could put beads on the moon, but we might have done too much. It's too much like a real StarTrek transporter. Now, they're asking us about anti-asteroid capabilities. An anti-asteroid shotgun. We classified the whole thing, but we still have brains spinning and tongues wagging at NASA. That's not a good thing."
"This is the mission room. It's the land between operations and physics." He opened a bank vault like door to something that looked like an x-ray booth in a dentist's office.The walls were white and plain. All sound stopped dead when it hit what must have been layers of lead. There was a computer keyboard and monitor screen and a little window with an opening that was obviously heavily shielded. A side table held what looked like small ceramic bottles with mostly open sides. "It's not very dramatic. The object, usually a glass or metal bead, is suspended on a one micron thread from the lab dish with a little superglue. The whole thing goes into the chamber. You enter the numbers that might take days of processing to develop, initialize the timer, and exit the room. Then, two other consoles, one in physics and one in operations, have to agree to let the timer fire the laser.There's a huge bang. Everybody on this side of the base calls the cops or the fire department to report an explosion, and we're done.The only impressive thing is the bang. Oh yeah, first we have to tell the nuclear power plant down the road to be ready for some load fluctuations. When the capacitor bank comes up for a charge, it could initially look like a dead short across the power grid leaving the plant. We have to ease into it."
"But it's not dramatic." Sally chided.
"Hey, it's just subatomic physics. The Colonel could and would give you an all day tour of the physics side. It looks like a brewery with a whole lot plumbing. You know that it all begins with the Bose-Einstein Condensation experiment that started at the University of Colorado. You know about the pumps and lasers. But, I think he's chomping at the bit to get you both working. Obviously, we need to do something about last Tuesday." He paused, "Wow, Today's Thursday. It's been more than a week!Pretty soon we'll be losing centimeters of delivery accuracy per day. Ready to work?"
Ted and Sally nodded and followed Bill to an empty office. It was spacious, with four desks, terminals, and phones, but windowless. There was a wall mounted TV camera over a large screen monitor. Bill gave them the combination to the electronic lock on the door and told them that the room was all theirs. “That's secure video conferencing." He pointed to the camera and screen. The Office of the Secretary of Defense staff in the Pentagon loves it. They'd sit there all day and watch themselves."
"Sally, we have Internet and MILNET access and the air base communications people upgraded our crypto gear on Monday. As you know, we have the best data mining software operating anywhere. It's improved a couple of generations each year and I think we're ahead of the NSA in what we can pick out and correlate from text, speech, databases, and pictures. We can have more data storage installed a hundred gigabytes at a time anytime you want it. So, let me know what you need."
"Ted, the Colonel named you as a liaison to the cross-agency investigating group. The three of us and the Colonel
have some clearances and access to their briefings and reports. But, since they're all butt-covering bureaucrats, we'll only see the tip of the iceberg. I filed all of the message traffic we've received so far under this project name."Bill ran a trackball to move a cursor around the screen on one of the desks. He highlighted a folder labeled PENTTBOM. "That's what they call the investigation. Start to dig and then let's get back together in a couple of hours."
The run to the commissary was forgotten. Bill brought in sandwiches from the "roach coach" lunch wagon that was now allowed back on the base for the first time since 9/11. Sally retrieved Patrick at 4:30 and brought him back to their office. As she came through security, a smiling guard gave Patrick his own security badge. "It's not a joke." the guard said to Sally. "Movement, body heat, even carbon dioxide from your breath without a badge valid for the area sets off all kinds of alarms out here." Patrick was proud of his badge with his own picture on it as he followed Sally to their office. He was given some pens and paper and "worked" along with Mom and Dad. Half an hour later he went online with the Disney Website.
