NORAD AND THE NMCC
A key military installation on 9/11 was the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) operations center, located deep under Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. Major General Eric Findley, NORAD's director of combat operations, was there, and has recalled events around the time of the first attacks. He had just been finishing breakfast when a colleague said to him: "The Federal Aviation Administration's asked for NORAD assistance with a hijacking." As he then came back to the battle cab, someone told him: "Sir, you wanna have a look at this." The monitor was showing television footage of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, with a burning hole in it from having just been hit by an airplane. Before Findley knew it, TV showed the second tower being struck. He said: "We've got a coordinated attack." [1]
Crucially, Findley has recalled that, at that moment, "every phone in this cab, and every phone over in the command center, and every phone in all the centers in this building were ringing off the hook." [2] Master Corporal Daniel Milne, the emergency action controller on duty in the NORAD operations center, has similarly recalled: "The feeling was total disbelief. Then the phones started ringing like crazy. I could not believe that we were under attack." [3] This wasn't just happening at NORAD. The American Forces Press Service has described events in the National Military Command Center (NMCC), located within the Pentagon, based on the recollections of two officers who were there. Like the NORAD operations center, the NMCC would have been one of the most important parts of the military that morning. After the second plane hit the WTC, phones there "began ringing off the hook." [4]
What caused all these phones to suddenly ring? Could it have been an influx of concerned agencies suddenly requesting help, now it was obvious the U.S. was under attack? Or was it something more sinister? A clue is in a 1996 article from the U.S. Air Force's own magazine, Airman. The article quoted Stacey Knott, a technician in the NORAD operations center: "Things can be pretty quiet in here." However, she added: "One of the busiest times is during exercises. This room fills up. ... The phones are ringing off the hook, and I've got phones in each hand." [emphasis added] [5]
COMPUTER NETWORK ATTACK
It just so happens that 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]
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