Some members of the 9/11 Commission suspected that military officials knowingly had made false statements to Congress and the commission about the Pentagon’s response to the 9/11 terrorists attacks, according to the Washington Post. This claim and publication of excerpts of NORAD audiotapes in the current Vanity Fair magazine has caught widespread media attention. The Post reported that commission members had contemplated appealing to the Justice Department, but instead decided to leave the matter to the inspectors general of DOD and the Transportation Department, since the matter involved the FAA, as well. An IG report sent to Congress in 2005 faulted Pentagon recordkeeping for some errors in official testimony. According to the Post, release of a DOD IG report on the matter is imminent. Much of the recent media hype has focused on Vanity Fair’s “new” release of the tapes, however Air Force Magazine in October 2004 reported on the miscommunications between NORAD and the FAA, offering excerpts of the tapes provided by the 9/11 commission, and noted the “inaccuracies in the public record.”
The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane. Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep…