Continuing from previous blogs . . . Whether the youthful, half-educated skyjackers knew it themselves or not, on a September 11 they were destined to fly in the
It is the opinion of this writer that most of the 19 were less likely than their backers to be directly aware of this little item of
In any case, a fact not in dispute is that the terrorists’ strikes occurred simultaneously with several previously scheduled military simulations.
Anyone wishing to review the ground/known facts would do well to begin with the excellent compilations of research and theory at Wikipedia and Oil Empire and Cooperative Research.
An imposing lineup of exercises and operations was scheduled on or around 9/11:
- Richard Clarke mentions early in his book Against All Enemies that an exercise called “Vigilant Warrior” was taking place on September 11.
- A San Francisco Chronicle article reported in August 2002 that, in what unnamed officials called a “bizarre coincidence,” the National Reconnaissance Office planned an exercise for September 11 in which a small plane would crash into a headquarters building.
- An exercise called “Operation Northern Vigilance,” deploying fighter jets to
- The invaluable compilation Cooperative Research includes “Operation Northern Guardian”: “In late August 2001, two-thirds of the 27th Fighter Squadron are sent overseas. Six of the squadron’s fighters and 115 people go to
- In early 2002, Newhouse News Service reported that “Sept. 11 was Day II of "Vigilant Guardian," an exercise that would pose an imaginary crisis to North American Air Defense outposts nationwide.” NORAD was conducting a week-long simulation, interrupted by the actual attacks.
- “Vigilant Guardian” was conducted simultaneously with and as part of “Global Guardian,” an annual exercise involving NORAD, the United States Strategic Command and the Air Force Space Command.
- “Tripod II,” a joint exercise of FEMA and the DOJ, was scheduled for September 12 in New York. It was a biowarfare vaccination exercise, as revealed by Mayor Giuliani later – typical of these cats that they would give free and taxpayer-sponsored publicity to Judith Miller’s book Germs, just released – and was canceled when the attacks occurred.
On top of the foregoing, there were further indications of the expensively hyped up militaristic tensions in the U.S., with Bush installed in office. As I have cited before, along with the plane-into-a-building exercise planned by the NRO, there were other, smaller preparations for September 11:
· A course called "Homeland Security," conducted by Colonel Randall Larsen, was offered in fall 2001 at the
· Richard Falkenrath, an Assistant Professor of Public Policy on leave from Harvard and "principal investigator in the Jeddah Project, funded out of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia" according to his biography, authored a book titled 'America's Achilles' Heel' (1998), on terrorism. By coincidence, the book was scheduled to be taught on Sept. 11, 2001, in a course on terrorism offered by instructor Jason Pate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, part of the Monterey (California) Institute for International Studies, with branches in DC and Kazakhstan.
Mr. Pate, who has an AB from Stanford in International Relations and a Master's degree in Public Management from the
Other writers have commented upon the 9/11 Commission’s facile conclusion that the simulations, operations and war games on and around September 11 did not deter appropriate and effective response. (See the Wikipedia entry, linked above.) I think the Commission’s conclusion is over-optimistic.
Important as are the questions about response, there are also other concerns about this swarm of seasonal military simulations and operations: the possibility should be mooted that they amounted to an engraved invitation to take advantage of the system. It should be obvious – given the way nominally rival militaries and intelligence services live in each other’s pockets – that some of the best information about these war games and other maneuvers was liable to be held by the military-security complexes of other nations. It should also be obvious that no amount of repression by a repressive regime suffices to prevent information leaking through a general population inimical either to the regime itself or to its allies. Not that the timing of these exercises and operations was much of a secret – except from
Back on the domestic front, it must be noted that all these simulations not only did not prevent or deter an actual attack, they may have assisted it. And much prior to the date of 9/11, they also contributed to what amounted to an ongoing campaign to make attack seem inevitable – so much so that top-level experts on military security in government and media not only devoted little time to questions about how the attacks happened, but also had apparently so felt them to be inevitable that they devoted comparatively few resources to preventing them.
Back in the day, we would have called this mediocrity at best. But you wouldn’t know it from the way these guys rake in corporate speaking fees and/or government contracts.
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