Before 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld Was Preoccupied With Pearl Harbor and Other Military Surprises

As the following two new entries in the Complete 9/11 Timeline show, early in 2001, the new Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was regularly talking about the danger of surprise attacks, and was expressing particular interest in the attack on Pearl Harbor. According to Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, Rumsfeld "routinely handed out or recommended" Roberta Wohlstetter's 1962 book, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision.

This is perhaps unsurprising, since Rumsfeld was one of the founders of the neoconservative think tank the Project for the New American Century. In a September 2000 report called Rebuilding America's Defenses, this group had stated that, to preserve its "military preeminence in the coming decades," America would need to undergo a "military transformation." However, the report continued, this process of transformation would be "a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor." Twelve months later, what President Bush called the "Pearl Harbor of the 21st century" took place.

* * *

January 11, 2001: Rumsfeld Warns of Surprise Attack Like Pearl Harbor
At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense-designate Donald Rumsfeld warns of the danger of a surprise attack like Pearl Harbor happening again. He testifies, "We all know that history is filled with instances where people were surprised. There were plenty of signals, plenty of warnings, plenty of cautions. But they weren't taken aboard. They didn't register. They weren't sufficient to cause a person to act on those." He continues, "We know that the thing that tends to register on people is fear, and we know that that tends to happen after there's a Pearl Harbor, tends to happen after there's a crisis. And that's too late for us. We've got to be smarter than that. We've got to be wiser than that. We have to be more forward-looking." As ABC News later comments, "eight months to the day after his warning of a surprise attack, Rumsfeld's fears became reality with the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks." [CNN, 1/11/2001; Scarborough, 2004, pp. 165-166; ABC News 7 (Chicago), 3/25/2004] Rumsfeld will again refer to the danger of military surprises four months later, during meetings with the House and Senate Armed Services Committees (see May 23-24, 2001).
Source

May 23-24, 2001: Rumsfeld Warns of Inevitability of Strategic Surprise; Refers to Pearl Harbor
During a meeting with the House Armed Services Committee, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says that the inevitability of surprise is a guiding principle of the Bush administration's national security strategy. To emphasize his point about the need to prepare for the unexpected, he gives panel members copies of the foreword to Roberta Wohlstetter's 1962 book, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. This foreword, written by Thomas Schelling, argues that in order to prepare for the next crisis, the US military needs to avoid thinking that the most familiar threat is also the most likely one. Rumsfeld says that, in line with this reasoning, a key element of the administration's strategy will be preparing for the unexpected. [US Department of Defense, 5/23/2001; Associated Press, 5/24/2001] The following day, he has a similar closed-door meeting with the Senate Armed Services Committee. He hands out to senators a four-page paper dealing with the inevitability of strategic surprise, and summarizing various defense surprises and incorrect predictions made during the 20th century. The paper states that the Department of Defense should "give some thought to the flexibility of a capability-based strategy, as opposed to simply a threat-based strategy." What this means, according to the Washington Post, is that the "US military needs to move away from a Cold War structure designed to counter one large, clear threat--from the Soviet Union--and to develop capabilities to respond to everything from ballistic missiles to terrorist attacks." [NPR, 5/25/2001; Washington Post, 5/25/2001] Rumsfeld had previously warned of the danger of a surprise attack, like Pearl Harbor, during his confirmation hearing in January (see January 11, 2001). Journalist Bob Woodward will later report that one of the main themes Rumsfeld referred to in the eight months prior to 9/11 was surprise, and he had "routinely handed out or recommended" Wohlstetter's book on Pearl Harbor. [Woodward, 2002, pp. 22-23] Yet when, in July, he receives a CIA briefing about the imminent danger of an al-Qaeda attack on an American target, Rumsfeld reportedly responds with "vehement dismissal," and criticizes the CIA for its "gullibility" (see July 11-17, 2001). [Cockburn, 2007, pp. 9]
Source

Who is Behind the "Suicide" Car Bombings in Iraq?

