JCS Myers Confirmation Hearings - Non-answers to Serious Questions
Re: Stick to the point.
OK, how about this point?
emperors-clothes.com
Or maybe this one?
On Sept. 13, U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) Holds Hearing On Nomination of General Richard Myers to be Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Remarkably, Myers simply cannot recall the details of the military response to four hijacked planes on 9/11!
public-action.com
Selected questions and astonishly vague answers:
LEVIN: Was the Defense Department contacted by the FAA or the FBI or any other agency after the first two hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center, prior to the time that the Pentagon was hit?
MYERS: Sir, I don't know the answer to that question. I can get that for you, for the record.
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LEVIN: And did you take action against -- for instance, there has been statements that the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down. Those stories continue to exist.
MYERS: Mr. Chairman, the armed forces did not shoot down any aircraft. When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS, radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked. But we never actually had to use force.
LEVIN: Was that order that you just described given before or after the Pentagon was struck? Do you know?
MYERS: That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck.
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MYERS: As the commander-in-chief of North American Aerospace Defense Command, as well as U.S. Space Command, we had plans to deploy our fighters to defend from external threats. I never thought we'd see what we saw the last few days, where we had fighters over our cities, defending against a threat that originated inside the United States of America. [[RD: This seems weird, several years after a private plane was crashed into the White House! ]]
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BILL NELSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
General Myers, Mrs. Myers, last week, I moved into an apartment overlooking the Pentagon. Tuesday morning, I was here in the Capitol in a meeting with Senator Daschle. But my wife was at our apartment. And she witnessed the whole thing.
And each evening, as I have been home since then, I have witnessed the very heroic efforts of a lot of people out there, as I get up periodically through the night, fitfully sleeping, and my congratulations to you. Now, that leads to my question to follow up Senator Collins' line of questioning.
The second World Trade tower was hit shortly after 9:00. And the Pentagon was hit approximately 40 minutes later. That's approximately. You would know specifically what the timeline was.
The crash that occurred in Pennsylvania after the Newark westbound flight was turned around 180 degrees and started heading back to Washington was approximately an hour after the World Trade Center second explosion. You said earlier in your testimony that we had not scrambled any military aircraft until after the Pentagon was hit. And so, my question would be: why?
MYERS: I think I had that right, that it was not until then. I'd have to go back and review the exact timelines.
BILL NELSON: Perhaps we want to do this in our session, in executive session. But my question is an obvious one for not only this committee, but for the executive branch and the military establishment.
If we knew that there was a general threat on terrorist activity, which we did, and we suddenly have two trade towers in New York being obviously hit by terrorist activity, of commercial airliners taken off course from Boston to Los Angeles, then what happened to the response of the defense establishment once we saw the diversion of the aircraft headed west from Dulles turning around 180 degrees and, likewise, in the aircraft taking off from Newark and, in flight, turning 180 degrees? That's the question.
I leave it to you as to how you would like to answer it. But we would like an answer.
MYERS: You bet. I spoke, after the second tower was hit, I spoke to the commander of NORAD, General Eberhart. And at that point, I think the decision was at that point to start launching aircraft.
One of the things you have to understand, senator, is that in our posture right now, that we have many fewer aircraft on alert than we did during the height of the Cold War. And so, we've got just a few bases around the perimeter of the United States.
So it's not just a question of launching aircraft, it's launching to do what? You have to have a specific threat. We're pretty good if the threat's coming from outside. We're not so good if the threat's coming from inside.
In this case, if my memory serves me -- and I'll have to get back to you for the record -- my memory says that we had launched on the one that eventually crashed in Pennsylvania. I mean, we had gotten somebody close to it, as I recall. I'll have to check that out.
I do not recall if that was the case for the one that had taken off from Dulles. But part of it is just where we are positioned around this country to do that kind of work because that was never -- it goes back to Senator Collins' issue. Is this one of the things that we'll worry about. You know, what's next?
But our posture today is not one of the many sites and the many tens of aircraft on alert. We just have a handful today.
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LEVIN: Thank you, Senator Nelson.
General Myers, just a very brief request. When I asked you what time it was that the FAA or the FBI notified the Defense Department after the first World Trade -- the two crashes into the World Trade Center and you indicated you didn't know the time. Could you ask someone on your staff to try to get us that time, so that we will have that either before this session here or for executive session?
MYERS: Mr. Chairman, I just did that.
LEVIN: Thank you.
BILL NELSON: Mr. Chairman, may I, just for the record? Commenting from CNN on the timeline, 9:03 is the correct time that the United Airlines flight crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center; 9:43 is the time that American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. And 10:10 a.m. is the time that United Airlines flight 93 crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
So that was 40 minutes between the second tower being hit and the Pentagon crash. And it is an hour and seven minutes until the crash occurred in Pennsylvania.
LEVIN: The time that we don't have is when the Pentagon was notified, if they were, by the FAA or the FBI or any other agency, relative to any potential threat or any planes having changed direction or anything like that. And that's the same which you will give us because that's . . .
MYERS: I can answer that. At the time of the first impact on the World Trade Center, we stood up our crisis action team. That was done immediately.
So we stood it up. And we started talking to the federal agencies. The time I do not know is when NORAD responded with fighter aircraft. I don't know that time.
LEVIN: Or the time that I asked you for, which was whether the FAA or FBI notified you that other planes had turned direction from their path, their scheduled path, and were returning or aiming towards Washington, whether there was any notice from any of them, because that's such an obvious shortfall if there wasn't.
MYERS: Right.
LEVIN: And in any event, but more important, if you could get us that information.
MYERS: It probably happened. As you remember, I was not in the Pentagon at that time, so that part of it is a little hazy. After that, we started getting regular notifications through NORAD, FAA to NORAD, on other flights that we were worried about.
And we knew about the one that eventually crashed in Pennsylvania. I do not know, again, whether we had fighters scrambled on it. I have to . . .
LEVIN: If you could get us those times then. We know you don' t know them.
MYERS: But we'll get them.
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So, two days after the catastrophe, our Chairman of the JCS simply didn't know, exactly, or apparently even approximately, what the USAF response to the hijacked jets was. Incredible.
-R. |
