David Ray Griffin: When did Cheney enter the underground bunker?

9/11 Contradictions: When Did Cheney Enter the Underground Bunker?

by David Ray Griffin

With regard to the morning of 9/11, everyone agrees that at some time after 9:03 (when the South Tower of the World Trade Center was struck) and before 10:00, Vice President Dick Cheney went down to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), sometimes simply called the “bunker,” under the east wing of the White House. Everyone also agrees that, once there, Cheney was in charge---that he was either making decisions or relaying decisions from President Bush. But there is enormous disagreement as to exactly when Cheney entered the PEOC.

According to The 9/11 Commission Report, Cheney arrived “shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58” (The 9/11 Commission Report [henceforth 9/11CR], 40). This official time, however, contradicts almost all previous reports, some of which had him there before 9:20. This difference is important because, if the 9/11 Commission’s time is correct, Cheney was not in charge in the PEOC when the Pentagon was struck, or for most of the period during which United Flight 93 was approaching Washington. But if the reports that have him there by 9:20 are correct, he was in charge in the PEOC all that time.

Mineta’s Report of Cheney’s Early Arrival

The most well-known statement contradicting the 9/11 Commission was made by Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta during his public testimony to the 9/11 Commission on May 23, 2003. Saying that he “arrived at the PEOC at about 9:20 AM,” Mineta reported that he then overheard part of an ongoing conversation, which had obviously begun before he arrived, between a young man and Vice President Cheney. This conversation was about a plane coming toward Washington and ended with Cheney confirming that “the orders still stand.” When Commissioner Timothy Roemer later asked Mineta how long after his arrival he overheard this conversation about whether the orders still stood, Mineta replied: “Probably about five or six minutes.” This would mean, Roemer pointed out, “about 9:25 or 9:26.”

This is a remarkable contradiction. Given the fact that Cheney, according to Mineta, had been engaged in an ongoing exchange, he must have been in the PEOC for several minutes before Mineta’s 9:20 arrival. If Cheney had been there since 9:15, there would be a 43-minute contradiction between Mineta’s testimony and The 9/11 Commission Report. Why would such an enormous contradiction exist?

One possible explanation would be that Mineta was wrong. His story, however, is in line with that of many other witnesses.

Other Reports Supporting Cheney’s Early Arrival

Richard Clarke reported that he, Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice had a brief meeting shortly after 9:03, following which the Secret Service wanted Cheney and Rice to go down to the PEOC. Rice, however, first went with Clarke to the White House’s Video Teleconferencing Center, where Clarke was to set up a video conference, which began at about 9:10. After spending a few minutes there, Rice said, according to Clarke: “You’re going to need some decisions quickly. I’m going to the PEOC to be with the Vice President. Tell us what you need.” At about 9:15, Norman Mineta arrived and Clarke “suggested he join the Vice President” (Against All Enemies, 2-5). Clarke thereby implied that Cheney was in the PEOC several minutes prior to 9:15.

In an ABC News program on the first anniversary of 9/11, Cheney’s White House photographer David Bohrer reported that, shortly after 9:00, some Secret Service agents came into Cheney’s office and said, “Sir, you have to come with us.” During this same program, Rice said: “As I was trying to find all of the principals, the Secret Service came in 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.’” ABC’s Charles Gibson then said: “In the bunker, the Vice President is joined by Rice and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta” (“9/11: Interviews by Peter Jennings,” ABC News, September 11, 2002).

The 9/11 Commission’s Late-Arrival Claim

The 9/11 Commission agreed that the Vice President was hustled down to the PEOC after word was received that a plane was headed towards the White House. It claimed, however, that this word was not received until 9:33. But even then, according to the Commission, the Secret Service agents immediately received another message, telling them that the aircraft had turned away, so “[n]o move was made to evacuate the Vice President at this time.” It was not until “just before 9:36” that the Secret Service ordered Cheney to go below (9/11CR 39). But even after he entered the underground corridor at 9:37, Cheney did not immediately go to the PEOC. Rather:

Once inside, Vice President Cheney and the agents paused in an area of the tunnel that had a secure phone, a bench, and television. The Vice President asked to speak to the President, but it took time for the call to be connected. He learned in the tunnel that the Pentagon had been hit, and he saw television coverage of the smoke coming from the building. (9/11CR 40)

Next, after Lynne Cheney “joined her husband in the tunnel,” the Commission claimed, “Mrs. Cheney and the Vice President moved from the tunnel to the shelter conference room” after the call ended, which was not until after 9:55. As for Rice, the Commission added, she “entered the conference room shortly after the Vice President” (9/11CR 40).

The contradiction could not be clearer. According to the Commission, Cheney, far from entering the PEOC before 9:20, as Mineta and others said, did not arrive there until about 9:58, 20 minutes after the 9:38 strike on the Pentagon, about which he had learned in the corridor.

Cheney’s Account on Meet the Press

The 9/11 Commission’s account even contradicted that given by Cheney himself in a well-known interview. Speaking to Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Press only five days after 9/11, Cheney said: “[A]fter I talked to the president... I went down into... the Presidential Emergency Operations Center... [W]hen I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon's been hit.” Cheney himself, therefore, indicated that he had entered the PEOC prior to the (9:38) strike on the Pentagon, not 20 minutes after it, as the Commission would later claim.

Dealing with the Contradictions

How did the 9/11 Commission deal with the fact that its claim about the time of Cheney’s arrival in the PEOC had been contradicted by Bohrer, Clarke, Mineta, Rice, several news reports, and even Cheney himself? It simply omitted any mention of these contradictory reports.

Of these omissions, the most important was the Commission’s failure to mention Norman Mineta’s testimony, even though it was given to the Commission in an open hearing---as can be seen by reading the transcript of that session (May 23, 2003). This portion of Mineta’s testimony was also deleted from the official version of the video record of the 9/11 Commission hearings in the 9/11 Commission archives. (It can, however, be viewed on the Internet.)

During an interview for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 2006, Hamilton was asked what “Mineta told the Commission about where Dick Cheney was prior to 10 AM.” Hamilton replied: “I do not recall” (“9/11: Truth, Lies and Conspiracy: Interview: Lee Hamilton,” CBC News, 21 August 2006). It was surprising that Hamilton could not recall, because he had been the one doing the questioning when Mineta told the story of the young man’s conversation with Cheney. Hamilton, moreover, had begun his questioning by saying to Mineta: “You were there [in the PEOC] for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the Vice President.” And Mineta’s exchange with Timothy Roemer, during which it was established that Mineta had arrived at about 9:20, came immediately after Hamilton’s interrogation. And yet Hamilton, not being able to recall any of this, simply said, “we think that Vice President Cheney entered the bunker shortly before 10 o’clock.”

Obliterating Mineta’s Problematic Testimony

To see possible motives for the 9/11 Commission’s efforts to obliterate Mineta’s story from the public record, we need to look at the conversation he reported to the Commission. He said:

During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say 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?”

Mineta’s story had dangerous implications with regard to the strike on the Pentagon, which occurred at 9:38. According to the 9/11 Commission, the military did not know that an aircraft was approaching the Pentagon until 9:36, so that it “had at most one or two minutes to react to the unidentified plane approaching Washington” (9/11CR 34). That claim was essential for explaining, among other things, why the Pentagon had not been evacuated before it was struck -- a fact that resulted in 125 deaths. A spokesperson for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, when asked why this evacuation had not occurred, said: “The Pentagon was simply not aware that this aircraft was coming our way” (Newsday, Sept. 23, 2001). Mineta’s testimony implied, by contrast, that Cheney and others knew that an aircraft was approaching Washington about 12 minutes before that strike.

Even more problematic was the question of the nature of “the orders.” Mineta assumed, he said, that they were orders to have the plane shot down. But the aircraft was not shot down. Also, the expected orders, especially on a day when two hijacked airliners had already crashed into buildings in New York, would have been to shoot down any nonmilitary aircraft entering the “prohibited” airspace over Washington, in which “civilian flying is prohibited at all times” (“Pilots Notified of Restricted Airspace; Violators Face Military Action,” FAA Press Release, September 28, 2001). If those orders had been given, there would have been no reason to ask if they still stood. The question made sense only if the orders were to do something unusual -- not to shoot the aircraft down. It appeared, accordingly, that Mineta had inadvertently reported Cheney’s confirmation of stand-down orders.

