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SHOESTRING 9/11
Tuesday, 1 December 2020. Time-Waster in Chief: General Richard Myers, the Highest-Ranking Military Officer in the U.S. During the 9/11 Attacks. General Richard Myers was the highest-ranking military officer in the country when America came under terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and yet he appears to have done nothing that wouldhave
SHOESTRING 9/11: 2019 The Strange Story of Daniel Lewin, the First Victim of the 9/11 Attacks. Daniel Lewin is believed to have been the first person killed in the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. The 31-year-old from Brookline, Massachusetts, was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to be hijacked that day. SHOESTRING 9/11: TODD BEAMER'S ODD PHONE CALL AND THE A key element of the official 9/11 story is the phone call Todd Beamer made from United Airlines Flight 93 shortly before it supposedly crashed in rural Pennsylvania. It was at the end of this call that Beamer was heard declaring: "Let's roll," before joining a SHOESTRING 9/11: UNITED AIRLINES HELD AN EXERCISE SO United Airlines personnel were subjected to a surprise training exercise 12 days before 9/11 in which they were led to believe that one of their planes had crashed. SHOESTRING 9/11: OVER 350 PASSENGERS CANCELED THEIR More than 350 people who were originally scheduled to be on the four airliners hijacked in the 9/11 attacks either changed their plans and canceled their reservations--in many cases at the last minute--or simply failed to show up for the SHOESTRING 9/11: THE MANY FALSE HIJACKINGS OF 9/11 As previously mentioned, there were some false alarms on September 11 for which the specific nature of the emergency is unstated. These may have been suspected hijackings or they may have been something else, like the loss of radio contact or the loss of a transponder signal. SHOESTRING 9/11: 'REAL-WORLD OR EXERCISE': DID THE U.S Key military personnel who were responsible for protecting the U.S. against the 9/11 attacks may have been seriously hindered in their ability to respond because of a large-scale air defense exercise they were participating in when the attacks occurred. SHOESTRING 9/11: HUSBAND OF FLIGHT 93 ATTENDANT: "CELL The reason for his surprise: "because cell phones don't work on a plane." The interview appeared on the 2006 documentary DVD, Portrait of Courage: The Untold Story of Flight 93. In it Lorne Lyles, a police officer in Florida, described how, at around 9:51 a.m. on September 11, he received a call from his wife, CeeCee Lyles, who was a flight SHOESTRING 9/11: THE MANY MISQUOTES OF WALLACE MILLER The Many Misquotes of Wallace Miller. Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11. He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there SHOESTRING 9/11: FEBRUARY 2007 Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11. He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there.SHOESTRING 9/11
Tuesday, 1 December 2020. Time-Waster in Chief: General Richard Myers, the Highest-Ranking Military Officer in the U.S. During the 9/11 Attacks. General Richard Myers was the highest-ranking military officer in the country when America came under terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and yet he appears to have done nothing that wouldhave
SHOESTRING 9/11: 2019 The Strange Story of Daniel Lewin, the First Victim of the 9/11 Attacks. Daniel Lewin is believed to have been the first person killed in the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. The 31-year-old from Brookline, Massachusetts, was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to be hijacked that day. SHOESTRING 9/11: TODD BEAMER'S ODD PHONE CALL AND THE A key element of the official 9/11 story is the phone call Todd Beamer made from United Airlines Flight 93 shortly before it supposedly crashed in rural Pennsylvania. It was at the end of this call that Beamer was heard declaring: "Let's roll," before joining a SHOESTRING 9/11: UNITED AIRLINES HELD AN EXERCISE SO United Airlines personnel were subjected to a surprise training exercise 12 days before 9/11 in which they were led to believe that one of their planes had crashed. SHOESTRING 9/11: OVER 350 PASSENGERS CANCELED THEIR More than 350 people who were originally scheduled to be on the four airliners hijacked in the 9/11 attacks either changed their plans and canceled their reservations--in many cases at the last minute--or simply failed to show up for the SHOESTRING 9/11: THE MANY FALSE HIJACKINGS OF 9/11 As previously mentioned, there were some false alarms on September 11 for which the specific nature of the emergency is unstated. These may have been suspected hijackings or they may have been something else, like the loss of radio contact or the loss of a transponder signal. SHOESTRING 9/11: 'REAL-WORLD OR EXERCISE': DID THE U.S Key military personnel who were responsible for protecting the U.S. against the 9/11 attacks may have been seriously hindered in their ability to respond because of a large-scale air defense exercise they were participating in when the attacks occurred. SHOESTRING 9/11: HUSBAND OF FLIGHT 93 ATTENDANT: "CELL The reason for his surprise: "because cell phones don't work on a plane." The interview appeared on the 2006 documentary DVD, Portrait of Courage: The Untold Story of Flight 93. In it Lorne Lyles, a police officer in Florida, described how, at around 9:51 a.m. on September 11, he received a call from his wife, CeeCee Lyles, who was a flight SHOESTRING 9/11: THE MANY MISQUOTES OF WALLACE MILLER The Many Misquotes of Wallace Miller. Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11. He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there SHOESTRING 9/11: FEBRUARY 2007 Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11. He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there. SHOESTRING 9/11: 2019 The Strange Story of Daniel Lewin, the First Victim of the 9/11 Attacks. Daniel Lewin is believed to have been the first person killed in the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. The 31-year-old from Brookline, Massachusetts, was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to be hijacked that day. SHOESTRING 9/11: WHY DID THE TOP ARMY OFFICER IN THE U.S General John M. "Jack" Keane was the most senior Army officer in the United States on September 11, 2001. Working at the Pentagon, he was ideally placed to respond promptly and effectively to the terroristattacks that day.
SHOESTRING 9/11: 2018 On the night of September 11, 1994, a man called Frank Eugene Corder stole a single-engine plane, flew to Washington, and crashed the plane into the wall of the White House. In fact, even before this incident occurred, the possibility of a plane being used as a weapon to attack the White House had been considered. SHOESTRING 9/11: 2012 Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, was originally going to be at a public event near the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001, but a late change to his plans meant the event was rescheduled and he was out of harm's way when the 9/11attacks occurred.
SHOESTRING 9/11: RECOVERY WORKERS REPORTEDLY FOUND THE The black boxes from the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, were found and retrieved in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks, a SHOESTRING 9/11: HOW DID THEY KNOW BUILDING 7 WAS GOING TO World Trade Center Building 7 was a 47-story skyscraper, located a few hundred feet from the twin towers. No plane hit it, yet at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001 it collapsed entirely to the ground in the space of just 6.6 seconds. No building like it, a SHOESTRING 9/11: 2017 General John M. "Jack" Keane was the most senior Army officer in the United States on September 11, 2001. Working at the Pentagon, he was ideally placed to respond promptly and effectively to the terroristattacks that day.
SHOESTRING 9/11: FEBRUARY 2007 On January 30 this year, turkeys started dying at a farm in Suffolk, England.Two days later, another 860 birds died there. The state veterinary service was contacted, and on February 3 it was confirmed to be an outbreak of the most dangerous form of bird flu, the H5N1strain.
SHOESTRING 9/11: 2007 On 9/11, the Captain of the USS Cole Said the U.S. Public Needed a 'Seminal' Terrorist Event. A new entry in the Complete 9/11 Timeline reveals that, shortly before the World Trade Center was first hit on 9/11, Kirk Lippold--who had been the commanding officer of the USSCole-
LAURA BUSH ON 9/11: WHY WAS THE PRESIDENT'S WIFE LEFT The wife of the U.S. president is considered one of the nation's "most visible targets," and is therefore provided with a detail of Secret Service agents whose job is to protect her and keep her out of harm's way. And yet on September 11, 2001, Laura Bush, the wife of then-President George W. Bush, was left vulnerable all through theterrorist
SHOESTRING 9/11
Tuesday, 1 December 2020. Time-Waster in Chief: General Richard Myers, the Highest-Ranking Military Officer in the U.S. During the 9/11 Attacks. General Richard Myers was the highest-ranking military officer in the country when America came under terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and yet he appears to have done nothing that wouldhave
SHOESTRING 9/11: 2019 The Strange Story of Daniel Lewin, the First Victim of the 9/11 Attacks. Daniel Lewin is believed to have been the first person killed in the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. The 31-year-old from Brookline, Massachusetts, was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to be hijacked that day. SHOESTRING 9/11: TODD BEAMER'S ODD PHONE CALL AND THE A key element of the official 9/11 story is the phone call Todd Beamer made from United Airlines Flight 93 shortly before it supposedly crashed in rural Pennsylvania. It was at the end of this call that Beamer was heard declaring: "Let's roll," before joining a SHOESTRING 9/11: UNITED AIRLINES HELD AN EXERCISE SO United Airlines personnel were subjected to a surprise training exercise 12 days before 9/11 in which they were led to believe that one of their planes had crashed. SHOESTRING 9/11: OVER 350 PASSENGERS CANCELED THEIR More than 350 people who were originally scheduled to be on the four airliners hijacked in the 9/11 attacks either changed their plans and canceled their reservations--in many cases at the last minute--or simply failed to show up for the SHOESTRING 9/11: THE MANY FALSE HIJACKINGS OF 9/11 As previously mentioned, there were some false alarms on September 11 for which the specific nature of the emergency is unstated. These may have been suspected hijackings or they may have been something else, like the loss of radio contact or the loss of a transponder signal. SHOESTRING 9/11: 'REAL-WORLD OR EXERCISE': DID THE U.S Key military personnel who were responsible for protecting the U.S. against the 9/11 attacks may have been seriously hindered in their ability to respond because of a large-scale air defense exercise they were participating in when the attacks occurred. SHOESTRING 9/11: HUSBAND OF FLIGHT 93 ATTENDANT: "CELL The reason for his surprise: "because cell phones don't work on a plane." The interview appeared on the 2006 documentary DVD, Portrait of Courage: The Untold Story of Flight 93. In it Lorne Lyles, a police officer in Florida, described how, at around 9:51 a.m. on September 11, he received a call from his wife, CeeCee Lyles, who was a flight SHOESTRING 9/11: THE MANY MISQUOTES OF WALLACE MILLER The Many Misquotes of Wallace Miller. Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11. He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there SHOESTRING 9/11: FEBRUARY 2007 Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11. He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there.SHOESTRING 9/11
Tuesday, 1 December 2020. Time-Waster in Chief: General Richard Myers, the Highest-Ranking Military Officer in the U.S. During the 9/11 Attacks. General Richard Myers was the highest-ranking military officer in the country when America came under terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and yet he appears to have done nothing that wouldhave
SHOESTRING 9/11: 2019 The Strange Story of Daniel Lewin, the First Victim of the 9/11 Attacks. Daniel Lewin is believed to have been the first person killed in the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. The 31-year-old from Brookline, Massachusetts, was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to be hijacked that day. SHOESTRING 9/11: TODD BEAMER'S ODD PHONE CALL AND THE A key element of the official 9/11 story is the phone call Todd Beamer made from United Airlines Flight 93 shortly before it supposedly crashed in rural Pennsylvania. It was at the end of this call that Beamer was heard declaring: "Let's roll," before joining a SHOESTRING 9/11: UNITED AIRLINES HELD AN EXERCISE SO United Airlines personnel were subjected to a surprise training exercise 12 days before 9/11 in which they were led to believe that one of their planes had crashed. SHOESTRING 9/11: OVER 350 PASSENGERS CANCELED THEIR More than 350 people who were originally scheduled to be on the four airliners hijacked in the 9/11 attacks either changed their plans and canceled their reservations--in many cases at the last minute--or simply failed to show up for the SHOESTRING 9/11: THE MANY FALSE HIJACKINGS OF 9/11 As previously mentioned, there were some false alarms on September 11 for which the specific nature of the emergency is unstated. These may have been suspected hijackings or they may have been something else, like the loss of radio contact or the loss of a transponder signal. SHOESTRING 9/11: 'REAL-WORLD OR EXERCISE': DID THE U.S Key military personnel who were responsible for protecting the U.S. against the 9/11 attacks may have been seriously hindered in their ability to respond because of a large-scale air defense exercise they were participating in when the attacks occurred. SHOESTRING 9/11: HUSBAND OF FLIGHT 93 ATTENDANT: "CELL The reason for his surprise: "because cell phones don't work on a plane." The interview appeared on the 2006 documentary DVD, Portrait of Courage: The Untold Story of Flight 93. In it Lorne Lyles, a police officer in Florida, described how, at around 9:51 a.m. on September 11, he received a call from his wife, CeeCee Lyles, who was a flight SHOESTRING 9/11: THE MANY MISQUOTES OF WALLACE MILLER The Many Misquotes of Wallace Miller. Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11. He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there SHOESTRING 9/11: FEBRUARY 2007 Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11. He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there. SHOESTRING 9/11: 2019 The Strange Story of Daniel Lewin, the First Victim of the 9/11 Attacks. Daniel Lewin is believed to have been the first person killed in the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. The 31-year-old from Brookline, Massachusetts, was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to be hijacked that day. SHOESTRING 9/11: WHY DID THE TOP ARMY OFFICER IN THE U.S General John M. "Jack" Keane was the most senior Army officer in the United States on September 11, 2001. Working at the Pentagon, he was ideally placed to respond promptly and effectively to the terroristattacks that day.
SHOESTRING 9/11: 2018 On the night of September 11, 1994, a man called Frank Eugene Corder stole a single-engine plane, flew to Washington, and crashed the plane into the wall of the White House. In fact, even before this incident occurred, the possibility of a plane being used as a weapon to attack the White House had been considered. SHOESTRING 9/11: 2012 Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, was originally going to be at a public event near the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001, but a late change to his plans meant the event was rescheduled and he was out of harm's way when the 9/11attacks occurred.
SHOESTRING 9/11: RECOVERY WORKERS REPORTEDLY FOUND THE The black boxes from the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, were found and retrieved in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks, a SHOESTRING 9/11: HOW DID THEY KNOW BUILDING 7 WAS GOING TO World Trade Center Building 7 was a 47-story skyscraper, located a few hundred feet from the twin towers. No plane hit it, yet at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001 it collapsed entirely to the ground in the space of just 6.6 seconds. No building like it, a SHOESTRING 9/11: 2017 General John M. "Jack" Keane was the most senior Army officer in the United States on September 11, 2001. Working at the Pentagon, he was ideally placed to respond promptly and effectively to the terroristattacks that day.
SHOESTRING 9/11: FEBRUARY 2007 On January 30 this year, turkeys started dying at a farm in Suffolk, England.Two days later, another 860 birds died there. The state veterinary service was contacted, and on February 3 it was confirmed to be an outbreak of the most dangerous form of bird flu, the H5N1strain.
