Talk of the Nation (2:00 PM ET) - NPR June 17, 2004
Dramatic reconstruction of the response to the attacks on the morning of 9/11
ANCHORS: NEAL CONAN
REPORTERS: MARY LOUISE KELLY
NEAL CONAN, host:
This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
In its final two days of public hearings, the 9-11 Commission examined two of the most contentious aspects of the attacks. Yesterday, the commission concluded that Saddam Hussein's Iraq played no part in the plot and then added that despite some contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq, there was no collaborative relationship. Today, President Bush asserted again that such a relationship did exist. We'll hear from both sides of that argument later in the program.
But first, today's dramatic reconstruction of the response to the attacks that Tuesday morning. The 9-11 Commission's staff report concludes that both the Federal Aviation Administration and the North American Aerospace Defense Command had not prepared or trained for suicide attacks. It documents confusion and mistakes, yes, but some remarkable improvisation, too, all amid widespread inability to comprehend the enormity of what was happening. NPR national security correspondent Mary Louise Kelly joins us here in Studio 3A.
Thanks very much for coming in today.
MARY LOUISE KELLY reporting:
Good to be here, Neal.
CONAN: Let's go through this reconstruction, if you would, and let's begin with what happened, I guess, regarding the first plane to be hijacked, American Airlines Flight 11, out of Logan Airport.
KELLY: Well, here's what we know that we learned from the commission report this morning. That plane started taxiing down the runway at 8:00 the morning of September 11th. At 8:21, the flight turned off its transponder. That's the device through which air traffic controllers are able to monitor where it is, its altitude, what direction it's heading. That was the first indication that something might be wrong, and the controller told a supervisor he thought there was something seriously wrong with that plane. But at that point, no one suspected hijacking, and they did not suspect that until three minutes later, 8:24, when they were able to hear a radio transmission from the plane.
CONAN: A reminder that they had not had a hijacking in this country since 1993, so this was a highly unusual event. And here's the tape which the commission's report says this is believed to be the voice of the lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta.
(Soundbite from tape)
Mr. MOHAMED ATTA (Terrorist): We have the plane. Just stay quiet and you'll be OK. We are returning to the airport.
CONAN: And at that point, they knew something was going on. There are protocols to deal with all of this. They're written down in case there's a hijacking. People do train on those, but they were anticipating a hijacking of the type that had always gone on before.
KELLY: Right, where someone might try to take the plane, land it somewhere, demand some money, demand something in return for the passengers; exactly. They knew something was going on. That transmission hard to understand even now, knowing everything that we know. The controller trying to monitor it couldn't quite understand it. He sent it up to a colleague and said, 'Listen back to that tape. What did he say? What did he say? I can't quite tell. Something's wrong, but I don't know what it is.' They started passing it up the chain of command and trying to identify what was happening.
CONAN: And one of--the staff report goes on to detail how various agencies and then the military received and communicated the information. And one of the things we learned was that the military's first indication that a plane had been hijacked came at 8:37 when the Boston Center's Federal Aviation Administration center--it's actually in New Hampshire, but that's what it's called--contacted the Northeast Air Defense Sector.
(Soundbite of tape)
Unidentified Man #1: Hi, Boston Center, Team U(ph), we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to--we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there to help us out.
Unidentified Man #2: Is this real world or exercise?
Unidentified Man #1: No, this is not an exercise, not a test.
CONAN: Real world or exercise.
KELLY: I mean, you can hear just how they were struggling to figure out what was going on. As you say, nothing like this had happened in years and nothing like this, as it turned out to be on September 11th, had ever happened. But it was at that point, right after that alert went out, that the air defense began. F-15 fighters were ordered scrambled at 8:46 from Otis Air Force Base.
CONAN: And then there is a problem with confusion because as normal air traffic control systems--as a plane passes from one area to another, it's handed off from center to center, from Boston to Cleveland to Indianapolis, all of which play a role in what's to follow, of course, New York and Washington as well. And even within one organization, the FAA, air traffic controllers were having trouble getting and sharing information. And let's listen to this conversation just past 9:00, a manager from the Boston Center FAA--excuse me. This is a--NORAD didn't know that the search for American Flight was under way. Let's listen to this tape excerpt.
(Soundbite from tape)
Unidentified Man #3: Are you still there?
Unidentified Man #4: Yes, I am.
Unidentified Man #3: I want to reconfirm with downstairs that the--as far as the chains seem to think that the guy said, 'We have planes.' Now I don't know if it was because of the accent or if there's more than one, but I'm going to reconfirm that for you, and I'll get back to you real quick, OK?
Unidentified Man #4: Appreciate it.
Unidentified Woman #1: Get what?
Unidentified Man #3: ...planes as in plural. It sounds like we're talking to New York. There's another one aimed at the World Trade Center.
Unidentified Man #4: There's another aircraft?
Unidentified Man #3: A second one just hit the Trade Center.
Unidentified Man #4: OK. Yeah, we've got to alert the military real quick on this.
CONAN: I'm sorry. I introduced the wrong cut of tape there. That was my mistake. That was a conversation between a manager of the Boston Center FAA contacting the New England center with some information that they had just learned. That earlier tape that we had heard, the hijacker had said, 'Planes,' plural, and at this point, they begin to realize that the first one had already hit the World Trade Center, and as you hear in the midst of that conversation, they learn that the second aircraft had hit the World Trade Center.