At the start of the morning what they knew about the 9/1 1 attacks mainly came from television and newspapers. By noon, they knew the path each hijacker traveled to get on the five flights. Sally picked up the trail of each hijacker and did her own backward checking of their activities through credit cards, telephones, and public records. She turned the Project's data mining software loose on the private databases available to the Project to see what it could find about each name, account number, address, and action. Ted backtracked the hijacked aircraft and established detailed images of
arrivals and departures along with lists of airline equipment on the East Coast on the morning of 9/1 1 . They also logged into the almost perpetual FBI classified video conference and listened through a couple of update briefings.
At six thirty Sally stretched in her chair. "I'm getting foggy."she said. "I've got the data mining software doing its thing, but it will take hours to generate a report on who is connected to what."
Ted nodded and said, "Okay, I've absorbed a lot of stuff. Let's make a run to the store, let it percolate overnight, and pull it together tomorrow."He called Bill and setup a meeting with Colonel Landry for 0830 the next morning. That would give them a good hour in the morning to pull together some Power Point slides and talking points.
The sun didn't set until about 7:30 this time of year, so it was still bright outside when they dropped off their badges and left the building. As they opened the door, Sally saw a thin man with dark hair standing in back of their Jeep. When the man heard the door of the building close he put something into his pocket without turning and walked to a car in a another row. Sally didn't mention that the guy was stopped by their car to Ted because they were on a secure Air Force base surrounded by military people. She was used to being safe. The man probably worked at the project. Ted didn't mention seeing the man to Sally. But, he would know if he saw the guy again. The Air Force calls it threat awareness and it's learned.
After they got everyone fed and Patrick put to bed, Sally and Ted sat in lounge chairs out by the pool. They each had
a glass of Cabernet. Neither of them drank much and Ted always stopped early because of his fear of being caught between "bottle and throttle." In other words, he never knew when he might get to fly. "What's the latest on the nuclear power plant?" Sally asked. The last thing she wanted to do was to turn on the television.
"If you believe what they're saying, the containment vessel held and the reactor is cold. The problem seems to be all the old nuclear fuel rods stored at the facility. A couple of decades worth. They weren't as well protected as the reactors and the impact and fuel fire put a lot of radioactive particles from the rods into the air. They're being spread and people are freaking. The radioactivity is spreading on the wind to the northwest. It's apparently difficult to get to the interstate highways heading west, so a lot of American refugees are winding up in Montreal and Toronto."
They talked for another 45 minutes about what the Project might do and what they would say to the Colonel and Bill in the morning. Finally, it got so dark that they could barely see each other. "How did you sleep last night?" Ted asked.
"Great after we moved Patrick to his bed." Sally replied. "Good mattress for a rental property." Ted observed.
"Yeah."she replied putting a little Atlanta southern in her voice."Nice and firm."
"Would you like to..." he didn't finish.
"Come on fly boy." she interrupted. "I know you. Anytime you're away from home you think it's exotic and erotic. Let's go." She led him by the hand through the dark house.
ANALYSIS AND PLANNING
Homestead ARB, Florida
Monday, September 17, 2001
0830 Eastern
Excerpt from the Personal Narrative
of Brig Gen Fred Landry, PhD, (USAF Ret)
Recorded July 2006
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET/TA
"We
received a lot of good information from the working group. We were able to come up with an initial plan of action pretty quickly. I was reluctant to ask for permission because I knew we would get plenty of fear followed by paralysis by analysis."
At 0830 Colonel Landry and Bill Wirtz joined Ted and Sally in their workspace. "Let's keep everything about 9/1 1 behind that locked door."Landry said.
Ted and Sally had pulled together some Power Point slides loaded with talking points. They also downloaded some slides from the files of the cross-agency investigative group to save time. The presentation was displayed on the large videoconferencing screen. "Some of the material we're going to talk about is from open sources like the newspaper. Some of it is from the cross-agency investigation. So we have to
pickup the classification of the investigation.This discussion is Top Secret code word PENTTBOM. Here's what we know."
"On Friday, the FBI released the names of the 22 men they think did the hijacking. This attack was a large and well coordinated effort. They successfully commandeered five planes and it looks like there were teams in place for several others. There might have been more planned or attempted, but those five planes each hit their target. By the way, the weird part is that we, I mean us here at the Project, might have already taken action that prevented the hijacking of some of those other planes. We just don't know.â€Ted laid out a lot more that they did know including the results of searches of cars found in airport parking lots and the places where the hijackers lived.
