The 9/11 Commission Report contains many disputed timelines, for everything from the moment that NORAD first launched fighters to the crash time of Flight 93, but few have given rise to quite so much controversy as its account of Dick Cheney's whereabouts during the attacks.
The Commission on Cheney
At the White House,Vice President Dick Cheney had just sat down for a meeting when his assistant told him to turn on his television because a plane had struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center.The Vice President was wondering “how the hell could a plane hit the World Trade Center” when he saw the second aircraft strike the South Tower...
The President remained in the classroom for another five to seven minutes, while the children continued reading. He then returned to a holding room shortly before 9:15, where he was briefed by staff and saw television coverage. He next spoke to Vice President Cheney,Dr.Rice, New York Governor George Pataki, and FBI Director Robert Mueller. He decided to make a brief statement from the school before leaving for the airport.The Secret Service told us they were anxious to move the President to a safer location, but did not think it imperative for him to run out the door.
Between 9:15 and 9:30, the staff was busy arranging a return to Washington, while the President consulted his senior advisers about his remarks. No one in the traveling party had any information during this time that other aircraft were hijacked or missing. Staff was in contact with the White House Situation Room,
but as far as we could determine, no one with the President was in contact with the Pentagon.The focus was on the President’s statement to the nation.The only decision made during this time was to return to Washington.
The President’s motorcade departed at 9:35, and arrived at the airport between 9:42 and 9:45. During the ride the President learned about the attack on the Pentagon. He boarded the aircraft, asked the Secret Service about the safety of his family, and called the Vice President. According to notes of the call, at about 9:45 the President told the Vice President:“Sounds like we have a minor war going on here, I heard about the Pentagon.We’re at war . . . somebody’s going to pay.”...
About this time, Card, the lead Secret Service agent, the President’s military aide, and the pilot were conferring on a possible destination for Air Force One. The Secret Service agent felt strongly that the situation in Washington was too unstable for the President to return there, and Card agreed. The President
strongly wanted to return to Washington and only grudgingly agreed to go elsewhere. The issue was still undecided when the President conferred with the Vice President at about the time Air Force One was taking off. The Vice President recalled urging the President not to return to Washington. Air Force One
departed at about 9:54 without any fixed destination.The objective was to get up in the air—as fast and as high as possible—and then decide where to go.
At 9:33, the tower supervisor at Reagan National Airport picked up a hotline to the Secret Service and told the Service’s operations center that “an aircraft [is] coming at you and not talking with us.” This was the first specific report to the Secret Service of a direct threat to the White House. No move was made to evacuate the Vice President at this time. As the officer who took the call explained, “[I was] about to push the alert button when the tower advised that the aircraft was turning south and approaching
Reagan National Airport.”
American 77 began turning south, away from the White House, at 9:34. It continued heading south for roughly a minute, before turning west and beginning to circle back. This news prompted the Secret Service to order the immediate evacuation of the Vice President just before 9:36. Agents propelled him out of his chair and told him he had to get to the bunker.The Vice President entered the underground tunnel leading to the shelter at 9:37.
Once inside, Vice President Cheney and the agents paused in an area of the tunnel that had a secure phone, a bench, and television. The Vice President asked to speak to the President, but it took time for the call to be connected. He learned in the tunnel that the Pentagon had been hit, and he saw television coverage of smoke coming from the building.
The Secret Service logged Mrs.Cheney’s arrival at the White House at 9:52, and she joined her husband in the tunnel. According to contemporaneous notes, at 9:55 the Vice President was still on the phone with the President advising that three planes were missing and one had hit the Pentagon.We believe this is the same call in which the Vice President urged the President not to return to Washington. After the call ended, Mrs. Cheney and the Vice President moved from the tunnel to the shelter conference room.
On the morning of 9/11, the President and Vice President stayed in contact not by an open line of communication but through a series of calls. The President told us he was frustrated with the poor communications that morning. He could not reach key officials, including Secretary Rumsfeld, for a period of time.The line to the White House shelter conference room—and the Vice President— kept cutting off.
The Vice President remembered placing a call to the President just after entering the shelter conference room. There is conflicting evidence about when the Vice President arrived in the shelter conference room. We have concluded, from the available evidence, that the Vice President arrived in the room shortly before 10:00,perhaps at 9:58. The Vice President recalled being told, just after his arrival, that the Air Force was trying to establish a combat air patrol over Washington.
[Footnotes to the above include...]
209. American 77’s route has been determined through Commission analysis of FAA and military radar data. For the evacuation of the Vice President, see White House transcript, Vice President Cheney interview with
Newsweek,Nov. 19, 2001, p. 2;USSS memo, interview of Rocco Delmonico,Oct. 1, 2001 (evacuation of the White
House); see also White House notes, Mary Matalin notes, Sept. 11, 2001. On the time of entering the tunnel, see USSS report,“Executive Summary: U.S. Secret Service Timeline of Events, September 11–October 3, 2001,” Oct. 3, 2001, p. 2. Secret Service personnel told us that the 9:37 entry time in their timeline was based on alarm data, which is no longer retrievable. USSS briefing (Jan. 29, 2004).
210. [What Cheney did in the tunnel]. White House transcript,Vice President Cheney interview with Newsweek, Nov. 19, 2001, p. 4; President Bush and Vice President Cheney meeting (Apr. 29, 2004).
211. On Mrs. Cheney, see USSS report,“Executive Summary: U.S. Secret Service Timeline of Events, September
11–October 3, 2001,” Oct. 3, 2001, p. 2 (time of arrival);White House transcript, Lynne Cheney interview
with Newsweek, Nov. 9, 2001, p. 2 (joining the Vice President). For the contemporaneous notes, see White
House notes, Lynne Cheney notes, Sept. 11, 2001. On the content of the Vice President’s call, see White House transcript,Vice President Cheney interview with Newsweek,Nov. 19, 2001, p. 5.According to the Vice President, there was “one phone call from the tunnel. And basically I called to let him know that we were a target and I strongly urged him not to return to Washington right away, that he delay his return until we could find out what the hell was going on.”For their subsequent movements, see White House transcript,Vice President Cheney interview with Newsweek, Nov. 19, 2001, p. 5;White House transcript, Lynne Cheney interview with Newsweek,Nov. 9, 2001, p. 2.
212. On communications problems, see, e.g., President Bush and Vice President Cheney meeting (Apr. 29,
2004). On lack of an open line, see, e.g., Deborah Loewer meeting (Feb. 6, 2004).
