Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - 9/11 Fifth Anniversary: Discuss Our Leaders' Versions of What They Did That Morning

host · 09-10-2006, 01:58 PM

Quote:

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/054...y,70685,6.html
Open and Shut
Four years later, we still have ten big questions
by Jarrett Murphy
December 5th, 2005 6:30 PM

On Monday, December 5, the 9-11 Public Discourse Project—a private group formed by 9-11 Commission members after their official mandate lapsed in 2004—held a wrap-up press briefing in Washington, signaling the last gasp of official inquiries into the attacks four years ago. The National Institute of Standards and Technology also recently completed its final report on the twin towers. Already gathering dust are a Federal Emergency Management Agency study, the joint inquiry by Congress, the McKinsey reports on New York City's emergency response, probes by federal inspectors general, and other efforts to resolve the myriad doubts about the hijackings.

Some questions can't be answered: People who lost loved ones will never know exactly how the end came, if it hurt, what the final thoughts and words were. But other questions are more tractable. Here are 10 of them:

1. Where was the "National Command Authority"?

There has never been a true accounting of why the nation's leaders were out of the loop for so long that morning. George W. Bush and his aides even have told different versions of how the president was actually informed of the first plane striking: The president claimed erroneously that he saw it on TV, while chief of staff Andrew Card said it was Karl Rove who told the president. According to the official version, after Rove told Bush, the president talked to then national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice. She told him about the crash but apparently did not know about the reported hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11, which military air defenses learned about 17 minutes earlier.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was informed of the second plane hitting the WTC—yes, the second plane—during his intelligence briefing but continued the briefing and was at his desk when Flight 77 struck the Pentagon.

Together, the president and secretary of defense are the National Command Authority that is supposed to lead the country in the case of military emergency. But Bush didn't get in touch with Rumsfeld until after 10 a.m., around the time the fourth and final plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. When Bush was criticized days after 9-11 for failing to return to Washington until more than 10 hours after the first attack, the White House claimed there had been a threat ("real and credible," in flack Ari Fleischer's words) to Air Force One. There was none. All the 9-11 Commission says of this phantom threat is that it was the product of "a misunderstood communication."

2. Who gave the order to try to shoot the planes down?

The commission is noticeably vague on this point. The official version says Dick Cheney told the military a little past 10 a.m. to shoot down a threatening plane, claiming that the president had given his approval for the order. But while a few people in the White House bunker noted a call between Cheney and Bush moments earlier, only Rice says she heard Cheney bring up the shoot-down order. Despite the fact that people at both ends of the call were taking notes, the commission found that "there is no documentary evidence of this call." Meanwhile, some of the fighter jets in the air over D.C. received no orders to shoot down planes, while other military aircraft got the OK from the Secret Service to fly "weapons free," which means they had wide authority to take out suspicious aircraft.

Since the military was given little or no notice about the planes, maybe it doesn't matter who authorized a shoot-down. But the record is unclear. Neither Cheney nor Bush testified under oath before the 9-11 panel, in public or private. .......

Quote:

President Meets with Displaced Workers in Florida Town Hall Meeting
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...011204-17.html

"Q Hi, Mr. President. I want to say, they haven't won. I got in my car today, and I'm in the same building with you, speaking to you. They have not won.
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much.
Q And would you say hello to my son Jordan, and my daughter Patricia.
THE PRESIDENT: Jordan and who?
Q Patricia.
THE PRESIDENT: Hi, Patricia; how are you? How old is Patricia?
Q Five, and Jordan is in 3rd grade. And Jordan has a question, if I could
give him the microphone.
THE PRESIDENT: You bet. Your mother is relaying the Mike to you, Jordan.
Q One thing, Mr. President, is that you have no idea how much you've done for
this country. And another thing is that, how did you feel when you heard
about the terrorist attack? (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jordan. Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card -- actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident. But I was whisked off there, I didn't have much time to think about it. And I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my Chief of Staff, who is sitting over here, walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower, America is under attack." And, Jordan, I wasn't sure what to think at first. You know, I grew up in a period of time where the idea of America being under attack never entered my mind -- just like your Daddy's and Mother's mind probably. And I started thinking hard in that very brief period of time about what it meant to be under attack. I knew that when I got all of the facts that we were under attack, there would be hell to pay for attacking America. (Applause.

