HEARING OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE 

UNITED STATES

DAY 2, CIVIL AVIATION SECURITY

TIME: 9:01 A.M. EDT DATE: FRIDAY, MAY 23, 2003

PANEL 1: SEPTEMBER 11, 2001: THE ATTACKS AND THE RESPONSE 

WITNESSES: SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION NORMAN MINETA; 

MAJOR GENERAL CRAIG MCKINLEY, NORAD; MAJOR GENERAL 

LARRY ARNOLD, (RET.); COL. ALAN SCOTT (RET.); LT. 

GENERAL MIKE CANAVAN (RET.), FORMER ASSOCIATE 

ADMINISTRATOR, CIVIL AVIATION SECURITY 

PANEL 2: REFORMING CIVIL AVIATION SECURITY: NEXT STEPS

WITNESSES: STEPHEN MCHALE, DPEUTY ADMINISTRATOR, 

TRANSPORTATION SECURITY AGENCY; MAJOR GENERAL O.K. 

STEELE (RET.); MARY SCHIAVO, FORMER INSPECTOR GENERAL, 

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

 MR. KEAN: Yesterday the Commission received testimony

from members of Congress and from expert witnesses about the 

U.S. civil aviation security system that operated in the period 

leading up to September 11, 2001. 

 Today we move forward with the first look at the 9/11 

hijackings themselves and the security system's performance of 

that day. Our final panelists will then address the changes 

which have been made in aviation security since 9/11 and also 

options for further improvements in the current system. 

 Before we proceed further, I want the record to be made 

very clear that the Commission is intensely aware of any number 

of reports indicating failures outside the area of the aviation 

security system. These would include failures in intelligence, 

law enforcement and border security, which may have played a 

major part in making 9/11 possible. The Commission has a 

statutory mandate and will be examining those areas as well. 

They may even be the subject of future hearings. 

 Our focus today, however, is the field of civil 

aviation. Today's first -- where we start, we pick up the story 

of the hijackings on September 11th itself. How did the civil 
aviation security system operate that day with respect to the 19 

hijackers? What weapons and tactics did they employ to defeat 

the system? Why couldn't we stop them or, at least in the three 

out of four cases that reached their target, prevented 

successful completion of their mission? 

 This hearing record will remain open for 14 additional 

calendar days for any of the witnesses who want to to submit 

additional material and perhaps for the commission to send 

follow-up questions. 

 We are very pleased with the group of witnesses who are 

here today, particularly our first witness. And we're going to 

hear from the secretary of Transportation, with a long record of 

public service in the United States Congress, Secretary Mineta. 

 MR. MINETA: Thank you very much, Chairman Kean, Vice 

Chairman Hamilton and distinguished members of the Commission, 

for this opportunity to testify before you. 

 I want to compliment the Commission on its intention to 

collect and provide the information on the circumstances 

surrounding the tragedies of September 11th, 2001. I would like 

to provide the Commission with a brief account of what happened 

on September 11th, 2001. I believe I can be most helpful to 

this Commission by providing information in which I have 

personal knowledge and a few observations from my perspective as 

Secretary of Transportation. 

 There are many events that occurred on September 11th 

that I do not have personal knowledge of, though I have learned 

about them in subsequent investigations and reports. I know 

this commission will be speaking to the same agencies and 

individuals that provided me with that information, so I will 

let the Commission collect that information from those primary 

sources. 

 However, I do want to comment on what I believe is an 

important responsibility of this commission, and that is to add 

to the understanding of the American people about what we call 

terrorism and the threat that it poses. I have seen terrorism 

in several forms and from several vantage points over the years, 

as an intelligence officer in the United States Army during the 

era of the Korean conflict, and in Congress as one of the early 

members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. 

Like a mutating virus, I have seen terrorism take different form 

over the years in an effort to defeat the safeguards that have 
been devised to protect against it. And I believe it is 

critical to recognize this important truth about terrorism: The 

threat of terrorism is constant, but the nature of that threat 

changes, because to be successful, terrorism must continually 

change how it operates. 

 On Tuesday morning, September 11th, 2001, I was meeting 

with the Belgian transport minister in my conference room 

adjacent to my office, discussing aviation issues. Because of 

the agenda, FAA Administrator Jane Garvey was also in 

attendance. 

 A little after 8:45 a.m., my chief of staff, John 

Flaherty, interrupted the meeting. He asked Administrator 

Garvey and me to step into my office, where he told me that news 

agencies were reporting that some type of aircraft had flown 

into one of the towers of New York's World Trade Center. 

 Information was preliminary, so we did not know what 

kind of aircraft nor whether or not it was intentional. Jane 

Garvey immediately went to a telephone and contacted the FAA 

operations center. I asked to be kept informed of any 

developments and returned to the conference room to explain to 

the Belgian prime minister that our meeting might have to be 

postponed. 

 In an incident involving a major crash of any type, the 

Office of the Secretary goes into a major information-gathering 

response. It contacts the mode of administration overseeing 

whatever mode of transportation is involved in the incident. It 

monitors press reports, contacts additional personnel to 

accommodate the surge in operations, and centralizes the 

information for me through the chief of staff. 

 In major incidents, it will follow a protocol of 

notification that includes the White House and other agencies 

involved in the incident. These activities, albeit in the 

nascent stage of information-gathering, took place in these 

initial minutes. 

 A few minutes after my return to the conference room, 

my chief of staff again asked me to step back into my office. 

He then told me that the aircraft was a commercial aircraft and 

that the FAA had received an unconfirmed report that a hijacking 

of an American Airlines flight had occurred. 
 While Mr. Flaherty was briefing me, I watched as a 

large commercial jet flew into the second tower of the World 

Trade Center. At this point things began to happen quickly. I 

once more returned to the conference room and informed the 

minister of what had happened and ended the meeting. I received 

a telephone call from the CEO of United Airlines, Jack Goodman, 

telling me that one of United's flights was missing. I then 

called Don Carty, the CEO of American Airlines, and asked him to 

see if American Airlines could account for all of its aircraft. 

Mr. Flaherty reported to me that Jane Garvey had phoned to 

report that the CEO of Delta Airlines had called the FAA and 

said it could not yet account for all of its aircraft. 

 During this time, my office activated the Department of 

Transportation's crisis management center, which was located on 

the 8th floor at that time of the Department of Transportation 

headquarters, and provides for senior DOT personnel to conduct 

surge operations in a coordinated manner. 

 By this time, my office had contacted the White House. 

A brief moment later, the White House called my chief of staff 

and asked if I could come to the White House and operate from 

that location. I decided that, given the nature of the attack 

and the request, that I should be at the White House directly 

providing the president and the vice president with information. 

 When I got to the White House, it was being evacuated. 

I met briefly with Richard Clark, a National Security Council 

staff member, who had no new information. Then the Secret 

Service escorted me down to the Presidential Emergency 

Operations Center, otherwise known as the PEOC. I established 

contact on two lines, one with my chief of staff at the 

Department of Transportation, and the second with Monty Belger, 

the acting deputy administrator of the FAA, and Jane Garvey, 

both of whom were in the FAA operations center. 

 And as the minutes passed, the developing picture from 

air traffic control towers and radar screens became increasingly 

more alarming. Some aircraft could not be contacted. While on 

a normal day that may be just a communications snafu, we were 

faced with trying to quickly sort out minor problems from 

significant threats. We did not know how many more attacks 

might be in progress. 

 The FAA began to restrict air travel in the Northeast 

United States by a combination of actions which included 

sterilizing air space in certain regions and at various 
airports, and ultimately a nationwide ground stop of all 

aircraft for all locations, regardless of destination. 

 Within a few minutes, American Flight 77 crashed into 

the Pentagon. At this time, as we discussed the situation with 

the North American Aerospace Defense commander and his staff, we 

considered implementing an emergency system of coordinated air 

traffic management to allow maximum use for defensive 

activities. 

 It was clear that we had to clear the air space as soon 

as possible to stop any further attacks and ensure domestic air 

space was available for emergency and defensive use. And so at 

approximately 9:45 a.m., less than one hour after I had first

been notified of an airplane crash in New York, I gave the FAA 

the final order for all civil aircraft to land at the nearest 

airport as soon as possible. It was the first shutdown of civil 

aviation in the history of the United States. 

 Within minutes, air traffic controllers throughout the 

nation had directed 700 domestic and international flights to 

emergency but safe landings. Within another 50 minutes, air 

traffic controllers, working with skilled flight crews, made 

sure another 2800 airplanes returned safely to the ground. 

 By shortly after noon, less than four hours after 

the first attack, U.S. air space was empty of all aircraft 

except military and medical traffic. A total of approximately 

4500 aircraft were landed without incident in highly stressful 

conditions. Additionally, all international inbound flights 

were diverted from U.S. air space and U.S. airports. 

 Unfortunately, during this time we also learned that 

United Flight 93 crashed in Stony Creek Township, Pennsylvania. 

As America knows, but it is important to keep repeating, that 

aircraft never reached the terrorists' target due to the heroic 

actions taken by the passengers and crew on United Flight 93. 

 A question has been asked whether or not there is 

evidence that other hijackings and attacks were prevented by the 

actions that were taken that day. There are classified reports, 

media reports and investigative documents that indicate that 

other attacks may have been planned. But the evidence on this 

question is speculative at best, and I do not believe anyone can 

assert that other attacks were thwarted on that day unless he or 

she is the one who either planned the attack or planned to carry 

it out. 
 I also want to tell the Commission that although the 

focus of this commission's interest is on the airplane crashes 

on September 11th, as secretary of the United States Coast 

Guard, I was involved that day in the mass evacuation of more 

than 350,000 people from Manhattan. In addition to the largest 

maritime evacuation conducted in the history of the United 

States, our department's agencies were working with the various 

New York authorities on the devastating infrastructure damage 

suffered there. 

 Over the next few days, our department spent hours 

working with various state, local and federal agencies to reopen 

roads, tunnels, bridges, harbors and railroads while getting 

essential relief supplies into the area. I have talked about 

the staff at the Department of Transportation and how proud I am 

of how they responded on September 11th and in the days and the 

months afterward. 

 I also want to remark on the families, friends, the 

victims of that tragic day and those who were injured physically 

and emotionally. I share in much of their grief and heartache, 

although I can never experience the depth of it. The 

consequences of September 11th affected all of America, but the 

greatest effect was on these people. And I have spent a great 

deal of physical and emotional effort this past year trying to 

make sure that what happened on that day does not happen again. 

 We must do everything we can to try and prevent other 

Americans from enduring the pain that these families and friends 

have suffered. But in that work, we must never forget those 

families and that pain and anguish. I know I don't. It helps 

me in the work I continue to do. They are in my thoughts and 

prayers. 

 Thank you very much. 

 MR. KEAN: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. When you were 

being prepared in the sense of preparing yourself to take your 

role in the Cabinet, were you briefed in any way, or what part 

of the possibility of terrorism occurring was part of your 

preparation? I mean, as you've looked at all the vast things 

you have to understand for your position, was the possibility of 

terrorism and what you might have to do in the result of 

terrorism a large part of that briefing, a small part of that 

briefing? 
 MR. MINETA: The nature of what was happening in the 

civil aviation industry in the United States at that time did 

not put terrorism high on the list of priorities. We were still 

dealing with the whole issue of delays, of congestion, of 

capacity issues, and so terrorism was really not something that 

I was prepared to deal with except as it came up on that tragic 

day. 

 MR. KEAN: So you had to improvise, in a sense, based 

on what was happening and the news reports you were getting. 

 MR. MINETA: Absolutely. And in terms of what 

motivated me to bring all the aircraft down, as you see one 

thing happen, that's an accident. When you see two of the same 

thing occur, it's a pattern. But when you see three of the same 

thing occur, it's a program. And so at that point I decided to 

bring all the aircraft down. 

 MR. KEAN: But in a sense, what I'm trying to get at, I 

guess, is the government was really unprepared for this kind of 

event. Nobody had anticipated it, this event or any kind of 

major terrorist event. So this was not a major preparation. You 

weren't prepared. You had to do your best under very difficult 

circumstances. 

 MR. MINETA: That's correct, sir. 

 MR. KEAN: There's been some confusion as to the issue 

of box cutters. You testified, I gather, that as of September 

11th, the FAA did not prohibit box cutters, before Congress. 

Yesterday we got testimony from the ATA that in checkpoint 

operation guides, box cutters were classified as restricted 

items, which could be kept off an aircraft if identified. What 

was the status of box cutters within the aviation system as a 

whole, and certainly in Boston, where those checkpoints were? 

MR. MINETA: The FAA regulation referred to blades of four 

inches or greater as prohibited items. And so a box cutter was 

really less than four inches. Now, on the other hand, the 

airline industry had a guideline. And in that guideline, they 

did prohibit box cutters, as it was in that guideline. But in 

the FAA regulations, that was not the case. All they referred 

to was the length of the blade, and that was four inches. And 

so under the FAA regulations, box cutters would have been okay 

on an airplane. 
 MR. HAMILTON: Mr. Secretary, we're very pleased to 

have you here this morning. I understand your time is short and 

you'll only be able to spend a few minutes with us. We're 

grateful for the time that you're able to make available. It 

might very well be that we'll have some questions that we would 

want to submit to you in writing subsequently. 

 MR. MINETA: And I will submit those to the Commission 

in writing. 

 MR. HAMILTON: We thank you for that. I wanted to 

focus just a moment on the Presidential Emergency Operating 

Center. You were there for a good part of the day. I think you 

were there with the vice president. And when you had that order 

given, I think it was by the president, that authorized the 

shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be 

controlled by terrorists, were you there when that order was 

given? 

 MR. MINETA: No, I was not. I was made aware of it 

during the time that the airplane coming into the Pentagon. 

There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice 

president, "The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles 

out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the 

young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still 

stand?" And the vice president turned and whipped his neck 

around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you 

heard anything to the contrary?" Well, at the time I didn't know 

what all that meant. And --

 MR. HAMILTON: The flight you're referring to is the --

 MR. MINETA: The flight that came into the Pentagon. 

 MR. HAMILTON: The Pentagon, yeah. 

 MR. MINETA: And so I was not aware that that 

discussion had already taken place. But in listening to the 

conversation between the young man and the vice president, then 

at the time I didn't really recognize the significance of that. 

 And then later I heard of the fact that the airplanes 

had been scrambled from Langley to come up to DC, but those 

planes were still about 10 minutes away. And so then, at the 

time we heard about the airplane that went into Pennsylvania, 

then I thought, "Oh, my God, did we shoot it down?" And then we 
had to, with the vice president, go through the Pentagon to 

check that out. 

 MR. HAMILTON: Let me see if I understand. The plane 

that was headed toward the Pentagon and was some miles away, 

there was an order to shoot that plane down. 

 MR. MINETA: Well, I don't know that specifically, but 

I do know that the airplanes were scrambled from Langley or from 

Norfolk, the Norfolk area. But I did not know about the orders 

specifically other than listening to that other conversation. 

 MR. HAMILTON: But there very clearly was an order to 

shoot commercial aircraft down. 

 MR. MINETA: Subsequently I found that out. 

 MR. HAMILTON: With respect to Flight 93, what type of 

information were you and the vice president receiving about that 

flight? 

 MR. MINETA: The only information we had at that point 

was when it crashed. 

 MR. HAMILTON: I see. You didn't know beforehand about 

that airplane. 

 MR. MINETA: I did not. 

 MR. HAMILTON: And so there was no specific order there 

to shoot that plane down. 

 MR. MINETA: No, sir. 

 MR. HAMILTON: But there were military planes in the 

air in position to shoot down commercial aircraft. 

 MR. MINETA: That's right. The planes had been 

scrambled, I believe, from Otis at that point. 

 MR. HAMILTON: Could you help me understand a little 

the division of responsibility between the FAA and NORAD on that 

morning? 

 MR. MINETA: Well, FAA is in touch with NORAD. And 

when the first flight from Boston had gone out of communications 

with the air traffic controllers, the air traffic controller 
then notified, I believe, Otis Air Force Base about the air 

traffic controller not being able to raise that American 

Airlines flight. 

 MR. HAMILTON: A final question and then we'll let 

other commissioners ask a question. And this is kind of a 

broad, sweeping one. What worries you most about transportation 

safety today? What are the most vulnerable points, do you 

think, in our transportation system today? A lot of steps have 

been taken, obviously, to improve security, a lot of progress 

made. What would be towards the top of your list? Or would 

there be two or three items that worry you the most? 

 MR. MINETA: I would say today the most vulnerable 

would be the maritime ports. With the number of containers 

coming into this country, we really don't have a good handle on 

what's in those containers. And to me that is one that we still 

haven't really been able to put our hands on. 

 I know that the Transportation Security Agency is 

looking and working on that matter diligently. But with the 

number of containers that come off of ships every day, something 

like 16 million a year, it's a formidable task. 

 MR. HAMILTON: Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I 

understand the secretary's time is very tight now. 

 MR. KEAN: I have one final question and then we'll 

go to Commissioner Roemer. Is there one recommendation that you 

know of that's pending now, either in the administration or in 

the Congress or other, that you believe would be most important 

to making the traveling public feel safer? 

 MR. MINETA: I suppose, in terms of aviation, I think 

that we are probably as confident about the security relating to 

aviation issues today in terms of where we were before the 11th 

of September and improvements that were made subsequent to the 

11th of September and in terms of each month, each day it gets 

better. 

 But, again, I would go back to my maritime containers 

as still the most vulnerable and the one that really needs the 

funding to get to the bottom of that issue. 

 MR. KEAN: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Commissioner 

Roemer. 
 MR. ROEMER: Nice to see you, Mr. Secretary, and nice 

to see you feeling better and getting around as well, too. 

 I want to follow up on what happened in the 

Presidential Emergency Operations Center and try to understand 

that day a little bit better. You said, if I understood you 

correctly, that you were not in the room; you were obviously 

coming from the Department of Transportation, where you had been 

busy in a meeting in official business, but you had not been in 

the room when the decision was made -- to what you inferred was 

a decision made to attempt to shoot down Flight 77 before it 

crashed into the Pentagon. Is that correct? 

 MR. MINETA: I didn't know about the order to shoot 

down. I arrived at the PEOC at about 9:20 a.m. And the 

president was in Florida, and I believe he was on his way to 

Louisiana at that point when the conversation that went on 

between the vice president and the president and the staff that 

the president had with him. 

 MR. ROEMER: So when you arrived at 9:20, how much 

longer was it before you overheard the conversation between the 

young man and the vice president saying, "Does the order still 

stand?" 

 MR. MINETA: Probably about five or six minutes. 

 MR. ROEMER: So about 9:25 or 9:26. And your inference 

was that the vice president snapped his head around and said, 

"Yes, the order still stands." Why did you infer that that was 

a shoot-down? 

MR. MINETA: Just by the nature of all the events going on 

that day, the scrambling of the aircraft and, I don't know; I 

guess, just being in the military, you do start thinking about 

it, an intuitive reaction to certain statements being made. 

 MR. ROEMER: Who was the young man with the vice 

president? 

 MR. MINETA: Frankly, I don't recall. 

 MR. ROEMER: And was there another line of 

communication between the vice president -- and you said you saw 

Mr. Richard Clark on the way in. Was Clark running an 

operations center as well on that day? 
 MR. MINETA: Dick was in the Situation Room. 

 MR. ROEMER: So there was the Situation Room making 

decisions about what was going to happen on shootdowns --

 MR. MINETA: I don't believe they were --

 MR. ROEMER: -- as well as the PEOC? 

 MR. MINETA: I don't believe they were making any 

decisions. I think they were more information-gathering from 

various agencies. 

 MR. ROEMER: Could it have been in the Situation Room 

where somebody in the Situation Room recommended the shoot-down 

and the vice president agreed to that? 

 MR. MINETA: Commissioner Roemer, I would assume that a 

decision of that nature would have had to be made at a much 

higher level than the people who were in the Situation Room. 

 MR. ROEMER: So take me through that. The Situation 

Room is monitoring the daily minute-by-minute events and they 

find out that Flight 77 is headed to the Pentagon. Somebody's 

got to be getting that information. The Situation Room is then 

communicating with the PEOC and saying, "We've got another 

flight that's on its way toward the Pentagon. Here are the 

options." Then the vice president talks to the president and 

says, "Here are the options; we have a shoot-down 

recommendation. Do you agree, Mr. President?" Is that what 

happens? 

 MR. MINETA: Again, that would be speculation on my 

part as to what was happening on that day, so I just wouldn't be 

able to really answer that -- on that inquiry. 

 MR. ROEMER: I know, because you had been conducting 

official business, and I'm sure you were hurriedly on your way 

over there. 

 MR. MINETA: As I was listening -- 

MR. ROEMER: I'm just trying to figure out how the 

Situation Room, which was gathering the minute-by-minute 

evidence and information and talking probably to a host of 

different people, and how they're interacting with the PEOC and 

then how the PEOC is interacting with the president, who is at 
that point on Air Force One, how a decision is made to shoot 

down a commercial airliner. 

 And then would you say -- let's say we're trying to put 

that part of the puzzle together. Then would your inference be 

that they scrambled the jets to shoot down the commercial 

airliner, it failed, and the commercial airliner therefore 

crashed into the Pentagon, the jets were not able to get there 

in time to succeed in a mission that they'd been tasked to do? 

 MR. MINETA: I'm not sure that the aircraft that were 

scrambled to come up to the DC area from Norfolk were under 

orders to shoot the airplane down. As I said, I just --

 MR. ROEMER: But it was an inference on your part. 

 MR. MINETA: It was an inference, without a doubt. And 

that's why, in thinking about the United plane that went down in 

Pennsylvania, the question that arose in my mind --

 MR. ROEMER: Right away was "Was that shot down?" And 

did you ever get an answer to that? 

 MR. MINETA: Yes, sir. The vice president and I talked 

about that. We then made the inquiry of the Department of 

Defense. They then got back to us saying, "No, it was not our 

aircraft." 

 MR. ROEMER: No shots were fired and no effort was made 

to shoot that down. 

 MR. MINETA: That's correct. 

 MR. KEAN: I'm going to go to another questioner. 

 MR. ROEMER: Thank you. 

 MR. KEAN: The secretary's time is limited. 

Commissioner Lehman. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Mr. Secretary, I have one question, and 

that is, we had testimony yesterday that there were many 

intelligence reports leading up to 9/11 and actual plots 

uncovered to use aircraft as missiles. 

 Do you feel that the system set up to provide to you as 

secretary of Transportation the latest intelligence bearing on 
your responsibilities, such as that subject, was adequate before 

9/11? If not, have measures been taken to see that you are 

provided with the best possible product on a daily basis as to 

threats to the broad range of transportation assets under your 

purview? Could you comment on before and after? 

MR. MINETA: Well, I do get a daily briefing, intelligence 

briefing. And I did during that time period, prior to the 11th 

of September and subsequent to the 11th of September. And 

there's no doubt that the nature of the intelligence data has 

improved. 

 And so -- but again, there was nothing in those 

intelligence reports that would have been specific to anything 

that happened on the 11th of September. There was nothing in 

the preceding time period about aircraft being used as a weapon 

or of any other terrorist types of activities of that nature. 

And so -- but I do get briefings, and I think that since the 

11th of September, 2001, the nature of the briefings have 

improved. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Just to follow up, Mr. Secretary, given 

the fact that there were, in the preceding couple of years, 

about half a dozen novels and movies about hijackings being used 

as weapons and the fact that there were reports floating around 

in the intelligence community, did you personally think that 

that was a possibility, that it could have happened? Or when it 

happened, did it just take you totally by surprise? Because 

yesterday we had testimony from the former FAA administrator 

that, in effect, it never entered her mind. 

 MR. MINETA: Well, I would have to, again, say that I 

had no thought of the airplane being used as a weapon. I think 

our concentration was more on hijackings. And most of the 

hijackings, as they occur in an overseas setting, or the 

hijacking, if it were to be a domestic one, was for the person 

to take over the aircraft, to have that aircraft transport them 

to some other place. But I don't think we ever thought of an 

airplane being used as a missile. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Given that there was so much intelligence, 

not a specific plot, but of the possibility and the fact that 

some terrorists had, in fact, started planning, wouldn't you 

view it as a failure of our intelligence community not to tell 

the secretary of Transportation that there was such a 

conceivable threat that the people like the Coast Guard and FAA 

should be thinking about? 
 MR. MINETA: We had no information of that nature at 

all. And as to whether that was a failure of the intelligence 

agencies, I think it would have been just even for them hard to 

imagine. 

 MR. KEAN: Thank you. We recognize your time 

constraints. We have two more commissioners --

 MR. MINETA: Absolutely. 

 MR. KEAN: -- who have questions. Commissioner 

Gorelick and then Commissioner Fielding. 

 MS. GORELICK: Secretary Mineta, again, thank you 

for being here. We all know that in the spring and summer of 

2001, the intelligence community was putting out reports of a, I 

would say, near-frantic level suggesting that we were expecting 

there to be some type of terrorist attack somewhere in the world 

-- we didn't know where, we didn't know the modality, but a very 

high level of concern. 

 My first question to you -- and I'll just give them to 

you all at once, is, one, were you called to any meeting or 

summoned at a Cabinet level, or was there any sort of crossfunctional group put together across the government to say, What 

can we do as a government to respond to this very heightened 

level of intelligence warning that we are getting generally? 

 Second, even though in response to Commissioner 

Lehman's questions you have indicated that this particular 

modality of attack was not made known to you clearly, hijackings 

and use of aircraft, bombings, bombs on aircraft, were a 

favorite tool, if you will, of terrorists. Did you yourself do 

anything within the agencies under your control to seek out 

mechanisms for being on alert and for heightening our security 

in this period of reporting? What did you know, what was anyone 

telling you, and what did you do in response? 

 MR. MINETA: First of all, on the first question I 

would say, no, that we had no meetings of an interagency nature 

given the nature of intelligence that you're describing. I 

think most of the response at that time was to what you might 

call the chatter, because the chatter is really just increased 

communication between people, but nothing specific as to the 

nature of the kind of attack that might be coming. We're at 

orange level now, and what prompted that was again increased 
chatter. But it wasn't anything specific about the nature of 

what the threat might be. 

 MS. GORELICK: Well, let me just contrast perhaps the 

chatter, the same kind of chatter level right in advance of the 

millennium. As I understand it, that information was widely 

disseminated in the government. There were Cabinet-level and 

sub-Cabinet-level meetings, and each agency essentially searched 

to do what they could to harden our country against attacks. 

