October 29, 2010
By Craig McKee
Did Dick Cheney give orders to allow a plane, allegedly American Airlines Flight 77, to hit the Pentagon on the morning of Sept. 11?
It seems that he did if you listen to one of his own cabinet colleagues at the time.
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta told the 9/11 Commission in 2003 that when he arrived in the Presidential Emergency Operations Centre (PEOC) in the basement of the White House around 9:20 a.m. on Sept. 11, Cheney was already there, as was Mrs. Cheney. The second World Trade Center tower was hit at 9:03.
Mineta said that shortly after he arrived, he witnessed an exchange between Cheney and a young, unidentified man. Mineta seemed not to realize the importance of what he was saying. He told the commission:
“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 testimony places Cheney in the PEOC almost 40 minutes before the 9/11 Commission said he arrived (They say he got there around 10 a.m.) Keep in mind that the alleged crash of American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon is believed to have occurred at 9:38 a.m.
Mineta kills official account.
This testimony indicates that as the plane drew closer and closer to the Pentagon, the vice-president gave the order to do nothing. And this account contradicts the claim of Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, who said they had no idea a plane was coming their way; this is why there was no evacuation of the Pentagon.
Somebody’s lying.
Is it Mineta? That doesn’t seem likely. He was very specific about the time, and he repeated the fact that Cheney was there before he arrived at 9:20 in an interview in 2007. And did he imagine the exchange about the approaching plane between Cheney and the young man? There’s no reason this member of the Bush team would want to call their own version of events into question. And he very specifically said it was Flight 77 they were talking about.
Mineta may have genuinely believed that Cheney was confirming an order to shoot down the incoming plane, but that makes no sense given what the young man said. If the order was to shoot the plane down, why would he have asked several times if the order stood? It was much more likely he was questioning the order because it was the unexpected order NOT to shoot the plane down.
Rumsfeld’s claim that he had no idea that a plane was headed towards the Pentagon 40 minutes after controllers were convinced that Flight 77 was hijacked stretches credulity to the breaking point – and contradicts other evidence. Cheney has already said in interviews he was on the phone with Rumsfeld shortly after arriving in the PEOC. If that was before 9:20 then Rumsfeld had to have known about the approaching plane. And if that’s true, why wasn’t the building evacuated?
You see the problem?
If Cheney is lying to get around the Rumsfeld problem, then he has another problem because his version actually contradicts what the 9/11 Commission concluded.
The 9/11 Commission had Cheney not reaching the PEOC until almost 10 a.m., 20 minutes after the alleged Pentagon crash. He claimed to have been in the corridor from about 9:40 talking to the president on the phone. But Cheney said he learned about the alleged Pentagon crash once he was in the PEOC. Are we to believe that he talked to the president for 20 minutes and didn’t find out about the supposed crash?
Cheney told Tim Russert of Meet the Press that he heard about the Pentagon “crash” once he was in the PEOC . This would mean that he was there after 9:38. What’s convenient about the commission’s version is it means that the exchange reported by Mineta could not have taken place – unless they were talking about the plane that supposedly crashed in the field in Pennsylvania.
And that’s exactly how the story goes according to the 9/11 Commission and an account by journalist Bob Woodward in The Washington Post in January 2002.
Both Woodward and the Commission turn the whole thing around and make it an exchange between Cheney and a young man about Flight 93, which was heading for Washington when it allegedly crashed. In this account, it was Cheney who wanted the plane stopped and it was the young man who kept hesitating.
As I said before, this isn’t believable. It contradicts Cheney’s statements to Russert that he was told of a plane headed for the White House shortly after 9:30. That could only have been Flight 77.
And the young man wouldn’t keep asking if the order still stands if the order was to shoot the plane down. They would simply have shot the plane down. But they didn’t. They didn’t shoot any planes down. Four planes were off course and out of communication but none was intercepted, let alone shot down (although many wonder about the debris field eight miles from the Shanksville field and believe that this indicates that Flight 93 was actually shot down).
Oh, I almost forgot. Mineta’s account of Cheney and the young man was omitted from the 9/11 Commission Report. And video of his testimony on the point is inexplicably missing from the Commission’s video archive.
http://vodpod.com/watch/4331011-richplanet-net-911-analysis-of-world-trade-centre-attacks
Will check it out. Thanks.
“Oh, I almost forgot. Mineta’s account of Cheney and the young man was omitted from the 9/11 Commission Report. And video of his testimony on the point is inexplicably missing from the Commission’s video archive.”
What else can I say? People, wake up. Who is the government (it’s supposed to be the people)? Then who are the ones who are able to twist and omit the truth; what should we call them?
Yes, the ideal of government doing the will of the people seems awfully far from reality. But I’m an eternal optimist. I keep believing that with enough awareness, and enough people who question things (as you are), there is hope to expose all of this. Thanks very much for your comment and for reading.
“And video of his testimony on the point is inexplicably missing from the Commission’s video archive.”
The video archives from C-Span seem to have been pulled: Are there any other sites that contain a full mirror of the archives?
This is something I don’t know. But I thank you for the suggestion. I’ll look into that. And if you get the answer in the meantime, feel free to write again.
911 Commission – Trans. Sec Norman Mineta Testimony
https://youtu.be/bDfdOwt2v3Y?t=17
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Do the families of those killed in the Pentagon on 9/11 know Cheney killed them? Just Asking.
