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Jack White

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  • One would think that a real investigation would include interrogation of General Mahmood Ahmad, the head of Pakistani intelligence (ISI) from 1999 until he was fired in October 2001. According to information reported in the Times of India (10/9/01), Agence France-Presse (10/10/01), and the Wall Street Journal (10/10/01), the general was sacked after the FBI determined with the help of Indian intelligence that Al Qaeda operative Saeed Sheikh (aka Ahmad Umar Sheikh) had wired $100,000 to hijacker Mohamed Atta upon General Mahmood's instruction.
    John S. Pistole, deputy assistant director of the FBI's counterrorism division, testified to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in July 2003 that investigators had "traced the origin of the funding of 9/11 back to financial accounts in Pakistan, where high-ranking and well-known al-Qaida operatives played a major role in moving the money forward, eventually into the hands of the hijackers located in the U.S." (AP 7/31/03). The money flowed through the Pakistani accounts from associates in Germany and the United Arab Emirates who reported to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who managed much of the 9/11 planning from Pakistan. But Pistole made no mention of the information linking the ISI's General Mahmood to the transfer of $100,000 of those funds via Pakistan to Atta.
    Independent journalist Chaim Kupferberg has suggested that the Bush administration intended to use the evidence that Saeed Sheikh had wired $100,000 to Atta as proof that Al Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks, until the story broke that Saeed Sheikh had done so by instruction of the head of Pakistan's ISI, which has long had close ties with the CIA ("Pakistani ISI and 9/11," Center for Cooperative Research website). (On the morning of 9/11, General Mahmood was in Washington DC, meeting at the time the attacks began with U.S. intelligence committee heads Porter Goss and Bob Graham. The main purpose of his presence in Washington from September 4 to 13 was obstensibly to visit with CIA director George Tenet, who had visited Pakistan in May. Mahmood also reportedly met with White House and Pentagon officials on 9/10, but when asked in a May 2002 press conference by an accredited Indian journalist - what U.S. journalist would dare ask? - about the ISI chief wiring money to the hijackers and meeting with administration officials in September 2001, WH official Condoleezza Rice curtly replied, "I have not seen that report, and he was certainly not meeting with me." She then went quickly to the next questioner.) ("Pakistani ISI and 9/11.")
    This all adds to the pack of lies and omissions found in the 9/11 Commission Report. Ignoring the Senate testimony of the FBI's John Pistole that the funding for 9/11 came from financial accounts in Pakistan, the Report states, "To date, the U.S. government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance" (p. 172).
    It is well known that the Pakistani regime had close ties to and backed the Taliban and it wouldn't be surprised if some factions backed Al-Queda as well however I haven't seen conclusive evidence linking Gen Mahamood to the money.
    According to your source the cooperative research site "The identity of this moneyman "Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi" is in dispute... India claims that Pakistani ISI Director Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed orders Saeed to send the hijackers the money at this time." http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timelin...ok=mahmoodAhmed I read elsewhere (I'll try to find the link) that the WSJ and AFP based their stories on the Times of India report. It could well be true but seeing as to the adversarial relationship between India and Pakistan and the US's approximation with Pakistan (which I'm sure didn't make the Indians very happy) a report based on information from Indian intelligence is suspect. According to Wikipedia the Times tends to tow the government line
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times_of_India
    Even if it's true it doesn't prove much the ISI's proximity to the Taliban isn't news. Bush had to use a lot of carrot and stick to get Pakistan to back the invasion of Afganistan. War indeed makes strange bedfellows (In WW II the Finns got help from the Nazi's, the US allied itself with the USSR) ISI ties to the CIA between the Soviet pull out from Afganistan and 9/11 are harder to prove.

Edited by Len Colby
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Guest Stephen Turner

Len, thanks for the information. yes, if Atta and the others can be shown to have belonged to Al Takfir ( a group I had never heard of before) It may explain their extraordinary behavior. I wil do some further research into this and let you know what I find...

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Here's a link to a long but very intriguing article by Abid Ullah Jan on 9/11. (English is obviously his second language, and there are many grammatical errors.) He first makes the very good point that it's time to stop arguing about the how of 9/11, which leads to endless running around in circles (e.g. see the Destruction of the World Trade Center thread). Since it is clear by now that 9/11 was an inside job, what should be pursued is the why of 911. That said, the author actually goes back into the how, but not in terms of controlled demolition and such, but in terms of how Osama Bin Laden was set up for the blame.

I must say I have often wondered how Bin Laden fit into an inside job, with the simple argument of some that he is still "working for the CIA" not being too believable. The article argues that Mohamed Atta and his 18 fellow party-loving Muslim "fanatics" were operatives for the U.S. (unaware they would not come out alive) who fed enough info on their plans to Bin Laden, as head of Al Qaeda, to implicate him with foreknowledge and lead him to make careless statements and to believe that he was helping them run the show as an Al Qaeda operation, when it was really a covert U.S. intelligence operation. This was very well done, the planning taking place over a long period of time, and simply underscores the reality that 9/11 was not an operation that Bin Laden and his bunch could have pulled off by themselves.

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/29722

Ron you should have posted that 26 days earlier LOL

I don't know what that essay is supposed to prove. He keeps on saying that 9/11 was obviously an inside job with out offering any proof.