Now, clearly when you don't know where the attack is coming from 

or what mode will be used, it's difficult. But what I am asking 

essentially is: Did this higher level of chatter, the what I 

believe to be a frantic quality to the intelligence warnings, 

result in any action across the government, and particularly in 

the area of transportation? I take it your answer to that is 

no? 

MR. MINETA: That's correct. 

 MR. KEAN: Commissioner Fielding. 

 MR. FIELDING: Mr. Chairman, I would like further 

explanation of the division of responsibility between the FAA 

and NORAD on the morning of 9/11, because there seems to be some 

confusion about that. I'd like the secretary's views, but I'd be 

very happy in respect to his time to submit that in writing to 

him. 

 MR. MINETA: All right, I'll submit that in writing. 

 MR. KEAN: Mr. Secretary, thank you very much. 

 MR. MINETA: Very well. Thank you very much to the 

Commission. 

 MR. HAMILTON: Mr. Chairman? 

 MR. KEAN: Mr. Hamilton. 

 MR. HAMILTON: I just wanted to be recognized for a 

moment to comment on a headline really in The Washington Post

that appeared this morning. The headline states that a -- and 

I'm quoting it now -- "New Panel, Independent of 9/11 

Commission, Is Sought," end of quote. And I want to observe 

that I don't see how it is possible to get that headline out of 

the article. And the article really does not say anything at 

all about a separate panel. 
 When I first saw the headline it occurred to me that 

maybe I had attended a different meeting yesterday than The 

Washington Post reporters and headline writers had attended. 

But I hope the Post will see fit to prominently correct that 

headline which is quite erroneous. 

 MR. KEAN: Thank you very much. I would certainly 

agree. 

 I would like to have Major General Craig McKinley, 

commander, 1st Air Force, Continental U.S. NORAD, here 

representing NORAD. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Governor Kean, Congressman Hamilton and 

members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to 

appear before you today on behalf of the combatant commander, 

United States Northern Command and North American Aerospace 

Defense Command, to provide testimony on the events surrounding 

the events of September 11th, 2001, when our nation was attacked 

from within by foreign terrorists using commercial aircraft as 

weapons of mass destruction. 

 It is an honor to represent the thousands of men and 

women from the Air National Guard, the active duty forces and 

the Air Force Reserves still serving around the clock defending 

America from further attacks in support of the North American 

Aerospace Defense Command. I personally was inside the Pentagon 

on September 11th, and I personally know what it feels like to 

be attacked by hostile forces. Although over 18 months have 

passed since that tragic day, our vigilance remains focused. We 

have flown almost 30,000 airborne sorties in support of 

Operation Noble Eagle in the continental United States alone. 

 Every day Americans and Canadians work side by side in 

NORAD to defend North America. We have forged unprecedented 

relationships with in the U.S. government, with federal agencies 

to strengthen our ability to detect and defend against further 

attempts to harm our nation from the air. We are now patterned 

with the new United States North Command to extend and perfect 

our mission in both homeland defense as well as civil support 

missions. We are proud to be a part of this team focused on 

defending our nation against all threats, and supporting our 

government in its role, primary role, of protecting its 

citizens. 
 First Air Force is a subordinate command of Air Combat 

Command, and is responsible to the North American Aerospace 

Defense Commander for the execution of the air defense mission 

to protect our nation. First Air Force, as NORAD's continental 

United States NORAD region, is responsible for the air defense 

of the continental United States under the NORAD agreements. 

 I personally took command of 1st Air Force in the 

continental United States's NORAD region on August 1st of 2002, 

and then became the joint force air component commander for 

General Eberhardt. This was 11 months after the attacks. I am 

pleased to say today that when I saw the nature of your 

questions, that I asked General Eberhardt's permission, and 

received it, to invite Major General Retired Larry Arnold, the 

past commander of 1st Air Force, and the commander on the day of 

the attacks, that led the command through those trying days 

during and after the event. He is with us today, and has 

volunteered to be part of this commission's hearings. I also 

asked for probably the best subject matter expert I could find 

on the chronology, the series of events that is so vital to this 

commission, to be with us today with your concurrence to walk us 

through the NORAD timeline. 

 I also have with me today Major Don Arias to show you 

the human nature of this. Don's brother, Adam, was killed in 

the South Tower 2. He was talking to his brother at 8:59 on the 

11th of September, '01, and Mr. Arias is our public affairs 

officer. Please stand up, Don. 

 I'd like to thank the Commission staff, especially 

Miles Kara, for his help in preparing for this. The committee 

has posed many questions regarding the events surrounding the 

9/11 attacks. Our intention is to provide the chronology first 

to the events leading up to September 11th, as well as taking 

your questions to give you a detailed look at how NORAD's 

response was made on 9/11, and any subsequent questions you may 

have on our posture since. Mr. Commissioner, that concludes my 

formal statement. The rest will be provided for the record. 

And, with your indulgence, sir, I would like Colonel Scott 

(ret.), Alan Scott, to walk you through the timeline. 

 MR. SCOTT: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, commissioners. 

It is my pleasure to be here with you today. General Arnold and 

I worked together that day on September the 11th. 

 What I will walk you through here is a chronology of 

the attacks, and I've presented it in a matrix form. And the 
only thing I lay claim to is having studied all of the attacks 

and how they are interwoven together. This was not a linear 

sequence of events where one attack began and ended and then a 

second attack began and ended. This was a coordinated, wellplanned attack. We had multiple airplanes in the air. The fog 

and friction of war was evidence everywhere in the country, both 

on the civil side as well as the military side. And this 

hopefully will show you how those interwoven events came about. 

 I will tell you the times on this chart come from our 

logs. The time on the chart is the time that's in the log. It 

may not be the exact time the event happened. It may be the 

time when the log-keeper was advised or became aware of the 

event. 

 The first thing that happened in the morning related to 

the events at 9:02, or I'm sorry 8:02 a.m., Eastern Standard 

Time, is when American Airlines 11 took off out of Boston. 

American Airlines 11 was a 767, and it was headed, I believe, to 

Los Angeles. Fourteen minutes later, also coming out of Boston 

Logan, United Airlines 175, a 757, also headed to Los Angeles, 

took off out of Boston, and initially took roughly the same 

ground track as American 11. Three minutes later, American 

Airlines 77 took off out of Dulles here in Washington, also 

headed to Los Angeles, and also a 757, and proceeded westbound 

toward the West Coast. So now the first three airplanes are 

airborne together. The first time that anything untoward, and 

this was gleaned from FAA response, that anything out of the 

ordinary happened was at 8:20, when the electronic transponder 

in American Airlines 11 blinked off if you will, just 

disappeared from the screen. Obviously the terrorists turned 

that transponder off, and that airplane, although it did not 

disappear from the radarscope, it became a much, much more 

difficult target to discern for the controllers who now only 

could look at the primary radar return off the airplane. That 

was at 8:20. 

 At 8:40 in our logs is the first occasion where the FAA 

is reporting a possible hijacking of American Airlines Flight 

11. And the initial response to us at that time was a possible 

hijacking had not been confirmed. At that same moment, the F-15 

alert aircraft at Otis Air Force Base, Massachusetts, about 153 

miles away, were placed immediately on battle stations by the 

Northeast Air Defense Sector commander. At 8:43, as this is 

going on, the fourth airplane, United 93, takes off out of 

Newark, New Jersey. It's a 757. It is headed for San 

Francisco. At 8:46, our next log event, we get the last, and, 
by the way, much of this radar data for these primary targets 

was not seen that day. It was reconstructed days later by the 

84th Radar Evaluation Squadron, and other agencies like it who 

are professionals at going back and looking at radar tapes and 

then given that they are loaded with knowledge after the fact, 

they can go and find things that perhaps were not visible during 

the event itself. 

 At 8:46, the last data, near the Trade Center,8:46, 

the first impact on the Trade Center. At that minute is when 

the Otis F-15s were scrambled. And, again, they were 153 miles 

away. And that scramble came, and General Arnold, I am sure can 

address this, based on a conversation between the Northeast 

Sector commander and himself. Those F-15s were airborne in six 

minutes. That is well inside the time that is allowed for them 

to get airborne. But because they were on battle stations, the 

pilots were in the cockpits ready to start engines, that 

scramble time was shortened by a significant amount of time. 

 At 8:53, that's a minute later, in the radar 

reconstruction, we are now picking up the primary radar contacts 

off of the F-15s out of Otis. At 8:57, which is seven minutes 

after the first impact is, according to our logs when the FAA 

reports the first impact. And about this time is when CNN 

coverage to the general public is beginning to appear on the TV, 

not of the impact, but of the burning towers shortly thereafter. 

So you can see what in the military I am sure you have heard us 

talk to the fog and friction of war, and as the intensity 

increases the lag tends to also increase for how quickly 

information gets passed. 

 9:02 -- United 175, the second airplane, which by the 

way never turned off its transponder before impact, crashes into 

the North Tower at 9:02. 

 The distance of those fighters which had been scrambled 

out of Otis, at that particular point they were still 71 miles 

away, about eight minutes out, and going very fast. 

 At 9:05, FAA reports a possible hijack of United 175. 

Again, that's three minutes after the impact in the tower. 

That’s how long it is taking now the information to flow through 

the system to the command and control agencies and through the 

command and control agencies to the pilots in the cockpit. At 

9:09, Langley F-16s are directed to battle stations, just based 

on the general situation and the breaking news, and the general 

developing feeling about what's going on. And at about that 
same time, kind of way out in the West, is when America 77, 

which in the meantime has turned off its transponder and turned 

left back toward Washington, appears back in radar coverage. 

And my understanding is the FAA controllers now are beginning to 

pick up primary skin paints on an airplane, and they don't know 

exactly whether that is 77, and they are asking a lot of people 

whether it is, including an a C-130 that is westbound toward 

Ohio. At 9:11 FAA reports a crash into the South Tower. You 

can see now that lag time has increased from seven minutes from 

impact to report; now it's nine minutes from impact to report. 

You can only imagine what's going on on the floors of the 

control centers around the country. At 9:11 -- I just mentioned 

that -- 9:16, now FAA reports a possible hijack of United Flight 

93, which is out in the Ohio area. But that's the last flight 

that is going to impact the ground. 

 At 9:24 the FAA reports a possible hijack of 77. 

That's sometime after they had been tracking this primary 

target. And at that moment as well is when the Langley F-16s 

were scrambled out of Langley. 

 At 9:25, America 77 is reported headed towards 

Washington, D.C., not exactly precise information, just general 

information across the chat logs; 9:27, Boston FAA reports a 

fifth aircraft missing, Delta Flight 89 -- and many people have 

never heard of Delta Flight 89. We call that the first red 

herring of the day, because there were a number of reported 

possible hijackings that unfolded over the hours immediately 

following the actual attacks. Delta 89 was not hijacked, enters 

the system, increases the fog and friction if you will, as we 

begin to look for that. But he lands about seven of eight 

minutes later and clears out of the system. 

 At 9:30 the Langley F-16s are airborne. They are 105 

miles away from the Washington area; 9:34, through chat, FAA is 

unable to precisely locate American Airlines Flight 77; 9:35, F16s are reported airborne. And many times, reported airborne is 

not exactly when they took off. It's just when the report came 

down that they were airborne. At 9:37 we have the last radar 

data near the Pentagon. And 9:40, immediately following that, 

is when 93 up north turns its transponders off out in the West 

toward Ohio, and begins a left turn back toward the East. 

 At 9:49, FAA reports that Delta 89, which had been 

reported as missing, is now reported as a possible hijacking. 

So again he is --
 MR. : That's 9:41, sir. 

 MR. SCOTT: I'm sorry, 9:41. Again, he is in the 

system. He is kind of a red herring for us. 

 Now, the only thing that I would point out on this 

chart is this says 9:43, American Airlines 77 impacts the 

Pentagon. The timeline on the impact of the Pentagon was 

changed to 9:37 -- 9:43 is the time that was reported that day, 

it was the time we used. And it took about two weeks to 

discover in the parking lot of the Pentagon this entry camera 

for the parking lot, which happened to be oriented towards the 

Pentagon at the time of impact, and the recorded time is 9:37. 

And that's why the timeline went from 9:43 to 9:37, because it 

is the best documented evidence for the impact time that we 

have. Getting toward the end now, 9:47 is when Delta 89 clears 

the system by landing in Cleveland. So he is not a hijack. 

Lots of things are going on now in the system as the sectors 

begin to call both units that are part of 1st Air Force and 

NORAD, as well as units that have nothing to do with us. We are 

beginning to call everyone now and the 103rd Air Control 

Squadron, for instance, stationed in Connecticut, is an air 

control squadron, a radar squadron, and they got their radar 

online, operational, and begin to link their radar picture into 

the Northeast system. They are not normally part of NORAD. 

This is really the initial part of a huge push the rest of that 

day to link as many radars in on the interior as we can, and to 

get as many fighters on alert as we can. 

 At 10:02, United 93 last radar data and the estimated 

impact time for United 93 is 10:03. 

 At 10:07 FAA reports there may be a bomb on board 93 --

that's four minutes after the impact. At 10:15 they report that 

it's crashed. And you can see now that fog and friction lag 

time has increased from seven minutes to nine minutes to 15 

minutes, because of the level of activities that are going on. 

And there are notations here about other airplanes as we begin 

to divert other airplanes that are just out were intended for 

training that day. We're picking up the phone, calling 

Syracuse, the Air National Guard. They're beginning to get 

flights airborne. They're beginning to arm those aircraft with 

whatever weapons they have handy so we can posture that defense. 

 That is how the timeline unfolded. As you can see, it 

is a fabric of interwoven actions. This is not just a linear 
event. So lots of things going on, lots of activities, and lots 

of C2 centers. Sir, that completes my piece. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Mr. Chairman, we thought right up front 

we'd put that on the record so we can have that as a departure 

point for your questions. I'd again caveat by saying that this 

is the North American Aerospace Defense Command and continental 

NORAD region timeline. Other agencies may have other logs that 

may have different times. But this is the best and most 

accurate data that we could piece together for your Commission, 

sir. With that, I open up to questions. 

 MR. KEAN: Thank you very much. Commissioner BenVeniste. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Good morning, gentlemen. First I 

would like to personally commend each of you and the dedicated 

men and women who serve our nation through NORAD. I'd like to 

explain to you what you probably know already, and that is that 

our mandate as a commission is to provide the most detailed and 

accurate exposition in our final report of what occurred leading 

up to the 9/11 tragedy and the events subsequent thereto. And 

so please understand that our questions may be very pointed. We 

mean no disrespect, but we have our mission as well. Now, 

General McKinley, is it fair to say that the mission and the 

primary responsibility of NORAD is to defend our homeland and

our citizens against air attack? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: On the day of September 11th, 2001, our 

mission was to defend North America, to surveil, to intercept, 

to identify, and if necessary to destroy, those targets which we 

were posturing were going to come from outside our country. In 

fact, that tracks originating over the landmass of the United 

States were identified friendly by origin. Therefore those 

alert sites that were positioned on the morning of September 

11th were looking out primarily on our coasts at the air defense 

identification zone, which extends outward of 100 to 200 miles 

off our shore. So that was the main focus of NORAD at the time. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: I asked you about your 

responsibilities, sir, and I ask you again, whether it was not 

your responsibility as NORAD to protect the United States and 

its citizens against air attack. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: It is, and it was, and I would just 

caveat your comment by saying that our mission was at that time 

not designed to take internal FAA radar data to track or to 
identify tracks originating within our borders. It was to look 

outward, as a Cold War vestige, primarily developed during the 

Cold War, to protect against Soviet long-range bomber 

penetration of our intercept zone. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, I think, sir, that you have 

used a good term, not good for the United States, but accurate, 

in terms of the vestigial mandate operationally to look outward 

toward the borders rather than inward. And as vestigial you 

mean, I am sure, as a result of our decades of confrontation 

with the former Soviet Union. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Correct, sir. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: And so on the day of September 11th, 

as you can see these dots -- I know it may be difficult to see -

- NORAD was positioned in a perimeter around the United States, 

but nothing in the central region, nothing on the border with 

Canada? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: That's correct, sir. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Now, let me ask you, sir, whether the 

concept of terrorists using an airplane as a weapon was 

something unknown to the intelligence community on September 

10th, 2001. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Very good question, and I --

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: -- I asked our staff to provide me some 

data on what they had that morning. As I said, General Arnold 

was at the helm that morning. But basically the comments I 

received from my staff was that there was no intelligence 

indication at any level within NORAD or DOD of a terrorist 

threat to commercial aviation prior to the attacks. And 

information from the daily Joint Chiefs intelligence report on 

the morning of September 11th indicated no specific dangers or 

threats within the country. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: My question, sir, and I mean no 

disrespect, but we'll save time if you listen to what I ask you. 

My question is: The concept of terrorists using airplanes as 

weapons was not something which was unknown to the U.S. 

intelligence community on September 10th, 2001, isn't that fair 

to say? 
 GEN. MCKINLEY: I'd like the intelligence community to 

address that. I would find it hard to believe that they hadn't 

speculated against that. But it was unavailable to us at the 

time. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, let's start, for example, 

with September 12th, 1994, a Cessna 150L crashed into the South 

Lawn of the White House, barely missing the building, and 

killing the pilot. Similarly, in December of 1994, an Algerian 

armed Islamic group of terrorists hijacked an Air France flight 

in Algiers and threatened to crash it into the Eiffel Tower. In 

October of 1996, the intelligence community obtained information 

regarding an Iranian plot to hijack a Japanese plane over Israel 

and crash it into Tel Aviv. In August of 1988, the intelligence 

community obtained information that a group of unidentified 

Arabs planned to fly an explosive-laden plane from a foreign 

country into the World Trade Center. The information was passed 

on to the FBI and the FAA. 

 In September of 1998, the intelligence community 

obtained information that Osama bin Laden's next operation could 

possibly involve flying an aircraft loaded with explosives into 

a U.S. airport and detonating it. In August 2001, the 

intelligence community obtained information regarding a plot to 

either bomb the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi from an airplane, or 

crash an airplane into it. In addition, in the Atlanta 

Olympics, the United States government and the Department of 

Justice and my colleague Jamie Gorelick were involved in 

planning against possible terrorist attacks at the Olympics, 

which included the potential of an aircraft flying into the 

stadium. In July 2001, the G-8 summit in Genoa, attended by our 

president, among the measures that were taken were positioning 

surface-to-air missile ringing Genoa, closing the Genoa airport 

and restricting all airspace over Genoa. 

 Was not this information, sir, available to NORAD as of 

September 11th, 2001? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: It's obvious by your categorization 

that those events all took place and that NORAD had that 

information. I would only add, sir, that the intelligence data 

that we postured our forces for and the training and the tactics 

and the procedures that we used to prepare our missions for 

support of the combatant commander of NORAD had hijacking as a 

primary intercept tactic. And we have some of the finest fighter 

pilots, as you know in the world, who are some of the best 
people in the world who can do their mission extremely well. But 

we had not postured prior to September 11th, 2001, for the 

scenario that took place that day. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, obviously it would be hard to 

imagine posturing for the exact scenario. But isn't it a fact, 

sir, that prior to September 11th, 2001, NORAD had already in 

the works plans to simulate in an exercise a simultaneous 

hijacking of two planes in the United States? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Colonel Scott, do you have any data on 

that? I'm not aware of that, sir. I was not present at the 

time. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: That was Operation Amalgam Virgo. 

 MR. SCOTT: Yes, sir. Specifically Operation Amalgam 

Virgo, which I was involved in before I retired, was a scenario 

using a Third World united -- not united -- uninhabited aerial 

vehicle launched off a rogue freighter in the Gulf of Mexico. 

General Arnold can back me up -- at the time one of our 

greatest concerns was the proliferation of cruise missile 

technology and the ability for terrorist groups to get that 

technology, get it close enough to our shores to launch it. In 

fact, this exercise -- in this exercise we used actual drone --

NQM-107 drones, which are about the size of a cruise missile, to 

exercise our fighters and our radars in a Gulf of Mexico 

scenario. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: You are referring to Amalgam 01, are 

you not? 

 MR. SCOTT: Yes, sir, Amalgam 01. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: I am referring to Amalgam 02, which 

was in the planning stages prior to September 11th, 2001, sir. 

Is that correct? 

 MR. SCOTT: That was after I retired, and I was not 

involved in 02. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Will you accept that the exercise 

involved a simultaneous hijacking scenario? 

 MR. SCOTT: I was not involved in 02. 
 GEN. MCKINLEY: Sir, I do have some information on 02, 

if you would allow me to read it for the record. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Please. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Amalgam Virgo in general, 02, was an 

exercise created to focus on peacetime and contingency NORAD 

missions. One of the peacetime scenarios that is and has been a 

NORAD mission for years is support to other government 

departments. Within this mission falls hijackings. Creativity 

of the designer aside, prior to 9/11, hijack motivations were

based on political objectives -- i.e., asylum or release of 

captured prisoners or political figures. Threats of killing 

hostages or crashing were left to the script writers to invoke 

creativity and broaden the required response for players. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, isn't that a bit fatuous given 

the specific information that I've given you? It wasn't in the 

minds of script writers when the Algerians had actually hijacked 

the plane, which they were attempting to fly into the Eiffel 

Tower. And all of the other scenarios which I mentioned to you. 

I don't mean to argue with you. But my question is, sir, given 

the awareness of the terrorists use of planes as weapons, how is 

it that NORAD was still focusing outward protecting the United 

States against attacks from the Soviet Union or elsewhere, and 

was not better prepared to defend against the hijacking 

scenarios of a commercial jet laden with fuel used as a weapon 

to target citizens of the United States? When you say our 

training was vestigial, I think you said it in capsulated form. 

But would you agree that on the basis of the information 

available that there could be, could have been better 

preparedness by NORAD to meet this threat? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: In retrospect, sir, I think I would 

agree with your comment. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: With respect to the bases that were 

available for protecting the East Coast, you -- and Colonel 

Scott has gone through the scrambling of aircraft -- I wanted to 

focus just on one flight, Flight 77, and then Secretary Lehman 

will ask you some more specific questions. With respect to 

Flight 77, sir, you testified previously before the House Armed 

Services Committee, and General Eberhardt was questioned -- you 

are familiar with his testimony? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Yes, sir. 
 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Okay. He was questioned about Flight 

77, and because of the use of Langley Air Base, which is 105 

miles from our capital, as opposed to, say, Andrews Air Force 

Base, which is in the neighborhood, the question arises again 

about the positioning and the thought behind the positioning of 

fighter planes to protect our capital in an enhanced terrorist 

situation such as existed on September 10th, September 9th, 

2002. 

 Let me ask you about Flight 77 again. The question was 

the timeline we have been given is that at 8:55 on September 

11th American Airlines Flight 77 began turning east away from 

its intended course, and at 9:10 Flight 77 was detected by the 

FAA radar over West Virginia heading east. That was after the 

two planes struck the Trade Center towers. Is that correct, 

Colonel Scott? 

 MR. SCOTT: Yes, sir. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Now, 15 minutes later, at 9:25, the 

FAA notified NORAD, according to this statement, that Flight 77 

was headed toward Washington. Was that the first notification, 

9:25, that NORAD or DOD had that Flight 77 was probably 

hijacked? And, if it was, do you know why it took 15 minutes 

for FAA to notify NORAD? General Eberhardt said, "Sir, there's 

one minor difference: I saw it as 9:24, which you do as well, 

that we were notified, and that's the first notification we 

received." "Do you know if that was the first notification to 

DOD?" "Yes, sir, that's the first documented notification that 

we received." And I want to focus on the word "documented," 

because it's very important for us to know when NORAD actually 

received notification, given the fact that planes had already 

crashed into the World Trade Center, and given I am sure the 

assumption that these were terrorist acts and there could be 

more coming, more planes coming. 

 Is it in fact correct, sir, that the first notification 

of any type that NORAD received was not until 9:24 with respect 

to Flight 77? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: With your concurrence, sir, I would 

like to ask General Arnold to address that. He was on the floor 

that morning. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Thank you. The simple answer to your 

question is I believe that to be a fact: that 9:24 was the 

first time that we had been advised of American 77 as a possible 
hijacked airplane. Our focus -- you have got to remember that 

there's a lot of other things going on simultaneously here, was 

on United 93, which was being pointed out to us very 

aggressively I might say by the FAA. Because our radars looking 

outward and not inward, the only way for us to know where 

anything was was for the FAA to pass along that information to 

us. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, is it not the case, General 

Arnold, that there was an open line established between FAA, 

NORAD and other agencies, including CIA and FBI, that morning? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Well, I wasn't on that line at that 

particular time if that were the case. In fact, there is an 

open line established between our sectors at really the tactical 

level where they are controlling the aircraft talking to the FAA 

controllers from time to time. We did not have an open line at 

that time with the FAA. That is not accurate. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: You did not. You were not -- NORAD 

was not in contact --

 GEN. ARNOLD: The continental United States NORAD 

region, my headquarters, responsible for the continental United 

States air defense, did not have an open line with the FAA at 

that time. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Was there some NORAD office that had 

an open line with the FAA --

 GEN. ARNOLD: Our --

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Excuse me. Let me finish my 

question, please. Was there some NORAD office -- and you'll 

forgive us because we had asked for this information prior to 

the hearing from FAA and did not receive it -- but we are 

advised that there was indeed an open line between either the 

net or some other name given to a -- essentially an ongoing 

conference where under, in real time, FAA was providing 

information as it received it, immediately after the first crash 

into the Towers, we were told, with respect to each of the 

events that were ongoing of any remarkable nature? I see 

General McKinley is nodding. 

GEN. MCKINLEY: I'd like to, if I may, address this, based 

on my research and review for this commission. It's my 

understanding that the FAA was in contact with our Northeast Air 
Defense Sector at Rome, New York. Understanding the 

relationship of how we defend North America from threats, NORAD 

located in Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, our 

continental NORAD region, our air operations center located at 

Tindel Air Force Base in Florida -- that's where the joint force 

air component commander resides. And then we have three sectors 

based on the size and volume of our country that handle that. It 

is my understanding from talking with both FAA and our 

supervisors at the Northeast Air Defense Sector in Rome, that 

those lines were open and that they were discussing these 

issues. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: So, is it fair to say that at 

least the NORAD personnel in Rome, New York, had information 

available to it in real time once it saw -- and we were advised 

that this occurred at 9:02, which was then 22 minutes earlier 

that Flight 77 first was observed deviating from its course, 

something which in the context of what was going on that day 

would be quite interesting, if not remarkable? Colonel Scott, 

any comments? 

