Lynn Spencer's Touching History

Touching History – The Untold Story of the Drama that Unfolded in the Skies over America on 9/11 by Lynn Spencer (Free Press, 2008)

Lynn Spencer’s Touching History is an important new book about 9/11 for a number of reasons, the least of which is the speculation on the fate of United Airlines Flight 93, and whether the military could have prevented it from reaching a target in Washington D.C.

Spencer takes a different approach to the subject, writing from a pilot’s perspective and concentrating on the reactions to the hijackings, rather than the hijackings themselves. She also obtained the cooperation of both the military brass and the FAA administrators, and interviewed many of the participants in the day’s action, giving names, faces, dialog and a little character to what was previously only names in footnotes to the 9/11 Commission Report.

This book does not deal with Osama Bin Laden, al Quada, the FBI, NYFD, World Trade Center Seven, Iraq or Afghanistan, but concentrates entirely on a minute by minute review of what transpired on 9/11 as experienced by the air traffic controllers, military officers and pilots who were in the sky.

Beginning early in the morning with FAA administrator Ben Sliney arriving for his first day at work at the FAA Command Center, Herndon, Virginia, the story follows a chronological timeline that ends at 3:30 pm when the last of the inbound flights to the United States landed and the skies were clear except for the military.

You know this book is written by a women when the first footnote is a reference to Sliney’s “striking blue eyes,” but she is a serious pilot who knows the standard procedures, protocols and the lingo, and both the military and the FAA apparently cooperated with her as the book includes a foreword by the FAA’s Ben Sliney and an afterword by Larry Arnold, Maj. Gen. USAF, Retired.

From Sliney, meeting his new coworkers at FAA HQ, the situation shifts to the NEADS command base at Rome, New York, where they are beginning a ten day “test prepardness” exercise called Vigilant Guardian, an annual simulated exercise (SIMEX) that includes a hijacking.

Their day is set, even though they don’t know it, as others go about their daily routine, counter clerks checking the tickets of the terrorist, security checking their baggage, stewards seating them and serving them coffee, and pilots about to fly them to their mutual destination.

The terrorists already know what the military response will be, and the military defenses of the United States are not set up to stop them.

The air force chain of command for the defense of North America goes from the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), Peterson AFB, California, to CONAR, Continental Air Defense which is responsible for Alaska, Canada, Continental USA, and CONAR Sectors, are the Westeran Air Defense Sector (WADS), Southeast Air Defense Sector SEADS, and NEADS, the Northeast Air Defense Sector, where most of the action will take place that day.

At one time the 1st Air Force had 175 planes armed and ready on alert at all times, but on 9/11 there were 14 for the whole country, which Lynn Spencer explains was “due to post-cold war budget cuts,” as some (no names are mentioned) argued they were “unnecessary baby sitters.”

As 9/11 Commissioner and former Navy Sec. John Lehman pointed out during a 9/111 Commission public hearing, there were hundreds of military jets sitting on runways up and down the east coast of the United States on 9/11. How much does it cost to keep them fueled, armed and ready to fly?

Many, if not most of the former Cold War alert bases, like the 177 New Jersey Air National Guard, (and Andrews), were taken off that status (circa 1997) when their Air Sovereignty Alert Mission was changed, and there was a national realignment of air defenses throughout the United States. This was a strategic decision that would have profound consequences, and few seem interested in the details.

Of the hundreds of available fighter jets that were alluded to by Commissioner Lehman, on September 11, 2001 there were only 14 that were fueled, armed and ready on alert status in the whole country.

Those 14 alert jets were stationed at seven bases, two in NEADS territory – under Bob Marr’s jurisdiction – F-16s at Langley AFB Virginia and F-15s at Otis, ANG Cape Cod.

In his Afterword, Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold writes: “… In some cases the facts published in this book, as told to her in interviews with airmen and airline pilots who were involved, differ markedly from the account in the 9/11 Commission Report, as well as from the depiction in the movie United 93. The corrections to the record are important, and I’m glad our people in the military were able to tell her their stories of the events of that tragic day. Lynn does not have a political agenda, as the 9/11 Commission clearly did….”

The 9/11 Commission did have a political agenda, as all commissions do by their very nature. It was purposely set up as a Bi-Partisan Commission, which means it was composed of half Democrats and half Republicans, who despite party differences, committed themselves to producing a unanimous report, which they did. One of the political agendas of the 9/11 Commission was to avoid assigning individual responsibility for what happened that day.