This remarkable yet little known CNN report from January 2007 raises questions about who is really responsible for the car bombings that have been taking place in Iraq. It suggests that some of the supposed "suicide" bombers may in fact be unwilling victims, who have their hands tied to their steering wheels and their cars detonated by remote control. The critical question is who is really carrying out these attacks? Is it "al Qaeda in Iraq"? Or could the real perpetrators be the British or American military?

Here's the transcript:

CNN NEWSROOM
Unwilling Bomber
Aired January 18, 2007 - 10:00 ET

ARWA DAMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): Forty-two-year-old Kamal (ph) al-Khaqani was happily married with four children, trying like most here to avoid the violence. To just get through each day alive.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE, (through translator): We have nothing to do with politics or anything else.

DAMON: Then one day, like a thousand others, Kamal left to run errands and pick up breakfast for the family. "He got dressed at 7:00 and told me he would come back at 9:00," his mother says. "It was 10:00, 11:00," his wife says. "At 11:00, I started to feel nervous. They kept comforting me. At 2:00, I was pacing back and forth." At that point, Halud (ph) knew deep down that her husband of 12 years would not be coming back.

ADEL AL-KHAQANI, VICTIM'S BROTHER, (through translator): The next day someone came by and said a car similar to your brothers is in Alhadra (ph) neighborhood that it has been blown up.

DAMON: Kamal's final moment, pieced together by officers at the scene.

AL-KHAQANI: He told me, it looks like your poor brother was kidnapped.

DAMON: Kamal was released and set off in his own car. Police say he was probably told to drive toward their checkpoint. But they say he must have realized that his vehicle was rigged with explosives and that he was about to become an unwilling bomber.

It's a trend Iraqi and U.S. officials have been warning since July. They believe a number of suicide bombers are actually kidnapped civilians who's cars have been turned into bombs set off by remote control.

Some of the clues, hands tied to steering wheels. And families. Kamal's, who assist the driver was a victim, too, not an insurgent. And in Kamal's case, eyewitness evidence. He tried desperately to warn the people around him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They said he was screaming the whole time, I am booby-trapped. I am booby-trapped.

AL-KHAQANI: He didn't finish his words before the car blew up. We showed him his pictures and he said, yes, that's him.

DAMON: The explosion wounded one policeman. Kamal's shouted warnings may well have saved lives.

"Kamal is gone," his mother cries. "When my sons sit around, Kamal is not there. His absence has tortured me." "It's difficult," his wife says. "How are we going to live? Only God's mercy can keep us going. It's tough. We are four."

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every time his little son starts to cry, I break down in tears.

DAMON: Eleven-year-old Zarat (ph) can't even speak. The youngest, one year old Sashad (ph), still runs around saying, daddy, too young to realize that daddy is never coming home.

Arwa Damon, CNN, Baghdad.

Source

New Details About Dick Cheney's Response on 9/11

An article in the Washington Post reveals new details of Vice President Dick Cheney's immediate response to the 9/11 attacks:

In a bunker beneath the East Wing of the White House, Cheney locked his eyes on CNN, chin resting on interlaced fingers. He was about to watch, in real time, as thousands were killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

Previous accounts have described Cheney's adrenaline-charged evacuation to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center that morning, a Secret Service agent on each arm. They have not detailed his reaction, 22 minutes later, when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.

"There was a groan in the room that I won't forget, ever," one witness said. "It seemed like one groan from everyone" -- among them Rice; her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley; economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey; counselor Matalin; Cheney's chief of staff, Libby; and the vice president's wife.

Cheney made no sound. "I remember turning my head and looking at the vice president, and his expression never changed," said the witness, reading from a notebook of observations written that day. Cheney closed his eyes against the image for one long, slow blink.

