in american history the last time there was an attack like this on the united states was pro harbor tremendous and of another terrible day the attack on pearl harbor but there was also someone on the same day who offered a prediction after the attack on pearl harbor guess what we did we went back and found out that yes the evidence was there we should have known and i gan i think what we're going to see even in this instance this pearl harbor the twenty first century is very much the same kind of thing in fact the more information that has been emerging about september eleventh the more we have come to realize that many different aspects of the two events bear a chilling resemblance to each other while both of bents were needed by the u s to go to war in both cases the ultimate goal was not the one initially stated roosevelt knew was surprised japanese attack would enraged the public and jump start according to their own documents before nine eleven the neo cons knew that a surprise attack like a new pearl harbor would in rage the public and jump start the war machine against afghanistan in this way they would get a backdoor entry into what they really wanted the war with saddam hussein from the very beginning there was their conviction that saddam hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go he says that going after saddam hussein was topic  ten days after the inauguration eight months before september eleventh before and during the war the propaganda machine made a relentless effort to create a direct connection between hitler and japan one poll taken immediately after pearl harbor showed that more than sixty percent of americans believe that germany was behind the attack the bush cheney propaganda machine made an even harder effort to create a direct association between iraq and osama bin laden by the end of two thousand and three nearly seventy percent of americans believe that saddam was implicated in the september eleventh attacks top levels of the roosevelt administration knew in advance that pearl harbor was going to be attacked general marshall an before september eleventh many in the intelligence community knew the attacks were on their way and there was so much discussion about this attack everybody was talking about it george tenet had some meetings other than other analysts had meetings at the white information on the japanese attack was kept from those who could have used it to defend the hawaiian port and to minimize the number of american casualties two men could use that information immediately admiral husband campbell and lieutenant general walter short commanders at pearl harbor but they never get it according to hill that was no mistake if f d r and his administration deliberately withheld the vital intelligence from pearl harbor and all the evidence indicates that they did then it was certainly a deliberate conspiracy to set pearl harbor up for a total defeat before september eleventh important information was kept from counterterrorism czar richard clarke who could have organized t defense and even have prevented the attacks altogether you have to intentionally stop it you have to intervene and say you know i don't want that report to go we therefore conclude that there was a high level decision in the cia ordering people not to share that information in both cases the pre knowledge by the u s government on the upcoming attacks was denounced in front of congress in september one thousand nine hundred four republican representative forest harness of indiana congressional charge about a pearl harbor conspiracy he said that three days before pearl harbor the australian government had warned washington about a japanese aircraft carrier was headed towards hawaii but he said that information was withheld from kimelman shortly after september eleventh republican congressman curt weldon denounced the pre knowledge of information on the upcoming attacks which was intentionally withheld from the intelligence community tend to prevent the american people from knowing the facts about how we could have prevented nine eleven and people are covering it up today when honest officials stumbled on important information on the japanese attack they went straight to their superiors only to see that information ignored diverted or suppressed altogether the chief of naval intelligence in washington captain allen kirk recognized the message as plans for a bombing raid against systems attempts to warn kimmel ended when uncovered the september eleventh plot but her memos never got past her superiors while she was prevented from pursuing the investigation any further why it turns out they were not read by the lawyer in the f b i with the duty to send those over to the department of hours before the japanese strike roosevelt's chief of staff george marshall became suddenly unavailable delaying the process of communication within the chain of command general george marshall the man who should have acted was nowhere to be found colonel reference bratton was responsible for keeping marshall supplied with such vital information for a broad national sudden and availability at a time when america was on the brink of war could not have been accidental in the crucial hours of september eleventh defense secretary rumsfeld and other top military became suddenly unavailable hampering the decisional process within the chain of command thirty minute w information however may not have been sufficient to guarantee the success of the japanese attack the military capacity of the hawaiian port was also kept below its requirements general short faced with the need to send out range patrols had only a handful of suitable a across his demands for more were not seen as a priority on september eleventh only four jets remain on alert to defend the entire sector of the country most likely to suffer an attack i've