If Mineta’s testimony is to be taken into account, and there is no apparent reason why it should not be, questions about the timing of events the morning of 9/11 come into focus. Most obvious is, if the standing order given by the Vice President prior to the aircraft hitting the Pentagon was not a shoot down order, then what was it? Perhaps it was the danger of this question, and the danger that Cheney would have had to commit perjury to uphold the timeline reported in the mainstream press, that caused the Vice President to testify to the Commission along with the President in closed session, with no transcript, no witnesses, and no public accountability.
Today, multiple serious investigations are underway as to the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify the war in Iraq (Plame/Wilson incident), and when the administration actually decided to invade Iraq (Downing Street Memos). In fact, it is widely known that Bush declared his desire to invade Iraq to an official biographer in 1999, even before he was appointed President by the Supreme Court. Given what is known today about the deceiving of the American public in order to justify the invasion of Iraq, and given what is known about "The 9/11 Commission Final Report" and the unanswered questions surrounding the attacks of 9/11. Is there not sufficient reason to include 9/11 in the overall inquiry into possible criminal actions of the Bush-Cheney administration?
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Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
Ok, I'm not quite getting what the controversy is here. The standing order is and should be to shoot down kamikaze planes aimed at vital government targets. Is the controversy that this is the standing order or that it wasn't followed through on? And what is the point of controversy either way?
And what's the problem with the 'war games' that were happening on 9/11? Do you think we shouldn't have our military practice? You think that practice and drills cause terrorist attacks? It's almost like you're suggesting there's a conspiracy, but don't quite manage to say it.
Is this all symptomatic of some sort of plot? Tell us what Alex Jones has inspired you to say. Tell us about the Jews. These half-measures are so frustrating.
Dave
2 - Temple Stark
Seems to me author is talking about a discrepency.
Whether anyone agrees or disagrees, accepts or rejects, that's pretty clear, yes?
3 - Nancy
I think Cheney deliberately did not allow the planes to be halted before they hit the towers. I think it is totally suspicious that Bush & Cheney insisted on no witnesses, no oaths, & being interviewed together. That by itself blows their credibility of ANYTHING offered by either one of them by way of evidence. It should not even have been entertained by those spineless, brainless, craven fools on the Committee. If they had to serve them both with warrants, arrest them, & prosecute afterwards for perjury or refusing to answer by pleading the 5th, then that's what should have been done, and to hell with the consequences. I am firmly convinced both Smirk & Cheney have blood on their hands, not just from the thousands they've sent to death or maiming in a false war, but for deliberately & knowingly allowing the thousands of deaths of 9/11 to happen.
4 - RKC
Let's face it.
We were caught with our pants down.
This is all about 20/20 hindsight
It shouldn't have been a total surprise but when was our government on top of what might happen?
5 - Dave Nalle
>>Seems to me author is talking about a discrepency.
Whether anyone agrees or disagrees, accepts or rejects, that's pretty clear, yes?<<
Absolutely, Temp. That much was clear. I'm just not sure if the discrepancy is at all significant, or what point he was trying to make with it.
Dave
6 - Maurice
Nancy might be a nut. She certainly seems to be an extremist. Much more so than her buddy Molly Ivins. Or is her buddy Ann Coulter. I seem to be getting my extremists mixed up.
7 - Temple Stark
Well Da, ignore it then.
8 - Temple Stark
By the way why is that guy* smiling in the first photo holding the 9-11 report - isn't he from Kids in the Hall?
;-)
*yes I know who it is.
9 - Gregor Holland
Dave (comment 1):
You said: "Ok, I'm not quite getting what the controversy is here. The standing order is and should be to shoot down kamikaze planes aimed at vital government targets. Is the controversy that this is the standing order or that it wasn't followed through on?"
No, the order was NOT a shoot down order, as both the 9/11 Commission Report and all available records indicate. There has never been any indication by any NORAD official that there was a shoot down order before even Flight 93 crashed slightly after 10 a.m. that morning. As Mineta stated, he only *thought* that it might have been a shoot down order. As my article also quotes him, he was not sure it was a shoot down.
You said: "And what is the point of controversy either way?"
The point of the article is to bring to light something that has not received much publicity. That is the fact that the 9/11 Commission essentially deleted the only publicly submitted testimony about the timing of events in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center on the morning of 9/11. Instead they reported a significantly different timing, by 38 minutes, and on top of that Mineta's testimony was edited out of the 9/11 Commission website video archive.
