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could not have reached Washington any earlier than 10:13, and probably would
have arrived before 10:23.There was only one set of fighters circling Washing-
ton during that time frame--the Langley F-16s.They were armed and under
NORAD's control.After NEADS learned of the hijacking at 10:07, NORAD
would have had from 6 to 16 minutes to locate the flight, receive authoriza-
tion to shoot it down, and communicate the order to the pilots, who (in the
same span) would have had to authenticate the order, intercept the flight, and
execute the order.
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At that point in time, the Langley pilots did not know the threat they were
facing, did not know where United 93 was located, and did not have shoot-
down authorization.
First, the Langley pilots were never briefed about the reason they were
scrambled.As the lead pilot explained,"I reverted to the Russian threat. . . . I'm
thinking cruise missile threat from the sea.You know you look down and see
the Pentagon burning and I thought the bastards snuck one by us. . . . [Y]ou
couldn't see any airplanes, and no one told us anything."The pilots knew their
mission was to divert aircraft, but did not know that the threat came from
hijacked airliners.
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Second, NEADS did not have accurate information on the location of
United 93. Presumably FAA would have provided such information, but we
do not know how long that would have taken, nor how long it would have
taken NEADS to locate the target.
Third, NEADS needed orders to pass to the pilots.At 10:10, the pilots over
Washington were emphatically told,"negative clearance to shoot." Shootdown
authority was first communicated to NEADS at 10:31. It is possible that
NORAD commanders would have ordered a shootdown in the absence of the
authorization communicated by the Vice President, but given the gravity of the
decision to shoot down a commercial airliner, and NORAD's caution that a
mistake not be made, we view this possibility as unlikely.
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NORAD officials have maintained that they would have intercepted and
shot down United 93.We are not so sure.We are sure that the nation owes a
debt to the passengers of United 93.Their actions saved the lives of countless
others, and may have saved either the Capitol or the White House from
destruction.
The details of what happened on the morning of September 11 are com-
plex, but they play out a simple theme. NORAD and the FAA were unpre-
pared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on September
11, 2001.They struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a home-
land defense against an unprecedented challenge they had never before
encountered and had never trained to meet.
At 10:02 that morning, an assistant to the mission crew commander at
NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector in Rome, New York, was working
"WE HAVE SOME PLANES"
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