What really happened to American Airlines Flights 11 and 77 on Sept 11, 2001.

by Gerard Holmgren . Nov 13 2003

(Slightly revised Sept 25 2006)

Copyright: This article or any part of it, may not be reproduced without the express permission of the author, in writing. This prohibition excludes quoting of relevant sections for the purpose of analysis of the article itself– providing that the article is linked to in association with any such quotation.

(Author’s note Jan 9 2005 : This article was originally published here. Shortly after I published this article the BTS moved it’s database to a new location—and didn't leave a forwarding address. The new address is

http://www.bts.gov/programs/airline_information/airline_ontime_statistics/

10 months after I published, they finally got around to doctoring the database as predicted at the end of this article. Links to back ups of the original BTS search results done in Nov 2003 are here  1   2   3   4

By visiting the original article, one can see that in Nov 2003, no-one in the comments column was disputing that I had accurately represented the contents of the data base. When I update this article, I will show how the BTS has made a mess of the cover up. Below is the article as originally published}

On the basis of photographic and physical evidence, it has now been established for some time that on Sept 11, 2001 the damage to the Pentagon was caused by something other than the hijacked Boeing 757, American Airlines Flight 77 claimed by the Government to have crashed into the building.

More recently, its become widely accepted on the basis of video evidence that the object which hit the North Tower of the WTC at 8.46 that morning was not the hijacked Boeing 767, American Airlines Flight 11, as claimed in the official story.

In response to these observations, both supporters of the truth and blind deniers of it agree on one thing. It raises the question - "If these flights did not hit the buildings as alleged, then where did they go?'

We are now in a position to answer that question.

First, lets recap the official story of what happened to four planes that morning.

AA 11 left Boston for LA at about 8 am, was reported as hijacked about 8.25, and hit the Nth Tower at about 8.46.

UA 175 left Boston for LA at about the same time, was reported hijacked at about 8.55 and hit the Sth Tower at about 9.03

AA 77 left Dulles for LA about the same time , was reported hijacked at about 8.55 and hit the Pentagon at about 9.45

UA 93 left Newark for SF at about the same time, was reported hijacked about 9.45 and crashed in PA at about 10.10.

The Buruea of transportation website contains search pages, where one can pull up detailed statistics about the history of which flights have been scheduled for which airports on any given day. Go to

http://www.bts.gov/ntda/oai/index.shtml (This was the link I quoted in the original article. As noted above, very soon after I published, the BTS moved it’s site and didn’t leave a forwarding address.)

and click on "detailed statistics" where one can search records of scheduled and actual departure times, arrival times, diversions and cancellations by departure airport, arrival airport, airline and flight number. Searches for Sept 11 2001 reveal that the flights AA 11 and AA 77 did not exist. They were not scheduled that day. Here are the search results which I encourage everyone to check for themselves.

A search for UA flights from Newark on Sept 11, 2001 shows 0093 to SF was scheduled at 8.00 and actually departed at 8.01. It is listed as "diverted" and did not arrive at its destination.

A search for UA from Boston on that day shows 0175 to LA was scheduled for 8.00 and actually departed at 7.58. Also listed as "diverted" and did not arrive at its destination. The term "diverted" is not clarified as to whether it includes hijacking and/or crashing, so the data gives no indication one way or the other as to truth of the official story about what happened to them, but it does confirm that they departed as per the official story and did not arrive at their destinations.

A search for AA flights from Boston that day does not list 0011. The earliest scheduled AA flight to LA

that day was 0181 at 11.00

A search for AA flights from Dulles that day does not list 0077. The earliest scheduled AA flight to LA was 0135 at 11.15.

Here's a different search method. One can find the historical reliability and punctuality of specific flights over a period of time, by specifying the Airline and flight number and defining the time period. The search then returns figures on average delays in departure and arrival times and percentages of cancelled or diverted flights.

If one searches specifically for UA 175 or UA 93 narrowed down to sept 11 only, the search returns the result of "diverted" for each flight. A similar search for either AA 11 or AA 77 returns "no data found".

If you search for AA 11 or AA 77 on different days, you will find that they were regularly scheduled flights right up to Sept 10. AA 11 was scheduled daily from Logan to LA at 8.00, and AA 77 from Dulles to LA at 7.45. On Sept 11, they were not scheduled. Not cancelled. Just not scheduled.

On Sept 12, they re-appear in the schedule (obviously as cancelled for the next few days) up until Sept 20 when both flights change their numbers.

