Between 8:49 a.m. and 9:02 a.m. September 11, 2001: NMCC Responds to First Crash at WTC, Notifies Senior Pentagon Officials

Officers in the National Military Command Center (NMCC) at the Pentagon begin notifying senior Pentagon officials about the plane crashing into the World Trade Center after learning of this from television, but they are apparently unaware of the hijacking of Flight 11. [9/11 Commission, 7/21/2003 ; 9/11 Commission, 4/29/2004 ; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 35] The NMCC’s three main missions are monitoring worldwide events for the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), maintaining a strategic watch component, and maintaining a crisis response component. The NMCC has live feeds from numerous television stations, and the operations team on duty there learned from CNN that an aircraft had hit the WTC (see (8:48 a.m.) September 11, 2001).
NMCC Directors Notify Senior Pentagon Officials of Crash – In response, members of the operations team monitor media reports and begin making notifications up the chain of command. [9/11 Commission, 7/21/2003 ; 9/11 Commission, 4/29/2004 ] Captain Charles Leidig, who is currently standing in temporarily as deputy director for operations in the NMCC (see 8:30 a.m. September 11, 2001), will later recall, “Initially… the National Military Command Center was primarily a means to notify senior leadership that, in fact, an event had occurred.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Leidig and Commander Patrick Gardner, the assistant deputy director for operations, start notifying those on the internal JCS notification list, including the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the crash. They also notify the office of the secretary of defense. Based on incorrect information being reported on television, Leidig tells the senior Pentagon officials that a small airplane has crashed into one of the towers of the WTC. [9/11 Commission, 4/29/2004 ; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 35]
NMCC Unaware of Flight 11 Hijacking – According to military instructions, “the NMCC is the focal point within [the] Department of Defense for providing assistance” in response to aircraft hijackings in US airspace, and, “In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA” (see June 1, 2001). [US Department of Defense, 6/1/2001 ] However, while details of the hijacking of Flight 11 have been circulating within the FAA, the 9/11 Commission will say it “found no evidence that the hijacking was reported to any other agency in Washington before 8:46.” The NMCC apparently learns of the hijacking for the first time when one of its officers calls the FAA at 9:00 a.m. (see 9:00 a.m. September 11, 2001). Leidig will recall that, before the second plane hits the WTC at 9:03 a.m., he and Gardner think it is “something unusual… that a light plane had crashed into the WTC and that there was a report of a hijacking.” [9/11 Commission, 4/29/2004 ; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 35, 462]