The POTUS does not [sit] outside the classroom "waiting to go in...", he does not "wait" for anyone....they wait for him. An especially odd statement, considering that "this" president is always first through the door; there is a recent news photo of him jumping ahead of Vincente Fox, and he tried to muscle his way ahead of Clinton, throught the doorway at the Clinton Presidential library, on the day of it's dedication.

There was no "TV" that "was obviously on", in the "hallway" that Bush was not "waiting in", and there was no broadcast, at the time that he stated, that televised what he told the child at the December, 2001 town meeting, the he, Bush, could have watched to see the airliner crash into WTC1....

....and a month later, Bush repeated this impossible to believe (IMO) "story":

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0020105-3.html
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
January 5, 2002

President Holds Town Hall Forum on Economy in California 

......THE PRESIDENT:......Go ahead and yell it out. If I don't like the question, I'll just change it. (Laughter.)

Q Mr. President, I'm a Navy chaplain, serving with the Marines in 29 Palms, California. I am also honored to have you as my Commander-in-Chief.

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.)

Q My question is very simple: How can we, as pastors, pray specifically for you and your family? (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first -- thank you. I have -- first of all, I believe in the power of prayer. (Applause.) And I have felt the prayers of the American people for me and my family. I have. And I want to thank all of you who have prayed. People say, well, how do you know? I say, well, I can just feel it. I can't describe it very well, but I feel comforted by the prayer.

I think the thing that -- the prayer that I would like America is to ask for is to pray for God's protection for our land and our people, to pray against -- that there's a shield of protection, so that if the evil ones try to hit us again, that we've done everything we can, physically, and that there is a spiritual shield that protects the country. (Applause.)

Do you have a question. Come on underneath. The man's got a question.

Q First of all, I'm very impressed in how you handled the situation on September 11th. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: That's plenty. (Applause.) No. Thank you.

Q What was the first thing that went through your head when you heard that a plane crashed into the first building?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Well, I was sitting in a schoolhouse in Florida. I had gone down to tell my little brother what to do, and -- just kidding, Jeb. (Laughter.) And -- it's the mother in me. (Laughter.) Anyway, I was in the midst of learning about a reading program that works. I'm a big believer in basic education, and it starts with making sure every child learns to read. And therefore, we need to focus on the science of reading, not what may feel good or sound good when it comes to teaching children to read. (Applause.) I'm just getting a plug in for my reading initiative.

Anyway, I was sitting there, and my Chief of Staff -- well, first of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake. And something was wrong with the plane, or -- anyway, I'm sitting there, listening to the briefing, and Andy Card came and said, "America is under attack."

And in the meantime, this teacher was going on about the curriculum, and I was thinking about what it meant for America to be under attack. It was an amazing thought. But I made up my mind that if America was under attack, we'd get them. (Applause.) I wasn't interested in lawyers, I wasn't interested in a bunch of debate. I was interested in finding out who did it and bringing them to justice. I also knew that they would try to hide, and anybody who provided haven, help, food, would be held accountable by the United States of America. (Applause.)

Anyway, it was an interesting day.......

....and VP Dick Cheney's version of what he was doing, on the morning of 9/11, televised jusr 5 days after the 9/11 attacks:

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresid...p20010916.html
Camp David, Maryland
September 16, 2001

The Vice President appears on Meet the Press with Tim Russert

......MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the events of Tuesday. Where were you when you first learned a plane had struck the World Trade Center?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I was in my office Tuesday morning. Monday, I had been in Kentucky, and the president had been in the White House. Tuesday, our roles were sort of reversed. He was in Florida, and I was in the White House Tuesday morning. And a little before 9, my speechwriter came in. We were going to go over some speeches coming up. And my secretary called in just as we were starting to meet just before 9:00 and said an airplane had hit the World Trade Center, and that was the first one that went in. So we turned on the television and watched for a few minutes, and then actually saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center. And the--as soon as that second plane showed up, that's what triggered the thought: terrorism, that this was an attack...

MR. RUSSERT: You sensed it immediately, "This is deliberate"?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Yeah. Then I convened in my office. Condi Rice came down. Her office is right near mine there in the West Wing.