May be you could quote the passesges you think are most significant from the article.

The bit about hijackers being trained by the gov't was delt with here

http://www.911myths.com/html/trained.html

Len

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He keeps on saying that 9/11 was obviously an inside job with out offering any proof.

There are at least two 9/11 smoking guns IMO. One is the unexplained symmetrical collapse of WTC7. If you can explain it, please do, since even the government admits that it can't. The second is the concerted, simultaneous avoidance of their duties during the attacks by all four of the men at the top of the U.S. defense establishment - Bush, Rumsfeld, General Myers, and General Winfield (in charge of the "war room"). Anyone who thinks that the shirking of duty of all four of these men during the attacks was some kind of weird coincidence, and is in any way excusable, will believe and excuse anything.

May be you could quote the passesges you think are most significant from the article.

I'm not going back over the article to pick out passages. What impressed me was the general picture it gave of how Bin Laden was suckered into being the fall guy for 9/11, perhaps thinking in his own mind (for all we know) that he actually "did it." It's in any case a role he has thereafter been content to play (a revered hero in the Arab world and an object of mortal fear in America).

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Hello Ron

I am not sure I can agree that it is obvious that 9/11 was an inside job and I remain unpersuaded by that argument. On the other hand, I do find it interesting as how, in a 1984 type way, Osama Bin Laden is set up as the ogre for him us to hate. That he appears on our screens much like the bad far-off enemy in 1984, guaranteed to raise our ire. See David Benjamin's 'Orwell's Oceania and Bush's America: Coming together.'

So it occurs to me, Ron, as an extension of your theory, does Osama Bin Laden in fact exist, or is he that bad guy conjured up to be our enemy? (The same might be true of Al Zaquawi.) As if some think tank decided that we needed an enemy now that the old Soviet Union and the Communist Block overall has largely crumbled.

My other thought is that if Bin Laden does exist and as you say "Osama Bin Laden was set up for the blame" why should he take the blame? He's anxious to take the credit, is that it? Well, I'm sorry, but if Bin Laden is real I think your idea is a bit facile, Ron.

Chris

Edited by Christopher T. George
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Chris,

I am in no position to explain Bin Laden's motivation. As I said, the article comes the closest that I have seen to a plausible explanation, which is basically that he was suckered into participation and, being the leader of Al Qaeda, may actually think he did it. For all we know he could be unaware of U.S. complicity in the operation. Like most people here, maybe he doesn't buy alternative 9/11 conspiracy theories.

But this fails to explain some things, such as why he would allow himself to be impersonated in that "confession" videotape that was serendipitously found in Afghanistan in October 2001. The "Bin Laden" in the tape clearly did not have Bin Laden's facial characteristics (notably the nose and cheeks), with the audio conveniently so poor that even Arabs couldn't understand it, much less identify the voice as Bin Laden's.

Would not this tape obviously tell Bin Laden that he was being used? So is he in fact being knowingly used? Does he "still work for the CIA"? I have no idea.

All I'm saying is that the article may be close to the truth, whatever that is. I hadn't thought about it in the article's terms before. But that said, Bin Laden still remains a mystery.

Ron

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Ron Ecker,

Ron, that was an interesting essay by Abid Ullah Jan. Thanks for posting the link to it. And I'm glad to see you sticking to your guns. I read the essay and your intitial assessment in your post seems fair and even understated.

Forty years ago Sylvia Meagher and Harold Weisberg wrote pioneering books that demonstrated that the Warren Commission conducted an inadequate investigation into the murder of President Kennedy. Today, their books are considered classics and there is no serious doubt among historians and researchers that Meagher and Weisberg (and others) signified the beginning of a collapse of the official government version (like a house of cards, as Schweiker put it). Did these authors prove a conspiracy? Did they prove the who, how, and why of Kennedy's murder? Were they right about everything they wrote? Of course not. Did they prove, using the government's own data and conclusions that something was seriously amiss? Of course they did. Their criticisms have stood the tests of time and probity.

Here we are almost half a century later the events surrounding Kennedy's death are still being researched, explored, debated, and written about. Perhaps if the Warren Commission had conducted a complete and truth seeking investigation, we would be much closer to closure in this case. Many believe that failure to investigate properly has made it likely that the full truth will never be known.

It has been not quite five years since 9/11. The executive office resisted with great vigor any attempts to have a formal investigation of what led up to and what happened on that horrible and tragic day. It was only after unyielding pressure from a group of "9/11 widows" in New York, demanding an investigation that the administration was forced to relent. Bush followed by nominating Henry Kissinger to chair the Commission, but that's another story.

Just like the Warren Report, the 9/11 Commission Report was released with great fanfare and glowing praise by the major media. Of course, it was another case of the government investigating itself, all the while beholden to the executive branch. Weisberg and Meagher had to struggle to be heard. No publisher would touch Weisberg's findings; he had to self publish. Meagher managed to find a small publisher named Bobbs-Merrill.

Today we have the internet and information flows infinitely faster, and anyone can have a blog or website and cut and paste a few links to buttress their opinions. While the access to information is to be welcomed, it becomes all the more important to check and cross check sources. There is a plethora of sensational, unproven and unsubstantiated claims that litter the information highway. Separating information from misinformation or disinformation can be difficult, if not impossible at times.

