September 14, 2001 and After: Anticiapted Debate about Poor Fighter Response on 9/11 Never Occurs

The Miami Herald reports, “Forty-five minutes. That’s how long American Airlines Flight 77 meandered through the air headed for the White House, its flight plan abandoned, its radar beacon silent… Who was watching in those 45 minutes? ‘That’s a question that more and more people are going to ask,’ said one controller in Miami. ‘What the hell went on here? Was anyone doing anything about it? Just as a national defense thing, how are they able to fly around and no one go after them?’” [Miami Herald, 9/14/2001] In the year after this article and a similar one in the Village Voice [Village Voice, 9/13/2001] , there will be only one other US article questioning slow fighter response times, and that article notes the strange lack of articles on the topic. [Slate, 1/16/2002] The fighter response issue finally makes news in 9/11 Commission hearings in 2004.