9/11: More Questions

The actions of the FAA on the morning of September 11, 2001 have always puzzled me. They knew they had planes in the air that at the least were a concern, and they appear to have known that they had hijacked planes in the air in the middle of the country flying around with unknown destinations and purposes. Yet they waited, as much as twenty minutes, before taking more than cursory action, including notifying the military or the Federal government. It's inexcusable and inexplicable.

I will remind you that not one person has been disciplined, transferred, demoted, terminated or punished in any way for what happened that day. NOT ONE.

Over the weekend, I found this story which shows that a pair of F-16 fighters (not armed, though) were in the air over New Jersey, as the two planes flew into the World Trade Center towers. I do not know this website, so I cannot vouch for its authenticity and accuracy, but they do quote names that can be tracked down, so I'm passing it on to you with caveats.

As two hijacked jetliners bore down on New York City's World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, two Air Force F-16 jet fighters were practicing bombing runs over an empty stretch of the Pine Barrens near Atlantic City.

The F-16 pilots had no idea of the impending tragedy in Manhattan, just eight minutes away in their supersonic jets....

A spokeswoman for the 177th confirmed that two of its F-16s were flying unarmed bombing runs that morning over a section of the Pine Barrens designated for military drills. But the F-16 pilots, she said, were unaware that America's air defense system needed them desperately....

Soon after two hijacked commercial jetliners slammed into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan, Aponte said, the two F-16s landed and were refitted with air-to-air missiles, then sent aloft. But that happened more than an hour after the trade center attacks....

NORAD confirmed it had only eight fighters on the East Coast for emergency scrambles on Sept. 11. Throughout Canada and the United States, including Alaska, NORAD had 20 fighters on alert - armed, fueled up, and ready to fly in minutes. Four years earlier, NORAD could count on having 175 jets ready to scramble, including two on the tarmac at Atlantic City's airport.

With the New Jersey Air National Guard's 17 F-16s out of the picture on Sept. 11, the commission is trying to assess why the Pentagon left what seems to be a yawning gap in the midsection of its air defenses on the East Coast - a gap with New York City at the center. Since Sept. 11, the 177th has been back on alert status, with its pilots logging hundreds of hours of patrols above New York City and along the East Coast.

This is absolutely unbelievable. It is outrageous, and I'm not just bloviating when I say that. I am fuming as I write this. We have legions of people whose job it is to protect us and they repeatedly dropped the ball on multiple levels. Other than knowing that many of those folks must have been shaken by those events and have redetermined to do their best, I haven't seen any evidence that the bureaucracies have been shaken up and scoured clean of the lethally idiotic space-wasters who didn't do their jobs up to that day. That's what I want. Right now.