Neither the military nor the FAA cooperated fully with the Commission, as the military gave false and misleading information and the FAA administrators destroyed records and had to be subpoenaed to produce records they didn’t want released. The breakdown in communications between the FAA and the military on 9/11 cannot be adequately explained, and simple negligence is not an excuse.

The military blames the FAA for not telling them in time, the FAA says we called, you didn’t answer the phone.

But here both the FAA and the military come together behind Lynn Spencer, who has access to the air traffic controllers and pilots that had previously only been mentioned in the Commission reports and monographs. And she gets the two top hotshots to write the first and last word.

Maj. Gen. Arnold, who used to be a commander at the 177 NJANG before being promoted, wrote in the Afterward that: “The terrorist attack came without warning and in a way that we had not imagined. It was an asymmetric attack, by which the terrorists exploited the weaknesses within the United States’ air surveillance and air defense system; a system that was designed to look outward, away from our shores, to detect aircraft or missiles approaching our borders. Nonetheless, our outstanding weapons controllers at the Northeast Air Defense Sector and the pilots in the F-15s, F-16s, AWACs, and tanker aircraft quickly adapted to the situation. We believe we could have shot down the last of the hijacked aircraft, United 93, had it continued toward Washington, D.C., the 9/11 Commission said we could not have done so. After reading this book, you decide.”

Although Spencer, in a radio interview, said that there was more than one line of defense against United 93 reaching a target in Washington, the first was Billy Hutchison, a DC Air National Guard F-16 pilot who was in the air at the time of the hijackings, on a practice bombing mission.

Hutchison refueled in the air, then flew a vector west towards United 93, intending to shoot his tracer rounds into the planes engines to bring it down, or, if necessary, ram it, but it disappeared off the radar screen before he could reach it.

According to Spencer, there were other DC ANG F-16s, alert F-16s from Langley, and eventually, F-16s from Atlantic City’s 177th in line to defend DC from U93, had the passengers not brought the plane down and had it got past Billy Hutchison.

The idea that the military could have possibly defended Washington against the fourth hijacked plane seems to rankle the former 9/11 Commission, some of whom took exception to this possibility and wrote a scathing attack on Hutchison, calling him a braggart rather than a hero, and saying they have radar records that show Hutchison landed and refueled and didn’t take off again until a half hour after United 93 had crashed.

[See: NYT OpEd: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/opinion/14farmer.html?n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Contributors ]

Resorting to records not yet available and seen by Lynn Spencer or any other independent reporter, the 9/11 Commission staffers call attention to their own records, which unlike the Warren Commission records, are still secret and will remain classified until the Bush administration is out of office. When the 9/11 Commission records are finally released, a lot of these conflicts will be settled. [See: Billy Hutch v. 9/11 Staffers – braggart or hero?]

While siding with the military on the issue of United 93 and the defense of Washington, Spencer does run down some rather embarrassing breakdowns in the chain of Command, Control and Communications that day. She details how standard operating procedures didn’t work, back channel communications over rode official circuits, and middle managers and officers at both the FAA and the military made decisions and gave orders they weren’t authorized to give, and they were obeyed.

As Spencer puts it, “The standard hijacking protocol calls for the air traffic facility that first becomes aware of the incident to pass the information up the FAA chain of command, from the facility to the Command Center to FAA headquarters. There, a hijack coordinator contacts the National Military Command Center, or NMCC, to officially request fighter assistance. Once the NMCC receives authorization from the secretary of defense, orders are transmitted down the military command chain, in this instance to NORAD, then CONR, and then to NEADS, to issue a scramble order, getting fighter jets in the air to intercept the hijacked plane and follow it. The nearest alert aircraft in this instance are at Otis Air National Guard base on Cape Cod.”

Getting to the heart of the matter, Spencer zooms in on some of the footnotes that I tried to run down, and she gets to the guys who were previously only known to me by their last names in the footnote to the 9/11 Commission Final Report as Bueno, Scoggins, et al.

Spencer takes us to Boston Center, which is actually in Nashau, New Hampshire, and introduces us to Dan Bueno, also going through the routine of a normal Tuesday morning at work as an FAA supervisor.

“Boston Center, Nashau, New Hampshire, 8:30 a.m. Back at Boston Center, supervisor Dan Bueno has just hung up with the FAA Command Center in Herndon. His next move is to request military assistance from the 102nd Fighter Wing at Otis ANGB on Cape Cod. He knows it’s not standard operating procedure to call the military directly – that’s suppose to be done by FAA headquarters – but he’s checked the FAA regulation manual, and in the back under section FAAO 7610.4J. Appendix 16, it states that fighters can be launched directly at FAA request, so he is going to make that happen. He may not be FAA headquarters, but he is FAA!”

