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Newly Released Cheney 9/11 Photos Refute Norman Mineta Testimaony and the Implications
August 12, 2015
In this article, I will attempt to explain my theory that Norman Mineta lied in his testimony to the 9/11 Commission, the reason why he lied and the implications, and also the reason why I believe that the newly released photos of Dick Cheney in his office on September 11, 2001 are indeed genuine.
Background
As a result of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by Colette Neirouz Hanna, co-ordinating producer for Kirk Documentary Group, photos of Dick Cheney on 9/11 were released for the first time in two sets by the National Archives, the first on June 20, 2015, and the second on July 24, 2015, and were subsequently published by PBS on their website and posted in a collection on Flikr [1][2]. The photos were taken by Cheney’s White House staff photographer, David Bohrer.
On page 3 of the Flickr series, there are three photos of Cheney in his office watching Bush deliver remarks about the attack at the Emma E. Booker elementary school in Florida, remarks he made at 9:30 AM [3]. One of them, taken at 9:31 according to the ABC live feed on the TV, is seen here:
These photos appear to back up the “official” government version of events that Cheney did not arrive in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), the underground bunker below the White House, until after the Pentagon had been hit at 9:37, directly refuting the testimony of Norman Mineta.
Norman Mineta’s Testimony
Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta testified to the 9/11 Commission on May 23, 2003 about events he claimed to have overheard or witnessed in the PEOC on the morning of 9/11 [4].
At a crucial point in the testimony, there were key exchanges between Mineta and Commission members Lee Hamilton and Timothy Roemer :
MR. HAMILTON: We thank you for that. I wanted to focus just a moment on the Presidential Emergency Operating Center. You were there for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the vice president. And when you had that order given, I think it was by the president, that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be controlled by terrorists, were you there when that order was given?
- As you can see here, Hamilton opens his line of questioning by specifically mentioning the PEOC and that Mineta was there for most of the day with Cheney. However, by his first mentioning the PEOC, he is implying that what will follow next in Mineta’s testimony will be taking place in the PEOC. If you notice, Hamilton does not immediately clarify that Mineta is in the PEOC when he asks about his presence when the order was given. But it seems like he is opening up, or possibly steering Mineta toward this line of thought.
MR. MINETA: No, I was not. I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, “The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to, “The plane is 10 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 –
- Here, Mineta does not specifically say whether or not he was in the PEOC when this exchange happened, he just states that a young man had “come in” the room.
MR. HAMILTON: The flight you’re referring to is the –
MR. MINETA: The flight that came into the Pentagon.
- And then further in the testimony:
MR. HAMILTON: Let me see if I understand. The plane that was headed toward the Pentagon and was some miles away, there was an order to shoot that plane down.
MR. MINETA: Well, I don’t know that specifically, but I do know that the airplanes were scrambled from Langley or from Norfolk, the Norfolk area. But I did not know about the orders specifically other than listening to that other conversation.
MR. HAMILTON: But there very clearly was an order to shoot commercial aircraft down.
MR. MINETA: Subsequently I found that out.
- And further still:
MR. ROEMER: Nice to see you, Mr. Secretary, and nice to see you feeling better and getting around as well, too.
I want to follow up on what happened in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center and try to understand that day a little bit better. You said, if I understood you correctly, that you were not in the room; you were obviously coming from the Department of Transportation, where you had been busy in a meeting in official business, but you had not been in the room when the decision was made — to what you inferred was a decision made to attempt to shoot down Flight 77 before it crashed into the Pentagon. Is that correct?
- Again, much the same as Hamilton, Roemer begins his line of questioning by mentioning the PEOC. Therefore, he’s immediately creating the impression that he is next talking about what happened in the PEOC. However, when he states “the room”, he isn’t specifying exactly which room he’s talking about. It’s implied, then, that it is the PEOC to which he is referring. Next, Mineta takes this and runs with it.
