T8 B22 Filson Materials Fdr- Remainder Of June 25 2002 Interview With Col Marr083

Remainder of interview with Col. Bob Marr, NEADS commander, June 25, 2002.

Rebecca, the tape sounds bad and messes up in the middle. Fortunately, I didn't lose much ... this is the rest of the interview. I'm copying from my notes here; I put quotes around direct quotes. Good luck. Also, you might contact Col. Marr for a copy of his briefing. Leslie

UAL 93 was going west over Cleveland, there was nothing between him and D.C. ... if he turned around to D.C. So we put Langley up toward D.C. (two alert F-16s from Fargo ANG) The pilots thought they were going to NYC The pilots see the smoke of the Pentagon After scrambling Langley we hear from the FAA that flight 77 is out of coverage. Flight 77 is on nobody's radar anywhere, not even skin paint At that point, unable to pick up anything on radar We knew 77 was coming toward Washington pretty quickly and didn't find out until later that a C130, callsign Gopher 106, was taking off out of Andrews and headed toward Michigan An approach controller in Washington had picked up a high-speed track and Gopher 106 saw the airliner coming in Now flight 93 can be seen on the scopes over Cleveland "Now I'm thinking. America is under attack. I think he's looking for a target of opportunity." Flight 93 is pointed toward D.C.. I already have F-16s (Fargo) in the air There is a dense corridor of aircraft between Washington and Boston - I've got traditional Soviet bomber routes and the Langley guys have to go over water now to get over the corridor Langley was well on their way to D.C. when flight 93 turned around we pick it up before it hits Pennsylvania - it drops 1.200 feet in 12 seconds Gopher 106. the C130. sees the Pentagon get hit and the plane flown into the field of Pennsylvania By the time UAL 93 his the ground. Langley jets (Fargo) was over D.C., 93 or 96 miles away from impact point "UAL 93 would not have hit D.C.. he would have been engaged and shot down before he got there." FAA put hold on air traffic, only planes in air were alert jets 1 turned to the staff and said what more can we do? Let's get everyone in the air and see what they can provide us Syracuse was available - told them we've got to get them up there to provide coverage Syracuse told us they could arm guns on the F-16s in 10 minutes

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They said in 30 minutes they could get heat-seekers on the wings; they said give us an hour and we can put radar missiles on board The Otis guys had been on a training mission Some went up unarmed "What do I do?" One guy from Otis had newborn twins and had just built a house. "I was telling this guy he might have to give his life up for this." I was realizing the impact that this day had on so many different lives In two hours we had jets over all the major population centers in the Northeast... when we called up they all said you bet Pretty soon, fighters were all over the sky, like you kicked a hornet's next The 113W in D.C. had 3 fighters in the air and one had enough gas to go back up...it's the closest fighter unit to the capital. A secret service agent had called the unit and said get aircraft in the air, fighters from Langley (Fargo) was up at a higher altitude. D.C. took off at about 10:30 or so. We had a high CAP and low CAP and eventually the two groups got coordinated At one point, we had 21 unaccounted for aircraft that weren't talking to FAA centers, not on flight plan or otherwise unaccounted for There was report of another light aircraft that had hit close to Camp David, a number of false reports out there The fog of war had set in - what was valid, what was a guess? Anything from overseas had to be diverted. We called American Airlines and the flight we were concerned about had gone back to Madrid At one time, there were at least nine hijacking reports Not all squawking We just didn't know - we were in foreign territory. We are used to protecting the shores. way out overseas. Our processes and procedures weren't designed for this By the afternoon, only military tankers were up in the air "Everybody was really fired up ... in my area of responsibility there is only one active duty fighter wing, all the rest are Air National Guard. The mindset of a lot of old military guys is that the Guard is the standby force ... but the Guard guys got up there very, very quickly." "All I was doing was getting any forces someone would give to me. I had the structure and the eyes, all I needed was the weapons." I left at 11 or 12 that night.

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