Just as there were people that thought the Warren Report was gospel, there are people today that believe the same thing about the 9/11 Commission Report. Oft times they ask doubters for proof of the unprovable. They lump the credible concerns about the Report in with the sensationalistic claims and tend to paint all with a broad brush. It is quickly becoming a given that the government's investigation into 9/11 was at best, incomplete and, at worst, incompetent and dishonest.

Not even mentioning the collapse of WTC7 in their findings cannot be defended. Not addressing serious concerns about the identities and backgrounds of the alleged highjackers is also indefensible. They identified Mohamed Atta as "the tactical commander of the operation," and spent one page on his life, upbringing, and religious metamorphasis. A careful reading of the footnotes will indicate they got their information from "friends and acquaintances" of Atta's and they did so in a very cursory manner. I could go on, but there really is no point in doing so. Those that accept the government version are going to continue to cast aspersions on views that differ from theirs and are unlikely to be convinced. On the other hand, those that read and study will have to go through the exercise of separating fact from fiction, not an easy task as I mentioned earlier.

To me it boils down to this: The 9/11 Commission failed in its duties. Where do we go from here?

Digressing from the above I just want to note that in the link you provided, Abid Ullah Jan wrote:

There is evidence, which shows that the Arabs used in the 9/11 operation were working with the U.S. government. A series of articles suggest that at least seven of the so-called 9/11 hijackers were trained in US military bases.400 The New York Times reported: “The Defense Department said Mr. Atta had gone to the International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama; Mr. al-Omari to the Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas; and Mr. al-Ghamdi to the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio in Monterey, Calif.”[401]

Ahmed Alnami, Ahmed Alghamdi, and Saeed Alghamdi even listed the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida as their permanent address on their driver’s licenses.[402] Hamza Alghamdi was also connected to the Pensacola base.[403] According to Guy Gugliotta and David S. Fallis, Washington Post Staff Writers: "Two of 19 suspects named by the FBI, Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi, have the same names as men listed at a housing facility for foreign military trainees at Pensacola. Two others, Hamza Alghamdi and Ahmed Alnami, have names similar to individuals listed in public records as using the same address inside the base. In addition, a man named Saeed Alghamdi graduated from the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, while men with the same names as two other hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari, appear as graduates of the U.S. International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., and the Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, respectively."[404]

Len Colby posted a link and stated: "The bit about hijackers being trained by the gov't was dealt with here." As if somehow that was a rebuttal of what Ullah Jan wrote above. I went there and searched in vain for any identification or credentials of those responsible for the website. Perhaps I missed it. But they did write this good advice:

Whatever you believe about 9/11, the spreading of false claims helps no-one, and we’d like to play a small part in revealing some of them. We’re not about debunking entire conspiracies, then, but will use this site to zoom in on what we think are the more dubious stories, revealing the misquotes, the distortions, the inaccuracies that are so common online.

But does this make us an authority? No. If we’ve an overall message here, it’s check things for yourself. Don’t trust a site just because it’s telling you what you want to believe. Don’t believe us without evaluating our arguments and checking the references we provide, either (we’re as likely to make mistakes as anyone else). Look into the claims yourself, discover both sides of the argument, and make your own mind up. The truth deserves nothing less. (Bold mine)

I looked at what they offered about claims some of the highjackers were trained to fly by the U.S. Government. They cited Newsweek magazine as a source. Here is what Newsweek's team of authors said:

Sept. 15 — U.S. military sources have given the FBI information that suggests five of the alleged hijackers of the planes that were used in Tuesday’s terror attacks received training at secure U.S. military installations in the 1990s.

THREE OF THE alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.—known as the “Cradle of U.S. Navy Aviation,” according to a high-ranking U.S. Navy source. Another of the alleged hijackers may have been trained in strategy and tactics at the Air War College in Montgomery, Ala., said another high-ranking Pentagon official. The fifth man may have received language instruction at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex. Both were former Saudi Air Force pilots who had come to the United States, according to the Pentagon source.

But there are slight discrepancies between the military training records and the official FBI list of suspected hijackers—either in the spellings of their names or with their birthdates. One military source said it is possible that the hijackers may have stolen the identities of the foreign nationals who studied at the U.S. installation.

The five men were on a list of 19 people identified as hijackers by the FBI on Friday. The three foreign nationals training in Pensacola appear to be Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmad Alnami, who were among the four men who allegedly commandeered United Airlines Flight 93. That flight crashed into rural Pennsylvania. The third man who may have trained in Pensacola, Ahmed Alghamdi, allegedly helped highjack United Airlines Flight 75, which hit the south tower of the World Trade Center.

My point is the information provided by the website that Len Colby provided to deal with "the bit about the highjackers being trained by the gov't" seems to either support or be inconclusive about Ullah Jan's claims. And frankly, whether it is or is not, the fact that they use sources like Wikpedia makes it incumbent to heed their advice and check the references they provide. And check other sources. Somehow, I think you do that Ron.

Mike Hogan

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Could the fighters from Otis have intercepted flights 11 and 175? If they had would they have shot them down?

That of course depends on three factors.

1) What's the least amount of time they could have reached the towers

2) what time they took off. AND

3) if a shootdown order would have been given.

WHAT'S THE LEAST AMOUNT OF TIME THEY COULD HAVE REACHED THE TOWERS?

According to airnav.com it's 167.6 nautical miles from OTIS AFB to the Port Authority Downtown Manhattan/Wall St Heliport the closest airport to the Trade Center [ http://www.airnav.com/airport/KFMH - Enter KJRB in the search box near the middle of the right margin of the page]. 167.6 nautical miles = 194.4 statue miles. The fighters were capable of supersonic speeds but "Rules in effect … on 9/11, prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts" [ http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=3&c=y ]

The speed of sound in air varies depending on temperature and pressure. The fighters would have flown at least 10,000 feet because below that altitude there is a 250 KAIS (290 mph) speed limit [ http://web.archive.org/web/20041025163207/...SC/ac_books.pdf

- pg. 41].

According to the NOAA 9000 feet above JFK and Logan the temperature is -2, at 12000 it is -8 over JFK and one degree colder over 'Beantown' [ http://aviationweather.gov/products/nws/winds/?area=boston&fint=06&lvl=lo ] I would assume those temps. to be Fahrenheit because that is what's used on other pages on the site. At ground level the high temp. in NY today will be 64 F according to the same site [ http://www.erh.noaa.gov/ifps/MapClick.php?CityName=New+York&state=NY&site=OKX ] which is about the temp. on 9/11. So we can assume the temperature at 10,000 between Otis an NYC to have been about -4 F. The speed of sound is 715 mph at that temperature at sea level [ http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/sound/souspe.html ] but would have been lower than that because it decrees at lower air pressure and higher humidity [ if anyone know how to calculate for these don't be shy].

According to the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology "Subsonic flight extends from zero (hovering) to a speed approximately 85% of sonic speed corresponding to the ambient temperature. At higher vehicle velocities the local velocity of air passing over the vehicle surface may exceed sonic speed, and true subsonic flight no longer exists." [ http://www.accessscience.com/Encyclopedia/...ameset.html?doi ] so the planes would have been limited to 610 mph or less. At that speed it would take 19 minutes to cover the distance from Otis to the WTC. I think we can safely assume they would loose at least a minute climbing to 10,000 feet and accelerating to 610 mph and descending to 1000 and decelerating to 290 mph so best case scenario they could have gotten there in 20 minutes.

WHAT TIME THEY TOOK OFF

To have intercepted flight 11 the fighters would had to have taken off at 8:26 and to intercept flight 175 at 8:43 which struck the towers at 8:46 and 9:03. Is it reasonable to expect such a quick scramble time?

There was only one intercept of a civilian aircraft over the US in the 10 years preceding 9/11. That was Payne Stewart's and it took 81 minutes from the time the air traffic controller was unable to contact the pilot. NORAD was set up to stop intruders coming into US and Canadian airspace not those already in it. [see Popular Mechanics article linked above]

Let's consider two similar events that happened AFTER 9/11 when we would expect response times to be faster.

On June 19, 2002 "Two U.S. Air National Guard F-16s were not able to intercept a small plane that violated restricted air space around Washington until more than 10 minutes after the Cessna 182 passed near the White House", the pilot it turns out was lost but if he had been a suicide bomber he could have hit any number of targets such as the White House, Pentagon or Capital. How long did it take to scramble the fighters?

"Timeline: 7:59 p.m. Cessna enters "restricted" air space

8:03 p.m. FAA notifies NORAD

8:04 p.m. Cessna enters "prohibited" air space

8:06 p.m. Two F-16s get orders to scramble

8:06 p.m. Cessna passes White House "within a few miles"

8:17 p.m. F-16s take off from Andrews AFB Intercept occurs "a few minutes later."

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/06/20/plane.intercept/

CTists will complain that the above timeline is based on information from a "Senior administration official" but similar accounts were given by other news outlets such as CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/06/19/national/main512816.shtml, the NY Times, Washington Pos and AP [ http://standdown.net/cessna182flewtooclosetothewhitehouse.htm#evacuated ].

So it took 18 minutes from when the plane entered "restricted" air space and 14 minutes from NORAD being notified and 11 minutes from when the scramble order was given for the fighters to take off. On 9/11 the fighters took off at 8:52 which was:

6 minutes after getting the official order (8:46) ,

12 minutes after getting an unofficial order (8:40)

15 minutes from the time NORAD was notified (8:37) and

32 minutes after the controllers at Logan concluded the plane had been hijacked (8:20) [ http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_9/11=aa11 ]. In other words the times are comprable, it only took a minute less to scramble fighters to intercept a plane flying towards several potential targets in D.C. 9 months AFTER 9/11 than it did that morning to intercept a hijacked plane that no one could have been expected to be used as a giant guided missile.