Thus the official figures from the Bureau  of Transportation statistics indicate that neither AA 11 nor AA 77 flew on Sept, 11 2001. This solves the question of what happened to them. Nothing. Because the flights did not exist. This is consistent with other evidence which shows that they were not the objects responsible for the Pentagon and Nth WTC tower incidents.

This still leaves unanswered the question of what happened to the passengers alleged to be aboard the non existent flights. (See update below) In the case of AA 77, while one can always speculate about the most plausible scenarios, I prefer to wait until some real evidence emerges. However in the case of AA 11, I think it is worth noting that UA 175 left from the same airport, at the same time for the same destination as that normally applicable to AA 11. Therefore, although there is no direct evidence to support the claim, it would seem reasonable to speculate at this stage that any passengers who booked for AA 11 that day, and went to the airport, expecting to get on AA 11, may have been told that there was a last minute problem with the flight which could not be fixed within a reasonable period of time, and were offered a flight on UA 175 as compensation.

The data in this search indicates that we have been systematically lied to about the alleged flight paths and hijacking sequence of AA 11 and AA 77, as well as the alleged phone calls made from the planes.

It also  indicates probable complicity by American Airlines in the events of Sept 11 , 2001.

For the benefit of any NWO operatives reading this, the search result pages have already been backed up and widely distributed, so there's no point in trying to pressure the Bureau into playing hanky panky with the records. Nevertheless, I do encourage all readers to do the searches themselves and back up the results pages, just in case this happens.

(Update Sept 25 2006). On May 16 2004, I published an article proving that even if AA 11 did exist, then the passenger lists published by the media for the flight were fabrications. This does not necessarily mean that there are no missing people to account for, but it does mean that question of “what happened to the passengers ?” now means that we must point out that we don’t even really know who we are looking for when we talk about “the passengers.” There is no known document which has any credibility as a “passenger list”.

In that analysis, I found that there were four people who were listed as being aboard both AA11 and UA 175. This may add some weight to the speculation above that some people were deceived into thinking they were going to catch a flight called AA 11 and finished up on UA 175. If so, that situation could be the source of a mix up where the two lists got partially confused. But that is only speculation.

All we know for certain at this stage is that according to the official flight data, no such flight took place, and that the media published fake passenger lists for the alleged AA 11 flight.

Related article.

How Mark Rabinowitz and Jim Hoffman Lied about the BTS data.

JIM HOFFMAN TRASHES THE SEPT 11 STAND DOWN EVIDENCE

Copyright:Gerard Holmgren. Jan 6 2006. This work may be freely distributed providing : It is not for commercial purposes: The authors name, date and the web address where you found it are cited: Any editing is clearly acknowledged as such: The copyright notice is included. Posting in breach of any of these conditions is a breach of copyright.

INTRODUCTION—BACKGROUND INFORMATION

This article exposes a very clever web of multi-layered disinformation perpetrated by Jim Hoffman. This web is so cleverly constructed that in order to easily expose one of his lies it becomes necessary to concede several others just to get to whichever particular lie one chooses to target. On the other hand , if one picks apart the different strands, fully addressing each layer, it can become very confusing for someone not fully conversant with the underlying facts.

In this article, I have chosen the latter method of deconstruction, and therefore it is important that the reader first understand some basic facts which will help to counter the confusion which Hoffman has attempted to create.

From Nov 2001 to Jan 2002, a website called TENC published a series of groundbreaking research articles showing that the air force must have been stood down to allow the hijacked planes to successfully reach their targets on Sept 11 2001.This research was based on the underlying assumption that the hijackings and plane crashes actually took place, an assumption which was reasonable at the time. They also showed that the media was complicit in the subsequent cover up as the Govt scrambled to try to fill the gaping holes in the official story.

One of the most embarrassing holes in the original story was the revelation that after two planes had (supposedly) already hit the WTC,  AA77 was (supposedly) allowed to fly off course for approximately another 40 minutes to hit the pentagon, even though Andrews air base, only 10 miles from the pentagon had at least two squadrons of fighter jets available, stationed there for the specific purpose of defending DC and the Pentagon.

At first, officials tried to explain it away by saying that they simply had no idea what was happening in time to scramble (activate for interception) fighter jets from Andrews. When this ridiculous cover story became indefensible within days, they suddenly changed the story, claiming that Andrews didn’t have any fighters available and so fighters were scrambled appropriately early from other bases but didn’t get there in time. After exposing the holes in the first story, TENC then pulled apart the new story, demonstrating it to be just as indefensible as the original cover story.

Through a combination of plagiarism and subtle misrepresentation, Hoffman has attempted to reduce the effectiveness of this research while cleverly pretending to support it.

