Dh B4 Andrews Afb Logs-timelines Fdr- Interview- Sass Re Air Defense - Norad

Interview for 9-11 Commission McNutz/Thompson/Sass Tape Started on Side B Inaudible, very faint voices Tape Side A Female voice: This is the continuing interview with Sass. Sass: It is not a huge deal. It is just difficult trying to get information from them, cause they'll say "hey we've got that track over here" now are they telling us that they want us to investigate it or are they just telling us about it so we can stay away? Is it a friendly? Are they talking to them? What's the deal? Female: Yea Sass: What's the deal? So we had to go through a little bit of learning curve there. If they know who is they would say it's a friendly. If they don't know who it is they and they want us to investigate, they call it a bogie. I don't know if they got to the point of hostile, but typically in our language, if it is a hostile that means that it's a bad guy. Depending on what the rules are you can shoot them. I don't think the word hostile never came out - not initially anyway. Female: But you are up here with, I know you guys said you didn't know about flight 93 when you were up there that first time, but isn't that first sortie when you heard from Phil back here that you have authorization? Sass: Inaudible Female: I know you have probably been asked before, but what was that like when you had a job to do but you know? Sass: Yea, it was scary. Female: Yea, I can imagine. Sass: Obviously because we were talking about shooting down a US air carrier with Americans on board, the whole gamut, women and children, as ugly as you can imagine it, that's what we were thinking. We didn't have a whole lot of ordnance so I talked to aviation week, Bill Spud (?) out of aviation week and told him this. We didn't have a whole lot of options. Once you got pass the point of okay I've got to take this airliner down, which is in and of itself was a huge step. Once you make the decision "Okay I've got to go for it" how were we going to do that with the limited ordnance that we had?

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This is a different tactical problem than what we face in combat. In combat, as long as you can disable an airplane, the thing upon role you have essentially done your job. Where in this case, disabling an airliner that's still pointed at the mall or the capitol or the White House they could still maintain control over the airplane and still guide it in. Female: I'm glad you didn't have to make that ultimate decision. Sass: Me too. So the only options were, what was going through my mind was I needed to destruct the aerodynamics of the airplane. The only way to do that really is to drop it,, if you will, to drop the airplane as soon as possible is to shoot off a wing. Female: You were thinking in your mind - I have to shoot the wing off? Sass: Yea, I was going to go for the wing. Going for the engines wouldn't do it, because it would still fly. Going for the cockpit wouldn't do it because they would still guide it in, depending upon what you hit in the cockpit, it still might be flyable. The only way to take it down was to take a wing. Female: Being an airline pilot, and doing that for a living, you know what goes on in there, that must have been sick. Sass: It was because you are going into this moral or ethical justification of the needs of the many versus the needs of the few. That is basically what it amounted to, it was very possible. The people on flight 93 those heroes's were probably thinking at the same time. They are communicating with their loved ones and get the word that they were under attack and they made the decision that we didn't know. It would have been a very similar thought process. Because if I shot both training bullets at the wing and the wing didn't come off, I was going to have to ram it. Female: Then could you just eject quickly? Sass: :I hope so, that's what I was hoping. Female: That was awful Sass: I wasn't there when the airplane hit the pentagon. I hadn't foreseen the negative impact on the economy, really I think overall it could have been a lot worse. But the psychological effect of an airliner hitting the White House, on the American public and the world would have been catastrophic. That I was thinking though. Female: When you were up there flying, doing these intercepts and basically identifying airplanes, would you characterize it as pretty orderly, pretty calm? There weren't that many planes in the air at that point, just you guys, and a few helicopters. Sass: It was calm, I don't know that I would use the word orderly.