MR. RUSSERT: The national security adviser.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: National security adviser, my chief of staff, Scooter Libby, Mary Matalin, who works for me, convened in my office, and we started talking about getting the Counterterrorism Task Force up and operating. I talked with the president. I'd given word to Andy Card's staff, who is right next door, to get hold of Andy and/or the president and that I wanted to talk to him as soon as they could hook it up. This call came in, and the president knew at this point about that. We discussed a statement that he might make, and the first statement he made describing this as an act of apparent terrorism flowed out of those conversations. While I was there, over the next several minutes, watching developments on the television and as we started to get organized to figure out what to do, my Secret Service agents came in and, under these circumstances, they just move. They don't say "sir" or ask politely. They came in and said, "Sir, we have to leave immediately," and grabbed me and...

MR. RUSSERT: Literally grabbed you and moved you?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Yeah. And, you know, your feet touch the floor periodically. But they're bigger than I am, and they hoisted me up and moved me very rapidly down the hallway, down some stairs, through some doors and down some more stairs into an underground facility under the White House, and, as a matter of fact, it's a corridor, locked at both ends, and they did that because they had received a report that an airplane was headed for the White House.

MR. RUSSERT: This is Flight 77, which had left Dulles.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Which turned out to be Flight 77. It left Dulles, flown west towards Ohio, been captured by the terrorists. They turned off the transponder, which led to a later report that a plane had gone down in Ohio, but it really hadn't. Of course, then they turned back and headed back towards Washington. As best we can tell, they came initially at the White House and...

MR. RUSSERT: The plane actually circled the White House?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Didn't circle it, but was headed on a track into it. The Secret Service has an arrangement with the F.A.A. They had open lines after the World Trade Center was...

MR. RUSSERT: Tracking it by radar.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: And when it entered the danger zone and looked like it was headed for the White House was when they grabbed me and evacuated me to the basement. The plane obviously didn't hit the White House. It turned away and, we think, flew a circle and came back in and then hit the Pentagon. And that's what the radar track looks like. The result of that--once I got down into the shelter, the first thing I did--there's a secure phone there. First thing I did was pick up the telephone and call the president again, who was still down in Florida, at that point, and strongly urged him to delay his return.

MR. RUSSERT: You told him to stay away from Washington.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I said, `Delay your return. We don't know what's going on here, but it looks like, you know, we've been targeted.'

MR. RUSSERT: Why did you make that judgment?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, it goes to--you know, sort of my basic role as vice president is to worry about presidential succession. And my job, above all other things, is to be prepared to take over if something happens to the president. But over the years from my time with President Ford, as secretary of Defense, on the Intel Committee and so forth, I've been involved in a number of programs that were aimed at ensuring presidential succession. We did a lot of planning during the Cold War, Tim, with respect to the possibility of a nuclear incident. And one of the key requirements always is to protect the presidency. It's not about George Bush or Dick Cheney. It's about the occupant in the office.

And one of the things that we did later on that day were tied directly to guaranteeing presidential succession, and that our enemies, whoever they might be, could not decapitate the federal government and leave us leaderless in a moment of crisis. That's why, for example, when we have a State of the Union speech and we've got the entire government assembled--the president, vice president, congressional leaders, Cabinet and so forth--we always leave a Cabinet member out. He's always taken to a secure location and set up there in case something should happen in the House chambers so we still have a president. .......

......VICE PRES. CHENEY: We evacuated Speaker Hastert to a secure facility, and later, the rest of the congressional leadership. I also ordered the evacuation of Cabinet members. And so we sent Tommy Thompson, Ann Veneman, Gale Norton also up to a secure facility. And in the days since, we've always maintained to say--I've spent a good deal of my time up at Camp David since the president returned to the White House just so we weren't both together in the same place so we could ensure the survival of the government.

The president was on Air Force One. We received a threat to Air Force One--came through the Secret Service...

MR. RUSSERT: A credible threat to Air Force One. You're convinced of that.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: I'm convinced of that. Now, you know, it may have been phoned in by a crank, but in the midst of what was going on, there was no way to know that. I think it was a credible threat, enough for the Secret Service to bring it to me. Once I left that immediate shelter, after I talked to the president, urged him to stay away for now, well, I went down into what's call a PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, and there, I had Norm Mineta...