That Mineta’s report was regarded as dangerous is suggested by the fact that the 9/11 Commission, besides deleting Mineta’s testimony and delaying Cheney’s entrance to the bunker by approximately 45 minutes, also replaced Mineta’s story with a new story about an incoming aircraft. According to The 9/11 Commission Report, here is what really happened:

At 10:02, the communicators in the shelter began receiving reports from the Secret Service of an inbound aircraft... At some time between 10:10 and 10:15, a military aide told the Vice President and others that the aircraft was 80 miles out. Vice President Cheney was asked for authority to engage the aircraft... The Vice President authorized fighter aircraft to engage the inbound plane... The military aide returned a few minutes later, probably between 10:12 and 10:18, and said the aircraft was 60 miles out. He again asked for authorization to engage. The Vice President again said yes. (9/11CR 41)

The 9/11 Commission thereby presented the incoming aircraft story as one that ended with an order for a shoot down, not a stand down. And by having it occur after 10:10, the Commission not only disassociated it from the Pentagon strike but also ruled out the possibility that Cheney’s shootdown authorization might have led to the downing of United Flight 93 (which crashed, according to the Commission, at 10:03).

Given the fact that the 9/11 Commission’s account of Cheney’s descent to the bunker contradicted the testimony of not only Norman Mineta but also many other witnesses, including Cheney himself, Congress and the press need to launch investigations to determine what really happened.

Make comments about this article in The Canadian Blog.

About the writer:
David Ray Griffin

This essay is the second in a series of articles written by Dr. David Ray Griffin for The Canadian. This particular one is an abbreviated version of Chapters 2 and 3 of Dr. Griffin's 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (Northampton: Olive Branch, March, 2008).

Ground Zero of the 9/11 Movement?

Everyone should read Peter Dale Scott's article referenced above! Thanks Reprehensor. It 's the most focused and pointed examination of the motives behind 9/11. Scott's article and his recent book, "Road to 9/11," are meticulous in their examination of 9/11, both, narrow and broad.

Why should Cheney be required to testify under oath? It is the ground zero of the 9/11 movement in my humble estimation.

Scott's distillation of the disparate accounts of Cheney's whereabouts in the nine o'clock hour, is truly amazing! Scott's conclusions about why Cheney should testify under oath, one of them below, make it clear what likely happened:

"Cheney's call or calls with Rumsfeld and the President before and about 10AM, and did they discuss so-called "Continuity of Governemnt (COG), including warrantless surveillance, suspension of habeas corpus, and arrangements for mass detention."

Scott further declares:

"I believe COG may be the answer to the mystery question about Cheney's actions at a time when he was talking to the President and Rumsfeld. If so, the three men were almost certainly not acting on their own. Rather, they would have been key figures in a highly classified agenda that must have involved other people.

The question to be explained is whether the agenda involved revising the U.S. Constitutional balance of powers, and whether Cheney on 9/11 was primarily occupied in exploring the attacks as a means to implement an agenda of constitutional revision which he already had in place."

Scott's book traces the trail beginning in the Ford Administration with Cheney and Rumsfeld. A major step was the creation of FEMA in 1979 and its radicalization by Oliver North in the eighties. COG becomes embedded as a permanet feature of the U.S. government.

Is COG the gateway for the Shadow Government to enter into direct and complete power?

...don't believe them!

MP3 Audio Clip - David Ray Griffin on Air America Radio

Saturday August 25, 2007
Air America Host Richard Greene Speaks With David Ray Griffin

* source = http://www.airamerica.com/clout
-----------------------------------

More MP3 Audio Clips >

DGR And Bow-Tie Man (sans bow-tie)

When did Cheney enter the bunker?

And what did he do when he got there?

----------------------------

What time did Cheney start monitoring the attack? ((He claims he was in his office in the WH and he was watching the attack on CNN.)

What time did Cheney arrive in the bunker?

What were Cheney and Rice doing between the time Cheney started monitoring the attack and the time they went to the bunker?

________________

What time did Rumsfeld start monitoring the attack? (He claims he was in a meeting in his office in the Pentagon. Tori Clarke informed him that the WTC had been attacked. He turned on the TV and they watched it on CNN and continued with the meeting.)

What time did Rumsfeld go to the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon?

What was Rumsfeld doing between the time he started monitoring the attack and the time he arrived at the National Military Command Center ?

Yes! What were Cheney & the “young man” demonstrating in front

What were Cheney & the “young man” demonstrating in front of Minetta? Why was the airliner’s location given as: “50 miles out”, “30 miles out”, “10 miles out”??? Out from what--did Cheney know the target??? Why didn’t Dick or the young man warn people in the Pentagon to get away from windows & take cover???

Furthermore, do they expect us to believe that the most secure building in the world doesn't have any clear video of an airliner smashing into it???

Come-on, let's stop their nonsense now!!!

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Consider mass emailing truth messages. More info here: http://www.911blogger.com/node/13321

The OCT is a crock

We're really just battling the initial narrative and our fellow citizen's denial of a horrible truth. The facts are on our side.

