THE GROUND TRUTH

The Untold Story of America
Under Attack on 9/11

The following is an excerpt from The Ground Truth, The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11 by John Farmer:

Almost simultaneously with the news that the Pentagon had been hit came the news that the radio system was not sufficient to allow NEADS Weapons controllers to communicate with the Langley fighters over Washington.

NEADS Weapons (Major Fox):

9:49:21      They’ve run out of radios over Washington—

9:49:23      I’m trying to get the longitude but the friggin’ computer hung on me as soon as I tried to do it. We’ve got somebody comin’ to look at it. . . .

NEADS MCC:

9:49:33      Just do the best you can. Okay, what’s the word on Toledo?

Male Voice:

9:49:38      We all had the direction [UNINTELLIGIBLE].

NEADS Weapons (Major Fox):

9:49:41      And, we’re losin’ radios out of those sites already and they’re not even over Washington.

NEADS MCC:

9:49:44      God damn it! I can’t even protect my NCA [National Capital Area].

The strain of coping with multiple reports and limited capabilities was starting to show on the NEADS floor. For all of the trillions of dollars that had been spent on America’s post–Cold War defense posture, and for all of the attention that had been paid to the rising threat of domestic terrorist attacks, the infrastructure of alert sites and radar and radio communication that had been built during the Cold War had been allowed to deteriorate to the point that NEADS could not communicate directly with the fighters at low altitude over Washington; communications would have to be relayed either through the FAA or through a higher-flying fighter or tanker. Patience was wearing thin throughout the floor. The identification technicians were mystified that the FAA’s Washington Center knew so little of what had happened.

NEADS ID:

9:44:11      Okay. The aircraft that he said was at White House is now near the Pentagon. I don’t know where the hell they’re getting their intel. I said Washington [Center, not FAA HA] has no clue when I called Washington about it. They didn’t know what the hell was going on. . . .

NEADS ID (OTHER):

9:44:53      They’re showing it on TV now.

NEADS ID:

9:44:55      I don’t know. [DIAL TONE] What the fuck is this about? [PHONE RINGS] Is that the one that Washington has no freaking—

The fighters from Langley Air Force Base arrived over Washington and formed a combat air patrol (CAP) at approximately 10:00 a.m. The three fighters were handicapped in their mission, however, by degraded radio quality and a lack of information. Because there was no radio contact with NEADS at low altitude, one of the three fighters always flew high so that he could relay orders to the lower fighters, and the FAA air traffic controllers assumed control of the lower-flying fighters. The other problem was that the Langley fighters had no awareness of the hijackings; they knew and could see that the Pentagon had been hit, but they had no idea how. The lead pilot explained: “I reverted to the Russian threat. . . . I’m thinking cruise missile threat from the sea. You know, you look down and see the Pentagon burning, and I thought the bastards snuck one by us. You couldn’t see any airplanes, and no one told us anything.”