Holy shit..Ptech runs the FAA when the air traffic controllers are not!

[Dig]

Air Traffic Controller on Phone During Hudson Crash (Update1)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=anrLkbMmv5qc
By Angela Greiling Keane

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- The air traffic controller handling the small plane that crashed with a helicopter above the Hudson River was on the telephone at the time of the crash, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The controller’s supervisor also wasn’t in the building, as required, at the time of the Aug. 8 crash that killed nine, the FAA said today in a statement.

“While we have no reason to believe at this time that these actions contributed to the accident, this kind of conduct is unacceptable and we have placed the employees on administrative leave and have begun disciplinary proceedings,” the FAA said in the statement.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the accident, which involved a Piper PA-32R-300 single-engine plane carrying three people and a Eurocopter AS 350 BA operated by Liberty Helicopter Tours of New York that had six aboard.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


PTECH MUST BE INVESTIGATED ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dig]

FAA Suspends Air Traffic Controllers
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125021318778231159.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
By ANDY PASZTOR

The Federal Aviation Administration has suspended two air traffic controllers in the wake of last Saturday's fatal midair collision over the Hudson River, but the agency said their actions didn't "contribute" to the accident. In a statement Thursday, the FAA said the crash probe revealed that the controller handling the Piper propeller plane that collided with a sightseeing helicopter at low altitude was engaged in an "apparently inappropriate" phone conversation at the time of the accident. An air-traffic control supervisor wasn't on site as required, according to the agency.

The crash resulted in nine fatalities and sparked a public debate over possibly restricting small plane traffic over the river, where pilots using visual flight rules aren't required to be in contact with controllers. The Piper had just taken off from the airport in Teterboro, N.J. before the crash. According to the FAA, there is "no reason to believe" that the allegedly improper actioms of the controllers "contributed" to the midair crash.

Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

[Dig]

Ptech and all risk management systems including smart systems must be investigated ASAP.
They could easily create these type of scenarios anywhere.

WTF?

[Monkeypox]

Ptech and all risk management systems including smart systems must be investigated ASAP.
They could easily create these type of scenarios anywhere.

WTF?

Did you watch last season of 24?  A terrorist group had a computer chip that allowed them to hack into the country's control grid and crash airplanes or control chemical plants, etc at will.

[ridebmx]

Did you watch last season of 24?  A terrorist group had a computer chip that allowed them to hack into the country's control grid and crash airplanes or control chemical plants, etc at will.

That's why they do shows like 24, so when you tell somebody about ptech etc they just think youre full of shit and dont bother looking into it

[TheCaliKid]

Is this the same PTECH company that had the swastika logo?

[Dig]

Risk Management
http://www.tc.gc.ca/CivilAviation/risk/menu.htm


Audio-visual presentation on the Risk-based Business Model and Risk Management Principles
What is Risk?

Ask ten people what they think risk is and you will get ten different answers. It does not take a thorough search of risk literature to reveal the same problem. Definitions abound and they are all worded in slightly different ways. What is important is to understand the concepts underlying risk.

Risk is the chance of injury or loss. Insight can be gained by listening to how people refer to risk in an everyday context and, particularly, in the aviation environment. What emerges is that there are different ideas about risk, based on personal perceptions. Nonetheless, its underlying concepts remain—a chance that something is going to happen and consequences if it does.
What is Risk Management?

Risk management introduces the idea that the likelihood of an event happening can be reduced, or its consequences minimized. In Civil Aviation, the term is frequently used in the context of decision-making about how to handle situations, which affect aviation safety. Effective risk management seeks to maximize the benefits of a risk (usually a reduction in time or cost) while minimizing the risk itself.

Risk management is the process of identifying risks, assessing their implications, deciding on a course of action, and evaluating the results. Effective communications is key to the success of the process.
Why Risk Management?

Risk management is important in the Civil Aviation organization because the effectiveness of service delivery and safety monitoring depends on it. Many decisions have an immediate impact on the department’s clients. The ability to manage risk in a consistent and effective manner impacts on perceptions about the overall quality of work. With a widely-dispersed inspector population and diverse responsibilities, it is important to be able to demonstrate to the aviation community and the public that the department is committed to making good safety-related decisions.

A by-product of risk management is an improved level of comfort that resources are being allocated in the best possible way to meet safety priorities. This is especially important given the department’s shared commitment to safety with the aviation community, and that resources to meet that commitment are limited.

[Dig]

January 22, 2005
PTECH, 9/11, and USA-SAUDI TERROR - Part I
http://911citizenswatch.org/?p=436
Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 2:42 am

PROMIS Connections to Cheney Control of 9/11 Attacks Confirmed

by Jamey Hecht

With research assistance by Michael Kane

and editorial comment by Michael C. Ruppert

FTW: You said at the 9/11 Citizens’ Commission hearings, you mentioned - it’s on page 139 of transcript - that Ptech was with Mitre Corporation in the basement of the FAA for 2 years prior to 9/11 and their specific job was to look at interoperability issues the FAA had with NORAD and the Air Force, in case of an emergency.

Indira Singh: Yes, I have a good diagram for that.

FTW: And that relationship had been going on mediated by Ptech for 2 years prior to 9/11. You elsewhere say that the Secret Service is among the government entities that had a contract with Ptech. Mike Ruppert’s thesis in Crossing the Rubicon, as you know, is that the software that was running information between FAA & NORAD was superseded by a parallel, subsuming, version of itself that was being run by the Secret Service on state of the art parallel equipment in the PEOC with a nucleus of Secret Service personnel around Cheney. In your view, might it have been the case that Cheney was using Ptech to surveil the function of the people in FAA & NORAD who wanted to do their jobs on 9/11, and then intervene to turn off the legitimate response?

Indira Singh: Is it possible from a software point of view? Absolutely it’s possible. Did he (Cheney) have such a capability? I don’t know. But that’s the ideal risk scenario - to have an overarching view of what’s going on in data. That’s exactly what I wanted for JP Morgan. You know what’s ironic about this - I wanted to take my operational risk blueprint which is for an operational event going wrong and I wanted to make it generic for extreme event risk to surveil across intelligence networks. What you’re describing is something that I said, ‘boy if we had this in place maybe 9/11 wouldn’t have happened.’ When I was going down to DARPA and getting these guys excited about creating an extreme event risk blueprint to do this, I’m thinking of doing exactly what you’re saying Cheney might have already had!

***

I believe that Dick Cheney also had the ability using evolutions of the PROMIS software, to penetrate and override any other radar computer or communications system in the government.

- Mike Ruppert, in “Summation: Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury,” from Crossing The Rubicon, p.592

[Few have grasped the overall long-term significance of the saga of PROMIS software and what it has become. When I reported on it in October 2000, after meeting with and assisting members of the RCMP's National Security Staff I was aware that - in terms of secret technologies - PROMIS and its evolutions were the lynchpin of every new military, scientific and financial advance being pursued by the US government and corporate sector. PROMIS progeny have become the "operating system" underlying data management and data mining for every major technology under development in all arenas of technological advance from medicine, to finance, to surveillance, to battlefield Command, Control and Communications or C3.

In the long ordeal to secure a publisher for Crossing the Rubicon, my agent and I went through a number of publishers who expressed keen interest in the book. The problem was that almost every one we dealt with came back to us and said, "We'd like to publish the book but we need for you to remove certain things." By a great margin, it was our chapter on PROMIS and my many subsequent references to it that appeared to be public enemy number one for mainstream publishers (most owned by multi-national corporations).

By definition, PROMIS progeny are the backbone of a current DoD plan to develop a "Godlike" view of all human (or battlefield) activity from space. They are also inherently a part of the data processing being envisioned for advanced space weapons requiring machines to think as they share data in virtual real time. MIT in a recent scientific publication titled "Space Weapons: Crossing the US Rubicon"(a possible tip of the hat to my book) described a number of capabilities to which FTW referred in our October 2000 story on PROMIS, including a statement that space is "the ultimate high ground."

The MIT article also contains a reference to one of the greatest fears expressed by all who wonder what hidden technologies might be making the Neocons so brazen in their attempts at bullying the world into submission: "On the other hand, the prospect of weapons in orbit-poised to strike anywhere on the globe at any time-has elicited vigorous opposition, both in the United States and abroad."45 The Neocons have placed their faith in technologies we have only begun to evaluate and discuss, and this is an area needing much additional research by authentic journalists.

Iran is a much more industrialized and automated nation than the ruin and rubble of Iraq. What if Donald Rumsfeld believed that he could use computers through the Internet to turn off all of the power generating stations supplying Tehran? What if Dick Cheney could shut down all of the computerized pumping, pipeline, refining and chemical technology used to keep Iran's oil flowing to the rest of the world? This is how the American, British and Israeli elites (including corporations) think and how they plan.

All three countries have long, deep and continuous links to PROMIS software. As time passes it is beginning to appear that PROMIS is literally what made possible not only 9/11, but everything that has followed since and what is being planned.

Recently the New York Times published a story about how the US military was envisioning a costly new "Internet" in space to control all military operations worldwide, calling it a "God's-eye view" of battle. Called Global Information Grid or GIG, this new platform performs the exact functions we described in an FTW article more than four years ago. Then we were called delusional conspiracy theorists. Four years later we are shown to have been right on the money.

Giant, expensive technology programs like SDI and GIG are sometimes neither wasteful porkbarrels nor the actual instruments that are presented to the public; instead, they are some third thing nobody knows about. This is the way large black projects are funded.

Total Information Awareness or TIA, an Orwellian nightmare of data mining that uses PROMIS-evolved technologies and artificial intelligence, is now operating and able to incorporate vastly divergent data bases of personal information on private citizens from computer systems using different languages in near-real-time. Every bit of personal information from grocery shopping habits to driving records, credit reports, credit card transactions and medical records is now almost instantly accessible. Access will be expedited and broadened to local law enforcement agencies when what will become a national ID card comes into being. That will happen as driver's licenses are standardized nationwide (following the recent intelligence reform act) to include a simple UPC-like code that will allow approved agencies to get all of our data. The surveillance and intervention capabilities of PROMIS progeny can now be used to prohibit a credit card purchase or (soon) prevent someone from boarding a commercial aircraft. These capabilities could also be used to empty a private bank account or - when coupled with biometric face recognition technology - prevent you from making a withdrawal from your bank or even buying food.

In every one of these software applications there are two themes: machines that "talk" to each other and artificial intelligence. (Please see Crossing the Rubicon). As you will see below, these capabilities are now known to exist.

TIA has been renamed several times. We know that the first software was delivered to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2003. Its latest nom de guerre is TIE or Trusted Information Environment. According to the San Francisco Chronicle last October TIE now allows the government to access private databases without a warrant. I go one step further to assert that TIE allows access to private databases without the knowledge of the database owners, provided only one condition exists: the database can be accessed through the internet.

And although the public face of TIA pretends that these technologies have not yet been applied, we are certain with the publication of this story that the same software the government needs is already in use by private corporations - the big ones - and we remind the reader that FTW's map of the world states that the government has been turned into a franchise operation of these corporations anyway. So where's the seam?

What the courageous and brilliant Indira Singh has to tell us is a matter of monumental importance. Based upon these new revelations which confirm what I suggested in Crossing the Rubicon every American and quite likely every citizen of an industrialized nation should assume that all of these technologies are operational today. A bit of breathing room is left as I conclude that they have not been sufficiently deployed yet to monitor all citizens in real time. My best assumption is that right now perhaps a million or so high-interest Americans are under constant surveillance; all by computer technology which has proven so accurate that it can detect suspicious movements just by correlating gasoline and food purchases with bank withdrawals and utility consumption. [--MCR]

FTW readers are aware that on the morning of 9/11 NORAD was engaged in multiple war games which drew fighter jets away from the doomed airliners, and polluted air traffic control screens with false information from the exercises. One of those injected blips was the so-called “phantom Flight 11,” which appeared and persisted on control screens after the war games had been aborted.1 That would require exactly the kind of technology that Ptech (with whom Singh did business) and its partner Mitre had been providing to each of the three agencies involved: the FAA, NORAD, and - most significantly for Dick Cheney that morning - the Secret Service. In other words, one of the most central arguments in the Rubicon’s case has just been independently validated. (See Part II)

In this electrifying timeline-driven report, Wall Street whistleblower Indira Singh lays out the connections between the providers of this advanced software (derived from the PROMIS software stolen from the Inslaw corporation in the 1980s by the US Justice Department and others) and the network of terrorist financing (sustained with US blessing) that has pervaded U.S covert operations for years. That deep-political relationship is at its strongest in the Bush administration, whose Saudi and Pakistani ties go back decades.

Dick Cheney, James Baker, GHWB, Dubya, and the people in and around the once and future American ruling junta have financially live links to the Muslim Brotherhood milieu that formed part of BCCI and, more recently, al Qaeda (this is also the context of a fascinatingly influential relationship among Kermit Roosevelt, GHWB, and Adnan Khashoggi). Nazis and their admirers are the third piece in the triangle, connected to Islamists since the Muslim Brotherhood’s creation in 1928 by Hitler ally Hasam al-Banna, and connected to the Bush clan through decades of interdependence with American oil and intelligence elites - including the Rockefellers (Standard Oil) and the Harrimans (Brown Bros. Harriman / Kellogg Brown and Root / Halliburton).2

Viewed in this context, the Ptech story is a chilling reminder that this network is still in charge; that it facilitated the 9/11 attacks that murdered thousands and destroyed the health of thousands more; and that “our” American defenses against sabotage are woefully dependent upon the goodwill of saboteurs (both foreign and domestic). - JAH]

January 20, 2005, 0900 PST (FTW) - In 1995 Indira Singh started working on Wall Street (around the corner from the WTC) as a Senior Enterprise Architecture Consultant for JP Morgan. When the company was purchased by Chase Manhattan Bank in January 2001, Singh moved from enterprise architecture to a related part of Morgan’s IT operations: the Operational Risk Management (ORM) group.3 ORM is the informational part of bank security, in which sophisticated software is engineered and deployed to detect malfeasance - especially money-laundering, rogue trading, and accounting fraud.4 Since the spectacular collapse of BCCI in 1991, a decade of bank failures had shown the terrible importance of such surveillance and intervention capability. At JP Morgan Chase, Singh worked on the next generation of risk software, whose function, according to Singh, was “to think about all the information going on throughout the enterprise as bank business was being conducted worldwide… If it spotted something, it would be able to react by notifying an intelligent agent or actually stop what was happening in real time.”5

In the wrong hands, such a program could have disastrous political and financial implications. From The Wilderness has published several stories about PROMIS software, the robust datamining program whose theft by the Justice Department has occasioned decades of international legal and illegal maneuvering. PROMIS is also the subject of a chapter in Crossing The Rubicon, because it took on geopolitical importance when a group of criminals connected to US intelligence modified PROMIS and sold it to foreign intelligence agencies in multiple countries as far back as the early 80s. There, it acted as a back door through which intelligence agencies stole proprietary and national-security information from those countries and dumped it into US computers. That was before artificial intelligence. In the twenty years since PROMIS was developed, artificial intelligence (AI) has potentiated such datamining programs in astonishing ways.

Half of Crossing The Rubicon is about 9/11; the other half is about the surrounding system of deep political alliances, terrorism, narcotraffic, money laundering, bank fraud, and information technology (PROMIS) that made it possible. Following where her Ptech experience led, Singh came face to face with the monster behind a half-century of criminally funded rightwing militarism.

The Ptech story is a crucial piece of 9/11 because the software was used to simultaneously coordinate the FAA with NORAD and the Secret Service. But it transcends 9/11 because that terror attack is continuous with preceding decades of violent Islamic extremism epitomized in the international Muslim Brotherhood, of which al Qaeda is only one, relatively recent, incarnation.6 Worse, the Muslim Brotherhood has from its first days been linked to the Nazi party and its Swiss neo-Nazi epigones.7 Anti-Soviet projects of the CIA and the Pentagon (from 11-22-63 to the Afghan War) have long been recognized as continuous with the absorption of Nazi SS personnel into what became the CIA.8 The connection of the Bush crime family to the political economy of the Nazi movement is familiar from the excellent work of former Justice Department Nazi war crimes prosecutor John Loftus and others.9 Its triangulation with the Bush-Saudi alliance forms a powerful explanatory paradigm - one to which FTW will be paying further attention in the sequel to this story.

The following timeline is a red thread running through the larger fabric of contemporary Rightist attacks on democracy and the rule of law. Global in scope, this milieu transcends the boundaries of nation-states just as banks and multinational corporations do; it transcends the boundaries of religions as does the conceptual purview of what is universally recognized as “fundamentalism”; and it comprehends the wide range of projects that unite every domestic political assassination in America from RFK to the latest “suicided” Enemy of the State. Such a tapestry cannot hang on the single nail of an article like this one, but if we are to understand this “warthatwillnotendinourlifetimes,” we need to pick up the hammer. With the Rubicon behind us and Indira Singh at our side, we begin with her experience.

* 1985. Egyptian banker Soliman Biheiri is introduced to members of the Muslim Brotherhood.10

* March 19, 1986. The articles of incorporation for BMI, Inc. show that Soliman Biheiri forms Islamic investing firm Bait ul-Mal, Inc. (BMI). His partner in that venture is Hussein Ibrahim, BMI’s Vice President from 1989 to 1995 and later chief scientist at Ptech.

* 1988. Makhtab al-Khidamat (MAK) is installed as the CIA accounting mechanism through which ISI / BCCI money moves to the Pakistani Mujaheddin. In False Profits: The Inside Story of BCCI, the World’s Most Corrupt Financial Empire, Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin document the close relationship between BCCI’s founder Agha Hasan Abedi, and then-CIA Director William Casey. Control of the proliferating MAK recruitment centers and training camps shifted to bin Laden when Azzam was murdered, apparently on bin Laden’s orders.

* 1992. FBI agent Robert Wright begins his investigation of terrorism financing and Yassin al-Qadi.

* 1993. WTC bombing is funded in part by BMI, the BCCI-linked shell company that includes Ptech.

* 1995-2000. Indira Singh is Senior Enterprise Architecture Consultant at JP Morgan.

* April 19, 1995. The Murrah Federal Building USG complex in Oklahoma City is bombed.11

* September 1996. Ptech already working with DoD’s research group, DARPA: “Ptech, based in Cambridge, Mass., offers an integrated set of object-oriented tools that enable users to create interactive blueprints of business processes. Software code can be generated from the hierarchical layout, providing rapid and consistent application development. The [Defense] Advanced Research Projects Agency is using [Ptech's program called] Framework to help transfer commercial software methodologies to the defense sector.” http://www.govexec.com/archdoc/rrg96/0996rrg5.htm.

* 1998. Yassin Al-Qadi contributes $14 million to Ptech, becoming its major investor. “Those involved in this deal from Ptech Senior Management were; Mr. Oussama Ziade (CEO); Mr. Jeff Goins (VP Marketing); and Mr. Ulf Fagerquist (Technical Adviser). Also present was a key value-added reseller of Ptech software in the business architecture space that complements technology architectures, Mr. Roger Burlton. This meeting took place in Jeddah at the offices of Mr. Al Qadi, and other locations.” - Indira Singh, Advisory Report on Ptech (see August 2002, below).

* August 7, 1998. “Terrorists bomb the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The bomb in Nairobi, Kenya kills 213 people, including 12 US nationals, and injures more than 4,500. The bomb in Dar es Salaam kills 11 and injures 85. The attack is blamed on al-Qaeda.” - Paul Thompson, 911 Timeline.

* October 1998. “FBI agents Robert Wright and John Vincent are tracking a terrorist cell in Chicago, but are told to simply follow suspects around town and file reports. The two agents believe some of the money used to finance the 1998 US embassy bombings (see August 7, 1998) leads back to Chicago and Saudi multimillionaire businessman Yassin al-Qadi. Supervisors try, but temporarily fail, to halt the investigation into al-Qadi’s possible terrorist connections… a supervisor prohibits Wright and Vincent from making any arrests connected to the bombings, or opening new criminal investigations.” - Paul Thompson, 911 Timeline. That supervisor - named in Crossing the Rubicon - is Supervisory Special Agent David Frasca.

* 2000. Seeing the limitations of existing risk management software, Indira Singh begins to design a new, more agile program - an extremely adaptable enterprise architecture blueprint which, when integrated with sufficient AI, has applications far beyond JP Morgan’s banking practices. These include Defense and Intelligence. Traditional enterprise architecture (e.g., Popkin Software) creates models; Singh wants to create a living, flexible surveillance and intervention system that can monitor an enterprise from within while coordinating it with the event risks of the changing outside world. That requires a core AI software component called an “inference engine.”12

* January 2001. Chase Manhattan Bank buys JP Morgan. Indira Singh moves to Operational Risk Management group within Morgan. While developing a risk blueprint program for JP Morgan, she presents the blueprint programming idea to Interoperability Clearing House, a DARPA-funded think tank for software R&D.13 Interested potential clients include CIA, through In-Q-tel14; JP Morgan itself; and, after 9/11, persons at Dowling College’s School of Aviation who have probable access to DHS funds.

* Aug. 28, 2001. Ptech CFO George Peterson Adds COO Role; Jeff Goins is promoted to General Manager, Europe; Blake Bisson joins Ptech as Vice President of Sales. Fagerquist and Goins are allegedly affiliated with a longstanding and politically potent Christian secret society called “The Fellowship” - with which Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft15 and other high US government officials16 are also affiliated. Wayne Madsen has established the involvement of the Fellowship in the rigging of the 2004 presidential election in the United States, and has linked Dick Cheney to that organization.17

* SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

* September 12, 2001. In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s IT-seeking arm is holding funding hearings. Backed by Interoperability Clearing House, Indira Singh presents the “Blue Prophet” risk blueprint.18 When In-Q-Tel / CIA declines funding, Singh goes on to shop for an inference engine core and for funding.

* October 2001. In the wake of traumatizing experience on 9/11 - as a civilian EMT at Ground Zero, as a career employee in the World Trade Center, and as a resident of the neighborhood - Singh’s focus on “extreme event risk” is intensified. Decides ICH are “techies” who don’t really understand risk. “There was a Risk technology conference on the [WTC] 106th floor on 9/11 that my team was supposed to be at… as you can imagine that wouldn’t be one for my group to miss, yet we did because I was late and had spent the previous week in DC focusing on In-Q-Tel and Blue Prophet. If I had been more focused on JPM and NY the prior week, who knows… there was free breakfast and it was Windows on the World.”

* October 12, 2001. Yassin Al-Qadi is listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. “The Treasury Department Press Release issued on the date of Yassin Qadi’s designation as an SDGT…states that Qadi was named an SDGT on the basis that he and other well-connected Saudi citizens transferred millions of dollars to Osama bin Laden through charities and trusts like the Muwafaq Foundation… [of which] Qadi was a trustee.” - Affidavit of David C. Kane, Senior Special Agent, Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. August 14, 2003.

* December 2001. Roger Burlton and others recommend Ptech to Indira.

* March 20, 2002. Under Operation Greenquest, Federal agents raid approximately 100 companies and charities operating in a single office at 555 Grove Street in Herndon, Virginia, taking hundreds of boxes of documents. Yaqub Mirza, a member of the Ptech board of directors, is a central target.19 In a major story in the conservative Weekly Standard (04/08/2002, Volume 007, Issue 29), “Wahhabis in the Old Dominion: What the federal raids in Northern Virginia uncovered,” Stephen Schwartz writes:

The keystone of the Saudi-sponsored Northern Virginia network is the Saar Foundation, created by Suleiman Abdul Al-Aziz al-Rajhi, a scion of one of the richest Saudi families. The Saar Foundation is connected to Al-Taqwa, a shell company formerly based in Switzerland, where its leading figures included a notorious neo-Nazi and Islamist, Ahmed Huber. Subsequently moved to the United States, Al-Taqwa was shut down after September 11 and its assets frozen by U.S. presidential order. But operations continued, as the Wahhabi lobby shifted to its backup institutions here.

Saar has also been linked to Khalid bin Mahfouz, former lead financial adviser to the Saudi royal family and ex-head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia. Mahfouz has been named by French intelligence as a backer of Osama bin Laden; Mahfouz endowed the Muwafaq Foundation, which U.S. authorities confirm was an arm of bin Laden’s terror organization. Muwafaq’s former chief, Yassin al-Qadi, oversaw the financial penetration of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania by Wahhabi terrorists in the late 1990s.

“Men like al-Rajhi, Mahfouz, and al-Qadi are the big players in the financing of Islamic extremism. And their paths repeatedly lead back to Northern Virginia. They don’t play for small stakes: Saar received $1.7 billion in donations in 1998, although this was left out of the foundation’s tax filings until 2000.”

* March 2002. “Searches by FBI agents and Bosnian police in Sarajevo uncover numerous handwritten Arabic documents detailing the origin and history of the al Qaida organization. Among the recovered files is a copy of a 1988 handwritten draft listing wealthy financiers of Osama bin Laden’s mujaheddin operations in Afghanistan, referred to within al Qaida as the “Golden Chain.” This list contains 20 names with a parenthetical after each name, likely indicating the person who received funds from the specified donor. “Osama” appears after seven of the listings. While Ptech President Yassin al Qadi does not appear on this list, he has ties to the listed Yussef Nada20 and Golden Chain businessmen. He invested millions of dollars in BMI and funded a Turkish firm run by senior al Qaeda figures.”

* April 28- May 2, 2002. In a private meeting at a conference in San Antonio, Texas,21 industry leader Dr. John Zachman suggests Singh use Ptech, citing their relationship to IBM, a strategic partner of JP Morgan Chase.

* May 2002. Dr. Hussein Ibrahim, co-founder of BMI and Ptech’s chief scientist, and a delegation of other Ptech personnel come to JP Morgan at Singh’s invitation, to demonstrate why Singh’s blueprint project should buy Ptech software for its inference engine core. But the Ptech delegation has come to the Morgan offices unprepared, and they behave strangely: Singh’s suspicions are aroused when Ibrahim offers to demonstrate the software on his laptop, using proprietary JP Morgan data. This would have compromised JPM information security and is entirely outside industry protocols (”a show-stopper”). In an adjoining room, Singh calls Roger Burlton, who runs Business Process Renewal in Vancouver. He tells her, “Don’t let them out of your sight and don’t let them leave with anything.” Burlton recommends that she speak with Jeff Goins, a former Ptech employee. Goins informs Singh that Saudi terror financier Yassin Al Qadi is an investor in Ptech. Al Qadi claims to have met Dick Cheney in Jeddah before he became vice president, and that they still maintain “cordial relations.” Singh confirms that Goins had taken his concerns to an FBI agent, and arranges to speak with that agent.

* May 30, 2002. Agent Robert Wright of the Chicago FBI holds a press conference on the steps of the Capital and bursts into tears apologizing to the 9/11 families. Wright says his ten-year investigation into terrorism financing by Yassin Al-Qadi - whom he called bin Laden’s banker - had been repeatedly shut down, that he had been censured for pushing it, and that if he had been able to continue and shut down the funding to al Qaeda, 9/11 would not have happened.

* June 2002. Indira Singh is dismissed from JP Morgan.

* June 2002. FBI validates everything Singh has said about Ptech, and passes her a copy of a news segment on Ptech by Joe Bergantino of WBZ TV, a CBS affiliate in Boston, which is set to air on September 11, 2002. Toward the end of his investigation, Bergantino contacts Rita Katz of the SITE Institute to validate some information. A former colleague of Katz notifies the White House that Bergantino’s program will break the Ptech story.22

* August, 2002. The White House intervenes to quash the story, and it never airs. Singh and Bergantino suspect that Jeff Goins, a Ptech vendor, makes a deal with Osama Ziade around this time. Goins handles an active White House account with Ptech, and he, too, alerts the WH about the story. Singh learns that the WH prevented several other journalists from going ahead with the Ptech story, including ABC’s Brian Ross and John Miller,23 and NBC’s Lisa Myers.24 Singh writes an Advisory Report on Ptech and, acting on information from Jeff Goins, she advises GHWB in that report that there is a related threat on President GWB’s life.

* September 2002. Singh delivers her report to GHWB. The persons of interest at Ptech remove their files and leave.

* November 2002. Still no raid. Singh threatens to send her report to ten Chief Intelligence Officers per month until something is done (i.e., until Ptech is raided). She begins by personally bringing the Ptech story to Charlie Lewis, a Chief Technology Architect for Air Products and Chemicals (a powerful company which had earned over 5.7 billion dollars in sales during 2000); to the CIO of Gartner (a major enterprise architecture / IT firm); to the CIO of the U.S. Department of Defense; and to John Osterholz, DOD Director of Architecture and Interoperability.

* December 6, 2002. Ptech is raided by Operation Greenquest, but the White House announces that Ptech is clean - on the very day of the raid: “The material has been reviewed by the appropriate government agencies, and they have detected absolutely nothing in their reports to the White House that would lead to any concern about any of the products purchased from (Ptech).”

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/20021206-4.html#17.

* April 2003. Singh is debriefed at the National Threat Assessment Center (CERT).

From Wall Street to the Wilderness

Early in the game, as the shady background of Ptech began to emerge, Indira Singh came to a point of decision. Should she go forward with Ptech’s product, or reject the company? Were the allegations about Ptech serious, or were they disinformation from competitors engaged in commerce interference? She sought out the FBI agent to whom Jeff Goins had spoken. He sent her a video documentary produced by Joe Bergantino for WBZ TV, a CBS affiliate in Boston, about an Islamist charity called CARE International.

“The people in the video that the FBI were looking for right after 9/11 were Ptech employees: Muhammed Mubayyid and Suheil Laher, who had also worked for CARE International. But this was not the Care International everyone knows. This CARE listed its corporate office in the same suite as Al Khifah’s Boston office25 - whose more famous location was the Al-Khifah Refugee Centre in Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue, where mujaheddin recruits were processed for the CIA’s Afghani “Operation Cyclone.” It was later named as the locus of the 1993 conspiracy to bomb the World Trade Center.26 Muhammed Mubayyid, a Ptech employee and former treasurer of CARE, has donated money to Al Khifah’s Brooklyn office.

Recall the notorious intransigence of the FBI in the 1993 WTC case - using Egyptian informant Emad Salem, the Bureau had successfully infiltrated the terrorist cell responsible for the bombing and secretly recorded myriad hours of the cell’s planning discussions. It has never given a satisfactory account of its failure to act on that abundant advance information. As documented in Crossing The Rubicon, the same deeply disturbing obstructionism pervades the behavior of middle and high officials in the FBI’s before and after 9/11/01.

This is the same FBI.

Indira took Joe Bergantino’s video report down to Virginia and interviewed Ptech employees herself. Having confirmed fears, she demanded the FBI agent who gave her Bergantino’s report re-open an investigation into Ptech. He said he couldn’t. She told him to tell his supervisor. He already had, and was told there was nothing they could do. The FBI was one of Ptech’s clients.

Her next stop was Mark Coughlin, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at JP Morgan Chase. His particular position equipped him to understand the kind of damage the firm might suffer if it were to adopt a malicious program with Ptech’s computational power. Moved and alarmed, Coughlin called Security, the General Auditor, and the CEO. They contacted the FBI - at a very high level - who validated all of Indira Singh’s claims about Ptech.

Coughlin was shaken. He sent her to William Moran, the General Auditor, who refused to meet with her until she had been debriefed by his security people. “They treated me like I was crazy, like I was the terrorist.” And when the meeting finally happened, it was an Orwellian horror show. He asked where she had gotten her information, and as she named her individual sources Moran answered each name the same way, over and over: “That person should be killed… that person should be killed… that person should be killed.”27

Hateful words, motivated by a terrible fear of the truth.

CODA: Knowledge is Power

The computational power of the Ptech evolution of PROMIS software represents of a daunting new surveillance-and-intervention capability in the hands of the same elites who planned 9/11, prosecute the subsequent resource wars, and are presiding over what may become a full economic and military disaster for the resource-consuming citizens of America and the world. Since the “War On Terror” and this coming dollar / natural gas collapse will necessitate new levels of domestic repression, this is just the capability those elites require. Ptech is Total Information Awareness.

It combines datamining, artificial intelligence, and “interoperability,” the capacity for one program to read, operate, and modify the source codes of other programs. Datamining is a technique for detecting and extracting meaningful patterns hidden within vast quantities of apparently meaningless data. Applications include policing and case management (where PROMIS — Prosecutor’s Management Information System began), aviation (Mitre), banking and risk management (JP Morgan), enterprise architecture and knowledge management (Popkin), the gathering and sifting of political and industrial intelligence information (FBI, RCMP, et al.), and a wide range of military applications (NORAD, Navy, etc.).

Programs based on datamining are powerful analytical tools; finding meaningful patterns in an ocean of information is very useful. But when such a tool is driven by a high-caliber artificial intelligence core, its power gets spooky. The datamining capability becomes a smart search tool of the AI program, and the system begins to learn.

In recent decades, great strides have been made by the mutually fertile disciplines of mathematics, computer science, and neuroscience. Among the results has been a new discipline called cognitive neuroscience, which constitutes a powerful new understanding of the way the human brain works (see Churchland, Gazzaniga, etc.) While this has illuminated some very fundamental and grand issues of philosophy, it also has applications so practical that they have reshaped our world. “Neural Network” programming is modeled on the computational techniques used by the human brain - an electrochemical computer that uses neurons instead of semiconductors; the firing or non-firing of neurons instead of ones and zeros.

With neural networking, software has become much smarter than it had been. Now it can perform multiple, related operations at the same time through parallel processing; now it can learn from setbacks, and use genetic algorithms to evolve its way out of limitations. Now it can respond to more kinds of data from the electronic environment, including “fuzzy” values that don’t come in discreet numerical packages. This kind of computational power supports an inference engine that can digest the mined data into results that are not only descriptive of the system’s present state but predictive for imminent and, to some degree, even middle-term outcomes. That’s why the same family of programs that does enterprise architecture, which is descriptive (and prescriptive if you take its descriptions as a mandate for cutting costs by firing people - “process management”), comes to include risk management software, which is predictive of the future. It extrapolates from current trends in a more than quantitative way.

