Barrie Zwicker on TVO - February 13th, 2008

[CGowen]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7629620514437266956&hl=en

On Wednesday, February 13th, Barrie Zwicker was invited to be a guest on the publicly funded TV Ontario television program, "The Agenda with Steve Paikin". The episode was originally billed as "Paranoid Political Imagination - Understanding conspiracy theories: Why do some people see things that most don't", this was on Monday the 11th.

The "agenda" seems to have been to have Zwicker on the show, showcase him as a paranoid "Conspiracy Theorist" and then have a panel follow up and explain why he was a paranoiac. However, Zwicker was so damn good in the opening segment with Paikin, that the episode was re-named, "Barrie Zwicker - Conspiracy Anyone?", and split into two distinct segments, the first with Zwicker, called "The Interview - Fact or fiction? Writer Barrie Zwicker on the real story behind 9/11", and the second segment a rather typical establishment rationalization of "Conspiracy Theories" called "The Debate: Conspiracy Anyone? - Why do some people see things that most don't? The rising popularity and seductive logic of conspiratorial thinking", which you can view as a streaming episode or podcast D/L at the show's website:



....


http://www.911blogger.com/node/13901

[wildbilln864]

1. very good. thanks CG.

He seemed to imply he wanteed to join in the panel discussion but they wouldn't allow it. Just speculating about where he said "I'd love to join you guys...". :hi:

[nebula]

2. While Bush was reading nursery ryhmes to the kiddies

The real president, Cheney, was in charge of all operations that day.

Cheney suspended normal, standard Air Force emergency response procedures
and ordered them to stand-down. Cheney's role was crucial for the 9/11 attacks
to be carried out successfully.

[SDuderstadt]

3. This is absolute bullshit...

I despise Cheney, but wild claims like yours require proof, which you don't have.

http://www.911myths.com/html/cheney_in_charge_of_norad.html

[nebula]

4. Ask Sec. Norman Mineta who was in charge of

the Pentagon response that day.

Unless you prefer to take the word of Darth Cheney over that of a democrat.

[William Seger]

5. Swing and a miss

Mineta says the exact opposite of what you're claiming:

Former Congressman Lee Hamilton: I wanted to focus just a moment on the presidential emergency operating center. You were there for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the vice president. We had that order given, I think it was by the President, that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be controlled by terrorists. Were you there when that order was given?

Mineta: No I was not. I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane was coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who'd come in and say to the vice president, the plane is 50 miles out, the plane is 30 miles out and when it got down to the plane is 10 miles out the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?" And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?

http://www.911truthmovement.org/video/hamilton_win.wmv

"When I overheard something about 'the orders still stand' and so, what I thought of was that they had already made the decision to shoot something down."

http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/260607_mineta.html

Unless you prefer to take the work of Alex Jones over that of a democrat. On that page, Jones takes those very words and tells his brainless fans that Mineta "confirmed" he was "indeed talking about a stand down order not to shoot down!" Is that how you got the story confused?

[nebula]

6. I think his words are pretty clear

you fail to understand.

[William Seger]

12. Yes, HIS words are pretty clear

"When I overheard something about 'the orders still stand' and so, what I thought of was that they had already made the decision to shoot something down." Nowhere in that interview or elsewhere does he add "... but later I found out it was a stand-down order."

And you even think he was "in charge of the Pentagon response that day." There seems to be a lot that you "fail to understand" about the situation.

[nebula]

17. Why did it take nearly an hour

for the Pentagon to respond to 4 hijacked planes?

Who ordered those air force planes to stand down?

[SDuderstadt]

18. No one "ordered them to stand down"

This has been explained over and over and makes sense to anyone who approaches it with an open mind. Seriously, if they were "ordered to stand down", there would be a very clear evidentiary trail. This reminds me of RWers who claimed that the lack of evidence against Clinton during his impeachment, just showed "how sneaky he is". I'll post it one more time. Pay attention.

http://www.911myths.com/html/intercepts__norad_and_the_faa.html

http://www.911myths.com/html/67_intercepts.html

http://www.911myths.com/html/payne_stewart.html

http://www.911myths.com/html/intercept_time.html

http://www.911myths.com/html/primary_radar.html

[nebula]

19. I don't want to hear their endless bullshit excuses

Give me a real answer please.

