NORAD's "Lies" Explained?

I have been perusing the blog of Miles Kara, a 9-11 Commission staffer. To be honest, it is a humbling experience, because it shows the vast amount of knowledge the Commission accumulated compared to the small amount that even I, who know the subject matter well, have managed to grasp. It's sort of like the difference between going to a movie and being on the set of a movie while it is being filmed.

Miles covers the NORAD "lies" here, and it's eye-opening to say the least.

There was one critical and two other serious mistakes in the timeline. The critical error was the 9:24 time for AA77. The accurate NEADS log information was: “American Airlines No. N334AA hijacked.” N334AA is the tail number for AA11, not AA77, a basic fact apparently never checked by any NORAD, CONR, or NEADS staff officer with either American Airlines or FAA.

The 8:43 time for UA175, was impossible and never explained in any document or during any interview conducted by the Commission staff. It was most likely a NORAD misunderstanding of information from FAA. That is the approximate time that UA175 was hijacked, a fact only known post facto.

So, the 9:24 time for Flight 77 is actually a time for what I call "Phantom Flight 11". For awhile NORAD and the FAA thought that Flight 11 was not the plane that hit the North Tower, and that it was still en route to Washington DC. This error becomes compounded:

On the day after the hearing Colonel Scott sent an e-mail to Colonel Marr, with a copy to the Commission staff, stating that it became easier to explain the Langley fighter scramble in terms of UA93 than AA77. It is clear from that email that neither Scott nor Marr, whose staff supported Scott, took the time to listen to the tapes or look at the actual transcripts. The NEADS staff, and Colonel Scott, had sufficient data available to them to find the rebirth of AA11 misinformation and the real reason for the Langley scramble. If they found it they did lie. If they did not they could not tell the truth. They could not solve their Sudoku puzzle.

Hence the erroneous assertion that the military found out about Flight 93 long before they did.

The Hijacking Continues

As many of you know, the design for the memorial to Flight 93 attracted quite a bit of attention when it was first unveiled. As many have noted, it appears to be more of a memorial to the terrorist swine like Ziad Jarrah rather than a monument to the heroes like Tom Burnett, Lou Nacke, Jeremy Glick, Todd Beamer, Mark Bingham and Sandy Bradshaw (among others) who prevented that plane from reaching its destination and killing many more people on the ground.

Apparently Tom Burnett's father continues to oppose the redesign of the memorial, and our commenter Alec Rawls has written a book on the topic, called Crescent of Betrayal. I know that this topic is controversial even among 9-11 debunkers in general; some excellent people do not see anything wrong with the design. However, I must confess that I disagree with that stance.

Remember, Arizona's own 9-11 Memorial was similarly hijacked by the PC brigade.

Update: Tim Sumner points us to this comment by David Beamer, father of Todd Beamer and someone I trust:

Excellent plans have been created for a permanent memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The memorial will commemorate the battleground and the burial ground of those who fought back. I am contacting you to ask that you join the many people who have worked, sacrificed, and supported this project. Beyond your personal support, I ask that you contact your entire network of friends, family and associates to seek their support as well. Let us unite a million Americans and complete this memorial.

Five More Questions for the Troofers

Over at Counterknowledge, as a sequel to the 15 questions asked in December.

(3) To those who believe that the airphone calls by passengers to their loved ones were “morphed”: how exactly did the conspirators know how to get voice samples for the 59 crew and passengers aboard AA77, and the 40 aboard UA93? How did they predict which passengers would be aboard - notably Jeremy Glick (scheluded to take a flight the day before he boarded UA93) and Lauren Grandcolas (who was supposed to board a later flight on 11th September, but actually found a seat on UA93)? How did they anticipate (and prepare the appropriate responses for) questions their loved ones would ask once they received the calls? And how is it that their relatives didn’t notice anything untoward about the comments and responses their loved ones made (other than the obvious fact that the latter were due to die in a grotesque terrorist attack)?

Let me add here the case of Linda Gronlund, passenger on Flight 93:

Joseph DeLuca called his Dad; his girlfriend, Linda Gronlund, called her sister, Elsa Strong.

Elsa Strong says, "She said, 'Hi, Else, this is Lin. I just wanted to tell you how much I love you.' And she said, 'Please tell Mom and Dad how much I love them.' And then she got real calm and said, 'Now my will is in my safe and my safe is in my closet. and this is the combination.' And she just told me the combination of her safe. and then she just said, 'I don't know if I'm ever going to get a chance to tell you again in person how much I love you, but I'm really going to miss you.' And she said goodbye."

