Analysis of the Interagency Cooperation based on the 9/11 Commission Report

September 11, 2001, started as a normal day. However, this changed when nineteen hijackers intelligently managed to get through security checkpoints at different airports. They took control over four flights overpowering their cockpits as well as the crew who at that time were not prepared for any suicide hijacking. The hijackers intended to use the commercial planes as weapons.

According to Laurent (2010), the nationwide disaster on 9/11 increased focus on interagency collaboration. Airport and government officials were questioned on what they knew when they knew it and if they sufficiently acted upon the information. Some of the agencies involved included the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), the Eastern Air Defence Command (then NEADS), CIA, FBI, and the United States government. However, the major game players during the attack were the FAA and NORAD. The report suggested particular shortcomings in the national security system. These obstacles not only inhibited one agency from integrating information from all the sources, but also limited the delegation of different assignments across agencies, pursuing progress, and eliminating challenges to success (Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 2003). According to the Commission, the agencies were like specialists in hospitals who ordered different tests, had a different diagnosis, and prescribed different drugs for the same illness. Every agency had their protocols and guidelines to follow to achieve their organizational mission. Even though such frameworks enhance proper jurisdiction, they delayed the process of countering the 9/11 attacks. The attacks and the crashes happened in more than fifty minutes, but the FAA and NORAD were unable to prevent the subsequent attacks. Several requests had to be made by the lower ranking agencies, which took unnecessary time to approve. The time taken to approve the requests between these agencies enabled the terrorist to be a step ahead. The essay will explore the nature of interagency cooperation by looking at the different ways they collaborated, merged, integrated, and built networks through sharing information before and during the 9/11 terror attacks.

The Mission and Structure of FAA and NORAD

The FAA and NORAD were the two major agencies that were initially involved in the attacks. The United States Airspace dwelled on the communication between these two federal agencies. Understanding the duties of the two agencies entails a review of their missions, authority, control frameworks, and their relationship to the 9/11 attacks. 

FAA 

Under the federal law, this agency is mandated to maintain safety and security in all civil aviation. By looking at it from an air controller’s view, it means ensuring a safer distance between aircraft that have already taken off. FAA is characterized by many air control centers. These centers are categorized under regional offices that closely work with the national Air Traffic Control System. Normally, the FAA control centers receive information and formulate operational decisions autonomously. During the 9/11 attacks, the four planes were controlled from Boston, New York, Cleveland, and Indianapolis. Therefore, when the attacks on the aircraft had started, the four command centers had an idea of the situation. However, the information known to one command canter was not necessarily the information known in another or the FAA regional headquarters in Washington. This was because the transponder signal for each aircraft was different. On the morning of the attacks, three out of the four FAA control centers could not track their aircraft because the terrorists had turned off the transponders. Before the attacks had occurred, the control center had not experienced any unusual happenings. For instance, an operator would briefly loose a transponder signal but, it would reappear after a few seconds. However, during the 9/11 attacks, the transponders on the three aircraft could not be traced five minutes or more and at the same time. Besides, the parent companies of the planes and other aircrafts within the vicinity could not account for American 11, United 175, American 77, and United 93. 

NORAD

Created in 1958, NORAD is a national command center between the United States and Canada. The mission of the agency is to defend the North American Airspace as well as protecting the continent against airspace terror. Even though its mission does not differentiate between the internal and external dangers, NORAD was established to deal with the Soviet threat, which was considered an external attack. As an approach to protect their mission, the members championed for gaining air control against new threats, which were of potential harm to the United States. They wanted to control the utilization of missile technology. According to NORAD, their major threat originated from cruise missiles and the belief that terrorists would resolve to the use of aircrafts as weapons. Before the attacks took place, word had it that an order to shoot down a commercial plane would have to be permitted by the president and the secretary of defense. In this case, they are often referred to as the National Command Authority. The supposed plane was believed by NORAD to have origins outside the United States. This was perceived as an advantage because it would grant them enough to prepare for the threat. Prior to the attack date, about seven alerts had been received making a few NORAD commanders to be uncomfortable with the competency of the agency. 

Within the United States, NORAD has three divisions. However, on 9/11, all the hijacked planes belonged to Northeast Air Defense Division (NEADS), which had its headquarters in Rome, New York. In the morning of the attack, NEADS was only able to assemble two fighters from their base in Massachusetts and Langley, Virginia. The remaining divisions were not ready for the attacks, hence, had to organize their crews and fighters. The protocol required NEADS to report to the Continental NORAD region in Florida, who later reported to NORAD in Colorado. 

