03-12-2011, 07:58 AM
http://www.911woodybox.blogspot.com/
The Cleveland Airport Shell Game: Delta 1989, Delta 1898, United 1898
The Cleveland Airport Shell Game: Delta 1989, Delta 1898, United 189808/21/2011 08:55 PM
This short piece is an update of my most popular article so far, "The Cleveland Airport Mystery" from 2004, prominently featured in "Crossing the Rubicon" by Michael Ruppert and "Loose Change, 2. edition" by Dylan Avery.
I examined the circumstances of the landing of Delta 1989, a Boeing 767 out of Boston, at Cleveland Hopkins Airport on 9/11. I was lucky to find so much evidence for the existence of a shadowy doppelganger flight of Delta 1989 - landing at about the same time and likewise being evacuated - that I published the results here.
Unfortunately, many people think the central thesis of the article is that United 93 was the mysterious plane that landed at Cleveland Airport. This ist not true. I never claimed that United 93 landed at Cleveland. For more background, look here.
I claimed, however, and do continue to claim that an unidentified Boeing 767 landed at Cleveland in emergency and was evacuated, with Delta 1989 serving as a cover, i. e. whoever asked for the identity of the mysterious plane afterwards reaped the answer: that was Delta 1989! and stopped asking questions.
In 2009, numerous documents of the 9/11 Commission came to light. There I found a perfect candidate for the eerie double of Delta 1989 - United 1898 - and published it here.
In summary, United 1898 is a most interesting case because Cleveland controllers reported it to a special unit of the FAA, named "AAT-200", which is dealing with accidents, emergency cases and other irregularities. However, on 9/11/2001 United Airlines operated no aircraft with flight number 1898. Together with the salient similarity of the flight number (1989/1898) this makes United 1898 a good candidate for "Flight X" and an interesting matter of investigation.
Two years later, I'm now proud to present an independent verification for the emergency landing of a Flight 1898 at Cleveland. This time it's called Delta 1898.
1009 DAL1989 on downwind at CLE
1024 DAL1989 on ground CLE
1035 Unconfirmed report - DAL1989 flaps up at CLE
1039 DAL1989 parked in secure area/no one exited a/c yet (pilot says he is not being hijacked)
1116 DAL 1898 confirmed by security HIJACK at CLE ATC - communication with pilot does not confirm
1119 DAL 1989 still not suspected hijack; taxiing to terminal
Source
In this internal FAA timeline, there is only one entry for DAL1898. Note that this is definitely no typo because DAL1898 was a confirmed hijacking, whereas DAL1989 (= Delta 1989) was never suspected a hijack, neither earlier nor later than the security warning of Delta 1898. It should be of no big surprise by now that this so-called Delta 1898 was not the official Delta Flight 1898 who was scheduled to depart from Salt Lake City in the afternoon, but - of course - never left the ground on that day.
So United 1898 and Delta 1898 were both fake flight numbers. The identity of the numbers and the similar context (United 1898 was an emergency case; Delta 1898 was a confirmed hijacking) leads straightforwardly to the conclusion that these two planes were one and the same. The close similarity of the flight numbers 1898 and 1989 corroborates the thesis that Delta 1989 functioned as a cover-up for Flight 1898. The plane was probably evacuated as United 1898, was quickly renamed Delta 1898, and fell into oblivion due to the informational cover provided by Delta 1989.
This very much reminds a shell game, with the shells bearing fake flight numbers. And the only entity entitled to legally use fake flight numbers was the military in case of conducting a war game, i.e. an exercise. It appears that the emergency landing of Flight 1898 and its subsequent evacuation was indeed part of a military exercise. This may be the reason why it's so difficult to obtain information about the incident: military secrecy.
Combined with the information already presented in my original article, there is now ample evidence that Flight 1898 was a Boeing 767 of United Airlines coming from Boston - but it was not the regular United 1898. The number of the United Boeing 767's departing from Boston is so small that it should narrow down the search for the identity of the mysterious plane considerably. United 177 looks like a good candidate.
Was Mohamed Atta being employed by American Airlines?05/29/2011 03:54 PM
Diane Graney is the second witness (besides Lynn Howland whom I presented in my last blog entry) with precise recollections of Mohamed Atta, but completely ignored by the 9/11 Commission. Graney worked at Portland Airport on 9/11. She didn't see the alleged hijackers Atta and Al-Omari, but recognized Atta's face from the photo that was published in the aftermath. She is positive that Atta, dressed in an American Airlines uniform and able to identify himself as an AA pilot, tried prior to 9/11 to achieve a jump seat on a US Airways flight.
Compare this to the particulars provided by Lynn Howland. According to her, Atta was "wearing a white pilot type or oxford shirt, no tie and blue pilot type slacks" and carried a "really cheap pilot bag". Furthermore, Atta approached her and asked if she was going to fly American 11. Apparently he wanted to jump seat the flight.
Here is a list of persons who occasionally are allowed to take a jump seat in the cockpit (from Wikipedia): In aircraft, jump seats - which are officially termed auxiliary crew stations - can be located in cockpits or passenger cabins. In cockpits, jump seats are provided for individuals who are not operating the aircraft. These might include trainee pilots, off-duty crew members in transition to another airport (see deadheading), government officials (such as Federal Aviation Administration staff), or airline staff.
There are also witnesses in Florida confirming that Atta boasted about his status as an American Airlines pilot. Yet the 9/11 Commission has completely blacked out the accounts of Lynn Howland and Diane Graney and missed to pursue their hints that Atta presented himself on several occasions as an AA pilot in order to jump seat a certain flight.
Was American Airlines aware about Atta's activities? And why has the 9/11 Commission failed to follow this important trace?
Here is Diane Graney's account (date: 9/22/01):
Diane Graney, date of birth ........... employed as a Customer Service Agent CSA and Ground Security Coordinator GSC, U.S. Airways USAIR, Portland International Jetport, 1001 Westbrook Street, Portand, Maine, telephone number 207775-5210, was interviewed at her place of employment. After being advised of the identity of the interviewing agent and the nature of the interview, she provided the following information:
Graney has been employed with USAIR for approximately twelve years. As a CSA for USAIR, Graney's duties include conducting passenger check-ins, checking baggage, making seat assignments, and issuing tickets. She performs her duties at either the USAIR Ticket Counter or at the individual airport gates. As a GSC, she deals with aircraft, airport, and general security issues.
On September 11, 2001, from 5:00 AM to 1:00 PM, Graney was working at the USAIR ticket counter. At some point in her shift she heard of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, and that one of the flights was American Airlines Flight 11 out of Logan Airport in Boston. As a GSC, she went and pulled the passenger lists for the US AIR flights to Logan to see if any USAIR passengers had a connection to thje flight. Graney saw that there were two passengers on USAIR Flight 5930 to Logan that had a connection to American Airlines Flight 11. The two names were Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari. She also noticed the two were to sit in First Class on American Airlines Flight 11. Graney thought it was suspicious that these two passengers could have taken a better, more direct flight then what they had scheduled.
Graney observed that Atta and Alomari had checked two bags in at the US AIR Ticket Counter, and that Michael Tuohey was the CSA who checked them in. She spoke to Tuohey about the two passengers, and he advised her of what he had observed. She then contacted Chuck Severance, US AIR Station Manager, and informed him of what happened and what she had discovered.
Graney advised that later when she saw Atta's picture on the news, she believed she had seen him before. She thought he may have tried to jump seat once with USAIR, and he was in uniform using an American Airlines pilot identification. She believed that this happened within the last six months. She advised she searched the USAIR jump seat peaperwork to see who had gone through for June 2001, July 2001, and August 2001, but was unable to find Atta's name. She advised the jump seat forms are only kept for 90 days. She became more concerned about this when she heard on the news that some American Airlines uniforms were stolen in Italy.
Graney was then requested to review a photograph array containing twelve pictures of twelve of the alleged hijackers. Graney identified the picture of Mohamed Atta as the person she remembered seeing prior to September 11, 2001 attempting to jump seat a USAIR flight. She also identified the picture of Marwan Alshehhi as someone she had seen sometime at the airport ticket counter. She identified the picture of Waleed Alshehri as someone who looks familiar. Both Graney and the interviewing agent dated and initialed the pictures she identified.A pilot's strange encounter with Atta at Boston Airport04/24/2011 03:48 PM
The following is the official paraphrased statement of an American Airlines pilot, interviewed by the FBI on October 13th, 2001. The witness describes how she was shortly approached by Mohammed Atta inside the AA terminal at Logan Airport. Her account is detailed, credible, and intriguing.
Lynn Marie Florence Howland, First Officer, American Airlines, AA, was interviewed near her home at a Starbucks Café in ................... She was advised of the identity of the interviewing agent and nature of the interview. For identification, she advised that she lives and .............................. and has been with American Airlines for eleven years.
