Bush Administration Had Knowledge of Specific 9/11 Targets
Evidence from the Case of United Airlines Flight 93
"If a plane wouldn't pay any
attention to instructions to move away from the city, as a last
resort our pilots were authorised to take them out. People say
that's a horrendous decision to make. Well, it is. You've got an
airplane full of civilians captured by terrorists and are you
going to shoot it down and kill all those Americans on board?
Would we have been justified in doing it? I think we would have.
As it turned out, we did not have to execute on that
authorisation. But there were a few moments when we thought we
might."
US Vice President, Dick Cheney
Daily Mirror 17 September
May 2002
The above remarks from Vice
President Cheney regarding the fourth
hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept 11 are
despite suggestions from some quarters that this plane was shot down by the military after the passengers staged a mutiny, although there were also suggestions of an in-flight
bomb. One passenger reported an explosion on board
over his cell phone.
This fourth plane had a delayed take-off of 40 minutes. It
appears to have been the only plane that was subject to a
concerted passenger revolt, and therefore the only one with some
improved chance of passenger and hijacker witness survival on the
day. It took
the Pentagon almost two hours to confirm whether the plane had
been shot down or not. However, according to one US newspaper report "Controllers
have also learned that an F-16 fighter closely pursued hijacked
United Airlines Flight 93 until it crashed in southwestern
Pennsylvania, the employee said. Although controllers don't have
complete details of the Air Force's chase of the Boeing 757, they
have learned the F-16 made 360-degree turns to remain close to
the commercial jet, the employee said. 'He must've seen the whole
thing,' the employee said of the F-16 pilot's view of Flight 93's
crash."
Another US press report states "An official at the Cleveland Air Traffic Control Center in Oberlin, Ohio, which tracked Flight 93 as it turned in the sky and tracked eastward from the Cleveland area, said 'no comment' when asked if there was any record of a second plane over the crash site. 'That's something that the FBI is working on and I cannot talk about,' said Richard Kettel, head of tower operations at the Cleveland center. He spoke shortly before the FBI announced it had no evidence of a second jet.". Controllers throughout the US have since said very little to the Press about the events of Sept 11, and those who have done so appear to have spoken only on condition of anonymity.
A missile strike would not necessarily destroy a plane but would cause it to crash. The Korean air liner brought down by Russian air to air missiles in 1983 had cockpit voice recordings by the crew for two more minutes after the sound of the first explosion was heard. Debris from the Sept 11 Pennsylvania aircraft was found between 6 and 8 miles from the crash site, consistent with the reports of an initial explosion. One local newspaper report stated that "authorities initially insisted crash debris could not have traveled over a mountain ridge more than eight miles from the crash". They later changed their view, with an FBI 'special agent' saying it was due to the 9 knot wind that day. Initially the FBI had said a shoot down was a possibility. The plane hit the ground at 10.10 am approximately 15 minutes after the President decided to give shoot down authority (on the basis of the Washington Post report 27 January).
The Washington Post 28 January 2002 confirmed that by Sept 12 the Bush Administration was suddenly producing intelligence reports which "specifically identified Capitol Hill and the White House as targets on Sept. 11" - presumably one of which the fourth plane may have successfully struck had it not been for its delayed take off.
However, those 'intelligence' reports were produced within around a mere 24 hours of the hijackings, despite the fact that as the planes prepared for take-off at the start of the previous day the intelligence services claimed to have had no specific information on them ('But for all [the Director of the CIA's] fears, intelligence officials could never pinpoint when or where an attack might hit...', Washington Post 27 January).
Indeed, all that reported communications with air traffic control appear to confirm regarding Flight 93's revised destination on Sept 11 is a statement by a hijacker announcing that 'we are going to turn back to the airport'. Moreover by 10.10 am on the 11th all the uninterviewed perpetrators were dead, and on the 12th itself neither the flight recorder nor the voice recorder had yet been recovered (the flight recorder was the first to be recovered at 4:20 pm on the 13th).
So on the day of the hijackings it was not even known, so it is claimed, which cities were to come under attack. A day later however, it appears, the US government was claiming that it suddenly had information on the precise buildings, never mind the towns, that were to be targets. In the case of Flight 93 this claim is made despite the fact that the plane concerned hadn't even managed to get beyond Pennsylvania, let alone as far as the outskirts of Washington.
So that's really not at all bad for a day's intelligence work in the circumstances.
It sure is a pity that the days, weeks and months of previous intelligence gathering prior to Sept 11 had apparently not been so informative, although it was still good enough for Pentagon staff to decide to cancel their own flights for Sept 11 'because of security concerns' according to Newsweek Magazine 24 September. It sure is a pity, too, that there have been no al-Qaeda cell busts in the US since Sept 11either. No, as the Director of the FBI Robert Mueller put it in a speech quoted in the Miami Herald 30 April 2002 ''In our [seven month] investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper -- either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere -- that mentioned any aspect of the Sept. 11 plot.''
So it rather looks like Sept 12 was just the one lucky day in the year for intelligence gathering.
Certainly this last minute 'intelligence' on additional targets released on Sept 12 would have provided very useful 'public-relations' cover if evidence of a US military shoot down subsequently came to light. However, given the general delays in scrambling fighter aircraft on the 11th, it would not have been necessary to even consider introducing this fall-back position had Flight 93 left the airport on time.
Nonetheless, even if deliberate delay of emergency response measures was taking place on Sept 11 there comes a point when you would have to scramble fighters if evidence of the obstruction was not to become too obvious. After the hit on the Pentagon even members of the public overseas following events live via the broadcast media were saying Flight 93 had to be 'taken out'.
However, for the purpose of bolstering post-attack support for the Bush Administration it would be much better from a PR 'no-fly-in-the-ointment' point of view if the plane had crashed of its own accord. According to the official line that's what happened to the plane.
NATURAL LAW PARTY WESSEX
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NATURAL LAW PARTY
WESSEX
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