MR. RUSSERT: Secretary of Transportation.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: ...secretary of Transportation, access to the FAA. I had Condi Rice with me and several of my key staff people. We had access, secured communications with Air Force One, with the secretary of Defense over in the Pentagon. We had also the secure videoconference that ties together the White House, CIA, State, Justice, Defense--a very useful and valuable facility. We have the counterterrorism task force up on that net. And so I was in a position to be able to see all the stuff coming in, receive reports and then make decisions in terms of acting with it.

But when I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon's been hit. We had word the State Department had been bombed, that a car bomb had gone off at the State Department. Turned out not to be true, but we didn't know that at the time. We had a report that Norm had provided that there were six airplanes that might have been hijacked, and that's what we started working off of, was that list of six.

Now we could account for two of them in New York. The third one we didn't know what had happened to it. It turned out it had hit the Pentagon. But the first reports on the Pentagon attack suggested a helicopter, and then later, a private jet, and it was only after we got ahold of some eyewitnesses that we knew it was an American Airlines flight. So then we had three planes accounted for, but we still have had three outstanding.

We had reports of planes down in Ohio, turned out not to be true; down in Pennsylvania; turned out that was true. And all of that--excuse me--added with the report of a perspective attack on Air Force One itself, we'd have been absolute fools not to go into button down mode, make sure we had successors evacuated, make sure the president was safe and secure. Offutt was a good location for that purpose, and also the president...

MR. RUSSERT: In Nebraska.

VICE PRES. CHENEY: In Nebraska.....

Mr. Cheney's televised account of Sept. 16, 2001, disclosed that "The Secret Service has an arrangement with the F.A.A. They had open lines after the World Trade Center was..."....to me, this makes President Bush's account of what he was thinking and doing, in the 20 minutes between the time that he "watched" the plane hit the first tower "on TV", and when his COS, Andrew Card, whispered in his air "that America was under attack", even more incredible.

Another curiousity is that Norman Mineta, in sworn testimony, contradicted Cheney's account of when Cheney arrived at the PEOC, by at least 30 minutes:

Quote:

http://www.9-11commission.gov/archiv...2003-05-23.htm
MR. MINETA: I didn't know about the order to shoot down. I arrived at the PEOC at about 9:20 a.m. And the president was in Florida, and I believe he was on his way to Louisiana at that point when the conversation that went on between the vice president and the president and the staff that the president had with him.

MR. ROEMER: So when you arrived at 9:20, how much longer was it before you overheard the conversation between the young man and the vice president saying, "Does the order still stand?"

MR. MINETA: Probably about five or six minutes.

MR. ROEMER: So about 9:25 or 9:26. And your inference was that the vice president snapped his head around and said, "Yes, the order still stands." Why did you infer that that was a shoot-down? .......

Norman Mineta's 9/11 Commission testimony was not included in the final report:

Quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_Commission_Report
.......The Report did not include key testimony by secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta which describes the situation in the Presidential Emergency Operating Center with vice president Cheney as American Airlines flight 77 approached the Pentagon on 9/11/01: "There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?" And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?" Well, at the time I didn't know what all that meant. And--" Yet despite such a detailed description of the events that day, the only mention of Mineta in the Commission Report is on p. 326, that Mineta was part of a group that met with Bush at the end of September 11 to review the events of the day.[9]....

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5233007/
9/11 commission staff statement No. 17
The text as submitted to the National Commission
on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

Updated: 10:17 a.m. ET June 17, 2004

Improvising a Homeland Defense

Staff Statement No. 17

United 93 and the Shootdown Order.......

..........There is conflicting evidence as to when the Vice President arrived in the shelter conference room. We have concluded, after reviewing all the available evidence, that the Vice President arrived in the shelter conference room shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58.

............In most cases the chain of command in authorizing the use of force runs from the President to the Secretary of Defense and from the Secretary to the combatant commander. The President apparently spoke to Secretary Rumsfeld briefly sometime after 10:00, but no one can recall any content beyond a general request to alert forces. The President and the Secretary did not discuss the use of force against hijacked airliners in this conversation.

The Secretary did not become part of the chain of command for those orders to engage until he arrived in the NMCC. At 10:39, the Vice President tried to bring the Secretary up to date as both participated in the Air Threat Conference:

Vice President: There’s been at least three instances here where we’ve had reports of aircraft approaching Washington—a couple were confirmed hijack. And, pursuant to the President’s instructions I gave authorization for them to be taken out. Hello?

SecDef: Yes, I understand. Who did you give that direction to?

Vice President: It was passed from here through the operations center at the White House, from the [shelter].

SecDef: OK, let me ask the question here. Has that directive been transmitted to the aircraft?

Vice President: Yes, it has.

SecDef: So we’ve got a couple of aircraft up there that have those instructions at the present time?

Vice President: That is correct. And it’s my understanding they’ve already taken a couple of aircraft out.

SecDef: We can’t confirm that. We’re told that one aircraft is down but we do not have a pilot report that they did it.

As this exchange shows, Secretary Rumsfeld was not involved when the shoot down order was first passed on the Air Threat Conference. After the Pentagon was hit, Secretary Rumsfeld went to the parking lot to assist with rescue efforts. He arrived in the National Military Command Center shortly before 10:30. He told us he was just gaining situational awareness when he spoke with the Vice President, and that his primary concern was ensuring that the pilots had a clear understanding of their rules of engagement.

The Vice President was mistaken in his belief that shoot down authorization had been passed to the pilots flying at NORAD’s direction. By 10:45 there was, however, another set of fighters circling Washington that had entirely different rules of engagement. These fighters, part of the 113th Wing of the DC Air National Guard, launched out of Andrews Air Force Base based on information passed to them by the Secret Service. The first of the Andrews fighters was airborne at 10:38.

General Wherley—the commander of the 113th Wing—reached out to the Secret Service after hearing second hand reports that it wanted fighters airborne. A Secret Service agent had a phone in each ear, one to Wherley and one to a fellow agent at the White House, relaying instructions that the White House agent said he was getting from the Vice President. The guidance for Wherley was to send up the aircraft, with orders to protect the White House and take out any aircraft that threatens the Capitol. General Wherley translated this in military terms to “weapons free,” which means the decision to shoot rests in the cockpit, or in this case the cockpit of the lead pilot. He passed these instructions to the pilots that launched at 10:42 and afterward.

Thus, while the fighter pilots under NORAD direction who had scrambled out of Langley never received any type of engagement order, the Andrews pilots were operating under “weapons free”—a permissive rule of engagement. The President and the Vice President told us they had not been aware that fighters had been scrambled out of Andrews, at the request of the Secret Service and outside of the military chain of command.

Reflections on United 93

Had it not crashed in Pennsylvania at 10:03, we estimate that United 93 could not have reached Washington, DC any earlier than 10:13, and most probably would have arrived before 10:23. We examined the military’s ability to intercept it.

There was only one set of fighters orbiting Washington, DC during this timeframe—the Langley F-16s. They were armed and under NORAD's control.

But the Langley pilots were never briefed about the reason they were scrambled. As the lead pilot explained, "I reverted to the Russian threat…I’m thinking cruise missile threat from the sea. You know you look down and see the Pentagon burning and I thought the bastards snuck one by us. . . . [Y]ou couldn’t see any airplanes, and no one told us anything.” The pilots knew their mission was to identify and divert aircraft flying within a certain radius of Washington, but did not know that the threat came from hijacked commercial airliners.

Also, NEADS did not know where United 93 was when it first heard about the hijacking from FAA at 10:07. Presumably FAA would have provided the information, but we do not know how long it would have taken, nor how long it would have taken NEADS to find and track the target on its own equipment.

Once the target was known and identified, NEADS needed orders to pass to the pilots. Shoot down authority was first communicated to NEADS at 10:31. Given the clear attack on the United States, it is also possible—though unlikely—that NORAD commanders could have ordered the shoot down without the authorization communicated by the Vice President.

NORAD officials have maintained that they would have intercepted and shot down United 93. We are not so sure. We are sure that the nation owes a debt to the passengers of United 93. Their actions saved the lives of countless others, and may have saved either the U.S. Capitol or the White House from destruction.