At one point Bill Wirtz observed, "One interesting aspect is that the attacks were coordinated to gain the most psychological advantage. They combined mass murder at the twin towers with decapitation of government at the Capitol building and Pentagon and the economic impact of the poisoning of perhaps thousands of square miles by the release of plutonium from the Indian Point nuclear power plant. This was more than a show. They wanted to hit us hard and strategically."
Sally took over. "The more we know the more it becomes apparent that we here at the Project don't need to know much more. While we might be curious, we know enough to come up with some basic ideas for actions the Project could take. Colonel, one question we have is how much time should we spend gathering
information and studying options?Specifically, how much accuracy and payload weight do we lose everyday we debate?"
Landry was quick on his reply. "I can tell you exactly. We've done a lot of experimenting to find out. We've got a heck of a complex formula, but it's all setup and ready for inputs in the physics management program."
He counted on the fingers of his right hand. "The seven variables in the formula include distance back in time, physical distance, relative motion, accuracy in time, accuracy in space, expended power, and object mass. Change one factor in the formula and all the others have to change. It gets a lot more complex because we are dealing with three dimensional positioning in space. And, the media we send back in time can limit the expended power because of its melting point. Basically, we try to hold the power back so the quartz beads stay below 1600 degrees Centigrade or about 3000 degrees Fahrenheit. Distance back in time is by far the most important factor in the equation. It's a variable with a big exponent. But, mass is important too. Assuming that everything else stays the same, right now you'll lose about 20 millimeters, or about three quarters of an inch a day in accuracy. That number will increase every day. So, the faster we decide to do something, the better our delivery accuracy."
Sally and Ted both nodded. "That's the way we saw it too." Ted said.
"Let me add something." Bill said. He had been sitting back in one of the desk chairs, but now he leaned forward on the edge of his seat to make a point. "We aren't going to get permission, we aren't going to get credit, and we aren't even going to know if we're successful. I've tried to impress government bureaucrats for five years with this project. I've scared most of them so badly that they would burn us at the stake as witches if they weren't so afraid. Only a few people at NASA get it and they all have their own agendas. I'm convinced that we can't just kick some suggestions for action upstairs and ask for permission to go ahead. We'll suffer paralysis by analysis."
Sally and Ted were almost afraid to hear from Colonel Landry. Bill had just suggested military anarchy. They didn't know Landry well enough to be able to predict his reaction.
"We aren't totally alone." Landry said. "There are people who know what we do. . . or what we think we try to do. . and they approve. None of them can openly help us or guide us, but they will consult off the record. Beyond that, there is a long history of independent military organizations conducting operations that are within their understanding of their mission. British and American naval officers have an acronym pronounced UNODIR that means unless otherwise directed. As far as I'm concerned, we're operating UNODIR."
"Okay. I understand." Ted replied. "Here is another question. We have five attacks to handle and we're losing
accuracy with every minute that goes by. Which attack do we want to stop the most?What are our priorities?"
Landry replied. "I can help there too. And these ideas aren't just mine. While you've been researching I've been canvassing some very smart people in our informal support group. They are in government, academia, and business. I asked that same question about priorities.As you said, each attack had a specific purpose. As terrible as the immediate loss of lives is at the twin towers, it was tactical. It was a short term grandstand. But, the impact of the fuel rod explosion at the nuclear plant in New York will spread from Philadelphia to Boston. The attack on the power plant was the same thing as a weapon of mass destruction used in a strategic attack. Similarly, the attack on the Capitol building was strategic decapitation. The attack on the Indian Point power station has caused millions of people to flee, it will probably kill tens of thousands of people from cancer over dozens of years, and will have an economic impact on commerce and industry for a hundred or maybe even ten thousand years. Stopping that attack is our first priority."