Three people who were present, not all of them admirers, said they saw no sign then or later of the profound psychological transformation that has often been imputed to Cheney. What they saw, they said, was extraordinary self-containment and a rapid shift of focus to the machinery of power. While others assessed casualties and the work of "first responders," Cheney began planning for a conflict that would call upon lawyers as often as soldiers and spies.

Furthermore, already that morning, Cheney was consulting his lawyer to arrange extraordinary presidential powers in response to the attacks:

In expanding presidential power, Cheney's foremost agent was David S. Addington, his formidable general counsel and legal adviser of many years. On the morning of Sept. 11, Addington was evacuated from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House and began to make his way toward his Virginia home on foot. As he neared the Arlington Memorial Bridge, someone in the White House reached him with a message: Turn around. The vice president needs you.

Down in the bunker, according to a colleague with firsthand knowledge, Cheney and Addington began contemplating the founding question of the legal revolution to come: What extraordinary powers will the president need for his response?

Before the day ended, Cheney's lawyer joined forces with Timothy E. Flanigan, the deputy White House counsel, linked by secure video from the Situation Room. Flanigan patched in John C. Yoo at the Justice Department's fourth-floor command center. White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales joined later.

Thus formed the core legal team that Cheney oversaw, directly and indirectly, after the terrorist attacks.

Does anyone else find Cheney's response to the attacks, described here, rather sinister and suspicious?

Larry Silverstein Was Already Thinking About Insurance Already On The Day of 9/11

It is well known that World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein has tried to claim the 9/11 attacks against New York constituted two separate events, thus entitling him to a double insurance payout. But a new entry in the Complete 9/11 Timeline reveals something less well known: Silverstein was already thinking about how to get this double payout on the evening of 9/11 itself:

September 12, 2001: WTC Leaseholder Already Wants to Claim Double Insurance for Attacks and Rebuild
Developer Larry Silverstein, who recently took over the lease of the World Trade Center (see July 24, 2001), later tells journalist Steven Brill that he’d been so sickened by the destruction on 9/11, and by the deaths of four of his employees in the WTC, that he did not focus on insurance or financial matters until “perhaps two weeks later.” But according to two people who call him this morning to offer their sympathy, Silverstein soon changes the subject: “He had talked to his lawyers… and he had a clear legal strategy mapped out. They were going to prove, Silverstein told one of the callers, that the way his insurance policies were written the two planes crashing into the two towers had been two different ‘occurrences,’ not part of the same event. That would give him more than $7 billion to rebuild, instead of the $3.55 billion that his insurance policy said was the maximum for one ‘occurrence.’ And rebuild was just what he was going to do, he vowed.” By mid-morning, he calls his architect David Childs, and instructs him to start sketching out a plan for a new building. He tells Childs to plan to build the exact same area of office space as has been destroyed. In fact, Silverstein’s lawyers claim the developer had been on the phone to them on the evening of 9/11, wondering “whether his insurance policies could be read in a way that would construe the attacks as two separate, insurable incidents rather than one.” [Brill, 2003, pp. 18-19 and 39-40; Real Deal, 1/2004] Yet Jerome Hauer, the former director of New York’s Office of Emergency Management, had gone to Silverstein’s office on 9/11, and later claims that Silverstein’s primary concern that day had been his employees, and whether they had gotten out of the WTC. “Larry was absolutely devastated,” he says. [Weiss, 2003, pp. 374] Following a lengthy legal dispute, Silverstein will eventually receive $4.55 billion in insurance payouts for the destruction of the WTC (see May 23, 2007). [New York Post, 5/24/2007]
Source: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a091201doubleinsurance&scale=0

Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the Secret Government

Check out the following two recently added entries from the Complete 9/11 Timeline. These indicate how, prior to 9/11, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were part of a "secret government." As author James Mann says: "Cheney and Rumsfeld were, in a sense, a part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States."

