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Waterpanther: That's assuming regular rules and procedures would be followed. Money and politcal influence have a way of getting around the regs. Paperwork can find its way into shredders. Witnesses keep silent because it's in their own best interest to do so.
That still doesn’t explain away the very large, expensive, and broken lawn dart of an F-102. Contrary to the best case conspiracy theories you just cannot cover up the crash of a multimillion dollar aircraft. You can’t exactly dump that broken aircraft into the junkyard and expect no one to notice it. You have to expend a tremendous amount of time, resources, money, and paperwork to get the spare parts to replace it. On top of that most of your paperwork on the subject would be either with the manufactures of the parts and the various other Federal Agencies that would investigate the crash. Ultimately you end up with a scenario that has enough evidence against it that not even Michael Moore would bother making a movie on it.
On top of that anyone who crashed an F-102 was lucky to walk away from it. Modern fighter planes rarely make crashes that are belly in touch up the paint landing. More often then not the plane needs a total overhaul or it is scrapped. Either way you couldn’t destroy the paper and witness trail enough to hide it.
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WP:
There's a difference between protecting and baby-sitting. You don't see SS telling Bill Clinton he can't work a crowd--and heaven knows that man has enemies who'd be willing to pot him. It probably gives the poor guys nightmares, but they take his orders, not the other way around.
There is a difference between pressing the flesh and racing out into an unsecured situation during a major terrosist attack without any knowledge of what is going on or the potential threat to the POTUS. The USSS might grudgingly accept the first on the second they are likely to tie you into your chair. The point is Bush would have been stupid not to listen to the USSS in the middle of a terrorist attack.
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WP: Oh, I agree that Bush could have done very little if anything that would have made a difference. But that's the product of 20/20 hindsight.
Even if there were more planes in the air Bush wouldn’t have been able to do anything. At the time everything was in the hands of NORAD.
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Anakam: Ahh... you sound exactly like The West Wing, when they talk about the Secret Service. It's all about the safety of the protectee being paramount, even more so than what he wants to do.
The West Wing the few times I have seen it seems to do a pretty good job of portraying the role of the USSS. I think they are a bit more intrusive than the show makes them appear. I can recall several things that have occurred on the show that the USSS never would have allowed.
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Spectacles: As for there being danger in flying the F-102, there are mixed reports on it. The source I found said it had a pretty good safety record.
Anyone who says the F-102 had a good safety record is barking up the wrong tree. According to the aerospaceweb link 259 of them were lost in crashes out of 875 production models. Any plane that has around 30% of them crash is not carrying on a pretty good safety record.
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Spectacles: Whatever the reason, he chose not to continue.
Another option is that he knew that the F-102s would be replaced in a couple of years and the returning active duty pilots from Vietnam would displace the ANG pilots. The ANG started dropping pilots left and right about a year or two after Bush pulled out of the ANG.
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Spectacles: That he didn't seem to think it appropriate to excuse himself if for no other reason than to find out more information?
Not really considering in seven minutes he would have had a lot more information gathered by his staff. At that point everyone from NORAD on down was pretty much in the dark in terms of having much information. I do find it amazing that most people against Bush criticize him for using “bad information too quickly” to go into Iraq and then blast him for waiting seven minutes for better information on 911.
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Spectacles: As for NORAD, why on earth didn't they scramble interceptors immediately? (I'm not blaming Bush, by the way. Just curious. Does anyone know?) The Pentagon was hit over an hour after the Twin Towers were. It seems to me that with an awareness that "America is under attack," it would only make sense to get interceptors over DC and fast.
That would be a case of 1990s defense budgets running amok. I think we only had 14 aircraft spread out on alert condition to defend the entire mainland of the United States. That means there might have been maybe 5 or 6 aircraft within range of NYC and Washington if they pushed it to the limit. At least a few ADFs were launched to intercept the second aircraft heading toward the WTC. That would have just about burned them out of fuel if they were pushing the limits to get there quickly. Overall I think it was pretty much a case of not having enough fighters on alert and the ones we had burning themselves out of fuel responding to the attack over NYC. A fighter running all out to make an intercept burns fuel at an amazing rate especially if they use the burners.
After that NORAD was down to fighters that were in the air on training missions with no weapons onboard or readying more fighters in terms of arming, fueling, and calling in more pilots. Getting a fighter plane ready to takeoff that isn’t already on alert status is a lengthy process. There is a reason why they keep fighters on various alert statues. The fighters on training missions would have been rather useless unless they tried to force down the airliners by turbulence from high speed passes or by ramming them. I know there is talk that the ramming option was considered. Either way it was a case of working with far too little. I checked this out shortly after the more detailed timelines came out and pretty much concluded that was the case. I’ll see if I can dig up the information again and post something more detailed.
"History has proven too often and too recently that the nation which relaxes its defenses invites attack."
-Fleet Admiral Nimitz
"Their sailors say they should have flight pay and sub pay both -- they're in the air half the time, under the water the other half""
- Ernie Pyle: Aboard a DE