WASHINGTON – Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.
Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources.
Some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.
In an article scheduled to be on newsstands today, Vanity Fair magazine reports aspects of the commission debate – though it does not mention the possible criminal referrals – and publishes lengthy excerpts from military audiotapes recorded on Sept. 11. ABC News aired excerpts Tuesday night.
For more than two years after the attacks, officials with North American Aerospace Command and the Federal Aviation Administration provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings. Authorities suggested that U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington.
In fact, the commission reported a year later, audiotapes from NORAD’s Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and at one point chased a phantom aircraft – American Airlines Flight 11 – long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center.
Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold and Col. Alan Scott told the commission that NORAD had begun tracking United Flight 93 at 9:16 a.m., but the commission determined that the airliner was not hijacked until 12 minutes later. The military was not aware of the flight until after it had crashed in Pennsylvania.
These and other discrepancies did not become clear until the commission, forced to use subpoenas, obtained audiotapes from the FAA and NORAD, officials said.
A Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday that the inspector general’s office would soon release a report addressing whether testimony delivered to the commission was “knowingly false.”
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