannual exercise known as Vigilant Guardian,** NEADS was fully staffed, its key officers and enlisted supervisors already manning the operations center "battle cab."
In retrospect, the exercise would prove to be a serendipitous enabler of a rapid military response to terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. Senior officers involved in Vigilant Guardian were manning Norad command centers throughout the U.S. and Canada, available to make immediate decisions.
* * *
The Aviation Week article has a curious aspect -- **if there was a readiness exercise underway, why weren't interceptors deployed in a timely manner, at least to prevent the attack on the Pentagon** (hit nearly an hour and a half after the first plane went off course)? Aviation Week's "timeline" of 9/11 is extremely deceptive - it suggests that orders to intercept each plane were only given a few minutes before each hit their target, omitting the fact that already scrambled fighters could have intercepted subsequent planes.
![][46]
* * *
**"Northern Guardian" and "Northern Vigilance" (NORAD exercises on 911/2001)**
> Copyright 2001 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
Toronto Star
December 9, 2001 Sunday Ontario Edition
SECTION: BUSINESS; Pg. B05
LENGTH: 974 words
HEADLINE: **The scene at NORAD on Sept. 11**
BYLINE: Scott Simmie, Toronto Star
>
> Original headline
**"Northern Guardian": The Scene at NORAD on Sept. 11
** Copyright 2001 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
Toronto Star
December 9, 2001
Sunday Ontario edition
by Scott Simmie
>
> HIGHLIGHT:
Playing Russian war games ... and then someone shouted to look at the monitor
BODY:
EARLY morning, Sept. 11. A lifetime before the attacks on New York and Washington.
Deep inside a mountain in Colorado and far beneath the granite of North Bay, members of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) are at full "battle staff" levels for a major annual exercise that tests every facet of the organization.
**Operation Northern Vigilance, planned months in advance, involves deploying fighter jets to locations in Alaska and northern Canada.** Part of this exercise is pure simulation, but part is real world: NORAD is keeping a close eye on the Russians, who have dispatched long-range bombers to their own high north on a similar exercise.
Everything is going as planned when Capt. Mike Jellinek arrives for his 6 a.m. shift. The Canadian will be overseeing the crew staffing a crucial post inside the mountain - NORAD's command centre.
Whether it's a simulation or a real-world event, the role of the centre is to fuse every critical piece of information NORAD has into a concise and crystalline snapshot.
An hour into his shift, something unscripted happens. NORAD's Northeast Air Defence Sector (NEADS), based in Rome, N.Y., contacts the mountain.
The Federal Aviation Administration has evidence of a hijacking and is asking for NORAD support. This is not part of the exercise.
In a flash, Operation Northern Vigilance is called off. **Any simulated information, what's known as an "inject," is purged from the screens.**
Someone shouted to look at the monitor displaying CNN.
"At that point, we saw the World Trade Center, one of the towers, smoke coming out of it. And a minute later, we watched the live feed as the second aircraft swung around into the second tower," says Jellinek.
>
>> **note: this assumes that NORAD wasn't contacted for about 40 minutes into the hijacking (second tower hit 9:03 am), which is not believable**
>
> He had one question for the people on the line from NEADS: "Was that the hijacked aircraft you were dealing with?" he asked.
Yes, it was, came the reply.
And then, Jellinek says, "it got really, really busy."
Maj.-Gen. Rick Findley, director of NORAD operations, had just completed the night shift. Usually, Findley would be across town at NORAD headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base. But because of the exercise and the time difference with Russia, he'd been working nights in the mountain. He was just preparing to leave when the disaster began unfolding.
It was a scenario unlike any NORAD had trained for.
"Lots of other reports were starting to come in," Findley recalls. "And now you're not too sure. If they're that clever to co-ordinate that kind of attack, what else is taking place across North America? So we were in a very high-tempo mode, trying to stay one step ahead.
"In the face of all this tragedy, people seemed to know what to do. Everyone seemed to understand that there was a crisis that was not well-defined yet."
Orders were quickly given to get more combat aircraft in the sky. Tankers for in-flight refuelling were at the ready.
Combat aircraft were dispatched to escort Air Force One in case the president was at risk. AWAC jets, designed to track air traffic and offer targeting information to combat aircraft, were deployed.
Because no one yet knew who was behind the attack - or what else might be en route - the giant blast doors designed to protect the Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center from a nuclear blast were sealed.
The massive steel slabs, weighing 25 tonnes each, had not been closed in a non-exercise event since the Cold War.
At the Peterson base, staff began covering windows with tape and paper to minimize flying glass should an explosion occur.
The base, NORAD's administrative headquarters, went to a security status known as Threatcon Delta. It's the highest state of alert and had not been in effect since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
"It was very eerie here," says Helen Booth, who co-ordinates services for the base's Canadian contingent.
"There was a real sense of crisis."
As that crisis unfolded, NORAD set up a secure line so it could brief key officials and act on their decisions. Jellinek was listening as President George W. Bush made the order to drain the skies of commercial aircraft.
Jellinek, who is close to retirement and doesn't have to "suck up to anyone," says it was one of two courageous decisions made at the very top level.
"The second one was: If it looks like a plane is going to be used as a missile, shoot it down. Again, what a gutsy call. Unprecedented, that we may have to shoot down a civilian airliner to prevent a greater disaster. And that decision was made very quickly."
Another timely decision was made halfway around the world. The Russians, on seeing the attacks in New York and Washington, immediately cancelled their own exercises, turning back their bombers and calling off planned missile testing. The Russians knew NORAD would have its hands full.
"They said: 'Okay, we're pulling back,'" Jellinek says. "They sent the message to the State Department clearly and unambiguously: 'Don't worry about our movements, we're going to stay down for a while.' Very, very useful. Very helpful."
More than three months later, NORAD's heightened tempo and battle-staff levels continue. The challenge will be to decide when, if ever, to scale back.
"Knock on wood, I hope that nothing happens," says Findley, rapping his knuckles on a table.
"But all it will take is one more terrorist event somewhere in the world to reinforce all of that unease again. And how do you back away from what you're doing now if it continues to be a very sporadic conflict?"
Adds Jellinek: "Folks are now having much more serious looks at what are the possible threats to us. What is the right balance of fiscal responsibility, operational responsibility, versus actual threat versus capability?
