
‘We May Have to Shoot Down This Aircraft’ - Tomte
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/05/911-oral-history-flight-93-book-excerpt-228001
======
dredmorbius
This is a phenomenal oral history of the events, learning of, and response to
the events of 9/11.

If an emergency is a circumstance in which _ongoing realities are emergent_
and aren't predictable based on previous experience or world-models, this is a
phenomenal example of those dynamics.

 _Commander Anthony Barnes: That first hour was mass confusion because there
was so much erroneous information. It was hard to tell what was fact and what
wasn’t. We couldn’t confirm much of this stuff, so we had to take it on face
value until proven otherwise._

I've long maintained that the first signs of a disaster tend to be:

\- Information doesn't add up.

\- Communications are completely severed.

\- Old models of understanding don't apply.

\- Old filters or sources of information don't apply, and information overload
is experienced _because it 's not clear what to ignore or what to trust._

Our world models give us the means to _process_ and _parse_ information, but
also, critically, _let us discard extraneous information at little or no
cost_. When we're placed in unfamiliar or extraordinary circumstances,
"foreign territory" as Col. Bob Maar put it, old models do not hold.

Very powerful reading.

~~~
sopooneo
I'm going to piggy-back on this about a certain way information may not add
up. I live in Boston, and so do my siblings. We all worked downtown. On the
day of the marathon bombing, I immediately called my sister on her cell phone
to see if she was okay. Someone that _was not_ my sister picked up, then
immediatly hung up after I said who I was looking for.

I was immediately terrified. What if my sister had been hurt, dropped her
phone, and it was now in the hands of an opportunistic lowlife? But no. That
wasn't it at all. It was instead, that the overloaded cell network, instead of
just failing to connect my call, instead, _mis_ connected it.

That was a failure mode I had not predicted. In the end, all my people were
fine. But I was shaken. And of course, many other people were not fine.

~~~
Noctem
Wow, I've never heard of that happening. If anyone knows, I'd love to hear a
technical explanation of how and why that could occur.

~~~
tialaramex
I don't have a technical explanation for how call misrouting can happen except
to observe that the endpoints are entirely reliant on the network to get this
right, they don't even tell each other "Hi I'm X trying to call Y" and "Hi I'm
Y answering a call from X".

On Strowger electro-mechanical exchanges one of the nice features is that a
random piece of the exchange handles each dialed call. This means the human
intuitive approach of "Huh, that didn't work, I'll hang up and try again"
actually had a pretty good chance of success if the problem is an electrical
fault or something rather than you wrote the number down incorrectly.

I did have a morning once where every call I received was for a business in a
Welsh village (I live in England) and the callers were as confused as I was
that they'd reached a personal mobile phone instead. The problem resolved
itself before it made me annoyed rather than confused.

~~~
Agentlien
I have a friend who, for a few months, had a really strange thing going on
with his phone. Any time his phone was off, calls to him would be redirected
to someone else. It was another person from the same city, but using a
different carrier.

Me, my friend and other friends of his called both companies to report the
error multiple times. All we received was scorn and disbelief. We were told,
repeatedly, that it simply couldn't happen. But it did, consistently.

It felt really silly when it got to the stage where I'd call my friend,
someone else picked up and I'd go "Oh, hi, it's me again". One day, it just
stopped happening.

~~~
NullPrefix
Did he check if call forwarding was activated?

~~~
Agentlien
According to customer service it wasn't and they said they didn't allow it
anyway to that other company's network. And hence, they didn't believe us when
we said it was happening.

This was circa 2006

------
throwbrow
I was riding the 7 train from Astoria, Queens, to my job at the big Citigroup
tower in Long Island City. It was after the first plane hit and, with the 7
being an outdoor subway line with a great view of the Manhattan skyline, we in
the first car could see the gaping hole and smoke billowing. I assumed it was
an accident. When I got to work I said dismissively to colleagues, “That must
be the dumbest pilot ever.” We went up to the top floor of the 40-something
floor building to watch. Not too long after, the second plane hit and we knew
it was no accident. They evacuated the building and sent us all home. Riding
the 7 train back and all the passengers shocked and exchanging what they’d
hears. Someone said there were planes headed for DC. The 7 stopped at Queens
Plaza. End of service, out of abundance of caution for NYC subways. We were
all standing on the platform looking at the towers burning. Then we saw the
first one collapse. Straight down in a cloud of smoke.