Note that Griffin has a new book coming out in the summer

9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (Northampton: Olive Branch, March, 2008)

Under oath ...

As far as I know Norman Mineta is the only person to testify under oath to this matter .
Since no testimony contradicting Minetas account has been given under oath, Mineta is a credible person who has served under 3 Emperors
and doesn't have any obvious personal interest in not telling the truth and furthermore has confirmed his testimony at least 1 time since,
the matter is very simple :
Tricky Dicky was in the PEOS before the Pentagram was hit, did nothing to prevent the attack from succeeding and
therefore he is a traitor with (also) American blood on his hands, end of story ..
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"Listen carefully now : DO NOT DESTROY OIL-WELLS" Dubya

Correct

Yes, it seems that Minetta is credible. Richard Clarke described the individuals in the PEOC as far more political than the ones in the Secure Video Conferencing Center, where he was located. It seems strange that the 9/11 Commission has this "event" occurring after Flight 93 crashed. What plane were they tracking? Supposedly the hypothetical route of a no longer existing plane. That sounds rather far fetched.

THESE ARE "THE ORDERS"

CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINTCHIEFS OF STAFF INSTRUCTION

It really annoys me how Griffin can omit this most obvious piece of evidence from every article he writes about Mineta/Cheney.

These June 1st 2001 orders directly address "AIR PIRACY (HIJACKING)", and they require "approval" from the "Secretary of Defense" before authorizing any interceptors. Since no "approval" was given by Rumsfeld, this was an obvious way of stopping Norad from authorizing scrambles. Cheney is confirming that the letter of these orders be followed, and therefore Cheney and Rumsfeld are working together to suppress fighter response.

Griffin should be the first person to show this document's relevance, not the last. Omitting the possibility entirely from the discussion is let's say counterproductive.

70 Disturbing Facts About 9/11

John Doraemi publishes Crimes of the State Blog
http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/

johndoraemi --at-- yahoo.com.

I agree

That and the fact that many others in the truth movement, like Griffin, refer axiomatically to a 'stand-down order' as necessarily having been given that morning; but wouldn't the change of protocol on June 1 '01 effectively have obviated the need for such an order on 9/11?

I doubt there was a stand down order

or anything like that. All Cheney and Rumsfeld had to do was refuse to stand up. That's why both of them dawdled for as long as possible that morning before they responded to the attacks. If the head of the snake is no where to be found, it makes it a lot harder for the rest of the animal to respond appropriately.

That may be so...

However, why weren't the planes even intercepted? Interception is not the same thing as shooting down.

One minor problem

Everything in this short excerpt is great. But I see one flaw having to do with Cheney's own testimony sited by Griffin; namely, the quote by Cheney where he says, "[W]hen I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon's been hit".

That statement could easily be interpreted to mean, and is consistent with, Cheney arriving in the PEOC after 9:38. When Cheney says, "we had word", it could easily mean that he was given notice after arriving in the PEOC without any indication of time. Or I should say more accurately, the statement can be interpreted both ways, and I think the case is strong enough without adding this allegedly self-incriminating statement by Cheney. It only will provide supporters of the official theory more reason to attack this point.

Other than that, it is a great analytical piece. Ultimately, however, it will take testimony by someone who was witness to Cheney's presence in the PEOC shortly after 9:00 AM. Has anyone ever identified this young soldier Mineta references?

It's not "testimony" !

Dick Cheney has never given any testimony under oath regarding the events on 9-11-2001,
not even when he and Bush had "a private conversation" with the 9-11 Ommission.
Furthermore Tricky Dicky has given at least 2 different explanations to his whereabouts on the morning of 9-11,
both of witch are highly questionable as it is impossible to find any credible witnesses to corroborate either of Cheney's versions.
If you then take into account that George W Bush also has told a story that is provable impossible at least twice !
(he claims to have seen the first plane hit the WTC on TV before pretending that he can even read "My little Goat")
you start to get a clear pattern ..
Anyway, there is no "minor problem" here because there is no testimony given under oath contradicting Mineta's ..
.. so it is public record that Dick Cheney was in the PEOS before the Pentagon was hit .

Minetas testimony is of great importance to 9-11 truth, not only because of what he said but also because the Ommission
chose not to include it and even removed the video-recording from their website .
I have turned quite a few believers of the OCT into "skeptics" thanks to Minetas testimony and Cheneys public lies .
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"Listen carefully now : DO NOT DESTROY OIL-WELLS" Dubya

Contradiction?

