The Scum at the Top
Commentary on the Rats in Washington
Who Was Really In Charge?
By Daniel Klaidman and Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
© June 28, 2004
Pages 22-26
Did Bush know Cheney had given orders to down airliners on
September 11? The commission staff wonders - and remains at
odds with both men over alleged Saddam-Al Qaeda ties.
America was under attack, and somebody had to make a decision.
Dick Cheney, huddled in the Presidential Emergency Operations
Center under the White House, had just urged the traveling
George W. Bush not to return to Washington. The president
had left Florida aboard Air Force One at 9:55 a.m. on 9/11
"with no destination at take-off," as last week's 9-11
Commission report noted. Nor had Bush given any known
instructions on how to respond to the attacks. Now Cheney
faced another huge decision on a morning in which every
minute seemed monumental. The two airliners had already
crashed into the Twin Towers, another into the Pentagon.
Combat air patrols were aloft, and a military aide was asking
for shoot-down authority, telling Cheney that a fourth plane
was "80 miles out" from Washington. Cheney didn't flinch, the
report said. "In about the time it takes a batter to decide
to swing," he gave the order to shoot it down, telling others
the president had "signed off on the concept" during a brief
phone chat. When the plane was 60 miles out, Cheney was again
informed and again he ordered: take it out.
Then Joshua Bolten, after what he described in testimony as
"a quiet moment," spoke up. Bolten, the White House deputy
chief of staff, asked the veep to get back in touch with the
president to "confirm the engage order." Bolten was clearly
subordinate to Cheney, but "he had not heard any prior
conversation on the subject with the president," the 9/11
report notes. Nor did the real-time notes taken by two others
in the room, Cheney's chief of staff, "Scooter" Libby - who is
known for his meticulous record-keeping - or Cheney's wife,
Lynne, reflect that such a phone call between Bush and
Cheney occurred or that such a major decision as shooting
down a U.S. airliner was discussed. Bush and Cheney later
testified the president gave the order. And national-security
adviser Condoleezza Rice and a military aide said they
remembered a call, but gave few specifics. The report
concluded "there is no documentary evidence for this call."
Did Dick Cheney follow proper procedures in ordering the
shoot-down of U.S. airliners on 9/11? Well, almost no one
seemed to follow procedures that day simply because there
were none, the 9-11 Commission concludes. NORAD (the U.S.
air defense command), the Federal Aviation Administration
and air-traffic controllers faced "an unprecedented challenge
they had never encountered and had never trained to meet."
The issue was moot anyway: by the time Cheney issued his
shoot-down order, between 10:10 and 10:15 a.m., United Flight
93, the last plane-turned-missile on 9/11, had already crashed
in Pennsylvania (at 10:03 a.m.) after its passengers had made
their heroic stand. The White House team just didn't know it.
And many of the scrambled fighters didn't even have weapons
onboard.
But the question of Cheney's behavior that day is one of many
new issues raised in the remarkably detailed, chilling account
laid out in dramatic presentations by the 9-11 Commission.
NEWSWEEK 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."
When the early draft conveying that skepticism was circulated
to the administration, it provoked an angry reaction. In a
letter from White House lawyers last Tuesday and a series of
phone calls, the White House vigorously lobbied the commission
to change the language in its report. "We didn't think it
was written in a way that clearly reflected the accounting
the president and vice president had given to the commission,"
White House spokesman Dan Bartlett told NEWSWEEK. Ultimately
the chairman and vice chair of the commission, former New
Jersey governor Thomas Kean and former representative Lee
Hamilton - both of whom have sought mightily to appear
nonpartisan - agreed to remove some of the offending language.
The report "was watered down," groused one staffer.
That was a battle lost, but the 9-11 Commission may find that
it still wins the war - by writing the history. Two years ago,
when the commission was created after emotional lobbying by
9/11 victims' families, the White House didn't take the probe
terribly seriously. The administration initially ignored its
requests for some key documents, snubbed efforts to get Bush
and others to testify and shrugged off threats of subpoenas.
But the commission persevered, stoked by the passion of the
victims' families, and persuaded the administration to cave
on most issues. The skirmishing continues - and it's starting
to get personal. Now, with a final report due next month, the
Bush team is increasingly aware that the commission's body of
work might someday stand as the nation's official record of
9/11. And Bush's credibility on key national-security issues -
upon which he's staked his re-election bid - could well turn on
whether the public believes the administration's version or
the commission's.
This week the 9-11 commissioners find themselves engaged in
another testy dispute, especially with Cheney, over the ties
between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. For the Bush team,
making the case that Saddam and bin Laden were linked is one of
its most sensitive credibility issues, a key justification for
following its assault on Al Qaeda with a much costlier and
bloodier war in Iraq. The vice president insisted in
short-tempered public remarks last week that the commission
had agreed the Iraq-Qaeda links were extensive. But commission
vice chair Hamilton acknowledged to NEWSWEEK the commissioners
had differences with the administration. "We didn't have any
evidence of collaboration or cooperation," Hamilton said flatly.
He added that bin Laden's ties "to Iran and Pakistan were
certainly stronger than any tie he had to Iraq." Despite
Cheney's comments, Bartlett said the White House did not
officially raise any questions about the report's conclusions
on Qaeda-Iraq ties.
Cheney has now challenged the commission point blank. Asked in
a CNBC interview whether he had more information about Iraq-Qaeda
links than the commission, Cheney remarked, "Probably." This
comment stunned Kean and Hamilton, who asked Cheney to pass that
extra intel on to them. (Administration spokesmen had previously
said they gave the commission whatever it needed to do its job.)
The vice president also reasserted his belief that a long-alleged
meeting between 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Atta and an Iraqi intel
agent on April 9, 2001, in Prague might have occurred. Some 9/11
staffers said they were astonished by this: their report, citing
cell-phone records, concludes unambiguously that Atta could not
have been in Prague on that date; he was in Florida. (NEWSWEEK
has also learned that Czech investigators and U.S. intelligence
have obtained corroborated evidence which they believe shows
that the Iraqi spy who allegedly met Atta was away from Prague
on that day.)
On several occasions since 9/11, in speeches before the Iraq war
and since, Cheney has run ahead of Bush on policy, only to be
lassoed back in by the White House. In August 2002, he dismissed
U.N. inspections just before Bush called for them in a speech.
Later that fall the veep suggested in another speech that Iraq
might have had a hand in 9/11, forcing Bush to deny later that
it did. And some staffers thought it was interesting that Bush
and Cheney insisted on testify-ing before the commission
together. (Sources say much of their testimony focused on the
shoot-down issue.) So far the two are staying on message in
asserting Qaeda-Iraq links.
Ultimately, the clash of views between the White House and the
commission could help shape the final 9/11 report - which Kean has
insisted is as much about the future as the past. The hard work
of trying to prevent another attack is well underway. U.S.
officials say that new emergency procedures have vastly improved
communications between top policymakers, air-traffic controllers
and U.S. military commanders (still, a communications breakdown
prompted a panicked evacuation of the Capitol when a plane
ventured into restricted airspace during the Reagan funeral).
"When it comes to shooting down an aircraft," NORAD commander
Gen. Ralph Eberhart told NEWSWEEK, "there are very specific
rules of engagement." Presumably the president, vice president
and 9-11 Commission will agree on what those should be. And who
will make the final call.
With Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff in Washington
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
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Last Modified:
January 15, 2007