By Craig McKee
It was the first thing that made me suspicious.
At 8:21 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, it was clear that unknown parties had hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 from Boston to Los Angeles. Fighters were unable to intercept the plane before it crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46. Seventeen minutes later, United Airlines Flight 175, also a Boston to Los Angeles run, hit the South Tower.
How could these planes reach their targets without encountering any opposition from the incredibly powerful and expensive U.S. military? Under normal circumstances, they couldn’t. But this day was anything but typical. In fact, nothing – from protocol to the laws of physics – operated as it should have on 9/11.
By the time the second tower had been hit, it was already known that American Airlines Flight 77 out of Washington D.C. had been hijacked. That flight, too, managed to fly around the northeast United States for more than 40 minutes before it allegedly flew into the Pentagon at 9:38 a.m.
Simply issuing orders to stand down would not have been enough to accomplish the “false flag” mission without the official story having even bigger holes in it than it does now. No, there had to be something going on that day that would provide a plausible excuse for the shocking failure of the military to protect New York City and Washington D.C.
And that something was war games. Several of them. Exercises that simulated planes being flown into buildings like the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. It happened on 9/11. Quite the coincidence, don’t you think?
Here are the main ones:
Amalgam Virgo (started in June 2001)
- This exercise considered the possibility of an airliner being flown into the Capitol Building and into Tindall Air Force Base
- It considered two hijacks happening at the same time
Vigilant Guardian (started Sept. 10, 2001)
- Staged by NORAD and the Joint Chiefs of Staff
- Simulated hijacked planes in the northeast U.S.
- False inputs were placed on the radar screens of military controllers at the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS)
- Caused confusion about whether controllers were seeing real planes or false blips for the exercise
Global Guardian
- Exercises (which included Vigilant Guardian) were usually held in October, but in 2001 were moved to early September. They went back to October the following year
- Run by NORAD, in co-operation with Barksdale AFB in Louisiana and Offut AFB in Nebraska.
Northern Guardian
- Involved sending six fighters and 70 people from Langley Air Force Base to Iceland.
Northern Vigilance
- Moved fighters to bases in Canada and Alaska to monitor Russian exercises
Vigilant Warrior
- A live hijack drill that simulated planes going in and out of radar
- Co-ordinated by NORAD and the Joint Chiefs
National Reconnaissance Office drill
- Conducted by a team from the CIA in which planes are accidentally flown into NRO headquarters in Washington D.C.
- Emergency evacuation drill took people away from watching satellite feeds
- Drill began at 8:45 a.m., just as the first tower was being hit
Tripod 2
- This was a bio-warfare exercise for lower Manhattan, conducted by the City of New York and the Department of Justice at Pier 29, was to start on Sept. 12.
And there was more. Three F-16 fighters from Andrews AFB (just 15 miles from the Pentagon) had been sent 180 miles away for a training exercise in North Carolina. And the FBI hostage unit and all their equipment (including helicopters) were involved in a two-day exercise in Monterrey, California on 9/11.
It has been reported by Michael Ruppert and others that the war exercises were co-ordinated through Dick Cheney, although some dispute this. What we do know is that George W. Bush placed Cheney in control of domestic counterterrorism operations in May 2001.
It’s interesting that Cheney was in Washington that day, while the president was out of trouble in a classroom in Florida. It’s also interesting that before returning to Washington on 9/11, President Bush flew to the Barksdale and Offut bases – the same bases involved in Global Guardian.
The idea that all of these exercises and simulations were going on that day can’t be a coincidence. And the pattern was eerily repeated with the London bombings in 2005 when exercises were under way simulating bombings in three underground stations the same day as all three were bombed.
Some think the exercises were intended to cripple the response to 9/11 by confusing military controllers and other personnel. I believe this is true, but I also believe they were staged to create plausible excuses for the lack of response. But either way, there was a concerted effort to prevent any fighters from intercepting anything.