THE NOBLE EAGLE FLIES

SUDDEN FEAR INSIDE:

Air defense new priority
as terrorists turn airliners
into weapons of war

The images that kept Maj. Gen. Larry K. Arnold awake at night were like
eerie plots in a sci-fi horror film: cruise missiles, nukes, biological warfare,
chemicals and airplanes in the hands of terrorists.
"I lie awake worrying," Arnold told The Associated Press in early 2000. "It
is one thing to put a truck inside the twin trade towers and blow it up. It is
quite another to be able to fly a weapon across our borders. That is an attack,
a direct attack, an unambiguous attack from outside our country." '
Then Sept. 11 happened, a twisted nightmare far scarier than Arnold ever
could have imagined. With a Cold War mentality that the demons would
come from outside America's shores, Arnold and his staff at 1st Air Force
and the Continental NORAD Region were blind-sided when the fear struck
from within. "No, we did not envision people hijacking airplanes from
within the United States, taking over those aircraft and using them as fuel-air
bombs," Arnold, retired 1st Air Force and CONR commander, says. "As
much as you brief what could happen in the future, I think from an
intellectual standpoint, we realized the greatest threat to the United States
prior to Sept. 11 was going to be a terrorist-type attack. But I did not
envision that it would be a hijacked airplane run into buildings like that."
In the world before Sept. 11, 2001, Arnold had visions of light aircraft
sneaking across America's air borders to wage biological, chemical or

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