Conventional electronic surveillance finds patterns in the data of other instruments; Ptech’s Framework can exploit the patterns it detects and extrapolate future probabilities. Then it can integrate itself with the computers from which it’s getting the information and intervene in their functioning. The result is a tool for surveillance and intervention. The program can identify suspect streams of cash in a banking network and allow a bank officer to freeze the suspect assets. Of course, a user could direct the same program to prevent detection. It can discover salient anomalies in a person’s movements through a city and either flag those anomalies for further scrutiny, or erase them from the record. And it can find errant flights in an air traffic map and initiate an intercept response. Or not.

Additional Reading on PROMIS and Its Evolutions:

* PROMIS; FTW, October 2000

* The “F” Word; FTW, November 2001

* Bin Laden’s Magic Carpet; FTW, October 2001

* Profits of Death; FTW, December 2001

* A Career in Microbiology Can Be Harmful to Your Health; FTW, February 2002

* Combining Biological and Economic Warfare; FTW, May 2003

* Briefing Paper: The Case for Bush Administration Advance Knowledge of 9/11; FTW, May 2002

1 Crossing the Rubicon, p. 444 (quoting from Air War Over America, p. 59): “Could Deskins and her colleagues have been confused by one of the radar injects left in place by the maestro? A subsequent statement by General Arnold suggests that at least some of the exercises continued to run well into the attacks. United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 AM with 65 people aboard. Two 767s were gone, and it was anyone’s guess what might happen next. “I thought it might be prudent to pull out of the exercise [Vigilant Guardian] which we did.” Arnold says. “We called NORAD, and they were well aware of what had happened obviously. … As we pulled out of the exercise we were getting calls about United Flight 93 and we were worried about that.” Here Arnold states that Vigilant Guardian was not terminated until about the same time that the first reports of Flight 93’s hijacking, which we have already established occurred at around 9:16 or 54 minutes after it had been known that Flight 11 was a hijack. Why did it take so long?”

What this all means is that, according to all official accounts, we have the exercises called off by 9:16 - well before 9:25 when “Phantom Flight 11″ comes on the scene [-MK].

2 Glenn R. Simpson, “U.S. Tries to Tie Maze of Firms, Charities Based in Herndon Into a Global Network: Bin Laden’s ‘Golden Chain’” The Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2004 ; Page A1.

3 FTW interview with Indira Singh. She worked for Peter Cerenita & Mark Coughlin under Martha Gallo on the Morgan side of the newly merged organization. For Gallo, see: http://www.infoworld.com/articles/fe/xml/01/11/26/011126fejp.html.

4 http://ar.jpmorganchase.com/ar/mda/operating.html.

5 “The afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market,” the CBS program 60 Minutes reported on Sept. 19.” Christopher Bollyn, “Revealing 9-11 Stock Trades Could Expose The Terrorist Masterminds,” American Free Press, April 2004; www.globalresearch.ca, 8 December 2004, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BOL412B.html Those “alarm bells” were part of this software. The irony of ultra-sophisticated software is that whatever it is equipped to protect, it is also equipped to sabotage; everything depends on the intentions of the user. Note that one of the earliest and most potent articles on 9/11 insider trading was the September 19, 2001 “Black Tuesday: The World’s Largest Insider Trading Scam?” by Don Radlauer, a consultant at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel. http://www.ict.org.il/.

6 National Commission On Terrorist Attacks Upon The United States. Public Hearing

Wednesday, July 9, 2003. 253 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC

Panel 1: Terrorism, Al Qaeda, And The Muslim World. Testimony of Dr. Mamoun Fandy: “Prince Nayef of Saudi Arabia finally admitted that the Muslim Brotherhood is the mother of all problems in the Arab world. And Saudi Arabia hosted the Muslim Brotherhood during the Arab Cold War that was between Nasser and King Faisal in the ’70s. And, in fact, the Muslim Brotherhood, one can argue that they hijacked the total educational Saudi system and turned it around to produce what we know as al Qaeda. The Muslim Brotherhood was the first Islamic organization with global reach, in fact. With its headquarters now next to CENTCOM in Qatar, under Sheikh Qaradawi, practically the Muslim Brotherhood has global reach. It has offices in Germany. It has offices in Virginia next door. It has offices in Yemen and other places. So unless we really consider the Muslim Brotherhood as part of that larger network, we fail to understand this whole organization. The Muslim Brotherhood is responsible for the civil war in Algeria, responsible for its civil war in Yemen, and responsible for the current situation that we see in Egypt and in Saudi Arabia.”

7 See Marc Erikson, “Islamism, fascism and terrorism (Part 2 of 3),” Asia Times, November 5, 2002: “During the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence, sent agents and money to support the Palestine uprising against the British, as did Muslim Brotherhood founder and “supreme guide” Hassan al-Banna. A key individual in the fascist-Islamist nexus and go-between for the Nazis and al-Banna became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini - incidentally the later mentor (from 1946 onward) of a young firebrand by the name of Yasser Arafat.

“Having fled from Palestine to Iraq, el-Husseini assisted there in the short-lived April 1941 Nazi-inspired and financed anti-British coup. By June 1941, British forces had reasserted control in Baghdad and the mufti was on the run again, this time via Tehran and Rome to Berlin, to a hero’s welcome. He remained in Germany as an honored guest and valuable intelligence and propaganda asset through most of the war, met with Hitler on several occasions, and personally recruited leading members of the Bosnian-Muslim “Hanjar” (saber) division of the Waffen SS.

“Another valued World War II Nazi collaborator was Youssef Nada, current board chairman of al-Taqwa (Nada Management), the Lugano, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Bahamas-based financial services outfit accused by the US Treasury Department of money laundering for and financing of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda.”

For links between Ptech’s board member Yassin al Qadi, Soliman Biheiri, and al Taqwa / Nada, see Glenn R. Simpson, “U.S. Tries to Tie Maze of Firms, Charities Based in Herndon Into a Global Network; Bin Laden’s ‘Golden Chain,’ Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2004.

http://www.hatefreeamerica.com/062104.htm; John Loftus, “The Muslim Brotherhood, Nazis and Al-Qaeda,” Jewish Community News, October 4, 2004: http://frontpagemag.com/articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15344; Marc Perelman,

“Terror Fund Trail Leads To Alpine Kingdom,” Forward, October 17, 2003:

http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.10.17/news4.terror.html.

“For excellent published works on the CIA/Nazi connection read: Trading With The Enemy by Charles Higham; The Secret War Against the Jews by Loftus and Arrons; Blowback by Christopher Simpson.” From Robert Lederman, “CIA Admits Nazi Connection,” September 23, 2000: http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/cia-.htm.

8 John Buchanan and Stacey Michael, “Bush - Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951 - Federal Documents,” The New Hampshire Gazette Vol. 248, No. 3, November 7, 2003: “After the seizures in late 1942 of five U.S. enterprises he managed on behalf of Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, failed to divest himself of more than a dozen “enemy national” relationships that continued until as late as 1951, newly-discovered U.S. government documents reveal.

Furthermore, the records show that Bush and his colleagues routinely attempted to conceal their activities from government investigators.

Bush’s partners in the secret web of Thyssen-controlled ventures included former New York Governor W. Averell Harriman and his younger brother, E. Roland Harriman. Their quarter-century of Nazi financial transactions, from 1924-1951, were conducted by the New York private banking firm, Brown Brothers Harriman.

The White House did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Although the additional seizures under the Trading with the Enemy Act did not take place until after the war, documents from The National Archives and Library of Congress confirm that Bush and his partners continued their Nazi dealings unabated.”

10 Stephen Schwartz, “Wahhabis in the Old Dominion: What the federal raids in Northern Virginia uncovered,” Weekly Standard 04/08/2002, Volume 007, Issue 29

[EXCERPT: ] The keystone of the Saudi-sponsored Northern Virginia network is the Saar Foundation, created by Suleiman Abdul Al-Aziz al-Rajhi, a scion of one of the richest Saudi families. The Saar Foundation is connected to Al-Taqwa, a shell company formerly based in Switzerland, where its leading figures included a notorious neo-Nazi and Islamist, Ahmed Huber. Subsequently moved to the United States, Al-Taqwa was shut down after September 11 and its assets frozen by U.S. presidential order. But operations continued, as the Wahhabi lobby shifted to its backup institutions here.

Saar has also been linked to Khalid bin Mahfouz, former lead financial adviser to the Saudi royal family and ex-head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia. Mahfouz has been named by French intelligence as a backer of Osama bin Laden; Mahfouz endowed the Muwafaq Foundation, which U.S. authorities confirm was an arm of bin Laden’s terror organization. Muwafaq’s former chief, Yassin al-Qadi, oversaw the financial penetration of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Albania by Wahhabi terrorists in the late 1990s.

[…]

A major personality on the ground in Virginia is an individual named Jamal Barzinji, whose office in Herndon was a major target of the raids. In 1980, he was listed in local public records as a representative of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), an arm of the Saudi regime with offices in Virginia. WAMY has been deeply involved in providing cover for Wahhabi terrorism. The 2002 entry in the U.S. Business Directory lists the president of the WAMY office in Annandale, Va., as Abdula bin Laden–the terrorist’s younger brother.

Barzinji serves as a trustee and officer of the Amana Mutual Funds Trust, a growth and income mutual fund headquartered in Bellingham, Wash., conveniently near the Canadian border. Amana’s board also includes Yaqub Mirza, a Pakistani physicist who shares Barzinji’s Herndon office address and who is widely described as a financial genius. Another board member and tenant in the Herndon office is Samir Salah. He formerly ran a branch of Al-Taqwa in the Caribbean, heads a financial firm linked to Saar, and directs Dar al-Hijra, a mosque in Falls Church, Va., notable for hardline Wahhabi preaching. Salah is also deeply involved with Taibah International Aid Association, a Virginia charity with a Bosnian branch that is being investigated by authorities in Sarajevo.

11 “Another exhibit from the defense motion is an affidavit filed by Edwin Angeles, a founder of Abu Sayyaf, a Filipino terrorist group. Angeles, who was assassinated by former comrades, wrote in 1996 that he was at a 1991 meeting in Davao City, attended by Yousef, Murad and Nichols, at which, they discussed ‘bombing activities, providing firearms and ammo’ to terrorists and ‘training in bomb making and handling’ of explosives. Nichols, he claimed, was introduced to him as ‘the farmer.’”

http://www.okcbombing.org/News%20Articles/oklahoma_mystery.htm

12 For a definition of and information about inference engines, see:

http://www.emclab.umr.edu/consortium/Whatis/node17.html;

http://www.hyperdictionary.com/computing/inference+engine;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inference_engine.

13 For DARPA’s letter of appreciation to ICH, see:

http://www.ichnet.org/images/darpa.pdf.

14 For In-Q-Tel, see Rick E. Yannuzzi, “In-Q-Tel: A New Partnership Between the CIA and the Private Sector,” Defense Intelligence Journal, Volume 9 Number 1 Winter 2000. “Yannuzzi was Senior Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Strategic and Nuclear Programs in the National Intelligence Council (NIC). He previously was a member of the CIA’s Enterprise - i.e., In-Q-Tel - Start-Up Team and served as its first Director of Business Operations. Mr. Yannuzzi also served as the DCI’s Executive Secretary [and] DCI Representative to the White House Science Office.” http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/inqtel/#top.

15 “As for the Bush connection, there is Ashcroft. I [Jeffrey Sharlet] discovered in their archives a correspondence between Ashcroft and Coe that began in 1981.” Anthony Lappé, Guerrilla News Network, “Meet ‘The Family’,” June 13, 2003.

http://www.alternet.org/story/16167

16 “Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as “members,” as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries.” Jeffrey Sharlet, “Jesus Plus Nothing,” Harper’s Magazine, March 2003.

http://www.harpers.org/JesusPlusNothing.html?pg=1

17 “The Fellowship is now trying to take over government boards in my county of Arlington, VA and are making a major power play in Annapolis, MD. Tom Feeney, Ashcroft, DeLay, Bush (Dubya and Jeb), Cheney, Sean O’Keefe, Condi Rice, John Bolton, Ed Meese, [Charles] Colson, Brownback, Ralph Reed, Frank Wolf, Ernie Fletcher, Katherine Harris, [Newt] Gingrich, JC Watts, Burr, Jindal, Lamar Smith, Zach Wamp, Scalia, Ensign, Kyl, [Kenneth]Blackwell, Bob Ehrlich, Karl Rove, Jack Kemp, James Baker, Clarence Thomas, Tom Coburn, Asa and Tim Hutchinson, Gens. Boykin and Myers, DeMint, Curt Weldon, Grover Norquist, George Allen, [Rick] Santorum, are all in this group. The late Lee Atwater was close to this group.

“The Fellowship, which has strong links to the “Rev.” Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, operates in cells and not only takes over governments but also local church congregations to further their goals. Two local congegations taken over by the Fellowship are Falls Church Episcopal and Cherrydale Baptist. They also maintain the private Riverdell School, another way to brainwash young children who are not already being brainwashed by home schooling.

“The Prime Minister of Norway has just been outed as a member of this group. In fact, most of the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” nations’ leaders are members of The Fellowship, e.g., Tonga, Macedonia, Palau, Netherlands, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Solomon Islands, Uganda, Rwanda, Guatemala, El Salvador, Denmark, Romania, Iceland, Fiji, Georgia, Colombia, possibly also Howard of Australia and Blair of Britain.” http://jamboi.dailykos.com/story/2004/12/31/175217/25

18 http://www.911truth.org/media/september-hearings.pdf.

19 See Dan Verton, “Feds turn up heat on IT sector links to al-Qaeda,” in New Zealand’s Unlimited business news magazine (9 December, 2002). “Senior counterintelligence officials familiar with the case said the U.S. Customs Service initiated the investigation of Ptech after a disgruntled employee tipped off the agency to the company’s alleged hidden ownership. As a result, Customs and the FBI began investigating Yacub Mirza, a former member of Ptech’s board of directors who also manages a number of other businesses in the U.S. ‘Mirza was acting on behalf of Yassin Qadi, the Saudi financier who was on the U.S. [terrorism] watch list and whose accounts here are frozen,’ said Vince Cannistraro, the former chief of counterterrorism at the CIA. ‘Qadi is the guy behind Ptech.’” http://unlimited.co.nz/unlimited.nsf/0/496994074071EE0FCC256C890078E951?OpenDocument.

See Mirza investigation at: http://www.sptimes.com/2002/03/21/news_pf/Worldandnation/Terror_raid_warrant_n.shtml.

See also: David Lytel, “The War at Home: Federal Law Enforcement Officials Follow International Terrorism’s Money Trail from Northern Virginia to Saudi Arabia, but President Bush Says That’s Far Enough.” http://www.john-loftus.com/saudis.asp#enough

20 Youssef Nada is “an Egyptian exile based in Switzerland who has served for decades as the longtime foreign liaison of the Muslim Brotherhood.” From Glenn R. Simpson, “U.S. Tries to Tie Maze of Firms, Charities Based in Herndon Into a Global Network; Bin Laden’s ‘Golden Chain,’ Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2004.

http://www.hatefreeamerica.com/062104.htm.

21 DAMA International Symposium and Wilshire Meta-Data Conference in San Antonio. http://wilshireconferences.com/MD2002/index.htm.

22 Search for International Terrorist Entities is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides information related to terrorist networks to the government, news media, and general public. http://www.siteinstitute.org/

23 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/801901/posts

24 Myers’ retreat from the story is summed up here: “NEVER MIND… Remember the Massachusetts software company which the feds raided in search of terrorist ties? NBC’s Lisa Myers found that Ptech’s suspicious Saudi backer Yassin al-Qadi ’sold his interest at least three years ago’ and then offered $500,000 to Bush’s 2000 Presidential campaign. The GOP rejected al-Qadi ‘because it is illegal to take contributions from foreigners.’” January 11, 2003:

http://www.tyndallreport.com/tw0302.html

25 “Software firm mired in terrorism probe,” Associated Press, January 5, 2003 http://www.seacoastonline.com/2003news/01052003/biz_nati/6299.htm

26 “U.S. probes terror ties to Boston software firm,” by Jerry Guidera and Glenn R. Simpson, Wall St. Journal, December 6, 2002 http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?section=static&page=ptech

27 Dan Hopsicker interview with Indira, “Conspiracy Tonight” online TV program at www.madcowprod.com

[Dig]

the push against human involvement in Risk Management (just a random example, this blog keeps account of "human" errors in risk managemtn-WTF?):

Human factors in risk management
http://andybrazier.blogspot.com/
A collection of thoughts and observations regarding how human factors fits into risk and safety management. Based on my consultancy work, what I read and conferences attended.

[donnay]

http://digg.com/politics/PTECH_9_11_Part_2_of_Indira_Singh_Interview

Indira Singh is described as a "whistle-blower" because of her revelations about Ptech's involvement with the critical U.S. government computer systems that failed on 9-11.

"Ptech was with MITRE Corporation in the basement of the FAA for two years prior to 9/11," Singh said. "Their specific job is to look at interoperability issues the FAA had with NORAD and the Air Force in the case of an emergency. If anyone was in a position to know that the FAA -- that there was a window of opportunity or to insert software or to change anything -- it would have been Ptech along with MITRE."

Singh has spoken extensively about Ptech's alleged connections with Saudi Arabia, for example with Pacifica Radio in 2005:

"Maybe those organizations don’t fully know who their masters are. And Ptech is the one thread, the one golden thread you pull on and all of this is unraveled, because it goes into the corporations, it goes into these government entities, it goes into the terrorism financing entities that were, that none of which have been, by the way, taken to task. There are just so many questions about what does this all mean. And as we investigated, as I investigated further, we found that the origins of Ptech were very interesting – where did this company come from obviously is the first question. And how did they get to be so powerful, who were the people, who were the organizations that brought them in, who knew, who gave them the power?"

Ptech software "is utilized at the highest levels of almost every government and military and defense organization in this country," Singh said, "including the Secret Service, the FBI, the Department of Defense, the House of Representatives, the Treasury Department, the IRS, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, and, last but not least, the Federal Aviation Administration."

A little more on Ptech:
'Ptech workers tell the story behind the search'
http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/securi ...
and
'Michael Chertoff and the sabotage of the Ptech investigation'
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/01/mich ...
and
'FBI's continuing investigation of Boston-area software company Ptech and its possible ties'
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2002/021208 ...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ptech, a mysterious software company has been tied with the events of 9/11. The Quincy, Massachusetts-based company was supposedly connected to "the Muslim Brotherhood" and Arab financiers of terrorism.

The firm's suspected links with terrorism resulted in a consensual examination by the FBI in December 2002, which was immediately leaked to the media. The media reports of the FBI "raid" on Ptech soon led to the demise of the company.

Ptech "produced software that derived from PROMIS (Prosecutor's Management Information System), had an artificial intelligence core, and was installed on virtually every computer system of the U.S. government and its military agencies on September 11, 2001," according to Michael Ruppert's From the Wilderness (FTW) website.

"This included the White House, Treasury Dept. (Secret Service), Air Force, FAA, CIA, FBI, both houses of Congress, Navy, Dept. of Energy, IRS, Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, Enron and more," FTW reported.

"Whoever plotted 9/11 definitely viewed the FAA as the enemy that morning. Overriding FAA systems would be the most effective way to ensure the attacks were successful," FTW reported. "To do this, the FAA needed an evolution of PROMIS software installed on their systems and Ptech was just that; the White House and Secret Service had the same software on their systems - likely a superior modified version capable of 'surveillance and intervention' systems."

[Dig]

This looks like a nice fun paper to read while on a long commute....


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

www.dodccrp.org/events/6th_ICCRTS/Tracks/Papers/Track2/049_tr2.pdf


Application of Network Centric Warfare Concepts to a Land-Air System – an
experimentation approach
Robert Seymour, Daphne G. Sands, Anne-Marie Grisogono, Mark Unewisse, Jon Vaughan
and Ron Baumgart
Land Operations Division
Defence Science and Technology Organisation
PO Box 1500 Salisbury, South Australia 5108, Australia
Phone: 61 8 82596563
Email: bob.seymour@dsto.defence.gov.au
Abstract
This paper describes the development of concepts for a military system of systems comprising a
variety of land and air assets integrated via network centric technologies and appropriate
procedures. A methodology is being applied which aims to coevolve the technology and human
aspects of the system of systems. The methodology features synthetic environment based
experimentation with a system concept demonstrator, which is constructed from an appropriate
mix of simulations, real hardware and software, and humans in key decision making roles. The
problem issues and chosen metrics and scenarios determine the fidelities of the representations of
the components of the concept demonstrator. This paper illustrates this approach with reference
to Exercise Prowling Pegasus, a synthetic environment experiment, which was a stage in the spiral
development process implicit in the methodology.
1 Introduction
In an attempt to demonstrate that the coordination and synchronisation of force elements of a
Land-Air System-of-systems (LAS) could be effectively achieved with the use of Network Centric
Warfare (NCW) concepts, we have constructed a system concept demonstrator (SCD) and
exercised this in a Synthetic Environment (SE). The LAS is a synergism of platform components,
C4ISR technologies and the people and procedures. Traditionally the formation, tasking and
command and control (C2) of Battlegroups, such as the LAS, has been accomplished by following
standardised procedures involving hierarchical lines of command and communication. This
process can lead to large time delays between task initiation and required effect and also can
impose a lot of rigidity to the mission plans. As a consequence, air strike missions in support of
land operations, for example, are not very responsive and tend to be restricted to targets with
fixed location. There is considerable potential for NCW technology to change this situation but
any introduction of technology must be accompanied by the development of new procedures and
operational doctrine. We have previously described (ref 1) a system-of-systems (SoS)
development and evaluation methodology, which is a combination of system architecting,Page 2

Operations Analysis and iterative experimentation using synthetic environments. This
methodology involves the development of a SCD and immersion of this in a SE, in order to
develop, refine and evaluate concepts of operations and tactics, techniques and procedures
(TTPs) exploiting the new features of the SCD. The SCD needs to be a suitable mix of models
and simulations, real hardware and software, human players, organisations, and procedures.
Representation of the various components of the SoS in the SCD is ideally determined by the
sensitivity of the overall metrics to the fidelity of the representation, but availability, feasibility and
cost of possible representations will also be major factors. The SoS representation is also
influenced by the issues chosen for study and the scenarios developed to address these. Due to the
difficulty in modelling complex human decision processes and the major part these will play in the
Land-Air SoS, key decision-making roles in the SoS are played by real people. This requires some
realistic representative interfaces between the humans and the rest of the experiment such as
existing or prototype Command Support Systems. A further aspect of the SCD is the interfaces to
the interaction environment, which need to be realistic enough to adequately represent the flow of
information between the SCD and the environment, but also allow access for measurement of
parameters of the system during the experiment for construction of the various metrics required
for the system analysis.
We have just completed a SE based experiment called Prowling Pegasus which aimed to assist the
development of a Land Air system concept for the Australian Defence Force. This paper describes
Prowling Pegasus against the framework provided by the methodology of reference 1. Some
results from a first analysis of the experimental data are presented and conclusions drawn as to the
potential benefits of Network Centric technologies and procedures to the Land Air system.
Further insights into the conduct of SE based experiments were gained and these are discussed.
2 Methodology
The methodology described in reference 1 is essentially an iterative development process whereby
a demonstrator of a SoS is constructed, experimented with and then modified in order to coevolve
the technology and human procedural aspects of the SoS. The aim is to produce the SoS
synergies such that, as a penultimate step in the process, an evaluation can be made of the true
value of a new SoS rather than of an assemblage of new components with old procedures. What is
different about our methodology is the potential to rapidly accelerate the coevolution process and
to significantly reduce the overall cost. This is achieved by a combination of the use of a SE to
represent most of the own and all of the enemy force in the conflict environment and, the
integration into this SE of a SoS concept demonstrator. The use of real humans immersed in the
SE is a vital part of the methodology as it is these that make the major contribution to the
development of new procedures better suited to the NC technologies so as to elicit the SoS
emergent behaviour.
In reference 1 the methodology was described as consisting of four phases. This paper is
concerned with the first three of these and the application to the Land Air System concept
development. In summary, the methodology consists of:
Phase 1. Problem definition and development of:Page 3

− Issues
− System of systems concept to address issues
− System of systems architecture
− Metrics of system’s ability to satisfy issues
− Scenarios to provide context and stress ability of system to satisfy
issues
Phase 2. Development of system of systems concept demonstrator (SCD)
− with fidelities of component representations chosen on the basis of
sensitivity of chosen metrics
Phase 3. Immersion of SCD in synthetic environment
− with play-out of scenario
− collection of data and analysis to populate measures of effectiveness
− feedback to modification of system concept
Phase 4. System of systems robustness.
− Model SoS in lower fidelity wargame (Janus or CASTFOREM)
− Evaluate against same metrics but in a variety of different scenarios
− Feedback to refine system concept and further iteration of development
cycle.
3 Problem definition and metrics
The problem addressed in the Prowling Pegasus experiment was the formation and command and
control of a BattleGroup (BG) with significant aviation capabilities working in a coordinated
fashion with some specific ground elements. The resulting SoS is what we call the Land Air
system-of-systems (reference 2). The hypothesis to be tested was that Network Centric
technologies and appropriate procedures would increase the effectiveness of the LAS and possibly
enable new SoS capabilities. To test this hypothesis the technical aspects of the system had to be
designed and appropriate procedures developed. The basic concept was that all members of the
BG could share information on blue force positions, status and mission plans and, detected red
force positions, status and projected red course of action. All this would be presented in a visually
intuitive way (3d presentation) superimposed on a representation of the terrain such as to enable
shared situation awareness, enhance decision-making, facilitate communication of commander’s
intent and orders and allow real-time mission monitoring.

The sharing of information digitally
would be augmented by voice communication to better assist knowledge generation and sharing.
A representation of the LAS concept is given in Figure 1, which is an OV-2 product in the
notation of the US DoD C4ISR Architectural Framework (ref 3) and produced with the Ptech
tool (ref 4). However the SoS also involves the human aspects of cognition and decision-making
together with procedures developed to extract the potential benefits of the technology.

An initial
set of new procedures was developed in a separate seminar involving both military and technical
experts and the intent was to develop these during the Prowling Pegasus experiment and in later
iterations.Page 4

Figure 1. Node connectivity of the Land Air System concept (OV-2)
As mentioned above, metrics are important to several aspects of the methodology. A hierarchy of
measures has been developed for the LAS development following the guidance given by the
Military Operations Research Society (ref 5). This hierarchy is described in table 1. At the highest
level, Measures of Force Effectiveness, MoFEs, provide a measure of how well the overall
mission intent was satisfied. Such measures are necessarily scenario specific and can be derived
from analysis of the articulated intent. As an example of such an analysis, the scenario for
Prowling Pegasus required the blue force to expel an enemy force from a town and to destroy
them in detail outside the town. Implicit in this intent is a requirement to minimise civilian
casualties and collateral damage in the town and to prevent the enemy from continuing to fight
once removed from the town. A total of three MoFEs can be shown to address both the stated
and implied intent. These are: total time to expel all enemy from town; the time integral of enemy
capability in town; and the numbers of enemy destroyed outside the town reduced by (weighted)
1
numbers escaping and (weighted) numbers destroyed in the town. At this level (and all levels)
measures of cost are also required such that cost benefit analysis can be performed for capability
acquisition processes. The high level costs identified are; overall capital value of the force; losses
to force; civilian losses.
At the next level down are the MoEs describing the effectiveness of the LAS. In a similar way to
the higher level, the role of the LAS as articulated in the intent communicated to the LAS
BattleGroup commander is analysed and measures of effectiveness constructed. For the Prowling
Pegasus scenario, the role of the LAS was to locate and destroy prioritised enemy targets outside
1
With weightings assigned in accordance with subject matter expert judgement.Page 5

town. A simple measure is the number of targets destroyed which can be attributed to the LAS
either directly or through its target acquisition for a 3
rd
party shooter. This MoE is then the ratio
of numbers destroyed due to the LAS to the total numbers destroyed, with perhaps some
reduction due to the (weighted) numbers of assigned targets not destroyed. Costs at this level
include measures of: capital value of the LAS; losses to the LAS; fratricide due to LAS; civil
casualties due to LAS; and collateral damage due to LAS. There is also the possibility that the use
of the LAS could have an indirect effect on enemy tactics and hence influence the overall
operation as reflected in the MoFEs. Such possibilities underscore the importance of baselining
with and without new capabilities such that relative improvements can be assessed.
It is at the next level down that the impact of the Network Centric concepts begins to be apparent
and directly measurable. Aspects of the LAS that directly impact its effectiveness are rate of
targeting, and probability of kill. Rate of targeting involves the whole process of surveillance,
reconnaissance, target acquisition and target hand-off and all of these have the potential to be
significantly enhanced by NCW concepts. The Prowling Pegasus experiment essentially held the
probability of kill once targeted at a fixed level so the one MoE at this level that varied in the
experiment, is the rate of targeting. In comparison experiments, the knowledge of the enemy prior
to tasking of the LAS, is the same for all cases. Costs at this level are essentially the vulnerability
of the LAS and this is related to: knowledge of threats; tactics employed to avoid known and
potential threats; and risk accepted. All of these are also potentially affected by NCW concepts.
The measure of vulnerability at this level is the total time elements of the LAS were in range of
enemy weapons.
At the next level down the decomposition of the two higher-level measures (rate of targeting and
vulnerability), as mentioned above, is carried out and measures are applied to each aspect. The
breakdown at this level is into procedural components and the measures of performance (MoP)
are mostly times to complete each component (time to air, transit time, time to acquire,
engagement time, re-tasking time). Such breakdowns are different for each set of procedures
implemented and details for the different system configurations used in Prowling Pegasus will be
reported elsewhere. However simple time measurements are not appropriate to the breakdown of
vulnerability into the components as described above, and here a mix of quantitative measurement
(numbers of threats known) and subjective assessment (degree of risk accepted) is required. A
MoP for tactics might only be measurable in a comparison study and at the next higher level.
2
There are additional costs that need to be considered at this level which involve the human costs
of the procedures (numbers involved, degree of skill/training required).
The MoPs of the components of the SoS are arguably at a lower level than those for procedural
breakdown described above, although some technology insertions can very directly influence the
MoEs without changing the high-level procedures. It is here that it becomes important to analyse
the impact of both technology and procedural aspects on the MoEs and we have found it useful to
describe such impact in the form of an influence matrix where eventually it will be necessary to
quantify the elements of this matrix either by comparison experiments or subjective assessment by
subject matter experts. However there is also the (desired) complication in such analysis when
2
Aspects difficult to measure absolutely can usually be assessed in comparison studies where their effect is evident
in the next higher-level measure.Page 6

procedures are modified to harness the potential of new technology insertion to produce overall
system synergy and then the higher-level measure is the true guide to improvement. The SoS is
decomposed into components and MoPs for these are devised. The details for the various SoS
configurations used in Prowling Pegasus will be reported elsewhere, but in general the
decomposition was into force mix components (helicopters, UAVs, HQ elements), C4ISR
technologies (mission management system, Joint interoperability, situation awareness displays,
information management architecture and communications technology) and integrated procedures
(planning, reconnaissance cuing, 3
rd
party targeting). The impact of the procedural aspects at this
level are also best observed at the higher levels. MoPs of the force mix elements generally relate
to their impact at the higher levels (eg effectiveness of the helicopter for reconnaissance,
effectiveness of a HQ element in reducing time to air) and for the C4ISR technologies MoPs are
related to improved situation awareness and decision making, both of which are also higher level
issues. Costs associated with the technology need to be assessed and factors involved include
capital cost, training required and vulnerability (to attack or breakdown).
This analysis could be carried to further lower levels to examine the performance of the individual
system components. To do this the components would need to be represented to sufficient fidelity
to justify such detailed study. An area where this was attempted is in the information technology
applied to situation awareness displays, mission management and information management. Some
description of the concept demonstrator system that was constructed for Prowling Pegasus is
given below. Detailed measurements of the parameters of these systems were carried out and will
be reported in full elsewhere (ref 6) but a brief description is given below in section 7. A second
area that was investigated in detail were the procedural aspects of the SoS, and again this will be
described briefly below but reported fully elsewhere (ref 7).
benefit
cost
MoFE
Measure of achieving high level intent
Capital costs, force losses, civilian losses
MoE
1
Effectiveness of Land Air System
LAS related capital costs, force losses, civilian losses
MoE
2
Rate of targeting by LAS
LAS vulnerability
MoP
1
Times for procedural components
Human resource costs, risk accepted
MoP
2
Performance of system components
Capital costs, human resource costs
Dimensional
Parameters
Low level data directly measurable
from high fidelity representations
Table 1. The hierarchy of metrics used for Prowling Pegasus.
4 The Land Air System Concept Demonstrator
The LAS had several configurations involving mixes of platform components including fixed wing
strike aircraft (FA-18s), Armed Reconnaissance Helicopters (ARH), tactical unmanned aerial
vehicles (TUAV), ground-based air defence (GBAD), forward air controllers (FAC), and several
ground-based Land and Air HQ elements. The representation of these components in the SCD
consisted of virtual platforms and representation in constructive simulations. Real people werePage 7

used in key decision making roles, which included the pilots and crew of the ARH and fixed wing
aircraft, ground based forward air-controllers (FAC), and a variety of roles in both Army and Air
Force headquarters. Virtual cockpits for both rotary and fixed wing aircraft were used to allow
the pilots to interact with the simulated battle and terrain of the constructive simulations described
below. A summary description of these representations follows.
• Platform-based Mission simulators
o ARH
ƒ Day and night out-the-window views
ƒ Target Acquisition and Designation System (TADS) including low fidelity
NVG and FLIR type views, laser designation and ranging, and target selection
and lock-on for weapons
ƒ EWSP: radar warning, missile warning, laser warning, audible and visual
displays, and automatic dispensation of countermeasures
ƒ Moderate fidelity flight dynamics (6 degrees of freedom)
ƒ basic flight instruments including heads-up displays, multifunction stick, and
pedals
ƒ Customised SA display with moving map, north or heading-up, blues and
detected reds as either military symbols or icons, sensor fields-of-view, threat
domes, flightplans, waypoints, no-go zones etc.
ƒ Weapons (Hellfires, rockets, guns)
o Tactical UAVs
ƒ Simulated realtime sensor (TV, FLIR, NV) views for human operators can be
provided in ground station, HQ or on board another virtual platform such as
ARH
ƒ Interface for operator control of sensor look direction
ƒ Operator can laser range and designate from sensor view and handover target
to any response asset
ƒ Can execute planned mission by waypoints or segments, or dwell on station, or
by manual control by operator
ƒ Can add EW, comms and weapon payloads if required
o Fixed wing aircraft (FA-18)
ƒ Out the window views
ƒ Moderate fidelity flight dynamics
ƒ Basic flight instrumentation
All the force mix components of the system were linked in the knowledge sphere by a technology
concept demonstrator system, which enabled the application of NCW principles by allowing all
players to have unrestricted sharing of situation awareness together with an ability to engage in
collaborative planning and decision-making. This system, which we call LSAS (for land situation
awareness system), uses a concept of information sharing, the ‘infospace’ described in reference
8, which allows all users on the system to access and deposit information in a distributed database.
The human players in the experiment interact with this ‘infospace’ via a visualisation system,
developed in-house using Autometrics’ “Edge Development Option”, which displays battlespace
entities on a 3D terrain and allows computer aided route planning, threat assessment,Page 8

reconnaissance planning and mission rehearsal with 3D ‘fly-throughs’. Instances of the LSAS
were provided to all of the humans in the SCD and each was configured independently to suit the
particular task. The pilots of the virtual helicopters for instance used their LSAS for navigation,
display of mission profiles (as prepared pre-flight in the Aviation HQ), and situation awareness by
displaying positions of friendly force elements and detected enemy (with associated ‘threat domes’
if identified). Connectivity of the ‘infospace’ in the real world is restricted by the communications
technology available and our concept demonstrator uses simulation (ref 9) of the digital
communications links including line-of-sight limitations (although this was not available in time
for the experiment). Additionally, several voice communications channels were provided to allow
this form of communication to augment the digital and assist in knowledge generation and
sharing.
New procedures for the planning and conduct of the mission in the context of the NCW
technology were developed through seminars involving military and system specialists, and these
were further developed during the conduct of the Prowling Pegasus experiment. These
procedures and the analysis of them are discussed further below but more fully in reference 7.
5 The Synthetic Environment
The SCD of the Land-Air BG interacted with constructive simulations of the rest of the friendly
force and the enemy force. The ModSAF constructive simulation was used to represent the
additional Land components and the STAGE simulation was used for additional Air elements.
Detailed numerical models of radar surveillance assets were also included and the whole of the SE
was linked using DIS protocols. Specialised interfaces between DIS and the ‘infospace’ were
constructed (ref 10) to link the SCD into the SE. The information that was fed from the
constructive simulations included the positions and status of all the blue elements and positions
and status of the red elements as determined by the available surveillance assets. Where the
surveillance assets were modelling in ModSAF, automatic feeds of the detections were fed into
the ‘infospace’. For the virtual platforms, when a human detected and identified an entity through
the view into the virtual world, this needed to be manually entered into the ‘infospace’ via the
LSAS interface. The movements of blue entities in the constructive simulations were carried out
by human operators (LOCON) who would receive commands from the HQ either by voice or via
the LSAS, but usually a combination of both to facilitate the communication of intent. The red
entities were controlled by another human player who represented an enemy commander
(ENCON).
6 Experiment Construction
A scenario was developed which involved the LAS assisting a conventional mechanised Brigade
in an operation of expelling an occupying force from a town (Katherine in Australia’s Northern
Territory). The main task for the LAS was to find and destroy priority enemy targets outside the
town.Page 9