Also there was an incident in Tampa in January 2002 that showed that even after 9/11 fighters can not be scrambled so quickly. A teenager stole a Cessna from a flight school at 4:50 PM which informed the local FAA. It and crashed into a bank building at 5:05 but NORAD was not informed until 5:13 and the fighters took off at 5:21. It took 8 minutes for the fighters to take off. [ http://news.tbo.com/news/MGA5NIP4HAD.html ] Even if the fighters from Otis had taken off that fast and flown directly towards the Trade Center at the highest permitted speed they would not have gotten there in time to intercept flight 175.

WOULD A SHOOT DOWN ORDER HAVE BEEN GIVEN?

Even if they had gotten to the Twin Towers before flight 175. it's doubtful they would have been given a shoot down order. At that time few people knew the whole story, millions of people knew the North Tower had been struck by a plane but only those watching CNN knew that it was a passenger jet but few if any of those people knew that two passenger jets had been hijacked and only a handful of those knew that one of those planes had disappeared from radar in the vicinity of the towers. It is doubtful that anyone giving orders to the pilots had the authority to order a shoot down or knew all of the above. Even if they would not have know how few people were onboard the plane nor how many people would die because it hit the South Tower (only a few people with structural engineering, controlled demolition or firefighting backgrounds said they expected collapses.[/font]

So much for the stand down. LOL

Len

Note - edited to fix some errors pointed out by Mr. Hogan.

Edited by Len Colby
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Len Colby poses the questions: "Could the fighters from Otis have intercepted flights 11 and 175? If they had would they have shot them down?"

In his first paragraph, Mr. Colby asserts:

The fighters were capable of supersonic speeds but "Rules in effect … on 9/11, prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts" (Mr. Colby's emphasis)[ http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/de...html?page=3&c=y ]

If the reader clicks that link, he/she will see that there is no mention at all of Mr. Colby's assertion of prohibitions on supersonic flight.

Next Mr Colby states:

The speed of sound in air varies depending on temperature and pressure. The fighters would have flown at least 10,000 feet because below that altitude there is a 250 KAIS (290 mph) speed limit [ http://www.cadets.net/pac/aircad/trg/CASC/ac_books.pdf - pgs. 41 -2].

That link didn't work for me. I got "The page cannot be found" message.

After some non-conclusive information about temperature changes at various altitudes, Mr Colby states:

So the planes would have been limited to 610 mph or less. At that speed it would take 19 minutes to cover the distance from Otis to the WTC. I think we can safely assume they would loose at least a minute climbing to 10,000 feet and accelerating to 610 mph and descending to 1000 and decelerating to 290 mph so best case scenario they could have gotten there in 20 minutes.

His source for this? Apparently this website: http://www.accessscience.com/Encyclopedia/...ameset.html?doi

However, there is only one paragraph there. McGraw-Hill tells us "The full article available through subscribing libraries." What kind of "research" is this?

Next Mr. Colby addresses this topic: WHAT TIME THEY TOOK OFF. He writes:

To have intercepted flight 11 the fighters would had to have taken off at 8:26 and to intercept flight 175 at 8:43 which struck the towers at 8:46 and 9:03. Is it reasonable to expect such a quick scramble time?

There was only one intercept of a civilian aircraft over the US in the 10 years preceding 9/11. That was Payne Stewart's and it took 81 minutes from the time the air traffic controller was unable to contact the pilot. NORAD was set up to stop intruders coming into US and Canadian airspace not those already in it.

Let's consider two similar events that happened AFTER 9/11 when we would expect response times to be faster.

What on earth does it have to do with this topic that there was "only one intercept of a civilian aircraft in the last 10 years?" 9/11 involved commercial aircraft. It is common knowledge that military aircraft have been scrambled often in response to emergencies or possible hijackings.

Mr Colby makes reference to a small plane that "violated restricted air space around Washington until more than 10 minutes after the Cessna 182 passed near the White House." At this point Mr. Colby offers no links. In fact he offers no documentation at all.

Mr Colby then makes the smooth transition to the timeline of response on 9/11. He gives a link to a Thompson's website that gives a timeline of 9/11. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timelin...ay_of_9/11=aa11

Mr. Colby then says:

In other words the times are comprable, it only took a minute less to scramble fighters to intercept a plane flying towards several potential targets in D.C. 9 months AFTER 9/11 than it did that morning to intercept a hijacked plane that no one could have been expected to be used as a giant guided missile.

CTists will complain that the above timeline is based on information from a "Senior administration official" but similar accounts were given by other news outlets such as CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/06/19/...ain512816.shtml,

This now is the link to the CBS article about the Cessna mentioned above.

Mr Colby states that "CTists" will complain about the timeline." There is NO timeline in the CBS link he supplied and NO reference to a "Senior Administration official." This is research?

Mr. Colby ends his research by concluding:

Even if they had gotten to the Twin Towers before flight 175. it's doubtful they would have been given a shoot down order. At that time few people knew the whole story, millions of people knew the North Tower had been struck by a plane but only those watching CNN knew that it was a passenger jet but few if any of those people knew that two passenger jets had been hijacked and only a handful of those knew that one of those planes had disappeared from radar in the vicinity of the towers. It is doubtful that anyone giving orders to the pilots had the authority to order a shoot down or knew all of the above. Even if they would not have know how few people were onboard the plane nor how many people would die because it hit the South Tower (only a few people with structural engineering, controlled demolition or firefighting backgrounds said they expected collapses.

