9/11: A unarmed cargo plane as America's reaction

The 9/11 commission has found that the Pentagon's domestic air-defense command was disastrously unprepared for a major terrorist strike on American soil. Its report says confusion, a series of miscommunications and missteps plagued federal officials on that day, so there was apparently no opportunity to do any intercepting if the possibility existed. Some of the commission's major findings:
- Officials in Washington had difficulty in establishing secure communications with President Bush, who was in Florida at the time of the attack.
- Vice President Dick Cheney, in a secure, below-ground White House facility, mistakenly thought U.S. warplanes had shot down two aircraft.
- When Cheney finally realized that the U.S. were under attack he authorized military jets to shoot down any planes headed for Washington. But the order did not reach pilots until the last of the four hijacked planes had crashed.
- The Federal Aviation Administration failed to notify the military that one of the four planes had been hijacked.
- The FAA incorrectly told the military that the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center was still in the air after impact.
- The confusion meant only an unarmed military cargo plane could be diverted to track the plane. The cargo plane located Flight 77 but could do nothing as the commercial jetliner crashed into the Pentagon.