The physical layout of the SCD was as follows. The Brigade HQ was sited in a tent in an open
space at the DSTO site at Salisbury. This HQ was represented by a small staff of about five
military, which carried out the command and support functions of immediate planning and
airspace coordination. A similar number of scientific staff assisted the military in the operation of
several LSAS terminals, which aided the military functions and provided the situation awareness
as the scenarios were played out. The Brigade commander also had use of a large format
‘Smartboard’ which was linked to the LSAS. An Airforce element in the HQ operated the Air
command support system, Phoenix, which was linked into the simulations and displayed the blue
air entities and the red air entities detected by the radar models. All these air entities were also fed
into the ‘infospace’ and could be displayed on LSAS terminals if required. One LSAS terminal in
the HQ was configured to display both Air and Land entities together, representing a Joint
situation awareness picture. Also in the HQ was the TUAV controller who had access to a virtual
view from the constructive UAV in ModSAF. This operator was able to steer the sensor
directions of the UAV and had access to a LSAS terminal when required to enter the locations
and identifications of entities detected in the virtual view.
In a room nearby was the Aviation Regiment HQ, which carried out the ARH mission planning on
an LSAS terminal. Also at the Salisbury site and located at separate locations were LOCON,
ENCON, HICON and the two virtual ARH cockpits. ModSAF and the radar simulations were
also sited at Salisbury and LSAS terminals were provided to most of the Salisbury locations. The
virtual FA-18 cockpit, the STAGE wargame and a LSAS terminal were located at DSTO’s
Melbourne site. The Melbourne and Salisbury sites are 800km apart and were linked by landline,
which carried the DIS traffic for the simulations, the simulated digital links of the ‘infospace’ and
a simulation of the voice radio link between ground based Air HQ elements and the FAC to the
FA-18.
The experiment was conducted over four days in March 2001. Day 1 was devoted to familiarising
the military participants with the capabilities of the LSAS
3
and general briefing on the background
to the missions. On subsequent days different configurations of the LAS were used in similar
missions. Each mission lasted about 2 hours and was followed shortly afterwards by an after
action review. The four configurations used were:
1. Two ARH’s conducting search and destroy missions and networked to each other and the
ground based HQs.
2. ARHs coordinating with: Special Forces conducting close reconnaissance and target
designation; with GBAD for airspace control; and with a UAV for reconnaissance.
3. Fixed wing added, with the ARHs acting as forward air controllers
4. Same as previous, but with ARHs also carrying out an attack function.
7 Analysis
3
A single day was insufficient to provide enough training to the military participants to make them proficient
operators of the LSAS and auxiliary scientific staff that had received more extensive training provided the
necessary skill level.Page 10

A feature of SE based experimentation is the ability to collect data. The complete sequence of
events during a mission can be captured for later replay and analysis, but it is also possible for
certain data to be processed and displayed to analysts in near real time. Missions could also be
stopped and restarted to enable analysts to examine human factors issues, such as the state of
situation awareness of participants or reasons for particular decisions, by direct questioning of the
players. In Prowling Pegasus, several automatic data logging techniques were employed and these
included:
− DIS logger, which logged all the data circulating on the network from the constructive
and virtual simulations regarding entity positions and status;
− ‘Infospace’ record, which recorded all the information that was deposited in the
‘infospace’ ;
− voice traffic record;
− video of actions during the missions of the virtual cockpit and HQ functions.
Additionally, trained observers recorded the human processes that occurred with particular
emphasis on the use of the LSAS, the HQ procedures and LOCON.
A key part of the analysis was the use of after action reviews (AARs), which gathered the
opinions of subject matter experts on some of the human factors and TTP aspects of the system.
The AARs were conducted shortly after the completion of each mission and an attempt was made
to incorporate some results of first-cut analysis and replays of crucial segments of the missions
using ModSAF and the LSAS. The intent was to stimulate the subject matter experts involved in
the AAR to conduct their own analysis of the causes of decisions and actions that had significant
effects on the course of the missions. However for a variety of technical reasons, this was
unsuccessful. A further problem with the construct of the AARs was the that the higher level
metrics had not been sufficiently defined prior to the experiment so that the questions were
possibly not as relevant to these as could have been.
The data gathered is currently being processed to populate the various metrics discussed in
section 3.
8 Results
The experiment provided examples of Land-Air battlegroups with intra BG coordination and
synchronisation as well as external interactions facilitated by NCW technologies coupled with
appropriately aligned procedures. Tasking, mission planning and mission conduct were performed
collaboratively across the brigade and battlegroup using an advanced LSAS, which involved
visualisation and planning tools with an underlying information management structure. Previous
work (references 11 and 12) has provided strong qualitative evidence of the benefits of shared
situation awareness. The current work has applied the concept specifically to the LAS with a
concept demonstrator mission management system, and has attempted some quantitative
measures of effectiveness.
The benefits of shared situation awareness were evident in the enabling of collaborative planning
of the detailed ARH mission profiles, which impacted at the higher levels of MoEs of time to airPage 11

(and hence target acquisition time) and reduced vulnerability. However, careful baselining
experimentation would be required to quantify these impacts. We were able to gain some
assessment of improvements as the participants learnt from one mission to the next how to better
utilise the capability offered by the LSAS demonstrator.
The LSAS also impacted on the planning within the Brigade HQ by assisting the development of
shared situation awareness. Again the impact of this is evident at the higher levels of measures of
target acquisition rates and reduced vulnerability. How much the LSAS contributed to shared
situation awareness is the subject of a separate investigation and some techniques for assessment
of situation awareness were trailed in Prowling Pegasus (ref 6). An interesting contrast that
emerged was the relative ease of generating shared situation awareness within the brigade HQ as
compared with the difficulty of communicating the inherent understanding to the other HQ and
LOCON, neither of whom were collocated with the Brigade HQ. This was despite all having the
same information and the same visualisation available with the LSAS. It was readily apparent that
direct personal interaction was a major factor in rapid development of shared situation awareness
and this is to be further investigated. The shared situation awareness also had additional impact
through the enabling of procedures for synchronisation of air-space and cooperative
reconnaissance, target acquisition and engagement. Again the benefits were apparent at the higher
level of measures (targeting rates, vulnerability, fratricide) and again the relative benefits of
different aspects will require careful baselining and comparison experiments.
As alluded to above, the experiment gave only preliminary quantitative results on the benefits of
NCW concepts to effectiveness of a LAS due to lack of a baseline measure and only partial
development of appropriate procedures. The procedures that have been discussed, which were
introduced to take advantage of the networking technology, could have been made even more
effective if greater advantage of the potential of the LSAS had been appreciated and utilised by
the military participants. A particular example was that little or no use was made by the FA-18
pilots of the potential offered by an LSAS system as enabled by digital information links. A
combination of the short familiarisation period provided before the experiment and some
‘unfriendly’ aspects of the LSAS user interface (cluttered displays, clumsy information entry for
ARH pilots, for example), had detrimental effects on user acceptance of the technology. Many
advanced features of a LSAS which some participants identified during the experiment, have
already been developed but, due to time pressures, were not used due to a technical problem of
interfacing them to the SE. These problems will need to be remedied in future experiments.
A further problem with the validity of any quantitative measures was the design of the scenario.
Although it had much military credibility it was not specifically designed to stress the issues
relating to the effectiveness of the LAS and the NCW concepts. In particular, the enemy force
was too inferior to the blue force so the use of the LAS did not have a decisive effect on the
overall battle outcome. Thus any improvements to the overall mission effectiveness, due to the
application of the NCW principles in a LAS, will not be readily apparent at the highest levels.
Other problems, related to the fidelities of representations of components of the SoS, also lower
the validity of any quantitative results. Some examples are the inadequate representation of the
UAV and its interface to the human operator, the cut-down representation of the HQ structurePage 12

(with only token representation of the S2 cell for example), and the representations of the data
communications links. The issue of the inadequate representation of the communications
infrastructure (where all data links in the experiment were very high bandwidth) does have benefit
in helping to define the bandwidth requirement to achieve the shared situation awareness
necessary for the synchronisation and coordination procedures. The information passage in the
LSAS system was designed to minimise bandwidth requirements in the expectation that the Land
environment would be restrictive. The actual bandwidth required in the experiment will be
extracted in the analysis of data collected and will serve as a guide to separate development of a
communications infrastructure architecture to support the application of NCW concepts.
9 Conclusions
The major outcome from the Prowling Pegasus experiment has been the refinement of the LAS
concept in the development of procedures to harness the potential of the NCW technologies
employed. Many possible improvements to both technology and procedural aspects have been
discovered and will be implemented in further iterations. However the quantitative measures
obtained should not be used in any definitive way to argue the value of the particular LAS
configurations due to the several inadequacies noted of this particular experiment. Analysis of the
conduct of the experiment itself has affirmed the power of the methodology and most of the
inadequacies have resulted from not adhering strictly to the stated methodology.
10 References
1. R. Seymour, AM. Grisogono, M. Unewisse, D. Tailby, L. Rees and P. James, The Role of
Synthetic Environments in C4ISR Modelling and Simulation, paper 19, 5
th
International
Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium, Canberra, Oct., 2000.
2. M. H. Unewisse and L. M. L. Rees, Integrated Land Air Systems in the Digitised
Battlespace, Australian Battlespace Digitisation Symposium, Adelaide, July, 2000.
3. C4ISR architectures working group, C4ISR Architecture Framework Version 2.0,
Department of Defence, USA, 1997.

4. Ptech Inc., (http://www.ptechinc.com/) Using Framework – Ptech Framework 5.3 for
Windows, 1998. Also see: G. Kingston, P. Prekop, M. Chin, R. Jones, D. Kilpatrick and
P. Collier, “Applying Ptech Framework to Modelling Operational Architectures”,
Proceedings for Defence Operations Analysis Symposium (DOAS) Canberra, 16 – 17
March 2000.Page 13

5. Military Operations Research Society, see L. G. Bornman Jr, Command and Control
Measures of Effectiveness Handbook, (C2MOE Handbook), TRADOC Analysis Center,
(TRAC-TD-0393),1993.
6. M. Kardos and D. G. Sands, Behavioural Situation Awareness Measures and the Use of
Decision Support Tools during Exercise Prowling Pegasus, DSTO Technical Report, in
preparation.
7. G. Goodman and D. G. Sands, The Impact of New Visualisation and Management Tools
on Joint Procedures for the Land Air System, DSTO Technical Report, in preparation.
8. R. Seymour, B. Kirby, J. Krieg, D. Reid, and M. Unewisse, Achieving Interoperability
through an Information Management Architecture, paper 46, 5th International Command
and Control Research and Technology Symposium, Canberra, Oct., 2000.
9. J. Krieg, Simulating The Effect Of Radio Communications On Deployable Applications
Using DIS,
SimTecT2001 proceedings, (2001)
10. B. Kirby, J. Krieg, S. Fry, R. Seymour, M. Unewisse, D. Sands and W. Johnson, Interfacing
Constructive and Virtual Simulations to Battlespace Visualisation and Decision Support Aids,
SimTecT2000 proceedings, p51, (2000)
11. AM. Grisogono, J. Vaughan, W. I. Menadue, R. S. Seymour and M. Davies, Synthetic
environments in support of capability development: an armed reconnaissance helicopter
case study at Exercise Phoenix SimTecT 99, Melbourne, March 1999.
12. AM. Grisogono and R. S. Seymour, Implications for Concept of Operations of an Armed
Reconnaissance Helicopter arising from the Synthetic Environment demonstration at
Exercise Phoenix, LOD Client Report, 1999.

[Dig]

“Entwistle double murder case: More here than meets the eye?
www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message561044/pg1
Neil Entwistle, the 27-year old Briton accused of shooting to death his wife Rachel and baby daughter Lillian on January 19, has been linked to classified work on special Internet surveillance software, according to source close Here digest this too... Entwistle was recently extradited back to the United States from Britain to face double murder charges. Entwistle has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Police claimed Entwistle shot his wife and daughter with a .22 semi-automatic smuggled out of his father-in-laws home.

Entwistle’s firm, Embedded New Technologies (ENT), reportedly had connections to the Braintree, Massachusetts-based firm P-Tech, which was investigated subsequent to 911 by the FBI for ties to Muslim Brotherhood financiers linked to Al Qaeda. P-Tech also had software contracts for the FAA, NORAD, Pentagon, and White House during the 9-11 terrorist attacks. According to Entwistle’s mother-in-law, he also told his wife that he had large amounts of money held in “offshore” accounts.

Entwistle was flown from Gatwick Airport in England to Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts aboard one of the CIA Gulfstream planes previously used to fly “renditioned” Al Qaeda suspects around the world. Entwistle was accompanied by U.S. Marshals. TV footage of the aircraft studiously avoided showing the plane’s tail number. After questions were raised about the use of the Gulfstream, Massachusetts authorities claimed it had merely “rented” the U.S. government’s aircraft for the sole purpose of transporting Entwistle.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Neil Entwhistle (FROM THE UK) worked for a company named InQtel (CIA)out of Boston. (right after 9/11) Keep it in mind.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Neil Entwistle (born 18 September 1978) is an English-born man accused of murdering his wife, Rachel Entwistle, and their infant daughter Lillian on January 20, 2006 in the United States.

The bodies of 27-year-old Rachel and 9-month-old Lillian were found on January 22, in the master bedroom of the couple's rented Hopkinton, Massachusetts home where the Entwistles had been living for only ten days. Autopsy results showed that Rachel died of a gunshot wound to the head, and the baby died of a gunshot wound to the stomach

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, Randi Rhodes has an old posting about entwistle's ties to Ptech, but since 2006, almost every site about this subject has mysteriously disappeared, except those who thought it was worth archiving. There is a HUGE back story to the Ymette St guillen murder and her father's ties to Venezuela via the infamous "School of the Americas" ... but ...I digress... poor Neil. I can't imagine what he must be thinking. I have a feeling this story won't go away though... too many loose, important (and not dead) ends.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

W T F ?

[Dig]

October 19, 2007
War games, etc.: A preliminary overview of some of Mark Robinowitz’s evidence about 9/11
http://activistnyc.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/war-games-etc-a-preliminary-overview-of-mark-robinowitzs-evidence-about-911/

In a comment on my post about Chip Berlet and “Conspiracism”, charlienneb has asked me to recommend an assertion of Mark Robinowitz’s for him to take a look at. So, I’ll now try to present what Robinowitz has said is some of his best evidence. I cannot vouch for everything he says, because he deals with a lot of matters I personally have not yet researched in depth.

For me personally, regarding 9/11, the smoking gun is the straight-down vertical, almost-symmetrical collapse of WTC 7, plus all the subsequent hampering and fudging of investigations. I’ve also spent quite a bit of time studying arguments for and against the idea that WTC 1 and 2 too were demolished with explosives and/or thermite/thermate, and I’m inclined to think it’s highly likely that they were.

But Robinowitz, on the other hand, prefers not to rely on demolition theories, or on physical-evidence arguments of any kind. He has made some good arguments against relying on physical evidence. Most people have almost no scientific background whatsoever and hence are not in a good position to evaluate physical evidence on their own. Although I’m no expert either, I personally do have a strong general scientific and engineering background, including two years of physics in college, which, I believe, is enough background for me to evaluate most (though not all) of the scientific arguments that have been made on both sides. But most people don’t share my background, so it would behoove me to see if I can build a solid case for government complicity in the 9/11 attacks (at least LIHOP, if not MIHOP) without any reference to demolition, either in the direct physical evidence or in the evidence of a coverup.

Robinowitz believes he has such a case. Because I’ve been asked about it, I’ll now discuss some of Robinowitz’s evidence as best I can without yet having done the needed further research. In later posts I’ll comment on other websites that he recommends, plus other websites I’m aware of which likewise focus on matters not requiring any scientific knowledge.

Robinowitz documents most of his claims, but there are, in my opinion, a few gaps in his documentation. He compensates for the gaps with good common-sense reasoning. However, to build a really solid case, it would be desirable to have documentation for those points too. I’ll be pointing out the gaps below, as I present his arguments. I would appreciate it very much if any readers could point me to some relevant primary-source documentation, if it exists.

On his Best evidence page, Robinowitz lists as the “Best documented evidence”:

suppressed warnings (from FBI investigation of flight schools and from US allies warning 9/11 was imminent), failure to follow standard operating procedure during the attacks, Air Force and intelligence wargames on 9/11

On a page about prior warnings, he includes the following, among other items:
High-Ranking Officials Admit 9/11 Could’ve Been Prevented – collection of quotes
List of Foreign Intelligence Agency Attack Warnings in the Cooperative Research site.
A copy of “Dozens of warnings preceded 9/11″ by Eric Lichtblau, The New York Times, Thursday, February 10, 2005, as reprinted in the International Herald Tribune
What Did They Know – collection of news stories about prior warnings and other foreknowledge, on MakeThemAccountable.com

In email to me, Robinowitz mentioned Coleen Rowley, an FBI agent who blew the whistle on how, before 9/11, the Washington office of the FBI had blocked investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was subsequently indicted as a conspirator in the 9/11 attacks. A copy of her memo can be found on the Time magazine site.

The above does not, by itself, prove government complicity, but it’s part of a larger pattern of actions and inactions by various government agencies which allowed the attacks of 9/11 to happen. The larger pattern, taken as a whole, is indeed suspicious, worthy of an investigation with subpoena power, by someone without Philip Zelikow’s ties to the Bush administration.

Many people have questioned why NORAD didn’t intercept any of the hijacked planes on 9/11. On his page about The “Stand Down” of the Air Force on 9/11, Robinowitz writes:

For critics of the official story of 9/11, the smokiest of the smoking guns is the “failure” of NORAD to intercept the planes.

…

Apologists for the Bush regime state that since they were not expecting the 9/11 scenario, and thought that the hijacking would be a “traditional” type hijack, but this avoids the question of why the off-course planes were not intercepted (a procedure that does not require Presidential authorization, unlike the order to shoot down the plane).

According to David Ray Griffin in Debunking 9/11 Debunking, there were two distinct protocols that the FAA and NORAD could have followed, the hijacking protocol and the emergency protocol. According to Griffin, the FAA and NORAD should have followed the emergency protocal because of the loss of radio contact and transponder signal. This should have resulted in a faster response, by the FAA and NORAD, than the hijacking protocol, which was admittedly slower, since “traditional” hijackings were not necessarily considered emergencies before 9/11. (If anyone can direct me to some good documentation on this, I would very much appreciate it. Unfortunately, Griffin’s documentation isn’t the best. Mark Robinowitz, by the way, does not endorse Griffin’s books.) In any case, once the first plane hit WTC 1, and especially after the second plane hit WTC 2, all other hijackings should surely have been treated as emergencies.

Back to Mark Robinowitz:

Even if one is willing to grant exceptional deference to the Bush / Cheney administration, and pretend that they had no idea 9/11 was about to happen, there is no excuse for this ignorance at 9:03 am, when the second (South) tower was hit. At that point, the entire military’s air defense system had no doubt that the hijackings were intentional, multiple attacks, and that additional hijacked planes would be used as weapons. This is the time when “President” Bush was content to continue to read to second graders, instead of assuming his duties as Commander-in-Chief.

When the second tower was struck, Flight 77 was near the Ohio – West Virginia border. Around this time, that plane made an unscheduled 180 degree turn, and stopped communicating with air traffic control — a big clue that this was also one of the hijacked planes. Nevertheless, no serious efforts were made to intercept this plane between 9:03 am and 9:38 am, when it hit the west side of the Pentagon. Planes were scrambled from an air base in the Norfolk, Virginia area during this time, but inexplicably were sent east over the ocean, instead of northwest toward the Washington area. (The weather that morning was perfectly clear, and there is no innocent explanation for why these interceptor planes were sent over the water, away from DC, instead of toward the National Capitol Area.)

The 9/11 Commission report placed all the blame on the FAA, which many people have questioned on various grounds. In discussing this point, it would be helpful to have documentation of exactly what the FAA’s standard operating procedures actually were back in September 2001. Unfortunately I haven’t found this on any of the 9/11 Truth websites I’ve looked at so far, other than some broken links to pages on the FAA website that no longer exist. Also I was unsatisfied with the references that David Ray Griffin provided, on this particular point, in Debunking 9/11 Debunking (although I don’t remember, offhand, exactly why I was unsatisfied with them). However, without primary-source documentation of the FAA’s actual standard operating procedures at that time, we don’t have a complete answer to those who would claim that the problem was just FAA incompetence or inadequate standard operating procedures. It has been widely claimed in the mass media that the FAA’s and NORAD’s SOP’s back then were not adequate to deal with the situation, but were made stricter after 9/11. If indeed the SOP’s were adequate before 9/11, I would appreciate it very much if anyone reading this could point me to some good documentation. When I asked Mark Robinowitz about this, he suggested that I read Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Ruppert. Not having read this book yet, I cannot comment further.

In the meantime, various people have made some good common-sense arguments against the idea of FAA incompetence or inadequate SOP’s. For example, on his page about The “Stand Down” of the Air Force on 9/11, Robinowitz writes:

The 9/11 Commission blamed the FAA for screwing up the response to the hijackings, yet FAA safely landed more than 4,000 planes at airports that were not expecting them immediately after the attacks began.

The point here being that the FAA managed to accomplish a totally unprecedented task without incident, which makes it unlikely that they would have been so utterly incompetent at a task which was more routine, e.g. calling NORAD in the event of trouble.

Robinowitz then argues, further:

It has been standard operating procedures for decades to immediately intercept off course planes that do not respond to communications from air traffic controllers. When the Air Force “scrambles” a fighter plane to intercept, they usually reach the plane in question in minutes. The Air Force plane will then fly next to the non-responsive plane, and rock their wings — a way to say “follow me” to a nearby airport (if the plane merely has lost its radio equipment). If the intercepted plane refuses to respond, there is a graduated series of actions the Air Force can use — firing tracer bullets in front of the plane, even shooting it down if it is a threat. This is analogous to police pulling motorists over for having their lights out – every driver in the US knows that when a police car behind them turns on their siren, they are supposed to pull over, just like every pilot knows that when an Air Force fighter plane pulls beside them, they are supposed to follow their orders, too. If the light bulb has merely burned out, the motorist will get a warning, but the police have a graduated series of responses they can employ if the driver is not merely having a mechanical problem (ie. they have just robbed a bank and are driving with the lights off to avoid being seen).

The airspace over the northeastern US is among the busiest on the planet. It is home to the nation’s political, military and financial headquarters, the largest population concentrations, and key strategic facilities. A jumbo jet in this area suddenly changing direction and altitude, and refusing to respond to air traffic controllers would be as dangerous as a truck on a busy rush-hour freeway driving the wrong way at full speed. When planes go off course in this busy environment, instant reactions make the difference between life and death — which is why NORAD (North American Air Defense) practices these kinds of scenarios, and instantly scrambles fighters when there is any hint of a problem.

Some people easily accept an incompetence theory on the alleged grounds that all bureaucracies are always, everywhere, and inevitably incompetent. But this is an unjustified blanket claim. Bureaucracies are sometime competent, sometimes not, depending on how well-trained their employees are, what their protocols are, etc. Also a government agency may be good at some tasks but not others. (An example David Ray Griffin gave in Debunking 9/11 Debunking is that the U.S. armed forces are good at invading other countries, but not good at occupying other countries.)

So then, what was the FAA’s and/or NORAD’s problem on 9/11?

Some people have alleged that a “stand down” order must have been given to the FAA and/or NORAD. Mark Robinowitz does not believe that a “stand down” order was given, because there would have been too great a risk of such an order being disobeyed. As he explains on his page about the war games:

It would be like asking a firefighter who had trained their entire adult life to “stand down” when their neighbor’s house was burning and the inhabitants trapped inside (or worse, asking that firefighter to “stand down” from protecting the next house on the block from catching fire from the first burning house). In this analogy, the firefighter would probably ignore orders from his or her boss to stand down, and would seek to rescue the neighbors without worrying about the consequences until later.

So, Robinowitz believes that normal responses, by both the FAA and NORAD, must have been interfered with in ways subtler than an outright “stand down” order.

He has a page discussing what he and others have alleged were an unusually large number of war games (training exercises) taking place on the morning of 9/11, thereby distracting the FAA, NORAD, the CIA, and other government agencies from doing what they normally might have been able to do the stop the planes from hitting the buildings — or at least the WTC buildings. As Robinowitz points out, the exercises don’t explain why the Pentagon was allowed to be hit, because the exercises would surely have been called off by the time the second WTC tower was hit. But he regards the war games as strong evidence of government complicity.

To know whether the war games are, in fact, truly anomolous enough to be strong evidence of complicity on the part of whoever scheduled all these exercises, one would also need to know how often such exercises were normally conducted and, therefore, how unusual it truly was to schedule so many exercises on a single day. Perhaps this is discussed in the hooks and websites he recommends. In the meantime, I would appreciate it very much if anyone else reading this could point me to such information.

In any case, the content of some of these drills, and of other similar drills before 9/11, clearly indicate that the government had in fact anticipated the possibility of an attack similar to 9/11, and so was not nearly as unprepared as some government officials have alleged.

One of the exercises, an emergency evacuation drill by the National Reconnaissance Office, involved a simulation of a plane crashing into a building. Robinowitz’s page about this exercise says:

This war game was not a “terrorism” exercise – but it did simulate a plane going off course (on the approach to nearby Dulles Airport) and crashing into the NRO’s headquarters, control center for US spy satellites. This war game was to test the emergency response procedures in the event of this type of accident, and included practice evacuation of the buildings. It is very damning that the war game planners (of all of the war games, not merely this one) ensured that the NRO’s headquarters was largely evacuated at precisely the time that 9/11 was taking place, which minimized the number of officials who were able to monitor the events via the Pentagon’s satellite intelligence systems.

Elsewhere, on Robinowitz’s main page about the war games, he quotes 9/11 War Games – No Coincidence by Michael Kane, including the following, about the NRO’s plane-into-building exercise, involving an emergency evacuation drill:

The NRO is, effectively, the “eyes of the world”. With the majority of American spy satellites at its fingertips, it can reasonably be assumed that NRO headquarters was an indispensable resource to NORAD and the Air Force from 8:28 when Flight 77 made its unplanned 180-degree turn over Pennsylvania, until 9:38 when it is said to have struck the Pentagon. The NRO claims as soon as the real world events “began to unfold” the drill was called off and all but the most essential personnel were sent home. (UPI, Aug 22, 2002)
Read that last sentence again.
Why was the NRO sending home personnel during what was likely the biggest military crisis on American soil in recent history? Who were the “most essential” personnel and what did those individuals do as events unfolded?

The citation is from UPI. Has anyone confirmed, from any other news source, that “all but the most essential personnel were sent home”? If accurate, it is indeed exceedingly strange. But how suspicious this it would depend on just how few people were considered “essential.” So, some further investigation is needed before this is hailed as damning evidence.

Robinowitz’s page about the war games includes a quote from the “Rigorous Intuition” blog discussing the NRO’s plane-into-building exercise, with a link to this page containing documentation.

Robinowitz’s page about the war games is, unfortunately, not very well-organized, so I’ll give some of the highlights below. He starts by recommending Michael Ruppert’s book Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, as “the most indepth analysis of the 9/11 war games.” Robinowitz then points us to a summary of the main points of Rupport’s book, Crossing the Rubicon: Simplifying the case against Dick Cheney by Michael Kane.

Robinowitz also refers us to the Military exercises up to 9/11 in the “Complete 9/11 timeline” on the Cooperative Research site. Robinowitz calls this page “Required reading for everyone concerned about the ‘failure’ of the Air Force to stop the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon.”

He also refers us to The Fog of War Games on Margie Burns’s blog. This page lists a bunch of war games known to have taken place on 9/11, with documentation.

Further down on his page about the war games, Robinowitz too has a table listing specific war games, with primary source documentation for most of them, and briefly explains how some of them interfered with the FAA’s and/or NORAD’s responses on 9/11.

After that is a brief mention of NORAD’s changing timelines, which suggest a coverup of some kind (though they do not, in and of themselves, indicate what sort of thing is being covered up).

He then quotes The Riddle of the Transponders on the blog “Rigorous Intuition” by Jeff Wells:

What was the value-added benefit for the 9/11 hijackers in turning off their transponder signals?
The planes remained visible to radar; the transponders merely ID’d the flights. And yet the transponders of all four flights were switched off. What was gained?
I think the answer is found in the proliferation of wargames on September 11, particularly the exercise called “Vigilant Guardian”: the live-fly simulation of hijackings in the US Northeast staged by the Joint Chiefs and NORAD the very morning of the attacks. (Health advisory to coincidentalists: chew carefully before digesting.)
At one time on 9/11, as many as 22 aircraft appeared to be hijacked. Suddenly, the virtue, now verging on necessity, of switching off the transponders becomes evident. With loss of transponder signals the planes became bogies, and discriminating real from simulated hijackings became next to impossible.
This confusion compounded the paralysis already introduced to the system by drawing most of the Eastern seaboard’s combat-ready interceptors into Northern Canada for the wargame “Northern Vigilence,” and changing the standing orders for a shootdown in June 2001 by removing the discretion of field commanders and placing it solely in the hands of the Secretary of Defense.

Robinowitz also quotes the page Tripod II and FEMA: Lack of NORAD Response on 9/11 Explained by Michael C. Ruppert.

