The National Airspace System and its Design and Implementation Pre 9/11: Did the 9/11 Commission Ignore the Real Facts and Circumstances?
9/11: The Unanswered Questions
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Ramesh S Arunachalam
On 9/11, communication emanating from the FAA to NORAD, NORAD to FAA as well as other stakeholders (like the White House) was, at best, reported as ineffective, inaccurate and even confusing. If communication was sub-optimal and has been blamed for much of the systemic failure on that fateful day, then it is only fair to look at systems related to communication to fix responsibility and accountability for the 9/11 crime. This becomes even more important when one considers the fact that no less a person than the 9/11 Commission vice-chair, Lee Hamilton (along with Daniel Marcus, the General Counsel of the 9/11 Commission) acknowledged that there were not only confusing and inaccurate aspects but also several gaps in communication on 9/11.
What are these systems related to communication, especially at the FAA with regard to the 9/11 crime? All information systems across the FAA—that were collectively called the National Airspace System (NAS)—comprise the primary communication system that needed to be analyzed for failure on 9/11. The NAS may be viewed as an information system of systems that collectively supports all air operations in the US and related oceanic areas. Viewed in this light, the NAS can be divided conceptually into three parts:
Sources of information necessary to perform air operations,
Users, who use the information to perform air operations and who, in the course of performing them, produce additional information, and
Access and management of the information between sources and users.
It is apparent that significant US taxpayer dollars were invested in the design of FAA’s NAS that failed so miserably in protecting airspace, life, and assets on 9/11. Yet, you will be shocked to know that the NAS is mentioned just once in the 9/11 Commission’s final report. Page 16 of the 9/11 Commission report[i] notes:
“FAA headquarters is ultimately responsible for the management of the National Airspace System.”
That is all there is on the NAS in the entire 9/11 Commission report and that is puzzling. Why did the 9/11 Commission—which acknowledged poor, inaccurate, and confusing communication on 9/11— not pursue and conduct a thorough investigation of the NAS which is widely acknowledged to have failed that fateful day?
The first question they should have asked here was who designed this ‘ineffective’ NAS that failed and caused large scale devastation? That was very, very important. For any criminal investigation this would have been important and I am simply amazed that the 9/11 Commission failed to even look at the antecedents of the NAS, including aspects of who had designed this.
From a criminal procedural standpoint, understanding why the NAS failed was very important. And for that, one needed to know the stakeholders who designed and implemented the NAS, their antecedents (including security clearances), their access to FAA’s NAS on 9/11 and, also, most importantly, what exactly these stakeholders were doing on 9/11. That is a starter’s imperative for any criminal investigation of the 9/11 event and ought to have been done, but was not pursued by the 9/11 Commission as part of its wide ranging mandate. This is to set the record straight.
Three key questions are of relevance at this juncture:
Who (which stakeholders) developed the blueprint for the design of FAA’s National Airspace System (NAS) prior to 9/11?
Who (which stakeholders) actually designed and implemented the NAS for the FAA, prior to 9/11?
Was this exercise ongoing prior to and during 9/11 as well?
As I was mulling over these for several years, I came across four papers which suggested that a body called the National Airspace System Information Architecture Committee (NIAC) was in charge of designing the NAS, prior to 9/11:
‘Adapting Information Engineering for the National Airspace System and Its Application to Flight Planning’, September 1999, Michael A. Hermes, Sally E. Stalnaker, Dr.Nels A. Broste, and Gary L. Smith, Sponsor: Federal Aviation Administration, Contract No.: DTFA01-93-C-00001, The MITRE Corporation;[ii]
‘FAA Data Registry (FDR) Concepts of Use and Implementation’, September 2000, Nels A. Broste, Ronald G. Rhoades, and Ronald A. Schwarz, MITRE Technical Report (MTR 00W0000097), Sponsor: Federal Aviation Administration, Contract No.: DTFA01-93-C-00001, The MITRE Corporation;[iii]
‘FAA Data Standards Initiative: Systems Engineering Base for Air Traffic Modernization’, July 2001, Katie Bolczak, Nels Broste, Ron Rhoades, Ron Schwarz, and Carol Uri;[iv] and
‘NAS Flight Data Model’, September 1998, Ronald A. Schwarz, Catherine N. Bolczak, Dr. Nels A. Broste, Carl E. Dahlke, Sally F. Stalnaker, and Long K. Truong, MITRE Technical Report (MTR 98W0000120), Sponsor: Federal Aviation Administration, Contract No.: DTFA01-93-C-00001, The MITRE Corporation.[v]
All of these papers are pre-9/11. They were under specific task contracts and consistently used the words NIAC[vi] as being the key driver in the design of FAA’s NAS prior to 9/11.
I also came across proceedings of a conference “executive report” (dated May 22, 1998) prepared by Dimensions International, Inc. as per an FAA contract (Number: DTFA01-95-Y-01024, see[vii] cover page).
A perusal of this interesting document also told me that the design of the National Airspace System, prior to 9/11, was under the aegis of a special committee called the National Airspace System Information Architecture Committee (NIAC).
The NIAC, as per this report, had even held a data architecture conference on April 21-22, 1998 (at a Mitretek[viii] conference facility).
From the above, it was fairly conclusive that the National Airspace System Information Architecture Committee (NIAC) was the key stakeholder group[ix] that designed and implemented FAA’s NAS prior to 9/11. Also, a reading of the aforementioned papers and the Dimensions International report suggested the design of the NAS as at 9/11 was an ongoing phenomenon. Therefore, it appears correct to presume that many stakeholders in the NIAC (may have) had access to the NAS even on the fateful day, 9/11.
In the context of the above, several other questions[x] arise with regard to FAA’s NAS and its design prior to 9/11, from a criminal procedure standpoint:
Given that the pre-9/11 design of the National Airspace System of the Federal Aviation Administration was undertaken by NAS Information Architecture Committee (NIAC), who (which authorities/stakeholders) constituted the NIAC in the first place and mandated it with the task of designing FAA’s NAS? A related question is who created the NIAC and through what mechanism?
Who decided on the composition of the NIAC?
On what basis were the stakeholders chosen to be a part of the NIAC? Specifically, how was membership in FAA’s NIAC decided in terms of criteria? And who set these criteria and based on what rationale? What about the security clearances? Who did the due diligence and who issued the security clearances, what type and when?
Which specific individual (s) from the NIAC led the design of FAA’s National Airspace System (NAS)? Were there coordinators of the NIAC? If so, who were they and what were their roles? How were they chosen?
Was there a product lead for the design of the National Airspace System? If yes, who was this and how was he/she appointed? What were his/her antecedents? What was his/her brief? What were his/her security clearances, who gave them and when?
Specifically, which contractors (private, government and otherwise) were part of the NIAC? Specifically, who were they? Why were they chosen? What were their security clearances and who gave them that? Why? When?
Was there an antecedent check on the stakeholders who were part of the NIAC? Who did this and was a copy of the security clearance with antecedent check provided to the FAA, for every stakeholder involved in the NIAC?
What was FAA’s role in all of this?
What about Jane Garvey, the administrator of the FAA (1997-2002)? What role did she play in setting up the NIAC, prior to 9/11? Did anyone else from the FAA play a role in establishing the NIAC?
Was there a NIAC steering committee (core group) formed to manage the NAS design and if yes, who was part of it, how were they chosen and why?
How often did the NIAC steering committee meet as the NAS design was underway? Was it on a weekly basis in 1997-98?
How many times did the NIAC meet in 97-98 prior to an important conference on data architecture and interoperability that was held on April 21-22, 1998?
Who participated in the NIAC data architecture and interoperability conference? Why were these people called?
Who was part of the (steering) committee that worked on the conference? Who constituted this conference steering committee? On what basis?
How many working groups were there in the data architecture and interoperability conference of the NIAC, held on April 21-22, 1998?
What was their mandate and what were they working on?
Were any technical papers published as part of the work of the NIAC working groups?
What was the objective of the free flight path as set by the FAA’s NAS?
What were the members of NIAC and designers of NAS doing on 9/11? What were the participants of the working groups of the data architecture and interoperability conference doing on 9/11?
What kind of access did they have to the National Airspace System on 9/11? Did they have full and complete access in the sense they could get into any system and do anything they wanted?
