This whole issue of Mineta's account vs. Cheney's is really bizarre,
because the evidence appears to be all over the place.
IMHO, NONE of the stories are consistent!
Even the notion that UA93 can account for the discrepancy is a little far fetched:
How could anyone think the plane that hit the Pentagon was approaching at 10:15 ??
If NM arrived "5 or 6 minutes" before that time, where the hell was he for the previous 40 minutes (~9:25-10:05). (Richard Clarke said he sent NM to the PEOC bunker some time before 9:28).
Then there's the consideration that Richard Clarke's account is more in line with the Transportation Secretary's testimony.
Below is a fairly detailed summary that might be worth critiqueing and breaking apart for logical inconsistencies:
journalof911studies.com/letters/AdamMinetaClarkePaper.pdf
<<begin quote>>
...
From the September 14th, 2002 ABC News article “Moments of Crisis”, David Bohrer, a White House photographer, also explains that it was just after 9:00am when Cheney left for the PEOC. [ABC News:#52]
--- BEGIN ABC NEWS ACCOUNT
Just after 9 a.m. ET on Sept. 11, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney
was in his West Wing office when two or three agents came in and
told him "Sir, you have to come with us," according to David Bohrer,
a White House photographer who was there.
One of the agents "put his hand on the back of my belt, grabbed me by the
shoulder and sort of propelled me down the hallway," Cheney said.
They took him into an underground bunker known as PEOC, the
President's Emergency Operations Center.
…
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta already was in the bunker.
"Someone came in and said, 'Mr. Vice President, there's a plane out
50 miles,'" Mineta said.
Mineta conferred with Federal Aviation Administration Deputy Chief
Monte Belger.
"I said … 'Monte, what do you have?'" Mineta said. "He said, 'Well,
we're watching this target on the radar, but the transponder's been
turned off, so we have no identification.'"
As the plane got closer, air officials had picked up enough information to
believe the unidentified plane was headed toward Washington, perhaps
toward Ronald Reagan National Airport, near the Pentagon.
At 9:30 a.m. ET, at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, F-16 fighter pilots
scrambled into the air 105 miles — or 12 minutes — south of Washington.
"Our supervisor picked up our line to the White House," said Danielle
O'Brien, an air traffic controller at an FAA facility near Washington's
Dulles Airport, "and started relaying to them the information: 'We have an
unidentified, very fast-moving aircraft inbound toward your vicinity, eight
miles west, seven miles west.' And it went, '6, 5, 4.'"
"Pretty soon, he said, 'Uh oh, we just lost the bogey,' meaning the target
went off the screen," Mineta said. "So I said, 'Well, where is it?' And he
said, 'Well, we're not really sure.'"
‘Bang, the Airplane Hits the Building’
--- END ABC NEWS STORY
This version of the official story, being presented as fact one year later, puts Cheney and Mineta in the PEOC before the Pentagon impact. These series of events are presented here in chronological order and clearly establish that the Secrete Service brought Cheney to the PEOC, where he was told the plane was “50 miles out,” before the impact on the Pentagon.
This article also articulates that Mineta conferred with Federal Aviation Administration Deputy Chief, Monte Belger, who said that they were tracking the plane on radar. Even though the article admits this plane was the plane that hit the Pentagon, this could not have been either Phantom AA 11 or United 93. Had Monte been referring to phantom AA 11, he would not have been able to track the plane on primary radar, since it did not exist. Had he been tracking United 93 on primary radar, he would have realized the plane
crashed when it was 125 miles out, which would also establish that the military was aware of United 93 before it crashed. There is no other possible plane that Monte could have been tracking on radar on its way to Washington. He must have been tracking the plane that hit the Pentagon. The article explains that this conversation between Mineta and Monte occurred after the plane was 50 miles out, but long before the plane reached Washington since “officials had picked up enough information to believe the unidentified plane was headed toward Washington”. This conversation therefore must have occurred before 9:34 when the military supposedly first learned that AA 77 was lost.
The story of Cheney’s actions on 9/11 described in 9/11 Commission Report are contradicted by earlier statements by the Vice President himself. When Cheney appeared on Meet The Press with Tim Russert on September 16th, 2001, he gave a completely different account of events. Inconsistencies exist with Cheney’s acknowledgement that they had “access to the FAA.” Cheney does not describe the Secret Service rushing him to the PEOC with last minute news of AA 77, but instead claims he headed down to the
PEOC after receiving word of a “credible threat to Air Force One.” However, the most glaring contraction is that Cheney himself admits to being in the PEOC shortly before the Pentagon was struck, making no reference to his current supposed whereabouts of being in the tunnel on the way to the PEOC.
[Meet The Press:#53]
--- BEGIN MEET THE PRESS EXCERPT
VICE PRES. CHENEY: …The president was on Air Force One. We
received a threat to Air Force One--came through the Secret Service...
MR. RUSSERT: A credible threat to Air Force One. You're convinced of
that.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I'm convinced of that. Now, you know, it may
have been phoned in by a crank, but in the midst of what was going on,
there was no way to know that. I think it was a credible threat, enough for
the Secret Service to bring it to me. Once I left that immediate shelter,
after I talked to the president, urged him to stay away for now, well, I went
down into what's call a PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations
Center, and there, I had Norm Mineta...
MR. RUSSERT: Secretary of Transportation.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: ...secretary of Transportation, access to the FAA.
I had Condi Rice with me and several of my key staff people. We had
access, secured communications with Air Force One, with the secretary of
Defense over in the Pentagon. We had also the secure videoconference
that ties together the White House, CIA, State, Justice, Defense--a very
useful and valuable facility. We have the counterterrorism task force up on
that net. And so I was in a position to be able to see all the stuff coming in,
receive reports and then make decisions in terms of acting with it.
But when I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon's
been hit.
--- END MEET THE PRESS EXCERPT
It certainly seems strange that only five days after the attacks, Cheney would tell a completely different series of events than what was described in the 9/11 Commission Report and no explanation for the contradiction has ever been given.
...
<<end quote>>
It certainly seems strange that only five days after the attacks, Cheney would tell a completely different series of events than what was described in the 9/11 Commission Report and no explanation for the contradiction has ever been given.
...
#52 ABC News. Sept. 11’s Moments of Crisis, Part 2 – 9/11 Scrambling. By Charles Gibson. September 14th, 2002.
abcnews.go.com/onair/DailyNews/sept11_moments_2.html
#53 NBC. Meet the Press: The Vice President appears on Meet the Press with Tim Russert. Camp
David, Maryland. September 16th, 2001. whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/newsspeeches/speeches/vp20010916.html