 MR. SCOTT: Sir, I think it's also important to 

understand that like the CONUS region, the FAA is also broken 

down into subordinate command and control centers as well. I 

know that the Boston center was talking directly to the 

Northeast sector. I don't believe Flight 77 was in Boston 

Center's airspace. They were in Cleveland. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: I think the FAA can report accurately 

on this, but I believe 77 was in Cleveland Center airspace when 

it developed the problem where they lost its radar image. And I 

believe -- and the FAA again can testify better to this -- they 

would take action based on losing that identification in 

Cleveland. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, actually I think according to 

the information that we have, the first indication was not a 

loss of radar contact but rather a course deviation with respect 

to Flight 77. 

 Now, I don't mean to take up any more time on this, 

because we are going to want to follow up on all of this 

information in great detail. But let me ask whether there is 

regularly made a tape recording of these open-line 

communications. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: (?) Not to my knowledge. 
 GEN. MCKINLEY: Not to my knowledge. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Does FAA to your knowledge keep a 

recording of these crisis situations? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: (?) I am unaware, but I would certainly 

direct that to them, please. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: To the best of your knowledge, you 

don't have anything further to shed light on when you first 

learned -- you, NORAD -- first learned of Flight 77's probable 

hijack status prior to 9:24 a.m.? 

GEN. ARNOLD: (?) I can provide that for the record. I do not 

have any further knowledge at this time. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: We would ask that you do so. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: (?) Yes, sir. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will have 

some other questions after. 

 MR. KEAN: Secretary Lehman. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Thank you. General, I would also like to 

echo my colleagues' expression of great admiration for you and 

your predecessor, your command and your pilots, even though they 

might require long runways to land. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: We understand. 

 MR. LEHMAN: One of the most serious responsibilities 

we have in addition to air security is identifying the real 

dysfunctions in our intelligence system that contributed to the 

tragedy. And we had prior as you know to your testimony 

Secretary Mineta, who indicated despite the fact of this long 

litany of events and intelligence reports of the growing 

probability that aircraft would be used as weapons, nothing ever 

got to him, and nothing apparently got to you, and I assume, 

General Arnold, nothing got to you. This would seem to be a 

pretty significant failure of our system, because it exists to 

provide product precisely to you, the most important users 

tasked with defending it. So I would like to ask -- we'll 

provide you a copy of this, which is from the Joint Inquiry 

staff statement -- if you could give us your studied assessment 
of what went wrong in the way you interact with, your command 

interacts with the intelligence community, and why the product 

did not get to you. These were pretty dramatic events, facts 

and intelligence reports. It would be very helpful to us to 

have your assessments as a customer of the system to what went 

so seriously wrong that you were still only looking out. 

 There's another, an issue that I would ask perhaps 

General Arnold to address, because there's a great deal of 

unease and distress, I think understandably, among many of the 

families that somehow those aircraft should have been shot down 

if people had not made mistakes. And I wonder if you would just 

take us through each flight, given the posture that NORAD was in 

at the time, which was national policy and not whatever based on 

erroneous intelligence perhaps. But given that posture and 

given the times that NORAD was notified of the deviation from --

the possibility of hijacking, could the aircraft on alert for 

instance at Otis have intercepted? And then if you could also 

take us through 77 and 93 as well with the F-16s, which -- and 

if you would tell us as you take us through what the armament 

was on the F-15s and the F-16s that were scrambled against 77 

and 93. 

GEN. ARNOLD: Thank you, sir, and I will try to do that to 

the best of my ability. And perhaps General McKinley has some 

data that he could shed light on, because I have been retired a 

little while, and do not have access to the staff for some of 

the very specifics on that. But I will try to do my best. 

 As you know from previous testimony from General 

Eberhardt to Congress, we were in the middle of a NORAD exercise 

at that particular time, which means that basically our entire 

staff was focused on being able to do the air operations center 

mission, which was our job to do. We had just come out of a 

video teleconference with the NORAD staff and with our folks at 

that particular time, when I was handed a note that we had a 

possible hijacking at Boston center, and it had come from the 

Northeast Air Defense Command, Colonel Bob Mahr (ph), who is 

commander up there, and he had requested that I call him 

immediately. And I was upstairs in our facility, immediately 

went downstairs, picked up the phone, asking on the way to my 

staff, "Is this part of the exercise?" Because quite honestly, 

and frankly we do do hijacking scenarios as we go through these 

exercises from time to time. But I realized that it was not. 

This was real life. 
 And I also remembered as I went downstairs, before I 

even talked to him, that it had been a long time since we had 

had a hijacking, but the fact that we had reviewed the 

procedures of what it is we do for a hijacking, because we were 

in the middle of an exercise. So we were pretty well familiar 

with those procedures, and of course we have our own checklist 

that we follow. 

 As I picked up the phone, Bob told me that Boston 

Center had called possible hijacking within the system. He had 

put the aircraft at Otis on battle stations, wanted permission 

to scramble them. I told them to go ahead and scramble the 

airplanes and we'd get permission later. And the reason for 

that is that the procedure -- hijacking is a law enforcement 

issue, as is everything that takes off from within the United 

States. And only law enforcement can request assistance from 

the military, which they did in this particular case. The route, 

if you follow the book, is they go to the duty officer of the 

national military center, who in turn makes an inquiry to NORAD 

for the availability of fighters, who then gets permission from 

someone representing the secretary of Defense. 

Once that is approved then we scramble aircraft. We didn't 

wait for that. We scrambled the aircraft, told them get 

airborne, and we would seek clearances later. I picked up the 

phone, called NORAD, whose battle staff was in place because of 

the exercise, talked to the deputy commander for operations. He 

said, you know, "I understand, and we'll call the Pentagon for 

those particular clearances." It was simultaneous almost for 

that decision that we made that I am looking at the TV monitor 

of the news network and see a smoking hole in what turned out to 

be the North Tower of the World Trade Center, wondering, What is 

this? And like many of us involved in that, Does it have 

anything to do with this particular incident? Which we didn't 

think it did, because we were talking Boston Center, and we were 

not thinking of the immediate New York metropolitan area. 

Shortly after that, of course our airplanes became airborne. It 

just so happens that Colonel Duffy, who was a pilot of that 

first F-15, had been involved in some conversation because, as 

telephone calls were made, he was aware that there was a 

hijacking in the system. It's kind of interesting because he 

concluded that that indeed might have been that airplane 

himself, and [he]elected to hit the afterburner and to speed up 

his way towards New York. 

 It was then very shortly thereafter that we saw on 

television the second airplane, United 175, crash into the South 

Tower. And the first thing that I think most of us felt was, was 
this a rerun of the first event? And then it turned out to be 

the second event. We had no warning of that whatsoever. In 

fact, that airplane was called possibly hijacked later on, which 

as General McKinley referred to, as the fog and friction of war, 

actually caused further confusion, because we were not aware 

which aircraft actually crashed into the towers. We just knew 

that by now we had two airplanes that have crashed into the 

towers. We have two airplanes that are called hijacked. Again, 

we are still minutes away -- I think the record said eight 

minutes away from New York City with F-15s that are moving very 

rapidly in that direction. 

 Now we have, before I get to 77, if it were, we get a 

call of United Flight 93. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Before you go to that, I just wanted to 

just make -- there was no possibility given the lateness with 

which you were notified from FAA of a possible hijacking that 

those airplanes in full after burner flying supersonic could 

have gotten there in time to intercept either of those two 

flights. Is that correct? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: That's correct. That's correct. The 

first aircraft, of course, American 11, crashed before our 

interceptors were airborne. We ordered the scramble almost 

simultaneously; our records show the same minute. I'm not even 

sure which occurred first, but it was almost simultaneous that 

we ordered the scramble of the aircraft, and the impact into the 

North Tower had occurred. And so by the time even the pilot 

accelerating to 1.5 mach, moving pretty fast, was still eight 

minutes out by the time the second aircraft had crashed into the 

tower. And though when the second aircraft crashed into the 

tower, by now, you know, I think Secretary Mineta said, this 

becomes a pattern certainly. I would like to tell you that I 

was absolutely certain at that time that we were under an 

attack, but I was not absolutely certain we were under attack at 

that particular time. But we knew that this pattern had to be

dealt with at that particular time. And then very shortly 

thereafter we got a call from on the United 93 flight being a 

possible hijacking. And that aircraft, as you -- well, I don't 

know if you know, but it wandered around. That aircraft 

wandered around and flew up over the northern part of 

Pennsylvania and Ohio. Mixed in with this was a call about a 

Delta flight that was possibly hijacked. So now our focus is we 

are under attack. What are we going to do in order to be in 

position to intercept another aircraft should it threaten 
someplace in the United States? That place of course, we would 

not know. 

 In the Northeast at this particular time we had no 

other aircraft available. The aircraft out of Otis had taken 

off. We looked at aircraft that were returning from a Michigan, 

an Air Michigan National Guard aircraft returning from the 

range, because at one time we thought either the Delta flight or 

the United 93 might pose a threat to Detroit. We tried to get 

airplanes airborne out of the Toledo Air National Guard at that 

particular time. Can you get anything airborne? Because we 

have this United 93 and this Delta. We need to intercept it and 

see what is going on with those particular aircraft. 

 Syracuse, New York Air National Guard unit -- we 

inquired with them, their ability to get airborne, and 

ultimately they did somewhat later at that particular time. 

 And so in the record you see the time when we were 

notified of the American Flight 77 as being a possible hijack. 

And I can tell you that I did not know, and I don't believe 

anybody in the NORAD system, knew where that airplane was. We 

were advised it was possibly hijacked. And we had launched 

almost simultaneously with that, we launched the aircraft out of 

Langley to put them over top of Washington, D.C., not in 

response to American Airline 77, but really to put them in 

position in case United 93 were to head that way. They were the 

closest fighters we had, and we started vectoring them to move 

towards the Washington, D.C. area, to --

 MR. LEHMAN: Did they also go into burner? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: No, sir. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Sir, they, based on their 

configuration, traveled at .98 Mach, roughly 575 knots, 660 

miles per hour, about 10 nautical miles per minute. 

 MR. LEHMAN: If they had gone into burner, could they 

have gotten there in time to get 77? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I think if those aircraft had gotten 

airborne immediately, if we were operating under something other 

than peacetime rules, where they could have turned immediately 

toward Washington, D.C., and gone into burner, it is physically 

possible that they could have gotten over Washington, D.C. 
 MR. LEHMAN: Why did they head out to sea first? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Our standard -- we have agreements with 

the FAA, and by the way we are looking outward. This is an 

advantage to us, and so we'd have agreements for clearance. 

When we scramble an aircraft, there is a line that is picked up, 

and the FAA and everyone is on that line. And the aircraft take 

off and they have a predetermined departure route. And of 

course, it's not over water, because our mission, unlike law 

enforcement's mission, is to protect things coming towards the 

United States. And I might even add in all of our terrorist 

scenarios that we run, the aircraft, if we were to intercept 

aircraft, it is usually always from outside the United States 

coming towards us. 

 So our peacetime procedures, to de-conflict with civil 

aviation's, so as to not have endanger civil aviation in any 

particular way. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Secretary Lehman, also if I may add, 

the complexity of the air traffic over the Northeast corridor is 

so complex that to just launch fighters, as you know, sir, from 

your background, into that air traffic system can cause 

potential damage or midair collision. So we rely on the FAA to 

de-conflict those corridors. And that is another reason why it 

vectored east originally. 

 MR. LEHMAN: The armament on the F-15s and the F-16s 

was? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: The armament, as I recall, and General 

McKinley can correct me on that, we had full-up armament on all 

those aircraft with both radar and heat-seeking missiles as well 

as guns. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: AIM –7,-8,-9. 

 MR. LEHMAN: So, to continue with 77, it's fair to say 

if you had got a more timely notification from FAA, and 

particularly with regard to where it was heading, that those F16s launched from Langley could possibly have gotten there 

before they hit the Pentagon? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: It is certainly physically possible that 

they could have gotten into the area. And the speculation is as 

to whether we could actually have intercepted the aircraft by 

that time, because everything that we were doing, remember, was 
being relayed from the FAA. We had no visibility on those 

aircraft -- couldn't see, we had no radars, couldn't talk to our 

pilots. FAA did a marvelous job during that period of time in 

doing radio relays and assisting us with being able to control 

them.

 MR. LEHMAN: Now, had 93 not crashed, would it not have 

been possible for the F-16s to have intercepted 93, and do you 

think they would have? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: It was our intent to intercept United 

Flight 93. And in fact my own staff, we were orbiting now over 

Washington, D.C. by this time, and I was personally anxious to 

see what 93 was going to do, and our intent was to intercept it. 

But we decided to stay over Washington, D.C., because there was 

not that urgency. And if there were other aircraft coming from 

another quadrant, another vector, we would have been pulled off 

station, and we would not have been able to -- there might have 

been an aircraft that popped up within the system closer that 

would have posed a larger threat to the Washington, D.C. area. 

So we elected to remain over D.C. until that aircraft was 

definitely coming towards us. And, as you know, the brave men 

and women who took over that aircraft prevented us from making 

the awful decision which the young men that were flying those 

aircraft would have lived with for the rest of their lives if 

they had to do that. 

 MR. LEHMAN: In a short answer, why with the previous 

attempt of a light plane to hit the White House, wasn't Andrews 

Air Force Base with F-16s and Marine F-18s available, part of 

the alert? And I understand, and I'd also like to have you 

comment on what the role of the Secret Service was in scrambling 

those F-16s. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Are you talking about scrambling the --

 MR. LEHMAN: Andrews --

 GEN. ARNOLD: The Andrews airplanes. It is my 

understanding that the Secret Service -- obviously they work 

with the 113th, because the president's Air Force One is located 

out at Andrews Air Force Base. So they had personal knowledge of 

those, of the people out there and the telephone number, and 

were—I cannot speculate whether they knew what we were doing or 

not, but in the urgency to get something done they made a phone 

call to the 113th, I learned later -- I did not know that at the 
time -- and asked them to get anything they could airborne, and 

I think the quote was "to protect the House." 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: And the 113th is the 113th Fighter Wing 

at Andrews, the District of Columbia Air National Guard F-16 

Wing. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: And not part of NORAD. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Now, you said that the clear delineation 

was you were looking outward, and to do anything inward you had 

to get authorization from a law enforcement agency. And that is 

covered, as I understand it, by JCS instruction 3610 on aircraft 

piracy. In that instruction, as I read it, which I believe is 

still in effect --

 GEN. MCKINLEY: That's correct, sir. 

 MR. LEHMAN: -- you don't have any delegated authority 

to interdict. In fact, there is no mention of interdiction, and 

it's purely an escort function. This is still in effect. Now, 

presumably you are not following it to the letter, and I would 

like you to speak to what the chain of command is now. Who has 

authority to interdict, to shoot down, where is it delegated, 

and are there published rules of engagement as to what criteria 

apply to make that decision? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Sir, I'd be happy to answer that, and I 

thank General Arnold for the comments about the actual data. I 

appreciate him being here today. Quite frankly, sir, since 

September 11th, 2001, the Department of Defense, United States 

Air Force has put a lot of resources into what we call Operation 

Noble Eagle. As President Bush said, it's the second front on 

the war on terrorism. And, as I said in my opening remarks, we 

have flown 30,000 sorties. In fact overhead today here our 

Noble Eagle pilots are flying, in addition to being supplanted 

with ground-based air defense artillery. 

 A lot of effort has gone into taking a look at the 

things that were not done right prior to prepare ourselves for 

the aftermath. And it is an honor for me to represent the men 

and women who do that. 

 Quite frankly, our relationships began at 9/11, and 

the aftermath, with General Arnold and our staff to work with 

the Federal Aviation Administration to bring in those radar 

facilities so our controllers at our Northeast, Southeast and 
Western Air Defense sectors had visibility internally now. And 

that has been completed. In addition to seeing internally to the 

United States, we must be able to communicate to the pilots who 

fly our interceptor missions, so we can have clear lines of 

control back to our command element, General Eberhart, in 

Colorado Springs. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Just to interrupt now, on the radar 

visibility, are you dependent on the FAA radars, which can have 

very little capability in a non-transponder environment, or can 

you, do you have the better air defense radar? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Sir, we try to put the best radars in 

effect for the mission. Most of those are FAA radars. Most of 

them are old radars, but they've been maintained properly, and 

we are actually putting Department of Defense people out to make 

sure those radars are calibrated for our mission. So therefore 

we are using their radars. We are using air control squadrons, 

both active duty Guard and Reserve, to supplement those. We in 

fact use the United States Navy every chance we can, because 

their Aegis cruisers are so capable that we link their pictures 

into our air combat command center at Tindel. So we are doing 

the absolute best job with the resources we have been given to 

make sure that internal picture now is transparent to our air 

battle managers, so that military controllers, when asked now, 

can pinpoint immediately an aircraft in distress, that we can 

find the nearest suitable fighter location, which I can say is 

substantial today. In open testimony I would not like to go 

into the details of the numbers of alert facilities, but it goes 

up and down depending on the threat. It is internal now to the 

United States, which it wasn't on the 11th of September. 

 So this capacity, this Operation Noble Eagle, which 

gives the military far more responsibility and latitude to do 

this mission now, has allowed us to be far more capable. And we 

have been involved in every airline incident that we have been 

asked to perform with, with the Federal Aviation Administration 

subsequent to 9/11, whether there be a disturbance onboard, 

whether it be an aircraft emergency, whether it be to protect 

critical infrastructure, our major population centers. We are 

there. 

MR. LEHMAN: To follow up on that, General Arnold, did you 

have authority to shoot down 93 when it was heading towards 

Washington? And where did you get it? 
 GEN. ARNOLD: A lot of discussion on that. Our intent 

on United 93 -- the simple answer is, to my knowledge, I did not 

have authority to shoot that aircraft down. We were informed 

after the airplane had already hit the ground. That's the 

simple answer. 

 MS. GORELICK: I'm sorry, could you say that again? 

You were informed of what after it hit the ground? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: We were informed of presidential 

authority some five minutes after that aircraft had hit the 

ground, according to our records. 

 MR. LEHMAN: So you were given it after the fact, 

presidential authority to shoot it down? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: To my knowledge. Now, I can tell you that 

in our discussion with the NORAD staff at that particular time 

that we -- you know, we intended to intercept that aircraft at 

some point in time, attempted to deviate that aircraft away from 

the Washington, D.C. area. There was discussion at that 

particular time whether or not that aircraft would be shot down. 

But we, I did not know of presidential shoot down authority 

until after that aircraft had crashed. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Mmm-hmm. And, General McKinley, could you 

take us to the present and where those authorities lie now? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Yes, sir. Subsequent to 9/11, the 

president delegated to the secretary of Defense, delegated to 

the combatant commander at NORAD, and now United States Northern 

Command, has the authority to declare a hostile target. Our 

fighter interceptors will be in position to accept that hostile 

declaration, and the clearance authorities will be passed up to 

the highest authority. We have improved our communications 

equipment. We have secure telephones that allow us to contact 

immediately the powers in the chain of command. And I, as the 

joint force air component commander, have delegated emergency 

authority in the very rare occasion where a telephone fails or 

we cannot get authority, and under emergency powers can exercise 

that authority. So the clearances now are in place. General 

Eberhart is in place in Colorado Springs, or his designated 

representative. We exercised this in real world, not exercise, 

probably between eight and 15 times a week. So it's been well 

documented. Any national security event will bring together the 

forces and those lines of communication are open now. 

Clearances are there. 
 MR. LEHMAN: Thank you. As you know, our rules of 

engagement are many V-1, so I will take rest and let my 

colleagues go at you. 

 MR. KEAN: Commissioner Ben-Veniste. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Following 

up on this shootdown authority, General Arnold, from what source 

did you receive the shootdown authority? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I did not receive shootdown authority. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: You say it was received subsequent to 

the crash of 93? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Yes, that's correct. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: From what source was that received? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: It was passed down to us from the NORAD, 

from Cheyenne Mountain, that they had received shootdown 

authority. And then, you know, the timeframe escapes me at the 

moment, but you know for example over the Washington, D.C. area 

it was declared a no-fly zone by clear -- just by the fact that 

any aircraft was present, if we could not determine if that 

aircraft was friendly, then we were cleared to shoot that 

aircraft down. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: When was the declaration of no-fly 

zone authorized? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I don't know. It was shortly during that 

timeframe. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: So are you saying that that 

declaration gave you shootdown authority? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: It gave us -- that particular declaration 

that I am referring to is a class bravo airspace within the 

Washington, D.C. area that was shut down to aviation, except for 

military or for law enforcement emergency response aircraft at 

that particular time. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: To help me understand, does it mean 

once that condition exists, that unless you were able to 
determine that this was a friendly aircraft, which under the 

circumstances I suppose means under the control of the 

terrorists at that time making it an unfriendly aircraft, that 

you had authority --

 GEN. ARNOLD: That's correct. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: -- by whatever means to bring that 

down? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Yes. The --

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: At what time during this process was 

that order issued, and who issued it? 

GEN. ARNOLD: I do not know who issued it. It is my 

understanding it was issued by the president, or the vice 

president in his stead, that that order was issued. And it was 

issued around the time that we decided to put all the aircraft 

on the ground, as Secretary Mineta had referred to, at that 

particular time. So --

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: We would ask you to supplement your 

testimony today with specific information about that. At what 

point was, to the best of your knowledge, any order received 

from either the president or the vice president of the United 

States with respect to action to be taken by the military in 

connection with the ongoing situation? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: It was my understanding that that 

occurred, the direct communication, to me. I can't answer if it 

was done at a higher level at some point in time around five 

minutes after the United 93 had crashed into Pennsylvania. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: And so you will be able to check the 

records of NORAD generally, or the DOD generally, to find out 

when a presidential directive was issued? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I am sure General McKinley will do that 

for me. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you. And if I understand the 

context of what you said about closing the perimeter around 

Washington, the president's directive or the vice president's 

directive would have been moot, because of the prior order, 

which would have enabled you to shoot down an unfriendly plane 

in that sector? 
 GEN. ARNOLD: We developed a certain -- I guess the 

short answer again, that is correct. But it's very specifically 

in the Washington, D.C. area by presence that aircraft was 

hostile unless we could determine it was friendly. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Let me go to the issue again to 

revisit Flight 77, because as we understand it, tragically, it 

appears that that was the only plane which reached its intended 

target which might have been interdicted that day, if everything 

had gone right. Are you in agreement with that? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I think, from a physics perspective, yes. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Let's go beyond physics for a moment, 

and let me ask you about the planes which were scrambled from 

Andrews Air Force Base. 

 MR. : Langley. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: No, from Andrews Air Force Base by 

the Secret Service of the United States. Who gave the order to 

scramble jets -- F-16s also, I believe -- out of Andrews? 

GEN. ARNOLD: It's my understanding that the Secret Service 

requested that they launch anything they could to get them 

airborne. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Of whom did they make that request? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I'm not sure if it's General Dave Worley 

(ph), and I think they actually talked to him. And I did not 

know this at time of course, but they called him up and said, 

What do you have that you can get airborne? He had some 

airplanes returning from the range on training mission. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: What would be the flight time from 

Andrews Air Force Base of two F-16s to the Pentagon? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: From the time they were notified? 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Yes. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Probably 15 to 20 minutes, because it 

takes about 10 minutes to get airborne, and they are not set up 

on alert or scrambled. In fact, it could have taken, f they 
didn't have any airplanes immediately ready to go, it could have 

taken them 20, 30 minutes. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: And under the circumstances --

 GEN. ARNOLD: They already had airplanes airborne. By 

the time those airplanes were airborne we had airplanes over 

Washington, D.C. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Right. Now if the order had been 

given to Andrews, even simultaneously with the order that you 

gave to scramble your planes, is it not fair to say that those 

planes would have reached the Pentagon sooner? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: They might have, but they would have been 

unarmed. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Sir, what would be my comment, sir, is 

those aircraft are not prepped or built up for that mission. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: And in fact we have received reports 

that are almost incredible in terms of the bravery of the two 

pilots who went up that day in unarmed aircraft with the 

mission, I presume authorized somewhere in the executive, to use 

their airplanes to bring down Flight 77 or 93 if they could 

interdict them. That means to clip their wings, crash into 

them, perhaps the pilots at the risk of their own lives. Is 

that correct? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Sir, as I evacuated the Pentagon that 

morning, as I came out the river entrance and looked up, 

virtually simultaneously those F-16s coming back from the range 

had been airborne, had dropped their weapons, were returning low 

on fuel -- were visible to 10 to 15,000 people, and it was a 

very heartening sight to see United States Air Force fighters 

overhead the Pentagon. And it is my understanding from the 

review of the records that that was their guidance. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: And who provided that guidance to 

them? Was that a decision made internally by Secret Service, or 

did Secret Service require higher executive order in order to 

launch those planes on that mission? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I do not know that. 

GEN. MCKINLEY: I am unaware of the answer to that, sir. 
 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, 

gentlemen. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Thank you. 

 MR. KEAN: One question. Suppose for a minute that 

this weekend, God forbid, that some terrorists got on board 

another plane in Boston and headed for New York. What would be 

different? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Sir, I am very proud to say that I 

think the interagency process has worked very, very well. The 

Transportation Security Administration, under the direction of 

Secretary Ridge, has implemented stringent procedures on the 

ground. Let's face it: solving this problem before the 

terrorists get on the airplane, I think, is the most critical 

step to protecting commercial aviation, because once the 

airplane is in the air, then it resolves back to the Department 

of Defense to take the appropriate action. So TSA deserves a 

great deal of credit. The Federal Aviation Administration, with 

their procedures, and they way they are lashed up with us now 

and the military, and the formation of the Northern Command, I 

think is vitally important to the security of the United States 

of America. I think those things in context make it far less 

likely for this to happen. But, as my boss says, we are not 100 

percent safe. We can never be 100 percent safe. I take nothing 

for granted when I am in our air operations center when any 

aircraft fails to communicate or fails to make a turn or fails 

to do what its flight plan said it was supposed to. So we are 

very, very serious today about what's happening in the skies 

over America. 

 MR. KEAN: But if it were able to get into the air, 

headed for New York, what procedures exist now that didn't exist 

then? Would you be able to intercept them? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: It's my understanding and firm belief 

that the Federal Aviation Administration would immediately 

notify us at the first sign of any impropriety, in any aircraft, 

whether it's commercial, cargo or civilian. We would 

immediately take action to get our fighters airborne from the 

nearest suitable location -- and we have that location set now 

where we didn't have it prior to the 11th. We should be able to 

protect our critical infrastructure, our major population 

centers. But there is, as in any case of a military effort, 

there are some risks. But we are postured to accept that 

responsibility. The example you gave us out of Boston is the F-
15s out of Otis would be immediately scrambled, they would 

immediately intercept the aircraft, and we would stand by for 

further authorities from those above us. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: And I want to just point out that if the 

question was if it were to happen today, you have airborne 

interceptors that would be vectored into that aircraft to 

intercept. 