"It's a complex equation ... but it's one that has been thrust in everyone's face right now."
GRAPHIC: Tom Kimmell FOR THE TORONTO STAR COMMAND CENTRE: Canadian Capt. Mike Jellinek was at the helm in Cheyenne Mountain when two hijacked jets hit the World Trade Center and NORAD "got really, really busy."
* * *
[http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/04/19/norad.exercise/index.html][47]
**NORAD exercise had jet crashing into building
** From Barbara Starr
CNN Washington Bureau
Monday, April 19, 2004 Posted: 7:49 PM EDT (2349 GMT)
NORAD
• Established by: Canada and United States in 1958
• Two missions: Warning and aerospace control
• Motto: Deter, Detect, Defend
• Three regions: Alaskan, Canadian and the continental U.S., which has three sectors: Western, Northeast and Southeast.
• Headquarters: Peterson AFB, Colorado Springs, Colorado
• Command and Control: Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center in Colorado
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sometime between 1991 and 2001, a regional sector of the North American Aerospace Defense Command simulated a foreign hijacked airliner crashing into a building in the United States as part of training exercise scenario, a NORAD spokesman said Monday.
The exercise was solely to test procedures and was no indication that NORAD had any reason to believe the scenario would happen in the real world, according to a spokesman.
**It is unclear whether the simulated scenario was that of a hijacked plane being "used as missile" -- intentionally crashing into a building -- or that of an out-of-control hijacked plane.
Military officials said the exercise involved simulating a crash into a building that would be recognizable if identified**, but was not the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.
They emphasize it involved an airliner being hijacked as it flew into U.S. airspace from abroad, a slightly different scenario from what happened on September 11, 2001.
**The identity of the building named in the exercise is classified.
The exercise was conducted at one regional sector, and was not conducted at the headquarters, as are major exercises. This sector exercise involved some flying of military aircraft as well as a command post exercise in which communications procedures were practiced in an office environment.**
NORAD officials emphasized that if it had been a real event, NORAD would have instituted standard procedures to try to contact the aircraft and keep it from crashing.
"We have planned and executed numerous scenarios over the years to include aircraft originating from foreign airports penetrating our sovereign airspace. **Regrettably the tragic events of 9/11 were never anticipated or exercised," said Gen. Ralph Eberhart, commander of NORAD.**
NORAD has the ongoing mission of defense of U.S. airspace.
According to a statement from NORAD, "Before September 11th, 01, NORAD regularly conducted a variety of exercises that included hijack scenarios. These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures."
All of those tasks are the responsibility of NORAD.
The statement continues:
"NORAD did not plan and execute these types of exercises because we thought the scenarios were probable. These exercises were artificial simulations that provided us the opportunity to test and validate our processes and rules of engagement with the appropriate coordination between NORAD's command headquarters, its subordinate regions and sectors and National Command authorities in Canada and the United States.
"Since 9/11 we have continued our exercise program having conducted more than 100 exercises, all of which have included mock hijacks. NORAD has flown 35,000 sorties and scrambled or diverted fighters from air patrols nearly 1,800 times. Additionally, NORAD fighters out of Florida have intercepted two hijacked aircraft since 9/11; both originating from Cuba and escorted to Key West in spring 2003. NORAD remains vigilant and its tolerance for any anomaly in the sky remains very low. The 9/11 commission has been informed about our exercises that include hijack scenarios.
"At the NORAD headquarters' level we normally conducted four major exercises a year, most of which included a hijack scenario. Since 9/11 however we have conducted more than 100 exercises, all of which included at least one hijack scenario."
* * *
Monday, April 19, 2004
**Air command ran drills similar to Sept. 11 attacks**
STEVEN KOMAROW, AND TOM SQUITIERI GANNETT NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON -- **In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.
One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center.** In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon -- but that drill was not run after defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.
NORAD, in a written statement, confirmed that such hijacking exercises occurred. It said the scenarios outlined were regional drills, not regularly scheduled continentwide exercises.
**"Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft," the statement said. "These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures."**
A White House spokesman said Sunday that the Bush administration was not aware of the NORAD exercises. But the exercises using real aircraft show that at least one part of the government thought the possibility of such attacks, though unlikely, merited scrutiny.
On April 8, the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks heard testimony from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that the White House didn't anticipate hijacked planes being used as weapons.
On April 12, a watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight, released a copy of an e-mail written by a former NORAD official referring to the proposed exercise targeting the Pentagon. The e-mail said the simulation was not held because the Pentagon considered it "too unrealistic."
President Bush said at a news conference Tuesday, "Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale."
The exercises differed from the Sept. 11 attacks in one important respect: The planes in the simulation were coming from a foreign country.
Until Sept. 11, NORAD was expected to defend the United States and Canada from aircraft based elsewhere. After the attacks, that responsibility broadened to include flights that originated in the two countries.
But there were exceptions in the early drills, including **one operation, planned in July 2001 and conducted later**, that involved planes from airports in Utah and Washington state that were "hijacked." Those planes were escorted by U.S. and Canadian aircraft to airfields in British Columbia and Alaska.
NORAD officials have acknowledged that "scriptwriters" for the drills included the idea of hijacked aircraft being used as weapons.
"**Threats of killing hostages or crashing were left to the scriptwriters to invoke creativity and broaden the required response**," Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley, a NORAD official, told the 9/11 commission.
"We have planned and executed numerous scenarios over the years to include aircraft originating from foreign airports penetrating our sovereign airspace," Gen. Ralph [Eberhart][48], NORAD commander, told USA Today. "Regrettably, the tragic events of 9/11 were never anticipated or exercised."
NORAD, a U.S.-Canadian command, was created in 1958 to guard against Soviet bombers.
* * *
[http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/vigilant-guardian.htm][49]
Vigilant Guardian
The VIGILANT GUARDIAN (VG) is a VIGILANT OVERVIEW (VO) Command Post Exercise (CPX) conducted in conjunction with USCINCSTRAT-sponsored GLOBAL GUARDIAN and USCINCSPACE-sponsored APOLLO GUARDIAN exercises. The exercise involves all HQ NORAD levels of command and is designed to exercise most aspects of the NORAD mission. One VG is scheduled each year and the length will vary depending on the exercise scenario and objectives.