KELLY: Right. So you hear them trying to get up to speed, desperately trying to figure out who knows what. It was apparently immediately after that conversation people at the New York center figured out something was very, very wrong. They declared what's called ATC zero(ph), meaning that aircraft were from that point not permitted to go through New York's airspace until further notice. And also, just after this, Boston Center issued an instruction that turned out to be controversial in today's hearing. They asked the air command center to issue a nationwide cockpit security alert telling all aircraft in the air, 'Watch your cockpit. You know, step up the security. Make sure it's locked.' And there was a lot of speculation in testimony this morning about if those instructions had reached, for example, the plane that ended up crashing in Pennsylvania and the pilots had known and been known, 'Don't open your cockpit door for any reason,' whether that might have been able to prevent what eventually happened on that plane from happening.
CONAN: In the meantime, the military was trying to respond. The report documents that in some cases procedures were followed. In other cases, procedures were absolutely improvised, and some word never did get through to the military. But one of the big problems all throughout that very confusing morning was confusion over which plane was which. Some fighters were scrambled out of Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, but as we'll hear in this tape excerpt, they think they're about to go after American Airlines Flight 11, one of the planes from Boston, that eventually did hit the World Trade Center in New York. They were then told, 'It's still in the air.'
(Excerpt from tape)
Unidentified Man #5: Military, Boston Center, just had a report that American 11 is still in the air and it's on its way heading towards Washington.
Unidentified Woman #2: OK. American 11 is still in the air on its way towards Washington?
Unidentified Man #5: It was evidently another aircraft that hit the tower. That's the latest report we have.
Unidentified Woman #2: OK.
Unidentified Man #5: I'm going to try to confirm and ID for you, but I would assume he's somewhere over either New Jersey or somewhere further south.
Unidentified Woman #2: OK. And so American 11 isn't a hijack at all then, right?
Unidentified Man #5: No, he is a hijack.
Unidentified Woman #2: American 11 is a hijack?
Unidentified Man #5: Yes.
Unidentified Woman #2: And he's going into Washington?
Unidentified Man #5: This could be a third aircraft.
CONAN: And a third aircraft--there was a third and, indeed, a fourth, but that wasn't it.
KELLY: That wasn't the one that they were talking about. So, yes. And not only there was confusion, of course, in terms of trying to track these planes, there was confusion in terms of the fighter jets that were being sent up to try to intercept and maybe do something about it. By the end, you had two sets of F-16s circling around Washington, trying to figure out was there anything they could do to prevent what--at that point, they didn't know, but to prevent anything else awful from happening. But it's not clear that those pilots had the right orders or could have done anything to get there in time.
CONAN: And the senior counsel of the 9-11 Commission, John Farmer, here reads from the report about the NEADS--that's the Northeast Aerospace Defense Sector--their response to hearing that Flight 77 was over Washington, DC.
(Soundbite of response)
Mr. JOHN FARMER (Senior Counsel, 9-11 Commission): After the 9:36 call to NEADS about the unidentified aircraft, a few miles from the White House, the Langley fighters were ordered to Washington, DC. Controllers at NEADS located an unknown primary radar track but, quote, "It kind of faded," end quote, over Washington. The time was 9:38. The Pentagon had been struck by American 77 at 9:37 and 46 seconds. The Langley fighters were approximately 150 miles away.
CONAN: So due to mistakes, phantoms, any number of things, it sounds as if the nation's capital was completely naked of protection that day.
KELLY: I mean, a lot of miscommunication. As we say, there was actually a pair of F-16s sent from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. They did not believe they were authorized to shoot down an aircraft. Later, another pair of F-16s was sent up over the capital from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. They did not reach the proper altitude until 10:45 AM. At that point, that was already 42 minutes after the very last plane had crashed into Pennsylvania. So, yes, there have been assertions all along from NORAD that had that plane not crashed in Pennsylvania, they would have been able to intercept, shoot it down, do something about it. The commission report this morning said, 'We're not so sure that's the case.'
CONAN: We'll hear from a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command later in the program. But getting back to this time line, in all of this, there are meetings being held, hurried conferences, phone calls. At one point, they describe a Secret Service agent with Andrews Air Force Base on one cell phone in one ear and the White House on the other cell phone in the other ear. There were meetings at the FAA, for example, some of which show good judgment and bad all at the same time. Let's listen to this tape excerpt.
(Soundbite from tape)
Unidentified Man #6: All right. They're pulling Jeff away to talk about United 93.
Unidentified Man #7: Do we want to think about scrambling aircraft?
Unidentified Man #6: Oh, God, I don't know.
Unidentified Man #7: That's a decision somebody's going to have to make probably in the next 10 minutes.
Unidentified Man #6: You know, everybody just left the room.
CONAN: 'Everybody just left the room.' 'We're going to have to decide whether to ask for aircraft to be scrambled sometime in the next 10 minutes,' clearly a lot of chaos going on.
KELLY: I have to tell you when this was played in the hearing room this morning, jaws just dropped. I mean, everyone just gasped to hear this, and the commissioners followed up on it. I believe it was Commissioner Bob Kerrey asking former and current FAA officials, 'How on earth in the middle of this horrific--clearly, even if you didn't know exactly what was going on, you knew it was bad--why was someone who didn't have a clue manning the phone at Air Traffic Command--Control Command Center in Herndon?' I mean, it just--it's very easy to second-guess in hindsight, but this clearly was an example of communication just not happening as it should have done and the protocols not being in place.
