T8 B22 Filson Materials Fdr- Interview Of Col Cromwell- Leslie Filson

Tape Side A Interview with Leslie Filson and Colonel Cromwell, Commander of the Western Air Defense Sector F: This is an interview with Colonel Cromwell. Commander of the Western Air Defense Sector. Okay, what I want to start out with Col Cromwell is where you on September 11, probably in the Battle Cab. Cromwell: Nope I was right here in this office when I got a call from the Battle Cab because we were in the middle of an exercise. There was a NORAD exercise going on and we had had an early morning VTC with CONAR and the other sectors. I had come back down to my office to review and early bird and what I normally do before the morning brief which was normally at 6 o'clock. So I was in my office when I got the call that the Northeast had a highjack and it didn't fit the exercise scenario, so I asked if it was real world or exercise. They said "it's a real world." So I did head up to the battle cab than and as I was in the battle, someone said the CNN's reporting that something hit the World Trade Center, they think it may have been the highjacked plane. So we turned on the TV and shortly thereafter, we saw the second plane fly into World Trade Center. At that time I said "exercise is on hold" we are in a combat situation. Don't do anything else on the exercise. At this time we are having our flight change over, a new crew was coming in and I went in at 6:30 and briefed them that we were in a state of war. I was concerned that there was going to be rolling attacks coming across the United States, basically around the 9 o'clock time frame in each time zone. I told people, we have maybe 1 or 2 hours to defend the Western United States and at that time we forgot about the exercise and General Arnold, I don't know exactly when it was but he pretty much called it off himself. The Director of Operations, Lt Col Bell (?) my scheduler Pat Malone to call every unit that we had West of our - you know right in the center part of the US and that we worked with. Because at that time I had four jets on alert, two in Portland, two in Riverside and that afternoon, we had over 100 jets on alert. That was through phone calls to schedulers, to wing commanders, to ops officers and the units had great initiative and they did a lot of things. The other fortunate situation, we were going to be briefing a Deputy Under Secretary of Defense that morning and Major General Scoggin (?) came over to our building about 7 o'clock, he was calling General Weaver at the Guard Bureau, General Kemmel (?) at the Guard Bureau and verifying that the authority was there to work toward bringing up as many jets as possible. F: (inaudible) C: So 1 had General Scoggin (?) helping to get the higher headquarters along with what we got from Col Clark at the time was the 1AF/CONR DO as well as from Gen Arnold about standing things up. Again, the focus was on the East coast because the situation in Washington DC and then the high jacked airplane that went down in Pennsylvania. But there was also reported that as many as 11 other jets that they weren't certain of. Many f the had taken off in the East and were heading toward the West. So again my concern of

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the rolling attacks, we were working with the FAA to track any unusual aircraft. Then on top of that the President's movement, where all three sectors worked when and again it's been out that he traveled from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska before going back to DC. All three sectors worked together to ensure that the President had escort and was protected while he traveled across the US before he got back to Washington DC. That kind of covers the first two areas. F: (inaudible) C: I had come in at 2:30 that morning and I had stayed on that schedule for about the first three weeks. We were doing either 3 or 4 o'clock VTC, I can't remember. Because we moved it back to where it's now 6 o'clock and General McKinley asked me why I wasn't trying to get it moved later. I said "Sir, it is so much better that it use to be." I think they were 4 o'clock for about the first 3 or 4 months, but I live on base and in fact that is something that I'm going to share with you later, cause going out at 2:30 in the morning, I could hear the airplanes CAPping over head cause that was the only thing in the air. That was the sound of freedom right over the base. I knew the pilots that would be flying up there from Portland and I knew it was going on above other cities in the US and it was an awesome feeling to know that we were doing what we've always done. But America was really desiring us to do it more so that what they had. Because of the unfortunate tragedy of the 11th of September. (silence on tape) C: The flexibility is another thing, guard, reserve as well as active duty units all came up there was no difference between any of them. The vast majority have never sat alert, especially at home station but they all responded and the maintenance maintainers, the weapons troops, all the support personnel to make it happen, did a great job. The response from all of the commanders was "what else can I do", it wasn't "that's to much" but they were always looking to do more. F: Now you said, you had over 100 on alert by that afternoon.