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Hamilton? 

 MR. HAMILTON: I just want to clarify a few things 

after listening to all this testimony. It's not all that clear 

to me. As of September 11th, only the president had the 

authority to order a shootdown of a commercial aircraft. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: That's correct, sir. 

 MR. HAMILTON: And today who has the authority? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: We see the president delegated to the 

secretary of Defense, delegated to the combatant commander of 

Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Command, and 

there are emergency authorities if that fails. 

 MR. HAMILTON: So you have the authority? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Yes, sir, and others. 

 MR. HAMILTON: And how many others? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: I prefer not to say in this forum, sir, 

but I can provide it for the record. 

 MR. HAMILTON: And you do not have to go up the chain 

of command at all in the event of a --

 GEN. MCKINLEY: We certainly will try, we will make 

every effort to try. 

 MR. HAMILTON: I'm sure you would. But you don't have 

to? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: In an emergency situation we can take 

appropriate action, yes, sir. 
 MR. HAMILTON: Now, one of the things that's curious to 

me, General Arnold, you said that you did not learn of the 

presidential order until after United 93 had already crashed. 

That was about a little after 10 o'clock in the morning. The 

first notice of difficulty here was at 8:20 in the morning when 

a transponder goes off on the American Flight 11. I don't know 

how significant that is, but 20 minutes later you had 

notification of the possible hijack. So there's a long lapse of 

time here between the time you are initially alerted and you 

receive the order that you can shoot that aircraft down. Am I 

right about that? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: That's correct. 

 MR. HAMILTON: In your timeline, why don't you put in 

there when you were notified? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Of which flight, sir? 

MR. HAMILTON: Getting the notification from the president 

of the United States that you had the authority to shoot a 

commercial aircraft down is a pretty significant event. Why 

would that not be in your timeline? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I don't know when that happened.

 MR. HAMILTON: Had you ever received that kind of a 

notice before? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Not to my knowledge. 

 MR. HAMILTON: So this is the first time in the history 

of the country that such an order had ever been given, so far as

you know? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Yes, sir. I'm sure there's a log that 

would tell us that, and I appreciate the question. 

 MR. HAMILTON: Maybe you could let us know that. 

 And then, finally, as I understand your testimony, it 

was not possible to shoot down any of these aircraft before they 

struck. Is that basically correct? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: That is correct. In fact, the American 

Airlines 77, if we were to have arrived overhead at that 
particular point, I don't think that we would have shot that 

aircraft down. 

 MR. HAMILTON: Because? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Well, we had not been given authority --

 MR. HAMILTON: You didn't have authority at that point. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: And, you know, it is through hindsight 

that we are certain that this was a coordinated attack on the 

United States. 

 MR. LEHMAN: But had you gotten notified earlier, 77's 

deviance, about when it turned east, for instance, certainly you 

could have gotten the F-16s there, and certainly there would 

have been time to communicate to either get or deny authority, 

no? -- for 77? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I believe that to be true. I believe 

that to be true. That had happened very fast, but I believe 

that to be true. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: What efforts were made that day to 

contact the president to seek that authority? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I do not know. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Who would have been in the chain of 

command seeking authority from the president with whom anyone at 

NORAD was communicating? GEN. ARNOLD: Can you answer that? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: The command director in Cheyenne 

Mountain is connected with the combatant commander who would 

have had the telephone lines open at that point. But I don't 

have knowledge of what happened that day. But that would be the 

way it would be done. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: The flow would be through the secretary 

of Defense obviously, and to --

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, the secretary of Defense was 

under attack in the Pentagon. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: He was evacuating, yes, sir. 
 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Now, in terms of anything you know 

today looking backwards, including all the after-action reports 

and various studies which I am sure have been conducted 

internally, and I am sure which we will wish to review, can you 

not tell us whether there was any effort made to contact the 

president to seek authority in dealing with what appeared to be 

a coordinated attack? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: I don't have knowledge at this time to 

make a comment, sir. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I don't have knowledge of that. Our 

actions were to try to get aircraft in position to intercept if 

necessary. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Now, just going back, because now I'm 

confused by on the one hand your statement that the closing of 

the airspace over Washington provided de facto authority to take 

whatever measures were necessary to deal with hostile aircraft, 

and your statement that we probably would not have shot down 77 

if we had arrived in time. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: The airspace had not been shut down 

over Washington, D.C. at that time. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: But what time was that? Is that on 

the timeline? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: I believe it is. I believe it was 

reported by Secretary Mineta ,the timeline that that occurred. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: It's not on your timeline? 

 MR. SCOTT: No, sir, it's not. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: But do you know what time that was? 

 MR. SCOTT: Sir, the only thing I've seen is we have a 

copy provided by General Worley (ph) of an Andrews tower 

transmission that announced to all aviation traffic that the 

Class B airspace was closed and that air traffic that did not 

cooperate would be shot down.

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: What time was that, Colonel Scott? 
MR. SCOTT: Sir, we'd have to go to the tower logs. We can 

get that for you. The tower log will show us what time that 

transmission was made. I don't know what time it was made. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: And on whose order was that directive 

given, that any plane in this sector would be shot down? 

 MR. SCOTT: Unknown to me, sir. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Would you be able to provide that to the 

best of your abilities to --

 GEN. MCKINLEY: We'll do everything we can to provide 

that for the record, sir. 

 MR. LEHMAN: From higher authority as well, so we can 

get on the record the chain of command during that period. 

 I have one last question on 175. It never turned its 

transponder off, and apparently you were never notified that it 

was a possible hijacking. Was that because it continued to 

communicate with ATC? Or did it deviate from its course? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I can't tell you why we weren't notified. 

You'd have to ask the FAA. But that aircraft was a very, as I 

understand it, a fairly short flight, and we were not notified. 

I can't tell you why. 

 MR. KEAN: Commissioner Gorelick? 

 MS. GORELICK: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd actually 

like to follow up on some of your questions about the respective 

roles of NORAD, Northern Command, the Defense Department 

generally vis-a-vis law enforcement. As Commissioner BenVeniste averted to, when I was at the Justice Department and we 

were planning for the Atlanta Olympics, we rehearsed a number of 

scenarios with the Defense Department and the various components 

thereof who were responsible for providing support to the 

Olympics. And when we got to the scenario of a domestic 

hijacking of a plane headed into a stadium, and I asked what 

they thought the proper division of labor should be, I was told, 

and it won't come as any surprise to you, General Arnold, given 

your testimony, that this is a law enforcement matter, and that 

the armed services would provide technical support to the FBI to 

shoot the aircraft down. And my response of course was, That's 

preposterous. And in fact, General Arnold, I am glad to see and 

hear that when faced with the judgment of whether you should do 
your job in defending the United States or wait for someone from 

the FBI to call you, you decided to get the authority later, 

because that is the only rational response. It probably could 

have gotten you court-martialed. But one appreciates that sort 

of leadership. I say this because it is clear that before 

September 11th we know that the Defense Depart ment discussed 

for decades what the appropriate role of our military should 

be in defending the domestic United States. This was not a new 

question. It was discussed up and down and across. And I see 

General McKinley nodding. Anyone who has been in the service 

for the period of time that you gentlemen have been, know that. 

And clearly September 11th served, if anything else, if nothing 

else, to break the resistance that had occurred to having a 

different view of what the appropriate role of the military 

should be. 

 So with that background, I would like to be very clear 

as to what has changed and what has not. As I understand it, 

the requirement of prior law enforcement requests has been 

eliminated. Is that correct? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: We are able under Operation Noble 

Eagle, which we are under presently, to respond to an event as a 

military entity to be in position to support. As you said 

eloquently, we don't have time to wait anymore to launch our 

fighters. So we have to take proactive action to do that. 

 MS. GORELICK: Thank you for that. Second of all, your 

radars are now, as you put it, are pointed inward as well. Is 

that correct? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: We have incorporated the radars that 

were there all along so that our military controllers can now 

see them, see those tracks of interest. 

 MS. GORELICK: You remain reliant to a certain extent 

on the efficacy of the FAA's radar system, as Secretary Lehman 

pointed out. Are you completely comfortable that they are more 

than adequate to your mission? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Ma'am, you are absolutely right, we are 

dependent upon the FAA. We are working closely with them and 

their programmers, because there are some financial disconnects. 

The FAA looks at radar differently than the military does. They 

are optimizing their radar to control traffic for commerce. We 

the military need to see very specific data which the FAA 

doesn't need. It costs money to do that. Our programmers along 
with the FAA have identified some disconnects and programmatics, 

and senior leadership is aware of those disconnects. We want to 

make sure that the radars last so that this mission can be done 

properly and effectively. 

 MS. GORELICK: I would ask you to supply for the 

record, if you could, a statement of what would be necessary in 

the professional opinion of you and your colleagues, to bring 

the FAA system, upon which you are now reliant, up to the 

standards that you think are required to defend the domestic 

United States. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Yes, ma'am. 

 MS. GORELICK: The other issue which you've raised in 

your testimony is that of communication between the FAA and 

NORAD, or lack thereof. And one of the questions that came 

immediately to mind is why you would not be co-located with FAA 

so that there is no such communication issue. Are you now 

co-located with FAA and have a presence in its command center 

that opens up when there is an emergency management? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Ma'am, we have done a little of both. 

After General this tragedy that occurred on the 11th, the FAA 

provided us with liaisons at all our air defense sectors, our 

continental NORAD region and at NORAD, so we have real-time 

people that we can turn to and say, Please use your 

communications channel so that we can get information. In 

addition, the national capital region has stood up a 

coordination center at Herndon, Virginia, in the FAA building, 

where we have military personnel, members of Transportation 

Security, the Secret Service and other federal agencies, where 

they can coordinate the efforts in this area. So that has 

helped us tremendously, and we think we can continue to do that. 

 MS. GORELICK: Thank you for that answer. And finally 

in my list, are you comfortable that you now have the preplacement of your resources, in terms of aircraft, et cetera, 

where they need to be to adequately defend our critical 

infrastructure in the United States? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Yes, ma'am. I believe at the present 

time we have an adequate force structure to do that. The 

requirements change daily, weekly, based on the event. For 

example, if a space shuttle were to take off, we would want to 

have aircraft at the Cape. So whenever we have a security event 

-- the Olympics, the State of the Union -- we move our fighters 
around in a flexible manner to respond to that. So we do have 

the capability based on intelligence and real- world need to do 

that. 

 MS. GORELICK: We may want to follow up in closed 

session on that issue. As the charter for NORAD and the 

existence of Northern Command were being changed and created, 

there clearly would have been debate within the Pentagon over 

what the scope of that charter should be -- and I speak of 

someone who served there twice and I can imagine what some of 

those discussions might have been. What authorities were 

contemplated to be given to Northern Command that haven't been? 

And what authorities, if you were writing that charter on your 

own, would you give it? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Well, ma'am, I don't mean to dodge the 

question, but I don't know if I have the level of knowledge that 

you require for that answer. I will tell you as a component 

commander who needs to employ resources in defense of United 

States citizens, I will tell you that the bi-national 

arrangement with Canada that NORAD has had for over 40 years has 

worked exceptionally well, for the threat period that we went 

through, the Cold War and subsequently. 

 The stand-up of Northern Command has given us the 

ability to now tailor our forces and to work with local law 

enforcement so that we can respond to a critical need far more 

quickly. And we do it in a joint fashion with Navy, Marine 

Corps, Army, our Guardsmen, our Reservists and our United States 

Air Force. So the Northern Command framework as I see it -- and 

we are still in initial operating capability -- we will become 

fully operational capable when General Eberhart says they are. 

We are learning, we are training together and exercising 

together, and from my perspective working exceedingly well. 

 MS. GORELICK: And one final question, General Arnold. 

We get some of our most candid advice from people who have taken 

off their uniform. And I use that phrase as well for civilians 

who no longer play whatever role they happened to have played. 

Having lived through the searing moments of 9/11, and having had 

the awesome responsibilities that you had on that day, and 

having had limited resources, as you had on that day, legal and 

physical, to help prevent harm, what advice do you have for us 

about changes that we should make as a country? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Well, I wrote a paper -- no, I didn't 

write a paper on that, but I think one would have to -- that is 
probably where you are going to go. We are very fortunate that 

we have a country with so many resources. And let me point, out 

if I could, the -- while you might -- there could be criticism 

of what we did in response, it worked pretty well in terms of 

the after-action reports. Airplanes were getting airborne 

because people knew they had to get airborne. And I don't have 

the timelines for all of these things. But as the president 

told the military to prepare to defend the country, we started 

gathering up all the aircraft that traditionally had not 

supported NORAD. And as soon as we could get armament to them, 

we put them on orbit. As you recall, we were on orbit for some 

time throughout the country. The Navy responded magnificently 

as well. It was in the press. Vice Admiral Dawson called me. 

He was on the George Washington at the time, and he said, We 

understand that General Eberhart is the supported CINC, and that 

you have been appointed the JFAC, the joint force air component 

commander, and we want to roll under your air-tasking order. 

Vice Admiral Buckey (ph) of the Third Fleet, who was steaming 

the aircraft carrier towards the West Coast to do the same 

thing. So the system in terms of military cooperation worked 

tremendously well. 

 I would also hasten to say that during the course of 

time that we were on orbit and our resources were extremely 

limited in many cases, because we initially could not see even 

what the FAA could see, we used our very strained AWACs 

aircraft, our warning aircraft that are used all over the world, 

and Brigadier General Ben Robinson was stretched very thin, but 

he continued to do what he could. 

 The United States Customs provided us with E-3s, with 

radars that gave us coverage in other parts of the area. And, 

as General McKinley alluded to, we were able to bring in units, 

Air National Guard and active duty theater area control units, 

units that are designed to be deployed, and integrate them into 

our air picture, not only for air, but also for voice. So we 

did a lot of things early on. But the things that were missing 

in particular immediately were, number one, we couldn't see into 

the interior of the country, we couldn't talk to our aircraft 

that were airborne to the interior of the country, and we did 

not have a command and control system that would absorb the 

number of radars. And we were able to do that very rapidly. 

That, coupled with the creation of the Department of Homeland 

Security and with the Northern Command, has provided defense in 

depth, in my opinion, to protect this country in a way that it 

has never been defended before. It's in depth at the present 

time. 
We need to continue down those avenues. I am sure there 

are ways to improve it. I am sure General McKinley will find 

those ways. General Eberhart is engaged in that as well. But I 

feel comfortable that we have done those things that we ought to 

have done in order to provide security before a certain 

hijacking would occur. And of course, God forbid, if that were 

to occur again, we are now positioned to be able to see, to be 

able to talk, to be able to provide the command and control, and 

we have exercised repeatedly our capability to pass an order, a 

military order, down to the pilot in the airplane, or the 

soldier next to his air-defense artillery. 

 MS. GORELICK: Thank you very much. 

 MR. KEAN: Our last questioner is Congressman Roemer. 

 MR. ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I 

want to again commend you and our vice chairman and the staff 

for all the work that you put into this hearing, especially this 

panel. This is very helpful to us, and plowing ground that the 

Joint Inquiry did not get into. And I just want to make sure 

that you recognize how important that is. And we are very 

grateful for your time, gentlemen, and your help, and the good 

work that has gone into setting this hearing up. 

 General Arnold, you were there that day, correct? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Yes, sir. 

 MR. ROEMER: And you had been there how long? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I had been a commander since December the 

19th, 1997, so I had been there for some time. I was 

approaching the end of my tour. 

 MR. ROEMER: Let me keep you on the hot seat, as Jamie 

Gorelick has put you there, and ask you a question about 

military threats, threats to the United States, and the way we 

try to get intelligence as the world changes from a Cold War to 

terrorist threats that can come at us from almost anywhere at 

any time, in nimble quick dynamic ways. Were you aware at all 

of the fatwa that Osama bin Laden had put out in February of 

1998 that said that he wanted to kill Americans, all Americans 

everywhere he could, whether that was in the Middle East or in 

the United States of America? 
 GEN. ARNOLD: The answer to that is yes, and we had 

briefings, our own briefings. I think we could even provide a 

date back to 1998 where we called Osama bin Laden the most 

dangerous man in the world. And our focus, with the demise of 

the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, in accordance with the HartRudman study, was that we felt like the greatest threat to the 

United States would come from a terrorist, a rogue, or a rogue 

nation, or I should say a nation of concern. 

MR. ROEMER: And then were you aware of George Tenet's 

statement in December of 1998 that the United States was "at 

war" with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I don't recall that, but I suppose I was 

generally aware of that, that the United States was at war with 

terrorism around the world. 

 MR. ROEMER: One of the frustrations is that in looking 

at this issue very carefully over the last year and a half, that 

a lot of our people responsible for these kinds of things did 

not know of George Tenet's declaration or did not know of Osama 

bin Laden's declaration. If Vladimir Putin had made that 

declaration as the leader of a nation-state, we would probably 

all be aware of it. If Kim Il Jong of North Korea or Saddam 

Hussein had made those statements in 1998, we would probably all 

be aware of it. And that combined with the intelligence that 

was coming in over the decade of the 1990s that pointed to 

planes as weapons, we need to look back. Not to blame anybody, 

but to try to make sure that this information can get in the 

right hands in the future so that we can respond nimbly and 

quickly to this very nimble and quick threat that is directed 

directly at the heart of America. And I would be very, very 

attentive to any suggestions you would have now that you have 

stepped away from that most important job that you took on for 

our country and for our people, and performed very well, I am 

sure. What do we need to do to break down these barriers of 

communication and increase the exchange of information so that 

we can respond quickly to this threat that will continue to come 

at us? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Mr. Commissioner, I think I've stated 

that earlier what I thought we have done in terms of the 

intelligence community and awareness. I think we are at a 

greater awareness today than we ever were before. I'd leave 

that up to perhaps General McKinley, not trying to duck the 

question, but I think I've answered that pretty much before. 
 MR. ROEMER: Well, if you think of more specific 

answers, please provide those for the record. 

 Let me ask you a question about the time difference 

between the scrambling and the battle stations and getting 

airborne. The F-15s at Otis, which was about -- What was the 

total timeframe there for the F- 15s at Otis? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I believe that from the time they were 

notified to scramble it was six minutes. 

 MR. ROEMER: Six minutes? Notified, scrambled and then 

airborne? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Notified, scrambled and airborne. I 

believe that was six minutes, as Colonel Scott has --

 MR. ROEMER: So a total of -- 

GEN. ARNOLD: You're not talking -- now, they were on 

battle stations because the Northeast air commander put them on 

battle stations. But once we said scramble, then I believe it 

was six minutes. 

 MR. ROEMER: Then, comparatively, for the F-16s at 

Langley, what was the total time it took to --

 GEN. ARNOLD: Again, if I can look at our data here, I 

believe it was -- they were reported airborne at 9:35, and I 

think we would show that we actually --

 MR. SCOTT: We got first radar data at 9:30. I believe 

they were ordered to scramble at 9:24. The 9:35 report is when 

they were reported to have been airborne. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Correct, correct, six minutes. 

 MR. ROEMER: Six minutes again. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: And these fighters, sir, have up to 15 

minutes to get airborne. And it's very intricate, as Secretary 

Lehman knows, to get an airplane without anybody in it, started, 

cranked, inertia line, to the runway, get a clearance, get in 

the air. Six minutes is exceedingly quick. 

 MR. ROEMER: So at 9:35, those F-16s are airborne? 
 MR. SCOTT: They were airborne, sir --

 GEN. ARNOLD: I think they were airborne at 9:30 

actually, and that they were reported airborne at 9:35 – correct 

my error here if I could, please. 

 MR. ROEMER: Okay. You were in the room when Secretary 

Mineta talked a little bit about arriving at the White House at 

about 9:20, and then overhearing a conversation at about 9:24 or 

9:25 between the vice president and a young aide, where he 

inferred that there was already an order in place for shootdown, 

and he assumed it was for American Airlines 77. So sometime 

even before 9:20 there was an order in place that he overheard 

in the presidential executive operations center that had some 

exchange between, I assume the vice president and the president 

and maybe the special ops, the situation room, and they had 

determined that they have would the authority communicated to 

somebody to shoot down American Airlines Flight 77. Were you at 

all aware of anything sometime after 9:15 or 9:20 to shoot down 

American Airlines Flight 77? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I was never aware of any order given to 

shoot down American Airlines 77. 

 MR. ROEMER: So nothing was ever conveyed to you by the 

White House or by the FAA administrator or by the secretary of 

transportation on Flight 77? 

GEN. ARNOLD: That's correct. 

 MR. ROEMER: So the only time you ever received 

information on a shootdown was on Flight number 93, and that was 

--

 GEN. ARNOLD: After the fact. 

 MR. ROEMER: Excuse me? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: After the fact. 

 MR. ROEMER: That was after the fact, and that was 

after 10 o'clock. 

 GEN. ARNOLD: That's correct. 

 MR. ROEMER: And that was from who? 
 GEN. ARNOLD: It was from Cheyenne Mountain. I assumed 

from the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense 

Command. 

 MR. ROEMER: Your assumption is that the White House 

communicated that to Cheyenne Mountain, and then Cheyenne 

Mountain communicated that to you? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: Through the National Military Command 

Center. 

 MR. ROEMER: Right. And when you had that after the 

fact, as Commission Hamilton asked you, that was at what time? 

 GEN. ARNOLD: I believe the time -- we do not have a 

record on this. I remember the time being somewhere around 

10:05, but we do not show that in this. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: And we'll try to find that accurately 

and depict it for the record, sir, because that's probably an 

important time you'd like to have. 

 MR. ROEMER: I think it's critically important. 

Colonel Scott, where you in on any of that information about the 

presidential authority to shoot down Flight 93? 

 MR. SCOTT: At the time I was upstairs with the crisis 

team. 

 MR. ROEMER: And General McKinley? 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: I was trying to get out of the 

Pentagon, which was on fire, sir. 

 MR. ROEMER: So, General Arnold, with respect to this 

decision, if you could get any more details on the timing and 

any information on Flight 77, that would be very helpful to us. 

Thank you again for your great service to the country. 

 MR. KEAN: General Scott, General Arnold and Major 

General McKinley, thank you very much. You've been very helpful 

today, we appreciate it, and thank you. 

 GEN. MCKINLEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of 

the Commission. Thank you very much. 

MR. KEAN: Lieutenant General Canavan is next. 
 All right, could we reconvene please? Lieutenant 

General Mike Canavan, former associate administrator for Civil 

Aviation Security. 

 MR. CANAVAN: Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice 

Chairman, members of the Commission. Thank you for inviting me 

to speak before the National Commission of Terrorist Attacks 

upon the United States. I sincerely hope that any input will be 

useful in increasing the safety and security of our flying 

public. My name is Mike Canavan. From December of 2000 until 

October of 2001, I served as the associate administrator for 

civil aviation security at the Federal Aviation Administration. 

Upon joining the FAA, my first order of business was to review 

our major mandates and policies, and determine where immediate 

improvements to civil aviation security could be made, both 

short and long term. Since the FAA was a regulatory agency and 

not an enforcement agency, I knew a challenge would lie ahead to 

work with the airline industry and those outside the federal 

government making sure every effort was made to ensure the 

security of the flying public.

 The challenge would come in terms of developing and 

reconstructing this long established partnership. Additionally, 

outside the FAA but within the federal government, I worked 

closely with my counterparts within the counterterrorism and 

intelligence communities. While the FAA is considered part of 

the counterterrorism community and intelligence communities, it 

participated only when issues arose that involved aviationrelated matters. It should be noted that the FAA was a consumer 

of intelligence and not really an intelligence collector. This 

is an important distinction, as we relied completely on the 

intelligence community to provide the best quality of raw and 

analyzed intelligence so that when appropriate we were able to 

turn it into an actual intelligence by which we could take 

corrective actions to employing countermeasures, transmitting 

advisories, warnings, et cetera. 

 During my tenure at the FAA, my staff and I interacted 

routinely with the intelligence and law enforcement communities. 

We were advised of current and possible future threats against 

civil aviation, and worked actively to implement measures to 

protect the flying public against those threats. Throughout 

2001, as the intelligence reporting volume increased, the 

overwhelming majority was focused on likely targets overseas, 

particularly in the Middle East. Throughout this period my 

office issued at least 15 information circulars to authorize the 
aviation industry, security professionals, corporate security 

directors, senior management personnel, ground security 

coordinators and supervisory personnel at overseas locations, 

and as appropriate to local airline managers and law enforcement 

personnel on a need-to-know basis. Oftentimes these were issued 

in concert with the Department of State public announcements and 

FBI national law enforcement transmittals. Information 

circulars contained data derived from law enforcement and 

intelligence information, focusing on domestic and international 

terrorism threats directly against aviation. 

 The information circulars updated U.S. carriers against 

continuing violence against American citizens and interests 

around the world, with a particular interest on the Middle East, 

and encouraged airlines to practice a high degree of awareness. 

For example, one information circular described a plot to target 

a public area in the Los Angeles Airport terminal by Ahmed 

Rassam, who was arrested in December 1999 while attempting to 

enter the United States from Canada. Another information 

circular issued in the summer of 2001 updated airline security 

personnel of developments that terrorists and criminals had in 

disguising firearms. 

 Additionally, my organization within the FAA issued 

security directives which required the airlines and security 

organizations to implement modifications or upgrades to their 

current security postures based on a variety of factors, 

including changes in the threat environment. 

 The threat environment throughout 2001. As I recall, 

the threat reporting during early to mid 2001 centered on U.S. 

targets abroad. In June and July of 2001, the FAA was included 

in many interagency counterterrorism security group meetings, or 

CSG, held at the White House by the National Security Council 

staff regarding possible attacks in the Arabian Peninsula, 

Israel and Europe. In early July, the NSC chaired a meeting at 

which the interagency was briefed about additional intelligence 

indicating that terrorist attacks seemed imminent. The 

intelligence community briefers emphasized attacks would likely 

take place overseas. While we all agreed that attacks within 

the U.S. could not be ruled out, there was no indication from 

the intelligence community that attacks focused specifically 

against airlines. Nonetheless, the entire CT community, 

including law enforcement and intelligence agencies, were placed 

on the highest alert, and we all sent out notifications for 

heightened security measures to be put in place immediately 
within our organizations. The FAA sent out security directives 

and information circulars to all interested parties. 

