By Matt Everett
Journal of PsychohistoryVolume 32, No. 3, Winter 2005, pp. 202-238
DICK CHENEY ON 9/11
Based upon mainstream accounts, Vice President Cheney's actions during the attacks appear less suspicious than those of Bush and Rumsfeld. However, there are some odd contradictions in the reports of what he did. On the morning of September 11, before learning about the attacks, Dick Cheney was in his office in the White House. According to the 9/11 Commission, just before 9 a.m. he was preparing for a meeting when his assistant "told him to turn on his television because a plane had struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center." [20]
Cheney subsequently saw the second aircraft hitting the South Tower. Then, "just before 9:36," the Secret Service ordered the evacuation of the vice president and agents took him down to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, the bunker below the East Wing of the White House. "The Vice President entered the underground tunnel leading to the shelter at 9:37." [21]
However, according to White House photographer David Bohrer who was present at the time, this evacuation occurred just after 9 a.m. [22] Furthermore, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta described before the 9/11 Commission how a young man had come into the PEOC to inform the vice president of the approach towards Washington of the aircraft that hit the Pentagon. According to Mineta, this occurred around 9:25 or 9:26. [23]
This suggests that the report of Cheney only reaching the underground tunnel leading to the shelter at 9:37 is incorrect. If Cheney were in fact evacuated soon after 9, why would it later be claimed this took place about half an hour later? One possibility is that it was to make the failure of the Secret Service to evacuate President Bush from his location that morning appear less suspicious. (See below.) Alternatively, if Michael Ruppert's allegations about the vice president's involvement in the attacks are correct, then this claim could simply be an attempt to conceal his complicity.
Soon after 9:15, Cheney spoke over the phone with the president, who was at a school in Florida that morning. Also, "sometime before 10:10 to 10:15," he reportedly phoned the president to discuss the rules of engagement for the combat air patrol above Washington. Supposedly, he recommended the president authorize the military to shoot down any civilian airliners that might be under the control of hijackers. Bush later recalled his response being "You bet." [24]
The president also emphasized in his private meeting with the 9/11 Commission that he had authorized the shootdown of hijacked aircraft. [25] This is an important point, because the shooting down of a wayward aircraft before it crashed into a populated area could save many lives.
Yet, according to the 9/11 Commission, "there is no documentary evidence for this call." [26] Newsweek adds: "Nor did the real-time notes taken by two others in the room, Cheney's chief of staff, 'Scooter' Libby -- who is known for his meticulous record-keeping -- or Cheney's wife, Lynne, reflect that such a phone call between Bush and Cheney occurred or that such a major decision as shooting down a U.S. airliner was discussed." [27]
According to Newsweek, some of the Commission's staff were highly skeptical of Cheney's account, with one well-informed source claiming some of them "flat out didn't believe the call ever took place." [28] All the same, whether or not Bush authorized him to do so, "by the time Cheney issued his shoot-down order, between 10:10 and 10:15 a.m., United Flight 93, the last plane-turned-missile on 9/11, had already crashed in Pennsylvania (at 10:03 a.m.)." [29]
Furthermore, it appears that Cheney -- along with Bush -- was reluctant for 9/11 to be investigated: When then Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle appeared on NBC's Meet the Press in May 2002, he said Cheney had, on January 24 that year, urged him not to investigate the events of September 11.
Daschle added that four days later Bush made the same request. When the program's moderator Tim Russert asked: "It wasn't, 'Let's not have a national commission, but let's have the intelligence committees look into this,' it was 'No investigation by anyone, period'?" Daschle replied: "That's correct." He added that the request had been repeated on "other dates following." [30]
GEORGE W. BUSH ON 9/11
September 11, 2001 was the most important day of George W. Bush's life. As American president he was commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces. His actions were crucial. According to the 9/11 Commission, the only people that day with authority to order the shooting down of a civilian plane if, say, it were heading towards a populated area (like the World Trade Center or the Pentagon) were the president or the secretary of defense. [31] I have already shown that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was apparently 'out of the loop' during the attacks. What then did Commander in Chief Bush do?
Before examining this question, it is important to recognise that the U.S. president does not travel alone. He takes with him an entire staff, including members of the Secret Service, who are responsible for his safety. The president's travelling entourage have the best communications equipment in the world. They have contact with, or can easily reach, the cabinet, the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon, the FAA and other Secret Service agents. [32] We might therefore assume George Bush would have been one of the first people informed of the extraordinary chain of events unfolding on September 11.
Furthermore, Bush's location for that morning was made public four days previously, on September 7: He would be in Sarasota, Florida, to "continue his focus on reading and education." [33] We might assume then that once it was recognised that America was under attack, the president would have been considered a potential target and immediate action would have been taken to protect him and ensure the safety of all around him.
Yet, despite the horrifying sequence of events in progress, Bush continued with his pre-planned visit to the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, where he listened to a class full of children reading. He remained at the school until around 9:35 a.m. [34] -- nearly 50 minutes after the first plane hit the WTC and over half an hour after the second plane hit. Incredibly, the president's support team, including the Secret Service, allowed this.
According to Philip Melanson, an expert on the Secret Service, Bush should have been removed from the school immediately after Flight 175 hit the second WTC tower. Melanson says: "With an unfolding terrorist attack, the procedure should have been to get the president to the closest secure location as quickly as possible, which clearly is not a school. You're safer in that presidential limo, which is bombproof and blastproof and bulletproof." [35]
Furthermore, considering the president's responsibilities as commander in chief, Melanson adds that Bush's limousine had key advantages: "In the presidential limo, the communications system is almost duplicative of the White House -- he can do almost anything from there but he can't do much sitting in a school." [36]
Bush was informed of the second plane hitting the WTC when, around 9:05, his Chief of Staff Andrew Card came across the classroom and reportedly whispered to him: "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack." [37] According to the 9/11 Commission: "The President told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis." [38]
Furthermore, "The Secret Service told us they were anxious to move the President to a safer location, but did not think it imperative for him to run out the door." [39] Yet this inaction could have had disastrous consequences. In the words of 9/11 researchers Allan Wood and Paul Thompson: "Why hasn't Bush's security staff been criticized for their completely inexplicable decision to stay at the school? And why didn't Bush's concern for the children extend to not making them and the rest of the 200 or so people at the school terrorist targets?" [40]
As the reporter Gail Sheehy concludes, the final report of the 9/11 Commission shows that on the morning of September 11, "the president and the other top officials in charge of the systems to defend the country from attack were, in essence, missing in action: They did not communicate, did not coordinate a response to the catastrophe, and in some cases did not even get involved in discussions about the attacks until after all of the hijacked planes had crashed." [41]
With the best communications in the world available to him, we might assume Bush would have been one of the first people informed of the hijackings and the first plane hitting the WTC. Yet according to official accounts, he remained oblivious even whilst millions of people saw what had happened on television. Strangely, there have been at least seven different accounts of when and from whom Bush first heard of Flight 11 crashing into the WTC. [42] As Allan Wood and Paul Thompson note, Bush's own recollections only add to the confusion:
"Less than two months after the attacks, Bush made the preposterous claim that he had watched the first attack as it happened on live television…. On December 4, 2001, Bush was asked: "How did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?" [As reported on CNN,] Bush replied, "I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on…. I said, it must have been a horrible accident." [43]
Yet, as Wood and Thompson point out, "There was no film footage of the first attack until at least the following day." They continue: "It's doubly strange why his advisors didn't correct him or -- at the very least -- stop him from repeating the same story only four weeks later. On January 5, 2002, Bush stated: "Well, I was sitting in a schoolhouse in Florida ... and my Chief of Staff -- well, first of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on." [44]
On the morning of 9/11, Bush promised that he had "ordered that the full resources of the federal government go ... to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act." [45] Yet it appears more like he has tried to hinder investigations. As Salon reported in June 2003:
"The White House long opposed the formation of a blue-ribbon Sept. 11 commission, some say, and even now that panel is underfunded and struggling to build momentum. And, they say, the administration is suppressing a 900-page congressional study, possibly out of fear that the findings will be politically damaging to Bush.