Howland explained to the interviewing agent that she has been out of state for several days flying in her job. To assist her recollection she prepared a type written one page chronology of the events regarding the encounter with a person she thought was the suspected hijacker of AA Flight 11 on the morning of September 11, 2001. She advised that she was extremely tired after her flight. She left her home at approximately 10:00 a.m. all times local on the morning of September 10th, flew down to San Francisco to then fly as first officer for the AA red-eye flight from San Francisco to Boston. Checking a dispatch schedule, she indicated she flew AA flight 198 from San Francisco, California to Boston, Massachusetts. She indicated the flight had a 9:50 p.m. departure, with arrival at Logan Airport, Boston at approximately 6:50 a.m. on the morning of September 11th. The equipment was a Boeing 767. She advised that the captain was Douglas Balmain. She was sure that the arrival gate for her flight 198 was Bravo 33. Subsequently she checked with AA dispatch and was told her flight AA 198 became the hijacked AA flight 11.
After almost everyone had deplaned, she went up the jetway ahead of Captain Balmain. She stated as she was standing near the entrance to the jetway, in the passenger lounge, a male individual comes up to her suddenly and asks if she is going to take this plane out, referring to the flight she just brought in. She said no and he abruptly turned and went and sat down. She thought that was extremely rude. Her first impression was that he was a pilot going to fly in the jump seat. While he wasn't in uniform, he may have been wearing a pilot type shirt, open collar. She thought he may have had a rolling pilot flight kit or bag with him, which she described as black vinyl, round top, and incredibly cheap. Again she could not recall anything else, only at that time wanting to get to the hotel and sleep. She said she was so tired, when she got to her hotel room she crashed in bed, in her uniform. She woke up about one p.m. and then found out about the terrorist attacks. She said for the longest time she wasn't even sure that she was dreaming it all, until she saw photographs of the hijackers in the news, she was instantly sure that the indivdual she saw that morning was the suspected hijacker, Mohammed Atta. She added that when she first saw the pictures of the hijackers in the new media, it was like an electric shock when she saw the picture of Atta.
She described the individual she saw that morning as having dark hair, dark eyes and being approximately five feet, eight inches in height. Because she was so tired and just wanted to get to the hotel, she could not recall much, other than he may have had that cheap pilot flight bag. She could not recall anything else and stated that time she had no reason to notice. She did not think that Captain Balmain would have noticed him. As she explained in her notes, the recollection .... (??? - missing text) She was shown a photo spread of six males and instantly chose number 5, which is the terrorist described as Mohammed Atta. She then signed and dated the photo spread under photograph number five. She said that her selection was based totally on her recollection of the morning of September 11th and not from any subsequent photographs she may have seen in the news.
The following are Howland's notes, prepared prior to the interview and scanned directly into this FD-302 and corrected only for scanning errors:
"Flew flight 198 SF-BOS
Departed September 10
Arrived September 11
On the ground approximately 0650 EST
In gate probably at 0700 EST
I left the cockpit first and waited for the captain at the top of the jetbridge in the boarding area.
He was slower maybe 5-7 minutes behind me.
We went to the hotel. I went to sleep called my parents at 1300 EST and they told me what happened.
Later that day I realized it was the aircraft that I had brought in.
That is what I remembered until I saw the photos on TV.
I was instantly sure I have seen Mohammed Atta before could not remember where.
Two days later I was driving my car in at night in the rain and my thoughts were drifting to the horrible loss. I suddenly had a memory of a man approaching me and asking me if I was taking the flight out. I was stunned. Did this really happen? I thought about it some more and remembered Mohammed Atta approaching me and asking me if I was taking flight 11 out. I said "No, I just brought the aircraft in." He turned his back and abruptly walked away and I was a little annoyed with his rudeness but as it was 0400 body clock time I let it go and told myself that people are rude everyday.
This would have been between 0700 and 0720 EST. I think he was wearing a white pilot type or oxford shirt, no tie and blue pilot type slacks. I am unsure about the shirt but perhaps that was what the man he sat down next to was wearing. I also remember him having a really cheap pilot bag. The vinyl one with a rounded top with black plastic squares at the corners.
I spent 2 days trying to decide of this was a true memory and decided it was. I have decided to share this because I felt it was my civic duty."http://www.scribd.com/doc/14094195/T7-B11-FBI-302s-Cockpit-and-American-and-Hijacker-Fdr-FBI-302-S-Entire-Contents
This statement creates a huge problem for the official Atta story: According to the BTS database and other sources, it was about 6:00 a.m. EDT when Flight 198 arrived at the gate, not 7:00 EST. (This is a minor mistake of West Coast resident Lynn Howland and in no way damages the accuracy of her other recollections.) Just at this time, a man identifying himself as Mohammed Atta boarded a Colgan Air flight in Portland, Maine, going to Boston. He did not arrive there before 6:45 EDT.
Conclusion: the "Mohammed Atta" whose face was presented on the news in the days after 9/11 and the "Mohammed Atta" in the blue shirt recorded by a security camera at Portland Airport are not the same person. This confirms the outstanding research of John Doe II who has collected plenty of evidence for the existence of - at least - one double of Atta:
http://johndoeii.blog.com/2011/03/29/mohammed-atta
Was Flight 11 a "real world exercise" ?03/07/2011 05:17 PM Source: Newhouse News
In an old Democratic Underground posting the esteemed colleague Shoestring expressed doubts about the customary interpretation of the term "real world" which pops up on the NEADS tapes a couple of times. Here's his quote in its entirety:
The quote of Major James Fox saying, "I've never seen so much real-world stuff happen during an exercise" is really suspicious. I wonder if the staff at NEADS understood "real-world" to mean a live-fly field training exercise, as opposed to a purely simulated command post exercise?
So when Sgt. Jeremy Powell asked Boston flight control center "Is this real-world or exercise?" he could have been asking if the exercise was live-fly or not. And when Boston replied "this is not an exercise, not a test," he took it to mean that it was indeed a live-fly exercise, involving a plane under the control of the military pretending to be hijacked.
This would certainly explain the bizarre conversation between the NEADS "ID techs Stacia Rountree, Shelley Watson, and Maureen Dooleywhen they heard of the reported hijacking:
8:37:56
WATSON: What?
DOOLEY: Whoa!
WATSON: What was that?
ROUNTREE: Is that real-world?
DOOLEY: Real-world hijack.
WATSON: Cool!
I find it hard to believe Shelley Watson would have responded, "Cool!" if she thought "Real-world hijack" did really mean a genuine hijacking. Might she instead have believed it to have meant a "live-fly," with a real plane pretending to be hijacked, for which they could launch fighers in response?
Shoestring surmises that the term "real world" indicates a "live-fly exercise" with real airborne planes as opposed to a "command post exercise" which is only played on the desks and screens of the participating military units. I agree with him that this interpretation is far more plausible than the official version (that "real world" meant an actual, genuine hijacking).
A statement of Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins of NEADS shows that Shoestring is right with his conjecture:
Deskins noted that NEADS had a hijack checklist and a variety of exercises depending on higher authority involvement and direction prior to 9/11. Some of those exercises involved NORAD coordination. She does not recall ever personally designing an exercise in which a decision would be made to shoot down the hij acked aircraft. A typical design would include course deviation in which the hijacker forces the pilot to fly to a designated landing point. They would not do these hijacks exercises real world. They had a cell that would play the FAA in the exercise. Deskins noted that there really were not the assets to do a large scale real world exercise to practice hijack response. The scenarios for the exercises are created by exercise designers in the exercise shop. Sgt. Mark Stanford and Sgt. Mike Quigley, both retired, designed the exercises when she was the head of the shop. NEADS' hijack shop would not design exercises for other sectors.
Exercises that are designed on the NORAD level are created at planning conferences. NORAD planning exercises are mostly held at Peterson, or at CONR at Tindle. There is intelligence representation at the conferences, but the sector shops are more concerned with the individual exercise of the sector floor and Battle Cab. She does not personally recall the design of a hijack with multiple hijacks or terrorist take over.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19988140/Mfr-N...3003-00778
For the first time, the term "real-world exercise" emerges here in the context of the 9/11 wargames, and according to Deskins, it means a voluminous large-scale exercise with the need to involve the FAA. In smaller (not "real-world" exercises) the FAA was not needed because NEADS had its own cell playing their role. A corollary of Deskins' statement is that real-world exercises were not designed by NEADS itself, but one level above, at NORAD planning conferences.
The reader can easily verify Shoestring's interpretation by searching for "real world exercise", maybe narrowed down with "air force" or "military". The output will quickly convince him that "real world exercise" is a common concept in the military world.
So whenever the term "real world" is used, it indicates that NEADS personnel are believing they are confronted with a large-scale, live-fly exercise with participation of the FAA. NEADS was prepared for these exercises, but not actual, genuine hijackings. It is not known how the air defense used to label such (very rare) genuine hijackings, but it was certainly not "real world" lest to confound it with the ongoing real world exercises.
Flight 11 was apparently viewed as a real-world exercise.
Was Flight 93 part of a military hijack exercise?11/23/2010 10:08 PMFAA delayed alerting of NEADS on the hijacking of Flight 93
Since 2002, when Jared Israel was the first one to point out the lame reaction of the US air defense to the hijackings (not being able to intercept leastwise one of the airliners), there's still no satisfying answer to the question for those who were responsible for the fatal delays.
The 9/11 Commission basically argues that the existing protocol for the collaboration between the FAA and NORAD in the case of a hijacking was "unsuited in every respect" because it was designed for "traditional hijackings" rather than suicide terrorists using hijacked planes as missiles. The Commission Report describes meticulously how the information "Flight X is hijacked" was ought to be processed from the basic FAA controller who spots the plane, upward the FAA hierarchy to the "hijack coordinator" who contacts the NMCC (National Military Command Center), and - after seeking approval from the Secretary of Defense - down the NORAD chain of command.
There is an entire section on this subject ("Interagency collaboration", p. 17/18), which is copied word by word from the Commission's Staff Statement No. 17, a working paper from June 2004, with one remarkable exception. The sentence "Most FAA centers had a civilian employee to coordinate with NORAD, for situations like training exercises", which is written down in the statement, didn't manage it into the final report.
It should have, however. On 9/11, these civilian employees, also known as "military liaisons", were in direct contact to the NEADS air defenders. So the regional FAA Centers were by all means able to shortcut the intricate protocol by simply telling their own military liaison to call up NEADS. And this is exactly what happened:
Flight..................................................11.........175.........77.........93
Controller realizes flight is hijacked.......8:25.......8:55.......----........9:32
Notification of NEADS.........................8:37.......9:03.......----.......10:07
Delay in minutes..................................12...........8..........----.........35
While 8 or 12 minutes look to be a reasonable time for controllers to figure out the situation, discuss various options and get clearance from higher-ranking FAA managers, the outstanding 35 minutes delay for Flight 93 requires a closer look at Cleveland Center, the facility responsible for Flight 93. (Flight 77 is a special case because it was not believed to be hijacked, but missed; it completely vanished from the radar scopes of FAA controllers.)
The "Flight 93 is a hijack with a bomb on board" information needed only two minutes from the basic controller to FAA headquarters:
At 9:32, a third radio transmission came over the frequency: "Keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board." The controller understood, but chose to respond: "Calling Cleveland Center, you're unreadable. Say again, slowly." He notified his supervisor, who passed the notice up the chain of command. By 9:34, word of the hijacking had reached FAA headquarters. (911 CR, p. 28)
However: NEADS first received a call about United 93 from the military liaison at Cleveland Center at 10:07. We know his name from transcripts of NEADS radio messages: that was Mr. Dukelin - first name unknown. Dukelin was in direct contact to Stacia Rountree from NEADS, he spoke with her at 9:45 and again at 10:00. At both occasions, he alerted her to Delta 1989 - but not one single word on United 93.
Did Dukelin not know about the hijacking of Flight 93? This can be precluded. He was certainly in contact with the Traffic Management Unit and Ed Wolbers, the operations manager:
They are speaking to the pilot, Dukelin talks to Ed and tells him he is talking to HUNTRESS. Ed says D1989 is not being hijacked, he is landing as a precaution in Cleveland.So Dukelin, like the Cleveland Center management, was certainly aware of the Flight 93 problem. Maybe he was eagerly waiting for an order from above to inform NEADS:
Cleveland even told the Command Center [at 9:36] it was prepared to contact a nearby military base to make the request. The Command Center told Cleveland that FAA personnel well above them in the chain of command had to make the decision to seek military assistance and were working on the issue. (911 CR, p. 28/29)
But the upper FAA management shied away from requesting the help of NEADS:
At 9:49, 13 minutes after Cleveland Center had asked about getting military help, the Command Center suggested that someone at headquarters should decide whether to request military assistance:
FAA Headquarters: They're pulling Jeff away to go talk about United 93.
Command Center: Uh, do we want to think, uh, about scrambling aircraft?
FAA Headquarters: Oh, God, I don't know.
Command Center: Uh, that's a decision somebody's gonna have to make probably in the next ten minutes.
FAA Headquarters: Uh, ya know everybody just left the room.
(911 CR, p. 29)
Everybody left the room. The Headquarters and the Command Center were tracking Flight 93 as it turned around and headed toward Washington. They got the information that it was hijacked and had a bomb on board. They knew that two airliners had already been used as guided missiles - yet nobody of the leading FAA personnel bothered to follow Cleveland Center's suggestion and tell NEADS (via Dukelin) to scramble fighters. What was going on there?
Additionally, at 9:45 the FAA issued the general grounding order for all aircraft. Who ordered it? The official story has it that it was Ben Sliney, director of the Command Center, but there are also reports that it was Monte Belger, deputy director of the Headquarters - not to forget that Norman Mineta claims the glory for himself. No matter who was it - why did this hero make the risky, unprecedented, precautionary decision to "get all the birds down", but failed to make the acute, urgent, if well-rehearsed and operationally easy decision to alert NEADS about a hijacked airliner on his way to Washington with a bomb on board?
There seems to be only one realistic recourse: Flight 93 was part of a military exercise, probably a hijack simulation, and the exercise plot included a delayed alerting of NEADS. The behavior of Belger, Sliney & co. indicates that they didn't view the plane as a threat, but were told (possibly from the Secret Service who - according to Mike Ruppert - had direct access to FAA data) that it was a "special", i.e. a military exercise flight. The purpose of the delayed alert might have been to test NEADS - to make it more difficult for them to intercept the flight in time.
To substantiate this thesis, I take a look at the function of the so-called military liaisons. I've already mentioned that the 9/11 Commission describes their job as "to coordinate with NORAD, for situations like training exercises". An analysis paper from 2001, examining the structure of Air Traffic Control, confirms that the military liaisons dealt with exercises. Moreover it looks that the exercises were the only job of the liaisons.
Military Coordinator: coordinates paper work and flight data for all military exercises within Boston Center airspace.This certainly applies to the other FAA Centers as well. Also FAA directive 7610.4K ("Special Military Operations") shows up the central role of the military liaisons for the exercises:
FAA Military Liaison Officers' Responsibilities
1−6−1. ACTIONS
Liaison officers shall take the following actions in connection with proposed military exercises:
a. Encourage mission planning officers to include assigned airspace requirements in the information disseminated with the request for exercise approval.
b. Recommend the use of planning conferences to mission planning officers for the resolution of problems when it is evident that the exercise requirements will generate sufficient traffic to create untenable air traffic or airspace user situations.c. Provide early notification and information to the affected ARTCCs and CARF on any exercises which are classified under subparagraph b.So by dropping the "military liaisons" from the final report, the Commission avoided questions about their function. Their function was to coordinate military exercises with civilian air traffic. It was not to assist the FAA in the case of a hijacking. Interestingly, there is an interview with the military liaison of Boston Center, Colin Scoggins (as his alias "Cheap Shot"):
As the military specialist I am responsible for all military procedures between Boston Center and the military units in my airspace, and any visiting military units that participate in any of our Special Use Airspace (SUA).http://sites.google.com/site/911guide/cs
Q: What can you tell about the military exercises of that day, and if they had any effect whatsoever on the response?
Cheap Shot: I never knew anything about them. Vigilant Guardian is an exercise that we don't participate at Boston Center. We normally are involved in Fertile Spades, Fertile Angels, and Amalgam Virgo's. Occasionally we will get involved in large-scale exercises such as a while back Amalgam Warrior, and Global Yankee.
http://sites.google.com/site/911guide/cs3
"Cheap Shot" denies any knowledge of or involvement in the ongoing exercises. This comes as a big surprise, because NORAD was conducting several large-scale exercises, Vigilant Guardian being only one of them. Other exercises, not mentioned by Scoggins, were Global Guardian, Northern Guardian, or Vigilant Warrior. NORAD covers the entire airspace of Boston Center. When Boston Center called NEADS, the air defenders thought it was the begin of Vigilant Guardian. Scoggins' "I never knew" claim would imply that NORAD conducted its exercises in Boston Center airspace without any coordination with civilian air traffic control - bypassing Scoggins, the scheduled coordinator.
This is hard to believe and entails the search for an alternative explanation. Here is one: Scoggins was involved in the exercises, but to admit this fact would have opened the doors for more gnawing questions. Many suspect Scoggins of being a gatekeeper, and the job of a gatekeeper is to absorb dangerous questions. This is exactly what he's doing.
A military liaison was not only assigned to the FAA field facilities, but to the Command Center and the Headquarters, too. There is little information available for the latter. The military liaison at the Command Center was the "Air Traffic Services Cell", consisting of Col. John Czabaranek, Lt. Col. Michael-Anne Cherry and Maj. Kevin Bridges. Mike Williams of 911myths.com speculates that the job of the "cell" on 9/11 was to help with the communication infrastructure (teleconferences etc.):
From this description the cell officers earliest task appears to have been to set up the various teleconferences. They were assisting with communications in general, and there's nothing here to say the officers would take it upon themselves to monitor FAA information and pass it on to NORAD, especially if they believed (like Sliney) NORAD had already been informed. It wasn't their job, and they had other things to do.Other sources suggest, however, that the task of the Air Traffic Services Cell was to coordinate civilian with military aircraft movement, like their counterparts at the field facilities:
Military Air Traffic Services Cell
Housed within the System Command Center
Mission -To coordinate all priority military aircraft movement and airspace issues during times of tension, warfare, natural disasters or civil unrest.