 During my ten months at the FAA, I was determined to 

instill a renewed sense of dedication and importance throughout 

the civil aviation security organization. In the airline and 

airport industry, that security of the flying public was our 

principal directive. A few examples include traveling to every 

CADEX airport -- that's our largest airports, there are 20 --

briefing all civilian aviation security airline and airport 

staffs regarding commitment to aviation security, and traveling 

to several international airport locations to ensure that host 

nations understood the U.S. government's commitment to civil 

aviation security. 

 I also made it a priority to draft and obtain buy-in 

from all FAA civil aviation security staff and agents on a 

strategic plan that articulated our security mission from the 

present forward. Additionally, I directed my policy staff to 

develop a long-term strategy planning effort out to the 2010

timeframe. In the short term I served at the FAA, I firmly 

believe we began improving the state of the FAA civil aviation 

security posture. 

 Some suggestions for aviation security improvements. 

Of course, it is one's hope to deter, disrupt or prevent every 

criminal or terrorist attack on the ground or in the skies. 

While this is the ultimate goal to which we all inspire, 

realistically this cannot happen as long as we continue to live 

in a free and open society. We must therefore strike a balance 

that allows a free and open society with sound and common-sense 

approaches to security. 

 There are some aviation security programs that deserve 

attention and may provide improvements to the flying public. 

For example, the use of red teams. During my tenure at the FAA 

I supported completely the concept of the red team to test and 

evaluate the overall state of readiness to domestic and 

international airports. From my time in the military I was used 

to this thing that we do call red teams. Although no airport 

security system can be flawless, in order to develop and 

implement improvements it is necessary to work with rather than 

to punish airport and airline personnel when defects were found 

by the red team. But you need to develop an improvement plan 

together. We are the experts. 
 Based on the red team findings, the airport authorities 

and airline industry should be made part of the improvement 

process, rather than be punished only with fines and then 

allowed to walk away without making the overall system better. 

This is another example of why it is imperative that the airline 

industry never be allowed to transfer all of its security 

responsibilities to the federal government. This must always be 

a shared responsibility. 

 Federal air marshals. The strength of this program's 

foundation is based on maintaining the anonymity of the FAMs. 

With the significant increase of FAMs deployed on domestic 

flights over the past 20 months. The FAMs are now as or more 

likely to be called upon to deal with unruly passengers as they 

are a threat to the cockpit crew and perceived threat to the 

cockpit crew and passengers. There is an important distinction 

between the security of the aircraft, its crew, passengers, 

versus a disorderly passenger. Disclosing the FAM's identity 

undermines the very premise under which they are operating. This 

is another example where the airline industry should share 

responsibilities by handling unruly passengers, then the FAMs 

only to be used as the last resort. Then the FAMs are allowed 

to execute their mission and provide security of the aircraft, 

its crews and its passengers. 

 The airline industry's responsibilities. Since 

September 11th of 2001, the federal government has taken 

additional responsibilities which have been previously been air 

carriers' and operators' responsibilities for more than three 

decades. It seems there is little burden sharing. The concept 

to share responsibility for good security is sometimes a 

memory. The airport and airline personnel are the first 

responders by virtue of them being the eyes and ears on the 

ground at these airports. They will be immediately directly 

aware of questionable behavior and potential threats. Now, 

however, the airline industry is no longer responsible for 

screening passengers, and are currently trying to relieve 

themselves of CAPPS and baggage screening, and are opposed to 

using hardened containers or advanced equipment, as a few 

examples. 

 The airlines must be responsible for some measure of 

security throughout this process. The government cannot and 

should not be held accountable for all things aviation. The 

concept of common and shared responsibility for security can be 

degraded in this manner. 
 Aviation security abroad at international airports. 

Foreign governments and airlines hire the personnel responsible 

for screening in overseas locations. While we may have made 

significant improvements domestically, we may not have yet dealt 

with the airports abroad. I understand that a recommendation 

was made to employ more than 70 explosive trace detection 

devices in airports overseas to screen footwear after Richard 

Reid's failed attempt last year to explode an aircraft has yet 

to be acted upon. This equipment is used domestically, and we 

should improve our aviation security overseas for flights to the 

United States and elsewhere. 

 When I joined the FAA, I was impressed with many of the 

dedicated employees at headquarters and in the field. However, 

I recognized that we would be facing a formidable challenge 

working within the FAA structure, and at the same time in a 

environment where partnership with the industry took on a whole 

new meaning. I tried to begin breaking new ground during this 

time. Not a single day passes when I do not think about 

decisions, theories and intelligence that might have possibly 

made some difference to the outcome of September 11th. 

 I hope that my testimony today and any information that 

I offer the National Commission will assist in making the 

traveling public and aviation in general more safe and secure. 

I take full responsibility for any and all FAA security failures 

on 11 September 2001. Thank you. 

 MR. KEAN: Thank you very much, General. 

 Congressman Hamilton? 

 MR. HAMILTON: General, thank you for your testimony 

this morning. You're pretty tough on the airlines, aren't you? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Well, again, sir, it's back before the 

rules changed after 2001. It was a shared responsibility. 

 MR. HAMILTON: You think it should be? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes. 

 MR. HAMILTON: So what we have seen over a period of 

time is all of the responsibility for airline security shifted 

to the government, and taken off the shoulders of the airlines? 

Is that the general trend? 
MR. CANAVAN: Yes, sir, that's how I see it. 

 MR. HAMILTON: And that's to the detriment of the 

flying public? 

 MR. CANAVAN: I think so, because when you take the 

airports or the airlines out of it, it's like those airports are 

small cities and those airlines, they are there, the airports 

are there. When you start taking chunks away from what I think 

is common knowledge of what's going on in your neighborhood --

everyone knows their neighborhood. You know when a stranger 

walks in there, you know when things change and that type of 

thing. When you take any responsibility away from someone like 

that, then at that point in time there's really no one watching. 

That's my whole point. 

 MR. HAMILTON: I see. 

 MR. CANAVAN: And, to continue on that, for years in 

this country you had two people in charge of an airport. You 

had the airlines and you had the airport officials. So you had 

two folks, and they didn't always come together. The airport 

manager, you know, he was worried about security, all these 

other things, making sure people had a place to eat, perimeters, 

all those things. The airlines -- and I understand it they are 

there to make money, and they were there to get people on 

airplanes. So anything that stopped them from getting you from 

the parking lot to your airplane in a timely manner, you know, 

they had -- that was difficult for them. 

 Whereas some of the European models, there's one person 

in charge of an airport, so as you know, when you have two 

people in charge of something in the military parlance, then you 

start to have gaps in your perimeter, and people can obviously 

slip through those gaps. So that's my point on that. 

 MR. HAMILTON: So you think airports should be 

organized in such a way that one person is in charge? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes, sir. 

 MR. HAMILTON: To go back to a question that has come 

up here fairly frequently, did the FAA ever consider the 

possibility that a plane could be used as a weapon prior to 

9/11? 
 MR. CANAVAN: I would say that over time the answer to 

-- first of all, yes. I dealt with terrorists all over this 

world, and I've seen the results of what people want to do when

they want to push their agenda, unfortunately. And when you 

look at possible scenarios, well, yes, you could take an 

aircraft and fly it into something. The Olympics in '84 were 

mentioned. That aircraft in that scenario was really a crop 

duster. There wasn't a big wide-body airplane. But then you 

have to -- then you look at it and you say, Okay, here's all 

these threats. Now, can you guard against all of them? Do you 

have the resources and the money and the people and the time and 

the effort? And a lot of times you have to say, no, you don't. 

So then you have to put it in priority. You know, when 

historically you went back and looked at hijackings of U.S. 

aircraft over the years, of which 107 were hijacked. 

 MR. HAMILTON: Prior to --

 MR. CANAVAN: Prior to 11 September. At no time was an 

aircraft ever used to fly into something. Now I'm talking 

commercial airplanes. You know, we had the thing with the small, 

the Piper Cub at the White House. In 1994, 1995, when the Air 

France aircraft was hijacked out of Algiers, and ended up in 

France, at that time I was in command of all of our special 

operations forces in Europe, so I was always hooked into all of 

our counterparts. The French debriefed us on that. What those 

people really wanted to do, what they thought at that time, the 

best guess by the French intelligence people, were that they 

wanted to use it as an aerial bomb. They wanted --

 MR. HAMILTON: But in your consciousness, had you 

considered prior to September 11th the possibility that a 

commercial airliner could be used as a weapon? 

 MR. CANAVAN: I knew there -- I knew there was a 

possibility, but it wasn't --

 MR. HAMILTON: Not a high priority? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Not a high priority. What I thought --

usually aircraft are taken to take hostages, they're taken for 

transportation, they are taken to release someone who may be in 

jail that's part of the organization. 

 MR. HAMILTON: Do you remember any publication or any 

training exercise where a commercial airliner was used as a 

weapon? 
 MR. CANAVAN: No. 

 MR. HAMILTON: And then after you became head of the 

FAA's civil aviation security, did you take actions prior to 

September 11th to make the system more effective? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes. My actions -- first of all, I got 

smart in what really our mandate was. That was in the 

headquarters. I went to every CADEX airport except for 

Honolulu, visited airlines, airports, and my own FAA agents in 

the field. I talked to airline, airports, security personnel, 

FBI, CIA, Department of State, and tried to get a feeling of 

what was out there in terms of what was rubbing up against 

people. 

 MR. HAMILTON: Do you feel that your activities 

strengthened the system in that period of time? 

MR. CANAVAN: Yes. During that period of time we came up -

- first time that we came up with this strategic plan for at 

least five years that looked in the areas of airport and airline 

security, air cargo, people and technology to improve all this, 

and come up with a game plan. At the same time --

 MR. HAMILTON: Well, was the plan implemented? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes, the plan was ongoing, on target. 

 MR. HAMILTON: Ongoing. It was being implemented? 

 MR. CANAVAN: It was being implemented. It had been 

briefed to everyone in the field, and we were tracking it at 

headquarters. It was part of our weekly meetings as to how we 

were doing on the strategic plan in these four areas, which we 

all felt were very important. 

 MR. HAMILTON: So your initiatives were well received 

and supported by the FAA? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes. 

 MR. HAMILTON: Can you be a little more specific about 

the kinds of things you recommended? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Well, we want to improve the testing in 

the field. We wanted to improve testing of screeners. We wanted 
to improve the access control regulations that we had out there 

in the field. We wanted to do -- we improved special emphasis 

testing. In other words, you'll go to, like in the Southeast 

during that period, over about a three-month period, we did 

10,000 tests on both access and X-ray and EDS machine 

operations. That's what I'm talking about. Of course the red 

team was going on at this time, and that was happening. 

 I was talking to a lot of the major airlines security, 

my counterparts. We needed to improve the screeners operation. 

We needed to pay them more money. We needed to get better 

training, better supervision. There were more people making 

money at McDonald's in airports they were making money working 

the screening line. So they were hearing this from me all the 

time. I was concerned about why we had so many foreign 

nationals working in these airports, as screeners. I mean, at 

that time you did not have to be a U.S. citizen. You just had a 

background check. That concerned me. I worked real hard to 

tell the airlines, you know, the threat is out there. Up until 

2001, the last major airline we had hijacked was in '85, a Pan 

Am flight in Pakistan. So 15, 16 years had gone by. And as you 

know when people perceive that the threat is not out there, when 

these airline security personnel, they wanted information from 

me, because they wanted to go to their bosses and say, The 

reason why I'm asking for all this money is based on this, this, 

and this. So we pushed real hard to get everything we got from 

the intelligence community into the field to include coming up 

with an FOU on CD-ROM that my intelligence chief went around to 

all the airports, talked to all the people -- everyone got this 

CD-ROM, and briefed them on the threat. 

 MR. HAMILTON: So your feeling is that prior to 

September 11th the airlines, which had principal responsibility 

for security, were lax? 

 MR. CANAVAN: I'm not -- some of them were lax. I 

mean, I'll be honest with you, their priority as time went by 

without an incident went to other areas. But at the same time -

- but that's not all the airlines and that's not all the 

airports. Depending on how -- and some were better than others. 

I don't know any other way to explain it. We were pushing for 

them to take our explosive detection systems, our trace 

machines, our TIC (?) machines --

 MR. HAMILTON: Well, I'm tempted to ask you to be 

specific, but I'll defer that, at least for the moment. Thank 

you, Mr. Chairman. 
 MR. KEAN: Secretary Lehman? 

 MR. LEHMAN: Yes, general, I note after the increase in 

the chatter that people previously talked about on previous 

panels, with the clear raising of the threat, that you issued a 

security directive prior -- I guess during the summer of 2001 --

reflecting that, and directing the airlines to get a little more 

vigorous in their security. In your judgment, did they respond 

to that? Were your initiatives in intelligence sharing and 

increased trying to get them to conform to the existing 

regulations, did they do it? Did that makes things a little 

better? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Sir, yes they did, because this was on 

the heels of our road show talking about that there's still a 

threat out there, and here is the threat. This is a very 

intensive briefing. And at the same time with our special 

emphasis areas in trying to keep bombs and guns off of 

airplanes, we went at them pretty hard. And, now again, some 

did better than others. But there was an interest level there 

that, yes, there is a threat out there, and this is the type of 

information the security managers wanted to go to their bosses 

and say, Okay, we are going to have to put some more resources 

here. So I -- the summer, because again of the threat ICs we 

kept giving these folks. It went up. It got better. 

 MR. LEHMAN: The disturbing picture that has been 

emerging from our testimony yesterday and previous information 

that has been uncovered is that the response of industry to 

activist people in FAA like yourself, and to the initiatives 

developed by the results of the red teams, was basically to do 

what you just described: shape up until you sort of walk away, 

and then it's back to business as usual. I mean, the initiatives 

that I recall during the '90s, after the two, the TWA 

particularly, to put in Kevlar doors, to lock the cockpit doors, 

and a number of others that would have certainly diminished the 

vulnerability. All, as soon as people went onto other things, 

they disappeared. The cockpit doors got open again. The keys 

were lost, doors never got put on. Part of the description we 

got from witnesses yesterday was that there simply aren't enough 

teeth in the rule-making enforcement for the FAA to see that 

once good things are identified and ordered that they are 

actually carried out, the fines are minimal and enforcement lax. 

Is that a fair description? 
 MR. CANAVAN: I think that's a fair description. I 

think what happens sometimes with the airlines is let's just 

talk about the doors. You can -- if you use the model of 

Israel, they had two doors. They have a catch. You have to go 

through one door before the second door opens. It has to close 

behind you. But my point is -- I wasn't there when all this was 

being kicked around, but I'm told, because number one it was 

going to weigh a lot, and every time you added weight to an 

airplane you took away revenue seats. So there's your problem. 

Anything that stood -- and, again, the airlines are out there to 

make money and they, probably based on their history -- well, 

when's the last time someone really kicked down a door? --

because you have to remember that up until 2001 the airline 

personnel were trained, and when someone threatened a flight 

attendant or a passenger or you, you just went along, because 

most hijackings ended up -- obviously the plane landed on the 

ground somewhere for the most part, and it was either negotiated 

out, or at sometime, when that fell apart, then somebody stormed 

the airplane. So you have to keep it in mind what they're --

they would come back and say, Well, why do we want to do this? 

Because, you know, now we are just going to land the planes, so 

why do I want to have this heavy door? Well, obviously 9/11 if 

you had had a heavy door -- but even if you had a door on 9/11, 

you still would have had to change the training of the crew. In 

other words, you will never open that door, regardless of what 

happens in the back of the plane, you land it. So there's a 

little dichotomy there. 

 But, again, we looked at improved luggage containers in 

the belly of the airplane with Kevlar. So if you had a suspected 

bag, or even though you checked someone out, but you are still a 

little leery about what they were carrying, you could put at 

least those bags inside those containers. We did testing. We 

knew how much explosives that they could handle -- you know, 

things like that. But in terms of the teeth, you could find --

there's a certain level -- I don't remember what it is, but 

there was a certain level of fining for different offenses. And 

after a while the airlines accumulated huge amounts of money, 

and then the lawyers would get at a hold of it, between the 

airlines and the Department of Transportation, and they would 

figure out some compromise. The thing that they never wanted 

was for you to go public and say Airline X has been fined X 

number of dollars because of A, B, and C. That was the biggest 

hammer you had. So a lot of this would get negotiated out. And 

of course this was frustrating in the field, because here I had 

all my agents out there trying to be all they could be and be 

fair and everything else, and then they would find things wrong 
and then at the end of the day sometimes they felt that nothing 

happened. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Now, if I were a company, regardless of 

industry, and I felt that stupid things were being done by the 

bureaucracy that I didn't agree with, what I would do would be 

to hire a good lobbyist and to get my industry association to go 

use some chips to see the secretary of this or the administrator 

of that and get this troublesome bureaucrat overruled, or at 

least, you know, let's study it for another six months. Did 

that happen in the case of these aircraft security measures? 

MR. CANAVAN: You mean people going to the Hill and 

lobbying to change them? 

 MR. LEHMAN: Not just the Hill, but the senior people, 

the administration? 

 MR. CANAVAN: I don't know. But I do know -- I don't 

know about within FAA or within -- I am sure that --

 Let me begin again. I am sure within the FAA -- and I 

know Ms. Garvey was under a lot of pressure, when we would come 

up and --

 MR. LEHMAN: From the industry? 

 MR. CANAVAN: From the industry, as we were pushing, 

trying to get either the fines paid or get certain things -- get 

rules, get rules out of the lawyer's office, like checked 

baggage and bag match and screener companies -- all those things 

that were just kind of laying out there. And we did get them 

out eventually. But so that was that pressure. 

 There was the pressure of the industry again where 

security measures were slowing down the people getting on the 

airplanes. Because during the summer of 2001, or the summer 

before I think -- I don't quite remember. But remember the 

airline system, the eight air traffic control just all bogged up 

-- late arrivals, late this, late that. So there was a lot of 

pressure from that point. 

 The other pressure came from where the lobbyist groups 

would go to the Hill and hit key members on the Hill and say, 

You know, we have got this Gore Commission here, and we don't 

really agree fully with this finding. And what happened -- and 

after it, you know, some of these things would get watered down. 
One example was the explosive detection systems. Now, they'll 

find -- for the most part they're pretty good. There was only 

one company that made good machines. We had another company 

that was trying to catch up, but it was going to take a while 

along the process to get this thing operational. And we told 

this company that and said, Hey, we'll put it out there. You 

know, you can do a demo, we'll put it in a couple airports, and 

we'll run bags through it and we'll see how it works. Well, that 

wasn't good enough. They didn't want to do all the steps that 

the other company did to make sure they had a good product, so 

they go to the Hill. And then language comes out that says, 

Every time I buy A I have to buy a B. So then you are with two 

choices: You either have zero EDS machines or you have a 50 

percent solution. So those are some of the pressures I'm talking 

about that I think you may be alluding to where people get in 

there and for whatever reason try to sway thinking and judgment. 

 MR. LEHMAN: You mentioned in your testimony, and you 

are known as an advocate of red teaming. And certainly my 

experience, and I am sure yours in the Pentagon with red teams 

are they are tremendously effective, but have a half life. They 

are effective as long as they are backed up by the senior person 

in charge. And as soon as that person moves on, the red team 

tends to disappear and the members are sent to Siberia. I'm 

sure you are familiar with the Navy red team experience. So 

it's built into the bureaucracy, yet it's the only answer, in my 

judgment, to the function that you were trying to do. We had 

testimony yesterday that there was no cover-up, and -- on the 

one hand -- that was the official FAA position. On the other 

hand we had pretty compelling testimony that whatever name you 

put on it it had the effect of a cover-up. But the former FAA 

administrator basically said that the results -- she said I 

think more than 90 percent of the recommendations of the red 

teams were passed on to the airlines and they are the ones that 

did nothing to implement them. Yet there was obviously, since 

the fact that the red team was in effect disestablished, there 

was hostility within the senior management of the FAA at the 

time. Could you comment on that? And then tell us what can be 

done to institutionalize the red team function without this 

almost inevitable half life. If they are doing their job, 

everybody hates them who are in senior positions, because they 

get embarrassed. 

 MR. CANAVAN: Right. I can only talk about it from the 

10 months I was there. When I arrived, I was briefed on the red 

team and talked to the red team members. In fact, I talked to 

the person who was in here yesterday. He told me their 
frustrations. I looked into it. And the changes I made was, 

number one, because there were people within the FAA and even my 

organization that wanted to do away with the red team -- I said 

that's not going to happen. We're going to continue, we are 

going to fund them. The second thing we are going to do is when 

they come back from an overseas mission or a United States 

mission, all their findings would be briefed, and we would pass 

them out to the various organizations in my staff to start 

looking at these things. At the same time, before they left 

where they were doing their testing, they were sitting down with 

airline and airport personnel, and saying, This is what we 

found. Because I did find over time that some of the 

frustration on the airline and airports part was they were 

getting fined for something or finding out their mistake, but 

they didn't know what it was. They would read about it later. 

 So I asked the red team personnel to debrief these 

folks before they left. And then the last thing we did -- and I 

think it was the first time in memory, because this is what I 

was told from the airline security personnel -- I brought all 

the major airline security managers into the office here in 

Washington, and we had the red team debrief them on what we had 

been finding. It was about a two-hour briefing -- handouts and 

everything -- and at the end of that they said, you know, this 

is great, this is what we want. So that's how I looked at the 

red team. So I used it. 

 When you have a red team, as you know, you have to 

watch out a little bit. You have to monitor these guys, because 

sometimes you get a thing called creeping excellence. If the 

rule says this, this is what the rule says. You don't add to it 

or you don't subtract from it. So any elite organization, so to 

speak, that I have been associated with, you know you got to 

always watch that and I think sometimes we had a tendency to go 

above and beyond what really the rule was. And I think that was 

a little frustration on the red team part and probably on the 

customer's part. 

 In terms of at least institutionalizing something like 

this, the red team has to work directly for the person in charge 

and not be subordinated underneath another organization. So 

they are layered down, so that everything that they find, it 

never really pops up to the top. And we were in the midst of a 

reorganization within ACS with my staff and that was going to --

we never got to that because of 9/11, but that was one of the 

things we were going to do. 
 But I think you need it, I think you need good people, 

I think there has to be a timeline on their term of service in 

the red team, and then to make sure that the person you hired 

initially is a red team member two years later, is still the 

same person two years later. Because sometimes -- again my 

background in elite forces, you know the person you hired 

initially changes overtime for a lot of different reasons. And 

then put them up under someone where they have direct contact 

with the boss, and there is no filter. So that is how I would 

institutionalize it. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Thank you. I just have two more 

questions. One, your responsibilities in civil aviation also 

extended to general aviation. It is my understanding today that 

there is a huge hole in the realm of charters, that an al Qaeda 

team could call up and charter a BBJ, a Boeing 737 loaded with 

fuel to go to Japan. Nobody would check their IDs, nobody would 

put them through TSA screening, and they could take off, and we 

could have another 9/11 on our hands. Why is that and what can 

be done about it? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Right after September 11th, the FAA 

tightened up the rules for general aviation. You either couldn't 

fly in some areas, they had to go through a screening 

checkpoint, they had to be verified with ID and manifest and all 

these other things. That was done at that time. Again, I left 

in October, so I have no idea what has happened to general 

aviation since I left and I'm not, probably not the right person 

to ask that question. 

 MR. LEHMAN: My second question is, first, the first 

part of it, was there a full after-action report done, and is 

that available to us? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Sir, again, I would have to go back and 

ask the powers to be now, because right after September 11th a 

lot of things were going on, and I'm sure that we were looking 

at lessons learned, but not immediately -- I mean we were 

reacting to things, getting the airlines back up, you know, 

getting the aircraft back into the air and that type of thing, 

and taking added measures at airports. But I'm sure that was 

done. And if you ask them, they should be able to give you that 

report. 

 MR. LEHMAN: We have a copy of an executive summary, 

and let me read you the second paragraph of the discussion of 

Flight 11. "At approximately 9:18 a.m., it was reported that 
the two crew members in the cockpit were stabbed. The flight 

then descended with no communication from the flight crew 

members. The American Airlines FAA principal security inspector 

was notified by Suzanne Clark of the American Airlines corporate 

headquarters that an onboard flight attendant contacted an 

American Airlines operations center and informed them that a 

passenger located in Seat 10B shot and killed a passenger in 

seat 9B at 9:20 a.m. The passenger killed was Daniel Lewin, 

shot by passenger Saddam Al Suqami. One bullet was reported to 

have been fired. 

 In subsequent requests to the FAA, we have been unable 

to confirm that that took place. 

 MR. CANAVAN: Sir, I looked into that question, and the 

PSI did write down what the thought she heard over the plane in 

the command center, wrote it down in the log or from the cell 

phone call. This was American Airlines -- the command center 

people later went out, I believe also to the FBI later went back 

to American Airlines to revisit that question, and everyone 

denied no knowledge. This did not happen. They said it was 

erroneous reporting, that there was no gun, that there was no 

evidence found later. They talked to the person involved, and 

that's all I know about that. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Okay, that's all. 

MR. KEAN: Commissioner Ben-Veniste, then Commissioner 

Gorelick, and finally Commissioner Fielding. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Good afternoon, General, and thank 

you so much for your candor and your help. Just following up on 

Secretary Lehman's last question, was the information correct 

with respect to the identities of the passengers in connection 

with that incident? 

 MR. CANAVAN: I do not have that information. I don't 

know. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: So in checking it through there 

wasn't any indication of whether there were circumstances that 

were corroborated other than the issue of the gun and the firing 

of the gun? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes. They couldn't corroborate anything. 

I mean, they later went back to American Airlines and said, as 

far as my understanding of this now, I didn't find this out, you 
know, the three weeks following September 11th, but I've asked 

since then and the answer was they couldn't substantiate any of 

this, that this took place. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: And to your knowledge were there tape 

recordings of these conversations that were maintained? 

 MR. CANAVAN: To my knowledge there were cockpit 

recorder tapings. I don't know if people on the ground 

receiving cell phone calls were taping them. I don't know about 

that. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: This would have been a conversation 

between a flight attendant and an airline representative? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes, that's to the best of my knowledge. 

