Oh I could write a book on the one plus hour of disinformation but I will not waste that much of my time. I almost would read her book just to see how many more outright lies there are but would not contribute to the earnings that she is making off her fantasies.
Her book is named “Methodical Illusions”. She has been very methodical in creating an illusion, for the uninformed, of imagined details to fill in her false world vision of events that she cannot grasp.
In the first minute and a half she makes a claim that everyone knew that “jets would scramble within 6 minutes” but that they were not scrambled for 1.5 hours meaning exactly what to the listener.
An air defense fighter, if it was to be scrambled in 6 minutes then still has to travel whatever distance it takes to get to the target. Even in an active air defense scramble in which supersonic flight is authorized (supersonic flight over populated areas is a VERY big deal) the interceptor still has to travel the distance to the target from the departure destination and at Mach 1 or roughly 10 miles a minute it takes time to get from point A to B. We are talking several hundreds of miles between launch point and target and ATC could not find the targets on radar as they were on skin paint only. ATC’s radar is optimized to work with transponders as everyone is required to use them. Air Defense radars work well on skin paints but they were not up and manned full time or with full coverage as there was no threat deemed necessary as the cold war was over. As matter of fact NATO AWACS were flying over the US mainland for months after 9/11 to fill in gaps and help support our US AWACS to give us the coverage we feared that we needed after the fact.
As an interesting aside.
I remember back in the August 2010, well after 9/11, during President Obama’s visit to support the Washington Senate candidate fund raiser, an active intercept run out of Portland towards an aircraft that had encroached on the no fly airspace (TFR, temporary flight restriction) in Seattle where the president was. It hit national news as the F-15’s out of the Portland Guard reportedly caused “massive unknown multiple explosions” up the I-5 corridor. Eventually it was re-reported correctly as sonic booms and why they occurred but it was breaking news and they cut into current broadcasts to tell folks about it. Talking with the lead F-15 pilot several years later he described his concern because it was a career breaking decision if he did not expedite the 150 miles to Seattle but if he did and was found at fault for going supersonic without both proper authorization and cause, he was toast as well. Decision, decisions that is why they get paid the big bucks, Oh that’s right they don’t!
Of course the big problem with her assertion was that the US had pretty much stood down the active interceptor alert that we had during much of the cold war after the fall of the Soviet Union. During the mid to late 1990’s our military was reduced to a shell of what it had been and we did not have the manpower or the airframes to stand 24/7 air defense alert as there was no threat that deemed it worthwhile except in special areas. Of course that changed post 9/11 for many years. Today it has again started to fall down in resource allotment. It was only post 9/11 that we again had active ADF (air defense fighters) sitting alert in any real numbers not on 9/11.
Two Otis ADF birds were delayed being sent the correct way and the three Langley birds on a normal training mission went east out over the ocean after not being properly briefed on the changed mission. The confusion factor was very high as no one could comprehend what was happening. After the fact “everyone knows what happened” only they don’t. But at the time no one in the FAA or at NORAD or anywhere else could grasp what was happening for quite some time. Confusion reigned, it should not have but it did.
Then there is her assertion of how the airline flight crews did or did not react and apply their training and how that was damning evidence to support her assertions. She used a term that did not become an “in-use” term until after 9/11 happened as training changed radically as to how crews would react to a hijacking. Before 9/11 the common belief was that since every previous hijacking incident involved the parties trying to coerce the flight crews into going to a destination and landing and then getting what they wanted. Crews were trained to comply with demands so as to minimize the risk to passengers as there had been no cases in which a/c had ever been used as weapons. Yes passengers and crew had been used as hostages and some were killed (Beirut) once on the ground but no a/c were used as weapons.
She implies that training that was changed post 9/11 was the way training was done pre 9/11. I cannot go into actual current details (US Code, rules, laws etc) as to current policy but there was a 180 degree reversal in how crews were trained to deal with a hijack situation after that time. She referred multiple times to training that was not accurately described in her descriptions.
She stated that no one would use the term of “Mid-eastern descent”.
The term of “Mid-eastern descent” was and still is widely used. Not very many folks can narrow down the nationality of most mid-eastern men or women to the country they originate in and describe them in any other way. I trained both Saudi and Iranians back in the 70’s (yes I am that old and we were friends with the Iranians at the time) and while I can tell the difference not many folks could do that easily, let alone Saudi vs Oman vs Iraq vs the Emirates, Egyptians etc.