Warfare Support
Deployment of forces
Sensitive, specialized, or classified mission coordination
Military training exercise support
Natural or environmental disaster assistance
Civil exercise collaboration involving military participation
On 9/11, there was no tension, warfare, natural disaster or civil unrest, leaving the "military training exercise support" as the residual task of the "cell". This is confirmed by an article of Aviation Week & Space Technology from December 2001, describing the job of the cell as "refresher training", i.e. conducting exercises:
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.It is unclear if the Air Traffic Services Cell was in direct contact to the military liaisons at the FAA field facilities, but there is reason to assume that. The cell was able to communicate with other military facilities via SIPRNET, the military's Internet:
The ATSC's response to the terrorist attacks benefits from the fact that, six weeks earlier, the cell had a secure terminal to access the SIPRNETthe military's classified version of the Internetinstalled, along with other hardware, which significantly enhances the movement of vital information. According to Meenan, because the cell has the SIPRNET terminal, "we could immediately look at NORAD and [Defense Department] plans as they evolved; filter, package, and format them, then walk out to the [FAA] national operations managerwho had control of the entire national airspace systemand give him current visibility into… fighter, tanker, and support aircraft activities. It cut down our response time tremendously."http://web.archive.org/web/2002091309060...0/aw52.htm
The last sentence - "it cut down our response time tremendously" - deserves only scorn and derision, considering the 35-minute delay of alerting NEADS to Flight 93. Instead, SIPRNET seems to have been the central tool to conduct the various exercises. Moreover, it was a valuable tool for "interested circles" to make the exercises a springboard for performing the 9/11 crimes.Source of the Delta 1989 hijack rumor: the FAA teleconference10/11/2010 10:24 PM
The FAA Command Center (source:caasd.org)
Why indeed was Delta 1989 believed to be hijacked? And who was the source for this misinformation? The answers appear to change everytime when a new report on the aircraft is published.
According to USA Today (2002), the FBI was the source. Delta 1989 simply fit the "hijack profile" of American 11 and United 175 (i.e. a Boeing 767 from Boston going from East Coast to West Coast).
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002...ytwo_x.htm
The 9/11 Commission Report (2004) mentions the same reason (the hijack profile), but identifies Boston Center as the source. Just recently, Commission staffer Miles Kara has repeated this version.
http://www.oredigger61.org/?cat=18
But Colin Scoggins, the controller from Boston Center who called NEADS to warn them about Delta 1989, explains in an interview from 2007 that the plane became suspicious because it missed a frequency transfer from Boston Center to Cleveland Center:
http://sites.google.com/site/911guide/cs2
Lynn Spencer ("Touching History", 2008) also mentions a failed frequency transfer, but this time within Cleveland Center (i.e. from sector to sector).
http://911woodybox.blogspot.com/2009/07/...on-on.html
Something doesn't add up here.
But here's a document that expels all of these accounts into the land of hearsay. It's the written account of Colin Scoggins, the said Boston Center controller, from 9/20/2001. According to Scoggins, it was the FAA Open Teleconference which was established by the Command Center after Flight 11 was reported being hijacked:
Open TELCON reports that DAL1889 is NORDO in ZOB airspace. ASD indicates aircraft is near Cleveland.Call NEADS to advise of DAL1889, possible hijack.http://www.scribd.com/doc/13950342/T8-B3...nion-First
In plain language: One participant of the teleconference reported that Delta 1989 (Scoggins remembered the flight number incorrectly) had lost radio contact while flying over Cleveland.
Here are three annotations to this surprising message:
1 - Delta 1989 was never out of radio contact, i.e. the message is flagrant misinformation.
2 - it's Scoggins 2001 vs. Scoggins 2007; when determining which account is more reliable, just look at the date. Memories use to be more accurate after nine days than after six years.
3 - who participated on the teleconference? At least the FAA Command Center and the three facilities Boston Center, New York Center and Cleveland Center, if we follow the 9/11 Commission. Cleveland Center was in continous contact with Delta 1989, Boston Center and New York Center were not responsible for Cleveland Center airspace. Therefore these three facilities are out of the question when it comes to the source of the misinformation.
Is there any reason that someone at the Command Center spreaded misinformation on the teleconference? Just note that Scoggins was not a regular air traffic controller, but the military liaison at Boston Center, and that there was a military liaison (or military cell) at the Command Center, too, who also participated in various teleconferences. This needs further research.
The passengers of Flight 11 embarked on the wrong plane: CONFIRMED09/17/2010 08:35 PM
Memorial flag at Gate 32, Boston Logan Airport, Terminal B, American Airlines (Source: patrickmadrid.blogspot.com)
When did the passengers of Flight 11 embark on the plane? After nine years, this seemingly easy question is still lacking an answer. The 9/11 Commission Report doesn't deliver one, instead it confronts us with surprising boarding data: See TSA report, "Selectee Status of September 11th Hijackers," undated. For boarding and seating information, see AAL record, SABRE information on Flight 11, Sept. 11, 2001. These boarding times from the American system are approximate only; for flight 11 they indicated that some passengers boarded after the aircraft had pushed back from the gate. See AAL response to the Commission's February 3, 2004, requests, Mar. 15, 2004. (9/11 Commisson Report, note #9 of Chapter 1)It is, of course, impossible that any passenger boarded Flight 11 after it had moved off the gate. The concise explanation of the Commission: the boarding times are "approximate only". This sounds like as if the actual boarding times were spaciously rounded up by American Airlines' SABRE system which records and processes the boarding data.
Example: Given that Flight 11 pushed back at 7:40*** (see appendix). Now the Commission claims: if a passenger passed the gate at 7:37 (before the push-back), the system logged his boarding time as 7:50 (or 8:00 or whatever time after the push-back). This sizeable time gap smells funny and shows that the Commission's explanation for the oddity is concise, but far from conclusive. And indeed it doesn't withstand a closer scrutiny.
The cited note indicates that the Commission sent a request to American Airlines on February 3, 2004, which was answered at March 15, 2004. In 2009, this response was released to the public. American previously has provided the Commission with documents that indicate the approximate times that passengers boarded AA Flights 11 and 77 and the approximate check-in times at the main ticket counters at the respective airports. These documents are Kean Commission Bates numbers 004658-004675 (Flight 77) and 004483-004518 (Flight 11) and are from American's Electronic Gate Reader ("EGR") records. The EGR records do not provide the exact time of individual passenger check-in, the check-in location (ticket counter vs. departure gate), or the identification of the check-in agent.
The EGR system for a particular flight is manually initiated by the gate agent usually several hours prior to boarding. The initation of the EGR system is done at the discretion of the gate agent. At initiation, the system downloads information for the flight, such as the names of all passengers holding reservations, check in status, seat assignment (if pre-reserved), booking class, and destination city.
Following system initation, the EGR system "polls" the Sabre passenger reservation system for any updates to this data. Prior to the start of boarding, the updates occur at approximately 15-minute intervals and provide a "snapshot" of any changes in information since the last update. For this reason, the ticket counter check-in times from the EGR system reflect only "approximate" times. During actual boarding of the flights, the "polling" process occurs more frequently, at approximately 15-second intervals. The EGR records the time that a passenger's boarding pass goes through the EGR and, provides an accurate record of when the passenger boards the aircraft.
http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Image:...ponses.pdf So the boarding times are recorded fairly accurate, with an uncertainty of +-15 seconds. In our example: if a passenger passed the gate at 7:37:48, the system might round up the time to 7:37:50 or 7:38:00, but certainly not a time after 7:40 (the push-back). While the system checks the passenger's reservation status every 15 minutes only, it doesn't create minute-long gaps between actual and recorded boarding time.
The 9/11 Commissioners ignore this difference. Why does their report insinuate that the inaccurate boarding times are inherent in the SABRE system if American Airlines declares in plain language that the system "provides an accurate record of when the passenger boards the aircraft"? Either the gentlemen did not read AA's answer (?), or didn't understand it (???), or they decided to cease further inquiries and try to get away with a half-baked explanation ("approximate only"). An internal working draft from May 2004 shows that likely the latter is the case: At 7:31 a.m. Wail Al-Shehri and Waleed Al-Shehri boarded American Flight #11. At 7:39 a.m. Atta and al Omari embarked on the aircraft and al Suqami boarded at 7:40 a.m. (PLACEHOLDER: THESE TIMES, WHICH ARE PULLED FROM AA'S SABRE RESPONSE SYSTEM, NEED FURTHER VERIFICATION BECAUSE THAT REPORT HAS SOME OTHER PASSENGERS "BOARDING" AFTER THE FLIGHT HAD PUSHED BACK).
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15121435/FO-B4...ber-11-166 The doubtfullness and need for further inquiry expressed in this paper is not reflected in the Commission report at all which was released three months later. The (too) late boarding is confirmed by two passengers of Flight 11 (Albert Filipov and Richard Ross) as well as flight attendant Madeleine "Amy" Sweeney. They called their spouse from the airport to tell her/him that the flight was delayed. Furthermore, there are conflicting reports of the gate where Flight 11 started from. Apparently the passengers embarked on a plane at gate 26, not at gate 32 as claimed by the 9/11 Commission. More about this here:
http://911wideopen.com/mirror/twin11-1/twin-11-mod.htm
The Cleveland Airport Shell Game: Delta 1989, Delta 1898, United 1898
The Cleveland Airport Shell Game: Delta 1989, Delta 1898, United 189808/21/2011 08:55 PM
This short piece is an update of my most popular article so far, "The Cleveland Airport Mystery" from 2004, prominently featured in "Crossing the Rubicon" by Michael Ruppert and "Loose Change, 2. edition" by Dylan Avery.