MR. MINETA: I didn’t know about the order to shoot down. I arrived at the PEOC at about 9:20 a.m. And the president was in Florida, and I believe he was on his way to Louisiana at that point when the conversation that went on between the vice president and the president and the staff that the president had with him.
- Mineta could not have arrived at the PEOC at 9:20 as it was physically impossible for him given his previous schedule. However, he could have arrived at the White House by this time. Furthermore, Bush first spoke with Cheney at approximately 9:15 to discuss the speech he was about to give at the school, and the president later claimed to have made no major decisions at that time. The 9/11 Commission will state that Bush did not authorize a shoot-down until 10:18. However, I consider it likely that a shoot-down order was issued by Bush in his first phone call. The 9/11 Commission will later state that the order for a shoot-down was given by Cheney at 10:10.
MR. ROEMER: So when you arrived at 9:20, how much longer was it before you overheard the conversation between the young man and the vice president saying, “Does the order still stand?”
MR. MINETA: Probably about five or six minutes.
- Is Mineta just confused about the location? He’s quite certain Cheney is in the PEOC, but the photos appear to betray this fact. Unless it was Cheney’s office where Mineta arrived.
MR. ROEMER: So about 9:25 or 9:26. And your inference was that the vice president snapped his head around and said, “Yes, the order still stands.” Why did you infer that that was a shoot-down?
MR. MINETA: Just by the nature of all the events going on that day, the scrambling of the aircraft and, I don’t know; I guess, just being in the military, you do start thinking about it, an intuitive reaction to certain statements being made.
- Here we have Mineta talking about what he believes was an order given to shoot, or possibly not shoot down, any hostile planes. Whether this exact order came from Bush or Cheney I’m not aware. But we can make a reasonable assumption that Bush first conveyed an order in his phone call to Cheney, who then gave an order to the young officer, because he later decided to question Cheney about it. I believe it’s also reasonable to assume that the order given by Cheney was indeed a “stand-down”, possibly directly countermanding Bush’s order, because of the simple facts that the Pentagon was hit without any interception by jet or missile battery, and that the order had to even be questioned in the first place.
There is now photographic evidence of Cheney in his office at 9:31. Cheney cannot be in two places at the same time, his White House office AND the PEOC bunker. If the exchange between Cheney and the officer about the incoming plane did not happen in the PEOC at 9:26, as the photos suggest, then the only other place it could have occurred was in Cheney’s office. But Mineta claims he was in the PEOC at this time. Even though Mineta is adamant Cheney was already in the PEOC at 9:20, the photographic evidence betrays this. In my opinion, the photos should be accepted over Mineta’s testimony. Mineta, despite his age at the time, would not mistake the obvious Cheney being present in the room and having the conversation. However, he could have lied about where the conversation took place.
If these newly released photos are genuine, then what we are left with is that either Mineta confused the time and location of his arrival at the White House and PEOC (something I don’t believe he was capable of doing) or he purposely lied that he arrived to the PEOC at 9:20.
Why would Mineta lie?
One thing, to my knowledge, which has never been questioned is Mineta’s truthfulness about the timeline.
By analyzing Mineta’s testimony very carefully, I think there’s a deliberate fudging of words between Mineta and the Commission members, a delicate dance which, seemingly under the surface, both sides are aware of. Take careful note in the exchanges between Mineta and Commission members how many times only the PEOC is mentioned, and establishing that Mineta was there.
In the questioning of Mineta by the members of the 9/11 Commission regarding the incoming plane, there are several common things which jump right out that the questioners are being very specific about: whether Mineta is certain that Cheney was in the PEOC, that the conversation Cheney had took place in the PEOC, and that the final destination for the incoming plane was the Pentagon. It is almost as if the 9/11 Commission questioners were not so much asking Mineta for information, as they are restating “facts” over and over, reinforcing to the public that all of this happened in the PEOC.
As reported in Secret Service records, other members of the President and Vice Presidents staff went with Cheney to the PEOC at 9:36. According to History Commons, Mary Matalin, one of Cheney’s senior aides, stated: “Speechwriter John McConnell and I were left behind in his office, staring at each other as if to say, ‘What are we, chopped liver?’ I think I actually said that.”
Besides Mineta, another person can verify the information being relayed to Cheney about an incoming plane. Special Agent James Scott, a member of Vice President Dick Cheney’s Secret Service detail, stated on record that “at approximately 0930hrs, I was standing outside the Vice President’s office, West Wing, when I heard over radio frequency that a plane was heading inbound towards the White House.” This was likely part of the exchange between Cheney and the relaying officer of the doomed Pentagon flight.
I believe Cheney’s lawyer Scooter Libby, photographer David Bohrer, and Condoleezza Rice (as reported in Secret Service records) went with Cheney and the agents, leaving Matalin and McConnell behind as she stated.
However, assuming nothing was staged and these new photos are true, there’s a distinct possibility that Mineta was present in the office as well, and went with Cheney to the PEOC. The exchange between Cheney and the young officer at the door about the incoming plane happened in front of other Secret Service agents, Mineta, Libby, Matalin, McConnell, Bohrer and Rice inside Cheney’s office – NOT in the PEOC!
If Cheney had already spoken with Bush on the telephone at about 9:15, the order to shoot down or not was apparently agreed upon. This keeps in line with Mineta stating he wasn’t present when the order was given, as he likely had not yet arrived in Cheney’s office. As I stated, Mineta could not have physically arrived in the PEOC by 9:20, but it’s possible he had congregated with the others to Cheney’s office by 9:30 to find out what to do next.
If Cheney, being the Vice President, entered the PEOC first with Mineta in tow just behind him, then Mineta is technically not lying with his statement that Cheney was already there when he arrived. This is what I mean by a very subtle fudging of words.
So if this is true, then Mineta is deliberately lying in his testimony about where this exchange took place, and it’s likely he was either ordered to do so, or heavily pressured. There’s simply no way Mineta could have remembered so well the conversation he overheard, but yet be completely wrong about where it took place. The question then becomes: Why was there a conspiracy to change Mineta’s testimony of the location of the exchange about the incoming plane from Cheney’s office to the PEOC?
The answer, I believe, is that there was a stand-down order given by Cheney to the young officer not long after 9:15, possibly by around 9:18, when there was confirmation of an unaccounted plane approaching Washington. This was an order which subsequently allowed the Pentagon to be hit without evacuation. Those who were there in Cheney’s office, including Mineta, were sworn to secrecy about the affirmation of an order which could have countermanded Bush’s. However, someone had to testify to the 9/11 Commission about this exchange of words, and Mineta was chosen and ordered to state that it occurred in the PEOC. They knew it could later be reasoned that Mineta was confused between AA77, and UA93 which crashed in Pennsylvania.
Once Mineta agreed and testified, there was no going back for him and he had to stick to the story.
I believe it likely that members of the 9/11 Commission were aware of these facts and their implications, and that they attempted to help Mineta, during his testimony, to falsely claim he was in the PEOC with Cheney when the Pentagon plane was approaching. It also explains why Mineta’s testimony was not in the Commission Report, because they knew parts of it were false and could not be put on record.
This evidence suggests the bigger implication that the White House ordered or pressured witnesses to directly lie in their testimonies. These new photos, while providing clarifying information about that morning, only serve to further damn the “official” government account of the events of 9/11.
This theory does not violate the evidence that the newly released photos present, and still allows for a no-shoot-down order given by Cheney for the Pentagon plane, this time in his office and not in the PEOC.
Could the Photos Be Staged?
As to whether or not the newly released photos are staged, I don’t believe they are and I will now attempt to explain why.
