first-hand account of day of 9/11 by maj. charles chambers, stationed in the nmcc

8/14/2019 First-hand Account of Day of 9/11 by Maj. Charles Chambers, Stationed in the NMCC

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Fox News was f inishing their mornin g show about fifteen min utes before 9am. I heard one ofth e hosts come on and say they had a l ive update on a tragic accident. Th e screen switched to theWorld Trade Center Tower Two, on fire. Eyewitness reports said a small twin-engine comm uterplane had crashed into th e WTC. There was very little information available other than reactionby fire personnel. The m ornin g news show didn 't end but stayed live. Th eir discussionscentered on wh at could possibly hav e caused such a tragic acciden t and were the people in thetop 10 floors going to get out. They brough t up the WW II bomber that flew into th e EmpireState Building,bu t that was in the fog. M y instinct was that th e pilot had used th e towers topoint himself towards th e area, lost consciousness, and autopilot had done th e rest. All three TVsets in the room imm ediately tuned to the news n etworks, that's why we have them. The largerscreen across the room was also on Fox News. Lt Col Brunderman and M aj Newell werelooking down at a test message they were preparing . Our interest in the crash a t tha t poin t wasno different from anyone else's in the country. That was about to change.I was glued to the screen. All the news chann els were showing the W orld Trade Center live. Isaw the second aircraft flash in from the right and the subsequent fireball out the left side of thebuilding. The F ox News camera was lined up with the two buildings, making it seem th at thesecond plane also hit Tower Two. I exclaimed that a 737 had just slammed into th e tower! LtCol Brunderman looked up and scoffed in disbelief, thinking it was a tape of the first impact. Itold him I was serious, a second plane, this one a 737, had just hit the building. It was then thatsomeone turned th e speaker up and everyone h eard th e anchors make a similar exclamation. Afew seconds later they replayed th e tape. The world had just changed, forever.These were obv iously deliberate actions. The phones started ring ing imm ediately. We use aSignificant Event Con ference (SiEC) to ensure all the military command centers have the sameinformation at the same t ime on unusual events that aren't a military threat. I headed towards th eintercom an d recommend to our boss, BG Winfield, that we convene a SiEC. Before I couldreach it SSgt Val Harrison had a phone in her hand saying that NORAD was asking fo r one.They stole my thun der. At least they were on th e ball as fast as we were. The DDO concurredan d Va l's fingers started flying. The computer does a mass dialing to connect to those commandcenters tha t are always included, but she had to man ually call th e civilian agencies, FAA, FBI,FEMA an d others. A couple of the civil agencies couldn't be reached an d others kept droppingof f moments after connecting. The SiEC was taking m uch longer than expected to bring up.The FAA wasn't in the conference, they could n't go secure, and so we couldn't get first-handinformation from them.W e finally decided to proceed without those agencies that were hav ing ph one problems. All weknew was that this was no coincidence, bu t there was no information on how or why i t happenedwhen the news m ade its first report about multiple h ijacked aircraft. At least one w as stillairborne and heading east towards Wash ington D.C. NORAD immediately scrambled figh tersfrom Otis Air Nation al Guard Base in Massachusetts an d Norfolk AFB in southern Virginia.The A ir National Gua rd fighters at Andrews AFB, just east of D.C. weren't part of the active airdefense system, so they weren 't available. The f ig hte rs were all headed toward D.C. at fullspeed, bu t they couldn't get here before th e airliner.As soon as NORAD scrambled the fighters they recommend we change to an Air ThreatConference (ATC). The AT C is reserved for wh en aircra ft are considered hostile. For the NorthAmerican Aerospace Defen se Comm and, tasked with defe ndin g th e U.S. and Canada againstenemy aircraft, th e term "hostile" carries a lot of weight. There are man y more people includedin th e ATC, th e Chai rman of the Joint Ch iefs of Staff, Secretary of Defense, th e W hite House


