WTC caught US air defence off guard: NORAD commander

Federal aviation authorities and the nation’s air defence command were unprepared in virtually every way for the 9/11 attacks and were ...

Federal aviation authorities and the nation’s air defence command were unprepared in virtually every way for the 9/11 attacks and were forced to improvise amid chaos and miscommunication, the commission staff investigating the attacks said on Thursday.

However, while the report made no claim that the attack could have been averted if things had gone more smoothly that day, Gen Ralph Eberhart, the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) commander, proclaimed in testimony on Thursday that all four hijacked planes could have been shot down if the FAA had informed the military quickly of each hijacking. ‘‘If that is the case, yes, we could shoot down the airplanes,’’ he said.

Among a litany of mistakes and missed opportunities, most were traced by the report to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Among them:

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• One Boston air traffic controller was left to juggle responsibility for the doomed American Airlines 11 and United Airlines 175 flights that crashed into the twin towers. Minutes were lost when he failed to notice that the transponder on 175 was changing signals — because he was transfixed on the American flight.

• An FAA regional operations manager in the Northeast tried to get his supervisors in Washington to issue a nationwide cockpit-security alert after he realised that multiple aircraft were involved. The requested order — which was sought minutes before the cockpit door was breached on United Flight 93, which eventually crashed in Pennsylvania — was either lost or ignored at FAA headquarters.

• FAA officials at one point concluded that American Flight 11 was headed to Washington — even though it had already crashed in New York. The FAA made an urgent plea to the military to try to find the missing jet. The result was that the military was responding to ‘‘a plane that no longer existed.’’

• FAA headquarters never alerted the military to the existence of American Flight 77, which later hit the Pentagon, or of United 93, which at one point seemed on a course for the US Capitol.

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• The FAA lost track of Los Angeles-bound American Flight 11 for 36 minutes and failed to realize that it had reversed course and was heading east.

• Top FAA and NORAD officials — the supposed main line of defence against such attacks — never coordinated their response the day of the attacks in part because the FAA did not have a secure telephone line.

• Vice President Cheney issued an order to military aircraft to intercept and shoot down suspicious planes — an order that was never passed along to fighters circling Washington and New York. —(LAT-WP)