Did You Know?
9/11
http://www.911blogger.com/node/11795
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) was in the middle of a major annual exercise the morning of 9/11, called Vigilant Guardian. It involved "all HQ NORAD levels of command," and "would pose an imaginary crisis to North American Air Defense outposts nationwide." Vigilant Guardian was conducted in conjunction with a U.S. Space Command exercise called Apollo Guardian and a U.S. Strategic Command exercise called Global Guardian. [6] While little is known about Apollo Guardian, Global Guardian has been confirmed as being "in full swing" at the time the real attacks started. [7]
Furthermore, a military newsletter reported in 1998: "For the last few years, United States Strategic Command has incorporated computer network attack (CNA) scenarios into its annual major exercise known as Global Guardian. The primary purpose of including CNA is to test the processes we have in place in case of a real attack against our information infrastructure." To carry out these attacks, the U.S. Strategic Command (Stratcom) would employ "red team" members "and other organizations to act as enemy agents." The attacks would range "from attempting to penetrate the Command from the Internet to a 'bad' insider with access to a key command and control system." Most significantly, "The attackers also 'war dialed' our phones to tie up the phones and sent faxes to numerous fax machines throughout the Command." [emphasis added] Could a "computer network attack" where the phones were "'war dialed" have been incorporated into the exercise on 9/11? The 1998 article had ended: "We plan to increase the level of CNA in future Global Guardian exercises to imitate as closely as possible the technical capabilities of a hostile source." [8]
THE NEED FOR INVESTIGATION
This raises many questions. Might a CNA incorporated into Global Guardian have provided a smokescreen for sabotaging the phone system, at a time when the U.S. military needed to communicate most effectively so as to respond to the real world attacks? If so, who was behind this act of treason? A thorough and dedicated criminal investigation would be required to identify these rogue individuals.
Major General Eric Findley has tried to suggest that it was not a problem when all the NORAD operations center phones suddenly started ringing. He told the CBC: "The good news is we had lots of people here and we already had an operational architecture. We already had the command and control, the network, the phones, the data links. Everything was already in place that enabled us to react to the situation." [9] Yet how believable is this? As Findley had himself stated, "every phone" had been "ringing off the hook." Now I can imagine that would be quite a hindrance when you are trying to respond to an unprecedented emergency. And if telephones "ringing like crazy" were really such a harmless occurrence, the U.S. military would have had no need to practice dealing with it during training exercises.
Editor's note: This blogger does not know of my work. That's why he poses these questions. Bush signed an Executive Order (EO) to take charge of intercepting any stray aircraft that day, and then rescinded it soon afterward, effectively giving it back to the U.S. military to conduct once again as is standard operating procedure.
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The Journal of History - Fall 2007 Copyright © 2007 by News Source, Inc.