You said: "And what's the problem with the 'war games' that were happening on 9/11? Do you think we shouldn't have our military practice? You think that practice and drills cause terrorist attacks? It's almost like you're suggesting there's a conspiracy, but don't quite manage to say it."
The point about the multiple war games that were underway on the morning of 9/11 is that there has been almost no disclosure of them, and almost no inquiry into them by the 9/11 Commission. A common conception, echoed by RKC in these comments, is that we were asleep at the wheel, or as RKC states "caught with our pants down".
But with the multiple drills going on, air bases were fully staffed and in essence on high alert. General Myers has stated that the coincidence of the drills enhanced the response. But the recordings available of the response by personnel to the notifications of actual hijacking do not support that. How do we correlate the idea that the coexistence of multiple live drills and the full staffing of base positions 'enhanced response' with the fact that the Pentagon, and Washington D.C., perhaps the most restricted air space on this continent, were unguarded 1 hour and 34 minutes after the SECOND World Trade Center tower was hit? This is a question that has never been adequately answered.
You said: "Is this all symptomatic of some sort of plot? Tell us what Alex Jones has inspired you to say. Tell us about the Jews. These half-measures are so frustrating."
Actually Alex Jones hasn't inspired me to say anything. I followed closely the 9/11 Commission and have been doing my own research on 9/11 now for several years. I went to the last two Commission hearings and have studied all of the hearings. The more I have learned about the Commission the more I have become concerned. You may have noticed that in the year since the Commission Report came out there has been almost NO critique of it. In fact the entire issue of what happened that day has almost become a taboo. Your own obviously perturbed reaction reflects that.
The basic point of my article is that there was an order on 9/11 at approximately 9:26 a.m. that was confirmed by Vice President Cheney in the PEOC as a plane was being announced as approaching D.C. This is a fact based on the testimony of Secretary Mineta.
There are several key questions that come up based on this:
1. What was the order?
2. Why has the 9/11 Commission essentially covered up this information?
I hope that answers some of your questions.
-Gregor
10 - gonzo marx
the discrepencies ARE important...the Record, and extrapolation that comes from it, in attempting to reconstruct everything...are crucial to understanding the Event...
another fascinating point was tyhe Post's mention of 100k payment to Atta...WTF?...why hasn't that bit been followed up completely?
we can tace Mob dollars effectively to find shit out, this should be a primary avenue of Investigation...
unfortuneately, it doesn't seem that ANYONE is really following up all the details...as investigations into any complex criminal activity ( see again Mob prosecutions) show..the devil is almost always found in the details...that is where the perpetrators fuck up
Excelsior!
11 - Gregor Holland
RKC: (comment 4)
You said: "Let's face it.
We were caught with our pants down.
This is all about 20/20 hindsight"
I think I responded to your 'pants down' part of the comment in my response to Dave. The 9/11 Commission was charged with an investigation into what happened on 9/11. 20/20 hindsight was their purpose, as well as delivering recommendations on what they learned. So, yes, I would agree with you. Any study of history, or recent events, is 20/20 hindsight. Are you suggesting that there was/is no value in understanding what happened on 9/11?
"It shouldn't have been a total surprise but when was our government on top of what might happen?"
The specific failure on 9/11 was that of our air defense system. This is the most sophisticated air defense system on the planet. It never sleeps. The existing hijack protocol in place on 9/11 and for decades prior, is that when a plane deviates from a flight plan, or loses communication, you scramble. This is routine, doesn't require presidential or national command authority. The entire government didn't fail on 9/11, our air defense system did. As anyone who has studied this issue knows, that has never been adequately explained. Particularly in light of the drills happening that morning.
You also might want to check the documentation of related military drills compiled by Cooperative Research. Here's the URL: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=militaryExercises
-Gregor
12 - Dave Nalle
>>I hope that answers some of your questions.<<
Yes, you answered my specific questions, but I still don't see what the point of it all is. What do you think Cheney's order could have been that would make it worth covering up? Or is it possible that his order was nothing remarkable and it wasn't covered up but just overlooked?
Dave
13 - u2r2h
Nice article.
Wargames exercise during the actual attack?
Thats soooo bizarre.