Bohrer, the White House photographer, was using a digital camera which recorded the metadata EXIF for each photo. The second set of Cheney photos recently published to the Flickr website almost all show that their date of creation was 2001:09:11. However, the photos of Cheney in his office show the date of creation as being 2002:08:15, almost a year later! In my opinion, this discrepancy needs to be explained, either by the National Archives or David Bohrer himself.
This has led to speculation by some that only these particular photos of Cheney in his office were staged using the VCR below the TV for the then upcoming anniversary of 9/11. However, I think this to be unlikely and really feels to me that this theory is scrambling in desperation.
What clues can we look for to see if a fraud has been staged or not? In the Cheney office photos, there’s no wrist watches or clocks on the walls to be seen, only the TV images with which we can tell a particular time (and if it’s staged even a year later, what exact time they would want to convey to any future viewer of the photo for that moment).
Well, in fact there are 3 more ways we can tell a time and a date!
If you look closely at this photo, with Cheney, Libby and Mary Matalin, we can see that there is indeed a brass round clock sitting in front of Cheney on his desk:
If you zoom in on this clock using graphic editing software like Photoshop, you will see that the clock appears to be turned slightly askew, and that the little hand is just above the 9, while the big hand is almost at the 6, which means the clock is reading almost 9:30. Viewing this as a negative image will make the hands stand out even more as they register as “black”.
Now, continuing to match the time with the clock in the photo, if we look at the TV in the corner showing the ABC “live” report, we can see the Twin Towers burning. But we can’t see the time in the right side corner of the ABC video as it’s hidden by Cheney’s chair. However, if you look closely, you can see that next to the towers on the left hand side, there’s the spire of another building.
If you watch this Youtube video of the ABC live coverage, the only shot which matches (between the 2 helicopters circling on either side of the towers) is exactly at 38:21 in the video, which shows 9:29 on the ABC feed. Look closely for the other building with the spire on the left-hand side and you will see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KYE4zViAAg
This time directly corresponds (more or less) with the brass clock sitting in front of Cheney.
To continue, there is also a newspaper sitting next to Cheney, which appears to have been read. Although we can’t see clearly any words or dates, we can see a photo image on the paper itself. I read somewhere that Cheney always reads the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal in the morning. If those particular morning edition newspapers that were published that day can be found and analyzed, you could also tell if any of the news articles in them match up with the photo printed on that paper (which we can see in the photo). So, in effect, this is another clue to telling the date that the photo was taken.
Now, for anyone to sincerely believe that these photos were staged a year later, they have to also believe that:
1. Cheney, Libby and Matalin were dressed up in the exact same clothes they were wearing on 9/11.
2. The time on the brass clock in front of Cheney was changed to read 9:30, which we can only just barely see in this one photo (wouldn’t they want us to see the time on a clock if it was staged, to match up with their timeline?)
3. A newspaper from that exact day was put next to Cheney, but left not showing us clearly anything we can see on it to judge the date.
4. Here’s the doozy: They managed to synchronize the timing of the photo taken in the office with the video of the ABC feed showing 9:29 on the VCR WITH the brass clock in front of Cheney showing 9:30, and at the same time not going out of their way to make any of this clear, making it difficult for us to judge the time and date. But yet we can.
Now, why would they bother to go through so much difficulty and trouble to synchronize something which is hard for us to see?
Occam’s Razor: The simplest answer is usually the correct one. The photos are genuine.
Conclusion
In the spirit of truth and knowledge this important discovery which directly refutes Norman Mineta’s testimony needs to be announced and addressed to the 9/11 Truth community in a proper way, so that everyone can discuss it and decide for themselves. It should not be suppressed or given silence, because I think that is the type of ball-game which should not be played. To keep everyone in the dark about this, is to also take the side of those who want us to stay in the dark.
Endnotes:
1. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/in-newly-released-photos-a-rare-glimpse-of-cheney-unscripted/
2. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/new-photos-show-bush-administration-reaction-to-911-attacks/
3. https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/sets/72157656213196901/with/19295976273/
4. http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm
© DC Wince 2015
