No kidding. That's like those stupid morons who wouldn't listen to the person on the World Trade Center intercom telling them to go back to work. Can you believe that garbage?
The thought at that time was that it was a horrible accident, not a terrorist attack. There was an evacuation operation going on in the North Tower. Evacuating the other towers would have significantly impeded evacuation from the North Tower--which was known to be in danger of an eventual collapse because the fires were out of control and overheating the structural elements.
So, in an effort to allow as many people to get out of the North Tower in the limited and unknown time available, the authorities at the World Trade Center made a judgement call, based on logical analysis of incomplete data, that turned out to be horribly wrong.
Given what was known at the time--that the North Tower was in danger of collapse, and without any knowledge that this was a terrorist attack and that another airplane was inbound...
What call would you have made? Every person coming out of the other tower essentially means that one person doesn't get out of the affected building. If the authorities had guessed the other way, they might have reduced the butcher's bill considerably--at the cost of raising the casualty count from the North Tower.
Had the passengers on that flight taken on the hijackers and succeeded, then the other tower would not have been hit, and the death toll would have been much lower.
Had they ordered the other tower evacuated, and the plane not hit it, then the North Tower would have had more people in it when it collapsed.
It's times like these that I'm glad I don't have to decide who lives and who dies. Whoever made that call--assuming he's still alive--is going to be haunted by these questions for as long as he lives.
My suspicion is that this rumor is meant to undercut Bush's contention that the flight was headed for DC- possibly the White House.