Why Did the Air Force's Top Officials at the Pentagon Delay Responding to the 9/11 Attacks?

The immediate response to the 9/11 attacks of dozens of the most senior U.S. Air Force officials at the Pentagon who were together in a meeting when the attacks began appears to have been far from what we might reasonably expect, considering the serious and unprecedented crisis the officials had to deal with and the Air Force's key role in responding to it. Evidence suggests that after the first plane crash at the World Trade Center was reported on television on September 11, 2001, there was a delay of over 10 minutes before the officials' meeting was interrupted and the officials were alerted to the incident. The subsequent response of the officials appears to have been slow and lacking urgency.

Even after they saw the second hijacked plane crashing into the World Trade Center live on television, the officials reportedly spent several minutes just watching the news coverage of the attacks and then continued with their routine meeting, instead of immediately halting what they were doing and getting involved with responding to the crisis. [1] Furthermore, when the meeting finally adjourned, instead of helping with the response to the attacks, the Air Force's most senior uniformed officer initially took the time to go upstairs, simply to bring a colleague down from his office to the Pentagon's basement. [2]

Some evidence suggests that the officials in the meeting may have failed to realize the seriousness of what was taking place when they learned of the attacks on the World Trade Center, and this was why they reacted so slowly. They could, perhaps, have mistakenly thought that what they were hearing about was a simulated scenario in a training exercise. Indeed, one of the officials has recalled that when they learned of the first crash, "At first we thought it was part of the briefing." [3] The officials may therefore have felt it was unnecessary for them to respond immediately.

If the officials were indeed confused about whether the attacks were real or simulated, might their slow response have been the intended result of an attempt by some of the people who planned and perpetrated the attacks to paralyze America's defenses, so as to ensure the attacks were successful? Might these planners--presumably rogue individuals within the U.S. military--have arranged what would happen on September 11 so that these key Air Force officials would initially fail to realize that a real-world crisis was taking place, which they needed to respond to immediately?

The tactics used to prevent these officials from responding quickly could have been part of an effort to ensure key individuals from various military and government agencies, who might have organized a successful response to the attacks, were "out of the loop"--unavailable or unable to respond--when the attacks took place.

The evidence currently available is limited and inconclusive. But the behavior of the Air Force's leaders when the 9/11 attacks began certainly deserves further scrutiny.

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