**CIA / National Reconnaissance Office "plane into building" exercise on 911/2001**
**The US National Reconnaissance Office, which operates spy satellites, was conducting a simulation of a plane crash into their headquarters (near Dulles Airport in Virginia) on September 11!**
**For more about the NRO, see [http://www.fas.org/irp/nro/index.html][50]**
**This war game was not a "terrorism" exercise - but it did simulate a plane going off course (on the approach to nearby Dulles Airport) and crashing into the NRO's headquarters, control center for US spy satellites. This war game was to test the emergency response procedures in the event of this type of accident, and included practice evacuation of the buildings. It is very damning that the war game planners (of all of the war games, not merely this one) ensured that the NRO's headquarters was largely evacuated at precisely the time that 9/11 was taking place, which minimized the number of officials who were able to monitor the events via the Pentagon's trillion dollar intelligence systems.**
**![][51]**
**On 9/11, CIA Was Running Simulation of a Plane Crashing into a Building
[http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm][35]**
**Agency planned exercise on Sept. 11 built around a plane crashing into a building**
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/08/21/national1518EDT0686.DTL][52]
JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer Wednesday, August 21, 2002
(08-21) 15:08 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
"Agency planned exercise on Sept. 11 built around a plane crashing into a building"
By John J. Lumpkin, Associated Press
WASHINGTON [September 2002]
> "**In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings**. But the cause wasn't terrorism -- it was to be a simulated accident.
"Officials at the Chantilly, Va.-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure.
The agency is about four miles from the runways of Washington Dulles International Airport. Adding to the coincidence, American Airlines Flight 77 -- the Boeing 767 that was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon -- took off from Dulles at 8:10 a.m. on Sept. 11, **50 minutes before the exercise was to begin.** It struck the Pentagon around 9:40 a.m., killing 64 aboard the plane and 125 on the ground.
The National Reconnaissance Office operates many of the nation's spy satellites. It draws its personnel from the military and the CIA
[http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/0514_coincidence.html][53]
THE GREAT 9/11 COINCIDENCE
Jon Rappoport
May 13, 2003
On August 22, 2002, the Associated Press ran a story about 9/11. "Agency planned drill for plane crash last Sept. 11."
"...one US intelligence agency [NRO, National Reconnaissance Office] was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 [2001] in which an errant aircraft crashed into one of its buildings."
The same morning. As. The 9/11 attacks.
Accrding to the NRO, their exercise was canceled when the real thing began.
Barbara Honegger, who worked in the White House under Reagan, points out another coincidence. Rsearching press reports, she found a 9/16/01 Washington Post story about the pilot of AA flight 77 that, on the morning of 9/11, was said to have crashed into the Pentagon.
The pilot, Charles Burlingame, an ex- F4 Navy flyer, had, as his last Navy mission, helped craft Pentagon response plans in the event of a commercial ariliner hitting the Pentagon.
Pilot drafts plan for response to Pentagon hit. Pilot winds up on plane that hits Pentagon.
Honegger states that Dick Cheney was ultimately in charge of the NRO exercise on the morning of 9/11. He was in the White House Situation Room for that purpose.
How do you like all these apples?
The limited hangout on this would be: "The hijackers had found out about the upcoming 9/11 mock exercise. They ran their op on top of that, hoping the confusion between Real and Mock would keep the US government from responding to the actual attacks."
Or, one could take this another step: NRO uses many CIA employees. Some element of the CIA was involved in the tactics of the actual 9/11 attacks.
All the above coincidences certainly defy the laws of probability.
Since AP eventually ran a story right out in the open about the mock exercise, one would think the Hill would have exploded in outrage. A hearing would have been held pronto. The "bizarre coincidence" would have become front-page news for a week or so.
Didn't happen.
The uncanny ability of the press to suppress---by sheer accident---a story that could have taken the lid off Washington---THAT should have become a story in itself as well.
Didn't happen.
Where did AP get its story from? It got it from a classic limited hangout, revealed in an announcement, in 2002, about an upcoming Homeland Security conference to be held in Chicago. One of the key speakers at the conference would be John Fulton, a CIA officer who worked for NRO. The announcement reads:
"On the morning of September 11, 2001, Mr Fulton and his team...were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way that day."
Sure.
NRO/CIA/Cheney/the White House were nervous about this story coming to light. So a limited hangout was arranged. The conference brochure would admit to part of the truth. Mayor Rudy of NYC was the main speaker at the conference. Perfect.
As in, "See, we're giving you a fascinating tidbit about 9/11. Why in the world would we do this if there were more to the whole thing? We've got Rudy himself on the podium. Don't you think he would go nuts if there were more to this, if his city had been devastated as part of some plan in which the federal govenrment were actually INVOLVED?"
Worked like a charm.
It should be noted that, right after 9/11, the White House denied that the intelligence community had any clue that a-plane-into-a-building was a possible terrorist scenario. When, in fact, a mock exercise for exactly that eventuality was in progress on the morning of 9/11.
There is one other possibility here we need to consider. On the morning of 9/11, THERE WAS NO MOCK EXERCISE UNDERWAY. The whole idea of such an exercise was fabricated to explain otherwise mind-boggling communications traffic among intelligence and military and civilian agencies of the US government----traffic that would have exposed the complete and casual disregard for the very real events that were underway in the air.
"Oh, all THOSE messages? They were just part of the mock exercise. They had nothing to do with the real thing. We were slow to catch on that the actual attacks were happening, because we had this practice deal running. What a coincidence."
When events like 9/11 occur, if you underestimate the devious quality of the cover stories, you can miss the true thread.
JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com
[http://www.questionsquestions.net/topics/question.html][54]
today's question...
Brian Salter, qq editor
5 June 2003: Why were 3000 NRO employees sent home after 9/11?
There have been a number of disinfo limited hangouts floating around, all of them designed to offer apparently revealing inside details of 9/11 but actually serving the purpose of whitewashing evidence of US govt. complicity. One which has been hanging around for a while centers on the terrorist training exercise that the NRO (National Reconaissance Office) had scheduled the same morning of the attacks. The super-secret NRO happens to be the agency which operates US spy satellites.
A mainstream article about it is here:
http://www.boston.com/news/packages/sept11/anniversary/wire_stories/0903_plane_exercise.htm
The limited hangout build around this is that the 9/11 "terrorists" somehow learned about the secret exercise in advance, and "piggybacked" their own attack on the same date in order to confuse US defences. This is used as a supposed explanation for lack of action on prior warnings, failure of air defences to operate, etc, on the assumption that military and intel personnel thought that everything going on was part of the the "exercise". I don't know of any serious 9/11 researcher who finds this a credible overall theory, given the fact that there is an abundance of evidence pointing beyond such a scenario, to official complicity and specific prior knowledge. This has been discussed very thoroughly among researchers.
That aside, there is an interesting detail in the above article:
"The National Reconnaissance Office operates many of the nation's spy satellites. It draws its personnel from the military and the CIA.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, most of the 3,000 people who work at agency headquarters were sent home, save for some essential personnel, Haubold said."
Sent home... why?? Recently, I heard one alternative speculation about this which deserves some inquiry. Namely, that certain high-ranking NRO staff may have needed this time to eliminate or alter satellite surveillance of the Washington, DC area during the attacks. Note that it has been alleged for years that the US has 24 hour high resolution satellite monitoring of the capitol and surrounding regions, where critical government institutions are located. If so, there would then be a record of Flight 77's flight path and imact. Would there be something there to hide?
With the recent 9/11 Commission hearings on 9/11 air defences having stirred up debate, this is perhaps something to consider.
**1990 "Internal Look" exercise simulating Iraq's invasion of Kuwait - another example of war games masking a real event, conducted when Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense**
General Norman Schwarzkopf, from an interview in the film [Hidden Wars of Desert Storm][55], describing the "wargame" that was underway when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990:
> **"We went ahead and did an exercise, what's called a command post exercise, which is what Internal Look was to test our ability to deal with this particular scenario ... Just so happened we were in the middle of conducting the Internal Look command post exercise at the same time the crisis developed in the gulf."**
>
>
[http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/internal-look.htm][56]
> INTERNAL LOOK is a biennial JCS sponsored, CENTCOM coordinated, and Command Post Exercise (CPX) based on a real-world contingency plan. Its operational concept is focused on joint battle staff warfighting at the strategic and operational level. The primary training audience is CENTCOM's combatant commander and the USCENTCOM headquarters staff. The secondary training audience is composed of CENTCOM service and functional component commanders, their staffs and selected allied forces. INTERNAL LOOK is CENTCOM's major CPX and facilitates training the full battle staff for CENTCOM and its components. It also allows Third Army to exercise its deputy joint land forces command responsibilities.
Exercise Internal Look is designed to exercise the command, control and communications ability of Central Command Headquarters and all of its different component commands who are spread throughout its AOR (area of responsibility) in other parts of the world. The exercise tests and exercises CENTCOM's ability to communicate on the modern battlefield.
>
> On November 23, 1988, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, U.S. Army, became USCENTCOM'S third commander-in-chief (USCINCCENT). Spurred by the rapid diminution of Soviet aggressiveness under Mikhail Gorbachev, Gen. Schwarzkopf worked to supplant USCENTCOM's primary war plan, which involved a war against the Soviets in Iran, with a more realistic scenario. The strategy of the original plan called for five and two-thirds divisions to march from the Arabian Gulf to the Zagros Mountains and prevent the Red Army from seizing the oil fields of Iran. Instead, **Gen. Schwarzkopf began to plan for what he thought was a far more likely situation: Iraq, emerging from eight years of war against Iran with the world's fourth-largest and most battle-hardened army, moving south to capture the rich oil fields whose output was essential to the industrial world.
Gen. Schwarzkopf first tested this new strategy in INTERNAL LOOK, a command post exercise held from July 9 through August 4, 1990** at Fort Bragg and at Hurlburt and Duke Fields in Florida. The events that led to creation of a new joint air campaign target planning organization began in July 1990, when General Schwarzkopf conducted the large joint command post exercise, "Internal Look," at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The exercise tested aspects of the plan for the defense of the Arabian peninsula. General Schwarzkopf quickly determined that neither the CENTCOM nor the CENTAF staff was fully capable of planning large joint air operations for an Iraqi invasion scenario.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Third Army prudently anticipated the Gulf War crisis that occurred in 1990. The initial Third Army plans drawn up to support Internal Look and operations plan (OPLAN) 1002-90 for CENTCOM recommended a heavy armored force whose closure would be in question due to sea-lift limitations. However, this force offered more combat power and an offensive capability that Army planners believed previous planning forces lacked. This prudent planning by military professionals was reflected in the Army Desert Shield force deployments and closure through the end of October 1990. Internal Look showed Saudi Arabia could be defended against Iraqi invaders, but at great cost.
**As the exercise unfolded, the real-world movements of Iraq's air and ground forces eerily paralleled the scripted scenario of the war game. So closely did actual intelligence reports resemble the fictional exercise messages, the latter had to be prominently stamped "Exercise Only." During the last few days of INTERNAL LOOK, Saddam Hussein's forces invaded and captured Kuwait on 2 August 1990.** Suddenly in possession of Kuwait's oil fields, Iraq was poised to acquire the even more valuable prize of the Arabian Peninsula. General Schwarzkopf's immediate requirements were to develop a military strategy and courses of action to stop the potential Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia. [emphases added]
[http://www.spacedaily.com/2002/021201024356.vny8atpb.html][57]
US establishes high-tech military command center in Gulf
WASHINGTON (AFP) Dec 01, 2002
> The United States has deployed in the Gulf state of Qatar a state-of-the-art command center that could be used to direct large-scale military operations throughout the Gulf region, a US defense official said Saturday.
**The deployment, officially in preparation for a military exercise, comes as the administration of President George W. Bush is considering using force against Iraq** if it refuses to give up its chemical and biological weapons, long-range means to deliver them as well as nuclear technology.
"There are roughly 28 shelters, and it consists of all the command-and-control equipment that allows to basically establish a forward-based headquarters," Central Command spokesman Lieutenant Commander Nick Balice told AFP.
The hardware was developed and tested earlier this year in Tampa, Florida, where the Central Command is based, and recently shipped to As Sayliyah military base in Qatar where the war game dubbed Internal Look will be launched early next month, according to Balice.
As many as 1,000 US military personnel, including top war planners, are being deployed to Qatar in advance of the exercise, in which Central Command head General Tommy Franks and the commanders of the Navy, Army and Marine Corps units in the region will take part.
