Newly published audio this week reveals that Vice President Dick Cheney’s infamous Sept. 11, 2001 order to shoot down rogue civilian aircraft was ignored by military officials, who instead ordered pilots to only identify suspect aircraft.
Far from sending fighters to chase after the hijacked aircraft, as Bush administration officials have repeatedly said they did, the new audio tapes paint a picture of bedlam and unpreparedness.
The families of United Flight 93 have repeatedly blocked the releases of the final half hour of tapes in this historic and tragic moment of American history.
Also, withheld from the audio released was a high-level meeting held by top administration officials, where they discussed continuity of government measures to be implemented if the president were to be killed or a mass casualty event were to occur.
In Cheney’s memoir, he claims to have ordered a staffer to hang up on that meeting when a technical glitch caused a degradation in audio quality. Instead of going directly there to participate in discussions about how to sustain the government, Cheney decided to watch television news.
9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean has said most of the investigation’s materials are classified for no apparent reason, and urged that the National Archives release the 9/11 files to the public as soon as possible. He’s also suggested that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tried to impede the investigation when it turned towards al Qaeda intelligence gathering methods.
(Source: RawStory.com and ABC-TV)
