Col. Ann Wright
Col. Ann Wright, U.S. Army (ret) – Retired Army officer and former U.S. Diplomat. Served 13 years on active duty with the U.S. Army and 16 years in the U.S. Army Reserves. She was a member of the International law team in Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada and served in Panama and Somalia.
She joined the Foreign Service in 1987 and served as Deputy Chief of Mission of U.S. Embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Afghanistan. She helped reopen the US Embassy in Kabul in December, 2001.
One of three U.S. State Department officials to publicly resign in direct protest of the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003.
Signatory of Letter dated 9/13/04, signed by 25 military, intelligence, and law enforcement veterans
"[W]e the undersigned wish to bring to the attention of the Congress and the people of the United States what we believe are serious shortcomings in the report and its recommendations. …
Omission is one of the major flaws in the Commission's report. We are aware of significant issues and cases that were duly reported to the commission by those of us with direct knowledge, but somehow escaped attention. …
The omission of such serious and applicable issues and information by itself renders the report flawed, and casts doubt on the validity of many of its recommendations. …
The Commission, with its incomplete report of "facts and circumstances", intentional avoidance of assigning accountability, and disregard for the knowledge, expertise and experience of those who actually do the job, has now set about pressuring our Congress and our nation to hastily implement all its recommendations. …
We the undersigned, who have worked within various government agencies (FBI, CIA, FAA, DIA, Customs) responsible for national security and public safety, call upon you in Congress to include the voices of those with first-hand knowledge and expertise in the important issues at hand. We stand ready to do our part."
Air America Radio 9/11/07, conducted by Richard Greene
"It's incredible some of these things that still are unanswered. The 9/11 Report; that was totally inadequate. I mean the questions that anybody has after reading that. You know, like — One of the questions, 'Why would people even get in planes and come after us?' That question was not at all addressed, much less all of these very, very interesting events that were going on that day, like Laurie was talking about.
How could our national intelligence and defense operations be so inept that they could not communicate; that they could not scramble jets; that they could not take defensive action? And I totally agree. I always thought the Pentagon had all sorts of air defense sort of equipment around it; that they could take out anything that was coming at it. And for a plane to be able to just fly low right over Washington and slam into that thing is just — I mean, you still just shake your head. How in the world could that happen? …
There's a very specific glide path that comes in for planes to land at [Reagan] National Airport [one mile from the Pentagon]. And you know whether it's somebody using a different transponder but even a plane any plane, a military plane with a transponder going — that was flying that low into Washington, a big plane like that should have set off alarm bells."
Occurs at about the 60% point of the two-hour recording.