determined of course that don't interfere with japan's overt act of war the united states desires that they had to pack it at the first two were that there's no argument about what f d r meant he meant that the us naval plan to defend pearl harbor should not and cannot be executed on september eleventh vice president cheney gave a direct order regarding the plane headed towards washington which in fact resulted in the plane reaching its target for the three thousand victims of september eleventh the president bush could launch a war that had already been prepared in the smallest detail c n n and time magazine have reported that on september tenth two thousand and one a military plan to attack afghanistan had been placed on george bush's desk to be signed by the president upon his return from florida may god grant us wisdom and may he watch over the united states of america then came the official commissions which in both cases were tasked to find out whether there had been a conspiracy by the same authorities that were suspected of having participated in the conspiracy just three months after the senator album barkley  kentucky convenes the joint congressional committee on the investigation of the pearl harbor attack the committee lays much of the blame on the commanders at pearl harbor and largely exonerate but its conclusions drawn challengers of cover up cronyism gross negligence becomes high treason when the motive is discovered or understood in july two thousand  report failed to meet many of the daleks expectations and concluded that nine eleven was merely a failure of imagination published in two thousand and four the nine eleven commission report has become the central focus of criticism by the nine eleven truth movement movement comprised of thousands of individuals and associations from all over the world all connected through the internet the commission's report is accused of having simply rubber stamp the government's version of the events by ignoring all the evidence against it while covering up its most conspicuous holes with a long series of omissions distortions and even plain false hoods led by researcher david ray griffin an international panel of twenty experts on nine eleven has compiled a list of the strongest evidence against the official version that has emerged to this day this evidence is available to the public on their website in four different languages despite all the evidence that has emerged in the last decades there are many who still reject the idea of a conspiracy at pearl harbor and prefer to reassert the much more simplistic explanation called the official version there was no conspiracy f d r did not know about no the american government did not now that the the official version by the government and dismiss such evidence as irrelevant these people are known as debunkers as their stated intent is to debunk the evidence presented by the nine eleven truth movement against the official version the most aspects of the debate the most prominent champion for the official version in france is to rome who also wrote a book called september eleventh and the conspiracy theories kieron also participated in numerous conferences and television debates on nine eleven in his own country but the flagship for the debunkers worldwide is certainly the american magazine popular mechanics in two thousand and six they published a book called debunking nine eleven myths in which the authors purport to have refuted all the major claims against the official version by the nine eleven truth movement jim igs is the editor of popular mechanics magazine in two thousand and five he and a staff of reporters decided to take on the factual and scientific claims made by members of the nine eleven conspiracy movement but the results were first published in a magazine article then more fully developed in a book titled debunking nine eleven myths why conspiracy theories can't stand up to the facts i think the popular mechanics but is a really s the debate on september eleventh can roughly be divided into these areas of discussion we had before hijackings as the overarching event of the day and we have the three different locations that were hit by the four airplanes one of them hit the pentagon another crash shanksville pennsylvania the other two hit the twin towers in new york the debate on the hijackings is divided in three parts the first one focuses on the air defense and whether the failure to intercept the hijacked airplanes was accidental or intentional the second focuses on the hijackers and whether they were actually aboard the airplanes or just the usual patsies the third part focuses on the aircraft themselves and whether the four airplanes used in the attacks were the same ones that took off from the airports that morning or were something that only resembled them from the outside what initially raise suspicions on the true role of the military on september eleventh is the fact that the us air defense which is arguably the most advanced and sophisticated in the world was unable to intercept even one of the four hijacked airplanes in the course of over one and a half hours i remember thinking where on earth are the interceptors i'm an old interceptor pilot and it's absolutely unbelievable that hijacked airliners could fly around for an hour and forty minutes without being intercepted as a former minister of national defense why did airplanes fly around for an hour and a half was remarked by senator mark dayton in the post nine eleven congressional hearings but what i find much more shocking and alarming were the repeated and catastrophic failures of the leaders in charge and the other people responsible to do their jobs to follow established procedures to follow direct orders from civilian and military commanders the official justification for this failure is a series of blunders miscommunications