CONAN: The conclusion of the staff committee report--indeed, the title of their report is "Improvising a Homeland Defense." Yet, they also came to the conclusion that though the protocols were wrong, the entire basis on which the protocols had been written were mistaken, did not take into account, obviously, what would happen on the morning of September the 11th. The report found that on the operational level at NEADS and the FAA, operators did as well as they could. Here's the executive director of the commission, Phil Zelikow, reading the report.
Professor PHIL ZELIKOW (Executive Director, 9-11 Commission): We do not believe that an accurate understanding of the events of this morning reflects discredit on the operational personnel from NEADS or FAA facilities. The NEADS commanders and floor officers were proactive in seeking information and made the best judgments they could based on the information they received. Individual FAA controllers, facility managers and Command Center managers thought outside the box in recommending a nationwide alert, in ground-stopping local traffic and ultimately in deciding to land all aircraft and executing that unprecedented order flawlessly.
CONAN: Now the rest of the report is a discussion about the decisions taken at higher levels than NEADS and the FAA, though the FAA's involved in this as well, and that is at the level of the national command authority, the president of the United States, the vice president and the secretary of Defense. And again, I think most Americans remember President Bush was at an elementary school in Florida that morning...
KELLY: That's right.
CONAN: ...on furthering his education policy and was actually told while he was on stage that it was a hijack.
KELLY: That's right. And some five to seven minutes apparently lapsed before he actually got up and left that classroom. That's been the subject of a lot of controversy. The president, according to this commission report, has told commissioners he was most concerned with conveying a sense of stability, of calm, of not showing panic on national television and that he exited as soon as he could and then quickly sat with advisers to find out what was going on and to figure out--he wanted to make a statement before he left that facility.
There was also a lot of questioning this morning about where the shoot-down order originated. Of course, everyone wanted to make sure that it originated with the commander in chief, with the president, that he was the one, the only one, who could actually give the order to shoot down a passenger aircraft because of the great danger of shooting down the wrong one.
CONAN: And who's going to be responsible for that decision...
KELLY: Exactly.
CONAN: ...in either case.
KELLY: Exactly.
CONAN: And as you say, eventually it turned out there were two separate pairs of fighter jets circling over Washington, DC, one from Langley, one from Andrews Air Force Base. They have different instructions about whether they were authorized to shoot. We'll get into that and more about the command decisions when we return from a short break. Our guest is Mary Louise Kelly, NPR's national security correspondent. We're also going to be taking your phone calls about what you've been hearing today. (800) 989-8255. (800) 989-TALK. E-mail us, totn@npr.org, if you have questions about what you've learned about what happened that morning and the response of the authorities in Washington and elsewhere to the attacks of September the 11th.
Back after the break. I'm Neal Conan. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
We're talking about the events of the morning of September the 11th according to the commission that is looking into the attacks. At this morning's hearings, the commission staff presented an extensive reconstruction of what happened that morning and how official America responded to it. If you have a question, again, we would welcome it. (800) 989-8255.
Mary Louise Kelly, NPR's national security correspondent, is here with us in the studio.
After going through the FAA's response and some of the things that happened at NORAD, we were talking about the national command level, the president and the vice president. At 10:31, we hear the vice president gave the order allowing fighters to intercept and shoot down planes that had been hijacked. And here's an excerpt of tape, NEADS' personnel responding to the announcement that an order had been issued.
(Soundbite from tape)
Unidentified Man #8: You need to read this. The region commander has declared that we can shoot down aircraft that do not respond to our direction. Copy that?
Unidentified Man #9: Copy that, sir.
Unidentified Man #8: So if you're trying to divert somebody and he won't divert...
Unidentified Man #9: Neal's(ph) saying no.
Unidentified Man #8: No? It came over the chat. You got a conflict on that direction.
Unidentified Man #9: Right now, no, but...
Unidentified Man #10: OK.
Unidentified Man #9: ...OK.
Unidentified Man #10: You read that from the vice president, right?
Unidentified Man #8: Vice president has cleared.
Unidentified Man #10: The vice president has cleared us to intercept traffic and then to shoot them down if they do not respond first on our CT.
CONAN: A couple of things about that, Mary Louise Kelly. As you said earlier, there was a great concern over who had issued the shoot-down order, and according to commission's report, there were several phone calls between the president and the vice president.
KELLY: Yes, all between 10 and 10:30 that morning, but there are not exact records of exactly when they spoke or exactly who said what. Vice President Cheney was telling his staff he was in the bunker underneath the White House. He was telling people there, 'I've talked to the president. He's given me the order.' We understand that another White House official said, 'Do you want to just call him back and make sure? Let's be very, very sure.'
CONAN: The vice chief of staff. Yes.
KELLY: Stephen Hadley asked him, 'Let's just double-check this.' So, apparently, there was another conversation. Vice President Cheney felt confident after that conversation and issued this order as we just heard there. However, as we just heard there, it was greeted with a great deal of confusion over the nature and effect of the order. And, in fact, NORAD commanders did not--say they did not pass this instruction on to the fighter jets that were circling Washington and New York because they were unsure how the pilots would and, in fact, should proceed under this guidance.
