Hijacking Drills Before 9/11/01

A remarkable article appeared in USA Today April 18th 2004. It was promptly ignored by the rest of the media.

Below are key excerpts from it:

In the two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons to crash into targets and cause mass casualties.

One of the imagined targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets performed a mock shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the Pentagon -- but that drill was not run after defense officials said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.

NORAD, in a written statement, confirmed that such hijacking exercises occurred. It said the scenarios outlined were regional drills, not regularly scheduled continentwide exercises.

"Numerous types of civilian and military aircraft were used as mock hijacked aircraft," the statement said. "These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures."

A White House spokesman said Sunday that the Bush administration was not aware of the NORAD exercises. But the exercises using real aircraft show that at least one part of the government thought the possibility of such attacks, though unlikely, merited scrutiny.

(snip)

The exercises differed from the Sept. 11 attacks in one important respect: The planes in the simulation were coming from a foreign country.

Until Sept. 11, NORAD was expected to defend the United States and Canada from aircraft based elsewhere. After the attacks, that responsibility broadened to include flights that originated in the two countries.

But there were exceptions in the early drills, including one operation, planned in July 2001 and conducted later, that involved planes from airports in Utah and Washington state that were "hijacked." Those planes were escorted by U.S. and Canadian aircraft to airfields in British Columbia and Alaska.

NORAD officials have acknowledged that "scriptwriters" for the drills included the idea of hijacked aircraft being used as weapons.

"Threats of killing hostages or crashing were left to the scriptwriters to invoke creativity and broaden the required response," Maj. Gen. Craig McKinley, a NORAD official, told the 9/11 commission.

(snip)

CNN ran a similar article the next day. It too was promptly ignored by the rest of the media.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sometime between 1991 and 2001, a regional sector of the North American Aerospace Defense Command simulated a foreign hijacked airliner crashing into a building in the United States as part of training exercise scenario, a NORAD spokesman said Monday.

The exercise was solely to test procedures and was no indication that NORAD had any reason to believe the scenario would happen in the real world, according to a spokesman.

It is unclear whether the simulated scenario was that of a hijacked plane being "used as missile" -- intentionally crashing into a building -- or that of an out-of-control hijacked plane.

Military officials said the exercise involved simulating a crash into a building that would be recognizable if identified, but was not the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.

They emphasize it involved an airliner being hijacked as it flew into U.S. airspace from abroad, a slightly different scenario from what happened on September 11, 2001.
The identity of the building named in the exercise is classified.

The exercise was conducted at one regional sector, and was not conducted at the headquarters, as are major exercises. This sector exercise involved some flying of military aircraft as well as a command post exercise in which communications procedures were practiced in an office environment.

NORAD officials emphasized that if it had been a real event, NORAD would have instituted standard procedures to try to contact the aircraft and keep it from crashing.

(snip)

NORAD has the ongoing mission of defense of U.S. airspace.

According to a statement from NORAD, "Before September 11th, 01, NORAD regularly conducted a variety of exercises that included hijack scenarios. These exercises tested track detection and identification; scramble and interception; hijack procedures; internal and external agency coordination and operational security and communications security procedures."

All of those tasks are the responsibility of NORAD.

The statement continues:
"NORAD did not plan and execute these types of exercises because we thought the scenarios were probable. These exercises were artificial simulations that provided us the opportunity to test and validate our processes and rules of engagement with the appropriate coordination between NORAD's command headquarters, its subordinate regions and sectors and National Command authorities in Canada and the United States.

"Since 9/11 we have continued our exercise program having conducted more than 100 exercises, all of which have included mock hijacks. NORAD has flown 35,000 sorties and scrambled or diverted fighters from air patrols nearly 1,800 times.

"Additionally, NORAD fighters out of Florida have intercepted two hijacked aircraft since 9/11; both originating from Cuba and escorted to Key West in spring 2003. NORAD remains vigilant and its tolerance for any anomaly in the sky remains very low. The 9/11 commission has been informed about our exercises that include hijack scenarios.

"At the NORAD headquarters' level we normally conducted four major exercises a year, most of which included a hijack scenario. Since 9/11 however we have conducted more than 100 exercises, all of which included at least one hijack scenario."

Both articles have been archived here.

These articles have amazing implications for 9/11.

In follow up posts, I will compare these known hijacking exercises to the 9/11 hijackings in order to try to understand what exactly happened on 9/11/01.