Cooperation between FAA and NORAD

Protocols exist between the two agencies in times of terror attacks like hijacking. Since NORAD was the bigger agency, FAA had to request for military assistance from them. There were delays in the approval of the requests especially from the high levels of the government. According to the FAA guidelines during hijack situations, it is presumed that the pilot will alert the controller through radio transmission. The transponder code 7500 is used universally by air traffic control during hijacking. The role of the controllers is to notify the supervisors, who will relay the information to FAA headquarters in Washington. The New York office had a hijack controller whose responsibility was to notify the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center (NMCC). The NMCC needed to track the planes by using escort aircrafts. The situation of 9/11 was critical, and, the NMCC was forced to seek for military help from the Office of the Secretary of Defense. However, all these depended on the approval of orders. In case the orders were permitted, then NORAD would take the chain of command. 

Meanwhile, the NMCC was to update the hijack controller back at FAA who would be in direct communication with the military. In the process, NORAD would be able to get the tracking information through joint radar or relevant FAA facilities. 

It was unfortunate that all the protocols between the two agencies failed to contemplate the probable interceptions by the terrorists. They all assumed that the fighter aircrafts would be tactful and discrete. FAA and NORAD had several presumptions about the rescue mission. For instance, they believed that the hijacked planes would be easily identified making them difficult to disappear. Secondly, they would get time to address the issue in their respective chains of command. Lastly, they assumed that the hijack would be conventional like that of D.B Cooper. They did not think of the planes being used as guided missiles. 

The Interagency Situation during the 9/11 Attacks

A critical analysis of the timings of the planes indicates that there was a lack of coordination between these two major agencies. The United States airspace failed to control effectively the situation based on the existing protocols training. The coordination between the agencies comprised of ordinary people lacking expertise saving hijacked planes. Besides, the airspace military seemed unprepared to change a commercial airplane into a weapon that could destroy millions of Americans. It turned out that NEAD commanding base has nine minutes to prevent the first plane from crashing into World Trade Center. Moreover, during the nine minutes, NEAD had no future notice on the second, third and the fourth plane. 

Controversial Accounts between the Interagency

A majority of people still believe that NEADS and FAA facilities would have done better to maintain the airspace security and prevent the four planes from crashing. There were inaccurate accounts from sources that indicated the military was notified earlier about the impending attacks, but, they delayed to react. Such accounts made critics question the competency of the military from an internal perspective. Consequently, the accounts overestimated the FAA ability to assist the military with early and accurate information on the morning of 9/11. However, the endeavors of the two agencies should not be discredited because as it seems, they actively participated in sorting out information and formulating the best judgments. A group of FAA controllers, facility coordinators, and command centers instructors made a decision of alerting the public. For instance, the local traffic was stopped in the affected areas. 

NORAD officials stated in public testimony before the commission that NEAD had received notification of the possible hijacking of United 93 at 9.16 from FAA. However, the statement was incorrect because there was no hijack at this specific time. United 93 was flying safely. Within this testimony, NORAD officials stated that NEAD had received notification of the possible hijacking of American 77 at 9.24. However, the statement was not accurate because the only notification NEAD had received for American 11, which was on the way to Washington DC. Moreover, these officials stated that Langley fighters took time to react to the hijackings of American 77, United 93, or both. This information was incorrect because the fighter jets in Langley were scrambled due to the supposed change of course of American 11. The tapes at NORAD, FAA, and NEADS were not clear to support these statements. Besides, the inaccurate statements established an impression to the public that the scramble was a response to an actual plane under attack. 

Nonetheless, the scramble was initiated by inaccurate information about American 11, but NEADS had no notification that America 77 was lost in the radars. It was notified at 9.34. A few minutes later, NEADS was notified that an unidentified aircraft was 6 miles from the Whitehouse. Until this moment, the scrambled airplanes were seen heading to Washington D.C. Hence, the military did not have fourteen minutes as indicated by the reports but had less than two minutes to react to the unknown plane approaching. This mission was unsuccessful because the fighter aircraft were focusing on a plane that did not exist. The military learned about United 93 after it had crushed (The 9/11 Commission Report: Final report of the national commission on terrorist attacks upon the United States).

Cooperation through Teleconferencing

FAA and the Whitehouse

A multi-agency cooperation was initiated between the FAA, Whitehouse, and Defense Department. However, the team was unsuccessful during the attacks because it lacked proper expertise. Before the fourth plane crashed, the FAA had set up teleconferences with many agencies including the NMCC. The Whitehouse set their conference in the situation room and the Panel included agents from CIA, FBI, FAA, and departments of justice and defense. 

Pentagon Teleconferences

Within the National Military Command Center, the deputy director summoned the National Command Authority, who is the president and the secretary of defense. Various people including representatives from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Security of Advisors were present in the meeting. The team toiled to get in touch with the FAA who had problems with their communication equipment. After NORAD had asked three times about the FAA, they showed up in the teleconference. 