CONAN: And the pilots themselves said they were unaware. They knew something was going on but were unaware that it involved hijacked civilian airliners. They saw the smoke rising from the Pentagon, and one of the F-15 pilots said he assumed the Russians had somehow sneaked in a cruise missile attack.
KELLY: Absolutely. And, of course, the irony of all of this, that excerpt that we just heard was was a conversation taking place at 10:31 AM. The last plane that crashed into the field of Pennsylvania was at 10:03 AM, but it speaks again to the uncertainty of that morning, that the very senior aviation and White House officials didn't even know it at that point.
CONAN: And that second pair of jets that took off from Andrews Air Force Base, they did go weapons-free. They were authorized to shoot, but this after the conversation with the Secret Service. They were not specifically authorized by the president.
KELLY: Right.
CONAN: So confusion all around. This is going to be material that's going to be debated for some time, but there's one name we did not mention, and that's that of the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. Where was he?
KELLY: Well, he appears to have been out of the picture for much of the morning. He does not emerge and sort of start running things at the Pentagon until about 10:30. He was at the Pentagon that morning. He rushed out and tried to help people. You can understand the instinct if, you know, your facility has just been attacked, but he was out trying to tend to the injured. Shortly before 10:30, we're told that he went into the Command Center, was briefed and just a few moments after that had a conversation with the vice president, Dick Cheney, trying to bring Secretary Rumsfeld up to speed. But again, great confusion and chaos. Vice President Cheney was briefing him and saying, 'My understanding is that US fighter jets have shot down two of the hijacked planes.' Secretary Rumsfeld said, 'I'm not sure I can confirm that.' And, of course, it turned out not to be true.
CONAN: NPR national security correspondent Mary Louise Kelly with us here in 3A. Thank you very much.
KELLY: You're welcome, Neal.
CONAN: As we mentioned, much of today's hearings covered the actions of officials with the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA. Joining us now from his home in Fauquier County, Virginia, is Darryl Jenkins, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida.
And Mr. Jenkins, nice of you to join us today.
Professor DARRYL JENKINS (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University): Thank you very much, young man.
CONAN: Are you surprised by the accounts of the FAA's reaction to the 9/11 hijacks on September the 11th?
Prof. JENKINS: Oh, not at all. I mean, this seems typical in a panic situation where we really had no planning before this, that we'd had no trials on anything like this pretty much within an FAA, a totally unanticipated situation. The fact that they were able to react as quickly as they did in the circumstance and get all the planes down was really kind of short of miraculous.
CONAN: Yes, the commission's report was emphatic on the point that they improvised all of the responses to this, and some of their improvisations were a little short of brilliant.
Prof. JENKINS: Yes, they were, both on the side of the airlines and the FAA. None of them had ever done anything like that. They had almost 5,000 planes in the air at I think it was about 10 to 10 when the order went out to bring the planes down. They had pretty much all of them down by noon, and that really is quite an achievement.
CONAN: Yet, we also hear of tremendous communications problems at the centers. In Indianapolis, for example, didn't know what was going on. In Boston, might have helped.
Prof. JENKINS: Yeah. I think certainly if something like this were to ever happen again, I think we're all indebted to the commission for their study because I think what they have done is kind of set the framework for going ahead and dealing with an emergency like this in the future. A lot of this is really quite typical of Washington where one agency does not talk to another agency. They really don't have a whole lot that they've ever done in terms of practicing talking to each other. The agencies within the city, as you're well aware, fight against each other, especially in August over budgets and stuff like this. So this non-cooperative spirit which does exist in agencies in Washington, DC, certainly worked against us.
CONAN: Not only was there difficulty of communication within the FAA, the FAA was also having difficulty communicating with outside agencies. When they finally did get up on the Pentagon's conference call, the official who was on the line didn't know what was going on.
Prof. JENKINS: Yeah, I remember that morning well because I was working with the press, and I remember the number of conflicting reports that I was receiving from, I mean, all over the place until probably 5 or 6:00 in the afternoon.
CONAN: And to be fair, as somebody who was in the press and working that day, we didn't do such a coherent job ourselves all the time that morning.
Prof. JENKINS: No, I remember this well for a number of reasons. I had just put my wife on a plane that morning at 9:00 on an American Airlines flight out of Dulles, and it wasn't until 3:00 that afternoon that I knew that she was not on the flight that went into the Pentagon. So it was confusing for all of us. The amount of misinformation that was going around on all of our parts was just enormous.
CONAN: Let's get a caller involved in the conversation. Eric is with us from Monterey, California.
ERIC (Caller): Hello?
CONAN: Hi.
ERIC: Actually, I have two comments. I'm an Air Force officer, and I've worked extensively with pilots. First, that the events of September 11th were truly paradigm shaking, that nobody had ever seen anything like this. Nobody had prepared for it. Nobody had even trained for an event like this. And I have a hard time believing, knowing several pilots myself, that any of them were ready to shoot down a civilian airliner under these circumstances, even given the vice president's order. I really do have a hard time believing that this was something that we were prepared to accept as a nation.
CONAN: Darryl Jenkins, you're on the civil aviation side, but I wonder if you have any thoughts about that.
Prof. JENKINS: Really, it's out of my expertise what the military will or will not do. It's an interesting point, though, and certainly on the part of a pilot of a military plane shooting down a civilian aircraft within your own country's borders would have been a very, very difficult decision that day.
CONAN: This is another impossible thing to know, but, obviously, you talk about the commercial airline pilots of the planes that were hijacked, how would they have responded to news that Air Force planes were up there weapons-free?
Prof. JENKINS: Oh, that would have been interesting as well. The training in a hijacking situation is very specific, and the training is is that you are to be passive, and the reason why is that in 90-plus percent of the situations where there have been hijackings and the pilots were passive, everybody got down to the ground and they got off safe and free. And so this was just totally different against anything that we'd ever trained for and anything that we really anticipated ever happening. So this went against all of our training.
CONAN: Eric, thank you. Good question.
ERIC: Thank you.
CONAN: And, Darryl Jenkins, just before we go, have these procedures been improved and changed? Obviously, the Transport Safety Administration is involved in a lot of this.
Prof. JENKINS: Well, certainly a lot has changed since then. The thing that is scary still is the airport security. The problem is the machine-human interface, so you have all of the screening that goes on, and that's kind of the backbone of the security system, and the truth is, that security screening is boring, it is repetitious, so it is at best chancy.
CONAN: Darryl Jenkins, thanks very much.
Prof. JENKINS: Thank you.
CONAN: Darryl Jenkins, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, joining us by phone from his home in Fauquier County, Virginia.
NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also came in for some criticism today. Joining now to discuss its role is Mike Perini, director of public affairs for NORAD. He's a retired colonel and joins us by phone from Reagan National Airport here in Washington, DC.
Thanks very much.
Mr. MIKE PERINI (NORAD): Thank you for the opportunity to discuss this.
CONAN: As you looked at the report's conclusions about what happened at NORAD that day, what do you come away with?
Mr. PERINI: Well, at NORAD shall never forget those who lost their lives and who were injured during the attacks on September 11th, and we must say the work that the commission did to go through the thousands of pages of notes in yythe hearings, I think they've done a great job.
CONAN: And in that respect, the report concludes that NORAD was completely unprepared for this event and hadn't trained for it. Is that accurate?
Mr. PERINI: Well, you have to remember, pre-9/11, NORAD, which had been around for 45 years, was focused and did a great job in looking at external threats to our nation. It was, you know, developed during the Cold War, and it worked very, very well. But since then and on that day, as you have noted and your callers have noted, there was a lot of work to deal with a situation that had not been dealt with before. And...
CONAN: An...
Mr. PERINI: ...a lot of changes have been made since then, a lot of great work has been done, and the skies are much safer as a result today.
CONAN: According to the report, NORAD officials maintain that they would have been able to intercept and shoot down United 93. That's the last plane to crash, the one that landed in Pennsylvania. The report says they're not so sure that would have happened.
Mr. PERINI: Well, when we look at our models and with our procedures in place today, we believe that we would have had the time for the decision-makers to notify people and then time for the crews to carry out the engagement orders.
CONAN: Even though, as it turns out, they didn't have the right rules of engagement.
Mr. PERINI: Well, back then, the rules of engagement were basically to monitor, you know, flight follow, and then report where the aircraft went down. The rules of engagement are much more developed now and much more specific on what we can and can't do.
CONAN: But that day, they didn't have the authorization to shoot.
Mr. PERINI: On that day, even if they'd had the authorization, because of the amount of time that they were given, they would not have been able to have executed that tough decision.
CONAN: And an extremely tough decision it would have been, and thank you for your time today. We appreciate it.
Mr. PERINI: Thank you.
CONAN: Mike Perini, a retired colonel, is the director of public affairs for NORAD, and he joined us by phone from Reagan Airport, which is located, of course, just across the river in Washington, DC.
You're listening to NPR's TALK OF THE NATION, coming to you from NPR News.
And joining us now is John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a security and defense policy group based in Alexandria, Virginia. He joined us by phone from his office.
John, good to have you back on the program.
Mr. JOHN PIKE (GlobalSecurity.org): Yes. Yes.
CONAN: As you look at the reactions, particularly of NORAD and the FAA, does anything in today's report surprise you? What have we learned that's new?
Mr. PIKE: Well, I think that one of the important things that we have learned from the report is that actually, NORAD had much less time to respond to the hijacked aircraft than they had testified a year ago. Back at the hearings early last year, it looked like they had 15, 20, 25 minutes to respond to the hijacked aircraft. In fact, when the commission went back and reconstructed the actual time lines, they only had a couple of minutes, and there was just physically no way that they could have done it.
A year ago, you would have said, 'Why was NORAD asleep at the switch? They had all of this time and they didn't do anything.' It turned out that they just really didn't have enough time to do anything.
CONAN: As you then go up the ladder a little bit and look at how the Pentagon responded to all of this, in setting up the various conference calls and structures that they needed to do, how does the report address that?
Mr. PIKE: Well, I think that they did a good job under the circumstances, but unfortunately, they were still fumbling. They didn't manage to get secretary of Defense into the conference calls until sometime after the Trade centers had been hit. And they really never were able to get the Federal Aviation Administration into the conference calls. First, they had problems with getting secure telephones. Then the FAA official that they got on the line, he was in the conference call, but he was out of the loop at the FAA, so he really didn't know what was going on.
