Flugabwehr

On the air side, NORAD continues to provide aerospace surveillance, warning and control; but since September 11 it has broadened its focus to cover not only threats that originate from outside of North America, but to watch for internal ones as well.^[1]

Although Norad has its own radar system to track aircraft over the US, its prime task is to watch for hostile aircraft approaching America from outside. "We assume anything originating in US airspace is friendly," said a spokesman. ^[2]

The NORAD Papers

Testifying before the 9/11 Commission General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the commission in response to NORAD’s mission, "I can't answer the hypothetical. It's more - it's the way that we were directed to posture, looking outward."1 This is utterly false. As we will see below NORAD, since its inception, was tasked to monitor and intercept aircraft flying over American and Canadian air space seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Members of the 9/11 Truth Movement found General Myers’ testimony on the capabilities of NORAD on 9/11 to be surprising, since it was long assumed that NORAD’s mission was more than "looking outward". However, except for the notable exception of David Ray Griffin2, the 9/11 Truth Movement has been negligent in producing any documents that would confirm their suspicion that NORAD was tasked with watching over and intercepting errant aircraft in American skies before 9/11; that NORAD’s mission was more robust than "looking outwards". The following pre-9/11 citations conclusively documents the true capabilities of NORAD on the morning of 9/11.

"Aircraft flying over our air space are monitored seven days a week, 24 hours a day." -- NORAD: Air National Guard manning stations across the country; National Guard Association of the United States, Sep. 1997 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3731/is_199709/ai_n8766326 "The NORAD mission is threefold. NORAD's first responsibility is to provide SURVEILLANCE AND CONTROL [emphasis mine] of the airspace covering North America, specifically the airspace of Canada and the United States. This mission is based on agreements between the two governments…. The second part of NORAD's mission is to provide the NCAs with tactical warning and attack assessment of an aerospace attack against North America. This information is essential to providing those in command with information to aid them in making decisions on how to respond to an attack against North America. NORAD's third responsibility is to provide an appropriate response TO ANY FORM OF AN AIR ATTACK [emphasis mine]. NORAD was created to provide a defense against the threat from air-breathing aircraft, specifically the threat from long-range bombers. However, over the years the threat has changed. Now NORAD must provide an appropriate response to a multitude of threats, to include the air-launched cruise missile (ALCM) and the sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM)."

-- NORAD AIR DEFENSE OVERVIEW; Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, Syracuse University, pre-19953 http://www.npac.syr.edu/projects/civ/vanguard/C2Demo/OPRef.html

This monitoring and control mission is called "air sovereignty". "One ongoing mission of the Battle Management Center is to coordinate "air sovereignty" efforts, MONITORING EVERY AIRCRAFT THAT ENTERS [emphasis mine] U.S. or Canadian airspace -- some 2.5 million a year. NORAD is asked to INVESTIGATE [emphasis mine] aircraft that do not file flight plans, contact ground controllers or identify themselves with TRANSPONDERS [emphasis mine]." -- Cheyenne Mountain: America's underground watchtower; CNN Interactive, 1999 http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/experience/the.bomb/route/01.cheyenne/ 4 "NORAD defines "sovereign airspace" as: the airspace over a nation's territory, internal waters, and territorial seas. NORAD's territorial seas extend 12 miles from the continental United States, Alaska, and Canada. Sovereign airspace above a nation's territory is unlimited." -- NORAD AIR DEFENSE OVERVIEW; Northeast Parallel Architectures Center, Syracuse University, pre-1995 http://www.npac.syr.edu/projects/civ/vanguard/C2Demo/OPRef.html "The Air Operations Center (AOC) (also known as the Air Defense Operations Center – ADOC) maintains CONSTANT SURVEILLANCE OF NORTH AMERICAN AIRSPACE TO PREVENT OVERFLIGHT [emphasis mine] by hostile aircraft. It tracks over 2.5 million aircraft annually. The ADOC collects and consolidates surveillance information on suspected drug-carrying aircraft entering or operating WITHIN [emphasis mine] North America, and provides this information to counternarcotics agencies." -- Cheyenne Mountain Complex; Federation of American Scientists, 1999 http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/c3i/cmc.htm "In 1998, Canada posses the ability to detect, identify, and if necessary intercept aircraft over Canadian territory. The "Canadianisation" of NORAD operations over Canada is complete. Though we still rely heavily on the Americans for the Integrated Tactical Warning and Attack Assessment and mutual defense, we have successfully transitioned on at least one of the three ore functions of NORAD [surveillance and control of sovereign airspace]." -- Canadian Aerospace Sovereignty: In Pursuit of a Comprehensive Capability, by Maj François Malo; Department of National Defence (Canada), 1998 http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/canada/0056.htm As is plainly obvious from the pre-9/11 literature quoted above on the capabilities of NORAD (for both the United States and Canada), the official accounts of NORAD’s capabilities before 9/11 were a lie; a monstrous story concocted by the Pentagon and its controllers in the White House to explain away the non-response of NORAD on 9/11.

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1: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/071204_final_fraud.shtml 2. Griffin, David Ray, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11, 2004; and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions And Distortions, 2004. 3. NORAD AIR DEFENSE OVERVIEW was written before January 1995 as determined by the following dated information within the chapter, "The four CONR sectors are designated as the Southeast, Northeast, Northwest, and the Southwest sectors. Each sector has a Sector Operations Control Center (SOCC) which is responsible for operations within its geographical area of responsibility and which reports directly to the CONUS ROCC." On January 1, 1995 the Northwest Air Defense Sector consolidated with the Southwest Air Defense Sector, its counterpart at March Air Force Base, California, to become the Western Air Defense Sector,

hence NORAD AIR DEFENSE OVERVIEW was written before January 1995.

According to Mineta an unidentified, young man comes to Cheney and says:

“The plane is 50 miles out.”
Mineta confers with Belger, who is at the headquarters:
”We are watching this target on the radar (…).”
The young man continues to update Cheney:
“The plan is 30 miles out”
and when he gets down to
“The plane is 10 miles out”
he asks Cheney:
“Do the orders still stand?”
In response Cheney:
“Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?”

9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003

In some of the more unusual testimony at the hearing, McKinley said pilots of two unarmed jets scrambled out of Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and intended to crash their planes into Flight 93, the Shanksville plane, if they could not get it to deviate from its flight path.

^[3] US pilots were forced to take to the skies without any weapons and might have had to deliberately crash into a hijacked plane to prevent casualties on the ground. "I had determined, of course, that with only four aircraft we cannot defend the whole north eastern United States," he said. "Some of them would have just gotten in the air possibly without any armament onboard. "If you had to stop an aircraft sometimes the only way to stop an aircraft is with your own aircraft if you don't have any weapons. 6

"It was very possible that they [the pilots] would have been asked to give their lives themselves to try to prevent further attacks if need be." ^[4]