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Female: What word would you use? Sass: Nobody was panicky, there was a lot of thrashing, there is probably a better word than thrashing. But again the calm contributed to the lack of situational awareness and a lot of going back and forth and a lot of confusion. It was definitely confusing. No I wouldn't say anybody was panicky. Female: That is weird that there are other fighters up there and you guys don't know about each other. Sass: That was the whole ... Female: Part of the confusion maybe? Sass: The whole NORAD program. Female: I know, they were officially scrambled. Sass: They were scrambled and they were up there going through the their chain of command. Then you've got people reacting outside of that structure with personnel relationships, with external agencies that are not part of the NORAD program. Everybody is on the same team trying to do the same thing, there was just no over arching program in place to react to that kind of thing. Female: You guys were on the fly the whole time. Sass: Yea, we weren't making it up. Female: When did you finally get to go home? Sass: It was about 8 o'clock that night. Female: What did you do when you got home? Sass: I watched CNN and tried to see what I'd missed during the day. There was a lot of stuff going on and I wanted to fill in any gaps in my knowledge to find out what had gone on. I tried to stop from getting to pissed off. Female: Yea Sass: I think rage that first night and it's not rage now. I am still angry. Female: Are you married? Sass: Oh, yea

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Female: When did you talk to your wife that day? Sass: I called her on the way home. Female: She knew you were okay. Sass: Yea Female: How would you characterize the job that the people in your squadron did? Sass: Outstanding, that was it, nobody had trained to do this, but everybody pitched in and made it happen. There was no formal spin up the 24-hour operations. Everybody was doing smart, safe things to do what they thought needed to be done. I'm not just talking about Ops, I'm talking about the maintainers out there setting up the airplanes. Female: I got to talk to them, that is a pretty cool story. Sass: That is a great story. Load and live, we finally got the AMRAAM here on base, loading live AMRAAMs. We were operating out of the normal set of rules but we were doing it smartly. Female: Are you guys considered a general purpose wing? You have a lot of deployments and exercises so normal training would be air to ground and air to air? Sass: Right Female: In that whole air defense thing, have you guys ever done that in your wings history? Sass: No Female: I didn't think so. Sass: Well in the 1950's and 60's the DC guard sat alert. Female: I can find that out. I think almost everybody did back then. Sass: But nothing within the past 20 years. Female: Is there anything that makes your wing different from other guard units by being in Washington DC? Sass: Oh yea Female: some examples ..

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Sass: Well, we have people who live here and we have people who live in a target area. I mean we have people who live downtown Washington DC. We have people who live in Arlington right by the Pentagon and by virtue of that, we know people who work in the Pentagon, people who work in government. Obviously, we have strong community ties to one of the big target areas in the country. Female: Also mission wise, with you protection of Air Force One? Sass: Much to my surprise, when I first got here I asked if there was any kind of Oplan that we fall under that somebody has come up with that says we need to protect these assets, do this or do that. No. Always in the back of my mind, I was thinking if something happened that we would be the first people they called. Female: It also seems that you guys would be involved in air defense also. Sass: Now it especially seems so. The other thing that makes us different is the proximity of all this, not only do we have the people who live, work and breathe are people in the target area. We work closely with secret service, we have ramp freeze and aircraft freeze today. All operations stop when Air Force One takes off. Female: So it is taking off today? Sass: Yes, I think it is coming back here pretty soon. We know when the President of VIPs come and go. It is not always the President. We know when that happens if we have any issues, we have numbers of the secret service guy to call and that's how our relationships were developed and what we're about. Female: Now the word was that somebody from secret service said "Protect the house", do you know any kind of word of that happening? Sass: No Female: That's what I heard from First Air Force that the secret service called and said "Protect the house". Everybody was real excited that there was a female pilot involved. The point is just to tell the story and I'll talk to the Fargo guys to and hopefully - I didn't really know about the Langley F- 15s that were up there because when I was at the North East Defense Sector that they told me that the First Fighter Wing couldn't help them out that maybe if they got up there later - obviously they did. I don't know if they were just out training of what. Sass: I'm pretty sure those were Langley F-15s. Female: I think it had to have been, the only other F-15s were Otis or way down in Florida r i h t ? Sass: Right

