NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES

Twelfth Public Hearing

Thursday, June 17, 2004

Washington, D.C.
NTSB Conference Center

CHAIRED BY: THOMAS H. KEAN

PANEL I:

STAFF STATEMENT NO. 17: IMPROVISING A HOMELAND DEFENSE

PANEL II:

GENERAL RICHARD MYERS, USAF, CHARIMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

ADMIRAL (SELECT) CHARLES JOSEPH LEIDIG, USN, COMMANDANT OF MIDSHIPMEN, UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY

GENERAL RALPH E. EBERHART, USAF, COMMANDER, NORTH AMERICAN AEROSPACE DEFENSE COMMAND(NORAD) AND UNITED STATES NORTHERN COMMAND

MAJOR GENERAL LARRY ARNOLD, USAF (RET.), FORMER COMMANDER, CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES NORAD REGION (CONR)

PANEL III:

MONTE BELGER, FORMER ACTING DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION

JEFF GRIFFITH, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION

JOHN WHITE, FORMER FACILITY MANAGER, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS COMMAND CENTER, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION

BENEDICT SLINEY, OPERATIONS MANAGER, NEW YORK TERMINAL RADAR APPROACH CONTROL, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION

The president's motorcade departed at 9:35, and arrived at the airport between 9:42 and 9:45. During the ride the president learned about the attack on the Pentagon. He boarded the aircraft, asked the Secret Service about the safety of his family, and called the vice president. According to notes of this call, at about 9:45 the president told the vice president, "Sounds like we have a minor war going on here, I heard about the Pentagon. We're at war -- somebody's going to pay."

About this time Card, the lead Secret Service agent, the president's military aide, and the pilot were conferring on a possible destination for Air Force One. The Secret Service agent felt strongly that the situation in Washington was too unstable to return. Card agreed. The president, however, needed convincing. All witnesses agreed that the president strongly wanted to return to Washington and only grudgingly agreed to go elsewhere. The issue was still undecided when the president conferred with the vice president at about the time Air Force One was taking off. The vice president recalled urging the president not to come back to Washington. Air Force One departed at approximately 9:55, with no destination at take-off. The objective was to get up in the air, as fast and as high as possible, and then decide where to go.

News of an incoming aircraft, later discovered to be American 77, prompted the Secret Service to order the evacuation of the vice president just before 9:36. The vice president entered the underground tunnel that led to the shelter at 9:37. Once inside, Vice President Cheney and the agents paused in an area of the tunnel that had a secure phone, a bench, and a television. The vice president asked to speak to the president, but it took some time for the call to be connected. He learned in the tunnel that the Pentagon had been hit, and saw television coverage of smoke coming from the building.

The Secret Service logged Mrs. Cheney's arrival at the White House at 9:52. She joined her husband in the tunnel. According to contemporaneous notes, at 9:55 the vice president was still on the phone with the president, advising that three planes were missing and one had hit the Pentagon. We believe this is the same call initiated close to the time Air Force One took off, in which the vice president joined the chorus of advisers urging the president not to return to Washington. The call ended. She and the vice president moved from the tunnel to the shelter conference room.

MR. FARMER: United 93 and the Shootdown Order. There was not an open line of communication between the president and vice president on the morning of 9/11, but rather a series of calls between the two leaders. The vice president remembered placing a call to the president just after entering the shelter conference room. There is conflicting evidence as to when the vice president arrived in the shelter conference room. We have concluded, after reviewing all the available evidence, that the vice president arrived in the shelter conference room shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58. The vice president recalls being told just after his arrival that an Air Force combat air patrol was up over Washington. At 9:59, a White House request for such a CAP was communicated to the military through the Air Threat Conference.

The vice president states that the purpose of his call to the president was to discuss the rules of engagement for the CAP. He recalled he felt it did not do any good to put the CAP up there unless the pilots had instructions to tell them whether they were authorized to shoot if the plane would not divert. He said the president signed off on that concept. The president said he remembered such a conversation, and that it reminded him of when he had been a fighter pilot. The president emphasized to us that he had authorized the shootdown of hijacked aircraft. The vice president's military aide told us he believed the vice president spoke to the president just after entering the conference room, but he did not hear what they said. Rice, who entered the conference room shortly after the vice president and sat next to him, recalled hearing the vice president inform the president that, "Sir, the CAPs are up. Sir, they're going to want to know what to do." Then she recalled hearing him say, "Yes sir." She believed this conversation occurred a few minutes, perhaps five, after they entered the conference room.

We believe this call would have taken place some time before 10:10 to 10:15. Among the sources that reflect other important events that morning, there is no documentary evidence for this call, although the relevant sources are incomplete. Others nearby who were taking notes, such as the vice president's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, who sat next to him, and Mrs. Cheney, did not note a call between the president and vice president immediately after the vice president entered the conference room.

At 10:02, the communicators in the shelter began receiving reports from the Secret Service of an inbound aircraft -- presumably hijacked -- heading toward Washington. That aircraft was United 93. The Secret Service was getting this information directly from the FAA, through its links to that agency. The Service's operations center and their FAA contact were tracking the progress of the aircraft on a display that showed its projected path, not its actual radar return. Thus, for a time, they were not aware the aircraft was going down in Pennsylvania.

At some time between 10:10 and 10:15, a military aide told the vice president and others that the aircraft was 80 miles out. Vice President Cheney was asked for authority to engage the aircraft. The vice president's reaction was described as quick and decisive: "In about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing." He authorized fighter aircraft to engage the inbound plane. He told us this was based on his prior conversation with the president. The military aide returned a few minutes later, probably between 10:12 and 10:18, and said the aircraft was 60 miles out. He again asked for authorization to engage. The vice president again said yes. The Secret Service was postulating the flight path of United 93, not knowing it had already crashed.

Also at the conference table was White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten. Bolten watched the exchanges and, after what he called "a quiet moment," suggested that the vice president get in touch with the president and confirm the engage order. Bolten told us he wanted to make sure the president was told that the vice president had executed the order. He said he had not heard any prior conversation on the subject with the president. The vice president was logged calling the president at 10:18 for a two-minute call that obtained the confirmation. On Air Force One, at 10:20, the president's press secretary, Ari Fleischer, noted that the president had told him he had authorized a shootdown of aircraft, if necessary.

Minutes went by and word arrived of an aircraft down over Pennsylvania. Those in the conference room wondered if perhaps the aircraft had been shot down pursuant to these directions. At approximately 10:30, the shelter started receiving reports of another hijacked plane, this time only five to ten miles out. Believing they had only a minute or two, once again the vice president communicated authority to, "engage," or "take out" the airborne aircraft. At 10:33, Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley passed that guidance on the Air Threat Conference call, "I need to get word to Dick Myers that our reports are there's an inbound aircraft flying low five miles out. The vice president's guidance was we need to take them out."

Once again, there was no immediate information about the fate of the inbound aircraft. As one witness to the event described, "It drops below the radar screen, and it's just continually hovering in your imagination; you don't know where it is or what happens to it." Eventually, the shelter received word that the alleged hijacker five miles away had been a Medevac helicopter.

Transmission of the Authorization from the White House to the Pilots. The National Military Command Center learned of the hijacking of United 93 at about 10:03. The FAA had not yet been connected to the Air Threat Conference and in general had practically no contact with the military at the level of national command. The NMCC instead received news about the hijacking of United 93 from the White House. The White House had received the word from the Secret Service's contacts with the FAA.

NORAD had no information either. In response to questions, the NORAD representative on the Air Threat Conference stated at 10:07, "NORAD has no indication of a hijack heading to Washington, D.C. at this time." Repeatedly between 10:14 and 10:19, a lieutenant colonel at the White House relayed the information to the National Military Command Center that the vice president had confirmed fighters were cleared to engage the inbound aircraft if they could verify that the aircraft was hijacked.

The commander of NORAD, General Eberhart, was en route to the NORAD operations center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado when the shootdown order was communicated on the Air Threat Conference. He told us that by the time he arrived at the mountain the order had already been passed down the NORAD chain of command. It is not clear how the shootdown order was communicated to the continental region headquarters. But we know that at 10:31 General Larry Arnold instructed his staff to broadcast the following message over a NORAD chat log, "10:31 vice president has cleared to us to intercept tracks of interest and shoot them down if they do not respond, per CONR CC -- General Arnold."

In Upstate New York, NEADS personnel first learned of the shootdown order from that chat log message:

(Begin audiotape.)

FLOOR LEADERSHIP: You need to read this. The region commander has declared that we can shoot down aircraft that do not respond to our direction. Copy that?

CONTROLLERS: Copy that, sir.

FLOOR LEADERSHIP: So if you're trying to divert somebody and he won't divert --

CONTROLLERS: DO is saying no.

FLOOR LEADERSHIP: No? It came over the chat. You got a conflict on that direction?

CONTROLLERS: Right now no, but --

FLOOR LEADERSHIP: Okay. Okay, you read that from the vice president, right? Vice President has cleared. Vice President has cleared us to intercept traffic and shoot them down if they do not respond per CONR CC.

(End audiotape.)

MR. FARMER: In interviews with us, NEADS personnel expressed considerable confusion over the nature and effect of the order. Indeed, the NEADS commander told us he did not pass along the order because he was unaware of its ramifications. Both the mission commander and the weapons director indicated they did not pass the order to the fighters circling Washington and New York City because they were unsure how the pilots would, or should, proceed with this guidance.

In short, while leaders in Washington believed the fighters circling above them had been instructed to "take out" hostile aircraft, the only orders actually conveyed to the Langley pilots were to "ID type and tail."

In most cases the chain of command in authorizing the use of force runs from the president to the secretary of Defense and from the secretary to the combatant commander. The president apparently spoke to Secretary Rumsfeld briefly sometime after 10:00, but no one can recall any content beyond a general request to alert forces. The president and the secretary did not discuss the use of force against hijacked airliners in this conversation. The secretary did not become part of the chain of command for those orders to engage until he arrived in the NMCC.

At 10:39, the vice president tried to bring the secretary up to date as both participated in the Air Threat Conference:

MR. ZELIKOW: The vice president said, "There's been at least three instances here where we've had reports of aircraft approaching Washington -- a couple were confirmed hijack. And, pursuant to the president's instructions I gave authorization for them to be taken out. Hello?"

The secretary of Defense: "Yes, I understand. Who did you give that direction to?"

The vice president: "It was passed from here through the operations center at the White House, from the shelter."

Secretary of Defense: "Okay, let me ask the question here" Has that directive been transmitted to the aircraft?"

Vice President: "Yes, it has."

Secretary of Defense: "So we've got a couple of aircraft up there that have those instructions at the present time?"

The vice president: "That is correct. And it's my understanding they've already taken a couple of aircraft out."

The secretary of Defense: "We can't confirm that. We're told that one aircraft is down but we do not have a pilot report that they did it."

MR. FARMER: As this exchange shows, Secretary Rumsfeld was not involved when the shootdown order was first passed on the Air Threat Conference. After the Pentagon was hit, Secretary Rumsfeld went to the parking lot to assist with rescue efforts. He arrived in the National Military Command Center shortly before 10:30. He told us he was just gaining situational awareness when he spoke with the vice president, and that his primary concern was ensuring that the pilots had a clear understanding of their rules of engagement. The vice president was mistaken in his belief that shootdown authorization had been passed to the pilots flying at NORAD's direction.

By 10:45 there was, however, another set of fighters circling Washington that had entirely different rules of engagement. These fighters, part of the 113th Wing of the D.C. Air National Guard, launched out of Andrews Air Force Base based on information passed to them by the Secret Service. The first of the Andrews fighters was airborne at 10:38. General Wherley, the commander of the 113th Wing, reached out to the Secret Service after hearing secondhand reports that it wanted fighters airborne. A Secret Service agent had a phone in each ear, one to Wherley and one to a fellow agent at the White House, relaying instructions that the White House agent said he was getting from the vice president. The guidance for Wherley was to send up the aircraft, with orders to protect the White House and take out any aircraft that threatens the Capitol. General Wherley translated this in military terms to, "weapons free," which means the decision to shoot rests in the cockpit, or in this case the cockpit of the lead pilot. He passed these instructions to the pilots that launched at 10:42 and afterward.

Thus, while the fighter pilots under NORAD direction who had scrambled out of Langley never received any type of engagement order, the Andrews pilots were operating under weapons free, a permissive rule of engagement. The president and the vice president told us they had not been aware that fighters had been scrambled out of Andrews, at the request of the Secret Service and outside of the military chain of command.

MR. ZELIKOW: Reflections on United 93. Had it not crashed in Pennsylvania at 10:03, we estimate that United 93 could not have reached Washington, D.C. any earlier than 10:13, and most probably would have arrived before 10:23. We examined the military's ability to intercept it. There was only one set of fighters orbiting Washington, D.C. during this timeframe -- the Langley F-16s. They were armed and under NORAD's control. But the Langley pilots were never briefed about the reason they were scrambled. As the lead pilot explained, "I reverted to the Russian threat -- I'm thinking cruise missile threat from the sea. You know you look down and see the Pentagon burning and I thought the bastards snuck one by us. You couldn't see any airplanes, and no one told us anything."

The pilots knew their mission was to identify and divert aircraft flying within a certain radius of Washington, but did not know that the threat came from hijacked commercial airliners. Also, NEADS did not know where United 93 was when it first heard about the hijacking from FAA at 10:07. Presumably FAA would have provided the information, but we do not know how long it would have taken, nor how long it would have taken NEADS to find and track the target on its own equipment.

Once the target was known and identified, NEADS needed orders to pass to the pilots. Shootdown authority was first communicated to NEADS at 10:31. Given the clear attack on the United States, it is also possible -- though unlikely -- that NORAD commanders could have ordered the shootdown without the authorization communicated by the vice president.

NORAD officials have maintained that they would have intercepted and shot down United 93. We are not so sure. We are sure that the nation owes a debt to the passengers of United 93. Their actions saved the lives of countless others, and may have saved either the U.S. Capitol or the White House from destruction.

The details of what happened on the morning of September 11th are complex. But the details play out a simple theme. NORAD and the FAA were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on September 11th, 2001. They struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge they had never encountered and had never trained to meet.

MR. KEAN: Our first panel today will focus on the military's response on the morning of September 11th. We are joined by a distinguished group of military leaders: General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and past commander of NORAD; Admiral-Select Charles Joseph Leidig, current commandant of the Naval Academy, who served as deputy director of operations in the National Military Command Center on 9/11; General Ralph E. Eberhart, commander of NORAD and the United States Northern Command; and Retired Major General Larry Arnold, who served on 9/11 as the commander of the Continental United States NORAD Region.

Could you please raise your hands while I place you under oath?

Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

WITNESSES: I do.

MR. KEAN: You may be seated. All written statements will be entered into the record in full. We recognize that General Myers has to leave for another engagement, so we'll proceed directly to questions after General Myers' opening statement. After General Myers departs, we'll proceed with the rest of the panel.

GEN. RICHARD MYERS: Thank you, sir. I have a brief statement, and then we'll get right to questions. First, I want to thank the Commission for your efforts to help our nation guard against future attacks. We share a common goal to capture the lessons of September 11th, 2001, in order to better protect the American people. You have my written statement, and I'll just make a few comments so we have as much time left for questions.

First, our military posture on 9/11, by law, by policy and in practice, was focused on responding to external threats, threats originating outside of our borders. Nevertheless, we executed the continuity of government plan very well on 9/11, and our service men and women displayed superb professionalism, judgment and flexibility at ever level that day, and I'm very proud of their performance.

That said, the lessons learned from 9/11 are many. Our armed forces' efforts to respond militarily, reorganize our forces, define and effectively resource our evolving tasks and our missions, and revive -- revise our processes have been colossal, and are still ongoing.

Day in and day out, our service men and women bravely combat terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places around the world, maintain alert for the homeland defense mission here in the United States, and work phenomenal hours on headquarters staffs to do everything they can to keep America and our allies safe and free. I appreciate everyone who supports their efforts, including this committee, of course.

And with that, we'll take your questions.

MR. KEAN: Thank you, sir.

The questioning -- the questioning this morning will be led by Commissioner Ben-Veniste and Commissioner Lehman. Commissioner Ben-Veniste.

MR. RICHARD BEN-VENISTE: Good morning, gentlemen.

GEN. MYERS: Good morning, sir.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: I'd like to start first by commending our staff for an extraordinary, detailed, 18-month investigation, which has provided the detail which we have provided today to the American public. I want to say that nothing that we have found indicates anything but the highest commitment to duty and valor among the pilots and support personnel involved in the air mission on that infamous day of September 11th, 2001. By the same token, General Myers, our staff has found that NORAD and FAA were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on September 11th, 2001.

And so, I would like to ask you, sir, whether you and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, were made available -- were made aware of the available information during the summer threat in 2001, which reflected the preparations by al Qaeda for a spectacular attack against the United States, and specifically whether the information in the August 6th PDB was shared with you or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs?

GEN. MYERS: We were aware -- I think it started, some of this information started flowing, intelligence information, at the end of the May, and it continued through June, July, the August 6th memo. It talked, as I recall, about al Qaeda threat to U.S. -- United States, primarily overseas. It was -- it was focused primarily on the Saudi Arabian peninsula, is my memory of that. And it, that threat reporting continued through those -- through those months, and we were certainly aware of it. But, in fact, we even took action when -- I think it was in July -- we actually sortied some ships out of Bahrain because of the threat in the peninsula area. And that, as I recall, the best -- the estimate from the intel analysis was that it would take place either on the Saudi peninsula, perhaps in Turkey, they even -- there was one mention, I remember, of Italy, actually. And then there was a potential threat to the United States, but never including an aircraft.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Now, in the PDB memo that I am referring to, specifically mentions FBI information of suspicious activity within this country, consistent with the preparations for hijackings. Was that information shared with you?

GEN. MYERS: Not -- not information, at least that I saw, other than what was contained in the Presidential Daily Brief memorandum, which I think was the last couple of paragraphs, or last paragraph.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Was information shared with you, General, with respect to the arrest of Mr. Zacarias Moussaoui, which occurred on or about the 17th of August, in which the FBI quickly came to the conclusion that Mr. Moussaoui was a suicide hijacker, an individual with jihadist connections who had sought and received some training on a commercial airliner?

GEN. MYERS: I don't recall. I simply can't recall. I think I would have, so -- but I don't recall.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Wouldn't that be something that you would recall?

GEN. MYERS: I would -- don't know, but it -- it's pretty significant information, but I don't recall.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Had you received such information tying together the potential reflected in the August 6th PDB memorandum that was titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in the United States," together with this additional information, might you have followed up on a training scenario at the least, such as the positive force training scenario where a hijacked plane was presumed to fly into the Pentagon, a proposal that was made and rejected in the year 2000?

GEN. MYERS: Well, a couple of things. I don't know that we would have because exercising alone is not enough, if you look at all, and you have -- you've looked at all the policy that we've gotten through the '90s into early 2000, 2001, and all the policy guidance was that we treat terrorism primarily as a criminal event. And the role of the Defense Department was to defend our forces, primarily, it was force protection, anti-terrorism, not counterterrorism -- counterterrorism responsibilities for, domestically were the FBI, externally were the CIA.

There was an exercise, and this was -- the idea was to stress the continuity of command, the one you referenced there, but it was an exercise focused on Korea, and that's why the scenario was rejected, because it did not -- it did not contribute to the exercise at hand.

I can't answer the hypothetical. It's more -- it's the way that we were directed to posture, looking outward, those were the orders that NORAD had, and it's had for, ever since the end of the Soviet Union when we had, at that time, I think it was 26 alert sites around the United States, and we'd gone down to seven. So, it would have -- it would have required more than exercising if you wanted to be effective, and it would have been not just the military, because civilian agencies had a -- had the major role.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, you've anticipated my next question. It might not be the entire answer, but it would be a start.

Let me ask you whether that might not have stimulated an effort to determine the level of communications with FAA, which, as we determined, on September 11th were abysmal. Would that not have also stimulated you had you thought about the information, had you received it, about an internal threat involving the United States air space, involving the hijacking of commercial airliners by a suicide hijack?

GEN. MYERS: It's certainly possible, and I can't -- you know, you just can't take hypothetical situations and say what you would have done in hindsight. I mean, obviously, we've got pretty good hindsight at this point.

The communications between the FAA and NORAD were specifically designed for the hijacking scenario, but a hijacking scenario where NORAD's role was to track the aircraft, if it crashed to report the crash site, but certainly not to take -- it was not the understandings and the policy at the time was not that these were hostile aircraft other than the fact that they had been hijacked. So, it was to track that, and help the FAA track that. And those were the rules that were standing at the time.

If we'd had definitive information, I think we would have probably taken steps to --

MR. BEN-VENISTE: I hope --

GEN. MYERS: -- to work that. But -- but to my knowledge, we didn't -- we didn't have that, sir.

MR. BEN-VENISTE:Let me direct my remaining to General Eberhart and General Arnold.

Why did no one mention the false report received from FAA that Flight 11 was heading south during your initial appearance before the 9/11 Commission back in May of last year? And why was there no report to us that contrary to the statements made at the time, that there had been no notification to NORAD that Flight 77 was a hijack?

GEN. LARRY ARNOLD: Well, the first part of your question -- Mr. Commissioner, first of all, I would like to say that a lot of the information that you have found out in your study of this of this 9/11, the things that happened on that day, helped us reconstruct what was going on.

And if you're talking about the American 11, in particular, the call of American 11, is that what you are referring to?

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Yes.

GEN. ARNOLD: The American 11, that was -- call after it had impacted, is that what you're referring to?

MR. BEN-VENISTE: No. I'm talking about the fact that there was miscommunication that Flight 11 was still heading south instead of having impacted --

GEN. ARNOLD: That's what I'm referring to. That's correct. As we -- as we worked with your committee in looking at that, that was probably the point in time where we were concerned -- remember, that call, as I recall, actually came after United 175, as well as American 11, had already impacted the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center. And then we became very concerned, not knowing what the call signs of those aircraft were that had hit the World Trade Center, we became very concerned at that particular point that those aircraft, that some aircraft might be heading towards Washington, D.C.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: General, is it not a fact that the failure to call our attention to the miscommunication and the notion of a phantom Flight 11 continuing from New York City south in fact skewed the whole reporting of 9/11, it skewed the official Air Force report, which is contained in a book called "The Air War Over America," which does not contain any information about the fact that you were following, or thinking of a continuation of Flight 11, and that you had not received notification that Flight 77 had been hijacked?

GEN. ARNOLD: Well, as I recall, first of all, I didn't know the call signs of the airplanes when these things happened. When the call came that American 11 was possible hijacked aircraft, that aircraft just led me to come to the conclusion that there were other aircraft in the system that were a threat to the United States.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: General Arnold, surely by May of last year, when you testified before this commission, you knew those facts.

GEN. ARNOLD: I didn't recall those facts in May of last year. That's the correct answer to that. In fact, as I recall, during that time frame, my concern was, why did -- the question that came to me was, why did we scramble the aircraft out of Langley Air Force Base, the F-16s out of Langley Air Force Base? And there had been statements made by some that we scrambled that aircraft the report of American 77, which was not the case, and I knew that.

And I was trying to remember in my own mind what was it that persuaded us to scramble those aircraft. And I thought at the time it was United 93. But as I was able to -- we did not have the times when these things were -- when we were notified of this. I did not have that information at that time. I didn't have it.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: General Arnold --

MR. ARNOLD: And so we scrambled those aircraft to get them over Washington D.C. to protect Washington D.C.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: According to our staff, you know that there was a substantial problem in getting information from NORAD, that we received information, we were told that the information was complete. We went out into the field, our staff did, and did a number of interviews. And as a result of those interviews, we found that there were tapes which reflected the facts relating to Flight 11.

And we found additional information by which we were able, through assiduous and painstaking work, listening to any number of tape recordings, to reconstruct what actually occurred, as you have heard in the Staff Statement.

I take it you have no disagreement with the facts put forward in the Staff Statement. That's been produced in advance for comment, and I take it you're in agreement now with our staff's conclusions with respect to those facts.

MR. ARNOLD: I am.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: We have -- and I'm not going to go through it, but it is disturbing to see that there were efforts at after-action reports which were available shortly after 9/11. There were communications which our staff has received with respect to e-mails that reflect some of the facts on nearly a contemporaneous basis with the 9/11 catastrophe that reflect a story which unfortunately is different from the one which was presented to this commission earlier.

When you and General Eberhart were asked about the existence of tape recordings reflecting these open-line communications, both of you indicated that you had no such recollections.

GEN. EBERHART: Mr. Commissioner, I think it's important to note that I did not testify in front of this commission. So to say that I said that that day is categorically wrong.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry. You are correct. I will refer to General Arnold's comments, both with respect to --

MR. KEAN: This is the last question, Commissioner.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.

MR. ARNOLD: Yeah, the Northeast Air Defense Sector apparently had a tape that we were unaware of at the time. And your -- to the best of my knowledge, what I've been told by your staff is that they were unable to make that tape run. But they were later able to -- your staff was able, through a contractor, to get that tape to run.

And so, to the best of my knowledge, that was an accurate statement in May that I did not know of any tape recordings. If I had had them available to me, I certainly would have been able to give you more accurate information.

Our focus was on when the events occurred, and we did not focus on when we -- we didn't have a record -- I did not have a record of when we had been told different things.

MR. BEN-VENISTE: In order to clarify it -- and I apologize again, General Eberhart -- the statement that I was referring to was a statement which we are advised was made to the staff. It was General McKinley, as well as General Arnold. When I asked the question, "Let me ask you whether there's a regularly-made tape recording of these open-line communications," General Arnold answered, "Not to my knowledge" and General McKinley answered, "Not to my knowledge."

It was through the painstaking investigation that discovered these tapes and then our staff listening to those tapes which assisted us in being able to provide the level of detail and accuracy which we've done today.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MR. KEAN: Thank you very much, Commissioner. Commissioner Lehman, we're going to concentrate on questions for General Myers because of his schedule. And we can come back, I guess, to the other members of the panel. They have a little more time.

MR. LEHMAN: General Myers, we're particularly pleased to have you here because your service from '98 to 2000 commanding NORAD gives you particular authority in talking about this.

I think what disturbs us most with regard to NORAD is not so much that this was an unprecedented threat -- and there were certainly problems relating to that with the orientation outward rather than inward and the sad capabilities, really, compared to military radars of the FAA radars that had to be depended on for much of the information -- what disturbs us most is that the glitches in command and control are glitches that had really nothing to do with the fact that it was an internal rather than external, because in the justification for maintaining NORAD, of course, the possibilities of intercepting hijacked airliners was part of the justification from the beginning, although the expectation was that they would be foreign airliners hijacked and incoming.

So the problems of command and control -- let's start at the top. Who was in charge on 9/11? Was it NORAD commander? Was it you? Was it NMCC? Was it SecDef? Was it FAA? With all the exercising that had been done in the past, clearly somebody should have been in charge. But we have been unable to find out who it was. And also, for all of my questions, if you could also say what's been done to change it and what's the situation today.

GEN. MYERS: That's a lot. In terms of national command authorities, you've interviewed the president and the vice president, and I'm not privy to that interview so I can't comment on that. I do know that the next person in the chain of command, Secretary Rumsfeld, was in contact with the president several times during that morning and through the rest of the day, to include -- I believe it's at least two video teleconferences we had with the president -- I may be wrong; it may have been only one -- but lots of conversations with the vice president --

MR. LEHMAN: No, but I'm talking about operationally, the minute-by-minute --

GEN. MYERS: And operationally, General Eberhart was on duty and at his duty station, as was General Arnold. In fact, the first call I got when I left Capitol Hill after a meeting with Senator Cleland was from General Eberhart saying, "We've had these crashes and we're going to take certain actions." And it was shortly thereafter that the Pentagon was hit as we were on our way back to the Pentagon.

So as you know, I'm not in the chain of command. I'm a military adviser to the chain of command and to the National Security Council. So I went back to my duty station, and what we started doing at that time was to say, "Okay, we've had these attacks. Obviously they're hostile acts."

We were not sure at that point who perpetrated them. And my focus at that point and I think the secretary's focus was, "Okay, what else is out there that is possibly going to happen, either in the United States or in other regions of the world?" And that's where we started to focus. What is the next event to happen? It might not be an airliner. It might be some other attack.

So we were looking outward. We were on a threat conference that developed, as you all know. And NORAD was represented on that. I had several conversations that day and early that morning with General Eberhart as we talked our way through the actions that were being taken.

So as far as I'm concerned, the command and control, it was in place. The secretary, except for the short period of time that he went outside to examine where the aircraft came into the Pentagon and then to help, because at that point they needed hands and he lent his hand to help those injured and those responding, but then came back in sometime around 10:00 and was upstairs.

I know he talked to the president sometime in there. I knew he went to what we call the ESC where the communications for the secretary's office goes through. He was up there. He had a VTC with the White House. And about 10:30 he came down to the National Military Command Center, where we joined up. And we stayed joined the rest of the day together.

MR. LEHMAN: Let's talk a little bit about technology and --

GEN. MYERS: Can I just mention one other thing?

MR. LEHMAN: Sure.

GEN. MYERS: Because you asked me to tell what we've done. In the National Military Command Center, that day we did have trouble trying to conference the FAA into our threat conference that was ongoing. So we had to use a separate phone line for that which was not as efficient. That's been corrected.

And as you know, our posture today is quite a bit different as we look at this threat and other potential threats. So we've improved our communications and we've refined our procedures, both with the White House and with the FAA. And those procedures are in effect and are exercised.

MR. LEHMAN: Assets. I understand that there was a great argument during the period before 9/11 about whether NORAD should exist at all, and the reduction from 23 to seven sites. Why, given the increasing threat discussion of the possibility of hijackings and the intentions of al Qaeda, was this such a big issue? Because with so many fighter aircraft based around the country -- Reserve, Guard, Navy, Marine, Air Force -- why is it an asset issue? Why can't there be a much broader allocation of assignment, of alert, throughout the country to deal with the threat that was becoming so evident?

GEN. MYERS: I think it's because the threat was not perceived to be so evident, and we were following the same guidance that we got right after the fall of the Soviet Union: "Where is the dividend from this?" And so forces were scaled down. Alert facilities, which are expensive to maintain, were closed. And we wound up with those seven sites. And I think you all know --

MR. LEHMAN: Why is that so -- I mean, why do they have to be owned assets? Why is it so expensive just to require rotating units to sit on alert and keep aircraft armed, as opposed to their normal training cycle?

GEN. MYERS: Well, it's just the kind of -- it's the priorities that the Defense Department goes through to balance risk. And, again, the threat perception was not there to balance that risk. And --

MR. LEHMAN: But it seems to me a false dichotomy, because the assets exist. They're there. All of the services have huge training-ready capabilities. It's not as if you have to buy and own separate aircraft for NORAD. Why is it even an issue?

GEN. MYERS: And that was -- and by the way, that was the NORAD plan. The NORAD plan was as the threat became more apparent, then we had access to Navy, Marine and Air Force aircraft, and we brought them up -- I think the last number I remember, we could bring 3,000 aircraft to defend this country, not to mention the Canadian aircraft that would be participating as well. So we could bring them up. We had alert sites designated.

So the plan was to do that, but you had to start with the perception of the threat and what we were asked to do. And our clear direction was to look outward. In fact, as General Arnold said, we fought many phantoms that day. There were many phantoms.

I remember getting to the NMCC, and we got the call that a bomb had gone off in front of the State Department. So you think, "Oh, my goodness, what else is happening in this town?" We got many aircraft calls inbound that morning that turned out to be phantoms.

So we were clearly looking outward. We did not have the situational awareness inward because we did not have the radar coverage. And that, by the way, will become an issue here later on as we discuss the fate of the FAA radars that exist in this country today, whether or not we keep radars and have situational awareness for the interior of this country.

MR. LEHMAN: And why shouldn't there be -- why shouldn't the Air Force today and the Army, the military, look at our domestic defense as part of their mission in terms of the air space? It's a huge gap between the normal common capabilities of tactical units, not only strategic units of the radar sophistication and capability compared to what the FAA is stumbling along with. What do you recommend we do about that?

GEN. MYERS: They are doing it. In fact, Army radars and Army air defense systems, as you know, are part of our defense of certain places. The national capital region is one of those places. We also have, as you know, lots of aircraft on alert today where we can respond to those potential sites that we have identified that might be of interest to future terrorist actions. So today there are a lot of resources being brought to that.

I think General Eberhart will recommend and has recommended to the department that we work with the FAA to determine who is going to pay for the radars for the interior of the country so we can have the situational awareness that we think we need. And that's being debated now. My guess is it'll be a '06 budget issue as we go forward. And your recommendations in that regard would be helpful.

MR. LEHMAN: As you know, the Israeli air force has exercised, practiced and developed techniques for dealing with hijacked aircraft for years and years. For instance, they carry special missiles that are not to destroy -- designed not to destroy airliners but to force them to land, missiles with inert warheads and other sophisticated gear.

What have you guys done to equip our Air Guard and other NORAD potentially assigned units with the training, with the rules of engagement and the hardware that gives them an option other than what we have now, which is just to destroy the aircraft and all its passengers?

GEN. MYERS: I'm aware of at least one program which is classified, so we can either talk about it offline or provide you the classified paper on it. There may be others to do exactly that.

MR. LEHMAN: President Bush told us in our interview that he was deeply dissatisfied with the ability to communicate from Air Force One. He told us that this was a very major flaw. Has this been fixed, and are you personally satisfied that those communications have been improved sufficiently so that a president will have the connectivity that he didn't have that day?

GEN. MYERS: Let me answer that for the record, so I can be very specific on that. Let me answer that for the record.

MR. LEHMAN: Okay. One of the happy instances of the day was that NORAD happened to be fully mobilized in a CP exercise, and had everybody, in effect, at battle stations. And even so we saw these glitches like a failure to pass on rules of engagements to the pilots over the Capitol area. If they hadn't been at full mobilized status, what would have happened then? Would it have been much worse?

GEN. MYERS: Well, I would let General Eberhart answer that. But from my experience, no, it wouldn't have been much worse. It was fortuitous that it was the case, but certainly at the Northeast Air Defense Sector, Southeast, the CONR region at NORAD, there are people that are always on duty to respond, and whether or not we'd had the exercise or not, people would have responded. And my best estimate is that the response would not have -- would have been very similar, even with not having all those additional that might have been present for an exercise. But I would let General Eberhart talk about that.

MR. LEHMAN: Secret Service has told us that they had repeatedly before 9/11 requested alert aircraft to protect the Capitol, particularly at Andrews Air Force Base, and other air defense, that this was never acted on by the Pentagon, was there a reason why?

GEN. MYERS: That never came to my attention. I was never -- as the vice chairman at the time, and I started in 1 March of 2000, from the time I was the vice chairman, I was never aware, or even as NORAD, I was never aware of a request from the Secret Service for that kind of service.

MR. LEHMAN: But when you were NORAD commander, there had already been a private aircraft that crashed into the White House grounds. There were repeated and written worries about the potential for private aircraft to make suicide attacks, and there were 11 separate intelligence reports circulating broadly through the intelligence community that al Qaeda had planned to use aircraft as weapons, although the focus was overseas. Didn't anybody at NORAD try to connect the dots and say that this is something we've got to worry about, that it's a target in the Capitol area, that we'd better get ready for it? But, instead, when even NORAD's own planning staff proposed to include in exercises the dealing with hijacked suicide aircraft, it was rejected by NORAD as by the NORAD commander, I think it was after your time, as something to be exercised and planned for.

GEN. MYERS: I think it was rejected, and General Eberhart can be clearer on this, I don't think it was by the commander, I think it was by the planning group that was meeting because it did not fit the scenario at the time. But, the use of aircraft as a weapon, as a missile, other than World War II and the Kamikaze situation, I'm not aware, and I've tried to research this, and the best information I get, I am not aware that an aircraft has ever been used as a weapon. Now, there have been landings on the White House lawn, there was a landing in Red Square, there have been lots of stupid things. There was talk about crashing airplanes into the CIA. But, in most of that threat reporting leading up to 9/11, it was hijacking an airplane and in the normal hijack mode, not in the mode of a weapon.

Now, there were some talks about in post hijack situations where they talked to about people over the demands were made that they were going to crash, one instance, into the Eiffel Tower, but even the work that was done and the hijackings that were planned for the Philippines, which is a well-known plot, they planned to hijack the airplanes and blow them up primarily.

So, no, the threat perception, there was not -- the intelligence did not point to this kind of threat, and I think that explains our posture.

MR. LEHMAN: Final question, as NORAD commander, and now as chairman, are you, were you then, and are you now, satisfied with the intelligence product that your J2 provides to you?

GEN. MYERS: Well, we've got a wonderful J2, and we've got a pretty good process. Information sharing is better today among the intel agencies, both civilian and military, and the CIA. It can be improved. We still have a ways to go in that regard. It's still, when we get threat warnings, you know, the venue, the type of attack, those kind of details are usually lacking, and we do have, as I think people well understand, and was announced publicly by, I think, the Attorney General the other day, still threats to the United States.

As a free nation with the freedom that we enjoy, we've -- as Secretary Ridge says, we've got to be right every time, and a suicide operative only has to be right once. And we worry about that very much. And with General Eberhart's hat as Northern Command, I think helps to focus all this in ways that we couldn't do before 9/11 because we've organized ourselves much differently. Am I satisfied? No. I'll never be satisfied. This is very tough work.

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