NORAD had drills of jets as weapons (2 Years before 9-11)

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm

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.

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 continent-wide 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.

"Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft,"


So was NORAD facing the ocean when they did these exercises?

that the jets were all facing the ocean for an external threat? I heard that at the hearings. They hadn't prepared for an internal threat.

I think we're being scammed big time by big brother.

I thought maybe I was off. So Big Brother is doing a reunion tour?

My brother deals in those old posters.

Turn around,
go back down,
back the way you came,
Can't you see that flash of fire ten times brighter than the day?
And behold a mighty city broken in the dust again,
Oh God, Pride of Man, broken in the dust again.

Turn around,
go back down,
back the way you came,
Babylon is laid to waste, Egypt's buried in her shame,
The mighty men are all beaten down, their kings are fallen in the ways,
Oh God, Pride of Man, broken in the dust again.

Turn around,
go back down,
back the way you came,
Terror is on every side, lo our leaders are dismayed.
For those who place their faith in fire, their faith in fire shall be
repaid,
Oh God, Pride of Man, broken in the dust again.

Turn around,
go back down,
back the way you came,
And shout a warning unto the nation that the sword of God is raised.
Yes, Babylon, that mighty city, rich in treasures, wide in fame,
Oh God, Pride of Man, broken in the dust again.

The meek shall cause your tower to fall, make of you a pyre of flame,
Oh you who dwell on many waters, rich in treasures, wide in fame.
you bow unto your God of gold, your pride of might shall be a shame,
For only God can lead His people back unto the Earth again.

Oh God, Pride of Man, broken in the dust again.
A Holy mountain be restored, and mercy on that people, that people

Quicksilver Messenger Service Pride Of Man

seeing as this book sold 2 million copies http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0425158632/qid=1082345728/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/102-0426684-8901749?v=glance&s=books#product-details

Of course Clancy had his 747 dive into the capital during an inaguration and wipe out most the top politicians.

that not a SINGLE person in the White House, Cabinet, or Chiefs of Staff were not aware of these training missions. It is completely ridiculous for them to have us believe that the entire upper echelon of this misadministration were completely oblivious to these training missions. I don't buy it for one damn second.

It is unfortunate that political strife in this country has placed blinders around partisans that prevent americans from seeing the truth.

I think RWers are scared to admit to themselves that this administration is capable of perpetrating such heinous crimes - and more importantly - did perpetrate such a crime on September 11th.

I can think of no other explanation for the rejection of overwhelming evidence of such a crime committed by the Bush* administration.

And Condi said "Nobody could imagine terrorists flying planes into buildings". You don't think they were lying, do you?

:eyes:

Who would have expected reporters from USA Today to be asking the important questions?

The part about the Pentagon attack clinches it.

"Aviation Week & Space Technology December 17, 2001

Crisis At Herndon: 11 Airplanes Astray

By David Bond, Washington

...

The kind of government-industry coordination Herndon relies on to deal with bad weather turned instead to crisis management. As usual, the Air Transport Assn. (ATA) and the National Business Aircraft Assn. were represented on the operational floor. In a fluke, so was what Herndon calls "the military cell"--the Air Traffic Services Cell, created by the FAA and the Defense Dept. for use when needed to coordinate priority aircraft movement during warfare or emergencies. The Pentagon staffs it only three days per month for refresher training, but Sept. 11 happened to be one of those days."

...

(now behind a subscription).

A little snippet that no one seems to know about. Must be the subscription.

Agency planned drill for plane crash last Sept. 11
Associated Press
August 22, 2002

WASHINGTON -- 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 crashed 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 crashed 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.

Agency chiefs came up with the scenario to test employees' ability to respond to a disaster, said spokesman Art Haubold. To simulate the damage from the plane, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building.

"It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility," Haubold said. "As soon as the real world events began, we canceled the exercise."

Terrorism was to play no role in the exercise, which had been planned for several months, he said

absent that day.

for finally running an article about them. A while back, I emailed as a news tip to the New York Times enough information to alert them, but, to my knowledge, no story has appeared there, or anywhere else in the "mainstream" press. Probably dismissed as "conspiracy theory," like Ashcroft's not flying commercial. Doesn't the article miss, however, the drill that occurred on 9/11/01?

http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm

Agency planned drill for plane crash last Sept. 11
Associated Press
August 22, 2002

WASHINGTON -- 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 crashed 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 crashed 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.

Agency chiefs came up with the scenario to test employees' ability to respond to a disaster, said spokesman Art Haubold. To simulate the damage from the plane, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building.

"It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility," Haubold said. "As soon as the real world events began, we canceled the exercise."

Terrorism was to play no role in the exercise, which had been planned for several months, he said

they should do a follow-up piece to their story.

Right on one of the Pentagon's websites, there's a description of an exercise (with simulation models set up right inside the Secretary of Defense's conference room) involving the simulated crash of a hijacked airliner used by terrorists as a bomb. Click on the images and you will even see a model of a crashed airliner placed right inside the Pengagon. Very, very strange and dramatic proof that this was a well-considered threat. These simulated exercises apparently occurred about 10 months before 911 and were up on this U.S. military website for all the world to see (link below). I think Don Abbott, of Command Emergency Response Training should be called before the 911 commission:


"...Washington, D.C., Nov. 3, 2000 — 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. An Arlington Fire Department chief dispatches his equipment to the affected areas.

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. The Pentagon Mass Casualty Exercise, as the crash was called, was just one of several scenarios that emergency response teams were exposed to Oct. 24-26 in the Office of the Secretaries of Defense conference room.

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...."

<...continued...>

http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/Contingency_Planning.html

since they've shown interest in covering this story.

on attacks using planes as weapons

http://www.unansweredquestions.net/timeline/main/essayairdefense.html

their new mission was to track down missing Texas state legislators etc. Since the TX redistricting fight was still several years off, a big coverage gap resulted, /sarcasm off (or maybe not)

right near the airport. It was a fighter that had stealth technology on it. They said the control tower was trying to redirect it, but couldn't get a read on it because of the stealth technology. I now wonder if that was a drill gone awry. Could be? After all the initial catastrophe of it, it slipped right off the radar screen, so to speak. It happened in the 90's sometime or other.

on edit: here is a link, I guess it was in 1987 that it happened.

http://www.interfire.org/res_file/pdf/Tr-014.pdf

Interesting how a Ramada Inn held up and stayed up after a military jet flies into it with a load of jet fuel that burns off.