He also quotes 9/11 War Games – No Coincidence by Michael Kane:

Officials at NORAD have stated when the hijackings first occurred they initially thought it was part of the Vigilant Guardian drills running that morning. Despite some confusion, once Flight 11 struck the World Trade Center at 8:45 am, everyone should have known it was not a test. However, this is still an assumption because we do not know what the fighter jocks in the air at the time did and did not know, we do not know the full extent of the orders they received and it has yet to be explained why scrambled fighter jets were unable to intercept even one of the 4 hijacked airliners.Scrambling Fighter Jets
Standard operating procedure of both FAA & NORAD dictates that once an aircraft is off course and/or its transponder is not responding, within 10 minutes Air Force jets are scrambled to re-establish physical contact with the wayward plane.
Scrambling Air Force interceptors does not mean shooting down any aircraft. It simply means that an Air Force jet is dispatched to fly next to the off course aircraft, attempt to communicate with the its pilots, look inside the cockpit, see who is in control of the plane and report back to flight control what is actually happening. In the year prior to 9/11 this automatic procedure was triggered a total of 67 times (AP, 8/13/02). On the morning of 9/11, it was not successfully applied even once in the well over an hour-long period in which the four separate hijackings occurred. Why?
The most egregious case is that of Flight 77, reported to have struck the Pentagon. At 8:50 am there was a loss of contact with this plane that was now well off course and hurtling toward the nation’s capital, but it was not until 9:24 am that fighter jets were scrambled. That’s 34 minutes after flight control lost contact with the plane and well after 2 hijacked aircraft had already crashed into both World Trade Center towers.
Fighter Planes were dispatched extremely late to the World Trade Center as well, and only made it there after Flight 175 had crashed into WTC 2, too late to be effective. Those planes were then sent back to base, instead of being sent in pursuit of an aircraft, which by that time was widely known to have been well off course. Why?
Did war games conducted by the Air Force, NORAD, NRO and others on 9/11 unintentionally cause this unprecedented ‘confusion’, or does all of this point to more disturbing conclusions about what happened that tragic morning?

As mentioned earlier, the war games could account only for confusion that occurred before the war games were called off. They could not account for why Flight 77 was allowed to hit the Pentagon. The 9/11 Commission Report claims that, at that point, there was confusion caused by a “Phantom Flight 11.” Assuming this is true (which has been questioned by David Ray Griffin, among others), where could “Phantom Flight 11″ possibly have come from? On his page about the warnings Robinowitz links to THE FAA KNEW! But were they set up? by Michael Kane, containing the following hypothesis as to how “Phantom Flight 11″ might have been generated:

The real issue with the FAA on 9/11 is Ptech.

Ptech (now Go Agile) was the company that supplied the enterprise architecture software for most of the federal government and its military agencies. This included the Whitehouse, Secret Service, Air Force and FAA. This software is able to analyze the critical data throughout an enterprise in real-time. For federal aviation, the most critical data of all lies on FAA radar screens.

Ptech was owned and funded by Saudi terror financiers with reported links to the Bush administration. But it was the Clinton administration that granted Ptech high military security clearance in 1996, when they began receiving contracts throughout the entire federal government.

Why wasn’t Ptech ever mentioned in the 9/11 Commission report? Why is the FAA being blamed for 9/11 without any mention of the appalling fact that Ptech was in the FAA for (at least) 2 years with access to their entire data blueprint and all FAA databases?

Ptech’s software is powerful enough to have allowed intentional, specific manipulation of real-time information on FAA radar screens. Remember, on 9/11 the Air Force was in the middle of simulated war games that involved false blips, referred to as “radar injects,” on FAA screens (see Crossing the Rubicon for full documentation). Add into this equation the very real possibility of such an inject remaining on FAA screens after the war games were called off – which seems to be exactly what happened.

…

Ptech had access to the entire informational barn door of the FAA’s data systems. In an amazing exchange published in part 1 of this series, FTW editor Jamey Hecht was able to confirm a central thesis of Crossing the Rubicon while interviewing Wall Street whistleblower Indira Singh. Ms. Singh is an IT professional who started First Boston’s first Information Technology group in 1975 and had worked on Wall Street until 2002. She’s been an IT consultant for Banker’s Trust, the U.N., JP Morgan, and American Express. In 1988 she started TibetNet – a derivative of DARPA’s Internet, the service on which you are likely reading this report at the moment. The exchange was as follows:

Jamey Hecht: You said at the 9/11 Citizens’ Commission hearings, you mentioned – its on page 139 of transcript – that Ptech was with Mitre Corporation in the basement of the FAA for 2 years prior to 9/11 and their specific job was to look at interoperability issues the FAA had with NORAD and the Air Force, in case of an emergency.

Indira Singh: Yes, I have a good diagram for that…

Jamey Hecht: And that relationship had been going on mediated by Ptech for 2 years prior to 9/11. You elsewhere say that the Secret Service is among the government entities that had a contract with Ptech. Mike Ruppert’s thesis in Crossing the Rubicon, as you know, is that the software that was running information between FAA & NORAD was superseded by a parallel subsuming version of itself that was being run by the Secret Service on state of the art parallel equipment in the PEOC with a nucleus of Secret Service personnel around Cheney.

…In your view, might it have been the case that Cheney was using Ptech to surveil the function of the people who wanted to do their jobs on the day of 9/11 in FAA & NORAD, and then intervene to turn off the legitimate response?

Indira Singh: Is it possible from a software standpoint? Absolutely it’s possible. Did he (Cheney) have such a capability? I don’t know. But that’s the ideal risk scenario – to have an over-arching view of what’s going on in data. That’s exactly what I wanted for JP Morgan.

…

Please see…
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/012005_ptech_pt1.shtml
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/012705_ptech_pt2.shtml
…for more info on Ptech, the FAA & 9/11

A more complete story about Indira Singh, also by Michael Kane, can be found here.

Of course, we have no hard evidence that the Ptech system was in fact used in the way these stories suggest. The above is only speculation. If the description of Ptech is accurate, then the above speculation establishes only that Dick Cheney had the means to disrupt the FAA’s response on 9/11. Establishing possible means is indeed a valid and vital step in building a good criminal case, although more is necessary, of course.

Anyhow, it is widely recognized that there was a lot of confusion on the part of the FAA on 9/11. For example, on, of all places, a “9/11 conspiracy debunking” website, I found this list of “some of the known false alarms” that occurred on 9/11.

Why was there so much confusion, after the war games had been called off? Such confusion can’t possibly be normal, or else air traffic controllers would never have been able to do their jobs very well, and plane crashes would be commonplace. So, something unusual had to have caused the huge amount of confusion on 9/11. But what?

A truly independent investigation with subpoena power would be needed in order to resolve this issue.
Comments (24)
24 Comments »

Thanks for that, Diane. I’ll take a look over the weekend.

In the meantime I have looked a little at your page on WTC7. The annotated chapter of the FEMA report seems to be the work of a conpiracist to me. FEMA are accused of being dishonest and deceitful but, as you stated yourself:

However, as even the FEMA report itself admitted, “the best hypothesis” along these lines “has only a low probability of occurrence.”

FEMA’s statement is hardly the statement of an organization intending to deceive. The writer of the annotations accuses FEMA of either faking a picture of the vast plume of smoke from WTC7 or mispresenting smoke/dust from the towers as smoke from WTC7. I think this video shows him to be wrong:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6790722824543352916&q=steve+spak&total=108&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3

(Relevant footage starts at 6:20 mark)

Comment by charlienneb — October 19, 2007 @ 12:32 pm | Log in to Reply

To my page about WTC 7, I should perhaps add a parenthetical note that I do not necessarily agree with or endorse all the annotations in red on that HTML copy of the FEMA report.

Anyhow, I would appreciate it very much if any further comments about my WTC 7 page and related matters could be posted on that page rather than here.

Comment by Diane — October 19, 2007 @ 12:52 pm | Log in to Reply

Diane, here are my thoughts about Mr Robinowitz’s evidence:

WARNINGS

The list of quotes from politicians who state that if all the intelligence had been acted upon, the attacks could have been stopped. I agree with this, but the fact that various agencies failed to get their act together doesn’t mean they did so by design.

The list of countries who supposedly supplied warnings:The problem with cooperativeresearch.org is that many of their links to sources do not work. However, I believe a great these warnings applied to US interests around the globe and do not specify the means of attack. It would be wrong to imply that these warnings should have alerted US Intelligence to attacks specifically in the US and specifically by crashing aircraft.

The article from the New York Times via the International Herald Tribune about the FAA and warnings, whose source is a “previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 Commission” (no link provided): The article tells us that the FAA received dozens of relevant intelligence reports about terrorism in the months before 9/11. As these intelligence reports come from the CIA and FBI, it’s hard to square the conpiracist claims that these same intelligence agencies deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen. The article tells us that the FAA was “lulled into a false sense of security” and goes o to tell us that “Federal aviation and natural security officials believed the threat was
focused overseas, the report said, and the commission found no evidence that the FAA had specific intelligence indicating that Al Qaeda was plotting to hijack commercial planes within the United States and use them as
weapons”, although the FAA did brief unspecfied airlines and airports about terrorism. Should the FAA have done more? Possibly. Any evidence here of deliberately allowing things to happen? No.

The “whatdidtheyknow” page is a mish-mash of stuff. Some I know to be false, others are not relevant to warnings.

I can’t go through them all, but debunking sites such as 911mtyhs.com deal with them. I do smile when ever conpiracist claims cite Richard Clarke. Richard Clarke is an authoratative witness, he was in a postion to know
things. Does he think 9/11 was an inside job? No. Does he say in the preface in Popular Mechanic’s Debunking9/11 Myths that the book tells it the way it was? Yes!

Coleen Rowley: Its quite clear from Ms Rowley’s memo that she blames bureaucracy, laws and error for the failure to secure a search warrant for Massaoui’s computer. It is clear from the body of her text there was a problem obtaining warrants. Here is just one she cites:

“Another factor that cannot be underestimated as to the HQ Supervisor’s apparent reluctance to do anything was/is the ever present risk of being “written up” for an Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) “error.” In the year(s) preceding the September 11th acts of terrorism, numerous alleged IOB violations on the part of FBI personnel had to be submitted to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) as well as the IOB. I believe the chilling effect on all levels of FBI agents assigned to intelligence matters and their manager hampered us from aggressive investigation of terrorists. Since one generally only runs the risk of IOB violations when one does something, the safer course is to do nothing.”

Now, if Mr Robinowitz could show that similar warrant requests were obtained without meeting the problems that Coleen Rowley describes, that might be something. But Ms Rowley’s memo is clear; the problem was case wide, not specific to Massaoui’s case.

The “Stand Down” of the Air Force on 9/11

I find this section a little confusing. It’s entltled” Why there was NOT a “stand down” order”, but goes on to to make stand down type arguments, only to finish up by saying a stand down order would have been too risky. As he
agrees there was no stand down, I should not need to comment further, but I will make these points:

“The 9/11 Commission blamed the FAA for screwing up the response to the hijackings, yet FAA safely landed more than 4,000 planes at airports that were not expecting them immediately after the attacks began.”

I take the point here about landing planes all at once, but landing planes is something the FAA is well practised at.They land thousands of planes,day after day, year after year. If they had dealt with hijackings frequently, they would be no doubt have reponded better.

When the Air Force “scrambles” a fighter plane to intercept, they usually reach the plane in question in minutes.”

There is no source for his claim. When he says Air Force, he should say NORAD. Only NORAD has aircraft in any state of readiness and even these take ~6 minutes to take off from the time the order is given to do so, let alone the further flying time to reach a target. On 9/11, the northeast sector of NORAD, NEADS, had their normal complement of two pairs of aircraft on standby, one pair at Otis Air Force base and one pair at Langley. How long
does it take for non-NORAD planes to get ready to fly? Well, on 9/11 Andrews Air Force base was asked to ready planes – they were ready one hour later, too late to do anything. 9/11myths.com has an interesting page on
intercepts – http://911myths.com/html/intercept_time.html

“Ultimately, Flight 93 was shot down around 10:06 am near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, although this was kept concealed from the public.”

Flight 93 was brought down because of the actions of some brave passengers fighting for their lives. All the evidence, particularly the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, which shows all systems functioning
normally until the plane hit the ground, point to this. All that’s offered here is conpiracist speculation. I find that insulting to the memory of these passengers.

(Diane, like you, I haven’t been able to find documentary evidence of pre-9/11 FAA hijacking protocols, but the

9/11 Commission report states this:

“From interviews of controllers at various FAA centers, we learned that an air traffic controller’s first response to an

aircraft incident is to notify a supervisor, who then notifies the traffic management unit and the operations manager in charge.The FAA center next notifies the appropriate regional operations center (ROC), which in turn
contacts FAA head-quarters.”

We know from the NORAD tapes that a controller at Boston Center circumvented all of this by contacting NEADS directly about the hijacking of AA11, which is a strange way to run a stand down!).

War Games

Nowhere does Mr Robinowtz demonstrate how any drill or exercise hampered or confused the FAA or NORAD.

Please see these 911myths pages about he NRO drill and transponder blips:

http://911myths.com/html/nro_drill.html
http://911myths.com/html/false_blips.html

and this page about all the exercises:

http://911myths.com/html/war_games_cover_for_9-11.html

One article Robinowitz cite makes some play of the fact that Flight 77 was not intercepted and indicates that it was known hijacking at 8.50am. This is not so. Flight 77 had its last routine contat at 8.50am. At 8.54m it deviated from it’s assigned flight path by turning south. Two minutes later, it’s transponder was turned off. The controller looked for a blip on primary radar and coud not find one. He tried contacting it by radio – nothing. With no transponder return, no primary radar return and no radio contact the controller assumed 77 had crashed, which was the only scenario in which these three events occur simulltaneously. Shorlty after 9.00am Indianapolis Center reported 77 missing and at 9.08am asked for a search and rescue mission to look for a downed aircraft and the West Virgnia State Police to do the same. Only at 9.20am did Indianapolis Center learn that there had been earlierhijackings and began to reconsider its evaluation of 77. They began to look for a primary radar return for 77,looking west along it’s original course and south, the direction of it’s last known heading. Unknown to them, 77 had turned east and was heading towards Washington. The FAA command center was informed that 77 was a potential hijacking at 9.21am and they ifnformed NEADS, who requested the Langley fighters to scramble at 9.23am .At 9.30 am the Lanley fighter were airborne, too late to stop 77 hitting the Pentagon at 9.37.46.

You may ask why there 77 dispappeared from primary radar. Simply, there were areas of the US where there were holes in the primary radar coverage and 77 entered such an area. Missing coverage is not a problem when all planes
have transponders, but when they are deliberately turned off a problem arises.
From all of this, I understand why 77 was not intercepted and can attach no blame to NORAD, nor even the FAA and I don’t see any evidence of a conpiracy.

The Ptech stuff is pure speculation. I have only one comment on this: As this company received approval during the Clinton administration, does this mean the Clinton administration is also part of the conpiracy? If it does, I can’t take any more!

Comment by charlienneb — October 21, 2007 @ 10:57 pm | Log in to Reply

To charlienneb:

You wrote:

The article from the New York Times via the International Herald Tribune about the FAA and warnings, whose source is a “previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 Commission” (no link provided): The article tells us that the FAA received dozens of relevant intelligence reports about terrorism in the months before 9/11. As these intelligence reports come from the CIA and FBI, it’s hard to square the conpiracist claims that these same intelligence agencies deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen. The article tells us that the FAA was “lulled into a false sense of security” and goes o to tell us that “Federal aviation and natural security officials believed the threat was
focused overseas, the report said, and the commission found no evidence that the FAA had specific intelligence indicating that Al Qaeda was plotting to hijack commercial planes within the United States and use them as
weapons”, although the FAA did brief unspecfied airlines and airports about terrorism. Should the FAA have done more? Possibly. Any evidence here of deliberately allowing things to happen? No.

The question here is why the FAA wasn’t warned, specifically, about the possibility of an attack on U.S. soil, given that some of the other warnings did point to this possibility.

Anyhow, I don’t believe that the FBI and the CIA, as a whole, could have been in on the 9/11 plot, which would have to have been the work of fairly small cabal of high-level people. (Otherwise, too many people would have known about it, which would have been too great a risk for something so blatantly treasonous.)

The “Stand Down” of the Air Force on 9/11

I find this section a little confusing. It’s entltled” Why there was NOT a “stand down” order”, but goes on to to make stand down type arguments, only to finish up by saying a stand down order would have been too risky.

Robinowitz’s claim here is that there was no explicit stand-down order, but that there was nevertheless a de facto stand down via deliberately-induced confusion and distractions.

When the Air Force “scrambles” a fighter plane to intercept, they usually reach the plane in question in minutes.”

There is no source for his claim.

Indeed there isn’t. And, as I said in my original post, the idea that the FAA’s and NORAD’s pre-9/11 standard operating procedures would have ensured that at least some of the planes were intercepted before they hit the buildings is a claim I that haven’t yet seen adequately documented by anyone. If people in the 9/11 Truth movement are going to continue to make such a claim (especially in the face of some counter-evidence, such as you’ve presented), we need some good primary-source documentation, not just common-sense arguments.

However, even if one doesn’t claim that the planes necessarily could have been intercepted in time, it’s still worth exploring the possibility that someone in the government might have created some deliberate distractions, to ensure that the planes weren’t intercepted in time. Of course, such a claim would need to be backed up with some good evidence too.

“Ultimately, Flight 93 was shot down around 10:06 am near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, although this was kept concealed from the public.”

Flight 93 was brought down because of the actions of some brave passengers fighting for their lives. All the evidence, particularly the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, which shows all systems functioning
normally until the plane hit the ground, point to this.

What is your source regarding the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder? (I’m wondering if your information contradicts Jim Hoffman’s, to which I’ll link below.)

I have not paid much attention to the whole question of what might have happened to Flight 93, because, even if it could be shown that Flight 93 was shot down, this in itself wouldn’t be strong evidence for MIHOP or even LIHOP. It was widely reported in the mass media that there was an order to shoot it down, and indeed one could argue that it should have been shot down, under the circumstances. So the only question is whether the struggle in the cockpit brought the plane down before it could be shot down as ordered. If indeed it should turn out that an actual shoot-down was covered up, one could then argue that perhaps the motive for the coverup was merely a belated attempt to prevent a lawsuit by the families of the passengers, or some other legal or bureaucratic issue. So, I have not considered the question of what happened to Flight 93 to be nearly as important as the question of what happened to the WTC buildings.

Be that as it may, Jim Hoffman presents some evidence for a shoot-down of Flight 93 here, here, and here.

I find that insulting to the memory of these passengers.

Apparently the passengers did act in a heroic manner, regardless of what finally brought the plane down.

Anyhow, later in your comment you gave a timeline for what happened to Flight 77. There have been a total of three different, mutually contradictory timelines released, regarding all four planes. Which timeline are you using?

The Ptech stuff is pure speculation. I have only one comment on this: As this company received approval during the Clinton administration, does this mean the Clinton administration is also part of the conpiracy?

No. Regardless of how/when/why the Ptech system was installed, its significance is that it may have provided Cheney with a possible means of sowing confusion on 9/11. Of course, one would need more evidence that such confusion was in fact sown.

This is an area I have yet to research in detail.

My focus so far, as I said earlier, has been more on what happened to the WTC buildings. And the number one thing that convinces me that something strange is afoot is the straight-down, vertical, almost-symmetical collapse of WTC 7.

Comment by Diane — October 26, 2007 @ 3:14 am | Log in to Reply

I just now came across the blog entry The Pentagon Flight Path Misinformation, Stand-Down, War Games, and the Three Mysterious Planes. It contains, among other things, some information about the FAA’s version of what happened on 9/11. For whatever reason, it appears that the FAA’s version was completely ignored by the 9/11 Commission. Anyhow, the FAA’s timelines has the FAA responding a lot sooner than they did according to any of NORAD’s various different timelines. Of course, no matter what may have really happened, we can expect each government agency to try to make itself look good, at the expense of other government agencies. However, according to David Ray Griffin, the FAA was handicapped in its ability to defend itself, because the FBI immediately seized the FAA’s tapes (but did not seize NORAD’s tapes). Griffin suspects that NORAD’s tapes (as released to the 9/11 Commission) may have doctored, because they make NORAD look even better than NORAD’s older timelines did.

Comment by Diane — October 28, 2007 @ 10:54 pm | Log in to Reply

Diane, the DoD regulations are described and linked to here:

http://www.911blogger.com/node/9629#comment-153055

These relate to what a base commander could order without higher approval, and show that these regs and their change in June 2001 were not the issue. As for the distinction between hijacking and emergency protocol, I forget what Griffin said, but basically the question is why fighters weren’t timely scrambled to intercept the blips, not why the planes were not shot down or some action taken once they were intercepted.

There were much fewer planes on high alert status after the Cold War, but that is partly a problem of definition. I did some research on this back in 2002 but never wrote it up. What I recall is that during the Cold War there were many more planes with engines running and pilots in the cockpit ready to scramble, and very few now, but there are still a lot of planes with pilots on alert ready to scramble on short notice. Maybe the difference between 3 minutes to 10,000 feet to 8, 10, 12 or 15 minutes – something like that. Bottom line, there was procedure and capacity to have fighters to meet those planes well before they hit. The war games are a good explanation why that didn’t happen — lots of fake blips in the air that day. Otis Air Base reports not being able to find Flight 11 as identified by FAA. Lie? Maybe, maybe not – who knows?

Comment by dwightvw — October 29, 2007 @ 5:05 am | Log in to Reply

Charlieneb, you link to the False Blips page at 9/11 Myths, which says “There’s nothing in the article to say the “injects” affected FAA screens, or NEADS, or even everyone in the command centre.” This may have been written before the Vanity Fair article “9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes,” which describes confusion of NEADS technicians as to whether they were viewing real planes or “inputs” on their screens.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/08/norad200608?printable=true&currentPage=all

The intercept times page at 9/11 Myths cites testimony by General Arnold. This testimony does not comport with DoD regs, and Arnold’s testimony has little credibility given the drastic change in the military’s story between 2001 and 2004.

Whether or not fighters could have reached the planes, they should have been off the ground much quicker, and not reaching Flight 175 is the least plausible.

Confusion and faked blips explains all this without requiring broad complicity among FAA and NEADs technicians and NEADs pilots.

Have you listened to the FAA controller that followed Flight 175 in a steep dive that he said would be hell on the passengers? It was on Discovery channel and is available on YouTube. The timing of this dive conflicts with the calls from Flight 175, suggesting that this controller was not following Flight 175. No need to posit faked calls or faked passengers.

Comment by dwightvw — October 29, 2007 @ 6:13 am | Log in to Reply

@dwightnv

The NORAD Tapes,” which describes confusion of NEADS technicians as to whether they were viewing real planes or “inputs” on their screens.

The only mention I see about false blips in the Vanity Fair article is in the commentary by the writer of the article. I see no mention of false blips in the dialog between ATCs and NORAD. I have not heard of any ATC reporting confusion over false blips in subsequent testimony.

It was on Discovery channel and is available on YouTube

No, I’ve not seen that, please post a link.

Comment by charlienneb — October 29, 2007 @ 4:21 pm | Log in to Reply

Everyone, please note that my comment policy does not allow links to non-downloadable videos. Instead, please post a link to a transcript, if you can find one.

I’ll be posting more comments later. Gotta run now.

Comment by Diane — October 29, 2007 @ 8:13 pm | Log in to Reply

The relevant excerpts are here, especially “I think it’s a damn input.”

http://ningens-blog.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-think-this-is-damn-input-to-be-honest.html

The reporters commentary is presumably based on what he was told about simulated inputs as the basis for the confusion shown by “real world or exercise?”

As for the Flight 175 ATC, I’ll look for it. The ATC’s name is Dave Bottiglia, and what he says suggests that the call from Hanson came from a different plane than the plane (or blip) in a dive that Bottiglia was monitoring. I wrote all this in comment somewhere but can’t find it.

Comment by dwightvw — October 29, 2007 @ 8:58 pm | Log in to Reply

dwightvw wrote:

Diane, the DoD regulations are described and linked to here:

http://www.911blogger.com/node/9629#comment-153055

Thanks for the info. However, the above URL points to a comment by Ningen that seems to be about Mineta’s testimony, not about the DoD regulations, and contains links to an MSNBC interview with Norman Mineta and the 9/11 Commission site. I would appreciate it very much if you could point me more directly to the DoD regulations you’re referring to.

These relate to what a base commander could order without higher approval, and show that these regs and their change in June 2001 were not the issue. As for the distinction between hijacking and emergency protocol, I forget what Griffin said, but basically the question is why fighters weren’t timely scrambled to intercept the blips, not why the planes were not shot down or some action taken once they were intercepted.

My question about what the standard operating procedures is most certainly relevant to the latter issue too. What needs to be established here is whether, under the SOP’s in effect at the time, it was likely that the planes would even have been intercepted within a half hour after an air traffic controller first noticed a problem. So far I haven’t seen any documentation showing that this would indeed have been likely.

There were much fewer planes on high alert status after the Cold War, but that is partly a problem of definition. I did some research on this back in 2002 but never wrote it up. What I recall is that during the Cold War there were many more planes with engines running and pilots in the cockpit ready to scramble, and very few now, but there are still a lot of planes with pilots on alert ready to scramble on short notice. Maybe the difference between 3 minutes to 10,000 feet to 8, 10, 12 or 15 minutes – something like that. Bottom line, there was procedure and capacity to have fighters to meet those planes well before they hit.

Perhaps, unless there were too many bureaucratic delays within the FAA before NORAD could even be notified. What needs to be established is whether the latter was in fact plausibly true on 9/11, given whatever the FAA’s actual SOP’s might have been at that time. Ditto for possible bureaucratic delays within NORAD.

Comment by Diane — October 30, 2007 @ 10:55 pm | Log in to Reply

I thought that comment contained links to the DoD regs, but you’re right, it was in a thread about Mineta. 9/11 Blogger is offline so I can’t check now.

I don’t know about a half hour. The question is whether delayed launch of interceptors is explained by regulations that might or might not require high level approval for certain actions. The answer is no.

Reponses to emergencies follow routine procedures, and there’s no reason they would not have on 9/11. After over 50 years of regular commercial aviation, this is just common sense. Seriously — the claims are patently absurd. The best explanation is confusion because of war games and fale inputs, which raises different questions from why planes weren’t scrambled earlier.

We’re trying to explain the delay from 8:20, when we are told Flight 11 went off radar/radio, but we have no way of knowing whether that premise is correct. David Ray Griffin does a good job, for the most part, of explaining the inconsistencies in changing official claims, but he takes certain facts as true — especially Flight 11/ 8:20 — where there’s no way of knowing whether any of it is true.

Comment by dwightvw — November 2, 2007 @ 1:52 am | Log in to Reply

I don’t want to dig around for the DoD regs again which is why I used that comment. The links are all there. Right after 9/11, Jared Israel at Emperor’s Clothes presented accurate information on those regulations, but many have mistated those regulations since. Griffin has them right in his Debunking book. The bottom line is that the June 2001 change should not have slowed intercept, even if it may have required or encouraged high level approval for shoot downs. So it’s a red herring – and perhaps was designed for that. I think the whole “stand down” meme is a well-designed red herring, and that Griffin’s book unfortunately reinforces that.

Comment by dwightvw — November 2, 2007 @ 2:00 am | Log in to Reply

dwightvw wrote:

Reponses to emergencies follow routine procedures, and there’s no reason they would not have on 9/11. After over 50 years of regular commercial aviation, this is just common sense. Seriously — the claims are patently absurd.

The above is the common-sense argument used by many in the 9/11 Truth movement. However, the world does not necessarily abide by common sense, and at least one “debunking” site (cited in an earlier comment on this page) does provide a few counter-examples, i.e. news stories about pre-9/11 intercepts (and even one post-9/11 intercept, if I recall correctly) that took longer than a half hour after the problem was first noticed by an air traffic controller. So if we’re going to argue that even one, let alone all, of the planes should have been intercepted within a half hour after a problem was first noticed, we need documentation. If you ever happen to run into relevant documentation I would appreciate it very much if you could let me know, with a specific reference.

As I’ve already noted, I did not find the documentation in Griffin’s book on this point to be adequate.

I’ll take a look at the Emperor’s Clothes Articles on 9-11. Thanks for letting me know about that site.

Comment by Diane — November 2, 2007 @ 3:47 am | Log in to Reply

You have to let the page load before it jumps to the comment, but here’s the text:

Rumsfeld’s approval was NOT required in emergency

You may have gotten this mistaken view of DOD regulations from Jim Hoffmann’s website.

http://911review.com/means/standdown.html

Better to read Jared Israel:

http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/911page.htm#1

Better yet to read the primary sources:

The June 2001 directive is here:

http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/cjcsd/cjcsi/3610_01a.pdf

page 1, paragraph 4a, requests for DOD assistance forwarded to SecDef for approval, “with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference d.” DOD assistance to FAA in accordance with reference d.

Reference d. is DOD Directive 3025.15, 18 February 1997, “Military Assistance to Civil Authorities.”

http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html/302515.htm

Immediate responses are discussed on page 4 of 16, section 4.7.1, referencing DOD Directive 3025.1, “Military Support to Civil Authorities (MSCA), January 15, 1993, and authorizing immediate response in emergencies by DOD Components or military commanders in accordance with DOD Directive 3025.1.

DOD Directive 3025.1

http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html/302501.htm

page 7 of 23, section 4.5.1, authorizes immediate responses by local military commanders to requests of civl authorities where imminently serious conditions exist and time does not allow prior approval from of higher headquarters.

The Directive as a whole provides for planning for responses, so it is likely there was subsidiary guidance to commanders for dealing with immediate responses.

The June 2001 change made no exception for “potentially lethal assistance,” as claimed by Hoffmann.

Gerard Holmgren, who I think is the best 9/11 researcher, has written about this, in a cached article. The third page is most relevant., and describes how Hoffmann distorts the DOD regulations. Holmgren’s work has been pulled from the Internet, which is a real shame.

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:ZISXkthTRk8J:members.iinet.net.au/~h...

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:rPt4c7AN018J:members.iinet.net.au/~h...

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:brDmfMzow34J:members.iinet.net.au/~h...

I could not find a cache of page 4.

Addendum: DOD Directive 3025.15, page 3, paragraph 4.4 discusses approval of lethal force by higher authorities, but specifically says that the Directive does not prohibit commanders from exercising immediate emergency response authority pursuant to DOD Directive 3025.1.

DODD 3025.15 does discuss the need for SecDef approval of requests from law enforcement agencies for potentially lethal force. That is completely different.

DODD 3025.1 does not contain the word “lethal,” and “immediate response” to attacks is not limited to non-lethal actions.

Comment by dwightvw — November 2, 2007 @ 6:31 am | Log in to Reply

We can’t ever prove that a response should have been quicker, and we don’t have access to all the information. This is just one part of the story, and when the “anomalies” stack so high, and the original story is both implausible and unproven, trying to prove this one point becomes counterproductive. As I’ve said, I think the whole issue is a red herring because we don’t know what was in the air that day and what NEADS and FAA saw on their screens. We only know facts that have been released, which are selective even if true.

That said, comparisons of response to small planes, as opposed to response to a commercial airliner emergency with hundreds of lives at stake, are probably not apt.

Comment by dwightvw — November 2, 2007 @ 6:40 am | Log in to Reply

dwightvw wrote:

We can’t ever prove that a response should have been quicker, and we don’t have access to all the information.

If indeed it’s true that a response should have been quicker, it should be possible to prove this via a combination of (1) old FAA documents and (2) news stories about pre-9/11 intercepts (preferably of domestic passenger jets).

Agreed that there were plenty of other anomolies on 9/11. However, we should be able to present solid evidence for any anomoly that we do assert.

Comment by Diane — November 2, 2007 @ 1:43 pm | Log in to Reply

Thanks VERY much for telling me about the Emperor’s Clothes site, which indeed contains the very best presentation of “stand down” evidence I’ve seen so far, including this page and this page. (The first of these two pages contains two dead links to a page on the DC Military site. I’ve found a copy of that page on the Internet Archive site here.)

Comment by Diane — November 2, 2007 @ 6:25 pm | Log in to Reply

Diane said: “we should be able to present solid evidence for any anomoly that we do assert.”

Indeed, we can point out the logical inconsistencies of the official accounts, and point out their further lack of credibility given changing accounts, as long as we don’t assume that we have therey figured out what really happened. We can’t really do that, since our factual premises based on official accounts may be lies.

And on the other side, just because we can’t figure out what really happened in relation to military response, the fact that the official explanation doesn’t make sense, in combination with many other ways in which the official story doesn’t make sense, combine to make a compelling case for, at l

[Dig]

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/052401_promis.html

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/11_19_01_magic_carpet.html

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/11_19_01_magic_carpet.html

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_14_02_microbio.html

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/012005_ptech_pt1.shtml

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/012705_ptech_pt2.shtml

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/040405_ptech_clarifications.shtml

[Dig]

Network-centric warfare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-centric_warfare
Network-centric warfare, now commonly called network-centric operations, is a new military doctrine or theory of war pioneered by the United States Department of Defense.

It seeks to translate an information advantage, enabled in part by information technology, into a competitive warfighting advantage through the robust networking of well informed geographically dispersed forces.[1] This networking, combined with changes in technology, organization, processes, and people - may allow new forms of organizational behavior.

Specifically, the theory contains the following four tenets in its hypotheses:[2]
A robustly networked force improves information sharing;
Information sharing enhances the quality of information and shared situational awareness;
Shared situational awareness enables collaboration and self-synchronization, and enhances sustainability and speed of command; and
These, in turn, dramatically increase mission effectiveness.

Network Enabled Capability is a term used in the United Kingdom and elsewhere for a similar doctrine. In Sweden, one of the first nations in Europe to begin the transformation, the term, translated, is Network Based Defence.[3]

The term "netcentric warfare" may be used interchangeably with the term network-centric warfare.Contents
1 Background and history
1.1 Network Centric Warfare
1.2 Understanding Information Age Warfare
1.3 Power to the Edge
2 Related technologies and programs
3 Doctrinal tenets in United States
4 Some architectural and design challenges
5 International activities
6 Supporting comments
7 Contradictory views
8 See also
9 References
10 External links
10.1 International links


[edit]
Background and history

Network centric warfare can trace its immediate origins to 1996 when Admiral William Owens introduced the concept of a 'system of systems' in a paper of the same name published by the Institute National Security Studies. Owens described the serendipitous evolution of a system of intelligence sensors, command and control systems, and precision weapons that enabled enhanced situational awareness, rapid target assessment, and distributed weapon assignment.