I’m sure they don’t. But if one of my loved ones had been killed, and then I heard what Norman Mineta said, I’d certainly be demanding answers. He continues to repeat and confirm his account. Aren’t you curious what it was all about?
He is a damn traitor.
No argument from me there.
There is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points in Features also.
Keep working ,great job!
In case anyone has missed it, 9/11 is in the news briefly. A FOIA act has been successful in getting photographs from the National Archives released that show Cheney and the rest of the senior officials on the day of 9/11. I think the most telling photographs are the ones that show Dick Cheney sitting back in his office chair, kicking back with his leg and foot up on the desk, watching the burning WTC on TV. While the rest of the world is looking in shock and horror, he’s sitting there as if watching his master plan unfold.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/249147-new-photos-released-of-bush-cheney-from-9-11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGI5BmNd7AE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-5PKQTUz5o
So Wright, you publish these videos here for what purpose? Mineta’s testimony, even the assumption he held that there was likely a shoot down order for the plane coming in that is claimed to have hit the Pentagon. Since “the orders still stand” as per Chaney, it is obvious that the orders of NOT to shoot down the craft. There is no other rational conclusion to be reached here.
Since we all know you think the official story is true, you must have some take on this Mineta thing that is in opposition to this rational conclusion.
So WTF is that conclusion?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH7rGPXGicM
Well ain’t that just peachy Agent Wright! But as usual you are avoiding the question I just put to you.
https://youtu.be/B8lra7EjEUc
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https://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2015/06/10/win-converts-using-these-plane-hit-the-pentagon-talking-points-just-keep-repeating-its-so-divisive/#comment-32391
Swell Agent Wright, let’s keep it that way.
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@Adm Syed He is watching Bush making his speech in Florida and the WTC at 9.36. He is not in the PEOC.
There is some reconsidering going on over at 9/11 Blogger with this load of newly released 9/11 photos. One shows Cheney kicking back watching shit on the TV and apparently the TV time shows that Cheney was in his office when Mineta says he was in the bunker.
“apparently the TV time shows that Cheney was in his office when Mineta says he was in the bunker.”~Jimbo
Apparent to who Jimbo? Can you make out the time on the TV screen from the shot’s you’ve seen?
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The commenter said Cheney is watching on the office TV Bush’s speech at the school and the time of the speech APPARENTLY is when Mineta said he was in the bunker. Further, in the bunker were a series of clocks with world times and one person said perhaps Mineta was off by an hour looking at the wrong time zone clock, and APPARENTLY it is about an hour’s difference between Cheney’s and Mineta’s versions. But then if those ideas are too OCT there are commenters who say the photos are doctored.
http://911blogger.com/news/2015-07-24/frontline-releases-new-photos-aftermath-911-after-foia-request
The time inferences in the newly released photos match neither Mineta’s OR Cheney’s accounts of the timeline of their actions…
Either way, after having had 14 years to launder the images, I doubt that there was not an extremely calculated effort put in to edit out any photos that might harm the narrative, but also include and/or doctor some photos to create further confusion.
The photos seem to come from an analog camera (film), however their “creation date” in the EXIF data shows as “2001:09:11”. It is questionable that these negs have been processed and scanned on the day the “attacks” took place, but perhaps they are so organized that’s how they really roll in the white house, processing film while the “nation is under attack” … Either way, the fact that these are scanned from negative, and the fact that they are released as hi-res, kinda rules out the doctoring possibility, as it would be exponentially easier for any photoshop professional to spot any manipulation within the grain structure of the image.
The FOIA photos are not sequential.. And more importantly, They are not a full set. Which, at the very least, means that there are more images that we DON’T see than the ones they released.
Certain people are trying to create a timeline of the photos and that morning judging by the images visible on the screens of TV monitors. This is not a guaranteed method, since any of the visible imagery could just as well be the networks showing a certain scene a second, third or fourth time. So far, i have not come across any legible time displayed in any of the photos. I have no reason to think this was not done purposefully.
“The commenter said Cheney is watching on the office TV Bush’s speech at the school and the time of the speech APPARENTLY is when Mineta said he was in the bunker.”~Jimbo
I will repeat this from Lilaleo, as it is one of the first things I realized as well:
“Trying to create a timeline of the photos and that morning judging by the images visible on the screens of TV monitors. This is not a guaranteed method, since any of the visible imagery could just as well be the networks showing a certain scene a second, third or fourth time.”
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The only two clocks on the wall that have a differential of 1 hour are the zulu time at the top and the Nato HQ (brussels) at the bottom. For Mineta to have mistaken the time by one hour, he would have had to have thought that i all that he witnessed was happening around 2:30 pm. Which is not really believable.
The second clock from top shows local time (Washington DC), and the third NORAD HQ, which is Cheyenne mountain 2 hrs behind)
Although most 911 truth seekers and skeptics have clung to Mineta’s account, which at the very least cast some doubt on the official story, it is really not inconceivable that both accounts are incorrect or inaccurate… Or, worse, it might indicate that Mineta is not the goody two shoes that we all thought he was, and he is simply an agent of confusion.
Like most people, what i find most disturbing is how Cheney, second in command, in the absence of the president, is sitting at his desk with his leg up, watching both towers burn, with the body language of an office building night guard watching a rerun of Dukes of Hazzard.
The bottom line is, the FOIA photos are not sequential .
I think this whole gambit is a tempest in a thimble, and I don’t see Mineta’s testimony seriously challenged by any of this. None of these “new images” have any certain time or timeline, they don’t mean anything but what someone might want to read into them.
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