Reply #18: Nitpicking and other more serious objections [View All]

[Kevin Fenton]

Why do you think the military-game blips were displayed to controllers at Boston Centre at the time American 11 was hijacked? And why do you think they were all in the same area? Surely, even if the exercise was confined to NORAD's northeastern sector in the continental US, that's actually quite large and many of the blips (if they were displayed to Boston Centre at that time) would have been very far away.

United 93's transponder was turned back on from 10:00 to 10:03.

Given that United 175 didn't turn its transponder off, how did it get switched?

You seem to be assuming that genuine hijackers would be stupid and would not know about problems with primary radar. Weren't lots of them involved in drug smuggling down in Florida? Surely, one of the first things a smuggler pilot learns is where the radar holes are - every country has them. If the hijackers were genuine, why would they not attempt to hide the planes? They should certainly learn about radar holes in Florida and attempt to find them.

American 77 would not have hit the Pentagon before the wargames were suspended if it had left on time. It was 10 minutes late taking off, whereas American 11 was 14 minutes and United 175 was 16 minutes late.

I thought the Willie Brown thing was significant too, but PT says not - apparently it was related to some previous security alert over the Pacific or something. I don't know whether United 93 would have arrived in SF before or after Brown left.

Isn't the NSA supposed to have intercepted a message celebrating the success of the attacks - so I guess it was operational?

I doubt there are missiles at the Pentagon - the only reliable source for this I can find is John Judge and he saw them in the 1950s. Anyway, the plane approached on the route taken by planes coming in to RRWNA and then went down to tree-top height below the radar. If the pilot knew the missiles were switched off, why didn't he just barrel into it?

If Bush has foreknowledge, why does he act like it? Is he just a knobwit who can't act?

If Bush shouldn't have gone to Offutt, where should he have gone?

Other random questions:
How come the demolition of the WTC is so obvious? Why don't they blow the right tower up first? why don't they use less explosives? why let RG know a couple of minutes beforehand? why not make it fall down slower? etc.
How come the other flights are (supposed to be in the case of United 93) hijacked at the same time American 11 crashes?
If United 93 was crashed by remote control, how do you account for the roving engine, debris at Indian Lake, etc.?
How come the cover stories ("I don't have a mobile phone", "I forgot I was secretary of defence and was playing doctors and nurses", "I was reading a story about a goat") are so crap? Shouldn't they have thought of something better? Or didn't they know beforehand and were told afterwards?
How come, according to the OCT, the pilots clearly didn't have the skills to fly the planes? Couldn't they have found more believeable hijackers?
Finally, what's the point? Whenever the military has seized/kept control of a country in the past, it was in response to a direct threat (e.g. communism in Italy during the cold war). What was the threat in the US in 2001?