So How Come

the president who sat in the classroom on the morning of 9/11 and knew that a second plane hit the WTC didn't call for an Emergency Alert System (EAS) (You know that "This is only a test, this is only a test.. if this were an actual emergency....") in the NYC area or for the whole country for that matter?

Only the president can issue a National Emergency Alert and the governor of NYS could have issued one locally. "Citizens of NY City and surrounding areas, please duck." How did they know that there weren't any other planes headed for New York City or anywhere else for that matter? If this wasn't a national emergency, what would constitute one?

Interestingly, Captain Deborah Loewer, the director of the White House Situation Room, the White House's crisis-management center, was the first person to inform President Bush that terrorism had struck New York City the morning of Sept 11 before he entered the elementary school. She watched the second plane hit, informed Card and told him it was terrorism. Card then told Bush (that famous picture deer in headlights picture) that it was terrorism. If she is the director of the WH crisis-management center, how come she didn't think about having the president issue an EAS?

Wouldn't it have been wise to interrupt cable broadcasting and public television (sesame street) to warn people to duck or not bother to take the train to work in Manhattan that morning? Bush's advisors who were there with him didn't even clue him in to this, I guess. Well obviously not by the looks of the video. I was sitting here watching local NYC broadcasting on the morning of 9/11 and I did notice that the Emergency Alert System was not used. I switched to cable stations and they were still running regular programming the morning of 9/11. I guess whomever was watching cable decorating shows that morning missed all the action.

And how come Bush wasn't evacuated from that elementary school? Were not the children in possible danger? Oh wait, Govenor Jeb Bush already activated units of the Florida National Guard on Sept. 7, 2001 via Executive Order Number 01-261. That's strangely coincidental. Wasn't there also some incident that very morning at Bush's hotel with middle eastern men insisting on seeing him?

LIE: The night of 9/11 when Bush was on TV, he said, "Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government's emergency response plans." No, he didn't. We saw the video.

I went to the FCC website just now to see what the rules are about this EAS since this issue popped into my head while reading about 9/11. (I watched "Orwell Rolls in His Grave" recently and discovered that Colin's son, Michael Powell is in charge of the FCC and is committed to restricting democracy in the United States, so I figured that I should check this out further.) Well apparently it's not mandatory to issue the EAS but it's useful in a dire emergency. Was not the terrorist attack of 9/11 a dire emergency? There are other tall buildings in Manhattan and around the country. I also wonder why Rudy Guiliani didn't ask the Governor to issue an EAS?

Here a couple of exerpts I gleaned from The FCC Handbook on EAS RULES PDF

The EAS provides the President with the capability to provide immediate communications and information to the general public at the National, State and Local Area levels during periods of national emergency. ..The EAS may be used to provide the heads of State and local government, or their designated representatives, with a means of emergency communication with the public in their State or Local Area. (page 1)

11.18 EAS Designations.
(a) National Primary (NP) is a source of EAS Presidential messages.
(b) Local Primary (LP) is a source of EAS Local Area messages....
(c) State Primary (SP) is a source of EAS State messages. These messages can originate from the Governor or a designated representative in the State Emergency Operating Center (EOC) or State Capital....
(d) State Relay (SR) is a relay source of EAS State messages. It is part of the State Relay Network and relays National and State common emergency messages into Local Areas.

11.20 State Relay Network.
This network is composed of State Relay (SR) sources, leased common carrier communications facilities or any other available communication facilities. The network distributes State EAS messages originated by the Governor or designated official. ... (page 4)

Well ok then. Now I am going to google search and see if anyone else was thinking about this and what they found out. (BTW, it's still perfectly reasonable to assert that the prez was so willfully ignorant and so was his staff and all government officials across the US, he didn't think that there could be other attacks and the 2 he just heard about were the only ones that would take place that day. My head is exploding. Ok, I'll be right back after my google search.

Back. One article says it looks like the EAS kind of expects the media to get the word out. New York State Emergency Management Office says that they only use EOS for "early warnings" and the attacks had already happened. But shortly after the 2nd plane hit the tower, officials knew that another plane had been hijacked! Supposedly they didn't know where it was headed, it could have been headed to NY again.... oy vey. Oh wait, we as a country were in a state of shock. Yeah, we were in a state of shock alright and I still am after reading this stuff... The Department of Homeland Security is now in charge of the policies of the EAS. So that means they are still using EAS for weather emergencies and amber alerts but not for the reason it was originally intended. (shoot me now). Just after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the FCC announced that it would allow radio and TV stations to suspend for several weeks the regular on-air testing of the EAS to avoid arousing fear that the nation was under attack.

Ok, I'm back again. I fell on the floor.

Found this: (an email from the FCC. Seems someone else was curious about the same thing.)

Return-Path: Suzanne.Tetreault@fcc.gov
From: "Suzanne Tetreault"
Sent: Mon, 22 Sep 2003 14:25:54 -0400
To: Mary Titus
Subject: FW: EAS on 9-11

Ms. Titus -- In response to your questions,

(1) the EAS system was not activated on 9/11/01.

(2) a decision to activate EAS would be made by the president (for national level) or by the affected state (for state level), or by local authorities, so the FCC has no information on why EAS was not used that day.

Suzanne M. Tetreault
Associate Chief, Chief of Staff
Enforcement Bureau
Federal Communications Commission

Alrighty then... a not for profit group called the Partnership for Public Warning (PPW), is studying this issue. This still doesn't answer my initial questions but let's see what they have to say...
Ok... it says that on 9/11 the EAS was not engaged, and first responders, corporate employees and the general public relied on television coverage and cell phones. Even though EAS covers cable stations and warnings could reach a much wider audience than just relying on network stations, the EAS has still never been used in a nationwide emergency.

