May-August 2003: 9/11 Commission Has Difficulty Gaining Access to Recording of Air Threat Conference

Members of the 9/11 Commission are informed that the air threat conference call, initiated by the military in response to the attacks on September 11, was recorded. This call reportedly began at around 9:37 a.m. on 9/11. Throughout the day, numerous key officials had participated in it, including the president, the vice president, the secretary of defense, plus senior officials from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Despite more than 18 months having passed since the attacks, Pentagon officials say they have not yet transcribed the tapes of the conference call. After the 9/11 Commission makes repeated requests, the Pentagon finally creates a classified transcript. On August 6, this is forwarded to the White House for an “executive-privilege review,” which is supposedly required because of Vice President Cheney’s participation in the call. The commission is then promised access to the 200-page transcript. However, the fact that it is not time coded may hinder the commission’s ability to outline an exact sequence of events, and commissioners say they may need to obtain the actual tapes recordings. Whether they are eventually allowed full or partial access to the tapes is unclear: The 9/11 Commission Report, released in 2004, will make numerous references to the “[Defense Department] transcript, Air Threat Conference Call.” It will only make one reference to “the tape… of the air threat conference call,” which it says was used to help reconstruct events in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC). The report will state that all the times it gives for the air threat conference call are estimates, believed to be accurate within a three-minute margin of error. This would suggest it did not have full access to the tape recordings. [US News and World Report, 8/31/2003; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 37 and 463-465] The recording of the air threat conference call is of particular significance, because the National Military Command Center (NMCC), which initiated the call, is—according to military instructions—the “focal point within Department of Defense for providing assistance” in response to hijackings in US airspace. [US Department of Defense, 6/1/2001 ]