213. On the Vice President’s call, see President Bush and Vice President Cheney meeting (Apr. 29, 2004). For the Vice President’s time of arrival in the shelter conference room, see White House record, PEOC Shelter Log, Sept. 11, 2001 (9:58); USSS memo, OVP 9/11 Timeline, Nov. 17, 2001 (9:52; Mrs. Cheney arrived White House and joined him in tunnel);White House notes, Lynne Cheney notes (9:55; he is on phone with President);White House transcript, Lynne Cheney interview with Newsweek, Nov. 9, 2001, p. 2 (“And when I got there, he was on the phone with the President . . . But from that first place where I ran into him, I moved with him into what they call the PEOC”); White House transcript,Vice President Cheney interview with Newsweek, Nov. 19, 2001, p. 4 (9:35 or 9:36 arrival; he estimated a 15-minute stay); Carl Truscott interview (Apr. 15, 2004) (arrived with Rice and the Vice President in conference room; called headquarters immediately; call logged at 10:00); President Bush and Vice President Cheney meeting,Apr. 29, 2004 (Vice President viewed television footage of Pentagon ablaze in tunnel); White House transcript, Rice interview with Evan Thomas, Nov. 1, 2001, p. 388 (Rice viewed television footage of Pentagon ablaze in Situation Room). For the Vice President’s recollection about the combat air patrol, see President Bush and Vice President Cheney meeting (Apr. 29, 2004);White House transcript, President Bush interview with Bob Woodward and Dan Balz, Dec. 17, 2001, p. 16.
Chapter 1, 9/11 Commission Report
(We've snipped this to discussions relating to Cheney and the timeline up to around 10 am as that's the main topic here, but there's more afterwards. If you've not read chapter one (and all the footnotes) in full then make sure you do that and confirm our details for yourself.)
Cheney and the 9/11 Commission therefore reports a Cheney timeline that runs like this.
At 9:03 Cheney was in his office.
At some point between 9:15 and 9:30 he called Bush.
At just before 9:36 he was evacuated from his office.
At 9:37 he arrived in a "tunnel" leading to the PEOC (Presidential Emergency Operations Centre, also described as the "bunker" or the "shelter").
While in the tunnel, Cheney spent some time talking to Bush. This call was ongoing at 9:55.
The Commission conclude: "There is conflicting evidence about when the Vice President arrived in the shelter conference room. We have concluded, from the available evidence, that the Vice President arrived in the room shortly before 10:00,perhaps at 9:58."
Despite the talk of "conflicting evidence", one point is clear: this timeline doesn't have Cheney in the bunker until virtually the exact time that the Pentagon was hit. So why is it, ask some 9/11 researchers, that other accounts place him already in the PEOC by 9:20?
Media on Cheney
The idea that Cheney was evacuated soon after the second WTC impact originated with several media reports.
This seems clear enough, but in the first two stories at least, there are signs of problems with the timeline. Both say that Cheney was moved at somewhere around 9:03 to 9:05, told on the way to the PEOC that a plane was bearing down on Washington, and that was the reason for his evacuation, yet the NORAD tapes and 9/11 Commission wouldn't show any such alert until after 9:20 (the Phantom flight 11), and Flight 77 was still hundreds of miles away. So why would Cheney have been evacuated at around 9:03-9:10?
It makes little sense, and the first story at least suggest another explanation. It tells us that on being informed of the approaching aircraft "Cheney promptly called the president in Florida, who had just boarded Air Force One". But Bush wouldn't board Air Force One until around 9:43, some 40 minutes after the second WTC impact and more than 5 minutes after the Pentagon was hit. So if he was evacuated because of an approaching plane, and "promptly called the President" afterwards, then this now matches with the 9/11 Commission account rather than an evacuation soon after 9:03: it looks like the "at that moment" is a simple mistake.
The lack of sourcing is another problem for these stories. Where have these timelines come from? We've no idea.
And although those defending the early evacuation time like to pretend they reflected a universal view, this isn't the case at all. Even though the New York Times published two pieces appearing to support an early evacuation on September 13 and 16, for instance, an article on the 15th says Cheney wasn't evacuated until 9:30 or after:
And here's what the New York Times was saying in October 2001:
You could, of course, argue that the initial stories were correct (even though some are self-contradictory, and there are others that disagreed), and the later ones fed by disinformation, a part of a cover-up. But in order to make that stick, you'll need to have some evidence. That's why 9/11 researchers generally place more weight on sourced eye-witness accounts that, they believe, also support the idea that Cheney was in the PEOC by 9:20.
David Ray Griffin on Cheney
In his book 9/11 Contradictions (or at least, an abbreviated version of two chapters, released to the press), David Ray Griffin writes:
Griffin cites four accounts in support of a 9:20 (or earlier) arrival time.
Norman Mineta said he arrived at the PEOC around 9:20, and on arrival found that Cheney "had been engaged in an ongoing exchange", meaning Cheney "must have been in the PEOC for several minutes before Mineta’s 9:20 arrival".
Richard Clarke "implied that Cheney was in the PEOC several minutes prior to 9:15".
"Cheney’s White House photographer David Bohrer reported that, shortly after 9:00, some Secret Service agents came into Cheney’s office and said, 'Sir, you have to come with us.'"
Cheney himself "indicated that he had entered the PEOC prior to the (9:38) strike on the Pentagon, not 20 minutes after it, as the Commission would later claim."
We'll consider each of these accounts in turn.
Norman Mineta
Griffin covers Mineta's account here.
Dr Griffin is, however, not reporting the many reasons to question Mineta's 9:20 arrival time.
Mineta has said, for instance:
But another Griffin source, Richard Clarke, describes a similar-sounding scene that occurred only after the Pentagon was hit:
This makes sense in terms of the 9/11 Commission account; the Security Service became concerned by reports of an incoming plane and ordered "the immediate evacuation of the Vice President just before 9:36", then Clarke tells us the White House was evacuated minutes later.
However, if Mineta is describing the same event as Clarke, and this happened after the Pentagon was hit, then clearly he didn't arrive at 9:20 and so cannot significantly contradict Cheney's account.
There are several other issues with Mineta's story that cast significant doubt on his timeline. He didn't arrive at the White House until after the FAA joined Richard Clarke's teleconference, for instance, which the 9/11 Commission Report puts at 9:40. And a report said Mineta was only informed of the 9:45 grounding of all planes in US airspace after the fact, when he called in from the White House. Read more on those, and other issues here.
Richard Clarke
Dr Griffin covers Richard Clarke's account here:
Looking at what Clarke actually wrote can help clarify these points, though.
On the meeting beginning "shortly after 9:03", for instance, Clarke said:
Clarke says it's 9:03 when he arrives at his car. He drives three blocks, talks to Kurtz, makes it to Cheney's office. It's now presumably somewhere between 9:06 and 9:08.
The meeting continues:
Clarke does not tell us when Cheney left, then. Note also that, while Griffin's retelling has Clarke leaving with Rice, the actual text says merely that "I left".
Clarke continues:
Just off the main floor of the situation room on the ground level of the West Wing is a Secure Video Conferencing Center, a clone of the Situation Room conference room except for the bank of monitors in the far wall opposite the chairman's seat. Like the conference room the Video Center is small and paneled with dark wood. The presidential seal hangs on the wall over the chair at the head of the table.