So much for the stand down. LOL

I know that reading the above has been tedious. In closing, I will offer the following quote from Nafeez Ahmed's well documented book The War On Truth:

Throughout the 9/11 terrorists attacks, then, the US national security apparatus systematically facilitated the attacks by implementing policies that either inexplicably delayed the response of US air defense or methodically diverted it. Both the FAA and Norad inexplicably delayed their responses for unconscionably long periods, in breach of standard procedures. Repeatedly, fighter craft were indefinitely postponed, continuously misdirected, and ultimately stood down, in such a manner that permitted the attacks to occur entirely unhindered for over one and a half hours in the most restricted airspace in the world.

I guess its no secret I don't think much of Mr. Colby's "research" or his reasoning on these matters. If other members have been persuaded by what Mr. Colby posted, I would be interested in hearing.

Mike Hogan

PS. I supose it is worth noting that in concluding "so much for the stand down. LOL " Mr. Colby made no references to the planes that crashed in Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.

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Mr Hogan said

What on earth does it have to do with this topic that there was "only one intercept of a civilian aircraft in the last 10 years?" 9/11 involved commercial aircraft. It is common knowledge that military aircraft have been scrambled often in response to emergencies or possible hijackings.

The key words you edited out were "over the US"

From Mr. Colby

There was only one intercept of a civilian aircraft over the US in the 10 years preceding 9/11.

Every other intercept was over international waters.

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Point well taken Matthew. It was not my intention to misquote Mr. Colby. The omission was inadvertant.

I hope it had no bearing on the point I was trying to make

Thanks for bringing that to my attention. And thanks for reading my post carefully, I wasn't sure anyone would.

Mike Hogan

Edited by Michael Hogan
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I didn't mean for it to sound harsh. Your point was well made. NORAD did have many intercepts before 911 (although not nearly as many as after) but with the vast majority of them being over international waters, an intercept over US territory was unexpected and foreign to them. Before 911, NORAD's radars did not look inward. They looked solely outward for incoming threats. This meant they could not direct intercepts themselves over the US and had to rely on the FAA and ATC to direct any fighters.

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Len Colby poses the questions: "Could the fighters from Otis have intercepted flights 11 and 175? If they had would they have shot them down?"

In his first paragraph, Mr. Colby asserts:

The fighters were capable of supersonic speeds but "Rules in effect … on 9/11, prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts" (Mr. Colby's emphasis)[ http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/de...html?page=3&c=y ]

If the reader clicks that link, he/she will see that there is no mention at all of Mr. Colby's assertion of prohibitions on supersonic flight.

Actually "if the reader clicks that link, he/she will see" Mr. Hogan's claim is totally bogus and the quote appears in the last paragraph. The text on that page has less than 840 words it's not hard to find, my 10 year-old daughter found it. Obviously Mr. Hogan has no business criticizing anybody else's research.

Next Mr Colby states:

The speed of sound in air varies depending on temperature and pressure. The fighters would have flown at least 10,000 feet because below that altitude there is a 250 KAIS (290 mph) speed limit [ http://www.cadets.net/pac/aircad/trg/CASC/ac_books.pdf - pgs. 41 -2].

That link didn't work for me. I got "The page cannot be found" message.

Unfortunately that site seems to have gone off line. The file can still be found on "the Wayback Machine" Internet archive. See page 41

http://web.archive.org/web/20041025163207/http://www.cadets.net/pac/aircad/trg/CASC/ac_books.pdf

I don't know if Mr. Hogan knew about the archive but if he did he should have tried it. I highly recommend it.

The speed limit is also mentioned in these documents/pages

http://wildlifedamage.unl.edu/handbook/Chapters/pdf/Eschefelder.pdf pg. 3

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=221530

http://www.avweb.com/news/columns/190960-1.html

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:tu5SmxFr3REJ:www.alpa.org/DesktopModules/ALPA_Documents/ALPA_DocumentsView.aspx%3Fitemid%3D2179%26ModuleId%3D2420%26Tabid%3D256 pg. 3

http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:kAL4KFwPO2MJ:ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19760013063_1976013063.pdf

After some non-conclusive information about temperature changes at various altitudes,

You can plug in higher temps. It won't change the out come that much. For example the speed of sound at 15 F is 729 mph that's only 2% faster that the 715 for which I calculated. At 50 F (I don't believe such a high temperature would be possible at that altitude over NY in September) it's 756 6% faster.

Mr Colby states:So the planes would have been limited to 610 mph or less. At that speed it would take 19 minutes to cover the distance from Otis to the WTC. I think we can safely assume they would loose at least a minute climbing to 10,000 feet and accelerating to 610 mph and descending to 1000 and decelerating to 290 mph so best case scenario they could have gotten there in 20 minutes.

His source for this? Apparently this website: http://www.accessscience.com/Encyclopedia/...ameset.html?doi

However, there is only one paragraph there. McGraw-Hill tells us "The full article available through subscribing libraries." What kind of "research" is this?

