T8 B22 Filson Materials Fdr- Interview Of Lt Col Tim Duffy- Leslie Filson

Interview with Lt Col Tim Duffy and Leslie Filson no date Beginning of Tape side A (This is a phone interview, sounds like airplanes in the background. Also she is typing the tape is very hard to understand) F: Your name is Tim right?

T: Yes F: Lt Col Tim Duffy, okay since you know what I'm looking on and I already talked to Chris McDonald and he was cool with me calling you guys. So as long as you're okay with it well get started. T: Okay F: How long have you been with the unit there? T: Little over 10 years. F: Part time? T: Yes, go back 1 year, I was on active duty for 2 years and back here for 1????? F: You have been there awhile, are from there originally? T: Yes, I am, when I was active duty, I was all over. F: So you're an airline pilot as well? T: Yes, ma'am F: What I want to talk to you about is the initial response on September 1 l l h , when you guys got the scramble order from the Northeast there. From what I here, you actually got a phone call from JCA(?). T: It didn't happen the way it was suppose to (inaudible) the way it came down was (inaudible) contacted right away and as soon as we hear there was something about a high jack we got moving. We're proactive, we were proactively moving before the air division had any idea about it. F: I need to ask you. Do you mind if I tape this phone conversation? I'm sorry, I meant to tell you that the minute we got on the phone, just so I can have a copy of all my notes. It's all going to be unclas stuff anyway.

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T: Right F: Okay, so tell me kind of the sequence of events and what happened. I'll just ask you stuff from there, about when you guys got the first call and what you saw. T: Well, we swap out at around 8 o'clock in the morning, so I showed up at 7:30 to set up my material and get all my flying gear together, (inaudible) so about 8:00 we were ready to go and the guys were getting ready to fly the morning go and it was a 9:00 take off. One of the guys that was flying with me was suppose to be in the morning go, so nasty(?) was just going to hold the alert for him until he got back on the ground then he was going to resume his alert. I guess at about 8:30, 8:35 out by the ops desk I got a phone call from one of the sergeants he said you've got a phone call. I just assumed it was my wife, nobody else knew I was here. I said "who is it", he said "it's Otis tower, something about a highjacking", that's not something that we throw around blatantly, that word, so I had a radio with me and I called for a (?) suit up right away. So I was a little bit ahead of nasty getting suited up, probably about a minute or two, so when he came in I said "have you ever done a highjacking before?" he said "no", I said "I have" he said "okay you get the lead." F: Let me back up on the highjacking, I think Col Marr told me you flew a highjacking in 92? T: Yea F: Real quick, I guess that... T: 92, the jet that was highjacked in the Kennedy. F: That's kind of weird, okay , go ahead. T: He said "okay you've got the lead" ?? command post because the sergeant at the desk as soon as 1 called for the suit up, I just yelled to him "patch us through to the command post." The squadron commander Tracer (?) was supervisor of flying that day, so he was in the command post already, 1 told him "I'm #1 and nasty is gong to be #2" at the time, he was on the phone trying to get if the air division was being notified yet. F: Who is the squadron commander again? T: He was at the time, he's not here anymore, he's retired moved down to Washington F: Okay T: Lt Col John Tracy F: So he's trying to get in touch with the Northeast then?

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T: When I run in, I'm all suited up and he has a phone in both ears, but he looked at me, I told him "I'm 1 Nasty is 2" he said "this looks like the real thing." It is American 757 on route to California. I said "okay, we're going to the jets" so at that point, I ran out and told Nasty "?? the truck let's go straight to the planes" so we hopped in the truck and going out to the alert jets, we were about half way there when we got battle station, which at that point now the air division was in the loop on what's ?? F: When you are at battle stations, am I correct, you see a light that indicates that? T: Yes, when we run out there ??? in the way, but when the horn goes off, we have a large PA that goes off and we also have radios that we carry with us all the time. They go off and say "off kilo 1 and 2 battle stations" and then when we get out there, they have like stop lights, red, green, yellow and depending on what light is on tells us what status we are in. F: So you actually at this point, you here there is an American 67, so you know something is pretty serious? T: Righl now it is a suspected highjacking. We are not sure what the problem is, I mean it was one of prettiest days I'd ever flown, literally not a cloud in the sky, visibility was probably better than 100 miles.

F: Wow T: It was funny when I was driving in that morning, I knew I wasn't on the flying schedule and 1 was "what a day to go flying" it was a beautiful fall morning, just crystal clear. F: If you don't mind me asking .

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3/11 P e r s o n a l P r i v a c y

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I'm just trying to find out, so what's happening next.'