SHOESTRING 9/11: 2007 On 9/11, the Captain of the USS Cole Said the U.S. Public Needed a 'Seminal' Terrorist Event. A new entry in the Complete 9/11 Timeline reveals that, shortly before the World Trade Center was first hit on 9/11, Kirk Lippold--who had been the commanding officer of the USSCole-
LAURA BUSH ON 9/11: WHY WAS THE PRESIDENT'S WIFE LEFT The wife of the U.S. president is considered one of the nation's "most visible targets," and is therefore provided with a detail of Secret Service agents whose job is to protect her and keep her out of harm's way. And yet on September 11, 2001, Laura Bush, the wife of then-President George W. Bush, was left vulnerable all through theterrorist
SHOESTRING 9/11
Tuesday, 1 December 2020. Time-Waster in Chief: General Richard Myers, the Highest-Ranking Military Officer in the U.S. During the 9/11 Attacks. General Richard Myers was the highest-ranking military officer in the country when America came under terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and yet he appears to have done nothing that wouldhave
SHOESTRING 9/11: 'REAL-WORLD OR EXERCISE': DID THE U.S Key military personnel who were responsible for protecting the U.S. against the 9/11 attacks may have been seriously hindered in their ability to respond because SHOESTRING 9/11: TODD BEAMER'S ODD PHONE CALL AND THEFLIGHT 93 PHONE CALL TRANSCRIPTSFLIGHT 93 PHONE CALLS IMPOSSIBLEFLIGHT 93 RECORDED PHONE CALLSPHONE CALLS FROM 911 VICTIMS A key element of the official 9/11 story is the phone call Todd Beamer made from United Airlines Flight 93 shortly before it supposedly crashed in rural Pennsylvania. It was at the end of this call that Beamer was heard declaring: "Let's roll," before joining a SHOESTRING 9/11: OVER 350 PASSENGERS CANCELED THEIR More than 350 people who were originally scheduled to be on the four airliners hijacked in the 9/11 attacks either changed their plans and canceled their reservations--in many cases at the last minute--or simply failed to show up for the SHOESTRING 9/11: HOW DID THEY KNOW BUILDING 7 WAS GOING TO World Trade Center Building 7 was a 47-story skyscraper, located a few hundred feet from the twin towers. No plane hit it, yet at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001 it collapsed entirely to the ground in the space of just 6.6 seconds. No building like it, a SHOESTRING 9/11: SECRETARY OF DEFENSE DONALD RUMSFELD Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. secretary of defense, proceeded as normal with his daily intelligence briefing at the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001, despite learning that a second aircraft had hit the World Trade Center and America was clearly under attack. SHOESTRING 9/11: FEBRUARY 2007 Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11. He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there. SHOESTRING 9/11: THE MANY MISQUOTES OF WALLACE MILLER The Many Misquotes of Wallace Miller. Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11. He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there WAS DELTA 1989 PART OF A LIVE-FLY HIJACKING EXERCISE ON 9/11?DELTA AIRLINES BOOK A FLIGHTDELTA AIR LINES INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTSDELTA AIRLINES FLIGHT TRACKERDELTA AIRLINES FLIGHTS SEARCHDELTA AIRLINES RESERVATIONSDELTA FLIGHT CHECK IN NEADS was in fact alerted to the suspected hijacking of Delta 1989 almost exactly one hour later, at 9:39 a.m. This was therefore around the time it was due to be notified of the simulated hijacking in the exercise, and supports the contention that "A GREAT OPPORTUNITY": PRESIDENT BUSH DESCRIBES 9/11 How did President Bush feel about the September 11 attacks? In the following hours, weeks, and months, he repeatedly used one word. While most people no doubt felt that it was an absolute catastrophe, George W. Bush described 9/11--or at least the political climate it hadengendered-
SHOESTRING 9/11
Tuesday, 1 December 2020. Time-Waster in Chief: General Richard Myers, the Highest-Ranking Military Officer in the U.S. During the 9/11 Attacks. General Richard Myers was the highest-ranking military officer in the country when America came under terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and yet he appears to have done nothing that wouldhave
SHOESTRING 9/11: 'REAL-WORLD OR EXERCISE': DID THE U.S Key military personnel who were responsible for protecting the U.S. against the 9/11 attacks may have been seriously hindered in their ability to respond because SHOESTRING 9/11: TODD BEAMER'S ODD PHONE CALL AND THEFLIGHT 93 PHONE CALL TRANSCRIPTSFLIGHT 93 PHONE CALLS IMPOSSIBLEFLIGHT 93 RECORDED PHONE CALLSPHONE CALLS FROM 911 VICTIMS A key element of the official 9/11 story is the phone call Todd Beamer made from United Airlines Flight 93 shortly before it supposedly crashed in rural Pennsylvania. It was at the end of this call that Beamer was heard declaring: "Let's roll," before joining a SHOESTRING 9/11: OVER 350 PASSENGERS CANCELED THEIR More than 350 people who were originally scheduled to be on the four airliners hijacked in the 9/11 attacks either changed their plans and canceled their reservations--in many cases at the last minute--or simply failed to show up for the SHOESTRING 9/11: HOW DID THEY KNOW BUILDING 7 WAS GOING TO World Trade Center Building 7 was a 47-story skyscraper, located a few hundred feet from the twin towers. No plane hit it, yet at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001 it collapsed entirely to the ground in the space of just 6.6 seconds. No building like it, a SHOESTRING 9/11: SECRETARY OF DEFENSE DONALD RUMSFELD Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. secretary of defense, proceeded as normal with his daily intelligence briefing at the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001, despite learning that a second aircraft had hit the World Trade Center and America was clearly under attack. SHOESTRING 9/11: FEBRUARY 2007 Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11. He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there were no bodies there. SHOESTRING 9/11: THE MANY MISQUOTES OF WALLACE MILLER The Many Misquotes of Wallace Miller. Wallace Miller is the coroner of Somerset County, Pennsylvania. He was among the first people to arrive at the alleged Flight 93 crash site on the morning of 9/11. He later recounted to the Washington Post what he'd seen when he first got there: "I stopped being coroner after about 20 minutes, because there WAS DELTA 1989 PART OF A LIVE-FLY HIJACKING EXERCISE ON 9/11?DELTA AIRLINES BOOK A FLIGHTDELTA AIR LINES INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTSDELTA AIRLINES FLIGHT TRACKERDELTA AIRLINES FLIGHTS SEARCHDELTA AIRLINES RESERVATIONSDELTA FLIGHT CHECK IN NEADS was in fact alerted to the suspected hijacking of Delta 1989 almost exactly one hour later, at 9:39 a.m. This was therefore around the time it was due to be notified of the simulated hijacking in the exercise, and supports the contention that "A GREAT OPPORTUNITY": PRESIDENT BUSH DESCRIBES 9/11 How did President Bush feel about the September 11 attacks? In the following hours, weeks, and months, he repeatedly used one word. While most people no doubt felt that it was an absolute catastrophe, George W. Bush described 9/11--or at least the political climate it hadengendered-
SHOESTRING 9/11: U.S. OFFICIALS GAVE EERILY PROPHETIC A number of senior officials in the United States government and military gave warnings in the week before September 11, 2001, or early on the morning of September 11, that seem to have predicted the 9/11 attacks with chilling accuracy. SHOESTRING 9/11: WHERE WERE THE F-15S ON 9/11? In response to the first hijacking, of Flight 11, two F-15 fighter jets were launched from Otis Air Force Base in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, which is about 153 miles away from New York City. The F-15s were ordered to scramble at 8:46 a.m. and were in SHOESTRING 9/11: HOW DID THEY KNOW BUILDING 7 WAS GOING TO World Trade Center Building 7 was a 47-story skyscraper, located a few hundred feet from the twin towers. No plane hit it, yet at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001 it collapsed entirely to the ground in the space of just 6.6 seconds. No building like it, a SHOESTRING 9/11: RECOVERY WORKERS REPORTEDLY FOUND THE The black boxes from the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, were found and retrieved in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks, a SHOESTRING 9/11: DECEMBER 2007 The vibration lasted for about 30 seconds. The doors were knocked out, and a huge ball of flame created by the exploding diesel fuel from the building's own supply tank shot from the elevator shaft and out the doors of the South Tower, consuming everything in its path. Minutes later, at 9:59 a.m., the tower collapsed." SHOESTRING 9/11: THE BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT REVEALED In his 1998 book Who Killed Diana? Simon Regan presents a clear definition of what the British establishment is. He also describes a "Super-Establishment" -- a ruling elite that, despite being entirely unelected, retains significant power over how Britain is governed. WAS DELTA 1989 PART OF A LIVE-FLY HIJACKING EXERCISE ON 9/11? NEADS was in fact alerted to the suspected hijacking of Delta 1989 almost exactly one hour later, at 9:39 a.m. This was therefore around the time it was due to be notified of the simulated hijacking in the exercise, and supports the contention that SHOESTRING 9/11: NEW DETAILS ABOUT THE 9/11 MYSTERY PLANE The morning of 9/11, CNN reported a mystery jet plane flying above Washington, DC. At 9:54 a.m., correspondent John King, who was standing near the White House, reported that about ten minutes earlier (hence, around 9:44 a.m.), there was "a "A GREAT OPPORTUNITY": PRESIDENT BUSH DESCRIBES 9/11 How did President Bush feel about the September 11 attacks? In the following hours, weeks, and months, he repeatedly used one word. While most people no doubt felt that it was an absolute catastrophe, George W. Bush described 9/11--or at least the political climate it hadengendered-
SHOESTRING 9/11: 2007 On 9/11, the Captain of the USS Cole Said the U.S. Public Needed a 'Seminal' Terrorist Event. A new entry in the Complete 9/11 Timeline reveals that, shortly before the World Trade Center was first hit on 9/11, Kirk Lippold--who had been the commanding officer of the USSCole-
SHOESTRING 9/11
Investigating 9/11 and Other Acts of the Secret State.@SHOESTRING911
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LINKS
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THURSDAY, 11 JULY 2019 THE APATHY AND INACTION OF VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY DURING THE 9/11ATTACKS
Dick Cheney, as vice president of the United States, had an important role to play when America came under terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and yet he appears to have taken no significant action until the attacks were over. He did nothing to initiate or implement a government response to the crisis until it was too late for his actions to make a difference to the outcome of the attacks. Cheney, who was at the White House on the morning of September 11, was alerted to the first crash at the World Trade Center shortly after 8:46 a.m., when it occurred. He followed the coverage of the incident on television and saw the second hijacked plane crashing into the Trade Center at 9:03 a.m. And yet, even though he realized then that the U.S. was under attack, he had no serious discussions with other officials about how to respond and failed to issue any significant orders. By the time Secret Service agents came and evacuated him from his office, more than half an hour later, practically all he had done was watch "developments on the television" and start to "get organized to figure out what to do," according to his own recollections. The vice president did eventually act with the kind of urgency and decisiveness we might reasonably have expected from him. For example, he authorized American fighter jets to shoot down aircraft that were believed to have been hijacked, so as to prevent terrorists from crashing them into targets on the ground. He was also involved in getting congressional leaders and some cabinet members evacuated to a secure facility outside Washington, DC, and helped Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta track aircraft after all planes in U.S. airspace were ordered to land. But by the time he started taking this more active role, the fourth and final plane to be hijacked that day had reportedly crashed in rural Pennsylvania and so the attacks wereover.
CHENEY AUTHORIZED THE MILITARY TO SHOOT DOWN SUSPICIOUS PLANES Perhaps Cheney's most significant action on the morning of September 11 was arranging "rules of engagement" for fighter pilots, authorizing them to shoot down hostile aircraft. It was clearly important for the military to be given this authority, since shooting down a hijacked aircraft might have been the only way to stop the hijackers crashing it into a target on the ground and killing perhaps hundreds of people in addition to the plane's passengers. Although shootdown authorization needed to be issued by the president, Cheney's involvement with giving it appears to have come about because President George W. Bush was away from Washington when the attacks occurred and so Cheney was the most senior official at the WhiteHouse.
Arranging for the military to have this authorization presumably ought to have taken place as early as possible. At the latest, efforts should surely have begun at 9:03 a.m., when the second hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center and it became clear that America was under attack. And yet Cheney only told the military it was authorized to shoot down hijacked aircraft shortly before 10:15 a.m. and got the president to retroactively give his approval for this authorization in a phone call at 10:18 a.m. In two earlier calls between Bush and Cheney, the subject of shootdown authorization was never discussed. The military therefore only received authorization to shoot down hostile aircraft after the attacks ended. Another significant action Cheney was involved with was getting those in the presidential line of succession--officials who might have had to take over as president if Bush was killed or incapacitated--to a secure location outside Washington in line with the "continuity of government" (COG) plan, which was intended to maintain a functioning government in the event of a catastrophic emergency. Cheney claimed this task was one of his priorities on September 11. And yet he took no action to get those in the presidential line of succession to a secure location after he saw the second hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center on television, even though it was then clear that a catastrophic emergency was taking place. The order to activate COG was given by Richard Clarke, the White House counterterrorism chief, without any prompting from the vice president and Cheney only started implementing the plan at some point more than an hour after the second crash occurred. CHENEY WAS THE TOP OFFICIAL AT THE WHITE HOUSE ON SEPTEMBER 11 The need for Cheney to respond immediately and decisively to the crashes at the World Trade Center was surely increased because the president was away from Washington, visiting a school in Florida, when America came under attack. Cheney was consequently the most senior official at the White House and presumably might have needed to carry out some of the president's duties if Bush was unable to adequately respond to the crisis due to being so far away. Cheney also ought to have taken prompt action to reduce the risk of his coming to harm since, if he had been killed or injured, there may have been no one immediately available to carry out the duties of the vice president. And yet, even though the White House, as the home of the U.S. president, was an obvious target for terrorists, he was content to stay in his office there after he saw the second crash on television. He only went to a safer location shortly after 9:35 a.m.--at least 50 minutes after the first crash at the World Trade Center--when his Secret Service agents forcefully removed him from hisoffice.