That link as should have been obvious was referring to the quote immediately BEFORE the link:

From my previous post:

According to the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology "Subsonic flight extends from zero (hovering) to a speed approximately 85% of sonic speed corresponding to the ambient temperature. At higher vehicle velocities the local velocity of air passing over the vehicle surface may exceed sonic speed, and true subsonic flight no longer exists." [ http://www.accessscience.com/Encyclopedia/...ameset.html?doi ]

The "one paragraph there" is what I quoted. Mr. Hogan people normally put links and footnotes AFTER not BEFORE the information and quotes they document. "610 mph" was the result of a simple calculation I thought too obvious to include (see context in original post) 715 mph x 0.85 = 607.75 mph. "19 minutes" was also a simple calculation involving division and multiplication 194 (miles) / 610 (mph) = 0.32 (hours) x 60 = 19.2 minutes.

Next Mr. Colby addresses this topic: WHAT TIME THEY TOOK OFF. He writes:

To have intercepted flight 11 the fighters would had to have taken off at 8:26 and to intercept flight 175 at 8:43 which struck the towers at 8:46 and 9:03. Is it reasonable to expect such a quick scramble time?

There was only one intercept of a civilian aircraft over the US in the 10 years preceding 9/11. That was Payne Stewart's and it took 81 minutes from the time the air traffic controller was unable to contact the pilot. NORAD was set up to stop intruders coming into US and Canadian airspace not those already in it.

Let's consider two similar events that happened AFTER 9/11 when we would expect response times to be faster.

What on earth does it have to do with this topic that there was "only one intercept of a civilian aircraft in the last 10 years?" 9/11 involved commercial aircraft.

Mr. Hogan commercial aircraft are not military thus they are civilian. As Matthew pointed out more clearly NORAD was not set up to deal with internal threats. I have two sources 1) the same paragraph from Popular Mechanics that Mr. Hogan couldn't find 2) An article from "Plane & Pilot" magazine confirming the PM story at least for the year prior 9/11:

"Terms like Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and temporary flight restriction (TFR) quickly came into widespread use among the general-aviation pilot group. Those terms had been around for years. Military fighters and the ADIZ protected American coasts from intrusions by Russian Bear Bombers throughout the Cold War. TFRs were used for presidential security and other extraordinary events. But they weren't part of a pilot's everyday life. You didn't get intercepted and forced down if you flew through a TFR.

Today, things are different. There's an ADIZ that surrounds Washington, D.C. In the four years after 9/11, it was violated over 1,000 times. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has scrambled fighters for intercepts within U.S. borders over 1,600 times. In the year previous to 9/11, NORAD intercepted airplanes in the ADIZ only 67 times, none of which occurred within the U.S. borders."

http://www.planeandpilotmag.com/content/2005/oct/busting_tfr.html

There is further backing to support the idea that fighters were not always scrambled to intercept civilian flights straying from norms:

"Posted: September 28, 2001 WASHIGTON - The FAA today alerted civilian pilots of their responsibility to avoid restricted airspace and the procedures to follow if intercepted, in light of the Department of Defense announcement that pilots near or in restricted or prohibited airspace face a forced landing, or as a last resort, use of deadly force by military aircraft...

[…]

EARLIER, PILOTS WHO FLEW IN RESTRICTED OR PROHIBITED AREAS RECEIVED A WARNING FROM AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL AND THEN FACED SUSPENSION OR REVOCATION OF THEIR LICENSES OR A FINE. Now a pilot faces interception by military aircraft and then a forced landing at the first available airport. The Department of Defense has stated that deadly force will be used only as a last resort after all other means are exhausted.

[…]

FAA Administrator Jane F. Garvey will be sending a letter to all U. S-registered pilots to ensure that each is aware of the new procedures.

http://www.faa.gov/apa/pr/pr.cfm?id=1415

So before 9/11 fighters were not scrambled when planes flew "near or in restricted or prohibited airspace" so I doubt they would be for anything short of a hijacking which hadn't happened for decades prior to 9/11 (see below)

It is common knowledge that military aircraft have been scrambled often in response to emergencies or possible hijackings.

Then I'm sure you will have no problems citing such incidents. Just in case you didn't know it the last time a plane diverted it's course due to a hijacking in the US before 9/11 was in 1988 and I don't think it was intercepted [ http://aviation-safety.net/database/dblist.php?Event=SEH〈=en&page=8 not counting one case in 1996 in which a Madrid – Havana flight was diverted to Miami, I saw no references to it being intercepted.]. I have no information "possible hijackings" that turned out to be false alarms being intercepted in the US pre-9/11.

Mr Colby makes reference to a small plane that "violated restricted air space around Washington until more than 10 minutes after the Cessna 182 passed near the White House." At this point Mr. Colby offers no links. In fact he offers no documentation at all.

I left out the above link inadvertently. I presume you have heard of Google, Yahoo and other search engines? With all the time you spent trying to debunk my post you could have found the article in about 5 seconds. That's doing something called 'research'.

Mr Colby then makes the smooth transition to the timeline of response on 9/11. He gives a link to a Thompson's website that gives a timeline of 9/11. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timelin...ay_of_9/11=aa11

Mr. Colby then says:

In other words the times are comprable, it only took a minute less to scramble fighters to intercept a plane flying towards several potential targets in D.C. 9 months AFTER 9/11 than it did that morning to intercept a hijacked plane that no one could have been expected to be used as a giant guided missile.

