Federal Government
According to 9/11 Commission staff statement No. 17 there were several communications failures at the federal government level during and after the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps the most serious occurred in an "Air Threat Conference Call" initiated by the National Military Command Center (NMCC) after two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center, but shortly before The Pentagon was hit. The participants were unable to include the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) air traffic control command center, which had the most information about the hijackings, in the call.
According to the staff report:
| “ | Operators worked feverishly to include the FAA in this teleconference, but they had equipment problems and difficulty finding secure phone numbers. NORAD asked three times before 10:03 to confirm the presence of FAA on the conference, to provide an update on hijackings. The FAA did not join the call until 10:17. The FAA representative who joined the call had no familiarity with or responsibility for a hijack situation, had no access to decision makers, and had none of the information available to senior FAA officials by that time.
We found no evidence that, at this critical time, during the morning of September 11, NORAD’s top commanders, in Florida or Cheyenne Mountain, ever coordinated with their counterparts at FAA headquarters to improve situational awareness and organize a common response. Lower-level officials improvised—the FAA’s Boston Center bypassing the chain of command to contact NEADS. But the highest level Defense Department officials relied on the NMCC’s Air Threat Conference, in which FAA did not meaningfully participate. |
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Read more about this topic: Communication During The September 11 Attacks
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“[M]y conception of liberty does not permit an individual citizen or a group of citizens to commit acts of depredation against nature in such a way as to harm their neighbors and especially to harm the future generations of Americans. If many years ago we had had the necessary knowledge, and especially the necessary willingness on the part of the Federal Government, we would have saved a sum, a sum of money which has cost the taxpayers of America two billion dollars.”
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