Why Not Andrews Air Force Base?
As previously mentioned, it appeared that Andrews Air Force Base had "combat ready" fighters "in the highest possible state of readiness." This is not surprising, given that Andrews is the airport typically used by Air Force One and foreign dignitaries when flying to Washington. Furthermore, at the time of the first World Trade Center crash, three F-16s assigned to Andrews were flying a training mission in North Carolina, 207 miles away from Washington. These fighters were only twenty miles further from Washington than the planes in Massachusetts ordered to New York were from that city. Yet it took about an hour more before they were recalled. They landed at Andrews at some point after Flight 77 had crashed into the Pentagon at 9:38. One of the fighters, piloted by Major Billy Hutchison, still had enough fuel to immediately take off again but the other two needed to refuel. Hutchison supposedly took off with no weapons. "Hutchison was probably airborne shortly after the alert F-16s from Langley arrive over Washington, although 121st FS pilots admit their timeline-recall ‘is fuzzy.'" [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/9/02] If NORAD's timeline for those other fighters is correct, this means Hutchison didn't leave Andrews until after 9:49. Again, one must wonder why these planes weren't recalled from their training much earlier. And why, even so much later, wasn't Hutchison with his adequate fuel ordered directly to Washington's skies, which was still unprotected?

The answer appears to be that NORAD only wanted to use fighters from the two bases on the Northeast Coast that they directly controlled, even if there were other bases or fighters in the air that were closer. But there was no reason for this. We know details of a 1999 fighter scramble, because famous golfer Payne Stewart was aboard a runaway Learjet. With the pilot unconscious, NORAD used fighters from a number of bases outside NORAD's official seven bases to follow the plane as it crossed over several states before finally crashing. [ABC News, 10/25/99] But on 9/11, NORAD seemed determined not to use fighters from other bases such as Andrews, even though Andrews was only ten miles from Washington. Andrews personnel learned about the national emergency through news coverage, and then a pilot called a friend in the Secret Service for more information. A few minutes after the second crash, it was the Secret Service, not NORAD, who called Andrews and asked them to get fighters ready. Again, a few minutes after the Pentagon crash at 9:38, it was the Secret Service who called Andrews, and said the fighters needed to "Get in the air now!" [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/9/02]

Yet, despite Andrews' claim to have "combat ready" fighters "in the highest possible state of readiness" when the "Get in the air now!" command came, the fighters still were not fully ready to take off. They had ammunition for "hot" guns. But AIM-9 missiles were located in a bunker on the other side of the base, and even though base commanders began the process of loading them shortly after 9:00, they still weren't finished until about 40 minutes later. The next two fighters to take off from Andrews after Major Billy Hutchison were only armed only with "hot" guns and 511 rounds of "TP"—nonexplosive training rounds. [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/9/02] Even though the Secret Service and NORAD had long been sharing a conference call by this time, NORAD officials claim they remained unaware that the Secret Service ordered any planes into the air from Andrews. [NORAD Testimony, 5/23/03]

The Sharing of Information
But the communication problems at Andrews were hardly unique. In his May 2003 testimony, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta claimed that about 9:25 or 9:26, a few minutes after his arrival at the bunker beneath the White House, he overheard an aide tell Vice President Cheney that a hijacked plane headed toward Washington was 50 miles away, then 30 miles away (judging by the speed of the plane it would have been 50 miles from Washington around 9:27). [Norman Mineta Testimony, 5/23/03, Washington Post, 1/27/02, ABC News, 9/11/02] When the plane was announced to be 10 miles away, the aide asked the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?" Cheney replied, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?" Mineta inferred that the order was an order to shoot down the plane. [Norman Mineta Testimony, 5/23/03]

Unbelievably, in his May 2003 testimony, NORAD Commander Larry Arnold doubts Flight 77 would have been shot down, because even at that point, it was only "through hindsight that we are certain that this was a coordinated attack on the United States." [NORAD Testimony, 5/23/03] Perhaps at 9:38 a.m. Arnold was the only person in the US aware of the news who was still doubting the US was under attack!

In any case, if Cheney did order Flight 77 shot down, none of the pilots from either Langley or Andrews appear to have been aware of any such orders! In fact, at this time there were no fighters near Washington to carry out those orders. But, one article points out, "If the airliner had approached much nearer to the White House it might have been shot down by the Secret Service, who are believed to have a battery of ground-to-air Stinger missiles ready to defend the president's home." [Telegraph, 9/16/01] Given that Flight 77 made a near 360 degree turn over Washington and that the Pentagon is only two miles from the White House [CBS News, 9/21/01], why wasn't it shot down by those missiles, if Cheney had already given the order to bring down the plane?