Cheney's failure to adequately respond to the 9/11 attacks until they ended is suspicious and needs to be explained. It is difficult to attribute his behavior to incompetence, since he had years of experience working in government. Significantly, he was secretary of defense from 1989 to 1993. This experience should have helped him understand the need for prompt action on September 11, when the U.S. military had to organize a response to protect the nation. A possible explanation that, though disturbing, needs to be considered is that Cheney was involved in planning the attacks and wanted them to succeed. If this was the case, his initial inaction, although treasonous, was quite logical. By doing nothing significant while the attacks were underway, he avoided doing anything that might reduce the likelihood of them being carried out successfully. CHENEY HAD MEETINGS BEFORE THE ATTACKS OCCURRED September 11, 2001, began like a typical day for Dick Cheney. Shortly before 7:00 a.m., he received his regular CIA briefing. That day's briefing was "unremarkable," according to journalist and author Stephen Hayes. He left the vice president's residence at the Naval Observatory in Northwest Washington at 7:44 a.m. and was driven to the White House, arriving there 13 minutes later. He then went to his office in the West Wing, where he met briefly with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, his chief of staff. Shortly before 8:30 a.m., Sean O'Keefe stopped by for an unscheduled meeting. O'Keefe, the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, had been a close confidant of Cheney's when Cheney was secretary of defense. Although Cheney had another meeting scheduled for 8:30 a.m. and colleagues were usually expected to keep any informal meetings with him brief, O'Keefe stayed with him for over 20 minutes. Curiously, neither man has been able to recall what they talked about during the meeting. Cheney was scheduled to meet John McConnell, his chief speechwriter, at 8:30 a.m. to discuss a series of upcoming speeches, but McConnell waited patiently outside Cheney's office until O'Keefe left there. While he was waiting, he saw a report about the first crash at the World Trade Center--when the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 was flown into the North Tower--on television. (This was presumably at around 8:49 a.m., when CNN became the first network to report the incident that occurred three minutes earlier.) He had been chatting with the Secret Service agent at the door to Cheney's office and the agent, after receiving a call from his intelligence division, told him the plane that hit the Trade Center was a passenger jet. McConnell finally went into Cheney's office shortly before 9:00 a.m. for his meeting with the vice president. Cheney learned of the crash shortly after or possibly shortly before McConnell came in. His secretary, Debbie Heiden, called and let him know what had happened. It apparently did not occur to him that the crash might have been a terrorist attack. "How the hell could a plane hit the World Trade Center?" he wondered, since it was "a clear day" and there was "no weather problem." Cheney and McConnell watched the coverage of the incident on television and saw the second crash--when United Airlines Flight 175 was flown into the South Tower--at 9:03 a.m. Cheney realized then that this was terrorism. "At that moment, you knew this was deliberate act, that it was a terrorist act," he recalled. He promptly called Scooter Libby and summoned him to his office. He went across the hallway to the office of Andrew Card, Bush's chief of staff, who was with the president in Florida, and told Card's secretary that he wanted to talk with Card or the president as soon as this could be arranged. He picked up a phone in his office with a direct line to Bush's mobile communications team in Florida and told the person who answered, "I need to talk to the president." And he received a call around this time from his eldest daughter, Liz Cheney. She had heard that a plane hit the World Trade Center on her car radio and wanted to alert her father to the incident. After she told him about it, he replied: "Two planes have hit. It's a terrorist attack." He then abruptly ended the call, saying, "I've got to go." COLLEAGUES WENT TO CHENEY'S OFFICE A number of Cheney's colleagues promptly went to the vice president's office after they learned of the crashes in New York. Apparently one of the first to arrive was National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Richard Clarke then arrived. He told the vice president: "It's an al-Qaeda attack and they like simultaneous attacks. This may not be over." He told Rice that he and his colleagues were "putting together a secure teleconference to manage the crisis." He added that he would "like to get the highest-ranking official from each department" on the teleconference and Cheney told him, "Do it." Clarke then left and headed to the White House Situation Room. Doug Cochrane, naval aide to the vice president, also arrived at Cheney's office around this time. After he learned of the first crash at the World Trade Center, Cochrane went to the Situation Room, hoping to learn more about the incident. There, he recalled, he was told that Cheney got cut off while he was on the phone with the president. (However, no other accounts have described Cheney talking to Bush around the time Cochrane's account suggests.) Cochrane therefore headed to Cheney's office carrying a piece of paper with a phone number the Situation Room had for the president on it. When he reached the office, he found Cheney with Rice. Cheney looked up and acknowledged him. It is unclear whether the two men spoke. When he was interviewed by the 9/11 Commission, Cochrane simply recalled seeing Cheney answering a call from Bush and saying, "Yes, Mr. President" when he picked up the phone. Cochrane then closed the door to Cheney's office and headed back to the Situation Room. Other officials subsequently came to Cheney's office. These included Scooter Libby; Mary Matalin, the vice president's closest aide; Josh Bolten, the deputy White House chief of staff; Brian McCormack, Cheney's personal aide; and possibly Sean O'Keefe. Cheney instructed Libby to go to the Situation Room since, Libby recalled, "because the president was away, we had the responsibility for sort of organizing things and he wanted to make sure that he was well connected." While Cheney was waiting for Bush to call him, he told his colleagues, "The cabinet is going to need direction" and he then "set about providing it," according to journalist and author Barton Gellman. However, Gellman gave no details of what this supposed "direction" involved. John McConnell initially stayed in Cheney's office when the officials arrived but decided to leave after a short time and returned to his own office before heading out of the building along with dozens ofstaffers.
CHENEY TALKED TO THE PRESIDENT AT 9:15 A.M. Cheney talked with President Bush for the first time following the crashes at the World Trade Center at 9:15 a.m. Bush was almost a thousand miles away from Washington that morning, visiting the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. He called Cheney after leaving a reading demonstration he had been participating in and talked with him for two minutes. The two men assessed the situation and agreed that terrorists were probably behind the attacks. They also discussed what the president would say in the public statement he was going to deliver. What Cheney did in the 18 minutes following the call are unclear. Evidence indicates he may have done very little. Along with the other people in his office, he watched Bush giving his statement from the Booker Elementary School on television, at 9:30 a.m. But by 9:35 a.m., he recalled, all he had been doing since speaking to the president was "watching developments on the television" and starting "to get organized to figure out what to do." Then, shortly after 9:35 a.m., the Secret Service agents responsible for protecting him came and abruptly removed him from his office. ARMED SECRET SERVICE AGENTS EVACUATED CHENEY The Secret Service had been contacted at around 9:33 a.m. by an air traffic controller who reported that an unidentified aircraft was flying toward the White House at high speed. The controller then reported that the aircraft had changed course, but when they subsequently said it was beginning to circle back, the Secret Service decided to evacuate the vice president from his office immediately. The news about the suspicious aircraft was passed on to members of the vice presidential protective division in the West Wing. They heard a message over their radios from the Secret Service's Joint Operations Center, stating, "Unidentified aircraft coming toward the White House." Right away, they went into Cheney's office to move the vice president to a secure location. Four or five agents carrying submachine guns went in and one of them, Special Agent James Scott, told the vice president, "Sir, we need to move you--now." The agents grabbed Cheney and took him to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), a secure bunker below the East Wing of the White House. Scott put his hand on Cheney's shoulder, grabbed the back of his belt, and propelled him out the door. Then, Cheney recalled, the agents "moved me very rapidly down the hallway, down some stairs, through some doors, and down some more stairs." Cheney's colleagues who had come to see the vice president were left behind in the office. The exact time when the evacuation occurred is unclear. It took place at 9:36 a.m. according to one Secret Service chronology and Cheney said that, according to the Secret Service, he left his office at "around 9:35 a.m. or 9:36 a.m." A photograph taken that morning indicates the evacuation must have occurred at 9:36 a.m. at the earliest. It shows Cheney in his office with the television set visible and the time shown by the television network in the corner of the screen appears to be 9:36 a.m. CHENEY CALLED BUSH FROM AN UNDERGROUND TUNNEL At the bottom of the stairs, on the way to the PEOC, Scott stopped and gave out additional firearms, gas masks, and flashlights to the other Secret Service agents. He explained to Cheney that the reason for the evacuation was that he had heard over his radio that an unidentified aircraft was flying toward the White House. He then received new information over his radio, which he passed on to Cheney. "Sir, the plane headed for us just hit the Pentagon," he said. "Now I knew for certain that Washington as well as New York was under attack," Cheneyhas commented.
The vice president entered a short tunnel that led to the PEOC about a minute after he was removed from his office. He stopped in an area of it where there was a television, a bench to sit on, and a secure phone, and said he wanted to speak to the president. However, operators had trouble connecting him to Bush, who by then had left the Booker Elementary School and was preparing to leave Sarasota on Air Force One. Cheney therefore only reached the president at around 9:45a.m.
Cheney has recalled that he told Bush the Pentagon had been hit and the White House was a target in the call. He also "strongly urged not to return to Washington right away" and advised him to "delay his return until we could find out what the hell wasgoing on."
Cheney's wife, Lynne Cheney, who had been brought to the White House by her Secret Service detail, joined her husband in the tunnel while he was making the call. As well as telling Bush that a plane had hit the Pentagon, she heard him say three planes were missing. Scooter Libby, who was accompanying her, recalled that the vice president "was communicating ... in a very efficient manner the status of the situation" to the president. Bush told Cheney he had heard about the attack on the Pentagon and commented, "Sounds like we have a minor war going on here." He also told Cheney to call the congressional leadership and give them abriefing.
Lynne Cheney noted that her husband was still on the phone with the president at 9:55 a.m., indicating the call lasted at least 10 minutes. However, accounts of it have made no mention of the president and vice president making any decisions about how to respond to the attacks or discussing orders they could issue during theirconversation.
CHENEY ENTERED THE PEOC JUST BEFORE 10:00 A.M. While Cheney was on the phone with Bush, he was joined in the tunnel by other officials, including Condoleezza Rice and Doug Cochrane. After the call ended, he was escorted into the PEOC along with the other people who were now with him. The group passed through a small communications studio and entered a conference room. There was a table in the middle of this room that was long enough to accommodate 16 people and had several secure phones located around it. There was also a row of chairs along the wall for support staff, large television screens on the walls, and cameras for video conferencing. Cheney and his entourage entered the PEOC "shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58," according to the _9/11 Commission Report_. Once inside the conference room, Cheney took his place at the center of the table. Then, he recalled, he "plugged in" and started "working the phones and working the problem." He subsequently "took briefings, conferred with Scooter Libby in a voice too low for anyone else to hear, then got on the phone with heads of agencies," accordingto Barton Gellman.
Cheney's "number one priority" after he entered the PEOC, according to Cochrane, was to be provided with "accurate, brief, and credible information that he could pass to the president, to enable the president to make good decisions." Cheney told the other people in the PEOC that their task was "to assimilate information for thepresident."
He also helped Norman Mineta and Condoleezza Rice track the tail numbers of aircraft while planes were being brought down, since all aircraft in U.S. airspace were being instructed to land at the nearest airport. While Mineta called out tail numbers, he kept track of how many planes were still in the air. He regarded this task as one of his priorities, since, he said, getting planes out of the air meant "we could sort out which had been hijacked." MILITARY NEEDED AUTHORIZATION TO SHOOT DOWN HOSTILE AIRCRAFT Probably the most important things Cheney did after he entered the PEOC were his actions that dealt with authorizing the military to shoot down aircraft that were believed to have been hijacked. Reportedly, the president was the only person permitted to authorize the shooting down of a civilian aircraft. Larry Arnold, the commanding general of the North American Aerospace Defense Command's Continental U.S. Region on September 11, agreed that "only the president had the authority to order a shootdown of a commercial aircraft." Major General Paul Weaver, the director of the Air National Guard at that time, similarly stated that "only the president could give the order for a U.S. fighter to shoot down a commercial airliner filled with American travelers." And Cheney described shootdown authorization as "a presidential-level decision." The _9/11 Commission Report_ stated, "Prior to 9/11, it was understood that an order to shoot down a commercial aircraft would have to be issued by the National Command Authority (a phrase used to describe the president and secretary of defense)." The vice president was not in the chain of command and Cheney knew this. In 1989, when he was secretary of defense, he told then Vice President Dan Quayle that "the vice president had no lawful place in the chain of command." However, Cheney understood the importance of authorizing fighters to shoot down a hostile aircraft from his experience as secretary of defense. "When you deploy force, you've got to give rules of engagement; that's something you learn as defense secretary," he has commented. "Without authorization to shoot," he added, a combat air patrol is "not much of a combat air patrol." In light of the nature of the 9/11 attacks, with aircraft being crashed into targets in order to cause mass casualties, it was surely essential that the military be given authorization to shoot down hostile aircraft as soon as possible. Although the passengers would be killed if a fighter shot down a commercial plane, countless additional deaths would result if the plane was allowed to crash into another skyscraper or a large government building, such as the Capitol. Shooting the plane down would at least save the lives of people on theground.
Bush and Cheney have made clear that they understood on September 11 the necessity of giving the military shootdown authorization. In an account of the events of that day, Bush wrote: "Hijacked planes were weapons of war. Despite the agonizing costs, taking one out could save countless lives on the ground." And Cheney noted that authorizing the military to shoot down a civilian airliner was essential because, "once a plane was hijacked, it was a weapon in the hands of theenemy."
And yet Cheney made no attempt to arrange for the military to be given this authorization after he saw the second crash at the World Trade Center on television and realized America was under attack. Evidence indicates that he only discussed rules of engagement for fighter pilots with Bush and arranged for the president to authorize the military to shoot down civilian aircraft in a phone call well over an hour later. By that time, there were no more hostile aircraft in the sky and so it was too late for the two men's actions to make a difference to the outcome of the attacks. Bush only issued shootdown authorization for fighter pilots at 10:18 a.m., according to the _9/11 Commission Report_, 15 minutes after United Airlines Flight 93--the final plane to be hijacked that day--reportedly crashed. And yet he and Cheney talked on the phone about the attacks at least twice before then--at 9:15 a.m. and around9:45 a.m.
Cheney could have advised Bush to issue shootdown authorization during either of these calls and surely should have. Journalist and author Mitchell Zuckoff pointed out the significance of his failure to do so. According to the official account of 9/11, Zuckoff noted, "No one outside al-Qaeda knew how many more planes and targets might be part of the terrorists' plot." But at the time the president and vice president's second call ended, shortly before 10:00 a.m., "If there were more planes, Bush and Cheney had yet to discuss how far the military should go to stop them." CHENEY AND BUSH CLAIMED THEY DISCUSSED SHOOTDOWN AUTHORIZATION ATAROUND 10:00 A.M.
