ben sliney first day as head of norad- 9/11
ben sliney first day as head of norad- 9/11
check this bungling:142smilie
8:30 a.m.-8:40 a.m. September 11, 2001: FAA Command Center Informed of Hijacking; NORAD Still Not Notified The FAA?s Command Center in Herndon, Virginia, begins its usual daily senior staff meeting. National Operations Manager Ben Sliney interrupts the meeting to report a possible hijacking in progress, as the Center had been told about the Flight 11 hijacking two minutes earlier.
At 8:40am, a supervisor interrupts the meeting to report that a flight attendant on the hijacked aircraft may have been stabbed. The meeting breaks up before the first WTC crash at 8:46 a.m. Apparently, no one in the meeting contacts NORAD. Despite the ?intuitive nature of this group of people,? none of them will initially consider the first WTC crash to be connected to the hijacking they have been informed of. According to Linda Schuessler, the deputy director of system operations at the Command Center, ?something that seemed so bizarre as flying a hijacked plane full of people into a skyscraper didn?t seem possible.? [Aviation Week and Space Technology, 12/17/2001; Freni, 2003, pp. 63]
(9:26 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Rookie FAA Manager Bans All Take Offs Nationwide, Including Most Military Flights? Mineta Asserts He Issues Order Minutes Later
FAA Administrator Jane Garvey. [Source: FAA]Time magazine later reports that Jane Garvey, head of the FAA, ?almost certainly after getting an okay from the White House, initiate a national ground stop, which forbids takeoffs and requires planes in the air to get down as soon as is reasonable. The order, which has never been implemented since flying was invented in 1903, applie to virtually every single kind of machine that can takeoff?civilian, military, or law enforcement.? Military and law enforcement flights are allowed to resume at 10:31 a.m. (see 10:31 a.m. September 11, 2001) A limited number of military flights?the FAA will not reveal details?are allowed to fly during this ban. [Time, 9/14/2001] Garvey later calls it ?a national ground stop? that prevented any aircraft from taking off.? [US Congress, 9/21/2001] Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta later says he was the one to give the order: ?As soon as I was aware of the nature and scale of the attack, I called from the White House to order the air traffic system to land all aircraft, immediately and without exception.? [US Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, 9/20/2001] According to Mineta, ?At approximately 9:45? I gave the FAA the final order for all civil aircraft to land at the nearest airport as soon as possible.? [9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003] At the time, 4,452 planes are flying in the continental US. A later account states that Ben Sliney, the FAA?s National Operations Manager, makes the decision without consulting his superiors, like Jane Garvey, first. It would be remarkable if Sliney was the one to make the decision, because 9/11 is Sliney?s first day on the job as National Operations Manager, ?the chess master of the air traffic system.? [USA Today, 8/13/2002]
When he accepted the job a couple of months earlier, he had asked, ?What is the limit of my authority?? The man who had promoted him replied, ?Unlimited.? [USA Today, 8/13/2002]
9:34 a.m. September 11, 2001: FAA?s Headquarters Notified There Might Be a Bomb Onboard Flight 93; NORAD Not Notified According to the 9/11 Commission, word of Flight 93?s hijacking reaches FAA headquarters. By this time, headquarters has established an open line of communication with the FAA Command Center at Herndon, Virginia. It had instructed the center to poll all flight control centers about suspect aircraft. So, at this time, the Command Center passes on Cleveland?s message: ?United 93 may have a bomb on board.? The FAA headquarters apparently does not forward this information to the military, despite having the responsibility for doing so. Ben Sliney, the FAA?s national operations manager at its Herndon Command Center, will later recount, ?I do know that all the information was being relayed to headquarters and, at least as far as we were concerned, it should have been. We thought it had been given to the military at each juncture.? The Command Center continually updates FAA headquarters on Flight 93 until it crashes. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004; CBC, 9/12/2006]
(9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Senior FAA Manager, on His First Day on the Job, Orders All Planes Out of the Sky Nationwide
FAA National Operations Manager Ben Sliney. [Source: Publicity photo]Ben Sliney, FAA?s National Operations Manager, orders the entire nationwide air traffic system shut down. All flights at US airports are stopped. Around 3,950 flights are still in the air. Sliney makes the decision without consulting FAA head Jane Garvey, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, or other bosses, but they quickly approve his actions. It?s Sliney?s first day on the job. [CNN, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/12/2001; Washington Post, 9/12/2001; MSNBC, 9/22/2001; Associated Press, 8/12/2002; USA Today, 8/13/2002; USA Today, 8/13/2002; USA Today, 8/13/2002; Associated Press, 8/19/2002; Newsday, 9/10/2002]
Seventy-five percent of the planes land within one hour of the order. [USA Today, 8/12/2002] The 9/11 Commission will later remark that this ?was an unprecedented order? that the ?air traffic control system handled? with great skill.? [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 29] The Washington Post has reported that Mineta told Monte Belger at the FAA: ?Monte, bring all the planes down,? even adding, ?[Expletive] pilot discretion.? [Washington Post, 1/27/2002] However, it is later reported by a different Post reporter that Mineta did not even know of the order until 15 minutes later. This reporter ?says FAA officials had begged him to maintain the fiction.? [Slate, 4/2/2002]
9:49 a.m. September 11, 2001: FAA Headquarters Continues to Delay Decision on Contacting NORAD About Flight 93 According to the 9/11 Commission, the FAA Command Center has just twice warned FAA headquarters that United 93 is now ?29 minutes out of Washington, DC.? Someone at headquarters says to someone at the Command Center, ?they?re pulling Jeff [last name unknown] away to go talk about United 93.? Command Center replies, ?Uh, do we want to think about, uh, scrambling aircraft [NORAD fighters]?? FAA headquarters replies, ?Uh, God, I don?t know.? Command Center says, ?Uh, that?s a decision somebody?s gonna have to make probably, in the next ten minutes.? FAA headquarters answers, ?Uh, ya know, everybody just left the room.? [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] This is 13 minutes since Cleveland flight control had asked the Command Center in vain to contact NORAD about Flight 93 (see (9:36 a.m.) September 11, 2001). Apparently there is only one person at FAA headquarters who is authorized to request military assistance. Ben Sliney, the FAA?s national operations manager at its Herndon Command Center, is told that no one can find them. He later recounts, ?I said something like that?s incredible. There?s only one person. There must be someone designated or someone who will assume the responsibility of issuing an order, you know. We were becoming frustrated in our attempts to get some information. What was the military response?? [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 9/10/2006] This contrasts with the FAA?s earlier response to Flight 11, where Boston flight controllers had contacted NORAD?s Northeast Air Defense Sector themselves (see (8:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001), and had even directly called military bases (see 8:34 a.m. September 11, 2001) (see (8:34 a.m.) September 11, 2001).