If so, who gave them the access and who was responsible for ensuring security with regard to the same?
Were there any security breaches because of this access provided to NIAC members and other stakeholders (as noted above) on 9/11?
And so the questions build up.[xi]
You would be shocked to know that the 9/11 Commission did not investigate any of these important issues related to FAA’s NAS, NIAC,[xii] enterprise architecture[xiii] and data interoperability[xiv] at all.
Why?
Were conflicts of interest at play?
Stay Tuned for more…
[i] ‘The 9/11 Commission Report, Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States’, U.S. Government Printing Office, July 22, 2004, last accessed on March 6, 2018, https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-911REPORT/pdf/GPO-911REPORT.pdf
[ii] This paper was last accessed on March 6, 2018 as per the following web link, https://www.mitrecaasd.org/foc_archive/related/infoeng.pdf
[iii] This paper was last accessed on March 6, 2018 as per the following web link, https://www.caasd.org/library/tech_docs/2000/mtr00w0000097.pdf
[iv] This paper was last accessed on March 6, 2018 as per the following web link, https://www.mitre.org/publications/technical-papers/faa-data-standards-initiative-systems-engineering-base-for-air-traffic-modernization
[v] This paper was last accessed on March 6, 2018 as per the following web link, https://www.mitre.org/sites/default/files/pdf/bolczak_flight_data_model.pdf
[vi] See Appendix 9, https://911unansweredquestions.blogspot.in/2018/04/appendix-9-continued-title-page-of-key.html, for specific instances of how NIAC has been used in these pre-9/11 papers. This clearly provides proof for the arguments made with regard to NIAC and it serving as the umbrella for the design and implementation of the NAS, prior to 9/11.
[vii] See https://911unansweredquestions.blogspot.in/2018/04/appendix-10-continued-image-of-title.html
[viii] “On January 29, 1996, Mitre divided into two entities: The Mitre Corporation, to focus on its FFRDCs for DoD and FAA; and a new company, named Mitretek Systems (now called Noblis), to assume non-FFRDC work for other U.S. Government agencies. The Mitre Corporation (stylized as The MITRE Corporation and MITRE) is an American not-for-profit organization based in Bedford, Massachusetts, and McLean, Virginia. It manages federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) supporting several U.S. government agencies. After the SAGE project ended in the early 1960s, the FAA selected Mitre to develop a similar system to provide automated air traffic control. The result of the project formed the National Airspace System (NAS), that is still in use today. To support the NAS project and continual operations with the U.S. Department of Defense at the Pentagon, Mitre opened a second “main office” in McLean, Virginia.”—Source: ‘Mitre Corporation’, Wikipedia, last accessed on March 6, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitre_Corporation
[ix] See Appendix 9—it will prove that NIAC was the key stakeholder that was designing the NAS prior to 9/11. The papers listed in Appendix 9 (along with relevant quotations) also triangulate and confirm what has been stated in the Dimensions International executive report (cover page given in Appendix 10) that the National Airspace System Information Architecture Committee (NIAC) was the key stakeholder group (comprising private and defense contractors, individuals and others) behind the design and implementation of the NAS, prior to and during 9/11.
[x] Please see Appendix 1—from the book, “9/11: The Unanswered Questions” by Ramesh S Arunachalam (2018)—for a detailed list of questions with regard to FAA’s NAS. These questions ought to have been asked (and answered) by the 9/11 Commission.
[xi] See Appendix 1 from the book, “9/11: The Unanswered Questions” by Ramesh S Arunachalam (2018), for a list of complete questions from a criminal procedure standpoint. It is imperative for any reader to carefully go through this Appendix as the questions listed here are very, very important and require transparent answers.
[xii] This word does not appear in the 9/11 Commission final report. See Appendix 5 from the book “9/11: The Unanswered Questions” by Ramesh S Arunachalam (2018).
[xiii] Ibid.
[xiv] Ibid.
9/11: The Unanswered Questions
Available: On #Amazon – mybook.to/911unq
RECOMMENDED BY THE US REVIEW OF BOOKS: See http://www.theusreview.com/reviews/9-11-by-Ramesh-S-Arunachalam.html#.Wv_LpYq-nce
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