orders were with respect to potential targets. Shortly after 10:10, and having
no knowledge either that United 93 had been heading toward Washington or
that it had crashed, he explicitly instructed the Langley fighters: "negative--
negative clearance to shoot" aircraft over the nation's capital.
tried to locate other fighters to scramble. NEADS called Washington Center
to report:
scopes.The flight had already crashed by the time they learned it was hijacked.
The defense of U.S. airspace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with pre-
existing training and protocols. It was improvised by civilians who had never
handled a hijacked aircraft that attempted to disappear, and by a military unpre-
pared for the transformation of commercial aircraft into weapons of mass
destruction. As it turned out, the NEADS air defenders had nine minutes'
notice on the first hijacked plane, no advance notice on the second, no advance
notice on the third, and no advance notice on the fourth.
and officers actively sought out information, and made the best judgments they
could on the basis of what they knew. Individual FAA controllers, facility man-
agers, and Command Center managers thought outside the box in recommend-
ing a nationwide alert, in ground-stopping local traffic, and, ultimately, in
deciding to land all aircraft and executing that unprecedented order flawlessly.