On my way through the Operations Center of the Situation Room, Ralph Siegler, the longtime Situation Room deputy director, grabbed me. "We're on the line with NORAD, on an air threat conference call." That was a procedure instituted by the North American Aerospace Defense Command during the Cold War to alert the White House when Soviet bombers got too close to U.S. airspace.
"Where's POTUS? Who have we got with him?" I asked, as we moved quickly together through the center, using the White House staff jargon for the President.
"He's in a kindergarten in Florida. Deb's with him." Deb was Navy Captain Deborah Lower, the director of the White House Situation Room. "We have a line open to her cell."
As I entered the Video Center, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty was taking the roll and I could see people rushing into studios around the city: Donald Rumsfeld at Defense and George Tenet at CIA. But at many of the sites the Principal was traveling. The Attorny General was in Milwaukee, so Larry Thompson, the Deputy, was at Justice. Rich Armitage, the number two at State, was filling in for Colin Powell, who was in Peru. Air Force four-star General Dick Myers was filling in for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Hugh Shelton, who was over the Atlantic. Bob Mueller was at the FBI, but he had just started that job.
Each Principal was supported by his or her member at the CSG and behind them staffs could be seen frantically yelling on telephones and grabbing papers. Condi Rice walked in behind me with her deputy, Steve Hadley. "Do you want to chair this as a Principal's meeting?" I asked. Rice, as National Security Advisor, chaired the Principals Committee, which consisted of the Secretaries of State and Defense, the CIA Director, the Chairman of the Join Chiefs, and often now the Vice President.
Rice is mentioned here as "walking in behind" Clarke. He talks about arriving himself in the preceding paragraph, which is presumably why Griffin says she left Cheney's office with him, but that is at best a speculative interpretation of the text. Clarke does not clearly say anything of the kind.
It's also worth keeping in mind that there are many reasons to dispute Clarke's accuracy.
The 9/11 Commission reports logs showing that the teleconference didn't begin until 9:25, for instance, and may not have been "fully underway" before 9:37 before the Pentagon was hit.
Clarke reports seeing and talking to Richard Myers, who Max Cleland places in his Capitol Hill office, also up to around 9:37.
The teleconference begins with Jane Garvey of the FAA telling Clarke that they were concerned about 11 possible hijackings: no-one else says that number of flights was reached until much later.
And Clarke reports that the FAA were "frantically looking" for Norman Mineta, yet Mineta tells us Garvey was in his office after 9:03, and called to pass on information about Delta Air Lines before he left for the White House. So we're supposed to believe Garvey left his office, returned to the FAA (a short distance down the street), was briefed on the situation, heard about Delta Air Lines, called Mineta's office in order to pass the situation, then "lost" Mineta, began frantically looking for him, finally joining Clarke's teleconference and explaining this situation, all in seven minutes?
Something clearly isn't right here, at least not with a 9:10 start time. If the FAA joined Clarke's teleconference at 9:40, however, at the 9/11 Commission said, then it becomes more plausible.
Clarke resumes:
"Do you want to chair this as a Principal's meeting?" I asked. Rice, as National Security Advisor, chaired the Principals Committee, which consisted of the Secretaries of State and Defense, the CIA Director, the Chairman of the Join Chiefs, and often now the Vice President...
"No. You run it." I pushed aside the chair at the head of the table and stood there, Condi visibly by my side.
"Let's begin. Calmly. We will do this in crisis mode, which means keep your microphones off unless you're speaking. If you want to speak, wave at the camera. If it's something you don't want everyone to hear, call me on the red phone."
Rice would later be criticised in the press by unnamed participants of the meeting for just standing around. From my obviously partial perspective, she had shown courage by standing back. She knew it looked odd, but she also had enough self-confidence to feel no need to be in the chair. She did not want to waste time. I thought back to the scene in this room when the Oklahoma City bombing took place. President [Bill] Clinton had walked in and sat down, chairing the CSG video conference for a few minutes. While it showed high-level concern and we were glad to have him there, it would have slowed down our response if he had stayed.
"You're going to need some decisions quickly," Rice said off camera. "I'm going to the PEOC to be with the Vice President. Tell us what you need."
"What I need is an open line to Cheney and you." I turned to my White House Fellow, Army Major Mike Fenzel. The highly competitive process that had selected White House fellows had turned out some extraordinary people over the years, such as another army major named Colin Powell. "Mike," I said, "go with Condi to the PEOC and open a secure line to me. I'll relay the decisions we need to you."
Fenzel was used to pressure. As a lieutenant, he had driven his Bradley Fighting Vehicle down the runway of an Iraqi air base shooting up MiGs and taking return fire. As a captain, he had led a company of infantry into war-torn Liberia and faced down a mob outside the US embassy. [Eighteen months after 9/11, Fenzel would be the first man to parachute out of his C-17 in a nighttime combat jump into Iraq.]
"OK," I began. "Let's start with the facts. FAA, FAA, go." I fell into using the style of communication on tactical radio so that those listening in other studios around town could hear who was being called on over the din in their own rooms.
Rice left a short time after the teleconference began, then. If that was at 9:10, as Griffin claims, then it is indeed evidence of Cheney being in the PEOC before 9:20.
However, we've already seen one or two reasons why the 9:10 start time is implausible. The 9/11 Commission say the teleconference began at 9:25, may not have been fully underway at 9:37, and wasn't joined by the FAA until 9:40. Cheney was, according to the report, evacuated at 9:36. If Rice knew Cheney had just left his office, then she could have been with Clarke at 9:45, and made the above comments without contradicting the 9/11 Commission's version of events.
By way of support, the Commission refers to a "White House transcript, Rice interview with Evan Thomas, Nov. 1, 2001, p. 388 (Rice viewed television footage of Pentagon ablaze in Situation Room)". We've been unable to find that transcript, however Rice has given at least one other interview that's very clear about the sequence of events:
Rice says she was in the Situation Room for some minutes after 9:37, and says she was only told about Cheney's evacuation after the Pentagon had been hit. No support for an early arrival at the PEOC here.
Clarke resumes:
"OK," I began. "Let's start with the facts. FAA, FAA, go." I fell into using the style of communication on tactical radio so that those listening in other studios around town could hear who was being called on over the din in their own rooms.
Jane Garvey, the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, was in the chair. "The two aircraft that went in were American flight 11, a 767, and United 175, also a 767. Hijacked."
"Jane, where's Norm?" I asked. They were frantically looking for Norman Mineta, the Secretary of Transportation, and, like me, a rare holdover from the Clinton administration. At first, FAA could not find him. "Well, Jane, can you order aircraft down? We're going to have to clear the airspace around Washington and New York."
"We may have to do a lot more than that, Dick. I already put a hold on all takeoffs and landings in New York and Washington, but we have reports of eleven aircraft off course of out of communications, maybe hijacked."
Lisa slowly whispered "Oh shit." All conversation had stopped in the studios on the screen. Everyone was listening.