C: Yea F: On alert, loaded, ready to go?

C: Yea F: That's significant, real quick C: Yes, CONR wide it was over 300, so again it was over 100 in the West. F: Without being classified obviously, I guess your concern that day was some of the big cities and...?

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C: We were trying to get connectivity and make sure that we had response capabilities. We were given directions to provide combat air patrol over certain cities, main area, and critical infrastructure. So we worked with different units, so they were ready to respond within their metropolitan areas, close to their bases, but they were also flying combat air patrols over numerous cities and key infrastructure within the Western United States. Again, there was an equivalent amount if not more on the Eastern two sectors. But my plate was full in the West and I did not even think about what they were doing. F: In the sectors, with all the rumors about the high jackings, and from what I under stand talking to other people earlier, at this point you guys couldn't really see the air picture. C: No, we were responding when FAA asked for assistance, we would coordinate the scramble. Fighters from the closest base and they would talk to the FAA controllers to get... F: The fighters? C: yea, the fighters would talk with them because we had no picture or radios. No way to control or we wouldn't even see where to control them to. So the FAA did a great job also of being flexible enough to not direct or control them but to at least point out where the situations were. We had several intercepts on different tracks that were not following normal procedures or that the FAA was concerned about that were uneventful. But the FAA, again the flexibility of the pilots in each of the situations allowed them to successfully intercept and escort these planes to an uneventful landing, after the first situation. F: Somebody mentioned to me that the other sectors had a little bit of a better picture than you guys did. C: We had so much more of a area that I would say that the inner picture to them it went a little bit closer inward than - because we had 63 percent of the air space, but we have fewer overall numbers of radars than they do. So just the geography of covering it would have allowed them to see a little bit more in a lot of areas. Again, the radios were as big of limitation as the picture. Because even if we could see it, we couldn't talk to them. F: As we get to talking more, I'd like to hear more about how that has changed. How would you describe that day? Would you say it was controlled, chaotic, hectic or? C: It was very interesting to see how people transitioned to a new scenario. They used the training that they have always had from a cold war scenario. It was a brand new scenario, but the training that they had done provided them a foundation to be creative and innovative and yet be under control. It was chaotic because of the tragedy on TV, it was almost like seeing a horror movie but it was reality TV unfortunately. But the training, people knew what to do, they did their job, they focused on their job. We had some people going around in case people got emotional or had people who had lost

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friends like the situation with Don Aries, loosing his brother. We checked with people to ensure that there wasn't something like that where someone had that type of a tragedy. But also people knew they had to go home and get sleep. I was going to bed at 6:30 in the evening and with three children, we'd eat supper and my daughter would tuck me in bed at 6:30 at night. I would get up at 2:30 in the morning to come in. So, people went about their jobs professionally, they went about their lives professionally, to ensure they got the rest they needed, so that we could defend the Western United States. Before this we always were looking external. We were thinking of guarding the boarders, although our mission had always been to guard Americas Western skies. We truly were responsible for all of Americas Western Skies. I suddenly started learning about quick key infrastructure in states that I never imagined I'd be concerned about. I'd obviously visited some of these places but I hadn't thought about defending Grand Cooley (?) other key infrastructure like in Utah, the chemical sights. The nuclear reactors, the number 'of nuclear reactors East of the Mississippi is so higher than West of the Mississippi was a blessing for us. Because there were less things to protect, but in some ways it is more challenging because it's hard to have things positioned correctly to guard all of the key infrastructure. F: ??? was this working with units that you'd never even dealt with? C: Most of them I had a relationship. Again, I've been the commander here for four years. All of the wing commanders from the guard units, I'd been to conferences with or I'd met them at tactic conferences. The guard commanders I knew. Many of the reserve commanders had come through the schoolhouse at McConnell, where I had been an instructor, so there were relationships that were restarted. One of my classmates from the academy was the wing commander of Mountain Home, so again we hadn't talked since the academy, but we're suddenly working together and his vice commander was an instructor for ?? with me. The vice commander down at Nellis had been at NORAD ??? So there was a lot of relationships from different commanders conferences, having attended them for four years. 1 knew where all the wings were and I knew what assets they had, so the four years in the job helped to quickly establish relationships also the support of General Arnold and General Skalion (?) on the air guard side, they were able to ensure the support from a state perspective from all the different units. There was also the relationship that General Skalion (?) had on the reserve side, but again there was no hesitancy really of anyone to step up. The relationship became more of a challenge after the two or three months because of sustainment after nothing else had happened. The resources were having to be determined and weren't as readily available. That's where the relationships - and again that were developed within the first couple months started to be more critical. Again, General Arnold did a great job of insuring that he was connected wherever he needed to be connected. His staff did a great job and the sector commanders to bring only the issues that we couldn't resolve and whenever we had something, he was able to help us bring it to a positive resolution. F: It sounds like that through all of the tragedy that happened, it sounds like it went fairly smoothly. Would you say?