CIA and FBI “cooperation.”

Even before the attacks took place, many questioned the roles of the CIA and FBI in preventing the 9/11 event. These two agencies were the best to prevent the tragedy before it occurred. One of their major roles includes tracking terrorists and ensuring they are apprehended, but they failed to deliver in this case. A majority of people had argued that the United States governments would have stopped the attacks before if the CIA, FBI, and respective state police officers had worked together. The “need to know” culture among these agencies inhibited them from working together. As indicated by the ten lost operational chances in the report, both CIA and FBI failed to circulate helpful information concerning the terror attacks. Partly, this was enhanced by the “wall” between law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies. The knowledge share between them was insufficient to illuminate the impending massive terror attack.

The Cold War between these two agencies was precisely demonstrated when a CIA agent was interviewed by the 9/11 commission. He failed to identify a suspected terrorist after being shown a clip by FBI basing his refusal on authorization protocols of the CIA whenever FBI is involved (Thomas, 2004). Walls also existed between individual agencies limiting the chase down for terror leads. In July 2001, an FBI agent based in Phoenix Field Office prepared a memo titled possibility of a coordinated effort by Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to enrol students in aviation schools. After a month, the Minneapolis FBI Field Office conducted a random investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui who was enrolled in a flight class. This heightened the suspicions of the FBI. However, the two instances received no major progression or investigation preventing them from sharing information with the FAA. These failures to connect dots and share information with the relevant agencies increase the potentials for crimes and terror attacks. 

The Interagency Situation after the Attacks

The attacks were a revelation to the commission and the United States to prepare for any future terror attacks. For instance, these happenings taught the United States to incorporate strategic intelligence from all the relevant agencies to achieve a solid operational planning with dimensions covering the foreign and domestic divide (Devine, 2014). In the commission report, they proposed the creation of National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) that would imitate the unified command concept established in 1980 by the American military and civilian agency. Integrating different agencies would reduce the time for waiting for request approvals. Besides, the commission believed that merging these agencies would be reinforcement in enhancing expertise in solving challenging situations. 

Moreover, the Commission proposed the formation of a unity of effort, which was the National Intelligence Director. This position requires the holder to manage the national intelligence centers and merge all the experts from relating fields tomcat against the common targets. Besides, his or her role should be to manage the agencies making up the national intelligence programs (Martin, 2006). To increase the effectiveness, the 9/11 commission recommended that The National Intelligence Director should be located in the office of the president to allow for direct reports. During the attacks, President George W Bush received information from the secretary of defense who in turn received secondary information from NORAD. Consequently, the commission believed in the strengthening of National Security Agency through building advanced firewalls that cannot be hacked by the terrorists. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, the 9/11 attacks marked a major milestone in the history of terrorism in the United States. After the attacks, it is just to state that the country lacked effective military options, experienced challenges within the intelligence sectors, problems with the FBI, permeable boarder control and immigration policies, shaky aviation security, and unpreparedness. The hijacker proved to the American government that they could easily penetrate their security systems with ease. Besides, they were able to control their intelligence. Even though the United States had various agencies that dealt with terror acts, their integration ascertained that they were slow and ineffective. The FBI and the CIA lacked coordination because of their work descriptions. Moreover, they had built walls denying each other the access of information concerning national security and intelligence. Such actions undermined the war against terror because as per the report, the FBI had prior leads but other agencies saw it a dead end. On the other hand, the cooperation between FAA and NEADS was ineffective because the request for the protocols took longer giving the terrorist a chance to continue with their destruction. A majority of people still believe that NEADS and FAA facilities would have done better to maintain the airspace security and prevent the four planes from crashing. However, the endeavours of the two agencies should not be discredited because as it seems, they actively participated in sorting out information and formulating the best judgments as per their capabilities.

References

Devine, T. (2014). An Examination of the Effectiveness of State and Local Fusion Centers toward Federal Counterterrorism Efforts.

Laurent, J. A. S. (2010). Interagency Collaboration: Key Issues for Congressional Oversight of National Security Strategies, Organizations, Workforce, and Information Sharing. DIANE Publishing.

Martin, G. M. (2006). Enhancing American interagency integration for the global war on terrorism. ARMY WAR COLL CARLISLE BARRACKS PA.

Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2003). In the wake of 9/11: Rising above the terror. American Psychological Association.

The 9/11 Commission report: Final report of the national commission on terrorist attacks upon the United States (2011). Government Printing Office.

Thomas H. Kean et al., (2004). The 9/11 Commission Report 269.