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Edited on Sat Apr-29-06 01:10 AM by Gabi Hayes
in the invasion of Iraq, and its aftermath: THE COMMISSION'S TREATMENT OF UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 93 Flight 93 presented the 9/11 Commission with a different task. In relation to the previous flights, the Commission's task was to explain why the US military did not intercept and shoot them down. With regard to Flight 93, the Commission had to convince us that the military did not shoot it down. It sought to do this not by refuting the evidence, which is considerable, that the airliner was shot down, but by simply constructing a new story intended to show that the US military could not have shot down Flight 93. The Military's Ignorance of the Hijacking The Commission makes two major claims about Flight 93. The first one is that: "By the time the military learned about the flight, it had crashed" (229). The centrality of this claim is shown by the fact that it is repeated, almost mantra-like, throughout the Commission's chapter.20 Incredible FAA Incompetence The main support for this claim is provided by yet another tale of amazing incompetence by FAA officials. At 9:28, we are told, the traffic controller in Cleveland heard "sounds of possible screaming" and noticed that Flight 93 had descended 700 feet, but he did nothing. Four minutes later, he heard a voice saying: "We have a bomb on board." This controller, not being completely brain dead, finally notified his supervisor, who in turn notified FAA headquarters. Later, however, when Cleveland asked Herndon whether the military had been called, the Commission claims, Herndon "told Cleveland that FAA personnel well above them in the chain of command had to make the decision to seek military assistance and were working on the issue" (227). To accept this account, we must believe that, on a day on which there had already been attacks by hijacked airliners, officials at FAA headquarters had to debate whether a hijacked airliner with a bomb on board was important enough to disturb the military. And we must believe that they were still debating this question 13 minutes later, when, we are told, the following conversation between Herndon and FAA headquarters occurred: Command Center: Uh, do we want to think, uh, about scrambling aircraft? FAA Headquarters: Oh, God, I don't know. Command Center: Uh, that's a decision somebody's gonna have to make probably in the next ten minutes. (228) But obviously the decision was that the military should not be disturbed, because 14 minutes later, at 10:03, when Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, we are told, "no one from FAA headquarters requested military assistance regarding United 93" (229). We are expected to believe, in other words, that FAA officials acted like complete idiots.
Worthless Teleconferences
In any case, besides arguing, by means of this tale of incredible incompetence, that the FAA never formally notified the military about Flight 93, the Commission argued that there was also no informal notification during any teleconference. In this case, not being able to argue that the teleconferences began too late, the Commission argued that they were worthless. Its summary statement said: "The FAA, the White House, and the Defense Department each initiated a multiagency teleconference before 9:30. none of these teleconferences . . . included the right officials from both the FAA and the Defense Department" (211).
Let us begin with the teleconference initiated by the National Military Command Center. Why was it worthless for transmitting information from the FAA to the military? Because, we are told, Pentagon operators were unable to get the FAA on the line. This is a very implausible claim, especially since, we are told, the operators were able to reach everyone else (230-31). Also, as we saw earlier, Laura Brown of the FAA seemed to have independent knowledge about when this teleconference started---which suggests that the FAA was reached.
Why was the FAA-initiated teleconference equally worthless? The problem here, the Commission claimed, was that the officer at the NMCC said that "the information was of little value" so he did not pay attention (234).
However, even if we could believe that no one at the Pentagon was monitoring the call, Laura Brown's memo had said that in addition to the phone bridge set up by the FAA with the Pentagon, the "Air Force liaison to the FAA . . . established contact with NORAD on a separate line." So even if no one at the Pentagon was paying attention, the military still would have received the information. Her memo said, moreover, that "he FAA shared real-time information . . . about . . . all the flights of interest" (183), and the Commission itself agrees that by 9:34, FAA headquarters knew about the hijacking of Flight 93, so it was a "flight of interest." The Commission's claim is, therefore, flatly contradicted by this memo, which was read into the Commission's record.
What about the White House videoconference, which was run by Richard Clarke? The Commissioners say: "We do not know who from Defense participated" (210). But this claim is completely unbelievable. One problem is that it contradicts the Commission's assurance that "the right people" were not involved in this conference: How could they know this if they did not know who was involved? The main problem, however, is simply that the claim is absurd. Surely any number of people at the Pentagon could have told the Commissioners who participated in Clarke's videoconference.
Simpler yet, they could have looked at Clarke's book, Against All Enemies, which became a national best seller during the Commission's hearings. It clearly states that the participants from the Pentagon were Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, Acting Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (210-12).21 It also reports that the FAA was represented by its top official, Jane Garvey. And if these were not "the right people," who would have been?
The Commission's attempt to prove that the military could not have learned about Flight 93 from this videoconference is even more explicitly contradicted by Clarke, who reports that at about 9:35, Jane Garvey reported on a number of "potential hijacks," which included "United 93 over Pennsylvania" (232). Therefore, more than 25 minutes before Flight 93 crashed, according to Clarke, both Myers and Rumsfeld heard from the head of the FAA that Flight 93 was considered a potential hijack.
The Commission's tales about FAA incompetence and worthless teleconferences are, therefore, directly contradicted by Laura Brown's memo and Richard Clarke's book. Their combined testimony implies that the Commission's main claim--that "by the time the military learned about the flight, it had crashed"--is a bald-faced lie.
Cheney's Arrival at the Shelter Conference Room
To recall where we are: The Commission's first major claim is that the US military could not have shot down Flight 93 because it did not know about the hijacking of this flight until after it crashed at 10:03. The Commission's second main point, to which we now turn, is that the authorization to shoot planes down was not issued until several minutes after 10:03.
In support of this point, the Commission claims that Vice President Cheney, who was known to have issued the shoot-down authorization from the shelter conference room under the White House, did not get down there until about almost 10:00, "perhaps at 9:58" (241). This claim, however, is doubly problematic.
One problem is that this claim is not supported by any documentation. The Commission says that the Secret Service ordered Cheney to go downstairs "just before 9:36"; that Cheney entered the underground corridor at 9:37; that he then, instead of going straight to the shelter conference room at the other end of the corridor, spent some 20 minutes calling the president and watching television coverage of the aftermath of the strike on the Pentagon (241). This timeline is said to be based on Secret Service alarm data showing that the Vice President entered the underground corridor at 9:37. However, The 9/11 Commission Report then says that this "alarm data . . . is no longer retrievable" (244). We must, therefore, simply take the Commission's claim on faith.
And this is very difficult, since the Commission's claim is contradicted by every prior report. A White House photographer, who was an eyewitness, and various newspapers, including the New York Times, said that Cheney went below shortly after 9:00. Richard Clarke's account suggests that Cheney went below before 9:15 (242). Even Cheney himself, speaking on "Meet the Press" five days after 9/11, indicated that he was taken downstairs at about that time (243). The Commission, showing its usual disdain for evidence that contradicts its story, makes no mention of any of these reports.
The most dramatic contradiction of the Commission's timeline was provided by Norman Mineta. In open testimony to the Commission itself, he said, as we saw earlier, that when he got to the underground shelter at 9:20, Cheney was already there and fully in charge. The Commission, insisting that Cheney did not get there until almost 10:00, simply omitted any mention of this testimony in its Final Report. But Mineta's testimony is still available for anyone to read.22
We can say with a very high level of confidence, therefore, that the Commission's account is a lie.
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20051205150219651I'm pretty sure 911 truth.org won't mind my overstepping copyright bounds on this It's SO sickening, and so OLD news thanks, M$M for ignoring EVERYTHING and thanks for touting this piece of BS propaganda mythology |
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