While they failed to discuss rules of engagement for fighter pilots during their first two calls, Cheney and Bush have claimed they addressed the issue during a call that took place significantly earlier than the call in which the _9/11 Commission Report_ stated that the president gave shootdown authorization. Cheney described this alleged call, stating: "I said , 'We've got to give the pilots rules of engagement and I recommend we authorize them to shoot.' We talked about it briefly and he said, 'Okay, I'll sign up to that.'" He indicated that this conversation took place at around 10:00 a.m. He told the 9/11 Commission that he "remembered placing a call to the president just after entering the shelter conference room" to discuss "the rules of engagement" for the combat air patrol that the Air Force was trying to establish over Washington. Bush also indicated that the call in which he gave shootdown authorization occurred at around 10:00 a.m., although he claimed that he called Cheney, rather than Cheney calling him. He made the call, he wrote, "as Air Force One climbed rapidly to 45,000 feet" after taking off from the Sarasota airport. (His plane took off at 9:55 a.m.) "We needed to clarify the rules of engagement," he recalled, and so he told Cheney "that our pilots should contact suspicious planes and try to get them to land peacefully. If that failed, they had my authority to shoot them down." Although this call was allegedly made almost an hour after the second attack on the World Trade Center, if it occurred this would at least mean the president issued shootdown authorization while the attacks were still underway, before Flight 93 reportedly crashed. However, when the 9/11 Commission examined the relevant evidence, some of its staffers concluded that the call never took place. Barton Gellman and another journalist and author, Philip Shenon, have summarized this evidence. Gellman noted that at the time the call supposedly occurred, Bush and Cheney "were among the most thoroughly monitored people on earth." Shenon noted that every phone call involving Bush and his senior staff on September 11 was logged, and a detailed summary was made of what was said. The White House secure switchboard logged communications to and from Air Force One, and seven other sets of official records tracked the calls between Bush and Cheney. Furthermore, several people in the PEOC made detailed notes about everything that happened in the PEOC, which included descriptions of what they overheard of Cheney's phoneconversations.
If a call had been made at around 10:00 a.m. in which the president and the vice president discussed shootdown authorization, at least one document should have mentioned it. However, the 9/11 Commission found, there was "no documentary evidence for this call." This was despite the fact that the relevant records appeared to be complete. There was "no other alleged gap in the president's telephone records" for September 11, Gellman pointed out. CHENEY GAVE SHOOTDOWN AUTHORIZATION WITHOUT THE PRESIDENT'S APPROVAL While Bush therefore appears to have issued shootdown authorization at 10:18 a.m., not 10:00 a.m., Cheney told a military officer in the PEOC that fighters could shoot down suspicious aircraft a few minutes before then, without the president's prior authorization. Captain Anthony Barnes, the senior military officer on duty in the PEOC, received a call from a general who, Barnes recalled, wanted "permission to engage confirmed terrorists on board commercial airplanes." At around 10:10 a.m. or shortly after, in response to this request, Barnes went into the PEOC conference room and told the people there an inbound aircraft that was presumably hijacked was 80 miles away. He asked Cheney for the authority to engage the aircraft and Cheney immediately gave his authorization. A short time later, Barnes reported that the aircraft was 60 miles out and once more asked Cheney for permission to engage it. Again, Cheney gave his authorization. Barnes then went back to the phone and told the general who had called him, "The vice president has authorized you to engage confirmed terrorist aboard commercial aircraft." Others in the military were promptly informed about what Cheney had said. His authorization was relayed over an air threat conference call convened by the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon. At 10:14 a.m., a military officer in the PEOC told those on the conference call, "The vice president has just confirmed: fighters are cleared to engage the aircraft inbound if we can verify that it is, in fact, the hijacked aircraft." Five minutes later, the officer repeated the information, saying, "The vice president has cleared fighter aircraft to engage any aircraft inbound to Washington, DC, areawithout authority."
At 10:31 a.m., Cheney's authorization was relayed within the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)--the military organization responsible for monitoring and defending U.S. airspace. Larry Arnold instructed his staff to broadcast a message over a NORAD instant messaging system, stating, "Vice president has cleared us to intercept tracks of interest and shoot them down if they do not respond." It is worth noting that even though Cheney had apparently taken the initiative to go outside the chain of command and authorize the military to shoot down hostile aircraft without the prior approval of the president, his authorization was still only issued after the attacks ended. It therefore came too late to make a difference to the outcome of the crisis. (As it turned out, shootdown authorization was unnecessary at the time the vice president issued it, since Barnes's reports of an approaching aircraft were incorrect. The _9/11 Commission Report_ suggested they related to Flight 93, even though this plane had already crashed.)
BUSH GAVE SHOOTDOWN AUTHORIZATION AFTER CHENEY ISSUED IT As previously mentioned, the 9/11 Commission determined that Bush told Cheney that fighters were authorized to shoot down hostile aircraft at 10:18 a.m., several minutes after Cheney told the military they coulddo this.
In a "quiet moment" after Cheney gave his authorization, the _9/11 Commission Report_ described, Josh Bolten suggested to the vice president that he "get in touch with the president and confirm the engage order," since Bolten "had not heard any prior discussion on the subject with the president." In response to Bolten's suggestion, Cheney called Bush at 10:18 a.m. and spoke with him for two minutes. During the call, Bush gave his confirmation for the shootdown order. Bush then told those with him on Air Force One what he had just done. He "said that he had talked to the vice president ... and gave the authorization that military could shoot down any planes not under control of their crews that were gearing critical targets," Karl Rove recalled. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer wrote in the notes he was taking at the time that, at 10:20 a.m., Bush said he had just authorized the shooting down of aircraft, if necessary. Bush's report to his colleagues at 10:20 a.m., recorded in Fleischer's notes, was the earliest mention the 9/11 Commission found of the president giving shootdown authorization. If the call at 10:18 a.m. was therefore when Bush told Cheney that fighters could shoot down hostile aircraft, it means Cheney only set about arranging rules of engagement for fighter pilots with the president an hour and a quarter after he learned of the second crash at the World Trade Center and realized America was under attack. Even then, he failed to do this on his own initiative and only acted because Bolten prompted him to. CHENEY ONLY HELPED IMPLEMENT CONTINUITY OF GOVERNMENT AFTER THEATTACKS ENDED
Cheney has stated that one of the things that was "uppermost" in his mind on September 11 was getting those in the presidential line of succession to secure locations in accordance with the U.S.'s continuity of government plan. "One of my major concerns was to 'preserve the continuity of government,'" he wrote, adding, "In the event that an attack should take out both the president and vice president, it's crucial to make certain that potential successors are safe and secure." And yet, evidence indicates, like arranging shootdown authorization, he only set about implementing COG after the attacks ended, by which time there was no longer any danger to those in the presidential line of succession. The secret COG plan, which was formulated during the Cold War, was originally intended to ensure that the federal government would continue to function during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. It "designates which officials should be taken to the at the White House, which cabinet members should be taken to secure locations, and where to move congressional leaders," the _Washington Post_ described. The main goal of COG, according to Cheney, "was making certain we protected successors in the line of succession to the presidency, so that when the smoke settled, that you had somebody as president who had the authority and constitutional responsibilities to run the country." When COG is activated, "the leadership of our three branches of government--and those in the line of succession to the presidency--are ordered to each move to their individual, predetermined, hardened sites around the country," Lieutenant Colonel Robert Darling, who worked for the White House Military Office on September 11, wrote. "This better enables them to survive a nuclear attack, for example, or a man-made or natural catastrophic event and take on the responsibilities to maintain the federal government's operations," headded.
Cheney had a better understanding than most of the COG plan, since he was a key figure in the program in the 1980s, when he participated in regular COG exercises. And yet he apparently made no effort to activate COG on September 11 and he only helped implement the plan after he entered the PEOC. COUNTERTERRORISM CHIEF ACTIVATED CONTINUITY OF GOVERNMENT Richard Clarke was the man who reportedly activated COG on September 11 and, according to his recollections, he did this of his own initiative, without any prompting from Cheney. He activated COG after the coordinator for the plan joined him in the Situation Room. Clarke asked the coordinator, "How do I activate COG?" and he replied, "You tell me to do it." Clarke then gave the instruction, "Go." He gave a message to a military officer in the PEOC to tell others in the PEOC that he was "instituting COG." He also told officials at the Pentagon over a video teleconference: "We are initiating COG. Please activate your alternate command centers and move staff to themimmediately."
Clarke apparently activated COG shortly before 9:59 a.m. since, around that time, Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, spoke to Colonel Michael Irwin, the director of operations for the White House Military Office, and, presumably in response to Clarke's instruction, requested implementation of the plan. Clarke has indicated that someone other than him--such as Cheney, perhaps--could have activated COG. "There was no paperwork that said who could push the button" and initiate the plan, he said. "The directives said that I was explicitly in charge of the procedures, but not explicitly that I could activate it," he added. And yet the only thing relating to COG that Cheney did while the attacks were taking place was urge Bush to delay returning to Washington. When he spoke to the president at around 9:45 a.m., while he was in the tunnel leading to the PEOC, he advised Bush to delay his return to Washington because, he recalled, "What I was immediately thinking about was sort of continuity of government." CNN described what was probably his line of thinking. It noted that COG protocols recommended "keeping the president and vice president in separate locations during times of significant terrorist threat." CHENEY HELPED IMPLEMENT CONTINUITY OF GOVERNMENT PROCEDURES AFTERENTERING THE PEOC
While he apparently played no role in activating COG, Cheney did at least help implement the plan. He was involved in evacuating Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and later the rest of the congressional leadership to a secure facility outside Washington. He also ordered the evacuation of some members of the cabinet. In light of the valuable knowledge of COG he would have gained during his years as a key player in the program, Cheney should surely have set about arranging for the plan to be activated and then helped implement it as soon as possible after he saw the second crash at the World Trade Center on television and realized America was under attack. Robert Darling pointed out that, in line with the COG plan, "in a national crisis such as 9/11, it's essential to track and know exactly where each leader is at all times." And yet, despite claiming that preserving the continuity of government was one of his "major concerns" on September 11, Cheney only set about implementing the COG plan after the attacks ended. Certainly, no accounts have described him taking any actions to implement it before he entered the PEOC. By the time he talked to Hastert, who was second in the line of presidential succession, and told him, "I want you to go to a secure location," Hastert had already been evacuated by his security detail to Andrews Air Force Base, about 12 miles outside Washington, from where he was going to be flown to this "securelocation."
CHENEY WAS A UNIQUELY POWERFUL VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney's actions on September 11 require close scrutiny because Cheney was a key member of the administration and had specific responsibilities. The vice president is the second highest executive officer of the United States government, after the president. The "executive functions" of the vice president include participation in cabinet meetings and membership of the National Security Council. The primary responsibility of the vice president, though, is to be ready to immediately assume the presidency if the existing president becomes unable to perform his duties due to death, resignation, or temporary incapacitation. While for much of U.S. history vice presidents held little power, over recent decades they have been integral members of an administration, functioning more like an assistant president. They have had increased privileges, which include having their own office in the West Wing of the White House, having full access to intelligence briefings, serving as a presidential adviser, and having regular meetings and a weekly private lunch with the president. The duties of the vice president, beyond those laid out in the Constitution, are in fact at the discretion of the president in office. And the nature of the job of vice president has been influenced by the personality and skills of the person occupying thepost.
Cheney's tenure as vice president, between 2001 and 2009, represented the apex of U.S. vice presidential power, according to many foreign policy experts. Cheney redefined the post by taking on more of the day-to-day managerial responsibilities of the presidency. He also had significant influence over the George W. Bush administration's national security policies. Cheney was in a particularly important position on September 11 because if Bush had been killed or become incapacitated during the attacks, as first in the presidential line of succession he would have taken over as president. He would then have taken on critical responsibilities, including being commander in chief of the nation's armed forces. "My job, above all other things, is to be prepared to take over if something happens to the president," he noted while recalling his experiences on September 11. He has in fact specifically indicated that, on that day, he thought he may have needed to take over as president. He said he believed someone was trying to "take out the leadership" of the United States for "most ofthe day."
Cheney has claimed his awareness of his responsibilities as vice president determined his behavior on September 11. "Because you've got a job to do, you've got to focus on that, so you don't have time for personal considerations," he said. "You're thinking in terms of your official responsibilities," he added. And yet his response to the terrorist attacks while they were taking place was particularly poor for someone in such a key position. His lack of action while America was under attack is even more alarming in light of the fact that the president was away from Washington. This meant he was the most senior official at the White House. He appears to have recognized the significance of this. He "saw himself as the man responsible for teeing decisions up for the president," one White House staffer who was with him in the PEOCcommented.
CHENEY WAS A FORMER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE It is important to note that Cheney was secretary of defense from 1989 to 1993 when we assess his actions during the 9/11 attacks. Secretary of defense is one of the most important cabinet positions. The person holding this post is the principal defense policy adviser to the president and exercises authority, direction, and control over the U.S. Department of Defense. Furthermore, the secretary of defense forms with the president what is known as the National Command Authority. This means the two officials have unique authority to issue military orders. "No _offensive_, lethal military action will ever be taken by any component of the U.S. military without the direct consent of the president or the secretary of defense," Robert Darling stated. As a former secretary of defense, Cheney would surely have had a better understanding than most on September 11 of how to organize an effective military response to the terrorist attacks. Indeed, as previously mentioned, he said his experience as secretary of defense led him to understand the importance of issuing rules of engagement to the military that day. He should also have been particularly aware of the necessity of taking action immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Center, so as to stop any possible further attacks before the targets were hit. And yet he appears to have taken no significant action for about an hour after the second crash. CHENEY PLAYED NO ROLE IN SETTING UP THE WHITE HOUSE TELECONFERENCE Cheney indicated that he may have been involved in at least one important action before he was evacuated from his office, specifically the establishing of a multi-agency video teleconference to deal with the crisis. However, Richard Clarke has stated that he arranged to set up the teleconference and the vice president played no role. Cheney recalled that when his colleagues such as Scooter Libby and Mary Matalin came to his office after the second crash at the World Trade Center occurred, he started talking with them "about getting the counterterrorism task force up and operating." "The main thing at that point was to make sure that we had--that we started to react to events, to get the counterterrorism task force up and running," hecommented.
