Where were you on the morning of 9-11? [View All]

[DoYouEverWonder]

Remember those old Perry Mason movies? He would get the witness on the stand and the all time favorite question would be asked – Where were you on the night of the July 4th?

Unfortunately, Perry Mason is dead and no one in Congress or the DOJ seems to be interested in a real 9-11 investigation. A real investigation where the key witnesses, Bush and his top administration officials, would all be under oath and in a public forum be forced to answer the question – ‘Where were you on the morning of the September 11th?’

Instead we are left to our own devices and must piece together the answer from the statements they made to the press and to Congress in the days following the attack. Perry would have a field day with the holes in their stories and the contradictions.



That morning the president's key advisers were scattered. Cheney and Rice were at their offices in the West Wing. Rumsfeld was at his office in the Pentagon, meeting with a delegation from Capitol Hill. Powell had just sat down for breakfast with the new president of Peru, Alejandro Toledo, in Lima. Tenet was at breakfast with his old friend and mentor, former senator David Boren (D-Okla.), at the St. Regis Hotel, three blocks from the White House. Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was halfway across the Atlantic on the way to Europe. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was bound for Milwaukee. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, on the job for just a week, was in his office at FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26

George Bush –

Bush's motorcade left for the school at 8:30 a.m. As it was arriving, pagers and cell phones alerted White House aides that a plane had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Bush remembers senior adviser Karl Rove bringing him the news, saying it appeared to be an accident involving a small, twin-engine plane.

In fact it was American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 out of Boston's Logan International Airport. Based on what he was told, Bush assumed it was an accident.

"This is pilot error," the president recalled saying. "It's unbelievable that somebody would do this." Conferring with Andrew H. Card Jr., his White House chief of staff, Bush said, "The guy must have had a heart attack."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26

On December 4, 2001, Bush was asked, "How did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?" 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. And I used to fly myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident. But I was whisked off there. I didn't have much time to think about it." Bush repeated the same story on January 5, 2002, stating, "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. And you know, I thought it was pilot error, and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake...."

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031006&s=alterman


An aide had just whispered to Miller the news of the first plane crash in New York, but if the President yet knew, his greeting as he got out of the limo did not give it away. He did, however, make an unscheduled stop in a communications room, where he talked with Condoleeza Rice in Washington. He then proceeded into a classroom where 16 second graders, led by their teacher, Sandra K. Daniels, were going to demonstrate their reading skills.

About eight minutes into Daniels’ lesson, the world fell apart. While Mr. Bush continued reading for a few more minutes, the White House staff considered their options and decided the President would return to Washington at once but would first make a brief statement to the crowd—and news cameras—assembled in the media center.

http://www.sarasotamagazine.com/Pages/hotstories/hotstories.asp?136

Dick Cheney –


Cheney was in his West Wing office when he received word that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. He watched TV and hoped that his instincts were wrong.

"It was a clear day, there were no weather problems, and then we saw the second airplane hit in real time," Cheney told CNN's John King in an interview in the vice president's office.

"At that moment, you knew this was a deliberate act. This was a terrorist act."

He called President Bush in Florida and spoke with top aides. Then his door burst open.

"My agent all of a sudden materialized right beside me and said, 'Sir, we have to leave now.' He grabbed me and propelled me out of my office, down the hall, and into the underground shelter in the White House," Cheney said.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/11/ar911.king.cheney/index.html


At about 9:35 a.m., Vice President Cheney was standing by his desk, looking at the TV in the corner. A Secret Service agent said to him, in a tone that brooked no dissent, "Sir, we have to leave now." The agent grabbed the vice president by the back of his belt and aimed him at the door. "They practice this," says Cheney. "You move. Whether you want to be moved or not, you're going. They don't exactly pick you up and carry you. It's more like they propel you forward."

Cheney was unflappable about his hasty exit. As he was swept through the outer office, the vice president reached out and grabbed a magazine, a copy of that week's Economist, off the table. "I'm always carrying something in case I get hung up someplace," Cheney explains. "I've got to have something to read." Down the hallway, past the empty Oval Office, the vice president was rushed into a tunnel outside a bombproof bunker known as the PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/newsweek123101.html

Condoleezza Rice -

(After 9:03 a.m.)