The series of TENC articles is linked here and  careful reading of these articles will help your understanding of this aspect of Sept 11 evidence, and also make it easier to understand the disinformation game being played by Hoffman.

                    

                PLAGIARISM AS A DISINFORMATION WEAPON

Some of the first well written and thoroughly researched evidence to emerge in relation to Govt involvement in the events of Sept 11 was the air force stand down evidence , by Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel.

At that time, it had understandably not occurred to many people that in fact the hijackings and plane crashes never happened. They were a giant media hoax.  1  2  3  4  5

Nevertheless, the series of research articles relating to the stand down is very good work - in so far as it goes - and is still a valuable  tool for demonstrating one angle of the impossibility of the mainstream story, providing that one adds the qualification that it has since emerged that there was probably no need to stand down the air force, because there weren't any hijacked planes in need of interception.

Many disinformationists calling themselves the  “9/11 truth movement” (I shall hereafter refer to such people as “truthlings” ) have partially endorsed the stand down evidence in order to give themselves the credible appearance of official story critics and then used this as a platform from which to attack other evidence of Govt and media involvement.

When truthlings endorse the stand down evidence, they seldom link or give credit to the original high quality research linked above. This is because the way in which the research is presented also provides an excellent lesson by example in critical thinking. This is disliked by truthlings, who want to herd  people’s thoughts like sheep. It is also probably because truthlings would prefer people to be exposed to poorly written, poorly documented, vague imitations, unlikely to have to have much influence on people who blindly trust the Govt and media  beyond the point of rationality. While there is never a guarantee of breaking through to such people, the incisive analysis and high standards of documentation provided by the original research  gives a better chance of a positive result—something the truthlings don’t want. Thirdly, truthlings want the credit for 911 “truth” (the exposing of the official story or the pretence of doing so) to be given to those who are interested only in promoting alternative lies. This increases their credibility in the eyes of people newly exploring the issue, and thus makes such people more vulnerable to trusting the truthlings and falling for their various disinformation ploys.

Consequently, the stand down research linked above has fallen victim to an astonishing amount of plagiarism.

Two such truthling plagiarists are Jim Hoffman and Mark Rabinowitz who I have already exposed as liars in another article.

First let’s consider how heavily Hoffman has plagiarized from TENC.

TENC original    http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-2.htm

Hoffman rip off  http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/alibis/cheney.html

TENC original    http://emperor.vwh.net/indict/urgent.htm

Hoffman rip off  http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/norad/index.html

TENC original   http://www.emperors-clothes.com/indict/faq.htm

Hoffman rip off  http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/defense/index.html

TENC original   http://emperor.vwh.net/indict/urgent.htm

Hoffman rip off  http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/alibis/myers.html

TENC original   http://emperors-clothes.com/news/albu.htm

Hoffman rip off  http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/retractions/romero.html

Rabinowtiz commits his plagiarism on a more modest scale.

Having taken ownership of much of TENC’s work in the minds of many, Hoffman put himself in a position to begin subtly undermining the very same work.

First, I will briefly summarize the two points of evidence to be examined here. TENC’s research demonstrated the following..

1. No fighters were scrambled (activated for interception) until after the pentagon was hit. After initially admitting this, the Govt and media then back flipped a few days later  to claim that fighters had been scrambled earlier but didn’t get there in time. TENC exposed this as a bogus claim.

2 While defending the first story, Vice President Cheney, in an interview on Sept 16 2001, deliberately attempted to confuse the issue of intercepting aircraft with that of shooting them down, and attempted to create the false impression that Presidential authority was needed to scramble fighter jets. Whether the planes should have or could have been shot down once interception was achieved is correctly identified by TENC as irrelevant to the question of why the air force didn’t do the first part of it’s job—routine interception. They exposed Cheney’s deceitful attempt to confuse the two issues.

Hoffman so much liked the demolition job that TENC did on Cheney’s spin that he plagiarized the substance of the article even to the point of only slightly rewording the title. However, as we’ll see later, once having claimed it by implication as his own work, Hoffman then set to work to subtly undermine it.

But first, I’ll examine Hoffman’s subtle twisting of the first point raised by TENC.

The magazine “Popular Mechanics” launched an attack on any idea that the Govt  was involved in any way in Sept 11. In response, Hoffman wrote an article supporting most of the views peddled by Popular Mechanics, including an attack on TENC’s first point.

