The changing stories given by NORAD led to placing more blame for the failed air defenses on the FAA. After NORAD’s 2003 timeline was issued, however, the FAA publicly stated that NORAD had in fact been informed throughout all the developments that morning. FAA official Laura Brown wrote a memo to the 9/11 Commission in which she stated that FAA shared “real-time information” with NORAD about “loss of communication with aircraft, loss of transponder signals, unauthorized changes in course, and other actions being taken by all the flights of interest, including Flight 77.”[14]
FAA leadership certainly did fail that morning and there are shocking questions to be answered in that regard.[15] Not the least of these questions is why evidence that might have helped was destroyed by an FAA official after the attacks.[16] But the multiple stories given by the military indicate that NORAD was at least as culpable as the FAA in the inexplicable lack of air defense. And the facts indicate that NORAD was in the loop earlier than its 2003 timeline suggested, meaning that there is no reasonable explanation for why NORAD-controlled jets did not intercept most, if not all, of the planes hijacked on 9/11.
When questioned by the 9/11 Commission, Eberhart confirmed that if NORAD had been in the loop as the FAA said it was, his people would have been able “to shoot down all three aircraft — all four aircraft.”[17]
Reasons to suspect Eberhart
Investigation of NORAD and its commander Eberhart is warranted, apart from the evidence for lying to Congress. Additional reasons to focus on Eberhart include the following nine facts.
- As Commander in Chief of the U.S. Space Command (CINCSPACE), Eberhart was responsible for setting Infocon levels.[18] Infocon is an alert system that defends against attacks on communications networks within the Department of Defense (DOD). Just 12 hours before the 9/11 attacks, an order was given to lower Infocon to its least protective level.[19] Setting Infocon at a lower level made it easier for people to hack or compromise the DOD computer networks, including the air defense system.[20]
- As both CINCSPACE and Commander in Chief of NORAD (CINCNORAD), Eberhart was in charge of many of the highly coincidental military exercises (i.e. war games) that were going on that morning.
- Eberhart did nothing effective in response to the 9/11 hijackings, despite being present in the military’s teleconference as those hijackings were in progress. He did not order the scrambling of jets, he did not order an escort for Air Force One, and he did not provide leadership.
- Eberhart also failed to implement military control over U.S. airspace until well after the attacks were over. Although it was his prerogative to do so, Eberhart did not implement SCATANA, the process of assuming military control over the U.S. airspace, until two hours after the second plane hit the WTC and one hour after the last plane had been destroyed. Eberhart later said that he had waited until it finally became “obvious” to him that a coordinated terrorist attack was underway.[21] He told the 9/11 Commission that, although people were telling him to take control of the airspace earlier, he didn’t feel that the military could “provide traffic deconfliction like the FAA has.”[22]
- In the middle of the 9/11 attacks, Eberhart decided to drive between Peterson Air Force Base and NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center (CMOC). Normally this 12-mile drive takes 30 minutes, but it took Eberhart between 45 minutes and an hour to make the drive that morning. No reason was ever given (or requested) for why Eberhart did not fly directly to CMOC from Peterson, making use of the Cheyenne Mountain helicopter port. Eberhart made conflicting statements about his reasons for making this trip, saying that he stayed for a while at Peterson because he “did not want to lose communication.”[23] Nevertheless, Eberhart lost communication at the most important time by leaving at approximately 9:30 am (EST), when two of the hijacked planes were still flying wildly off-course. His reason for doing this was that things had “quieted down.”[24]
- While on his way to the CMOC he was in the U.S. military’s air threat call via cell phone. In this call, at 9:49 am, Eberhart “directed all air sovereignty aircraft to battle stations, fully armed.”[25] Although this might sound like decisive action, the command apparently grounded all interceptor jets that had not yet taken off due to the fact that “battle stations” is a grounded status. Other military leaders later gave orders to actually scramble the jets. And despite his involvement, Eberhart portrayed himself as being out of the loop entirely. For example, he told the 9/11 Commission that he had “no knowledge of the circumstances that initiated the scramble” of fighter jets from Langley AFB and that he had just “recently” been made aware that it happened (in March 2004).[26]
- Eberhart failed to explain the multiple changes in the account of 9/11 that were given by NORAD. In fact, he seemed to tell his staff to change the NORAD timeline as much as was needed in order to prevent further questioning about the military’s performance.[27]
- For whatever reasons, Eberhart also gave out false information about the NORAD response to others. General Richard Myers, acting CJCS that morning, said that Eberhart told him there were “several hijack codes in the system.” Yet none of the four planes had squawked the hijack code on 9/11 and therefore it is not clear how such codes could have been in the system.[28]
- NORAD failed to cooperate with the 9/11 Commission. Even as late as March 2004, the Commission was struggling to get basic documents about 9/11 performance from Eberhart’s organization.[29] In some cases, such as with the after-action reports that follow all military actions, the Commission never received the NORAD documents.
