Questions for Miles Kara on NORAD (and Other) Exercises by Erik Larson
Greetings Miles Kara, and welcome to the blogosphere!
As the History Commons contributor ‘paxvector’ who’s been scanning and uploading NARA’s 9/11 Commission records to Scribd.com/HistoryCommons (including many of yours), your public expression of gratitude for the project is appreciated.
I am very interested in your blog, 9/11 Revisited, and that you’re responding to questions from the public. With your knowledge from having served on the Commission’s staff as a member of Team 8, you may be able to settle some of the unanswered questions and speculation regarding 9/11.
I’ve compiled a list of questions and posted this as an open letter to you at my blog, 911Reports.com; Questions for Miles Kara on NORAD (and Other) Exercises. Your responses are up to you, of course, but as a courtesy to readers please include the questions with your responses, or provide a link to the questions and number your answers to correspond.
Thanks for your time- I look forward to your response, and any additional information you may provide.
Erik Larson
1. What were the name(s) and scenario(s) of the hijack exercise(s) that NORAD conducted or planned to conduct on September 11, 2001?
At least one hijack exercise is documented by the NEADS tapes, and was reported on by Michael Bronner for Vanity Fair in 2006. Bronner provides some details of the exercise, and quotes Major Kevin Nasypany, who helped design the exercise:
”When they told me there was a hijack, my first reaction was ‘Somebody started the exercise early,’” Nasypany later told me. The day’s exercise was designed to run a range of scenarios, including a “traditional” simulated hijack in which politically motivated perpetrators commandeer an aircraft, land on a Cuba-like island, and seek asylum. “I actually said out loud, ‘The hijack’s not supposed to be for another hour,’” Nasypany recalled.
2. Why was the hijack exercise (or exercises) scheduled for September 11, 2001 not included in your NORAD Exercises – Hijack Summary table?
3. Why was the hijack exercise (or exercises) not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report, or made into a subject at the Commission hearings?
4. Why does the 9/11 Commission Report, Chapter 1 endnote 116 restrict itself to a description of Vigilant Guardian on September 11, 2001 as having “postulated a bomber attack from the former Soviet Union”, without mentioning other exercise scenarios, and in particular omitting hijack exercises? (458n116)
Endnote 116 is the reference for the following conversation, which is also featured in the Vanity Fair article, and in your article 9/11: Training, Exercises and War Games:
NEADS: “Is this real world or exercise?”
FAA: ”No, this is not an exercise, not a test.” (20)
As quoted by Bronner (see 1. above), Nasypany indicated the questions he and many other military personnel had about “real world or exercise” were due to the hijack exercise coinciding with the 9/11 real world events- not a Soviet Bomber attack exercise, as implied by endnote 116.
Your NORAD Exercises – Hijack Summary table lists 9 versions of Vigilant Guardian from 9/6/01 to 9/10/01, all of which involved a hijack scenario.
5a. What was total number of military exercises involving aircraft that took place on September 11, 2001?
5b. What were the names and scenarios of these exercises? (Other than the hijack exercise(s) you name and describe in response to question 1. above)
6a. Which exercises involved the use of computer-simulated aircraft aka “injects” (or “inputs”) on 9/11, and how many injects were being used?
6b. Which radar screens were the injects on, and what time were they cleared?
6c. Why was the use of injects in NORAD exercises on September 11 not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report?
7. On your NORAD Exercises – Hijack Summary table, you highlighted certain text in Red, Yellow and Bold; what was your reason for doing this?
8. You say in your article 9/11: Training, Exercises and War Games, “The [NORAD Exercises - Hijack Summary] was prepared to list what we knew about exercises before we traveled to NORAD Headquarters.”
How was this information used in the interviews?
9. What is the reason Ken Merchant stated “that [NORAD hijack exercises] were always resolved peacefully, that is, NORAD did not project shooting down a hijacked aircraft.”? (3)
Your NORAD Exercises – Hijack Summary” table lists at least 3 exercises which included a shoot-down scenario; Vigilant Guardian 10/26/98 and 9/6/01, and Amazon Condor 10/21/99.
Ken Merchant’s MFR states:
“Mr. Merchant is the joint exercise design manager for NORAD, and has been with NORAD J3 (or J38) for 17 years.”
10. In a comment on your 9/11: Training, Exercises and War Games article, you said, “there was one Department of Justice exercise that didn’t have anything to do with the other three”. Please cite sources for information on this exercise (or provide links).
10a. What was the name, scenario and purpose of this DOJ exercise?
10b. Why was this DOJ exercise not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report?
11a. Why was the 2001 Global Guardian exercise rescheduled from October to the week of September 11?
11b. What are the names of those responsible for rescheduling Global Guardian?
11c. Why was Global Guardian not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report?
12. What are the names and roles of those who were in charge of coordinating the military, intelligence, law enforcement and emergency management exercises scheduled for September 11, 2001?
13. The 9/11 Commission Report says, “Other threats were identified during the late 1990s, including terrorists’ use of aircraft as weapons.” (17)
13a. What information was this threat-identification based on; what NORAD documents describe this threat, what do they say, and are Bin Laden and/or Al Qaeda mentioned in any of them?
13b. What did the Commission learn about this threat-identification from interviews?
14. Why does the 9/11 Commission Report say, “Exercise planners also assumed that the aircraft would originate from outside the United States, allowing time to identify the target and scramble interceptors. The threat of terrorists hijacking commercial airliners within the United States—and using them as guided missiles—was not recognized by NORAD before 9/11.”? (17)
In this unclassified Amalgam Virgo 01-02 exercise scenario (also described in your NORAD Exercises – Hijack Summary table), a suicide pilot took off from Clearwater, Florida with a plan to crash into SEADS- in order to disrupt NORAD’s ability to intercept drug-smuggling flights.
In addition to other ‘planes as missiles’ plots, Commissioner Ben-Veniste noted at the May 23, 2003 hearing, “September 12th, 1994, a Cessna 150L crashed into the South Lawn of the White House, barely missing the building, and killing the pilot. Similarly, in December of 1994, an Algerian armed Islamic group of terrorists hijacked an Air France flight in Algiers and threatened to crash it into the Eiffel Tower. In October of 1996, the intelligence community obtained information regarding an Iranian plot to hijack a Japanese plane over Israel and crash it into Tel Aviv.”
General McKinley responded, “It’s obvious by your categorization that those events all took place and that NORAD had that information.”
And the 9/11 Commission Report noted that, “in February 1974, a man named Samuel Byck attempted to commandeer a plane at Baltimore Washington International Airport with the intention of forcing the pilots to fly into Washington and crash into the White House to kill the president.” (561n21)
15. Why was Osama Bin Laden’s picture used on the cover of the Amalgam Virgo 01 exercise proposal?
16. DOD Document Request No. 4, Item 20 requested “The final briefing and intelligence scenario for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) exercise scheduled on 9/11 concerning a plane crash into NRO headquarters.” This DOD Document Index (emailed by Dan Levin) says it was delivered 7/15/03.
17a. What was the full NRO exercise scenario- and did it involve an accidental plane crash, or an intentional one?
17b. In what ways, if any, was this NRO exercise connected with the other exercises happening on 9/11?
17c. Why was this NRO exercise not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report?
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