For me, native New Yorker, the skyscrapers are like our heart. Someone cut our
heart out. I thought nothing would ever be the same. Months later I felt so
panicky on subways, thinking something awful was bound to happen again. The
way things snapped back to near normalcy just a few years later was something
I never anticipated. Neither did I foresee the way this event would be used to
justify an illegal invasion if Iraq just a few years later. I felt and still
feel disgusted by how this tragedy has been exploited. But I guess that’s
politics.

~~~
jacobush
I was working on a large airport in Europe, on-site. We got notice that US-
bound planes were diverted to turn back over the Atlantic and come back to us.
Then the news started trickling in. I _immediately_ thought "they are going to
hit Iraq for this".

~~~
juped
Why would you think that?

~~~
jacobush
I just thought that Bush had a score to settle and now there would be no
friction to do that. It may have been completely wrong, but that was my
instant thought.

------
mabbo
> We didn’t have [missiles] on board to shoot the airplane down. As we were
> putting on our flight gear in the life support shop, Sass looked at me and
> said, “I’ll ram the cockpit.” I made the decision I would take the tail off
> the aircraft

> I genuinely believed that was going to be the last time I took off. If we
> did it right, this would be it.

\- Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney

That leaves me just speechless and chilled. I'd like to think I have that kind
of bravery in me but I hope I never have to find out.

~~~
philwelch
What's also chilling, when you think about it a little more, is that a group
of civilian passengers made more or less the same decision, _and that 's the
reason these fighter pilots survived the day_.

~~~
dTal
There's no evidence the passengers suicided. They were attempting to save
themselves. There was a struggle in the cockpit, and the aircraft crashed. It
may even have been that the _terrorists_ crashed the plane when they realized
they weren't going to make it to their target.

This meme is unhealthy, and disrepectful to the fallen.

~~~
mkl
There is no meme. There is no disrespect. There is no claim of suicide in that
comment.

Both the passengers and the fighter pilots were willing to do whatever it took
to prevent the plane being used to kill a lot more people on the ground. The
passengers' phone calls in the article suggest they knew they were likely to
die whether acting or not, and as it happened they acted before the fighters
could intercept. The article includes conversation of the hijackers in the
cockpit deciding to take the plane down before the passengers could get
control back.

~~~
bluntfang
>Both the passengers and the fighter pilots were willing to do whatever it
took to prevent the plane being used to kill a lot more people on the ground.

considering all the passengers are dead, you can't make that claim. We'd all
love to believe the passengers were selfless, and it definitely made for a
great movie, but pretending like we knew what their intentions were is
disingenuous at best.

~~~
mkl
We have the phone call information. The passengers knew the fate of the other
planes, and decided to try and regain control to avoid that. This is clear
from the phone calls. They weren't selfless at all; they were trying to save
their own lives.

I don't think there's anything disingenuous or speculative in what I'm saying.
I'm being very general and going by the article's phone call information (I
haven't seen that movie).

------
cantrevealname
The article has photos from inside the bunker during the actual crisis. Who
took the pictures? It seems that VP Cheney’s official photographer went into
the bunker with him: _On July 24, 2015, the National Archives and Records
Administration released 356 photos shot on Sept. 11, 2001, by Vice President
Dick Cheney’s official photographer David Bohrer. The publication was the
result of a decade-long fight by Frontline to gain access to the images._ [1]

[1] [https://time.com/3975126/dick-
cheney-9-11-photos/](https://time.com/3975126/dick-cheney-9-11-photos/)

~~~
kristofferR
Interesting to know that Robert Mueller was in the room.

~~~
EForEndeavour
Mueller officially became FBI Director on September 4, 2001, so his presence
isn't surprising.

------
ryacko
[http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete...](http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_9/11=dayOf911)
Another timeline of events

Training exercises, surprising number of red flags ignored.

According to a quote from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleen_Rowley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleen_Rowley)

>During the early aftermath of September 11th, when I happened to be
recounting the pre–September 11th events concerning the Moussaoui
investigation to other FBI personnel in other divisions or in FBIHQ, almost
everyone's first question was "Why?—Why would an FBI agent(s) deliberately
sabotage a case? (I know I shouldn't be flippant about this, but jokes were
actually made that the key FBI HQ personnel had to be spies or moles like
Robert Hanssen who were actually working for Osama Bin Laden to have so
undercut Minneapolis's effort.)

------
zuppy
I have a book recommendation that completes this article:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/148775](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/148775)

It is called “The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland”
and it tells the story of how after the US air space has been shut down the
wonderful people of Newfoundland managed to host 7000 people that were forced
to land in there, in a town of 10000.

~~~
lonelappde
Also hit musical

wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_from_Away

------
Despegar
The 9/11 tapes are pretty chilling.

[http://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/...](http://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/08/nyregion/911-tapes.html)

------
rmason
I was headed downtown to my startup's office when I heard a radio newscast. I
don't even know why I had my radio on as it was a pretty short drive.

I immediately went in and started checking the web. It gave me a little more
information. Fifteen minutes later when my developer showed up you couldn't
bring up any news site on the web.

Guy from across the hall had a TV and he invited all of us in the building to
watch. We watched the TV for around an hour and at that point we all made the
decision to call it a day.

Got home and think I watched TV for the next 14 hours or so. After a while
there was no new information, they just kept repeating themselves on every
news channel. I can remember just feeling numb. It was just so unexpected to
see the US attacked.

My father said it was worse than Pearl Harbor. People at that time expected
war was coming. Most American's at the time had never even heard of Pearl
Harbor, much less Hawaii. This was in our living rooms and it was New York and
Washington. Now I measure everything in pre-9-11 and post 9-11 because things
changed that dramatically.

~~~
dredmorbius
A lot of the Web wasn't geared for high load. Information was developing so
rapidly that online was really the only effective place to go for information
(such as it was -- there was rampant speculation). Many sites rapidly slimmed
down their services and offered lightweight versions. A few lighter-weight
sites remained up, notably, at the time, Slashdot.

NPR refers to 9/11 as the event which made clear that the network needed to
have full capabilities to broadcast from a secondary location, and began
planning for its west-coast hub (in Los Angeles) shortly after. Its flagship
news programmes are now co-anchored from both Washington and Los Angeles.

~~~
zuppy
This is something that I’ve completely forgotten until now. I remember all the
major news sites were down and when they came back up, there were only simple
html pages. It took a while before they restored to a slimmed down version. I
have a memory of a picture on a news article that I can’t forget: there were
tens of ambulances one behind another on a boulevard, waiting in line to help
people.

~~~
ianhawes
I also remember several cable channels (non-news) entirely shut off
programming for a few days after.

~~~
dredmorbius
Both broadcast transmission and network distribution were severely impacted by
loss of the towers, and other disruptions to NYC.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> I asked the vice president that question and he answered it in the
affirmative. I asked again to be sure. “Sir, I am confirming that you have
given permission?” For me, being a military member and an
aviator—understanding the absolute depth of what that question was and what
that answer was—I wanted to make sure that there was no mistake whatsoever
about what was being asked. Without hesitation, in the affirmative, he said
any confirmed hijacked airplane may be engaged and shot down.

I have a faint recollection of Dick Cheney and who he was. I find it easy to
believe that the reason he did not hesitate was because his own person was in
mortal danger from the airliner in question.

I think a leader responsible for the lives of people on the air and on the
ground both, would find it very hard to make a decision to condemn one group
to save the other, even if one group was condemned already. I mean, it's not
for nothing that the Trolley Problem and Sophie's choice, etc are such well-
known ethical conundrum examples.

But when it comes to saving one's own bacon- the decision is much simpler.

Is this comment too cynical?