As is frequently the case, orders were issued from the top, but they never got out to the people who needed them. The vice president authorized NORAD to shoot down the incoming airliners. That information, that authorization was never passed to the pilots themselves.
CONAN: Let's get a caller involved. Betsy's with us from Memphis, Tennessee.
BETSY (Caller): Yes. Hello?
CONAN: Yes. You're on the air, Betsy. Go ahead.
BETSY: OK. I don't know if you can hear me on my cell phone. Yeah. That brings up an interesting question, and I haven't heard all of the news today, but why is Vice President Cheney making decisions rather than the president about shooting down planes, assuming that he was on Air Force One and he could make such decisions, if he had to?
CONAN: Well, exactly where he was at exactly which minute is still not utterly resolved, but in conversations in the report, John Pike, we appear to hear that Vice President Cheney asks the president to make that decision and then relays the decision.
Mr. PIKE: And then the president made that decision and Cheney was trying to relay it down the chain of command. Part of the problem--you know, I mean, somebody had to make the call to NORAD, and it was Cheney who made the call. I think the problem that Cheney was having was that he was skipping the echelon of Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of Defense. They had to get Rumsfeld back in the chain of command, so they did have the president participating in it, but the vice president was the one who was attempting to carry the message. Unfortunately, that message didn't get all the way down the chain of command.
CONAN: Betsy, thank you.
BETSY: Thank you.
CONAN: John, before we let you go, you've been quoted as saying, "If bin Laden had attacked us when Ike was president, it would have meant a different response."
Mr. PIKE: Well, it would have meant a very different response, because when the Eisenhower administration was running air defense and back when President Bush was flying air defense fighters back in the 1960s, we had an enormous air defense apparatus, thousands of fighter aircraft, many of them on strip alert, thousands of air defense missiles to shoot down aircraft, and they were locked and loaded. They were cocked and ready to go because the main threat back then was Soviet bombers. Well, when the Soviets got long-range ballistic missiles, we started taking apart our air defense system, and the air defense system that President Bush was presiding over was only a pale shadow of the air defense system that he was part of back in the 1960s.
CONAN: Indeed, there's an interesting moment where the FAA attempts to contact the ready strip in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to try to get fighters in the air without realizing that strip had been phased out.
Mr. PIKE: Yes, yes.
CONAN: John Pike, thanks very much.
Mr. PIKE: Thank you.
CONAN: John Pike is director of GlobalSecurity.org, a security and defense policy group in Alexandria, Virginia. He joined us by phone from his office.
When we come back from a short break, the controversy over Iraq and al-Qaeda. President Bush insists there is a connection.
I'm Neal Conan. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
(Announcements)
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
And here are some of the stories NPR is following today. Two car bombings in Iraq killed more than 40 Iraqis and wounded 140 others. And a new poll suggests that American support for the war in Iraq has grown over the past month. The Pew Research Center For People & The Press also says support for President Bush has gone up. You can hear details on both those stories coming up later today on "All Things Considered."
Tomorrow on "Science Friday," Ira Flatow will be in Seattle for a special live broadcast from the Science Fiction Museum. You can join him for that broadcast tomorrow on "Talk of the Nation/Science Friday."
We've been talking about the 9-11 Commission's conclusions today, about aerospace defense command and the Federal Aviation Administration. Yesterday the 9-11 Commission issued a report on ties to al-Qaeda and came to the conclusion that Iraq played no part in the plot of September the 11th and went on to say that despite some contacts, there was no substantive link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
A connection to that terror group was part of the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq. At the White House today, President Bush was asked why, given the panel's conclusion, he continues to insist that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: Oh, the reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
CONAN: President Bush speaking with reporters earlier today at the White House. If you have questions about this dispute, give us a call, (800) 989-8255, (800) 989-TALK. Our e-mail address is totn@npr.org.
Joining us now here in Studio 3A is Stephen Hayes. He's a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and author of the book, "The Connection: How al-Qaeda's Collaboration With Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America."
Thanks very much for coming in today.
Mr. STEPHEN HAYES (The Weekly Standard; Author): Good to be here, Neal.
CONAN: In your book, you say there is evidence proving there was a long and strong collaboration between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. How does it square with what the commission found yesterday?
Mr. HAYES: Well, I think the commission got part of it right. I mean, in one sense, the commission didn't disagree with the Bush administration in that it laid out a series of contacts. I think the difference was when the commission said that there was no evidence of--I think they called a collaborative relationship. I would argue that there was, in fact, evidence of a collaborative relationship, and I think George Tenet has presented such evidence. He did so in February of 2003. At the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said that, "There's credible reporting of Iraqis training al-Qaeda on chemicals and biologicals"--was his exact quote.
I think there's more evidence. I think there are telephone intercepts that indicate that the Iraqi regime was paying Ansar al-Islam, providing it funding, providing it with arms up in the north. That comes from both telephone intercepts and detainee debriefings. So I think it's a little bit shortsighted for the commission to leap to this conclusion.
CONAN: So you're saying no dispute on the facts, but on the interpretation of the facts.