But wait for this:
There ALSO was an exercise during the London 7/7 bombs...
http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/special-reports-storypage.jsp?id=372
Now thats not a coincidence.
Coincidentally, no mayor paper is reporting about it... just CHANNEL4 (BBC)
a glitch in the Matrix?
14 - RKC
The specific failure on 9/11 was that of our FBI and our airport security.
15 - Gregor Holland
>>Yes, you answered my specific questions, but I still don't see what the point of it all is. What do you think Cheney's order could have been that would make it worth covering up? Or is it possible that his order was nothing remarkable and it wasn't covered up but just overlooked?<<
Actually, a great deal of attention was given to Cheney's order. If you do a Google Search on "Cheney shoot down" you will find many MSM reports about the order. All of them describe the same event that Mineta testified to, but the timing is shifted, as if it happened in response to the projected trajectory of Flight 93, after 10 a.m. That was also how the 9/11 Commission Report accounts for the conversation with the unknown young man who is announcing an incoming plane. Mineta specifically states that the order confirmation occured in response to the approach of Flight 77, at 9:26. Mineta also states that there was no information given to the PEOC about Flight 93 until it crashed. The point is that Mineta's testimony clearly and substantially conflicts with the account given by the 9/11 Commission in its Final Report, and it is the only public testimony available about the PEOC timeline. Thus, an investigatory body has dropped key testimony and also acted to conceal it from the record (by editing the video of his testimony from the 9/11 Commission website video archive).
Regarding what the order was, I'm going to cover that in my final part to the series, but the apparent answer is out there if you look for it.
16 - Gregor Holland
>>The specific failure on 9/11 was that of our FBI and our airport security.<<
To be sure, these were important failures. But the failure of the air defense system to execute standard protocol procedure on 9/11 has never been explained. And even the existence of simultaneous war games on 9/11 is unknown to the vast majority of Americans. The 9/11 Commission not only failed to shed light on that issue, but also, with the Mineta Testimony, discarded key public testimony and then acted to conceal it.
17 - plunger
What about the Jews, Dave?
Google: Dancing Israelis
Name the only country that benefitted from 9/11.
Explain the Mossad Agents celebrating in New York as the towers fell. Explain the inexplicable.
Google: false flag
18 - Bennett
"Google: false flag"
That's actually quite disturbing.
I shouldn't be surprised. Actually, if someone had asked me outright (this morning) if this kind of stuff goes on? I would say:
"If you think up something really sneaky, someone else is already doing it.
And I guarantee you... governments hire sneaky geniuses. And there are a shitload of cowboys out their that love the adrenaline rush. Fervent cowboys no less. Aw fuck, the world has officially gone bonkers.
It really pays to avoid crowds these days, and hope that you're upwind.
Bennett
19 - Dave Nalle
Plunger, back to infowars.com for you. Peddle the insanity to the already insane.
Dave
20 - buches
I find David Griffin's hypothesis the most convincing: that Mineta misinterpreted the order that the young man was asking about with, "do the orders still stand?" Mineta thought that they were talking about a shoot-down order, but that wouldn't fit. First, the plane wasn't shot down. Second, if there was such a shoot-down order, then it would have been conditional, such as when it got within 1 mile of the Pentagon or the Capitol building. (I would also say that the 9/11 commission states that the military didn't know the flight was even hijacked until after it crashed into the Pentagon, but we all know that the report is nothing but a pack of lies.)
What makes more sense, is that the order was a stand-down order. Don't shoot the plane down under any circumstances. This would cause the young man to become nervous, and wonder whether the order changed, especially when the plane was less than 10 miles out of Capitol hill. This testimony is particularly damning, showing that the 9/11 commission report lied, and covered up its lie, and also shows that Dick Cheney lied, and likely himself gave the stand-down order.
21 - Tom
What is current status of the archived copyof Mineta's comments on the plane 50 30 and 10 miles out? Did they agree to fix it?
PS the significance is that this is the smoking gun. The order is a stand down order because surely there were orders to protect the White House and Pentagon
22 - Bjjjsh
Bush authorised, Cheney ordered the attacks... Look up Stanley Hiltons lawsuit & consider all the evidence...
23 - NadePaulKuciGravMcKi
Sure are a lot of guilty sounding people working overtime to stop REAL investigations.
It seems they will say or do anything to get their way.