~~~
heliodor
You're jumping to conclusions based on incomplete information and your
existing point of view.

Refer to [https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/were-the-
onl...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/were-the-only-plane-
in-the-sky-214230)

Quote:

Karl Rove: Andy and I are there with the president. The president gets this
call from Cheney—we didn’t know who it was at the time, we just knew the phone
rang. He said “yes,” then there was a pause as he listened. Then another
“yes.” You had an unreal sense of time that whole day. I don’t know whether it
was 10 seconds or two minutes. Then he said, “You have my authorization.” Then
he listens for a while longer. He closes off the conversation. He turns to us
and says that he’s just authorized the shoot-down of hijacked airliners.

------
acqq
The required read is also the written statement of the planners of the attack
(the copy of pdf on Penn Law):

[https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/5964-d-101-islamic-
resp...](https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/5964-d-101-islamic-response-to-
the-chargespdf)

"killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding
back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our
religion. These actions are our offerings to God."

They really tried hard to be very clean about their motives there.

Covered by

NYT 2009:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/us/10gitmo.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/us/10gitmo.html)

The Guardian 2009: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/10/guantanamo-
det...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/10/guantanamo-detainees-
september-11-2001)

The document is also on the Smoking Gun:
[http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/terrorists-
bone](http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/terrorists-bone)

~~~
Udik
You forgot the first part:

"America is the number one, and the largest country in the world, in spreading
military might and terrorism. Also, America is the principle and greatest
supplier to the occupying terrorist state of Israel in Palestine. Also,
America supports and finances the terrorist regimes that govern the countries
ofthe Arab world, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan."

~~~
acqq
What you call “the first part” is actually the start of the last chapter of
all, and which continues with:

“We ask to be near to God, we fight you and destroy you and terrorize you. The
Jihad in god's cause is a great duty in our religion. We have news for you,
the news is: You will be greatly defeated in Afghanistan and Iraq and that
America will fall, politically, militarily, and economically. Your end is very
near and your fall will be just as the fall of the towers on the blessed 9/11
day. We will raise from the ruins, God willing. We will leave this
imprisonment with our noses raised high in dignity, as the lion emerges from
his den. We shall pass over the blades of the sword into the gates of heaven.”

It’s worth reading in full to understand how they think and what their beliefs
are.

------
dghughes
I remember working that day (a cool and sunny Tuesday) and each place I went
to I asked them to turn on the TV. Nobody was interested in turning on the TV
or even changing the channel to any news channel.

What I thought had happened was a large aircraft accidentally ran into the
Empire State building again like had happened many years ago.

~~~
zeta0134
I was in the 7th grade, and in my Texas History class in the morning when the
news hit. We had a television system that would play news broadcasts for the
whole school to start off each morning, and as soon as the news broke, the
administration turned those on and had all the classrooms tune in.

At first we thought it was a freak accident... and then we saw the second
plane hit.

"Shaken" is the word. It was all anyone could think about for the rest of the
day.

~~~
billti
“...rest of the day” seems like an understatement. I was living in Australia
at the time, never having lived in the U.S, and everyone was pretty shaken and
lost for words for a few days (at least in my circle and workplace).

~~~
girvo
My dad woke myself (an 11 year old) and my two brothers (5 and 6 respectively)
up, and explained what had happened. It was all we could talk about or focus
on, and school ground to a halt for most of that day

------
adventured
A companion story from Politico from September 2016:

"We're the Only Plane in the Sky"

"Where was the president in the eight hours after the Sept. 11 attacks? The
strange, harrowing journey of Air Force One, as told by the people who were on
board."

[https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/were-the-
onl...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/were-the-only-plane-
in-the-sky-214230)

~~~
basch
I came to post the same thing. Is it a new edition of the same book, or has
that article grown and grown into a new book just coming out?

It's interesting that the story from 2016 has the link to the new amazon book
at the top.

------
baybal2
I do remember listening news on the radio just a day or two after. Immediately
in my head, I thought "something Saudi happened."

A week after, when it finally got clear that those were indeed Saudis, I
though for myself "there is no way Saudis will be coming out of that now."