1981-1992: Cheney and Rumsfeld Practice Secret Continuity of Government Plan, Later Activated on 9/11
Throughout the 1980s, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are key players in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan administration. Presently, Cheney is working as a Republican congressman, while Rumsfeld is head of the pharmaceutical company G. D. Searle. At least once per year, they both leave their day jobs for periods of three or four days. They head to Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, DC, and along with 40 to 60 federal officials and one member of the Reagan Cabinet are taken to a remote location within the US, such as an underground bunker. While they are gone, none of their work colleagues, or even their wives, knows where they are. They are participating in detailed planning exercises for keeping government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. This highly secret "continuity of government" (COG) program is known as Project 908. The idea is that if the US were under a nuclear attack, three teams would be sent from Washington to separate locations around the US to prepare to take leadership of the country. If somehow one team was located and hit with a nuclear weapon, the second or third team could take its place. Each of the three teams includes representatives from the State Department, Defense Department, CIA, and various domestic-policy agencies. The program is run by a new government agency called the National Program Office. Based in the Washington area, it has a budget of hundreds of million dollars a year, which grows to $1 billion per year by the end of Reagan's first term in office. Within the National Security Council, the "action officer" involved in the COG program is Oliver North, who is a key figure in the mid-1980s Iran-Contra scandal. Reagan's Vice President George H. W. Bush also supervises some of the program's efforts. As well as Cheney and Rumsfeld, other known figures involved in the COG exercises include Kenneth Duberstein, who serves for a time as President Reagan's chief of staff, and future CIA Director James Woolsey. The program, though, is extraconstitutional, as it establishes a process for designating a new US president that is nowhere authorized in the US Constitution or federal law. After George H. W. Bush is elected president in 1988 and the effective end of the Soviet Union in 1989, the exercises continue. They will go on after Bill Clinton is elected president, but will then be based around the threat posed by terrorists, rather than the Soviet Union (see (1992-2000)). According to journalist James Mann, the participation of Rumsfeld and Cheney in these exercises demonstrates a broader truth about them: "Over three decades, from the Ford administration onward, even when they were out of the executive branch of government, they were never too far away; they stayed in touch with its defense, military, and intelligence officials and were regularly called upon by those officials. Cheney and Rumsfeld were, in a sense, a part of the permanent, though hidden, national security apparatus of the United States." [Mann, 2004, pp. 138-145; Atlantic Monthly, 3/2004; Cockburn, 2007, pp. 85] The plan they rehearse for in the COG exercises will be activated, supposedly for the first time, in the hours during and after the 9/11 attacks (see (Between 9:45-9:55 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Washington Post, 3/1/2002] Mann subsequently comments, "The program is of particular interest today because it helps to explain the thinking and behavior of the second Bush Administration in the hours, days, and months after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001." [Atlantic Monthly, 3/2004]
Source: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a81cogexercises&scale=0

(1992-2000): Secret Continuity of Government Exercises Prepare for Terrorist Threat
During the 1980s, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were regular participants in top-secret exercises, designed to test a program called continuity of government (COG) that would keep the federal government functioning during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union (see 1981-1992). Despite the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the COG exercises continue into the 1990s, being budgeted still at over $200 million per year. Now, terrorists replace the Soviet Union as the imagined threat. The terrorism envisaged is almost always state-sponsored, with the imagined terrorists acting on behalf of a government. According to journalist James Mann, the COG exercises are abandoned fairly early in the Clinton era, as the scenario is considered farfetched and outdated. However another journalist, Andrew Cockburn, suggests they continue for longer. He adds that, while the "shadow government" created in the exercises had previously been drawn from across the political spectrum, now the players are almost exclusively Republican hawks. A former Pentagon official with direct knowledge of the program will later say, "It was one way for these people to stay in touch. They'd meet, do the exercise, but also sit around and castigate the Clinton administration in the most extreme way. You could say this was a secret government-in-waiting. The Clinton administration was extraordinarily inattentive, [they had] no idea what was going on." [Atlantic Monthly, 3/2004; Cockburn, 2007, pp. 88] The continuity of government plan will be activated, supposedly for the first time, in the hours during and after the 9/11 attacks (see (Between 9:45-9:55 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Washington Post, 3/1/2002]
Source: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a92cogcontinues&scale=0

The Assassination of JFK Junior - Murder by Manchurian Candidate

Overwhelming, jaw-dropping evidence of foul play in the death of John F Kennedy Jr. - all based on official government documents.