I examined the circumstances of the landing of Delta 1989, a Boeing 767 out of Boston, at Cleveland Hopkins Airport on 9/11. I was lucky to find so much evidence for the existence of a shadowy doppelganger flight of Delta 1989 - landing at about the same time and likewise being evacuated - that I published the results here.
Unfortunately, many people think the central thesis of the article is that United 93 was the mysterious plane that landed at Cleveland Airport. This ist not true. I never claimed that United 93 landed at Cleveland. For more background, look here.
I claimed, however, and do continue to claim that an unidentified Boeing 767 landed at Cleveland in emergency and was evacuated, with Delta 1989 serving as a cover, i. e. whoever asked for the identity of the mysterious plane afterwards reaped the answer: that was Delta 1989! and stopped asking questions.
In 2009, numerous documents of the 9/11 Commission came to light. There I found a perfect candidate for the eerie double of Delta 1989 - United 1898 - and published it here.
In summary, United 1898 is a most interesting case because Cleveland controllers reported it to a special unit of the FAA, named "AAT-200", which is dealing with accidents, emergency cases and other irregularities. However, on 9/11/2001 United Airlines operated no aircraft with flight number 1898. Together with the salient similarity of the flight number (1989/1898) this makes United 1898 a good candidate for "Flight X" and an interesting matter of investigation.
Two years later, I'm now proud to present an independent verification for the emergency landing of a Flight 1898 at Cleveland. This time it's called Delta 1898.
1009 DAL1989 on downwind at CLE
1024 DAL1989 on ground CLE
1035 Unconfirmed report - DAL1989 flaps up at CLE
1039 DAL1989 parked in secure area/no one exited a/c yet (pilot says he is not being hijacked)
1116 DAL 1898 confirmed by security HIJACK at CLE ATC - communication with pilot does not confirm
1119 DAL 1989 still not suspected hijack; taxiing to terminal
Source
In this internal FAA timeline, there is only one entry for DAL1898. Note that this is definitely no typo because DAL1898 was a confirmed hijacking, whereas DAL1989 (= Delta 1989) was never suspected a hijack, neither earlier nor later than the security warning of Delta 1898. It should be of no big surprise by now that this so-called Delta 1898 was not the official Delta Flight 1898 who was scheduled to depart from Salt Lake City in the afternoon, but - of course - never left the ground on that day.
So United 1898 and Delta 1898 were both fake flight numbers. The identity of the numbers and the similar context (United 1898 was an emergency case; Delta 1898 was a confirmed hijacking) leads straightforwardly to the conclusion that these two planes were one and the same. The close similarity of the flight numbers 1898 and 1989 corroborates the thesis that Delta 1989 functioned as a cover-up for Flight 1898. The plane was probably evacuated as United 1898, was quickly renamed Delta 1898, and fell into oblivion due to the informational cover provided by Delta 1989.
This very much reminds a shell game, with the shells bearing fake flight numbers. And the only entity entitled to legally use fake flight numbers was the military in case of conducting a war game, i.e. an exercise. It appears that the emergency landing of Flight 1898 and its subsequent evacuation was indeed part of a military exercise. This may be the reason why it's so difficult to obtain information about the incident: military secrecy.
Combined with the information already presented in my original article, there is now ample evidence that Flight 1898 was a Boeing 767 of United Airlines coming from Boston - but it was not the regular United 1898. The number of the United Boeing 767's departing from Boston is so small that it should narrow down the search for the identity of the mysterious plane considerably. United 177 looks like a good candidate.
Was Mohamed Atta being employed by American Airlines?05/29/2011 03:54 PM
Diane Graney is the second witness (besides Lynn Howland whom I presented in my last blog entry) with precise recollections of Mohamed Atta, but completely ignored by the 9/11 Commission. Graney worked at Portland Airport on 9/11. She didn't see the alleged hijackers Atta and Al-Omari, but recognized Atta's face from the photo that was published in the aftermath. She is positive that Atta, dressed in an American Airlines uniform and able to identify himself as an AA pilot, tried prior to 9/11 to achieve a jump seat on a US Airways flight.
Compare this to the particulars provided by Lynn Howland. According to her, Atta was "wearing a white pilot type or oxford shirt, no tie and blue pilot type slacks" and carried a "really cheap pilot bag". Furthermore, Atta approached her and asked if she was going to fly American 11. Apparently he wanted to jump seat the flight.
Here is a list of persons who occasionally are allowed to take a jump seat in the cockpit (from Wikipedia): In aircraft, jump seats - which are officially termed auxiliary crew stations - can be located in cockpits or passenger cabins. In cockpits, jump seats are provided for individuals who are not operating the aircraft. These might include trainee pilots, off-duty crew members in transition to another airport (see deadheading), government officials (such as Federal Aviation Administration staff), or airline staff.
There are also witnesses in Florida confirming that Atta boasted about his status as an American Airlines pilot. Yet the 9/11 Commission has completely blacked out the accounts of Lynn Howland and Diane Graney and missed to pursue their hints that Atta presented himself on several occasions as an AA pilot in order to jump seat a certain flight.
Was American Airlines aware about Atta's activities? And why has the 9/11 Commission failed to follow this important trace?
Here is Diane Graney's account (date: 9/22/01):
Diane Graney, date of birth ........... employed as a Customer Service Agent CSA and Ground Security Coordinator GSC, U.S. Airways USAIR, Portland International Jetport, 1001 Westbrook Street, Portand, Maine, telephone number 207775-5210, was interviewed at her place of employment. After being advised of the identity of the interviewing agent and the nature of the interview, she provided the following information:
Graney has been employed with USAIR for approximately twelve years. As a CSA for USAIR, Graney's duties include conducting passenger check-ins, checking baggage, making seat assignments, and issuing tickets. She performs her duties at either the USAIR Ticket Counter or at the individual airport gates. As a GSC, she deals with aircraft, airport, and general security issues.
On September 11, 2001, from 5:00 AM to 1:00 PM, Graney was working at the USAIR ticket counter. At some point in her shift she heard of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, and that one of the flights was American Airlines Flight 11 out of Logan Airport in Boston. As a GSC, she went and pulled the passenger lists for the US AIR flights to Logan to see if any USAIR passengers had a connection to thje flight. Graney saw that there were two passengers on USAIR Flight 5930 to Logan that had a connection to American Airlines Flight 11. The two names were Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari. She also noticed the two were to sit in First Class on American Airlines Flight 11. Graney thought it was suspicious that these two passengers could have taken a better, more direct flight then what they had scheduled.
Graney observed that Atta and Alomari had checked two bags in at the US AIR Ticket Counter, and that Michael Tuohey was the CSA who checked them in. She spoke to Tuohey about the two passengers, and he advised her of what he had observed. She then contacted Chuck Severance, US AIR Station Manager, and informed him of what happened and what she had discovered.
Graney advised that later when she saw Atta's picture on the news, she believed she had seen him before. She thought he may have tried to jump seat once with USAIR, and he was in uniform using an American Airlines pilot identification. She believed that this happened within the last six months. She advised she searched the USAIR jump seat peaperwork to see who had gone through for June 2001, July 2001, and August 2001, but was unable to find Atta's name. She advised the jump seat forms are only kept for 90 days. She became more concerned about this when she heard on the news that some American Airlines uniforms were stolen in Italy.
Graney was then requested to review a photograph array containing twelve pictures of twelve of the alleged hijackers. Graney identified the picture of Mohamed Atta as the person she remembered seeing prior to September 11, 2001 attempting to jump seat a USAIR flight. She also identified the picture of Marwan Alshehhi as someone she had seen sometime at the airport ticket counter. She identified the picture of Waleed Alshehri as someone who looks familiar. Both Graney and the interviewing agent dated and initialed the pictures she identified.A pilot's strange encounter with Atta at Boston Airport04/24/2011 03:48 PM
The following is the official paraphrased statement of an American Airlines pilot, interviewed by the FBI on October 13th, 2001. The witness describes how she was shortly approached by Mohammed Atta inside the AA terminal at Logan Airport. Her account is detailed, credible, and intriguing.
Lynn Marie Florence Howland, First Officer, American Airlines, AA, was interviewed near her home at a Starbucks Café in ................... She was advised of the identity of the interviewing agent and nature of the interview. For identification, she advised that she lives and .............................. and has been with American Airlines for eleven years.