Few years later, still in my yearly teens, I kept catching myself in disbelief
of American logic. Not only did Americans spare the Saudis, but Washington
went out of its way and did every thing possible to extricate Riyadh from the
backlash.

Not only they came dry out of the water, _but they got out of that better off
than before._ US took down Saddam for them, and took upon the Ikhwan ul
Muslimin — the only thing in the world Saudis feared. Not to say they got much
higher diplomatic standing, and near free defence contracts as a result.
Anything like that would've been unthinkable before.

In 2004, I was reading a newspaper, and saw a big photo of Bush and some Saudi
prince enthusiastically shaking hands together, I was not able to contain my
laughter.

~~~
varjag
Osama bin Laden was not Saudi royal, his commoner family became rich in
construction business. It was precisely the alliance of Riyadh with the States
that motivated his jihad, so you are on the same page with him wrt American
assistance.

At the time of attack, he was a fugitive from the Kingdom for nearly a decade.

~~~
baybal2
> Osama bin Laden was not Saudi royal,

I think this was the first thing Saudi court told the Americans. Whomever
those guys were, they were integral to Saudi polity.

> It was precisely the alliance of Riyadh with the States that motivated his
> jihad.

Which did not preclude his affiliates from receiving money from "private"
officials in his "exile" well into mid-naughties. His close relatives were
continuing their life of minor socialites in the kingdom unimpeded up until
the point US started demeaning the head of his son and few brothers during
Obama.

The Bin Ladin clan is more than just alive and well in the kingdom. They were
the biggest bankrollers of the Saudi Royal Family, and still are.

~~~
varjag
There is no doubt about OBL provenance really, question is at which point you
associate the act of a (former) citizen with his country of origin.

One of the hijackers was Egyptian, can't remember ever hearing calls for
severing (substantial) American ties with Egypt off that. As reprehensible
Saudi regime was (and is, under the rule of bonesaw prince), saying that the
USA supports Saudi despite 911 is factually exactly backwards.

------
ranDOMscripts
I remember looking up and seeing a fighter jet circle the burning north tower
for what I thought was a reconnaissance mission but then watching it take off
across the Hudson and commenting to my colleagues that it must be on the hunt
for another plane. It's crazy to think they were on a kamikaze mission.

------
Balanceinfinity
In Washington DC on 9/11 - crisp autumn day. First thing I heard was when
someone poked their head into my office and said a plane had hit the twin
towers. I imagined some idiot in a Cessna. Things spiraled from there - from
my office window could see the smoke from the Pentagon. We heard rumors: the
Mall was on fire, there had been an explosion at the state department. We all
were terrified that the subways were next, so masses of people were walking to
their homes, like a great migration - everyone totally terrified and trying to
call their loved ones (cell phones were useless, and the internet had
completely crashed in our office). Now, crisp autumn days always bring me back
to 9/11.

------
gigatexal
Not sure I can read the article 9/11 was a traumatic experience for me. I
remember vividly where I was and what I was doing and who I called and
virtually everything about that day. I almost joined the military in response
such was my reaction.

~~~
smdyc1
I actually did, joined joined the Air Force 3 years later as soon as I turned
18. Only recently got out after 10 years. I was on holiday at the time with my
family, and we saw the first news at at a train station when we were waiting
for a connection. It had a tremendous impact on me at the time. Once we got to
our hotel, we were glued to the TV 10 hours afterwards, and I can vividly
remember the horror of watching replay after replay of those planes hitting
the towers.

~~~
gigatexal
That’s awesome!

Thank you for your service.

What are you up to now? I hear the job market for people with clearance that
you likely have is pretty lucrative.

~~~
smdyc1
Well I got myself an Information Technology degree and I'm working as a
product manager for a Saas product that supports the building industry. Really
different environment. I like it, but still miss the Air Force.

------
FartyMcFarter
I can't be the only one who, after 9/11, had recurring nightmares about trying
to evacuate from a building that had been hit by a plane? They have stopped
some years ago, but lasted for quite a few years.

