CHAPTER 16 - THE INSPECTORS GENERAL
Summary
NORAD and the FAA withheld real-time audio recordings and transcripts of their responses to the 9/11 attacks until they were forced under subpoena to release them to the 9/11 Commission in late 2003 (Kean and Hamilton, WAPO, NYT). Upon receipt, the 9/11 Commission claimed the tapes proved that the FAA never alerted the military to the Flight 175, 77, and 93 hijacks before they crashed (Com-pg. 21), despite years of official NORAD/FAA chronologies, media statements, and official testimony to the contrary, as we have already seen, or will soon see in the case of Flight 175.

9/11 Commission Chairmen Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, other Commissioners such as Bob Kerry, and senior counsel/lead investigator John Farmer (former New Jersey Attorney General, Rutgers Law School Dean) made numerous public statements lambasting NORAD and FAA for collaborating to advance lies for years (Shenon, Farmer, Vanity Fair-Farmer, WAPO-Farmer, Kean/Hamilton, WAPO-Kean), Com-Farmer Test, Com-Zelikow Test). Strangely, the Commission chose not to pursue criminal charges against the officials they said lied and/or falsified official records, eliciting sharp criticism in the media (CNN x2). However, this choice was critical in maintaining the 9/11 Commission’s narrative since contradictory evidence would likely have been forced into the public domain when the accused NORAD/FAA officials filed for discovery, as we will see momentarily.

The 9/11 Commission eventually publicized all the recordings/transcripts that supported its narrative via Rutgers Law School (of which 9/11 Commission Lead Investigator John Farmer was the Dean) (Rutgers, NYT). As a reminder (and preview of Flight 175), these include: 

  • The 9:03 call between NEADS and the New York Center as the military’s first notification of Flight 175

  • The 9:34 call between NEADS and the Washington Center as the first notification that Flight 77 was lost, not hijacked

  • The 9:21 call between NEADS and the Boston Center’s military liaison concerning phantom Flight 11 and a subsequent exchange between NEADS personnel as precipitating the Langley scramble

  • The 10:07 call between NEADS and the Cleveland Center’s military liaison as the military’s first notification of Flight 93

 
However, the 9/11 Commission omitted all recordings/transcripts that reportedly would have debunked its narrative. As a reminder (and preview of Flight 175), these include: 

  • Communications by gagged Boston Flight controllers and NEADS’ Master Sergeant Maureen Dooley’s team in the vicinity of 8:43 when they all reportedly first learned of Flight 175’s hijacking

  • Communications by Washington controllers beginning with Flight 77’s 9:10 reentry into Washington’s airspace

  • Communications down the NORAD chain of command from Arnold to Marr to Powell concerning the Langley scramble in response to Flight 77 and 93

  • Communications by gagged Cleveland Center controllers concerning the tracking and near shoot down of Flight 93

  • Communications between Arnold, Marr, Powell concerning the tracking and near shoot down of Flight 93

  • Communications made over the centrally important FAA hijack net and White House teleconference

 
Instead of seeking criminal charges (lest the aforementioned omitted evidence be forced into the public domain when the accused NORAD/FAA officials filed for discovery), the 9/11 Commission asked the Defense and Transportation Department Inspectors General (Com-OIG Letter) (which have no power to file criminal charges) to internally investigate the officials who provided the documented and testimonial evidence it rejected. Both Inspectors General quietly spent more than two years (longer than the entire 9/11 Commission investigation) before claiming in classified reports that the FAA/NORAD documentation and testimony the 9/11 Commission rejected was the result of unintentional errors due to the agencies’ poor record-keeping capabilities (DOD, DOT, NYT, WAPO). This claim was nonsensical since all applicable communications were recorded in real-time.

Sources:
CNN, 8/2/2006, “The Situation Room” (transcript)
CNN, 8/9/2006, “Lou Dobbs Tonight”
John Farmer, 9/8/2009, “The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11,” pgs. 283-289
New York Times, 9/2/2006, “Report Urges F.A.A. to Act Regarding False 9/11 Testimony”
New York Times, 9/7/2011, “Newly Published Audio Provides Real-Time View of 9/11 Attacks”
Philip Shenon, 2008, “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation,” pgs. 204-210
Rutgers University Law Review, 9/7/2011, “Full Audio Transcript”
Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton (9/11 Commission Chairmen), 2007, “Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission,” pgs. 85-88
U.S. Department of Defense; Inspector General, 9/12/2006, “Memorandum for Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence: Report on Review of Testimony to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States”
U.S. Department of Transportation; Office of the Inspector General (Todd Zinser), 8/31/2006, “Memorandum: Results of OIG Investigation of 9/11 Commission Staff Referral”
Vanity Fair, 10/17/2006, “9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes”
Washington Post, 8/2/2006, “9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon: Allegations Brought to Inspectors General”
Washington Post, 9/2/2006, “No Intent to Mislead Panel Found in Aviation Officials’ 9/11 Errors”
9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004, Public Hearing (Transcript: Remarks by Staff Lead John Farmer, Executive Director Philip Zelikow, Commissioner Bob Kerry)
9/11 Commission, July 2004, “9/11 Commission Report,” pg. 21
9/11 Commission, 7/29/2004, untitled letter from the Commissioners and Executive Director Philip Zelikow to DoD Inspector General Joseph Schmitz and DoT Inspector General Kenneth Mead (Requesting investigations into the cause of public statements made by NORAD and FAA officials deemed by the 9/11 Commission to be false) 

Military Withholds Tapes; 9/11 Commission Subpoenas, Claims Tapes Show FAA/NORAD Narrative Is False, Only Publicizes Tapes Which Support Its Narrative, Asks FAA/DOD IG’s to Internally Investigate; IG’s Blame Nonsensically Blame Poor Record-Keeping
According to the book, “Without Precedent,” authored by 9/11 Commission Chairmen Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, in October of 2003, the 9/11 Commission staff took a tour of the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) facility in Rome, New York. When the staff entered the operations room, it observed more than 20 perpetually active stations of weapons controllers and flight controllers for which all conversations were always tape-recorded. Alarmingly, the 9/11 Commission had still not received most of the NEADS tapes and documents from the 9/11 attacks. The same applied to the FAA, which withheld “audiotapes” according to the Washington Post (8/2/2006) and “dozens of boxes of documents involving the Sept. 11 attacks” according to the New York Times (9/2/2006).

The 9/11 Commission issued a subpoena for the missing tapes and documents. Upon receipt, the 9/11 Commission said the tapes showed that NORAD never learned of Flights 175, 77, and 93 hijacks before their impacts (pg. 21 of the Final Report), despite official NORAD/FAA chronologies and years of official testimony to the contrary.

New York Times investigative journalist Philip Shenon wrote in his 2008 book, “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation,” that 9/11 Commission senior counsel/lead investigator John Farmer (former New Jersey Attorney General, Rutgers Law School Dean) was “99 percent” certain the NORAD/FAA knew they were lying when they testified to the 9/11 Commission because they had already reviewed the subpoenaed tapes and documents. Likewise, Farmer told Vanity Fair in 2006:

“Commission staff believes that there is significant evidence that the false statements made to the commission were deliberately false… The false testimony served a purpose: to obscure mistakes on the part of the FAA and the military, and to overstate the readiness of the military… I've been in government and I know what spin is… [but this was a] whole different order of magnitude than spin. It simply wasn't true.”

And he told the Washington Post in 2006:

“I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years… This is not spin. This is not true.”

Similarly, 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean’s told the Washington Post:

“We to this day don’t know why NORAD told us what they told us. It was just so far from the truth.” 

Further, in their 2007 book, “Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission,” the co-chairmen wrote:

“…after-action reports, accident investigations and public testimony by FAA and NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue.”

The Washington Post summarized:

“Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public…

“Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation… Staff members and some commissioners… believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission.”

The article went on to echo the 9/11 Commission’s narrative:

“For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA… [said] jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington… Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold and Col. Alan Scott told the commission that NORAD had begun tracking United 93 at 9:16 a.m… [However] the commission reported a year later… the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and… was not aware of the flight until after it had crashed in Pennsylvania.”

Nevertheless, the 9/11 Commission chose not to seek any charges against the officials they accused of lying. Regarding this decision, in August of 2006, CNN anchor Jack Cafferty stated on air:

“The 9/11 Commission failed. If they mulled criminal charges because they doubted the veracity of testimony from Pentagon personnel, why did they stop at that? And why say so now? If persons are suspected of lying, they must be brought up on charges…”

CNN anchor Lou Dobbs added:

“The fact that the government would permit deception after a deception… suggests that we need a full investigation of what is going on and what is demonstrably an incompetent and at worst deceitful federal government.”

However, as we are about to see, the choice by the 9/11 Commission not to pursue criminal charges was a critical step in maintaining its narrative since contradictory evidence would likely have been forced into the public domain when the accused NORAD/FAA officials filed for discovery.

On September 7, 2011, Rutgers Law School (of which 9/11 Commission Lead Investigator John Farmer was the Dean) released a multimedia presentation of 114 time-stamped civilian and military transcripts and audio recordings from 9/11. (It had previously in 2006 released a smaller subset to Vanity Fair and movie producer Michael Bronner in connection to the making of the movie United 93.) Of course, the release included the communications by NEADS and regional FAA air traffic control centers that the 9/11 Commission quoted or cited in its Report – quotes or citations that by themselves appeared to support the Commission’s narrative that the military never learned about the Flight 175, 77, and 93 hijackings before they crashed.

The New York Times covered the Rutgers release the same day and echoed the Commission’s talking points this way:

“…a newly published chronicle of the civil and military aviation responses to the hijacking… prepared by investigators for the 9/11 Commission [has been released].”

“…covering each of the four airliners, the multimedia document contains 114 recordings of air traffic controllers, military aviation officers, airline and fighter jet pilots, as well as two of the hijackers, stretching across two hours of the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.”

“…the complete document, with recordings, is being published for the first time by the Rutgers Law Review…”

“In its 2004 report, the commission… thoroughly dismantled the accounts of senior government officials… The commission discovered that… of the four flights, military commanders had nine minutes’ notice on one before it flew into the World Trade Center, and did not learn the other three had been hijacked until after they had crashed… The newly published multimedia document spells out precisely how the recordings contradicted the accounts of the senior officials.”

“When the commission began taking testimony, military and civil aviation officials said ‘that no tapes were made, and we were told at one point that a technical malfunction would prevent us from hearing them,’ Mr. Farmer [9/11 Commission senior counsel, Rutgers Law School Dean, former New Jersey Attorney General] wrote.”

The New York Times then quoted Farmer as stating in a self-congratulatory manner:

“If we had not pushed as hard as we did — ultimately persuading the commission to use its subpoena power to obtain the records — many of the critical conversations from that morning may have been lost to history.”

Farmer neglected to mention all the critical conversations covered toward the beginning of this section that were lost to history!

As we have already seen, the communications quoted or cited by the 9/11 Commission did not come close to debunking the broad agreement between FAA/NORAD/Secret Service/White House sources that the FAA followed its hijack protocol after the first WTC impact by opening up the hijack net and shared timely, useful information on Flight 77 and 93 while the Pentagon’s NMCC – a formally required liaison between the FAA and NORAD – joined a half hour late and even then did not engage in any meaningful way for the entirety of the 9/11 attacks.

As a reminder (or preview in the case of Flight 175), let’s walk through what the 9/11 Commission did and did not publicize as evidence to support its narrative. However, I will not re-list (or pre-list) all the applicable sources for these details at the end of this section since they have already been (or will be) covered at length in other chapters.

First, the 9/11 Commission cited a 9:03 New York flight controller call to NEADS as the military’s first notification of Flight 175. But it omitted what was discussed by the later-gagged Boston Flight controllers or NEADS’ Master Sergeant Maureen Dooley’s team in the vicinity of 8:43 when they all reportedly (per NORAD and Newhouse News’ interview of Dooley) first learned of Flight 175’s hijacking since NEADS was linked in to Boston controllers’ headsets. And they omitted any recordings of what was communicated to the two fighter jets scrambled from Otis Air Force Base toward New York due to “a technical issue.”

Next, the 9/11 Commission quoted a Washington Center controller telling a NEADS technician that Flight 77 was lost at 9:34 as the military’s first alert to Flight 77. But it omitted any record of Flight 77-related Washington controller transmissions or chat logs beginning with Flight 77’s 9:10 reentry into Washington’s airspace, which were cited by Colonel Scott, Major General McKinley, and the FAA “Chronology of Events” press release.

Further, the 9/11 Commission quoted a military liaison in the FAA’s Boston Center erroneously telling NEADS’ Flight 11 was still airborne and then claimed this interaction precipitated the 9:24 Langley fighter jet scramble rather than Flights 77 and 93. It also quoted a brief exchange between NEADS personnel to this effect. However, it omitted any record of conversations down the chain of command from NORAD Continental Commander Major General Larry Arnold to NEADS Commander Colonel Robert Marr to NEADS technician Lt. Jeremy Powell who all told the 9/11 Commission plainly in interviews and testimony that they authorized/ordered/executed the Langley scramble in response to Flight 77 and 93. Marr and the official Air Force 9/11 history added that NEADS was indeed aware of the false Flight 11 report at the time of the scramble, but it was not a major contributing factor to the scramble order.

Next, the 9/11 Commission cited a 10:07 Cleveland controller telling a NEADS technician that Flight 93 had been hijacked as the military’s first notification of Flight 93, but it omitted earlier Cleveland flight controller (who were also gagged) conversations implied by Major General Arnold about Flight 93 being off course in the northern part of Pennsylvania and Ohio. And it omitted extensive discussions between Arnold, Marr, Powell (as well as Western and Southeast NORAD Commanders John Cromwell and Larry Kemp) tracking Flight 93 as it first headed west then turned back toward Washington D.C. (Recall that Powell even specifically told the 9/11 Commission staff that his conversation with Selfridge Air Base concerning Flight 93 was “recorded”.) And it omitted their conversations around the time Flight 93 crashed when they would have observed a fighter jet in close proximity, according to numerous sources. And it omitted the New Hampshire flight controller cited by the Associated Press who observed the same thing. And it necessarily omitted discussions inside the NMCC and PEOC about preparing to shoot down Flight 93 by Winfield, Myers, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and possibly Rumsfeld since the real-time transcript was classified and replaced by a completely rewritten one.

Finally, it omitted any quote or citation of the centrally important FAA hijack net and White House teleconference, despite learning from DOT Inspector General Kenneth Mead that a recording of the hijack net had been taken into the custody of the Justice Department and that Monte Belger received a hijack net chronology of events, which the Justice Department restricted from public access.

As stated, all of these omitted materials might have been forced into the public domain when the accused NORAD/FAA officials filed for discovery if the 9/11 Commission chose to pursue criminal charges.

In its June of 2004 hearing, the 9/11 Commission presented its narrative and essentially accused of perjury/falsification the FAA and military officials who attested to the usefulness of the FAA hijack net. Some of the accused were not present to respond, such as Garvey, Asmus, Schuessler, Weikert, Scott, McKinley, Marr, Powell, Mineta, Clark, and Winfield. Other accused parties were present, but had flip-flopped, such as Eberhart, Arnold, and Myers. Belger was invited despite not flip-flopping.

Ironically, the 9/11 Commission simultaneously praised NORAD for doing the best it could with the sparse information it said the regional FAA air traffic control centers provided to NEADS. At one point when Commissioner Bob Kerry questioned NORAD Commander General Eberhart, he suggested NORAD was “taking a bullet” for the FAA by collaborating with it for years to promote a falsified timeline. Kerry stated:

“…the optics for me is, you all [at NORAD] are taking a bullet for the FAA. I think the military performed, under the circumstances, exceptionally well… if you look at what [NORAD] did on that day, it's hard to find fault… So it leaves the impression that there is an attempt [by the FAA and NORAD] to create a unified story there, and has you all [at NORAD], as I said, taking a bullet for the FAA, because the FAA should have told you what was going on…”

Tellingly, Kerry noted in the same breath that the Secret Service had better information than NORAD, which according to Secret Service and White House sources came through the hijack net – exactly where NORAD via the NMCC should have been listening all along. Kerry stated:

“…it must be agonizing to know that Secret Service had information you didn’t have.”

Perhaps due to the glaring contradictions between the 9/11 Commission’s narrative and all the aforementioned evidence, the Commissioners and Executive Director sent a letter and appended data package dated July 29, 2004 to DOD Inspector General Joseph Schmitz and FAA Inspector General Kenneth Mead. The Washington Post (8/2/2006) stated:

“In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments…”

The letter reminded the Inspectors General of the 9/11 Commission’s conclusions regarding when the military was notified of Flights 77 and 93 and what precipitated the Langley scramble. The letter did not ask them to provide any feedback on whether their conclusions were correct; it only asked them to internally investigate the officials who gave contradictory accounts did so knowingly.

Both Inspector General reports were classified. However, both Inspectors General did publicly release abridged summaries which claimed the rejected FAA/NORAD documentation and testimony were unintentional errors that resulted from poor record-keeping. The Defense Department Inspector General’s 3-page summary contained no specific details and can be encapsulated by the statement:

“DoD forensic capabilities were inadequate to ensure accurate and timely reporting.”

Likewise, the Transportation Department Inspector General’s 30-page summary repeatedly stated:

“[The contested testimony and documentation] we attribute to FAA’s reliance on an erroneous timeline entry.”

The Transportation Department summary contained much more detail than the Defense Department’s summary, but it was mostly a regurgitation of the 9/11 Commission’s narrative and the selective evidence it cited. Additionally, to support the 9/11 Commission’s claim that the 9:24 scramble was due solely to the false phantom Flight 11 report, the summary relied heavily on a handwritten note by a NEADS staff member that was time-stamped 9:24 and stated that Flight 11 was hijacked. Of course, this note was in no way inconsistent with the official Air Force 9/11 record or NEADS Commander Colonel Robert Marr’s staff interview, both of which stated plainly that the phantom Flight 11 report was received by NEADS, but was not the main driver of the Langley scramble like the Flight 77 and 93 reports were.

Per the New York Times (9/2/2006), Commissioner Richard Ben Veniste criticized FAA Inspector General Mead for taking more than two years to complete his report (more time the entire 9/11 Commission report took) and then released it quietly on Friday afternoon before Labor Day weekend.

Furthermore, the claim of poor record-keeping capabilities was ridiculous on its face. As we already saw from the Chairmen’s book, “Without Precedent,” all conversations that took place at the over 20 perpetually active weapons controller and flight controller stations at NEADS were always recorded. And, as we saw from Rutger’s selective multimedia presentation, FAA headquarters and regional facility conversations were likewise recorded and time-stamped. What better records could possibly be needed? John Farmer’s 2009 book asserted:

“…it is impossible to conclude honestly, from the two inspector general reports, that the official version of the events of 9/11 [originally reported by NORAD and the FAA] was the result of mere administrative incompetence…

It is a safe assumption that the classified material from which the inspectors general generated their classified reports included some or all of the recordings/transcripts/documents that the 9/11 Commission omitted to advance its narrative. Considering that some FAA and NORAD officials apparently withheld these records for years and/or lied for years about their existence, and considering that the 9/11 Commission and FAA/DOD Inspectors General refused to publicize them lest their narratives be debunked, should the public blindly take them at their word?

Sources:
CNN, 8/2/2006, “The Situation Room” (transcript)
CNN, 8/9/2006, “Lou Dobbs Tonight”
John Farmer, 9/8/2009, “The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11,” pgs. 283-289
Leslie Filson, 2003, “Air War Over America: Sept. 11 Alters Face of Air Defense Mission,” pgs. 59, 63, published by Tyndall Air Force Base Public Affairs Office
New York Times, 9/2/2006, “Report Urges F.A.A. to Act Regarding False 9/11 Testimony”
New York Times, 3/25/2007, “First Chapter: ‘Rumsfeld’,” by Andrew Cockburn
New York Times, 9/7/2011, “Newly Published Audio Provides Real-Time View of 9/11 Attacks”
Philip Shenon, 2008, “The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation,” pgs. 204-210
Rutgers University Law Review, 9/7/2011, “Full Audio Transcript”
Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, 2007, “Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission,” pgs. 85-88
U.S. Department of Defense; Inspector General, 9/12/2006, “Memorandum for Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence: Report on Review of Testimony to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States”
U.S. Department of Transportation; Office of the Inspector General (Todd Zinser), 8/31/2006, “Memorandum: Results of OIG Investigation of 9/11 Commission Staff Referral”
Vanity Fair, 10/17/2006, “9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes”
Washington Post, 8/2/2006, “9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon: Allegations Brought to Inspectors General”
Washington Post, 9/2/2006, “No Intent to Mislead Panel Found in Aviation Officials’ 9/11 Errors”
9/11 Commission, 1/23/2004, “Memorandum for the Record: Interview of NEADS Commander Colonel Robert Marr”
9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004, Public Hearing (Transcript: Remarks by Staff Lead John Farmer, Executive Director Philip Zelikow, Commissioner Bob Kerry)
9/11 Commission, July 2004, “9/11 Commission Report,” pg. 21
9/11 Commission, 7/29/2004, untitled letter from the Commissioners and Executive Director Philip Zelikow to DoD Inspector General Joseph Schmitz and DoT Inspector General Kenneth Mead (Requesting investigations into the cause of public statements made by NORAD and FAA officials deemed by the 9/11 Commission to be false)