The game will begin at an undisclosed date in early December and will last 7-10 days. Its scenario remains secret.
It has not been decided what will happen to the command center after the war games are over, the spokesman said.
According to administration officials, General Franks is in charge of drafting plans for a possible US military intervention in Iraq that could be used, if Bush finds Baghdad in violation of its international disarmament obligations.
But Balice denied Internal Look had anything to do with these plans.
**"This particular exercise, we began planning for roughly a year and a half ago," he said. "It just so happens to coincide with current events."
The denial notwithstanding, the name Internal Look has a familiar ring to those who monitored the events leading up to the 1991 Gulf War, in which an international force led by the United States ejected Iraqi troops from occupied Kuwait.**
**A command exercise under the same name was run by then-Central Command head General Norman Schwarzkopf in July 1990 to rehearse a massive US troop buildup in Saudi Arabia to defend the kingdom against an Iraqi invasion.**
The deployment of a new US headquarters to Qatar marks a new step in the buildup of US forces in the Gulf nation, which is gathering pace at As Sayliyah as well as al-Udeid air base, according to defense officials.
More than 4,000 US military personnel are already working in the country, mostly at al-Udeid, which has a 4,500-meter-long (15,000 feet) runway and new hardened shelters to accommodate up to 80 aircraft.
Balice acknowledged the US military was also prepositioning equipment in the region as part the Central Command's effort "to be prepared for any contingency that could arise" but refused to give any specifics.
However, The New York Times said the United States had spent more than 100 million dollars to build more than 20 climate-controlled warehouses at As Sayliyah, warehouses storing hundreds of tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and other hardware -- enough to equip a US Army brigade.
All rights reserved. (C) 2004 Agence France-Presse.
**NSA illegal spying on US citizens disguised as training exercise**
[http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/nsa/Bolton.htm][58]
NSA intercepts for Bolton masked as 'training missions'
By Wayne Madsen
> May 15, 2005--According to National Security Agency insiders, outgoing NSA Director General Michael Hayden approved special communications intercepts of phone conversations made by past and present U.S. government officials. The intercepts are at the height of the current controversy surrounding the nomination of Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations.
It was revealed by Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) during Bolton's Senate Foreign Relations Committee nomination hearing that Bolton requested transcripts of 10 NSA intercepts of conversations between named U.S. government officials and foreign persons. However, NSA insiders report that Hayden approved special intercept operations on behalf of Bolton and had them masked as "training missions" in order to get around internal NSA regulations that normally prohibit such eavesdropping on U.S. citizens.
It is noteworthy that in the fictional movie "Enemy of the State," it was under the authority of a "training mission" that renegade NSA officials targeted U.S. civilians for eavesdropping. United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18, the NSA's "Bible" for the conducting of surveillance against U.S. persons, allows "U.S. material," i.e., listening to U.S. persons, to be used for training missions. However, USSID 18 also requires that all intercepts conducted for such training missions are to be completely destroyed after completion of the training operation.
**1981: Presidential Succession exercise**
[http://www.tarpley.net/bush17.htm][59]
**George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography** --- by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin
Chapter -XVII- **The Attempted Coup D'Etat of March 30, 1991**
> .... Back at the White House, the principal cabinet officers had assembled in the situation room and had been running a crisis management committee during the afternoon. Haig says he was at first adamant that a conspiracy, if discovered, should be ruthlessly exposed: "It was essential that we get the facts and publish them quickly. Rumor must not be allowed to breed on this tragedy. Remembering the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, I said to Woody Goldberg, 'No matter what the truth is about this shooting, the American people must know it." [fn 11] But the truth has never been established.
Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger's memoir of that afternoon reminds us of two highly relevant facts. The first is that a "NORAD [North American Air Defense Command] exercise with a simulated incoming missle attack had been planned for the next day." Weinberger agreed with General David Jones, the chiarman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that this exercise should be cancelled. [fn 12]
Weinberger also recalls that the group in the Situation Room was informed by James Baker that **"there had been a FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Administration] exercise scheduled for the next day on presidential succession, with the general title 'Nine Lives.'** By an immediate consensus, it was agreed that exercise should also be cancelled." [fn 13]
>
>
John Hinckley, who was charged with shooting President [Reagan][60], was a son of a business partner of then Vice-President George Herbert Walker Bush.
see
[www.nathanielblumberg.com/neil.html][61]
The connections between the Hinckley and Bush families
**"Amalgam Virgo 01" NORAD exercise just prior to 9/11**
[http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/09/149985_comment.php][62]
Amalgam Virgo was a multiagency, bilateral air security exercise sponsored by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
[**http://sf.indymedia.org/uploads/tab_01_report_of_ftx_amalgum_virgo_01_30_june_2001.pdf**][63]**
** The one in this pdf report happend just prior to 9/11 in the summer of 2001. They didn't know about the attack? So they say.
[http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2002/n06042002_200206043.html
][64] NORAD-Sponsored Exercise Prepares For Worst-Case Scenarios
This year's exercise is a commercial airliner-hijacking scenario -- planned before the Sept. 11 attacks, Snyder said. Last year's exercise, he said, was a scenario involving a cruise missile launched by "a rogue (government) or somebody" from a barge off the East Coast.
[http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/AVE_STE.html][65] - more on Amalgam Virgo and other pre-9/11 war games (military, biowar, financial crash)
> **from AMALGAM VIRGO 01 military exercise, June 1 - 2, 2001 (unclassified report)
note the obvious implication of a potential terrorist attack against the US Capitol building in the graphic on the right side
(most of the report is about the military response to a cruise missile launched by terrorists into the US - the picture
of the Capitol building is the only photo of a potential "target" in the report, although there are graphics simulating
an attack on Gulf of Mexico area target)**
>
> ![][66]
cover page of Amalgam Virgo report
>
> ![][67]
page 34 of report
>
>
[http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/amalgam-virgo.htm][68]
> Amalgam Virgo is a joint-service, cruise-missile defense exercise at Tyndall AFB.
Fast, low-flying cruise missiles are hard to detect. To practice their part in defending the U.S. from these missiles, members of the 513th Air Control Group deployed to Florida for the "Amalgam Virgo" cruise missile defense exercise. The multi-service exercise tested the defense and response capabilities to a cruise missile attack on Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., June 1-4, 2001.