"Eleven," I repeated. "Okay, Jane, how long will it take to get all aircraft now aloft onto the ground somewhere?" My mind flashed back to 1995 when I asked FAA to ground all US flights over the Pacific because of a terrorist threat, causing chaos for days. It had taken hours then to find the Secretary of Transportation, Federico Pena.
"The air traffic manager," Jane went on, "says there are 4400 birds up now. We can cancel all take-offs quickly, but grounding them all that are already up ... nobody's ever done this before. Don't know how long it will take. By the way, it's Ben's first day on the job." Garvey was referring to Ben Sliney, the very new National Operations Manager at the FAA.
"Jane, if you haven't found the Secretary yet, are you prepared to order a national ground stop and no-fly zone?"
"Yes, but it will take a while." Shortly thereafter, Mineta called in from his car, and I asked him to come directly to the Situation Room. He had two sons who were pilots for United. He did not know where they were that day. I suggested he join the Vice President.
Roger Cressey, my deputy and a marathoner, had run eight blocks from his doctors office. Convincing the Uniformed Secret Service guards to let him into the compound, Roger pressed through to the situation room. I was pleased to see him.
I turned to the Pentagon screen. "JCS, JCS. I assume NORAD has scrambled fighters and AWACS. How many. Where?"
"Not a pretty picture, Dick." Dick Myers, himself a fighter pilot, knew that the days when we had scores of fighters on strip alert had ended with the Cold War. "We are in the middle of Vigilant Warrior, a NORAD exercise, but... Otis has launched two birds toward New York. Langley is trying to get two up now. The AWACS are at Tinker and not on alert." Oris was an Air National Guard base on Cape Cod. Langley Air Force Base was outside Norfolk, Virginia. Tinker AFB, home to all of America's flying radar stations, was in Oklahoma.
"Okay, how long to CAP over D.C."?" Combat Air Patrol, CAP, was something we were used to placing over Iraq, not our nation's capital.
"Fast as we can. Fifteen minutes?" Myers asked, looking at the generals and colonels behind him. It was now 9:28.
Dr Griffin takes from this that Norman Mineta arrived at "about 9:15" and was sent to the PEOC.
However, Clarke does not clearly say when Mineta arrives. The paragraph referring to his phone call doesn't specifically say he's arrived at all:
It could be argued that because Clarke says Mineta should both come to the Situation Room, and join the President, then these suggestions were delivered at separate times: Mineta calls in, Clarke asks him to come to the Situation Room, Mineta arrives and does so, Clarke suggests he joins Cheney. However, that's just one interpretation.
It's also possible that Clarke delivered both suggestions over the phone. He may have said, for instance, "please come to the Situation Room first and I'll brief you on what's going on, but after that I think it's best if you join the Vice President".
Even if the "I suggested he join the Vice President" line was delivered in person, it's unsafe to assume when this happened chronologically. Mineta tells us that he spent "four or five" minutes talking to Clarke in the Situation Room, for instance, yet Clarke doesn't mention this at all. This means there could be something like 5 to 10 minutes between Mineta calling in from his car, and then leaving for the PEOC. If we are to take Clarke's account in strict chronological order, then that implies nothing else worthy of reporting happened within that 5 or 10 minutes. But isn't it possible that, say, Mineta called, then Cressey arrived, then Clarke talked to the JCS, some other things happened, then Mineta arrived and they talked? And Clarke simply folded his Mineta comments into a single paragraph because it was neater, and their conversation wasn't a significant event?
Whatever your view, it's clear that deriving Mineta's arrival time from Clarke's text requires a degree of interpretation. Clarke does tell us that Mineta wasn't present when the teleconference began, however, which makes that an important time to establish. Check our page on this issue if you haven't already done so.
David Bohrer
Dr Griffin discusses the account of David Bohrer here:
However, the original account appears to be a little more ambiguous. Cooperative Research sources the same claim to this story:
The "according to Bohrer" line here could simply be referring to the "two or three agents" coming in, and not the time at all. A reporter may cover a news story like this, for instance:
Just after 9 a.m. ET on Sept. 11, 2001, John Doe was in his store when two masked gunmen came in and shot him, according to Jane Smith, a customer who was there.
Has Jane Smith definitively said the incident occurred before 9 a.m.? No. That's one possible interpretation, but another is the reporter provided the time from other information, and all that came from Jane Smith was the account of "two masked gunmen".
Of course even if the time comes from the reporter, there's still the question of why he said that. But it's worth noting that there's a possible contradiction later, when it seems to be implied that Rice was told "there may be a plane headed for the White House" soon after Cheney's evacuation. We've seen no explanation of which plane might have caused such an alert "shortly after 9", but it does match the 9/11 Commission's account of alarm over the approaching Flight 77 after 9:30.
This story makes unsatisfactory evidence, then, and isn't nearly as compelling as if we had Bohrer specifying the time himself, in a clear quote. We need additional information. And as it turns out, there is more available. This story appears to have been taken from interviews given for a full ABC News anniversary special on September 2002, where Bohrer and others recall what happened on the day, and the transcript is very illuminating:
04:01:40 KARL ROVE, WHITE HOUSE COUNSELOR
The President said, I need to, I'm gonna need to make a statement before we leave here.
04:01:44 BYRON MITCHELL, EMMA BOOKER ELEMENTARY STUDENT
He was red and I seen that had tears in his eyes. So I knew something bad had really, really happened. His face was just red. And he was, his lips were just trembling.
04:01:55 MICHAEL ANDREWS, EMMA BOOKER ELEMENTARY STUDENT
He kind of stuttered, when he talked, and he kind of said it all slowly.
04:02:00 PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, UNITED STATES
Today we've had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country.
04:02:12 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) Quick good-byes, and then a race to the Sarasota airport. At that moment, in the White House, . . .
04:02:19 VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY, UNITED STATES
I was in my west wing office.
04:02:21 DAVID BOHRER, WHITE HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER
The Secret Service had come in, to his office. I think it was two or three agents, which is very unusual.
04:02:27 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) David Bohrer is another White House photographer, assigned to Vice President Dick Cheney.
04:02:33 DAVID BOHRER, WHITE HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER
And agents came inside the office and said "Sir, you have to come with us."
04:02:38 VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY, UNITED STATES
Put his hand on the back of my belt, grabbed me by my shoulder and sort of propelled me down the hall way.
04:02:43 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) And to an underground bunker, the President's Emergency Operations Center, PEOC they call it.
04:02:49 VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY, UNITED STATES
It's got blast doors on each end. it's a secure phone there as well as a television set.
http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/pentagon/attack/abcnews091102_jenningsinterviews.html
In the programme neither Bohrer not anyone else says Cheney was evacuated "shortly after 9:00". What actually happens is that Charles Gibson talks about Bush leaving the school at around 9:34, then says "at that moment, in the White House", and moves on to the security service evacuating Cheney. The 9/11 Commission would later state that Cheney was evacuated at 9:36, so the program matches that account very closely: it certainly doesn't contradict it.
