9/11 is a Number, Here are the Facts: Evidence Proves White House Complicity 59
EXHIBIT E Fighters at Andrews AFB Did Not Protect Nation’s Capital or Pentagon Andrews Air Force Base is 12 miles from the Pentagon and the White House. According to its own website on 9/11, it had at least two squadrons of jet fighters whose task was the protection of Washington, DC.32 33 Yet the 9/11 Commissioners claim that in order to protect the Pentagon the scramble order had to go to Langley Air Force Base, 130 miles away, because Andrews had no fighters on alert. The Andrews AFB website was altered September 12, 2001 in a way that deleted mention of fighter jets,34 further proof of tampering with evidence. The Commission claim is contradicted by a report in Aviation Week 35 that three F-16s from Andrews AFB were on a training mission in North Carolina when the North Tower was hit at 8:46 a.m. Being only 207 miles from Washington, they could have been back by 9 a.m. to establish CAP (Combat Air Patrol) until replacements were sent. And yet they did not begin flying over Washington until 10:45.36 Aviation Week also states that at 10:42 Andrews fighters finally did take off, but without missiles (or shoot down orders), and that two more F-16s, armed with AIM-9 missiles (and shoot down orders), took off 27 minutes later, at 11:09 a.m. ... after it was all over.37 According to David Ray Griffin, “Andrews AFB has primary responsibility for protecting the nation’s capital. Can anyone seriously believe that Andrews, given the task of protecting the Pentagon, Air Force One, the White House, the houses of Congress and the Supreme Court would not have had fighters on alert at all times? If Andrews had fighters on alert, it would seem likely that McGuire AFB in New Jersey did too, meaning that fighters to protect New York City did not have to be scrambled from Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod.” 38 National security expert and former ABC producer James Bamford says, moreover, that NEADS was also able to call on “alert fighter pilots at National Guard units at Burlington, Vermont; Atlantic City, New Jersey; and Duluth, Minnesota.” In that case, there were at least seven bases from which NEADS could have scrambled fighters, not merely two, as the official story has it.” 39 40