“When he reaches tower control at Otis, though, the controller tells him to contact NEADS, under Bob Marr’s command. That’s the protocol.

While he is suppose to call the FAA Command Center to report the hijacking, he also calls the military, but the military can’t move until they hear from the FAA Command Center. Besides doing his job and notifying his superiors, Bueno also notifies the military at NEADS, Ottis and Atlantic City.

As Spencer reports, the breakdown in lines of communications, command and control ruled the day, yet back channel communications were successful to some degree, and many middle managers made the right calls in giving orders they were unauthorized to give, yet they were obeyed.


Excerpts from Touching History, with a special emphasis on the Atlantic City NJANG, here is the way Lynn Spencer describes some of the more significant incidents:


“Meanwhile, per Supervisor Dan Bueno’s instructions, Boston controller Joseph Cooper has gotten through to the NEADS facility in Upstate New York to request fighter assistance.”

“At 8:37, Tech Sgt. Jeremy Powell, who works on the Ops floor in support of the senior director in charge of the Weapons section, receives the phone call from the FAA’s Boston Center controller, Joseph Cooper.”

“ ‘Hey Huntress,’ Cooper says, using the NEADS call sign, ‘we have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft heading toward New York, and we need you guys to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.”

“Is this real-world or exercise?” Powell asks.

“No, this is not an exercise, not a test,” Cooper responds urgently…..

“In the battle cab overlooking the Ops floor, Marr and his staff make note of a huddle of people gathering. Sergeant Powell, who took the call from Boston Center, is up on his feet mouthing something to Marr that Marr can’t make out. Since only the MCC has a hotline into the battle cab, Powell doesn’t have any other way of communicating directly with the commander. It’s not his job.”

. “….A direct call from a regional FAA facility is not the customary means for requesting military assistance with a hijacking…Proper request or not, Marr decides to act first and ask questions later. At 8:37 he directs Mission Crew Commander Nasypany to order two F-15 alert aircraft at Otis ANGB to battle stations. A battle stations order requires the pilots to suit up into their full flight gear and get into their jets. There, they’re ready to start their engines and taxi out should a scramble order follow.”

“Though the Otis tower controller had directed Dan Bueno from the FAA’s Boston Center to call NEADS, he decides he should also go ahead and alert the Otis Operations Center that a call from NEADS might be coming. If the information Bueno was giving about a hijacked flight was accurate, he figures a call will be coming from NEADS soon and a scramble order is likely. He knows the fighter pilots will appreciate the heads up.”

“MSgt. Mark Rose is on duty at the Operations desk when the phone rings. As the superintendent of aviation management, he is in charge of flight records and currency for the Wing’s pilots. He’s not sure what to make of the call.”

“…The director of operations for the fighter squadron, Lt. Col. Timothy “Duff” Duffy, is standing next to him, chatting with some pilots who are getting ready to depart for a routine training flight….”

“…He and Nasty are way ahead of the game, and Duff is glad he made the decision to suit up right after getting that call from the control tower. It has saved precious time….”

“NEADS, Rome, NY, 8:38 am. Although Bob Marr took the initiative and ordered the Otis alert aircraft to battle stations within a minute of learning about the hijacking, he does not have the authority to scramble fighters to intercept a hijacked airliner. That approval must come from the secretary of defense. He reports up the chain of command to his boss, Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, at Tyndall AFB in Florida, who will then seek the higher authorization through the rest of the chain of command…”

“At approximately 8:38, another call comes in from Boston Center, this time from controller Colin Scoggins, who has just arrived at work. A large, jolly man, with thick head of light brown wavy hair, a full mustache, and smiling brown eyes, Scoggin’s huge size hints at his 22 year as a power lifter, where his efforts earned him state records for the squat and bench presses. An experienced controller, he specializes in airspace, procedures, and military operations, and is currently working in Boston Center’s airspace section. He manages operating agreements between Boston Center and other air traffic control facilities, and also the military. His responsibilities include generating the military schedules that keep the FAA facilities in sync with military airspace requirements, and because of this, he has personal relationships with most military units in the region.”

