I just read your article. Hardly convincing. It is always easy to be a Monday morning q/b. In the chaos of unexpected disaster very few of us would have the presence of mind to understand the situation much less take evasive action. It is good that you ask questions but is also good to mix it with a somewhat realistic view of how people respond to situations which for all practical purposes are totally beyond the scope of normal experience. We were totally surprised by Pearl Harbor. Our warriors in Iraq have been taken by surprise time and time again even being somewhat familiar with the intent and tactics of their adversary.

I have not yet read the 9/11 Commission Report. I came across your comments as I was beginning to look for it online.

Trust in the L-rd, it will calm you down.

This article is not worth the time it takes to read. It was written by someone with no experience or technical background in airline, military or government operations. The author attempts to inform you on matters far exceeding his or her capabilities as an analyst.

Most Sincerly;

Daniel N. Mac Millan

Captain, Boeing 767

American Airlines

dmacmillan@cox.net

The 911 Commission Report is a finalist for the National Book Awards for "nonfiction." Rather, it should have been nominated for the "fiction" award. On the very first page of the report, the reader is confronted with fictions. For example, how did the commission determine that Atta "apparently" spoke on the phone for three minutes with Shehhi at Logan Airport? The accompanying footnote 3 sheds no convincing light on this assertion/surmise, unless they were already under surveillance by the FBI, and, if so, that only begs a whole host of questions.

Given the fact that the alleged hijackers of American flight 11 and United flight 175 were not captured on any surveillance tapes boarding the two planes and the fact that the names of the ten alleged participants did not appear on the passenger lists, it is debatable whether they were even in Logan on 911, much less that they actually boarded the doomed planes.

Why is this phone call anecdote even in the report? Its provenance is highly suspect.

M. Kato

Its all in the theory on how to approach emergency response. As it stands we have long been applying what is known as an incident command approach; basically a militaristic hierarchy where there a a bunch of top guys who are supposed to link their respective chains of command. Due to the territorialities or government and the nature of protecting information so as to render oneself important (the old Foulcault Knowledge is power seems more true then ever) along with the organizational behavior and doctrin that arrises due to a competative system that is built around a military system response to such complex and multi-nature crises is simply impossible. Adding a head of intelligence or a new homeland secutriy office, ie setting up a new line in the myriad of chains that exist just makes things worse. What is needed is a management approach to emergency response. This implies working toward resource coordination and departmental integration long before anything happes. As it stands most emergency response systems are based on a idea of reaction. They are also based on predicting threats. They completely ignore the vulnerability component in the ’Risk’ equasion (ie vulnerability +threat =risk) by reconceptualizing how we think about crisies and by buildign the interaction and cooperative management structures BEFORE events occure a more effective system could be built. unfortunatly this requires the most difficult of tasks, getting people to cooperate and work together. They must give up images of power and notions of their own importance and truely work together with an ALL Hazards Approach (ie we got this many resources lets organize them so they can best be used regardless of the crisis causing event). Also, disaster is based largely on how we live in the world, we must reassess how we look at how we interact with the natural and political world. In summation, this report wants to answers questions and I can see points where it begins to say something but stops as all those involved are protecting their own territories and power. Lets all think about this differently! Revolution begins with ideas!

Cheers,