Washington ? Blindsided by terrorists and beset by poor communications, officials were so slow to react on Sept 11, 2001, that the last of four hijacked planes had crashed by the time Vice President Dick Cheney ordered hostile aircraft shot down, a bipartisan commission reported Thursday.

In an unflinching report, the panel depicted the Federal Aviation Administration as slow to alert the military to the hijackings — even failing to pass along word that one of the planes had been seized.

In testimony before the panel, Gen. Ralph Eberhart said military pilots would have been able to “shoot down the airplanes” if word of the hijackings had been immediate. The commission, though, made no such claim.

Some military pilots “were never briefed about the reason they were scrambled,” the panel said. The Secret Service, worried about a plane approaching the capital, went “outside the chain of command” to ask for warplanes to be sent aloft.

‘Not in the loop’

President Bush, in Florida when the terrorists struck, was not immune to communications woes. The commander in chief later told interviewers he had been frustrated that day at delays in establishing secure phone links with officials in a capital city feared under attack.

“There was a real problem with communications that morning,” the commission’s chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, told reporters. “There were a lot of people who should have been in the loop who were not in the loop.”

The commission sketched its picture as it neared the end of an exhaustive investigation into terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000. Terrorists seized four planes on a single day, flying two of them into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon.

The fourth, headed for Washington, D.C., crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside after passengers struggled with their hijackers.

“The nation owes a debt to the passengers. … Their actions saved the lives of countless others and may have saved either the U.S. Capitol or the White House from destruction,” the commission’s report said.

‘We are not sure’

Family members of 9-11 victims JoAnne Kelly, left, who lost her son Bill Kelly in the World Trade Center north tower, and Diane Horning, right, who also lost her son Matthew Horning in the north tower, fight back tears during the last public hearing of the 9-11 Commission in Washington.

It noted that officials at NORAD — the North American Aerospace Defense Command — maintain they could have intercepted and shot down the plane, United Flight 93. “We are not sure,” the commission said.

Eberhart, the NORAD commander, made an even bolder claim as he testified before the panel. He said all four planes could have been shot from the sky if the FAA had informed the military as soon as it knew of each hijacking.

“If that is the case, yes, we could shoot down the airplanes,” he said.

It was a claim the panel steered clear of making, and none of the commissioners responded when he made it.

Hijackers on tape

As is its custom, the commission had its staff report read aloud, a recitation spiced by snippets of taped audio conversations that most Americans were hearing for the first time.

“We have some planes. Just stay quiet and you’ll be O.K. We are returning to the airport,” says one voice, believed to belong to Mohamed Atta, the alleged ringleader of 19 hijackers.

Those few chilling words, heard at the FAA’s Boston Center, were the first the government knew of any of the hijackings.

Moments later, there was more. “Nobody move. Everything will be OK. If you try to make any moves, you’ll endanger yourself and the airplane. Just stay quiet.”

On the ground, there was skepticism bordering on disbelief. “Is this real-world or exercise?” an unidentified NORAD official said when told by the FAA there was a need to send F-16 fighter planes aloft.

“No, this is not an exercise, not a test,” came back the reply.

Cheney orders planes shot

In a tunnel beneath the White House, Cheney talked later to the president. The vice president subsequently told commissioners Bush had authorized orders for military pilots to shoot down hijacked aircraft that refused to follow orders.

Cheney issued the orders on several occasions, the report said, unaware that the last of the four hijacked planes — heading for Washington — had already crashed in Pennsylvania.

A half hour later, Cheney erroneously told Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld he believed military pilots had “already taken a couple of aircraft out.”

Adding to the woes were reports of additional terrorist activities.

“We fought many phantoms that day,” testified Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He noted that reports of car bombings and other terrorist acts spread quickly — and falsely.

Panel offers praise

Whatever the problems, the panel praised the actions of government personnel forced to make split-second decisions. Air traffic controllers brought nearly 4,500 planes safely to the ground, for example, juggling many more aircraft than usual once the skies were ordered cleared.