Transcript: 9/11 Commission Hearings for June 17, 2004

BEN-VENISTE: ...according to source...

ARNOLD: We scrambled those aircraft to get them over Washington, D.C., to protect Washington, D.C.

BEN-VENISTE: According to our staff, you know that there was a substantial problem in getting information from NORAD; that we received information, we were told that the information was complete, we went out into the field -- our staff did and did a number of interviews.

And as a result of those interviews, we found that there were tapes which reflected the facts relating to flight 11. And we found additional information by which we were able, through assiduous and painstaking work, listening to any number of tape recordings, to reconstruct what actually occurred as you have heard in the staff statement.

I take it you have no disagreement with the facts put forward in the staff statement. That's been produced in advance for comment and I take it you're in agreement now with our staff's conclusions with respect to those facts.

ARNOLD: I am.

BEN-VENISTE: We have -- and I'm not going to go through it, but it is disturbing to see that there were efforts at after-action reports, which were available shortly after 9/11.

BEN-VENISTE: There were communications which our staff has received with respect to e-mails that reflect some of the facts on nearly a contemporaneous basis with the 9/11 catastrophe, that reflect a story which unfortunately is different from the one which was presented to this commission earlier.

When you and General Eberhart were asked about the existence of tape recordings reflecting these open line communications, both of you indicated that you had such -- no such recollections.

EBERHART: Mr. Commissioner, I think it's important to note that I did not testify in front of this commission. So to say that I said that that day is categorically wrong.

BEN-VENISTE: I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry. You are correct. I will refer to General Arnold's comments, both with respect to...

KEAN: This is the last question, Commissioner.

BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.

EBERHART: Yes. The Northeast Air Defense sector apparently had a tape that we were unaware of at the time. And you're -- and to the best of my knowledge, what I've been told by your staff is that they were unable to make that tape run.

BEN-VENISTE: I'm told...

EBERHART: Though they were later able to -- your staff was able, through a contractor, to get that tape to run.

And so, to the best of my knowledge, that was an accurate statement in May that I did not know of any tape recordings. If I would have had them available to me, it certainly would have been -- I would have been able to give you more accurate information.

Our focus was on when the events occurred, and we did not focus on when we -- we didn't have a record -- I did not have a record of when we had been told different things.

BEN-VENISTE: In order to clarify it, and I apologize again, General Eberhart, the statement that I was referring to was a statement which we are advised was made to the staff. It was General McKinley, as well as General Arnold.

When I asked the question, "Let me ask you whether there's a regularly made tape recording of these open line indications?" General Arnold answered "Not to my knowledge," and General McKinley answered, "Not to my knowledge."

It was through the painstaking investigation that discovered these tapes and then our staff listening to those tapes which assisted us in being able to provide the level of detail and accuracy which we've done today.

BEN-VENISTE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

KEAN: Thank you very much, Commissioner.

Commissioner Lehman, we're going to concentrate on questions for General Myers because of his schedule. But we can come back, and can see other members of the panel later when they have a little a more time.

LEHMAN: General Myers, we're particularly pleased to have you here because your service from '98 to 2000 commanding NORAD gives you particular authority in talking about this.

I think what disturbs us most with regard to NORAD is not so much that this was an unprecedented threat; and there were certainly problems relating to that with the orientation outward rather than inward, and the sad capabilities really compared to military radars of the FAA radars that had to be depended on for much of the information. What disturbs us most is that the glitches in command and control are glitches that had really nothing to do with the fact that it was an internal rather than external.

Because in the justification for maintaining NORAD, of course, the possibilities of intercepting hijacked airliners was part of the justification from the beginning. Although the expectation was they would be foreign airliners hijacked and incoming.

So the problems of command and control -- let's start at the top. Who was in charge on 9/11? Was it the NORAD commander? Was it you? Was it NMCC? Was it SecDef? Was it FAA? With all the exercising that had been done in the past, clearly someone should have been in charge but we have been unable to find out who it was.

And also, for all of my questions, if you could also say what's been done to change it and what's the situation today.