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and others. SSgt Harrison had two options, connect each new number one at a time or hang upon everyone in the SiEC and have the computer do a mass calling. She recommended the latter.The DDO concurred. He explained to everyone in the SiEC what was about to happen thendirected Val to disconnect and start over. As with before, several agencies couldn't get into theconference as needed. Some other agencies didn't understand what the DDO meant about thenew conference so they didn't hang up when we disconnected. All we got from them was a busysignal. As with the SiEC, it took longer than expected to convene the ATC.I lost track of exactly when the plane was expected over D.C. I don't know why, but I didn't feelthreatened. I never thought about the Pentagon being a target. The end of "Debt of Honor"came to mind. In that Tom Clancy novel a suicidal pilot flew an empty Jumbo Jet into theCapitol Building during a joint session of Congress. I figured that was where the third plane washeaded. I don't know, but I hope they were able to evacuate the building. Thankfully it wasn'thit. Val was still trying to get more agencies into the conference. My phone was in theconference, on the speaker. I was standing in front of the TV at my station waiting for theconference to get started and watching updates on the WTC. I heard a strange faint rattling noisethrough the air ducts and felt a slight vibration. I looked over at SSgt Lindsey and asked her ifshe'd felt that? I didn't hear or feel anything else so I didn't pay it much mind. The third TV inthe EA cell, about 12 feet from my desk, was tuned to a local station. My attention snapped tothat TV when I heard their breaking news report. I yelled out over all the talking to geteveryone's attention. The local station just reported that a bomb exploded at the Pentagonheliport. The total time elapsed from the first WTC impact to the Pentagon crash was 1hour.Sketchy news reports a couple hours later said the plane seemed to be headed for the WhiteHouse but didn't go down, then veered toward Capitol Hill missing it as well. It made a righthand turn and then hit the Pentagon. Several weeks later 60 Minutes interviewed one of the AirTraffic Controllers who'd tracked that plane. She said the plane was heading due east towardsthe White House. About 8 miles out the plane made a long slow turn to the right, reversingdirection. She believes the hijackers couldn't locate the White House. The National Mall isfilled with tall trees. Most are taller than the White House. It makes sense that the pilot couldn'tdistinguish the White House from the Smithsonians, monuments and other buildings. Fromalmost any distance there are three structures that can be identified immediately, the CapitolBuilding, the Washington Monument and the Pentagon. The Washington Monument wouldcome down, but only if the plane hit it straight on. The Capitol Building faces south. It may betall, but it's a rather small target to line up on from the side. The Pentagon, however, is huge nomatter which way you look at it. The Air Traffic Controller believes the hijackers turned the 757around while trying to figure out what to do, then turned back eastward and went after thebiggest and easiest target in the area.The ATC was convened without a couple agencies a few minutes after the Pentagon impact.NORAD briefed the ATC that the FAA had passed them data on two more hijackings. This wasprobably a communications mix up, but we all thought for a while that there were a total of fivehijackings. Questions were flying left and right on the conference and trying to keep thingsstraight was very difficult. People were beginning to stream into the NMCC. Vice PresidentCheney was in the conference from the secure bunker under the White House. President Bushwas pulled out of the Florida school he was visiting and rushed to Air Force One. The fourthhijacked aircraft was heading west over Pennsylvania. NORAD recommended evacuatingChicago's Sears Tower. Fighters from somewhere west of PA were already vectored in tointercept th e airliner.


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Aletha called me shortly after the second W TC crash. I don't remember exactly what she asked,bu t I told her we w ere aware of the situation and reacting. I was swam ped w ith incom ing phonecalls. After the Pentagon crash she called again. I talked to her a little longer that time andexplained that I was OK and shouldn't be threatened by the fire. I told he r that if 1 had toevacuate I'd call her on my way out the door. Fortun ately that never happened.At some point Gen Meyers, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and soon to beChairman, showed up. He took control of the conference from BG W infield's office. Alongwith him came the necessary entourage of a dozen or more other Flag Officers. They may havealready been there wh en the crash occurred. Sm oke slow ly started to seep into the hallways, bu tno t into the EA cell. The rest of the Pentagon was being evacuated. If our side of the buildingwas falling down, or an active fire was in the imm ediate area, we might have left, but not before.Th e primary focus was the location and safety of President Bush. Fighters had been scrambledfrom Homestead AN GB, FL and were escorting Air Force One westward. All the attacks hadbeen on the east coast, so sending the President of the United States (POTUS) west made sense.All I could do was update my screens to focus on Air Force One. There was lots of talk aboutwhether Bu sh wanted a fighter escort. Seemed strange to even ask. Just put the F-16s fromHomestead up there. Looking back it makes sense though. If the President hadn't asked for thefighters, an d if NORAD wasn't able to tell him they were coming, having a four-ship ofunannounced fighters show up on Air Force One's wingtips might have made the 747's pilots goape. The FAA and NOR AD w ere giving orders fo r every air traffic control station to makeverbal contact with every aircraft to confirm their status. All aircraft headed into the U.S. werebeing diverted to Canadian airports.While on e group was focusing on the President's status another was putting some other plansinto effect. Th e Speaker of the House and a few others on the chain of succession were whiskedaway to another secure location I've only heard reference to. Once everyone knew thegovernment was able to survive the focus turned to defending ourselves. President Bush was inthe air, but not in the ATC. Vice President Cheney was in the ATC and talking to Air Force Oneon a separate line. I heard one of the most chilling orders I could imagine. VPOTUS passed onthe order that any aircraft confirmed to be under hijacker control was to be shot down.Instinctively I knew this was the right thing to do. Every passenger on the first three aircraftwere dead, along with thousands of others. There was no telling how many others were ou t thereor what the ir targets were. The FAA ordered all civilian aircraft to land no later than 10:30 am,regardless of whether they w ere at a planned destination or not.Sometime after the shoot down order we heard that the fourth aircraft had crashed nearYoungstown, PA. The automatic question was "HOW!?" NORAD confirmed the fighters theysent to intercept it had n't arrived y et. Later we found out that one of the passengers had calledhome on a cell phone to say he'd been hijacked. His family told him about the WTC. He and afew other passengers decided to rush the hijackers claiming to have a bom b. He left the cellphone on, but nothing else was heard. Cu rrent belief is that the passengers either forced theplane into the ground, or there really was a bomb, which brought the plane down. Either waythey saved the targeted lives.Over the coarse of the day the other four Surveillance Officers called in. All asked the samequestions; "Is the NM CC still active?" and "When do I come in?" I told them all the samethings; Yes and I don't know yet, but stand by the phone."The smoke in the halls was getting thicker. We w ere told fire w asn't spreading beyond theimmediate crash area, but we took that at face value. A call went out to the team that was


