USA: Yahoo! News — Response to 9/11 chaotic: “Neither did the FAA alert the military to the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77–until just minutes before the plane slammed into the Pentagon, according to the report. Likewise, the headquarters staff failed to act on a suggestion from the Boston regional control center for an immediate national alert to aircraft to secure their cockpits against intruders. Twelve minutes later, hijackers took over United Flight 93, the final plane captured by terrorists.
’It just seems to me that those 12 critical minutes were a real opportunity to potentially do something about that fourth flight,’ said commission member Timothy Roemer, a former congressman from Indiana. Another commissioner, former Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, declared that the FAA ‘blew it.’ As Sept. 11 unfolded, it often was lower-level FAA employees who bypassed the chain of command and took the initiative to respond, according to the report. Immediately after the Pentagon was struck, a manager at the national air traffic command center ordered all commercial aircraft grounded on his own authority while higher-ups were still debating such a move, the report said. ”
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