Top Secret Conference Call on Sept. 11 Could Shed New Light On Terrorist Attack (Shoot Down Orders)

US News and World Report ^ | September 8, 2003 | Mark Mazzeti and Chita Ragavan

[prarie earth]

The (executive privledege review) transcripts may also shed light on the military's repsonse to President Bush's unprecedented order to shoot down any hijacked civilian airplane.

Pentagon sources say Bush communicated the order to Vice President Dick Cheney almost immediately after Flight 77 hit the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration, for the first time ever, ordered all domestic flights grounded.

'There are unanswered questions,' said Richard Ben-Veniste, a comission member and former federal prosecutor, as to whether the shoot down order had been rehearsed for, whether it had been prepared for, and what measures were in place to protect the Capitol,' believed to be the hijackers original target for Flight 77.

Some of the questions may be raised in the comissions second interim report, due out in about two weeks.

The report will offer a substantive summary of the comissions top priorities and offer an updated report card on agency cooperation.

[prarie earth]

So the President was in contact with Cheney after all and gave the order, so much for the libs having him incommunicado that day.

[mhking]

Please post the entire article when not covered by WP/LAT exclusion...

---

Not long after American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center, military officials in Washington initiated an "air-threat conference call." Through the course of the day, participants included Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and senior officials from the National Security Council (NSC), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Pentagon officials familiar with the events say the conference call was broadcast over a loudspeaker inside the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, which Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were using as an emergency command post.

Back in May, members of the independent commission appointed to examine the September 11 attacks were informed that the conference call had been recorded. But Pentagon officials said that they had yet to transcribe the tapes. The commission's repeated requests over the summer finally resulted in the Pentagon's creating a classified transcript. It was forwarded to the White House on August 6, U.S. News has learned, so that administration officials could conduct an "executive-privilege review," required because of Cheney's participation in the call. The commission has been promised access to the roughly 200-page transcript, sources say. Staff Director Philip Zelikow says the transcript is just a small piece of a mammoth puzzle the commission must put together by next May from thousands of pages of government documents. "We already had the substance," Zelikow says. "This is further detail, further corroboration." Commissioners say they may have to obtain the tapes themselves because the transcript is not time coded, making the task of outlining the exact sequence of events that day cumbersome.

Among the other highly classified materials recently presented to the commission: thousands of pages of transcripts of interrogations of top-tier al Qaeda leaders captured abroad and lower-level operatives held at the U.S. military barracks in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Commissioners hope the transcript of the September 11 conference call is revealing on several fronts. On the morning of the terrorist attacks, NORAD's satellites, operated to detect potential airborne attacks from outside U.S. borders, were unable to monitor the airspace inside the country. The command, buried in a mountain in Colorado Springs, Colo., was dependent on radars operated by the Federal Aviation Administration for information about the four fuel-heavy aircraft hijacked by the terrorists. NORAD even had to rely on FAA satellites to track military jets inside U.S. airspace, officials say. The transcript could help explain why it took the FAA 14 minutes to notify NORAD that American Airlines Flight 77--originally bound for Los Angeles from Washington's Dulles International Airport, but way off course over West Virginia--had been hijacked and was headed back toward Washington. Could the military, in those 14 minutes, have scrambled fighter jets and diverted the plane before it slammed into the Pentagon?

Shoot-down order. The transcript may also shed light on the military's response to President Bush's unprecedented order to shoot down any hijacked civilian airplane. Pentagon sources say Bush communicated the order to Cheney almost immediately after Flight 77 hit the Pentagon and the FAA, for the first time ever, ordered all domestic flights grounded. "There are unanswered questions," says Richard Ben-Veniste, a commission member and former federal prosecutor, as to whether the shoot-down order "had been rehearsed for, whether it had been prepared for, and what measures were in place to protect the Capitol," believed to be the hijackers' original target for Flight 77.

Some of the questions may be raised in the commission's second interim report, due out in about two weeks. The report will offer a substantive summary of the commission's top priorities and offer an updated report card on agency cooperation. In its first interim report in July, the commissioners publicly chastised the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, and other agencies for recalcitrance. "Certainly, cooperation has improved," says Timothy Roemer, a commissioner. "But we're still seeking very critical documents from NORAD, NSC, and CIA."

[MissAmericanPie]

Does this mean that flight 911 was shot down over Penn?

[Tamzee]

And thank GOD that Gore wasn't in charge of the country that day...

[prarie earth]

Doubtful that the planes could have gotten there in time, but they were on the outer reaches of missle range.