MYERS: That's a lot.

In terms of national command authorities, you've interviewed the president and the vice president and I'm not privy to that interview so I can't comment on that.

MYERS: I do know that the next person in the chain of command, Secretary Rumsfeld, was in contact with the president several times during that morning, then through the rest of the day, to include -- I believe it's at least two video teleconferences we had with the president -- I may be wrong, there may have only been one. But lots of conversations with the vice president.

LEHMAN: No, but I'm talking about operationally, the minute-by- minute.

MYERS: Operationally, General Eberhart was on duty and at his duty station, as was General Arnold.

In fact, the first call I got when I left Capitol Hill, after a meeting with Senator Cleland, was from General Eberhart saying, "We've had these crashes and that we're going to take certain actions," and it was shortly thereafter that the Pentagon was hit as we were on our way back to the Pentagon.

So, as you know, I'm not in the chain of command, I'm a military adviser to the chain of command and to the National Security Council. So I went back to my duty station. And we -- what we started doing at that time was to say, "OK, we've had these attacks. Obviously they're hostile acts. Not sure at that point who perpetrated them."

And my focus at that point, and I think the secretary's focus, was, "OK, what else is out there that is possibly going to happen either in the United States or in other regions of the world?" And that's where we started to focus, "What is the next event to happen?" It might not be an airliner, it might be some other attack.

So we just -- we were looking outward. We were on a threat conference that developed, as you all know, and NORAD was represented on that. I had several conversations that day and early that morning with General Eberhart as we talked our way through the actions that were being taken.

So as far as I'm concerned, the command and control was -- it was in place, the secretary, except for the short period of time that he went outside to examine where the aircraft came into the Pentagon and then to help, because at that point they needed hands and he lended his hand to help those injured and those responding, but then came back in some time around 10 o'clock and was upstairs -- I know he talked to the president, I know he -- some time in there I know he went to the -- what we call the ESC, but where the communications for the secretary's office goes through.

He was up there, he had a VTC with the White House. And about 10:30 he came down to the National Military Command Center where we joined up and we stayed joined the rest of the day together.

LEHMAN: Let's talk a little bit about technology and...

MYERS: Can I just mention one other thing...

LEHMAN: Sure.

MYERS: ... because you asked me to tell you what we've done?

In the National Military Command Center, that day the -- we did have trouble trying to conference the FAA into our threat conference that was ongoing, so we had to use a separate phone line for that which was not as efficient. That's been corrected.

And as you know, our posture today is quite a bit different as we look at this threat and other potential threats. So we've improved our communications and we've refined our procedures, both with the White House, with the FAA. And those procedures are in effect and are exercised.

LEHMAN: Assets -- I understand that there was a great argument during the period before 9/11 about whether NORAD should exist at all and the reduction from 23 to seven sites.

Why, given the increasing threat discussion of the possibility of hijackings and the intentions of Al Qaida, was this such a big issue? Because with so many fighter aircraft based around the country, Reserve, Guard, Navy, Marine, Air Force, why is it an asset issue?

LEHMAN: Why can't there be a much broader allocation of assignment of alert throughout the country to deal with the threat that was becoming so evident?

MYERS: I think it's because the threat was not perceived to be so evident and we were following the same guidance that we got right after the fall of the Soviet Union, is where is the dividend from this? And so forces were scaled down, alert facilities, which are expensive to maintain, were closed and we wound up with those seven sites. And I think you all know where they are.

LEHMAN: But why is that so, I mean, why do they have to be owned assets? Why is it so expensive just to require rotating units to sit on alert and keep the aircraft armed as opposed to their normal training cycle?

MYERS: Well, it's just the, kind of -- it's the priorities that the Defense Department goes through to balance risk, and again the threat perception was not there to balance that risk and...

LEHMAN: It seems to me to be a false dichotomy because the assets exist. They're there. All of the services have huge training ready capabilities. It's not as if you have to buy and own separate aircraft for NORAD. Why is it even an issue?