Also in 1996, the Joint Chiefs of Staff released Joint Vision 2010, which introduced the military concept of full-spectrum dominance. Full Spectrum Dominance described the ability of the US military to dominate the battlespace from peace operations through to the outright application of military power that stemmed from the advantages of information superiority.

[edit]
Network Centric Warfare

As a distinct concept, however, network-centric warfare first appeared publicly in a 1998 US Naval Institute Proceedings article by Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski and John Gartska. The concepts were later given greater depth in the book, Network Centric Warfare coauthored by Gartska, David S. Alberts (Director of Research, OASD-NII), and Fred Stein of The MITRE Corporation.

Published by the Command and Control Research Program (CCRP), the book derived a new theory of warfare from a series of case studies on how business was using information and communication technologies to improve situation analysis, accurately control inventory and production, as well as monitor customer relations.

[edit]
Understanding Information Age Warfare

Network-centric warfare was followed in 2001 by Understanding Information Age Warfare (UIAW), jointly authored by Alberts, Gartska, Richard Hayes of Evidence Based Research and David S. Signori of RAND. UIAW pushed the implications of the shifts identified by network-centric warfare in order to derive an operational theory of warfare.

Starting with a series of premises on how the environment is sensed, UIAW posits a structure of three domains. The physical domain is where events take place and are perceived by sensors and individuals. Data emerging from the physical domain is transmitted through an information domain.

Data is subsequently received and processed by a cognitive domain where it is assessed and acted upon. The process replicates the "observe, orient, decide, act" loop first described by Col. John Boyd of the USAF.

[edit]
Power to the Edge

The last publication dealing with the developing theory of network centric warfare appeared in 2003 with Power to the Edge, also published by the CCRP. Power to the Edge is a speculative work suggesting that modern military environments are far too complex to be understood by any one individual, organisation, or even military service.

Modern information technology permits the rapid and effective sharing of information to such a degree that "edge entities" or those that are essentially conducting military missions themselves, should be able to "pull" information from ubiquitous repositories, rather than having centralised agencies attempt to anticipate their information needs and "push" it to them. This would imply a major flattening of traditional military hierarchies, however.

It is not yet clear whether the vision of Power to the Edge is realisable, although Alberts and Hayes argue in the book that the establishment of the Global Information Grid is the first step to accomplishing it.

Power To The Edge's radical ideas had been under investigation by the Pentagon since at least 2001. In UIAW, the concept of peer-to-peer activity combined with more traditional hierarchical flow of data in the network had been introduced.

Shortly thereafter, the Pentagon began investing in peer-to-peer research, telling software engineers at a November 2001 peer-to-peer conference that there were advantages to be gained in the redundancy and robustness of a peer-to-peer network topology on the battlefield. Colonel Robert Wardell said "You have to empower the fringes if you are going to... be able to make decisions faster than the bad guy".[4]

Network-centric warfare/operations is a cornerstone of the ongoing transformation effort at the Department of Defense initiated by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It is also one of the five goals of the Office of Force Transformation, Office of the Secretary of Defense.

See Revolution in Military Affairs for further information on what is now known as "defense transformation" or "transformation".

[edit]
Related technologies and programs
 
German Army Leopard 2A6M that incorporates systems designed to be used in conjunction with a networked battlefield

The US DoD has mandated that the Global Information Grid (GIG) will be the primary technical framework to support network-centric warfare/network-centric operations. Under this directive, all advanced weapons platforms, sensor systems, and command and control centers are eventually to be linked via the GIG. The term system of systems is often used to describe the results of these types of massive integration efforts.

The topic Net-Centric Enterprise Services addresses the applications context of the GIG.

A number of significant U.S. military programs are taking technical steps towards supporting network-centric warfare. These include the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) of the United States Navy and the Future Combat Systems (FCS) program in the United States Army.

Net-Centric Enterprise Solutions for Interoperability (NESI) provides, for all phases of the acquisition of net-centric solutions, actionable guidance that meets network-centric warfare goals of the United States Department of Defense. The guidance in NESI is derived from the higher level, more abstract concepts provided in various directives, policies and mandates such as the Net-Centric Operations and Warfare Reference Model (NCOW RM) and the ASD(NII) Net-Centric Checklist.

[edit]
Doctrinal tenets in United States

The doctrine of network-centric warfare for the United States armed forces draws its highest level of guidance from the concept of "team warfare", meaning the integration and synchronization of all appropriate capabilities across the various services, ranging from Army to Air Force to Coast Guard. This is part of the principle of joint warfare.

The tenets of network-centric warfare are:[5]
Tenet 1: A robustly networked force improves information sharing.
Tenet 2: Information sharing and collaboration enhance the quality of information and shared situational awareness.
Tenet 3: Shared situational awareness enables self-synchronization.
Tenet 4: These, in turn, dramatically increase mission effectiveness.

[edit]
Some architectural and design challenges
The complexity of the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) offers insight into the challenges of integrating numerous different communications systems into a unified whole. It is intended to be a software-defined radio for battlefield communications that will be backwards compatible with a very large number of other military and civilian radio systems.
An April 10, 2008 GAO report (GAO FCS report) highlighted the scalability of the network as a major risk factor to the Network Centric FCS program. The proposed system will be unable to network all the units into one self-forming, self-healing network.
The problem of coordinating bandwidth usage in a battlespace is a significant challenge, when every piece of mobile equipment and human participant becomes a potential source or relay of RF emissions.
It is difficult to efficiently transfer information between networks having different levels of security classification. Although multi-level security systems provide part of the solution, human intervention and decision-making is still needed to determine what specific data can and cannot be transferred.
Accurate locational awareness is limited when maneuvering in areas where Global Positioning System (GPS) coverage is weak or non-existent. These areas include the inside of buildings, caves, etc. as well as built-up areas and urban canyons, which are also settings for many modern military operations. Much work on reliable fusion of positional data from multiple sensors remains to be done.
Providing secure communications in network-centric warfare/network-centric operations is difficult, since successful key management for encryption is typically the most difficult aspect of cryptography, especially with mobile systems. The problem is exacerbated with the need for speedy deployment and nimble reconfiguration of military teams, to respond to rapidly changing conditions in the modern battlespace.

[edit]
International activities

There is significant need to harmonize the technical and operational aspects of net-centric warfare and net-centric operations among multiple nations, in order to support coalition activities, joint operations, etc. Standard Agreement is the coordinating vehicle for establishing shared technical standards among NATO nations.

See also Partnership for Peace for information on extending coordination efforts to non-NATO nations that are keen to support military operations other than war activities, such as international peacekeeping, disaster response, humanitarian aid, etc.

[edit]
Supporting comments

"With less than half of the ground forces and two-thirds of the military aircraft used 12 years ago in Desert Storm, we have achieved a far more difficult objective ... In Desert Storm, it usually took up to two days for target planners to get a photo of a target, confirm its coordinates, plan the mission, and deliver it to the bomber crew. Now we have near real-time imaging of targets with photos and coordinates transmitted by e-mail to aircraft already in flight. In Desert Storm, battalion, brigade, and division commanders had to rely on maps, grease pencils, and radio reports to track the movements of our forces. Today, our commanders have a real-time display of our armed forces on their computer screen."[6]

--former Vice President Richard Cheney.

"Net-centric warfare's effectiveness has greatly improved in 12 years. Desert Storm forces, involving more than 500,000 troops, were supported with 100 Mbit/s of bandwidth. Today, OIF forces, with about 350,000 warfighters, had more than 3,000 Mbit/s of satellite bandwidth, which is 30 times more bandwidth for a force 45 percent smaller. U.S. troops essentially used the same weapon platforms used in Operation Desert Storm with significantly increased effectiveness."[7]

--Lieutenant general Harry D. Raduege Jr, director, Defense Information Systems Agency.
[edit]
Contradictory views

Our incipient NCW plans may suffer defeat by [adversaries] using primitive but cagey techniques, inspired by an ideology we can neither match nor understand; or by an enemy who can knock out our vulnerable Global Positioning System or use electromagnetic pulse weapons on a limited scale, removing intelligence as we have construed it and have come to depend upon. Fighting forces accustomed to relying upon downlinks for information and commands would have little to fall back upon.
—Charles Perrow, Information Assurance, National Defense University, May 2003

The aspiration of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to embrace network-centric warfare is outlined in the document ADF Force 2020. This vision has been criticized by Aldo Borgu, director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). By developing interoperability with U.S. systems, in his view, the three arms of the Australian Defence Force could end up operating better with their sister United States services than with each other.[8]

Network centric warfare is criticized by proponents of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) doctrine.

Also, since Network-centric warfare focuses so much on distributing information, one has to be wary of the effect of false, misleading, or misinterpreted information entering the system, be it through enemy deception or simple error. Just as the usefulness of correct information can be amplified, so too can the repercussions of incorrect data entering the system achieve much greater non-positive outcomes.

One way that this can happen is through errors in initial conditions in an uncorrected, closed system that subsequently skew result-sets; the result-sets are then reused, amplifying the initial error by orders of magnitude in subsequent generations of result-sets; see chaos theory.

Other possible failure modes or problem areas in network-centric warfare include the occurrence of the Byzantine generals' problem in peer-to-peer systems; problems caused by an inadequate or a shallow understanding of (or general disregard for) self-regulation, self-organization, systems theory, emergent behavior and cybernetics; in addition to this, there are potential issues arising from the very nature of any complex, rapidly-developed artificial system arising from complexity theory, which implies the possibility of failure modes such as congestion collapse or cascading failure.

[edit]
See also
Battlespace
C4ISTAR
Fog of war
Fingerspitzengefühl
Net-centric
Network-centric organization
Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium
Network science
Peer-to-peer
Sensemaking
Swarming (Military)

US military and Department of Defense specific:
Office of Force Transformation
Net-Centric Enterprise Services
Defense Systems Communications Management Office
Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations
Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare
Command and Control Research Program
Battlefield_Airborne_Communications_Node_(BACN)

[edit]
References

Alberts, D.S., Garstka, J.J., Stein, F.P., (2000) Network Centric Warfare: Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority, CCRP Publ., 2nd Edition (Revised). Aug 1999, Second Print Feb 2000.
^ Department of Defense. The Implementation of Network-Centric Warfare. Washington, D.C., 2005, p. 4.
^ Department of Defense. The Implementation of Network-Centric Warfare. Washington, D.C., 2005, p. 7.
^ "LedsystT - Suppliers". Swedish Defence Materiel Administration. Retrieved on 2008-11-16.
^ Walker, Leslie (November 8, 2001). "Uncle Sam Wants Napster!". Washington Post (Washingtonpost.com). Retrieved on 2008-11-16.
^ Alberts, D.S., (2002), Information Age Transformation: Getting to a 21st Century Military, Washington, DC, CCRP Publications. pp. 7-8. First published 1996.
^ "Crosstalk". Stsc.hill.af.mil. 2004-01-04. Retrieved on 2008-11-16.
^ Lt. Gen. Harry D. Raduege Jr., "Net-Centric Warfare Is Changing the Battlefield Environment", Defense Information Systems Agency
^ Blenkin, Max. AAP General News (Australia), 9/17/2003

[edit]
External links
IDGA's Network Centric Warfare
The OASD-NII Command and Control Research Program (CCRP)
NCOW Wiki Network-Centric Operations Warfare Wiki
Net-Centric Enterprise Solutions for Interoperability (NESI)
Network centric warfare and wireless communications
Network Centric Warfare Solutions - Aeronautics Defense Systems
NCW related article on Crosstalk - Defense Software Engineering Journal
Army War College article: Principles of Warfare on the Network-Centric Battlefield
http://www.globalsecurity.org
NCW Topics on Defense Update
C4I.org - Computer Security & Intelligence
Network Centric Warfare on APA
Network-Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC)
Ericsson white paper: C4ISR for Network-Oriented Defense
Understanding Network Centric Warfare
Launching a new kind of warfare
High-Tech Military in Due Course
U.S. Air Force prepares to fight in cyberspace
Swedish Defence Materiel Administration, includes published technical documentation.
THE IMPORTANCE OF NETWORK ENABLED CAPABILITIES FOR 21st CENTURY DEFENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITYArticle by Air Marshal Subhash Bhojwani

[edit]
International links
NATO Network Enabled Capabilities (NNEC)
NETWORKING IN THE INDIAN SCENARIO

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Welcome to the world’s largest gathering of network centric warfare and operations experts!
http://www.ncwevent.com/
IDGA's NCW is the world’s largest and most respected event focused on netcentric operations, and the premier forum for the exchange of plans and best practices on network centric innovation. Attend and get information on the latest operational experiences and the most groundbreaking and significant government and industry initiatives to date, as well as insights into future large scale initiatives and the development of future capabilities.

Join us this January to witness the first post-inauguration comments and insights on the future of network centric warfare and operations!

Find out more
All New this Year
Measuring and assessing the success of international network-centric operations
Enabling network-centric battle command through NECC and FCS
Maintaining information assurance in a netcentric environment
Developments and transformational efforts in support of future combat force strategy
Extending enterprise services to the tactical edge
Air Force Cyber Command strategies and establishing cyber security as a warfighting domain
Topics To Be Discussed
Network enabled capabilities for improved command, control, and communications
Battle command migration and future combat systems integration
Interoperability solutions for multi-level security networks
Leveraging architectures for secure service-oriented systems

[Dig]

Understanding Network Centric Warfare
http://www.ausairpower.net/TE-NCW-JanFeb-05.html
Unabridged Original Version
Australian Aviation, January/February 2005
by Dr Carlo Kopp

Network Centric Warfare (NCW) is the buzzword of choice in current Defence Department rhetoric. There is little doubt that the introduction of NCW is the defining paradigm of this decade in military affairs, and inevitably, we should see this reflected in Australia. How well NCW is understood in Australia's DoD is, however, another matter entirely.

From a broad perspective the introduction of networking techniques into warfighting systems is the military equivalent of the digitisation and networking drive we observed in Western economies between 1985 and 1995. Military networking, especially between platforms, is far more challenging than industry networking due to the heavy reliance on wireless communications, high demand for security, and the need for resistance to hostile jamming. The demanding environmental requirements for military networking hardware are an issue in their own right. It should come thus as no surprise that the introduction of networking into military environments has proven more painful and more protracted than the industry experience of over a decade ago.

Why Networking?

Much has been written and said over the last decade as to why networking is essential, and how it improves warfighting capability. Unhappily, not all of the publications present robust arguments, and much of what has been written has been accepted as fact, rather than critically analysed.

At the most fundamental level networking aims to accelerate engagement cycles and operational tempo at all levels of a warfighting system. This is acheived by providing a mechanism to rapidly gather and distribute targeting information, and rapidly issue directives. A high speed network permits error free transmission in a fraction of the time required for voice transmission, and permits transfer of a wide range of data formats.

In a more technical sense, networking improves operational tempo (optempo) by accelerating the Observation-Orientation phases of Boyd's Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action (OODA) loop. Identified during the 1970s by US Air Force strategist John Boyd, the OODA is an abstraction which describes the sequence of events whihc must take place in any military engagement. The opponnent must be observed to gather information, the attacker must orient himself to the situation or context, then decide and act accordingly. The OODA loop is thus fundamental to all military operations, from strategic down to individual combat. It loop is an inevitable part of reality and has been so since the first tribal wars of 25,000 years ago, as it is fundamental to any predator-prey interaction in the biological world. Sadly, its proper understanding had to wait until the 1970s.

At a philosophical and practical level what confers a key advantage in engagements is the ability to stay ahead of an opponent and dictate the tempo of the engagement - to maintain the initiative and keep an opponent off balance. In effect, the attacker forces his opponent into a reactive posture and denies the opponent any opportunity to drive the engagement to an advantage. The player with the faster OODA loop, all else being equal, will defeat the opponent with the slower OODA loop by blocking or pre-empting any move the opponent with the slower OODA loop attempts to make.

The four components of the OODA loop can be split into three which are associated with processing information, and one which is associated with movement and application of firepower. Observation-Orientation-Decision are information centric while Action is kinematic or centred in movement, position and firepower.

If we aim to accelerate our OODA loops to achieve higher operational tempo than an enemy, we have to accelerate all four components of the loop. Much of twentieth century warfighting technique and technology dealt with accelerating the kinetic portion of the OODA loop. Mobility, precision and firepower increases were the result of this evolution.

There are practical limits as to how far we can push the kinetic aspect of the OODA loop - more destructive weapons produce collateral damage, faster platforms and weapons incur ever increasing costs. Accordingly we have seen evolution slow down in this domain since the 1960s. Many weapons and platforms widely used today were designed in the 1950s may remain in use for decades to come, the B-52 being a good case study.

Observation-Orientation-Decision are all about gathering information, distributing information, analysing information, understanding information and deciding how to act upon this information. The faster we can gather, distribute, analyse, understand information, the faster we can decide, and arguably the better we can decide how and when to act in combat. Networking is a mechanism via which the Observation-Orientation phases of the loop can be accelerated, and the Decision phase facilitated.

Well implemented networking can contribute to improved effectiveness in other ways. One such technique is 'self synchronisation' which permits 'directive control'. Rather than micromanage a warfighting asset with close control via a command link tether, warfighters are given significant autonomy, defined objectives, and allowed to take the initiative in how they meet these objectives. A fighter pilot who receives continuous updates from an AEW&C aircraft over a network can make his own tactical decisions, exploiting the situational picture broadcast from the AEW&C aircraft. This is of course not a new model, but networking facilitates it in ways difficult to match - compare this example with the AM radio broadcasts issued in 1943-1945 by Luftwaffe air defence nodes to permit night fighters to autonomously hunt for Allied bombers. Both amount to a 'self synchronisation' scheme, but the underlying technology is five decades apart.

Networking is not a panacea, nor can it be. The ultimate limits on the combat effect produced by a warfighting system, and thus is capability, are bounded by the Action or 'kinetic' phase of the loop. Bombs or missiles delivered is the bottom line, and networking is a tool to facilitate this effect, it is not a sustitute for bombs and missiles on target as some proponents of NCW publicly advocate.

Until recently the mathematics underpinning capability gains in large networked warfighting systems had not been studied closely. Many scholars of NCW simply borrowed the well established Metcalfe's Law from the commercial domain and simply declared it to be valid for military systems. Metcalfe's Law states that the 'utility' of a network increases with the square of the number of nodes in the network - ten nodes (platforms) permit a hundred possible connections, a hundred nodes ten thousand. Unfortunately the mathematics of web site driven sales statistics are not particularly revelant to the behaviour of networked military forces. What we now understand is that Metcalfe's Law presents a possible best case scenario for distribution of information collected by sensors on platforms in a military system. At best it is an indicator of gains in situational awareness, assuming the data being distributed is valid, timely and relevant. The real limits to capability gains in networked systems arise from the Decision-Action phases of the OODA loop.

The Decision phase sees a commander exploiting knowledge acquired in the Observation-Orientation phases, and conferring as required with his superiors and subordinates to determine what is the best choice of action. In the Action phase the commander must deploy his assets and effect the engagement. Both of these phases of the loop, in mathematical terms, are queuing systems. The commander must wait for others to respond, and must marshal and position assets to engage. All of these events involve one entity waiting for another, in effect queueing up.

The mathematical model which contrains such systems is Amdahl's Law, like Metcalfe's Law a defining equation in the computer industry. The reality Amdahl defines is simple - increasing the number of assets in the system increases the achieved work or effect at best only by the number of assets added. The actual improvement is limited by the queuing effects seen in marshalling and positioning assets to perform engagements.

The mathematical bottom line in NCW is a very simple one: networking can permit a significant improvement in operational tempo, where a shortage of targeting information is the bottleneck to achieving a high operational tempo, but networking itself has very little impact on the absolute ability of a force to deliver weapons against targets, that being constrained by the capabilities and number of combat platforms in use.



Networking can accelerate operational tempo by speeding up the Observation and Orientation phases of Boyd's OODA loop. Unfortunately the bounds on the capability of the 'system of systems' are imposed by the Decision and especially Action phases of the loop (Author).

A good example is the classic Desert Storm scenario of an air force attacking strategic targets and in situ battlefield targets like deployed armoured divisions. With ample targeting information, especially for fixed targets, networking of the attacking force would not have dramatically increased combat effect.

Accordingly we have seen networking produce its greatest gains in combat effect during battlefied strike and close air support operations, especially against highly mobile and fleeting ground targets. In such an environment, where the opponent is continuously on the move, networking can produce spectacular gains since the bottlneck limiting force capability lies in the flow of targeting information to strike aircraft.

No less interesting are the effects observed in demand for specific types of assets to support networked interdiction and strike operations. Short targeting cycles in strike operations require that the bomber be orbiting in close proximity to the intended target - this is persistent strike formally now labelled a killbox interdiction. In practice this has driven up the demand for tanker sorties and the demand for B-52H, B-1B and F-15E - all at the expense of the smaller F-16C and F/A-18 variants. Bigger is better in the networked strike game, so much so that a recent discussion piece by US analyst Price Bingham in the ISR Journal predicted the demise of the classical battlefield interdiction tasked fighter-bomber, in favour of larger bombers and UCAVs. This is a direct challenge to the basic rationale for the Joint Strike Fighter family of battlefield interdiction and close air support fighters, and the longer term use of legacy designs like the F-16 and F/A-18 variants.

Networking has produced other useful benefits. One is combat identification and deconfliction, where the JTIDS/Link-16 system has been used very effectively as a more capable substitute for conventional IFF, capable of supporting air, land and sea assets.

A key issue for all networking is the Intelligence-Surveillance-Reconnaissance capability supporting it. Networks like all computing systems obey the Garbage-In Garbage-Out rule - without accurate high quality ISR systems feeding the network, it is little more than high speed digital plumbing between platforms, with nothing useful to carry. In the US force structure, the pressure to introduce network developed mostly due to bottlenecks in pushing ISR derived targeting information out of existing ISR systems like AWACS, JSTARS and Rivet Joint.

Networking capabilities are not confined to Western nations. The diffusion of commercial computing and networking systems globally has contributed to a growing in focus by non-Western militaries. Russia has capitalised on this by aggressively marketing ISR platforms like the A-50 AWACS, digital datalinking products - the Soviets were deeply enamoured of digital air defence networks - and counter ISR systems. The latter include long range AAMs like the R-172, R-37 and Kh-31 variants, as well as airborne and land mobile high power jamming equipment, and very long range SAMs like the S-400 and Imperator series.

In summary the introduction of networking offers many benefits for an air force and should be actively pursued. It is however not a substitute for combat or ISR capabilities in a force structure and cannot be used as an excuse to justify downsizing of combat fleets.





The Technological Perspective

The technology supporting NCW is inherently complex, but not significantly moreso than the technology used to digitise and network the civilian world. It must however be more resilient physically, thermally, electrically and be better resistent to hostile penetration, and in wireless systems, hostile jamming.

The prerequisite for an NCW capability is the digitisation of combat platforms. A combat aircraft with a digital weapon system can be seamlessly integrated in an NCW environment by providing digital wireless connections to other platforms. Without the digital weapon system, and its internal computers, NCW is not implementable. The growing gap between the US military and the EU military largely reflects the Europeans' reluctance to heavily invest in digitising their combat platforms.

Provision of digital wireless connectivity between combat platforms is a major technical challenge which cannot be understated. While civilian networking of computers can largely rely on cabled links, be they copper or optical fibres, with wireless connectivity as an adjunct, in a military environment centred in moving platforms and field deployed basing, wireless connectivity is the central means of carrying information.

The problems faced in providing military networking are generally well understood, but often push the boundaries of available technology. Key issues can be summarised thus:

Security of transmission. Since everybody does their best to eavesdrop, digital links have to be difficult to eavesdrop, and robustly encrypted to defeat any eavesdropping which might succeed. Even if a signal cannot be successfully decrypted, its detection provides an opponent with valuable information on the presence, position and often activity of the platform or unit in question.


Robustness of transmission. In the face of transmission impairments such as solar flares, bad weather and hostile jamming, networks must continue to function. If a signal cannot penetrate a rainshower or is blotted out by an opponent's barrage jammer, the link is broken and the NCW model also breaks.


Transmission capacity. How fast data can be transmitted is vital, especially where digitised imagery must be sent. If a 10 Megabyte recce image must be sent, or a 2 Megabit/sec digitised video feed observed, a 9600 bit/sec channel will be nearly useless. A popular misconception is that digital data compression solves this problem - the reality of Shannon's communication theory is very much at odds with this popular (in some Canberra circles) fantasy. Robustness against jamming and the overheads of encryption both function at the expense of transmission channel capacity for a given radio communications link - the robust the link, the more capacity is soaked up with overheads to protect it.


Message and signal routing. Platforms must be able to specifically address and access other platforms or systems in an NCW environment. Just as email on a civilian network must have an address, so must a military messaging scheme. Such addressing must be able to cope with a fluid network topology, as platforms entre and leave an area of operations.


Signal format and communications protocol compatibility. It is essential that dissimilar platforms and systems can communicate in an NCW environment. This problem extends not only to the use of disparate signal modulations and digital protocols, but to the use of partially incompatible implementations of what is ostensibly the same signal modulation or communications protocol. The mutual incompatibility headaches we see in commercial computing are often more traumatic in the challenging military environment.

At the time of writing nearly all military datalinks used in NCW operate at speeds which would be considered intolerable in the civilian/commercial world, reflecting the realities of wireless communications. Moreover, the military world lives with a veritable Tower of Babel in both signal modulations, operating frequencies and digital communications protocols, and variations of nominally standard protocols.

To contextualise this, Western armed forces currently deploy systems using a wide range of current and legacy signal formats and protocols, examples being:

Link 1 at 1200/2400 bits per second used for air defence systems, devised in the 1950s.

TADIL A / Link-11/11B at 1364 bits per second used for naval links and ground based SAM systems, using original CLEW DQPSK modulation, or newer FTBCB convolutional coding at 1800 bits per second. It is 1960s technology.


TADIL C / Link-4 at 5,000 bits per second in the UHF band, used for naval aviation, AEW&C to fighter links, and fighter to fighter links on the F-14 series. It is also 1960s technology.

Link-14 used for HF transmission between naval combatants at low data rates.


TADIL J / MIDS/JTIDS / Link-16 which is a jam resistant L-band time division Spread Spectrum Multiple Access (SSMA)system based on 1970s technology. While its time slot model permits some allocation of capacity, in practical terms it is limited to kilobits/sec data rates, over distances of about 250 nautical miles. JTIDS is multi-platform and multi-service and widely used for transmitting tactical position data, directives, advisories, and for defacto Identification Friend Foe. Its limitation is that it is ill suited to sending reconnaissance imagery and inherently tied to master stations which generate its timebase - reflecting its origins of three decades ago. Satellite link and higher data rate derivatives exist but retain the basic limitations of its time division technique.


CDL/TCDL/HIDL/ABIT which are US high speed datalinks design primarily for satellite and UAV transmission of imagery. CDL family links are typically assymetric, using a 200 kilobit/s uplink for control and management, and a 10.71, 45, 137 or 234 Megabit/s high speed uplink, and a specialised for the control of satellite/UAVs and receipt of gathered data. ABIT is a development of CDL operating at 548 Megabits/s with low probability of intercept capabilities.


Improved Data Modem (IDM) is used over Have Quick II spread spectrum radios to provide low data rate but secure transmission of targeting coordinates and imagery. It has been used widely for transmission of targeting data to F-15E/F-16C strike fighters and F-16CJ Wild Weasels. It is essentially an analogue to commercial voiceband modems.


Army Tactical Data Link 1 - ATDL 1 used for US Army Hawk and Patriot SAM batteries.


PATRIOT Digital Information Link - PADIL used by Patriot SAM batteries.


Tactical Information Broadcast System - TIBS used for theatre missile defence systems.


PLRS/EPLRS/SADL are a family of US Army/Marine Corps datalinks used for tracking ground force units, and providing defacto Identification Friend Foe of ground units. EPRLs is also used for data transmission between ground units.


TCP/IP (Internet) protocol implementations running over other channels, to provide connectivity between platforms and remote ground facilities.

Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS), intended to supplant most legacy protocols with networking equipment which can communicate both in legacy prototols and modulations, and its own JTRS protocols and modulations. The JTRS Wideband Netwroking Waveform (WNW) is to provide multi-Megabit/s throughput.

This veritable menagerie of datalink modulations/protocols is by no means exhaustive, but reflects the realities observed in the computer industry in the decades predating the Internet. New protocols like the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) are in part intended to incorporate mechanisms for translating such legacy protocols into formats which can be sent over a common channel. Separate from these multi-platform protocols and modulations are the type specific datalinks, such as the intra- and interflight datalinks used on the F/A-22A and later the JSF.

As yet there has been little effort to capitalise on the new technology of ad hoc network protocols, designed for self organising networks of mobile platforms, although the JTRS WNW effort looks promising. The DARPA GLOMO program in the late 1980s saw considerable seed money invested, but did not yield any publicised dramatic breakthroughs. Ad hoc networking remains a yet to be fully explored frontier in the networking domain, one which is apt to provide a decisive technology breakthrough for NCW.

The technological issues in NCW often dominate the debate at the expense of the deeper philosophical and functional issues which is unfortunate, since both domains matter and getting either wrong results in an equally disfunctional end result.

NCW and Australia

In Australia networking has been very much in the limelight of the defence debate. Sadly, it has also been used to justify a great many dubious decisions, all predicated on premises which do not hold.

Like most intellectually demanding and complex systems problems, NCW must be properly understood before it can be used as a basis for strategic planning decisions. Clearly this has not been the case in many key areas of the DoD, resulting in public statements which would be comical were not the circumstances so dire.

Perhaps the best exposition of this problem lies in the package of submissions presented earlier this year to the JSCFADT committee of Federal Parliament, especially the Air Combat Capability paper.

In this document we learn that networking can substitute for combat fleet numbers, despite the contrary experience in Afghanistan and Iraq, where aircraft size became the pivotal issue. We also learn that the combat effect of the system should exceed the sum of its parts despite the contrary mathematics underpinning this problem. Limitations in the F/A-18A and JSF we learn do not matter, since Australia will evidently have an asymmetric advantage in networking and AEW&C, despite regional buys of Russian/Israeli A-50 AWACS, and Russian marketing of TKS-2 digital datalinks on Su-30 fighters. We also learn in this document that AEW&C aircraft and networks will not be challenged, as evidently Russian R-172, Kh-31 and R-37 missiles, or high power jammers, will never be used in the region - regional buys notwithstanding. No differently, Australia need not invest in high power jamming aircraft since other nations will never use their AEW&C and networking systems. We also learn that five A330-200 tankers will improve the RAAF's combat persistence, since evidently the fuel carried in F-111s need not be counted. No less surprisingly we also discover that the mere AU$20M to 30M required to put networking into the F-111s is unusually expensive and not worth doing - evidently it is better to kill off the aircraft than invest into networking it.

The ugly reality is that networking has become a cure all panacea in the DoD bureacratic machine, one which can magically offset all force structure limitations, and one which magically only Australia can possess and use properly in the Pacrim.

The analytical perspective is very different, however. Most regional nations are now operating, deploying or shopping for AEW&C aircraft. Russia is actively marketing digital datalinks, like the TKS-2 and older APD-518, and marketing counter-ISR weapons like the Novator R-172 (KS-172) or Kh-31 series missiles. Russia is also marketing high power jamming equipment, especially pods using Digital RF Memory (DRFM) technology, and there is a good prospect of a Growler-ski based on the Su-32 materialising before the end of the decade.



In practical terms, by 2010-2015 regional opponents without AEW&C, long range counter-ISR missiles and jamming pods are likely to be the obliging exception to the rule. US thinking is not surprisingly centred in using F/A-22As to sanitise airspace permitting unhindered use of ISR platforms and networks, and the program to replace the lost capabilities of the EF-111A Raven with the B-52J or EB-52, equipped with high power stand-off jamming equipment to disrupt opposing networks and ISR sensors.
The reality we observe regionally and globally is, like the physics and mathematics which apply to the network problem, very different to the interpretation of these issues which we observe in the confines of Russell Offices. The Departmental leadership have effectively committed Australia to major strategic decisions, like the JSF program and F-111 retirement, on the basis of beliefs which are simply not supportable by fact. That a major fraction of virtually every public document dealing with the JSF and F-111 issues is dedicated to extolling the virtues of NCW is evidence in its own right.

The sad conclusion is that this emotive rather than rational approach to NCW amounts to little more than a doctrinal and strategic heresy, one which will no doubt vanish into oblivion no differently than the enthusiasm for the 'Revolution in Military Affairs' did some years ago. Until that much awaited day comes, damage will continue to be done to Australia's basic capabilities.


******************************************





Jamming of networks and ISR platforms can be highly profitable for an attacker. Networking antennas are mostly low gain designs with hemispherical coverage, and datalink emitters typically rate at tens to hundreds of Watts of output power. They must compete against jamming equipment which may have many kiloWatts of power rating, steerable high gain antennas and via DRFM technology the ability to mimic valid network datalink waveforms. While most advanced networking waveforms are designed to be jam resistant, none are ultimately jam-proof if the jammer has a big enough advantage in power-aperture performance. Modern networking waveforms always trade throughput performance for jam resistance, and given effective enough jamming may prove unusable in combat  (Author).

[Dig]

Network Centric Warfare Bibliography:
http://www.comw.org/rma/fulltext/netcentwar.html


Coalition Operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom: A U.K. Perspective of FBCB2/Blue Force Tracker (BFT)
Network Centric Operations Case Study, Department of Defense, 28 August 2007 (.pdf file).

The Evolution of NATO Network-Enabled Capabilities: Immediate Reaction Task Force (Land)
Network Centric Operations Case Study, Department of Defense, 06 August 2007 (NOTE: Will open as a Word document).