This is a must see video.

Where Were the F-15s on 9/11?

September 11, 2001 was an extraordinary day for many reasons. It was a day when hijackers who were amateur pilots and had never before flown jet planes suddenly gained remarkable flying skills. It was a day when scientific laws apparently changed, so that relatively small fires supposedly could cause three massive skyscrapers to disintegrate into dust, each in the space of just a few seconds. And it was also a day when two F-15s appear to have made possibly the slowest journey by military fighter jets in all history.

A new entry in the Complete 9/11 Timeline summarizes the testimonies of numerous witnesses who were on the ground in Manhattan that morning, describing when they first heard fighter jets arriving overhead. Despite a few contradictory accounts, these witnesses generally agree that fighters did not arrive over New York until around the time of the second WTC collapse, so roughly about 10:20 a.m.-10:35 a.m.

In response to the first hijacking, of Flight 11, two F-15 fighter jets were launched from Otis Air Force Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, which is about 153 miles away from New York City. The F-15s were ordered to scramble at 8:46 a.m. and were in the air by 8:53 a.m. But, according to the 9/11 Commission: "Lacking a target, they were vectored toward military controlled airspace off the Long Island coast. To avoid New York area air traffic and uncertain about what to do, the fighters were brought down to military air space to 'hold as needed.' From 9:08 to 9:13, the Otis fighters were in this holding pattern." [1] After leaving it at 9:13, they finally arrived over Manhattan at 9:25 a.m. [2]

This account itself is extraordinary. The first sign of a problem with Flight 11 was when it broke communication with air traffic control just before 8:14 a.m., refusing to respond to a request to climb to 35,000 feet. The emergency was compounded when Flight 11's transponder went off minutes later, at 8:21 a.m. [3]

As MSNBC reported: "If a plane deviates by 15 degrees, or two miles" from its pre-arranged course, "flight controllers will hit the panic button. ... It's considered a real emergency." In response, "F-16 interceptors can fly alongside a plane to see who's flying it. They can also try to force it off course. Once it is apparent that it is not following directions, it might be forced over the ocean or to a remote airport--or even shot down." [4]

Clearly then, a plane need not be hijacked for an emergency to exist. A plane that is off course or out of contact with air traffic control would be a potential danger to other aircraft in its area, regardless of whether or not it was hijacked. A speedy response by the military would be essential.

This point has been elucidated by Robin Hordon, an air traffic controller from 1970 to 1981, who in fact was responsible for the air traffic sector where Flight 11 first became an emergency on 9/11: "It is important for people to understand that scrambling jet fighters to intercept aircraft showing the signs of experiencing 'IN-FLIGHT EMERGENCIES' such as going off course without authorization, losing a transponder signal and/or losing radio contact, is a common and routine task executed jointly between the FAA and NORAD controllers. The entire 'national defense-first responder' intercept system has many highly trained civilian and military personnel who are committed and well trained to this task. FAA and NORAD continuously monitor our skies and fighter planes and pilots are on the ready 24/7 to handle these situations." [5]

Therefore, very soon after 8:14 a.m., Flight 11 should have been declared an emergency, and fighters should have been in the air to intercept it within minutes. According to Hordon: "The first fifteen minutes are the key. I have done the math. If we had scrambled some aircraft five or six minutes after we saw this huge deviation, the fighters from Otis would have intercepted American 11 over southwestern Connecticut or just south of Albany, NY." [6] As we know, this did not happen.