Of all these concerns, it is the military exercises that NORAD was conducting on 9/11 that have drawn the most attention from concerned citizens. When questioned about them, Eberhart claimed that the impact of the 9/11 exercises on NORAD’s response was that they “at most cost us 30 seconds.”[30] That was clearly not the case.
NORAD’s coincidental exercises
After several government officials had made incorrect statements about the military’s preparation for hijackings and the use of planes as weapons, General Myers responded to a pointed question on the subject. He reported that NORAD had practiced “five exercise hijack events,” between November 1999 and October 2000, all of which “included a suicide crash into a high value target.”[31] Records since released show that NORAD practiced approximately 28 hijack exercise events in the 20 months leading up to 9/11. At least six of these were focused on hijackings located entirely within the Unites States, which puts to rest the excuse that NORAD was only looking for threats coming from outside of U.S. borders.[32]
One of these exercises, Vigilant Guardian, in October 2000, practiced interception of an airliner hijacked for a suicide attack against the 39-story United Nations building in New York City, just a few blocks from the WTC.[33] Another air defense exercise, called Amalgam Virgo and practiced just three months before 9/11, was accompanied by a planning document that had a picture of Osama bin Laden on the cover.[34]
Many of the military exercises or war games that were occurring on the day of 9/11 were run under the control of CINCNORAD Eberhart. In fact, Eberhart was in command of the war games that had the greatest impact on the nation’s air defenses. Of course, he had help.
NORAD is divided into several large areas that cover the U.S. and Canada, one of which is the region of the continental U.S. called CONR, headed on 9/11 by General Larry Arnold. Within CONR there are three sectors. The 9/11 attacks took place in the airspace monitored by CONR’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS). Personnel at NEADS were therefore primarily responsible for trying to coordinate the NORAD response to the hijackings. CMOC was also an important facility in the response that should have been effective but was not.
At NEADS, Colonel Robert Marr was in charge. Marr had been in the U.S. Air Force for over 20 years until 1994, at which time he spent a few months in Saudi Arabia as “director of combat operations.”[35] He then left the military to work two years for a private company called Phoenix Air. Coincidentally, Phoenix Air provided aircraft for the Amalgam Virgo exercises.[36] There is also reason to believe that Phoenix Air is associated with Huffman Aviation where the alleged 9/11 hijackers had trained.[37] After his stint at Phoenix Air, Marr returned to the military as the exercise coordinator at NEADS and, by 9/11, had risen to the position of commander of the facility.
There were several NORAD exercises planned for 9/11: Vigilant Guardian and Vigilant Overview, both command post exercises (CPX), and Amalgam Virgo and Amalgam Warrior, which were field training (or FTX) exercises. All four of these exercises were CJCS approved and sponsored by CINCNORAD Eberhart.[38] Apollo Guardian was also running on 9/11. This was an exercise conducted by the U.S. Space Command, meaning Eberhart was in control of that too.
FTX exercises are sometimes what are referred to as SPADEs, meaning “a track is taken out of radar coverage and then re-introduced as an unknown track.”[39] This exercise feature is interesting given that Flight 77 was lost on radar for a period of time on 9/11 and then reappeared in a way that has not yet been explained.[40]
