James Corbett
9/11 Blogger
Thursday, June 5, 2008
The Corbett Report has just released the final installment in a three-part YouTube documentary series seeking to highlight some of the bizarre facts surrounding the movements and whereabouts of President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld on the day of 9/11. The three videos can be watched in the players below.
Where Was Rumsfeld on 9/11?
The first video, regarding the whereabouts of Donald Rumsfeld on the morning of 9/11, reveals that Rumsfeld was in the Pentagon as the largest attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor unfolded.
In a startling admission on which he was never pressed, however, he states he was ‘out of the loop’ that morning and unaware of Flight 77 the hijacked jet streaking towards the heart of the American capital until it actually hit the very building he was sitting in.
In his well-researched article Donald Rumsfeld on 9/11: An Enemy Within Matthew Everett makes it clear how this startling revelation from the second in command of the U.S. Armed Forces goes well beyond mere incompetence. Rumsfeld’s inability to be contacted by his own staff during that crucial half hour as Flight 77 bore down on the Pentagon directly affected the Air Force’s ability to respond to that or any other threat that morning.
As the video reveals, the protocol dealing with the very events which unfolded that day namely, those dealing with the authorization to shootdown hijacked civilian aircraft, had been mysteriously revised mere weeks before 9/11.
Nor can ‘Rummy’ claim ignorance of the high terror threat level in the U.S. at that time. In fact, as he revealed to Larry King in December of 2001, he was actually briefing members of Congress in a startlingly prescient talk on the likelihood of a large terror attack that would transform America in the very near future which began just minutes before the first plane hit the World Trade Center.
Where Was Cheney on 9/11?
The second video deals with Vice President Cheney, who was physically picked up and carried to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) as the attacks unfolded. The PEOC is a highly secretive command bunker underneath the White House from which the President can direct response to catastrophic events.
The timing of Cheney’s arrival at the PEOC is crucial to our understanding of 9/11 as it could shine light on precisely how Cheney coordinated the unbelievably inadequate response to the attack.
The 9/11 Commission heard testimony from Norman Mineta the Secretary of Transportation on the morning of 9/11 that Cheney was already operating out of the PEOC when he arrived there at 9:20 a.m.
This is significant because Mineta also testified in some detail about how Cheney was receiving reports on Flight 77 as it made its way toward and eventually hit the Pentagon. The 9/11 Commission’s final report, however, asserts that Cheney arrived at the PEOC at 9:58 a.m., meaning Mineta either lied or got confused and made up an elaborate, detailed story about the Vice President and his aide.
Also quite puzzling is the fact that Mineta’s testimony happened to be left out of the 9/11 Commission’s video archive because of what representatives at the National Archives deemed a ’snafu.’ Amazingly, the crucial discrepancy in arrival times for Cheney in the Presidential bunker was never followed up on by the controlled corporate media, but an intrepid team of journalists from We Are Change followed up with Mineta, who stood by his testimony.
Where Was Bush on 9/11?
The final video in the series covers the whereabouts of President Bush on the most imporant day of his presidency. Was Bush aware of the fact that his life was in grave danger as he sat at Booker Elementary that morning, an unsecured, publicly disclosed location? Certainly he was aware of a drect threat on Air Force One that morning, a threat which was taken as credible because as Webster Tarpley explains it was preceded by a series of classified codes, including nuclear launch codes. This threat caused Air Force One to take defensive measures on its mad dash for Offut Air Force Base, the only location from which the president could physically control the nuclear warfighting capabilities of the U.S…and the very spot where Warren Buffet was having an exclusive confab of many of the presidents and CEOs who on any regular day would been at work in their offices…in the world Trade Center.
Taken singly, any one of these stories would be startling and perhaps inexplicable if one believes the official story that America was attacked by an outside force on 9/11. Taken together, however, it quickly becomes apparent that the understanding of that day portrayed in the controlled corporate media is vastly distorted. By collecting this data into an easily digestible YouTube documentary format, these three videos make excellent tools for activists seeking to alert others to some of the many troubling unanswered questions about the defining political event of our age.