Howland explained to the interviewing agent that she has been out of state for several days flying in her job. To assist her recollection she prepared a type written one page chronology of the events regarding the encounter with a person she thought was the suspected hijacker of AA Flight 11 on the morning of September 11, 2001. She advised that she was extremely tired after her flight. She left her home at approximately 10:00 a.m. all times local on the morning of September 10th, flew down to San Francisco to then fly as first officer for the AA red-eye flight from San Francisco to Boston. Checking a dispatch schedule, she indicated she flew AA flight 198 from San Francisco, California to Boston, Massachusetts. She indicated the flight had a 9:50 p.m. departure, with arrival at Logan Airport, Boston at approximately 6:50 a.m. on the morning of September 11th. The equipment was a Boeing 767. She advised that the captain was Douglas Balmain. She was sure that the arrival gate for her flight 198 was Bravo 33. Subsequently she checked with AA dispatch and was told her flight AA 198 became the hijacked AA flight 11.
After almost everyone had deplaned, she went up the jetway ahead of Captain Balmain. She stated as she was standing near the entrance to the jetway, in the passenger lounge, a male individual comes up to her suddenly and asks if she is going to take this plane out, referring to the flight she just brought in. She said no and he abruptly turned and went and sat down. She thought that was extremely rude. Her first impression was that he was a pilot going to fly in the jump seat. While he wasn't in uniform, he may have been wearing a pilot type shirt, open collar. She thought he may have had a rolling pilot flight kit or bag with him, which she described as black vinyl, round top, and incredibly cheap. Again she could not recall anything else, only at that time wanting to get to the hotel and sleep. She said she was so tired, when she got to her hotel room she crashed in bed, in her uniform. She woke up about one p.m. and then found out about the terrorist attacks. She said for the longest time she wasn't even sure that she was dreaming it all, until she saw photographs of the hijackers in the news, she was instantly sure that the indivdual she saw that morning was the suspected hijacker, Mohammed Atta. She added that when she first saw the pictures of the hijackers in the new media, it was like an electric shock when she saw the picture of Atta.
She described the individual she saw that morning as having dark hair, dark eyes and being approximately five feet, eight inches in height. Because she was so tired and just wanted to get to the hotel, she could not recall much, other than he may have had that cheap pilot flight bag. She could not recall anything else and stated that time she had no reason to notice. She did not think that Captain Balmain would have noticed him. As she explained in her notes, the recollection .... (??? - missing text) She was shown a photo spread of six males and instantly chose number 5, which is the terrorist described as Mohammed Atta. She then signed and dated the photo spread under photograph number five. She said that her selection was based totally on her recollection of the morning of September 11th and not from any subsequent photographs she may have seen in the news.
The following are Howland's notes, prepared prior to the interview and scanned directly into this FD-302 and corrected only for scanning errors:
"Flew flight 198 SF-BOS
Departed September 10
Arrived September 11
On the ground approximately 0650 EST
In gate probably at 0700 EST
I left the cockpit first and waited for the captain at the top of the jetbridge in the boarding area.
He was slower maybe 5-7 minutes behind me.
We went to the hotel. I went to sleep called my parents at 1300 EST and they told me what happened.
Later that day I realized it was the aircraft that I had brought in.
That is what I remembered until I saw the photos on TV.
I was instantly sure I have seen Mohammed Atta before could not remember where.
Two days later I was driving my car in at night in the rain and my thoughts were drifting to the horrible loss. I suddenly had a memory of a man approaching me and asking me if I was taking the flight out. I was stunned. Did this really happen? I thought about it some more and remembered Mohammed Atta approaching me and asking me if I was taking flight 11 out. I said "No, I just brought the aircraft in." He turned his back and abruptly walked away and I was a little annoyed with his rudeness but as it was 0400 body clock time I let it go and told myself that people are rude everyday.
This would have been between 0700 and 0720 EST. I think he was wearing a white pilot type or oxford shirt, no tie and blue pilot type slacks. I am unsure about the shirt but perhaps that was what the man he sat down next to was wearing. I also remember him having a really cheap pilot bag. The vinyl one with a rounded top with black plastic squares at the corners.
I spent 2 days trying to decide of this was a true memory and decided it was. I have decided to share this because I felt it was my civic duty."http://www.scribd.com/doc/14094195/T7-B11-FBI-302s-Cockpit-and-American-and-Hijacker-Fdr-FBI-302-S-Entire-Contents
This statement creates a huge problem for the official Atta story: According to the BTS database and other sources, it was about 6:00 a.m. EDT when Flight 198 arrived at the gate, not 7:00 EST. (This is a minor mistake of West Coast resident Lynn Howland and in no way damages the accuracy of her other recollections.) Just at this time, a man identifying himself as Mohammed Atta boarded a Colgan Air flight in Portland, Maine, going to Boston. He did not arrive there before 6:45 EDT.
Conclusion: the "Mohammed Atta" whose face was presented on the news in the days after 9/11 and the "Mohammed Atta" in the blue shirt recorded by a security camera at Portland Airport are not the same person. This confirms the outstanding research of John Doe II who has collected plenty of evidence for the existence of - at least - one double of Atta:
http://johndoeii.blog.com/2011/03/29/mohammed-atta
Was Flight 11 a "real world exercise" ?03/07/2011 05:17 PM Source: Newhouse News
In an old Democratic Underground posting the esteemed colleague Shoestring expressed doubts about the customary interpretation of the term "real world" which pops up on the NEADS tapes a couple of times. Here's his quote in its entirety:
The quote of Major James Fox saying, "I've never seen so much real-world stuff happen during an exercise" is really suspicious. I wonder if the staff at NEADS understood "real-world" to mean a live-fly field training exercise, as opposed to a purely simulated command post exercise?
So when Sgt. Jeremy Powell asked Boston flight control center "Is this real-world or exercise?" he could have been asking if the exercise was live-fly or not. And when Boston replied "this is not an exercise, not a test," he took it to mean that it was indeed a live-fly exercise, involving a plane under the control of the military pretending to be hijacked.
This would certainly explain the bizarre conversation between the NEADS "ID techs Stacia Rountree, Shelley Watson, and Maureen Dooleywhen they heard of the reported hijacking:
8:37:56
WATSON: What?
DOOLEY: Whoa!
WATSON: What was that?
ROUNTREE: Is that real-world?
DOOLEY: Real-world hijack.
WATSON: Cool!
I find it hard to believe Shelley Watson would have responded, "Cool!" if she thought "Real-world hijack" did really mean a genuine hijacking. Might she instead have believed it to have meant a "live-fly," with a real plane pretending to be hijacked, for which they could launch fighers in response?
Shoestring surmises that the term "real world" indicates a "live-fly exercise" with real airborne planes as opposed to a "command post exercise" which is only played on the desks and screens of the participating military units. I agree with him that this interpretation is far more plausible than the official version (that "real world" meant an actual, genuine hijacking).
A statement of Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins of NEADS shows that Shoestring is right with his conjecture:
Deskins noted that NEADS had a hijack checklist and a variety of exercises depending on higher authority involvement and direction prior to 9/11. Some of those exercises involved NORAD coordination. She does not recall ever personally designing an exercise in which a decision would be made to shoot down the hij acked aircraft. A typical design would include course deviation in which the hijacker forces the pilot to fly to a designated landing point. They would not do these hijacks exercises real world. They had a cell that would play the FAA in the exercise. Deskins noted that there really were not the assets to do a large scale real world exercise to practice hijack response. The scenarios for the exercises are created by exercise designers in the exercise shop. Sgt. Mark Stanford and Sgt. Mike Quigley, both retired, designed the exercises when she was the head of the shop. NEADS' hijack shop would not design exercises for other sectors.
Exercises that are designed on the NORAD level are created at planning conferences. NORAD planning exercises are mostly held at Peterson, or at CONR at Tindle. There is intelligence representation at the conferences, but the sector shops are more concerned with the individual exercise of the sector floor and Battle Cab. She does not personally recall the design of a hijack with multiple hijacks or terrorist take over.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/19988140/Mfr-N...3003-00778
For the first time, the term "real-world exercise" emerges here in the context of the 9/11 wargames, and according to Deskins, it means a voluminous large-scale exercise with the need to involve the FAA. In smaller (not "real-world" exercises) the FAA was not needed because NEADS had its own cell playing their role. A corollary of Deskins' statement is that real-world exercises were not designed by NEADS itself, but one level above, at NORAD planning conferences.
The reader can easily verify Shoestring's interpretation by searching for "real world exercise", maybe narrowed down with "air force" or "military". The output will quickly convince him that "real world exercise" is a common concept in the military world.
So whenever the term "real world" is used, it indicates that NEADS personnel are believing they are confronted with a large-scale, live-fly exercise with participation of the FAA. NEADS was prepared for these exercises, but not actual, genuine hijackings. It is not known how the air defense used to label such (very rare) genuine hijackings, but it was certainly not "real world" lest to confound it with the ongoing real world exercises.
Flight 11 was apparently viewed as a real-world exercise.
Was Flight 93 part of a military hijack exercise?11/23/2010 10:08 PMFAA delayed alerting of NEADS on the hijacking of Flight 93
Since 2002, when Jared Israel was the first one to point out the lame reaction of the US air defense to the hijackings (not being able to intercept leastwise one of the airliners), there's still no satisfying answer to the question for those who were responsible for the fatal delays.
