T8 B22 Filson Materials Fdr- Interview Of Lt Col Dawne Deskins- Leslie Filson

Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins, in battle Cab, but also a mission crew commander on 9/11 atNEADS

when call came in, on duty mcc was not on position Jeremy saw me in battle cab and called me, I used to be his flight commander he called me up in the battle cab and said I have boston center on the line and they say they've got a hijacked aircraft 1 came out of the battle cab and started walking toward Jeremy and first thought was he had it confused w/an exercise input so as I'm walking toward him, I said are you sure, it's prob an exercise input and he indicated to me no, I am sure Phone line that was lit up was our faa line - the direct hotline to faa centers, once I saw that line lit up at that point I realized it is not an input Not unusual for that line to ring Bostcon center calls all the x I picked up thephone and identified who I was and guy on other end said he had a hijacked and could we get some mili aircraft up to assist It had deviated and appeared to be going toward nyc area, first thing 1 asked hm, I'm right at the scope, I sadi can you give me a posit He gave me a lat and long and I typed it into the console and nothing came up, nothing in that general area Asked him who would be controlling it and they would have to, becuz aircraft had turned its transponder off and we didn't' see it on our radar Kept our line open w/him (Kept line opne w/Boston Center) Put phone down and went ahead and put otis on battle stations and we recalled the rest of the crew back into the ops room Eveyrone came into ops room, I briefed the senior director, maj. Fox, on what was going on and who was on the line, Briefed mcc as well Went up to battle cab to brief col. Marr on it At this pt our mindset would have been the 1970s vintage hijack, we didn't have some huge concern that this aricraft was going to crsh Thinking, get plane sup, escort it and figure out what airport he's going to land at Col. Marr siad let's assist them Scrambled otis And he coordinated that w/gen amold At that point everything was rolling, so I used To work in pa so I went and called don arias at laf becuz this was a big story, we had a hijacked aircraft in the neast area

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I came back in ops room and we someone from ops floor said and somebody said an aircraft crashed into the wtc, now we didn't know that was aa 11, and our first question was, are we talking about this hijacked aircraft? ID was asking what type of aircraft was it? And be said AA 11 was still airborne, so it must have been a weird coincidence 1 remember thinking oh boy this is starting to sound really bad, didn't want to jumpt o any conclusions but it seemed logical that's what happened that the hijacked aircraft had hit the wtc, Thought it was still an accident though if it had been the hijakced aircraft Still have otis coming up, 1 called pa again and this x when I talked to don and told him an aircraft hit the wtc,think it was the hijacked and don said to me, oh my god, my brother works in the tc, 1 said don you call your bro and I'm going back to the ops floor and 1 said clal your brother Entire ops room - everybody is in ops room, I'm up in battle cab, evryone's trying to figure out what's going on and finding status of otis and we hear that another craft has hit the other tower That one came out of nowhere, we didn't knowthere was asecond hijack So then it goes from just being concerned about this 1 aircraft that had an accicent to this huge Sounds intentional, not like an accident Boston center was saying they still showed aa 11 airborne somewhere so we think that there's a third one hijacked because we think it's aa 11 Everyone's looking at scopes, trying to take last lat and long I had and deadreckon south thinking what could another potential target be and we're thinking the d.c. area, projected out the flight path and started looking at tracks around that area I And col. Marr had directed ops floor to scramble langley to support n.y. - we didn't see an imminent threat \o d.c.. at that pt. V, Looing at the scope me and a master sgt. Such a needle in the haystack so everyone was looking to see if they could find a nonsquawking aircragf that looked like aa 11, but as we found out later, it had crashed long before 1 had scope focused in on d.c. area and got blips of this aircraft that appeared to be going in a turn around d.c.. it was going fast for where it was located and I remember looking at the guy next to me and going what is that? (with emphasis) I probably got 6 or 7 radar returns on it and it faded and it was just gone and you're thinking what just happened and you get this feeling in your pit of your stom and sy, that's another one V^ I'm thinking, how many aircraft are hijacked and faa was reporting to us aircraft not responding to them at \e pt. We counted a total of 5 potential hijaks and had one around Cleveland that actually landed and then \l 93 and we knew he was heading west, so what we stared doing