MYERS: And that was -- and, by the way, that was the NORAD plan. The NORAD plan was, as the threat became more apparent, then we had access to Navy, Marine and Air Force aircraft. And we brought them up -- I think, the last number I remember, we could bring 3,000 aircraft to defend this country, not to mention the Canadian aircraft that would be participating, as well. So we could bring them up. We had alert sites designated.

So the plan was to do that, but you had to start with the perception of the threat and what we were asked to do. And our clear direction was to look outward.

And in fact, as General Arnold said, we fought many phantoms that day. I remember getting to the NMCC and we got the call that a bomb had gone off in front of the State Department. So you think, "Oh, my goodness what else is happening in this town?" We got many aircraft calls inbound that morning that turned out to be phantoms.

So we were clearly looking outward. We did not have the situational awareness inward because we did not have the radar coverage. And that, by the way, will become an issue here later on as we discuss the fate of the FAA radars that exist in this country today, whether or not we keep radars and have situational awareness for the interior of this country.

LEHMAN: Why shouldn't there be -- why shouldn't the Air Force, today, and the Army, the military, look at our domestic defense as part of their mission in terms of the air space? It's a huge gap between the normal, common capabilities of tactical units, not only strategic units, of the radar sophistication and capability compared to what the FAA is stumbling along with.

LEHMAN: What do you recommend we do about that?

MYERS: They are doing it.

In fact, Army radars and Army air defense systems, as you know, are part of our defense of certain places. The National Capital Region is one of those places.

We also have, as you know, lots of aircraft on alert today where we can respond to those potential sites that we have identified that might be of interest to future terrorist actions. So today there are a lot of resources being brought to that.

I think General Eberhart will recommend and has recommended to the department that we work with the FAA to determine who's going to pay for the radars for the interior of the country so we can have the situational awareness that we think we need. And that's being debated now.

My guess is it will be a '06 budget issue as we go forward. And your recommendations in that regard would be helpful.

LEHMAN: As you know, the Israeli air force has exercised, practiced and developed techniques for dealing with hijacked aircraft for years and years. For instance, they carry special missiles that are designed not to destroy airliners but to force them to land, missiles with inert warheads and other sophisticated gear.

What have you guys done to equip our Air Guard and other NORAD potentially assigned units with the training, with the rules of engagement and the hardware that gives them an option other than what we have now, which is just to destroy the aircraft and all its passengers?

MYERS: I'm aware of at least one program which is classified, so we can either talk about it off-line or provide you the classified paper on it, there may be others, to do exactly that.

LEHMAN: President Bush told us in our interview that he was deeply dissatisfied with the ability to communicate from Air Force One. He told us that this was a very major flaw.

Has this been fixed? And are you personally satisfied that those communications have been improved sufficiently so that he will have -- a president will have the connectivity that he didn't have that day?

MYERS: Let me answer that for the record so I can be very specific on that. Let me answer that for the record.

LEHMAN: OK.

One of the happy instances of the day was that NORAD happened to be fully mobilized in a C.P. exercise and had everybody, in effect, at battle stations.

LEHMAN: And even so, we saw these glitches, like the failure to pass on rules of engagements to the pilots over the capital area.

If they hadn't been at fully mobilized status, what would have happened then? Would it have been much worse?

MYERS: Well, I'd let General Eberhart answer that.

But from my experience, no, it wouldn't have been much worse. It was fortuitous that that was the case. But certainly at the Northeast Air Defense Sector, Southeast, the CONR region, at NORAD, there are people that are always on duty to respond. And whether or not we'd had the exercise or not, people would have responded.

And my best estimate is that the response would have been very similar, even with not having all those additional people that might have been present for an exercise.

But I'd let General Eberhart talk about that.

LEHMAN: The Secret Service has told us that they had repeatedly, before 9/11, requested alert aircraft to protect the capital, particularly at Andrews Air Force Base and other air defense, and that this was never acted on by the Pentagon.

Was there a reason why that was not...

MYERS: That never came to my attention. I was never -- as the vice chairman at the time, and I started in 1 March of 2000, from the time I was the vice chairman I was never aware -- or even as NORAD -- I was never aware of a request from the Secret Service for that kind of service.

