Dick Myers' whereabouts on morning of 9/11

[Bryan Sacks]

Can someone clear this up? For a long time there have been two mutually exclusive accounts of Dick Myers' whereabouts on the morning of 9/11. Has this ever been resolved? Any help is appreciated:

Story 1: About six weeks after 9/11, Myers tells the Armed Forces press Service that he was meeting with then-Senator Max Cleland on Capitol Hill. While in an outer office (probably around 8:50am) he saw a TV report that a plane has hit the WTC . "They thought it was a small plane or something like that," Myers told AFPS. The two men went ahead with their meeting.

It is only after the second plane hits the WTC and a third plane hits the Pentagon that Myers finally emerges from his meeting and is given situational awareness. He then talks with Gen. Eberhart, and "...at that point, I think the decision was at that poiny to start launching aircraft."

www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/n10232001_200110236.html
from Myers and Sept. 11: "We hadn't Thought About This."

Story 2: Myers in at the Pentagon, participating in a videoconference led by Richard Clarke. It's clear from the excerpt that Myers' participation begins no later than 9:25 or so, making this account incompatible with his first story.

From page 5, Against All Enemies, by former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke:

I turned to the Pentagon Screen. "JCS, JCS. I assume NORAD has scrambled fighters and AWACA. How many? Where?"

"Not a pretty picture, Dick." Dick Myers, himself a fighter pilot, knew the days when we had scores of fighters on strip alert had ended with the Cold War. "We are in the middle of Vigilant Warrior, a NORAD exercise, but . . .Otis launched two birds toward New York. Langley is trying to get two up now . . ."

"Okay, how long to CAP over DC?" Combat Air Patrol, CAP, was something we were used to placing over Iraq, not over our nation's capital.

"Fast as we can. Fifteen minutes?" Myers asked, looking at the generals and colonels around him. It was 9:28

[wildbilln864]

1. Excellent question Bryan...

there's too many questions and no real answers.

[John Q. Citizen]

2. The earlier story ring truer, if just because it's reported much sooner

to 9/11.

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. Don't you wish someone would just ask the SOB

what his real story is?

How did he ever get confirmed after such blatant incompetence. Oh gee, the WTC just got attack but my meeting with Max Cleland is much more important at the moment.

Funny Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice and Bush all reacted in similar ways.

Flight 93 leaving a half hour late really threw a kink into their plans it seems.

[Andre II]

4. Three stories:

Here from "Crime of the Millenium"
http://www.team8plus.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?3739
(p15)

“But when we came out, that was obvious. Then right at that time somebody said the Pentagon has been hit. I immediately, somebody handed me a cell phone, and it was General Eberhart”.
http://web.archive.org/web/20041011152711/http://www.dtic.mil/jcs/chairman/AFRTS_Interview.htm
“(A)fter the second tower was hit, I spoke to the commander of NORAD, General Eberhart.”
http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/Myers.html
“In fact, the first call I got when I left Capitol Hill, after a meeting with Senator Cleland, was from General Eberhart saying, "We've had these crashes and that we're going to take certain actions," and it was shortly thereafter that the Pentagon was hit as we were on our way back to the Pentagon.”
http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing12/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-06-17.htm


And here the comments p.9

He was very busy the morning of September 11.
He had a meeting in Capitol Hill in preparation of his confirmation hearing to become the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“And I remember before we walked in there was a TV that was playing and somebody has said, ‘An airplane has hit one of the World Trade Center towers.’ They thought it was an airplane, and they thought it was a small airplane or something like that. So we walked in and we did the office call with Senator Cleland. Sometime during that office call the second tower was hit. Nobody informed us of that.”
(Pause)
Nobody informed him.
Does Myers not have an assistant?
Does Myers not have a cell phone?
Does Myers not have a pager?
The acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Army?
(Pause)
He came out of the meeting after the Pentagon was hit.
At 9:37.
More than half an hour after the second tower had been hit.
He finally entered the National Military Command Center just before Rumsfeld.
At 10:30.
Almost half an hour after the fourth and last plane crashed.
(Pause)
No urgency.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. My favorite alibi is Paul Wolfowitz's

The top two civilians in the Pentagon both watched the attack on TV and didn't think they should do anything. Unbelievable!

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.

Q: Let me ask you then about the next couple of days. There is --

Wolfowitz: Just to complete it. We went back into the building and that was an experience I won't ever forget. There was a huge fire, there was smoke gradually filling -- not all, just the small number of us who were basically in the command group. Rumsfeld was there and General Myers who was still the Vice Chairman at that point. The Chairman was on his way back from overseas and I was there. We were in the National Military Command Center and there was this acrid smoke gradually seeping into the place. Rumsfeld simply refused to leave. He finally made me leave, which I was not happy about.
I went up to this bizarre location that was prepared to survive nuclear war.

Q: Really?

Wolfowitz: Yes.

Q: In the Pentagon.

Wolfowitz: No, no. Way out of town.

Kellems: That's why he left, was to separate them.

Q: I see.

Kellems: To provide continuity.

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

[John Q. Citizen]

6. Oh well, that just proves he's too incompetent to tell the truth! Truth

telling is a sign of competence, didn't ya know?