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C: Because of the training, the experience, we knew what we needed to do and the leadership was there from General Arnold, from senior Air Force leaders, from the President. The taskings were there and again, military members are used to when they are given a task to determine a plan to figure out how to do it. So the people were focus and the motivation was there because of the tragedy that people worked longer and harder than if it had been just a peace time scenario that we were doing in an exercise. This was a wartime scenario that we never imagined or dreamed would happen. F: With the long hours, what kind of toll did it take on some of the families? C: There was lots of structure, they were given 12-hour shifts. The traditional guardsman suddenly going from being in the exercise, being here training, suddenly being mobilized and being pulled out their civilian jobs on short notice. Normally when there is a deployment or a call up, you would anticipate your family as well as your employer for that. Suddenly we called up approximately 100 traditional guardsman and. again the employers were great, the families were making sacrifices. I called in some people, for instance there was someone at Boeing, he was a classmate from our academy, he was our state DO, I asked him to come be in my commander's support staff here and he did that for about 4 months. Boeing released him for that period of time to allow him to support the initial standup and work a lot of the mobilization issues, and the employer support issue. So, the stress on families was there but also the stress on the employers and the civilian community was something else that - we always anticipated it being a cold war scenario but would not go on like this. Again, the whole first year, the challenge was the sustainment as things did wind down and yet the requirements to be able to respond in a few minutes against another terrorist attack remains there today. F: How many people are in the sector? Roughly 400 is that correct?

C: Yes F: About 400 and you had to .... C: Of which about 270 were full-time and 100 guardsman were mobilized approximately. F: 100 traditional members.... C: and then, we've also received active duty and Air National Guard augmentation and new AFSC's that we didn't have the specialties in, new requirements as well as additional requirements above our manning document. The Southeast and the Northeast, we've all been augmented by active duty reservist and guardsman from across the United States. The Air Expeditionary Force the AEF cycle is how they continue to cycle into the unit, so about every 90 days we get a new group of people that staggered across a two or three week period, but the rotations are ongoing with augmentation. F: Some of your folks have demobilized.

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F: I think ??? told me a story about that. C: We've been able to allow the people who had critical relationships with employers to return to their employers, to continue in their traditional status and yet they are all doing a little bit more than just the minimum. They are not just active one weekend a month and two weeks sometime during the year. They are all doing a few extra days per month, depending on what their civilian and family situation allows them. F: The consensus that I'm getting is the job is harder now. C: It's more challenging and there is a bigger immensity to it from a geographical viewpoint as well as from a catastrophic results. It has been demonstrated that if we fail the results - and I'm going to share a couple situations with you that really brought it home personally to ourselves as well as to the pilots who that are flying the mission. F: I'm looking forward to hearing about these. F: Okay, so after September 11th, is there anything that you want to add about that day before we go on? C: Nope F: (repeating comments) In your mind did they really have time to sense what had really happened or did you just kind of just get into the work mode? C: I think it was harder for the people who had just came off shift and went home to try to go to sleep. They were going to come back in that night. I think it was harder for them to go to sleep after what they had just seen. Whereas on the East Coast I think the night crews would have already gotten home and would be in bed and they didn't experience it until they woke up. In our situation, the people saw it happen and then they drove home and all of America was shocked but they knew they had to get their rest because they were going to come back in. They didn't know what they were going to be facing when they came in that night. So, I think it was very challenging for them. I consciously didn't have the TV on because I didn't want to focus in on that. I had so many people to contact and so many things to do with the defense of the President was one of our main concerns that day. So again, the immensity of it just made us focus on our checklists and our procedures and then the creativity and the innovativeness of the people of the organization was wonderful to see. People were there supporting one another. Again, the relationship internally that people had helped to support to help the ones that possibly were a little bit more touched by it. No one was untouched, it impacted everyone to a degree and it came out different times during the day as the long hours went on. After a while we would have to send some people home. I know between the three of us that were pulling battle commander, we would force one another to go home or we'd tend to be here to long.