National Security Advisor Rice has just started her usual national security staff meeting at 9:00. Shortly after 9:03, an aide hands her a note saying a second plane has hit the WTC. Rice later claims that she thinks, “This is a terrorist attack,” and then leaves the meeting, quickly walking to the White House Situation Room. However, according to counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, Rice leaves the meeting for Vice President Cheney's office. Clarke meets her there a few minutes later and only then does she go down to the basement bunker.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/searchResults.jsp?searchtext=Rice&events=on&entities=on&articles=on&topics=on&timelines=on&projects=on


As I was trying to find all the principals, the Secret Service came and said, you have to leave now for the bunker. The Vice President's already there. There may be a plane headed for the White House. There are a lot of planes that are in the air that are not responding properly.

In the bunker, the Vice President is joined by Rice and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/abcnews091102.html


About six blocks from the school, a news photographer overheard a radio transmission. Press Secretary Ari Fleischer would be needed
on arrival to discuss reports of some sort of crash. The radio also said that Mr. Bush had a call waiting for him at his holding room in the school from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Mr. Fleischer told the press what Ms. Rice told the president - a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. Nobody knew how serious the situation was.

Bush entered a Booker classroom at about 9 a.m.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0917/p1s1-usgn.html

Donald Rumsfeld


In his Pentagon office, Rumsfeld felt the huge building shudder. He looked out his window, then rushed out toward the smoke, running down the steps and outside where he could see pieces of metal strewn on the ground. Rumsfeld began helping with the rescue efforts until a security agent urged him to get out of the area. "I'm going inside," he said, and took up his post in the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon war room.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26

Q: One is, where were you on September 11th? Were you at the Pentagon when --

Wolfowitz: I was in my office. We'd just had a breakfast with some congressmen in which one of the subjects had been missile defense. And we commented to them that based on what Rumsfeld and I had both seen and worked on the Ballistic Missile Threat Commission, that we were probably in for some nasty surprises over the next ten years.

Q: Oh, my gosh.

Wolfowitz: I can't remember, then there was the sort of question of what kind of nasty surprises? I don't remember exactly which ones we came up with. The point was more just that it's in the nature of surprise that you can't predict what it's going to be.

Q: Do you remember then the impact of the plane into the Pentagon? Or had you first heard stories about New York? What was --

Wolfowitz: We were having a meeting in my office. Someone said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Then we turned on the television and we started seeing the shots of the second plane hitting, and this is the way I remember it. It's a little fuzzy.

Q: Right.

Wolfowitz: There didn't seem to be much to do about it immediately and we went on with whatever the meeting was. Then the whole building shook. I have to confess my first reaction was an earthquake. I didn't put the two things together in my mind. Rumsfeld did instantly.

Q: Did he really?

Wolfowitz: Yeah. He went charging out and down to the site where the plane had hit, which is what I would have done if I'd had my wits about me, which may or may not have been a smart thing to do. But it was, instead the next thing we heard was that there'd been a bomb and the building had to be evacuated. Everyone started streaming out of the building in a quite orderly way. Congregated on the parade ground basically right in front of the Pentagon which would have been about the worst place to have a crowd of a couple of thousand people in that moment if we'd again had our wits about us. But we were out of the building anyway.

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html

General Myers -

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2001 -- Air Force Gen. Richard Myers wasn't in the Pentagon when terrorists attacked it Sept. 11, but the event was still a nightmare for him.

Watching the events unfold on television was "like watching a bad movie," the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told American Forces Radio and Television Service Oct. 17.

Myers said he was on Capitol Hill that morning in the offices of Georgia Sen. Max Cleland to discuss his confirmation hearing to become chairman. While in an outer office, he said, he saw a television report that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
"They thought it was a small plane or something like that," Myers said. So the two men went ahead with the office call.
Meanwhile, the second World Trade Center tower was hit by another jet. "Nobody informed us of that," Myers said. "But when we came out, that was obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody said the Pentagon had been hit."

Somebody thrust a cell phone in Myers's hand. Gen. Ralph Eberhart, commander of U.S. Space Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, was on the other end of the line "talking about what was happening and the actions he was going to take."

On Sept. 11, Myers was vice chairman. He was sworn in as chairman Oct. 1. His predecessor, Army Gen. Henry Shelton, was "somewhere over the Atlantic" en route to Europe when the attacks occurred, so it was critical for Myers to get back to the Pentagon.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/n10232001_200110236.html