Someone picked up a phone from the airplane and called down to 

the ground. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: So the question of whether a tape 

exists of that call somewhere is a question mark in your mind? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: We'll follow up on that. Let me 

briefly follow up on a couple of things that Ms. Garvey was 

questioned about yesterday. First of all, was there an afteraction report produced by the FAA? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Again, I am going to assume there was. I 

never saw one, because by the time I left there obviously 

wasn't. If it was ongoing, it wasn't complete. But they should 

-- most organizations I've been involved in, this is what you 

do: you sit down and figure out what happened and what went 

wrong and what do you need to fix. I would be surprised if they 

didn't have one somewhere. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: We have focused very heavily on 

Flight 77 which ultimately crashed into the Pentagon, because on 

the basis of everything we've heard, that was the one flight 

which hit its target which could have possibly been intercepted. 

What is your understanding of the first time FAA notified NORAD 

of the fact that this was a possible hijack or that it had 

deviated from course, or that there was some anomaly about 

Flight 77 in the context of everything else that was going on 

that day? 
 MR. CANAVAN: Here's my answer -- and it's not to duck 

the question. Number one, I was visiting the airport in San 

Juan that day when this happened. That was a CADEX airport, and 

I was down there also to remove someone down there that was in a 

key position. So when 9/11 happened, that's where I was. I was 

able to get back to Washington that evening on a special flight 

from the Army back from San Juan, back to Washington. So 

everything that transpired that day in terms of times, I have to 

-- and I have no information on that now, because when I got 

back we weren't -- that wasn't the issue at the time. We were -

- when I got back it was, What are we going to do over the next 

48 hours to strengthen what just happened? 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: What would be, putting aside the

issue, and I think we've covered it extensively, about the 

preparedness for the potentiality of a terrorist attack using a 

plane as a weapon, and I think we heard very candidly from 

General McKinley that basically the system in place was a 

vestige of the Cold War as opposed to looking inward at the 

United States to anticipate this kind of a problem, basically 

looking the wrong way on September 11th. What is the normal 

procedure? What was the normal procedure on September 11th in 

the event of a hijacking in terms of the point in time at which 

FAA would notify NORAD? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Well, my experience as soon as you know 

you had a hijacked aircraft, you notify everyone. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: There seems to be a gap of 15 or 20 

minutes between the time where there was a substantial 

indication which was, I suppose, supported by the other events 

that already occurred, which would put into question whether 

Flight 77 had been compromised. Can you explain to us what 

would have accounted for such a delay between the time FAA 

received the information of deviation from flight pattern and 

notification of NORAD? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Again, well, based on my experience, when 

something happens a lot of times the first reports are wrong. 

So people will wait a little while to find out, Is this really 

going on? And I'm basing this on experience in the field, and 

not so much the FAA model. So I think just the fog of, number 

one, do we have a hijacked aircraft? Because on several 

occasions over the years, the pilots have hit the panic button, 

and all of a sudden he's beeping, he's squawking hijacked, and 

you find out that that's really not the case. So when these 

aircraft -- I just as soon when the aircraft either beeped or 
went off the airs there's minutes that go by where the air 

traffic controller, he's not thinking hijack. He's trying to 

call the airplane, and he's talking around to his other 

controllers, Do you see so-and-so? And he's talking to pilots 

in the air, Do you see -- say, the plane behind the other -- Do 

you see Flight X? 

 So I think if you look at it like that that eats up 

your time. And then when you finally find out, yes, we do have a 

problem, then obviously then the standard notification is it 

kind of gets broadcast out to all the regions, it gets broadcast 

to the interagency, it gets broadcast right up to DOT. I mean, 

those things happen. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, we asked that question 

yesterday, and Ms. Garvey was not at that time prepared to 

respond. Last evening she did communicate with the staff at my 

request, and we were provided a statement which comes from FAA, 

which I'd like to read into the record, Mr. Chairman. And it 

is, I am told, authored by two individuals, high level 

individuals at FAA, Mr. Asmus and Ms. Schuessler. And it's 

entitled FAA Communications with NORAD on September 11th, 2001. 

"Within minutes after the first aircraft hit the World Trade 

Center, the FAA immediately established several phone bridges 

that included FAA field facilities, the FAA command center, FAA 

headquarters, DOD, the Secret Service and other government 

agencies. The U.S. Air Force liaison to the FAA immediately 

joined the FAA headquarters phone bridge and established contact 

with NORAD on a separate line. The FAA shared real-time 

information on the phone bridges about the unfolding events, 

including information about loss of communication with aircraft, 

loss of transponder signals, unauthorized changes in course, and 

other actions being taken by all the flights of interest, 

including Flight 77. Other parties on the phone bridges in turn 

shared information about actions they were taken. NORAD logs 

indicate that the FAA made formal notification about American 

Flight 77 at 9:24 a.m. But information about the flight was 

conveyed continuously during the phone bridges before the formal 

notification." So now we have in question whether there was an 

informal real-time communication of the situation, including 

Flight 77's situation, to personnel at NORAD. Can you give us 

from your experience -- obviously you were not there on the 11th 

-- but on your experience what this phone bridge communication 

is all about, and whether it is likely in view of this 

communication we have just received, that there was some 

informal communication of the distress of Flight 77? 
 MR. CANAVAN: Well, this sounds to me when they went 

into the command center they started calling up these different 

organizations. That's the phone bridge. And they were probably 

doing the right thing, because they didn't have all the 

information to bring in -- it sounds like they brought in the 

LNO. He opened up his bridge to NORAD. So then you get these 

organizations talking to one another while above you people are 

trying to figure out, What do we really have here? That's what 

it sounds like to me. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: So would there be an expectation that 

the military personnel on this phone bridge, which is that 

another name for a conference call? MR. CANAVAN: Yes, or it 

could be a VTC, it could be anything that -- anything that --

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: But in the nature of a conference 

call? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: -- in which parties dial into a 

central. 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes, and in our JOC there you call up, 

you get a phone bridge, and that's an open line to that 

organization. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: So if the military were apprised, as 

FAA is now telling us, in real time of what FAA is seeing on its 

radars, and now focusing specifically on Flight 77, that would 

mean that someone at NORAD was advised of the deviation from 

course, which is substantially earlier than the formal 

notification of hijacking. Would it have been expected that 

receiving that information the military personnel or NORAD 

personnel on that phone bridge, would communicate with other 

NORAD facilities, apprising them of the information he or she 

was learning in real time? 

 MR. CANAVAN: I think, to answer your question, I would 

think that they would pass it to someone within the NORAD 

command center, because that person on that phone is a radio 

operator, and he takes the log, and he turns around and he gives 

it to someone and says, We have a problem. He may not know what 

the problem is. All they know is an airplane is deviating from 

course, and they are not too sure why, and, Okay, more to 

follow. 
 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Would it be expected that the people 

participating in this phone bridge that day would themselves 

have maintained a log of what they were hearing? 

 MR. CANAVAN: I would think so. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Would it also be expected that there 

would be a tape recording of that phone bridge? 

 MR. CANAVAN: I don't know about that. I don't know 

about a tape recording. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: I think these are some profitable 

areas for us to explore as we request additional information. 

Thank you very much. 

 MR. CANAVAN: You're welcome. 

 MR. BEN-VENISTE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. KEAN: Ms. Gorelick. 

 MS. GORELICK: General Canavan, thank you for your 

testimony here today. Just so I can locate you within the 

bureaucracy, your title was "associate administrator"? 

MR. CANAVAN: Yes. 

 MS. GORELICK: Did you report to Administrator Garvey 

directly? 

 MR. CANAVAN: I reported to her deputy and also to Ms. 

Garvey. 

 MS. GORELICK: Okay, and Ms. Garvey reported directly 

to the secretary, or --

 MR. CANAVAN: I believe she did, yes. 

 MS. GORELICK: All right, so you were four levels down 

in the bureaucracy? Is that about right? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Well, I would say three. 

 MS. GORELICK: Three. All right, three to four, that's 

fine. I am interested in the CSGs, the counterterrorism 
security group meetings that you attended. That's a working 

group within the National Security Council? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Pardon me? 

 MS. GORELICK: That's a working group within the 

National Security Council? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes, it's a working group, and it's an 

on-call meeting of the interagency, again, chaired by the 

National Security Council. 

 MS. GORELICK: All right. And these meetings were 

chaired by Dick Clarke? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Dick Clarke most of the time. Sometimes 

-- well, the ones I went to Dick was the chair. 

 MS. GORELICK: After those meetings, your action was to 

send out notices to the airlines? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes, if we felt it had -- the reason why 

I was there was because there may have been an aviation piece to 

it. If there wasn't an aviation piece, I did not attend these 

things. 

 MS. GORELICK: So clearly the NSC thought that there 

either would be or could be an aviation security piece to the 

emergency that was triggered by this very high level of warning 

and chatter and threat reporting that was coming in. Is that 

correct? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes, that's correct. 

 MS. GORELICK: And the response of the FAA was to send 

out a notice, a circular? Is that correct? 

MR. CANAVAN: Yes, information circular. 

 MS. GORELICK: An information circular. And you had 

sent out some, I take it from your testimony, about 15 of those 

over the course of 2001? So the airlines received one of 15 

circulars. Secretary Mineta stated this morning that there was 

no action at the Cabinet level in response to this crisis, no 

meeting of that sort. Are you aware of any meeting above your 

level convened by the National Security Council or otherwise to 

deal with this crisis? 
 MR. CANAVAN: I'm thinking here. The fact that -- I'm 

going to assume something here, but the fact that they had a 

CSG, and they thought it was important enough to get all the 

right people in the room, to include State, CIA, DOD, FBI, FAA, 

et cetera, that, and knowing Dick Clarke, he just didn't have a 

meeting to have a meeting. He was passing out information, and 

he was also sometimes he was asking for more information from 

some of these organizations -- that there was a problem out 

there. And I would believe that these people would go back to 

their organizations and then they would tell, you know would 

pass up that there may be a problem here. 

 MS. GORELICK: Did you brief Secretary Mineta yourself 

on this issue? 

 MR. CANAVAN: No. I passed up the ICs through my 

chain, which they would go up from. I would sign them. They 

would go up to Monty. He would do it. They would go up to Jane. 

And then at that point in time it was up to them. You know, I 

could brief it or they could go over there and brief it 

themselves. It's up to them -- depending on just how critical 

it was. 

 MS. GORELICK: So you passed the information circular 

up the line and your assumption is that that piece of paper 

moved up the three or four levels within the organization? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes. 

 MS. GORELICK: In answer to some questions about the 

red teams, I think you said that when reports form the red teams 

went up the line, that as they went up two and three and four 

layers, that the reports might lose some of their intensity, 

that they could get watered down in impact. Can you imagine 

that the same thing might have happened with an information 

circular that you copied up the line, and then they --

 MR. CANAVAN: No. They would have to completely 

rewrite it, and then they would have to sign it. 

 MS. GORELICK: Oh, I'm not suggesting that -- I'm 

sorry, I am not suggesting that the writing would get changed, 

but just the level of intensity, if you were sitting there as 

Secretary Mineta that you might not see it as intense if, A, you 

don't hear it in person from the National Security Council; or, 

B, you get something from someone of considerable responsibility 
at your level, but nevertheless several layers down in the 

organization? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Well, they can read it. I mean, it was 

pretty cut and dried. It said, for the one on July 18th, “we 

have no specific information on threat to civil aviation. The 

FAA urges all civil aviation security personnel to continue to 

demonstrate a high degree of alertness." Again, these things go 

out based on what we're being told. 

 To get back to the red team, I'm the one that 

passes out the information on the red team for the staff and to 

the airlines and that. Did Ms. Garvey see some of the red team 

results? Probably not. But these were things we were working 

internally to fix where we knew there was a problem. 

 MS. GORELICK: What I'm trying to get at is the level 

of intensity of response to the threat warnings that were coming 

into our government as a whole. And we know from your testimony 

and from other information that is already in the public record 

that there were these counterterrorism security group meetings. 

We are unaware of any meetings above the CSG level. And so just 

for the record I'm asking you – you’ve speculated, and I am 

asking you, Do you know of any meetings above your level? 

 MR. CANAVAN: No. 

 MS. GORELICK: Do you know of any instruction to the 

intelligence agencies to surge their intelligence? Do you know 

of any alert that went to NORAD to be particularly on the alert 

as a result of these meetings? 

 MR. CANAVAN: No. 

 MS. GORELICK: Thank you. One other question. Someone 

of your background and tenure who is brought into the civilian 

agency at the level you were brought in at might be assumed to 

serve more than ten months. And I know this is a sensitive 

question, but I really just want to ask you whether you came to 

a substantive parting of the ways with your superiors at FAA and 

the Department of Transportation. 

 MR. CANAVAN: We had a disagreement on an issue that I 

couldn't support. That's really all I'll say in this forum. 

 MS. GORELICK: Thank you. 
 MR. KEAN: And finally, Commissioner Fielding. 

 MR. FIELDING: Yes, General, thank you for being with 

us. Some of my colleagues have asked you some of the questions 

that I was going to ask, so I would just briefly -- obviously 

we'll want to follow up with you on your last answer, however. 

But it seems to me in looking at this and the security systems 

with which you were involved that screening is a very vital part 

of the security system and a very vulnerable juncture in the 

security process. And yet prior to 9/11 screeners were only 

required to have three hours of on-the-job training, as we 

understand it. Now, is there a way to reconcile that with the 

intensity and the sensitivity of the mission they were 

performing? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Sir, as I remember it, it was 12 hours of 

formal instruction, and 40 hours of OJT under supervision on the 

site. That was the standard. 

 MR. FIELDING: That's very helpful, thank you. The 

other thing is that in your prepared testimony, and your 

testimony today, you said that -- you were talking about the 

counterterrorism security group meetings that Commissioner 

Gorelick was just asking you about, and you said, "Nonetheless, 

the entire CTG community, including law enforcement, 

intelligence agencies, were placed on the highest alert. We all 

sent out notifications that heightened security measures be put 

into place immediately." The FAA sent out SDs and ICs to all 

interested parties. Did interested parties include the 

airlines? 

 MR. CANAVAN: No, that's not a good term. It went out 

to every -- airlines, airports, all officials, all security 

officials that we had regulatory oversight. 

 MR. FIELDING: So --

 MR. CANAVAN: That's not very well stated. It went to 

everyone who was supposed to get a copy of it. 

 MR. FIELDING: And the ‘supposed to get a copy of it’ 

included the airlines? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Yes, of course. 

 MR. FIELDING: The reason I'm asking is that Mr. May, 

on behalf of ATA yesterday, his testimony indicated that the FAA 
provided the airlines with no specific guidance and credible 

information about hijackings during all of 2001 up to and 

including September 11th, and that you issued no relevant 

security directives in that regard. 

 MR. CANAVAN: The security directives -- we had five 

that were still -- you have to, when you open up a security 

directive, you have to close it. So you have a continuation of 

security directives over time, and until you close it that 

security directive was still in force. And a lot of what we saw 

this summer -- those security directives were still out there 

and they were in force. The only information we had -- again, 

it gets back to the intelligence piece -- we really had no 

credible or actionable intelligence that told us this was really 

going to happen. In other words, this is a real threat, we are 

hearing, this, this, this, this and this from this organization. 

It was just again in the chatter piece so to speak. None of it 

was ever talked about being held in the United States. It was 

all overseas -- Israel, Europe and some other -- I forget 

where else. So that's with these -- when we put out these SDs, 

and also the information circulars are the same type of thing --

it says like on January 1st, "Alert U.S. carriers to the 

continuing possibility of violence against American citizens and 

interests throughout the world due to the unrest in the Middle 

East." In other words, if you are flying into the Middle East -

- Delta Airlines, then, you know, pay attention. Up your level 

of alertness there at Tel Aviv when you are boarding passengers. 

That type of thing. 

 But, again, there was no actionable intelligence that 

even hinted to me, or to anyone within my organization, that 

there was a threat to aviation. What we did -- again, you know, 

you just kind of look at it and say, Well, in 1998 there was the 

fatwa and that thing was still out there. Bin Laden did say he 

wanted to do certain things. And so a prudent person says, 

Okay, this is what we are reading, this is what we are seeing. 

So, you know, pay attention to what you are doing here. And we 

also -- this went out to the agents too, and that's where -- and 

when you do that you increase your inspections also. So those 

are certain actions that take place. 

 I don't know if I'm answering your question, but --

 MR. FIELDING: Well, but I am trying to determine 

whether in fact you issued during the year 2001 to the airlines 

security directives dealing with anything having to do with 

terrorism. 
 MR. CANAVAN: Yes. I don't have them in front of me. 

 MR. FIELDING: No, but could you supply them to us? 

 MR. CANAVAN: Sure. We had five, I believe -- 15 ICs 

and five SDs during that period of time that discussed what you 

are talking about. 

 MR. FIELDING: Well, thank you very much. That's all I 

had, Mr. Chairman. 

 MR. KEAN: General, thank you very much for your time 

today and for your service. We appreciate it. 

 MR. CANAVAN: Thank you. 

 MR. KEAN: I'd ask Mr. McHale, Major General Steele, 

Ms. Schiavo. 

 This is now Stephen McHale, deputy administrator, 

Transportation Security Administration. TSA has assumed 

security responsibilities not only for aviation, but a number of 

other transportation modes as well. Following him will be 

Retired Major General O.K. Steele. We have asked him to focus 

especially on the Lockerbie/Pan Am Commission recommendations in 

his perspective as associate administrator for civil aviation 

security when the report was issued in 1990. Our final witness 

-- or whatever order you go in -- I know you've got a time 

problem. I'd ask everybody to summarize and just get into 

questions. Ms. Schiavo? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: Schiavo. 

 MR. KEAN: Schiavo. Former inspector general for the 

Department of Transportation, and she has a number of 

perspectives on these various issues. So who would like to go 

first? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: I have a time problem, so -- My 

instructions were to summarize in three minutes. Is that 

correct? 

 MR. KEAN: Yes, go ahead. Move things along, and I 

apologize to the witnesses. 
 MS. SCHIAVO: That's all right. With your permission 

then I will just submit my entire statement for the record with 

the attachments, and I will summarize it very briefly. 

 Just following up on a couple of things that the 

previous witness said, I think I can shed light on a few 

questions. For example, you asked him, and he commented about, 

the negotiating down of the fines and the problems that were 

found. When I was inspector general we actually investigated 

that. We looked at what was the result of the fines that were 

proposed for very serious violations and what happened to them. 

Why was no one ever held accountable? And the problem was that 

it turned out to be about 10 cents on the dollar. You would see 

a lot of big fines proposed, a lot of saber-rattling, a lot of 

tough talk. But months or years down the pike, when all the 

attention of the hour went away, the real result was about 10 

cents on the dollar. And I did put in my testimony over the last 

three years preceding the 9/11 attacks both the carriers, 

American and United, did have record numbers of fines, one at 

$3.4 million and one at 3.6. But when you consider that's about 

ten cents on the dollar, that would recognize a really 

staggering number of violations. And, as the previous witness 

said, in some cases it became paying as opposed to improving, 

because it was easier to pay the fines and go on without a big 

investment. 

 Another thing that is very, very important to note, and 

I must take a little bit of issue with some of the previous 

testimony, and because it's a very common public misconception, 

is that the responsibility and the obligation for security is 

now passed from the airlines to the TSA. Nothing could be 

further from the truth. I have put in my testimony what the 

current law is. The current law is very similar to the previous 

law in that both airlines and airports do still share security 

responsibility. And I agree with the previous witness it is 

absolutely imperative. You cannot possibly lift that from the 

airlines or airports, because then you have lost a very 

important component of your triad for safety and security in 

this country. But it is still the law that they are responsible 

for it. And that's why the actions committee is so very 

important, because what we have seen time and time before is 

that there really isn't any accountability. You have these 

tragedies -- and I put in my testimony some -- hopefully some 

rather sobering numbers. We hear a lot of testimony, a lot of 

public urban legend about nothing like this has ever happened 

before. It hasn't happened in the United States. Planes have 

never been used as weapons of terror or destruction. And in 
many cases I had to resort -- and I want to point this out 

because it was very important -- in many cases to do our 

original research we had to result to media reports because, 

among other things, lots of obscure government regulations 

sometimes inhibit good institutional memory -- for example, the 

sundown rules on government records. We very routinely -- and I 

was a government employee myself for, I suppose if you add all 

the service together, almost two decades. But the problem is is 

you toss out your records, you send them off to Boyers, 

Pennsylvania, you shred them up in the shredder -- legally, I 

might add, after three years. And there goes your institutional 

memory. Parties change, people move on, people retire, and 

everyone ceases to remember what has really happened. 

 And if, with your permission, I'll stand up here 

for a second, because I think I can shed some light on some of 

these now erroneous misconceptions about security. First of 

all, about the warnings -- and I put this in my testimony --

everybody said, Well, nobody knew about any direct threats. We 

then had Condoleezza Rice talk about 15 very -- there's an

argument over define "specific" -- but they are pretty specific 

warnings. In fact, we had in the Federal Register on July 17, 

2001, some rather alarming language. And, by the way, the 

carriers were alerted to this, because they responded to this 

notice of proposed rulemaking, complaining about the expense 

that the security would cost them. So they were very clearly 

put on notice, because they complained. And, in particular, 

this Federal Register, published for all to see, clearly still 

out there for us lawyers to go get, said, "The terrorist threat 

level in the United States over the next decade will remain at 

least as high as it is and will probably rise. Expanding 

geographical range of terrorist activity is increasingly 

evident. Members of foreign terrorist groups, representatives 

from state sponsors of terrorism, and radical fundamentalist 

elements are present in the United States." This particular 

Federal Register goes on at length. Indeed, there were 

additional pages talking about the threat, and in particular it 

pointed out the threat events in Asia in 1995 in which attacks 

on 12 jetliners and attacks on buildings was anticipated. 

 And finally, it goes on to mention that civil aviation, 

and I quote, "Civil aviation targets may be chosen by terrorists 

even if alternative, and softer targets are available, 

especially since an attack on aviation seizes the public's 

imagination to a degree unequaled by other types of attacks." 

So I find it interesting that a lot of after-the-fact facts are

being created, but there it was in the Federal Record. 
 Another thing that's important to point out is what the 

threat really is. And I think the mistake we have made so many 

times in the past is that as a nation we continue to respond to 

the last attack. So we were busy talking about bombs in 

suitcases, when there were many other things going on. And so I 

put in there, and again, for a lot of these, because the 

institutional memory is gone, we had to resort to public 

accounts of things that have happened. And we had many things 

happen. In 1970 to 2001, hijackings, cockpit intrusions were, 

contrary to what people say, common -- bombings, shootdown and 

air rage incidents. 

 In the short months just preceding 9/11, we had 30 

cockpit intrusions. The thought that you can't get into the 

cockpit is belied by the facts. There they were, 18 months. 

Now, we are all talking about bombs on jetliners, bombing the 

plane, something we are all busy as a nation and as a government 

focused on on 9/11. Indeed, I was able to find 31 from 1970 to 

2001. But there were many other things going on. In 

particular, there was lots of air raging -- things going on in 

airplanes. I use United's own numbers for that: 531, 621, 454 

-- and they didn't have any data for 2001. The FAA didn't match 

even United's, which was interesting. The FAA's range from 320 

to 266. There was a whole lot going on on those airplanes, 

including cockpit intrusion that our data wasn't collecting. 

 In particular, the air rage incidents often turned ugly 

and violent. Indeed, passengers and others were harmed -- or 

died -- before 9/11. When I resorted to looking, not on our 

official government reports, but looking to the First Amendment 

for some real data, I got an astounding 47,402 from 1994 to 

2001. And the most astonishing figure of all to me, and a real 

alarm, and I know it's not exactly what the hearings are about, 

but the whole idea is to protect Americans was this number. 

When I resorted to looking at reports other than official 

government reports to find instances where planes were shot at 

or shot down, in particular two weeks ago or a few weeks ago we 

heard about the incident against the Israeli plane, and people 

were saying, Well, that's hasn't been done before. It has -- 59 

times I found when I resorted to data other than just government 

data where that's occurred. 

 And finally, the biggest shock, when I did research 

across the board, is I came up with 823 airlines hijacked from 

'70 to 2001; 115 of those hijackings the passengers or the crew 

were able to overcome them, were able to fight back. Look at 
that savings there. They were able to save their lives, save 

the plane, save the carrier, in those incidences. So in this 

country we had all these supposed these warnings, these things 

that went out, but no one was allowed to know. Even now after 

the fact they are saying, Well, these are all secret, you can't 

know them. Something could have been done, even with 

information. Information may have indeed been the most powerful 

weapon we had, and not only was it not told to the persons who 

might actually been able to do something about it; now, in 

retrospect, it's all a big secret. 

 Finally, we had 109 airlines on U.S. soil; 58 on 

foreign soil. Surprisingly, 11 foreign on U.S. soil. 

 And probably the biggest or most alarming urban legend 

that has come out, and I have a difficult time figuring or 

excusing that was accidental -- is the after-the-fact statements 

that no rules were broken on 9/11. What could you have done? 

Nothing was wrong. Nobody violated any laws, nobody violated 

any federal regulations. That is absolutely false. In my 

statement I go over the various federal regulations that require 

security on the various carriers and obligations on them. And 

then of course we all heard, including persons you have heard 

from, who went on the media to say box cutters were allowed. 

They were not, most assuredly not, allowed. This comes from the 

regulations and the guidelines that the carriers use to do their 

security. And, by the way --

 MR. KEAN: We're exceeding the three minutes a bit. 

(Laughter.) 

 MS. SCHIAVO: Okay. And neither was pepper spray. 

Pepper spray absolutely not allowed. Two, we know for a fact 

they didn't find any of them, because certain events are 

supposed to happen when you find those. None of those events 

happened. So there's a lot of urban legend out there going on, 

but it's important to get the facts out so this isn't repeated, 

and to look at the other possibilities. 

 MR. KEAN: Thank you. 

 MS. SCHIAVO: Thank you. 

 MR. KEAN: Mr. McHale? 

 MR. McHALE: Good morning, Governor Kean and 

distinguished commissioners. I am happy to be here on behalf of 
Admiral James Loy, the administrator of the Transportation 

Security Administration. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to be 

here today, but I am sure he will be glad to answer any 

questions you may have for him at a later date. 

 At the outset, on behalf of all TSA, I want you to know 

that each day our thoughts are with the families and friends of 

those who perished in the terrorist attacks on September 11th. 

Their loss has steeled our determination to fulfill the 

responsibilities that the president and Secretary Ridge, 

Secretary Mineta, Congress and the American people have 

entrusted to us. 

