U.S. unprepared to deal with Sept. 11 attacks, panel says

WASHINGTON - As four hijacked planes bore down on Washington and New York on Sept. 11, 2001, military and civilian officials in charge of securing the nation's skies were wholly unprepared, unable to communicate with one another or with people in their own agencies, the bipartisan commission investigating the attacks said yesterday.

The confusion was such that at one point that morning, according to a commission report, Vice President Dick Cheney mistakenly thought his order to shoot down hijacked planes had been carried out. Cheney told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, "It's my understanding they've already taken a couple of aircraft out."

Cheney was unaware that even before he issued the orders, all four had already crashed.

In some of the most haunting moments of yesterday's testimony, panel staff members played excerpts from air traffic control audiotapes. On one, Ziad Jarrah, a hijacker piloting United Airlines Flight 93, tells passengers in a calm, accented voice:

"Uh, is the captain. Would like you all to remain seated. There is a bomb on board and are going back to the airport, and to have our demands [unintelligible.] Please remain quiet."

On another, commissioners listened as an FAA employee and official struggled with what to do. An employee from the Cleveland control center, monitoring American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, phoned FAA headquarters for instructions.

"Uh, do we want to think about, uh, scrambling aircraft?" the employee asked.

The official replied, "Uh, God, I don't know."

The crisis caught military and civilian aviation officials by surprise, investigators found, with no adequate system or instructions to help stage a coordinated defense. The result was confusion and miscommunication.

"A lot of things about this story make us nervous," said former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean, the Republican chairman of the commission. "There was a real problem with communication. And a lot of people who should have been in the loop weren't in the loop."

Many of the major decisions that day, such as grounding all commercial aircraft and scrambling fighter jets to try to intercept the hijacked planes, were made largely by quick-thinking midlevel employees. The employees acted even though they were unsure they had authority to issue such orders.

Disorder was widespread. Panel investigators found that, contrary to impressions left by the Defense Department, fighter pilots did not believe they had the authority to shoot down a commercial airliner and never had any real chance of intercepting the planes.

Defense officials had asserted in previous testimony that military jets were prepared to engage the last of the four hijacked planes, United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. But investigators said they were "not so sure" this was true, saying their evidence indicates that the military had not known of the existence of Flight 93.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, which oversees the nation's air defense, had been trying to locate what the report called a "phantom" American Airlines flight that the command thought was headed for the capital. The flight turned out to be American Airlines Flight 11, which had hit the World Trade Center in New York nearly an hour earlier.

As news broke of the attacks, President Bush was visiting a Florida classroom. Cheney, from the White House, incorrectly told Rumsfeld that military jets had downed "a couple of aircraft." Rumsfeld replied: "We can't confirm that. We're told that one aircraft is down, but we do not have a pilot report that they did it."

The shoot-down order, which both Cheney and Bush insisted originated with Bush, never made it to the pilots. The pilots told investigators that their commanders told them only to track and monitor any planes.

Bush also told the commission he had been "frustrated" by his inability to communicate continuously with staff in Washington while traveling from the classroom to Air Force One. At one point, he used an unsecure cell phone to get through. He said improvements in communications, from the presidential limousine and Air Force One, were among his priorities after the attacks.

In releasing yesterday the last of 17 reports on the attacks, commission investigators concluded that a few moments of clarity during the crisis arose once midlevel employees circumvented higher-ups.

In one example, the Federal Aviation Administration's frustrated air traffic control center in Boston bypassed its chain of command and called the nearest military base responsible for air defense. In doing so, the Boston center gave the military the longest warning it would have that day - nine minutes - about a hijacked plane.

"We have a problem here," the Boston center warned as Flight 11 flew toward the World Trade Center. "We have a hijacked aircraft headed toward New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out."

Midlevel military personnel at the regional base, the Northeast Air Defense Sector, immediately ordered two F-15 alert aircraft "to battle stations." Senior military personnel at the Pentagon, meanwhile, were only beginning to organize a multiagency teleconference to discuss the situation.

In response, Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, who was head of the air command, told the battle commander at the base to "go ahead and scramble the airplanes," noting that they would "get permission later."

But they were too late to stop the New York attacks. The first plane, American Airlines Flight 11, hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m.

Midlevel employees at the Boston center made a second key judgment call - to alert all aircraft in its Northeast area about the unfolding events and to warn pilots to "heighten cockpit security," the report says. Pilots on United Flight 175, the second plane hijacked, apparently received that message just moments before the hijackers burst into the cockpit.

Despite the Boston center's urging to officials at the FAA's national command center in Herndon, Va., to send out a similar warning to all aircraft nationwide, investigators said no such warning was issued.

Hijackers took over Flight 93 at 9:38 - 22 minutes after the command center received the request to warn pilots to lock their doors.

Testifying yesterday, two former FAA officials - Benedict Sliney, a former operations manager, and John White, a former facility manager - said they were unaware of that request.

Several commissioners criticized the FAA's performance on Sept. 11, with one, former Navy Secretary John Lehman, calling it a "real inescapable failure."

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