Cheney has been talking a lot about 9/11. So what was he doing that day? —By James Ridgeway

[Demeter]

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/05/cheneys-bunker-mentality

Say what you will about Dick Cheney, at least he's consistent. While he was in office, the Vice President made a practice of exploiting the fear and loss wrought by the 9/11 attacks to advance his own political agenda—and he's still doing it now. During his speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, according to Dana Milbank's calculations in the Washington Post, "Cheney used the word 'attack' 19 times, 'danger' and 'threat' six times apiece, and 9/11 an impressive 27 times."

In this putative rebuttal to Obama speech on national security, Cheney described how he spent the morning of 9/11 "in a fortified White House command post," receiving "the reports and images that so many Americans remember from that day," and then declared:

In the years since, I've heard occasional speculation that I'm a different man after 9/11. I wouldn't say that. But I'll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities.

Since he's evoking his experience as a rationalization for torture, this might be a good time to review exactly what it was that Cheney was doing in the bunker on that terrible day. Here again, consistency is the rule: A preponderance of evidence points to the fact that Dick Cheney spent the morning of September 11, 2001, violating the Constitution of the United States....

[Sebastian Doyle]

1. What was he doing that day? He was personally supervising the "drills"

..that turned out not to be drills at all. And he also spent the previous evening in the White House in a Bush Crime Family slumber party with Poppy Bush (the dumbass was out of town, of course)

Is it normal for the VP to sleep over at the White House?

[Bolo Boffin]

3. The OP article does a really good job of explaining what Cheney was actually doing that day.

Perhaps you should read it.

[laststeamtrain]

2. K & R - n/t.

[Wednesdays]

4. K&R

:kick:

[MichiganVote]

5. Gee..an underground bunker, wow. Really makes my heart go out to all the rest of us

who were standing around in the streets of New York, trying to help kids in school, dealing with parents whose friends or families were on planes, wondering which city was next....and to think all we needed was a bunker to make a difference.

What a fucking asshole. All about Cheney, All the time.

[bemildred]

6. Another guy that does not know when his time is up. nt

[Politicalboi]

7. He was busy giving

Stand Down orders.

[Bolo Boffin]

8. No, read the article.

He was busy giving shootdown orders that weren't his to be giving.

[leveymg]

10. That's a matter of interpretation. Mineta's narrative can easily be read the other way.

We still don't know whether Cheney was issuing a Standdown order for Flt. 77 or a Shootdown order for Flt. 93, a half hour later. The references to "50 miles out, 30 miles out, 10 miles out" seem to indicate the former explanation.

Really, this is still not a settled issue. This article tells us little we didn't already know from other sources. Cheney's order at 10:30 am to shoot-down what turned out to be a medivac helicopter I had not seen, though.

Here are the two interpretations of Transportation Secretary Mineta's account (Wiki):

Mineta's testimony to the 9/11 Commission about his experience in the Presidential Emergency Operating Center with Vice President Cheney as American Airlines flight 77 approached the Pentagon was not included in the 9/11 Commission Report. In one colloquy testified by Mineta, the vice president refers to orders to shoot the plane approaching the Pentagon:

"There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, 'The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.' And when it got down to, 'The plane is 10 miles out,' the young man also said to the vice president, 'Do the orders still stand?' And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, 'Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?' Well, at the time I didn't know what all that meant."

– Norman Mineta, <3>

Mineta's testimony to the Commission on Flight 77 differs rather significantly from the account provided in the January 22, 2002 edition of the Washington Post, as reported by Bob Woodward and Dan Balz in their series "10 Days in September"

“ 9:32 a.m.
The Vice President in Washington: Underground, in Touch With Bush

Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, summoned by the White House to the bunker, was on an open line to the Federal Aviation Administration operations center, monitoring Flight 77 as it hurtled toward Washington, with radar tracks coming every seven seconds. Reports came that the plane was 50 miles out, 30 miles out, 10 miles out-until word reached the bunker that there had been an explosion at the Pentagon.

Mineta shouted into the phone to Monte Belger at the FAA: "Monte, bring all the planes down." It was an unprecedented order-there were 4,546 airplanes in the air at the time. Belger, the FAA's acting deputy administrator, amended Mineta's directive to take into account the authority vested in airline pilots. "We're bringing them down per pilot discretion," Belger told the secretary.

" pilot discretion," Mineta yelled back. "Get those planes down."

Sitting at the other end of the table, Cheney snapped his head up, looked squarely at Mineta and nodded in agreement.
”
—Dan Balz and Bob Woodward, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42754-2002Jan26_3.html


This same article also reports that the conversation between Cheney and the aide occurred at 9:55 am, about 30 minutes later than the time Mineta cited (9:26 am) during his testimony to the 9/11 Commission.

This remains an unanswered question.

[Bolo Boffin]

11. Yes, this is a settled issue.

Even Mineta says that it was a shoot down order.

Cheney was not in the PEOC while Flight 77 was in the air.

[DCKit]

9. So the millions of dollars of communications equipment in the WH and aboard AF-1...

are nearly useless. Sounds like a stellar example of gubmint contracting to me.

And I wonder: Did DICK ever call for an ambulance? As they say in the commercial "An erection lasting more than four hours...."