T: We are in the jets strapped in but we're not started, that's a battle station ? F: You have been notified and you know this is looking fairly serious. T: We are at battle stations now and basically we are prepped to get scrambled, so we're standing by and just waiting. We were there about 4 minutes or so, 1 had enough time tell a crew chief what's going on. I'm all strapped in, they were like "what's up?" I got a chance to fill them in on the suspected high jacking out of Boston at 67, you know I had to go through all that and tell them, if we can and if we have time to let the crew chiefs know what we are doing. Then the horn went off, we went into a scramble, the lights changed. F: From what I heard about the time line, you guys were scrambling about the same time the first plane hit. T: Yea, we got the scramble order at 8:47, which is right when American hit.

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F: Heard you guys were pushing it up pretty fast trying to get there., at this point it is still suspected, you don't really know what has happened. T: Yea, this is one of those things that I can't really explain why I did it the way I did. You know we took off, I left it in after burner the whole time. So we climbed up ??? going up toward Long Island (inaudible) at the time I just wanted to get there and see what was going on. We were high enough ?? that we wouldn't do any damage to anybody, then I figured out if anybody cares later, I could probably take the heat for trying to get there quickly. Again, we had no idea what we were going towards. We figured we were going to help somebody. Let's get there quickly and see what the status is of the situation. F: Did you have like intuition? You said you can't explain why, you just felt the suspected highjacking it's important to do what we could? T: Yea, and I had the Weapons officer say "why did you leave it flowing the whole way? That's not our standard procedure, that's not what we normally do." I said, "I don't know, I can't give you a good answer." F: That's interesting anyway. Okay, so you are going as fast as you can go, full afterburner and T: We get up to altitude and I call for ???? to try to find out where the contact is. Bogy is unidentified aircraft ??? I'm still trying to find out where he is or where the plane is. They say "here contact over ??" F: Are you calling for NEADS to get this information?

T: Yes F: Okay T: We've already checked and authenticated and gone through all that with them. As soon as I check in I authenticate to make sure I've got the right person. Then we authenticate any change to our status, (inaudible) So they told me contact ?? which I don't realize that American has already hit. I think I'm still chasing the American and so I talk to ?? over Kennedy, and we're just going down right down over Long Island and about three or four minutes later, I still have my head down on the scope and I call ?? again and right then they said the second aircraft just hit the World Trade Center, (inaudible), I looked out there and we were about 60 to 70 miles outside Manhattan and I could see the towers burning. F: I know you've talked about it a lot, but what are you thinking at this point? T: Right then, I look up and said "okay, obviously everything just changed" that from my personal mind set that we took off to go help somebody then we look up and see it burning and say "okay now people are dicing." It is kind of hard to explain, basically

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you switch into the combat mind set at that point. You take it real serious real fast, even more so than when it was when you were going to go help somebody, (inaudible) what you really have to do and you start getting emotional but you just have to put that aside, because you don't have time for it. F: You probably have had experience flying in the desert and stuff too? T: Yea, Desert Storm, (inaudible) and all that. So you just crawl back at least for me personally, into that mind set. F: It's in your country. T: Yea, but it didn't matter, it was very surreal kind of experience as far as flying over Central Park at 1000 feet and 500 knots or whatever we were doing to identify (inaudible) that's just wrong, you know. You should never be doing this over downtown Manhattan, (inaudible) getting down on the ground (inaudible) and you have special ?? and the towers building around behind it. As soon as I saw the towers were burning (inaudible) what do you want me to do next. What do you need from me right this second? We had the airspace just off of Long Island (inaudible) I said "how about if we just jump into the warning area ?? 105, I'll hold the Northwest corner ?? Kennedy basically. I said "let's hold here" (inaudible) F: Did you have the tanker there yet from Maine? T: The tanker was scheduled for the training ?? that morning. F: That was lucky? T: Yea, it was just a coincidence. F: (inaudible) T: We had two tanks of gas. F: ?? at this point, I guess it wasn't until after 93 crashed that you had clearance to shoot an airliner if you have to. So you guys are kind of up there, can you say you were confused or didn't know what the heck to do? T: No, at this point, you sit and look at it and we are probably where we need to be. I'm only 40 or 50 miles outside the city. It is clear in a million, right now we are just waiting for guidance. We're here and as close as we can be, "what do you want us to do?" I was surprised, it was a couple of minutes ?? before they came back on. I just came up and said "NORAD just took control of all of the airspace in the country and they are directing the combat air patrols." I said "okay", I called Boston Center???, I didn't ask anyone (inaudible) "combat air patrol I need in lower" he brought me down to 11,000 feet and I told him "that isn't good enough, I need in lower" so he ?? me over to New York tracon