The details of what happened on the morning of September 11 are complex. But the details play out a simple theme. NORAD and the FAA were unprepared for the type of attacks launched against the United States on September 11, 2001. They struggled, under difficult circumstances, to improvise a homeland defense against an unprecedented challenge they had never encountered and had never trained to meet.

Quote:

http://web.archive.org/web/200302131...moments_2.html
Sept. 11 Scramble
A Plane Hits the Pentagon; Bush Takes Flight; Others Give Orders From Bunkers

Sept. 14 —(2002) As President Bush told Americans the crash of two jets into New York's World Trade Center appeared to be the work of terrorists, the Secret Service was springing into action at the White House.

Just after 9 a.m. ET on Sept. 11, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney was in his West Wing office when two or three agents came in and told him "Sir, you have to come with us," according to David Bohrer, a White House photographer who was there.

One of the agents "put his hand on the back of my belt, grabbed me by the shoulder and sort of propelled me down the hallway," Cheney said.

They took him into an underground bunker known as PEOC, the President's Emergency Operations Center.

"It's got blast doors on each end," Cheney said. "There's a secure phone there as well as a television set."......

.........."As I was trying to find all of the principals," Rice said, "the Secret Service came in and said, 'You have to leave now for the bunker. The vice president's already there. There may be a plane headed for the White House. There are a lot of planes in the air that are not responding properly.'"

‘We Just Lost the Bogey’

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta already was in the bunker.

"Someone came in and said, 'Mr. Vice President, there's a plane out 50 miles,'" Mineta said.

Mineta conferred with Federal Aviation Administration Deputy Chief Monte Belger.

"I said … 'Monte, what do you have?'" Mineta said. "He said, 'Well, we're watching this target on the radar, but the transponder's been turned off, so we have no identification.'"

As the plane got closer, air officials had picked up enough information to believe the unidentified plane was headed toward Washington, perhaps toward Ronald Reagan National Airport, near the Pentagon.

At 9:30 a.m. ET, at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, F-16 fighter pilots scrambled into the air 105 miles — or 12 minutes — south of Washington.

"Our supervisor picked up our line to the White House," said Danielle O'Brien, an air traffic controller at an FAA facility near Washington's Dulles Airport, "and started relaying to them the information: 'We have an unidentified, very fast-moving aircraft inbound toward your vicinity, eight miles west, seven miles west.' And it went, '6, 5, 4.'"

"Pretty soon, he said, 'Uh oh, we just lost the bogey,' meaning the target went off the screen," Mineta said. "So I said, 'Well, where is it?' And he said, 'Well, we're not really sure.'"

‘Bang, the Airplane Hits the Building’.....

David Bohrer, in the ABC quote attributed to him in the preceding Sept. 14, 2002 articles, as well as US Transportation Secretary, Norman Mineta, both place Cheney's evacuation from the White House to the PEOC, at least 30 minutes before the time that Cheney, and the 9/11 Commission report, say that it happened:

Quote:

.........MR. MINETA: I didn't know about the order to shoot down. I arrived at the PEOC at about 9:20 a.m. And the president was in Florida, and I believe he was on his way to Louisiana at that point when the conversation that went on between the vice president and the president and the staff that the president had with him.

MR. ROEMER: So when you arrived at 9:20, how much longer was it before you overheard the conversation between the young man and the vice president saying, "Does the order still stand?"

MR. MINETA: Probably about five or six minutes.

MR. ROEMER: So about 9:25 or 9:26. And your inference was that the vice president snapped his head around and said, "Yes, the order still stands." Why did you infer that that was a shoot-down? ..........

So....what "gives", here? The 9/11 Commission investigated the 9/11 attacks, and issued it's report. Why all the confusion, and statements from "the leaders" that contradict "reality" and other sworn testimony of government officials. Would it not be a priority of our "leadership" to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. Why would they want to leave contradictions "on the table", that could predictably, add fuel to "conspiracy theories" .

Five years later, why doesn't the president and the vice-president do the brief, and probably nearly effortless....."work" of laying the ambiguities in their statements and actions on 9/11, to rest.....once and for all, by holding a joint news conference, with Mr. Runsfeld and Norman Mineta, to answer our questions, and clear our confusion....that they've caused....up...once and for all.....for the historical record, and to confirm that our trust, in them.... is warranted!