The "counterterrorism task force" was "a designated group of people that's ... on video conference, down in the Situation Room," he said. He was presumably referring to the Counterterrorism Security Group (CSG), which included the leaders of each of the federal government's counterterrorism and security organizations. However, Clarke, who chaired the CSG, claimed that he--not Cheney--gave the instruction for the group to be activated on a video teleconference. He recalled that he told a colleague to "activate the CSG on secure video" at 9:03 a.m. He then went to Cheney's office and said the teleconference was being established. The only thing Cheney did in relation to the CSG at the time was tell Clarke, "Do it." CHENEY JUST WATCHED TELEVISION BEFORE BEING EVACUATED Cheney practically admitted explicitly that he initially did nothing significant in response to the 9/11 attacks in one interview. He said that by the time he was evacuated from his office, shortly after 9:35 a.m., all he had been doing was "watching developments on the television" and starting "to get organized to figure out what to do" in response to the crashes at the World Trade Center. Photographs of the vice president in the minutes before he was evacuated support this account. In a few of them, the television in the office is showing Bush giving a speech from the Booker Elementary School, which means they were taken at 9:30 a.m., when the speech was made. In these photos, Cheney appears relaxed, and is doing nothing more than sitting back in his chair and watching the television. In other photos, the clock shown by the network in the corner of the TV screen reveals the time was 9:33 a.m. and 9:36 a.m. The photos show that, at these times, Cheney was still doing nothing more than watching the coverage of the crashes on television. He again appears relaxed, with a foot resting on his desk. In the photos that have been released of him on September 11 before he was evacuated from his office, the vice president is either watching television or chatting with colleagues who have come to see him. In none of the photos does he appear to be taking action or displaying any signs of the urgency we might reasonably have expected from a U.S. vice president in the middle of the worst attack on American soil since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in December 1941. Cheney apparently remained indifferent to the seriousness of the situation when the armed Secret Service agents rushed into his office and said they needed to move him immediately. He just nodded his head, indicating that he would respond to them in a moment, and turned to say something to one of his colleagues. Special Agent James Scott had to slam his hand down on Cheney's desk and order, "_Now!_" and then the agents practically had to carry Cheney away in order to get him out of the office, according to Barton Gellman. Even then, the vice president took the time to pick up the latest issue of _The Economist_ from a table, so he would have something to read if he got stuck anywhere. Cheney's apparent indifference and lack of urgency were still evident just over 20 minutes later, after he entered the PEOC. Those with him observed his lack of response when he watched the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsing on television, at 9:59 a.m. One person recalled that while they heard "a groan in the room" when the tower came down, Cheney made no sound and "his expression never changed." His only reaction was that he "closed his eyes against the image for one long, slow blink." And when he was subsequently told "that a casualty estimate ranged well into the thousands," _Newsweek_ described, "Cheney just nodded grimly." CHENEY WAS UNCONCERNED FOR HIS OWN SAFETY Dick Cheney's behavior on the morning of September 11 was suspicious not just because Cheney failed to do anything significant to protect the country while it was under attack, but also because he never seemed concerned for his own safety while the attacks were taking place. If he had been killed or seriously injured, the nation would have been left without a vice president at a time when it was most dependent on its leaders. And yet he made no attempt to quickly get himself to a secure location. If Cheney was unaware of what the crisis was going to involve and what the targets of the terrorist attacks would be, as is implied by official accounts of 9/11, he should presumably have thought that, as the home of the U.S. president, the White House was a likely target and consequently feared that he might be in danger there. Indeed, the possibility of the White House being attacked was repeatedly considered before 9/11. After a man crashed a small plane into it in 1994, _Time_ magazine noted: "The unlikely incident confirmed all too publicly what security officials have long feared in private: The White House is vulnerable to sneak attack from the air." Former CIA Director Richard Helms commented, "For years I have thought a terrorist suicide pilot could readily divert his flight from an approach to Washington to blow up the White House." Cheney was likely well aware of the danger since, Barton Gellman noted, "In previous jobs, the vice president had studied 'decapitation attacks,' intended to wipe out a nation's senior leadership." These "decapitation attacks" presumably included attacks on the White House, which aimed to take out the president, vice president, and other top officials there. Cheney's Secret Service agents certainly believed the White House was a possible target while the 9/11 attacks were taking place. After they had moved the vice president from his office to the underground tunnel leading to the PEOC, they "positioned themselves at the top, middle, and bottom of the staircase, creating layers of defense in case the White House itself should be invaded," Cheney recalled. Ashley Snee, Cheney's special assistant, who was in Cheney's outer office when the Twin Towers were hit, also thought the White House might be attacked. She said that "at a certain point" after the second crash, "fear did begin to creep in." She recalled thinking that "if this was intentional, someone is attacking our nation and I'm sitting in probably a pretty significant target." Why then did it apparently never occur to Cheney, while America was under attack, that he might be leaving himself in danger by staying in his office, on the first floor of the White House? CHENEY WAS SAFER IN THE WHITE HOUSE BUNKER There were surely numerous locations Cheney could have gone to that were safer than his office. He would likely have been in less danger if he simply left the White House and went to somewhere less prominent and less associated with the U.S. government, which was therefore a less likely target for terrorists. He certainly would have been safer if he had gone to the PEOC as soon as he realized America was under attack. The PEOC was located several floors below ground and was built to survive a nuclear strike on Washington. If he was in it he would have been unharmed if a plane crashed into the White House. But if a plane hit the White House while he was in his office, he could have been killed or seriouslyinjured.
As well as being safer, Cheney would probably have been in a better position to respond to the crashes at the World Trade Center. This is because the PEOC was well equipped for dealing with an emergency. Among other things, it was staffed around the clock by specially chosen military personnel from several services and had equipment for video conferencing. Cheney described it as "a more secure facility that's got ... all the communications." Indeed, after he eventually went to the PEOC, much of the U.S. government's response to the 9/11 attacks was managed from there. CHENEY FAILED TO SHOW ANY URGENCY Dick Cheney described 9/11 as if the terrorist attacks were a surprise to him. He recalled: "We don't know what's happening. We know Washington's under attack. We don't know by who, we don't know how many additional planes are coming. We don't know what all is plannedfor us."
But if the attacks were a surprise to him, he surely would have immediately taken action to prepare for any possibility, including an attack on the White House. And yet he seems to have initially responded with a chilling lack of urgency. By the time he started taking serious action, probably more than an hour had passed since the second hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center and the crisis wasover.
It seems unlikely that Cheney's initial failure to take action was due to incompetence since once the attacks had ended, he was well able to get involved with the government's response to them. For example, he helped Norman Mineta track aircraft as they landed and helped implement the COG plan, thereby ensuring the government would still function in the worst of situations. His actions after the attacks ended led one White House staffer who observed him in the PEOC to describe Cheney as "the man in charge" who was "holding the fort." It also seems unlikely that his initial apparent apathy was simply due to his temperament since he eventually displayed the urgency and decisiveness that were absent while the attacks were taking place. For example, when he was asked by Anthony Barnes if the military could engage the suspicious aircraft believed to be heading toward Washington, at around 10:10 a.m., his response was immediate and authoritative. "You could see him weigh it quickly and make his call," Scooter Libby described. It was a "very quick decision," Libby added. WAS CHENEY COMPLICIT IN 9/11? We surely need to consider whether there was a more sinister reason for Cheney's initial lack of concern and failure to take action after he learned of the crashes at the World Trade Center. Might Cheney's unusual behavior have come about because the vice president was involved in planning and perpetrating the 9/11 attacks? If he was, his initial lack of action could have been deliberate, intended to make sure he did nothing that might stop the attacks before all the plannedtargets were hit.
Cheney may have been employing a simple tactic: He did nothing meaningful for about an hour after he saw the second crash on television; then, after 10:03 a.m., when the last of the hijacked planes apparently crashed into the ground, he started responding with the urgency and commitment he should have exhibited from the outset. Since the attacks were by then over, he could now do whatever he wanted, because nothing he did would affect the outcome of the crisis. If Cheney was involved in planning the attacks, he would have known in advance what was going to happen on September 11. And if he knew what would happen, this could help explain his calmness when the devastating events took place. For example, photos of him in his office between 9:30 a.m. and 9:36 a.m. show that in the middle of the attacks he was apparently relaxed and content to just watch the coverage of the crisis on television. And while other White House officials were visibly distressed when they saw the collapse of the South Tower on television, he appeared emotionless. If Cheney already knew what was going to happen that morning, the catastrophic events would have been less of a shock to him than to others at the White House and, therefore, it presumably would have been easier for him tostay calm.
Foreknowledge of the attacks could also explain why Cheney was in no hurry to leave his office and go to somewhere safer, even when his Secret Service agents told him he needed to evacuate immediately. Because he knew what the targets were going to be, he knew that no planes were going to crash into the White House and so he was safe inhis office.
CHENEY SAID THERE WERE 'THINGS' HE HAD 'TO MAKE HAPPEN' Dick Cheney, as U.S. vice president and the most senior official at the White House when America came under attack, was a key figure on September 11. He described his experiences that day as if he recognized his important role and took it seriously. "This is your job and ... you have things that you have to make happen," he said. "You don't have time for the emotional reaction that might otherwise occur if somebody was just sitting there watching these events unfold and had no responsibilities," he added. Furthermore, his ability to react quickly and effectively to the terrorist attacks should have been greater due to his experiences as secretary of defense and a participant in the continuity of government program. And, surrounded by other senior officials, he was in a good position at the White House to help organize the government's responseto the crisis.
And yet his response to the attacks while they were taking place was alarmingly poor. At the most important time of his professional life, he apparently failed to do anything significant to help protect his country. Before he was evacuated from his office, he acted like somebody who was indeed "just sitting there watching these events unfold and had no responsibilities." But while his behavior on September 11 was suspicious, official investigations have failed to examine whether Cheney was involved with planning and perpetrating the 9/11 attacks. This possibility now needs to be taken seriously and properly looked into.NOTES
"9/11/01 Timeline." United States Secret Service, November 17,2001 ; Stephen
F. Hayes, _Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President_. New York: HarperCollins, 2007, pp.327-328.
Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, p. 328. Eric Schmitt, "Cheney Friend to be Next Navy Secretary, Bush Officials Say." _New York Times_, July 7, 1992.
_Meet the Press_. NBC, September 16, 2001;
Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, pp. 328-330._Meet the Press_
;
Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, p. 330; Dick Cheney and Jonathan Reiner with Liz Cheney, _Heart: An American Medical Odyssey_. New York: Scribner, 2013, p. 189. White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice president by _Newsweek_. White House, November 19, 2001;
Evan Thomas, "The Day That Changed America." _Newsweek_, December 30,2001 .
_Meet the Press_
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Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, pp. 330-331. "Profiles of Victims, Heroes, Leaders From September 11." _Live Event/Special_, CNN, September 11, 2002.
White House transcript, interview of Scooter Libby by _Newsweek_ magazine. White House, November 16, 2001;
Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, p. 331._Meet the Press_
;
White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice president by_Newsweek_
;
Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, p. 331. Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, pp. 331-332; Barton Gellman, _Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency_. New York: Penguin, 2008, p. 114; "Vice President Dick Cheney on His Memoir, In My Time." _Hugh Hewitt Show_, Salem Radio Network, September 8, 2011.
_Meet the Press_
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Barton Gellman, _Angler_, p. 114. Richard A. Clarke, _Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror_. New York: Free Press, 2004, pp. 1-2. Christopher F. Aguilar, "Remembering Sept. 11." _Florida Times-Union_, September 10, 2003;
Interview with Douglas Cochrane, written notes. 9/11 Commission, April16, 2004
.
_Meet the Press_
;
White House transcript, interview of Scooter Libby by _Newsweek_magazine
;
White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice president by_Newsweek_
;
Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, pp. 331-332; Barton Gellman, _Angler_, p.114.
White House transcript, interview of Scooter Libby by _Newsweek_magazine
.
Barton Gellman, _Angler_, p. 114. Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, pp. 332-333; Robert Schlesinger, _White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters_. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008, p. 456. "The Daily Diary of President George W. Bush." White House,September 11, 2001
;
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States_. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 38-39. Bill Sammon, _Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism--From Inside the Bush White House_. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2002, p. 92-93; Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, p. 332; Dick Cheney and Jonathan Reiner with Liz Cheney, _Heart_, p. 189. White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice presidentby _Newsweek_
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_Meet the Press_
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Barton Gellman, _Angler_, pp. 114-115. 9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, pp. 39-40; Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney, _In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir_. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011, p. 1. Evan Thomas, "The Day That Changed America"; Stephen F.
Hayes, _Cheney_, p. 333._Meet the Press_
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"What I Remember." _National Review_, September 8, 2011.
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; White House
transcript, telephone interview of the vice president by _Newsweek_.
See David Bohrer, _V1546-14: Vice President Cheney Watches Television_. September 11, 2001, White House Photo Office, Washington,DC
.
A few accounts have suggested Dick Cheney was evacuated from his office significantly earlier, apparently shortly after the second hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center. See "(Shortly After 9:03 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Vice President Cheney Evacuated From Office, Earlier Than Some Accounts Claim." History Commons, n.d. However, photos of Cheney in his office in which the television is visible and showing the time reveal that he must have been evacuated much later than this. Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney, _In My Time_, p. 1. White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice presidentby _Newsweek_
;
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, pp. 39-40; Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, p. 335. Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney, _In My Time_, p. 2. White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice presidentby _Newsweek_
.
USSS memo, interview with SAIC Carl Truscott. United States Secret Service, October 1, 2001;
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 40; Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney, _In My Time_, p. 2. White House notes: Lynne Cheney notes, September 11, 2001.
White House transcript, interview of Scooter Libby by _Newsweek_magazine
.
White House notes: Ari Fleischer notes, September 11, 2001;
Bill Sammon, _Fighting Back_, p. 101; Ari Fleischer, _Taking Heat: The President, the Press, and My Years in the White House_. New York: HarperCollins, 2005, p. 141. Nicholas Lemann, "The Options." _New Yorker_, October 1, 2001; Bob
Woodward, _Bush at War_. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002, p. 17. White House notes: Lynne Cheney notes.
USSS memo, interview with SAIC Carl Truscott;
Interview with Douglas Cochrane, written notes.
"Actions of TSD Related to Terrorist Incident." United States Secret Service, September 12, 2001;
White House transcript, interview of Scooter Libby by _Newsweek_magazine
;
Evan Thomas, "The Day That Changed America"; Dick Cheney with
Liz Cheney, _In My Time_, p. 2. Barton Gellman, _Angler_, p. 116. Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, p. 337; Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney,_In My Time_, p. 2.
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 40. Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, p. 338; Barton Gellman, _Angler_, p.116.
White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice presidentby _Newsweek_
.
Barton Gellman, _Angler_, p. 118. Christopher F. Aguilar, "Remembering Sept. 11." Interview with Douglas Cochrane, written notes.
White House transcript, interview of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice by Scott Pelley, CBS. White House, August 2, 2002;
Condoleezza Rice, interview by David Gregory. NBC News, September 11,2002
.
Peter Baker, _Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House_. New York: Doubleday, 2013, p. 127. Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney, _In My Time_, p. 6; "Vice President Dick Cheney on His Memoir, In My Time." National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States: Public Hearing. 9/11 Commission, May 23, 2003.
Paul Richter, "Fighter Jets Assume New Protective Role." _Los Angeles Times_, September 15, 2001;
Richard Whittle, "National Guard Jets Raced to Intercept 2 Airliners." _Dallas Morning News_, September 16, 2001.
_Meet the Press_
.
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 17. Barton Gellman, _Angler_, p. 120; Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, "President Bush National Geographic Interview's Unanswered Questions." Daily Beast, August 28, 2011.
White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice presidentby _Newsweek_
.
George W. Bush, _Decision Points_. New York: Crown, 2010, p. 129. Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney, _In My Time_, p. 3. 9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, pp. 39-41; "September 11, 2001: 'Tic Toc' of Significant Events." White House,n.d.