Homeland defense is increasingly being discussed as a primary mission for Guard and Reserve forces. The exercise was coordinated by the Air National Guard's 1st Air Force and involved active duty, National Guard and Reserve forces, the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard as players.
Contributing to the air picture was the Navy Aegis cruiser, USS Yorktown, in the Gulf of Mexico. Equipped with a high-powered radar capable of tracking more than 100 targets simultaneously, the Yorktown also played a role in the multi-layered defense used to shoot down a cruise missile
Real-time battle management and the transmission of E-3 aircraft sensor information is nothing new to the members of the 513th ACG. Data linking the Airborne Warning and Control System "picture" involves providing continual updates of the battlefield, thereby providing command leadership the needed information to instantly respond to changing conditions. It is crucial that information gathered by the AWACS aircraft be transmitted to the specified command center for rapid analysis and response.
What was perhaps a bit different about this exercise was that it involved U.S. homeland defense and practicing to merge a variety of sister services' capabilities to create a uniform picture and response. There are 75,000 cruise missiles and cruise missile-like aircraft in about 75 countries around the world. Those facts, coupled with the ease with which a cruise missile can be acquired make cruise missile defense a priority. Because of the capability for people with very limited means, in relative terms, to be able to obtain a cruise missile, NORAD has to be very serious about that threat. Key to defending against cruise missiles is making sure all air defenders see the same thing. The goal of this exercise was to improve the air picture and counter new and emerging threats.
The Coast Guard, Navy and U.S. Southern Command, took the lead in detecting, identifying and prosecuting the surrogate terrorist vessel that "launched" the cruise missiles for the exercise. From an air defense point of view, the exercise was a complete success. Twelve drones were launched, and twelve were 'destroyed.' The multi-layered defense structure worked as advertised.
At the heart of the exercise was the Joint-Based Expeditionary Connectivity Center, or JBECC, which 1st Air Force tested as part of its Area Cruise Missile Defense demonstration. Ackermann explained that the JBECC is a highly mobile connectivity shelter, which can be deployed to high-risk areas to provide early warning of a cruise-missile attack. It does this by collecting and correlating radar information from the different services to provide an accurate tracking picture of low-level targets such as cruise missiles.
During the June 2001 exercise Amalgam Virgo, ANZUS, Inc. demonstrated the Rosetta LINK-16 / Link-11 gateway functionality. Tracks and data were forwarded between both links in both directions in real-time. This demonstration served as the pre-certification contractor test which was scheduled for October 2001 at JITC. Additionally, ANZUS demonstrated the JMMTIDS JICO toolset capabilities developed to support the Joint Interface Control Officer in managing a complex combined interface architecture.
**Pentagon prepares for airline crash, October 2000**
Mascal is interesting but not evidence for complicity since it's reasonable to expect a plane crash given the proximity to National Airport. Anyone who has spent time in the DC area - or flown into National Airport - understands that the flight path runs very close to the Pentagon and the office buildings of Rosslyn, Virginia. In fact, it would be irresponsible NOT to plan for responses to a plane crash. **Mascal is a distraction from much more solid evidence of complicity.**
Contingency planning Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies
[www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/ContPlanP.html][69] archive of article by Military District of Washington on emergency response planning for a plane hitting the Pentagon
> A plane crash is simulated inside the cardboard courtyard of a surprisingly realistic-looking model Pentagon. This "tabletop" exercise was designed to help emergency relief personnel better prepare for disasters when they occur.
![][70]
![][71]
However, most Washington area residents have known that a crash into the Pentagon (or other nearby buildings) was a strong possibility given the tight aviation corridor used by planes going into National Airport. It is likely that nearly everyone who has looked at the office buildings in Rosslyn and Crystal City has wondered about the probabilites of an off-course jet plowing into one of those buildings (some have beacons on their roofs to warn pilots). The Pentagon is not very far from the normal flight path and therefore an exercise of dealing with a crash is not evidence of preparation for 9/11, although it could be possible that it was used for that.
![][72]
Pentagon Simulated a Scenario of an actual Terrorist Attack 10 months before 9/11
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Outlook, No 8, Spring 2004
www.globalresearch.ca 20 June 2004
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO406C.html
> In October 2000, a military exercise was conducted which consisted in establishing the scenario of a simulated passenger plane crashing into the Pentagon.
The exercise was coordinated by the Defense Protective Services Police and the Pentagon's Command Emergency Response Team.
According to a detailed report by Dennis Ryan of Fort Myer Military Community's Pentagram, "the Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise, as the crash was called, was just one of several scenarios that emergency response teams were exposed to on Oct. 24-26":
>
> "The fire and smoke from the downed passenger aircraft billows from the Pentagon courtyard. Defense Protective Services Police seal the crash sight. Army medics, nurses and doctors scramble to organize aid… Don Abbott, of Command Emergency Response Training, walks over to the Pentagon and extinguishes the flames. The Pentagon was a model and the "plane crash" was a simulated one.
On Oct. 24, there was a mock terrorist incident at the Pentagon Metro stop and a construction accident to name just some of the scenarios that were practiced to better prepare local agencies for real incidents.
To conduct the exercise, emergency personnel hold radios that are used to rush help to the proper places, while toy trucks representing rescue equipment are pushed around the exercise table.
Cards are then passed out to the various players designating the number of casualties and where they should be sent in a given scenario.
To conduct the exercise, a medic reports to Army nurse Maj. Lorie Brown a list of 28 casualties so far. Brown then contacts her superior on the radio, Col. James Geiling, a doctor in the command room across the hall.
Geiling approves Brown's request for helicopters to evacuate the wounded. A policeman in the room recommends not moving bodies and Abbott, playing the role of referee, nods his head in agreement. …
An Army medic found the practice realistic.
"You get to see the people that we'll be dealing with and to think about the scenarios and what you would do," Sgt. Kelly Brown said. "It's a real good scenario and one that could happen easily." …
Abbott, in his after action critique, reminded the participants that the actual disaster is only one-fifth of the incident and that the whole emergency would run for seven to 20 days and might involve as many as 17 agencies.
"The emergency to a certain extent is the easiest part," Abbott said. He reminded the group of the personal side of a disaster. "Families wanting to come to the crash site for closure.