Mr. HAYES: I don't know. I mean, I don't know what exactly the September 11th Commission looked at, presumably everything that was in the public record--or I hope everything that was in the public record. But it just seems strange, especially in light of the fact that elsewhere in this same report, they talked about evidence coming to light about a possible al-Qaeda role in the Khobar Towers bombing, which had previously been assigned to Iran and Hezbollah, and they said basically, 'Look, you know, there was this relationship. We didn't think that the Sunni militants would work with the Shiite extremists.' And, in fact, it looks like they did, and there's increasing evidence that suggests that al-Qaeda played an attack in those roles. Well, that was eight years ago. So it's hard for me to see how the commission can say today, 'Well, it looks like there was no evidence of any participation or any overlap now.'
CONAN: One of the big items in all of this discussion, cited by Vice President Cheney several times, was an alleged meeting between Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague. Yesterday we saw videotape of Mohamed Atta making a withdrawal from a bank in the United States. At the time, he was supposed to be having that meeting.
Mr. HAYES: Well, I think if I'm not mistaken, the videotape was actually from April 4th, which would have been one of the last times he was thought by the people who believe in this meeting to have been in the United States before his trip. And what I think has been reported publicly and has been shown not to be accurate was that there were hotel receipts and car rental records and other things placing him in the United States. Excuse me.
CONAN: Sure.
Mr. HAYES: In fact, all that the US intelligence community has potentially placing Atta in the United States at the same time, at the time of this alleged meeting, are cell phone records, and that's certainly not conclusive. I talked to one prosecutor who said he'd be laughed out of court if he presented those as evidence.
CONAN: Well, joining us now is Larry Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism expert and a former CIA intelligence officer. He's with us from his office in Bethesda, Maryland, by telephone.
And, Larry, good to have you with us today.
Mr. LARRY JOHNSON (Former State Department Counterterrorism Expert): Hi, Neal. How are you?
CONAN: You've heard what Stephen Hayes has been saying in response to what the commission said yesterday. What do you make of the argument at this point? Is there definitive word, one way or the other?
Mr. JOHNSON: No. Well, there are definitive facts, but unfortunately, a lot of this discussion is getting bantered about like Bill Clinton's discussion of what 'is' is. Was there contacts between the Iraqis and al-Qaeda? Yes, that's true. But if you go to the documents that Stephen published in his excellent article last fall in The Weekly Standard, what those documents show is that there were multiple meetings, but no outcome. There was requests for WMDs but no agreement to supply, no evidence that such material was ever provided. There was request to establish camps, and the date of that information was 1998. No such camps were ever established. It's true that UBL--you know, Osama directed his followers not to attack Saddam from 1993.
But then we're left with the facts of what international terrorist activity has been. From 1991 through 2002, there was a grand total of 4,342 attacks. Of those attacks, Iraq was directly implicated in 82. So this impression that Iraq was some sort of mass sponsor of international terrorism, that's simply misleading. It is not supported by the facts. It is true that people like Abu Nidal, Abu Ibrahim and Yassin, who was implicated in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, were hiding out in Iraq, but the problem you run into with those is that, number one, Abu Nidal--the last terrorist attack they were implicated in was in 1995, and Abu Nidal wound up dead, supposedly committed suicide while resisting arrest from Iraqi agents, even though they shot him three or four times. Abu Ibrahim is now in US custody, my understanding, and we're still looking for Yassin.
CONAN: And he was, the man you were talking about just a moment ago, the Achille Lauro hijacker. Yes.
Mr. JOHNSON: Correct. I mean, what disturbs me about this is if it was an even-handed discussion by the Bush administration, particularly President Bush and Cheney, about what's central to the war on terrorism is going after state sponsors. The evidence points to Iran, as was reiterated yesterday of this collaboration between a Shia regime and Abu Nidal--I mean, and Osama bin Laden. But not only do you have to rely upon the evidence yesterday, there was evidence introduced into court in October of 2000 just before the election by Ali Mohammad, an Osama bin Laden operative, who testified to helping set up a meeting between Imad Mugniyeh, who's an operative for the Iranians, and Osama bin Laden. And why did bin Laden want the meeting? He saw Mugniyeh as a mentor, and out of that meeting came a commitment of providing training, financing and support.
CONAN: Mugniyeh, again, believed to be responsible for some of the bombings against American targets in Beirut.
Mr. JOHNSON: Well, I mean, of the Marine barracks in 1983...
CONAN: Yes.
Mr. JOHNSON: ...which was the largest loss of life, until September 11th. So my point is...
CONAN: Well, let...
Mr. JOHNSON: ...(Unintelligible).
CONAN: I think we got your point. We'll get back to you, Larry. But I wanted to get a response from Stephen Hayes.
Mr. HAYES: Yeah. Actually, I don't disagree with much of what Larry says. I think that--and I do think that he's right to point out that Iraq, you know--and I haven't argued--I don't think the Bush administration has argued that Iraq was the primary sponsor of international terror over the past decade or two. What my argument has been, what my argument in this book is, that Iraq presented a unique threat, because of the overlap with al-Qaeda, because of Saddam's eagerness, displayed eagerness to exact revenge for the first Gulf War, and he has said repeatedly that the mother of all battles did not end. I think...
CONAN: And there was a plot to assassinate the president's father.
Mr. HAYES: There was a plot to assassinate the president's father in 1993. There was a plot to blow up Radio Free Europe's building in Prague in the Czech Republic in 1998. And I think, you know, there are signs that there was continuing Iraqi involvement in terrorism as late as October of 2002. And Filipino officials have said, and really not minced words much about, Iraqi involvement in Abu Sayyaf attacks in October of 2002, one of which claimed the life of a US soldier.
CONAN: Abu...
Mr. HAYES: But I would agree with Larry that, you know, we should be careful not to suggest that Iraq was the main sponsor of all worldwide terrorism, but I do think that it's important to be sure about--to communicate that Iraq never really stopped its participation in terrorism.
CONAN: We're talking about the conclusions of the 9-11 panel yesterday about links between al-Qaeda and Iraq or lack of links. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
And let's get a question from a listener. Bill is on the line with us from Denver, Colorado.
BILL (Caller): Yes, sir.
CONAN: Hi. You're on the air, Bill. Go ahead.
BILL: Oh, very good. Yes. I just have question for your guest there. He immediately came on the radio and mentioned the fact that George Tenet had established concrete links between the operation of the Hussein regime and how is it connected to al-Qaeda, but nowhere in any media report, nor in your guest's opinion have any substantive evidence been delivered. They say there's letters, there's correspondence. And I just wondered if he can address that and tell us how those correspondences would justify an entire invasion of a country.
CONAN: Stephen Hayes.
Mr. HAYES: Yeah. I guess I would dispute the premise of the question. I think that there have been pieces of hard evidence that have been found. And, you know, let me preface it by saying, you know, the nature of this stuff, as Larry knows, is often marque and it's often circumstantial, so unfortunately, that's a lot of what we have to go on. That said, I think that there are instances of hard evidence, of overlap between Iraq and al-Qaeda. And I think the telephone intercept from an Iraqi intelligence official to an Ansar al-Islam official promising $100,000 and praising the good work of Ansar al-Islam in May of 2002 is one such piece of hard evidence. That evidence has been corroborated now by numerous detainees in northern Iraq who have spoken both to journalists and to US intelligence officials. So I think it's fairly clear at this point, I mean, if the discussion is about hard evidence, that seems to me to be pretty good evidence.
CONAN: Larry Johnson, let me ask you, Ansar al-Islam, the al-Qaeda associated group that established an enclave in northern Iraq, that was a presence in Iraq.
Mr. JOHNSON: Well, but the thing we ignore is that they were receiving support from Iran. They were receiving much more support from Iran than from Iraq, number one. And when it came time to flee, they didn't flee down into the heart of Baghdad and say, 'Saddam, protect us.' They took off for Iran. Now, look, at the end of the day, what we're facing on the front of international terrorism is a group of committed Salafists, these Islamic jihadists, and unfortunately or fortunately, whichever your point of view, the one country which has been consistent in backing and supporting that movement for the last 24 years is the government of Iran, not the government of Iraq. And, in fact, our policy of supporting Saddam Hussein up until 1989 was predicated upon trying to wall off the government of Iran. What we've done is we've now destroyed the one government that was helping keep them at bay, and we've opened it up now that we've seen just a surge, a dramatic surge, of Islamic extremist terrorism not just in Iraq, but throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
CONAN: Stephen Hayes, getting back to the al-Qaeda and Iraq links, this was not the only rationale for the war in Iraq. Obviously, there was weapons of mass destruction. There was Saddam Hussein's abuse of his own people and the 300,000 graves discovered in Iraq after the war. But the link between al-Qaeda and Iraq was an important one. It led urgency to the concerns that weapons of mass destruction might somehow be given to this group, which was obviously ruthless in its use. Based on the evidence that we do know and what the commission came up with, does that substantiate the decision to go to war?
Mr. HAYES: It's a good question. I mean, I think it does. I think that Saddam presented a unique threat, based on what we knew about his past performance, his, you know, unwillingness to abide by the UN resolutions; certainly, his overlap with al-Qaeda, which I think the administration probably should have made more of an issue of, rather than less. I think they were actually rather understated in making their case on the overlap, not only with al-Qaeda but with international terrorist groups and the demonstrated willingness of Saddam to exact revenge for the first Gulf War. Also, the human rights case I think, you know, is one that has not gotten a lot of attention, frankly, and I think it should get a lot more attention. I mean...
CONAN: But is there a hard enough evidence in your mind--you know, again, in 30 seconds, if you were president of the United States, on this link to al-Qaeda, said, 'Well, that's enough for me.'
Mr. HAYES: I think the link to al-Qaeda, combined with all of these other factors, made Iraq the unique threat that it was and made the war justified. It's a good question. I don't know that I would have done it with the WMD or the human rights on their own, but with the overlap with al-Qaeda, I think that's pretty strong.
CONAN: Larry Johnson, thanks very much for being with us today. We appreciate your time.
Mr. JOHNSON: Thanks, gentlemen.
CONAN: Larry Johnson, a former State Department counterterrorism expert, a former CIA intelligence officer. He was on the phone from Bethesda, Maryland. Stephen Hayes, also, thank you for coming in today.
Mr. HAYES: Thanks, Neal. Enjoyed it.
CONAN: Stephen Hayes, a staff writer at The Weekly Standard, author of "The Connection: How al-Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America." He was with us here in Studio 3A.
All of this--more details on this later today. Earlier in the program, we heard excerpts of audio recordings released by the 9-11 Commission today. You can hear lots more at our Web site, npr.org.
I'm Neal Conan in Washington.
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