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

First of all, back to the original question, we've heard time and time again about domestic threats and terrorists potentially getting a hold of an airplane and using it as a weapon.

We had extensive testimony from Richard Clarke at the NSC, where in 1996 in the Olympics, he was so worried that the terrorists are going to either commandeer a plane or somehow use a plane as a weapon against that venue that he goes to the unbelievable extent of lashing up Treasury, Secret Service, having sharp shooters out of helicopters that can at least shoot at an airplane that might be coming at the Olympic Village. That threat is very real.

ROEMER: We continue to hear, however, from so many of our witnesses that, "It wasn't contemplated, it wasn't possible, it wasn't really in our exercise."

Were you aware, General Eberhart, when you came into this job, in your position, that that effort had taken place in 1996?

EBERHART: No, sir.

ROEMER: Were you aware today, when you walked in the room?

EBERHART: Yes, sir.

ROEMER: Why weren't we better prepared at that kind of a training posture?

EBERHART: Sir, I think the most important message is: I wish we had have been.

But at the same time, I can tell you that we didn't have any what we call actionable intelligence, intelligence that said that you need to change your posture, you need to change your orientation, you need to do all the things that we've since done.

As we look at all the threats out there that we postulate, and many at the rostrum up there know this, we can't develop that capability across our government, across our federal forces, or we'd break the bank -- we'd break the bank. We have to take those things that we think are most likely and prepare for those. And tragically, tragically, we were wrong here.

But the important thing to note is that this is not a zero-defect operation. I mean, at this very minute, if somebody wants to take off in a small airport in Kansas and fly five or 10 minutes and crash someplace, I don't care what posture we develop, we can't preclude that -- we can't preclude that. Nor do I think people -- citizens want to preclude that, but it's cost-prohibitive, and what it does to our freedoms and our liberties is something that we're not prepared for.

ROEMER: Well, let's go on to the second part of the question then, when we really do have information, at least a possibility that information is being conveyed from the vice president to NORAD that we have a threat out there -- and this is so surprising, so shocking to some people, that I believe it's Colonel Marr decides not to convey the vice president's order on to the pilots that are circling around Washington.

Now, it may be highly unlikely that they could have done something, given that 93 has already crashed, but the fact is it was not passed on to those pilots that were protecting the city.

How long would it have taken to authenticate that if the colonel decides to pass that on at a later time? Why didn't he at least attempt to say to those pilots, "This is a very tough thing to understand, but here's what the vice president of the United States has ordered for our military to consider for a specific target in Washington, D.C."?

EBERHART: Obviously, I'd be speculating about what Colonel Marr -- why he made that decision.

ROEMER: You haven't asked him this in an after-action report?

EBERHART: We have. We have.

ROEMER: What did he say?

EBERHART: There was great concern that morning, Commissioner, on my behalf, on Larry Arnold and Bob Marr, as the chain of command goes, that we were very concerned about the ability to shoot down a hijacked airplane. But, frankly, we were just as concerned about making a mistake.

And if you think this is an interesting session here this morning and what you've been through, had we made a mistake on that morning, or subsequent days, I would offer, it has a much different...

ROEMER: Mistake, meaning that you shoot down the wrong airliner?

EBERHART: Exactly.

So that was at the forefront of Bob Marr's concern is, "We don't have a confirmed hijacking right now, let's make sure we clearly understand this order, convey it properly, so that in fact we do not make a mistake."

ROEMER: Wouldn't eliminating the possibility of mistake be better enhanced by starting that order rather than introducing it as soon as you have the possibility of making a mistake?

ROEMER: Doesn't the possibility of making a mistake gather likelihood and possibility increase the later you introduce such an unusual order into the system?

EBERHART: I don't believe so.

I believe that if you qualify and transmit that order in terms and then language in the lexicon the pilots will understand, then you reduce the chance of making a mistake.

KEAN: Senator Gorton?

