...
Given Mineta's own personal timeline:
- was at his DOT office several blocks away at or after 9:03l when UA175 crashed
- cancelled a meeting with the Belgian minister
- was briefed by his staff
- talked to American Airlines CEO on the phone
- talked to United Airlines CEO on the phone
- talked with White House staffers on the phone
- made himself aware that his own staff was setting up a crisis center elsewhere in the building
- packed his briefcase
- went downstairs to car
- rode across Washington to the White House
- witnessed massive evacuation of same
- was led to the Situation Room
- talked there with Clarke for several minutes
- was then escorted away many stairs down to PEOC
- set up office there (establishing a couple of phone lines)
it would have been very unlikely that he could have been there [at the PEOC] early enough [before AA77 was tracked and finally crashed into Pentagon].
...
According to Mineta's testimony to the 9/11 Commission,
as quoted in 911Myths, Mineta saw the crash of UA175 live on TV in his office:
Mineta said:
While Mr. Flaherty was briefing me, I watched as a large commercial jet flew into the second tower of the World Trade Center. At this point things began to happen quickly.
As we know, that crash was just before 9:03. But when did they at the DOT, and Mineta and his chief of staff, Flaherty, specifically, realize they actually saw a second plane crash?
Might depend on what channel Mineta watched.
According to Jane Garvey's interview with the 9/11 Commission, quoted and sourced in the same 911Myths article,
Jane Garvey said:
CNN was on in the Secretary's office.
Alright, now here is archive-org's archive of what CNN broadcast at that time:
http://archive.org/details/911/day/..._Live_This_Morning/start/13:00:00UTC/chan/CNN
Look at the second row of clips!
The second clip in that row starts with the time on the clock indicated as "8:02a CT". It switches to "7:0
3a MT" just as the plane comes into view from the right for a brief moment, as the clip timer goes from 0:04 to 0:05. There is a momentary black screen at the 0:06 mark - probably coinciding with the crash. So CNN showed the crash at 9:03:01 or 02 seconds on their clock. So there is a delay of a few seconds in their video signal. However, it seems the people speaking on CNN seem not to have seen the plane (something that Mineta later, in June 2006, claims to have seen - but I think that is unreliable) until later. It isn't until a 9:04:07, or the 14-seconds mark in the
fourth video, second row, that the newscaster says "perhaps a second plane was involved".
I'd go out on a limb that Mineta took at least as long until he came to the conclusion that something larger was afoot, and he should get into gear immediately. So that adds at least another full minute to the timeline.
