The June 1st directive may have played a role in disabling air defense against the 9/11/01 attack by stripping commanders in the field of the authority to scramble interceptors to pursue the off-coarse jetliners. However, as Michael Ruppert points out in Chapter 19 of Crossing the Rubicon, that order by itself could not have been counted on to assure that none of the flights would be intercepted.

e x c e r p t

title: Wargames and High Tech: Paralyzing the System to Pull off the Attacks

authors: Michael C. Ruppert

Military discipline can be severe, but the absence of orders to scramble would never have provided our suspects with a guarantee that pilots and commanders would not respond on 9/11 and stop the attacks anyway. For an event like 9/11, where the American homeland was under attack and American citizens were dying, that would be the equivalent of asking a prizefighter who had trained his entire life not to enter the ring for his first-ever title fight -- a championship match -- when the opportunity presented itself and his or her name was called.

site: www.frontthewilderness.com page: www.newsociety.com/News/rub_war.pdf

OilEmpire.us was one of the first websites to publish a run-down of documentation on the war games in play during the attack. That site provides the following table summarizing published reports of the war games.

e x c e r p t

title: 'War Games' by the US military on 9/11 ...

authors: Mark Robinowitz

War Game	Attribution	Description
CIA / National Reconnaissance Office "plane into building" exercise	Associated Press, August 21, 2002	simulation of a plane crash into the NRO headquarters (near Dulles Airport, Virginia) - this was not a "terrorism" exercise but it did result in the evacuation of most NRO employees just as the "real" 9/11 was taking place
Vigilant Guardian	Aviation Week & Space Technology, June 3, 2002, Newhouse News, others (these articles are reproduced below)	The publicly available mass media articles about these exercises state that they were similar enough to the actual events that top NORAD personnel were confused, not sure if 9/11 was "part of the drill" or a real world event.
Vigilant Warrior	Richard Clark, "Against All Enemies" (March 2004)	referenced by Richard Clark, but other information is not publicly available. Vigilant Guardian and Vigilant Warrior were probably related exercises (defender and attacker).
Northern Vigilance	Toronto Star, December 9, 2001	"Operation Northern Vigilance, planned months in advance, involves deploying fighter jets to locations in Alaska and northern Canada." This ensured that there would be fewer fighter planes available to protect the East Coast on 9/11. Simulated information was fed into radar screens - is this what confused the air defenses that morning?
Northern Guardian	Toronto Star, December 9, 2001	only mention was in the early edition of this article, no details publicly available (probably related to Northern Vigilance)
Tripod II US Department of Justice and City of New York	Rudolph Giuliani's testimony to the 9/11 Commission, May 2004	biowar exercise in New York City scheduled for September 12, 2001

site: www.oilempire.us page: www.oilempire.us/wargames.html

The most extensive account of military exercises in play before and during the attack of 9/11 is contained on the Complete 911 Timeline.

s u m m a r y

title: Military Exercises Up to 9/11

This rundown lists a series of exercises and operations conducted in the years and months preceding the attack, and on the day of the attack itself.

site: www.cooperativeresearch.org page: www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=militaryExercises

page last modified: 2008-08-08

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