GORTON: General Eberhart, General Arnold, I want to associate myself with the remarks that Senator Kerrey made that, under the circumstances, especially as we've outlined them here today, the response of NORAD was quite remarkable, particularly given the fact that this was so unprecedented and we were dealing with a different kind of hijacking than we had previously anticipated.

It seems to me, however, that it was remarkable in part because people didn't necessarily go through the appropriate chains of command. Whatever the mistakes that the FAA made here in Washington, D.C., Boston called Otis directly, which it was not supposed to do. And Colonel Marr responded immediately under -- according to our statement here, by ordering the Otis fighters to battle stations.

Did Colonel Marr have the authority to do that without it coming from someone other than just a request from Otis? Was he acting on his own in making that decision?

ARNOLD: Of course, Colonel Marr is commander of the Northeast Air Defense Sector, so that communication -- they called the tower, as I understand it, at Otis first and then they called Colonel Marr.

GORTON: OK.

ARNOLD: And he did have the authority to put them on battle stations certainly. He then called me.

GORTON: And you told him?

ARNOLD: He said, "I'd like to scramble them," that's what he told me.

GORTON: And you said, "Scramble, I'll get the authority later."

ARNOLD: Exactly.

GORTON: So were you exercising an authority that you didn't have? Should you have gone higher before you ordered the scramble?

ARNOLD: I didn't order a scramble.

The issue is whether or not we intercept the hijacked airplane. So we got the airplanes airborne, put them out in the warning area where they are allowed to fly anyway, then to determine whether we're going to have the priorities to do that.

GORTON: And so, you had to go higher up before you sent them to New York?

ARNOLD: Sure. I called General Finley (ph), who is the -- your D.O., and told him what we're doing. He said, "Fine, we'll get the authorities."

ARNOLD: And the fact that they were going toward New York, from my perspective, because that's where the warning areas was initially because we didn't know that -- we certainly didn't know that the hijacked airplane, even after we saw on television the smoking hole in the World Trade Center, as tragic as it was, we did not know that that was caused by one of the hijacked airplanes.

GORTON: And that's not in the report that we gave here today, but I understand from our staff that in your -- in a staff interview with you, General Arnold, you said that if you had deemed it necessary, you would have communicated a shoot-down order even though you hadn't heard through the secretary of defense or the vice president or anyone else if you felt that it was necessary. Is that correct?

ARNOLD: I sure hope that I would never have to come to that.

I think it was a reference to United 93. United 93, very shortly, I guess by the time we had heard about it, your staff tells me, because we did not know that, the airplane had already hit the ground up in Pennsylvania thanks to the heroic efforts of those passengers that were on board.

And the question that came to me was, "What would you have done?" And we were, at that time, seeking presidential authority to shoot that aircraft down as we were flying toward it. So it never came to that point.

But it, very typical in intercept, you try to get that airplane, get beside of them, get their attention, see if they respond to you, and based on what had happened earlier -- and we knew what happened earlier, obviously -- the question came to me, "What would you have done?" And using some emergency authorities, and God help me if I'd ever have to do this, we would have given the order to shoot them down.

GORTON: And you would have been taking a huge responsibility on yourself in doing that, would you not?

ARNOLD: It would have, yes. But at that particular point in time, we fully anticipated that we would get presidential authority.

GORTON: Now, you saw earlier, during the course of the staff presentation, the very elaborate system of going up through the FAA and then down through the military before many of these orders can be made, in theory, at least. I take it, General Eberhart, that that chain of command is somewhat attenuated now and we can respond much more quickly.

EBERHART: Yes, sir, it is and for a variety of reasons. I mean, we go all the way to the cockpit. In the cockpit today, if anything happens in that airplane that seems unusual, the first thing the crew does is get off a call and change their transponder. So time starts to work for us right there.

The second thing that happens that is as soon as there's a problem, and FAA knows we're listening on the same network, and we know as soon as the FAA knows that there is a problem.