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F: You and who else were making those calls to commanders? C: Lt Col Ezelle was the DO and Miss Pat Malone, she is our air base scheduler and she had relationships with the vast majority of the wings at least at a scheduler and an operations level and she called a lot of people. She, I would say did more of half of the contacting. F: I hear that you guys contacted virtually every fighter wing West of the Mississippi? C: yea F: That's crazy ness C: I'd almost say to Missouri, because we did not contact St. Louis, but we did Sioux Falls and Sioux City, Iowa which are in the Northeast sector. Tulsa which is just barely in the Southeast so I mean we did things right along the boarder. It was kind of everything left. Again, New Orleans, we didn't, I know that the Southeast would have contacted them early on. Houston was already, Ellington was already working for the SEADS, but Navy Coswell (?), the reserves are there. Then they contacted on their own the Marine unit there, just to work things. General Dikes (?) did a great job, he set up his own command post there, he was doing a great job or defending the Dallas Fort/Worth. Again, in a lot of these situations, it is natural for guardsman to be defending their state. Because Air National Guard and Army National Guard have an allegiance to defend their states as well as the country. The governors had responsibilities to defend their states, so again Oregon, Klamath Falls and Portland were guarding Oregon as well as the Northwest. Fresno was guarding all of California and would have also gone up into Southern Oregon if necessary. F: Did most of these people came up on their own or was it a coordinated effort? C: No, they did not fly CAPs without coordination. F: Okay, except for the 113 th Wing in DC. C: After the first 6 to 8 hours, I ' l l say that.General Dikes did a few things on his own too, but... F: Who is he? C: He is the wing commander for the 301s' Fighter Wing. F: Is that in Dallas? C: Fort Worth actually F: (inaudible)

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C: Air Force Reserve, he is a character. If you could interview him, you would get some stories. They have had a lot of situations there because there was a lot of things and again with Crawford, they were very involved with some of the different CAPs and what not for supporting Presidential visits to the ranch. F: How do you spell his name? C: Dyches, Tommy Dyches, Brig Gen 301 FW F: APR, lots of units out there that just came out of the work work hu? C: Yea, again, having been an F-16 instructor at McConnell, a lot of these units had converted and gone through McConnell, so I knew a lot of the different people. F: YouflyF-15'stoo? C: Now I do, but I've flown 16's before. I flew Eagles on active duty, F-4's and F-16's in the guard and now I'm back flying F-15's again. F: In Portland? C: Portland, yes F: Have you done some CAPs?

C: Yes F: Over Portland? C: In the Northwest F: Do you guys get a lot of media attention? C: There were a lot of requests and initially I told people that my goal was to be a Stealth commander. If no one ever hears of my name, we've done our job. Then just before the Olympics Gen Eberhart wanted us to go pro-active so people would be reassured and suddenly I turned into a neon flashing light, I felt like. I have had more people press conferences, I've went and spoke to the Peugeot Sound business travelers association, I'm speaking to retired officers association to assure people that it is safe to travel, that the military is there to defend them. One of the situations, I'll talk to you about the Hawaii air, there was miss information on TV from a miss perception and NORAD encouraged me to have a press conference that afternoon to ensure that it got cleared up before it got blown up out of proportion, so we changed it from a bad situation to where people were reassured. As I go through some of the situations, I'll share a couple of those things.