How did the government know the combination to Linda Gronlund's safe, and where it was located?

Buzzflash Editor Buys Flight 93 Shoot Down

We've given credit to the major lefty blogs for (mostly) not engaging in the 9-11 kookery, but Buzzflash Editor Mark Karlin bites on the Flight 93 shootdown theory:

But the Tribune editorial reminded us that the likelihood that Flight 93 was shot down, given the first reports and the account of Cheney ordering it shot down, is quite high. Any U.S. government, whether Democratic or Republican, would probably not want to admit that it was responsible for blowing a commercial airliner with U.S. citizens aboard out of the sky.

So a heroic narrative was, it appears, crafted to cover up the reality of what happened. At the time, we speculated that Flight 93 may have been headed for the infamous Three-Mile Island nuclear plant, just a short air distance away from where it went down. Or it may have indeed been flying back with terrorist plans to crash the plane into Congress or the White House.

We'll never know.

But on a scale of 1 to 10, BuzzFlash would put it at an 8 likelihood that Flight 93 was indeed downed by an American missile.

As I have said in the past, this is probably really the most commonly held conspiracy theory on 9-11. But that doesn't make it any less stupid. Remember that the Lockerbie bombing shows us what happens to a plane when it is blown out of the sky; the wreckage of Flight 93 looks nothing like this:



But common or not, Buzzflash takes it into real kook territory with "So a heroic narrative was, it appears, crafted to cover up the reality of what happened." That's every bit as offensive as Korey Rowe's comments about "Let's Roll". Screw you, Buzzflash!

Mark Karlin gets the old Nutbar-O-Meter Treatment:

Griffin Questions Tom Burnett's Choice, Insults Other Callers

Now this is really offensive stuff from the supposed kindly old man of 9-11 "Truth".

He is right to say that this would have been a stupid thing for the fake Tom to have said. But evidently lots of stupid things were said by those making the calls. For example, the person who called Mark Bingham’s mother reportedly said: “Mom, this is Mark Bingham.”[14] Have any of us, even in the most stressful situations, identified ourselves to our own mothers by using our last name? With regard to the person who was supposedly Tom Burnett: In his fourth call, Deena Burnett tells him that their kids are asking to talk to him, but “Tom” replies: “Tell them I’ll talk to them later.”[15] This was after he had told her that he had realized that the hijackers were on a suicide mission, planning to “crash this plane into the ground,” so that he and others had decided they must try to gain control of the plane as soon as they are “over a rural area.” And the hijackers had already killed one person, “Tom” had reported. So if this was the real Tom Burnett, he knew that there was a good chance that he would die in the next few minutes, one way or the other. And yet, rather than taking this probably last opportunity to speak to his children, he told his wife to say that he would “talk to them later.”

Hey, you know what, David? Screw you! Questioning Tom Burnett's decision not to talk to his children when he is in the middle of the most stressful situation in his life is patently offensive. This is not freaking Hollywood where he had plenty of time to say goodbye, he was about to risk his life to save it. How dare you question that decision?

Tom Burnett is a national hero.



David Ray Griffin is a national disgrace.

Interview with Boston Center Air Traffic Controller

No, not with Robin Hordon, who was last an ATC 26 years ago. It's an interview with a guy who was at Boston Center on 9-11-01, when the hijackings took place. It makes for fascinating reading, especially with the NORAD tapes being released this week as well. Kudos to Ref and Cheap Shot for putting this together; highly recommended!

It's All Part of the Script

We covered a few months ago the nutty theory from the Deniers that the BBC report of WTC-7 collapsing about 20 minutes before it actually happened, was all scripted. Because, as we all know, the media are all happy to report the news that President Bush wants reported.

But now, when the kooks uncover an old report claiming (incorrectly) that Flight 93 had crashed at Camp David, that's evidence of a script as well?

Note particularly this part:

The news anchor subsequently noted that the date marked the anniversary of the signing of the Camp David Accords on September 11, 1978 and tied the coincidence to the fact that the Accords are still disputed in the Arab world. However, the Camp David Accords were actually signed on September 17, 1978 - so why such an obvious error would be made is unclear.

Maybe because the media occasionally get things wrong? But no, everything must fit in their paranoid jigsaw puzzle, so the only explanation is that it was all part of the script.