Air Force jet fighters could have intercepted hijacked airliners roaring toward the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11 if only air-traffic controllers had asked for help 13 minutes sooner, the head of U.S. air defenses said yesterday.
The never-heard-before declaration by Gen. Ralph Eberhart stunned the hearings on the terror attacks – with startled 9/11 commission members questioning if it was really possible, as horrified family survivors shook their heads in disbelief.
“If the FAA told us as soon as they knew, then, yes, we could have shot down the planes,” said Eberhart.
The earliest that the Federal Aviation Administration was aware a plane had been hijacked was 8:24 a.m., according to a commission report released yesterday. That was 22 minutes before the plane, American Airlines Flight 11, crashed into the Trade Center at 8:46 a.m.
But the FAA did not reach NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) to warn about the hijacking until 8:37 – leaving its F-15 jets only nine minutes to intercept the Boeing 767.
“The nine minutes’ notice was the most the military received that morning of any of the four hijackings,” a commission report said.
Worse, NORAD – the North American Air Defense command – wasn’t told of the second hijacking until just about the same moment that it struck the south tower.
But the report stopped well short of backing Eberhart’s claim.
Commissioner James Thompson pressed Eberhart again and again on whether it was physically possible for airplanes based hundreds of miles away to intercept and shoot down the aircraft.
“We would have been able to shoot down all three . . . all four of them,” said Eberhart, who was named commander of NORAD after Sept. 11.
“That’s pretty remarkable,” commission Chairman Tom Kean told The Post in an interview moments after Eberhart’s dramatic testimony.
Eberhart said his staff reviewed time, distance and aircraft before he reached his conclusion.
He also testified that NORAD had access to 14 fighter planes at seven locations on 9/11, all fully armed with ammunition and missiles.
But Eberhart’s testimony did not address a very key question – whether it was possible that an order to shoot down the airliners could have been given by the president in those 13 minutes, especially given the communications chaos that day.
It was also revealed yesterday that Vice President Dick Cheney gave the order to fire on the hijacked planes at 10:02 a.m. – more than an hour after Eberhart’s 13 minutes were long gone – and well after the first two hijacked planes had struck the trade center.
In fact, Cheney’s order didn’t reach scrambled jet fighters until after the fourth plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. The commission also aired for the first time dramatic radio transmissions of 9/11, including one by lead hijacker Mohamed Atta.
It was this chilling transmission, at 8:24, that led an FAA controller to become the first person in U.S. air defenses to suspect a plane was hijacked.
In another shocking exchange between controllers – well after three of the four planes had already crashed – the FAA was still unsure whether the military should be called in.
FAA’s Cleveland Command Center: “Uh, do we want to think about, uh, scrambling aircraft?”
FAA Headquarters: “Uh, God, I don’t know.”
Cleveland Command: “Uh, that’s a decision somebody’s gonna have to make probably in the next 10 minutes.”
FAA Headquarters: “Uh, you know, everybody just left the room.”
During the hearing, a furious commissioner Bob Kerrey raised his voice and asked the FAA what the “hell” had been going on.
The FAA, for its part, tried to deflect the criticism by saying that the military had advisers at command centers who were aware of the hijackers, and that the civilian FAA was more focused on the safety of other airlines and getting them to land.
“I was focused on getting planes on the ground,” said the agency’s former acting Deputy Administrator Monte Belger.
The commission report detailed a disastrous series of blunders and miscommunications by FAA controllers and others trying to defend America on Sept. 11, including:
* When the FAA’s Boston Center finally reached NEADS, an official broke the news of the first hijacking:
“We have a problem here. We have a hijacked aircraft headed to New York, and we need you guys to, we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.”
NEADS replied: “Is this real-world or exercise?”
He was assured it was “not a test.”
But the two fighters that were then ordered into the air were at Otis Air Force Base, more than 150 miles from Manhattan – and NEADS didn’t know where to send them.
* When another hijacked jet, United Airlines Flight 175, changed its transponder code – sharply reducing the information about it – the jet had entered the airspace of the FAA’s New York Center.
The controller responsible for Flight 175 didn’t notice that because he was also responsible for Flight 11 and “was focused on finding” it – unaware it had already crashed.
* The third hijacked jet, American Airlines Flight 77, disappeared from FAA radar for more than half an hour after takeoff because of a glitch.
The Indianapolis-based controller tracking it was unaware other planes had been hijacked, and concluded Flight 77 was experiencing electrical failure.
The plane traveled undetected for 36 minutes toward Washington, and when it reappeared controllers had either stopped looking for it or were looking in the wrong direction. It hit the Pentagon.