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9/11 Classified Information

scheduled to c o me in a t 1 pm and sent them to our al ternate faci l i ty] II I W e activated th e helicopters o n s tandby fo r jus t th is k i n d of s i tua t ion . I got a cal l

f r o m the i r ops o f f icer ask ing how m any w e needed , where to l and (s ince the he l ipor t was g one)and w h a t helo squadron to use . Five, the River En trance and IT DOESN'T M A T T E R !Everyone from Team 5 that could be at the Pentagon by 11:30 would get a helicopter ride, th erest had to get there on their own. Several of the day staff fo lks wen t on the choppers to he lpactivate th e site. Later they were joined by one of the teams on break . T he other team on breakw as even tual ly ca l led to take th e Pentagon swing s h i f t . The mid s h i f t w as told to c o m e in asscheduled.T h e F A A conf i rmed tha t there were only fou r k n o wn h i ja c k in g s . A ll c iv i l i a n aircraf t were on theground but more f ighters were go ing up . From then on I d idn ' t have m uch to do except an swerphones. Most of them were from people w ho wa n te d to k n o w if "Joe" was OK . The f i rs t one ofthose w as some guy c la im ing to be an Und er Secre tary o f Defense fo r something-or-o ther ask ingto get the h o me n u mb e r s fo r several of his people. Ever hear of a "recall roster"??? I spent overhal f an hour d igging th rough in te rna l n e twork s i tes t ry ing to f ind those num bers . I ca l led h imback a w hile later saying I couldn ' t f ind an yth ing . I told al l the rest of the cal lers the truth; wedidn ' t have any info o n w h o w a s OK , w ho wa sn ' t , or exact ly where anyone 's office is. I washanded th e job of cont inual ly updat ing th e roster of exact ly where the key cabinet an d mil i t a r yoff icials were, w hen they were expected to ge t to wherever they were g o ing , and how to ge t intouch with them.It was about 11 o 'c lock tha t I rea l ized I hadn ' t ea ten any th ing s ince 4 am and I d idn ' t have al unc h . I had a bag o f microw ave popcorn in my locker. One o f the guy s I work wi th has a ra therlarge stock. W e pooled ou r resources and I popped a bun ch of bags, d i s t r ib u t in g th e m a r o u n d th eroom. Later someone brought in a large platter of cold cuts and b u n s . Two o f the guys were onphone ca l l s they co uldn ' t leave, so I grabbed e noug h fo r three sandwiches . I we nt back a fewm i n u t e s later, there w a s n o th in g l e f t but the l iverwurst.Sometime before noon I j u mp e d on the computer and sent Aletha a n d m y fo lks an e-mai l say ingI was OK and I'd ge t back to t h e m wh e n I could . I knew they 'd be more than nervous. I asked