Since the FAA said Flight 77 was headed toward Washington at 9:24, and Cheney and Mineta knew of Flight 77's progress from at least 50 miles away, it's strange that other reports suggest that the Washington flight controllers weren't aware of the plane until much later. One Washington flight controller has claimed she was the first to notice Flight 77 when it was about 12 to 14 miles away, and Cheney learned of it only after that. [ABC, 10/24/01, ABC, 10/24/01 (B)] The head Washington flight controller claimed the Secret Service first alerted his tower of a hijacked plane coming his way, when it was only five miles away. [USA Today, 8/12/02] According to another account, flight controllers detected it just before 9:30, and told the Secret Service. [USA Today, 8/13/02] Another account stated radar detected Flight 77 30 miles away at 9:30 and yet another account claimed 9:33. [CBS News, 9/21/01, New York Times, 10/16/01] If Washington flight control's radar didn't detect Flight 77 from 9:24 and before, then whose radar did?

We know NORAD was officially notified that Flight 77 was headed toward Washington at 9:24, and FAA Administrator Jane Garvey claimed a conference call had discussed Flight 77 well before that. But it wasn't until well after the Pentagon was hit at 9:38 that the order was given to evacuate likely Washington targets such as the White House, the Capitol Building, State Department, or the Pentagon. [CNN, 9/16/01] Had Flight 77 hit the Capitol Building instead of the Pentagon, most Senators and Congresspeople would still have been inside. [AP, 8/19/02] (Would be twentieth hijacker Ramzi bin al-Shbih later revealed that the Capitol Building was the target for Flight 93.) [Guardian, 9/9/02] Supposedly even Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his top aides in their Pentagon offices remained unaware of any danger until the Pentagon was actually hit, even though the conference call was being run out of the National Military Command Center inside the Pentagon itself! [Newsday, 9/23/01, Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/02, CNN, 9/4/02, ABC News, 9/11/02] Why did Cheney and others track Flight 77 getting closer and closer to Washington, and fail to give any evacuation orders? How many of the 125 people killed inside the Pentagon could have been saved?

Flight 93
Flight 93 had to wait in a line of planes before it could take off, delaying its departure about 40 minutes until 8:42 a.m. [Newsweek, 9/22/01, USA Today, 8/12/02] As a result, it was the last of the four planes to be hijacked. The FAA told NORAD at 9:16 that Flight 93 was hijacked [CNN, 9/17/01, NORAD Testimony, 5/23/03], but it's not clear why they believed this because the transponder wasn't turned off until about 9:30 or 9:40 and the flight didn't go off course until much later. [9:30, MSNBC, 9/3/02, 9:40, CNN, 9/17/01] (Edited transcripts of cockpit voice recordings have been released for every plane but Flight 93. [New York Times, 10/16/01, New York Times, 10/16/01 (B), New York Times, 10/16/01 (C), New York Times, 10/16/01 (D)])

Much of the timing surrounding Flight 93 has not been released, or is in dispute. For instance, NORAD maintains the plane crashed at 10:03 [NORAD, 9/18/01, NORAD Testimony, 5/23/03], even though a seismic study commissioned by the US Army determined the plane crashed five seconds after 10:06. [US Army Authorized Seismic Study, Philadelphia Daily News, 9/16/02] Even more mysterious is when, or even if, fighters flew toward Flight 93. NORAD's first timeline failed to give this information, except to say that a fighter was 100 miles or 11 minutes away when Flight 93 crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside. [NORAD, 9/18/01] That means the fighter was traveling about 550 mph. As with the fighters going after Flight 77, that seems strangely slow, considering the first fighters dispatched to New York City an hour earlier flew twice as fast.

That statistic also means that the fighters had only gone about 80 miles from Washington when Flight 93 crashed. If we assume the slow 550 mph speed was correct and constant, that means the fighters left Washington about eight minutes before the crash, or 9:58.

Think about the implications of that. Even before Flight 93 was hijacked at 9:16, the nations' defenses were in an uproar, with base commanders all over the country calling in, asking to help. Yet, incredibly, about 42 minutes passed before even anyone sent any fighters toward the hijacked Flight 93!

End Part VII