Cellphones at that time were mostly analog phones not digital signal phones. There were some digital cellphones yes, but the majority was still analog at the time. They have different signal responses. In addition, the planes were not cruising at the altitudes that most folks are used to. Most folks spend less than 10 minutes during any flight in the lower altitude ranges where it is believed that the planes were flown by the hijackers. I have, even with the digital phones of today, watched when I have signal strength and what altitudes when I have it. (Yes I know not suppose to do that but…) Also when you are on the east coast the signal coverage is totally different than in other parts of the country, even today 17 years later.
She also claimed that they landed at Westover Air Force Reserve Base, got the flight attendants off the aircraft, and then into a building where they could make their phone calls. All this was done no later than 20 minutes after takeoff. Totally laughable. Remember the a/c control was “taken away from the pilots with the flight termination system” they were just along for the ride and they would not know that they had lost control of the a/c (Uh Huh).
The a/c landed at Westover but then control was given back to the pilots I guess so they could taxing to the ramp and into the big hangers to hide the a/c. The “flight termination system” could not have done that; by her own admission of its so called design it was not designed for that. Then the pilots shut down and deplane just the two Flight Attendants and get them up-stairs into the building for their phone calls. Right!!!!
Most post flight taxis at normal airports is about 10 minutes to get to the gate at an airport the pilots know. Of course when you have to taxi after landing on a 10,000 ft runway nearly 2 miles it takes time to cover those distances as well. Oh but now I am getting away from the big picture of the joke that she is or represents.
Oh yes the so called “flight termination system.” Flight termination systems are very real. They are on rockets and missiles during test launches in case something goes wrong so that you can “terminate” the launch. Her claim that they were installed on commercial a/c and were connected “via the transponder” is laughable. The bandwidth of the transponder transmission is not adequate to be able to transmit adequate date to be able to control an a/c remotely. Could you send an activation signal for a preprogrammed action to be implemented yes, but not the bandwidth to do what she suggests? Even today 17 years later we don’t have ADS-B installed in 90% of commercial a/c (will be required in 2020) and that has a much broader bandwidth for data exchange but would still be hard-pressed to “control“ an a/c from the ground.
While there were many other major errors in her explanation I will end with this.
Her discussion of air flow in the cabin of a pressurized a/c versus an unpressurized a/c (stated by her as proof of being on the ground) is indicative of her lack of knowledge. Due to the airflow design of a pressurized aircraft. The aircraft is a constantly leaking vessel (hopefully very slowly leaking) with a roughly 12” x 12” designed hole with a big “valve” near the rear of the fuselage. It is called the outflow valve. The “packs” create the pressure that keeps the aircraft pressurized. Two packs on these type aircraft. They create and pump pressurized air into the airplanes and it slowly leaks out. If the cabin pressure rises then the outflow valve opens to bleed off the excess pressure, if it decreases then the valve closes to maintain pressure. There is actually another valve as well but I am leaving it out in this discussion. Bottom line there is a constant exchange of air in an aircraft. Yes some air is cycled back into the mix manifold and then redistributed but much is discharged. The whole system is often referred to as the air cycle machine. She proves that she has no understanding of the pressurization of modern a/c by her description of events. Now that is not really surprising however considering her other totally incorrect statements.
I have gone back and kept adding stuff as I reread what I previously typed. I refuse to reread again as I will add something more that she had wrong from a technical standpoint.
There will always be crackpots in this world, conspiracy theorists galore and charlatans who are trying to make a buck off of things that do not make sense as there are holes in an explanation that just don’t make sense. While it is useful at times to think about those issues and try to come to grips with what really happened, to downplay the tragedy that occurred and to try to incite more folks with totally inaccurate and fallacious information does not do the many good folks that died any good and does not serve any purpose other than their own demented mind. To say that there is an illness that envelopes these folks is being very kind indeed.
Let’s get back to talking about drying kilns, how to and how not to saw lumber, how to manage our woodlots and forests and planting seedlings for the next generation of timber to harvest. Stuff I really enjoy talking about.
However: If you really want to know what I think about these nut cases and their illnesses, both mentally as well as ethically, I can let loose with both barrels rather than be the mild, meek, and demure individual that I am.
Of course no one that I know would accept a description of me that way.