them to fo rward the e-ma i l so our re la t ives and f r iends could stop wo rry ing . In h indsigh t thet i m i ng was in G od 's h a n d s . M o m & D a d g o t th e message tha t morn ing . If I hadn ' t sen t i t outf r o m work when I d id they w ouldn ' t have go t ten i t a t a l l . Tha t a f te rnoon a haphazardconst ruc t ion crew cu t the i r phone l ines . They d id n ' t ge t phone serv ice back unt i l Fr iday .Several people were walking around th e N M C C m a k in g su re e v e ry o n e had gotten a hold ofsomeone to let t h em k n o w th e y we re OK .T he President landed a t Barksdale AFB, LA. A B-52 base. He w a s on t he ground ju s t longenough to refuel Air Force On e and hand ou t cop ies o f a b r ie f s ta tement . I do n ' t remember w hatwas on tha t tape , we w ere rea l ly hopping w hi le it a i red . From there he go t back in the a i rnor t hbound to O f f u t t A F B , NE . W hen he landed he was rushed in to the US Stra teg ic Com m andunderground c o m m a n d b u n k e r . Fo r me r l y th e St ra te g ic A i r C o m ma n d C o m ma n d C en ter . Th a tfacil i ty w a s bui l t to surv ive a n u c l e a r n e a r miss . C h e y e n n e M o u n ta in a n d o u r al terna te si te a reprobably th e o n ly places more secure than there. He was in the conference for a while. I heardhe and Chancy ta lk ing . Chancy w as unaware that several hundred people were in theconference , mo st in rece ive-on ly mode. Bush reminded h im tha t they were be ing broadcast, andto watch h is l anguage . Bush wasn ' t on the ground very long. Som et ime la te r tha t a f te rnoonBush was back in the a i r , headed home.


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W e had a few almost exciting events over the next couple hours. Two K orean Air Lines flightsstarted squawking hijack frequencies as they approached Alaska. That go t them some immediateattention from the Elmendorf AFB F-15's. By the time the fighters showed up the pilotschanged their status to low fuel or some other kind of problem. They were directed, andescorted, to W hite Horse airfield in the Yukon. Another time our pulses got going when theFAA reported an unknow n contact heading in towards Baltimore from the Atlantic. Again,fighters went to intercept, except there w as nothing there. The plane had already made voicecontact with the FAA and was headed for Canada. With all the confusion everything seemed tohappen as expected. All civilian aircraft landed as directed and no shots were fired, at least byour side.At 5:30 Maj Rizzonico showed up. He was one of the first of the swing shift to arrive. I wasexpecting to be there until the Mid shift showed around 9 pm . All traffic inbound to the D.C.area was reportedly shut down. It turns out the roadblocks were letting all official trafficthrough, so our relief got in without much trouble. Changeover norma lly takes three or fourminutes. This one took over 15 just to fill him in on stuff that wasn't on the news. I left andwent to another office to see if they needed any help. The ir relief was trickling in so I wen t backin to tell Rizzonico I was head ing hom e. I was leaving the EA Cell for the final time thatevening at about quarter to six wh en Maj Scanelli walked in. He had no idea how long it wouldtake him to get there, so he left 4 hours early. I called A letha to let her know I was on my wayhome.I walked down Corridor 9 to the central A Ring and noticed it was daylight. For some reason Iwas expecting it to be dark. The only windows in the Pentagon are in the E Rin g outward and ARing into the central courtyard. I paused to look across the way. The NMCC is betweenCorridors 8 and 9. The crash was next to Corridor 4. So I was almos t directly across thecourtyard. There was no visible damage, bu t lots of smoke billowing from around Corridor 4. Iwalked out of the Corridor 2 entrance with some apprehension. No one had said a nything, oneway or the other, about shrapnel damage. I didn't ask the incoming personnel, figuring they'dbeen routed to the North Parking Lot since the impact was right next to the South Lot, where Iwas parked. I looked out and there was only light smoke damage to the south face. MyThunderbird was right where I left it, without a scratch!I got home and had a bit of dinner, but didn't eat much. After dinner I w ent down stairs to watchthe recorded Monday Night Football game and drink a beer. The satellite receiver can record TVshows. The playback has a 30 second forward jum p, which happens to be the length of timebetween the end of one play and the next snap. That makes in nice w atching MNF w ithoutlistening to that je rk from HBO. At halftime I was more than ready to call it a day. I had to beback at work at 5 am W ednesday, as usual. I went to bed at 8 pm but didn't fall asleep rightaway. I was out at 10:30 wh en I got a call from an old friend of mine. W e'd been in touch via e --mail, but I haven't seen him in person since H igh School. He just wanted to make sure I wasOK .The first day of the W ar on Terrorism was over.

first-hand account of day of 9/11 by maj. charles chambers, stationed in the nmcc

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