and mistakes that has come to be known as the incompetence theory on that day so a lot of well meaning confused people struggling to make sense of it of a terrible situation that even though where the planes were one argument for the incompetence theory is that the air defense was conceived to protect the us from external threats not internal ones the fact is that  air defenses and the whole norad system was not all geared towards protecting us from domestic aircraft quite the contrary it was all set up to detect aircraft coming in from overseas let's  question that's what the debunkers forget to mention is that the responsibility for tracking internal hijackers has never fallen on the military to begin with this has always been the duty of the civil air traffic controllers as explained by the secretary of civilian plane and analyze this through action and see what is going on the f a a authority over the national airspace is clearly acknowledged in this exchange between the military from september eleventh if you can and the fighters that were directly to that base so that are still under control we're never going to take this work with them coordinate with them as best you can with that they can tell you i don't like them and all that airspace another argument for the incompetence theory is that by turning off the transponders the hijackers had made the airplanes very difficult to be tracked on radar that can't be overstated the fact that once the hijackers turned off the transponders you had air traffic control were looking at something like forty five hundred primary radar blips they were trying to pick out the plane that they just lost altitude but they can still track the plane as a primary signal the following example shows how long it took an air traffic controller to find american eleven on his screen after he was told the plane had been hijacked by the negative situation united one seventy five never turn the transponder off it just switched codes united one seventy five is fifty miles northwest of new york city when its transponder code is suddenly changed as i look up i know it's like you know the one seventy f because he just changed codes and didn't turn it off he still left the controllers with a very clear indication of the normal return from an aircraft that was squawking us what we call it with the altitude according to the secret service the plane that hit the pentagon was tracked for said we have four planes outstanding to have to towers and two were headed to washington d c one of them approximately thirty minutes out one of them approximately forty five minutes out the one thirty minutes out turned out to be the plane it hit the pentagon just the one near hijacking we were tracking united ninety three and i was in conversation with the f b i agent and he was relaying to me that we suspect that this aircraft is now been taken over by hostile forces describe the sharp turn it made over eastern moments of confusion the four airplanes were being tracked by air traffic controllers all along the real reason for the failure to intercept the four aircraft seems to have been the high number of military exercises that were being run by nor september eleventh out of their base in cheyenne mountain colorado as webster tarpley noted in his book nine eleven synthetic terror staff exercises where command exercises are perfect for a rogue network which is forced to conduct it operations using the same communications and computer systems used by other officers who are not necessarily party to the illegal operation interestingly enough on the evening of september tenth the security level for the norad computer system called info had been dropped to normal the lowest level this made it easier for anyone to penetrate or compromised the computer networks of the air defense system on september eleventh between four and ten military exercises had been scheduled some of them involving four hijacks of commercial airplanes this unusual number of exercises had two major consequences one they moved a large number of fighters out to canada and alaska two they created a major confusion but not apparently someone took advantage of the situation while the plane headed for the pentagon was quickly approaching from the west and unknown source which was never identified reported that american eleven was headed towards the capital even though the plane had already crashed into the north tower to report that america yet general myers who is the highest military authority on september eleventh has denied that the war games affected the military capacity of response the question was whether or not the activities of the for war games going on on september eleventh actually impaired our ability to respond to the attacks they answered the question is no did not appear our response general myers forgot to mention that on the morning of september eleventh only four planes were armed and ready to intercept terrorists in the eastern region of the country i've determined of course that with only four aircraft we cannot defend the whole northeastern united states that was the sensation of frustration of i don't have the forces available to do anything about this myers instead has even suggested that the war games helped the military response it was in the command of north american aerospace defense command as he testified in front of the nine eleven commission i believe he told them that it enhanced our ability to respond what that means is all the battle positions that are normally not filled are indeed filled so it was an easy transition from an exercise into a real world situation that again myers forgot to mention that the transition took place only after all tragic events had ended around eleven o'clock eleven o'clock the sense of alarm had spread across the country actually patrolling the skies it was a war zone our