To: sea_urchin who wrote (10019 ) 2/17/2005 11:11:42 AM From: GUSTAVE JAEGER Read Replies (1) | Respond to Re: ...it is conceivable that Cheney had not officially been appointed Commander in Chief and when approached by the generals he told them to wait until the Commander, himself, becomes available. MR. HAMILTON: Mr. Secretary, we're very pleased to have you here this morning. I understand your time is short and you'll only be able to spend a few minutes with us. We're grateful for the time that you're able to make available. It might very well be that we'll have some questions that we would want to submit to you in writing subsequently.MR. MINETA: And I will submit those to the Commission in writing.MR. HAMILTON: We thank you for that. I wanted to focus just a moment on the Presidential Emergency Operating Center. You were there for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the vice president. And when you had that order given, I think it was by the president, that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be controlled by terrorists, were you there when that order was given?MR. MINETA: No, I was not. I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?" And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?" Well, at the time I didn't know what all that meant. And --MR. HAMILTON: The flight you're referring to is the --MR. MINETA: The flight that came into the Pentagon.MR. HAMILTON: The Pentagon, yeah.MR. MINETA: And so I was not aware that that discussion had already taken place. But in listening to the conversation between the young man and the vice president, then at the time I didn't really recognize the significance of that.MR. HAMILTON: Let me see if I understand. The plane that was headed toward the Pentagon and was some miles away, there was an order to shoot that plane down.MR. MINETA: Well, I don't know that specifically, but I do know that the airplanes were scrambled from Langley or from Norfolk, the Norfolk area. But I did not know about the orders specifically other than listening to that other conversation.MR. HAMILTON: But there very clearly was an order to shoot commercial aircraft down.MR. MINETA: Subsequently I found that out.MR. HAMILTON: With respect to Flight 93, what type of information were you and the vice president receiving about that flight?MR. MINETA: The only information we had at that point was when it crashed.MR. HAMILTON: I see. You didn't know beforehand about that airplane.MR. MINETA: I did not.MR. HAMILTON: And so there was no specific order there to shoot that plane down.MR. MINETA: No, sir.MR. HAMILTON: But there were military planes in the air in position to shoot down commercial aircraft.MR. MINETA: That's right. The planes had been scrambled, I believe, from Otis at that point.9-11commission.gov ...I think you were there with the vice president. And when you had that order given, I think it was by the president, that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft... THINKS the order was given by the Prez! However, Secretary Mineta's testimony clearly casts the Vice President as the one in charge: There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president... in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief . The order to shoot down a commercial airliner full of US passengers flying over the US is not a banal event! USAF brass won't obey such an order merely on hearsay that it was allegedly issued by the President... Again, remember the USS Liberty precedent: RADM Geis wanted to be told by the Commander-in-Chief himself --that is, allowing him to tape-record the Presidential order....
