9/11 tapes expose flaws in military chiefs' testimony
The US military appear to have deliberately misled the 9-11 commission by making claims that they surely must have known to be false.
Tape transcripts published this month in Vanity Fair show that two of the only four available fighter planes wasted much of the morning on a wild goose chase, pursuing American Airline 11, which had by that time already smashed into the World Trade centre.
However, by far the greatest revelation is that the US military did not hear of United 93 being hijacked until after it had crashed. This would appear to greatly undermine Cheney's claim that the White House had questioned whether or not to allow the military to bring flight 93 down.
The moment when Sergeant Shelley Watson is told that 93 is down is caught on the tape at 10.15am.Members and staff of the 9/11 commission believe the discrepancies may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead, and they discussed asking the justice department to consider criminal charges against senior members of the military, sources told the Washington Post.
Thomas Kean, the former New Jersey governor who led the commission, described what his panel had been told by the North American Aerospace Defence Command as "just so far from the truth". To this day, he said, commission members still "don't know why Norad told us what they told us". John Farmer, a senior counsel to the commission, told Vanity Fair that the military's story was "a whole different order of magnitude than spin. It simply wasn't true".
The 9-11 Commission have decided not to refer the Norad officials to the Justice Department, but have instead passed their complaint to the Pentagon."He's down," an air traffic controller tells her on the tape, though she at first misunderstands. "When did he land? Because we have confirmation ..."
"He did ... he did ... he did not land," the controller replies.
"Oh, he's down down?" Sgt Watson replies, as the truth dawns.
A whitewash can be expected to be produced in due course.
Click title for full article.
Read the Vanity Fair article here. You can also listen to the tapes at that site.
2 comments:
I listened to all them and it's fairly damaging hearing people say, "cool" when informed of a hijacking.
I just don't understand why it is that an associate film producer for "United 93" got first dibs on the tapes. Anybody know where we can get all 30 hours, instead of just the snippets?
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