EBERHART: And then as we start to get more information, we'll put aircraft on battle stations or we'll even launch them even if FAA hasn't asked or TSA has not asked us. Because, as Larry said, we can launch them anytime we want to, send them on a training sortie and head them toward what we think might be the problem.

So that type of cooperation and coordination, coupled with this increased situational awareness of netting the radars and, in some cases, data link where we can data link that target right to the cockpit of the airplane, makes us much more responsive and unlikely to have the problems that we had on 9/11.

GORTON: Thank you very much to both of you.

KEAN: I've got a couple of questions.

First of all, besides the sites you had, the 14 alerted planes, the seven sites, what about other assets? I mean, did you have -- what about the National Guard sites, Coast Guard, Customs, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms? Usually you think of those planes, you look at -- whatever -- being alert and ready.

What about those assets? Have you had those available to you?

EBERHART: Sir, on 9/11, in terms of the other assets, we did not track them and we were not linked to them from other government agencies, and so we had not factored it into our air defense because we believed the attack was going to come in the form of an enemy bomber at 35,000 feet at 0.8 Mach, et cetera, and they don't have that capacity or capability to deal with that.

They are now factored in.

KEAN: So you had no link to those other assets on that day and you do now?

EBERHART: Exactly.

Now, no link is not exactly right. As we work some drug enforcement issues, we worked with different organizations where -- that we would -- if they didn't have an asset available, we would go track an asset for them and tell them what we saw, identify it and tell them where it landed, and then it was a law enforcement issue in terms of suspected drug trafficking. So we had that linkage through different organizations.

But I think it's important to note and it goes back to Commissioner Lehman's question, is that we have access to all those assets, but right now if we had to go get them right this minute and have them take off, they're not armed.

EBERHART: They're not armed. They're not armed for good reason because they're going to go fly a training sortie, so you don't want to be up there flying training sorties armed.

So we would have to upload the munitions. And so therefore, if it's a come-as-you-are party or tragedy, as it was that morning, we had to take the assets that were armed because otherwise all they could go up and do is observe, which is better than nothing but it doesn't work the problem.

And with notification, as we increased the air defense level today, then we arm more aircraft and put more aircraft on alert. So that's how the system works.

So even though, for example, we talk about the aircraft that took off from Andrews that morning, they weren't armed. So they were observers is what they were. So they couldn't have shot down an airplane if need be.

So I think it's important to note that. So we have lots of airplanes around there, but then to get them airborne and make a difference, that's the challenge.

KEAN: So, first, aircraft were unarmed, then you launched aircraft that were armed.

EBERHART: No, sir. NORAD's airplanes were launched armed. We were not running the F-16 out of Andrews. Those were not initially armed. And then they came back and armed.

KEAN: And none of these other assets -- Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms -- none of those other people are armed.

EBERHART: No, if you go to -- you'd pick an Air Force base today, Seymour Johnson, and you walk on base today, none of the airplanes are armed. They may have training munitions on them but they're not armed for daily training; that's for the safety of people on the ground and people who are working around those airplanes.

KEAN: And if I understood you earlier, if 9/11 happened today, you believe you could have intercepted all four planes?

EBERHART: Yes, sir. And we've shared these models with the staff and the staff has looked at them, and I think they agree that when we compare the notification times and we compare the results, if you will, on 9/11, we got six minutes of notification time for American Airlines flight 11. Today, we believe we would have at least 17 minutes to make that decision.

On 9/11, we were 153 miles away. Today, we would be in position to fire for eight minutes that we could decide that this is a hostile act that's got its nose down.

EBERHART: Because it's very important to note that if an airplane's flying straight and level at 35,000 or 30,000 feet, even if it's been hijacked, we haven't seen a hostile act yet; it could a classical, traditional hijacking, or we may have brave souls on board, like we had United Airlines flight 93, who may wrest control back.

It's important for us to see a hostile act.

KEAN: And there was never -- you're assuming -- are assuming a different set of facts, different timelines than occurred?

EBERHART: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Again, I am assuming that they told us, FAA told us as soon as they knew.

KEAN: So you wouldn't have had the seven minutes, five minutes, 14 minutes, and 47 minutes.

EBERHART: Yes, sir. That's the key. That's the difference.

KEAN: Was there any consideration ever of ramming any of the planes?

EBERHART: Sir, we did not consider that because we were never in such a position to be able to do that. So that didn't cross our paths -- our idea.

During the Cold War, that was one of the things that we looked at in terms of enemy bombers. But I would say it was a much different airplane then, and it was an airplane where we had a very large tail hook that we would drop and theoretically we would drag that across the cockpit of the enemy bomber.

Now, I wouldn't want to be the one who does that, but if we thought that enemy bomber had nuclear weapons on it and was coming to the U.S., it's probably a last-ditch maneuver.

These are much different airplanes today than those airplanes we were talking about during the Cold War, the F-106, et cetera.

KEAN: And one matter just to clarify the staff records -- records from the staff anyway. The planes we have that took off from Andrews were launched at 10:38. Those were unarmed, according to our staff report. Planes that were launched at 10:42 and 11:09 were armed. So the first planes launched were unarmed, according to our staff report.

EBERHART: Again, they were not under our command and control.

But my knowledge now is a little bit different, because I believe that one of those airplanes -- the first ones were definitely unarmed. I don't think they got the second set completely armed. They may have armed the gun, which had training munitions in it. But I would think it was probably the third or fourth set that got up that had missiles in it was a full-up round, if you will.

KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick?

GORELICK: A couple of follow-up questions. First, for General Arnold.

You testified before us before that the jets were scrambled in response to flight 93, not American 11. And when you were asked about...

ARNOLD: I was wrong. I was wrong.

GORELICK: Yes, but the question about that is -- and I want to be fair to you and give you an opportunity to respond -- you said that the reason that you were wrong is that you hadn't had an opportunity to listen to the tapes or the tapes were not accessible.

But, I mean, we have -- I'm just holding four of them -- different headquarters and CONR logs that clearly reflect that the scrambling was done in response to this phantom American 11, which didn't exist anymore.

And it was your responsibility, as I recall, to do the after- action report or to lead it or to be, in part, responsible for it. Did you not look at the logs in that process?

ARNOLD: You refer to an after-action report that we didn't do. I mean, I don't recall doing an after-action report other than the fact that we tried to capture when the aircraft took off, how soon we were able to react to those aircraft. And that was the real issue.

So, as I get older, I guess my memory was not as good as it should be. And your staff actually helped me out quite a bit in terms of this one particular area. Because I was never comfortable with the fact that some people had said we had scrambled because of American 77. And that, I knew, was not the case.

So I guess in the way the human mind works, unfortunately, is we try to put things into some kind of category. And then, as we heard this log or this log was presented to me, it made more sense to me then that that's what had occurred.

It occurred to us -- we had now had two airplanes that hit and we got a call that another airplane, because it was another airplane to me, had been hijacked. And so now, the Northeast Air Defense Sector correctly was scrambling aircraft out of Langley to get an aircraft over Washington, D.C., in case that aircraft that was called was headed toward Washington, D.C.

GORELICK: The reason I return to this is that, as a consequence of the NORAD conclusion that the jets were scrambled in response to notification on 93, was that senior policy-makers reassured the American public that our military was on it and would have addressed this threat to the White House or the Capitol before the threat arrived.

GORELICK: And that may or may not be the case. We have real doubts about whether it would have been possible to intercept that flight in any event, but certainly not with the notice that was received.

I'd like to follow up on some questions, General Eberhart, that you've been asked this morning.

I'm struck by two times. After the second World Trade Center was hit at 9:03, I think everybody concluded we were under attack. And as I understand it, you have the authority to put in place something that, I don't know what it stands for, called SCATANA, which is essentially that you, the military, take control of the skies from the civilians, FAA. And that you did that at around 11:00.