Stand-DownScramblingStoryAfterOneYear

From 911Encyclopedia:

Almost synchronised with the anniversary of the Sep11th attacks, the Scrambling story became yet another new twist: From an MSNBC Transcript Aug. 19 , 2002 `Ashleigh Banfield: On Location' "...meet the first two men scrambled into the sky, racing toward the World Trade Center to try to stop the terrorists... ...Within minutes after terrorists hijacked the first passenger planes out of Boston, the FAA alerted NORAD. Air Force fighter jets were scrambled but too late to intercept the suicide hijackers who flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. ...COMMANDER DAVE FEATON, NORAD: We're looking for space and missile launches throughout the world. ...COL. CORKY VON KESSEL, NORAD: Right. We've sanitized, covered up all of our classifieds so that you all can come in. LT. COL. WILLIAM GLOVER, DIR., NORAD WARNING CTR: We had about 50 or 60 folks in here, and as you can imagine, we ran the gamut of different feelings in here. We-whenever we saw the first sighting of the first aircraft going into the World Trade Center, there was a dead silence in here, and you could hear a pin drop. People were thinking, they were thinking what's going on? You know, how could this happen? BANFIELD (MSNBC) : This colonel and this major, whose names can't be released, were the two pilots on alert at Otis National Air Base (ph) on September 11th. They were charged with protecting the skies above the northeast that fateful morning. What was supposed to be just another routine shift, would turn out to be a day they would never forget. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Came in here and started to do some-you know, my normal every day scheduling work. And sometime after 8:30, we got a phone call, I guess first went to the control tower and then to our command post about a possible hijacking. We get a lot of false alarms, but I've only been here two years, never heard the word hijack thrown around before, so we thought it was the real thing. Source: http://www.msnbc.com/news/796625.asp