In observance of September 11, 2001 each of the next 2 days will include a very small excerpt from the 'complete' 9/11 timeline (based on media accounts). Most of what you will read will not be common knowledge -yet it was reported in the media. Hyperlinks to the original media articles are included. The full blown (very detailed) timeline can be found at http://cooperativeresearch.org. We will continue today here:
President Bush is in a Booker Elementary School second-grader classroom. His chief of staff, Andrew Card, enters the room and whispers into his ear, “A second plane hit the other tower, and America’s under attack.” [New York Times, 9/16/2001; Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001; Albuquerque Tribune, 9/10/2002; Washington Times, 10/8/2002; ABC News, 9/11/2002] Intelligence expert James Bamford describes Bush’s reaction: “Immediately [after Card speaks to Bush] an expression of befuddlement passe[s] across the president’s face. Then, having just been told that the country was under attack, the commander in chief appear[s] uninterested in further details. He never ask[s] if there had been any additional threats, where the attacks were coming from, how to best protect the country from further attacks. ... Instead, in the middle of a modern-day Pearl Harbor, he simply turn[s] back to the matter at hand: the day’s photo-op.” [Bamford, 2002, pp. 633] Bush begins listening to a story about a goat. But despite the pause and change in children’s exercises, as one newspaper put it, “For some reason, Secret Service agents [do] not bustle him away.” [Globe and Mail, 9/12/2001] Bush later says of the experience, “I am very aware of the cameras. I’m trying to absorb that knowledge. I have nobody to talk to. I’m sitting in the midst of a classroom with little kids, listening to a children’s story and I realize I’m the commander in chief and the country has just come under attack.” [Daily Telegraph, 12/16/2001] Bush listens to the goat story for about ten more minutes. The reason given is that, “Without all the facts at hand, George Bush ha[s] no intention of upsetting the schoolchildren who had come to read for him.” [MSNBC, 10/29/2002] Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport is only three and a half miles away. In fact, the elementary school was chosen for the photo-op partly because of its closeness to the airport. [Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/12/2002] Why the Secret Service does not move Bush away from his publicized location that morning remains unclear.
9/11/2001 9:37 a.m.: Flight 77 Crashes into Reinforced Section of the Pentagon
The Pentagon explodes. [Source: Donley/ Sipa]
Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon. Approximately 125 people on the ground are later determined killed or missing. [North American Aerospace Defense Command, 9/18/2001; CNN, 9/17/2001; Guardian, 10/17/2001; USA Today, 8/13/2002; ABC News, 9/11/2002; CBS News, 9/11/2002; Associated Press, 8/19/2002; MSNBC, 9/3/2002] Flight 77 strikes the only side of the Pentagon that had recently been renovated—it was “within days of being totally [renovated].” [US Department of Defense, 9/15/2001] “It was the only area of the Pentagon with a sprinkler system, and it had been reconstructed with a web of steel columns and bars to withstand bomb blasts. The area struck by the plane also had blast-resistant windows—two inches thick and 2,500 pounds each—that stayed intact during the crash and fire. While perhaps, 4,500 people normally would have been working in the hardest-hit areas, because of the renovation work only about 800 were there...” More than 25,000 people work at the Pentagon. [Los Angeles Times, 9/16/2001]
Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Pentagon
9/11/2001(After 9:37 a.m.): Cheney Tells Bush to Stay Away from Washington
Having learned that the Pentagon had been hit, Vice President Cheney telephones President Bush, who is on his way to the Sarasota airport, and tells him that the White House has been “targeted.” Bush says he wants to return to Washington, but Cheney advises him not to “until we could find out what the hell was going on.” According to Newsweek, this call takes place in a tunnel on the way to the PEOC underground bunker. Cheney reaches the bunker “shortly before 10:00 a.m.” [Newsweek, 12/31/2001] The 9/11 Commission’s account largely follows Newsweek’s. He reaches the tunnel around the time of the Pentagon crash and lingers by a television and secure telephone as he talks to Bush. The commission has Cheney enter the bunker just before 10:00, but they note, “There is conflicting evidence as to when the vice president arrived in the shelter conference room.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Indeed, in other accounts, including those of Richard Clarke and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, Cheney reaches the bunker before the Flight 77 crash at 9:37 a.m. [Clarke, 2004, pp. 3-4; ABC News, 9/11/2002; 9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003 Sources: Norman Mineta, Richard A. Clarke] Regardless of Cheney’s location, as Cheney and Bush talk on the phone, Bush once again refrains from making any decisions or orders about the crisis. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Richard ("Dick") Cheney