As the program continues, however, it's a different story:
04:02:54 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) Up above, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is trying to find the rest of the President's team. Secretary of State Colin Powell is in Peru, Attorney General John Ashcroft is in the air, and Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Joe Allbaugh is at a conference in Montana.
04:03:14 CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER
As I was trying to find all the principals, the Secret Service came and said, you have to leave now for the bunker. The Vice President's already there. There may be a plane headed for the White House. There are a lot of planes that are in the air that are not responding properly.
04:03:28 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) In the bunker, the Vice President is joined by Rice and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.
04:03:34 NORMAN MINETA, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY
Someone came in and said Mr. Vice President, there's a plane out 50 miles.
04:03:39 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) Mineta confers with Federal Aviation Deputy Chief Monty Belger.
04:03:43 NORMAN MINETA, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY
And so I said, Monty, what do you have? He said, well we're watching this target on the radar, but the transponder's been turned off. So we, have no identification.
04:03:56 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) At the FAA's Air Traffic Control Center near Washington's Dulles Airport, Danielle O'Brien is at a radar scope.
04:04:03 DANIELLE O'BRIEN, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER
It was an unidentified plane to the southwest of Dulles moving at a very high rate of speed.
04:04:11 NORMAN MINETA, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY
Someone came in and said, Mr. Vice President, the airplane's 30 miles out.
04:04:16 LT COLONEL DAWNE DESKINS, AIR NATIONAL GUARD
We caught on the radar scope, a few blips, maybe seven or eight, you know, just enough to kind of go around in a half circle and then fade right over, losing radar contact right over, Washington. I said, my God, what is that?
04:04:31 DANIELLE O'BRIEN, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER
He was fast and it was just, it would be unprecedented for a commercial plane to come screaming through your air space at that kind of speed, unidentified, without making some type of communication.
04:04:45 MASTER SERGEANT MAUREEN DOOLEY, AIR NATIONAL GUARD
We knew that he was headed in that direction and we were calling, Washington Center, oh, my God, you've got, he's coming towards you.
04:04:51 NORMAN MINETA, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY
The fellow came in and said, it's ten miles out. Assuming that it was coming into, National Airport, Ronald Reagan National Airport.
04:05:01 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) At Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, F-16 fighter pilots Brad Derrig and Dean Eckmann scramble into the air. They are 105 miles, 12 minutes south of Washington. It is just 9:30 a.m.
04:05:15 MAJOR BRAD DERRIG, PILOT, AIR NATIONAL GUARD
We're directed to go and which turned out to be Reagan National which is right by the Pentagon.
04:05:20 DANIELLE O'BRIEN, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER
Our supervisor picked up our line to the White House and started relaying to them the information. We have an unidentified, very fast moving aircraft inbound toward your vicinity, eight miles west, seven miles west, and it went, six, five, four, . . .
04:05:39 NORMAN MINETA, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY
He said, uh-oh, we just lost the bogey, meaning the target went off the screen. So I said, well, where is it? And he said, well, we're not really sure.
04:05:49 ALLAN WALLACE, FT. MEYER FIRE DEPARTMENT
I happened to look up to my left and there is the airplane. The airplane is about 25 feet above the ground and it's about 150 to 200 yards away. And coming at us.
04:06:00 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) It is 9:38, just 52 minutes have passed since the first attack. Firefighter Allan Wallace is on duty next to the helicopter landing pad on the west side of the Pentagon.
04:06:11 ALLAN WALLACE, FT. MEYER FIRE DEPARTMENT
I look up and see the airplane. I hear the noise from the airplane. And bang, the airplane hits the building. And that's how fast it happened.
http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/pentagon/attack/abcnews091102_jenningsinterviews.html
Now the program reports Mineta's story, and ties that to Flight 77. We've seen several reasons why that seems to be untrue, though, and David Bohrer plays a part himself here:
04:21:55 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) Cheney personally compiles a list of possible threats from the air.
04:21:58 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS (CONTINUED)
(OC) Of the flights that you didn't know where they were?
04:22:02 VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY, UNITED STATES
That we couldn't account for.
04:22:04 DAVID BOHRER, WHITE HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER
At first it was one of a few planes that they had questions about.
04:22:07 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) White House photographer David Bohrer watches the tense moment and records it on film.
04:22:13 DAVID BOHRER, WHITE HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER
Eventually it narrowed to Flight 93. That was the biggest threat at that point.
04:22:19 KARL ROVE, WHITE HOUSE COUNSELOR
If you take the trajectory of the plane, of Flight 93 after it passes Pittsburgh and draw a straight line, it's gonna go to Washington, DC.
04:22:27 NORMAN MINETA, TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY
You just had to do something instantaneously.
04:22:30 DAVID BOHRER, WHITE HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER
There was a, a PEOC staffer who would keep coming in with updates on Flight 93's progress towards DC.
04:22:40 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(OC) Did you have any thoughts at the time as to what the target of that airplane might be?
04:22:44 VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY, UNITED STATES
I thought probably White House or Capitol. We found out later from interviewing people who were detained Al Qaeda members, that said the fourth plane was intended for the White House.
04:22:55 BRIGADIER GENERAL W MONTAGUE WINFIELD, US ARMY
The decision was made to try to go intercept Flight 93.
04:22:59 VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY, UNITED STATES
The significance of saying to a pilot that you are authorized to shoot down that plane full of Americans, is a, you know, it's an order that had never been given before.
04:23:10 ANDREW CARD, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF
Very, very tough decision. And the President understood the magnitude of that decision.
04:23:30 CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER
The President did give the order to shoot down a civilian plane, if it was not responding properly. And it was authority requested through channels, by Secretary Rumsfeld, Vice President passed the request, the President said, "yes."
04:23:32 DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
It was a totally different circumstance for our country, the thought of having to shoot down one of our own civilian aircraft.
04:23:40 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(OC) Do you remember your own thoughts as to what you were thinking?
04:23:43 VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY, UNITED STATES
Yeah, that this was a very difficult, difficult proposition, but it had to be done. If we had been able to intercept the planes before they hit the World Trade Center, would we? And the answer was, absolutely yes.
04:23:55 DAVID BOHRER, WHITE HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER
And the President gave the, the VP authority to make that call. It was a chilling moment, chilling moment.
http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/pentagon/attack/abcnews091102_jenningsinterviews.html
Bohrer, as with other witnesses, talks of "a PEOC staffer who would keep coming in with updates on Flight 93's progress towards DC": he places the updates after the Pentagon was hit, not before. Were there two events? Or is Mineta's account simply incorrect?
With regard to the Cheney evacuation time, however, we can see that Bohrer doesn't say it occurred "shortly after" 9:00. The programme transcript agrees with the 9/11 Commission in putting this after 9:34.
It's also worth noting that the "shortly after 9:00" interpretation of the ABC text story may be in conflict with Richard Clarke's account. He was three blocks away from the White House at 9:03, so we might reasonably speculate that he wouldn't reach Cheney's office until 9:06 at the very earliest, and perhaps a couple of minutes later. When Clarke arrived, though, he said Cheney and Rice were alone: no mention of Bohrer. They talk, he leaves, still Bohrer hasn't arrived. It might be 9:10 or later still, so if Bohrer isn't there now, then how can he know that Cheney is evacuated "shortly after" 9:00, and what, in this context, does "shortly after" actually mean?
Maybe, somewhere, there's video tape of Bohrer giving a time for the evacuation that would support the "shortly after 9:00" claim. Or perhaps someone can ask him to clarify the issue. Of course they should also check when Mineta arrived: it would be interesting to hear. But without further clarification, Bohrer's ABC testimony so far does not make any kind of a convincing case for placing Cheney in the PEOC before 9:20, and the programme itself clearly says he only arrived later.
Condoleezza Rice
You may have noticed that Dr Griffin followed his comments about David Bohrer with a word about Condoleezza Rice:
He doesn't explain this, but read Griffin's book Debunking 9/11 Debunking and it's clear he sees the testimony as significant:
The fact that Cheney had gone down to the PEOC shortly after the second strike on the World Trade Center was also confirmed by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. On an ABC News television program one year after 9/11, based on interviews by Peter Jennings, Rice said: "[T]he Secret Service came and said, 'you have to leave now for the bunker. The Vice President's already there. There may be a plane headed for the White House. There are a lot of planes that are in the air that are not responding properly,'" after which Charlie Gibson said: "In the bunker, the Vice PResident is joined by Rice and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta."
David Ray Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking
How does Rice confirm an early evacuation, though? She ties the Secret Service warnings to concerns about a plane possibly heading for the White House, which is precisely what the Commission said happened with Flight 77 at around 9:36.
What's more, as we've seen above, the program already provided a time for the evacuation:
04:02:12 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) Quick good-byes, and then a race to the Sarasota airport. At that moment, in the White House, . . .
04:02:19 VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY, UNITED STATES
I was in my west wing office.
04:02:21 DAVID BOHRER, WHITE HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER
The Secret Service had come in, to his office. I think it was two or three agents, which is very unusual.
04:02:27 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) David Bohrer is another White House photographer, assigned to Vice President Dick Cheney.
04:02:33 DAVID BOHRER, WHITE HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER
And agents came inside the office and said "Sir, you have to come with us."
04:02:38 VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY, UNITED STATES
Put his hand on the back of my belt, grabbed me by my shoulder and sort of propelled me down the hall way.
04:02:43 CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS
(VO) And to an underground bunker, the President's Emergency Operations Center, PEOC they call it.
04:02:49 VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY, UNITED STATES
It's got blast doors on each end. it's a secure phone there as well as a television set.
http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/pentagon/attack/abcnews091102_jenningsinterviews.html
Bush left for the airport around 9:34/ 9:35, Gibson says "[a]t that moment, in the White House", and has Cheney and Bohrer describe the evacuation. Rice's comments came after this, and fit perfectly well with the 9/11 Commission account.
It could be that Dr Griffin, and the others using these accounts, are assuming the statements "You have to leave now for the bunker. The Vice President's already there. There may be a plane headed for the White House" means Cheney was in the PEOC before the Pentagon was hit. However, Cheney's description of the shelter before the PEOC as having "blast doors on each end" certainly also fits the definition of a bunker as far as we're concerned. We're not sure of the layout: could it even be described as a part of the PEOC?
This is becoming an argument over semantics, though. The reality is that Rice's statements here are entirely consistent with Cheney's account as reported by the 9/11 Commission. And the idea they confirm "that Cheney had gone down to the PEOC shortly after the second strike on the World Trade Center" appears to have no foundation at all.
Cheney and Tim Russert
Dr Griffin's most remarkable claim is that Dick Cheney himself indicated arriving in the PEOC prior to 9:38:
This is an abbreviated version of the interview, though. Here's what Cheney actually said.
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the events of Tuesday. Where were you when you first learned a plane had struck the World Trade Center?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, I was in my office Tuesday morning. Monday, I had been in Kentucky, and the president had been in the White House. Tuesday, our roles were sort of reversed. He was in Florida, and I was in the White House Tuesday morning. And a little before 9, my speechwriter came in. We were going to go over some speeches coming up. And my secretary called in just as we were starting to meet just before 9:00 and said an airplane had hit the World Trade Center, and that was the first one that went in. So we turned on the television and watched for a few minutes, and then actually saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center. And the--as soon as that second plane showed up, that's what triggered the thought: terrorism, that this was an attack...
MR. RUSSERT: You sensed it immediately, "This is deliberate"?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Yeah. Then I convened in my office. Condi Rice came down. Her office is right near mine there in the West Wing.
MR. RUSSERT: The national security adviser.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: National security adviser, my chief of staff, Scooter Libby, Mary Matalin, who works for me, convened in my office, and we started talking about getting the Counterterrorism Task Force up and operating. I talked with the president. I'd given word to Andy Card's staff, who is right next door, to get hold of Andy and/or the president and that I wanted to talk to him as soon as they could hook it up. This call came in, and the president knew at this point about that. We discussed a statement that he might make, and the first statement he made describing this as an act of apparent terrorism flowed out of those conversations. While I was there, over the next several minutes, watching developments on the television and as we started to get organized to figure out what to do, my Secret Service agents came in and, under these circumstances, they just move. They don't say "sir" or ask politely. They came in and said, "Sir, we have to leave immediately," and grabbed me and...
MR. RUSSERT: Literally grabbed you and moved you?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Yeah. And, you know, your feet touch the floor periodically. But they're bigger than I am, and they hoisted me up and moved me very rapidly down the hallway, down some stairs, through some doors and down some more stairs into an underground facility under the White House, and, as a matter of fact, it's a corridor, locked at both ends, and they did that because they had received a report that an airplane was headed for the White House.
MR. RUSSERT: This is Flight 77, which had left Dulles.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Which turned out to be Flight 77. It left Dulles, flown west towards Ohio, been captured by the terrorists. They turned off the transponder, which led to a later report that a plane had gone down in Ohio, but it really hadn't. Of course, then they turned back and headed back towards Washington. As best we can tell, they came initially at the White House and...
MR. RUSSERT: The plane actually circled the White House?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Didn't circle it, but was headed on a track into it. The Secret Service has an arrangement with the F.A.A. They had open lines after the World Trade Center was...
MR. RUSSERT: Tracking it by radar.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: And when it entered the danger zone and looked like it was headed for the White House was when they grabbed me and evacuated me to the basement. The plane obviously didn't hit the White House. It turned away and, we think, flew a circle and came back in and then hit the Pentagon. And that's what the radar track looks like. The result of that--once I got down into the shelter, the first thing I did--there's a secure phone there. First thing I did was pick up the telephone and call the president again, who was still down in Florida, at that point, and strongly urged him to delay his return.
MR. RUSSERT: You told him to stay away from Washington.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I said, `Delay your return. We don't know what's going on here, but it looks like, you know, we've been targeted.'
MR. RUSSERT: Why did you make that judgment?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, it goes to--you know, sort of my basic role as vice president is to worry about presidential succession. And my job, above all other things, is to be prepared to take over if something happens to the president. But over the years from my time with President Ford, as secretary of Defense, on the Intel Committee and so forth, I've been involved in a number of programs that were aimed at ensuring presidential succession. We did a lot of planning during the Cold War, Tim, with respect to the possibility of a nuclear incident. And one of the key requirements always is to protect the presidency. It's not about George Bush or Dick Cheney. It's about the occupant in the office.
And one of the things that we did later on that day were tied directly to guaranteeing presidential succession, and that our enemies, whoever they might be, could not decapitate the federal government and leave us leaderless in a moment of crisis. That's why, for example, when we have a State of the Union speech and we've got the entire government assembled--the president, vice president, congressional leaders, Cabinet and so forth--we always leave a Cabinet member out. He's always taken to a secure location and set up there in case something should happen in the House chambers so we still have a president.
MR. RUSSERT: Did you have any role in Speaker Hastert...
VICE PRES. CHENEY: Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: ...speaker of the House being taken away?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: We evacuated Speaker Hastert to a secure facility, and later, the rest of the congressional leadership. I also ordered the evacuation of Cabinet members. And so we sent Tommy Thompson, Ann Veneman, Gale Norton also up to a secure facility. And in the days since, we've always maintained to say--I've spent a good deal of my time up at Camp David since the president returned to the White House just so we weren't both together in the same place so we could ensure the survival of the government.
The president was on Air Force One. We received a threat to Air Force One--came through the Secret Service...
MR. RUSSERT: A credible threat to Air Force One. You're convinced of that.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: I'm convinced of that. Now, you know, it may have been phoned in by a crank, but in the midst of what was going on, there was no way to know that. I think it was a credible threat, enough for the Secret Service to bring it to me. Once I left that immediate shelter, after I talked to the president, urged him to stay away for now, well, I went down into what's call a PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, and there, I had Norm Mineta...
MR. RUSSERT: Secretary of Transportation.
VICE PRES. CHENEY: ...secretary of Transportation, access to the FAA. I had Condi Rice with me and several of my key staff people. We had access, secured communications with Air Force One, with the secretary of Defense over in the Pentagon. We had also the secure videoconference that ties together the White House, CIA, State, Justice, Defense--a very useful and valuable facility. We have the counterterrorism task force up on that net. And so I was in a position to be able to see all the stuff coming in, receive reports and then make decisions in terms of acting with it.
But when I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon's been hit. We had word the State Department had been bombed, that a car bomb had gone off at the State Department. Turned out not to be true, but we didn't know that at the time. We had a report that Norm had provided that there were six airplanes that might have been hijacked, and that's what we started working off of, was that list of six.
Now we could account for two of them in New York. The third one we didn't know what had happened to it. It turned out it had hit the Pentagon. But the first reports on the Pentagon attack suggested a helicopter, and then later, a private jet, and it was only after we got ahold of some eyewitnesses that we knew it was an American Airlines flight. So then we had three planes accounted for, but we still have had three outstanding.
We had reports of planes down in Ohio, turned out not to be true; down in Pennsylvania; turned out that was true. And all of that--excuse me--added with the report of a perspective attack on Air Force One itself, we'd have been absolute fools not to go into button down mode, make sure we had successors evacuated, make sure the president was safe and secure. Offutt was a good location for that purpose, and also the president...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20010916.html
(We've snipped the interview at that point because we're only interested in explaining the timeline issue, however it's worth reading the full text if you haven't already done so.)
After the second WTC impact, then, Cheney says that Rice, Scooter Libby, Mary Matalin and others convened in his office. He then spoke to the President, which didn't happen until 9:15 according to the 9/11 Commission Report. After continuing to watch "developments on the television" for "several minutes", he was then evacuated by the Secret Service. This doesn't at all fit with being evacuated shortly after 9:00, or getting him to the PEOC before 9:20, but is entirely compatible with the 9/11 Commission report.
Cheney also tells us that the evacuation was because of the approaching Flight 77, again supporting a 9:36 time.
Next we hear that Cheney went into a shelter area, immediately before the PEOC: just as the 9/11 Commission reports. He tells us that "[t]he president was on Air Force One. We received a threat to Air Force One--came through the Secret Service..., and while in that shelter he told the President to stay away." If Bush was on Air Force One then this also gives us a timeframe:
The President’s motorcade departed at 9:35, and arrived at the airport between 9:42 and 9:45. During the ride the President learned about the attack on the Pentagon. He boarded the aircraft, asked the Secret Service about the safety of his family, and called the Vice President. According to notes of the call, at about 9:45 the President told the Vice President:“Sounds like we have a minor war going on here, I heard about the Pentagon.We’re at war . . . somebody’s going to pay.”
9/11 Commission Report
This puts Bush at the airport by 9:42 at the earliest, and places Bush and Cheney speaking at 9:45. It's after the Pentagon was attacked, but Cheney is still in the shelter before the PEOC. Only after leaving the call was ended did Cheney move on: "Once I left that immediate shelter, after I talked to the president, urged him to stay away for now, well, I went down into what's call a PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, and there, I had Norm Mineta..."
It is true that Cheney said "when I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon's been hit", but of course even this doesn't necessarily mean he was there before the Pentagon attack. It would take time for news of the attack to reach them, and Cheney himself describes how the initial situation was confused: "the first reports on the Pentagon attack suggested a helicopter, and then later, a private jet, and it was only after we got ahold of some eyewitnesses that we knew it was an American Airlines flight".
There's confirmation of this initial confusion at Cooperative Research:
There would be other, later reports, too: the type of plane, identifying an American Airlines jet, discovering that it was the hijacked Flight 11. Arriving before any of these might lead someone to say "[W]hen I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon's been hit."
And a recently released Secret Service document appears to confirm something like this, saying that "the report of the Pentagon being hit by the suspicious aircraft was announced to the VP and NSA Rice after they arrived at the PEOC" (Source).
The simple fact is that the "short order" line does not necessarily put Cheney in the PEOC before 9:37, and is actually further evidence against the "shortly after 9:00" timeline suggested by some (if he'd arrived at the PEOC by 9:15, say, then Cheney would not have heard of the Pentagon being hit "within a short order"). And so, with the rest of his account also unambiguously ruling out an early arrival at the PEOC, this interview does not contradict the 9/11 Commission's evacuation timeline for Cheney.
Others
This page was originally written as a response to David Ray Griffin's piece, and so focused on the accounts he highlighted. There are other statements worth mentioning, though, and so we'll add those here.
Karl Rove
Karl Rove was with Bush in Florida on 9/11. He gave an interview to MSNBC a year later that included the following comment on what happened after Bush left the classroom at about 9:15:
Here we're being told that Cheney was evacuated at around 9:15 or so, contrary both to the 9/11 Commission evacuation timetable, and their mention of the Bush-Cheney call (they say this happened at 9:15).
However, Rove also says that Cheney was moved "because the plane was approaching the White House". But which plane? The 9/11 Commission said Cheney was evacuated due to the approaching Flight 77, however that alert wouldn't occur until 9:34 to 9:36. So is Rove referring to some other, covered-up alert, or has he simply mixed up his times?
There's a little support for the mixup theory in the fact that Bush left the Florida school at around the same time as Cheney says he was evacuated. If Bush tried to call the White House as the convoy pulled away, then there's a good chance that Cheney would have been on his way to the PEOC tunnel, and so they wouldn't have been able to speak. Maybe this is the incident to which Rove was referring. Certainly in an October 2001 interview Rove mentions no problems in reaching Cheney prior to Bush's statement:
In his first statement, Rove is telling us they got the director of the FBI, but not the vice president; in this one, he appears to be saying they got the vice president, but not the FBI director (at first, anyway).
Of course the real problem here is that Rove wasn't in the White House at the time. He didn't see Cheney being evacuated, and so his statement here has been derived from other information. If that came from a conversation with Cheney or another direct witness, where they discussed a very specific timetable of events, then it's plainly significant. But if Rove has simply surmised for himself that this was why he couldn't get Cheney, then his statement has much less value, and if he's just mistaken over the time then it has no importance at all.
More information is required before Rove's comments can properly be assessed, then. We'll look for other interviews he has given, along with others in the Presidential party, that may help to clarify the issue.
CNN
David Ray Griffin claims that a CNN programme supported the early arrival of Dick Cheney at the PEOC:
A second alternative version of the incoming plane story was told on the CNN program that aired on the first anniversary of 9/11. As mentioned earlier, this program's account, like Clarke's and Mineta's accounts, said that Cheney was taken down to the PEOC shortly after the second tower was hit. This program was, in fact, entitled "Cheney Recalls Taking Charge from Bunker."
9/11 Contradictions, David Ray Griffin
Dr Griffin kindly provides the URL so we can read the account for ourselves. And that's just as well, because it's not nearly as clear as he claims:
Here Cheney makes a call to Bush at 9:15 for an unspecified length of time, then speaks "with top aides", then is evacuated. This is not "shortly after the second tower was hit" at 9:03, and it seems most unlikely that it could put Cheney in the PEOC before 9:20.
It's not the most detailed of timelines, though, so we might benefit from researching this further. The article offers a clue in its reference to "an interview in the vice president's office", which suggests there's another programme that could tell us more. And sure enough, three days after this article was published, CNN aired something called "9/11: What Really Happened?" that included the Cheney quotes and a possible qualification:
KING: He was here in his West Wing office, suspicious at word a plane had struck the World Trade Center, watching TV, hoping his instincts were wrong.
DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It was a clear day. There was no weather problem. And then we saw the second airplane actually hit in real time, and that was, at that moment you knew this was a deliberate act, that it was a terrorist act.
KING: A call to the traveling president, urgent conversations with top aides and then a burst through the door.
CHENEY: My agent all of a sudden materialized beside me and said, "Sir, we have to leave now." He grabbed me and propelled me out of my office, down the hall, into the underground shelter in the White House.
KING: In White House shorthand, it is the PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.
MARY MATALIN, COUNSELOR TO THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I didn't know that it existed until I was actually down there. And I'm not sure I could find my way back there to this day.
KING: A Cold War relic, deep underground, and the vice president's base of operations on the first day of a new war.
LEWIS LIBBY, VICE PRESIDENT'S CHIEF OF STAFF: There's only one reason we would be headed for the PEOC on a day when planes were attacking America. And at one point they came in and said there's a plane five miles out. Now a plane five miles out, traveling at 350 to 500 miles per hour doesn't take long to arrive. And so that was a wrong bit of information that added to the drama.
KING: That was the plane that slammed the Pentagon. Then, a report of a plane over Pennsylvania headed for Washington. Twice, a military aide asks the vice president for authority to shoot it down.
JOSH BOLTEN, DEPUTY WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: The vice president said, yes, again. And the aide then asked a third time. He said, "just confirming, sir, authority to engage." And the vice president, his voice got a little annoyed then, said, "I said yes..."
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0209/14/cp.00.html
Libby's comment isn't entirely clear, but is at least consistent with the 9/11 Commission's explanation: that the evacuation to the PEOC occurred due to a warning about the rapidly approaching Flight 77. And the programme still has a Bush-Cheney conversation that only begins at 9:15, followed by "urgent conversations with top aides" afterwards, that we would also say makes an early arrival time most unlikely. Certainly it didn't say that "Cheney was taken down to the PEOC shortly after the second tower was hit": Dr Griffin's claim is simply untrue.
Conclusion
David Ray Griffin cites four main accounts to support his claim that Cheney was in the PEOC before 9:20.
He uses part of a Cheney interview, and fails to point out to his readers that this account clearly doesn't support an early arrival. His sole argument is that the words "when I arrived there within a short order, we had word the Pentagon's been hit" mean the Pentagon must have been hit after Cheney arrived, but as we've demonstrated, that simply isn't true.
Dr Griffin uses a summary of David Bohrer's ABC News comments to say that Cheney was evacuated shortly after 9:00, but look more closely and that doesn't stand up, either. Bohrer provides no time for the evacuation in the full programme transcript, which actually implies that Cheney wasn't moved from his office until after 9:34, just as the 9/11 Commission Report states.
Richard Clarke was said to imply "that Cheney was in the PEOC several minutes prior to 9:15". Clarke makes no mention of when Cheney left, though, and such calculations make considerable assumptions about his accuracy. And there's considerable reason to believe he's not very accurate at all, that his teleconference began long after the 9:10 claimed by Dr Griffin, and so calculations based on his timeline will be seriously flawed.
And of course there's Norman Mineta's account, which famously placed Cheney in the PEOC prior to 9:20. But we've seen there are several reasons to question that. For example, Mineta said the White House was being evacuated when he arrived; Clarke, along with virtually everyone else, says this only happened after the Pentagon was hit. And while Mineta has himself in action and talking to the FAA from soon after 9:20, another report says he didn't call them until nearer 10 o'clock. Read more here.
Check these stories in more detail, then, and they begin to fall apart. Not one of them is sufficiently reliable to make the case that Cheney reached the PEOC before 9:20, and the weight of evidence continues to show that the 9/11 Commission timeline for Cheney's evacuation is more accurate.