NORAD’s Santa Trackers Have Record-Breaking Night

…First lady Michelle Obama, who is spending the holidays with her family in Hawaii, also joined in answering calls as she has in recent years. She spent about 30 minutes talking with children from across the country.

Volunteer Sara Berghoff was caught off-guard when a child called to see if Santa could be especially kind this year to the families affected by the recent Connecticut school shooting.

“I’m from Newtown, Connecticut, where the shooting was,” she remembered the child asking. “Is it possible that Santa can bring extra presents so I can deliver them to the families that lost kids?”

Sara, just 13 herself, gathered her thoughts quickly. “If I can get ahold of him, I’ll try to get the message to him,” she told the child.

Other questions required the volunteers to think fast:

“How do reindeer fly?”

“How many elves does Santa have?”

“Does Santa leave presents for dogs?”

“How old is Santa?” The answer to that one is in the FAQs that NORAD hands out to volunteers: “It’s hard to know for sure, but NORAD intelligence indicates Santa is at least 16 centuries old.”

One little boy phoned in to ask what time Santa delivered toys to heaven, said volunteer Jennifer Eckels, who took the call. The boy’s mother got on the line to explain that his sister had died this year.

“I think Santa headed there first,” Eckels told him…

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cnn.com

Los Angeles (CNN) — If you’re planning to transport marijuana in a private plane, you may want to check the president’s schedule before taking off.

That was the apparent lesson Thursday when two fighter jets under the direction of the the North American Aerospace Defense Command intercepted a general aviation plane that had flown Thursday into temporarily restricted air space over Los Angeles, NORAD said.

A law enforcement official said 10 kilograms of what appeared to be marijuana were found on the plane.

A New Type of War
The Story of the FAA and NORAD Response to the September 11, 2001 Attacks

Team 8 of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States has determined the operational facts of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) and North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) response to [the] September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as reconstructed from primary sources such as logs, tape recordings, transcripts and radar data, and corroborated in interviews with key personnel involved. Set forth in this monograph is the definitive account concerning when and how the FAA gained situational awareness that each of the four commercial aircraft was hijacked by terrorists on the morning of 9/11, when and how the FAA notified the military about each of the hijacked aircraft, and when and how the military responded. — Rutgers Law Review

[…]

As the team on the 9/11 Commission Staff responsible for reconstructing the facts of the day itself, Team 8 was scrupulous to heed the direction of Commission Chairman Kean and Vice-Chairman Hamilton that we present the facts as we found them as objectively as possible. In the closing days of our work, it became clear that the most objective way to present those facts – and to capture both the urgency with which decisions were being made that day and the level of command at which critical decision making was occurring – would be to allow, where possible, the various officials and others responsible for responding to the attacks to speak for themselves. Accordingly, the team prepared what we called an ‘audio monograph’ of critical communications from the morning of 9/11, linked by narrative and graphics placing each audio clip in context. We believed that such a rendering would be the best way to enable the public to understand what happened on 9/11 – how the day was lived by those responding to the attacks.

[…]

COMMISSION STAFF RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS REPORT

John J. Farmer, Jr., Senior Counsel & Team Leader

John A. Azzarello, Counsel

Miles L. Kara, Sr., Professional Staff Member

Kevin Shaeffer, Professional Staff Member

Geoffrey Scott Brown, Research Assistant

Dana J. Hyde, Counsel

Lisa Marie Sullivan, Staff Assistant

Charles M. Pereira, Professional Staff Member

[…]

PREFACE

Team 8 of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States has determined the operational facts of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) and North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) response to [the] September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as reconstructed from primary sources such as logs, tape recordings, transcripts and radar data, and corroborated in interviews with key personnel involved. Set forth in this monograph is the definitive account concerning when and how the FAA gained situational awareness that each of the four commercial aircraft was hijacked by terrorists on the morning of 9/11, when and how the FAA notified the military about each of the hijacked aircraft, and when and how the military responded.

Unless otherwise noted, all times presented are rounded to the nearest minute. None of the audio excerpts in this document [was] derived from cockpit voice recorders. Where possible, individual names, phone numbers, excessive static noise, and excessive periods of ‘dead space’ have been removed from the audio excerpts. Absolutely no content within the audio excerpts has been altered.

From Air Boyd TV: Listen To 9/11 As It Unfolded - FAA NORAD Tapes

113. New type of war

Unknown: This is a new type of war, that’s what it is.