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F: Okay, let's go ahead and talk about, if you are ready to talk about those situations. I'm interested in ?? a few things that did happen after September 11 th C: The Olympics is a big part. Because the Olympics was our next major - again even before September 11, we new there was going to be a responsibility for the Olympics because of tragedies that have happened at the Olympics in prior years. We just thought their would be some responsibility to help with air defense at the Olympics. Obviously after September 11th it was going to be even greater. Again, we were in a support capacity to Customs for air security and the Secret Service was the overall lead agency for the overall security at the Olympics. So we did a lot of interagency and a lot of team work to support Customs, to ensure the Olympics came off uneventfully, which they did. But there were several situations that were unknown situations where we either in conjunction with or on our own with Customs intercepted airplanes and escorted them to uneventful landings. But there were periods of time where the FAA weren't sure why someone was coming in. The FAA established very strict procedures and if the airlines or private pilots didn't follow those procedures, they weren't allowed to come within 40 miles of Salt Lake City. F: By the time the Olympics took place, did you have some better communication and radar? C: Yes, and we sent a team to Salt Lake City, that were there for the whole six weeks of the Olympics to again work with the FAA, Customs, Secret Service all in one room. We called it the ASOC the Air Security Ops Center and they had a good radar picture there, they had good radios. They were connected to us as well as CONR and to NORAD to ensure the air security of the venue there. I've got a couple of pictures and maps I'll show you that can give you a little bit of a contrast that you may or may not want to include. F: What is ASOC Center? C: Air Security Operations Center F: In that packet do you include something about that? C: I doubt it F: (comments) You sent a team down there from WADS, how many people? C: We sent one team for 3 weeks, and I'd say it was about 12 to 15, and another one for the second three weeks. Col Bonner was there the whole time, as the senior Detco. F: I'm talking to him later. C: Good, he's the expert on what went on there.

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10 F: I can ask him more about that too. That you're coordinating CAPS and.... C: We were coordinating all the security procedures with Customs, with FAA toensure that we did random CAPs and we had certain times that were more critical during the major events when the President was there, the Vice President was there, when different leaders from other countries were there, we were on heightened alert just to be ready to ensure that there were no successful terrorist attacks. Our responsibility through there, there was equal amount of ground security. Again, Secret Service was the overall responsible agency. F: That's really unprecedented.... C: That set the foundation for now what they are using to develop the relationship for national capital region, that the Northeast is establishing to defend Washington DC and it will probably become the way that they will set up the fences for all the major metropolitan areas. So this was the first time that this inner agency relationship wherever they worked together and so they are continuing to use it for other critical areas. F: Does that project of defense of Washington DC have a name? C: National Capital Region. F: National Capital Region. C: NCR, that's, again Northeast would know specifically, but if you talk about NCR they will know that .... F: I need some kind of a buzz word. C: Defense of NCR or NCR defense. Again, the national special security event that went on the same time as the Olympics was the Superbowl. The Southeast did that at New Orleans and they did the same thing, in just a shorter time frame. F: Right C: Because the Olympics was for six weeks whereas the Superbowl was obviously for a little bit more than a day with all of the activities and what not. But all the coordination went into the Southeast and the same type of coordination for the Superbowl and when there is a special event, this coordination between all of these different agencies goes on. F: ?? in California C: It's all in California, in fact a comment was made in the VTC this morning. General McKinley said "the only good baseball is in the West is that what you are saying?" I said "it is a good year to be a wild card." We are going to be ready for high events, high media events. The World Series last year was Arizona and New York so each of those

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situations were covered. So we only had half of the games though because we only covered Arizona. This year we'll have both of the sites. F: This is really a big change

this is really different.

C: We are worried about what goes on, on the inside. Again, we aren't survey ling on the inside though, surveillance is still - the FAA is still watching the traffic and coordinating the traffic, but when there is some anomaly or something unusual, they call us and we are there to support the FAA. F: Are you allowed to talk about how many you have on alert now? C: As far as I know, CONR would be the one who would know. Again NORAD will put out certain information, but the specifics - and if varies, we don't stay it just one set number, whereas before September 11th we had 14 jets on alert at 7 sites and it was well know. Now it varies at different times for different situations and again part of that is just so the terrorist won't know that we are on alert. It's like I couldn't tell people, it wasn't until February that they discovered that we had jets on alert here at McCord. The local reporter was so mad at me for not telling him. We don't have jets on alert at McCord right now but I'm not telling that either because I want them to think - and again, it's not that we are trying to deceive anyone, it's just that we are not going to give specific information - and we move around for security. F: Portland was on alert. C: Yea F: I saw some pictures that VI had taken of some Portland planes. C: We have other airplanes come in here at other times too so it varies. F: You mentioned Mountain Home earlier, now you are even working these active duty guys. C: Yea, and Hill was the primary responsibility for the defense of the Olympics. F: (something about Portland) C: Yes, and the wing commander that is there now was the wing commander during the Olympics, he hasn't left yet. F: What was his name? C: I'll get it for you, I can't think of it right now. I haven't talked to him for a while. F: Okay, I'll contact their PA and ....

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12 C: I'll get it for you.

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F: I really think that there was something unique about (inaudible). What are some of these events that have gone on, that have peaked your interest. C: Early on when we were watching the Dallas/Fort Worth area, Texas area, it was either Saturday or Sunday morning and it was after the Anthrax situation that happened in Washington DC. We got word; FAA reported that a light airplane, civilian airplane was dispensing a white powdery substance in the Texas area. So we scrambled fighters and went out to intercept them, by the time the fighters got there the plane had landed and it wasn't there and they didn't see anything. This white powdery substance was migrating spider webs that were blowing through the air and when it got caught in the ?? of the wing tips, it looked like a white powdery substance coming out of the airplane and so it is one of the unusual situations. Again, all of these are going to uneventful but at the time it was very scary for the people in Texas. It was a very big concern to ourselves if Anthrax is being dispensed. Again that is one of the scenarios... F: Where did it get caught? C: The wing tip bordesy (?) coming off, your husband can explain it, but again it's just like when an airliner lands sometimes you'll see the wash on the side of the runway, these bordesies (?) come out and these migrating spider webs, that's how they pollinate and I mean I've learned things that I'd never imagined. That was when they found this white substance, again they went in to check it and said "they're spider webs". F: Did they intercept it? C: No, he landed F: I haven't heard that one. C: Then just after the situation in Tampa, where the young man crashed into the building

F: yes, yes C: We got a report here in the evening that somebody had made a threat to fly into a large building in Portland. So we scrambled Portland, our coverage, the planes were flying over downtown Portland looking for light airplane that possibly was going to crash into the tallest building in Portland. Then the pilots saw explosions on the ground and they reported it to us, we reported it up the channel. The pilot had a sickening feeling that he had failed, it was very quiet up and down the telephone line when we reported that there were explosions. Then we found out that there was a movie set that was doing planned explosions, happened to be at that time, in the vicinity of downtown Portland and again I've got some background information from the newspapers. But the airplanes were racing around at a low altitude and suddenly people were hearing explosions. So

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13 again it caused quite a stir in Portland. The people in the building that were possibly threatened weren't even aware that there had been a threat against the building. F: Is this completely independent of this going on?

C: Yes F: Oh my goodness C: We later found out that mid afternoon a private pilot was getting gased up at small airport asked the guy what the tallest building in Portland was. The guy responded back ?? (it's probably in the article). He goes "well I'm depressed I think I'll fly into it." He finished pumping the gas, took his money, went home, thought, maybe I should tall somebody, called somebody in the FAA, they immediately upchanneled it. We got it thinking it was something that had just happened and it was actually 3 or 4 hours before hand. As soon as we got it we responded, so but it had actually been 3 or 4 that this threat, and by that time he had flown to wherever he was flying to and landed and was at dinner. But they actually talked to him, they questioned him and it was - the fact that that was the day that they were doing the explosion for the set was just totally coincidental and the pilots, again when the movie comes out, it probably says what the movie is, I don't remember, it will be interesting if that is actually part of the movie, the airplanes flying over. F: The pilots must have been like C: I know him, the wing commander, we spoke at a retired 18lh FW reunion up here in Seattle together we did a team presentation. He said one of the biggest most macho pilots and he felt like he had failed.

