Context of 'October 2, 2001: Remote Controlled Passenger Airplane Flew Before 9/11, Despite Claims to the Contrary'

President George Herbert Walker Bush. [Source: White House]George H. W. Bush replaces Ronald Reagan and remains president until January 1993. Many of the key members in his government will have important positions again when his son George W. Bush becomes president in 2001. For instance, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell later becomes Secretary of State, and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney later becomes vice president.

Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Ronald Reagan

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

Joseph Cirincione. [Source: Takoma / Silver Spring Voice]Joseph Cirincione, an expert on proliferation issues and national security, is detailed by Congress to find out just how well the Patriot missile performed in combat during the Gulf War. George H.W. Bush told a group of Raytheon employees, who helped manufacture the Patriot missile system, that the system had performed admirably during the war: “Forty-two [Iraqi] SCUD [missiles] engaged, 41 intercepted.” (Some sources later cite Bush as claiming that the figures were 43 of 45.) Television viewers around the globe were familiar with video footage of Patriot batteries blazing away at the sky during the middle of the night; such images became icons of the technological success of the war. However, Cirincione finds a very different story for the Patriot. His investigations of Defense Department records shows that the Patriot actually only brought down two to four SCUDs in 44 intercept attempts, or about a 10 percent success rate. The video footage rerun so often by American news broadcasters was of Patriots exploding in midflight. Nevertheless, Congressional funding for the Patriot and other missile defense systems rose dramatically after the war.
Pentagon Experts Knew System Faulty - Experts in the Pentagon admitted to Cirincione that they knew the Patriot system didn’t work as early as 1991, when it was deployed to Iraq. Cirincione tells a reporter, “Everybody thought that missile defense could work” after the erroneous reports of the Patriot’s success. “So it gave the whole program, theater and strategic missile defense, a new lease on life, and cost us billions of dollars more in research and programs that still haven’t proved to be viable.… The power of that television image, the power of that myth of the Patriot success, proved to be very powerful indeed. Studies and scientific inquiries alone can’t overcome the popular misperception.”
Army Incensed with Findings - The Army is incensed by Cirincione’s findings, he will recall in 2004. “The Army insisted that they knew they had some problems with the Patriot, but it didn’t serve any purpose to make these public. We would just be aiding the enemy. And that they would take care of it in the course of normal product improvement.” Why did the Army so adamantly oppose Cirincione’s findings? “The Patriot is a multi-billion dollar system. There’s a lotta money involved. There’s a lotta careers involved.” Cirincione will say that the Army continued to claim that the Patriot was a success even after he presented them with his findings until 2001, when it finally admitted the Patriot’s poor performance. [PBS Frontline, 10/10/2002; Carter, 2004, pp. 52; CBS News, 6/27/2004]

Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Raytheon, US Department of the Army, George Herbert Walker Bush, Joseph Cirincione

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion

James Bath. [Source: Time Life Images]The FBI investigates connections between James Bath and George W. Bush, according to published reports. Bath is Salem bin Laden’s official representative in the US. Bath’s business partner contends that, “Documents indicate that the Saudis were using Bath and their huge financial resources to influence US policy,” since George W. Bush’s father is president. George W. Bush denies any connections to Saudi money. What becomes of this investigation is unclear, but no charges are ever filed. [Houston Chronicle, 6/4/1992]

Entity Tags: James Bath, Federal Bureau of Investigation, George W. Bush, Salem bin Laden

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

President Bill Clinton. [Source: Library of Congress]Bill Clinton replaces George H. W. Bush as US president. He remains president until January 2001.

Entity Tags: William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, George Herbert Walker Bush

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Former President George H. W. Bush meets with the bin Laden family on behalf of the Carlyle Group. The meeting takes place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. [Sunday Herald (Glasgow), 10/7/2001]