9/11/2001 9:59 a.m.: South Tower of WTC Collapses
The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses. It was hit by Flight 175 at 9:03 A.M., 57 minutes earlier (see 9:03 a.m.). [Washington Post, 9/12/2001; MSNBC, 9/22/2001; Associated Press, 8/19/2002; ABC News, 9/11/2002; New York Times, 9/12/2001; USA Today, 12/20/2001]
Entity Tags: World Trade Center
9/11/2001(Between 10:00-10:15 a.m.): Bush and Cheney Said to Confer on Shootdown Orders, 9/11 Commission Doubts Their Account
According to a 9/11 Commission staff report, Vice President Cheney is told that a combat air patrol has been established over Washington. Cheney then calls President Bush to discuss the rules of engagement for the pilots. Bush authorizes the shootdown of hijacked aircraft at this time. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] According to a Washington Post article, which places the call after 9:55 a.m., “Cheney recommended that Bush authorize the military to shoot down any such civilian airliners—as momentous a decision as the president was asked to make in those first hours.” Bush then talks to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to clarify the procedure, and Rumsfeld passes word down the chain of command. [Washington Post, 1/27/2002] Cheney and Bush recall having this phone call, and National Security Adviser Rice recalls overhearing it. However, as the commission notes, “Among the sources that reflect other important events that morning there is no documentary evidence for this call, although the relevant sources are incomplete. Others nearby who were taking notes, such as the vice president’s chief of staff, [I. Lewis ‘Scooter’] Libby, who sat next to him, and [Lynne] Cheney, did not note a call between the president and vice president immediately after the vice president entered the conference room.” The commission also apparently concludes that no evidence exists to support the claim that Bush and Rumsfeld talked about such procedures at this time. [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004] Commission Chairman Thomas Kean says, “The phone logs don’t exist, because they evidently got so fouled up in communications that the phone logs have nothing. So that’s the evidence we have.” Commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton says of the shootdown order, “Well, I’m not sure it was carried out.” [9/11 Commission, 6/17/2004; New York Daily News, 6/18/2004] Newsweek reports that it “has learned that some on the commission staff were, in fact, highly skeptical of the vice president’s account and made their views clearer in an earlier draft of their staff report. According to one knowledgeable source, some staffers ‘flat out didn’t believe the call ever took place.’” According to a 9/11 Commission staffer, the report “was watered down” after vigorous lobbying from the White House. [Newsweek, 6/20/2004] An account by Canadian Captain Mike Jellinek (who was overseeing NORAD’s Colorado headquarters, where he claims to hear Bush give a shootdown order), as well as the order to empty the skies of aircraft, appears to be discredited. [Toledo Blade, 12/9/2001]
Entity Tags: Lee Hamilton, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Mike Jellinek, 9/11 Commission
9/11/2001 (After 10:06 a.m.): Bush, Told of Flight 93 Crash, Wonders If It Was Shot Down
President Bush is told that Flight 93 crashed a few minutes after it happened, but the exact timing of this notice is unclear. Because of Vice President Cheney’s earlier order, he asks, “Did we shoot it down or did it crash?” Several hours later, he is assured that it crashed. [Washington Post, 1/27/2002]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Richard ("Dick") Cheney
Quickies:
“The clandestine U.S. commandos whose job is to capture or kill Osama bin Laden have not received a credible lead in more than two years,” the Washington Post reports. “Nothing from the vast U.S. intelligence world…has led them anywhere near the al-Qaeda leader.”
The chief of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq recently filed an unusual secret report concluding that the prospects for securing that country’s western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there.
Iran is ready to consider complying at least temporarily with a U.N. Security Council demand that it freeze uranium enrichment, which can be used in developing atomic weapons, diplomats told The Associated Press on Sunday.
Al Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri released a videotape to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, underscoring the fact that he still has not been caught. Addressing the West, Zawahiri said, “Your leaders are hiding from you the true extent of the disaster.”
Afghanistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Said Jawad, “called yesterday for more military and economic help from the West, citing a spike in terrorist activity in the past six months and fears that it could spread.”
(Sources: WashingtonTimes, USAToday, FOXNews, Center For American Progress, US Senate website, 911 Commission Report, CBS News)
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