F: Who was it? C: Code Manley (?) F: That's unbelievable, that's awful. C: But it was uneventful and yet for a minute there we thought we'd failed. Another situation, a couple months ago, we had a situation where we suddenly had a plane coming out of Phoenix squawking high jack squawk. Again it was flying towards Tuscan, we immediately responded, FAA said they didn't know what was going on. It was a light airplane though, it wasn't an airliner we discovered. We started getting the fighters in position they intercepted, we followed our procedures. Someone was able to call the airport where the fellow students instructor was on the ground. It was a students initial solo and he had the wrong squawk set in. They probably were going through and showing "this is what you never want to squawk and then they didn't change it" So when he took off it was squawking high jack so his initial solo he got intercepted by F-

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16's and that's again one of the articles is in there from the Phoenix paper - it was a very eventful initial solo for that young man. F: Some of these units that you ended up scrambling on this, they are not part of your units? Not part of 1AF? C: That was a non 1AF unit. F: Wow! Things really have changed. C: Yes, the situation where I had to do the press conference afterwards, the Hawaiian air flight from Honolulu to Seattle a bomb threat was called in from Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle to the Port Authority, they contacted the FAA, requested our assistance, we scrambled F- 15' s to go out to escort the airplanes from out over the Pacific Ocean into Seattle. They were able to get out there, they intercepted them well out over the Pacific and they followed them in to an uneventful landing. The bomb threat obviously, nothing ever occurred as a result of it. Again, that morning, I was in here watching on the news the TV footage of the plane landing and the airplanes going around. I was thinking "it was wonderful" until I heard the pilots say "you know why those planes were there, they were there to shoot down that airliner. I said "that isn't why we were there, we were there to provide emergency escort if they lost electrical power, if they lost radios, if they had some damage, the pilots would have been able to help the pilots know what the damage was to bring them in safely. That's why I called a press conference to clarify why the planes were there. I said "if an F-15 or F-16 joined on your wing, it is not always bad, but they are there to help or there to defend, but we're there to do what's necessary. It doesn't mean just for bad reasons, again they were there to assist is necessary." The flight on Monday, they had a United flight, where they had a laptop discovered that wasn't claimed. They thought it was suspicious. We escorted a United flight to a landing here, uneventfully, again to provide emergency support if necessary. F: Now for the Hawaii flight, there was a - the bomb was on the plane? C: It was called in from the ground to somebody at the Port of Seattle authority, that there was a bomb on board and it was going to blow up. They have never figured out anything more that I'm aware of. (Col Cromwell has to leave for a moment) C: Okay, Comm and Radar picture, I'm going to give you this whole packet to take with you. Again, the morning, this shows the radars along the coast and the fighter alert. This now shows the radars that we have now plugged in so that the increase within the interior is dramatic. Again, all of the radios were the boarder and the blue squares and the yellow triangles are the increases in radios. It gives us a picture throughout, it is not to all altitudes and we can't talk to everywhere, but we're also linking through the FAA such that through them we are able to communicate and we have better established procedures than we ever thought we would need. Because we had handled one interior situation