skies were turned into a war zone everywhere you turn it was military jets and helicopters everywhere george bush returned to washington on the evening of september eleventh the president finally returns to washington and escorted six helicopters was waiting for him three hundred this leads us straight into a pivotal question was the choice of scheduling so many exercises in the same day just a misfortunate call or was it intentional to answer this question we need to take a closer look at some of the warnings the u s had received in the months prior to september eleventh by the spring of two thousand and one the system was blinking away according to intelligence chiefs the us administration has always maintained that they knew the attacks were on their way but they didn't have specific information on them and attack no specific threat involving really domestic operations or involving you know what happened obviously with cities airliner and so forth there were no warning signs that i'm aware of that would indicate this of operation in the country all the statements are false a joint congressional inquiry on september eleventh has revealed that in spring and summer of two thousand and one there had been a flood of warnings about possible terrorist attacks in the united states  using airplanes as weapons in fact as reported by the new york times american aviation officials were born as early as one nine hundred ninety eight that al qaeda could seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a u s landmark the london times as revealed that the british m i six and warned the american intelligence services about a plot to hijack aircraft and crash them into buildings two years before the september eleventh attacks russian president vladimir putin has said publicly that he ordered his intelligence agencies to alert the united states last summer in two thousand and one that suicide pilots were training for attacks on u s targets and german intelligence alerted the cia in june two thousand and one that middle eastern terrorists were training for hijacking the sunday herald has confirmed that britain gave president bush a categorical warning to expect multiple airline hijackings one month before the september eleventh attacks then there was the infamous august sixth memo president bush was told in august that osama bin laden might be planning an attack involving the hijacking of u s aircraft it's titled bin laden determined to strike in the u s the two page memo states f b i information indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks maybe it's no coincidence that the f b i advised their own boss to stop flying commercial airliners as early as six weeks before time at this point we can pose the following question knowing that the attacks were imminent knowing that they might involve hijacked airliners but not knowing where and when they could happen would have been a good reason to beef up the defense and keep even more jets than usual on alert all across the country why instead schedule so many exercises in one day while leaving only four jets on alert to defend the very sector of the country that was most likely to be attacked to bring even more confusion into the situation was a series of last minute replacements and unexplained absences within the chain of command the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff was general henry shelton but on september eleventh he was absent and his post was taken by his deputy general richard b myers the f a s national operations manager was ben slimy on the morning of september eleventh sly and he had been on that job for less than one day the protocols required for mr sly need to speak directly with the hijacker ordina lieutenant general mike count of them but canavan on that day was in puerto rico and apparently he had forgotten to designate a replacement in regards to the ensuing confusion mr slightly has stated that's incredible there is only one person there must be someone designated or someone who will assume the responsibility of issuing an order at the head of the national command center was general moniker winfield but on the evening of september tenth winfield instructed captain charles lighted to take his place on the following morning light it had been just recently certified for that post and was also on his first day on the job at the operation command of need ads was colonel marr when maher called his superior general arnold to get authorization to scramble the jets from notice he was told that arnold was in a meeting where he could not be reached by telephone marc had to physically send a messenger looking for precious minutes were lost as more waited for arnold to return his call and when the fighters were finally scrambled it was too late for them to intercept american eleven the top commander in charge of norad was general routh ever hard who was stationed at peterson air force base in colorado ever hard told the nine eleven commission that he was made aware of the first hijacking practically at the same time american eleven that slammed into the north tower he then went to his office and saw the c n n broadcast of the world trade center explosion after the second impact writes the commission it was obvious to everyone hard that there was an ongoing and coordinated terrorist attack at that point eberhard called general myers to update us on the situation but even though both generals knew the country was being attacked by hijacked airplanes neither of them suggested suspending the war games and recalling all the fighters available as soon as possible furthermore instead of getting on the phone and taking control of the situation in the most crucial moment of the day general eberhart chose to get in his car and drive from the peterson base to  mountain the thirty minute drive put him completely out of the loop since