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Laura Brown’s 2003 memo, therefore, reflects information that was available immediately after 9/11.<br />
What did the 9/11 Commission do about Brown’s memo which was, in fact, presented to them directly? Richard<br />
Ben-Veniste, after reading it into the record, even said: “So now we have in question whether there was an<br />
informal real-time communication of the situation, including Flight 77’s situation, to personnel at NORAD.” 1 The<br />
Commission knew, therefore, that this was the FAA’s position, and it offered no rebuttal. When The 9/11<br />
Commission Report appeared, however, it contained no mention of this memo or its account. The Commission<br />
implicitly claimed, in fact, that the memo’s account could not be true by claiming that the FAA initiated conference<br />
(which according to Brown’s memo had begun about 8:50) did not begin until 9:20. 2 As usual, inconvenient facts<br />
were simply eliminated by the 911 Commission.<br />
If we, however, refuse to ignore all these facts, we have good reason to consider the Commission’s tapes-based<br />
account of AA 77 false--which would imply that the tapes are inauthentic. An examination of the Commission’s<br />
account of UA 93 will provide additional support for this conclusion.<br />
Flight 93:<br />
According to the 911 Comm/Tape based Account:<br />
9:28am - FAA controller hears “sounds of possible screaming” - 93 descends 700 feet. No one notified<br />
9:32am - A voice is heard saying, “We have a bomb on board.” - Notified his supervisor<br />
9:36am - Various debate occurs, no direct action<br />
9:49am - Conversation between Command Center and FAA headquarters occurs, but no decisions are made<br />
10:03am - Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania, no active action taken by NEADS/NORAD 3<br />
This account involves yet more apparent amazing incompetence by FAA officials. To accept this account, we must<br />
believe that the decision to call the military is a momentous, extraordinary one, not a routine one, made over a<br />
hundred times a year. We must also believe that, on a day on which hijacked airliners had already caused much<br />
death and destruction, officials at FAA headquarters had to debate whether a hijacked airliner with a bomb on<br />
board was important enough to disturb the military. We must believe, moreover, that they were still debating this<br />
13 minutes later at 9:49, when the following conversation between Herndon VA and FAA headquarters occurred:<br />
Command Center: Uh, do we want to think, uh, about scrambling aircraft?<br />
FAA Headquarters: Oh, God, I don’t know.<br />
Command Center: Uh, that’s a decision somebody’s gonna have to make probably in the next ten minutes.<br />
The decision, moreover, was obviously that the military should not be disturbed, because 14 minutes later, at<br />
10:03, when Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, “no one from FAA headquarters [had yet] requested military<br />
assistance regarding United 93.” 4 To believe the Commission’s tapes-based report, in other words, we must<br />
believe that FAA officials acted in a manner beyond incompetent.<br />
Besides the fact that the Tape based / 911 Commission’s new story about UA 93 is highly implausible, it is<br />
challenged by some inconvenient facts. One fact is the existence of the teleconference mentioned in Laura<br />
Brown’s memo. The Commission claims that this FAA-initiated teleconference did not start until 9:20<br />
(instead of about 8:50, as her memo indicated), but this claim provides no help with regard to UA 93, which did<br />
not crash until 10:03 AM, so that the time between 9:30 and 10:00 was the crucial period. Her memo said, as we<br />
saw, that “[t]he FAA shared real-time information...about...all the flights of interest,” and the Commission itself<br />
agrees that by 9:34, FAA headquarters knew about the hijacking of Flight 93 so that it was a “flight of interest.”<br />
Accordingly, the Commission’s tapes-based claim (that the military was not told about the hijacking of UA 93 until<br />
it crashed) is flatly contradicted by Laura Brown’s memo, which, although it was ignored in the Commission’s final<br />
report, had, again, been read into the Commission’s record by Richard Ben-Veniste.<br />
Another inconvenient fact was a video conference being run from the White House that morning by Richard<br />
Clarke, the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, who described this video conference in his<br />
best-selling book, “Against All Enemies”--which came out in 2004 while the hearings were still going on. (cont.)<br />
1 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, May 23, 2003<br />
(http://www.911commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm). In introducing the memo,<br />
Ben-Veniste said he was told it had been authored by two “high level individuals at FAA, Mr. Asmus and Ms. Schuessler.” That<br />
it was in reality written by Laura Brown, however, was confirmed during a telephone conversation I had with her on Sunday,<br />
August 15, 2004.<br />
2 911 Commission Report, p.27<br />
3 911 Commission Report, p.28-29<br />
4 911 Commission Report, p.29-30