<< Cheney’s Account on Meet the Press

The 9/11 Commission’s account even contradicted that given by Cheney himself in a well-known interview. Speaking to Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Press only five days after 9/11, Cheney said: “[A]fter I talked to the president... I went down into... the Presidential Emergency Operations Center... [W]hen I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon's been hit.” Cheney himself, therefore, indicated that he had entered the PEOC prior to the (9:38) strike on the Pentagon, not 20 minutes after it, as the Commission would later claim. >>

I do not see the contradiction here. Cheney says he got "word" of the Pentagon strike after he entered the PEOC. Obviously, there is some unknown time delay between the strike itself and Cheney getting word of it.

It's possible Griffin is confused

but I think he's also factoring Mineta's testimony into the equation. You're probably right: there seems to be some ambiguity there.

Actually, I think Griffin is

Actually, I think Griffin is assuming that Cheney (or the PEOC) would have been instantaneously notified of the Pentagon strike. This might not be true, so it does not imply a strict contradiction per se.

Maybe?

According to the 9/11 Commission, Cheney didn't enter the PEOC until right before 10:00AM, probably 9:58AM. This is roughly 20 minutes after the Pentagon was hit. So Cheney was not aware of the Pentagon impact until sometime after 10:00AM?. Fox News began reporting on the Pentagon attack at 9:42AM. Cheney's statement, at least, seems to contradict the 9/11 Commission Report's claim that he didn't arrive in the PEOC until 9:58AM.

Newsweek Article Talks about Cheney in the Bunker

If you read between the lines, it seems to be saying the official version is a lie.

It states as fact "Around 9:35 on the morning of 9/11, Cheney was lifted off his feet
by the Secret Service and hustled into the White House bunker" when we know the 9/11
Commission Report says he didn't get there until 9:58.

It says the 9/11 Commission staffers did not believe Cheney's claim that he had
consulted the President before ordering flight 93 shot down, and that the draft
report indicating their skepticism was changed after a battle with the administration.

This appears on the concluding page of an article about Cheney's having shot
a man in the face.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/56896/page/6

Something that's been nagging at me for a while...

Considering flight 77's nonsensical approach and fighter-like maneuvers, was the Pentagon really it's intended or perhaps primary target? Maybe flight 93 was intended to hit the Pentagon but for some reason 77 was diverted to the Pentagon? Taking 77's flight path into account, what target makes more sense? Maybe that's where Cheney expected it to go? If 93 was really shot down maybe that's why, because the plans went astray?

There's more to this story, I can smell it.

Sniff-sniff...

Co6aka

If it really was Flight 77

If it really was Flight 77.

clarifications

1) We don't know the actual identity of the plane(s), only what was claimed by the government. They have refused to positively identify (from serial number records) any of the debris found at any of the sites.

2) It is possible that Flight 77 was swapped for another plane, and it allegedly disappeared from radar around 8:52am, which should have triggered immediate code red type response.

3) The countdown of 50 miles out, etc. could simply refer to its distance from the PEOC (white house), which is pretty obvious. That particular aspect does not seem particularly incriminating.

4) The flight plan of the attacking object is not particularly "impossible" or unexplainable either. The plane followed "the river approach" at about 7000 ft. altitude. Once it was able to spot the pentagon it had to make a diving corkscrew in order to lose altitude (or else it could not hit the target, duh) and come back around for the impact. This was probably meant to imply the pilot was flying by visual cues (whether or not they actually were). Saying it behaved like a fighter does not mean the manuever was "impossible" for a sophisticated aircraft like a 757. The "impossible" claim has been unconvincing and erroneous for a number of years now. It misleads a lot of people who don't know much about these issues.

5) It seems entirely plausible that Flight 93 was a backup, which was positioned to hit either New York or Washington if one of the other planes failed in their missions. It was not necessary, after the successful strike at the Pentagon, and so they ordered the shoot down. The shoot down seems the only plausible explanation for debris being strewn all over several square miles as found.

70 Disturbing Facts About 9/11

John Doraemi publishes Crimes of the State Blog
http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/

johndoraemi --at-- yahoo.com.

I disagree with One Point

"3) The countdown of 50 miles out, etc. could simply refer to its distance from the PEOC (white house), which is pretty obvious. That particular aspect does not seem particularly incriminating"

The 50 miles out marker would in fact tell us all when in fact deadeye Dick was in his bunker at a minimum. This would be very very incriminating. Besides the mention of the 50 Mile marker, there really is no other milestone that pegs him in the PEOC at any earlier moment. The 50 Mile marker is the earliest it can be PROVEN he was there. Even deadeye couldnt deny having said conversation with said younger individual.