That said, the most dangerous thing is what society does to itself as a
response to terrorism fears. Terrorism needs to be kept in perspective, as
it's far from the biggest danger facing us.

------
jakeogh
38min of news footage from the day:
[http://s3.amazonaws.com/nasathermalimages/public/video/prete...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/nasathermalimages/public/video/pretext.mov)
(Win users may need vlc: [https://videolan.org](https://videolan.org))

------
MrGilbert
I just came home, and my mom had the TV running, saying that "there is
something going on in New York". I remember seeing the burning tower, and
heard the voice in the TV say something like "a plane hit the tower". My first
thought was that this wasn't an accident, but that a fighter jet might have
attacked this building. Then the events unfolded, and the next day in school,
I remember our history teacher saying something like "I was up all night - as
most of you probably too, trying to grasp every bit of information you can
get." We feared the response these events might cause.

I was 15 years old at that time, and I remember precisely what I did. I was
born, raised, and still live in Western Europe.

------
paxys
So weird to see such a detailed article on the critical moments after the
attack which basically doesn't even mention the President.

~~~
dredmorbius
The article is a book exerpt, essentially a chapter of a larger work.

The chapter addressing the President, then in Florida, has been posted
elsewhere in this thread, it's here:

[https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/were-the-
onl...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/were-the-only-plane-
in-the-sky-214230)

~~~
AceJohnny2
offtopic:

Where do you blog nowadays? Haven't followed you since G+ went down and you
dropped Reddit too. You don't seem overly active on Mastodon either?

~~~
dredmorbius
Mostly Mastodon, actually. My posts are usually unlisted, so not on the home
stream, but you should see them if you follow me there.

[https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius](https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius)

There's a new blog coming ... eventually. On Gitlab.

------
m0zg
I thought it was an elaborate prank and it wasn't really happening. My first
thought literally was "someone is pranking us with CGI". It was just too
unbelievable to really absorb. I only realized it really was happening when I
discovered it was on all the channels, and when the second tower got hit.

This will go down in history as the most unbelievable screwup of three letter
US agencies ever. It came out recently that Russian intelligence took the
extraordinary step of warning the US a few days before 9/11 that shit was
about to go down. Putin literally called Dubya and told him. He was ignored.

Source:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=bo5xDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT32&dq=%2...](https://books.google.com/books?id=bo5xDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT32&dq=%22Putin+had+telephoned+President+Bush%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj668Wn7brkAhVsuVkKHQ36CgIQ6AEwAHoECAAQAg#v=onepage&q=%22Putin%20had%20telephoned%20President%20Bush%22&f=false)

~~~
colordrops
Considering the nature of the rest of the comments in this thread, I'm sure
this will be completely taboo. There is a strong argument that the three
letter agencies let this happen to further the agendas of the monied elite,
and the media owned by that same elite class did everything they could to bury
the truth. I don't expect this comment to last long here, but it's it no way
an absurd assessment of the nature of the event. It's a really sad state of
affairs that mentioning straight forward truths about how the monied and
powerful control narratives and start wars will get you buried and ostracized.

~~~
opan
Can you tell me more? Any guesses to how it furthered agendas? It certainly
changed stuff like airport security. I could see it being allowed to happen to
make people take the war on terror more seriously. It would depend on how much
of the current state of things could be predicted to determine reasoning. I'm
sure even in the internet age there is plenty of forbidden knowledge.

~~~
AndrewBissell
The "war on terror" has served as justification for:

\- permanent mass surveillance of global communications

\- total governmental control and visibility into fiat money financial
transactions

\- endless U.S. participation in or support for military campaigns in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Syria, and the concomitant
trillions spent on military hardware and services

\- increasingly lawless privacy intrusions at U.S. border crossings

\- a huge cottage industry of corrupt dealings as detailed in the WikiLeaks
dumps

It's not even necessary to believe any conspiracy theories to recognize that
the events of 9/11 lent direct support to a multitude of imperialist and
corporatist agendas.

~~~
m0zg
You make it sound like all this stuff started with "war on terror". The US has
been at war (and overthrowing governments) ever since WW2. And I'd be
seriously surprised if the government did not have "total visibility" into
non-cash financial transactions, phone calls, and internet traffic well before
2001.

