Pentagon assures public on possibility of shooting down hijacked civilian airliners
( 2001-09-28 10:57 ) (7 )

Top US Defense Department officials sought to reassure air travelers on Thursday about procedures for deciding whether to shoot down a hijacked commercial jet.

Henry H Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said of military fighter pilots, "Don't get the impression that anyone who's flying around out there has a loose trigger finger. That's not the case."

Shelton spoke at a Pentagon news conference with Defense Secretary Donald H Rumsfeld at his side.

Rumsfeld said that for security reasons he could not reveal details of the procedures that have been established since the deadly hijackings on September 11. In cases in which time allowed, the president would be consulted before military action was taken, he said.

If time was too short, the final decision on firing at a civilian airliner could be made by a general responsible for US air defense. Rumsfeld and others stressed this would be rare, a last resort.

"Very, very senior people are able to address a matter in real time and ask the right questions and make the right judgments," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference. He said he has been consulted a number of times since September 11 about "concerns, questions about what various aircraft might be doing in various locations of the world." He provided no detailed examples.

Vice-President Dick Cheney said earlier this month that President George W Bush had decided, after the hijackings September 11, that airliners which clearly imperiled civilian populations should be shot down. Fighter jets were launched shortly before the second World Trade Center attack and shortly before the Pentagon attack, but in both cases the fighters did not reach the scene in time to act.

Rumsfeld said he was confident that proper authorities would be consulted in future air emergencies.

"Americans have a high degree of certainty, it seems to me. The president, the secretary of defense and the combatant commanders are never more than a minute or two away from a secure phone," Rumsfeld said.

Shooting down a civilian airliner headed for a government building or other populated area would be costly -- not only in passenger and crew lives lost but potentially also on the ground.

Responsibility for defense of US and Canadian air space lies with the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, whose headquarters is in a secure bunker inside Cheyenne Mountain near Colorado Springs, Colo. The commander in chief of NORAD is Air Force Gen. Ralph E Eberhart.

Eberhart was quoted in Thursday's New York Times as saying that authority to shoot down a hijacked civilian airliner over the continental United States goes as low as the two-star general below him, Larry K Arnold.

Ultimately, the person who would pull the trigger would be the pilot flying the jet.

Shelton, the Joint Chiefs chairman, said no one should fear that a fighter pilot would act imprudently or recklessly.

In fact, Shelton said, his concern is that a pilot would be so reluctant that he might not act in time.

"I don't think our American citizens have to be concerned about the things that we are doing right now to protect the American citizens," he said.

Anya Piazza, a spokeswoman for the Airline Pilots Association, said commercial pilots accept the fact that the decision to shoot down a hijacked civilian plane could, in rare cases, be made by a military officer.

"We certainly understand why (the president) has that authority and why he has passed it down," she said.

There is no precedent for shooting down an American commercial airliner in American skies, although lives have been lost in shootdowns elsewhere. A US Navy warship, for example, shot down an Iranian commercial jet in the Gulf in 1988 after mistaking it for a military plane. All 290 aboard died. In 1983, a Soviet fighter shot down a Korean Air Lines jet that strayed into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 aboard.