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Female: What else, is there anything that I'm leaving out? Sass: Let's see. Female: I think I have it pretty straight, it is kind of confusing. Sass: The part that I'm not sure where my (to give you a timeline) superimposes over when the attach happened. To be honest with you, I don't like to think about it to much. I could probably, if I wanted to go back, we kept our tapes I think. Female: That's what the intel person told me. Sass: But I haven't even gone back and listened to the tapes. Female: Well First Air Force has gone back and done an official time line. I was talking to General Arnold, he just retired, he was the commander there. He_said even the time line they have, they maybe could have done a better job with the timeline. I don'tjcnow howlmper important it is~that 1 have - I mean 1 need To be accurate with details, but 1 don't know if it is that big of a deaT When you guys were flying, obviously you didn't know about flight 93 yet, but by the time you guys all got up the Pentagon had already been hit, so you know you are under attack, you know what you have to do. Do you always look at the FAA that closely? Sass: No, not that closely. Not that closely outside of our training missions. After a while you recognize the controllers voices and you basically understand the Washington approach. Do you understand how the ATC structure works? Female: Not really. Sass: Let me explain it to you quickly, maybe it will help you. I don't have this exactly right because .... Female: That's okay, just enough for background. Sass: (describes ATC from map) Here is Washington National and here is Andrews, these are the runways. Female: Two runways here? Sass: Yes, you have a tower here which controls that much. You've got a different Andrews approach which controls this much, I don't have the boundaries exactly right. Then you've got Washington National and this only goes up to let's say maybe 7,000 feet. Washington National which controls this much and that goes up to here. Female: That's the tower at Washington National?

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Sass: No, that's the tower approach, the same thing over here, the tower only controls the terminal area, basically within the visual range of the airfield. The Andrews approach is inside of the Washington approach. When you think it, it is they are in control when you are on approach. Then out here at Leesburg, Washington Center which controls all of this and goes way behind. So as you go from outside to in you would go to Washington Center, and if this was an airplane trying to land at National - you would go through Washington Center's airspace, they would say "okay go to Washington approach" you go to Washington approach and turn around on the final, contact the tower. Female: Okay Sass: Now the people at Washington approach have radars that see the whole scope. They only talk to airplanes that are in certain sectors, they can see everything that is going on, they are only controlling airplanes within in - in that if you go to Washington Center or something - did you see that movie with the two controllers? Female: No, I heard it was really good. Sass: It was a pretty funny movie. They have a scope like this, he is sitting there saying American 232 turn left and in the middle they have DCA and then they have all of the little dots for airliners around here. Then superimpose of that if you can take it off are going to be sectors and each time if this is a really busy sector depending upon how airplanes get into the airfield or get out of the airfield is going to be 273.1 and a frequency this could be 5.2 and as this airplane goes from that sector this sector it is going to talk to that controller. So the guys at approach can see the whole thing and it doesn't matter where we were, they would see us airborne, they would see lucky over here and I'm over here. They would see all this and they would say "hey, we have a hit over here" and then I would say "okay Lucky commit" and she'd go out and make contact. This is all with the approach guide. Female: Yea, working with them a little more than usual, you guys speak a little bit of a different language too? Sass: Um, Um Female: I can call you later if I think of anything else. Is there anything else? Sass: Yes, you know, the initial reaction, everybody doing a good job and we didn't have the right ordnance, we weren't prepared to do that. The initial weapons free zone, that was rescinded shortly after that when things started to get under control. SCATANA was declared, we talked about that. We didn't know what SCATANA was, we had no idea, never heard the term. Female: Isn't that wild?

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Sass: After a while when we'tried to control it, it was like a free for all. Just like a dream, do wherever you want to go you don't have to bother with these ATC guys. "How is this working?" Then they said SCATANA is no longer in effect. We figured it out when they turned SCATANA off. SCATANA is what has been allowing us to operate freely for the last three days. Female: Yea, I was watching some stuff on September 11th, last week, they were saying they implemented SCATANA and that it had never been done. What has been done? In 1961 NORAD had a huge exercise and do you know about this? Sass: No Female: Yea, it was in 1961, October, I write about it in this book. They wanted to test their air defense readiness so they paid, the Air Force paid all of these airliners to stop their aircraft for like 12 hours. It was this big exercise called Sky Shield 2 , and I'm like how come nobody knows about this? It happened, I have paperwork from the history office, it is all declassified, it is all cold war stuff, but it has happened before and nobody knows about it, but it will be in this book. I guess that's all I have, where can I call you? Sass: The same number that you have. Female: The other things I need is to gather up photos. I was told you could help me with that, maybe go to VI or something. Sass: Sure END OF TAPE SIDE A

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