The 9/11 Commission basically argues that the existing protocol for the collaboration between the FAA and NORAD in the case of a hijacking was "unsuited in every respect" because it was designed for "traditional hijackings" rather than suicide terrorists using hijacked planes as missiles. The Commission Report describes meticulously how the information "Flight X is hijacked" was ought to be processed from the basic FAA controller who spots the plane, upward the FAA hierarchy to the "hijack coordinator" who contacts the NMCC (National Military Command Center), and - after seeking approval from the Secretary of Defense - down the NORAD chain of command.
There is an entire section on this subject ("Interagency collaboration", p. 17/18), which is copied word by word from the Commission's Staff Statement No. 17, a working paper from June 2004, with one remarkable exception. The sentence "Most FAA centers had a civilian employee to coordinate with NORAD, for situations like training exercises", which is written down in the statement, didn't manage it into the final report.
It should have, however. On 9/11, these civilian employees, also known as "military liaisons", were in direct contact to the NEADS air defenders. So the regional FAA Centers were by all means able to shortcut the intricate protocol by simply telling their own military liaison to call up NEADS. And this is exactly what happened:
Flight..................................................11.........175.........77.........93
Controller realizes flight is hijacked.......8:25.......8:55.......----........9:32
Notification of NEADS.........................8:37.......9:03.......----.......10:07
Delay in minutes..................................12...........8..........----.........35
While 8 or 12 minutes look to be a reasonable time for controllers to figure out the situation, discuss various options and get clearance from higher-ranking FAA managers, the outstanding 35 minutes delay for Flight 93 requires a closer look at Cleveland Center, the facility responsible for Flight 93. (Flight 77 is a special case because it was not believed to be hijacked, but missed; it completely vanished from the radar scopes of FAA controllers.)
The "Flight 93 is a hijack with a bomb on board" information needed only two minutes from the basic controller to FAA headquarters:
At 9:32, a third radio transmission came over the frequency: "Keep remaining sitting. We have a bomb on board." The controller understood, but chose to respond: "Calling Cleveland Center, you're unreadable. Say again, slowly." He notified his supervisor, who passed the notice up the chain of command. By 9:34, word of the hijacking had reached FAA headquarters. (911 CR, p. 28)
However: NEADS first received a call about United 93 from the military liaison at Cleveland Center at 10:07. We know his name from transcripts of NEADS radio messages: that was Mr. Dukelin - first name unknown. Dukelin was in direct contact to Stacia Rountree from NEADS, he spoke with her at 9:45 and again at 10:00. At both occasions, he alerted her to Delta 1989 - but not one single word on United 93.
Did Dukelin not know about the hijacking of Flight 93? This can be precluded. He was certainly in contact with the Traffic Management Unit and Ed Wolbers, the operations manager:
They are speaking to the pilot, Dukelin talks to Ed and tells him he is talking to HUNTRESS. Ed says D1989 is not being hijacked, he is landing as a precaution in Cleveland.So Dukelin, like the Cleveland Center management, was certainly aware of the Flight 93 problem. Maybe he was eagerly waiting for an order from above to inform NEADS:
Cleveland even told the Command Center [at 9:36] it was prepared to contact a nearby military base to make the request. The Command Center told Cleveland that FAA personnel well above them in the chain of command had to make the decision to seek military assistance and were working on the issue. (911 CR, p. 28/29)
But the upper FAA management shied away from requesting the help of NEADS:
At 9:49, 13 minutes after Cleveland Center had asked about getting military help, the Command Center suggested that someone at headquarters should decide whether to request military assistance:
FAA Headquarters: They're pulling Jeff away to go talk about United 93.
Command Center: Uh, do we want to think, uh, about scrambling aircraft?
FAA Headquarters: Oh, God, I don't know.
Command Center: Uh, that's a decision somebody's gonna have to make probably in the next ten minutes.
FAA Headquarters: Uh, ya know everybody just left the room.
(911 CR, p. 29)
Everybody left the room. The Headquarters and the Command Center were tracking Flight 93 as it turned around and headed toward Washington. They got the information that it was hijacked and had a bomb on board. They knew that two airliners had already been used as guided missiles - yet nobody of the leading FAA personnel bothered to follow Cleveland Center's suggestion and tell NEADS (via Dukelin) to scramble fighters. What was going on there?
Additionally, at 9:45 the FAA issued the general grounding order for all aircraft. Who ordered it? The official story has it that it was Ben Sliney, director of the Command Center, but there are also reports that it was Monte Belger, deputy director of the Headquarters - not to forget that Norman Mineta claims the glory for himself. No matter who was it - why did this hero make the risky, unprecedented, precautionary decision to "get all the birds down", but failed to make the acute, urgent, if well-rehearsed and operationally easy decision to alert NEADS about a hijacked airliner on his way to Washington with a bomb on board?
There seems to be only one realistic recourse: Flight 93 was part of a military exercise, probably a hijack simulation, and the exercise plot included a delayed alerting of NEADS. The behavior of Belger, Sliney & co. indicates that they didn't view the plane as a threat, but were told (possibly from the Secret Service who - according to Mike Ruppert - had direct access to FAA data) that it was a "special", i.e. a military exercise flight. The purpose of the delayed alert might have been to test NEADS - to make it more difficult for them to intercept the flight in time.
To substantiate this thesis, I take a look at the function of the so-called military liaisons. I've already mentioned that the 9/11 Commission describes their job as "to coordinate with NORAD, for situations like training exercises". An analysis paper from 2001, examining the structure of Air Traffic Control, confirms that the military liaisons dealt with exercises. Moreover it looks that the exercises were the only job of the liaisons.
Military Coordinator: coordinates paper work and flight data for all military exercises within Boston Center airspace.This certainly applies to the other FAA Centers as well. Also FAA directive 7610.4K ("Special Military Operations") shows up the central role of the military liaisons for the exercises:
FAA Military Liaison Officers' Responsibilities
1−6−1. ACTIONS
Liaison officers shall take the following actions in connection with proposed military exercises:
a. Encourage mission planning officers to include assigned airspace requirements in the information disseminated with the request for exercise approval.
b. Recommend the use of planning conferences to mission planning officers for the resolution of problems when it is evident that the exercise requirements will generate sufficient traffic to create untenable air traffic or airspace user situations.c. Provide early notification and information to the affected ARTCCs and CARF on any exercises which are classified under subparagraph b.So by dropping the "military liaisons" from the final report, the Commission avoided questions about their function. Their function was to coordinate military exercises with civilian air traffic. It was not to assist the FAA in the case of a hijacking. Interestingly, there is an interview with the military liaison of Boston Center, Colin Scoggins (as his alias "Cheap Shot"):
As the military specialist I am responsible for all military procedures between Boston Center and the military units in my airspace, and any visiting military units that participate in any of our Special Use Airspace (SUA).http://sites.google.com/site/911guide/cs
Q: What can you tell about the military exercises of that day, and if they had any effect whatsoever on the response?
Cheap Shot: I never knew anything about them. Vigilant Guardian is an exercise that we don't participate at Boston Center. We normally are involved in Fertile Spades, Fertile Angels, and Amalgam Virgo's. Occasionally we will get involved in large-scale exercises such as a while back Amalgam Warrior, and Global Yankee.
http://sites.google.com/site/911guide/cs3
"Cheap Shot" denies any knowledge of or involvement in the ongoing exercises. This comes as a big surprise, because NORAD was conducting several large-scale exercises, Vigilant Guardian being only one of them. Other exercises, not mentioned by Scoggins, were Global Guardian, Northern Guardian, or Vigilant Warrior. NORAD covers the entire airspace of Boston Center. When Boston Center called NEADS, the air defenders thought it was the begin of Vigilant Guardian. Scoggins' "I never knew" claim would imply that NORAD conducted its exercises in Boston Center airspace without any coordination with civilian air traffic control - bypassing Scoggins, the scheduled coordinator.
This is hard to believe and entails the search for an alternative explanation. Here is one: Scoggins was involved in the exercises, but to admit this fact would have opened the doors for more gnawing questions. Many suspect Scoggins of being a gatekeeper, and the job of a gatekeeper is to absorb dangerous questions. This is exactly what he's doing.
A military liaison was not only assigned to the FAA field facilities, but to the Command Center and the Headquarters, too. There is little information available for the latter. The military liaison at the Command Center was the "Air Traffic Services Cell", consisting of Col. John Czabaranek, Lt. Col. Michael-Anne Cherry and Maj. Kevin Bridges. Mike Williams of 911myths.com speculates that the job of the "cell" on 9/11 was to help with the communication infrastructure (teleconferences etc.):
From this description the cell officers earliest task appears to have been to set up the various teleconferences. They were assisting with communications in general, and there's nothing here to say the officers would take it upon themselves to monitor FAA information and pass it on to NORAD, especially if they believed (like Sliney) NORAD had already been informed. It wasn't their job, and they had other things to do.Other sources suggest, however, that the task of the Air Traffic Services Cell was to coordinate civilian with military aircraft movement, like their counterparts at the field facilities:
Military Air Traffic Services Cell
Housed within the System Command Center
Mission -To coordinate all priority military aircraft movement and airspace issues during times of tension, warfare, natural disasters or civil unrest.