 The nine stars and eleven stripes behind the American 

eagle on our logo are a daily reminder to us of the importance 

of our responsibilities. Using a systems approach, we have 

established a network of overlapping layers to prevent and deter 

terrorists from using our aviation system as a target or a 

weapon. Today, highly trained federal employees screen every 

bag and every passenger at almost 450 commercial airports. 

Airport checkpoints are redesigned. We use state-of-the-art Xray systems and metal detectors. Explosive detection systems 

are installed in airports across the country. We have expanded 

the federal air marshal service from just 33 on 9/11 to the 

largest, best trained and most professional air protective force 

in aviation history. Bomb-sniffing canine teams work the entire 

airport environment, randomly screening checked baggage, cargo 

mail, searching unattended bags, responding to bomb threats, and 

at higher threat levels checking vehicles approaching terminals. 

 The Federal Aviation Administration has ensured that 

cockpit doors are hardened on all passenger aircraft. And just 

recently TSA has begun deploying volunteer armed pilots as 

federal flight deck officers. And through our 19 overseas 

offices, we continue to work aggressively with our foreign 

counterparts to ensure the security of international aviation. 

Most importantly, we have dramatically increased intelligence 

collection and sharing on threats to transportation. Our 

Transportation Security Intelligence Service receives, assesses 

and distributes intelligence on threats to transportation and 

operates an around-the-clock watch tied to all national and law 

enforcement intelligence programs. We have direct connections 

with our field operations across the country and security 

centers of major transportation stakeholders. 

 As part of DHS, we are now integrating our intelligence 

analysis and products with other intelligence communities of the 
department. The top DHS and TSA leaders receive daily 

intelligence briefs. We know that our enemies are alert and 

resourceful, perpetually probing for weaknesses in our systems, 

and TSA reassesses its operations and policies to seek 

improvement to meet new and evolving terrorist threats. We have 

tried as hard as we can to learn the lessons of 9/11, and we 

have tried to build them into our corporate culture. 

 To help TSA maintain a high level of performance and 

continually improve, TSA conducts aggressive covert testing --

we don't use the term "red team," but perhaps that's an easy 

shorthand for you -- conducts aggressive covert testing of all 

aviation security systems, including screening checkpoints, 

access control, baggage screening systems and catering security. 

These tests are intentionally designed with a high probability 

of beating the system some of the time. If we were not so 

aggressive we would not be able to identify vulnerabilities and 

avenues for improvement. Admiral Loy and I and other senior 

members of TSA are briefed on the results of those tests. These 

tests provide instantaneous feedback, and after the tests are 

completed in an airport, the testers sit down with the screening 

managers and the screeners themselves to explain how they beat 

the system when they've beaten the system, so that there can be 

instant feedback and opportunities for on-site training of 

airport security personnel. 

 Let me address, if I could, Mr. Chairman, those airport 

security personnel. We are immensely proud of our screener work 

force, and they come from all walks of life and are motivated by 

a strong desire to make sure that nothing like 9/11 happens ever 

again. But as with any large work force put together in such a 

short time, we face challenges. The first is budgeting -- the 

need to balance payroll against operational support needs. It 

does no good to hire the best and to give them the best training 

if you cannot support them on the job. We must provide them 

with continuous training and recertification. We must give them 

the best tools to do the job, and we must maintain those tools. 

And we must also ensure that all airports are properly staffed. 

Accordingly, and with much internal pain, over the next three 

months we will be reducing our work force by 6,000 screeners, to 

ensure that the 49,000 who remain are well supported and we are 

distributing the screener work force from some over-staffed 

airports to some under-staffed ones. But in managing this 

reduction, our number one concern is to maintain the highest 

level of security. We are also going to extraordinary lengths 

to check our screeners' backgrounds, and we continue to do so. 

All screeners are fingerprinted and checked against FBI records. 
They are also subjected to Choice Point and OPM background 

checks. Virtually all had the FBI and Choice Point checks 

before they started work. And as we now complete the longer, 

more detailed OPM checks, we are moving quickly to address any 

problems that are uncovered. 

 Looking ahead in aviation security, TSA is pursuing a 

dual path of improving its core security programs at commercial 

airports, while launching new measures to protect aviation 

facilities, air cargo and general aviation from possible attack. 

 To identify potential airport perimeter 

vulnerabilities, we are conducting inspections of facilities and 

critical assets at each airport, and developing countermeasure 

to thwart potential threats. For example, we are conducting 

detailed site assessments at over 50 airports to identify areas 

of vulnerability to shoulder-launched air defense missile 

systems, and we are educating local law enforcement 

organizations to that threat. 

 TSA is moving forward to increase security of maritime, 

transit, highway, rail, and pipeline systems, and I detail some 

of those efforts in my written testimony. We are working on 

many other fronts, such as awarding grants to improve the 

security of ports and cargo, and working with the Coast Guard 

and other parts of DHS and DOT to design a terrorist risk 

assessment tool tailored specifically to maritime and surface 

transportation facilities. We are working with our other 

federal partners to ensure intermodal consistency in setting 

assessment and security improvement standards proportionate to 

risk for the national transportation system. 

 In accomplishing our mission, we are acutely aware of 

the challenge in maintaining balance between freedom and 

security, and between security and customer service. Our 

mission is simply stated: it is to ensure the fundamental 

American freedom, the freedom of movement for people and 

commerce. We will meet the needs and expectations of the 

American people with the greatest consideration for their 

privacy and the least disruption to their routine behavior. But 

we must protect them from terrorist attacks so they feel free to 

move. Our top priority is providing maximum security with 

minimum intrusion. 

 Thanks to the team work of TSA and our partners in 

private industry at DHS and DOT and in state and local 

governments, our nation's transportation system is more secure 
today than it was yesterday, and it will be more secure tomorrow 

than it is today. We look forward to working with the 

commission in the coming months as you develop recommendations 

for aviation and trading partner security, and of course I'm 

pleased to answer any questions you may have. 

 MR. KEAN: Thank you for that. General Steele. 

 MR. STEELE: Governor Kean, distinguished members of 

the Commission, I am Major General O.K. Steele, United States 

Marine Corps, retired. I served as the assistant administrator 

for civil aviation security from 1 November of 1990 to 1 

November of 1993. You have my statement in the record. I tried 

to highlight those years that I was in active service; in the 

second part I try to address the future. 

 That summarizes mine, except that I would like to make 

one correction from what you heard yesterday. Your last 

witness, Mr. Dzakovic, mentioned that he believed that I was 

fired or had to leave under force or something like that. 

That's not actually true. When I was hired as ACS they had to 

do it under a somewhat very quickly and under a kind of 

emergency situation. And under the rules provided, I believe by 

the Office of Personnel Management, the secretary of the 

Treasury or the secretary of transportation had that authority, 

and he could vet me as an ACS without having to go into any sort 

of competitive selection process. And that's what was done. 

But it could only be done for up to three years and then had to 

be re-vetted. It was my choice to leave after three years. 

 MR. KEAN: Thank you. Congressman Roemer? 

 MR. ROEMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you again 

for your testimony here this afternoon. And, Ms. Schiavo, I 

hope you can stay with us a little while. Your testimony is 

very intriguing and extremely interesting to us. Let me start 

with the whole concept here of your background. For those that 

don't know, you were appointed by President Bush -- is that 

right? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: That's correct, the first one. 

 MR. ROEMER: The first President Bush. And the first 

President Clinton, if that's a term to be used -- I don't know 

if that's --

 MS. SCHIAVO: I guess we could say that. 
 MR. ROEMER: President William Jefferson Clinton 

appointed you or kept you in place --

 MS. SCHIAVO: The male one. 

 MR. ROEMER: -- as the inspector general at the 

Department of Transportation, is that correct? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: That's correct. 

 MR. ROEMER: And you were there from 1990 to 1996? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: That's also correct. 

 MR. ROEMER: And we are going to hear a lot I think 

over the course of the next 12 months about actionable 

intelligence and strategic intelligence and predictive 

intelligence, and maybe even prescriptive intelligence. 

Actionable intelligence, if it is what Mr. McHale might think it 

is -- is that, Ms. Schiavo, when somebody says, "John Brown is 

going to bomb the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis on August the 

16th, 2004"? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: Well, that depends who you ask. 

Including the times that I was in the Department of 

Transportation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the 

entity that makes the threat assessment and then provides the 

additional intelligence, which of course the FAA fans out to the 

airlines. But the difference in that, or the key in that 

statement is the regulations, the security regulations, the 

operational effect at the airports and the airlines is not 

supposed to fall down to illegal levels, if I may say that. 

Because, frankly, when you don't meet the federal aviation 

regulations you are operating illegally. And so the threat 

assessment was not supposed to be used to say, Okay, today you 

really do have to do your job, as opposed to the other 364 days 

of the year when you can slop off, go to sleep, and hire felons 

to do your security. So I think one of the biggest problems we 

have, if everybody is talking about actionable intelligence, but 

for the levels that we are talking about at the airport, they 

aren't intelligence officers. And so I think in some ways it's 

a misnomer to get hung up on who said what to whom. 

 MR. ROEMER: So warnings coming in, if I understand 

what you just said, warnings coming in can take all kinds of 

different variations that can be threats overseas, it can be 
chatter in the intelligence, it could be something that happened 

in the Philippines or other places. Is that correct? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: Sure. 

 MR. ROEMER: So we could have information circulars and 

security directives triggered by these little bit more vague 

activities that seem to be occurring more and more and more as 

we reach the spring and the summer of 2001. Is that correct? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: Well, that's correct. And I think that 

you have seen that in the 15. For example, one was very 

specific about cell phones and others were less specific, like, 

people are training to hijack. 

 MR. ROEMER: Let me get there. Let me then with that 

in mind, back in 1994 and '95 it was discovered that Osama bin 

Laden had a plot, called the Bujinka plot, that was discovered 

on a hardware drive in Manila, that outlined the possibility of 

blowing up 12 airliners over the Pacific, and also crashing a 

plane into Langley in the domestic United States. He also 

speculated about testing that, and had a bomb on a plane, that 

the bomb went off, the plane landed, I think one person was 

killed. You were in the Department of Transportation as IG at 

that point. Did you recommend any changes after that took 

place? Did this hit your radar screen? Did the government in 

the Department of Transportation do anything about this warning?

 MS. SCHIAVO: Actually during that period of time we 

did two major security reviews, and we made a number of 

recommendations. The first one resulted in Congressional 

hearings in I believe '92 or '93. The second one resulted in 

hearings in '96. And so we had two ongoing overall reviews for 

that, and I will say that probably the sort of highest level of 

attention still centered on events that were closer to home in 

terms of things that actually affected the United States. There 

was still a lot of work on the Pan Am aftermath, trying to get 

the Pan Am recommendations implemented -- which some of them 

never did get implemented -- and working on the buildup to the 

Atlanta Olympics. 

 MR. ROEMER: So in your two major investigations, did 

anything change as a result of the attention that you brought to 

these deficiencies? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: Temporarily. When we would investigate, 

when we would make these findings, and we were very similar to 
the gentlemen you heard from yesterday from the red team, we did 

very similar work, and people would get sort of excited and 

there would be a level of enthusiasm. For example, we did it 

twice in six years, and then it would calm down, and people 

would sort of lose their drive. The big problem we had on our 

second major investigation is we learned later, and the extent 

of which I had only learned from some of Bogdan's testimony --

the second investigation that we did probably was not as 

accurate as it could have been, because many of the airports 

were warned that we were coming, including by the FAA. So some 

of that was compromised. 

 MR. ROEMER: So, if I could fairly sum up what you've 

said, ephemeral temporary changes, nothing that permanently 

would alter the way that somebody could exploit the system at 

that point. 

 MS. SCHIAVO: In documentable, statistical changes they 

reverted quickly to their old patterns. 

 MR. ROEMER: Let's start to jump ahead then to right 

into the spring of 2001 and the summer of 2001. I think 

Commissioner Ben- Veniste and myself outlined a host of 

different intelligence discovering by the intelligence community 

that started popping up through the next five or six years, 

including the Los Angeles incident at the millennium, where 

somebody was going to explode a bomb in the LA Airport. 

 Then we come into the spring, and there are 15 

information circulars issued, and there are five security 

directives issued in a fairly compressed time period. Is this 

highly unusual, this number 20? Is this standard? Give me some 

sense of how these people reading these kinds of security 

directives might be alarmed at this, or simply this is just 

standard operating procedure for them. 

 MS. SCHIAVO: That's a -- I mean, I don't call it 

chatter. I mean, that's a lot of information, and that's a lot 

of warnings. And you know I have some information that doesn't 

stem from my service in the government. For example, I mean now 

a lot of people call me with information because of the work 

that I do correct. And, for example, I have learned that there 

was some discussion, that there was extra attention, if you 

will, during that period of time, and there was a heightened --

I don't want to say "alert," but there was -- and "chatter" 

seems to be the word that everybody uses. So there was sort of 

a heightened chatter level, and things were going on. There was 
discussion about the situation and training, et cetera. But, 

again, you got down to the problem of intelligence doesn't go to 

the lower level people who are supposed to be doing their jobs. 

So did that translate into operational success? Clearly not. 

 MR. ROEMER: You mentioned in your testimony, in your 

written testimony on page 13 anyway, an August circular, and you 

mention the national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, in 

this, and she mentions the possible use of cell phones and key 

chains and pens as weapons and so forth. Is this something you 

cite because it happened at that time, or is this something that 

the national security advisor explained after September 11th? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: No, I mean -- that happens to be one 

of the ones I've seen. I mean, that was one of the warnings 

that went out during that time. The reason I used her summary 

from the news media is obviously including in the litigation we 

have not been able to get those warnings yet. 

 MR. ROEMER: And what litigation are you involved in? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: Our firm represents a number of the 

passenger families who perished on 9/11, and that litigation is 

proceeding in New York City. 

MR. ROEMER; And just to be clear for the record, how many 

people do you represent in that? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: Forty-seven. 

 MR. ROEMER: Forty-seven. 

 MS. SCHIAVO: Only passengers. 

 MR. ROEMER: You also mentioned in your testimony --

you talk about citing information that credited FBI sources with 

respect to pre-positioned weapons, a targeted fifth plane, the 

possession by terrorists of ramp passes, security badges and 

pilot credentials. Is this information that you gathered from 

media accounts and media sources, or is this something that you 

got from other accounts? Can you be much more specific as to 

what you have evidence of here? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: Right. Certainly most of the things 

credited to the FBI sources, as I mentioned they were credited 

in public or media reports without persons' names attached to 

them. 
 MR. ROEMER: Do you have anything else that you can add 

to that? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: Again, the information that we have in 

the litigation has not come from actual litigation, because so 

far the government has said it's sensitive security information. 

But I have talked to certain other witnesses. But in terms of 

actually getting the FBI reports, no, we do not. We do not have 

those reports. 

 MR. ROEMER: You mentioned, and I think Mr. McHale 

mentioned red teams. I think Mr. McHale referred to them as 

"covert teams," or "covert testing programs." We had a witness 

here yesterday that you call a hero in your written testimony. 

He is very critical of these red teams' performances. That the 

information doesn't get to the appropriate people. And he also 

went on to say that they are not aggressive at all now, I think 

it's fair to state -- not quoting him, but paraphrasing him I 

think that's what he finally said. Do you think that these red 

teams are aggressive enough today to test the system thoroughly, 

to make people feel safe?

 MS. SCHIAVO: It depends who their leader is and how 

much support they get. I had the same kinds of teams, and mine 

were very good, but they got very disillusioned like Bogdan, 

because when you would see that the administration didn't 

respond to what you found, they got quite disillusioned. But we 

thought they were quite successful, and we, for the ones that I 

had, we got some really tremendous findings and located some 

vulnerabilities. I thought they were successful. 

 MR. ROEMER: And how do you make sure -- how do you 

ensure that these red teams are successful in the future? How 

do you, as an inspector general who is somewhat insulated in the 

system, for very specific institutional reasons, how do you try 

to make sure the red teams have the autonomy to do their job 

well, to potentially embarrass people and get good results of 

weaknesses in the system without being punished for that? Where 

is the balance there? How did you achieve it in your tenure 

there? 

 MS. SCHIAVO: Well, I awarded those who did it. But I 

was criticized for that too. I was called "The Gotcha IG." So 

I mean I rewarded them. I liked it. They certainly weren't 

punished for making great findings, and they were rewarded for 

that. But I wasn't in the line-up of the FAA. I was an 
independent, had an independent organization. We didn't have to 

answer to the FAA, and technically not even to the secretary of 

transportation. So my employees were rewarded and remained I 

think pretty tough. 

 MR. ROEMER: Well, again, I don't want to take up a lot 

of time. I want other commissioners to be able to ask some 

questions as well, too. But we appreciate your testimony, and I 

will turn over the rest of that time to Commission Gorton. 

 MR. GORTON: Mr. McHale, you are welcome here, and I 

hope and trust that you can answer the widest range of 

questions. You won't be offended by our view that we really do 

need your boss. We need the admiral. You've said that that will 

be the case in the future, but I think I need to begin this by 

reminding you of that. We are going to need the number one 

person here. But I think you can probably answer most of the 

questions that I'm going to have. And I begin with this: What 

percentage or what number of boarding passengers have been in 

the recent past stopped because they were discovered with 

prohibited articles? Out of every thousand passengers, say who 

attempt to board, how many are stopped and not just examined, 

but are actually found to have prohibited articles on their 

person? 

 MR. MCHALE: We actually -- I think I look at the 

number a little bit differently than that, because what we look 

at is the number of things that we recover. I am not sure I 

have a specific per one thousand passenger number for you. But 

we have recovered well in excess -- almost I believe 2,000 

firearms since we took over security. We have recovered hundreds 

of thousands of knives. We recover a lot of other kinds of 

prohibitive items, some of which are greater or lesser threats. 

Passengers --

 MR. GORTON: At this point I'm trying to get at the 

psychology of that employee of yours who is doing this 

repetitively, you know, hour after hour, day after day. 

 MR. MCHALE: I would say there are a significant number 

-- even at a good busy checkpoint there are checkpoint there are 

multiple recoveries of prohibited items every day. Most of 

those are relatively small items, sharp objects, things like 

that. Firearms would be rarer, but at our major airports every 

single one of our major airports makes multiple recoveries of 

firearms every year. 
 MR. GORTON: How many or what share, say the people 

that are stopped with some prohibited item are carrying 

something that is so serious or otherwise regarded as serious 

enough security risk so that they are not permitted to board, 

even after you have taken those articles away from them? 

 MR. MCHALE: Well, usually all. Generally people who 

are carrying firearms or large knives generally are arrested, so 

they obviously don't proceed. People that are carrying small 

items that may have been overlooked in their packing or things 

like that generally are going to be treated as just the item 

will be taken and they will be allowed to proceed, although the 

airline is consulted on that. There may be instances where you 

have somebody who tries to conceal the fact that they are 

carrying a prohibited item, even a small relatively innocent 

prohibited item. With that kind of concealment we will generally 

stop them, interview them. They may be arrested. They're 

almost certainly in that circumstance going to miss their 

flight, and it will be up to the airline whether they rebook 

them or not. 

 MR. GORTON: Well, let me again try to get you to be a 

little bit more precise. Out of every thousand or hundred 

thousand boarding passengers, how many are arrested? 

 MR. MCHALE: Oh, we have almost two million passengers 

a day, and we probably have two or three arrests a day. 

 MR. GORTON: So approaching -- it's not much more than 

one in a million? 

 MR. MCHALE: Yes, right. 

 MR. GORTON: As sensitive as this question may be, what 

is your current estimate of the number of prohibited articles 

that you miss every day out of those almost two million 

passengers? 

 MR. MCHALE: It's always very hard to estimate what you 

miss, because you don't have it. We do some -- we do do some 

checking, continue to do gate screening recoveries. 

 MR. GORTON: Well, you have your --

 MR. MCHALE: We have not generally recovered -- we have 

actually rarely in those instances recovered larger items, like 

large knives and guns, although we have recovered those after 
the checkpoint. There was a very well known incident in New 

Orleans where that happened last year. But generally the items 

that are recovered at the checkpoint are the smaller items. It 

is a small percentage, probably in the --

 MR. GORTON: Well, you have your checkers or your red 

teams now who are testing. What's their share of success in 

getting away with what they are carrying in the way of 

prohibited items? 

 MR. MCHALE: The red teams, we want the red teams to 

break the system. 

 MR. GORTON: I understand you do. 

 MR. MCHALE: So we send them out to break the system. 

When their success rate drops below 50 percent, we tell them to 

get harder. We tell them to work harder at getting it through -

- find other ways to get the items into the system. That's 

their goal. So that's what we try to do with them. We try to 

find any possible way to get a prohibited item into the system. 

 MR. GORTON: All right, if your goal for your red team 

is 50 percent --

 MR. MCHALE: Right. 

 MR. GORTON: -- isn't it likely that 50 percent of 

those who are deliberately attempting to beat the system and 

have rehearsed for a while are not going to have the same degree 

of success? 

 MR. MCHALE: They might. Our red team of course 

understands the system probably better than any terrorist does. 

So they probably have an advantage over that. What we look at 

is we want to make it as hard as possible for somebody 

intentionally to get something into the system, basically so 

that it becomes almost impossible for them to plan to get 

something into the system. That way they will go to another 

target. 

 Also, I think the second thing, and very important to 

point out here, is screening is just one level of security. 

MR. GORTON: I will get to that in a moment. With respect 

to screening, however, is perfection obtainable? 
 MR. MCHALE: No. 

 MR. GORTON: How much closer to perfection do you think 

you can get? 

 MR. MCHALE: We are going to try to get as close as 

we can. But it will never be perfect at all. There's no way it 

could be. You have human factors, you have technology 

limitations, and you have the tremendous pressure of the crowd. 

As I mentioned, we have almost 1.8 million passengers a day. We 

have huge numbers of bags. So it's a huge job every day to 

screen those people. I think we have to strive for perfection, 

but I think we would be fooling ourselves. 

 MR. GORTON: I've spoken so far of passengers and the 

passenger checking. Could you give me comparable answers with 

respect to baggage checking? How much checked baggage do you 

stop because it has prohibited articles in them? And how 

successful are your tests in getting things through that system? 

 MR. MCHALE: There are obviously far fewer prohibited 

items in checked baggage in the sense that there are few items 

on the list of things that are prohibited. What we do recover 

occasionally are firearms that are in checked bags that are not 

properly packed. You can pack a firearm in checked baggage if 

you do it correctly and notify the airplane. We find several of 

those a day, and take action against the passenger, if 

appropriate, with law enforcement. We occasionally find things 

like pepper spray or mace, which are regarded as hazardous 

material and dangerous to put into checked baggage. We have not 

found any bombs. We have only been doing it for about three 

months. 

 MR. GORTON: Let me go to one other level, and I would 

like you to describe what you think both the functions and the 

effectiveness of the marshal system is. What share of flights 

now, whether all flights or relatively long-distance flights in 

which an aircraft taking off has a large amount of fuel on board 

actually are protected by an on board marshal? 

 MR. MCHALE: We don't discuss in open session the 

deployment of the air marshals. I would be happy to provide 

that in a classified forum. I can tell you though that air 

marshals today, unlike prior to 9/11, fly both domestically and 

internationally, and we do cover a significant portion of the 

flights. 
 MR. GORTON: Have there been any -- you can tell me 

whether this is classified as well -- have there been any air 

marshal arrests or interdictions of what appeared to be not 

passenger rage but actual attempts at hijacking or destroying 

aircraft? 

MR. MCHALE: There have been arrests of passengers who were 

considered to be a potential threat. As far as I know there 

have not been any attempt to hijack U.S. domestic aircraft since 

we have been out there. So I think I'd probably have to leave 

it at that.

 MR. GORTON: To what extent is TSA experimenting with 

or considering either additional or certain forms of profiling, 

and tell me what they are at one end, and at the other end a 

trusted traveler program? 

 MR. MCHALE: The FAA has been using for years, really I 

think since almost shortly after Pan Am 103, something called 

the CAPPS I system. The CAPPS system it is called -- computerassisted passenger pre-screening. It started off being used for 

baggage screening purposes -- what bags should be screened. But 

it was expanded after 9/11 to help identify passengers. It's a 

bit of an old system. It's an old technology based on airline 

reservation systems, and frankly isn't up to the task that we 

need it to do today. 

 We are replacing that over the summer with what we call 

CAPPS II. CAPPS II is an intelligence-based system on the 

government computers. We will be using intelligence data 

basically to develop systems programs to help us identify 

patterns of terrorism and identify terrorists through that. It 

is not, however, a system that draws on racial profiling or 

anything like that. That's not really a very useful way to find 

terrorists, if you look today at the Jose Padillas and the 

Richard Reids, that kind of ethnic profiling could well lead you 

in the wrong direction potentially. So we don't -- that's not 

something we really rely on. 

 In terms of registered traveler, that is probably --

the way we look at that today is that will probably be a portion 

somehow integrated into CAPPS II. Registered traveler system 

would give us an ability to do a background check on a passenger 

that would be far greater than anything we could do in the 

commercial environment in which CAPPS has to operate. If we 

could get a significant level of confidence in that, it would 

help assure us that the passenger does not need to be subjected 
to additional security measures. But our expectation at this 

time is that we will always maintain a certain level of security 

screening for all passengers, regardless of whether they are 

registered. 

 MR. GORTON: What's the source of your intelligence for 

CAPPS II? 

 MR. MCHALE: The intelligence community, the FBI --

basically the entire intelligence community. 

 MR. GORTON: And is that a relationship with which you 

are comfortable that you are getting what you need? 

MR. MCHALE: We have actually -- yeah, we have a very good 

relationship today with the intelligence community. We have 

liaisons at all the major agencies. Our people there, their 

people, some of their people, with us. There's a tremendous 

flow of information. I was not at the FAA on September 11th. I 

came to DOT at the end of 2001. But talking to the people who 

work for me who were there, my impression is that the flow of 

intelligence is far, far better today. 

 MR. GORTON: All of my questioning -- my questioning of 

you and the earlier questioning has been directed at airline and 

aircraft security. Close to 90 percent of your money, as I 

understand it, goes into that form of transportation security?

 MR. MCHALE: That's right. 

 MR. GORTON: And more than half of that into screening. 

 MR. MCHALE: That would be about right. 

 MR. GORTON: In your long-range point of view, is that 

an independent division of your resources? Does it reflect the 

threat and the scope and seriousness of the threat when you take 

transportation safety, which is the name of your agency as a 

whole? 