[prarie earth]

Gore probably would have made himself commander in chief in the basement..

[Tamzee]

Or flown to France to wait it out amongst friends...

[boxerblues]

bttt for later

[prarie earth]

But of course!

[prarie earth]

Great tagline.

[boxerblues]

I like it!

[Seeking the truth]

Never, never trust anything that comes out of the mouth of Richard Ben-Veniste.

He is a coolaid drinking Demonrat of the highest order!

[11th Earl of Mar]

If you are too lazy to post the whole article, don't bother posting at all.

[PPHSFL]

This was mentioned in Bill Sammon's book on the attacks.

[prarie earth]

What was the title of that book?

[new cruelty]

bttt

[null and void]

If you are too lazy to post the whole article, don't bother posting at all.

Ummm - did you forget the terms of LAT's copyright infringement lawsuit against FR, or are you just trying to get FR shut down?

[.cnI redruM]

Peter Jennings should be sued for implying Bush hid like a coward.

[mtbopfuyn]

The only unanswered question I have is why they let Ben-Veniste out by himself.

[Quilla]

Excellent read, I highly recommend it.

[prarie earth]

Thanks.

[Republican Red]

Sounds to me like they are trying to pin a "they knew it was going to happened" on President Bush.

This guy is trying to say that if the President and Vice PResident were so quick and decisive in their actions they must have had some heads-up and thus were prepared to act immediately.

What a fool. Democrats cannot accept the fact that President Bush is a born leader and reacted instinctively. Shame on them.

[tubebender]

If there was a shoot down over Pa a radar somewhere would have caught it...

[mtbopfuyn]

Whatever Bush said to whomever whenever doesn't matter to me. We were all naive on 9/10 but should thank our lucky stars we had Bush and Cheney leading our country on 9/11. I never doubted for a second Bush was hiding out. Cheney and other leaders were in Washington DC and could very well have been a victims so of course they kept Bush a safe distance away. That doesn't mean he wasn't on the phone getting confirmation of the situation and making quick decisions. I doubt the military could have acted any faster but I don't believe for a minute the PA flight was shot down because too many people were on phones. I'm also of the opinion there are many actions taken by our government that day which should be kept secret.

Thanks be for Bush and Cheney. If we'd had Gore there would be no US of A today.

[prarie earth]

Wasnt the last liberal spin is that Cheney and Bush were incommunicado?

[Republican Red]

as to whether the shoot down order had been rehearsed for, whether it had been prepared for

Dem's are going to try the "Bush Knew" tactic again, if I am reading this correct. Idiots.

[null and void]

Dem's are going to try the "Bush Knew" tactic again, if I am reading this correct. Idiots.

Clinton knew, and did nothing - 12 times!

[mhking]

Is it really that difficult for you to follow the link, or are you just that lazy!

In three days when you can't read the article, then you won't have anything to reference. Posting the article comes under "fair use," and it (provided it is not covered under any of the known exclusions) is common courtesy.

You can keep your insults. No one asked for them.

[Core_Conservative]

too lazy

Too lazy, the same could be said to you for not going to the site to find out more. I find it more convienient to see a protion of the article, and if I'm interested, then I'll go read the rest. Get a life and get off your dead arse!

[11th Earl of Mar]

Seeing how nobody here agrees with you, we know who the dead arse is!

[null and void]

So I'm NOBODY!?!?!


HARUMPF!

[Core_Conservative]

Ok - so you be lazy your way and I'll be lazy my way - I have alsways found it harder to post partials than the whole thing, but I will continue to post partials - maybe just to get your guys goat, now that I know that ya don't like it!

[Sal]

Dem's are going to try the "Bush Knew" tactic again...

It could blow up in their faces. Laura Bush was at one of the intended targets (the Capitol) that AM and she was there to address one of Hillary's committees.

Hillary's location OTOH could not be tracked down by freepers until 4PM...

I don't know if anybody knew or not, but, if someone did, it wasn't Bush!

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Never, never trust anything that comes out of the mouth of Richard Ben-Veniste.

He is a coolaid drinking Demonrat of the highest order!

Amen, to that Seeking, and that was the first impression I had on reading this article. This piece of dog excrement had his hands deep into the impeachment of Nixon in '74 and was a particularly loathsome defender of clinton in 98-99. Ben-Veniste oozes sleaze out of every pore and is not to be believed or trusted, ever. To describe him as a "former federal prosecutor" is misleading, at best. That would be like describing Ken Starr as a "former law professor" or OJ as a "former running back".