Hoffman’s support for most of the official story was cloaked in a clever disguise of appearing to do the opposite. There is just one issue on which Hoffman gives a good presentation of Sept 11 evidence. The demolition of WTC 1,2 and 7.  Hoffman plagiarized nearly all of this work too. Having arrived to the issue belatedly, in mid 2003, after the hard work on the demolition evidence had already been done by others, and claiming it as his own, this is the platform which Hoffman has used to defend most of the official story, while appearing to be a critic of it.

Popular Mechanics attacked a wide range of the Sept 11 evidence. Hoffman took issue with them on the demolition but agreed with them on almost everything else. Hoffman cleverly disguised his extensive agreement with Popular Mechanics by presenting his endorsement of their views in a confrontational tone. His method was to agree that most of the evidence attacked by Popular Mechanics was junk and to take issue with them for falsely presenting such issues as representative of genuine Sept 11 scepticism.

Hoffman even boasted that he had debunked most of it before they did.

Let’s consider some of Hoffman’s response to Popular Mechanics.

[[More important, it misrepresents skeptics' views by implying that the skeptics' community is an undifferentiated "army" that wholly embraces the article's sixteen "poisonous claims," which it asserts are "at the root of virtually every 9/11 alternative scenario." In fact much of the 9/11 truth community has been working to expose many of these claims as disinformation…

...Superficially, the topics appear to address the major physical evidence issues brought up by the skeptics (while ignoring the mountains of evidence of foreknowledge, motive, and unique means possessed by insiders). However, the sixteen "most prevalent claims made by conspiracy theorists" which it attacks are mostly specious claims, many of which were probably invented to discredit skepticism of the official story in the first place. The article debunks the more specious claims, and uses distortion and falsehoods to counter serious claims.

Thus the main approach of the article is to set up and attack a straw man of claims that it pretends represent the entirety of the skeptics' movement. The list includes many of the same claims that are debunked on the companion to this site, 911review.com. The article gives no hint of the questions raised by the evidence in this site, nor any sense of the issues raised by the broader 9/11 truth movement. ]]

So there we have it in Hoffman’s own words. For the main part he agrees with the  assessment of the evidence by Popular Mechanics and is proud to have launched similar attacks himself.

Now lets look at one of the “straw man “ claims, as identified by Hoffman, which caused him to grumble that these “specious” claims should not have been presented to [[represent the entirety of the skeptics' movement.]] It is one of the very same pieces of evidence which Hoffman plagiarized from TENC in order to give himself credibility as a Sept 11 sceptic.

Hoffman writes
[[2. No Stand-Down Order
Here, the article falsely implies that emperors-clothes.comand StandDown.netboth claim that no jets were scrambled to pursue any of the four commandeered jets. It then attacks this straw man…]]
(“emperor’s clothes” is an alternative name for TENC)
Here, Hoffman is supporting the official story that fighters were scrambled
before the pentagon was hit and didn’t get there in time. One of very same myths which TENC worked so hard to expose as bogus.   According to Hoffman, the claim that no fighters were scrambled is a “straw man” . That’s curious, because it’s the exact opposite of what Hoffman writes on another part of his site  plagiarizing TENC’s much more thorough deconstruction of the issue..
[[The Changing StoryFor the first few days after the attack, the official story was that no interceptors were scrambled until after the Pentagon strike. On September 16th Vice President Cheney told Meet the Press that George Bush personally made the decision to scramble interceptors, and suggested that he did so only after the Pentagon was hit. 1 General Myers, during his confirmation hearing on September 13th, said that no military aircraft were scrambled until after the Pentagon was hit. 2 There was also no mention in the major media of scramblings of jets prior to the Pentagon hit, until September 14th, when Dan Rather announced on the CBS Evening News that F-15s were scrambled from Otis at 8:44 and F-16s were scrambled from Langley at 9:30. 3 Officials such as Cheney apparently were not kept apprised of these new "facts," since his Meet the Press interview was two days later. Four days after the CBS disclosure, the new story was incorporated into NORAD's official timeline. ]]
So, where it’s convenient to him, Hoffman uses (without  accreditation) TENC’s research showing that the claim of scrambles prior to the pentagon strike was a retrospective back  flip by officialdom to try to cover up what they’d earlier admitted—that nothing was scrambled until after the pentagon was hit. But when writing his cleverly disguised agreement with Popular Mechanics, he put on his other face and supported the official story. His only issue with Popular Mechanics was a complaint that the claim that such scrambles didn’t take place was a “straw man” and didn’t represent genuine Sept 11 scepticism.
Furthermore, he falsely attributed to TENC agreement with the official story of the scrambles. Misrepresenting the same people from whom one plagiarizes one’s research is about as low as one can go. Superficially, Hoffman appears to have at least linked to TENC, so that what they wrote can be easily checked. But this is also a deception. He has linked not to the specific articlenor even the relevant sectionof their site, but simply to their home page. Since the site deals with a wide range of issues, someone not familiar with the site and the issue would have little chance of quickly finding what TENC actually wrote in relation to this question.
Hoffman used some cleverly deceptive language, probably in preparation for the very type of criticism which I am now presenting.
[[the article falsely implies that emperors-clothes.com and StandDown.netboth claim that no jets were scrambled ]]
If we read that carefully and literally, it leaves open the possibility that *one* of the sites does present such a claim. However, there is no doubt that the way it is written is intended to mislead readers into thinking that *neither* site made such a claim.
If Hoffman were to object that his writing was not intended to give this misleading impression, and that it’s not his problem if people misinterpret technically correct language , this only digs him into an even more serious hole. Implicit in such a defence is a claim that TENC got it wrong—so wrong that their work can be described as a “straw man”, and  that StandDown.net (which supports the official story of the early scrambles) got it right. Even though Hoffman found it convenient to mimic TENC’s “straw man”  on another part of his site.
Which means that he’s calling the same TENC work that he copied and posted in order to raise his own profile, a “straw man”.
An examination of StandDown.net, shows that it’s another site which plagiarizes TENC’s original research and then subtly distorts it.