 MR. MCHALE: Transportation Security. Yeah, we do. The 

budget that we have, the division we have is required to meet 

the legislative mandates that we have. One of the things I 

addressed in my opening remarks was the need to bring balance to 

that, to bring balance to our very high payroll costs, to bring 

operational support. And a piece of that also is to free up part 

of our budget to drive it over to the other parts of our 
mission, to look at the other parts of the transportation 

system. Asking a government bureaucrat whether he wants more 

money is kind of like putting a kid in a candy store. But, I 

mean, I think -- I mean, the reality is we could use more money, 

but we'll divide it up. 

 MR. GORTON: Yeah, but if you were not subject to 

Congressional constraints and you had the amount of money that 

you did not, would you distribute it in the fashion that it is? 

 MR. MCHALE: I am not sure that we'd reduce the amount 

of money we are spending on aviation security. 

 MR. GORTON: But you might use an increase as somewhat 

disproportionately for other --

 MR. MCHALE: That's correct, that's correct. 

 MR. GORTON: General Steele, you were in at the 

beginning in a very real sense of facing these problems over the 

first three years. You've been an observer ever since, and you 

see Mr. McHale who is in at the present time. Just in general 

terms, how effective and how dramatic in your view have the 

changes been? Is, given the nature of some of the changes and 

the threat, are we better off now than we were when you started? 

And if you just had one or two things to say we ought to have as 

immediate priorities, what would they be? 

 MR. STEELE: I'd be happy to answer that, Senator. 

First of all, I have -- I am not privy to the figures that are 

coming back from their testing, whether that be done 

electronically using the TIPS system, which is both the training 

vehicle as well as it can be used to evaluate screener 

performance. I know what it was when I was there, but I don't 

know what they are getting. So how much better are they is a 

very, very good question. This much better? This much better? 

That much better? I don't know. 

 I think instinctively everybody believes that the fact 

that they are federal employees and they have higher standards 

now. They feel more comfortable about it with the security 

companies. But they are the only ones who can really say that. 

I, from what I read though in the paper, and when I say close to 

it, I say they're still being penetrated too often too easily, 

even by the press and others who are out there to evaluate or 

test the system and publicize it. So that bothers me. 
 A few other things, if I may. I happen to be a 

believer in the CAPPS system, but I was a believer in CAPPS I. 

The way Mr. McHale is describing CAPPS II, I am not saying when 

that's going to be very successful. CAPPS I was simply 

developed by the airlines based on information they had to 

separate the knowns from the unknowns. The president of Ford 

Motor Company is a million miler going through, we don't have to 

spend much time on him. So it's a way to -- you know, the whole 

system moves with bags and people at about every six seconds. 

So it's a winnowing effect. If we can get the knowns through 

very, very quickly, that offers us an opportunity to spend more 

time on the unknowns. And that's what that was about. That 

seems to have been reversed with CAPPS II, and now they are 

trying to identify a real threat out there, and I don't think 

there is any way to do that frankly, without going into some 

very, very intrusive things which I don't think our society is 

ever going to accept. 

 I could go on to some other things on --

 MR. GORTON: Well, I asked you for your two highest 

priorities. 

 MR. STEELE: Well, I would -- is that the last question 

I am going to get from the Commission? 

 MR. GORTON: I don't think so. 

 MR. STEELE: I've got some views on a few other things, 

on red teams and that sort of things as well, but I'll be happy 

to respond. 

 I would like to make a point also -- I think the 

question is about standards. Are we going to get 100 percent? 

And of course I agree with Mr. McHale's response. And I think 

you'll find everybody has said that, including the Chapter VIII, 

as you look at Pam McLaughlin's report also. She stresses that 

point on national will. And I think everybody will say that. 

Even the security guards at El Al will tell you exactly the same 

thing. 

 But even on the EDS, the automated explosive detection 

systems, none of those systems were designed, nor did we certify 

them to be 100 percent. We had to accept a probability 

detection rate less than that when we designed those. I won't 

give it to you exactly what it is, but I am sure your, some of 
your staff will tell you. But none of it is designed to be 100 

percent, even in our equipment. 

 MR. GORTON: Mr. McHale, I had one other perhaps 

philosophical question for you. How do you keep your screeners 

interested and alert when one out of one million passengers is 

going to have a dangerous gun and be arrested for it? It just 

seems to me the job is so routine that to keep people alert 

constantly, when of course the only measure of their success is 

negative, you know, that nothing bad happens. How do you deal 

with that? 

 MR. MCHALE: That has been a concern of all of us I 

think who have been in this business. It certainly has been a 

concern of ours as we have built this work force and as we go 

forwards. First of all, when we say one in a million, remember 

that we have almost two million a day, so that's a lot of people 

going through the system. So, you are right, it sounds like not 

much, but as General Steele said it's really one person every 

six seconds going through some of these major checkpoints. It's 

not actually all that unusual to find something significant. 

But that's actually not what we rely on. 

 What we rely on is every day we send out to all our 

airports, as well as all our air marshal bases, intelligence 

briefs. They are actually brought down to a very low level of 

classification, since there's security information, so it can be 

widely shared. But they identify things that have occurred 

around the world, or items that have been found at airports, or 

ways things have been concealed, or other sorts of information, 

to let the people know every day that there is something, you 

know, that things are happening out there, to remind them every 

day that this is in fact a real war they are in, it's an ongoing 

thing. 

 We rely on our federal security directors, many of whom 

have a sense of military or police or law enforcement 

experience, used to working with teams and motivating teams. We 

rely on them to motivate their screeners. And of course we 

test. We test the system. Not only do we do the covert testing, 

but we have a more routine form of testing that goes on at all 

the airports. Plus General Steele mentioned the TIPS system, 

which is critical. It's one that we were challenged frankly to 

get it on to every explosive detection machine in the country as 

we went out last year and increased the production r ate from 40 

a year previously to over a thousand last year. We are putting 

those on all the machines throughout this year. Our plan is to 
have those all hooked up so that we can download new images. 

The TIPS system, just very briefly, if you don't know what it 

is, is a system that basically puts up a false image 

occasionally of a threat item in a kind of hidden way that's a 

little difficult to see, and it puts that up on the X-ray 

screen, and then we can actually measure how often our X-ray 

technicians actually identify that item. So that helps with Xray screening. But we have to test all the other systems -- the 

wanding, we have to recalibrate the metal detectors. So that is 

very important to us. It is a human engineering issue, and it's 

one that we work very hard to keep our people alert. 

 MR. STEELE: May I also just follow in on that, if I 

may, sir? The answer is, first of all, it's not in money. The 

answer is in that's, what we call the CSS, the supervisor. He 

is the key or she is the key. And I found in the years that I 

was there if that supervisor was good you had a pretty strong 

defense. And conversely it wasn't why then you could penetrate 

it. Do you remember the movie "The Sands of Iwo Jima." And you 

remember Sergeant Stryker who took these 12 young Marines and 

trained them and got them ready for the battle of Iwo Jima, and 

what he did and the coaching he did, and what he knew about the 

strengths and weaknesses of each one of those youngsters. What 

we need is a Sergeant Stryker at every one of our checkpoints, 

whenever that checkpoint is open, who knows the people, knows 

them, knows that when you put somebody on that screen that you 

need to warm up. You go out and play tennis, you don't go out 

and just play tennis, you warm up. We do the same for the 

screeners. Now, there are limits to how long. But we found that 

when they made their errors was when they first went on the 

machine. So you take your weak ones, and you take it when 

you're not being surged but kind of the slower times, put your 

weaker one on there, throw those test objects at him, train him, 

put the arm around the shoulder. That's -- getting them trained. 

 And then, conversely, just like we went to sea and you 

were at general quarters, you had a battle staff up on the 

bridge. During the search times you got the varsity back out 

doing those things. That's the person who knows and who can 

understand those rhythms is what we really need. And it takes a 

long time. And it's leadership. That's all it is, pure and 

simple. A lot of human factors at work, which I hope you go 

into, is involved here, and we really are pushing it at the end, 

and particularly in my last year was encouraging the air 

carriers, that's where you need to make your investment. And I 

would say TSA needs to follow through on that one. It's not 

money. 
 MR. MCHALE: I couldn't agree more, and obviously 

that's what we do try to follow through on. We also move the 

people around too. We don't want to leave somebody on any task 

too long. That causes them to lose their edge, if you leave 

them at the X-ray machine for hour after hour. So we rotate 

them around, try to encourage them. 

 And I think one last thing though that's important is 

you also do need experience. And one of the problems that we 

found -- we managed the contract screening operation for about 

six months before we brought out the federal screeners, from 

February until almost November. And one of the problems we 

found was whenever there was any testing that revealed that an 

item got through the checkpoint, the screeners were all fired 

who were responsible for it. And that became kind of the 

expected thing: if something gets through the checkpoint, fire 

the screener. 

 One of the things we tried to do is look at this as a 

system. If something gets through the checkpoint that shouldn't 

have gotten through the checkpoint, we need to look at the 

entire system: Was the X-ray machine calibrated correctly? Was 

the metal detector calibrated correctly? Is our training good 

enough? What are we doing? What are we doing wrong? What is 

it -- I mean, obviously if the screener is asleep we are going 

to fire the screener. But that's not -- I think there was a 

reaction, certainly in the time after 9/11, sort of immediately 

after 9/1l. I don't know what was done before -- that was every 

time there was a lapse at the checkpoint you fired the screener. 

The result of that was you end up firing a lot of experienced 

people, and not necessarily getting to the real cause of the 

problem. So that's something else we look at very hard. 

 MR. STEELE: I found that women, for example -- senior 

women were absolutely the best screener. It's something in 

their -- in their pattern recognition-- I don't know if it's in 

their pattern analysis, something that they do. But they they 

found things that I looked at -- I would have looked at it for 

million years and never see anything. But they could pick it out 

in an instant. I don't know why it is. But those are little 

tips, you know, the things you learn over time -- not all of 

them. But they also had great ability to concentrate, and 

that's what you need is somebody who is concentrating in that 

time that they are on those machines. Conversely, they may not 

like to meet the public, so that's not the person to put out and 
hand-wand or anybody else. Those are the little things, you 

know. 

 MR. ROEMER: Mr. Chairman, could I just? Just as 

General Steele took us back to Sergeant Stryker, let me take us 

back for just an instant to CAPPS II. We constantly here this 

balance between civil liberties and civil rights and the 

security needs in this new terrorist world. You mention that in 

CAPPS II we might be working with your liaison, which you feel 

is strong in CIA and FBI. We just read reports recently that the 

FBI has new powers to occasionally be able to go to libraries 

and check up on what people are reading. We understand that the 

CIA may be running the TTIC, the Terrorist Threat Integration 

Center. 

 In light of this, and in light of Americans' concerns 

about this, can you be more specific as to what CAPPS II is 

going to be looking at? Are we talking about watch-listing 

information? Are we talking about private sector databases? 

Are we talking about law enforcement information? Exactly what 

are we talking about, Mr. McHale? 

 MR. MCHALE: I can't be too specific in an open forum, 

but again that's something we can provide the commission as 

appropriate. But let me just say -- 

MR. ROEMER: Can you be vague? 

 MR. MCHALE: I can be vaguely specific. 

 MR. ROEMER: And I'd be very interested in the followup on this in private. 

 MR. MCHALE: Sure. We are checking all sorts of 

databases. We are checking public and we are checking private 

databases to get a sense of what we have. But the system is 

actually designed -- it's been designed actually in a lot of 

consultation with the privacy groups. And in fact, although we 

-- the technical term is "ping" -- although we ping off the 

public databases to run some of these algorithms and things, we 

do not actually get that private data into a government computer 

database. We do not build a database with CAPPS II. So I think 

I need -- that's -- it's actually quite an interesting and 

complicated system to explain. It's very hard to do it here. 

But I --

 MR. ROEMER: Yes, I think we can do this --
 MR. MCHALE: It's important for you to understand that. 

 MR. ROEMER: And it's important for the American people 

to understand the debate on some of this as well, too. 

 MR. MCHALE: That's correct. We're going to -- there 

is obviously going to be debate and discussion of this. But we 

are very, very sensitive to the privacy side of this. And, 

frankly, that's something that's important. 

 I'd just like very briefly to address something that 

General Steele suggested. We actually also see CAPPS II as a 

system for focusing our resources, and really a large part of 

what it will do is identify the vast, vast, vast majority of 

people who should just move quickly through security. And 

that's really what it does. But then it works your way down to 

a point where you also get some red flags up as people who need 

considerably more scrutiny. 

 MR. ROEMER: My last question, General Steele. I love 

testimony that is futuristic and challenges us to look at 

threats, you know, ten years from now. On page seven of your 

testimony you outline four, and you look at such things as the 

shoulder-launched missiles and a coordinated terror campaign 

against cargo flights using smaller bombs. You talk about 

driving a car or a truck up to a terminal and exploding it. 

Congress at some point, as we heard yesterday, is going to say 

to us, We have limited resources, we don't have all the money in 

the world to fund every one of your recommendations, whether it 

be screening, ports, airports, terminals, outside terminals for 

cars, equipping airliners with the necessary defensive 

mechanisms for shoulder-fired missiles. Specifically how would 

you prioritize a future threat in this industry, but maybe other 

threats in other industries that we are going to have to look 

at? Look broader than just the industry that you are here to 

talk to us about, and anticipate what we are going to be faced 

with in 12 months, recommending to Congress how they try to 

spend resources on the most likely threats across the board. 

 MR. STEELE: Well, despite the dramatic events of 9/11, 

I still believe the weapon of choice for -- and the one that is 

really the most difficult to defeat -- is still an improvised 

explosive device probably in checked baggage, given the number 

of checked bags that pass through the system every day, and the 

fact that there are bombers, very artful bombers out there, who 
can make those almost undetectable, and with out some sort of a 

person, but an automated system that would alert us to it. 

 And so until we really have those out there 

deployed -- and not only here, but also, as I mentioned in my 

statement, abroad, because we have got to have parallel systems 

over there or all we are going to do is squeeze the bubble here, 

and it will pop out over there. I think that is really the most 

important. And then also containers. We really need to get some 

containers. It was coming on line when I was there in '91, we 

pushed it further, and we still don't have any deployed, except 

for a few out there as test cases. We need to get busy on that. 

 But we must also know, and you know Mr. Roemer 

especially, that once you close out one avenue then there will 

be a new threat vector as sure as anything. For example, when 

they talk about future threats in our profiles and what we were 

seeking on passengers, it used to be a male, and particularly 

from an Arab nation and a certain age and everything else, 

excluding females. Now from what we now see coming out of the 

Middle East, we have to include the females, don't we? We can't 

exclude those. That's an example. 

 We started thinking in my last year there, Listen, we 

are going to have EDS out there some day, and what are they 

going to do? And what we were already seeing was an emerging 

threat of MANPADs, or surface-to-air missiles that we were 

receiving out of places like Athens. They had knocked down a 

couple of airplanes in Africa-- cargo, not commercial -- and 

clearly that was going to be kind of on the horizon, 

particularly when we closed that avenue, and we had to start at 

least intellectually beginning to figure out what we were going 

to do. So I still think that is the greatest threat. I think 

the cargo business is more kind of nuisance, panic, smaller 

bombs that we may have to face out there that -- not 

catastrophic loss of an airplane necessarily, but just to tell 

the American people, this is, you know, we are still capable of 

doing this at a fairly low risk way of introducing something. 

 MR. KEAN: Senator Gorton? 

 MR. GORTON: Mr. McHale, I have a question that came 

here from a Senate office. It's really quite interesting: What 

percentage of mid- and senior level staff at TSA have actually 

worked physical security at an airport? 
 MR. MCHALE: I don't have a percentage for you. Quite 

a few at different places. Our federal security director in 

Phoenix is the former head of the Phoenix police unit that ran 

that. Our federal security director, that ran the airport unit 

in Seattle is a former employee of the FAA civil aviation 

security. We have a lot of people who have got military 

security backgrounds. Some of them provided airbase security. 

We have a lot of people with security backgrounds and law 

enforcement backgrounds. I don't have a specific percentage for 

you on that. 

 MR. KEAN: I have one question. This is a question I 

guess that the public ought to be interested in. People go 

through airports a lot see certain people pulled out of line. 

We had witnesses yesterday who said what we should be really 

concentrating on is people, not things, and indicated I gather a 

form of profiling is what we should be after now. Well, right 

now we are pulling out grandmothers and grandfathers and teenage 

girls and people who it's very hard to conceive of any threat. 

I've been pulled out a couple of times, but maybe I fit. But 

what is it? People are interested. Why are these people pulled 

out who look like no threat whatsoever? 

 MR. MCHALE: Two reasons. One is the CAPPS I system 

does and also some of the watch lists have -- the CAPPS I system 

does result in a fairly high number of false positives. Plus, 

the watch lists have a lot of common names on it. The third 

most normal reason people are pulled out is because there may be 

some sort of alarm or some sort of indication they are not sure 

what's in the bag or whatever it is. We need to remember that 

terrorists have used dupes. Perhaps the most famous one was the 

Irish tourist in Israel who became pregnant and whose 

Palestinian fiance hid a bomb in her checked baggage, and 

luckily the Israeli security agency talked to her, uncovered 

that. That's a very famous story, but it's one that reminds us 

that dupes are out there and we see that quite frequently as a 

fairly common, potential tactic. 

 Also, there is no easy ready profile of a terrorist. 

You need to look at a variety of things. In Israel there have 

been 65-year-old suicide bombers. So we need to think about all 

of that. We have had -- the IRA used to smuggle explosives in 

the bottom of children's strollers under sleeping babies. So we 

cannot fall asleep. We need to look at a wide range of things. 

But do we pull over too many grandmothers and too many kids? 

Yes. 
 MR. KEAN: Last question from Secretary Lehman. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Well, I -- you stole my thunder on that 

one, because --

 MR. KEAN: Sorry. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Because I thought that was one of the most 

telling things that came out of yesterday's testimony that it's 

all very well we have to concentrate on counting things and 

metrics and things that are measurable and X-raying and so 

forth. But we have been overlooking, and I agree with Mr. May, 

the industry spokesman who made this point, we have got to look 

at people. And as another witness yesterday was pointing out, 

it's the other side of the coin that General Steele was saying 

on the people of our side of the fence. You have got to look at 

the human being and people that fit a profile, not because the 

computer spits them out, although you can use that too, but 

because if there is an Arab, a young Arab male or female, and a 

little old lady from Pasadena, you pick the Arab to pull aside 

and talk to him. Talk to him as a human being -- not measure 

him or see if he's carrying a knife. Because as the point is 

made, an effective well-trained terrorist doesn't need a knife, 

doesn't need a box cutter. 

 So it worries me. Your testimony, Mr. McHale, worries 

me that the system is once again falling prey to the metrics, 

the fallacy of metrics, as opposed to the human factor that 

General Steele was --

 MR. MCHALE: Well, I think a lot of the testimony -- my 

testimony certainly in the questions I've answered, but just 

listening to the testimony and reading some of the ports from 

yesterday's testimony, often focuses on the screening checkpoint 

and the screeners and what they do. And I think that gives you 

a false impression of what aviation security is all about. It 

is perimeters within perimeters. We have intelligence, we have 

intelligence reporting. They tell us what to look for. We have 

airport police who are trained in surveillance detection. Our 

federal air marshals are trained in surveillance detection, 

looking at people who may well be planning or surveiling an 

airport. We deal with obviously the checkpoints. We try to 

train our people about what to look for. In addition to that we 

have obviously the air marshals. We have the hardened cockpit 

doors today that are hard to get through. Frankly, we have the 

passengers. Somebody referred to that earlier today, and I 
think we have to recognize that the passengers themselves are a 

part of our security. And then we have the armed pilots. 

 What I regard this as is a series of hurdles. I think 

if you look at security as a series of hurdles going all the way 

out to the farthest reaches of the intelligence community, 

including the movement of money. At some point a terrorist must 

pop up over those hurdles. And our hope in security is that we 

catch them when they pop over one of those hurdles. No one 

hurdle is going to be enough. You have to have a whole system. 

You have to work it as a whole system and keep the bad guys off 

the plane. 

 MR. LEHMAN: How can you assure us that the system you 

have, which sounds very good in description, isn't just as 

toothless as the system that preceded it, which we heard from 

witness after witness really had no teeth -- fines ended up 

being a tenth of what was assessed, lobbying pressures prevented 

the issuing of rules, things like the locked doors that went 

into the memory hole over time. What teeth do you have that FAA 

didn't have before 9/11? 

 MR. MCHALE: I think that the best thing that we have 

is people, and people who are reminded and remember 9/11. That 

is ultimately what is going to be about. 

MR. LEHMAN: They don't have any more teeth? 

 MR. MCHALE: Well, we have more teeth. I mean, we have 

a lot more federal presence. We have very good, very senior 

people who are the heads of security at all our major airports. 

 MR. LEHMAN: Though what I'm talking about is 

enforcement when, as you said, you have got to keep the industry 

as an essential partner. If after things settle down,

hopefully, and there are no more incidents, a couple of years go 

by, just like after the '95 and the Pan Am 103, the doors start 

swinging open again, people start forgetting. And even though 

the red teams -- and you know my last question -- I know you 

want to talk about red teams, because you made a great 

reputation as being very aggressive when you were there and very 

effective with the kind of red team approach. But there has 

been no real teeth in enforcing people who get negligent. I'm 

not talking about the people who work for TSA. I am talking 

about the industry, the airport people. How are you going to 

put the fear of God in them that if they get complacent, or they 
talk themselves into thinking that something is not cost 

effective -- therefore we don't have to pay attention to it? 

 MR. MCHALE: Well, you know, I'm not actually all that 

familiar with what the teeth were of the FAA before. So let me 

tell you what our teeth are, and you can decide whether we have 

more. I do know that the civil penalties have been increased, 

that we can assess the amounts the penalties have been 

increased. But they are still $25,000 per violation for an air 

carrier, and $10,000 per violation for a passenger. You can 

actually pick up a lot of violations if you go after somebody. 

 But in addition to that we do have the authority given 

to the administrator by the Aviation and Transportation Security 

Act to prohibit a flight coming into the United States. We have 

turned flights around. We have done a significant amount of 

reverse screening. We have delayed flights. We have dumped 

passengers off flights for re-screening if appropriate. There 

are a lot of different things we can do. I can tell you when 

you have a breach of a concourse, and you dump the entire 

concourse to re-screen all the passengers, that is a multimillion dollar impact on the airline, if it's a big concourse. 

So there are a lot of -- and we have done a lot of that. I 

mean, there's a lot of those kinds of things. I do not know the 

extent to which FAA had all those things available to them or 

used them in the past. 

 MR. LEHMAN: General Steele, red teams. 

 MR. STEELE: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Also, let 

me just clarify something that Mary Schiavo said. She talked 

about her red teams. I don't think she understood. She didn't 

have red teams. She was the IG and she had inspectors, but they 

were not the red teams that we had had which really were former 

counterintelligence people, a lot of experience in the field, 

who used all the guile and everything else, which made it even 

more embarrassing when her inspectors were able to penetrate. 

But, nevertheless, they really weren't in the sense of the word 

red teams who were going to out to really evaluate the system 

and give you an honest answer. 

 My view is that, yes, certainly TSA needs its red teams 

to be able to give feedback on equipment buys, policy decisions 

and that sort of thing. But you also need -- and I think 

perhaps -- and I've given this a lot of thought, and I want you 

to know it's a serious proposal. In fact, I started thinking 

about it when the the House bill and the Senate bill were out 
there and you remember the House bill still kept the private 

sector versus the large number of people. 

 My feeling was then you did not probably have to create 

a huge new work force of federal people, that you could probably 

still use the system. But to build in it a very, very robust 

red team capability that ought to be not only just aviation, but 

probably all modes of transportation. And I would maybe put it 

under the secretary of Homeland Security versus the TSA. In 

other words, a more independent view. You would still need 

strict protocols. This is not cowboy stuff. I mean, you are 

going to keep them tight, and you probably have to rotate them 

around. But you would send them out to evaluate let's say an 

airport. And if in their findings that there are serious gaps, 

and particularly if more than two or even three layers had 

failed and continued to fail, and that that becomes kind of a 

consistent report, then that secretary -- it would have to be a 

Cabinet officer -- notifies the secretary of transportation that 

you either get that fixed in 48 hours or we are shutting you 

down. And you will shut down maybe perhaps that terminal, 

perhaps that entire airport, or perhaps that cargo area or maybe 

an airline. But that's the time you've got to get it fixed, and 

we'll be back. And then you do it. In my former life of a 

Marine I learned the lesson early that there's no lesson in the 

second kick of a mule. There's a lesson in the first one. But 

this beast has kicked us now a couple of times, and it's like 

this a couple of other times. And I'm really hoping that your 

commission is going to be able to get a hobble around it this 

time. And I offer that as very constructive means of doing 

this. We do this internationally. Did you know -- I mean, if 

you look at the Foreign Airport Assessment Act, and we didn't do 

it in quite such a dramatic way, but we have a means where our 

inspectors, the TSA inspectors today find the airport in Athens 

for example not meeting the ICAO minimum standards on one of 

their inspections, and the secretary of Transportation issues a 

warning through the State Department that they've got 90 days to 

get that, and we'll work with them. And we did this a number of 

times. I was there in Bogota, and we did it in Barcelona during 

the Olympics, because there was a lot of construction and the 

place leaked like a sieve. It was -- so you have -- and then 

you do work with them and they've got 90 days. And if they pull 

up their socks and earnestly pull that in there, then you may or 

may not. If they don't, then advisories start going out, and 

then the secretary of Transportation says no U.S. airplane will 

fly into your airport. Boy, that gets them busy. So there are 

incentives for doing that, and it can't be just done 

arbitrarily, and it's got to be kind of worked out. But I think 
we are at that point right now, and it's got to be done at the 

highest level, because we know the costs. And I think that 

would be a terrific way to be able to kind of keep this 

complacency from coming back. 

 MR. KEAN: General Steele. Thank you. I'm glad we 

got that in, because that's important. I want to thank the 

witnesses very much, General Steele, Mr. McHale. I'm glad, by 

the way, that all the witnesses over the last couple of days 

have been with us and have done it in open session, because I 

think it's very important whenever we can in our work that the 

American people are allowed to see the evidence and see the 

kinds of things we're discovering. 

 I would remind all of those who are interested in the 

work of our commission that we are still in our early stages, 

but we will be issuing our final report just not much over a 

year from today. So with the help of the kind of people we have 

had with us the last few days, both as witnesses and the 

audience, have increased confidence that we will meet that 

deadline and have a report that the American people can be proud 

of. So thank you all very, very much. And thank you all for 

coming to be with us. 

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