Hey, Let's Do Something Productive Here...

Let's figure out WHICH plane it HAD to be by judging the flightpaths of the 911 planes and seeing which one[s] fit the bill. WHICh one was 50, 30, and 10 miles out from WHAT?

This shouldn't be hard. Maps are down to scale and depict miles/kilometers.

EDIT: This analysis would tell us eaactly what TIME this strange conversation took place (between dead eye dick and the young man).

38 miles out

Approximately 9:20 a.m.
Mineta: "During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say 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?”

9:29 a.m. September 11, 2001
The plane is flying at 7,000 feet and is about 38 miles west of the Pentagon. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 9] http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a929autopilot#a929au...
_______________
Arabesque: 911 Truth

Thanks for the Reply Arabesque

That is part of the puzzle. From that, deadeye Dick was most assuredly in the bunker by 9:29 am at a minimum, and that contradicts the lies.

The other part however is determining how fast the plane was going during it's trajectories. There are quotations of speeds ranging from 345MPH to 600MPH and everywhere in between. With so much ambiguity, it wouldn't be so easy to pinpoint exactly when deadeye Dick was **first** told the plane was 50 Miles out. Why is 50 so important? Because 50 miles is the first radius quoted by Mineta and should corroborate his timeline if he was correct/truthful. Why is speed so important? Because it would allow us to estimate a likely range of possible positions the plane may have attained between takeoff and impact. The speed[s] may have varied.

But then again, there might even be legal ways of learning the exact speed[s].

Where was that plane @ 50?

A few more clues from Giuliani's 9/11 Comm Testimony

Rudy Giuliani claims he was holding the phone to speak to Cheney after the Pentagon was hit, but got cut off when the first Tower fell.

----------------------

TESTIMONY BY MAYOR RUDOLPH GIULIANI

BEFORE THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES

5/19/04

And then we proceeded up West Street two and a half blocks again, back to where we had originally been. On the way up, I saw Father Judge and that was the last time I saw him. And I asked him to pray for us, which he assured me that he was doing. And I shook hands with him.

And then I walked to 75 Barclay Street. I was really brought inside 75 Barclay Street and told this would be our command post. It was set up. It was set up with telephones. There were police on the phones. And I was brought into a, like a cubicle inner office and told that we had reached the White House.

I had already been informed by my chief of staff that he had reached the White House and by the police commissioner, who I think had reached the Defense Department. I'm not sure exactly. But both of them had assured me that we had gotten air support, because that's why I wanted to reach the White House. I wanted to make sure that we had air defense for the city.

And my chief of staff told me that he was informed by the White House that there were seven planes that were unaccounted for. And at this point, I knew of two, and I had heard reports that the Pentagon had been attacked, that the Sears Tower had been attacked and several other buildings.

So I got through to the White House. Chris Henick was on the phone, who was the, who was then the deputy political director to President Bush. And I said to him, "Chris, was the Pentagon attacked?"

And he said, "Confirmed."

And then I asked him if we had air support. I said, "Have you -- do we have air support? Do you have jets out, because I think we're going to get hit again?"

He said, "The jets were dispatched 12 minutes ago and they should be there very shortly, and they should be able to defend you against further attack." And then he said, "We've evacuating the White House and the vice president will call you back very, very shortly."

And I put down the phone and within seconds got a call in another room from the vice president. I walked over to that room, picked up the phone. The White House operator was on the phone and said, "Mr. Mayor, the vice president will be on in a moment."

And at that point, I heard a click. The desk started to shake and I heard next Chief Esposito, who was the uniformed head of the police department. I'm sure it was his voice. I heard him say, "The tower is down. The tower has come down."

http://www.gothamgazette.com/rebuilding_nyc/features/giuliani_5_19_04.shtml

Cheney and Rummie weren't the only ones who went AWOL

(responding to Vesa - Posted out of order)

during the attack.

So did the President, General Myers, the Head of Norad, Paul Wolfowitz, Condi Rice, Rudy Giuliani, Bernie Kerik.....

Starting to notice a pattern here?

With the Pentagon and NORAD ignoring the attack, no fighters were launched in time to intercept even one of 4 hijacked jets. I don't know why no one went to Threatcon Delta as soon as the first Tower was hit, no less after two?