\^All we had was otis andlangley so we just started opening our phone rosters and tryiing to figure which diff af units there were on the interior of th us. And we calle d these units individually seeing if they could get planes up. Marr coordinated w/syracuse and I was calling a traning unit in Springfield ohio that had f!6s and they wre delployed to alpina and we called them up there, Calling different units tryng to get aircraft airbrone, nobody knows where 93 was going, 1 thought he was going to Chicago

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What's the potential? Then 93 turned and it faded So again were't trying to find it on the scope and get different aircrfat on the interior airborne na dhave additional aircraft coming up over d.c. to preotect thed.c. area and iarcraft coming up on controllers' frequence that we didn't call, the ss called them When andrews came up 1 remember maj. Fox saying I've got some f!6s here, did we call them? No, but just put them in cap over d.dc Trying to get aircraft airborne for 93 and intifial report was that an aircraft had crashed west of camp david and that was acctually 93 in shanksville, pa., but reference everything off of d.c. area At that point, we had gone to defcon 3 I've been in 18 years and I've never seen defcon 4, let along defcon3, I've got scatana, landing all the aircraft nad we thought there were still more coming Took a couple hours to say 93 was the last one The whole time trying to defend different cities and just get aircraft up and amazing thing in allof this we were just calling these guard units and they were loading aircraft and armamaent and putting pilots in those jets and gettting them up it was just amazing W/in an hour getting aircraft up, fully loaded At the same x all this going on, some of the centers getting bomb threats, we had at least two of the faa centers call in Fa primarily coordinates w/our id section They're doing all coordination for trying to find these aircraft plus receiving all thse reports of possible hijacking then getting calls that the centers are getting bomb threats and evacuating

We switched gears at a certain pt., it wasn't a concious decision, when 77 hit the second trade cneter and we heard there were still hijakcs airborne, we swithced gears from pecetime to wartime under attack It changed our response, we practice wartime procedurees all thetime, we arne't doing this isolated incident of a single hijacked aircraft. It changed from that to ok, we have these different attackers out there and we need to defend our portion of the united states against that We just couldn't see, esp. w/ual 93, as it was proceeding on the interior it was really difficult as it got further away from the periphery of our aor When it turned and faded it had gone out of our range, if we'd had a radar tied on on that day No assets there anyway Norad contingency suite supplements Q93 It is certainly a huge enhancer as far as what we are able to see now, as far as whwat we were able to see on that day." My best friend worked at the pentagon and for everybody, like when 1 called don and his bro was involved and heard pent was hit, there were so many diff waysthis was personal for so many people

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One of biggest things I remember thinking on that day, we were so fortunate to have been in an exercise, we really were, everyone in the command chain were there, gen arnold and eberhart were easily reached and al ot of that coordiantion flowed really well, We already had people set up for 12-hour shifts and we didn't have to come up w/that, it was already set up 1 remember as day went onand we went intoevening and new crew ame in to relieve all the dif positions it was really difficutl to lave Which sounds really weird but you just had this feeling, you'd gone thru this entiere event and there was al ot of info we had that we didn't necessarily write down soomewher,e as long as we were present, we could turn around an dsnwer that question When I elft, I was afraid there was something I was going to miss, something I would need to tell someone that I didn't' Afraid to let go of it, holding on so tight since that morning and just going and going and goin g and to get in the car andgo home and be a normal person and drive home just seemed so foreign at that point It was a matter of- once we had swithced gears and were in defcon 3 we figured out what we needed to do, we were really, really busy but we knew what we needed to do. Geez, what are we going to do now? It was fairly focused, not chaotic, everyone kind of swithced to their wartime mode and said these are the diffeme things we need to do

People who had the information were right down to staff sgts. And airmen we didn't have people to turn around and say and staff sgt. So and so give the info to It. Col., and said, you understand what's goin gon, you need to call this unit and coordinate Citizne soldier - visions of guys running to their jets coming straight out of wherever they were working Mindset of the guard - being there to defend the country whenever they're called on

Scatana - we would do exercises where we practiced implementing scatana,had been brought up several times, can you imagine us doing this? The weird thing, about 2 in the afternoon and looked at radar scope and it looked like it was 2 o clock in the morning, nobody flying except fighters in capsover different cities, a strange feeling over and I've worked at 2 in the morning, just too weird to be happenign in the middle of the day

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