Agency planned exercise on Sept. 11 built around a plane crashing into a building
JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, August 21, 2002
(08-21) 15:08 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
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 would crash 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 would
crash 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. No actual plane was to be
involved -- to simulate the damage from the crash, 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.