“Since NEADS has no information for him, Scoggins hangs up fast. He doesn’t want to waste their time. A few minutes later, when he sees that the Otis fighters aren’t yet airborne, he calls back to suggest that they try to scramble Atlantic City. He knows that Atlantic City is no longer an alert facility, but he also knows that they launch F-16s for training flights every morning at nine. He figures that the pilots are probably already in their planes and ready to go. They’re unarmed, but they’re a lot closer to New York City than the Otis fighters on Cape Cod, and the military serves only a monitoring purpose in hijacking anyway. Unarmed fighters are better than no fighters, he thinks. The NEADS tech takes his advice and dials the only number he has for Atlantic City, the one they used to scramble Atlantic City’s F-16s before the unit was removed from the shrinking Air Defense Mission in 1997. The number connects him directly to the highly secured Command Post. But these days, the Command Post is more of a highly secured storage area, opened just once a month for drill weekends. The phone rings and rings.”

“CONR Headquarters, Florida/ NEADS, Rome, New York, 8:42 a.m. As CONR Commander General Arnold finishes us his teleconference, his assistant hands him the urgent message from Bob Marr. Given that a hijacking is part of the day’s simulated exercise, he asks the obvious question on the way to his office: ‘Is this part of the exercise?’ Even as NORAD’s commander for the continental United States, Arnold is not privy to everything concerning the exercise. The simex is meant to test commanders also, to make sure tht their war machine is operating as it should.”

“His assistant tells him it’s real world, and the thought occurs to Arnold that it’s been many years since NORAD has handled a hijacking. He’s relieved that he recently reviewed the protocol.”

….After talking to Marr…..“….This is a lot less information than Arnold would like, a call from Boston Center hardly constitutes the standard protocol to request military assistance. Such requests customarily come from FAA headquarters. But he knows that the protocol is based on assumptions: that the hijacked aircraft is readily identifiable and trackable and that there is time to coordinate an appropriate military response. Most important, perhaps, it assumes that the hijacking is taking the ‘traditional’ form.”

“But today they have nothing more than a call from an air traffic control facility. American 11 is not easily identifiable. It’s already in U.S. airspace, and the hijackers have made no demands. Especially disturbing is the lack of communications from the cockpit crew.”

“The bottom line is that one of his battle commanders has asked for assistance in getting the authorization he feels he needs. Arnold’s instincts tell him to act first and seek authorization later. He’ll give Marr what he’s asking for.”

“ ‘Go ahead and scramble and I’ll take care of the authorities,’ Arnold assures Marr. Such a command should be coming from the secretary of defense, but Arnold isn’t going to wait on that.”

“…Arnold hangs up and immediately puts through a call to the NORAD Command Post deep inside Cheyene Mountain in Colorado Springs. The operations commander, Major General Rick Findlay, concurs with Arnold’s assessment and decision to scramble the fighers.”

“ ‘I’ll call the Pentagon for the clearances,’ he promises Arnold. Rather than waiting on directives from the top, the commanders are working in reverse. The situation seems to require it.”

“At NEADS, Bob Marr is directing his mission crew commander, Kevin Nasypany, to issue the scramble order. Marr is taking decisive action, but he isn’t actually anticipating much military participation. He figures that by the time the fighters are airborne, the plane will have already landed at JFK or Newark…..”

“Otis Air National Guard Base, Cape Cod, 8:46 a.m. Lt. Col. Duff Duffy is strapping into his ejection seat when the scramble siren blares. He and Nasty Nash start their engines and taxi out of the hanger….”

“177th Fighter Wing. Atlantic City, New Jersey, 9:10 a.m. In Somers Point, New Jersey, Lt. Col. Brian Webster, who is the acting wing commander for the 177th Fighter Wing in Atlantic City because his higher-ups are out of town, was enjoying a lazy morning at home on his day off. Then his wife called to him while he was in the shower to let him know that a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center.”

“He got out of the shower immediately and made a quick check of the television coverage. His full-time job is as a Boeing 767 captain for American Airlines, and he knew right away that only a big plane could cause such a large explosion. Then he saw United 175 make impact.”

“He grabbed his flight suit and dressed in a rush, and when his wife asked him why he had to go to the base, he called out simply, ‘That was a 767! That’s why I have to go to work!’”

“Now screeching out of his driveway, he grabs his cell phone and calls the base to instruct the SOF to hold the launch of a scheduled training mission, a routine practice bombing run over Fort Drum in Central New York.”

“ ‘Done that, sir!’ Lt. Col. James Haye, the SOF, answers. The F-16s, which had been taxiing out for takeoff, have already been brought back to the hanger. Haye had seen the coverage too, and had ordered the planes back right away.”

“ ‘Shut down the practice mission altogether and I’ll be at the base within five minutes,’ Webster barks before hanging up. Next he calls the Command Post and orders, ‘Raise the base’s threat protection level to Charlie!’”

