Posted on 08/12/2002 12:50:43 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
FAA says it had 11 other suspect planes on Sept. 11
Monday August 12, 2002
By RICHARD PYLE Associated Press Writer
WESTBURY, N.Y. (AP) In the tense minutes after two hijacked jetliners smashed into New York's World Trade Center and another hit the Pentagon, air traffic controllers had as many as 11 other suspect aircraft on their screens, federal aviation officials said Monday.
The concern over possible additional hijackings did not end until 12:15 p.m. on Sept. 11 3{ hours after the first attack on the twin towers when the last of 4,546 commercial aircraft were safely on the ground nationwide.
``Somewhere in the first hour after the first plane hit, we were receiving reports of additional confirmed hijackings. The list at that point in time started to grow,'' said Frank Hatfield, Eastern Region division manager for FAA air traffic control operations.
``All reports were treated as unconfirmed hijackings until we eliminated that as a possibility. We were not satisfied that the last number was four until 12:15 p.m., and every airplane in the country was on the ground,'' he said.
``No one had ever envisioned a scenario where the United States would land every plane in the sky.''
Airports became jammed with the unexpected aircraft, yet there were no mishaps, he said.
Hatfield and other FAA officials briefed news media on Monday at the New York Terminal Approach Control Center, known as TRACON, on Long Island.
Mike McCormick, air traffic control manager at New York Center the main traffic control center for New York area airports made the unprecedented decision at 9:04 a.m. to declare ``ATC Zero,'' meaning that normal services were suspended and no aircraft could fly into, out of or through the region's airspace.
At that time there were still hundreds of aircraft in the skies around New York and the western Atlantic, for which the Long Island-based center had responsibility.
The decision came just after the second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, struck the south tower of the World Trade Center, confirming that the country was under terrorist attack.
Unlike the first hijacked plane, American Airlines Flight 11, the second Boeing 767's transponder was working and he knew where it was headed, McCormick said, even before the Newark Airport control tower picked it up visually as it flew south along the Hudson River, turned and headed back toward the twin towers.
``I wanted to make sure everyone understood that this (attack) was not a single aircraft, that this was not a single event. There was at least one other aircraft involved and there could be many more, and we needed to prepare for all eventualities,'' McCormick said.
The officials said many changes have been effected in emergency procedures since Sept. 11 but declined to go into detail for security reasons.
Hatfield said, however, that the time frame for the FAA to make contact with the military in an emergency ``has been shaved from minutes to seconds.''
On that day, the first two military interceptors, Air Force F-15 Eagles from Otis Air Force Base in Massachusetts, scrambled airborne at 8:52 a.m., six minutes after the first attack, but too late to do anything about the other jets heading for the Trade Center or Pentagon.
Those struck at 9:02 and 9:40 a.m., respectively. The fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed near Somerset, Pa., at 10:07 a.m.
McCormick said that under the new procedures, ``We are in direct instantaneous communication with our military and those people responsible for defending our country.''
Hatfield said security now has a much higher priority than it did before Sept. 11.
``We have searched our souls and tried to figure out what we could have done differently on that day,'' he said. ``Probably the best thing we could have done was to improve our communications, and over the last year we have aggressively addressed that issue.''
It might make Poohbah look bad if a link was found?
I'm sure quite a few did. I think the Arabs overestimated their side and underestimated ours. I'll bet some were too drunk, too hungover, too scared to even show up to the airports that morning as planned. Some probably went to a nudie bar like the others and completely changed their minds about dying for their religion.
Imagine if they had hit the Pentagon harder, destroyed Congress and killed our President --and those are just the plans we know about that failed all for Hour 1 of Day 1. It's quite obvious they meant to do far more damage than they did, it seems that by Day 3 at least we could have seen some Arab or Iraqi or Egyptian troops landing on our shores.
Thank you for this link. Someone has been doing some homework.
oh come on now..............are you serious?
You can thank President Reagan for that. When he stood up to the air traffic controllers' strike, he cut a lot of union deadwood from their ranks -- and made it possible for real professionals to replace them.
oh come on now..............are you serious?
They are already here. After Gulf War I, the U.S. resettled over 17,000 Iraqi's, including thousands of former Iraqi soldiers inside our borders.
Yeah, it makes me sick in my stomach.
Since just before 911 when the site was getting pelted with pro-pali, pro Iraqi wackos I've been keeping a one-person links database on certain terrorists and isolated incidents which has since become very bulky. Most of the threads linked have additional links in them worth reading too. If you type in the last name of certain terrorists on FR's search box (try to spell the names different ways, like alarian, or al arian), you will get more useful links. If you can run onto a more recent page which has keywords on it you can find additional relevent articles, too, but it isn't much use for older material. There is also a 'wayback machine' web site which stores old internet articles and does contain archived FR threads.