Information Management for Net-Centric Operations (Vol I)
Defense Science Board, Department of Defense, April 2007 (.pdf file).

Information Management for Net-Centric Operations (Vol II)
Defense Science Board, Department of Defense, April 2007 (.pdf file).

Network Centric Operations: Background and Oversight Issues for Congress
Clay Wilson. Congressional Research Service, updated 15 March 2007 (.pdf file).

U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet Task Force 50 In Operation Enduring Freedom
Network Centric Operations Case Study, Department of Defense, 27 February 2007 (.pdf file).

Task Force 50 During Operation Enduring Freedom
Network Centric Operations Case Study, Department of Defense, 23 February 2007 (.pdf file).

War 2.0
Thomas Rid. Policy Review, Hoover Institution, February 2007.

Network Centric Warfare Case Study Volume III: Network Centric Warfare Insights
John B. Tisserand III. Center for Strategic Leadership, October 2006 (.pdf file).

Network Centric Warfare Case Study Volume II: A View of Command, Control, Communications and Computer Architectures at the Dawn of Network Centric Warfare
Kevin J. Cogan and Raymond G. DeLucio. Center for Strategic Leadership, October 2006 (.pdf file).

Complexity, Networking and Effects-Based Approaches to Operations
Edward A. Smith. Command and Control Research Project, July 2006 (.pdf file).

Tactical Radio Project Substantially Weakened
Sandra I. Erwin. National Defense, July 2006 (.pdf file).

Network Centric Warfare Case Study Volume I: Operations
Dave Cammons et al. Center for Strategic Leadership, June 2006 (.pdf file).

Freedom and Control Networks in Military Environments
Paul T. Mitchell. Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Singapore, May 2006 (.pdf file).

Understanding Command and Control
David S. Alberts and Richard E. Hayes. Command and Control Research Project, March 2006 (.pdf file).

Vital Link: A Communcations Pipeline Enables Warfighters to Do More with Less
David Axe. Navy League of the United States, March 2006.

Information Technology Management: Select Controls Security of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense Communications Network
Department of Defense, 24 February 2006 (.pdf file).

Distributed Operations: Translating Tactical Capabilities into Operational Effects
Brian L. Gilman. Naval War College, 13 February 2006 (.pdf file).

Extending the User's Reach: Responsive Networking for Integrated Military Operations
David C. Gompert, Charles L. Barry and Alf A. Andreassen. Center for Technology and National Security Policy, National Defense University, February 2006 (.pdf file).

Unintended Consequences of the Network-Centric Decision Making Model: Considering the Human Operator
Robert S. Bolia, Michael A. Vidulich and W. Todd Nelson. Air Force Research Laboratory, February 2006 (.pdf file).

Network Science
Board on Army Science and Technology, The National Academies Press, 2006.

Net-Centric Warfare Experts Look to Improve Communications
Greg Grant. The Journal of Net-Centric Warfare, 11 October 2005.

An Information Age Combat Model
Jeffrey R. Cares. Alidade Inc., 30 September 2004 (.pdf file).

Network Centric Blind Spot
Greg Grant. Defense News, 12 September 2005. NOTE: Will open as a Word Document.

Battle Command: Toppling the Tower of Babel
Col. Stuart A. Whitehead. Military Review, September-October 2005 (.pdf file).

Modularity: An Application of General Systems Theory to Military Force Development
Melissa A. Schilling and Col. Christopher Paprone. Defense Acquisition Review Journal, August-November 2005 (.pdf file).

Social Networking Analysis: One of the First Steps in Net-Centric Operations
Tom Edison. Defense Acquisition Review Journal, August-November 2005 (.pdf file).

Network-Centric Warfare: The Problem of Social Order
Lt. Col. David Schmidtchen. Working Paper # 125. Land Warfare Studies Centre, June 2005 (.pdf file).

Fundamentals of Distributed, Networked Military Forces and the Engineering of Distributed Systems
Jeffrey R. Cares, Raymond J. Christian and Robert C. Manke. NUWC-NPT Technical Report 11,366. 09 May 2002 (.pdf file).

Network-Enabled Battle Command
Lt. William S. Wallace. RUSI Defense Systems, 2004/2005. Posted on the Combined Arms Center Military Review website, May 2005 (.pdf file).

Studies Examining Role of Network Centric Operations In Iraq
Geoff Fein. Defense Daily, 6 April 2005. Posted on the Office of Force Transformation website (.doc file).

Cognitive Readiness in Network-Centric Operations
Nancy J. Wesensten, Gregory Belenky, and Thomas J. Balkin. Parameters, Spring 2005 (.pdf file).

Net-Centric Warfare and Its Impact on System-of-Systems
Lt. Col. Steven G. Zenishek and David Usechak. Defense Acquisition University, April 2005 (.pdf file).

The Network Way of War
John Tirpak. Air Force Magazine, March 2005 (.pdf file).

Modular Devices Weave Tactical Networks
Henry S. Kenyon. Signal Magazine, March 2005.

The Challenge and Promise of Network-Centric Warfare
John Luddy. Lexington Institute, February 2005 (.pdf file).

The Implementation of Network-Centric Warfare
Department of Defense, Office of Force Transformation, 05 January 2005 (.pdf file).

Data Holds the Key to Network-Centricity
Robert K. Ackerman. Signal Magazine, January 2005.

Battlewise: Gaining Advantage in Networked Warfare
Center for Technology and National Security Policy, National Defense University, January 2005 (.pdf file).

Information Age Warfare Quarterly
Winter 2005 (.pdf file).

FORCEnet Implementation Strategy
Naval Studies Board, The National Academies Press, 2005.

Network-Centric Operations Case Study - The Stryker Brigade Combat Team
Daniel Gonzales, Michael Johnson, Jimmie McEver, Dennis Leedom, Gina Kingston and Michael Tseng. RAND, 2005 (.pdf file).

Network-Centric Operations Case Study: Air-To-Air Combat With and Without Link 16
Daniel Gonzales, John Hollywood, Gina Kingsto and David Signori. RAND, 2005 (.pdf file).

The Weapons Mix Problem
Christopher G. Pernin and Louis R. Moore. RAND, 2005.

The Agile Organization: From Informal Networks to Complex Effects and Agility
Simon Reay Atkinson and James Moffat. CCRP, Information Age Transformation Series (.pdf file).

A Woven Web of Guesses
Lt. Col. Ralph E. Giffin and Darryn J. Reid. Command and Control Research Program, 17 June 2004 (.pdf file).

Net-Centric Approach Proven in Iraq
Dawn S. Onley. Government Computer News, 3 May 2004. Posted on the Office of Force Transformation web site (.doc file).

Transformation Office Gears Up for for Net Centric Logistics Test
John T. Bennett. Inside the Pentagon, 6 May 2004. Posted on the Office of Force Transformation web site (.doc file).

Network Centric Warfare: Background and Oversight Issues for Congress
Clay Wilson. Congressional Research Service, 02 June 2004 (.pdf file).

Net-centric on the Cheap
Matthew French. Federal Computer Week, 26 January 2004.

Iraq War Proves Power Of Net-Centric Vision
Megan Scully. Defense News, 26 January 2004. Posted on the Office of Force Transformation web site (.doc file).

Military Culture Seen As Hurdle To Network Warfare
William New. National Journal's Technology Daily, 22 January 2004. Posted on the Office of Force Transformation web site (.doc file).

Horizontal Fusion:  Enabling Net-Centric Operations and Warfare
John P. Stenbit. CrossTalk, January 2004. Posted on the Software Technology Support Center website (.pdf file).

Look Closely At Network-Centric Warfare:  Technology can both aid and dominate the warfighter
Col. Alan D. Campen, USAF (Ret.). Signal, January 2004.

Communications Networks to Support Integrated Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance, and Strike Operations
RAND, 2004 (.pdf file).

The Joint Forces Air Command Problem
Major William A. Woodcock. Naval War College Review, Winter 2003. Posted on the Find Articles website.

Tactical Operations:  Tactical Web Takes Shape
Henry S. Kenyon. Signal, November 2003.

Swarming:  Network Enabled C4ISR (slow to load)
Proceedings of a conference sponsored by the Joint C4ISR Decision Support Center, 13-14 January 2003. Posted on the web site of the US DoD Command and Control Research Program.

Pentagon Commissions Net-Centric Studies
Michael Sirak. Jane's Defence Weekly, 29 October 2003. Posted on the Office of Force Transformation web site (.doc file).

Swarming -- The Next Face of Battle
John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt. Aviation Week & Space Technology, 29 September 2003. Posted on the RAND website.

The Challenges and Limitations of 'Network Centric Warfare'
Aldo Borgu. Presented at the "Network Centric Warfare:  Improving ADF Capabilities Through Network Enabled Operations" conference, 17 September 2003. Posted on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute website (.pdf file).

Network Centric Warfare:  More than Just Technology
MITRE Digest, September 2003.

Complexity Theory and Network Centric Warfare
James Moffat. US DoD Command and Control Research Program, September 2003.

The Network Is the Battlefield
Business Week, 07 January 2003.

The Hidden Dangers Of Networked Warfare
Loren Thompson. Lexington Institute, 17 June 2003.

Network-Centric Warfare:  Not There Yet
Dan Caterinicchia and Matthew French. Federal Computer Week, 09 June 2003.

Concept of a Dynamic Organizational Schema for a Network-Centric Organization
Gregory M. Maguire. Naval Post Graduate School, June 2003. Hosted by STINET database (.pdf file).

Network-Centric Warfare Requires A Closer Look
Lt. Col. Edmund C. Blash. Signal Forum, May 2003. Posted on IWAR.com web site.

Network-Centric Warfare Offers Warfighting Advantage:  Datalinks are the new weapon of the information age
John J. Garstka. Signal, May 2003.

Network-CentricWarfare Requires A Closer Look:  Concept may be too ahead of its time
Lt. Col. Edmund C. Blash, USAR. Signal, May 2003.

Cebrowski:  Iraq Shows Network Centric Warfare Implementation
Hunter Keeter. 23 April 2003. Posted on the Office of Force Transformation web site (.doc file).

Network Centric Warfare and Its Impact On Operational Functions
Dennish Garth. Naval War College, 03 February 2003. Hosted by STINET database (.pdf file).

Swarming:  Network Enabled C4ISR Conference
Joint C4ISR Decision Support Center, McLean, MA, 13-14 January 2003. Posted on IWAR.com web site (.pdf file).

Cebrowski Speech
Network Centric Warfare Conference, 22 January 2003. Posted on the Office of Force Transformation web site (.doc file).

Be Careful What You Wish For:  The Dangers of Fighting With a Network Centric Military
Alfred I. Kaufman. Journal of Battlefield Technology, November 2002 (.pdf file).

Principles of War on the Network-Centric Battlefield: Mass and Economy of Force
Paul Murdock. Parameters, Spring 2002.

Afghanistan Is Only the Tip of the Network-Centric Iceberg
Robert K. Ackerman. SIGNAL Magazine, April 2002.

Network Centric Warfare
Report to Congress, Department of Defense, April 2002. Posted on the Federation of American Scientists website (.pdf file).

Network-Centric Special Operations-Exploring New Operational Paradigms
Capt. Greg Gagnon. Aerospace Chronicles, 4 February 2002.

Network Centric Warfare
Department of Defense, September 2001. Posted on the Federation of American Scientists website (.pdf fil).

Network Centric Warfare: What's the Point?
Edward A. Smith, Jr. NWC Review ( Winter 2001). Posted on the Find Articles website.

Network-Centric Warfare and Its Function in the Realm of Interoperability
Joseph M. Ladymon. Acquisition Review Quarterly, Summer 2001 (.pdf file).

Network Centric Warfare
John J. Garstka. Phalanx, December 2000. Posted on the Military Operations Research Society website.

Defense Disconnect: How Interop is Challenging the Top Brass
Grahame Lynch. America's Network,15 September 2000.

Network Centric Warfare: Where's the Beef?
Dr. Edward A. Smith, Jr. C4ISR Cooperative Research Program (CCRP). February 2000. Posted on the Information Warfare website.

Network-centric warfare 21st century
J.R. Wilson. Military & Aerospace Electronics (January 2000).

The Seven Deadly Sins of Network-Centric Warfare
Thomas P.M. Barnett. Proceedings (January 1999).

Observations on the Emergence of Network Centric Warfare
Fred P. Stein. Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium Proceedings, June 1998.

Network-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future
Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski, U.S. Navy, and John J. Garstka. Proceedings (January 1998).

[Dig]

Complete 911 Timeline
BMI and Ptech Investigations
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?financing_of_al-qaeda:_a_more_detailed_look=bmiPtech&timeline=complete_911_timeline
Project: Complete 911 Timeline
Open-Content project managed by matt, Paul, KJF, blackmax