LEHMAN: But when you were NORAD commander, there had already been a private aircraft that crashed into the White House grounds. There were repeated and written worries about the potential for private aircraft to make suicide attacks. And there were 11 separate intelligence reports circulating broadly through the intelligence community that Al Qaida had planned to use aircraft as weapons, although the focus was overseas.

Didn't anybody at NORAD try to connect the dots and say that, "This is something we've got to worry about, that it's a target in the capital area, that we better get ready for it?"

But, instead, when even NORAD's own planning staff proposed to include in exercises the dealing with hijacked suicide aircraft, it was rejected by NORAD, by the NORAD commander -- I think it was after your time -- as something to be exercised and planned for.

MYERS: I think it was rejected -- and General Eberhart can be clear on this -- I don't think it was by the commander. I think it was the planning group that was meeting because it did not fit the scenario at the time.

But the use of aircraft as weapons, as a missile -- other than World War II and the kamikaze situation, I'm not aware -- and I've tried to research this and the best information that I get -- I am not aware that an aircraft has ever been used as a weapon.

Now, there have been landings on the White House lawn. There was a landing in Red Square. There have been lots of stupid things. There was talk about crashing airplanes into the CIA. But in most of that threat reporting leading up to 9/11, it was hijacking an airplane and in the normal hijack mode, not in the mode of a weapon.

Now, there were some talks about in post-hijack situations where they talked to the people or where the demands were made that they were going to crash, in one instance, into the Eiffel Tower. But even the work that was done, the hijackings that were planned for the Philippines, which is a well-known plot, they planned to hijack the airplanes and blow them up, primarily.

So, no, the threat perception, the intelligence did not point to this kind of threat. I think that explains it.

LEHMAN: Final question: As NORAD commander and now as chairman, were you then and are you now satisfied with the intelligence product that your J-2 provides to you?

MYERS: Well, we've got a wonderful J-2 and we've got a pretty good process. Information sharing is better today among the intel agencies, both civilian and military and the CIA.

It can be improved. We still have a ways to go in that regard. It still, when we get threat warnings, you know the venue, the type of attack -- those kind of details are usually lacking.

And we do have, as I think people well understand, and it was announced publicly by, I think, the attorney general the other day, still threats to the United States. And as a free nation with the freedom that we enjoy, we've -- Secretary Ridge says, you know, we've got to be right every time, and a suicide operative only has to be right once. And we worry about that very much.

And with General Eberhart's hat as Northern Command I think helps to focus all of this in ways that we couldn't do before 9/11 because we've organized ourselves much differently.

But am I satisfied? No, I'll never be satisfied. This is very tough work.

LEHMAN: Thank you, General.

KEAN: Three questions, then I know the general has to leave.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Ask about the war games that were planned for 9/11.

KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Tell us about the 9/11 war games.

GORELICK: Could you please be quiet? We have only a few minutes with General Myers, and I'd like to ask a question.

General Myers, the -- I'm sorry.

KEAN: I would ask please people in the audience to be quiet if you want to stay here.

GORELICK: General Myers, if you listen to the staff statement this morning, I think the question that has to be on the minds of the American people is: Where was our military when it should have been defending us? I think that's a fair question from a layman's point of view.

And the response of NORAD, which you used to command and which General Eberhart now commands, is that NORAD was not postured to defend us domestically unless someone was coming at us from abroad.

And that has lots of implications: It has implications for where our fighters were to dispatch, how much we cared about the internal radars which didn't function particularly well, which you were, at NORAD, dependent on. It has implications for whether you can communicate with your fighter pilots when they're up in the air in the interior of the country. It has implications for how you quickly get authorities to the pilots.

And so I want to explore very briefly this question with you. Because for years the Department of Defense did, in fact, resist having a domestic mission, and with all due respect, said, "This was a law enforcement function; we do not have a domestic role." It was very uncomfortable with that role and I think it's important to address that.

Now, that's why I come back to this word "posture." We were postured against an external threat.