The Us Government Declassified The Interview After 9 11

Photo: Ron Edmonds/AP On Wednesday, like With the US public’s eyes focused on Tuesday’s midterm election results, a US government panel quietly released a newly declassified summary of a joint Oval Office interview held with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney about the 9/11 attacks. The interview, conducted by members of the 9/11 Commission, was not recorded and the summary document is the only known official record of the meeting. The meeting took place on April 29, 2004. “The President and Vice President were sitting in chairs in front of the fireplace. The President’s demeanor throughout was relaxed. He answered questions without notes,” according to the document prepared by committee executive director Philip Zelikow. “Washington’s portrait was above the fireplace, which was flanked by busts of Lincoln and Churchill. On the wall are paintings of southwestern landscapes. It was a beautiful spring day.” The document, whose declassification was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is not an official transcript, but is described as “a memorandum for history.” It has been authorized for release by the Interagency Committee on Security Clearance Appeals. One of the most striking aspects of the declassified document is the seeming absence of even a glimmer of self-awareness from Bush about the significance of the death and destruction he unleashed with his world war. The interview took place as a mass insurgency erupted in Iraq against an American occupation that would kill thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. While the document is a rough transcript and summary, Bush comes across as almost childishly simplistic in his ideas and analysis. The lack of any sensitive information contained in the document should raise questions about why it took more than 18 years for it to be released. While the document is a rough transcript and summary, Bush comes across as almost childishly simplistic in his ideas and analysis. The declassified document contains no ground-breaking revelations, but offers some new texture to the internal events immediately following the attacks. That morning, after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, Bush was reading “The Pet Goat” with second-graders at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota County, Florida. Bush told commissioners he had seen the first plane hit but thought it was an accident. “He recalled that he and others believed the building had been hit by a twin-engine plane. He remembered thinking, what an awesome pilot.” Immediately after the second plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center at 9:03 a.m., Chief of Staff Andy Card approached Bush as he sat listening to students recite more passages from “The Pet Goat” and informed him that it looked like the US was under attack. The commissioners asked the commander-in-chief why he continued to sit in class. “He was trying to absorb the news. He remembered a child or someone reading. He remembered looking at the pool and noticed them talking on their phones. He realized that the country was watching his behavior. He had to send the right signals. He wanted to collect his thoughts,” according to the notes. “He felt he had to project calmness and strength until he had a better understanding of what was going on.” Bush “thought it was important to keep his body language calm in the face of danger. As president, he was aware that “the world is reacting against me.” Perhaps the most interesting passages from the document relate to the extent to which Cheney had the authority to effectively assume command authority that morning. Bush said he was under pressure to get on Air Force One, so he “made a few quick remarks and got out of there.” Cheney, he recalls, urged him: “Don’t come home.” Cheney “told him Washington was under attack. He strongly advised the President to delay his return to Washington. There was no indication how much more the threat could be. The President agreed, reluctantly.” Once Cheney was at the wheel inside the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, an underground bunker under the East Wing of the White House, he and Bush discussed the “rules of engagement” for the evolving situation, including dealing with other potential hijackers. “Yes, engagement with the enemy. You have the authority to shoot down a plane,” Bush reportedly told Cheney. “The President learned this from his experience in the Texas Air National Guard,” according to the notes. “He was trained to shoot down planes. He generally understood how this worked — one plane would lock, one would identify. He understood the implications for the pilot, how a pilot might feel about being ordered to shoot down an American aircraft. It would be difficult.” The document describes a chaotic scene with communications equipment failing and Bush being inundated with rumors and reports of other possible targets, including Air Force One and his private ranch in Crawford, Texas. Bush “had heard of the fog of war. That day he saw it first hand. He wanted to go back to DC.” Instead, Bush was moved to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, while Cheney ran things from the bunker under the White House. The document states that during this time, the secure telephone line between Bush and Cheney continued to fail. Bush also tried to contact Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, but said they “couldn’t reach him.” Bush “was very frustrated that he couldn’t get in touch with different people.” He also complained that “there was no good television in” Air Force One. He was eventually transferred to Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, where he had better secure communications equipment. Bush spent about nine hours on Air Force One that day and did not return to the White House until 7 p.m. Cheney, according to the document, directly authorized the military to shoot down civilian airliners after being tipped off that the planes had been hijacked. “Then they heard that a plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. The Vice President thought we blew it. It took a while to sort this out. In the next half hour there were two or three cases like this: an incoming report, would it repeat the authorization? Yes. In any case, however, the problem was resolved without shots being fired.” According to the declassified memos, there were five reports of additional hijackings that all turned out to be false. When one of the commissioners pressed Cheney about apparent discrepancies in the timing of exactly when Bush gave the vice president the authority to direct the downing of US civilian planes, “The President said: Look, he didn’t give orders without my permission.” One of the 9/11 commissioners “asked if the President or the Vice President had been involved in allowing planes carrying Saudi nationals to leave after 9/11. No, said the President. He had no idea about it until he read about it in the papers.” Cheney, the document notes, “also gave a negative response,” but added that his response was “hard to hear.” Several 9/11 commissioners raised the issue of the infamous Presidential Daily Briefing from August 6, 2001, titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike the US.” This document cites foreign intelligence agencies indicating that Osama bin Laden “wanted to hijack a US airliner” in an attempt to free Islamic extremist prisoners held by the US on terrorism convictions. It also said the FBI had information “indicating patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including the recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.” Bush has repeatedly rejected the idea that he had received any “potent information” and said it was just a “general assessment” and that he had personally requested information that ultimately led to the production of the particular briefing. “He concludes that bin Laden wants to attack us,” Bush told the commissioners. “Yes, commented the President, he is trying to do that. So does al-Qaeda.” Bush claimed that none of the briefings he received “commented on a threat to America. There was no credible information about such a threat – not one.” Bush told commissioners that CIA Director George Tenet told him, “The threat was overseas — that’s what George said.” Bush said he thought that if there was serious concern in August [2001]he would know.” The declassified document also contains some thoughts from Bush and Cheney about the early stages of the so-called war on terror. Bush complained that US allies were reluctant to join the global assassination program implemented after 9/11. “When it comes to bringing terrorists to justice, their approach has not been as tough as ours. Foreign governments were less willing to kill them, to hunt them down in the remote parts of the world. Our own services, the President said, were quite robust.” Cheney also denounced congressional oversight of covert operations, particularly those run by the CIA, saying it had weakened the agency. “The norms that had been applied to the intelligence community tended to be risk averse. Penalties were high for engaging in actions that could later be determined to be inappropriate,” the notes said. Cheney “cited the example of having bad people on the CIA payroll. The employees then try to be careful. they don’t take matters into their own hands.” Throughout his political career, Cheney was notorious for his disdain for congressional oversight of covert operations. Five days later…