1986-October 1999: New Jersey Firm Investors List Is ‘Who’s Who of Designated Terrorists’
Soliman Biheiri. [Source: US Immigrations and Customs]
BMI Inc., a real estate investment firm based in Secaucus, New Jersey, is formed in 1986. Former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke will state in 2003, “While BMI [has] held itself out publicly as a financial services provider for Muslims in the United States, its investor list suggests the possibility this facade was just a cover to conceal terrorist support. BMI’s investor list reads like a who’s who of designated terrorists and Islamic extremists.” Investors in BMI include: [US Congress, 10/22/2003]
 Soliman Biheiri. He is the head of BMI for the duration of the company’s existence. US prosecutors will later call him the US banker for the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Egyptian militant group. Biheiri’s computer will eventually be searched and found to have contact information for Ghaleb Himmat and Youssef Nada, leaders of the Al Taqwa Bank, which is founded two years after BMI (see 1988). After 9/11, the US and UN will designate both Himmat and Nada and the Al Taqwa Bank as terrorist financiers, and the bank will be shut down (see November 7, 2001). US prosecutors say there are other ties between BMI and Al Taqwa, including financial transactions. Biheiri also has close ties with Yousuf Abdullah Al-Qaradawi. Qaradawi is said to be a high-ranking member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a shareholder in Al Taqwa, and has made statements supporting suicide bombings against Israel. In 2003, US investigators will accuse Biheiri of ties to terrorist financing. He will be convicted of immigration violations and lying to a federal agent (see June 15, 2003). [Wall Street Journal, 9/15/2003; Forward, 10/17/2003] Biheiri will be convicted of immigration fraud in 2003 and then convicted of lying to federal investigators in 2004 (see June 15, 2003).
 Abdullah Awad bin Laden, a nephew of Osama bin Laden. He invests about a half-million dollars in BMI real estate ventures, earning a profit of $70,000. For most of the 1990s he runs the US branch of a Saudi charity called World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). He is investigated by the FBI in 1996 (see February-September 11, 1996), and WAMY will be raided by US agents in 2004 (see June 1, 2004). The raid is apparently part of a larger investigation into terrorism financing. In 2001, at least two of the 9/11 hijackers will live three blocks away from the WAMY office (see March 2001 and After). [Wall Street Journal, 9/15/2003; Washington Post, 4/19/2004]
 Nur and Iman bin Laden, two female relatives of Osama bin Laden. Abdullah Awad bin Laden will invest some of their money in a BMI real estate project. While their bin Laden family ties are intriguing, neither have been accused of any knowing connections to terrorist financing. [Washington Post, 4/19/2004]
 Mousa Abu Marzouk. He has identified himself as a top leader of Hamas. The US declares him a terrorist in 1995 (see July 5, 1995-May 1997). BMI makes at least two transactions with Marzouk after he is declared a terrorist. [Wall Street Journal, 9/15/2003]
 Yassin al-Qadi, a Saudi multimillionaire. His lawyers will later claim he has no terrorism ties and had only a passing involvement with BMI and liquidated his investment in it in 1996. However, another company operating from the same office as BMI is called Kadi International Inc. and lists its president as al-Qadi. Al-Qadi is also a major investor in the suspect computer company Ptech (see 1994; 1999-After October 12, 2001). Al-Qadi and BMI head Biheiri have financial dealings with Yaqub Mirza, a Pakistani who manages a group of Islamic charities in Virginia known as the SAAR network (see July 29, 1983). These charities will be raided in March 2002 on suspicions of terrorism ties (see March 20, 2002). Shortly after 9/11, the US will officially declare al-Qadi a terrorist financier (see October 12, 2001). [Wall Street Journal, 9/15/2003]
 Saleh Kamel. BMI allegedly receives a $500,000 investment from the Dallah Al-Baraka banking conglomerate, which is headed by Kamel. For many years before 9/11, Omar al-Bayoumi, an associate of 9/11 hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, will receive a salary from Dallah, despite apparently doing no work. Some will accuse al-Bayoumi of involvement in funding the 9/11 plot, but that remains to been proven (see August 1994-July 2001). Kamel reportedly founded a Sudanese Islamic bank which housed accounts for senior al-Qaeda operatives. He is a multi-billionaire heavily involved in promoting Islam, and his name appears on the Golden Chain, a list of early al-Qaeda supporters (see 1988-1989). He denies supporting terrorism. [US Congress, 10/22/2003; Wall Street Journal, 6/21/2004]
 The Kuwait Finance House. According to Clarke, this organization is alleged to be a BMI investor and the “financial arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Kuwait. Several al-Qaeda operatives have allegedly been associated with the Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Suliman abu Ghaith, Wadih El-Hage, and Ramzi Yousef.” In 2003, an apparent successor entity to the Kuwait Finance House will be designated as a terrorist entity by the US. A lawyer for the Kuwait Finance House will later say the bank has never let its accounts be used for terrorism. [Wall Street Journal, 9/15/2003; US Congress, 10/22/2003; Wall Street Journal, 4/20/2005]
 Tarek Swaidan. He is a Kuwaiti, an associate of al-Qadi, and a leading member of the Kuwaiti branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is unknown if he has made any denials about his alleged associations. [Wall Street Journal, 9/15/2003]
 Abdurahman Alamoudi. For many years he runs the American Muslim Council, a lobby group founded by a top Muslim Brotherhood figure. US prosecutors say he also is in the Brotherhood, and has alleged ties to Hamas. In 2004, the US will sentence him to 23 years in prison for illegal dealings with Libya (see October 15, 2004). [Wall Street Journal, 6/21/2004; Washington Post, 10/16/2004]
 The International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and the Muslim World League, closely connected Saudi charities suspected of financing terrorism. They give BMI $3.7 million out of a $10 million endowment from unknown Saudi donors. The Financial Times will later note, “While it is not clear whether that money came from the Saudi government, [a 2003] affidavit quotes a CIA report that says the Muslim World League ‘is largely financed by the government of Saudi Arabia.’” Both organizations consistently deny any support of terrorism financing, but in early 2006 it will be reported that US officials continue to suspect them of such support (see January 15, 2006). [Financial Times, 8/21/2003] In 1992, a branch of the IIRO gives $2.1 million to BMI Inc. to invest in real estate. The money disappears from BMI’s books. In October 1999, BMI goes defunct after it is unable to repay this money to the IIRO branch. The IIRO branch gives BMI the rest of the $3.7 million between 1992 and 1998. BMI will use the money to buy real estate (see 1992). Eventually, some of this money will be given to Hamas operatives in the West Bank and spent on violent actions against Israel. This will eventually lead to legal action in the US and a seizure of some of the money. [Wall Street Journal, 11/26/2002; Washington Post, 8/20/2003; Washington Times, 3/26/2004; Washington Post, 4/19/2004] By 1992, BMI has projected revenues in excess of $25 million, based largely on their real estate investments in the US. [US Congress, 10/22/2003] In early 1999, months before BMI goes defunct, the FBI hears evidence potentially tying BMI to the 1998 US embassy bombings (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998), but an investigation into this will not be pursued (see Early 1999). It should be noted that BMI had many investors, and presumably most BMI investors would have had no suspicions that their money might be used to fund terrorism or other types of violence.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Mid-1990s: Al-Qadi Claims Good Relationship with Cheney
Saudi multimillionaire Yassin al-Qadi will say in an interview shortly after 9/11, “I have also met with US Vice President and former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in Jeddah [Saudi Arabia] when he came for a lecture organized by the Dallah Group. I spoke to him for a long time and we still have cordial relations.” The US had named al-Qadi a supporter of terrorism and frozen his assets two days before (see October 12, 2001). Oussama Ziade, CEO of Ptech, a US computer company that al-Qadi had invested in (see 1994) and that will be raided for suspected terrorism ties (see December 5, 2002), later will claim that al-Qadi “talked very highly of his relationship” with Cheney. Ziade will claim he only knew al-Qadi for a few years starting around 1994, so presumably the contact between al-Qadi and Cheney happens during the mid-1990s. A newspaper will report later that when a Cheney spokeswoman is asked about his possible ties to al-Qadi, she replies that “she had no reason to believe the vice president had met with al-Qadi”. Al-Qadi claims to be a respected businessman who met other important leaders such as ex-President Jimmy Carter. [Arab News, 10/14/2001; Associated Press, 1/3/2003; Computerworld, 1/17/2003] The US will declare al-Qadi a terrorism financier shortly after 9/11 (see October 12, 2001), and the Dallah Group will be accused of funding al-Qaeda (see November 22, 2002).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
1992: Militant Financial Front Said to Fund Terrorism Through Real Estate Investments in US
The Barnaby Knolls housing development, another Washington, DC, suburb funded by BMI Inc. [Source: Susan Biddle/ Washington Post]
BMI Inc., is a New Jersey-based Muslim investment firm. Some of the lead investors have been suspected of supporting terrorism and other types of violence in the Middle East (see 1986-October 1999). In 1992, a branch of the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), a Saudi charity gives $2.1 million to BMI to invest in real estate. The money disappears from BMI’s books. By 1996, the CIA will secretly report that the IIRO supports terrorism financing in many locations around the world (see January 1996). In October 1999, BMI will go defunct after it is unable to repay this money to the IIRO branch. Additionally, the IIRO branch will give BMI over a million dollars between 1992 and 1998. BMI uses some money from the IIRO and other investors to build houses in Oxon Hill, a Washington, D.C., suburb. Many well to do Muslims invest in the housing development because BMI advertises itself as investing according to Islamic principles. Most of the small investors as well as the middle class Americans who buy the Oxon Hill houses do not realize that the profits from the property sales go to Mousa Abu Marzouk, a known leader of Hamas. Marzouk is said to make $250,000 in profits from BMI real estate deals in the early 1990s. In 2004, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement court declaration will assert that significant amounts of cash obtained from BMI by Marzouk is eventually used “in furtherance of Hamas terrorist operations.” [Wall Street Journal, 11/26/2002; Washington Post, 8/20/2003; Washington Times, 3/26/2004; Washington Post, 4/19/2004] By the end of 1992, BMI will have projected revenues in excess of $25 million based largely on their real estate investments in the US. [US Congress, 10/22/2003]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
1994: Ptech Founded with Support from Suspected Terrorism Financiers
Oussama Ziade. [Source: Beta Consulting]
Ptech is founded in 1994 by Oussama Ziade, Hussein Ibrahim, and James Cerrato. Ziade came from Lebanon to study at Harvard University. As the Associated Press will describe it, Ptech’s “idea was to help complicated organizations like the military and large companies create a picture of how their assets—people and technology—work together. Then the software could show how little changes, like combining two departments, might affect the whole.” They raise $20 million to start the company. A number of Ptech employees and investors will later be suspected of having ties to groups that have been designated by the US as terrorist organizations: [CNN, 12/6/2002; Wall Street Journal, 12/6/2002; Associated Press, 1/3/2003]
 Yassin al-Qadi, a Saudi multimillionaire. He will invest $5 million of Ptech’s start-up money. The US will declare him an al-Qaeda financier shortly after 9/11 (see October 12, 2001). In 1998, al-Qadi will come under investigation by FBI agent Robert Wright (see October 1998) for potential ties to the 1998 US embassy bombings (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998). Al-Qadi is also a major investor in BMI Inc., an investment firm with connections to a remarkable number of suspected terrorist financiers (see 1986-October 1999). Al-Qadi later will claims that he sold his investment in Ptech in 1999, but there will be evidence he may continue to hold a financial stake after that year, and even after the US will officially declare him a terrorism financier (see 1999-After October 12, 2001). [Wall Street Journal, 12/6/2002; Washington Post, 12/7/2002; Associated Press, 1/3/2003]
 Gamel Ahmed, Ptech’s comptroller in the mid-1990s. One al-Qadi loan Wright will investigate also involves Ahmed. [Associated Press, 1/3/2003]
 Hussein Ibrahim, Ptech vice president and chief scientist. He also serves as vice president and then president of BMI from 1989 until 1995. He has no known direct terrorism finance connections, but it has been reported that al-Qadi brought Ibrahim into Ptech as his representative. [Wall Street Journal, 12/6/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002; Associated Press, 1/3/2003]
 Soliman Biheiri. He is the head of BMI and a member of Ptech’s board. US prosecutors will later call him the US banker for the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Egyptian militant group. He will later be convicted for lying and immigration fraud (see June 15, 2003). [FrontPage Magazine, 6/17/2005]
 Abdurahman Alamoudi. He is one of Ptech’s founders, as well as an investor in BMI. In 2004, the US will sentence him to 23 years in prison for illegal dealings with Libya (see October 15, 2004). [Washington Post, 10/16/2004; FrontPage Magazine, 6/17/2005]
 Muhammed Mubayyid and Suheil Laheir. Neither have any known direct ties to terrorism financing. However, both are longtime Ptech employees whom formerly worked for Care International, a Boston-based suspect Islamic charity (not to be confused with a large international charity having the same name). [Wall Street Journal, 12/6/2002] In 2005, Mubayyid will be charged with conspiring to defraud the US and making false statements to the FBI. Care International had previously been the Boston branch of the Al-Kifah Refugee Center (see [a0493kifahboston]]) and a recruitment office for Mektab al Khidmat (MAK), the precursor organization to al-Qaeda (see 1985-1989). Laheir, Ptech’s chief architect, wrote many articles in support of Islamic holy war. He frequently quoted Abdullah Azzam, bin Laden’s mentor. [Associated Press, 5/13/2005; FrontPage Magazine, 6/17/2005]
 Yaqub Mirza. He is a Ptech investor and on a Ptech advisory board. He directs SAAR, a multi-million dollar network of companies and charities in Herndon, Virginia (see July 29, 1983). In March 2002, US investigators will raid the SAAR network for suspected terrorism ties (see March 20, 2002). In late 2002, the Wall Street Journal will report, “US officials privately say Mr. Mirza and his associates also have connections to al-Qaeda and to other entities officially listed by the US as sponsors of terrorism.” [Wall Street Journal, 12/6/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002; Associated Press, 1/3/2003]
 BMI itself directly invests in Ptech. It also gives Ptech a founding loan, and leases Ptech much of its office and computer equipment. [Wall Street Journal, 12/6/2002; Associated Press, 1/3/2003] Ptech president Ziade and other Ptech employees will claim that all of their ties to suspected terrorist financiers are coincidental. By 2002, Ptech will have annual revenues of up to $10 million. [Wall Street Journal, 12/6/2002] Ptech’s potential ties to suspected terrorist financiers will be of particular concern because of its potential access to classified government information (see 1996-1997). [Wall Street Journal, 12/6/2002; Boston Globe, 12/7/2002] Joe Bergantino, a CBS journalist who will be the first to report on Ptech, will say of Ptech in 2002, “The worst-case scenario is that this is a situation where this was planned for a very long time to establish a company in this country and in the computer software business that would target federal agencies and gain access to key government data to essentially help terrorists launch another attack.” [National Public Radio, 12/8/2002]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Shortly After March 1994: US Learns Bin Laden Gave Prominent Muslim Activist Money for ‘Blind Sheikh’
Alamoudi, center, with Vice President Gore, left, and President Clinton, right. This picture is from a 1997 American Muslim Council newsletter and was presumably taken around that time. [Source: CAIR]
Abdo Mohammed Haggag, speechwriter for the “Blind Sheikh,” Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, makes a deal and agrees to testify against Abdul-Rahman in an upcoming US trial. [New York Times, 6/26/1994] He soon reveals that bin Laden has been paying for Abdul-Rahman’s living expenses since Abdul-Rahman moved to the US in 1990 (see July 1990). This is one of the first things that causes US intelligence to become interested in bin Laden. [Miller, Stone, and Mitchell, 2002, pp. 147-148] Further, Haggag reveals that the money was funneled through Abdurahman Alamoudi and his organization, the American Muslim Council. “Investigators tried to prove Alamoudi was a terror middleman but could not find ‘smoking gun’ evidence. That allowed Alamoudi to became a politically connected Muslim activist and co-founder of the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veteran Affairs Council, which helps the US military select Muslim chaplains.” [New York Post, 10/1/2003] This same year, Alamoudi will be one of the founders of Ptech, a US computer company with suspected terrorism ties (see 1994). It will later be alleged that he was able to operate with impunity for years due to his close ties to Grover Norquist, a powerful Republican lobbyist (see March 20, 2002). In 2004, the US will sentence him to 23 years in prison for illegal dealings with Libya (see October 15, 2004).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
1995-1998: Alleged Ties Between Al-Qadi Charity and Terrorist Groups Are Uncovered; No Action Taken
Beginning in 1995, evidence begins to appear in the media suggesting that a Saudi charity named the Muwafaq Foundation has ties to radical militants. The foundation is run by a Saudi multimillionaire named Yassin al-Qadi.
 In 1995, media reports claim that Muwafaq is being used to fund mujaheddin fighters in Bosnia (see 1991-1995).
 Also in 1995, Pakistani police raid the foundation’s Pakistan branch in the wake of the arrest of WTC bomber Ramzi Yousef (see February 7, 1995). The head of the branch is held for several months, and then the branch is closed down. [Chicago Tribune, 10/29/2001]
 A secret CIA report in January 1996 says that Muwafaq is has ties to the Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya militant group and helps fund mujaheddin fighting in Bosnia and at least one training camp in Afghanistan (see January 1996).
 In February 1996, bin Laden says in an interview that he supports the Muwafaq branch in Zagreb, Croatia (which is close to the fighting in neighboring Bosnia). [Guardian, 10/16/2001]
 A senior US official will later claim that in 1998, the National Commercial Bank, one of the largest banks in Saudi Arabia, ran an audit and determined that the Muwafaq Foundation gave $3 million to al-Qaeda. Both al-Qadi and the bank later claim that the audit never existed. Al-Qadi asserts he has no ties to any terrorist group. [Chicago Tribune, 10/29/2001] In 2003, former counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke will elaborate on this allegation, saying to a Senate committee, “Al-Qadi was the head of Muwafaq, a Saudi ‘relief organization’ that reportedly transferred at least $3 million, on behalf of Khalid bin Mahfouz, to Osama bin Laden and assisted al-Qaeda fighters in Bosnia.” [US Congress, 10/22/2003] (Note that bin Mahfouz, a Saudi billionaire, denies that he ever had any sort of tie to bin Laden or al-Qaeda and has not been officially charged of such ties anywhere.) [Bin Mahfouz Info, 11/22/2005]
 Al-Qadi will claim that he shut down Muwafaq in 1996, but it is referred to in UN and German charity documents as doing work in Sudan and Bosnia through 1998. [Guardian, 10/16/2001; BBC, 10/20/2001]
 Shortly after 9/11, the US Treasury Department will claim that Muwafaq funded Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK)/Al-Kifah (the predecessor of al-Qaeda), al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Abu Sayyaf (a Philippines militant group with ties to al-Qaeda), and other militant Islamic groups. [FrontPage Magazine, 6/17/2005]
However, despite all of these alleged connections, and the fact that the US will officially label al-Qadi a terrorism financier shortly after 9/11 (see October 12, 2001), the Muwafaq Foundation has never been officially declared a terrorist supporting entity. An October 2001 New York Times article will say that the reason, “administration officials said, was the inability of United States officials to locate the charity or determine whether it is still in operation.” But the same article will also quote a news editor, who calls Muwafaq’s board of directors “the creme de la creme of Saudi society.” [New York Times, 10/13/2001]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
1996-1997: Ptech Begins to Get US Government Contracts
Ptech logo. [Source: Ptech]
Ptech is a Boston computer company connected to a number of individuals suspected of ties to officially designated terrorist organizations (see 1994). These alleged ties will be of particular concern because of Ptech’s potential access to classified government secrets. Ptech specializes in what is called enterprise architecture. It is the design and layout for an organization’s computer networks. John Zachman, considered the father of enterprise architecture, later will say that Ptech could collect crucial information from the organizations and agencies with which it works. “You would know where the access points are, you’d know how to get in, you would know where the weaknesses are, you’d know how to destroy it.” Another computer expert will say, “The software they put on your system could be collecting every key stroke that you type while you are on the computer. It could be establishing a connection to the outside terrorist organization through all of your security measures.” [WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] In late 1996, an article notes that Ptech is doing work for DARPA, a Defense Department agency responsible for developing new military technology. [Government Executive, 9/1/1996] In 1997, Ptech gains government approval to market its services to “all legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the federal government.” Beginning that year, Ptech will begin working for many government agencies, eventually including the White House, Congress, Army, Navy, Air Force, NATO, FAA, FBI, US Postal Service, Secret Service, the Naval Air Systems Command, IRS, and the nuclear-weapons program of the Department of Energy. For instance, Ptech will help build “the Military Information Architecture Framework, a software tool used by the Department of Defense to link data networks from various military computer systems and databases.” Ptech will be raided by US investigators in December 2002 (see December 5, 2002), but not shut down. [Wall Street Journal, 12/6/2002; CNN, 12/6/2002; Newsweek, 12/6/2002; Boston Globe, 12/7/2002] A former director of intelligence at the Department of Energy later will say he would not be surprised if an al-Qaeda front company managed to infiltrate the department’s nuclear programs. [Unlimited (Auckland), 12/9/2002] Ptech will continue to work with many of these agencies even after 9/11. After a Customs Department raid of Ptech’s offices in late 2002, their software will be declared safe of malicious code. But one article will note, “What no one knows at this point is how much sensitive government information Ptech gained access to while it worked in several government agencies.” [WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
April 1998: FBI Agent Stifles Investigation into Ptech Figures
John Vincent. [Source: Patriot TV]
FBI agent Robert Wright will later recall that at this time, he is pleasantly surprised when FBI management provides his Vulgar Betrayal investigation with a 10 year veteran agent to assist with his efforts. According to Wright, the unnamed agent is assigned to “investigate a company and its 20-plus subsidiaries which were linked to a major financer of international terrorism.” However, Wright and fellow agent John Vincent will soon become dismayed when they realize the agent is not actually doing any work. He merely shuffles papers to look busy when people walk by. He will continue to do no work on this important assignment until the Vulgar Betrayal investigation is effectively shut down one year later (see August 3, 1999). Wright will claim in 2003, “The important assignment he was given involved both the founder and the financier of Ptech.” Presumably these could be references to Oussama Ziade, the president and chief founder of Ptech, and Yassin al-Qadi, apparently Ptech’s largest investor. [Federal News Service, 6/2/2003]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
October 1998: Vulgar Betrayal Investigation Nearly Shut Down
Mark Flessner.
Two months after the US embassy bombings in Africa (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998), FBI agent Robert Wright and his Vulgar Betrayal investigation discover evidence they think ties Saudi multimillionaire Yassin al-Qadi to the bombings. Since 1997, Wright had been investigating a suspected terrorist cell in Chicago that was connected to fundraising for Hamas. They discovered what they considered to be clear proof that al-Qadi and other people they were already investigating had helped fund the embassy bombings. Wright asks FBI headquarters for permission to open an investigation into this money trail at this time, but the permission is not granted. Wright will later recall, “The supervisor who was there from headquarters was right straight across from me and started yelling at me: ‘You will not open criminal investigations. I forbid any of you. You will not open criminal investigations against any of these intelligence subjects.’” Instead, they are told to merely follow the suspects and file reports, but make no arrests. Federal prosecutor Mark Flessner, working with the Vulgar Betrayal investigation, later will claim that a strong criminal case was building against al-Qadi and his associates. “There were powers bigger than I was in the Justice Department and within the FBI that simply were not going to let [the building of a criminal case] happen. And it didn’t happen.… I think there were very serious mistakes made. And I think, it perhaps cost, it cost people their lives ultimately.” [ABC News, 12/19/2002] Flessner later will speculate that Saudi influence may have played a role. ABC News will report in 2002, “According to US officials, al-Qadi [has] close personal and business connections with the Saudi royal family.” [ABC News, 11/26/2002] Wright later will allege that FBI headquarters even attempted to shut down the Vulgar Betrayal investigation altogether at this time. He says, “They wanted to kill it.” [ABC News, 12/19/2002] However, he will claim, “Fortunately an assistant special agent in Chicago interceded to prevent FBI headquarters from closing Operation Vulgar Betrayal.” [Federal News Service, 6/2/2003] He claims that a new supervisor will write in late 1998, “Agent Wright has spearheaded this effort despite embarrassing lack of investigative resources available to the case, such as computers, financial analysis software, and a team of financial analysts. Although far from being concluded, the success of this investigation so far has been entirely due to the foresight and perseverance of Agent Wright.” [Federal News Service, 5/30/2002] When the story of this interference in the alleged al-Qadi-embassy bombings connection will be reported in late 2002, Wright will conclude, “September the 11th is a direct result of the incompetence of the FBI’s International Terrorism Unit. No doubt about that. Absolutely no doubt about that. You can’t know the things I know and not go public.” He will remain prohibited from telling all he knows, merely hinting, “There’s so much more. God, there’s so much more. A lot more.” [ABC News, 12/19/2002]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Early 1999: FBI Fails to Pursue Possible Connection Between BMI and Embassy Bombings
BMI Inc. is a New Jersey-based investment firm with connections to a remarkable number of suspected terrorist financiers (see 1986-October 1999). In 1999, a former BMI accountant contacts the FBI and says that he believes BMI is supporting terrorism. He claims that money he “was transferring overseas on behalf of the company may have been used to finance the embassy bombings in Africa.”(see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998) US investigators establish a financial link between BMI and an Islamic charity named Mercy International. A Nairobi, Kenya, branch of that charity helped support the embassy bombings. FBI agent Robert Wright’s Vulgar Betrayal investigation had recently discovered evidence suggesting a link between Saudi multimillionaire Yassin al-Qadi and the embassy bombings (see October 1998), and al-Qadi is a major investor of BMI. The Vulgar Betrayal investigation begins looking at this new possible link. BMI president Soliman Biheiri hears that FBI agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz has been told about this, and he asks to meet with Abdel-Hafiz to explain. Apparently, he does not realize that Abdel-Hafiz is an undercover FBI agent. Wright asks Abdel-Hafiz to wear a wire to the meeting, and Abdel-Hafiz refuses to do so (see Early 1999-March 21, 2000). Apparently the meeting with Biheiri never takes place and the possible connections between BMI and the embassy bombings are not fully investigated before 9/11. [Wall Street Journal, 11/26/2002; Washington Post, 8/20/2003; Frontline, 10/16/2003]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Early 1999-March 21, 2000: Muslim FBI Agent Refuses to Wear Wire in Meeting with BMI Head; FBI Infighting Follows
Gamal Abdel-Hafiz. [Source: Charles Ommanney]
Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, the only Muslim FBI agent in the years just prior to 9/11, becomes involved in FBI agent Robert Wright’s Vulgar Betrayal investigation in early 1999. An accountant working for BMI Inc., an investment firm with connections to many suspected terrorism financiers (see 1986-October 1999), tells Abdel-Hafiz that he is worried that BMI funds had helped fund the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa (see 10:35-10:39 a.m., August 7, 1998). BMI president Soliman Biheiri hears that Abdel-Hafiz had been told about this, and wants to meet with him to discuss it (apparently without realizing that Abdel-Hafiz is an undercover FBI agent). Wrights asks Abdel-Hafiz to wear a wire to the meeting, but Abdel-Hafiz refuses to do so. This leads to infighting within the FBI. On July 6, 1999, Abdel-Hafiz files a religious discrimination complaint, accusing Wright of making derogatory comments to fellow agents. [Frontline, 10/16/2003] On March 21, 2000, Wright makes a formal internal complaint about Abdel-Hafiz. FBI agent Barry Carmody seconds Wright’s complaint. Wright and Carmody accuse Abdel-Hafiz of hindering investigations by openly refusing to record other Muslims. In an affidavit, Wright claims that Abdel-Hafiz refused to wear the wire “based on religious reasons saying, ‘A Muslim doesn’t record another Muslim.’” Abdel-Hafiz does not deny the quote, but claims it was taken out of context. [Wall Street Journal, 11/26/2002; ABC News, 12/19/2002; Frontline, 10/16/2003] Federal prosecutor Mark Flessner and other FBI agents back up the allegations against Abdel-Hafiz. [ABC News, 12/19/2002] Carmody will also claim that, in a different investigation, Abdel-Hafiz hindered an inquiry into the possible ties to Islamic militants of fired University of South Florida Professor Sami al-Arian by refusing to record a conversation with the professor in 1998. [Tampa Tribune, 3/4/2003] Complaints to superiors and headquarters about Abdel-Hafiz never get a response. [Fox News, 3/6/2003] “Far from being reprimanded, in February 2001 Abdel-Hafiz [is] promoted to one of the FBI’s most important anti-terrorism posts, the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia, to handle investigations for the FBI in that Muslim country.” [ABC News, 12/19/2002; Frontline, 10/16/2003] In 2003, FBI agent John Vincent will complain, “Five different FBI field divisions complained of this agent’s activities, and the FBI headquarters response was to promote him to a sensitive position in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.” [Federal News Service, 6/2/2003] Abdel-Hafiz will be suspended in February 2003 over charges that he faked a break-in of his own house in order to collect $25,000 in insurance benefits and then failed an FBI polygraph test when asked about it. In January 2004, the FBI’s Disciplinary Review Board will reinstate him after deciding there was insufficient evidence in the case. [Tampa Tribune, 3/4/2003; Frontline, 10/16/2003]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
1999-After October 12, 2001: Al-Qadi Continues to Fund Ptech
After a 2002 US government raid on the offices of Ptech, a Boston based computer company (see December 5, 2002), Ptech officials will downplay any connection between Ptech and Yassin al-Qadi, a multimillionaire suspected of financing groups that have been officially designated as terrorist organizations. For instance, Ptech vice president Joseph Johnson will say al-Qadi had no ties to the company but “may have had something to do with it [in 1994].” Al-Qadi was one of Ptech’s biggest initial investors in 1994, if not the biggest investor (see 1994). [Associated Press, 12/7/2002] However, there is considerable evidence al-Qadi is still involved in Ptech at least through 1999. Company insiders will later tell investigators that they were summoned to Saudi Arabia in 1999 to brief Saudi investors in Ptech. They are introduced to al-Qadi, who is described as an owner of Ptech. A photograph taken at this meeting shows al-Qadi with Ptech CEO Oussama Ziade and others. [WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] Most media accounts say al-Qadi invested about $5 million in Ptech in 1994, one quarter of the company’s start-up money. But one account claims that al-Qadi invested an additional $9 million indirectly through BMI, the New Jersey-based investment firm with ties to several individuals suspected of financing Islamic militant groups (see 1986-October 1999). Swiss investigators also allege that al-Qadi transfers $2 million to Ptech between 1997 and 2000. [FrontPage Magazine, 6/17/2005] There are even allegations that al-Qadi continues to support Ptech after the US officially designates him a terrorist financier on October 12, 2001. In late 2002, CNN will report, “Sources said Ptech executives are believed to have been aware of al-Qadi’s suspected connections but did not sever their relationship with him.” [CNN, 12/6/2002] Al-Qadi will deny allegations that he had any interest in Ptech after 9/11. But in late 2002 al-Qadi’s lawyer will concede that it is possible an al-Qadi representative continued to sit on Ptech’s board after 9/11. [Newsweek, 12/6/2002]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
September 11, 2001: The 9/11 Attack: 3,000 Die in New York City and Washington, D.C.
The September 11, 2001 attacks. From left to right: The World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Flight 93 crash. [Source: unknown] (click image to enlarge)
The 9/11 attack: Four planes are hijacked, two crash into the WTC, one into the Pentagon, and one crashes into the Pennsylvania countryside. Nearly 3,000 people are killed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 12, 2001: US Declares Al-Qadi Terrorist Financier
Yassin al-Qadi. [Source: Arab News]
Yassin al-Qadi is included in a new US list of 39 individuals and organizations designated by the US as connected to terrorism (see October 12, 2001). The US officially declares him a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” and his US assets are frozen. [Chicago Tribune, 10/14/2001; Chicago Tribune, 10/29/2001] Al-Qadi says he is “horrified and shocked” by the allegations. [Chicago Tribune, 10/16/2001] There have been several accusations that al-Qadi laundered money to fund Hamas and al-Qaeda. He headed the Muwafaq (Blessed Relief) Foundation, a Saudi-based charity. Treasury officials allege it has funneled millions of dollars to al-Qaeda (see 1995-1998). [Chicago Tribune, 10/16/2001; Chicago Tribune, 10/29/2001] An investigation into his al-Qaeda connections was canceled by higher-ups in the FBI in October 1998 (see October 1998). In late 2002, Saudi Arabia will freeze al-Qadi’s accounts, an action the Saudis have taken against only three people. However, he has yet to be charged or arrested by the Saudis or the US. [Washington Post, 12/7/2002]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Shortly After October 12, 2001: Software Company Whistleblowers Ignored
Yassin al-Qadi, a Saudi multimillionaire businessman, was officially declared a terrorist financier in October 2001 (see October 12, 2001). [Arab News, 9/26/2002] That same month, a number of employees at Ptech, a Boston-based computer company that al-Qadi and other individuals suspected of financing officially designated terrorist groups invested in (see 1994), tell the Boston FBI about the connections between Ptech and al-Qadi. However, FBI agents do little more than take their statements. A high-level government source later will claim the FBI does not convey the Ptech-al-Qadi link to Operation Greenquest, a Customs Department investigation into al-Qadi and other suspected financiers, and none of the government agencies using Ptech software are warned about the possible security threat Ptech represents. [Boston Globe, 12/7/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] According to a private counterterrorism expert involved in investigating Ptech at the time, “Frighteningly, when an employee told [Ptech president Oussama Ziade] he felt he had to contact the FBI regarding al-Qadi’s involvement in the company, the president allegedly told him not to worry because Yaqub Mirza, who was on the board of directors of the company and was himself a target of a [Greenquest] terrorist financing raid in March 2002 (see March 20, 2002), had contacts high within the FBI.” [National Review, 5/27/2003] A Ptech investigation will finally begin in 2002 after more whistleblowers come forward (see May-December 5, 2002).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
May-December 5, 2002: US Investigators Pressed to Look Into Ptech
Indira Singh. [Source: Michael Kane]
In October 2001, Ptech insiders attempted to warn the FBI that suspected terrorist financier Yassin al-Qadi had funded Ptech (see Shortly After October 12, 2001). Then Indira Singh, an employee at JP Morgan Chase bank, develops her own suspicions about Ptech after her bank assigned her to investigate Ptech for a potential business deal. In May 2002, she speaks with the FBI about her concerns. Weeks later, she learns the FBI still has not told any other government agencies about the potential Ptech security threat. She later will recall, “the language, the kind of language law enforcement, counterterrorism, and the FBI agents themselves were using basically indicated to me that absolutely no investigation was going on, that it was totally at a standstill, at which point my hair stood on end.” She contacts a Boston CBS television station, WBZ-TV, and a reporter for the station named Joe Bergantino begins investigating Ptech. [Boston Globe, 12/7/2002; National Public Radio, 12/8/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] Around the same time, a former government official with contacts in the Bush administration tells officials at the National Security Council about the Ptech allegations. By late August, Operation Greenquest then opens its own Ptech investigation. The FBI then tries “to muscle its way back into the probe once it [becomes] clear that [Greenquest is] taking the case seriously.” [Newsweek, 12/6/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] Beginning in late November, US agents begin calling Ptech officials and asking them if they have ties to money laundering, thus tipping them off. Ptech will also be notified when a December raid will be occurring before it happens. [Associated Press, 1/3/2003] WBZ-TV prepared a story on Ptech, but withheld it from the public for more than three months after receiving “calls from federal law enforcement agencies, some at the highest levels.” The station claims the government launched its Ptech probe in August 2002, after they “got wind of our investigation” and “asked us to hold the story so they could come out and do their raid and look like they’re ahead of the game.” [Boston Globe, 12/7/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
Late 2002: FBI Agent Wright Not Allowed to Continue His Financial Investigations
Robert Wright, the FBI agent in charge of some groundbreaking investigations into charity fronts before 9/11, has been suspended and under investigation since at least early 2001 (see August 2000 and January-March 2001). However, at this time, his suspension is cleared and he is allowed to work as an FBI agent again. But he is specifically prohibited from working on topics he was investigating before, such as BMI and Yassin al-Qadi. He is not even allowed access to his own files from before his suspension. Wright will later be fired and then reinstated, but it does not appear he is ever able to continue his charity front investigations (see April 30, 2005-October 19, 2005). [Katz, 2003, pp. 186]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
December 5, 2002: Software Company with Access to Government Secrets Raided
FBI agents raid Ptech offices. [Source: ABC News]
Federal agents search the offices of Ptech, Inc., a Boston computer software company, looking for evidence of links to Osama bin Laden. A senior Ptech official confirms that Yassin al-Qadi, one of 12 Saudi businessmen on a secret CIA list suspected of funneling millions of dollars to al-Qaeda, was an investor in the company, beginning in 1994. Ptech appears to have connections to other potential terrorist financiers (see 1994). In particular, there seem to be many ties between Ptech and BMI Inc., a New Jersey-based company whose list of investors has been called a “who’s who of designated terrorists and Islamic extremists” (see 1986-October 1999). [Newsweek, 12/6/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] A former FBI counterterrorism official states, “For someone like [al-Qadi] to be involved in a capacity, in an organization, a company that has access to classified information, that has access to government open or classified computer systems, would be of grave concern.” [WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] On the day after the raid, US authorities will claim that Ptech’s software has been scrutinized and poses no danger. But security expert John Pike comments, “When you look at all of the different military security agencies that they have as customers, it’s very difficult to imagine how they would not be encountering sensitive information, classified information.” [National Public Radio, 12/8/2002] The search into Ptech is part of Operation Greenquest, which has served 114 search warrants in the past 14 months involving suspected terrorist financing. Fifty arrests have been made and $27.4 million seized. [Forbes, 12/6/2002] However, the raid appears to have been largely for show. Ptech was notified by US officials in November that they were being investigated, and they were told in advance exactly when the raid would take place (see May-December 5, 2002). Top officials in the US government appear to have made up their minds before the results of the raid can even be examined. White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer comments on the Ptech raid only hours after it ends: “The one thing I can share with you is that the products that were supplied by this company to the government all fell in the nonclassified area. None of it involved any classified products used by the government. The material has been reviewed by the appropriate government agencies, and they have detected absolutely nothing in their reports to the White House that would lead to any concern about any of the products purchased from this company.” [White House, 12/6/2002] The fact that the raid takes place at all appears to be due to the persistence of Operation Greenquest investigators, who are engaged at this time in a bureaucratic battle with other investigators over who will control US government investigations into terrorist financing (see After March 20, 2002-Early 2003). Greenquest will lose this battle early in 2003 and get shut down (see May 13-June 30, 2003). In his 2003 book Black Ice, author Dan Verton will call Ptech an “innocent” casualty of Operation Greenquest’s “scorched-earth” tactics. [Verton, 2003, pp. 223] No charges will be brought against Ptech, and the company will continue fulfilling sensitive government contracts under a new name (see May 14, 2004).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
June 15, 2003: BMI Leader Arrested and Imprisoned
Yaqub Mirza. [Source: Publicity photo, via Byrd Business Review]
Soliman Biheiri, the former head of BMI Inc., a New Jersey-based investment firm with ties to many suspected terrorism financiers (see 1986-October 1999), had left the US immediately after a raid of the SAAR network in March 2002 (see March 20, 2002). On this day, he returns to the US and is immediately arrested and interviewed by Customs agent David Kane. Biheiri tells Kane that he has longstanding ties to leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical Muslim group banned in Egypt. Agents are able to search his laptop computer, and discover ties with Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzouk. He is also connected to two principals of the banned Al Taqwa Bank (see November 7, 2001), Youssef Nada and Ghaleb Himmat, when their addresses are discovered on his computer as well. Agents say there are “other indications” of connections between Al Taqwa and Biheiri’s company BMI, including financial transactions. [Forward, 10/17/2003; Wall Street Journal, 6/21/2004; Associated Press, 10/12/2004] An e-mail is also discovered showing Biheiri was involved in Saudi multimillionaire Yassin al-Qadi’s financial dealings with Yaqub Mirza, the director of the raided SAAR network. The US froze al-Qadi’s assets in late 2001 (see October 12, 2001). [Wall Street Journal, 9/15/2003] Biheiri will be convicted of immigration fraud in October 2003. He will be convicted again in 2004 for lying to Kane about his ties to Marzouk during his interview. [Wall Street Journal, 6/21/2004; Associated Press, 10/12/2004]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
May 14, 2004: Ptech Continues Business with US Government Under New Name
A newspaper article reveals that Ptech, the Boston-based computer company with ties to Yassin al-Qadi and other suspected terrorist financiers (see 1994), is still continuing its business under a different name. The article states, “Although no one associated with the company has been charged, the US attorney’s office has never issued a statement exonerating the company or ending the investigation.” Ptech is now called GoAgile. The company lost many customers in the wake of the widely-publicized raid on its offices in 2002 (see December 5, 2002). However, CEO Oussama Ziade states, “We still have government agencies as customers, including the White House.” [Patriot Ledger, 5/14/2004; FrontPage Magazine, 6/17/2005]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
August 21, 2004: 9/11 Commission’s Terrorist Financing Conclusions at Odds with Media Accounts
The 9/11 Commission releases a report on terrorism financing. Its conclusions generally stand in complete contrast to a great body of material reported by the mainstream media, before and after this report. For instance, while the report does mention some terrorism-supporting organizations in great detail, such as the Global Relief Foundation or Al Barakaat, many seemingly important organizations are not mentioned a single time in either this report or the 9/11 Commission Final Report. The Commission fails to ever mention: BMI, Inc., Ptech, Al Taqwa Bank, Holy Land Foundation, InfoCom, International Islamic Relief Organization, Muslim World League, Muwafaq (Blessed Relief) Foundation, Quranic Literacy Institute, and the SAAR network or any entity within it. Additionally, important efforts to track terrorist financing such as Vulgar Betrayal and Operation Greenquest are not mentioned a single time. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 61; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 134-5 ] Some select quotes from the report:
 “While the drug trade was an important source of income for the Taliban before 9/11, it did not serve the same purpose for al-Qaeda. Although there is some fragmentary reporting alleging that bin Laden may have been an investor, or even had an operational role, in drug trafficking before 9/11, this intelligence cannot be substantiated and the sourcing is probably suspect.” Additionally, there is “no evidence of [al-Qaeda] drug funding after 9/11.” [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 22-23 ]
 “[C]ontrary to some public reports, we have not seen substantial evidence that al-Qaeda shares a fund-raising infrastructure in the United States with Hamas, Hezbollah, or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.” [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 24 ]
 “The United States is not, and has not been, a substantial source of al-Qaeda funding, but some funds raised in the United States may have made their way to al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups. A murky US network of jihadist (holy war) supporters has plainly provided funds to foreign mujaheddin with al-Qaeda links. Still, there is little hard evidence of substantial funds from the United States actually going to al-Qaeda. A CIA expert on al-Qaeda financing believes that any money coming out of the United States for al-Qaeda is ‘minuscule.’” [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 24 ]
 The notion “that bin Laden was a financier with a fortune of several hundred million dollars” is an “urban legend.” “[S ]ome within the government continued to cite the $300 million figure well after 9/11, and the general public still [incorrectly] gives credence to the notion of a ‘multimillionaire bin Laden.’” [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 20, 34 ] (A few months after this report, it will be reported that in 2000 over $250 million passed through a bank account jointly controlled by bin Laden and another man (see 2000).)
 “To date, the US government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks.… Ultimately the question of the origin of the funds is of little practical significance.” [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 144 ]
 “The US intelligence community has attacked the problem [of terrorist funding] with imagination and vigor” since 9/11. [New York Times, 8/22/2004]
 According to the New York Times, the report “largely exonerate[s ] the Saudi government and its senior officials of long-standing accusations that they were involved in financing al-Qaeda terrorists.” [New York Times, 8/22/2004] Author Douglas Farah comments on the Commission’s report, “The biggest hole is the complete lack of attention to the role the Muslim Brotherhood has played in the financing of al-Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups. While the ties are extensive on a personal level, they also pervade the financial structure of al-Qaeda.… According to sources who provided classified briefing to the Commission staff, most of the information that was provided was ignored.… [T]he Commission staff simply did not include any information that was at odds with the official line of different agencies.” [Farah, 8/27/2004]

[Dig]

Blae the air traffic controllers, blame the pilot, but do not dare talk about Ptech!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jokes about barbecuing cat preceded midair crash
http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/08/jokes-about-barbecuing-cat-preceded-midair-crash/

WASHINGTON -- Two minutes after he cleared a private plane for takeoff and a fateful flight over the Hudson River, an air traffic controller at New Jersey's Teterboro Airport was on the phone with a woman in the airport operations office, joking about barbecuing a dead cat.

"We got plenty of gas in the grill?" the controller asked. "Fire up the cat."

"Ooh, disgusting, augh, that thing was disgusting," the woman responded.

According to a draft government transcript obtained by The Associated Press, the two continued to banter until seconds before the private plane collided with a tour helicopter over the Hudson.

Nine people - three members of a Pennsylvania family in the plane and five Italian tourists and a pilot in the helicopter - died in the Aug. 8 accident.

[Satyagraha]

Complete 911 Timeline
BMI and Ptech Investigations
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?financing_of_al-qaeda:_a_more_detailed_look=bmiPtech&timeline=complete_911_timeline
Project: Complete 911 Timeline
Open-Content project managed by matt, Paul, KJF, blackmax

Excellent post - thanks

[SpeakUpFightBack]

Air Traffic Controller on Phone During Hudson Crash (Update1)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=anrLkbMmv5qc
By Angela Greiling Keane

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- The air traffic controller handling the small plane that crashed with a helicopter above the Hudson River was on the telephone at the time of the crash, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The controller’s supervisor also wasn’t in the building, as required, at the time of the Aug. 8 crash that killed nine, the FAA said today in a statement.

“While we have no reason to believe at this time that these actions contributed to the accident, this kind of conduct is unacceptable and we have placed the employees on administrative leave and have begun disciplinary proceedings,” the FAA said in the statement.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the accident, which involved a Piper PA-32R-300 single-engine plane carrying three people and a Eurocopter AS 350 BA operated by Liberty Helicopter Tours of New York that had six aboard.

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PTECH MUST BE INVESTIGATED ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wait... no reason to believe at this time that these actions contributed to the accident... are you fcuking kidding me???

[Anti_Illuminati]

This looks like a nice fun paper to read while on a long commute....


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

www.dodccrp.org/events/6th_ICCRTS/Tracks/Papers/Track2/049_tr2.pdf

Nice find Sane.

I will read that in full and extract it later since it adds even more fuel to the damning stack of proof against them.  This whole situation parallels the NMCC false flag component of 911, which was the main thing I wanted to get into in my interview but did not have time to do so.  I will try to get on his show again.

Meanwhile I found this, which looks to have a few new details.  This is sourced in many places on this site, but I did not see this full article posted here anywhere.

http://islamicsupremecouncil.org/bin/site/wrappers/media-show_clips_domestic-1469X.html

U.S. Probes Terror Ties to Boston Software Firm

Jerry Guidera and Glenn R. Simpson
The Wall Street Journal December 6, 2002

QUINCY, Mass. -- A software company raided here by antiterrorism investigators was targeted because several employees already are under scrutiny for alleged terrorist ties and because it does computer work for the military, the Federal Aviation Administration and Congress and may have access to classified information.

Agents with the U.S. Customs Services and the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the company, Ptech Inc., at 4 a.m. Friday, confiscating files and computer equipment. Based in a blue-collar suburb south of Boston, the firm has annual revenue of up to $10 million and specializes in software programs that help run corporate networks.

Efforts to reach Ptech executives for comment were unsuccessful. Its offices were closed Friday, and no one returned a call left on the company's voice-mail system.

According to General Services Administration records, Ptech gained government approval in 1997 to market its services to "all legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the federal government" under a Clinton Administration government-efficiency improvement effort. The company has stated in government filings that it has enjoyed security clearance to work on sensitive projects since December 1997, according to records obtained by the Washington-based the Investigative Project, a terror research group. Revenue from federal government work totaled $3.1 million as of August 2002.

Among other projects, Ptech helped build the Military Information Architecture Framework, a software tool used by the Department of Defense to link data networks from various military computer systems and databases, a contract that was renewed in September. The company also has done work for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the House of Representatives and the Energy Department, and the FBI itself has used its software for budgeting tasks.

Tom Ridge, the Bush administration's chief of homeland security, said the company's work "has been scrutinized by the best, and it poses no strategic threat or operational threat to this country. But there is a nexus there that led to the law enforcement action, and that's all I can tell you."

Financial Backers Probed

Ptech's financial backers include two suspected terror financiers, investigators said: Saudi businessman Yassin Qadi, who the U.S. Treasury lists as a financial backer of al Qaeda and other terrorists, and a company run by M. Yaqub Mirza, a Pakistani immigrant who controls a web of businesses and charities in Northern Virginia raided by antiterror investigators in March.

A lawyer for Mr. Qadi, who was the subject of a page one article 2 in The Wall Street Journal last month, said his client invested $5 million in Ptech in the mid-1990s and sold his stake in 1999. He said Mr. Qadi was a passive investor and never had any day-to-day involvement in the company. The lawyer denied that Mr. Qadi has any ties to terrorism.

Shortly after last year's attacks, U.S. authorities froze the assets of Mr. Qadi, a prominent Saudi businessman who they alleged has secretly financed al Qaeda and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group. They also asserted that he helped run the Muwafaq Foundation, a charity that funneled millions of dollars to terror kingpin Osama bin Laden. Saudi authorities recently said they too had blocked Mr. Qadi's accounts. Mr. Qadi is fighting to regain control of his assets.

Mr. Mirza is one of Ptech's board members. According to court records and Justice Department documents, Mr. Mirza and several associates are suspected of funding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which targets Israeli civilians with suicide bombers. U.S. officials privately say Mr. Mirza and his associates also have connections to al Qaeda and to other entities officially listed by the U.S. as sponsors of terrorism. Many of Mr. Mirza's investments are made through a firm he runs called Sterling Management, and one of the companies he has set up includes the name of the software company raided Friday -- the Sterling Ptech Fund LLC. Investigators said they believe that entity holds a stake in Ptech for Mr. Mirza.

Mr. Mirza's lawyer, Nancy Luque, said Mr. Mirza has no involvement in terrorism and asserted that the government has failed to find any evidence to the contrary.

Ptech also received backing from BMI Inc., a defunct New Jersey firm now drawing government scrutiny for its financial relationships with Muslim charities allegedly involved in terrorism. Government filings show BMI made loans to Ptech when it was founded in 1994, and a lawyer familiar with the matter said BMI also was a Ptech investor.

BMI, in which Mr. Qadi also invested, was the subject of an FBI terrorism probe in 1998-99. The FBI says BMI's investors also include Mousa Abu Marzouk, who operates openly as a top Hamas leader based in Damascus, Syria, and is designated by the Treasury as a terrorism sponsor. In 1999, a BMI employee told the FBI that the company may have financed the bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998, according to a sworn FBI statement. BMI also was named as a possible conduit for Hamas related funds in a separate 1998 FBI court filing.

Ptech's chief scientist, Hussein Ibrahim, joined the company after a lengthy stint at BMI, where he served as vice president from 1989 to 1995. After The Wall Street Journal article about Mr. Qadi disclosed BMI's alleged involvement in fraud and terrorism, Ptech's Web site was altered to remove references to Mr. Ibrahim's employment at BMI.

Two other Ptech officials of concern to U.S. officials are Muhammed Mubayyid and Suheil Laheir, both of whom formerly worked for a Boston-based Islamic charity called Care International, which has been the subject of U.S. terrorism probes since shortly the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. (The Islamic charity isn't related to the Atlanta-based charity of the same name.)

Close Ties

Records indicate close ties between the Islamic charity and the Boston branch of Al Kifah Refugee Center, the Brooklyn branch of which was named by prosecutors as the locus of the 1993 conspiracy to bomb the World Trade Center.

Al Kifah's Boston office on Commonwealth Avenue is located in the same suite that Care International listed in its 1993 incorporation documents. A Web site registered by Al Kifah has been used by Care International, according to terrorism researcher Steven Emerson. And the militant Islamic newsletter Al-Hussam (The Sword) listed its publisher Al Kifah until April 1993, after which it listed Care International as its publisher. The newsletter's address also is the one on Commonwealth Avenue.

According to Al Kifah records, Mr. Mubayyid donated $720 to the refuge center in care of Abdullah Azzam, a now-deceased mentor of Mr. bin Laden. The center was operated by Makhtab Al-Khidamat/Al-Kifah, a charity whose assets have been frozen by the U.S. antiterror investigators. In late 1993, Care and Al Kifah both launched efforts to make the Islamic religious movement more high-tech. "It is the duty of every Muslim, especially those with the latest technical expertise from the U.S., to contribute this knowledge that Allah has bestowed on them," a Care document announcing the project says.

A spokesman for Care International, Asim Ghafoor, has said that the group has no links to terrorism.

Write to Jerry Guidera at
jerry.guidera@wsj.com 3 and Glenn R. Simpson at
glenn.simpson@wsj.com 4

URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1039184086357188113.djm,00.html

Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1)http://online.wsj.com/page/0,,2_0800,00.html
(2)http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1038261957100299628,00.html
(3)mailto:jerry.guidera@wsj.com
(4)mailto:glenn.simpson@wsj.com

[yrpplmean]

Ptech "produced software that derived from PROMIS (Prosecutor's Management Information System), had an artificial intelligence core, and was installed on virtually every computer system of the U.S. government and its military agencies on September 11, 2001," according to Michael Ruppert's From the Wilderness (FTW) website.

"This included the White House, Treasury Dept. (Secret Service), Air Force, FAA, CIA, FBI, both houses of Congress, Navy, Dept. of Energy, IRS, Booz Allen Hamilton, IBM, Enron and more," FTW reported.

"Whoever plotted 9/11 definitely viewed the FAA as the enemy that morning. Overriding FAA systems would be the most effective way to ensure the attacks were successful," FTW reported. "To do this, the FAA needed an evolution of PROMIS software installed on their systems and Ptech was just that; the White House and Secret Service had the same software on their systems - likely a superior modified version capable of 'surveillance and intervention' systems."

I think this is what needs to be investigated but who would be willing to take the heat in that fiery furnace (politics as hell)!

Although there is no question as to who plotted the 9/11 (NWO), it is very obvious that it was inside technology at its "hidden best".  No "Islamic" intervention could have made it possible for all the mechanisms to be overridden like they were.  That part is so obvious.

Ptech should be held accountable and others.

oh and it just goes to show you that this "neocon-front-propaganda" crap would mention "Al Qaida, Palestine, and Muslims as terrorists".  Sheesh!  all PHD crap----PILED HIGHER AND DEEPER!

