Tapes show confusion in U.S. military on 9/11 - Americas - International Herald Tribune

Very strange, eh?

Tapes show confusion in U.S. military on 9/11 - Americas - International Herald Tribune:

WASHINGTON - Newly disclosed tapes offer evidence of the widespread confusion within the military as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were being carried out, further undermining contentions by the Pentagon that it moved quickly to try to intercept and shoot down one or more of the hijacked jets.

When matched with the timeline of the attacks, the tapes make clear that information about the hijackings was slow to reach the military and that much of the information that did reach air force commanders was faulty.

The tapes were provided under subpoena to the independent commission that investigated the attacks, and parts of them had previously been made public by that commission.

But the full collection of nearly 30 hours of tapes from the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, were released by the Pentagon last year to Michael Bronner, a producer of the recent film 'United 93,' who described them in detail in an article posted this week on the Web site of Vanity Fair magazine, www.vanityfair.com. The Web site includes links to excerpts from the actual tapes.

The tapes demonstrate that for most of the morning of Sept. 11, the airspace over New York and Washington was essentially undefended and that jet fighters scrambled to intercept the hijacked planes were involved in a fruitless chase for planes that had already crashed.