"We've been fighting for nearly 21 months -- fighting the administration, the White House," says Monica Gabrielle. Her husband, Richard, an insurance broker who worked for Aon Corp. on the 103rd floor of the World Trade Center's Tower 2, died during the attacks. "As soon as we started looking for answers we were blocked, put off and ignored at every stop of the way. We were shocked. The White House is just blocking everything."
Another 9/11 family advocate ..... was more blunt: "Bush has done everything in his power to squelch this [9/11] commission and prevent it from happening." [46]
After opposing the creation of the 9/11 Commission, the White House wanted to limit any appearance by the president to just one hour spent with two of the commissioners. A compromise was met such that George Bush did eventually meet with the Commission on April 29, 2004, but only under stringent conditions. Bush had to have Dick Cheney at his side, testifying at the same time; testimony was given in private and not under oath; no press coverage was allowed; and no recordings or transcripts were made of what they said. [47]
Further suspicion had been raised just over two weeks earlier, when the White House was forced to release a daily intelligence briefing given to the president whilst on vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, five weeks before 9/11.
The briefing was titled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US," and stated: "FBI information ... indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York…. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Laden supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives." [48] Despite receiving this, according to the New York Times, "Bush broke off from work early and spent most of that day fishing." [49]
What is also interesting is that several key members of the Bush administration, including Cheney, Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, had been members of a neoconservative think-tank called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). In September 2000, PNAC wrote a report called Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, which they hoped would be "a road map for the nation's immediate and future defense plans." In it they complained: "The post-Cold War world will not remain a relatively peaceful place if we continue to neglect foreign and defense matters."
However, they added: "serious attention, careful thought, and the willingness to devote adequate resources to maintaining America's military strength can make the world safer and American strategic interests more secure now and in the future." [50] They stated that to "preserve American military preeminence in the coming decades" America would need to undergo a "military transformation." [51] However, they wrote, this transformation would be "a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor." [52] One year later, 9/11 happened. As George W. Bush wrote in his diary that night: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today." [53]
After this catastrophic, catalyzing event, actions proposed by the Project for the New American Century soon came into force. As John Pilger wrote of PNAC:
"[In 2000] it recommended an increase in arms-spending by $48bn so that Washington could "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars". This has happened. It said the United States should develop "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons and make "star wars" a national priority. This is happening. It said that, in the event of Bush taking power, Iraq should be a target. And so it is. [54] Furthermore, during his 2000 election campaign and after, Bush repeatedly promised a budget surplus, except in the event of a recession, war or a national emergency. In the days after 9/11, he said to his budget director: "Lucky me. I hit the trifecta." [55] (A 'trifecta' is a kind of bet that requires picking the top three finishers in a race.)
With so much suspicious evidence, one lawyer, Stanley Hilton -- a former aide to Senator Bob Dole -- has filed a $7 billion suit on behalf of the families of 14 victims of the 9/11 attacks, alleging that Bush, along with Cheney, Rumsfeld and others, actually ordered 9/11 to happen for political gain. Hilton says he has incriminating documents and witnesses showing this. Calling it "the biggest act of treason and mass murder in American history," he claims that 9/11 was a 'decoy operation': "You make the people focus on the decoy to avoid looking at the real criminals. So they are focusing on these so-called nineteen hijackers and saying, 'Oh, it must have been these Arabs.' When, in fact, the guilty person is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- sitting in the Oval Office." [56]
I have already discussed White House attempts to prevent or hinder any official inquiry into 9/11. But another less known example, where there has been a lack of investigation and a suppression of important evidence relating to 9/11, is in the unlikely situation of the retirement community that is Venice, in southwestern Florida.
Part III follows...
No comments:
Post a Comment