~~~
bradknowles
Go re-read all the Snowden leaks. Many of those systems (or versions of them)
were in operation for at least a decade before 2001.

~~~
m0zg
I assumed as much. I think you're responding to the parent.

------
fit2rule
Its one thing to read this story and understand the tragedy that occurred on
that day.

But its another thing to understand the tragedy that has been standard fare
for hundreds of thousands of people around the world, every day, as Americas
illegal wars continue.

One bomb dropped every twenty minutes for the last twenty years, is the
context we need to understand - mostly on innocent people.

Americans cannot ask for sympathy while ignoring their own aggression. It is
high time for the war criminals that put us in this position to feel justice.
That means Cheney, it means Bush, and it means Rice. America has become a
criminal thug nation, and its people callously ignore the victims of America's
illegal wars while demanding justice for the blowback suffered by the entire
country on 9/11.

If 9/11 upsets you, consider Mosul. Consider All Raqqah and Aleppo and
Baghdad. These places have suffered 100x worse than any New Yorker ever did.
And the reason it continues is because the American people don't have the
_courage_ to face the truth: America has illegally invaded, and utterly
destroyed, civilization around the world.

------
Wildgoose
What amazed me was how quickly the responsible parties were identified. Just
about the only website that kept up in England was Slashdot and the
discussions about who and what was happening very rapidly provided the
disparate pieces of information required.

Truly the Wisdom of Crowds.

------
SiempreViernes
I'm surprised the national guard apparently hasn't trained for combat
operations within mainland airspace, I though at least the national guard was
an actual _defensive_ force, and not an _expeditionary_ one.

------
stef25
Obligatory reading: The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Looming_Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Looming_Tower)

Important name in this event in Ali Soufan.

The amount of conspiracy theories here are surprising.

~~~
lostlogin
It’s a good tv series too.

------
mkipfer
I could hardly imagine taking flight in a jet to potentially intercept one of
the suspect planes knowing that your only options were to aim for the tail or
the cockpit. Knowing that you were acting as a type of kamikaze. Chilling.
That thought was barely on my mind during the day on 9/11 as a 6th grader. I
still get chills thinking about it.

~~~
gerbilly
People who fly jets are a different breed.

My dad witnessed the snowbirds crash at an airshow over lake Ontario.

They give boats a cordon that they are supposed to stay out of, but
enforcement had become lax, so people would bring their boats in close for a
better view.

When the crash happened one of the pilots, whose plane was damaged beyond
control, flew it straight into the lake instead of ejecting to avoid hitting
the boats.

See: [https://www.upi.com/Archives/1989/09/04/Crash-witnesses-
Vali...](https://www.upi.com/Archives/1989/09/04/Crash-witnesses-Valiant-
pilot-averted-catastrophe/7406620884800/)

------
not2b
Dick Cheney basically pulled off a coup that day. George W Bush wasn't
incapacitated. He never put Cheney in charge. But Cheney just took over. He
started giving orders and everyone else was too stunned to do anything but
follow.

~~~
cryptonector
It wasn't even a coup attempt because no one, but no one, thought of it as
such then, as as soon as POTUS was back in town, no one, but no one,
challenged his authority. A coup attempt would have ended with the VP in
chains or the President deposed.

No, this was an emergency that everyone was unprepared for, so they winged it.
And they did alright, even though it was utter chaos. If the President has
been at the WH, or in good enough communication with the WH, I'm pretty sure
the VP would not have been anything like "in command", though the President
might have delegated some authority to him. As it was, POTUS had to get to AF1
first, then in the air, and probably a lot of work had to be done to get
connectivity back to the WH makeshift situation room.

You have to go back to Reagan getting shot for something just slightly closer
to a coup attempt, when the Secretary State ran around saying he was in charge
(but no one gave him the time of day). That must have looked rather strange to
a lot of people, but since no one took him seriously, and since it wasn't that
long after the JFK assassination, which meant everyone remembered the basic
chain of succession, the fact that no one took Alexander seriously was exactly
as it should have been. Alexander, however, really had no clue, and showed he
was not capable in a crisis.

------
ummonk
_Nearly every American above a certain age remembers precisely where they were
on September 11, 2001_

False: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/911-memory-
accura...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/911-memory-accuracy/)

~~~
lstamour
Actually the article says that little details like the order of events or
where the president was where the parts that folks get wrong. It’s not like
I’m going to forget or incorrectly remember that I was in a class at school
when it happened and we tuned in live to a TV in a classroom next door that
happened to have cable. And how everyone assumed for the first hour or so that
it was just this tragic, tragic accident. Now if you asked me, who was I with,
or what did I do later that day, or who was the first person I spoke to...
well, that’s where I might have false memories. I “know” I called my parents
and was emotionally shaken for weeks after, scared (sometimes even now) of
working in really tall buildings or those that might be a target, and that
even now, I’m less likely to suggest or hold meetings on Sept 11, as
conversationally I know it will distract folks. Whether my memories are 56%
accurate or 86% accurate doesn’t matter that much, I know how I felt and
that’s what counts. :)

~~~
lordnacho
Why would your teachers interrupt class to show you some banal accident? This
seems to have happened a lot, according to the comments here. Why on earth
would you stop class to show the kids something on TV, ever? Would it not make
sense to either send them home due to security concerns, or just finish the
school day and let them find out the news later?

~~~
lstamour
Finish the school day? In Eastern US time zone, it was in the morning, and
actually started just before class, near the start of the day. Folks had
arrived early, somebody heard about it from somebody else and rushed to get a
TV so we could watch it live. At the time, it wasn’t entirely determined to be
a “banal accident”, it was, well, it was live news more than anything.
Everyone was glued to the screen as folks were trying to figure out what was
going on. There were reports of a plane off course, and frankly what ran
through some people’s minds were, “are we next?” The cellphone grid was
strained to capacity not just in New York but just about everywhere, there was
this palpable sense that the world had changed in some kind of fundamental
way. It hadn’t, not really, but it was a shock.

You know on movies where they show the world ending, or devastation or even
the atomic bomb’s aftermath, etc. It was that kind of “I can’t stop watching,”
going on, where you know the likelihood it will affect your life directly in a
negative way is pretty low, but you want to know more, see what happens next,
or if it will affect you too.

It’s maybe a bit different now — we’re overwhelmed with so many information
sources that... it’s possible the modern day equivalent is all being on the
same Reddit thread or Twitter feed or live stream of an event.

Generally classrooms are meant to be a mixture of real events and things you
can learn from them. If I recall correctly, this was an art class, or maybe an
English class, but a humanities class of some kind, and so part of the
activity was actually meant for conversation afterward. But... it unfolded in
a much more dramatic way, and ... I think had there been more evidence that it
was a criminal act from the start, we might not have—-ah, well, the use of
airplanes as weapons was entirely new. What can I say, it sounds like any
other event now, and somehow less shocking than people using IEDs, vehicular
homicide, mass shootings or unjust violence, but... it unfolding live in the
largest city in the world, the centre of finance, it... was still a horrendous
act. The tragedy was only made worse by what followed in “revenge” and the
changes to laws that we still live under today. I remember thinking a year
previously that there’s no way 1984 could happen as I’d read it, and then I
re-read it around a decade later and discovered it had already happened,
partly thanks to Prism and other intelligence agency sharing agreements we’d
been living under for years. The biggest shame is that folks knew about it in
advance and yet we didn’t even have safely locked cockpit doors at the time.
Who would have thought that hijackers wouldn’t simply want to send the plane
somewhere else but to...

~~~
lordnacho
It's more that I'm surprised the school would let news take over their
schedule. If a tower in NYC is on fire, that doesn't seem to be enough to
justify it. When the second plane hits, sure. But even then, if you live far
from NYC, why make the kids watch that? I mean are there other events that
your teachers would make you watch?