In order to understand this, we need to divide point 1 of TENC’s case into two sections.
A)  As already explained, early statements from officials all admitted that nothing was scrambled until after the pentagon was hit, and the stories about the scrambles which allegedly took place earlier were only introduced retrospectively to try to cover the holes in the first story. One should read the TENC articleto get a full grasp on the evidence for this, although Hoffman’s summary of it quoted earlier gives a basic idea.
B)  TENC showed in a different article written later, that had such earlier scrambles taken place, then the fighters involved would have to been flying at such ridiculously low speeds (less than 260 mph, as compared to top speeds of around 1500 mph), that this further supports their earlier published evidence that the alleged scrambles were a retrospective concoction.
Most of the truthling sites which plagiarize TENC’s work have twisted this evidence. They mostly omit part A of the analysis, and present it as fact that the earlier scrambles  took place. Having done this, they  present their scepticism in the form of asking why the scrambled fighters flew so slowly, rather than admit the obvious deduction that no such scrambles took place and that the ridiculously slow flying speeds were the result of trying to fit something which didn’t happen into the established timeline—a deduction supported by the evidence in part A, which the truthlings usually leave out. StandDown.net is a case in point.
Most sites which plagiarize TENC’s work imply it to be their own work rather than directly claim it.  Hoffman and Rabinowitz for example, simply imply a claim of originality by failing to acknowledge where they pinched it from.
StandDown.netuses far more aggressive and malicious plagiarism. Ignoring part A of the above analysis, it describes part B and directly attributes the original research to a person named Scott Shugar , who isn’t available to tell his side of the story because he reportedly died in 2002, not long after writing it. The author of the site, Mark Elsis also takes partial credit, even boasting that no-one but he and Shugar had the courage to write about the issue.
[[Stand Down is dedicated to Scott Shuger. Scott was known as the first Internet reporter. He was also the only mainstream or alternative media writer, besides myself, who had the courage to write about the elementary mathematical facts (that the two United States Air Force (USAF) F-15 fighters ordered to intercept United Airlines Flight 175 and the two or three USAF F-16 fighters ordered to intercept American Airlines Flight 77 were flying at only 25.8% and 27.4% of their top speed) of the NORAD Press Release of September 18, 2001. Scott's article is called IGNORAD The Military Screw-up Nobody Talks About. Scott Shuger died in a scuba diving accident June 15, 2002.
IGNORAD
The Military Screw-up Nobody Talks About
by Scott Shugar
http://AttackOnAmerica.net/IGNORAD.htm]]
Following this link we find an article pushing part B of the above analysis and claiming it to be original work.  It’s dated Jan 16 2002 and in its basic substance, is a copy of the TENC article published a week earlier. It also plagiarizes other aspects of the TENC research which were published even earlier than that, but carefully avoids the other evidence that the alleged scrambles prior to the Pentagon strike were retrospective concoctions, as shown by TENCand repeated by Hoffman
In summary, this is what Hoffman has done. First, in the main part of his site, he has attempted to write TENC out of the history of their own research, claiming it by implication as his own. Having achieved some success with this, he then subtly confuses and undermines the findings of the research by, in his response to Popular Mechanics, retiring the evidence that the alleged scrambles were fictitious—to the point of describing it as “straw man “ evidence , while opportunistically playing the other side in another part of his site. This is coupled with attempting to misrepresent TENC and shift credit for their original work to StandDown.net which also misrepresents the early scrambles issue.
                     HOFFMAN AND CHENEY SPIN TOGETHER
Hoffman uses the same tactic against TENC’s second point. That being the way in which Cheney attempted to confuse the issue of interception with the issue of shooting down, and create the impression that executive authorization was required to scramble fighter jets.
The TENC analysis begins thus
[[Lie # 2: Presidential Authorization Was Needed To Scramble Jets To Intercept Flight 77
On Sunday, September 16th, Vice-President Richard Cheney was interviewed on NBC TV's 'Meet the Press'. During that interview he created the impression that the military would have needed presidential authorization to scramble fighter jets to intercept American Airlines Flight 77 before it hit the Pentagon.]]
Hoffman’s plagiarismdescribes it this way.
[[Cheney, in an interview with Tim Russert on NBC, indicated that the President made the decision that day to scramble fighter jets. This is very unusual, as it is contrary to standard operating procedures ]]
And in another part of his site
[[It is standard operating procedure (SOP) to scramble jet fighters whenever a jetliner goes off course or radio contact with it is lost. 1Between September 2000 and June 2001, interceptors were scrambled 67 times.2 In the year 2000 jets were scrambled 129 times.]] 
Now we’ll see how later, through different channels, Hoffman played the other side, going to elaborate lengths to revive Cheney’s spin disguised as a new development.
Here is an article called “Found: The 9/11 strand down order ? “dated March 31 2004.
It is written by Jerry Russell, but he is obviously acting as a mouthpiece for Hoffman.
Some extracts.
[[Jim Hoffman has discovered a document which I believe may be very important to the 911 skeptic movement. This document superseded earlier DOD procedures for dealing with hijacked aircraft, and it requires that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is personally responsible for issuing intercept orders. Commanders in the field are stripped of all authority to act. This amazing order came from S.A. Fry (Vice Admiral, US Navy and Director, Joint Staff) so it appears to me that responsibility for the US armed forces "Failure to Respond" rests directly with Fry for issuing this instruction, as well as with Donald Rumsfeld for failing to execute his responsibility to issue orders in a timely fashion…
...this discovery could somewhat diffuse the power of our movement's message about the "Stand Down", since it is now clear that it was implemented through a routine administrative memo...The relevant documents are on the Web at:
http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/norad/docs/intercept_proc.pdf
http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/d302515_021897/d302515p.pdf]] (Note that the first link is Hoffman’s site)
If you actually read the documents in question, you’ll see that they are nothing to do with routine interception procedures. The changes represent merely a regulation adding UAV’s to the definition of “derelict objects” in the section relating to “destruction of derelict  airborne objects” and some minor shuffling of definitions and references.