CTists will complain that the above timeline is based on information from a "Senior administration official" but similar accounts were given by other news outlets such as CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/06/19/...ain512816.shtml,

This now is the link to the CBS article about the Cessna mentioned above.

Mr Colby states that "CTists" will complain about the timeline." There is NO timeline in the CBS link he supplied and NO reference to a "Senior Administration official." This is research?

Do you understand the difference between ABOVE and BELOW Mr. Hogan? I referenced the CBS article after (i.e. below) my reference to "the above timeline" a few lines above that is a timeline the first word of which is 'timeline'. I have since edited that to be less confusing.

Mr. Colby ends his research by concluding:

Even if they had gotten to the Twin Towers before flight 175. it's doubtful they would have been given a shoot down order. At that time few people knew the whole story, millions of people knew the North Tower had been struck by a plane but only those watching CNN knew that it was a passenger jet but few if any of those people knew that two passenger jets had been hijacked and only a handful of those knew that one of those planes had disappeared from radar in the vicinity of the towers. It is doubtful that anyone giving orders to the pilots had the authority to order a shoot down or knew all of the above. Even if they would not have know how few people were onboard the plane nor how many people would die because it hit the South Tower (only a few people with structural engineering, controlled demolition or firefighting backgrounds said they expected collapses.

So much for the stand down. LOL

I know that reading the above has been tedious. In closing, I will offer the following quote from Nafeez Ahmed's well documented book The War On Truth:

Throughout the 9/11 terrorists attacks, then, the US national security apparatus systematically facilitated the attacks by implementing policies that either inexplicably delayed the response of US air defense or methodically diverted it. Both the FAA and Norad inexplicably delayed their responses for unconscionably long periods, in breach of standard procedures. Repeatedly, fighter craft were indefinitely postponed, continuously misdirected, and ultimately stood down, in such a manner that permitted the attacks to occur entirely unhindered for over one and a half hours in the most restricted airspace in the world.

I agree you post was very tediuos.

There are published books and websites many of them full of footnotes that assert: the Holocaust was a hoax, the Moon landings were a hoax, the Zapruder film was a hoax, the pyramids and Nazca lines were made by aliens, The world is controlled by the Illuminati, Queen Elizabeth is the Worlds biggest drug dealer, the Twin Towers had reinforced concrete cores, global warming will cause the World to explode and that sex between adults and young children should be permitted. Simply repeating someone's assertion isn't enough if Mr. Ahmed has any hard evidence cite it. Without that his opinion and your assessment of it are meaningless.

Since I guess its no secret I don't think much of Mr. Colby's "research" or his reasoning on these matters. If other members have been persuaded by what Mr. Colby posted, I would be interested in hearing.

Since your reply had more error and more serious errors than my original post you disparaging my research is like the "1st little pig" criticizing the "2nd little pig" for building a shoddy house.

PS. I supose it is worth noting that in concluding "so much for the stand down. LOL " Mr. Colby made no references to the planes that crashed in Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.

Flight 93 crashed far short of it's target. According to the official version it would have been intercepted before it reached Washington, according to many CTists it WAS shot down. Either way it does help you case.

Flight 77 is the only flight that reasonably COULD have been intercepted. The question is was that failure due to a conspiracy or a combination of errors due not being prepared for events like those that unfolded on 9/11 and incompetence. If you want to prove the former offer some evidence. Let's not forget that the only intercept of a civilian aircraft a decade prior to 9/11 took 81 minutes from the first sign of trouble and about 77 minutes from NORAD being notified.

Flight 77 – Crashed at 9:37

First sign of trouble – 8:54 plane begins to go off course.

Elapsed time: 43 minutes

Authorities notified – "shortly after 9:00… For instance, at 9:08,

Indianapolis contacts Air Force Search and Rescue at Langley Air

Force Base, Virginia"

Elapsed time: 29 - 36 minutes.

Apparently unaware of what happened in NY till about 9:20, the

controllers though the plane had crashed. The FAA was only notified

at 9:24 though a regional office had been called a few minutes

earlier ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5233007/ )

Elapsed time: 13 minutes

Complicating factors compared to Payne Stewart's plane:

1) Was flying an erratic course.

2) Transponder was turned off.

3) According to Matthew the fighter was already in the air.

[source for the above info about flight 93 unless otherwise noted is the 9/11 Timeline]

There is more evidence in addition to the cases cited in my previous post that even after 9/11 intercepts weren't always so easy

"...another federal official said that two years ago [in 2002], military jets could identify and intercept only about 40 percent of intruders in training drills."

[ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35440-2004Jul7_2.html ]

Len

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Mike – I didn't start this "xxxx fight" and if you so want it's over. I acknowledged my mistakes; do you have the courage to admit to yours?

If you want to address the points I made instead of slinging mud feel free.

Peace,

Len

Edited by Len Colby
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Guest Stephen Turner

here's the jist of it.An audio tape perporting to be bin laden has been placed on a jihadist web-site.

On the tape (which has, at time of writing yet to be authenticated) Bin Laden takes full responsibility for the 911 attacks, and even claims to have hand picked the operatives.

I would be interested to know what members make of this.

Edited by Stephen Turner
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