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One
week after The Memory Hole first reported
this story (14 August 2002), it was picked
up by the Associated Press in the
following article:
Agency planned drill for plane crash
last Sept. 11
Associated Press
August 22, 2002
WASHINGTON -- In what the government
describes as a bizarre coincidence, one
U.S. intelligence agency was planning an
exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant
aircraft crashed into one of its
buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism
-- it was to be a simulated accident.
Officials at the Chantilly, Va.-based
National Reconnaissance Office had
scheduled an exercise that morning in
which a small corporate jet crashed into
one of the four towers at the agency's
headquarters building after experiencing a
mechanical failure.
The agency is about four miles from the
runways of Washington Dulles International
Airport.
Agency chiefs came up with the scenario
to test employees' ability to respond to a
disaster, said spokesman Art Haubold. To
simulate the damage from the plane, some
stairwells and exits were to be closed
off, forcing employees to find other ways
to evacuate the building.
"It was just an incredible
coincidence that this happened to involve
an aircraft crashing into our
facility," Haubold said. "As
soon as the real world events began, we
canceled the exercise."
Terrorism was to play no role in the
exercise, which had been planned for
several months, he said.
Adding to the coincidence, American
Airlines Flight 77 -- the Boeing 767 that
was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon
-- took off from Dulles at 8:10 a.m. on
Sept. 11, 50 minutes before the exercise
was to begin. It struck the Pentagon
around 9:40 a.m., killing 64 aboard the
plane and 125 on the ground.
The National Reconnaissance Office
operates many of the nation's spy
satellites. It draws its personnel from
the military and the CIA.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, most of the
3,000 people who work at agency
headquarters were sent home, save for some
essential personnel, Haubold said.
An announcement for an upcoming
homeland security conference in Chicago
first noted the exercise.
In a promotion for speaker John Fulton,
a CIA officer assigned as chief of NRO's
strategic gaming division, the
announcement says, "On the morning of
September 11th 2001, Mr. Fulton and his
team ... were running a pre-planned
simulation to explore the emergency
response issues that would be created if a
plane were to strike a building. Little
did they know that the scenario would come
true in a dramatic way that day."
The conference is being run by the
National Law Enforcement and Security
Institute.
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