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15 before 9-11 and that was the Payne Stewart tragedy. So again, the Southeast and ourselves had worked that situation. Again, that was a situation where there was nothing we could do and yet we had the flexability to work with the FAA on that - to have fighters in position if there had been something they could have done. Unfortunately, they weren't able to. (explaining a map) This again, shows the venues in the Salt Lake City area. This is the temporary flight restricted area that people weren't allowed into unless they were following the proper procedures. These are the agencies that worked together for the defense at Salt Lake City. This shows the different FAA regional sectors that we work with. Again, we always worked with ones around the boarder. Now we are working with Denver and Salt Lake City a lot more than we every imagined, Kansas City and DFW, these are temporary flight restricted areas around Navy bases here in the Peugeot Sound area. Again when I talk in the local areas, I usually address those. I'm going up to Bremerton to give a speech in a week in a half. So I'll talk about the Bremerton flight restricted areas. This is an OSI program, kind of background, it is something that the Air Force is doing now, eagle eyes is to help us defend from what you see you know what is normal and what is not normal in your local area. If people keep watching when the airplanes take off or land here. Other in nominally they may be going through one of these things here - kind of a neighborhood watch. F: Kind of like the folks here, who kind of tipped off about their neighbors acting strange. C: Yes, so anyway it is an OSI program for that, (showing photographs) Then that's me flying an F-15 that my wife took centered on Mt. Rainer. She caught it perfectly. This is support for the employers, it is a program that is Air Force wide now that they are doing so support the program. A quote by Gen Bush at the one year anniversary, and the new Northern Command is going to be very influential. F: Yea, we are going to talk about that in the book too. C: The other - the FAA coordination has increased a lot. We have had people come in here as well as we've gone places. We've had air battle managers pulling duties within the FAA sectors, to that the military presence is there to help with the coordination. Inner agency relationships, again we talked a little bit about that in relation to the Olympics, but it is ongoing to just assure Northern Command, Gen Eberhart was just here and the inner agency relationships are critical for Northern Command success, they are land and sea. Again, NORAD is the component of North Com for the air primarily. The maritime and the land responsibilities will also involve a lot of other agencies. But NorthCom will support, they won't be the lead agency. It is just like NORAD is supporting the FAA, NorthCom will support other government agencies to ensure that we defend America on air, land, and sea. Systems upgrade wise, that NORAD continues to sweep, was the thing that allowed us to bring the radars, FAA radars on the interior into each of the sector facilities and give us the picture on the inside as well as the external picture. The communications was a different project that allowed us to bring in the FAA radios, to allow us to be able to talk. So now we can see and talk, but the FAA is primarily responsible for controlling the airspace. We are there assisting the FAA, but we are not

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16 in control. So again, it that support relationship, with the military supporting a civilian federal agency to ensure that things are accomplished safely within the US. F: Tell me about the good job your people have done. C: Again, the dedication and commitment, the professionalism that they have demonstrated throughout the first year and continue is based on all the training and the many years of being prepared for the Cold War threat, allowed us to be prepared for this new terrorism threat and their commitment to guarding Americas skies has been phenomenal to the importance of our mission. We always considered our mission to be vital, but with the Cold War being over and the Russian threat being substantially reduced, many didn't see the mission as being that vital. Unfortunately, it took a very dramatic tragedy to help everyone to realize this mission is always important. The ' analogy that I use is the C-17's that we use at McChord, we want to ensure that they come home safe to their families. That no matter where in the world they fly, we ensure that Americas Western skies will be safe when they return home and when they bring our troops home from overseas. We want to ensure that it is safe for them to come back and they don't have to worry about their families while they are gone. F: Do you have anything else at this time. C: The other thing I wrote down, you put down about the big cities. Just to show you the magnitude, again just to show you the need, Washington DC, New York City, Chicago. In the West, just along the West Coast, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, LA and SanDiego, yea I'm covering you too. F: Thank you C: So the West Coast has always been there because of being on the coast. Additionally, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, El Paso, San Antonio, Denver, Colorado Springs, Wichita, Oklahoma City, Mount Rushmore, because of the vice president, Jackson hole, Wyoming, those are all key cities and in one case a national monument. We are ready to defend any part of America in our case, the Western part. But obviously the nuclear facilities, the chemical facilities that the terrorist might use to further their means are also priorities to ensure that we can respond to support the FAA or customs. To not allow the terrorist to not allow the terrorist to be successful in a terrorist type of scenario that would again be even more unimaginable than what happened on the l l l h of September. END OF INTERVIEW End of Tape Side A Tape Side B is blank

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