PPW Progress
To make the new, nationwide EAS a reality, the PPW board of trustees has been meeting monthly in Washington, D.C., and working with the Office of Homeland Security (OHS) and other federal agencies. The PPW also has been reaching out to industries and organizations that play any role in emergency warning and response. Currently in the works is a National Strategic Plan for Public Warning...
...
For now, the PPW’s main focus is to craft a broad-reaching emergency alert solution that incorporates the most advanced technologies and best practices from both the public and private sectors. The newly created EAS will replace the existing reliance on spotty information from television news broadcasts, manual notification methods, limited police statements, and haphazard input from employees during times of crisis — dramatically improving communications with first responders, corporate employees and their families, news organizations, and other agencies.

LIE: There were no warnings of this attack on 9/11 as per Ari Fleisher on 9/11:

Q Had there been any warnings that the President knew of?
MR. FLEISCHER: No warnings.

Puhlease. Warren Buffet was hosting his "last annual golf charity event" which just happened to be at the U.S. Strategic Command headquarters located at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha. Who hosts a charity event at an Air Force Base bunker? This happened to be the same base Bushieboy stopped at while he was flying around the country in Air Force One that day in order to find safety. The CEO of Fiduciary Trust which is right where Flight 175 crashed into the WTC 2 was also present at the Air Force bunker that day. Rush Limbaugh says he was too. God help me.


and isn't this weird too? A story from Newsday, September 12, 2001

Heightened Security Alert Had Just Been Lifted

The World Trade Center was destroyed just days after a heightened security alert was lifted at the landmark 110-story towers, security personnel said yesterday.

Daria Coard, 37, a guard at Tower One, said the security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the past two weeks because of numerous phone threats. But on Thursday, bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed.

"Today was the first day there was not the extra security," Coard said. "We were protecting below. We had the ground covered. We didn't figure they would do it with planes. There is no way anyone could have stopped that."

Security guard Hermina Jones said officials had recently taken steps to secure the towers against aerial attacks by installing bulletproof windows and fireproof doors in the 22nd-floor computer command center.

"When the fire started, the room was sealed," said Jones, who was in the command center when explosions rocked the building. "Flames were shooting off the walls....We started putting wet towels under the doors. The Fire Department unsealed the door and grabbed us by the hand and said, 'Run!' "

Security worker Diane Easton said she was out front writing tickets when notice of "a plane flying too low" placed security personal on alert.

"The plane went right through the building...and debris started falling everywhere, then 15 minutes later the second plane," Easton said.

Nancy Joyner said several police officers were knocked down and then were stampeded in the ensuing frenzy.

"People were flying out of the windows; there was nothing we could do," Joyner said. "People were pulled from the top floors by the wind tunnel created."

And just one more strange thing I just thought about: Marvin Bush. He was on the board of directors of Stratesec, a company providing electronic security for the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport and United Airlines, according to public records. The company was backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for years to the Bush family. Do a google search on him regarding 9/11. Here's a tidbit: (Marvin didn't come up once in the 9/11 report interestingly.)

Marvin P. Bush, the president's youngest brother, was a director at Stratesec from 1993 to fiscal year 2000. But the White House has not publicly disclosed Bush connections in any of its responses to 9/11, nor has it mentioned that another Bush-linked business had done security work for the facilities attacked.

Marvin Bush joined Securacom when it was capitalized by the Kuwait-American Corporation, a private investment firm in D.C. that was the security company's major investor, sometimes holding a controlling interest. Marvin Bush has not responded to telephone calls and e-mails for comment.

KuwAm has been linked to the Bush family financially since the Gulf War. One of its principals and a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, Mishal Yousef Saud al Sabah, served on the board of Stratesec.

The managing director at KuwAm, Wirt D. Walker III, was also a principal at Stratesec, and Walker, Marvin Bush and al Sabah are listed in SEC filings as significant shareholders in both companies during that period.

Marvin Bush's last year on the board at Stratesec coincided with his first year on the board of HCC Insurance, formerly Houston Casualty Co., one of the insurance carriers for the WTC. He left the HCC board in November 2002.

But none of these connections has been looked at during the extensive investigations since 9/11. McDaniel says principals and other personnel at Stratesec have not been questioned or debriefed by the FBI or other investigators...

See? I was just thinking of one thing this morning after I watched a test of the Emergency Alert System (used to be the Emergency Broadcast System) on TV and then thanks to internet technology and Al Gore, I guess, I have a zillion more questions! I didn't even get into what I found out about that Florida flight school, Mohamad Atta and a huge drug cartel. I'll do that another time.

LIE: I'll leave you with this quote from our President in Orlando meeting with rather enthusiatic displaced workers on December 4th, 2001 from the White House website.

Q One thing, Mr. President, is that you have no idea how much you've done for this country. And another thing is that, how did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack? (Applause.) barf

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jordan. Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card -- actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident.

But I was whisked off there, I didn't have much time to think about it. And I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my Chief of Staff, who is sitting over here, walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower, America is under attack."

And he told this story twice... so no it wasn't a mistake. And by the way, Andrew Card LIED in a newspaper article HE wrote for the SF Chronicle on 9/11/02:

I said those things into the president's right ear, and I stepped back, because I did not want to invite a discussion from the classroom. But I tried to be succinct in what I told him so that he understood the enormity of the problem. He looked up -- it was only a matter of seconds, but it seemed like minutes -- and I thought that he was outstanding in his ability not to scare either the American people that were paying attention to the cameras or, more importantly, the students that were in the classroom.

And he just excused himself very politely to the teacher and to the students, and he left.