Warfare Support
Deployment of forces
Sensitive, specialized, or classified mission coordination
Military training exercise support
Natural or environmental disaster assistance
Civil exercise collaboration involving military participation
On 9/11, there was no tension, warfare, natural disaster or civil unrest, leaving the "military training exercise support" as the residual task of the "cell". This is confirmed by an article of Aviation Week & Space Technology from December 2001, describing the job of the cell as "refresher training", i.e. conducting exercises:
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.It is unclear if the Air Traffic Services Cell was in direct contact to the military liaisons at the FAA field facilities, but there is reason to assume that. The cell was able to communicate with other military facilities via SIPRNET, the military's Internet:
The ATSC's response to the terrorist attacks benefits from the fact that, six weeks earlier, the cell had a secure terminal to access the SIPRNETthe military's classified version of the Internetinstalled, along with other hardware, which significantly enhances the movement of vital information. According to Meenan, because the cell has the SIPRNET terminal, "we could immediately look at NORAD and [Defense Department] plans as they evolved; filter, package, and format them, then walk out to the [FAA] national operations managerwho had control of the entire national airspace systemand give him current visibility into… fighter, tanker, and support aircraft activities. It cut down our response time tremendously."http://web.archive.org/web/2002091309060...0/aw52.htm
The last sentence - "it cut down our response time tremendously" - deserves only scorn and derision, considering the 35-minute delay of alerting NEADS to Flight 93. Instead, SIPRNET seems to have been the central tool to conduct the various exercises. Moreover, it was a valuable tool for "interested circles" to make the exercises a springboard for performing the 9/11 crimes.Source of the Delta 1989 hijack rumor: the FAA teleconference10/11/2010 10:24 PM
The FAA Command Center (source:caasd.org)
Why indeed was Delta 1989 believed to be hijacked? And who was the source for this misinformation? The answers appear to change everytime when a new report on the aircraft is published.
According to USA Today (2002), the FBI was the source. Delta 1989 simply fit the "hijack profile" of American 11 and United 175 (i.e. a Boeing 767 from Boston going from East Coast to West Coast).
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002...ytwo_x.htm
The 9/11 Commission Report (2004) mentions the same reason (the hijack profile), but identifies Boston Center as the source. Just recently, Commission staffer Miles Kara has repeated this version.
http://www.oredigger61.org/?cat=18
But Colin Scoggins, the controller from Boston Center who called NEADS to warn them about Delta 1989, explains in an interview from 2007 that the plane became suspicious because it missed a frequency transfer from Boston Center to Cleveland Center:
http://sites.google.com/site/911guide/cs2
Lynn Spencer ("Touching History", 2008) also mentions a failed frequency transfer, but this time within Cleveland Center (i.e. from sector to sector).
http://911woodybox.blogspot.com/2009/07/...on-on.html
Something doesn't add up here.
But here's a document that expels all of these accounts into the land of hearsay. It's the written account of Colin Scoggins, the said Boston Center controller, from 9/20/2001. According to Scoggins, it was the FAA Open Teleconference which was established by the Command Center after Flight 11 was reported being hijacked:
Open TELCON reports that DAL1889 is NORDO in ZOB airspace. ASD indicates aircraft is near Cleveland.Call NEADS to advise of DAL1889, possible hijack.http://www.scribd.com/doc/13950342/T8-B3...nion-First
In plain language: One participant of the teleconference reported that Delta 1989 (Scoggins remembered the flight number incorrectly) had lost radio contact while flying over Cleveland.
Here are three annotations to this surprising message:
1 - Delta 1989 was never out of radio contact, i.e. the message is flagrant misinformation.
2 - it's Scoggins 2001 vs. Scoggins 2007; when determining which account is more reliable, just look at the date. Memories use to be more accurate after nine days than after six years.
3 - who participated on the teleconference? At least the FAA Command Center and the three facilities Boston Center, New York Center and Cleveland Center, if we follow the 9/11 Commission. Cleveland Center was in continous contact with Delta 1989, Boston Center and New York Center were not responsible for Cleveland Center airspace. Therefore these three facilities are out of the question when it comes to the source of the misinformation.
Is there any reason that someone at the Command Center spreaded misinformation on the teleconference? Just note that Scoggins was not a regular air traffic controller, but the military liaison at Boston Center, and that there was a military liaison (or military cell) at the Command Center, too, who also participated in various teleconferences. This needs further research.
The passengers of Flight 11 embarked on the wrong plane: CONFIRMED09/17/2010 08:35 PM
Memorial flag at Gate 32, Boston Logan Airport, Terminal B, American Airlines (Source: patrickmadrid.blogspot.com)
When did the passengers of Flight 11 embark on the plane? After nine years, this seemingly easy question is still lacking an answer. The 9/11 Commission Report doesn't deliver one, instead it confronts us with surprising boarding data: See TSA report, "Selectee Status of September 11th Hijackers," undated. For boarding and seating information, see AAL record, SABRE information on Flight 11, Sept. 11, 2001. These boarding times from the American system are approximate only; for flight 11 they indicated that some passengers boarded after the aircraft had pushed back from the gate. See AAL response to the Commission's February 3, 2004, requests, Mar. 15, 2004. (9/11 Commisson Report, note #9 of Chapter 1)It is, of course, impossible that any passenger boarded Flight 11 after it had moved off the gate. The concise explanation of the Commission: the boarding times are "approximate only". This sounds like as if the actual boarding times were spaciously rounded up by American Airlines' SABRE system which records and processes the boarding data.
Example: Given that Flight 11 pushed back at 7:40*** (see appendix). Now the Commission claims: if a passenger passed the gate at 7:37 (before the push-back), the system logged his boarding time as 7:50 (or 8:00 or whatever time after the push-back). This sizeable time gap smells funny and shows that the Commission's explanation for the oddity is concise, but far from conclusive. And indeed it doesn't withstand a closer scrutiny.
The cited note indicates that the Commission sent a request to American Airlines on February 3, 2004, which was answered at March 15, 2004. In 2009, this response was released to the public. American previously has provided the Commission with documents that indicate the approximate times that passengers boarded AA Flights 11 and 77 and the approximate check-in times at the main ticket counters at the respective airports. These documents are Kean Commission Bates numbers 004658-004675 (Flight 77) and 004483-004518 (Flight 11) and are from American's Electronic Gate Reader ("EGR") records. The EGR records do not provide the exact time of individual passenger check-in, the check-in location (ticket counter vs. departure gate), or the identification of the check-in agent.
The EGR system for a particular flight is manually initiated by the gate agent usually several hours prior to boarding. The initation of the EGR system is done at the discretion of the gate agent. At initiation, the system downloads information for the flight, such as the names of all passengers holding reservations, check in status, seat assignment (if pre-reserved), booking class, and destination city.
Following system initation, the EGR system "polls" the Sabre passenger reservation system for any updates to this data. Prior to the start of boarding, the updates occur at approximately 15-minute intervals and provide a "snapshot" of any changes in information since the last update. For this reason, the ticket counter check-in times from the EGR system reflect only "approximate" times. During actual boarding of the flights, the "polling" process occurs more frequently, at approximately 15-second intervals. The EGR records the time that a passenger's boarding pass goes through the EGR and, provides an accurate record of when the passenger boards the aircraft.
http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Image:...ponses.pdf So the boarding times are recorded fairly accurate, with an uncertainty of +-15 seconds. In our example: if a passenger passed the gate at 7:37:48, the system might round up the time to 7:37:50 or 7:38:00, but certainly not a time after 7:40 (the push-back). While the system checks the passenger's reservation status every 15 minutes only, it doesn't create minute-long gaps between actual and recorded boarding time.
The 9/11 Commissioners ignore this difference. Why does their report insinuate that the inaccurate boarding times are inherent in the SABRE system if American Airlines declares in plain language that the system "provides an accurate record of when the passenger boards the aircraft"? Either the gentlemen did not read AA's answer (?), or didn't understand it (???), or they decided to cease further inquiries and try to get away with a half-baked explanation ("approximate only"). An internal working draft from May 2004 shows that likely the latter is the case: At 7:31 a.m. Wail Al-Shehri and Waleed Al-Shehri boarded American Flight #11. At 7:39 a.m. Atta and al Omari embarked on the aircraft and al Suqami boarded at 7:40 a.m. (PLACEHOLDER: THESE TIMES, WHICH ARE PULLED FROM AA'S SABRE RESPONSE SYSTEM, NEED FURTHER VERIFICATION BECAUSE THAT REPORT HAS SOME OTHER PASSENGERS "BOARDING" AFTER THE FLIGHT HAD PUSHED BACK).
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15121435/FO-B4...ber-11-166 The doubtfullness and need for further inquiry expressed in this paper is not reflected in the Commission report at all which was released three months later. The (too) late boarding is confirmed by two passengers of Flight 11 (Albert Filipov and Richard Ross) as well as flight attendant Madeleine "Amy" Sweeney. They called their spouse from the airport to tell her/him that the flight was delayed. Furthermore, there are conflicting reports of the gate where Flight 11 started from. Apparently the passengers embarked on a plane at gate 26, not at gate 32 as claimed by the 9/11 Commission. More about this here:
http://911wideopen.com/mirror/twin11-1/twin-11-mod.htm
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass