Why Did No Planes Scramble on 9/11?

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©2001-2012 Roedy Green, Canadian Mind Products

Why Did No Planes Scramble?

Yet the first plane was in the air for a hour without any action to stop it. Dozens of flight controllers would have seen the renegade planes, yet none ordered planes scrambled? Really?

Andrews air force base is home to a squadron of F16s and FA18s. It is only 19.31 km (12 miles) from the Whitehouse. One of its main functions is to protect Washington. Yet it sent up no planes until the evening.

You would think everyone would be on high alert after the first plane hit for the second and third planes. Yet again, no planes were scrambled to investigate or intercept them. Somebody had to have ordered them not to. George W. Bush surely had the power to override whoever blocked the scramble, but for some reason did not. He just meekly stood there and let the planes crash into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — hardly the actions of a hard drinkin', tough ridin' Texan.

I have asked various people who disagreed with this interpretation of events how they countered. Here are the arguments they came up with.

• It was a jurisdictional problem. The Air Force looks after foreign invaders. The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) looks after domestic terrorists. The FBI had no planes to scramble.
• There were no planes anywhere in the American North East to scramble in time. It takes a while for a plane to warm up. Unless it were on hot alert, it would have been useless. The cold war was over. America had no reason to expect an attack. The Air Force had zero fighter planes ready to go and none in the air, not even ones to guard Air Force One. According to the Air Force, in a story, now withdrawn one person suggested plotting the bases of the Air National Guard to figure out where an interceptor could possibly have come from. Another suggested reading Aviation Week and Space Technology which had many articles covering the events of 9/11, specifically including the readiness and response of various USAF and ANG fighter wings during the crisis.
• The 15 minutes to intercept number is very optimistic, based on one instance where a fighter just happened to be in the vicinity. 9/11 all happened way too fast to stop.
• George W. Bush was not sure there were terrorists involved until the second World Trade hit. He erred on the side of caution, presuming the first hit was just an accident, not wanting to shoot down and kill American civilians. He explained to the school children how he thought the problem was a poor pilot. (This does not explain why he ordered no intercept just in case he later had to change his mind. He had plenty of warnings such a thing was about to happen, no matter how much he might want to deny it.) He had warnings from many countries such as Afghanistan, Argentina, Britain, Cayman Islands, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco and Russia. About the only countries than did not give him a warning were Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) issued 52 warnings about Al-Qaeda attacks. Yet Bush claimed he had no idea such an attack was possible. That is obviously a lie.

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