Mitchell Zuckoff, _Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11_. New York: HarperCollins, 2019, p. 147. White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice presidentby _Newsweek_
.
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 40. George W. Bush, _Decision Points_, p. 129. Daniel Klaidman, "Who Was Really in Charge?" _Newsweek_, June 27,2004 .
Barton Gellman, _Angler_, p. 121; Philip Shenon, _The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation_. New York: Twelve,2008, pp. 265-266.
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 41. Barton Gellman, _Angler_, p. 121. Interview with Douglas Cochrane, written notes;
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 41; Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, _The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden_. New York: Ballantine Books, 2011, pp. 141-142. Air Threat Conference and DDO Conference, Transcript. U.S. Department of Defense, September 11, 2001;
Air Threat Conference Call, Transcript. U.S. Department of Defense,September 11, 2001
;
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 42. 9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 42.Ibid. p. 41.
"The Daily Diary of President George W. Bush";
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 41. Karl Rove, interview by Campbell Brown. NBC News, September 11,2002
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White House notes: Ari Fleischer notes.
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 465. Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney, _In My Time_, p. 6. Dick Cheney and Jonathan Reiner with Liz Cheney, _Heart_, p. 190. James Mann, "The Armageddon Plan." _The Atlantic_, March 2004; Howard Kurtz,
"'Armageddon' Plan Was Put Into Action on 9/11, Clarke Says." _Washington Post_, April 7, 2004.
Dan Balz and Bob Woodward, "America's Chaotic Road to War." _Washington Post_, January 27, 2002.
"Vice President Dick Cheney on His Memoir, In My Time." Robert J. Darling, _24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker: 9/11/01 The White House_. Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2010, p. 67. James Mann, "The Armageddon Plan" ; Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney, _In My Time_, p. 129. Richard A. Clarke, _Against All Enemies_, p. 8. Air Threat Conference Call, Transcript;
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 38. Garrett M. Graff, _Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself--While the Rest of us Die_. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017, p. 337. White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice presidentby _Newsweek_
;
Evan Thomas, "The Day That Changed America." Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, pp. 335-336. John King, "Vice President in Secure Location at Night." CNN,September 11, 2002
.
_Meet the Press_
;
White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice president by_Newsweek_
;
White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice president by Bob Woodward and Dan Balz, the _Washington Post_. White House,December 17, 2001
;
James Mann, "The Armageddon Plan" ; Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney, _In My Time_, p. 6. Robert J. Darling, _24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker_, p.67.
Dan Balz and Bob Woodward, "America's Chaotic Road to War." Dennis Hastert, _Speaker: Lessons From Forty Years in Coaching and Politics_. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2004, pp. 8-9; Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney, _In My Time_, p. 6. Office of the Federal Register/National Archives and Records Administration, _The United States Government Manual 1999/2000_. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999, p. 90;
Jonathan Masters, "The U.S. Vice President and Foreign Policy." Council on Foreign Relations, September 22, 2016;
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Barton Gellman, _Angler_, p. 118. Office of the Federal Register/National Archives and Records Administration, _The United States Government Manual 1999/2000_, p.177
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_Department of Defense Directive 5100.01: Functions of the Department of Defense and Its Major Components_. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, December 21, 2010; "Travels With the
Secretary." U.S. Department of Defense, n.d. 9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 17; "DOD 101: Overview of the Department of Defense." U.S. Department of Defense,n.d.
_Multiservice Procedures for Humanitarian Assistance Operations_. Fort Monroe, VA: U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command,1994
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Andrew Cockburn, _Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy_. New York: Scribner, 2007, p. 4;
"Overview of National Security Structure." Defense Technical Information Center, n.d. Robert J. Darling, _24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker_, p.103.
White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice president by _Newsweek_.
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White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice president by _Newsweek_.
Richard A. Clarke, _Against All Enemies_, pp. 1-2._Meet the Press_
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David Bohrer, _V1546-04: Vice President Cheney Watches Television_. September 11, 2001, White House Photo Office, Washington,DC
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David Bohrer, _V1546-05: Vice President Cheney Watches Television_. September 11, 2001, White House Photo Office, Washington, DC;
David Bohrer, _V1546-06: Vice President Cheney Watches Television_. September 11, 2001, White House Photo Office, Washington, DC.
David Bohrer, _V1546-10: Vice President Cheney Watches Television_. September 11, 2001, White House Photo Office, Washington,DC
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David Bohrer, _V1546-14_.
See the set of 356 photos of Dick Cheney on September 11 that were released to PBS in 2015: _Vice President Cheney on September 11, 2001_. September 11, 2001, White House Photo Office, Washington, DC.
Barton Gellman, _Angler_, p. 115. Evan Thomas, "The Day That Changed America"; Stephen F.
Hayes, _Cheney_, p. 333. Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, "'A Different Understanding With the President.'" _Washington Post_, June 24, 2007; Barton
Gellman, _Angler_, pp. 116-117. Evan Thomas, "The Day That Changed America." Michael Duffy, "Flight of the Intruder." _Time_, September 26,1994
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Barton Gellman, _Angler_, p. 115. Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney, _In My Time_, p. 1. Peter Baker, _Days of Fire_, p. 121; Adriana Padilla, Bethany Jones, and Karen Daniel, "9/11: Inside the White House." _Queens of Crime_, podcast audio, October 11, 2017.
William Safire, "Inside the Bunker." _New York Times_, September13, 2001
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Éanna Ó Caollaí, "9/11: Newly Released Photos Show U.S. Leaders in Aftermath of Attacks." _Irish Times_, July 25, 2015;
David W. Myers, "Get Your Home Ready for Cooler Months Ahead." _Bellingham Herald_, September 16, 2016.
Robert J. Darling, _24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker_, p. 50; Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney, _In My Time_, p. 2; David W. Myers, "Get Your Home Ready for Cooler Months Ahead." White House transcript, telephone interview of the vice president by _Newsweek_.
Stephen F. Hayes, _Cheney_, p. 337._Meet the Press_
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Barton Gellman, _Angler_, p. 118. White House transcript, interview of Scooter Libby by _Newsweek_magazine
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"Vice President Dick Cheney." Posted by Shoestringat 01:15
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THURSDAY, 31 JANUARY 2019 THE INEXPLICABLE CALLS FROM A HIJACKED PLANE MADE BY THE SOLICITOR GENERAL'S WIFE ON 9/11 Barbara Olson, a passenger on one of the planes hijacked on September 11, 2001, called her husband from the hijacked aircraft and gave him important details of the hijacking. The information she provided subsequently helped establish the official narrative of the 9/11 attacks. However, close analysis of the various accounts of her calls reveals so many anomalies and contradictions that the calls appearhighly suspicious.
Barbara Olson, a well-known political commentator, was on American Airlines Flight 77, the third of the four planes to be hijacked on September 11, which supposedly crashed into the Pentagon. After the hijackers took over her plane, she made two phone calls to her husband, Ted Olson, the solicitor general of the United States. The details she provided in the calls gave an insight into what the passengers and crew members supposedly experienced when their plane was taken over, and in the time between the hijacking and when the plane crashed. She was, for example, the only person on the hijacked planes to reveal in a phone call the much-reported detail that the hijackers were armed with box cutters. She was subsequently the first victim of the 9/11 attacks to be named on television and the most famous person to die in the attacks. There are, however, significant contradictions between accounts given by those who dealt with her calls. There are, for example, conflicting accounts of where she was on the plane when she made the calls and whether she used a cell phone or one of the plane's seatback Airfones. There are also problems with official records that provide details of the calls. For example, while Ted Olson has described receiving only two calls from his wife, official records indicate that four successful calls were made to his office from Flight 77. If the official story of how Barbara Olson called her husband from Flight 77 after it was hijacked and told him what had happened on her plane is accurate, the various accounts of her calls would surely be fairly consistent in the information they provided. The appearance of so many contradictions and anomalies in these accounts thus indicates there was more to the calls than the official narrative of 9/11suggests.
Since reports about the calls in the news helped establish the official 9/11 story, anything that casts doubt on how the calls came about and the validity of the information Barbara Olson provided in them surely brings into question the entire official narrative of9/11.
BARBARA OLSON WAS DUE TO APPEAR ON TV ON SEPTEMBER 11 Barbara Olson was a well-known public figure in the United States. She had been a federal prosecutor, but when the 9/11 attacks occurred, she was a conservative political commentator who regularly appeared ontelevision.
Ted Olson, her husband, was a lawyer who, three months before 9/11, took office as solicitor general of the United States, the fourth-highest-ranking official in the U.S. Department of Justice who represents the federal government in cases before the Supreme Court. He previously represented candidate George W. Bush in the Supreme Court case that settled the disputed 2000 presidential election. Barbara Olson was a passenger on Flight 77, a plane bound from Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC, to Los Angeles, California. She was going to Los Angeles to appear on Bill Maher's television show, _Politically Incorrect_, and to attend a major media businessconference.
Flight 77 took off at 8:20 a.m. on September 11 and was hijacked between 8:51 a.m. and 8:54 a.m., according to the _9/11 Commission Report_. The hijackers were five Middle Eastern men. No passengers are believed to have been injured or killed during the hijacking. Then, after deviating from its assigned course, the plane was flown by the hijackers back toward Washington and, according to the official narrative, crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. Only one person other than Barbara Olson is reported to have made a phone call from Flight 77 after it was hijacked. Renee May, one of the flight attendants, called her mother on an Airfone at 9:12 a.m. She said her plane had been taken over by six individuals, and these hijackers had moved the passengers and crew members to the back of the aircraft. She instructed her mother to call American Airlines to report the incident. SECRETARY ANSWERED A SERIES OF AUTOMATED CALLS While Barbara Olson only reached her husband sometime after May talked to her mother, evidence indicates that she may have made several unsuccessful attempts at calling his office at the Department of Justice earlier on. Specifically, beginning at around 9:00 a.m., Lori Keyton, a secretary in the office, answered around six to eight collect calls in succession. They were all automated and comprised a recorded voice advising her of the collect call, and telling her to hold for an operator; a short time later, a recorded voice stated that all operators were busy and gave the advice to hang up and try thecall again later.
These were presumably attempted calls made by Barbara Olson, since they occurred just before Barbara Olson was able to reach her husband's office and her first successful call was a collect call. However, Keyton's phone had no caller identification feature, so Keyton would have been unable to determine the origin of the calls. It also appears that Barbara Olson may have tried passing on information about the hijacking of Flight 77 by calling Ted Olson's number at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the law firm he worked for before taking over as solicitor general, and leaving voicemail messages. Ted Olson spoke to the FBI on September 13, after previously being interviewed by the bureau on September 11 about the calls from his wife, and said he had "new messages on his voicemail at his old law firm" and "his old secretary would provide access to these calls tothe FBI."
While the FBI's record of its September 13 conversation with the solicitor general provides no details about what was in the messages, Ted Olson was presumably referring to voicemail messages left by his wife when she called from Flight 77 after it was hijacked. Barbara Olson may have called his old law firm because she had difficulty reaching him at the Department of Justice. Ted Olson has in fact mentioned how hard it could be to contact him there. While describing his wife's calls from Flight 77, he told the London _Telegraph_, "She was trying to get through to the Department of Justice, which is neververy easy."
BARBARA OLSON CALLED AN OPERATOR AND ASKED TO BE CONNECTED TO HERHUSBAND'S OFFICE
Barbara Olson made her first successful call to Ted Olson at sometime between 9:15 a.m. and 9:25 a.m. (Investigators have been unable to determine the exact time of the call. ) She reportedly reached his office by dialing "0" on one of the Airfones on Flight 77 and initially talking to an operator. She gave Mercy Lorenzo, the operator she spoke to, details of what was happening on Flight 77 before Lorenzo connected the call to Ted Olson's office. Barbara Olson told Lorenzo her plane "was currently being hijacked," Lorenzo has recalled. She said the hijackers were "armed with guns and knives," and "were ordering the passengers to move to the back of the plane." She also "wanted to know how to let the pilots know what was happening," because it "did not appear as if they were aware of thesituation."
She asked to be connected to her husband, who she said was "a sergeant who resides in Washington, DC," and provided his telephone number. Lorenzo connected her to Ted Olson's office where the call was answered by Lori Keyton. Lorenzo told Keyton there was "an emergency collect call." Keyton accepted the call and then Barbara Olson came on the line. She asked Keyton to pass on a message to Ted Olson, but Keyton said she would put him on the line. Keyton alerted Helen Voss, Ted Olson's special assistant, to the call, and then Voss rushed up to Ted Olson and told him, "Barbara is on the phone." At that point, Ted Olson, who had been watching the coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center on television, took over thecall.
Barbara Olson then gave her husband details of the crisis on her plane. She said it had been hijacked by men armed with "knives and box cutters." She said she had been sitting in first class, which was at the front of the plane, but the hijackers had moved the passengers to the back of the plane. She said the hijackers were unaware that she was making the call. The call then inexplicably got cut off. Ted Olson has estimated that he talked to his wife for about a minutebefore it ended.
TED OLSON ALERTED HIS COMMAND CENTER The solicitor general then set about alerting others to what he had learned. He tried calling Attorney General John Ashcroft but was unable to reach him. He then called the Department of Justice command center. He did so, he recalled, because he "wanted them to know there was another hijacked plane out there" and to pass on the information his wife had given him "to someone who could possibly do something." He told the person at the command center who answered the call that his wife's plane had been hijacked and he gave them the number of the flight. He said his wife was able to communicate from the plane, even though her call to him got cut off. He was told that, prior to his call, officials in the command center had been unaware of the hijacking of Flight 77. He also asked for someone from the command center to come to his office. Allen Ferber, a security officer, was therefore instructed to go to the solicitor general's office. After he arrived there, he sat watching the television coverage of the attacks with TedOlson.
BARBARA OLSON PHONED AGAIN SHORTLY AFTER HER FIRST CALL ENDED Barbara Olson was able to talk to her husband again within a few minutes of her first call to him getting cut off and provided additional information about the hijacking of Flight 77. Her second call to Ted Olson was made at sometime between 9:20 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. (As with her first call, investigators have been unable to determine the exact time. ) Unlike previously, she now phoned his office directly rather than being connected to it by an operator. As before, the call was initially answered by Lori Keyton, who then passed it on to the solicitor general. Barbara Olson told her husband the pilot of Flight 77 had announced that the plane had been hijacked. Ted Olson asked if she had any idea of her plane's location. She said the plane had been hijacked shortly after it took off and had been "circling around for a while." She said it was flying over some houses. She also said she thought it was heading northeast. How she determined this is unclear. Ted Olson has commented that he believed she must have consulted someone else on theplane.