every hard couldn't receive telephone calls wrote the denver post as senior officials weighed how to respond general eberhart was also the person responsible for lowering the security level of the defense computer system on the evening of september tenth and then there was donald rumsfeld as stated by the nine eleven commission procedures called for the hijack ordinator on duty to contact the national military command center and to ask for a military escort aircraft to follow the flight the n m c c would then seek approval from the office of the secretary of defense to provide military assistance if approval was given the order would be transmitted down norad chain of command but this kind of procedure becomes difficult to follow when the hijack coordinator is in puerto rico no one knows who the replacement is the military command is in the hands of a total lookee and the secretary of defense is nowhere to be found donald rumsfeld that he was informed of the trade center being hit some fifteen minutes before the pentagon was hit this places the episode around nine twenty two in the morning and after the pentagon was hit rather than go to the command center and take charge of the situation the secretary of defense chose to lend a helping hand on the pentagon's law it's almost as if rumsfeld didn't feel the need to be informed about what was happening to his country under attack depended outside the burning building rumsfeld told the nine eleven commission that he was just gaining situational awareness when he spoke with the vice president at ten thirty nine that's more than one and a half hours after the whole world knew that america was under attack why would so many rookies be placed in key positions and why would so many top officials be either absent or unavailable on a day when so many exercises were scheduled is a question that remains to be answered question after having realized that the country was being attacked by hijacked airplanes at nine o three why didn't eberhard immediately suspended all the war games and recall all the available jets to their bases why didn't myers order him to do so after having been briefed by ever hard on the ongoing attack and why hasn't the nine eleven commission ever asked either general peace most fundamental questions the final argument against the incompetence theory is offered by research are not feasible men try three explain it one using the compet jobs something would have happened to correct the situation we find that there has been for months not only that didn't happen but the opposite took place after nine eleven most of the high ranking people involved in this catastrophic failure were either confirmed to their post or promoted to higher levels conda lisa rice who had misrepresented the information the government had on the attacks and a sworn testimony kept her post as national security adviser and went on to become secretary of state in the following bush administration general eberhart the norad commander who didn't think of recalling the war games as soon as he knew his country was under attack was chosen to lead the newly created u s northern command which the department of defense has termed the nation's premier military homeland defense organization donald rumsfeld who acted more like in a strange passer by than the secretary of defense kept his post at the pentagon and began enjoying the largest increase in military spending after the vietnam war richard b myers despite the total breakdown under his leadership was promoted to chairman of the joint chiefs of staff the highest military post in the country on september thirteenth confirmation hearings were held for general myers as if nothing ever happened while people were still being pulled alive from the rubble at ground zero while at the pentagon the military appeared completely aloof from the events unfolding at the white house the coordination activities seem to be concentrating under the firm authority of vice president cheney in fact the so called norad tapes have revealed that the white house to the nine eleven commission on may two thousand and three minute it was being questioned about the events that took place in the p i the underground bunker in the white house from where dick cheney took charge of the situation after convincing president bush to stay away from washington for safety reasons to fully understand the implications of this case two things must be kept in mind one is that according to the official version flight seventy seven crashed into the pentagon at nine thirty seven while flight united ninety three crashed pennsylvania at ten o three it's on this twenty six minute window it hinges the whole credibility of the vice president on his true role in the september eleventh attacks the second thing to keep in mind is that the order to shoot down civilian airliners came from the president through the vice president only after the pentagon had been hit when the third plane hit the pentagon the magnitude of the attacks grew dramatically we don't know if there are other planes that have been hijacked so the first decision i made on air force one was to give our air force orders to shoot down commercial aircraft that did not respond this means that any order given before the pentagon was hit could not have been a shoot down order however as chairman hamilton was inquiring about the shoot down order something unexpected emerged from moneta on the plane that hit the pentagon and we had that order given i think it was where the president that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be controlled by terrorists who were you there when that order was given no i was not i  was made aware of it during the time that the airplane coming in to the pentagon there was a young man who would come in and say to the vice president of the plane is fifty miles out the plane is thirty miles out and when i got down to the plane is ten 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 well at the time i didn't know what all that meant and the flight you're referring to is the one i thin into the pentagon and that his deposition posed a major problem since the shoot down order was given only after the pentagon was hit cheney's order sounded very much like one not to shoot down the plane president havel to immediately suggested that w had to had witnessed was also a shoot down order let me see if i understand the plane that was headed toward the pentagon and was some way there was an order to shoot that plane  well i don't know that specifically commissioner roemer picked up where hamilton left off you said if i understood you correctly that you were not in the room when the decision was made to what you inferred was a decision made to attempt to shoot down flight seventy seven before it crashed into the pentagon is that correct i didn't know about the shooting the order to shoot down commissioner roemer then tried to suggest a different solution was there another line of communication between the vice president and you said you saw mr richard clarke on your way and was clarke running an operations center as well on that dick was in the situation room so there was a situation room making decisions about what was going to happen i do believe as well as the i don't believe they were making any decisions i think they were more information gathering from various agencies could have been in the situation room where somebody in the situation room recommended to shoot down and the vice president agreed to that commissioner roemer i would assume that decision of that nature would have been would have had to be made in a much higher level than the people who were in the situation room unable to resolve the discrepancy the nine eleven commission took a series of dramatic steps firstly they simply excluded and that is testimony from the final report in the five hundred sixty pages of the report norman that it is mentioned only on in an unrelated circumstance his presence in the p r t is never even acknowledged and the video segment you have just seen has been removed from the commission's official website and it's no longer available secondly the nine eleven commission moved dick cheney's or rival in the p r to after the pentagon had been hit from the final report we read the vice president entered the underground tunnel leading to the shelter at nine thirty seven which is the same time the pentagon was hit the commission stated that dick cheney remained in the tunnel for more than twenty minutes trying to complete a call to the president and that he only entered the piave at nine fifty eight why would the vice president spend more than twenty minutes in a tunnel trying to make a phone call when the p r is fully equipped with all kinds of telephones has never been explained as a third step the commission moved the exchange with the young man to after ten o'clock and rewrote it in order to reconcile it with the official version from the final report we read at sometime between ten ten and ten fifteen a military aide told the vice president and others that the aircraft was eighty miles out by president cheney was asked for authority to engage the aircraft a military aide returned a few minutes later and said the aircraft was sixty miles out he again asked for authorization to engage the vice president again said yes in summary the window of time and that it described as during the time of the plane coming into the pentagon had become ten ten to ten fifteen in the commission report the fifty miles out reference by moneta had become eighty and sixty miles out in the report for thirty miles out and ten miles out mentions by minetta were removed and the unspecified order by dick cheney to the young man had become a straightforward shoot down order and now that the episode had been moved to after ten o'clock the commission could maintain that the exchange moneta had witnessed was referring to flight ninety three when the shoot down order was already in place and not the flight that hit the pentagon there was only one problem with this version of the events norman minetta had to be terribly confused in his recollections as he could not have been with the vice president in the p r at the time the pentagon was hit to support this theory the debunkers point out a statement by many who said he arrived at the white house while it was being evacuated since the official order of the evacuation came at nine forty five contend the dipankar minetta could not have been with the vice president in the p r at the time the but in the same deposition moneta also stated that he arrived at the p r about nine twenty a m so it's presumable that he was referring to the people that had already started leaving the white house before the official order of a vacuum ration was given in fact and one fifty t n reported that a slow evacuation of the white house had started some thirty minutes earlier much before the official order was given but the main problem with placing cheney's removal from his office at nine thirty seven is dick cheney himself driving on september sixteenth five days after the events cheney stated on meet the press that he was taken into the bunker shortly after the second tower was hit which happened at nine o three so we turned on the television and watched for a few minutes and then i actually saw the second plane hit the world trade center i talked to the president but i was there over the next several minutes watching developments on television and those were starting to get organized to figure out what to do my secret service agents came in and  also several highly credible testimonies that placed dick cheney's removal from his office shortly after nine o three a b c news quoted white house photographer