“Military threat conditions range from ‘A’ (peacetime) to “D” (base lockdown and under attack). Thread condition “C,” or Charlie, is a wartime posture. It activates a whole slew of security measures to prepare for a possible attack. Webster knows that these ‘accidents’ have terrorism written all over them, and if America is at war he’s determined that Atlantic City is going to be ready to respond.”

“In the years since the base was pulled off the Air Sovereignty Alert Mission, the base’s highly secured Command Post had gradually reverted to a highly secured storage closet, used just once a month for duty weekends, when the troops would train. Personnel are now quickly bringing the Command Post to life, turning on all te lights and bringing the various computers and monitors online. When the loudspeakers announce the transition to Threat Con Charlie, the pace becomes frenzied.”

”Arriving at Operations a short time later, Webster finds one of his master sergeants busy calling up staff and ordering them to report to base. Nobody has told him to do so; nobody had to. The base is rapidly transitioning from a nonalert peacetime setting to full war status.”

“Webster instructs the Operations Support Flight commander to offload the practice missiles and munitions from the fighter jets and replace them with live ones. This will take some time, as the missiles are not stored near the aircraft. A convoy will have to transport them to the flight line, where the fighters are parked, with security escort as a safeguard.”

“‘Get me authenticators,’ he orders next, turning to Haye. He knows that if he is uploading missiles, he is going to need these. Each pilot is given an authenticator – a peace of paper with code in a series of letters – which is valid for only one 24-hour period. When a pilot receives an order to fire, he must follow a strict protocol. He asks for an authentication code, and the code is given must match the one on his authenticator. If they don’t match, he cannot legally comply. The highly classified authenticators are issued to all alert sites, as well as each controlling authority, in this case NEADS, by courier each month. Unfortunately, Atlantic City is no longer an alert site, so they don’t have any authenticators.”

“They’re going to have to get some – fast! Today Webster wants live missiles and he wants authenticators.”

“These orders at a nonalert fighter wing of the Air National Guard are unprecedented. Air National Guard jets don’t simply fly around the United States with live missiles. Guardsmen train to fight wars overseas, not fly armed combat over the United States. There aren’t rules of engagement for war at home, and certainly not for fighters that aren’t even part of the Air Defense Mission. Live missiles? Authenticators? The weapons chief is less than enthusiastic about these orders and he asks to have a word with the colonel.”

“‘Just do it!’ Webster responds, and turns abruptly to walk away. The matter is not up for discussion.”

“….After Garvey announces that United 93 is closing in on the capitol, the decision is made to evacuate the White House and institute COG for the first time in history. Mineta and other senior government officials are quickly relocated to more secure locations, remaining in contact via their cell phones in the interim.”

“….Unknown to NEADS, their lead F-16 pilot over Washington is being given the shoot-down authority directly from the Secret Service, bypassing the military chain of command….”

“…When the DCANG asserts its authority over the operation, however, it causes some tension. Dog, the SOF at the D.C. Guard, gets on the phone to the SOF of the 177th Fighter Wing in Atlantic City, Lt. Col. James Haye. ‘We’ve got airplanes running all over the place!” Dog Snaps. ‘We’ve got to coordinate here or someone is going to end up shooting someone down!’”

“Haye is not pleased with what he’s hearing. ‘Wait a minute,’ he objects, ‘no one should be shooting at anyone. This is getting way out of control!’”

“A spirited discussion follows. Dog repeatedly asks for the radio frequency that the Atlantic City jets are on and the details of their mission over the capitol. Being there in Washington, one of the Capital Guardians, he feels a natural inclination to take the lead in bringing order to the situation, but Heye is agitated. He is not even sure of all the answers to the questions Dog is asking, and it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to understand that the D.C. Guard pilots are operating under different rules of engagement than are his own fighters. Those rules of engagement – flying weapons-free- are not sitting too well with Haye. Firing weapons is a very serious matter, and the insinuation that ‘someone is going to get shot down’ unless something changes is simply unacceptable.”

“ ‘Listen, I have airplanes down there, and you have airplanes down there,’ Haye growls, ‘and nobody is talking on the same frequency! If you guys have a target, I strongly suggest that you be sure to make visual identification before shooting!’”

“Tensions between the D.C. Guard and Atlantic City will run strong for days to come….”

“…Finally, at 3:30, Sliney is relieved to be able to announce that the last of the flights inbound to the United States has landed. From his post, he watches a new, military-directed air traffic control system emerge under NORAD’s ESCAT order…...”