During the call, Ted Olson alerted his wife to the crisis that was taking place that morning. He said two other planes, besides Flight 77, had been hijacked and these had crashed into the World TradeCenter.
For much of the call, according to Ted Olson, the couple "segued back and forth between expressions of feeling for one another and this effort to exchange information." They reassured each other that things were going to work out okay. The last thing Barbara Olson said to her husband was: "What shall I tell the pilot? What can I tell the pilot to do?" The call then got cut off. It had lasted between two and four minutes, Ted Olson has estimated. Ted Olson then returned to watching the coverage of the attacks on television. TED OLSON THOUGHT FLIGHT 77 HAD CRASHED AS SOON AS HE HEARD OF AN INCIDENT AT THE PENTAGON When he saw reports about some kind of explosion occurring at the Pentagon, the solicitor general was immediately certain his wife's plane had crashed there. He recalled that when he saw the first reports of the incident, "I knew in my heart that was that aircraft and I also knew in my heart that could not possibly have survived that kind of an explosion with a full load of fuel on a recently taken-off airplane." "I knew it was her" as soon as he learned of the incident, he told the London _Telegraph_. "I did and I didn't want to, but I knew," he told CNN. Ted Olson promptly told others what he had concluded. Helen Voss recalled that when the incident at the Pentagon was first reported, he told her, "That's Barbara's plane." Allen Ferber recalled that, referring to the early television coverage of the incident, Ted Olson told him, "The plane is down." Ted Olson stayed in his office at the Department of Justice for the next few hours, and phoned friends and family members to let them know that Barbara Olson was probably dead. He recalled: "I called my mother and I called my son. I said I didn't think--I thought that--I was hoping that it wasn't true, but I was very worried. I did not want them to see something on television and hear her name." ACCOUNTS CONFLICT OVER BARBARA OLSON'S LOCATION ON THE PLANE While the story of how Barbara Olson phoned her husband on September 11 and told him about the hijacking of Flight 77 may appear straightforward and unproblematic, close analysis of it reveals countless problems that have never been properly addressed by official investigations of the 9/11 attacks. There are, for example, numerous contradictions in the various accounts of her calls and other evidencerelating to them.
To begin with, there is conflicting evidence of where on the plane Barbara Olson was located when she made the calls. Some evidence indicates she was near the back of the coach section. She used an Airfone to call her husband, according to the Department of Justice, and the Airfones were attached to the back of the plane's seats. Since the hijackers reportedly moved the passengers to the back of the plane, this would presumably mean she was at the back of the coach section with the other passengers, using an Airfone on the back of oneof the seats there.
And yet one account contradicted this. A spokesman for Ted Olson stated that Barbara Olson "said she was locked in the toilet" when shemade the calls.
ACCOUNTS CONFLICT OVER THE TYPE OF PHONE BARBARA OLSON USED There are also conflicting claims about what kind of phone Barbara Olson used when she called her husband. She used a cell phone, according to some accounts; according to others, she used an Airfone. If she was locked in the toilet when she made the calls, she must have used a cell phone, since there would have been no Airfone there for her to use. However, the Department of Justice and the FBI told the 9/11 Commission, "All of the calls from Flight 77 were made via the onboard Airfone system." Ted Olson, meanwhile, has given contradictory accounts. Initially, on the day of the attacks, he told the FBI he didn't know if his wife used a cell phone or an Airfone. He mentioned, though, that she "always has her cell phone with her." He similarly told Fox News, three days later, that he was unaware of what kind of phone she used, but added that he initially assumed she must have used an Airfone and called collect because "she somehow didn't have access to her creditcards."
Lori Keyton, who initially answered the calls from Barbara Olson, seemingly confirmed that Ted Olson would have been unable to determine what kind of phone his wife used. She told the FBI there was no caller identification feature on her phone and so she was unable to ascertain whether Barbara Olson's calls were made on a cell phone or an Airfone. Unless Barbara Olson mentioned to him what kind of phone she was using, therefore, Ted Olson would presumably have been unaware of whether she used a cell phone or an Airfone. However, on September 11, he told CNN that his wife "called him twice on a cell phone." Six months later, he again implied that he knew what kind of phone she called him on, only this time he claimed she used an Airfone. "She wasn't using her cell phone; she was using the phone in the passengers' seats," he told the London _Telegraph_. But at a public event in 2014, he indicated that she used a cell phone. While describing her calls from Flight 77, he commented, "I don't know how Barbara managed to make her cell phone work," since she was "up in the air." ACCOUNTS CONFLICT OVER WHETHER ONE OR BOTH CALLS WERE MADE THROUGH ANOPERATOR
There is also contradictory evidence regarding whether the second call Barbara Olson made to her husband was, like her first call, made via an operator or made directly to the solicitor general's office. An FBI report published on September 20, 2001, that described the Airfone calls from Flight 77 listed four calls from unknown callers to unknown recipients, which, the Department of Justice and the FBI have determined, included the calls made by Barbara Olson to her husband. These four calls all involved the caller dialing "0" in order to reach an operator, the report stated. If the Department of Justice and the FBI's determination was correct, it means Barbara Olson's second call, like the first, went via an operator. And yet Lori Keyton, who initially answered the second call, contradicted this. Barbara Olson "called direct," she told the FBI. There was no operator on the line when she picked up the phone and the first words she heard were, "It's Barbara." BARBARA OLSON'S COMPOSURE CHANGED DRASTICALLY There are conflicting descriptions of how composed Barbara Olson was when she called her husband's office. Keyton said she "sounded hysterical" when she made her first call. Helen Voss recalled Keyton telling her that Barbara Olson was "in a panic" when she alerted her to the call. Ted Olson, however, described his wife as being unusually calm during her calls. "She sounded very, very calm ... in retrospect, enormously, remarkably, incredibly calm," he said. Barbara Olson's behavior was quite bizarre, if these accounts are accurate. It appears that Barbara Olson went from sounding "hysterical" to being "incredibly calm" in the space of probably justa few seconds.
Additionally, it seems odd that Barbara Olson would be so calm when she talked to her husband, since she apparently had no previous experience of dealing with a crisis as serious as the situation she was in, unlike, say, someone who worked for the military or in law enforcement. Ted Olson recalled that even when he told her two planes, besides Flight 77, had been hijacked and subsequently crashed into the World Trade Center, she "did not seem panicked." Ted Olson's explanation for how Barbara Olson was able to remain so calm was that she would have been focused on thinking, "What can I do to help solve this problem?" And yet the solicitor general also surmised that she "must have been partially in shock from the fact that she was on a hijacked plane." So, even if she was thinking about how to respond to the hijacking, would she really have remained "enormously, remarkably, incredibly calm" in such a threateningsituation?
TED OLSON HEARD NO BACKGROUND NOISE The other passengers on Flight 77 were also apparently remarkably calm. Ted Olson said he could hear no "other noises on the plane" besides the sound of his wife's voice. This is extraordinary. If Barbara Olson was at the back of the coach section rather than locked in the toilet--as would have been the case if she was calling on an Airfone--there would likely have been 52 other passengers and four flight attendants in the same area of the plane as her. In such terrifying circumstances, would these 56 people all have been so calm that none of them made a sound while Barbara Olson spoke to her husband? Their silence seems even stranger considering that it appears no hijackers were with them, since Barbara Olson told her husband the hijackers were unaware that she was calling him even though, he recalled, she was "speaking loud enough that I could hear her" and notwhispering.
If no hijackers were with them, the passengers and crew members could presumably have talked freely among themselves. They could have discussed things like what they knew about the hijacking, what they thought the hijackers' intentions were, and what they could do in response to the crisis. Under these circumstances, would they really all have remained silent? BARBARA OLSON GAVE INACCURATE INFORMATION Another oddity is that Barbara Olson made some claims in the calls that contradict findings of official investigations of the 9/11 attacks. For example, she said her plane was hijacked "shortly after takeoff." However, the _9/11 Commission Report_ determined that the hijacking occurred quite a long time after Flight 77 left the ground. It took off from Dulles International Airport at 8:20 a.m. and, the 9/11 Commission established, the hijacking occurred more than 30 minutes later, between 8:51 a.m. and 8:54 a.m. And she said the plane had been "circling around for a while" after it was hijacked. But according to a study by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) based on information from the plane's flight data recorder and radar data, this claim was alsoincorrect.
After the plane is believed to have been hijacked, the NTSB determined, it deviated from its assigned course and turned to the south. By 9:00 a.m. it had reversed course and was heading east. At 9:07 a.m. it made a slight change of course and headed to the east-northeast. Over the next three minutes its heading "remained steady." And between 9:10 a.m. and 9:34 a.m. only "slight course changes were initiated." The plane was therefore never "circling around" between when it was hijacked and when Barbara Olson called herhusband.
MESSAGES WERE LEFT ON TED OLSON'S OLD VOICEMAIL It seems unusual that there are so many contradictions in the various accounts of Barbara Olson's calls from Flight 77 and other evidence relating to the calls. If the official story of how the calls came about and what was said in them is accurate, details would surely be more consistent between the accounts. The existence of so many contradictions and anomalies therefore gives rise to numerousquestions.
There are questions regarding the messages Ted Olson said were left on his voicemail at his old law firm. If these messages were left by Barbara Olson, why has Ted Olson never mentioned them and described their contents during public appearances in which he talked about the calls from his wife on September 11? The only time he is known to have revealed their existence was during a phone call with the FBI onSeptember 13, 2001.
Furthermore, were the messages recorded before or after Barbara Olson spoke to her husband? And why was there no mention of the calls to the law firm in information the Department of Justice provided to the 9/11 Commission, which supposedly covered all of the calls made from Flight77?
BARBARA OLSON TOLD AN OPERATOR THAT THE HIJACKERS HAD GUNS Why did Barbara Olson call an operator, rather than phoning her husband's office directly, when she made her first successful call to Ted Olson? She clearly knew the number for the office, since she provided it to the operator, Mercy Lorenzo, so Lorenzo could connect her to the office. And she must have been capable of phoning Ted Olson's office directly, since she phoned it directly when she made her second successful call. Additionally, did she tell Lorenzo that the hijackers on Flight 77 had guns, as Lorenzo claimed when she was interviewed by the FBI? The _9/11 Commission Report_ made no mention of the hijackers being armed with guns. And Ted Olson has never mentioned his wife telling himthey had guns.
Did Lorenzo therefore incorrectly claim that Barbara Olson told her the hijackers had guns because she misheard what the solicitor general's wife said? Or was she perhaps mistaken in her recollection of her conversation with Barbara Olson when she spoke to the FBI? If, however, her claim was accurate, why is there no other evidence of the hijackers on Flight 77 having guns? Why has Ted Olson never said his wife told him they were armed with guns? BARBARA OLSON GAVE NO DESCRIPTION OF THE HIJACKERS Then, when she spoke to her husband, why did Barbara Olson provide no information about the appearance of the hijackers? She surely ought to have noticed what at least some of them looked like, since three of them were, like her, initially seated in first class. And yet she "never identified what the nationality was or what the hijackers were like," Ted Olson recalled. When flight attendant Renee May called her mother from Flight 77, she did at least specify how many hijackers there were, saying there were six of them. Barbara Olson and May were both near the front of the aircraft when it began its flight, and so they presumably would have been in this part of the plane when it was hijacked and witnessed the same things at that time. And yet, while May determined how many hijackers there were and passed this information on, Barbara Olson never told her husband anything about the number of hijackers. Why did she either fail to determine how many hijackers there were or fail to pass on such an important piece of information? She did reveal that there was more than one hijacker, but only inadvertently, since she referred to the hijackers as "they" rather than "he" or "she." (Curiously, though, May's claim about the number of hijackers contradicts official accounts. According to the FBI and the _9/11 Commission Report_, there were five hijackers--not six--on Flight 77.)
Even if, for some reason, Barbara Olson failed to observe any details of the physical appearance of the hijackers, she ought to have heard their voices. She therefore should have noticed that, as the Department of Justice and the FBI have pointed out, they had only "limited English language skills." But she never mentioned any such detail to her husband. The only possible explanation Ted Olson has suggested for why his wife told him nothing about the appearance of the hijackers was, "We just didn't--that didn't come up" in his conversations with her. But surely she would have wanted, as a matter of priority, to give him details that might help identify the hijackers, especially since he worked at the Department of Justice and would likely have been able to quickly contact key individuals who could help respond to the hijacking. If, for example, she'd mentioned the hijackers' poor English, this would have indicated that they were foreigners. SOME OF BARBARA OLSON'S CLAIMS CONTRADICT THE OFFICIAL 9/11 STORY Also, why does some of the information that Barbara Olson provided to her husband conflict with the official narrative of the hijacking of Flight 77? She said the plane was hijacked "shortly after takeoff." And yet, according to the _9/11 Commission Report_, the hijacking occurred more than half an hour after the plane left the ground. She also said the plane had been "circling around" after it was hijacked. But the NTSB determined that it maintained quite a steady course after the hijackers took over and flew it back toward Washington. Assuming the _9/11 Commission Report_ and the NTSB were correct, how could Barbara Olson have made such blatant mistakes? She would surely have known her claim that the hijacking occurred shortly after takeoff was wrong and that the plane was never circling around after it washijacked.
TED OLSON HAD LITTLE REASON TO CONCLUDE SO SOON THAT FLIGHT 77 HADCRASHED
There are questions regarding what Ted Olson has said about the calls he received from Barbara Olson after her plane has hijacked. Why, for example, has he given different accounts about the kind of phone hiswife used?
He told the FBI, on September 11, that he was unaware of whether she called him on a cell phone or an Airfone. Why, then, did he sometimes specify what kind of phone she used when he talked about her calls in subsequent interviews and public appearances? And why has he contradicted himself, sometimes saying she used a cell phone and at other times saying she used an Airfone? Additionally, why was he immediately certain, when he heard there had been an explosion at the Pentagon, that this was the result of Barbara Olson's plane crashing there, especially since the initial reports were unspecific about what had happened? The first television network to report the incident, NBC, made no mention of a plane crash. At 9:39 a.m., its correspondent, Jim Miklaszewski, only stated, "It felt, just a few moments ago, like there was an explosion of some kind here at the Pentagon." He was unclear what the cause was. "I have no idea whether it was part of the construction work, whether it was an accident, or what is going on,"he said.
Ted Olson said he thought he was watching CNN's coverage of the attacks when they occurred. But CNN, too, was initially vague about what had happened at the Pentagon. Its first reference to the incident was a banner that appeared on the screen at 9:40 a.m., which stated, "Reports of fire at Pentagon." Three minutes later, Chris Plante reported from the Pentagon: "It's impossible for me to say ... exactly what caused this. I did not hear an explosion, but there is certainly a very, very significant fire in this enormous officebuilding."