[Maria S]

A few words about Richard Ben-Veniste:

www.madcowprod.com

“I did my part by launching Barry Seal into the arms of Vice
President Bush, who embraced him as an undercover opera-
tive,” Ben-Veniste said to reporters who questioned his ethics in
sitting as Democratic co-counsel on the Whitewater Commission
after being a lawyer-participant in matters being investigated. Ben-
Veniste said he’d “‘read’ of the Seal-Lasater link,” intimating he
knew nothing more. But the attorney defending Barry Seal, a key
figure in the drug angle of the Whitewater probe, surely knew far
more than that.

So, just who is Richard Ben-Veniste? Richard Ben-Veniste has
made a career of defending political crooks, specializing in cases
that involve drugs and politics. The gray-haired lawyer who defended Bill Clinton on the
Whitewater Committee first entered the limelight as a Watergate
prosecutor in 1973. He was the point man in prosecutions of
Nixon aides Mitchell, Haldeman and Erlichman; displaying to-
tal recall of the facts. He led the successful fight to secure the
secret Nixon White House tapes. “Watergate will probably al-
ways be the most important thing in my career in terms of its
national scope and impact,” he has said.

In the wrangling over Nixon’s tapes he worked with Hillary
Rodham and Bernard Nussbaum. The three would later find them-
selves working together again, though this time on the defense
side, in the Whitewater scandal, where, during Ben-Veniste’s tour
of duty as minority special counsel to the Senate Whitewater com-
mittee, he served up enough disdain, contempt, and indignation
to fortify the Democratic contention that the whole investigation
was an overblown load of partisan mud-slinging.

But we also discovered this curious fact: Ben-Veniste has regu-
larly been referred to
in print as “a Mob lawyer,” and even as a “Mob figure,” as well
as “a very close associate of the notorious Mobster Alvin Malnik...”
Curious, indeed, for someone defending the President of the United
States. But when Ben-Veniste defended Clinton on the Whitewater
panel the media ignored his Mob connections.
In the early 1980’s he represented both Barry Seal and Bill
Clinton at the very time when, after Clinton was elected for a
second term as Governor of Arkansas, Mob money reportedly
really started pouring into Arkansas. “That was the election when
the Mob really came into Arkansas politics, the dog-track and
racetrack boys, the payoff people who saw a good thing,” a former
U.S. attorney told Roger Morris and Sally Denton. “It wasn’t
just Bill Clinton, and it went beyond our old Dixie Mafia, which
was penny-ante by comparison. This was Eastern and West Coast
crime money that noticed the possibilities…just like the legiti-
mate corporations did.”

When Whitewater hovered into view Ben-Veniste responded
with his trademark humor, claiming that it was a flare-up of his
“hydrotropic” affliction. “Every couple of decades I get involved
in something with the word ‘water’ in it. It’s a condition only
seen in fungi.”

Ben-Veniste, the quintessential Washington lawyer, has the huge
house, the million-dollar partnership bonuses, the Rolodex with
everyone’s private number, and the ego to go with it all. He even
played a “commentator’s” role in the Iran Contra Scandal. “My
feeling is that the American people, within the next six months or
so, will have a pretty good idea of what’s occurred,” he said, when
he was hired by NBC News to do commentary. When two former
national security officials asserted their Fifth Amendment rights
during the hearings he defended their refusal to talk, saying, “In
common parlance you would say things might be bad enough with-
out getting hit with your own bat.”

During the ABSCAM trials into Congressional bribes, where
he acted as a defense attorney, he asked the jury to believe that
what was shown on videotapes secretly made during the investiga-
tion was not what really happened, that his clients were play-act-
ing and had intended to provide no service in return for a $50,000
payoff. He had explained, “No matter how thin you make a pan-
cake… it still has two sides.”

When House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) was caught accept-
ing bribes camouflaged as book sales, he turned to fixers Clark
Clifford… and Richard Ben-Veniste. Clifford himself was later
caught up in the BCCI scandal but “mysteriously” escaped pros-
ecution by the Bush Justice Department.


This could go on and on, but I think you get the general idea.

[Marysecretary]

After soiling his Depends....

[new cruelty]

My two cents on the whole excerpt commotion:

I agree with mhking. If the article is not a part of the Related Publications in the LAT/WP vs Free Republic Settlement Agreement then it is a matter of common courtesy to post the entire article. Mhking did the appropriate thing by requesting to "Please post the entire article when not covered by WP/LAT exclusion" and then posting the article for others to read. He was considerate and proactive without taking an acrimonious tone.