Even according to the 9/11 Commission's account, it was more than an hour after Flight 11 became an obvious emergency that the fighter jets launched in response to it finally arrived over New York. But if we believe the claims of the majority of witnesses quoted by the Complete 9/11 Timeline, it actually took more than two hours from when the emergency began for F-15s to arrive over the city. Yet the base from where they took off was just 153 miles away, and F-15s have a maximum speed of 915 mph at sea level, or 1,875 mph at high altitude. [7] So what slowed them down?

It could hardly be claimed that the mission the fighters were being called upon to perform was something out of the ordinary. A report published by the General Accounting Office in May 1994 stated: "Overall, during the past 4 years, NORAD's alert fighters took off to intercept aircraft 1,518 times, or an average of 15 times per site per year. Of these incidents, the number of suspected drug smuggling aircraft averaged one per site, or less than 7 percent of all of the alert sites' total activity. The remaining activity generally involved visually inspecting unidentified aircraft and assisting aircraft in distress." In other words, over this four-year period, military scrambles averaged about one per day. After 9/11, it was reported that NORAD had scrambled fighters 67 times during the nine months from September 2000 to June 2001. [8] So clearly the launching of military jets to intercept suspicious aircraft was a routine operation.

Fighters were reportedly able to respond within minutes of being called upon to do so. In the days after 9/11, Otis Air Force Base was reported as keeping two fighters "on 24-hour alert," which, "if needed, must be in the air within five minutes." [9] An alert pilot at Homestead Air Reserve Base, Florida--another of NORAD's alert sites--said: "If needed, we could be killing things in five minutes or less." And a book published by the 1st Air Force in 1999 described the emergency scramble procedure at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, also one of NORAD's alert sites. Tech. Sgt. Don Roseen, who was responsible for keeping the fighters there ready for instant takeoff, was quoted as saying that the alert jets were "hot and cocked, they are ready. When that alarm goes off, everything else just stops." [10] According to Robin Hordon: "Jet fighters typically intercept any suspect plane over the United States within 10-15 minutes of notification of a problem." [11]

How then can we explain the failure of the military to stop Flight 11 and Flight 175 from hitting the World Trade Center? And why did fighter jets apparently not arrive over New York until around 10:30 a.m.?

It could hardly have been due to incompetence. In fact, in January 1999, the 1st Air Force air sovereignty team, which, as part of NORAD, is responsible for the air defense of the continental United States, scored an unprecedented "grand slam" in an evaluation of its effectiveness. The three air defense sectors responsible for protecting U.S. airspace had their command and control skills tested in the Air Combat Command Operational Readiness Inspections (ORI). All were rated "outstanding," which was the highest score possible on a five-tier scale. Brigadier General Kenneth Stromquist Jr., the 1st Air Force vice commander, commented: "There's never been a grand slam ... in the history of this outfit." [12]

How could this team's performance plummet so abysmally two-and-a-half years later, on 9/11? Adding to the suspicion is the fact that no one in the military has been punished for this disastrous performance. Retired Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, a former fighter pilot, has summed it up: "No one has been court-martialed. No one has been reprimanded. No one has been demoted. No one is to blame. That only tells me one thing. The ones to blame are too high up to play scapegoat." [13]


From the Complete 9/11 Timeline:

(9:45 a.m.-10:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Witnesses First Notice Military Jets over New York, Later Than Claimed by 9/11 Commission
According to the accounts of numerous witnesses on the ground near the World Trade Center, military fighter jets are first noticed flying over Manhattan either shortly before or soon after the second collapse, at 10:28 a.m. Some witnesses recall fighters arriving just before this collapse:
* Emergency medical technicians Dulce McCorvey and Michael D'Angelo hear fighters flying over Manhattan at unspecified times after the first tower's collapse. [City of New York, 10/3/2001; City of New York, 10/24/2001]
* Fire Lieutenant Sean O'Malley and firefighters Pete Giudetti and Dan Potter notice jet fighters flying overhead soon before the second collapse. [City of New York, 10/12/2001; City of New York, 12/6/2001; Smith, 2002, pp. 49-50]
Other witnesses say the fighters arrive soon after this collapse:
* Deputy Fire Chief Robert Browne, police officer Peter Moog, and emergency medical technicians Richard Zarrillo and Jason Katz notice fighters overhead immediately after, or fairly soon after, the second tower's collapse. [City of New York, 10/24/2001; City of New York, 10/25/2001; City of New York, 12/20/2001; Fink and Mathias, 2002, pp. 79-80]
* Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, and Office of Emergency Management Director Richard Sheirer are heading north together after leaving their temporary command post on Barclay Street (see (9:50 a.m.-10:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001). In some accounts, all three of them recollect hearing the first military jets overhead soon after the second tower's collapse. [Kerik, 2001, pp. 339-340; Giuliani, 2002, pp. 14; 9/11 Commission, 5/18/2004] However, according to another account, Giuliani hears the first jet slightly earlier, at around 10:20 a.m. And, in his private testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Kerik claims to have heard a fighter jet coming when he was heading to the temporary command post on Barclay Street, i.e. shortly before 9:50 a.m. [Barrett and Collins, 2006, pp. 348-349]
A few witnesses claim the fighters arrive earlier on, before the first collapse at 9:59 a.m.:
* Emergency medical technician Frank Puma and Port Authority Freedom of Information Administrator Cathy Pavelec say they see fighter jets overhead at unspecified times before the first collapse. [City of New York, 12/12/2001; Fink and Mathias, 2002, pp. 68]
The fighter(s) are presumably the F-15s launched from Otis Air Force Base at 8:46 a.m. (see (8:46 a.m.) September 11, 2001). However, the 9/11 Commission will claim that these arrived over Manhattan at 9:25 a.m. (see 9:25 a.m. September 11, 2001), which is significantly earlier than most of the witnesses on the ground recall.

(Source: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a945fightersnoticed&scale=0)

ENDNOTES
[1] "Staff Statement No. 17: Improvising a Homeland Defense." 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004.
[2] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, p. 24.
[3] "Transcript American Airlines Flight 11." New York Times, 10/16/2001; "Staff Statement No. 17: Improvising a Homeland Defense." 9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004.
[4] Dr. Bob Arnot, "What Was Needed to Halt the Attacks?" MSNBC, 9/12/2001.
[5] "Statement of Robin Hordon: Former FAA Air Traffic Controller." Patriots Question 9/11, 4/10/2007.
[6] Jeremy Baker, "The First Fifteen Minutes of September 11th." CommunityCurrency.org, 3/2007.
[7] Joseph F. Baugher, "McDonnell F-15A Eagle." 2/20/2000; "F-15 Eagle." United States Air Force, 6/2006.
[8] "Continental Air Defense: A Dedicated Force Is No Longer Needed." United States General Accounting Office, 5/3/1994; Leslie Miller, "FAA, Military Now Work Closely: NORAD Notified Immediately of Any Problems." Associated Press, 8/13/2002.
[9] Kevin Dennehy, "Local Reservists Await the Call." Cape Cod Times, 9/15/2001; Kevin Dennehy, "Otis Force Activated; Home Duty Seen Likely." Cape Cod Times, 9/21/2001.
[10] Pat McKenna, "FANGs Bared." Airman, 12/1999; Leslie Filson, Sovereign Skies: Air National Guard Takes Command of 1st Air Force. Panama City, FL: First Air Force, 1999, p. 97.
[11] "Statement of Robin Hordon: Former FAA Air Traffic Controller." Patriots Question 9/11, 4/10/2007.
[12] Leslie Filson, Sovereign Skies, pp. 115 and 184; Don Arias, "Outstanding: CONR Sectors Receive Highest Inspection Ratings." American Defender, 3/1999.
[13] Dr Robert Bowman "A Fighter Pilot Looks Back at 9/11 and Forward to a Resurrected America." Speech at the International Citizens Inquiry Into 9/11 in Toronto, Canada, 5/30/2004.