At 9:49 a.m., Plante suggested that a helicopter may have hit the building. "Initial reports from witnesses indicate that there was in fact a helicopter circling the building ... and that this helicopter disappeared behind the building, and that there was then an explosion," he said. CNN first reported that a plane had crashed at 9:53 a.m., when anchor, Aaron Brown, stated, "We also have a report now that it was a plane that crashed into the Pentagon." Indeed, despite concluding immediately that the explosion at the Pentagon was a result of Flight 77 crashing there, Ted Olson has recalled that it was some time before the television reports he saw indicated that this may have been what happened. The initial reports "indicated that there had been an explosion of some sort at the Pentagon," he said. He added: "It was a long time before what had happened at the Pentagon--or it seemed like a long time--before it was identified as an airplane . Then the first report that I heard was that it was a commuter plane and then I heard it was an American Airlines plane." BARBARA OLSON GAVE NO INDICATION THAT HER PLANE WAS FLYING TOWARD THEPENTAGON
The promptness with which Ted Olson concluded that Flight 77 had crashed at the Pentagon is also curious since Barbara Olson had given him no reason to think her plane was being flown toward the Department of Defense's headquarters. During her second call, she told him only that she thought it was heading northeast and was over some houses. "I don't know where she was when she called," Ted Olson commented. Additionally, as the _9/11 Commission Report_ noted, Barbara Olson "did not indicate any awareness of an impending crash" in her conversations with her husband. Why, then, did Ted Olson decide so quickly that the reports of an explosion at the Pentagon meant Flight 77 had crashed there? Surely, he would have wanted more information before he reached a conclusion, especially since if he incorrectly assumed Flight 77 had crashed he might consequently fail to assist his wife when he could still helpher.
If he assumed the explosion at the Pentagon may have been caused by something other than Flight 77 crashing and the plane might still be airborne, he could perhaps have contacted people he knew in the U.S. government and passed on to them the information his wife had given him, so as to help agencies respond more effectively to the hijacking. He could also have thought about what to say if Barbara Olson phoned him again. Since the last thing she said in her second call was, "What can I tell the pilot to do?" he could have thought of an answer togive her.
But by immediately resigning himself to believing Flight 77 had crashed, Ted Olson ruled out the possibility of doing anything to help his wife if her plane was still in the air. ONLY TWO PEOPLE MADE CALLS FROM FLIGHT 77 It is also odd that only Barbara Olson and Renee May made calls from Flight 77. If Barbara Olson was able to make calls without the hijackers noticing, as she claimed, other passengers ought to have been able to make calls without the hijackers noticing, too, and would presumably have done so. Why, then, did only two people make calls? The lack of calls from Flight 77 stands out when we consider what happened on United Airlines Flight 93, the fourth plane to be hijacked on September 11, which supposedly crashed in rural Pennsylvania after its passengers tried to retake control of it. Even though there were fewer passengers on Flight 93 than on Flight 77, significantly more of them made calls from the plane. Flight 77 had 58 passengers on board, including the five hijackers, along with two pilots and four flight attendants, making 64 people in total. Flight 93, meanwhile, had only 44 people on board, comprising 37 passengers, including four hijackers, two pilots, and five flight attendants. And yet at least 10 passengers and two crew members made calls from Flight 93--six times as many people as made calls from Flight 77. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT'S INFORMATION IS PROBLEMATIC Information about the phone calls from Flight 77 that the Department of Justice gave to the 9/11 Commission, which was also included in an FBI report published on September 20, 2001, was central to official accounts of 9/11, such as the _9/11 Commission Report_. Close analysis of this information, however, reveals several problems and casts doubton its reliability.
Assistant U.S. Attorney David Novak and two FBI agents provided the information to 9/11 Commission staffers during a briefing in May 2004. The information, according to the Commission, "was derived from a study of all phone records from , an examination of the cell phone records of each of the passengers aboard who owned cell phones, and interviews with those who received calls from the flight, as well as with family members of the other passengers and crew." Novak and the FBI agents told the Commission staffers they were "confident that they had identified all completed calls from theflight."
The list of calls they provided included what the _9/11 Commission Report_ described as four "connected calls to unknown numbers." These were made at 9:15 a.m., 9:20 a.m., 9:25 a.m., and 9:30 a.m. They lasted 1 minute 42 seconds, 4 minutes 34 seconds, 2 minutes 39 seconds, and 4 minutes 20 seconds, respectively. The 9/11 Commission determined that these four calls included Barbara Olson's two calls to her husband. It was unable to say, though, which specific calls were the ones between Barbara and Ted Olson, and it was therefore unable to give exact times for when these two calls occurred. Inexplicably, though, the Commission staffers at the briefing were told that the FBI and the Department of Justice had determined that all four calls, which were from unknown callers to unknown recipients, were communications between Barbara Olson and her husband's office. How is this possible? Ted Olson recalled receiving only two calls from his wife. Helen Voss, who was in his office on September 11, said he was only called twice by her. And Lori Keyton, who initially answered the calls, has described receiving only two calls fromBarbara Olson.
If the FBI and the Department of Justice were correct, and all four "connected calls to unknown numbers" were communications between Barbara Olson and her husband's office, what did the other two calls involve? And why have Ted Olson, Voss, and Keyton never mentioned them? If, however, only two calls between Barbara Olson and her husband's office were made, who made and received the other two calls? The evidence that any of the four calls were between the Olsons is in fact inconclusive. The 9/11 Commission noted that there was no "direct evidence" that any of them were between Barbara Olson and Ted Olson's office. The calls were therefore just listed as being made by an "unknown" caller to an "unknown" recipient. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT INDICATED THAT ALL OF BARBARA OLSON'S CALLS WERECOLLECT CALLS
Another problem with the four "connected calls to unknown numbers" is that all of them appear to have been collect calls, which are made through an operator and involve the recipient agreeing to pay the charges for the call. They were made by the caller dialing "0" on theAirfone.
And yet Keyton recalled that only the first of the two successful calls from Barbara Olson that she answered was a collect call, in which she spoke to an operator before the solicitor general's wife came on the line. For her second call, Barbara Olson called Ted Olson's office directly and was therefore on the line immediately when Keyton picked up the phone. The second call "was not a collect call," Keyton told the FBI. A further problem is that, even though David Novak and the two FBI agents with him said the list of calls from Flight 77 they provided to the 9/11 Commission included all of the calls from the hijacked plane, the list made no mention of the six to eight collect calls comprising an automated message that Keyton answered shortly before Barbara Olson successfully reached the solicitor general's office. The list did include a call that failed to connect, which was described as being made by Barbara Olson to Ted Olson's office. However, this was just one call, not six to eight, and it was made just before 9:19 a.m., whereas Keyton said the calls with an automated message began at "approximately 9:00 a.m." THE CALLS MAY HAVE BEEN STAGED TO CREATE FALSE EVIDENCE The evidence relating to Barbara Olson's calls from Flight 77 on September 11, as we can see, is filled with anomalies and contradictions. The story of how the wife of the solicitor general called her husband from one of the hijacked planes and gave him valuable information about what was happening on the aircraft may, on the surface, appear plausible and believable. However, close analysis reveals it to be highly suspicious. A possible reason for the problems with the evidence is that Barbara Olson's phone conversations with her husband were something other than calls from a hijacked aircraft. They could have been staged so as to appear as if this is what they were, thereby creating false evidence that would support the official narrative of the 9/11 attacks. But in reality, they were a malicious act of deception against the public. This possibility surely needs to be looked into as part of a new investigation of the 9/11 attacks. And if the story of Barbara Olson's calls from Flight 77 was found to be fabricated, we would need to consider whether other evidence that supports the official narrative of the attacks was also faked.NOTES
_Staff Report: The Four Flights_. 9/11 Commission, August 26,2004, pp. 32, 48 .
Toby Harnden, "'She Asked Me How to Stop the Plane.'" _Daily Telegraph_, March 5, 2002.
Harriet Arkell and Anthony France, "Desperate Calls From Relatives as Jets Were Hijacked." _Evening Standard_, September 12, 2001;
Michael McCarthy, "The Stream of Calls to Say 'I Love You.'" _The Independent_, September 13, 2001;
Neil A. Lewis, "Barbara Olson, 45, Advocate and Conservative Commentator." _New York Times_, September 13, 2001.
"Solicitor General: Theodore B. Olson." U.S. Department of Justice, October 31, 2014; Matt Naham,
"'Legal Superstar' Attorney Who Rejected Trump's Job Offer Comes Back to Haunt the President." Law & Crime, November 13, 2018.
Martin Kettle, "Democrats Back on the Offensive." _The Guardian_,May 11, 2001
;
Steve Gorman, "Bush v. Gore Lawyers Take on Gay Marriage Ban." Reuters, May 28, 2009;
Brittany Shepherd, "A Conservative Lawyer Said no to Joining Trump's Legal Team. Now He's Representing CNN in its Suit Against Him." _Washingtonian_, November 13, 2018.
_Staff Report: The Four Flights_, p. 28.
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy." _Larry King Live_, CNN, September 14, 2001; "Ted Olson
on Barbara Olson's Last Moments on Flight." Hudson Union, August 8,2014 .
_PENTTBOM Case Summary as of 1/11/2002_. Federal Bureau of Investigation, January 11, 2002, p. 47;
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States_. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 8-10. 9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 9; "Memorandum for the Record: Department of Justice Briefing on Cell and Phone Calls From AA Flight 77." 9/11 Commission, May 20, 2004.
Ronald May and Nancy May, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 11, 2001;
_Staff Report: The Four Flights_, p. 31 ; Tom Murphy, _Reclaiming the Sky: 9/11 and the Untold Story of the Men and Women Who Kept America Flying_. New York: AMACOM, 2006, p. 57. Lori Lynn Keyton, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 11, 2001;
_Staff Report: The Four Flights_, p. 94.
Ted Olson, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation,September 13, 2001
.
Toby Harnden, "'She Asked Me How to Stop the Plane.'" 9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 455. "American Airlines Airphone Usage." Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 20, 2001.
Mercy Lorenzo, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 11, 2001;
Teresa Gonzalez, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 11, 2001.
Lori Lynn Keyton, interview by the FBI.
Helen Voss, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 11, 2001;
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy." Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 11, 2001.
Michael Isikoff, "'I Can't Just Sit Back.'" _Newsweek_, September28, 2001 .
Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI.
Ibid.; _Hannity & Colmes_. Fox News, September 14, 2001.
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy." Marc Fisher and Don Phillips, "On Flight 77: 'Our Plane is Being Hijacked.'" _Washington Post_, September 12, 2001.
Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI.
Allen Ferber, interview by the FBI. Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 11, 2001.
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 455. Lori Lynn Keyton, interview by the FBI.
Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI;
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy"; _Hannity &
Colmes_
.
Marc Fisher and Don Phillips, "On Flight 77: 'Our Plane is BeingHijacked'"
;
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy." Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI;
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy." "America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy"; _Hannity &
Colmes_
.
Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI;
Helen Voss, interview by the FBI.
_Hannity & Colmes_
.
Toby Harnden, "'She Asked Me How to Stop the Plane.'" "America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy." Helen Voss, interview by the FBI.
Allen Ferber, interview by the FBI.
Toby Harnden, "'She Asked Me How to Stop the Plane.'" "America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy." "Memorandum for the Record: Department of Justice Briefing on Cell and Phone Calls From AA Flight 77." Duncan Gardham, "Wife's Secret Call From Hijacked Plane." _Daily Mail_, September 12, 2001;
Toby Harnden, "Wife Phoned From Hijack Airliner as it Hit Pentagon." _Daily Telegraph_, September 12, 2001.
"Memorandum for the Record: Department of Justice Briefing on Cell and Phone Calls From AA Flight 77." Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI.
_Hannity & Colmes_
.
Lori Lynn Keyton, interview by the FBI.
Tim O'Brien, "Wife of Solicitor General Alerted Him of Hijacking From Plane." CNN, September 12, 2001.
Toby Harnden, "'She Asked Me How to Stop the Plane.'" "Ted Olson on Barbara Olson's Last Moments on Flight." "American Airlines Airphone Usage";
"Memorandum for the Record: Department of Justice Briefing on Cell and Phone Calls From AA Flight 77." Lori Lynn Keyton, interview by the FBI.
Ibid.
Helen Voss, interview by the FBI.
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy." Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI.
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy."Ibid.
_Staff Report: The Four Flights_, pp. 28-29.
Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI;
_Hannity & Colmes_
.
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy." 9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 8._Hannity & Colmes_
.
"Flight Path Study: American Airlines Flight 77." National Transportation Safety Board, February 19, 2002.
Ted Olson, interview by the FBI.
"Memorandum for the Record: Department of Justice Briefing on Cell and Phone Calls From AA Flight 77." Teresa Gonzalez, interview by the FBI.
Lori Lynn Keyton, interview by the FBI.
Mercy Lorenzo, interview by the FBI.
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 8. See, for example, Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI;
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy"; _Hannity &
Colmes_
.
_Staff Report: The Four Flights_, p. 28.
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy." _Staff Report: The Four Flights_, p. 31.
Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI.
"The FBI Releases 19 Photographs of Individuals Believed to be the Hijackers of the Four Airliners That Crashed on September 11, 2001." Federal Bureau of Investigation press release, Washington, DC,September 28, 2001
;
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, pp. 2-3. "Memorandum for the Record: Department of Justice Briefing on Cell and Phone Calls From AA Flight 77." "America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy." Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI.
"NBC Sept. 11, 2001, 9:12 a.m.-9:54 a.m." NBC News, September 11,2001 .
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy." "CNN Sept. 11, 2001, 9:29 a.m.-10:11 a.m." CNN, September 11,2001 ; "Terrorism
Strikes in the United States in a Massive Attack." _Breaking News_, CNN, September 11, 2001; "The White
House Has Been Evacuated." _Breaking News_, CNN, September 11, 2001.
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy." Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI;
"America's New War: Recovering From Tragedy"; _Hannity &
Colmes_
.
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 9. _Staff Report: The Four Flights_, p. 28.
Ibid. p. 36.
9/11 Commission, _The 9/11 Commission Report_, p. 13. Ibid. p. 455; "Memorandum for the Record: Department of Justice Briefing on Cell and Phone Calls From AA Flight 77." Theodore Olson, interview by the FBI;
Tim O'Brien, "Wife of Solicitor General Alerted Him of Hijacking FromPlane."
Helen Voss, interview by the FBI.
Lori Lynn Keyton, interview by the FBI.
"Memorandum for the Record: Department of Justice Briefing on Cell and Phone Calls From AA Flight 77." "American Airlines Airphone Usage." Lori Lynn Keyton, interview by the FBI.
Ibid.; "Memorandum for the Record: Department of Justice Briefing on Cell and Phone Calls From AA Flight 77." Posted by Shoestringat 01:19
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