Many people wouldn’t bother to read the fine print and if they did, many wouldn't  have the confidence to be sure that they had understood it properly, when Russell is confidently telling them that it amounts to Rumsfeld taking executive control of interception procedures.


In the following deconstruction, we’ll see that the particular section of the document quoted by Russell actually means the exact opposite of what he attributes to it.

 Hoffman’s version of this sneaky disinformation is here. These kinds of regulations are not easy for most people to read, which is presumably why Hoffman chose this as the platform to launch his re-invention of Cheney’s spin. But the following explanation may make it easier for you to read the documents yourself and work out what they mean and how Hoffman and Russell have twisted this.

 Note this from Russell’s article

 [[This CJCSI states that "In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be

notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference d, forward

requests for DOD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval."]]

 Russell’s claim that this means that personal approval from Rumsfeld is required to intercept a plane simply isn’t true. Somehow he forgot about this bit.

 [[with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference d]]

“Immediate responses”  obviously includes routine intercept procedures. They are defined here by “reference d”.

 And what’s reference d ? If we scroll towards the bottom of the document we find it.

 [[DOD 3025.15, 18 February 1997 “Military assistance to civil authorities”.]]

 So things which qualify for exemption on the basis of “immediate responses” are still defined by the 1997 regulation, which Russell agrees did not give the Defense Secretary executive control over  interceptions. This is contrary to the claim by Russell that the June 2001 changes mean that since that date [[Commanders in the field are stripped of all authority to act ]]

 While its understandable that some readers might be confused or intimidated into accepting Russel’s interpretation, through finding it difficult to directly understand the regulations, it’s difficult to see how anyone could have thought up Russell’s interpretation to begin with, in the absence of a conscious desire to spin in this direction.

