Who was in charge on 9/11?

The following article was written by my husband, Frank Morales, Episcopal priest, writer, and activist.


The Council on Foreign Relations – 9/11 Connection
By Frank Morales

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is a key elite policymaker and think-tank for the military, corporate, industrial complex, headquartered in New York City. In 1999, CFR set up an Independent Task Force on Nonlethal Weapons in order to "assess the current status of non-lethal weapons development and availability within the Department of Defense, in light of their potential to support U.S. military operations and foreign policy." So stated their report on the matter, entitled, “Nonlethal Technologies: Progress and Prospects.” For some time now, the Council has promoted so-called “non-lethal” weapons as a means of facilitating war against non-combatants and civilians, situated within what the Pentagon, Inc. likes to call, “operations other than war.”

The 16 members of CFR’s Independent Task Force hailed from both the corporate and military sectors. It was chaired by IBM executive Richard L. Garwin, CFR’s Senior Fellow for Science and Technology, and other members included Philip A. Dur, U.S. Navy (Ret.), a Vice President of Tenneco Automotive and member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council; David Jones, a U.S. Navy Commander; Edward N. Luttwak, a member of the National Security Study Group administered by the Department of Defense; Edward C. Meyer, former Chairman of Mitretek Systems and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Task Force Project Director was one U.S. Army General W. Montague Winfield, a former Executive Officer to the Commander of the Stabilization Force stationed in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. Since 1998 General Winfield has also served as a Senior Military Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. It just so happens that on the morning of September 11, 2001, Winfield was the Pentagon’s General Officer-in-Charge, the Deputy Director for Operations, J3, in the National Military Command Center (NMCC)—the same command center that would prove to be so “massively incompetent” at defending America. Or rather extremely competent at carrying out a pre-arranged plan of the 9/11 attacks, depending upon how you look at it.

On the evening of September 10, 2001, General Winfield arranged to be relieved of his scheduled shift at the NMCC on the next morning, from 8:30 a.m. until 10:30 a.m. This (and the further absence during most of that period of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers and President George W. Bush) left his deputy director in command, one Capt. Charles J. Leidig, Jr., in control of national crisis management at the Pentagon’s Command Center during the two hours of the actual attacks.

In a written, June 17, 2004 statement released by the Kean (or 9/11) Commission prior to his testimony, Navy Capt. Leidig wrote that “on 10 September 2001, Brigadier General Winfield, U.S. Army, asked that I stand a portion of his duty as Deputy Director for Operations, NMCC, on the following day. I agreed and relieved Brigadier General Winfield at 0830 on 11 September 2001.”

According to Dr. David Ray Griffin (The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, pg.235), “Leidig also pointed out that he had only recently qualified to perform this duty. He had become the deputy for NMCC Operations about two months before 9/11and had only qualified in August to stand watch in Winfield’s place. As far as we can tell from his statement, 9/11 was his first day to actually do this.”

Winfield, for his part, was originally scheduled to testify before the Kean Commission on the same day—June 17, 2004—but canceled shortly beforehand, thwarting a full investigation of this curious and timely “dropping out of sight” maneuver.

A full investigation would have determined whether Gen. Winfield was aware of the warning allegedly received by “top Pentagon brass” on "the night before the attacks, causing some” of them “to cancel a trip,” as reported by Newsweek (9/13/01 and 9/20/01). A full investigation would also have determined whether Gen. Winfield was aware of other advance warnings of imminent attack and of the Pentagon's MASCAL exercise of October, 2000, which actually rehearsed planes crashing into the Pentagon. And a real investigation would certainly have questioned Gen. Winfield about why he decided on such short notice to have himself relieved of command for the two hours between 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. on September 11, 2001, replacing himself with a barely qualified rookie, Capt. Leidig, who might find himself in over his head should any crisis arise.

In the Times-Discovery Channel documentary, The Pentagon Attack, first aired in 2002, Gen. Winfield can be seen in a videotaped interview describing how part of the attacks were allegedly experienced at the NMCC. He also spoke of the process of determining the fate of Flight 93 (to shoot down or not-to-shoot-down) supposedly prior to its crash at 10:06 a.m., as if he had been present. Was Gen. Winfield actually present at the NMCC at any point between 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. on September 11, and if so, was he exercising his command authority? We’ve yet to arrive at the real story.

In his June 17, 2004 statement before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, Capt. Leidig stated that he presided over the late-starting air threat conference; when asked by the 9/11 Commission why the NMCC never connected during the conference with Air Force One, Leidig replied, "I don't recall." Poor guy. Leidig also testified that due to “some compatibility issues” between the NMCC and FAA phone systems “we had difficulty throughout the morning getting (the FAA) in the conference and that hampered information flow to some degree.”

As for Winfield, there is apparently no legitimate published report of his whereabouts during the 9/11 attacks. The operative word here is "legitimate." For, according to the revisionist historians at CNN, in a September 4, 2002, broadcast entitled, “The Pentagon Goes to War: National Military Command Center,” Winfield is featured as having been present in the NMCC “hot seat” throughout the attacks, running the air threat conference with the White House, FAA, and NORAD. “Twenty hours after he went to work on September 11,” reported CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr, “Winfield went home.” Huh? Capt. Leidig, the rookie who actually was in the NMCC “hot seat” during the attacks was never even mentioned in the CNN broadcast. Leidig testified to the Kean Commission that Winfield had relieved him of command “right after we resolved what was going on with United 93”—that is, after the last hijacked plane went down.

Not bothering about the facts, Winfield’s military biography states that he “was present (in the NMCC) as the General Officer in Charge during the terrorist attacks of 9/11.” This was later modified to read, “Winfield was the [NMCC] General Officer-in-Charge during the terrorist attacks of 9/11,” implying that he was actually present. Leidig, promoted in 2004 to the rank of Rear Admiral, now commands U.S. naval forces in the Marianas Islands of Saipan—in other words, very far away. His official online U.S. Navy biography makes no mention of his service in the NMCC during the 9/11 attacks. Meanwhile, Winfield, CFR’s Senior Military Fellow, was also promoted and shipped out immediately following the attacks, reassigned as Assistant Division Commander for the 25th Infantry Division (Light), Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.