INSIGHT

New Audio Reveals 9/11 Response

Shows aviation scrambling for information.

Newly released audiotapes show civil and military aviation controllers racing to figure out what was happening on 9/11. The tapes, tracked down by a former investigator in the 9/11 Commission and published for the first time by the Rutgers Law Review, further debunk claims made by senior officials that military jets were ready to shoot down the hijacked planes. In one tape, a military official calls the Washington center of the FAA and learns that American Airlines Flight 77 had disappeared more than 30 minutes earlier; no one had told the military. Three minutes later it crashed into the Pentagon. At the same time, another military commander learned that fighters had been sent over the ocean east of Washington in search of American Flight 11, which had crashed into the World Trade Center an hour earlier.