 Hoffman makes the same claim as Russell, but takes more care to spin against the deconstruction I have just offered. Presumably anticipating that some people might notice what I just described, Hoffman wrote

 [[CJCSI 3610.01A, dated June 1, 2001, required that all requests for asistance in hijackings be approved by the Secretary of Defense. It had an exception for emergencies that would seem to give commanders in the field autonomy in ordering intercepts. However, that exception did not cover requests for "potentially lethal assistance", the kind required to respond to the attack.]]

 Hoffman provides no evidence for the assertion in the last sentence of this quote. And the assertion is clearly false. Exceptions are authorized by reference d. Reference d is the 1997 regulation. Therefore, the exceptions haven't been changed since 1997. This can be also be confirmed by scrolling to section 7 of the document headed “summary of changes”, which don’t include anything claimed by Russell and Hoffman.

 [[ 7. Summary of changes.


A. Unmanned vehicles (UAV,ROV) added to description of possible derelict airborne objects.

B. Statutory authority for Responding to aircraft Piracy enclosure removed and added to reference list.

C. In various places throughout the document, “USELEMNORAD” was replaced with “NORAD”

D. FAA order 76104J 3 November 1988. *Special military operations* was added as a reference. ]]

 The attempt to portray this as a regulation making interception dependent upon executive authority is disinformation.

 Now lets see how truly crummy this disinformation attempt is.

 Note this from Russell’s article dated March 31 2004.

 [[Jim Hoffman has discovered a document…]]


And from Hoffman’s own article in relation to it.

 [[The June 1st order apparently gave Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the legal authority (if not the de facto authority) to prevent intercepts of Flights 11, 175, and 77 by just doing nothing.]]

 The two quotes collectively create the impression that Hoffman has discovered a June 1 2001 change which was previously unnoticed, handing authorization to scramble fighter jets to Rumsfeld personally from that date on. Let’s remind ourselves again of the exact wording of this  “discovered document” as quoted by Russell’s article , which is recommended as source material by Hoffman.


[[This CJCSI states that "In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be

notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference d, forward

requests for DOD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval."]]

 Now lets look at an extract from the TENC article exposing Cheney’s spin, remembering that it is dated Nov 20, 2001 and that Hoffman liked it so much that he plagiarized much of the substance of it.

 [[A Defense Department manual makes the same point:

 "In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses,...forward requests for DOD [Department of Defense] assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval."

--CJCSI 3610.01A, 1 June 2001  ]]

 So much for “discovering a new document “.   2 1/2 years before Hoffman and Russell, TENC quoted this exact same document to demonstrate the routine nature of interception procedures, and how they do not require executive authority - as clearly stated in the regulation.

 And let’s remember what Hoffman himself wrote, when playing the other side in plagiarising that research.

 [[Cheney, in an interview with Tim Russert on NBC, indicated that the President made the decision that day to scramble fighter jets. This is very unusual, as it is contrary to standard operating procedures ]]

 Having established what the document actually says, and also the fact that it’s exposure to researchers was old news, let’s consider this claim from Russell.

 [[it requires that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is personally responsible for issuing intercept orders. Commanders in the field are stripped of all authority to act. ]]

 For anyone who somehow managed to initially get that impression from the document, common sense should have warned them to consider the question more carefully.

 Interception is such a routine procedure that it is inconceivable that the Secretary of Defense would have his permission sought every time a plane needed to be intercepted. It’s equivalent to suggesting that the police commissioner would be personally contacted for approval every time a police officer wanted to question a suspect. Hoffman knows enough to be aware of this, as shown here  from one of his articles playing the other side.

 [[It is standard operating procedure (SOP) to scramble jet fighters whenever a jetliner goes off course or radio contact with it is lost. 1 Between September 2000 and June 2001, interceptors were scrambled 67 times.2 In the year 2000 jets were scrambled 129 times.]] 

 And Rumsfeld has nothing better to do with his time than make himself constantly available to handle this volume of requests, which could occur at any time, most of which are in relation to trivial incidents ? Since when does the highest official in any bureaucracy be put in the position of having to personally approve every application of something which is “standard operating procedure”?

 Remember that the regulatory change falsely claimed by Russell and Hoffman to make interception dependent on personal approval from Rumsfeld is still in place. This means that for the last  4 1/2 years Rumsfeld would have been flooded with these time wasting, trivial requests, turning himself into a pointless rubber stamping clerk for his field commanders.

 To further emphasise that point, let’s examine some extracts from the documentation linked by Hoffman in his above quote. From the link numbered 1


[[At a NORAD operations center in Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs, Colo., a noncommissioned officer listens to conversations on the FAA network from all over the United States, said Maj. Douglas Martin, NORAD spokesman.