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(?), so I called up tracon (?) told him who I was, said I was over Manhattan and I needed lower, he came back and said "you are cleared all altitudes" which is perfect. So that meant they basically gave us the airspace. F: Kind of amazing. T: Yea, it was, it was exactly what I needed right then. I needed to figure out a plan and . I'm coming over to the buildings, I need to go check out what is going on and figure out how we are going to orchestrate ourselves and the resources that we have to do this right. Make sure there is no more - him giving me all the airspace really helped out a lot. F: Tracon (?) is the center? T: No, it is the terminal approach control for the three airports, they handle all the sequencing of aircraft in the low altitude, which falls around LaGuardia and Kennedy. . F: Okay, now that it's over a year later now. What kind of effect did this have on you? T: I was surprised at the university, it was a lot harder than I thought. I think for the most part we were out just doing our jobs, (inaudible) we were just doing what we do, I think people make it out to be a little bit bigger than what it was. (inaudible) so once we set up the CAPs, we were really busy doing that (inaudible) there was a lot of unidentified planes at that point, a lot of confusion between both the air division and ?? they both had us ?? on different contacts to identify them and turn them away from the area and I identify them and try to get them on the ground. F: So you are getting calls from? T: Both radios F: (inaudible) You are getting directions from two different sources. T: Right F: That must have been confusing? T: No, just what we did was ??? with one of us always over the city. Nasty had mentioned that we had a tanker in the airspace. So I called up ?? and said "we'd like that tanker, put him over Kennedy at 20,000 feet. They told me to stand by and we'll come up and get gas as needed. That left one of us always over the city while the other one is running an intercept or going to get gas or whatever, (inaudible) then we used all the gas from that tanker over the hours and then he ended up diverting, he had to go back home. F: I talked to those guys

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T: Then we got a KC-10 that was coming back I guess from Europe. Our guys in Boston basically we sent them down to New York so then we had more gas available to us, so it worked out real well. F: How long did it take some other air refueling guys to come up and join you? T: We took off about 8:50 or so. The other air refuelers came up around 12:30 F: You and Nasty were just flying around up there(inaudible) T: We were pretty busy intercepting up there but we got it, ?? went down to a couple hundred feet, helicopters were down there and they wanted us to go down and identify who they were. All of the sudden you get contacts coming toward the city that are unidenfied and aren't talking to anybody and we were getting real nervous. F: So I suppose unfortunately, you witnessed the towers collapsing? T: Actually, the South tower collapsed, we were both over by Kennedy. I just looked over my shoulder and all of the sudden, I could see all of Manhattan (inaudible) they came back a minute later and said that the South tower had collapsed. I thought it had fallen over, I didn't realize who it exploded. So we went over by Kennedy and turned a plane away that was over there and them I was going to go back and check out the tower because we had somebody coming down the Hudson that was unidentified, so we ran another intercept. It took a few minutes to get everything done. I'm going to go check out the North tower and see how it's doing. So I flew by (inaudible) it looked like the top floor was just going burn out. I didn't think there was anyway of saving anybody that was above the hit line there. Where the plane went in, there was just so much smoke, (inaudible) I just couldn't imagine, (inaudible) I was looking straight at it, I thought maybe they would be able to save it (inaudible) I realized it was exploding right before my eyes. F: It must have been horrible T: Yes, it was the sickest feeling I've ever had in a plane, (inaudible) F: I appreciate you talking about it. It is important to have this stuff down. T: You can't imagine how many interviews I've done. (conversation about people calling him at home for interviews) T: I think there was only one thing that we disagreed on the whole day and that was, it was sometime before the towers had gone down. We'd got a call on (inaudible) are you going to be clear to shoot down the next high jack attack. I was flying right by the towers at that time, they were both still up. They guy said "do you have a problem with that?" I

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said "no, no I don't." Again (inaudible) went we came back and started talking about it that is what we disagreed on. F: I'm happy you didn't have to make that kind of decision. T: Yea, me too. That was a big ?? "what would you have done?" I said "I would have taken it out." F: You kind of have a choice, but that is your job. T: Plus, I kind of took offense when the guy said "do you have a call on that?" I said "it is a little late to ask me that now." Then at some point later in the day (inaudible) in DC. That was kind of hard to imagine, (inaudible) F: I don't know if I have any other questions for you right now. I know you have a really busy schedule and everything, but if I come up with something else, can I call you back? T: Sure I don't know if I'll be here that much, just because I'm a traditional guardsman. F: Okay, I can email you and maybe get the questions from you that way. Thanks a lot for calling, I really appreciate it. You may be sick of telling this but I think it is very interesting for this project. T: Your welcome F: Okay, thank you very much, bye bye. END OF INTERVIEW End of Tape Side A Tape Side B is blank

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