"In this particular crash there would have been 341 victims.1
>
> The Bush Administration is lying
This Pentagon exercise simulated a plane crashing into the Pentagon. The report serves to refute unequivocally claims by the Bush Administration that they could not have predicted that an airplane could be used in a terrorist attack.
In the words of Condoleeza Rice at her 16 May 2002 Press Conference:
>
>> "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile."
>
> Sec Donald Rumsfeld, whose office is on the third floor of the outer ring of the Pentagon, stated "I didn't know". "The Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise" had been ordered by senior Pentagon officials and Rumsfeld says he did not know.
Below is an excerpt of his testimony at the 9/11 Commission in March 2004 (in response to Commissioner Ben-Veniste):
>
>> BEN-VENISTE: ... So it seems to me when you make the statement, sir, that we didn't know that planes might be used as weapons in the summer of 2001, I just have to take issue with that.
RUMSFELD: Well, I didn't say we didn't know. I said I didn't know. And if I just was handed a civil aviation circular that people did know. And they sent it out on June 22nd, 2001 (See complete transcript of testimony at http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/COM403A.html )
>
>
>
> Simulated versus Actual Disaster
The objective of the exercise, in the words of its Pentagon organisers was
>
>> "preparation for any potential disasters… "This is important so that we're better prepared," Brown said. "This is to work out the bugs. Hopefully it will never happen, but this way we're prepared."2
>
> Were they prepared ten months later on September 11, 2001, when the actual disaster occurred?
What was the purpose of conducting this exercise?
>
> Note
1. Dennis Ryan, Contingency planning, Pentagon MASCAL exercise simulates scenarios in preparing for emergencies, MDW NEWS 3 Nov 2000. http://www.mdw.army.mil/
2. Ibid.
**Limited Hang Out: the "piggy back" theory**
**The "Piggy Back" theory - did the hijackers time their attacks for the wargames
- or did the government piggy back the attack onto the wargames?
Who would be able to delay scrambling of interceptors, especially after the WTC had been hit?
**
"Feature: The U.S. Government, Not the Hijackers, 'Chose' the Date of the 9-11 Attacks"
by Barbara Honegger http://www.911pi.com/honneger.htm [no longer posted on line]
This is a curious article - it discusses the NRO / CIA "simulation" of the plane crash into the NRO headquarters and supposes that the "terrorists" learned of this exercise and then chose to time their attack when the US air defense system would think that it was merely a simulation, ensuring the real attack's success. _**It is just as likely that the "simulation" exercise was used by elements in the military / intelligence agencies to distract the air defense apparatus to ensure that the attack would actually succeed.**_ This alternate interpretation is consistent with the theory that the Bush-Cheney administration (and the forces they represent) either saw the attacks coming and chose to let them happen, if not actually planned them.
In other words, the "exercise" could have been the means to confuse those "not in the know" for a critical few minutes in order to let the "American Reichstag Fire" happen. The "piggy back" theory (the hijackers took advantage of the "exercise") doesn't seem to explain the Air Force's curious lethargy during the half-hour between the Second Tower being struck and the Pentagon attack, or why the Pentagon just happened to be hit in the one place that was almost empty ... Andrews AFB is about ten miles from the Pentagon ...
The "piggy back" theory is a great "limited hang out" to discourage officers with inside knowledge from whistleblowing about the war games, since they could be dissuaded from going public by the claim that the "terrorists" compromised US military secret communication systems and that this is the reason why the perpetrators of 9/11 was successful in their attacks.
Barbara Honegger gained her 15 minutes of fame in the late 1980s when she quit her post in the Reagan White House and wrote the book "_October Surprise_," which discussed the 1980 deal between George H.W. Bush and the Iranian revolutionary Islamic regime that was holding US diplomats hostage. Since then, a few other books have been written that talk about the deal, but few politicians have been willing to discuss the "original sin" of the Bush administration - the Reagan/Bush campaign's weapons deal with Ayatollah Khomeini to DELAY the release of the hostages until after the 1980 election to ensure Carter's defeat. In most countries, this would be called a coup d'etat.
In October 2004, Ms. Honegger told a forum in Los Angeles that "shoe bomber" Richard Reid was really Osama and that the Pentagon was hit several minutes before it was struck by the plane (probably false leads designed to soak up time and energy on a wild goose chase).
book reviews of three books about October Surprise
[http://www.namebase.org/books59.html][73]
Honegger, Barbara. October Surprise. New York: Tudor, 1989. 323 pages.
Parry, Robert. Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery. New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1993. 350 pages.
Sick, Gary. October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan. New York: Times Books - Random House, 1991. 278 pages.
[www.washington-report.org/backissues/0591/9105011.htm][74]
**1980 October Surprise** (Reagan/Bush deal with Iran to _**delay**_ hostage release until after the 1980 Reagan-Carter election)
A web search on "Octopus" and "Danny Casolaro" will also add to this.
**"On October 19, 1980, Bush was dealing with Khomeini!"**
[http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile.html][75]
several articles on the October Surprise
* * *
**Some more material from Barbara Honegger about the war games - this material has NOT been verified**
Subject: [911truthalliance] Vital Context for May 2001 plane-into-Pentagon emergency response exercise
Hi, Paul -- Fri. 3/28 1:30 p.m.
To place your below-attached ) 9-11 Timeline entry on
the Pentagon's May 2001 emergency response exercise on
what to do if the Pentagon were hit by a plane:
May 2001 (J): U.S. Medicine magazine later reports:
> "Though the Department of Defense had no capability in place to
> protect the Pentagon from an ersatz guided missile in the form of a
> hijacked 757 airliner, DoD [Department of Defense] medical personnel
> trained for exactly that scenario in May (2001)." The tri-Service
> DiLorenzo Health Care Clinic and the Air Force Flight Medicine Clinic
> train inside the Pentagon this month "to fine-tune their emergency
> preparedness." [US Medicine, Oct. 2001].
into vital context:
1) Pres. Bush publicly announced the appointment of
Vice President Cheney to head a new interagency task force
on counterterrism preparedness and emergency response
early that same month--on May 8, 2001 (TIME cover story,
"The Secret History of 9-11"); and, therefore, in all probability
(which is discoverable), the "May 2001" exercise in the
below timeline entry was either the first or one of the first
actions of that very Cheney counterterrism response
and preparedness Task Force. It is critical to the importance
of this connection to note that, after 9-11, the White House
felt compelled to lie and deny what on its face should be seen as
a positive "we did the right thing and practiced protecting ourselves",
and told TIME magazine that the Cheney counterterrism response
task force 'had never been activated' -- a completely noncredible
claim given that a) the World Trade Center had already been attacked
once on U.S. soil, in 1993; and b) that top Bush Administration officials
had been urgently briefed and warned about the "#1 threat to the U.S."
of Al Qaeda, bin Laden, etc. even before taking office in January;
and c) that part of this now-known pre-inauguration briefing was
almost surely the now-just-being-revealed fact (Judicial Watch lawsuit)
that Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols met in the
Phillippines with first WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef, 9-11 mastermind
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's (KSM's) nephew, and therefore that
Yousef's and KSM's then-already-well-known massive "Bojinka" plot
to bomb eleven U.S. airliners (or "use them as bombs") was surely
briefed to incoming NSC adviser Rice, Bush, Cheney, etc.
2) The Washington Post reported, in a page 1 story shortly after 9-11,
that a Pentagon medic was reading a new Pentagon emergency response
manual for what to do in case the building was struck by a civilian airliner
just before the Pentagon plane struck the bldg.;
3) The second emergency response exercise to a plane-into-building
scenario was on the morning of 9-11 itself, at (at least) the National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO) headed by a top CIA officer.
4) the main pilot of the 9-11 Pentagon plane, former Navy and then
Navy Reservist pilot Charles Burlingame, had recently, in a Reserve
assignment at the Pentagon, been part of a Task Force that drafted
the Pentagon's emergency response plan on what to do in case
a plane hit the building -- which his own plane then did. It is therefore
very possible -- in fact extremely likely, if not certain -- that this 'task force'
that Flight 77 pilot "Chick" Burlingame was part of was the Cheney
counterterrorism preparedness task force, and that the Pentagon
plane pilot, therefore, directly knew and even worked with/for Cheney.
and
5) Burlingame's 9-11 Pentagon plane not only hit the Pentagon
that morning, it struck a Command and Control center for that
morning's counterterrorism 'game' exercise, killing most,
if not all, of the 'players'. We know this because Army personnel
from Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey were on special duty assignment
at the Pentagon that morning for an emergency response exercise
and were killed when Burlingame's plane hit. Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey
also happens to be the headquarters for White House/Presidential
communications, including therefore probably also for Air Force One
(this is discoverable) -- and recall the warning "Air Force One is next"
and the 'secret code' which was called into the White House that
morning which WH press secretary Ari Fleischer revealed as a
means of explaining why Pres. Bush left Florida for a military base
and did not return to the White House. This 'warning' was probably
called into the White House, if true, by either the Ft. Monmouth
White House communications headquarters and/or the Ft. Monmouth
counterterrorism exercise 'game' players temporarily at the Pentagon
that morning.
This nexus is completely and totally beyond coincidence, and is
the real reason that all facts that could reveal the context in which
it can be easily understood by the public are being ruthlessly
classified/hidden, as well as the real reason the White House
is trying to stifle/kill the Kean/Hamilton 9-11 Commission by
delaying release of the classified House/Senate 9-11 Inquiry report,
delay/reduce requested funding, etc.
Barbara
[1]: graphics/oilempire-web-title.jpg
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[3]: peakoil.html
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[5]: 911.html
[6]: worldwar4.html
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[14]: #ruppert
[15]: #coincidence
[16]: #airforce
[17]: #nro
[18]: #1990
[19]: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/011805_simplify_case.shtml
[20]: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=militaryExercises
[21]: http://www.oilempire.us/wargames.html
[22]: pod.html
[23]: ruppert.html
[24]: http://www.fromthewilderness.com
[25]: graphics/911wargames.gif
[26]: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/030105_mckinney_question.shtml
[27]: cynthiamckinney.html
[28]: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/031505_mckinney_transcript.shtml
[29]: http://www.margieburns.com/blog/_archives/2006/7/8/2093537.html
[30]: remote.html#lonegunmen
[31]: http://www.flight93crash.com
[32]: http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/09/riddle-of-transponders.html
[33]: http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/02/sibels-way.html
[34]: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToA.html#TOC
[35]: http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm
[36]: http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/01/michael-chertoff-and-sabotage-of-ptech.html
[37]: http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/01/do-you-know-this-woman.html
[38]: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/060704_tripod_fema.html
[39]: standdown.html
[40]: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/oct152001.html
[41]: http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=387
[42]: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/COM403B.html
[43]: http://www.unansweredquestions.net/timeline/main/essayairdefense.html
[44]: http://www.unansweredquestions.net/timeline/2002/newhousenews012502.html
[45]: http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm
[46]: graphics/aw-timeline.jpg
[47]: http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/04/19/norad.exercise/index.html
[48]: northcom.html
[49]: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/vigilant-guardian.htm
[50]: http://www.fas.org/irp/nro/index.html
[51]: graphics/nro-banner.gif
[52]: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2002/08/21/national1518EDT0686.DTL
[53]: http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/0514_coincidence.html
[54]: http://www.questionsquestions.net/topics/question.html
[55]: http://www.hiddenwars.org
[56]: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/internal-look.htm
[57]: http://www.spacedaily.com/2002/021201024356.vny8atpb.html
[58]: http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/nsa/Bolton.htm
[59]: http://www.tarpley.net/bush17.htm
[60]: reagan.html
[61]: http://www.nathanielblumberg.com/neil.html%20
[62]: http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/09/149985_comment.php
[63]: http://sf.indymedia.org/uploads/tab_01_report_of_ftx_amalgum_virgo_01_30_june_2001.pdf
[64]: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2002/n06042002_200206043.html%0D%0A
[65]: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/AVE_STE.html
[66]: graphics/amalgam.jpg
[67]: graphics/amalgam-virgo.jpg
[68]: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/amalgam-virgo.htm
[69]: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/ContPlanP.html
[70]: graphics/Ex_sim1.jpg
[71]: graphics/Ex_sim2.jpg
[72]: graphics/DCA_River_Visual.jpg
[73]: http://www.namebase.org/books59.html
[74]: http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0591/9105011.htm
[75]: http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile.html