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.mitre.org/news/digest/aviation/08_09/realtime.html

A Successful Landing: Modeling Chicago's Airspace in Real Time

If you've ever passed through Chicago's O'Hare Airport, you probably know firsthand that it's one of the world's busiest. Airplanes awaiting their turn for takeoff line up on the runway like taxicabs during rush hour. Numerous industry projections estimate that O'Hare will only get busier in the future.

The strain on the airport has created the need for more capacity. Fortunately, a major effort designed to ease congestion—the $6.6 billion, multiphase O'Hare Modernization Program (OMP)—is already underway. The OMP will increase the number of air traffic control towers and runways to meet the region's current and future aviation needs.

MITRE, which operates the Federal Aviation Administration's federally funded research and development center, has been supporting the OMP in a variety of ways. Among the most notable: When two key stakeholders couldn't settle on the best way to work air traffic into new routes, we devised a modeling technique for on-site testing to help them reach consensus.

Keeping Humans in the Loop

"Last year, MITRE was asked to help solve a challenge that affected the airspace changes for the OMP's first phase," explains Shane Miller, a MITRE principal software application development engineer. "Two facilities—the Chicago Terminal Radar Approach Control [known in aviation parlance as C90] and the Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center [known as ZAU]—couldn't agree on how southbound departures should be delivered to five new departure tracks."

These new routes were planned to not only support the OMP, but the overall redesign of Chicago's airspace as well. "The two parties needed to agree on what procedures to use, so we set up a human-in-the-loop [HITL] evaluation to explore options for delivering aircraft on to the five new routes," she adds.

The term "human-in-the-loop" refers to a modeling and simulation experiment that involves both computers and humans using a particular application. The goals of such experiments are varied. In the case of air-traffic human-in-the-loop simulations, often the goal is to identify how to efficiently manage traffic through a piece of airspace, while at the same time balancing air traffic controller workload across multiple facilities.

Asked to Help Solve a Problem

While C90 is responsible for airspace at 15,000 feet and below, and the planes flying through it, ZAU is responsible for the airspace above. Typically, the two facilities work together on departures.

"Both facilities tried on their own many times, over months, to agree on the best way to deliver departures from C90 to ZAU," Miller explains. "But as the deadline for a decision approached, there was still no firm agreement on how to handle the delivery of departures. One option, for example, was to merge and sequence departures from O'Hare and Midway into each of the five new streams, while the other option was to stack O'Hare departures on top of Midway departures."

With the deadline looming in a month, the FAA asked MITRE to resolve the problem. A team of five engineers, including Miller, Thor Abrahamsen, Lee Brown, Steve Kalbaugh, and Leang Ross, accompanied by two simulation modeling experts, Paul MacWilliams and Jeff Shepley, traveled to Chicago with much gear in tow.

The team arrived at C90's location early on a Monday morning with a dozen computers, four projectors, routers, cables, and everything else necessary to set up a lab in the facility's conference room. By Tuesday morning, ZAU and C90 employees were looking at their respective airspace on computer screens and simulating their roles of working on air traffic challenges from actual, real-time radar data.

The novel experiment marked the first time an HITL evaluation of this type was taken on the road. While MITRE has conducted such experiments at a single terminal facility, it was the first time combined, interactive modeling for both a terminal and a busy center was deployed on location.

In this case, MITRE's HITL simulation allowed C90 and en route controllers to talk to one another and control the same aircraft. The mission was to clarify which option was the best way to handle southbound Chicago departure traffic over five departure tracks instead of three. To make the results as robust as possible, additional air traffic controllers were summoned to the conference room from their normal shift work to take part in the activity.

Ranking for Results

"We ran five different proposed departure-track scenarios over the course of the week, so both facilities could evaluate all proposed options for transitioning southbound departures," Miller recalls. "But by the end there was still no clear agreement between the two parties. So we had each facility rank the five options, based on what was most important to them." The ranking process uncovered a point of agreement—both C90 and ZAU ranked one particular scenario at the same level of desirability.

The ultimate result? The modeling provided enough information to resolve the issue so that both facilities were comfortable with the outcome: All five southbound departure tracks are used by both O'Hare and Midway airports independently. When the timing of the departures is such that two departures, one from each airport, would like to use the same track at the same time, the O'Hare departure is stacked on top of the Midway departure.

ZAU has since followed up with MITRE, partnering with us to determine best practices for its own airspace when running the agreed-upon departure routes.

As the O'Hare Modernization Program continues its rollout, Miller notes that "the work we performed at our sponsor's location, in addition to the preparation and follow-up tasks we have conducted, should have a positive benefit for anyone whose plane has to fly through Chicago airspace."

—by Cheryl Scaparrotta

[Satyagraha]

Pentagon scrambles fighter jets as pilots overshoot destination
by 150 miles. Asleep in the cockpit?
October 23, 2009 |  9:28 am
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/10/asleep-in-the-cockpit-pilots-miss-arrival-gate-by-150-miles-ntsb-on-the-case-flight-attendant-saves-.html



Passengers at the Detroit airport in front of a Northwest Airlines plane

The 9/11 terrorist attacks involved jet airlines, transcontinental flights, and a lot of innocent passengers.

So when air traffic controllers lost contact Wednesday evening with a Northwest Airlines plane jetting from San Diego to Minneapolis, they feared a hijacking and contacted the Pentagon.

Later the two pilots said they were out of contact for 78 minutes -- overshooting their destination by 150 miles before calling the tower -- because they were having a "heated argument" about airline policy and "lost situational awareness."

The National Transportation Safety Board is looking into the possibility that maybe they were asleep at the wheel. With the flight recorder now in Washington, investigators should know soon.

Two aspects of the story seem especially interesting.

One is that it was a flight attendant who apparently saved the day by finally alerting the pilots on an intercom. After that, with the plane already in Eau Claire, Wis., the pilots sought permission to turn back. They landed in Minneapolis about an hour after the scheduled arrival time.

But the second truly alarming feature is how close the 147 passengers and crew on board came to disaster. According to several reports, the National Guard was scrambling four fighter jets from two bases to intercept the plane. Because the pilots finally resumed contact with the tower, the jets never made it to the air.

But passengers were shaken later when they learned how close they had come to peril.

"When you hear that fighter jets were ready to scramble, that just gets you really mad," passenger Scott Kennedy told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

-- Johanna Neuman

VIDEO: At source link, or on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUf6xGl-mw&feature=player_embedded

Credit: File photo of a plane in Detroit by John Gress / Reuters

[LadyDamorea]

http://intelfiles.egoplex.com/2005-07-25-Ziade-Indictment-Ptech-Kadi.pdf

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
V.
OUSSAMA ABDUL ZIADE
(CEO of PTECH)

CRIMINAL COMPLAINT
CASE NUMBER:6)"-Wt ,o'-l~ if- R/3i!
I, the undersigned complainant being duly sworn state the following is true and correct to the best of my
knowledge and belief. On or about in Norfolk and Suffolk county, in the
District of __~?~sal?h~se~s__ defendant(s) did, (Track Statutory Language of Offense)
attempt to engage in transactions involving, and dealing in, the property and interests of propertY of a Specially Designated
Global Terrorist, Yassin Kadi a1k/a "Yasin AI-Qadi". "Shaykh Yassin Abdullah Kadi," & "Yasin Kahdi", in violation of 50 U.S.C.
ss. 1701-1705 & Executive Order 13224; knowingly make a false statement for the purpose of influencing the action of the
U.S. Small Business Administration ("SBA") in a loan application for Ptech, Inc., submitted to the SBA in January 2002, in
violation of 18 U.S.C. s. 1014; & make false statements to special agents of the FBI, ICE, and IRS regarding a matter within
the jurisdiction of the executive branch of the U.S. government in December 2002, in violation of 18 U.S.C. s. 1001,
in violation of Title 50 United States Code, Section(s)
I further state that I am a(n)
facts:
See attached affidavit of Linda Hunt.
....§p_ecial Allent of ICE
Official Title
and that this complaint is based on the following

[luckee1]

I am really trying to find articles on the incident somewhere between 1992-1995 during the Clinton administration, where a pilot got his private plane and was trying to crash it into the whitehouse.  Can anyone help.  It is as if it never happened.  I remember this clearly, I am stuck on what year it was.

[gEEk squad]

The story about the airplane overshooting Minneapolis/St. Paul is inconsistent. It says they overshot MSP International airport by 150 miles before calling the control tower but it also says they were over Eau Claire, Wi when the flight attendent alerted the pilots over the intercom.

Eau Claire, Wi is only 75 miles from the airport.

[luckee1]

Pilikia again you rock! 
Check this out!  They really do love that 9-11 number thing don't they?!
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=secret_service
September 11, 1994: Suicidal Man Attempts to Crash Small Airplane into White House

Frank Corder piloted this Cessna, which crashed into the White House lawn and skidded up to the side of the building.Frank Corder piloted this Cessna, which crashed into the White House lawn and skidded up to the side of the building. [Source: Getty Images]A suicidal and apparently apolitical pilot named Frank Corder steals a single-engine plane from an airport north of Baltimore, Maryland, and attempts to crash it into the White House. He crashes into a wall two stories below the presidential bedroom (President Clinton is not there at the time). Corder is killed on impact. [Time, 9/26/1994; New York Times, 10/3/2001] A Time magazine story shortly after the incident notes, “The unlikely incident confirmed all too publicly what security officials have long feared in private: the White House is vulnerable to sneak attack from the air. ‘For years I have thought a terrorist suicide pilot could readily divert his flight from an approach to Washington to blow up the White House,’ said Richard Helms, CIA director from 1966 to 1972.” The article further notes that an attack of this type had been a concern since 1974, when a disgruntled US Army private staged an unauthorized helicopter landing on the South Lawn. Special communications lines were established between the Secret Service and Washington’s National Airport control tower to the Secret Service operations center, but the line is ineffective in this case because no flight controller pays attention to the flight in time. [Time, 9/26/1994]

Entity Tags: Richard Helms, Frank Corder, Secret Service, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline
Bookmark and Share

-----------------------------------
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=secret_service
1996-1997: Ptech Begins to Get US Government Contracts
http://www.historycommons.org/events-images/611_ptech_logo.jpg
From Sane's above:

1996-1997: Ptech Begins to Get US Government Contracts
Ptech logo. [Source: Ptech]
Ptech is a Boston computer company connected to a number of individuals suspected of ties to officially designated terrorist organizations (see 1994). These alleged ties will be of particular concern because of Ptech’s potential access to classified government secrets. Ptech specializes in what is called enterprise architecture. It is the design and layout for an organization’s computer networks. John Zachman, considered the father of enterprise architecture, later will say that Ptech could collect crucial information from the organizations and agencies with which it works. “You would know where the access points are, you’d know how to get in, you would know where the weaknesses are, you’d know how to destroy it.” Another computer expert will say, “The software they put on your system could be collecting every key stroke that you type while you are on the computer. It could be establishing a connection to the outside terrorist organization through all of your security measures.” [WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] In late 1996, an article notes that Ptech is doing work for DARPA, a Defense Department agency responsible for developing new military technology. [Government Executive, 9/1/1996] In 1997, Ptech gains government approval to market its services to “all legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the federal government.” Beginning that year, Ptech will begin working for many government agencies, eventually including the White House, Congress, Army, Navy, Air Force, NATO, FAA, FBI, US Postal Service, Secret Service, the Naval Air Systems Command, IRS, and the nuclear-weapons program of the Department of Energy. For instance, Ptech will help build “the Military Information Architecture Framework, a software tool used by the Department of Defense to link data networks from various military computer systems and databases.” Ptech will be raided by US investigators in December 2002 (see December 5, 2002), but not shut down. [Wall Street Journal, 12/6/2002; CNN, 12/6/2002; Newsweek, 12/6/2002; Boston Globe, 12/7/2002] A former director of intelligence at the Department of Energy later will say he would not be surprised if an al-Qaeda front company managed to infiltrate the department’s nuclear programs. [Unlimited (Auckland), 12/9/2002] Ptech will continue to work with many of these agencies even after 9/11. After a Customs Department raid of Ptech’s offices in late 2002, their software will be declared safe of malicious code. But one article will note, “What no one knows at this point is how much sensitive government information Ptech gained access to while it worked in several government agencies.” [WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002]

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.startribune.com/local/65619367.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciaec8O7EyUsr

Plane crazy: NWA flight misses MSP by 150 miles


The flight path of Northwest flight 188

Military jets stood by as NWA pilots, apparently distracted, didn't respond to controllers for 75 minutes.

By SUZANNE ZIEGLER and MARY LYNN SMITH, Star Tribune staff writers

Last update: October 23, 2009 - 10:21 AM

Brent Bjorlin and his fellow airline passengers didn't have a clue something had gone wrong at 37,000 feet until federal officials with badges and guns boarded the Northwest plane after it landed in the Twin Cities on Wednesday night.

As passengers prepared to leave, flight attendants told them to sit back down, Bjorlin said. Eventually, he and the others filed out, walking past security officials standing outside the closed cockpit door and still others on the jetway and at the gate.

"It looked like it was a big deal," said Bjorlin of St. Michael, Minn.

It wasn't until the next day that he and the others found out that Northwest Flight 188 from San Diego had overshot Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport by 150 miles, winding up in Wisconsin before turning around to land safely at MSP. Federal officials say the pilots apparently became distracted. Military jets had been on standby to track down the jet after it dropped out of radio communication for about 75 minutes.

"When you hear that fighter jets were ready to scramble, that just gets you really mad," said passenger Scott Kennedy.

In hindsight, passengers say, the wayward flight to Wisconsin may explain why the flight seemed to "drag on," the usual pilot updates were nonexistent and why a flight attendant's "unusual comment" now makes perfect sense.

Some passengers worried about making their connecting flights, Bjorlin said. When a passenger asked when the plane was expected to land, the attendant returned 10 minutes later and said, "'I have no idea when we're going to get to the terminal,'" he said.

Eventually, the pilot announced that the crew was waiting for clearance and would be landing soon, said Anne Kroshus of Woodbury. But the expected arrival time came and went. "It was bizarre," she said. "It certainly didn't feel like we were circling."

"I hate flying," Kroshus said. So to find out that the plane lost radio contact and missed its mark "really freaks me out," she said. "Planes are scary enough as it is, and [now I find out] that my safety was completely on the line by their negligence."

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating, and Delta Air Lines, which operates Northwest Airlines, has suspended the pilot and co-pilot of the Airbus A320. Delta said Flight 188 had 144 passengers and five crew members.

The pilots didn't respond to controllers' repeated efforts to contact them from about 7 p.m., when the plane was over western Kansas, until 8:14 p.m. when the plane was in Wisconsin, about 150 miles northeast of MSP. The plane flew over the Twin Cities at 7:58 p.m.

The situation grew increasingly alarming from a safety and security standpoint because the pilots could have been in distress or the plane hijacked, said FAA spokesman Tony Molinari.

"When you aren't speaking to a commercial airliner, that's a big issue for us," he said. "We see them on the radar, but not being able to talk to them is a problem."

Control towers in Denver and Minneapolis tried to contact them, as did Northwest, via its dispatch network.

Jets on the verge of taking off

The military had four fighter jets ready to chase down the plane, said Michael Kucharek, a North American Aerospace Defense Command spokesman.

The jets were on the "edge" of taking off but did not have to because communication with Flight 188 was reestablished. "You never know what the situation is, why they're not in contact," he said.

The fighter pilots would have flown by the plane to see whether someone was in control or tried "other methods" to get the attention of the pilots. "Usually when you see fighters off your wing, it gets your attention," he said, noting that the jets get called into action with commercial planes a handful of times each year.

The FAA said the FBI and airport police interviewed the crew, who said they "were in a heated discussion over airline policy, and they lost situational awareness." The crew requested that the plane be allowed to return to MSP. The NTSB is scheduling an interview with the crew.
_________________________________________________
According to Josh, pilots DO NOT fly passenger planes anymore (I am not sure wtf their role is as "pilot" these days) they are flown via the Ptech engineered AI NAS built by IBM, MITRE, and Felix Rausch as discussed in one of MITRE's documents as well as the NIAC document.  The motive behind this plane being steered off course and blaming the pilots for something they had no control of still eludes me.  The fact they mention an NWO term like "situational awareness" is disturbing though and I am not sure why they specifically make it a point to state that.

[Satyagraha]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125631959748904273.html

Outdated Cockpit-Voice Recorder Could Stymie Northwest Jet Probe
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125631959748904273.html#

By ANDY PASZTOR



An outdated cockpit-voice recorder with only a 30-minute memory may stymie federal investigators from getting to the bottom of the strange odyssey of Northwest Flight 188, which fell out of contact with air-traffic controls for more than an hour as it overshot its destination airport by 150 miles, according to government and industry officials.

The crew of the Northwest Airbus A320, en route to Minneapolis from San Diego on Wednesday evening, failed to respond to repeated air-traffic control radio transmissions for a total of 78 minutes and flew over their destination. After resuming communication with controllers on the ground, the plane circled back, flew for nearly half an hour and then landed safely at Minneapolis without injuries.

But according to these officials, the cockpit recorder is likely to have captured only the tail end of the flight, when the pilots were back in contact with controllers. The cockpit recorder erases old conversations and records over them in a continuous loop.

Safety experts and investigators initially suspected that both pilots, who had engaged the autopilot while the plane was cruising routinely at 37,000 feet, may have nodded off in the cockpit and lost touch with controllers. But the pilots have told law enforcement officials -- and also fellow pilots -- that they were engaged in a heated discussion about company matters and lost track of their position.

That explanation has been questioned by many air-safety experts, who contend that regular contact with traffic control is second nature for commercial pilots, particularly when they are nearing their destination. Officials at Northwest, a unit of Delta Air Lines Inc., have declined to comment on the specifics of the investigation. Delta has said it suspended the two pilots from flying duties, launched its own investigation and is cooperating with efforts by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration to determine what happened.

During the 78-minute radio silence, controllers became so concerned about the fate of the 149 people aboard that they asked pilots of other aircraft in the vicinity to see if they could rouse the Northwest crew, according to industry and government officials. When that failed, the Federal Aviation Administration and military official began to consider having fighter jets scrambled to intercept the twin-jet Airbus A320, these officials said.

When an aircraft fails to respond for such a long time, it is routine procedure to send fighters to try to determine the problem.

The incident comes as federal regulators, lawmakers and airlines are focusing on the issue of pilot fatigue and debating possible changes to rules that spell out how long pilots can fly or be on duty in a 24-hour period
More

    * Radio Calls Went Unanswered:

    * Earlier: Latest Air-Safety Idea: Cockpit Naps

    * Middle Seat Blog: Delta Flight Lands on Taxiway

    * Discuss: Should pilots be allowed to take naps?
 

Wednesday night's incident is the second time in less than a week that a cockpit crew was involved in a high-profile safety mix-up. On Monday, a long-range Delta Boeing 767 en route from Brazil to Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport landed on a taxiway, rather than the parallel runway. There were no injuries to any of the 182 passengers or 11 crew members.

The NTSB is investigating whether pilot fatigue or distraction was an important factor with the Atlanta-bound flight. The Delta crew had flown all night and was landing in darkness. The approach lights for the runway weren't turned on. But the lights on the runway, which are different in color and pattern from those on the taxiway, were illuminated, according to the safety board.

Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

[Satyagraha]

'Heated discussion' may have caused pilots to miss destination
Northwest flight overshot Minneapolis airport by 150 miles

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/23/AR2009102303617.html?wpisrc=newsletter
By Mary Pat Flaherty
Saturday, October 24, 2009

Pilots flew Northwest jet 150 miles past airport
As investigators try to figure out why a Northwest Airlines plane flew 150 miles past its destination, the flight and cockpit recorders are being brought to Washington. (Oct. 23)
VIDEO: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2009/10/23/VI2009102303503.html?sid=ST2009102303712

The pilot of the Northwest Airlines flight that overshot Minneapolis airport by 150 miles gave "two thumbs up" to local airport police as he taxied in and "shook his head indicating all was ok," ending a tense hour in which he and his first officer had failed to respond to air traffic controllers, eight computer messages and calls to their cellphones, according to an incident report from the airport police.

The pilot is identified as Timothy B. Cheney, 53, and the first officer is listed as Richard I. Cole, 54, in an incident report from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport Police Department. Calls to Cheney and Cole went into voicemail and messages were not returned.

Airport police met Northwest Flight 188 as it landed just after 9 p.m. Wednesday en route from San Diego, the report said.

The pilot told police he and Cole "had become involved in conversation and had not heard radio communications" as they flew their 144 passengers past Minneapolis and into Wisconsin, according to the police report. The report does not indicate whether officers asked if the pilot or co-pilot had fallen asleep and a police spokesman said the department would not go beyond its written report in describing events.

The Northwest crew of the Airbus A320 has told federal safety investigators they "were in a heated discussion over airline policy" and "lost situational awareness," according to a statement from the National Transportation Safety Board.

Both Cheney and Cole were "cooperative, apologetic and appreciative," the police report says. A preliminary breath test administered at the scene to both pilots was negative for alcohol, the report said.

The lead flight attendant told local police she was unaware of any incident during the flight, the report said.

On the ground, police and FBI agents prepared for the worst, and the Air National Guard put fighter jets on alert at two locations as the drama unfolded.
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Pilots from two other planes in the vicinity were finally able to reach the pilots using a different radio frequency, a controllers union spokesman said.

Before local police arrived at the gate to speak with the flight crew of five, managers from Delta Air Lines told police they had "quizzed" the crew and that they indicated they "were okay and that there had been flight deck distractions," the report said.

Delta, which acquired Northwest last year, has barred the pilots from flying pending the NTSB investigations. It declined to comment beyond saying it was cooperating with investigators.

Passenger Lonnie Heidtke said he didn't notice anything unusual before the landing except that the plane was late.

The flight attendants "did say there was a delay and we'd have to orbit or something to that effect before we got back. They really didn't say we overflew Minneapolis. . . . They implied it was just a business-as-usual delay," said Heidtke, a supercomputer consultant with a company based in Bloomington, Minn.

Once the plane was on the ground, an airport police officer and a couple of other people came on board and stood at the cockpit door, talking to the pilots, he said.

"I did jokingly call my wife and say, 'This is the first time I've seen the police meet the plane. Maybe they're going to arrest the pilots for being so late.' Maybe I was right," Heidtke said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Dig]

It was not sleeping on the job, heated discussion, outdated voice recorders, etc.

IT WAS PTECH TYE CONTROL SYSTEMS

THE PILOTS ARE BARRED FROM DISCUSSING IT DUE TO FAKE NATIONAL SECURITY BULLSHIT

TECH SYSTEMS CONTRIBUTED MORE TO THE HORROR OF 9/11 THAN ANYTHING ELSE AND THEY ARE PREARING MORE FALSE FLAGS IN THE FUTURE.

THAT IS WHY THIS IS A FABRICATED "NATIONAL SECURITY" ISSUE! THE BANKSTERS WILL NOT ALLOW ANY DISCUSSION ABOUT THE PTECH SYTEMS THAT FUN ALL AIRCRAFT AND ARE BEING PREPPED FOR MORE FALSE FLAGS AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!

[Anti_Illuminati]

It was not sleeping on the job, heated discussion, outdated voice recorders, etc.

IT WAS PTECH TYE CONTROL SYSTEMS

THE PILOTS ARE BARRED FROM DISCUSSING IT DUE TO FAKE NATIONAL SECURITY BULLSHIT

TECH SYSTEMS CONTRIBUTED MORE TO THE HORROR OF 9/11 THAN ANYTHING ELSE AND THEY ARE PREARING MORE FALSE FLAGS IN THE FUTURE.

THAT IS WHY THIS IS A FABRICATED "NATIONAL SECURITY" ISSUE! THE BANKSTERS WILL NOT ALLOW ANY DISCUSSION ABOUT THE PTECH SYTEMS THAT FUN ALL AIRCRAFT AND ARE BEING PREPPED FOR MORE FALSE FLAGS AGAINST THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!

This is my take on the motive behind this.  I could dig around and provide back up for what I am about to say--I may do that later, as it would require a lot of work, and I have more than enough to do atm.  I will paste a chat log to illustrate my realization as to what was going on with this in real time (times blanked out as well as other party name).

[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: hmm
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: f**k
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: something just popped into my mind about this
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: what?
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: wow if I am right about what I now just thought of thsi is crazy
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: hmm ok.. wtf is it.
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: this is the beginning of a very subtle conditioning process
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: ?
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: the conditioning is that pilots are unreliable
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: wow. "Asleep at the wheel" bs.. Plus luckee's post.. crazy pilot... hmm
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: THEY ARE MOVING TO SELL THE PUBLIC  ON OFFICIALLY ANNOUNCING THAT PASSENGER JETS WILL BE FLOWN AUTONOMOUSLY
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: BECAUSE HUMANS CANT MAINTAIN SITUATIONAL AWARENESS LIKE A COMPUTER CAN
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: I BET THATS IT
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: 'babysitter' pilots only? ... THAT MAKES SENSE shit.
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: reasons?
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: control over skies (to the public.. cost cutting)?
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: To public: safety, cost cutting, reliability - no 'missed' flights...?
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: because the UAV's are already unmanned and they want to make them have a far greater prescence in the US.  Thats aprt of it but it is part of the world government air traffic control system that they want to shift to as part of their transformation into a wo0rld government--more efficiency, yes even the lower carbon footprint bullshit might fit into this  on a more minor level (less humans managing flights/flying) -- so they have to get the public used to seeing mroe and more shit being done autonomously.
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: brb coffee
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: BUT...think about this... if they already have control of the planes (your reference to Josh).. then why take this next step - conditioning then 'officially' replace. They're already there, and have convenient patsies with human pilots...  (Shit.. you already answered this.)
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: thats it I can almost guarantee u I am right
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: That's absolutely plausible; it fits into their need to UAVs in the us for herding the sheep... attacking.. and all the green bs reasons..
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: how can you guarantee you're right?
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: You will see
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: you made a good point btw
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: The pilots are in effect playing the role as patsies, in what is what you could call a "mini-false flag" --not a terror based false flag, but a pure problem reaction solution -manufactured "mini-crisis"
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: see not all false flags have to be about terror
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: they can be just about getting solutions they want for anything
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: they decide if they want to use a terror component to it or not
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: depending on what they are trying to achieve, who the target audience is, etc
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: so I have to break this down lol,,, wtf it never ends
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: and this is  not even a high profile, really super dangerous false flag either
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: and it takes work to dissect shit like this even
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: theres documentation
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: that I will reference to support what im saying
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: that is already on this forum
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: that point, " it doesn't have to be terror" is a good one - hadn't thought of false flags as just a 'tool', not necessarily involving death.. only creating the problem.
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: yup
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: so there are probably hundreds that go unnoticed.
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: makes me think I need to read news reports differently than I have done.. the 'little articles may actually be the bigger stories
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: a good example is the 2003 blackout --it wasnt called a terror attack (IIRC they made it a point to mention that "we dont think this is terror related")  --whenever you see a false flag that the NWO says IS NOT terror related, it is a huge psyop of a different sort, because THEY still f**kign carried it out, so in effect it was "real" terrorism that they carried out, but tehre was no larger agenda that was needed to cram down the throats of the public, because they quietly implemented their solutions behind the scenes across the US in response to the 2003 blackout, and no one knew, except for a handful of people.  These types of false flags are intended to ahve their solutions aimed at forcing various industry types to comply with DHS/DoD mandates for "greater security" --all part of the slow takeover of the entire infrastructure, every aspect, no stone left unturned.
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: wow.
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: they are very f**king slick bastards
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: yes
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: that's intensely evil

[Dig]

This is my take on the motive behind this.  I could dig around and provide back up for what I am about to say--I may do that later, as it would require a lot of work, and I have more than enough to do atm.  I will paste a chat log to illustrate my realization as to what was going on with this in real time (times blanked out as well as other party name).

[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: hmm
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: f**k
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: something just popped into my mind about this
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: what?
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: wow if I am right about what I now just thought of thsi is crazy
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: hmm ok.. wtf is it.
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: this is the beginning of a very subtle conditioning process
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] Xxxxxxxxxxx: ?
[10/23/2009 --:--:--] anti_illuminati: the conditioning is that pilots are unreliable

That is exactly what it is.

They are having helicopters hitting planes, trains derailing because of text messeging.

THE AGENDA IS FOR HUMANS TO BE TAKEN OUT OF THE EQUATION!

THAT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE PLAN!

IT WAS LEAKED IN THE MOVIE OVER 25 YEARS AGO CALLED "WARGAMES"

THEY ARE NOW DOING IT FOR EVERY ASPECT OF OUR LIVES!

THEY WANT NO HUMANS TO GET IN THE WAY!

THEY WANT NO HUMANS TO BE NEEDED TO BE AROUND IN CASE THEY FEEL LIKE EXPEDITING POP CONTROL INSANITY!

THEY WANT NO HUMANS PERIOD, EXCEPT AS OBEDIENT SLAVES!

[ekimdrachir]

[luckee1]

A_I and xxxxxxxxxxxx,   

First the crazy pilot referred to in the text:  It was not really with out results.  After that incident, the PA Ave. was then blocked, as policy, from citizens to drive.

Perhaps we should find some professionals who have dealt 1st hand, total immersion with psychopaths.  I have, but not in a professional capacity.  A_I and Sane you are right we are dealing with psychopaths.  I am not using the colloquial term for crazy, I am talking about the truest sense of the word.  I am going to ask Amazon to help out in this.

Now let me explain why all the non terror false flags are used.  And if we are only dealing with one psychopathic entity or a group under the same mind, we may be ok.  But if we have a multitude of psychopaths in power, we are in a hurt locker.  Solitary Psychos can be dealt with like one would a rabid dog. 

Ok, the events or false flags:  As we all know we all have been conditioned to associate false flag with terror.  The Psycho never told us that.  They never made that a rule.  We assumed it as usually a false flag include horrific amounts of lives lost or dramatic injury.  We need to reset our patterns of thought. 
Psychopaths, who knows the victim of their attention has 'learned the lesson', will periodically throw a small element into the day to gauge the reaction.  It is a means to assess the victims' response and future responses.  Something as little as a flick of the thumb can elicit a terrified response of the victim, especially if things have been quiet for a time.  The victim is to be kept in a perpetual state of waiting "for the other boot to drop".

So any little thing that happens by the psychopaths or not, will exact a result of fear, superstition, and / or hostility by the victim.

[luckee1]

Guys you might want to relisten to the Lindsey Williams interview on Alex's show on Friday.  commercial free http://www.archive.org/details/AlexJonesRadioShow-October232009  but the important thing is that he was explaining how the elites have their own set of ethics, and they always!! tell us what they are going to do before they do it.  They use hollywood movies.   It is their rule!  I so f**king hate being right!   

[Satyagraha]

Pilot who overshot airport denies crew was napping
By STEVE KARNOWSKI and BRAD CAIN,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091025/ap_on_re_us/us_northwest_airport_overflown/print
Associated Press Writers 27 mins ago

MINNEAPOLIS – The first officer of the Northwest Airlines jet that missed its destination by 150 miles says he and the captain were not sleeping or arguing in the cockpit but he wouldn't explain their lapse in response and the detour.

"It was not a serious event, from a safety issue," pilot Richard Cole said late Friday in front of his Salem, Ore., home. "I would tell you more, but I've already told you way too much."

Air traffic controllers and pilots had tried for more than an hour Wednesday night to contact the Minneapolis-bound flight. Officials on the ground alerted National Guard jets to prepare to chase the airliner, though none of the military planes left the runway.

The jet with 144 passengers aboard was being closely monitored by senior White House officials, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro told The Associated Press on Saturday. He didn't say if President Barack Obama was informed.

Many aviation safety experts and pilots say the most likely explanation is that the pilots fell asleep along their route from San Diego. NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said fatigue and cockpit distraction are factors that will be looked into.

"We were not asleep; we were not having an argument; we were not having a fight," Cole said, but would not discuss why it took so long for him and the flight's captain, Timothy B. Cheney, of Gig Harbor, Wash., to respond to radio calls.

"I can tell you that airplanes lose contact with the ground people all the time. It happens. Sometimes they get together right away; sometimes it takes awhile before one or the other notices that they are not in contact."

The FAA said Friday letters had been sent informing the pilots they are being investigated by the agency and it is possible their pilot's licenses could be suspended or revoked.

Investigators were in the process Saturday of scheduling interviews with the pilots, Holloway said, and audio from the cockpit voice recorder was downloaded at NTSB headquarters on Friday.

But they may not glean much from it. While new recorders retain as much as two hours of cockpit conversation and other noise, the older model aboard Northwest's Flight 188 includes just the last 30 minutes — only the very end of the flight after the pilots realized their error over Wisconsin.

The NTSB recommended a decade ago that airlines be required to have two-hour cockpit voice recorders. The standard has been 15- to 30-minute recorders.

Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a rule requiring airplanes and helicopters seating 10 or more people to have the 2-hour audio recordings, but gave the industry time to comply. Aircraft made after March 2010 must come equipped with longer recorders, though many manufacturers have already been including them. Existing planes have until March 2012 to comply.

The FAA rule doesn't require cockpit video recordings, which the NTSB had also recommended. Pilots opposed the video recordings.

Northwest, which was acquired last year by Delta Air Lines, is also investigating the incident. Cheney and Cole have been suspended. Messages left at Cheney's home were not returned.

The pilots passed breathalyzer tests and were apologetic after the flight, according to a police report released Friday. Cheney and Cole had just started their work week and were coming off a 19-hour layover, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported Saturday, citing an internal Northwest document it said was described to the newspaper.

The police report said that the crew indicated they had been having a heated discussion about airline policy.

FlightAware.com tracking of Northwest Flight 188: http://bit.ly/2QV9hX

National Transportation Safety Board http://www.ntsb.gov

[luckee1]

Here is another thought!  Could it be that they were discussing going on strike?  There are several groups that have been in discussions.  It has been 10 years since their last strike, for northwest.  This is bizarre.

http://propilotnews.com/2009/09/flight-options-pilots-strike.html