The Gazette (Colorado Springs) June 17, 2004
Analysts defend NORAD's 9/ 11 role
By Pam Zubeck
The international command that monitors incoming airstrikes shouldn't be blamed for being unprepared for the Sept. 11 attacks because no one could have foreseen the strikes, defense policy analysts said Wednesday.
Their comments came in response to a New York Times report that the independent government panel investigating the attacks is expected to harshly criticize the Colorado Springsbased North American Aerospace Defense Command.
The analysts said the inability of the Air Force to launch fighter jets in time to shoot down the hijacked planes was more a result of the Cold War's end than neglect.
"If bin Laden had attacked us when Ike was president, it would have been a different response. We were locked and loaded back then, and we were twitchy," said John Pike, executive director of the defense think tank GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Va.
"Under the circumstances I think it would have been difficult for them (fighter jets) to have made a difference," he said.
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States is expected to accuse NORAD, a joint United States and Canadian command, of being slow and confused on that day.
"On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen," the report will say, according to a Wednesday New York Times account. "What ensued was a hurried attempt to create an improvised defense by officials who had never encountered or trained against the situation they faced."
The report also will suggest that a more organized response by NORAD might have allowed fighter pilots to reach one jetliner and shoot it down before it flew into the Pentagon, nearly an hour after the first of the hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Times reported.
Instead, the commission reportedly has concluded, an emergency order from Vice President Dick Cheney authorizing the hijacked planes to be shot down did not reach pilots until the last of the four commandeered jetliners had crashed into a field in western Pennsylvania.
NORAD commander Gen. Ralph Eberhart and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testify today at the commission's last hearing before it reports its findings late next month.
NORAD officials did not address the commission's reported findings Wednesday, saying in a statement they did not want to "pre-empt Gen. Eberhart's testimony before the commission."
While some criticize the Air Force for not having fighters on alert close to likely targets such as Washington, D.C., and New York, defense analysts aren't surprised.
After the Cold War ended more than a decade ago, continental air defense was turned over to the Air National Guard, Pike said, noting that the days of planes being fueled, armed and ready on the tarmac ended long ago.
"Given the prevailing attitudes at the time, it would have been an uphill struggle" to have fighters on alert for a homeland attack, Pike said.
As it was, fighters that responded to Washington, D.C., came from Langley Air Force Base in southern Virginia, and those sent to New York City flew from Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod, Mass.
The Air Force has closer bases where fighters could have been placed but weren't, said Dr. Loren Thompson, chief operating officer with the Washington, D.C., think tank Lexington Institute.
That's really not the issue, though, he said.
"Nobody took the continental air defense mission seriously before 9/11," Thompson said.
"It was the bottom of the list for the Air Force. Neither NORAD or the Air force assigned a high priority to the mission. Most of the aircraft that were on alert weren't even armed."
No one had attacked the continental United States from the air since the Japanese tried to drop incendiary weapons on the West Coast from balloons in World War II.
Even if fighters had been based in the right place and ready for deployment, however, it's sheer guesswork whether they could have shot down the airliners in time, said Ted Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at Cato Institute, a nonprofit public policy research foundation in Washington, D.C.
"The more important factor is no one anticipated this," Carpenter said. "The danger is much more evident in retrospect than it was at the time."
Carpenter said NORAD's mission was to monitor threats from outside the borders, not from within.
"To me, this illustrates one of the problems with the 9/11 commission trying to assess blame for a situation that would have been very difficult to anticipate," Carpenter said.
Pike said the commission's findings are of interest only in terms of identifying changes.
After Sept. 11, the Air Force launched Operation Noble Eagle, which sent fighters patrolling over select targets. It continues today.
NORAD has expanded its mission to monitor threats from within the United States and has taken steps to enhance communication with other agencies. In addition, the military has been given authority to shoot down aircraft under certain circumstances without seeking presidential approval.
© Copyright 2004, The Gazette, a division of Freedom Colorado Information