Entity Tags: George Herbert Walker Bush, Carlyle Group, Bin Laden Family

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

After a successful test, the FAA makes an enhancement to the Global Positioning System (GPS) called Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) available to some aviation users. WAAS improves the accuracy of GPS data by correcting some known measuring errors. “The system demonstrated one to two meters horizontal accuracy and two to three meters vertical accuracy throughout the contiguous United States,” says the FAA. The system will be operated by Raytheon. [Federal Aviation Administration, 8/24/2000] The deployment of WAAS is only one of many technological advances that could lead to pilotless aircraft navigation, including takeoff and landing. Tests have shown that landing by autopilot is possible (see also August 25, 2001). [Spinoff, 1998; Federal Aviation Administration, 8/13/1999; Rockwell Collins, 10/5/1999] WAAS also has non-aviation uses. It will be used during the rescue effort at Ground Zero. “[A]t the World Trade Center, rescue teams used WAAS to survey the site during the recovery program,” according to Avionics Magazine. [Avionics Magazine, 2/1/2002] After 9/11 there will be some speculation that the hijackers used GPS to navigate to their targets (see (September 12-17, 2001)). Some press reports will claim that 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta was at the WTC the day before the attacks to gather GPS data (see September 10, 2001).

Entity Tags: Federal Aviation Administration, Raytheon

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

George W. Bush taking the oath of office. [Source: White House/ Wally McNamara]George W. Bush is inaugurated as president, replacing President Bill Clinton. [New York Times, 1/21/2001]

Entity Tags: George W. Bush

Timeline Tags: Hurricane Katrina, Complete 911 Timeline

The US Air Force successfully tests the use of a military technology component that will land planes entirely by autopilot. The component is installed on a commercial airliner. The test takes place at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico and uses a Boeing 727. The component for automated landing used by the military is called the Joint Precision Approach and Landing System, or JPALS. The JPALS is a differential GPS ground station developed by Raytheon. It was designed to become interoperable with civilian systems utilizing the same GPS-based technology. The civilian counterpart to the JPALS is known as the Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS). Both the JPALS and the LAAS use GPS data sufficiently accurate to allow a plane’s autopilot to land safely without human intervention. The test demonstrates that “the JPALS and LAAS will provide an interoperable landing capability for military and civil applications,” according to a Raytheon announcement (see also August 2000). [SpaceDaily, 10/1/2001]

Entity Tags: Raytheon

Timeline Tags: US Military

At Boston’s Logan Airport, during the morning, businesswoman Jan Shineman is checking in for Flight 11 to Los Angeles, when she notices a man resembling Mohamed Atta behaving suspiciously. She later recalls him wearing “summery, holiday-type clothes… and he had no baggage, just a folder with a notebook.” She sees him again at the gate for Flight 11, “taking notes, watching the pilots in the cockpit through the window by the gate. They were running through their pre-flight checks.” She decides, “if he had boarded I would have told the captain about him, he was so odd and frightening.” [Guardian, 7/5/2002; Corbin, 2003, pp. 229] Atta will return to Logan Airport and board Flight 11 to Los Angeles on 9/11. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 1-2]

Entity Tags: Logan Airport, Jan Shineman, Mohamed Atta

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

Credit card receipts later discovered by the FBI apparently show that alleged lead hijacker Mohamed Atta is in Manhattan on this day. According to FBI agents, he visits the observation deck on the 107th floor of the south WTC tower. CNN will report, “Officials speculate Atta may have been in New York… to program the towers’ location into a global positioning system.” A global positioning system (GPS) uses satellite technology to pinpoint any location on Earth. According to the FBI, Atta bought himself such a device, costing about $500, by mail order. [ABC News, 5/22/2002; CNN, 5/22/2002] Investigators will reportedly consider this trip necessary, “because they believe the hijackers were too inexperienced to handle the jumbo jets without help.” [New York Daily News, 5/22/2002] BBC reporter Jane Corbin points out that Atta was also witnessed at Boston’s Logan Airport the previous morning (see September 9, 2001), where he could have entered start-point co-ordinates for his 9/11 flight into the GPS device. [Corbin, 2003, pp. 230] However, there is no mention of Atta’s New York visit in the 9/11 Commission Report. According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Atta spent the previous night at the Milner Hotel in Boston, and then shortly after noon on this day is in Boston where he picks up Abdulaziz Alomari and drives to Portland, Maine. [US Congress, 9/26/2002] The 200-mile journey from Boston to New York takes approximately four hours by car. [MIT, 5/25/2006] So if Mueller’s account is correct, it seems difficult to comprehend Atta having time to travel to New York, go up the WTC, make purchases on his credit card, and then return to Boston, all in the space of one morning. An article in the New York Post will in fact claim that the person in Manhattan was “a distinguished renal and gene specialist at Johns Hopkins University Hospital” in Baltimore, Maryland. This man, who is also called Mohamed Atta, happened to have visited New York in the days before 9/11, “for a whirlwind weekend with his new bride.” The article claims that it had erroneously been reported that alleged hijacker Mohamed Atta “was casing the Twin Towers days before Sept. 11—even after the FBI concluded it was just the kidney doctor, who had planned to take his wife to Windows on the World for dinner in the North Tower.” [New York Post, 5/28/2002]

Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Mohamed Atta

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

After arriving at FAA headquarters on September 12, Tony Ferrante, the manager of FAA investigations, spends several days working out the movements of the four hijacked planes. He is astonished at the precision with which they were flown towards their targets, later saying: “[I]t was almost as though it was choreographed.… It’s not as easy as it looks to do what they did at 500 miles an hour.” He concludes that either the hijackers were better pilots than originally thought, or they were aided by additional equipment such as radios to communicate among the four planes or handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) equipment. [Freni, 2003, pp. 74 and 76] 9/11 Commission investigators will in fact later speculate that the hijackers may have purchased GPS devices, “so they could determine the latitude and longitude of their intended targets.” According to a summary of a Commission interview, “Any autopilot changes made by the terrorist pilots to assist them in navigating to predetermined coordinates would simply have been to enter a specific location such as Newark or Reagan National” Airport. However, airline personnel will tell the 9/11 Commission investigators that “Entering changes to the autopilot is something that terrorist pilots probably would not have been trained or able to do.” Even a United Airlines senior pilot, who instructs on how to do this, says “he always has to pause before he makes such corrections to make sure to remember how to enter the change.” [9/11 Commission, 11/17/2003 ]

Entity Tags: Tony Ferrante

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

As details of the passengers on the four hijacked flights emerge, some are shown to have curious connections to the defense company Raytheon, and possibly its Global Hawk pilotless aircraft program. Stanley Hall (Flight 77) was director of program management for Raytheon Electronics Warfare. One Raytheon colleague calls him “our dean of electronic warfare.” [Associated Press, 9/25/2001] Peter Gay (Flight 11) was Raytheon’s vice president of operations for Electronic Systems and had been on special assignment to a company office in El Segundo, California. [Associated Press, 9/25/2001] Raytheon’s El Segundo’s Electronic Systems division is one of two divisions making the Global Hawk. [Intelligence Surveillance Reconaissance Journal, 3/2002] Kenneth Waldie (Flight 11) was a senior quality control engineer for Raytheon’s electronic systems. David Kovalcin (Flight 11) was a senior mechanical engineer for Raytheon’s electronic systems. [CNN, 9/2001] Herbert Homer (Flight 175) was a corporate executive working with the Department of Defense. [CNN, 9/2001; Northeastern University Voice, 12/11/2001] A surprising number of passengers, especially on Flight 77, have military connections. For instance, William E. Caswell was a Navy scientist whose work was so classified that his family knew very little about what he did each day. Says his mother, “You just learn not to ask questions.” [Chicago Tribune, 9/16/2001]

Entity Tags: Stanley Hall, William E. Caswell, Peter Gay, David Kovalcin, Kenneth Waldie, Herbert Homer

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

A Raytheon 727 lands in New Mexico in August, 2001. [Source: Associated Press]It is reported that the US company Raytheon landed a 727 six times in a military base in New Mexico without any pilots on board. This was done to test equipment making future hijackings more difficult, by allowing ground control to take over the flying of a hijacked plane. [Associated Press, 10/2/2001; Der Spiegel (Hamburg), 10/28/2001] Several Raytheon employees with possible ties to this remote control technology program appear to have been on the hijacked 9/11 flights (see September 25, 2001). Earlier in the year, a specially designed Global Hawk plane flew from the US to Australia without pilot or passengers. [Independent Television News, 4/24/2001] However, most media reports after 9/11 suggest such technology is currently impossible. For instance, the Observer quotes an expert who says that “the technology is pretty much there” but still untried. [Observer, 9/16/2001] An aviation-security expert at Jane’s Defence Weekly says this type of technology belongs “in the realms of science fiction.” [Financial Times, 9/18/2001; Economist, 9/20/2001] Even President Bush appears to deny the technology currently exists. He gives a speech after 9/11 in which he mentions that the government would give grants to research “new technology, probably far in the future, allowing air traffic controllers to land distressed planes by remote control.” [New York Times, 9/28/2001]

Entity Tags: Raytheon, George W. Bush

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline