Perhaps I am missing something, but having just reread the testimony you linked to, I fail to see that Cheney knew beforehand about 9/11. Can you point out what makes you think this?
8-{E
"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?" " seems obviously refering to the orders to SHOOT DOWN a commercial aircraft.
"MR. ROEMER: So about 9:25 or 9:26. And your inference was that the vice president snapped his head around and said, "Yes, the order still stands." Why did you infer that that was a shoot-down?
MR. MINETA: Just by the nature of all the events going on that day, the scrambling of the aircraft and, I don't know; I guess, just being in the military, you do start thinking about it, an intuitive reaction to certain statements being made. "
As for the aircraft disappearing from the radar,
"The first time that anything untoward, and this was gleaned from FAA response, that anything out of the ordinary happened was at 8:20, when the electronic transponder in American Airlines 11 blinked off if you will, just disappeared from the screen. Obviously the terrorists turned that transponder off, and that airplane, although it did not disappear from the radarscope, it became a much, much more difficult target to discern for the controllers who now only could look at the primary radar return off the airplane. That was at 8:20. "
" At 8:46, our next log event, we get the last, and, by the way, much of this radar data for these primary targets was not seen that day. It was reconstructed days later by the 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron, and other agencies like it who are professionals at going back and looking at radar tapes and then given that they are loaded with knowledge after the fact, they can go and find things that perhaps were not visible during the event itself. "
"At 9:05, FAA reports a possible hijack of United 175. Again, that's three minutes after the impact in the tower. That's how long it is taking now the information to flow through the system to the command and control agencies and through the command and control agencies to the pilots in the cockpit. At 9:09, Langley F-16s are directed to battle stations, just based on the general situation and the breaking news, and the general developing feeling about what's going on. And at about that same time, kind of way out in the West, is when America 77, which in the meantime has turned off its transponder and turned left back toward Washington, appears back in radar coverage. And my understanding is the FAA controllers now are beginning to pick up primary skin paints on an airplane, and they don't know exactly whether that is 77, and they are asking a lot of people whether it is, including an a C-130 that is westbound toward Ohio. At 9:11 FAA reports a crash into the South Tower. You can see now that lag time has increased from seven minutes from impact to report; now it's nine minutes from impact to report. You can only imagine what's going on on the floors of the control centers around the country. At 9:11 -- I just mentioned that -- 9:16, now FAA reports a possible hijack of United Flight 93, which is out in the Ohio area. But that's the last flight that is going to impact the ground.
At 9:24 the FAA reports a possible hijack of 77. That's sometime after they had been tracking this primary target. And at that moment as well is when the Langley F-16s were scrambled out of Langley.
At 9:25, America 77 is reported headed towards Washington, D.C., not exactly precise information, just general information across the chat logs; 9:27, Boston FAA reports a fifth aircraft missing, Delta Flight 89 -- and many people have never heard of Delta Flight 89. We call that the first red herring of the day, because there were a number of reported possible hijackings that unfolded over the hours immediately following the actual attacks. Delta 89 was not hijacked, enters the system, increases the fog and friction if you will, as we begin to look for that. But he lands about seven of eight minutes later and clears out of the system.
At 9:30 the Langley F-16s are airborne. They are 105 miles away from the Washington area; 9:34, through chat, FAA is unable to precisely locate American Airlines Flight 77; 9:35, F-16s are reported airborne. And many times, reported airborne is not exactly when they took off. It's just when the report came down that they were airborne. At 9:37 we have the last radar data near the Pentagon. And 9:40, immediately following that, is when 93 up north turns its transponders off out in the West toward Ohio, and begins a left turn back toward the East.
At 9:49, FAA reports that Delta 89, which had been reported as missing, is now reported as a possible hijacking. So again he is --
MR.: That's 9:41, sir.
MR. SCOTT: I'm sorry, 9:41. Again, he is in the system. He is kind of a red herring for us.
Now, the only thing that I would point out on this chart is this says 9:43, American Airlines 77 impacts the Pentagon. The timeline on the impact of the Pentagon was changed to 9:37 -- 9:43 is the time that was reported that day, it was the time we used. And it took about two weeks to discover in the parking lot of the Pentagon this entry camera for the parking lot, which happened to be oriented towards the Pentagon at the time of impact, and the recorded time is 9:37. And that's why the timeline went from 9:43 to 9:37, because it is the best documented evidence for the impact time that we have. Getting toward the end now, 9:47 is when Delta 89 clears the system by landing in Cleveland. So he is not a hijack. Lots of things are going on now in the system as the sectors begin to call both units that are part of 1st Air Force and NORAD, as well as units that have nothing to do with us. We are beginning to call everyone now and the 103rd Air Control Squadron, for instance, stationed in Connecticut, is an air control squadron, a radar squadron, and they got their radar online, operational, and begin to link their radar picture into the Northeast system. They are not normally part of NORAD. This is really the initial part of a huge push the rest of that day to link as many radars in on the interior as we can, and to get as many fighters on alert as we can. "
So, where is the mystery???
"GEN. MCKINLEY: On the day of September 11th, 2001, our mission was to defend North America, to surveil, to intercept, to identify, and if necessary to destroy, those targets which we were posturing were going to come from outside our country. In fact, that tracks originating over the landmass of the United States were identified friendly by origin. Therefore those alert sites that were positioned on the morning of September 11th were looking out primarily on our coasts at the air defense identification zone, which extends outward of 100 to 200 miles off our shore. So that was the main focus of NORAD at the time.
MR. BEN-VENISTE: I asked you about your responsibilities, sir, and I ask you again, whether it was not your responsibility as NORAD to protect the United States and its citizens against air attack.
GEN. MCKINLEY: It is, and it was, and I would just caveat your comment by saying that our mission was at that time not designed to take internal FAA radar data to track or to identify tracks originating within our borders. It was to look outward, as a Cold War vestige, primarily developed during the Cold War, to protect against Soviet long-range bomber penetration of our intercept zone.
MR. BEN-VENISTE: Well, I think, sir, that you have used a good term, not good for the United States, but accurate, in terms of the vestigial mandate operationally to look outward toward the borders rather than inward. And as vestigial you mean, I am sure, as a result of our decades of confrontation with the former Soviet Union.
GEN. MCKINLEY: Correct, sir.
MR. BEN-VENISTE: And so on the day of September 11th, as you can see these dots -- I know it may be difficult to see -- NORAD was positioned in a perimeter around the United States, but nothing in the central region, nothing on the border with Canada?
GEN. MCKINLEY: That's correct, sir. "
"And I also remembered as I went downstairs, before I even talked to him, that it had been a long time since we had had a hijacking, but the fact that we had reviewed the procedures of what it is we do for a hijacking, because we were in the middle of an exercise. So we were pretty well familiar with those procedures, and of course we have our own checklist that we follow.
As I picked up the phone, Bob told me that Boston Center had called possible hijacking within the system. He had put the aircraft at Otis on battle stations, wanted permission to scramble them. I told them to go ahead and scramble the airplanes and we'd get permission later. And the reason for that is that the procedure -- hijacking is a law enforcement issue, as is everything that takes off from within the United States. And only law enforcement can request assistance from the military, which they did in this particular case. The route, if you follow the book, is they go to the duty officer of the national military center, who in turn makes an inquiry to NORAD for the availability of fighters, who then gets permission from someone representing the secretary of Defense. Once that is approved then we scramble aircraft. We didn't wait for that. We scrambled the aircraft, told them get airborne, and we would seek clearances later. I picked up the phone, called NORAD, whose battle staff was in place because of the exercise, talked to the deputy commander for operations. He said, you know, "I understand, and we'll call the Pentagon for those particular clearances." It was simultaneous almost for that decision that we made that I am looking at the TV monitor of the news network and see a smoking hole in what turned out to be the North Tower of the World Trade Center, wondering, What is this? And like many of us involved in that, Does it have anything to do with this particular incident? Which we didn't think it did, because we were talking Boston Center, and we were not thinking of the immediate New York metropolitan area. Shortly after that, of course our airplanes became airborne. It just so happens that Colonel Duffy, who was a pilot of that first F-15, had been involved in some conversation because, as telephone calls were made, he was aware that there was a hijacking in the system. It's kind of interesting because he concluded that that indeed might have been that airplane himself, and [he]elected to hit the afterburner and to speed up his way towards New York. "