9/11 Official Cover-Up: The Claim about the Time of Dick Cheney’s Entry into the White House Bunker
We are offering a Series of Consensus Points from the 24-member 9/11 Consensus Panel, which presents considerable new evidence about 9/11 in the form of its 44 Consensus Points to date. The official claims regarding 9/11 are contradicted by facts that have been validated by a scientific consensus process, based on a standard medical model of investigation.
Point MC-3: The Claim about the Time of Dick Cheney’s Entry into the White House Bunker
The Official Account
Vice President Dick Cheney took charge of the government’s response to the 9/11 attacks after he entered the PEOC (the Presidential Emergency Operations Center), a.k.a. “the bunker”.
The 9/11 Commission Report said1 that Cheney did not enter the PEOC until almost 10:00 AM, which was at least 20 minutes after the violent event at the Pentagon that killed more than 100 people.
The Best Evidence
Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta told the 9/11 Commission that, after he joined Cheney and others in the bunker at approximately 9:20 AM, he listened to an ongoing conversation between Cheney and a young man, which took place when “the airplane was coming into the Pentagon.”2
After the young man, having reported for the third time that the plane was coming closer, asked whether “the orders still stand,” Cheney emphatically said they did. The 9/11 Commission Report, by claiming that Cheney did not enter the PEOC until long after the Pentagon was damaged, implies that this exchange between Cheney and the young man – which can most naturally be understood as Cheney’s confirmation of a stand-down order – could not have occurred.
However, testimony that Cheney was in the PEOC by 9:20 was reported not only by Mineta but also by Richard Clarke3 and White House photographer David Bohrer.4Cheney himself, speaking on “Meet the Press” five days after 9/11, reported that he had entered the PEOC before the Pentagon was damaged.5
The 9/11 Commission’s attempt to bury the exchange between Cheney and the young man confirms the importance of Mineta’s report of this conversation.
References for Point MC-3
1. 9/11 Commission Report (2004), note 213, p. 464.
4. See “9/11: Interviews by Peter Jennings,” ABC News, September 11, 2002.
5. “The Vice President Appears on Meet the Press with Tim Russert,” MSNBC, September 16, 2001.