Ironically, there are those that would rather expend what must be crucial energy by typing out a bitter comment to the messenger of the article than actually make the backbreaking effort to click on a link to read the full article.

I've been guilty of posting an excerpt of an article(s) that would have served the reader better had I posted the entire article. Fortunately, there are those that take the time to instruct and inform. It is through the helpful guidance of some very thoughtful FReepers that I am taking the time to become more familiar with LAT/WP v. FR when posting an article.

[Pagey]

In the wrangling over Nixon’s tapes he worked with Hillary Rodham and Bernard Nussbaum. The three would later find them- selves working together again, though this time on the defense side, in the Whitewater scandal, where, during Ben-Veniste’s tour of duty as minority special counsel to the Senate Whitewater committee, he served up enough disdain, contempt, and indignation to fortify the Democratic contention that the whole investigation was an overblown load of partisan mud-slinging.

What a great guy to have on a 9-11 panel,eh? So this Ben veniste fellow, is also a Saul Alinsky follower, planning the confrontational attacks against anyone who attempts to call them on their B.S.And he knew Hillary back in the Nixon Era.Oh yeah,a great non-partisan human.<=====sarcasm

[Ciexyz]

Most interesting.

[cyncooper]

So the President was in contact with Cheney after all and gave the order, so much for the libs having him incommunicado that day.

This was well known almost immediately. Witness this article dated September 17, 2001.

'Shoot-down' order was given

Excerpt:

President Bush has confirmed that he ordered any airliners refusing to turn away from Washington be shot down in the aftermath of the attack on the Pentagon, and the World Trade Center in New York.

Asked whether he had struggled with the decision, Mr Bush said: "I gave our military the orders necessary to protect Americans, do whatever it would take to protect Americans."

~snip~

Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed that the order came after World Trade Center and Pentagon had been hit, and a fourth plane appeared to be on course for the capital.

[cyncooper]

Does this mean that flight 911 was shot down over Penn?

Flight 93, not shot down. Crashed due to passenger uprising. Would have been shot down shortly after if the crash had not happened.

[weegee]

Also be aware that the Admin Moderators are vigilant for violations of the WP/LAT settlement. If you accidently post too much information from one article the post will be edited. Generally there is no rebuke, just a friendly reminder.

[new cruelty]

Yes, that too has happened on several articles I have posted. And yes, there was no rebuke from the moderator, just, as you say, a friendly reminder.

[cyncooper]

I well remember Tom Brokaw's televised interview with President Bush. President Bush directly addressed his discussion with VP Cheney and the shoot down orders. To Brokaw's credit, it was an excellent interview.

Here is another reference:

September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack/Timeline September 11

Excerpt:

10:39 AM: another hijacked jumbo jet is claimed to be headed for Washington, D.C. F-15s are scrambled and patrol the airspace above Washington, D.C. while other fighter jets sweep the airspace above New York City. They have orders, first issued by Vice President Cheney and later confirmed by President Bush, to shoot down any potentially dangerous planes that do not comply with orders given to them via radio.

[PPHSFL]

Sorry for the delay, I had to go study and go to class.
The name of the book is Fighting Back. On the back cover it describes how President Bush was confronted with this question.

[Mad_Tom_Rackham]

[cyncooper]

More documentation of this well known order:

AMERICA ON ALERT (archive)

Scroll down to September 27, 2001:

Excerpt:

In an ominous reminder of the potential for more terror, the Pentagon confirmed that two Air Force generals have been authorized to order the military to shoot down any civilian airliner that appears to be threatening U.S. cities.

Bush issued a similar order himself in the hours after hijacked planes attacked American symbols of military might and capitalism Sept. 11.

[azhenfud]

No, United 93 AC's debris field/impact area appeared too concentrated for the crash to have been caused from a missile detonation.

[cyncooper]

More:

'Air force was ordered to shoot down stray jets'

Monday, September 17, 2001

US Vice-President Dick Cheney has admitted that he and President George W Bush ordered the air force to shoot down any passenger jets that were being used in attacks against US landmarks.

Mr Cheney said that on Tuesday, after the first two planes had smashed into the World Trade Centre in New York, fighter jets were ordered to shoot down any plane that failed to respond to orders to divert.

This admission follows confusion over the fourth hijacked plane, which crashed near Pittsburg before it could reach its target.

The US Government has denied that the plane was shot down.