More on the St. Louis to Texas folks who were detained:
DIASPORA
FBI tests documents of 2 detained Indians for anthrax
PTI • New York • October 26 • 8:30 PM IST
FBI sleuths are testing documents seized from the apartment of two Indians, detained in connection with the US terror attacks, for anthrax after old issues of magazines carrying stories on biological weapons and gas attack were found in their rooms.
Ayub Khan and Mohammad Jaweed Azmath, both from Hyderabad, were earlier pulled off a train near Dallas and detained as they were found carrying box cutters similar to those used by the hijackers who destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon building on September 11.
The New York Times newspaper reported that the Hyderabadi duo had not explained their travels to the satisfaction of the investigators and FBI is trying to squeeze information from reluctant witnesses.
They said they were going to Texas to open a fruit stall.
On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a search at their residence in Jersey City found old issues of Time magazine and US News and World Report with cover stories on biological weapons and a gas attack in Tokyo.
Their room-mate Aslam Pervez, who once worked in Trenton and lived near the postal facility from where some of the letters suspected to have carried anthrax powder were posted, has also been detained.
No links so far have been established against Khan and Azmath and the terrorist attacks, and investigators say they doubt if they were involved.
Police officials in India were quoted as saying that they were helping FBI look into how Azmath and Khan, who had little money when they moved to the United states in the mid 1990s, amassed enough to wire 54,000 dollars to their families in 1999.
Last week, Pervez was reportedly charged with lying to federal agents when they questioned him about more than 110,000 dollars in cheques and money orders that moved in and out of his bank account, mostly during 1995 and 1996.
Khan's and Azmath's movements on Sept. 11 and 12, and the box cutters they were carrying in a briefcase, are "certainly suspicious," one law enforcement official told the Times.
"But we can't link them to anything, any particular suspicious flights or destinations," he said.
He added that federal agents were in "kind of a standoff" with them.
But one person involved in the case was quoted as saying that Pervez testified before the Federal grand jury investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Times said there may be an innocent explanation for their trip to Texas. The news stand on which the two worked was sold to another company in late August, leaving Khan, Azmath and Pervez without jobs.
The Times said that Khan's real name is Gul Mohammad Shah. They said he and Azmath had obtained Indian passports by giving false information about themselves, but they added that was not uncommon for people trying to leave the country.
Postal route in N.J. tracked
8th case confirmed; anthrax studies suggest cases linked
By Frank D. Roylance and Marego Athans
Sun Staff
October 20, 2001
TRENTON, N.J. - Federal investigators descended on suburban Ewing Township yesterday, tracking a postal carrier's route where at least one of the anthrax-tainted letters that have rattled the nation in recent weeks might have been mailed.
FBI agents went door to door, asking residents and workers at businesses about suspicious activity. Investigators removed some mailboxes. Two local postal facilities were closed, and nearly 1,000 employees were advised to take antibiotics.
...snip...
In Washington, authorities said close examination of the anthrax bacteria mailed to offices in Florida, New York and Washington found that the samples were "indistinguishable," suggesting that the attacks were related.
"It does appear that it may have been from the same - the same batch," Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge told reporters at a White House briefing. "But it may have been distributed to different individuals to infect and to send into different communities."
...snip...
Farther north in New Jersey, Carroll said the FBI will run anthrax tests on items removed last month from the apartment of two Jersey City men detained by federal authorities after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The FBI was alerted after Wall Street Journal reporters visited the unlocked apartment of Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan and found a 1995 article on sarin nerve gas and a magazine article on the National Center for Infectious Diseases.
Azmath and Khan have been detained since they were picked up in Texas on an Amtrak train the day after the Sept. 11 attacks. They were alleged to be carrying about $5,000 and box-cutting knives similar to those used by the hijackers.
...snip...
The anthrax attack on the offices of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle was launched three weeks after the New York attacks, in a letter very similar to the NBC letter, and postmarked at the same Trenton facility Oct. 9.
...snip...
Preliminary tests have turned up anthrax in at least two places overseas.
Sun staff writer Ellen Gamerman and wire reports contributed to this article.
Copyright © 2002, The Baltimore Sun
...snip...
On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a search at their residence in Jersey City found old issues of Time magazine and US News and World Report with cover stories on biological weapons and a gas attack in Tokyo.
Their room-mate Aslam Pervez, who once worked in Trenton and lived near the postal facility from where some of the letters suspected to have carried anthrax powder were posted, has also been detained.
...snip...
...snip...
At the same time, investigators into the terrorist attacks have also been passing through Trenton, running down leads on Mohammad Aslam Pervez, who was indicted last week on charges he lied to the FBI about financial transactions.
Pervez, who lived in Trenton in the mid 1990s and worked at a newsstand at the train station, is a former Jersey City roommate of Ayub Ali Khan and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, who were pulled off an Amtrak train in Texas on Sept. 12. They had a large sum of cash, hair dye and box-cutter knives like those believed to have been used in the Sept. 11 hijackings. Pervez is being held in New York without bail.
...snip...(originally from the Miami Herald)
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