"If he hears anything that indicates difficulty in the skies, we begin the staff work to scramble," Martin said.]]

 He doesn't say anything about needing to contact Rumsfeld.

 [[From Sept. 11 to June, NORAD scrambled jets or diverted combat air patrols 462 times, almost seven times as often as the 67 scrambles from September 2000 to June 2001, Martin said…]]

 And Rumsfeld had to make a personal decision on every one of them ? 46 times a month ?

 [[...No one has been shot out of the sky since Sept. 11, he said; for that, an order must come from President Bush or Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. ]]

 This is the only part of the article which mentions executive authority. Note the clear distinction, as stated by Martin, between what has to be done to initiate a scramble, and what has to be done to initiate a shoot down. “Staff” initiate scrambles (46 times a month on average.)  Rumsfeld or Bush can authorize a shoot down. Exactly the distinction which Cheney attempted to confuse in Sept 2001 and which TENC sorted out in Nov 2001 , and which Hoffman plagiarized years later.


In summary:

  A correct reading of the CJCSI document reveals it to mean the opposite of what Hoffman and Russell attribute to it.

 The quoted regulation - claimed as a Hoffman discovery—had already been quoted for its correct purpose by TENC 2 1/2 years earlier as part of an article, the substance of which was plagiarized by Hoffman for use on a different part of his site.

 · Hoffman and Russell’s interpretation of the CJCSI document contradicts common sense.

 · Documentation about the process of aviation security since Sept 11 -used by Hoffman himself in a different part of his site - contradicts their interpretation of the CJCSI document.

 Again, we see that Hoffman plays both sides. In one part of his site he plagiarizes TENC’s work to raise his profile as a Sept 11 “researcher”. But through the back door, putting on his other face, Hoffman attempts a cleverly disguised revival of the Cheney spin that executive authorization is required to scramble fighter jets.


We could describe Hoffman by  quoting exactly what TENC says about Cheney.

 [[he created the impression that the military would have needed executive authorization to scramble fighter jets to intercept American Airlines Flight 77 before it hit the Pentagon.]] (TENC’s word “presidential” changed to “executive”. )


In this article we’ve seen Hoffman exposed as waging a subtle disinformation campaign against the stand down evidence on two fronts. First, he attempted to support the official story that jets were scrambled and didn’t get there in time. Second, he  supported Cheney’s deceit that executive authority is needed to scramble fighter jets.



If this claim from Hoffman were true



[[The June 1st order apparently gave Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld the legal authority (if not the de facto authority) to prevent intercepts of Flights 11, 175, and 77 by just doing nothing.]]



then the mythical scrambles which Hoffman (sometimes) believes in, had to be authorized by Rumsfeld.  If so, how could the scrambles have happened if Rumsfeld’s Sept 11 action can be accurately described as [[just doing nothing ]] ?



Not only are both prongs of Hoffman’s disinformation demonstrably false, they also contradict each other.



In conclusion, lets look at another extract from Russell’s article. What is the basic message of this disinformation ?



[[this discovery could somewhat diffuse the power of our movement's message about the "Stand Down", since it is now clear that it was implemented through a routine administrative memo.]]



“Forget about the stand down” is the basic message.



Lets put this message in perspective. I don’t believe that any stand down order was issued on Sept 11, because I don’t believe that there were any hijacked planes in need of interception. I am therefore confident that the “stand down order” will never be found because it doesn't exist, and that the issue is therefore a red herring in terms of material which could constitute proof in a legal sense.



So if anyone were to suggest that we forget about the stand down, you would expect it to be me.



Nevertheless, I still believe that the original stand down work - as done by TENC—not the proliferation of second rate plagiarism like Hoffman’s - is still a valuable tool in the total picture of public education, and so I still promote it - subject to the qualification above. This can be seen in my summary article and in my direct linking to the TENC articles from my site.



By contrast, Hoffman is adamant in defending the official story of what hit the towers and the Pentagon. Such a position mandates that one then treat the stand down issue as one of critical importance. And yet Hoffman, while pretending to support it, is pushing disinformation which prompts people to give up on it, and to be confused about it. For someone who actually believes that four planes were hijacked that morning and crashed where we were told - as Hoffman claims to believe -   then the stand down should be considered a prime piece of evidence, to be analysed respectfully and promoted properly.



And yet we see Hoffman trashing it through a campaign of plagiarism as the platform from which to issue subtle disinformation to misrepresent ,confuse and undermine the issue.