U.S. News: Pieces of the Puzzle - A top-secret conference call on September 11 could shed new light on the terrorist attacks
usnews.com
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By Chitra Ragavan and Mark Mazzetti
Not long after American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the north tower of the
World Trade Center, military officials in Washington initiated an "air-threat
conference call." Through the course of the day, participants included Vice
President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and senior
officials from the National Security Council (NSC), the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA), and the North American Aerospace Defense Command
(NORAD). Pentagon officials familiar with the events say the conference call
was broadcast over a loudspeaker inside the National Military Command
Center at the Pentagon, which Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were using as an emergency command post.
Back in May, members
of the independent
commission appointed
to examine the
September 11 attacks
were informed that the
conference call had
been recorded. But
Pentagon officials said
that they had yet to
transcribe the tapes.
The commission's
repeated requests over
the summer finally
resulted in the
Pentagon's creating a
classified transcript. It
was forwarded to the White House on August 6, U.S. News has learned, so
that administration officials could conduct an "executive-privilege review,"
required because of Cheney's participation in the call. The commission has
been promised access to the roughly 200-page transcript, sources say.
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