The Gazette (Colorado Springs) June 17, 2004
Independent panel expected to criticize NORAD's response on Sept. 11
By Pam Zubeck
The international command that monitors incoming air strikes shouldn't be blamed for being unprepared for the Sept. 11 terrorist 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 Springs-based North American Aerospace Defense Command.
But the analysts said the inability of the Air Force to launch armed 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, more than 50 minutes 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, according to the Times report.
NORAD officials did not address the commission's findings head-on saying in a statement, "In order to preserve the integrity of what the commission is trying to do and not to preempt Gen. Eberhart's testimony before the commission tomorrow, we will not comment today (Wednesday)."
© Copyright 2004, The Gazette, a division of Freedom Colorado Information
