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Many 9/11 theories claiming government involvement allege that the US air defense system, NORAD, was deliberately stood down
or rendered ineffective. This belief originates from the 9/11 Commission Report account of the actions taken by the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA), NORAD and other military personnel. Some claim that "FAA standard procedures (for NORAD
interception of off course or ceased responding aircraft) were activated on 67 occasions in the period from September 2000
to June 2001 and in 129 cases in the year 2000",but failed to do so on 9/11. Some theorists suggest that the war games
being conducted on September 11 were deliberately planned to coincide with the attacks to create confusion.United States Representative
Cynthia McKinney, economist Michel Chossudovsky, and publisher/editor Michael Ruppert of From the Wilderness are a few of
the individuals who have questioned these exercises.
The 9/11 Commission Report timeline of events in the FAA and NORAD contradicts the timeline released by NORAD shortly
after the event. The Washington Post reported in its August 3, 2006 edition that:
"For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information
about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances... Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept.
11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial account of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part
of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public... Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member
commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department
for criminal investigation. In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general
for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted".
Since the 9/11 Commission places the primary blame on communication failures within the FAA, Prof. David Ray Griffin,
who has written several books alleging that the 9/11 conspiracy was considerably larger than the government claims, has questioned
why the US military would lie to cover up the mistakes made by that agency.
There were a number of war games and military exercises taking place during the attacks, including Northern Vigilance,
a NORAD operation which involved deploying fighter aircraft to locations in Alaska and northern Canada to respond to a war
game being conducted by Russia; Global Guardian, an annual command-level exercise organized by United States Strategic Command
in cooperation with Space Command and NORAD; and Vigilant Guardian, a semiannual NORAD Command Post Exercise (CPX) (meaning
it is conducted in offices and with computers, but without actual planes in the air) involving all NORAD command levels in
which one scenario being run on September 11 was a simulated hijacking. Additionally, a National Reconnaissance Office drill
was being conducted on September 11 in which the event a small aircraft crashing into one of the towers of the agency's headquarters,
was to be simulated, and the Office of Emergency Management were preparing for Operation Tripod, a bioterrorism exercise due
to take place on September 12.
Members of the 9/11 Truth Movement question whether the story that such an array of war games and exercises were due to
take place on that day by coincidence, is plausible.Jim Hoffman and Michael Ruppert, among others, have suggested that the
war games may have been specifically organised to coincide with the attacks, in order to help disable the air defence system.Webster
Tarpley, in his book 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA (ISBN 978-0930852313) claims that the war games were the "perfect
cover for conducting the actual live fly components of 9/11 through a largely non-witting military bureaucracy. Under the
cover of this confusion, the most palpably subversive actions could be made to appear in the harmless and even beneficial
guise of a drill."
The 9/11 Commission ignored the public testimony of Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta in producing its report.
He said that at around 9:20 he entered the Presidential Emergency Operation Command in the bunker underneath the White House
where Dick Cheney was in command. He describes the following exchange, between Cheney and a "young man", as taking
place sometime between him entering the bunker and the time the Pentagon was hit at 9:37:
There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is
30 miles out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the vice president,
"Do the orders still stand?" And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course
the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?
Mineta uttered the presumption that the orders might have involved shooting down the aircraft that was approaching the
Pentagon, or the one in Shanksville, since he later learned that 'shoot down orders' had been given that day. Contrarily it
has been suggested that the orders spoken of must have been an order not to shoot down the approaching plane, on the basis
that shooting down the approaching plane would be the expected action, and the unusual nature of the order explains the young
man's disbelief. Although Mineta later clarified that he believed the order being discussed was indeed a shoot down order,
the 9/11 Commission found that "A shootdown authorization was not communicated to the NORAD air defense sector until
28 minutes after United 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania".
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