[SDuderstadt]

22. This is funny...and stupid at the same time

"I don't want to hear their endless bullshit excuses. Give me a real answer please."

I thought you believed it was an "inside job". If it was, why would they be offering "bullshit excuses"? Wouldn't they have elaborate cover stories developed? How do you know that what they claim didn't happen that day? Do you have a fully developed alternative theory with concommitant evidence? Or do you just have "bullshit excuses" too? Do you have a truly open mind no matter where the evidence leads? Or have you already decided that they're all guilty?

[nebula]

26. Why do you insist on defending Darth Cheney?

Does NORAD have good excuse for failing to do their sworn duty to defend the country? Why did NORAD constantly lie to the 9/11 Commission about not even being aware of any hijackings, according to Hamilton and Kean? Does Dead Eye have a good excuse for sitting i his bunker with his thumb up his ass while the 'homeland' was under attack? How many innocent Americans have died as a result of their willful inaction?

The Pentagon attack occurred at 9:38 a.m., a full 1 hour 20 minutes after the first of the 9/11 flights was diverted from its designated flight path.

Myers's statement to the Senate was incredible, given the standard U.S. air defense protocols for dealing with errant instrument flights (including off-course passenger planes). In place many years before Sept. 11, these procedures are automatic and require no special order. Within minutes after a flight ceases to respond to ground control, the FAA is expected to alert NORAD - which scrambles jet fighters to intercept the errant flight for reconnaissance purposes. These are supposed to be airborne within 10 minutes of the problem arising.

This routine was activated on at least 67 occasions in the year prior to June 1, 2001. Exceptional as the events of 9/11 proved to be, the procedures should have also been activated automatically within minutes of each flight diversion on that day (i.e., long before anyone needed to realize that hijackers would fly multiple airliners into buildings). This did not happen.

www.911citizenswatch.org

[Bolo Boffin]

27. He isn't. You really should stop flinging stupid accusations around.

Especially when they are against the rules.

[nebula]

28. Why don't you take your own advice?

In OCT land, Darth Cheney was a saint on 9/11. He did nothing wrong.

[Bolo Boffin]

30. You see, that's not even true.

The 9/11 CR even skewers Cheney for pulling a Haig. Perhaps you should read the whole thing instead of the quotes selected for you by the Truth Movement.

[SDuderstadt]

31. Ummm, Nebula...

what part of "the hijackers turned off the transponders" (thus rendering it anything BUT a routine interception) is too difficult for you to grasp? I also challenge you to point out exactly how I am supposedly defending Cheney. I despise him.

[mhatrw]

33. That's right. Turning off the transponder makes giant passenger jets invisible.

It's the equivalent of a Romulan cloaking device.

[Bolo Boffin]

36. Four aircraft in one of the busiest corridors in the world.

Are you seriously that daft about this?

[mhatrw]

41. Exactly! If you are flying an enemy plane, all you need to do to elude the USAF

is find a busy air corridor and turn off your transponder. You'd have to be daft not to understand this!

[jberryhill]

45. The trick is getting the enemy aircraft *into* US airspace from outside of the US

...because the operative assumption is that there is not an enemy air force stationed within the United States.

[Bolo Boffin]

46. So true.

There's a guy over in New Zealand that is poring over the NORAD tapes and putting together a comprehensive paper on the actual responses that day. The blow to American exceptionalism looks to be rather severe. :D

He's already found some interesting things about the way the complete response went down. I can't find that specific thread right now at JREF, but the first part of the paper's being proofread now.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=105379

[mhatrw]

50. Will this be the eighth and definitive story of how USAF flew around in cricles on 9/11? n/t

[Bolo Boffin]

51. It's going to be as definitive as the guy can make it.

And he's a rather thorough writer. Here he is taking down David Ray Griffin:

http://911guide.googlepages.com/griffin

[mhatrw]

54. I hope he's getting paid more than 10 cents a post for that stuff. n/t

[Bolo Boffin]

58. Feel free to bring back an example of his error, mhatrw.

Any day now...

[mhatrw]

49. And what's the "trick" when US fighters are fighting overseas? n/t

[jberryhill]

52. I don't support them being there

What does that have to do with the supposed primary-radar internal air defense system you believe to have been in operation on 9/11?

Was there a war going on somewhere overseas that day?

[mhatrw]

53. So enemy aircraft can always hide in crowded passenger air corridors overseas?

How would our poor fighter jets ever find them?

[jberryhill]

55. A better question

is what keeps us from accidentally shooting down civilian aircraft overseas?

And the answer sometimes is dumb luck, as illustrated by the extremely unlucky shooting down of that Iranian passenger jet some time ago.

But I'm not sure what you are asking here. You are asking, for example, how the Netherlands manages its air defense? Their air force has something like two fighters which, at speed, can only be *in* the Netherlands for a few minutes tops. The primary defense of a country like that is the fact that they aren't pissing off their neighbors, or indeed more distant folks.

And, since the end of the cold war, one very valid operative assumption is that there really isn't anyone with an air force capable of flying here to do harm for any sensible reason. Are we talking about a lone Chinese long range bomber or what? Most of the sovereign entities with significant air assault capabilities are not generally hostile to us, and the ones which are hostile are certainly not capable of attacking us without a devastating counterattack. That is the main principle that kept us and the Soviets from blowing each other up for 50 years.

But, during the cold war, yes we used to test Russian air defenses, and they used to test ours, all of the time. Even then, we weren't set up to scramble to intercept a Russian bomber wing taking of from say, somewhere in Ohio.

One of the reasons for grounding all flights on 9/11 was that it was, among other things, a much simpler way to figure out if there were any more hostile aircraft (or aircraft which had become hostile). After everything capable of landing had landed, then anything without a proper FOF signal would have been a sure bet.

"enemy aircraft can always hide in crowded passenger air corridors overseas" - I just can't figure that one out. The North Koreans tend to simply park theirs at airbases in North Korea. They don't have to hide them anywhere, because they are allowed to have them there.

[mhatrw]

56. Is the USAF or is it not capable of locating any enemy aircraft that has

its transponder turned off?

[Grateful for Hope]

57. A very good question. n/t

[Bolo Boffin]

59. Yes, it is. But without a transponder, it's a lot more difficult.

It's really interesting to watch you figure out what your rejection rhetoric will be before his paper is even released. It's the definition of prejudice.

[mhatrw]

60. Why should I react to anything the OCT ever says about our air response on 9/11?

The story will just change again.

[jberryhill]

61. When there are not a thousand other potential targets around, sure

But you have this notion that air combat occurs in areas with lots of civilian air traffic.

Perhaps you mind consider this question: "When was the last time a US fighter engaged a hostile enemy aircraft, and where did it happen?"

I realize it may come as a shock to you that civilian aircraft don't tend to route through war zones.

[mhatrw]

62. So all an enemy aircraft has to do to elude the USAF is to hide in civilian air traffic?

Whoops! Have I compromised national security by giving away this secret?

BTW, the other potential targets traveling at the same cruising speeds all still had their transponders on. Didn't they?

[nebula]

38. That. Is. Pure. Nonsense.

turning off the transponder doesn't make an airplane invisible to radar.

the fact that the control tower LOST the TRANSPONDER SIGNAL coupled with the fact that the planes went wildly are course should have alerted FAA and NORAD and given them a big fat clue that something is seriously wrong, alerting them to a huge emergency, and that jet fighters should be scrambled immediately to check on their situation, which is routinely done dozens of times every single year.

[SDuderstadt]

39. And you know EXACTLY how those systems work, right?

You know how interoperable they are, right? Once the transponder is turned off, they should be able to be picked up on radar just like that? Your personal incredulity doesn't prove anything. Why don't you explain to us PRECISELY how it works? Please be specific.

[nebula]

40. Read and learn.

NORAD Stand-Down

The Prevention of Interceptions of the Commandeered Planes

It is standard operating procedure (SOP) to scramble jet fighters whenever a jetliner goes off course or radio contact with it is lost. Between September 2000 and June 2001, interceptors were scrambled 67 times. 1 In the year 2000 jets were scrambled 129 times. 2

There are several elements involved in domestic air defense. The air traffic control system continuously monitors air traffic and notifies NORAD of any deviations of any aircraft from their flight-paths or loss of radio contact. NORAD monitors air and space traffic continuously and is prepared to react immediately to threats and emergencies. It has the authority to order units from the Air National Guard, the Air Force, or other armed services to scramble fighters in pursuit of jetliners in trouble.

Routine interception procedures were not followed on September 11th, 2001.

Layered Failures

The air defense network had, on September 11th, predictable and effective procedures for dealing with just such an attack. Yet it failed to respond in a timely manner until after the attack was over, more than an hour and a half after it had started. The official timeline describes a series of events and mode of response in which the delays are spread out into a number of areas. There are failures upon failures, in what might be described as a strategy of layered failures, or failure in depth. The failures can be divided into four types.

* Failures to report: Based on the official timeline, the FAA response times for reporting the deviating aircraft were many times longer than the prescribed times.
* Failures to scramble: NORAD, once notified of the off-course aircraft, failed to scramble jets from the nearest bases.
* Failures to intercept: Once airborne, interceptors failed to reach their targets because they flew at small fractions of their top speeds.
* Failures to redeploy: Fighters that were airborne and within interception range of the deviating aircraft were not redeployed to pursue them.

Had not there been multiple failures of each type, one or more parts of the attack could have been thwarted. NORAD had time to protect the World Trade Center even given the unbelievably late time, 8:40, when it claims to have first been notified. It had time to protect the South Tower and Washington even given its bizarre choice of bases to scramble. And it still had ample opportunity to protect both New York City and Washington even if it insisted that all interceptors fly subsonic, simply by redeploying airborne fighters.

Failures to Report

Comparing NORAD's timeline to reports from air traffic control reveals inexplicable delays in the times the FAA took to report deviating aircraft. The delays include an 18-minute delay in reporting Flight 11 and a 39-minute delay in reporting Flight 77. The delays are made all the more suspicious given that, in each case, the plane failed to respond to communications, was off-course, and had stopped emitting its IFF signal.

Failures to Scramble

No plausible explanation has been provided for failing to scramble interceptors in a timely fashion from bases within easy range to protect the September 11th targets. Fighters that were dispatched were scrambled from distant bases. Early in the attack, when Flight 11 had turned directly south toward New York City, it was obvious that New York City and the World Trade Center, and Washington D.C. would be likely targets. Yet fighters were not scrambled from the bases near the targets. They were only scrambled from distant bases. Moreover there were no redundant or backup scrambles.

New York City

Flight 11 had been flying south toward New York City from about 8:30 AM. Yet no interceptors were scrambled from nearby Atlantic City, or La Guardia, or from Langley, Virginia. Numerous other bases were not ordered to scramble fighters.

Washington D.C.

No interceptors were scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base to protect the capital, at least not before the Pentagon was hit. Andrews Air Force Base had two squadrons of fighters on alert, and is only 10 miles from the Pentagon.

Failures to Intercept

Even though the interceptors were not dispatched from the most logical bases, the ones that were scrambled still had adequate time to reach their assigned planes. Why didn't they? Because they were only flying at a small fraction of their top speed. That is the conclusion implicit in NORAD's timeline.

Otis to the WTC

The first base to finally scramble interceptors was Otis in Falmouth, Massachusetts, at 8:52, about a half-hour after Flight 11 was taken over. This was already eight minutes after Flight 11 hit the North Tower, and just 9 minutes before Flight 175 hit the South Tower.

According to NORAD, at the time of the South Tower Impact the two F-15s from Otis were still 71 miles away. Otis is 153 miles east-northeast of the WTC. That means the F-15s were flying at:
(153 miles - 71 miles)/(9:03 - 8:52) = 447 mph
That is around 23.8% of their top speed of 1875 mph.
At 9:11 the F-15s finally reached the World Trade Center. Their average speed for the trip was:
153/(9:11 - 8:52) = 483 mph
That is around 25.8% of their top speed.

Langley to the Pentagon

The F-16s from Langley reached the Pentagon at 9:49. It took them 19 minutes to reach Washington D.C. from Langley AFB, which is about 130 miles to the south. That means the F-16s were flying at:
130 miles/(9:49 - 9:30) = 410.5 mph
That is around 27.4% of their top speed of 1500 mph.

Andrews to the Pentagon

Andrews Air Force Base, located on the outskirts of the capital, is just over 10 miles from the Pentagon. One would have expected interceptors to be scrambled to protect the capital within a few minutes of the 8:15 loss of contact with Flight 11. Instead, no fighters from Andrews reached the Pentagon until 9:49, several minutes after the assault.
Failures to Redeploy

Fighters that were in the air when the attack started were not redeployed to intercept the deviating planes. When fighters scrambled to protect Manhattan arrived there too late, they were not redeployed to protect the capital even though they had plenty of time to reach it before the Pentagon was hit.
Long Island to Manhattan

Two F-15s flying off the coast of Long Island were not redeployed to Manhattan until after the second tower was hit. 3
WTC to the Pentagon

By the time the two F-15s from Otis reached Manhattan, the only jetliner still flying with its IFF transponder off had just made a 180-degree turn over southern Ohio and had been headed for Washington D.C. for 12 minutes. It was still 34 minutes before the Pentagon was hit. Had the fighters been sent to protect the capital, they could have traveled the approximately 300 miles in:
300 miles/1875 mph = 9.6 minutes
They even could have made it to the capital in time to protect the Pentagon if they had continued to fly at only 500 mph.

http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/norad/index.html

[SDuderstadt]

42. This has been answered over and over....

yet you keep putting out the same tired old discredited "truther" claims. I'll post the rebuttal to this yet one more time, not in hopes you'd actually bother to read it, but maybe someone else will and realize just how far offbase you and your claims actually are.

http://www.911myths.com/html/intercepts__norad_and_the_faa.html

[nebula]

43. What rebuttal?

your link doesn't explain a damn thing.

[hack89]

47. Error in the first paragraph

none of those intercepts were over land. I have asked for a single example of an intercept over land and no one has provided one.

Now, isn't there a 911 truth organization comprised of pilots? Why haven't they been able to document that "It is standard operating procedure (SOP) to scramble jet fighters whenever a jetliner goes off course or radio contact with it is lost."?

This is a classic example of how superficial the truth movement is - make a flat out assertion without feeling the need to document it is true.

[CGowen]

7. It's in the video of seattle911truth on the jones page

Seattle911truth:
"I think what you stated that you actually thought it was a shoot down order,
when you learned later that it was not the case at all"

Mineta: "yeah"



What Mineta confirmed is that the 911 commission manipulated the time Cheney arrived, he also mentioned that his wife was there and with his "yeah" he basically said that it wasn't a shoot down order.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-5PKQTUz5o (at 1:55 min)

[William Seger]

8. Bullshit!

That interpretation of that quick "yeah" makes no sense at all; it completely contradicts what he clearly says in answer to that question right after that, quoted right there on Jones' page, and what he has repeatedly said elsewhere: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/terrorism/july-dec01/mineta_9-16.html
Mineta told the Commission, and has consistently continued to say, that he wasn't in the room when the order was given, but that he assumed it was a shoot-down order. Interpreting that quick verbal interjection as "confirmation" of a stand-down is total bullshit: The interviewer was claiming he said something he never said! Why would he answer "yeah" if he had understood that the interviewer was misquoting him, and then go on to say something completely different?

[CGowen]

9. To me it sounds like he confirms that what he learned in all these years afterwards

that it wasn't a "shoot down order". We certainly don't know what it was and you are right that the Jones article jumps to the conclusion that it was a "stand down order".

[William Seger]

11. Why would he have said "yeah"

... if had actually understood that the interviewer had just completely misquoted him? Why does he continue to say that he assumed it was a "shoot-down?" Also, if he wasn't in the room when the order was given, how could he possibly "confirm" what it was, one way or the other? This is nonsense.

[CGowen]

13. Because that's what he thought at the time and the question by the 911 commission

led him to conclude that it was what he had heard.

Why should he believe the 911 commission now if they distorted the time Cheney arrived?


I know that Mineta tried to change his story when he was confronted by McGovern, but not this time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL2w_v0PV4A

[William Seger]

14. The Commission didn't "distort" the time Cheney arrived

They decided that all the other witnesses, the live media reports, and the Secret Service logs, all of which contradicted Mineta timeline, were more probably correct. That's how discrepancies in witness accounts are usually decided, and deciding that Mineta was the one person who got it right would have been irrational. They also didn't have any good reason to ascribe the sinister implications that the "truth movement" would like to put on the discrepancy. The one and only reason that the "truth movement" prefers Mineta's timeline is that it helps to imply that Cheney was actually talking about a stand-down order to not shoot down Flight 77 headed to the Pentagon, when all the testimony presented to the Commission said it was a shoot-down order. All the evidence except for Mineta's timeline indicate that he was talking about Flight 93, and when it crashed, Cheney asked if we had shot it down.

Getting back to the topic at hand, show me just one case where Mineta says he found out it was a stand-down order. That quick "yeah" where it's clear he didn't understand that the interviewer had just misquoted with that "not the case" added on the end ain't it.

This is nonsense.

[CGowen]

16. Have you read the stuff by Griffin?

I know the OCT doesn't like him, but there is some interesting stuff

http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2008/01/22/02147.html




I'm not claiming to know what the order was, just pointed out that the statement by Mineta sounds to me like he agrees that it was not a "shot down order"

[William Seger]

29. Gee, what's not to like about Griffin

OK, if you read the Griffin page, tell me how many people besides Mineta put Cheney in the bunker around 9:20?

If you believe Griffin's article, the answer is two: Clarke and the photographer Bohrer. But there's a slight problem with the scholarly Dr. Griffin's research and analysis: neither of them really do.

Clarke said he saw Cheney gathering papers to go to the bunker at "a little after 9:03." There are two problems with that: 1) he didn't actually see Cheney go to the bunker, he just assumed that's what he was preparing to do (and possibly didn't even assume that until later when he was reconstructing the events), so his statement proves nothing even if true; and 2) he says he and Rice then went to a teleconference that began at 9:10, but the teleconference logs show that it didn't start until 9:25, so his guess at the time was wrong, anyway.

And, sorry, but Bohrer never said that the time was "just after 9:00" when he saw the agents escort Cheney out of the office. He didn't give any time at all! Here's a transcript of the show that the statement was supposedly based on: http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/pentagon/attack/abcnews091102_jenningsinterviews.html
In fact, all the hundreds of "truther" references to Bohrer's statement are really references to a summary of the show published on the ABC website, written by Charles Gibson, in which Bohrer was not actually quoted directly: The "just after 9:00" apparently was just Gibson's impression of the timing, added just for context before relating what Bohrer actually says in the interview. (One thing that Bohrer does say in the interview is about the plane under discussion: "Eventually it narrowed to Flight 93. That was the biggest threat at that point.")

So, you are correct that I don't like Griffin: He does sloppy research by relying on unreliable sources; his logic is faulty; and he completely ignores any information that doesn't fit the story he wants to tell.

And again: This whole Mineta thing is just nonsense, a phoney "issue" trumped up to support a theory that Cheney gave a "stand-down" order, and it doesn't even really do that even if by some chance Mineta was the only one who got the time right.

[CGowen]

32. We are talking about distortions by the 911 commission

You say they didn't distort the time Cheney arrived in the PEOC.

I'm not claiming to know when he exactly arrived, I just say something doesn't add up.

911 report

Once inside, Vice President Cheney and the agents paused in an area of the tunnel that had a secure phone, a bench, and television. The Vice President asked to speak to the President, but it took time for the call to be connected. He learned in the tunnel that the Pentagon had been hit, and he saw television coverage of the smoke coming from the building.
...
According to contemporaneous notes, at 9:55 the Vice President was still on the phone with the President advising
that three planes were missing and one had hit the Pentagon.

(911 report page 40)

Cheney himself 5 days later on Meet The Press.

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

MR. RUSSERT: Secretary of Transportation.

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

But when I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon's been hit.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20010916.html

The 911 report tells us that he was on the phone till 9:55 and learned in the tunnel that the Pentagon was hit.

He himself tells us on MTP that after he talked to the president and after he went into the PEOC, they had word "within a short order" that the Pentagon was hit.

The Pentagon fire was reported even on CNN at 9:40, so he had to get there around that time to get word of it and not long after.


It's fishy...

[William Seger]

34. No we aren't, and no it's not

We were talking about the desire of CTists to believe Mineta's timeline, for the singular purpose of pulling a theory out of their asses that Cheney was ordering Flight 77 to not be shot down when he said "of course it still stands." Perhaps Griffin's changing the subject to Cheney's account differing from others confused you (or perhaps that was Giffin's intent), but no one else puts Cheney in the bunker at the time Mineta says -- as if it mattered, anyway.

And no, CTists get it ass-backwards when they think that differences in witness accounts of time are "fishy": I would be suspicious if everyone was giving the same time, because that doesn't happen very often in real life. That shouldn't be expected unless you think everyone involved was looking at their watches every couple of minutes and making careful mental notes about everything that happened. There is nothing "anomalous" about witnesses having different perceptions and different recollections about details, but that's especially true of time because it's usually just a guess.

OK, last time for this: This is nonsense.

[CGowen]

35. You said in post 14 that the commission didn't distort the time n/t

[William Seger]

37. Jeez...... How do you figure they "distorted" the time?

In the report footnotes, they say they determined the 9:37 time for Cheney's first entrance into the tunnel from Secret Service alarm logs. Cheney had a phone call with Bush while still in the tunnel. The Secret Service logged Lynn Cheney as arriving at the White House at 9:52. She joined Cheney in the tunnel while he was still on the phone, then they went to the conference room. So, those log times are probably the only fairly accurate times in all of this. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether or not those log times are really accurate, but why in hell would you think the Commission (or anyone else) should ignore the available evidence and just guess at some other time? But that doesn't stop you from claiming that the report "distorted" the only times that can actually be documented, and you do that for absolutely no reason except that it doesn't fit with your imaginary scenario. But after inventing an idiotic theory that Cheney was telling the aide that the order to not shoot down Flight 77 still stood -- a theory not supported by a shred of evidence, even circumstantial -- the "truth movement" doesn't have much choice but to assert that the logs were faked and the Commission intentionally covered up the "real" evidence like Mineta's guess at what time it was, do they.

I think it's pretty clear who is doing the "distorting" here. And why.

This is nonsense, and I'm finished with it.

[CGowen]

44. You are right, we don't know if they are accurate.

They used the logs, notes by his wife, his interview with Newsweek over a month later, and the interview with Bush & Cheney in 04.

While ignoring Mineta, Cheney's first account or trying to find the person who kept asking Cheney.


But that would probably resemble a real investigation......

[mrgerbik]

10. you are an oct fundamentalist

the fact is that all the strange and coincidental events from 9/11 (and prior) only take on logical and rational meaning in the context of a conspiracy. this includes cheney and his behavior that day. your method of 'rational disbelief' fragments events into completely separate, incongruous realities with no consistency and flow - even in light of the fact that its the proven liars that are supporting and feeding their shit-sandwich theories that you seem to hold so dear. I guess it would be like religiously telling people that they didn't see a suicide, when the body was found with a knife stuck in the back.

[SDuderstadt]

25. the fact is that all the strange and coincidental events from 9/11 (and prior) only take on...

logical and rational meaning in the context of a conspiracy."

Oh, yeah? Prove it.

[Twist_U_Up]

20. Your link is absolute bullshit...add it to the banned sites.

OCTers never a group of people to be bothered by facts.

[Bolo Boffin]

21. Be so good as to point out what 911myths gets wrong.

Also, provide a clear statement with links and evidence to justify why 911myths should be a banned site here at DU.

[SDuderstadt]

23. Is 911 myths banned?

Why should it be? Because the truthers can't refute it?

[Bolo Boffin]

24. It most certainly is not.

And your suspected reason is 100% accurate.

[Parche]

48. Cheney

He wasnt in charge of NORAD per say, he was in charge of the Military Excercise that Bush
put him in charge of around May of 2001, called Operation Northern Guardian along with a few
others....so yes he did have a big hand in 9/11....:hi:

[Mist]

15. Thanks for posting this--I had the same questions on 911 re: air force. nt