Yoo Issued an Opinion on 9/11 about Scrambling Planes
Still reading through the Yoo side of the Esquire transcript. At times, it’s very frustrating, since Esquire gave only Yoo’s side of the conversation, without the questions. But by putting this passage of the final article…
So let’s go back to that moment in the heat of battle. The way Yoo tells the story, he was sitting at his desk at the Justice Department when the first plane hit the World Trade Center. He had only been working there two months, hired to answer the White House’s questions on foreign-policy laws at a time when the biggest legal issue before him was a treaty about polar bears. When the order came to evacuate Washington and people began heading out into the streets, someone from the attorney general’s office told him to stick around.
Soon the questions came:
Is this a war?
Do we need to declare war?
Can we scramble planes?
And again: Is this a war?
Together with these two answers from the transcript…
Yes, that was a question [Can planes be scrambled to shoot down any remaining hijacked aircraft]. That was earlier: Can we use force?
I must have. I can’t tell you what I said. No, I don’t think that’s actually public. Can you use force in response? What kind of force? What are the standards that guide the use of force?
I think it’s fairly safe to say that sometime on 9/11, Yoo gave an opinion about whether or not the US could shoot down remaining hijacked planes.
Only he’s not going to tell us what that opinion said.
The opinion is relevant, of course, because one thing Dick Cheney attempted to hide from the 9/11 Commission was that he–without consulting George Bush–issued an order to shoot down any remaining planes. He even tried (unsuccessfully) to get the 9/11 Commission to reverse its finding that Cheney gave the shoot-down order before speaking to Bush.
Now, Yoo’s opinion almost certainly came after Cheney issued the order and after he told Bush he had made it. According to Libby’s notes, Cheney issued the order between 10:15 and 10:18; according to Ari’s notes, Cheney informed Bush of the opinion shoot-down order at 10:20. In other words, Yoo’s opinion probably didn’t contribute to Cheney’s extra-constitutional order.
Still, it’s notable that they went to Yoo for such an opinion, presumably after the fact. And it’s notable that this is yet another of Yoo’s opinions they haven’t released.
Update: fixed unclear chronology on shoot-down order per phred.
Interesting that the belief of someone (Addington/Yoo) is that the President’s powers are at their maximum during a war; and Addington’s boss got all excited and asked “Is this a war?”
It’s like Cheney was literally asking “Are we on go for Operation Executive Empire?”
I can hardly believe that only now am I wondering what planes, where?
What do you mean? You you don’t think it was a Flight 93 type situation?
Domestic or foreign targets? This being Cheney and all, it suddenly occured to me just now that perhaps we’ve all been presuming too much about what he really wanted to scramble and where.
(Nothing I’ve heard about Flight 93 makes me think that the story we’ve heard could not be substantially true, that the terrorists probably crashed the plane either in a tussle, or to keep from giving up control to the passengers.)
Don’t think for a second that Cheney wasn’t drooling over the prospect of
havinggetting to order a shootdown of a plane full of innocent passengers.That sounds like their wet dream of a Churchillian Moment.
I remember yelling at the TV that Bill Clinton (or Al Gore) would have insisted on being immediately returned to Washington to lead – instead of bouncing all over the midwest like a chicken – like Bush did that day. It seems clearer now that Cheney didn’t want him there, and that’s why he was all over the place.
Yep. I wonder if that was what he was trying to do when he shot that old man. He saw a low flying plane, not a flock of quail…..
I can see the Clancy novel now. New guy Yoo working in the bowels of the OLC gets the call on the fateful day. Scrambles to write an opinion that is so jumbled in it’s legal logic, but is so gloriously in synch with Cheney’s need for an after the fact justification that he sparks an interest. A true believer identified…
Darth is a tremendous judge of malleability of character, and I’m sure could be heard remarking “Who is this Guy? Keep and eye on him – he could come in handy later”.
Yoo was identified by Judge Laurence H. Silberman in 1992. Silberman got Yoo hired at Berkeley and a clerkship for Justice Clarence Thomas. Yoo was a plant who did what he was “hired specifically to do.”
http://dir.salon.com/story/new…..index.html
Nice catch on the Silberbum. Just when I thought the tin foil was getting a bit thick, I have a reason to add another layer.
Looks like Brock really needs to hose himself off – he’s been in bed with the puppetmaster.
How Silberman got Yoo hired at at Berkeley –
Gerald Parsky was appointed to the UC Board of Regents in June 1996. He has also served on the selection committees for the chancellors of the UCLA and Berkeley campuses. His daughter, Laura, is a graduate of UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law.
How in the world do you come up with that? Yoo was first hired at Boalt in 1993. Because Parsky has a daughter that – gasp- went to Boalt, they are both somehow magically responsible for Yoo? There are a lot of bogeymen Goopers in California, I’ve got news for you, Gerry Parsky is not considered necessarily among the worst of them by any of the people I know, despite some infamy.
Look up the ‘Parsky commission’. It will make much clear.
Short form: Parsky has pull.
I know exactly who Gerry Parsky is, and have for a long time. And you are correct, he “has pull”. Lots of it. I knew of (but have never met him personally or professionally that I know of) Parsky from his time at Gibson, Dunn, he was a rainmaker. But the fact of the matter is that he was not even appointed to the Cal Board of Regents until 1996 and was not elected chairman until 2004 (unanimously I might add). His daughter did not graduate from Boalt until 1995. But the claim was made that Gerry, who was not a part of the Board of Regents until 1996 and Laura, who would have been a 1L in 1993 when Yoo was hired at Boalt Hall, were the force that was responsible for Yoo’s hiring. This is just not the case, not do the facts even remotely support the allegation. All I am saying is, if you are going to make Parsky a bogeyman, get your facts straight. There are plenty of gripes that progressives and Democrats can, and should, have with Parsky; but, to borrow from a currently popular phrase, I don’t think he is who you think he is. He is not the all powerful for only evil purposes Dick Cheney of California. Hit him with what he has earned, not a bunch of ginned up crap.
Yes, it is a reach. Sometimes I put forward ideas to see if others can connect a dot that I don’t see. Silberman made a recommendation for Yoo to somebody at Berkeley.
My second suspect is Howard Leach. He was Chairman of the Board of Regents of the University of California in 1994. He was a Bush Pioneer in 2000 and was appointed Ambassador to France from 2001-2005.
But Parsky’s influence with Rove topped Leach in my mind.
Maryo2, that is a quite valid exercise; maybe just identify working theories a bit better in the future. To be honest, I had not heard or though of Parsky for a long time until reintroduced to the name in conjunction with the US Atty mess because of his vetting capacity on judicial nominations and then the bizarre situation surrounding Erwin Chemerinsky more recently. He sure has a lot of unusual power in regards to USA vetting, not aware of other arrangements in other places like that, but he did not appear to have been overly diabolical with that, nor in the UC Irvine deal. He is clearly a hard nosed partisan player on the other side; but I have seen little to place him in the uber-evil category. Aurora Capital actually checked out surprisingly clean back then; no idea what it would be now, but I don’t know of any change in that regard. All for what it is worth. It may just be that Yoo had the right “demographics”, not to mention a solid Harvard-Yale record, and was an attractive entry level hire in 1993.
Thanks for saying valid. I know I wear a lot of tin foil and don’t have training, time or resources to find all of the answers. It is not bad to have a hypothesis “shot down” (in keeping with this thread) because then I can stop wasting time on a dead-end and look elsewhere.
I came up with that by looking into the firing of US Attourneys a few months ago and looking into Larisa Alexandrov’s Bajagua articles:
“Randall Humm, was replaced in 2003 by DOJ attorney and liaison to the Office of the Vice President, Mary Neumayr, the Justice Department reversed its position abruptly.”
I began to think that there is something brewing in Southern California – something having to do with the drinking water. So I started looking into what Judges were being replaced and I found Laura Parsky who was groomed at DOJ to be given a position (look at the dates of her appointments):
http://www.signonsandiego.com/…..dges1.html
And then I read about Laura’s dad — and then this Yoo thing came up, and I think he was to be groomed in DC DOJ and then appointed as a judge in California, and that is the relationship to Gerald Parsky.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com…..nthal.html
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/…..038;page=7
So the earliest decisions on 9/11 were made by lawyers? That’s going to add a few more hits to Mr. Bush’s and Mr. Cheney’s reputations at decisive leaders… Hiding behind lawyers.
And “someone in the Attorney General’s Office told him to stick around?” And he did? When airplanes were raining down on Washington? Either that’s bravado, or stupidity, or “he was in on it.”
I love how Yoo always phrases these things as “Can we …” when we know that in every case, it was “We did …., Yoo come up with a legal justification”.
It just came to me! The reason Bush flew all over the country, to Omaha and other points unknown, after leaving FL on 9/11 was because of Cheney. Bush knew if he headed for D.C. Cheney would shoot Air Force One down. Cheney had a plan. Bush knew.
Oh, I love it! What a twist!
BTW, the 9/11 sites keep referring to Cheney’s NOT ordering action against a radar return that was heading for the Pentagon in the course of the exercise going on that day. What’s the best wisdom on that?
Let the bogies through to do their business and then shoot down Air Force One? Naah, Hollywood would never buy it.
EW, I’m not sure I’m reading this correctly, but either Yoo had his opinion typed up and sitting in a drawer waiting for an excuse to issue it, or he’s the fastest writer I’ve ever seen. Can you explain how it was possible for Yoo to have an opinion by 10:20? Would a simple verbal answer of “yes” really have been considered a legal opinion without having it formally written up first? Just curious…
Ah nuts. It should say (and now does, thanks) “Cheney informed Bush of the shoot-down order.”
The point being that Yoo almost certainly issued the opinion AFTER Cheney gave the order (10:17), and informed Bush (10:20).
Thanks EW, that makes more sense to me now : )
Maybe this 9/11 moment (if it actually existed) solidified Yoo’s ability to author memos and send them directly into the White House bloodstream without review by his superiors (Bybee, I think) or the Attorney General?
I think it was Jack Goldsmith’s book that mentioned something about Yoo’s special relationship with the WH and how his stuff did not get reviewed up the chain…
This bit from the same Esquire batch that TPM highlights, i.e. Yoo on impeachment of Clinton and Bush is marginally interesting too.
I find Yoo’s comments strange. It seems self-evident that the President could have invoked emergency powers in order to respond proportionally to the perceived threat, based on the then best available evidence about what happened, who did it and why. Ironically, that would be a reasonable extrapolation of his Article II powers. The invocation of emergency power would have been sustainable for several days or weeks — until circumstances were again secure enough to seek any required legislation or orders from Congress or the courts.
What’s missing is that those powers would have been the President’s. Cheney’s ambitions aside, he is not President. He is not co-President. He is an executive branch employee on the public payroll, an understudy who has essentially no authority unless and until the President is unable or unwilling to perform his lawful duties.
The President was immediately available 24/7 throughout the actual or potential crises posed by the attacks on 9/11. He was traveling thousands of miles away from the actual and likely targets of attack. He was accompanied by hundreds of senior and ancillary staff, his usual armed security detail, and the best, most reliable and secure telecommunications equipment that money can buy.
There would have been no legal basis for the Vice President to make any decisions — unless the President had given up his powers. Conceivably during rest or sleep periods, which for most sentient beings would have been rare during the 48 hours immediately after that attack, he could have delegated authority to act. But I think most of the important or questionable decisions would have been made in that first 24-36 hours.
But it appears that Cheney did take command for extended periods and failed to inform the President before and possibly after he made decisions. The most likely hypothesis that requires investigating is that Bush, Captain Queeg, froze and Cheney illegally assumed de facto control. Legal, political and ego considerations dictated that Bush secretly ratify Cheney’s actions. That seems a logical explanation and appears to be an arrangement that hasn’t changed since 9/11.
Grace under pressure, responding effectively when all about you is chaos, is the single most important leadership trait expected of a top executive, whether it is responding to the poisoning of a company’s flagship consumer product, to a terrorist bombing of a federal building or a foreseeable natural disaster that inundates one of America’s great cities.
George Bush has been called upon repeatedly to meet such challenges. He repeatedly failed to meet them. Time and again, he ignored the problem, “delegated” authority to his too-ready subordinate, or just hoped that someone else would solve the problem so that he wouldn’t have to.
Mr. Bush defined down his role to looking good and “feeling optimistic”, pretty much what he’d brought to the party since high school. For all intents and purposes, he has changed places with his Vice President without telling anyone and without expecting there to be consequences. The MSM, imagining that they were reporters ignoring JFK’s sexual dalliances (a tragically flawed analogy), looked the other way and let it pass. After all, Dick Cheney is good at his job, isn’t he?
OT, but very interesting interview with a soldier in military intelligence on Democracy Now. She saw the Palestine Hotel on a list of targets before the incident in which journalists were killed. She also eavesdropped on journalists and NGO’s like Red Cross, etc. There is some interesting stuff on when they stopped caring about minimization of conversations that included identified Americans.
http://www.democracynow.org/20…..cer”
sorry, I have great difficulty getting my links to work.
I just found this written in 2004, and it is interesting because it relates to a prostitute talking to the FBI office in New York and to wiretapping.
“A prostitute who worked for a madam named Judy Krueger had an Arabic client who told the call girl about the plans his terrorist group had, including the hijacking of planes and the WTC. After her “date” with the Arabic client, the girl called her madam with the terrifying information. The madam decided they should tell the police, which they did. The local police decided that this was a matter for the FBI, so they sent the call girl and the madam to the local FBI office.”
http://www.tediumshift.com/bre…..20Sept.pdf
Against All Enemies always struck me as an interesting title for a book focussed on that period, coming as it does from the phrase in the generic federal oath of office in which one swears so to defend the Constitution.
I wonder who the career fellow is. From the transcript:
“My superiors in the Justice Department. There was a career fellow who was sort of in charge. Someone in the attorney general’s office.”
And then there is this about Ashcroft – “It would be crazy for me to make any kind of significant decision on the behalf of the attorney general. These decisions don’t mean anything unless the attorney general agrees with it. And so whether there’s a war or not, that’s a decision for the attorney general to make. …
Oh yeah, they [Alberto Gonzales and David Addington] had the right to ask us questions. But we had to tell the AG we had been contacted, what they asked, what our initial thinking is. But the AG’s office had to approve every piece of advice we gave them. “
Maryo2 @23:
er, really? It’s been a year since I took ConLaw, but I could have sworn that was a decision for the CONGRESS. What does this guy Yoo teach again?
I know, I know, the President has all due power to respond to immediate threats yadda yadda yadda, and someone flying planes into the Pentagon certainly qualifies as an immediate threat. But it ain’t a war until Article 1 says so.
It’s been extremely well document in hundreds of books, and 35 of the best ones on my shelf that the US performed as a Banana Republic during the months that were the prelude to 911–Condi Rice was pathetic, is pathetic, and will always be–she’s the person in a government spotlight whose nothing more than an empty suit with shoulderpads and a “speech.”
Sybel Edmunds was ground into pixie dust by Bushies on the D.C. Circuit and gutless Bushies on the S. Ct. who are cowed and compliant and unable to muster 4 measley cert. votes to give Sybel her day in court.
States Secrets forevah yall! How’s that workin’ out in the Banana Republic and it’s Banana Federal Appellate Judiciary? Not so well huh?
Let’s take a closer look at the sophisticated US with its plethora of alphabet agencies most DOJ attorneys can’t even name who was about as prepared as a group of Brownies to respond to 911 and whose President and Vice President were probably less prepared than a random selection of third grade Brownies to cope with 911. Talk about calls at 3AM–try “The Little Goat” when you’re so flumoxed you want to pee in your pants but can’t right Bushie?
From James Bamford’s A Pretext for War
First few pages…
NORAD, Strategic Air Command were in complete chaos and panic, and no book I’ve seen documents the details better.
Bush was in the right place at the right time. I don’t mean the Presidency. Attorney Sandra Day O’Conner put him there. I mean the classroom where he was–Sandra Kay Daniels’ Second Grade Class. He belonged there then; he belongs there now.
This is important commentary and has been documented from James Bamford who formerly worked for CIA, produced for ABC’s World News Tonight and wrote cover stories for NYT Magazine, WaPo Mag, and LA Times Mag.
Bamford writes:
I don’t know of any book that follows the transcripts of a completely panicked NORAD, the F-16 pilots, the FAA, the NSA, or the entire defense command and response apparatus of the U.S. better. And they were totally fucked, totally panicked, and completely unprepared and uncoordinated. And it showed. The 911 Commission barely scratched the surface or covered this in their report/book and many other aspects because they didn’t want to.
At several points in the NORAD control room there were supervisors yelling “Oh God! What do we do now?
Oh yeah, Karl Rove–that Karl Rove–brave enough to yammer to Fox and Time but scared shitless to appear before Conyers’ completely feckless HJC was on hand to do exactly nothing at the second grade classroom. He’s the one giving incisive “advice” to Obama in the form of attacks from his perches at Fox and Time.
you forgot the part where the flight controler’s transcripts were confiscated and destroyed
why the hell would those be destroyed?
NORAD watched commercial airliners do you turns in the sky for 45 minutes and did absolutely nothing
not gonna happen
and while under attack, and we know we are under attack, not only does the president continue with his scheduled appearance, he hangs out at that very same venue for 45 frigging minutes
at a publicized venue
when we know as a fact we are being bombed at political structures
how on earth would the SS protocol be to NOT spirit the president to an undisclosed location?
what the frig is THAT?
YOU CANNOT TELL ME THEY THOUGHT THE PRESIDENT WAS AT RISK
they knew as a fact (somehow) that the president’s PUBLICIZED location was safe from attack
now how on earth could they possibly know that?
how on earth?
Correction–Rove is a Newsweek “opinion contributor.”
here’s “notable”
yoo happened to be “coincidentally” hired just before the “surprise” attack on september eleventh
that’s what’s “notable
you know, that “surprise” that everyone knew was comming, the one where the cia was running around with “their hair on fire”, the one clark warned about, tennet warned about and the one that the president was personally briefed, chased down to demonstrate the severity of the warning
that’s what’s “notable”, that yoo just “happened” to be hired right before that and just so “happened” to issue an opinion to cheney
quite a bit of serendipity there
or not
Is it possible that Bush was “off the wagon” and Cheney knew it? This did not happen far from his pretzel incident. And was this perhaps what Cheney was “waiting” for? That moment in time, when he could begin the next phase of his war time plan?
Of course anything is possible, but an awful lot of things lined up…Bush’s long vacation schedule, Bush’s bruised face stands out because it is extremely rare. In your office how many of your higher execs have had massive facial bruising without any car accident??
I am just saying… there is more to this story. Maybe that’s the “secret” that we pick up on. Or maybe they knew it was coming, picked Bush because of his “problem” knowing that he would be malleable. Who knows? We may never know but the look on Bush’s face as he read to those children did not fit with my gut. I don’t know what it meant, but there is an incongruency about it.
what do you mean “bruised face”
do you have a picture or link to that”
I have never heard the referance before
There was a West Wing episode in which Josh tells a White House staff member to avoid using the forbidden word ‘recession’ by substituting it with an innocuous word such as ‘bagel.’ They cruise the hallways talking about the ‘bagel.’
Perhaps life imitates art and ‘pretzels’ are actually the WH way of referring to beer bottles.
While I am the first to ridicule 9/11 conspirancy theories,
there is a reasonable case to be made that United 93 was shot down.
so, pray tell, why do you think the president was not spirited away from his advertised location?
ss simply not doing their jobs?
so let’s lool a t those sonspiracy theories yet again, I just took this quote from firedoglake and it’s a doozy;
that information was gleemed from the pentagon docu dump researching into the generals for hire propaganda schene
now, tell me yet again you don’t believe 9/11 was the product of a conspiracy
Yea I believe that shithead Rumsfeld would make some statement like that. Although I couldn’t imagine the context that would allow anyone to get away with it.
But as far as a conspiracy goes, I think that we have to define the said conspiracy at least a bit. I doubt that the administration had anything to do with planning or arranging the attacks. But being aware of comming attacks and enabling them by doing nothing, is something that at least Cheney, if not all of the Neocon Cabal are capable of. To use 9/11 as means to install their regime, is truly beyound the pale. Boy George, nah, he’s such a fool I doubt that they would even let him in on it. They just sent him down to the school in Florida to read, “My pet goat.” I’m a sucker for conspiracy theories, but this one is out there. Who the hell would try something like this? But then who would attack Iraq for imagined WMD?
how do you suppose the president wasn’t spirited to a safe location by the ss when we knew we were not only attacked, but our domestic defense is breached
how do you suppose that happened, what scenario do you think made it possible for the president to continue to his publisized location?
me sorry, this is not possible
Your points are well taken. Can you imagine the amount of complicity that would be involved to pull something like that off? The conspiritors would have to be limited to a very few. Cheney and Rumsfeld of course (they have history.) But who else would be arrogant and foolish enough to even attempt it?
Little bits and pieces seem to be trickling out lately. Maybe next year more will be revealed, Fitz’s indictments not withstanding. I look forward to January 20, 2009. And hope that you are wrong about this November’s lack of elections.
far fewer then you might think, all that really had to happen is agencies deliberately not given orders to act, in effect, put the country in sleep mode
here’s something very few people point out;
clinton was iven an almost identical pdb, if you read his you might think the two were the same report written from two differant authors, I forget the portion of the 9/11 report but I believe page 218 sticks in my head right now, will come back to post the actual page
in any event, clinton put the country on high alert, all agencies were coordinated with what to look for and actions to take
the event was avoided
bush had the same report and he stood down, he took vacation, cheney took control norad
there was NO failure of our inteligence, we wnew precisely what was about to occur, we were told when, where, how, who, the weapons, the actual buildings
everyone knew it was going to happen, their hair was on fire
the president took vacation, cheney took control of norad and I forget which administration official, ashcroft comes to mind, but whoever it was stopped flying commercial
go figure
there are very few that need to be involved in this lack of action, very few
the only difficulty I have is with the ss, I cannot see the scenario where they were told what was going to happen so how were they convinced not to spirit the president away
that is my only difficulty with the entire conspiracy, I imagine the president somehow gave the direct order to proceed to scheduled appearance however they would have had to be in contact with their headquaters and I cannot believe headquaters would sign off on it
the ss is the key here, we really need testimony from those officers to finally put a period at the end of this chapter
here’s a referance to the clinton pdb from media matters
it is really impossible to come away with any other conclusion that this was indeed a conspiracy, they even knew the president’s publicly marketed location was absolutely secure
how could they possibly know that?
yea, there appears to be lots of coordination and even more
instances of coincidence, than luck would allow. With so few a players as you suggest, it may be a long time til the wheels fall off the wagon and this thing unravels. Cheney and the Neocons are a hardcore bunch, but when their carefully laid plans turn to shit, they are sure quick to point the fingers at one another. The buck stops at Cheney though, and whether he spends the remainder of his days in a black hole in the Hague or the States, makes little matter to me. I’ll sleep like a baby.
And here’s Media Matters coverage of the Transition Team failures from the Bush side…Rice failed.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200609260006
I tend to agree with Jerry on this, considering the Bush-Cheney gang’s ability to fuck up two car funerals, as demonstrated in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, North Korea, et al. Not to mention relations with one-time allies.
Bush had a severly bruised face after what was reported as a pretzel choking incident. At the time severly doctors shared opinions that most folks do not bang their faces on table or floors with enough force to do this type of damage because choking is a slow asphyxiation. That means choking people have time to put their hands out before they go unconscious.
Here’s a picture of Bush’s face after his choking incident. I think it’s also noteworthy that our beloved commander had another bruised face when he fell off his bike, and another bike accident when he hit a cop.
I mean, come on…if it quacks like a duck??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z44xlov1Rag
Damn. Pop quiz today
Don’t have a lot of time to find all my links and hang around, but here goes …
EW:
John Yoo is a moron – but you knew that.
John Yoo would not have been in any position to give anyone his opinion about what should or should not be done in the event of a hi-jacking, and Dick Cheney should never have been anywhere near the military command. The Pentagon is a very capable organization.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction CJCSI 3610.01A Aircraft Piracy Hijacking and the Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects
http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/j…..10_01a.pdf
Background here
http://www.emperors-clothes.co…..dict-1.htm
http://www.tenc.net/indict/indict-2.htm
http://www.emperors-clothes.co…..dict-3.htm
President Bush knew he was not a target the morning of September 11th, 2001.
Before he even arrived to that school in Sarasota, one plane had already crashed into the WTC. The President’s Secret Service detail has direct communications with the FAA. At the time that Bush was sitting in that classroom, the FAA thought there were as many as 8 hijacked planes all over the country. Bush’s visit to that school for the photo op was public information and the location was around 5 miles from an international airport. Bush and his Secret Service detail were so confident that the President of the free world was not a target that morning that they were willing to sacrifice a school full of children to prove that point and continued to allow the President to stay in an unsecured location.
Even after the second plane hit and Andy Card leaned over to tell the President this news, his lack of curiosity and general demeanor tells us all we need to know.
At the very least, the President’s Secret Service detail on 9/11 in that Sarasota school, should be brought up on charges of gross criminal negligence for not removing the President of the United States from a public location and thereby endangering his life and the continuity of our government while under attack.
9/11 was an inside job.
Don’t even get me strated about the Norman Mineta testimony about how he described the plane coming into the Pentagon…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDfdOwt2v3Y
Watch it for yourself.
Norad Guy: The plane is 50 miles out, the plane is 40 miles out, the plane is 30 miles out, the plane is 20 miles out, the plane is 10 miles out…Does the order still stand Mr. Vice President.
Cheney: Yes, you haven’t heard anything to the contrary.
So what was the order? The only thing that makes sense is that the order was to let the plane hit it’s target otherwise I’m sure we would have heard some heroic story about some fighter pilot who just couldn’t get to the plane in time to shoot it down. And if they knew that a plane was on it’s way towards DC, why were there no evacuation orders given out to people at the Pentagon, the Capitol and the White House.
Jesus people, use your frickin brains!!
How about we talk about the pilot who flew the plane into the Pentagon using top gun maneuvers yet his instructor says he could barely fly a prop plane. Nothing makes sense except an inside job. How did debris from Flight 93 in Penn end up 8 miles away from the crash site? Look it up.
How long did it take for our military jets to intercept Payne Stewart’s plane?
bingo
I thought I was the only person who thought of that “anamoly” but obviously not
he knew and the SS knew as a fact the president was not a target
this is a fact, there are no two ways, no excuse other then they knew there was no threat to his known location
Hear, hear!
Look, I don’t know why he kept falling down, but the bottom line is that our commander in chief bruised his face significantly in January 2002, then again in May of 2004, and then hit a cop with his bike in England in Oct 2005. Two incidents of signficant facial bruising. I know it doesn’t prove anything. But I don’t know any human being who has bruised their face by falling down, but for my husband when he was drinking. Look it at the very least suggests some form of physical incapacitation.
I am just suggesting that maybe Cheney had considered this possibility because of another problem…maybe he was ready to step in because they all knew that Bush had a problem.
VP Cheney’s order to shoot down civilian aircraft occurs after airlines passengers start fighting the terrorists. Case in point, United Air Flight 93.
Flight 93 is the anomaly on 9/11, because the passengers fought back. By 10am they were hearing via cellphone about the terrorist attacks, with civilian aircraft, on New York’s World Trade Center Twin Towers.
The 9/11 Commission Report (Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorirst Attacks Upon The United States) records the actual time of the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 as 10:03:11 in a field in Shanksville, PA. Maybe this detail was not widely known in real time even inside the White House shelter where VP Cheney was playing president on that September 11th morning, 2001.
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My question:
Even if Cheney wanted the terrorist attacks to succeed, why would Cheney care about flight 93 passengers fighting back and potentially foiling Cheney’s new Pearl Harbor? Afterall, Cheney’s new Pearl Harbor had already occurred by this time as Atta and Al-Shehhi had already crashed their hijacked planes into the Twin Towers.
My answer:
Taking out civilian aircraft after 10am (now that the passengers are fighting back) only makes sense if Cheney wants to prevent capture of terrorist Jarrah and his henchmen, and if Cheney wants to avoid the subsequent distractions of trials (and pre-trial discovery) that would ensue if Jarrah et al survived the hijacking.
And oh ya, maybe Cheney ordered the shootdown to protect Americans.
Not that it should particularly surprise me, but I’m having trouble putting some of the pieces of fact in this thread together. The one that’s on top of the mind just now is this: If Yoo rendered Dick an insta-opinion about shooting down jetliners-turned-missiles that were filled with civilians, and we have one plane on the ground short of its target and another plane on the ground inside its target, then we have a few possible scenarios: 1) Opinion sez OK To Shoot Down; result 1A opinion moot b/c no shooting happened; result 1B opinion relied on, action taken, United 93 secretly shot down. 2) Opinion sez Not OK To Shoot Down, result being the accepted story: U93 crashed for other reasons, Pentagon hit. 3) Opinion sez OK Not To Shoot Down, result being Pentagon is hit but no liability attaches to Dick + Co. Hadn’t thought of #3 before, but actually it reads as plausible, and might explain the “order still stands?” part.
OT-on the deep corruption of condi’s state department in a hearing of Senate Democratic Committee yesterday.
http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/ (with video)
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/…..n-crocker/ (with video)
http://www.npr.org/templates/s…..d=90378761 (AP)
That’s not the only reason it’s frustrating. Yoo’s thought is very hard to follow. He sort of mixes history, his own history, the law, the Constitution, his mentors all together. While he’s articulate, his logic is vague, anecdotal, and in spite of his disclaimers, contrarian. He tells us of all the research he’s done, but it’s hard to see how it informed his conclusions. Yoo, himself, is frustrating, independent of the format…
I’m guessing Yoo got all mixed up and that explains the Global War on Polar Bears.
You know what really strikes me as pathetic?
That the leadership of this country had to consult a single f*cking academician of a lawyer to make a decision this momentous and this urgent.
Something is seriously wrong here, and many more threads need to be pulled.
bmaz (42) — Parsky Commission and Parsky himself are likely not involved in seating of Yoo…but they might have something to do with why Yoo remains employed to this date.
Oh, now that is more than possible. Don’t know that it is probable, but certainly possible. That was not, however, the original statement I took issue with. If we are to decry all the dishonest, ill informed and downright malicious things said about people on our side, like Soros for example, we should condone the same thing against the other side. Like I said, I don’t know Parsky, but I researched Aurora Capital once back several years ago for an investment banker I help out every now and then in relation to Aurora’s proposed takeover of a mechanical parts company. The report I got from numerous people in SoCal I know and respect was that Parsky is fairly Gooper, but a pretty stand up guy and that Aurora Capital was pretty solid. All I am saying is tar him with, you know, things that are true; that’s all.
bmaz, you make an excellent point – lord knows there’s plenty of factual, provable stuff to hit ‘em with, we should stick to that.
OT – last night I made a run up to the USC campus (off the I-10 near downtown LA) after work. We went to see a family friend of my SO do her Masters thesis performance (she is in their Opera program). It turns out that traffic isn’t quite the nightmare I had anticipated – we did 110 miles through the belly of the beast starting at 4:45 in two hours. (maybe everyone stayed home yesterday?)
Late enough in the day to miss the worst of it, and a lot more people are not driving these days. (May have something to do with needing second mortgages to fill the tanks on their SUVs.)
I am thinking he rigged some kind of Asteroids laser blaster on the front of his rig….
You’ll recall we had this discussion when EW had her speaking engagement in Santa Monica… regarding what it would be like driving up from SD and crossing the great satan at that time of day… good to know it’s doable.
PJ – where are you?
Semi-OT, working way through interview
It is interesting how Yoo said that he wanted to be a lawyer because of the way Bork was treated and how his own views on the separation of powers are so similar to Bork’s. Courts should have very little responsibility and Congress should have most of the responsibility. His statements about how Congress had no spine are in accord with what many of the commenters here think.
You emphasize the shootdown order because it was what prompted Cheney et al. to scramble for legal opinions, but I think the real story is John Yoo working on polar bear treaties at one moment and telling Cheney things Cheney wanted to hear in the next. It looks like Cheney was trying to cover his ass for pulling a Haig on 9/11 and found himself a nice, compliant lawyer who would justify anything and everything they needed.
Cheney’s usurpation of authority on 9/11 started a chain of events that ended with Abu Ghraib and the U.S sanction of detainee torture.
And why did Cheney need to usurp power and start throwing his weight around? Because George Bush kept himself out of the loop time and again on 9/11. He stayed in the classroom. He stayed at the school. He kept giving speeches. And meanwhile, people were waiting on him to get connected, to be in charge, to be available for the big decisions. Before the shootdown order came, Cheney had tried twice to get hold of the President in the previous hour and had to wait interminable minutes to do so.
When the call came to shoot down or not, Cheney forewent trying once again to get hold of the President and just made the decision. Again he was asked and again he made the decision. That’s when Josh Bolten told him to contact the president and confirm the order.
In other words, Cheney could have made the decision provisionally (Act as if the answer is Yes.), and then started immediately to try and contact Bush. He didn’t. He made the decision and the room watched as he did not pick up the phone. He was asked again and he made the decision again, and he did not pick up the phone again. And finally Josh Bolten said, “Pick up the phone.”
And so John Yoo found himself at the beck and call of Cheney later that day, answering all sorts of questions about use of force and scrambling planes.
Someone should ask him if he was asked about the legality of the Vice President making those kinds of decisions and if so, what was his answer?
What a chronology! Here are just a few time points in re shootdown, from here and here at the Timeline:
10:10 a.m. September 11, 2001: Langley Fighters Told They Cannot Shoot Down Hijacked Planes
“Authorization to shoot down hijacked civilian aircraft only reaches NEADS at 10:31 a.m. (see 10:31 a.m. September 11, 2001) Even then, the authorization is not passed on to the pilots. (9/11 Commission 6/17/2004)”
(Between 10:10 a.m. and 10:15 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Vice President Cheney Is Told that Flight 93 Is Still Heading to Washington, Orders It Shot Down
“The Secret Service, viewing projected path information about Flight 93, rather than actual radar returns, does not realize that Flight 93 has already crashed. Based on this erroneous information, a military aide tells Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the White House bunker that the plane is 80 miles away from Washington. […]”
This is the order that Joshua Bolten overheard and questioned, prompting Cheney to call Bush.
(10:10 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Military Put on High Alert
That’s DEFCON-3. This was ordered by Rumsfeld in consultation with CJCS Myers. Or by just Myers. Or maybe Bush.
10:14 a.m. September 11, 2001: Vice President Cheney Gives Engage Order to NMCC to Relay to Fighters
“According to the 9/11 Commission, beginning at this time, the White House repeatedly conveys to the NMCC that Vice President Cheney confirmed fighters were cleared to engage the inbound aircraft if they could verify that the aircraft was hijacked. However, the authorization fails to reach the pilots.” My emph.
10:18 a.m.-10:20 a.m. September 11, 2001: Cheney Calls Bush; Receives Shootdown Authorization, According to 9/11 Commission
Or maybe he got it as early as 9:38, depending on who you believe.
[Coda below]
Coda:
(10:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001: Missing Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Finally Enters NMCC
[cough]
10:31 a.m. September 11, 2001: NEADS Does Not Pass Along NORAD Shootdown Order
“According to the 9/11 Commission, NORAD Commander Major General Larry Arnold instructs his staff to broadcast the following message over a NORAD chat log: “10:31 Vice President [Cheney] has cleared us to intercept tracks of interest and shoot them down (see 10:14 a.m. September 11, 2001) if they do not respond, per CONR CC [General Arnold].” NEADS first learns of the shootdown order from this message. However, NEADS does not pass the order to the fighter pilots in New York City and Washington. NEADS leaders later say they do not pass it on because they are unsure how the pilots should proceed with this guidance. (9/11 Commission 6/17/2004) The pilots flying over New York City claim they are never given a formal shootdown order that day.”
(10:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m.) September 11, 2001: Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Works on Rules of Engagement for Fighter Pilots, Too Late to Be of Any Use
“After he finally arrives at the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon (see (10:30 a.m.) September 11, 2001), Donald Rumsfeld’s primary concern, according to the 9/11 Commission, is “ensuring that the [military fighter] pilots [have] a clear understanding of their rules of engagement.” (9/11 Commission 7/24/2004, pp. 44) Rumsfeld later recalls, “It was clear they needed rules of engagement telling them what they should and should not do. They needed clarity. And there were no rules of engagement on the books for this first-time situation where civilian aircraft were seized and were being used as missiles.” By this time, the president has supposedly already given authorization for the military to shoot down hijacked aircraft (see (Between 10:00 a.m. and 10:15 a.m.) September 11, 2001), and Dick Cheney informs Rumsfeld of this over the air threat conference at 10:39 (see 10:39 a.m. September 11, 2001). Rumsfeld says that, “Throughout the course of the day,” along with acting Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers, he “returned to further refine those rules.” (9/11 Commission 3/23/2004) As journalist Andrew Cockburn will later remark though, Rumsfeld’s work on the rules of engagement “was an irrelevant exercise for he did not complete and issue them until 1:00 p.m., hours after the last hijacker had died.” “
And on and on pointlessly into the afternoon. It’s enough to make you want to rend you garments, and I really mean that. But I’ll tell you one thing: it undermines the planned chaos argument and bolsters the case for gaping maws of incompetence, however baleful the intent.
Taxpayers imagine that they are providing the President with the most secure, reliable and immediate telecoms capability in the world. Among other paraphernalia, he travels with the “football”, held by an aide never more than a stated distance away from the President. Those telecoms are how he’s supposed to keep in touch with those telling him why he might need to use it, those who might counsel him yea or nea, and those to whom he would need to give orders should he decide to use it.
The military and other staffs involved in that process train, via war games and other exercises, in using that equipment. They have decision trees that tell them who to involve, when and in what order. They include primary actors and substitutes to be contacted should a primary player be unreachable for any reason. It’s what these guys do.
The bottom line is that President travels with the equipment, people and telecoms necessary for him to deal with potentially hostile, always life-threatening emergencies, just as if he were in the command bunker under the White House. It should have been irrelevant whether Cheney was in the command bunker.
Why was the constitutionally appointed agent, Bush, apparently so out of the loop? Why did he stay in that school room so long when a simple, “I’ve enjoyed meeting you all, but I have a pressing engagement and will have to end this lesson a little early,” would have allowed him to leave in about sixty seconds? Why did he remain, endangering those he is employed to protect by his presence, staying miles from the worldclass facilities on Air Force One?
If, in fact, the President was out of reach, that’s a SNAFU that should have been harshly and immediately correctly. But if he was, and assuming Cheney did not create that situation by choosing to make no real effort to contact him, then Cheney would have been correct in assuming de facto control, all while his staff hurriedly attempted to contact the President so that he could fulfill his constitutional responsibilities.
Had the SS’s information been correct, had Flt 93 been knowingly hijacked and controlled by terrorists, had it been within eight minutes from the White House, I think a lot of us would have given a shoot down order. He would have been correct to do so. But what these records suggest is that the President froze, little effort was made to contact him while considerable effort was made to keep him out of touch, flying to and fro (even though his fully operational command center was always with him), and Cheney took command.
Except for concealing that commander codpiece was a guppy wrapped in newspaper and that Cheney may have been required to temporarily assume command – or that he did so illegally – none of that would have required legal CYA’ing. Except to hide how sloppy and panicky things were and how worse things could have become had there been more or better-trained terrorists. Knowledge of that would sunk Bush’s first term in a sea of recrimination and investigations, disclosed that Cheney was the power behind the throne, and doomed any chance of a second Bush term. Which makes hiding what happened behind a blanket of legal normalcy and “everything operated according to plan” a politically necessary if reprehensible thing to do.
From an interview with Russ Baker:
According to journalist Mickey Herskowitz,(who was contracted to write W’s autobiography ‘A Charge to Keep’ until his notes and computer files were snatched and the project given to Karen Hughes):
“George W. Bush’s beliefs on Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House – ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. “Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade.” )my emphasis)
Cheney’s question to Yoo ‘are we at war?’ expressed relief. He didn’t even have to invade first.
Totally OT and answering my own question, but the House Judiciary committee has posted the court documents in the Miers/Bolten executive privilege contempt case.
there will be no progress until we jail meyers
there is no middle gound, she has to go to jail, and then when in jail even if she complies and honors subpeona she needs to do punative time for degying subpeona
Um, I don’t think what you seek is exactly what the Congressional subpoena and civil contempt power involves….
I believe there is precedence for congress to jail those who defy subpeona, I believe it is called something like…”inherent contempt, there’s precedence for it and it was referenced by marcy a number of times
and since the ag will not prefer charges this is their only remedy
Yes, I am familiar with inherent contempt; indeed, I have maybe been the one here screaming the loudest for just that. However, as with other forms of civil contempt, it is remedial in nature, not punitive. You stated she should continue to be held and punished even after compliance; that is not the design of the theory though. Once the contempt is cured, the citation and hold should die.
well then at least it’s a start
jail her ass
OT: From TPM
Another rat leaves the ship
Jeebus. They are fleeing like, well, rats! And I do remember the prior discussion. Now you have no excuses next time I make it to Santa Monica.
Hey if I can make it for Opera…