david boren saying that just after nine a m vice president dick cheney was in his west wing office when two or three airliner exploded against the twin towers at that moment the secret service grabbed him and hurried him down to peoc richard clarke in his book against all enemies wrote that soon after the second tower was hit cheney began to gather up his papers as i left i counted eight secret service agents ready to move to the president bush's secretary ashley estes stated as the second plane hit it didn't really click exactly what happened then i heard a noise like a body bumping the door i looked out into a hallway and saw the vice president with the secret service they had kind of lifted him up and were running with him at that point it definitely registered what it was a former undersecretary of defense eric edelman testified i was already down in the p r with the vice president when we got word there had been an explosion at the pentagon and even after ten years dick cheney has not changed his story one bit as we watched we saw the second place strike and then we knew it was was a terrorist attack and then  my secret service agent leading agent came bursting through the door of my office and said sir we have to leave now while all these testimonies clearly place dick cheney in the p r by the time the pentagon was hit the nine eleven commission has admitted that the nine thirty seven entry time by dick cheney in the tunnel was based on alarm data which is no longer be treatable and most important of all men that it himself recalls being with the vice president by the time the pentagon was hit so then someone came in and said dear mr vice president clear there's been an explosion at the head of the pentagon in the course of time secretary mineta has never changed his story repeatedly confirming both the location and the timing of the airport and about that time so i'm broke into the conversation said mr secretary we just had a confirmation from arlington county police officer saying that he saw an american airlines plane go into the pentagon that the exchange meant that a witness was referring to the plane that hit the pentagon should be beyond doubt at this point but we still don't know what was the order given by dick cheney to the young military whose name turned out to be douglas cochrane in two thousand and ten some researchers tracked down mr cochrane and asked him to clarify what the orders by dick cheney were mr cochran confirmed to being the person involved in the exchange but declined to elaborate he simply stated that everything that happened on that day has been well documented the nine eleven commission report is the authoritative narrative on the events of nine eleven i have nothing to add in fact it turns out that in two thousand and four the nine eleven commission did interview douglas cochran military aid to the vice president on the inbound aircraft and on the shoot down language he used but his interview has been withdrawn from public access and to this day it remains classified while we wait for that document to be declassified we can piece together the information we already have one the sky over washington is class bravo restricted airspace it's called prohibited area fifty six in order to enter it in airplane must have clearance from air traffic controllers active two way radio communications and its transponder must be on otherwise it's to be considered hostile and it could be shot down too as explained by former secretary of defense caspar weinberger in a time of crisis the washington airspace goes into an actual unknown airplane was approaching the protected airspace it had no clearance from air traffic controllers no radio communications active and the transponder was off he said we're tracking an airplane coming in and the transponder has been turned off so we don't have any identification on the airplane we know it's coming in fast a representation of the f a a radar scope based on information obtained by twenty twenty shows the plane headed straight for what is known as p fifty six prohibited airspace fifty six which covers the white house and the capitol at a speed of about five hundred miles an hour with no radio contact whatsoever this made it a perfect candidate for a shoot down especially after two towers in new york had already been hit by an airplane five the secret service had known about the incoming airplane for the last thirty minutes so it's presumable they would have been ready to shoot it down if it became necessary one of them approximately thirty minutes out one of them approximately forty five minutes out so we knew we had some some time a little time despite all this no one moved a finger as the unknown threat kept rushing towards the capitol and someone came in and said to the vice pres and there's a plane out about fifty miles out just the one nearest us got closer and closer and it's out five minutes out the same person said to the vice president mr vice president there's a plane thirty miles out and then at one point we got under a minute and i said it's the vice president sort of whipped his head around as he said of course they do nine miles from the white house hey boss white house hallway down to one mile from the white house but no missile was fired undisturbed the plane circled the white house and went on to strike the pentagon causing the death of at least one hundred twenty five people between military and civilians on the ground question the secret service knew about the incoming plane for the last thirty minutes was following it on radar had the means to shoot it down and should have done so in order to protect the capitol but they didn't why in regards to the exchange between cheney and the young man can you suggest anything different from an order not to shoot down the plane as it was approaching washington's protected her space