Bad 9/11 Alibis: Gen. Myers, acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

[stickdog]

September 11th, 2001 was the most important day of General Richard B. Myers' life. On this fateful day -- the only day in history that the continental United States has ever been successfully attacked from the air -- Myers, a Air Force General with thousands of hours of time flying fighter planes, was the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

General Hugh Shelton was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until 9/30/01, but General Myers was scheduled to replace Shelton, a Clinton appointee, pending Myers' Senate confirmation hearing on 9/13/01 and subsequent confirmation. Myers was the acting Chairman of the US military during the 9/11 crisis because on the morning of 9/11 Shelton was flying in a plane across the Atlantic on his way to Europe.

Here's how General Myers described his actions on the morning of 9/11/01 in an 10/17/01 interview with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service:

http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/disinfo/alibis/AFRTS_Interview.htm

I remember it was like watching a bad movie. I was on Capitol Hill. I was about ready to meet with Senator Cleland. I was meeting with him in preparation for my hearing, my confirmation hearing to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And I remember before we walked in there was a TV that was playing and somebody has said, "An airplane has hit one of the World Trade Center towers." They thought it was an airplane, and they thought it was a small airplane or something like that. So we walked in and we did the office call with Senator Cleland.

Sometime during that office call the second tower was hit. {stickdog's note: At 9:03 EDT, to be exact.} Nobody informed us of that. But when we came out, that was obvious. Then right at that time somebody said the Pentagon has been hit. {stickdog's note: But the Pentagon wasn't hit until 9:38 -- a full 35 minutes AFTER everyone with two working brain cells knew the United States was under attack.}

I immediately, somebody handed me a cell phone, and it was General Eberhart out at NORAD in Colorado Springs talking about what was happening and the actions he was going to take. We immediately, after talking to him, jumped in the car, ran back to the Pentagon. {stickdog's note: So after after spending the 35 minutes between the second plane hitting the WTC and the Pentagon atack in sensory deprivation tanks, they immediately rushed off to a highly insecure location that an active enemy had already successfully attacked once. Brilliant military strategy, huh?}

My concern was where can you best discharge your duties? Where's your duty station? As a sailor, Quinn, you know a lot about your battle station. Well, my battle station was in the National Military Command Center. I asked if it was still running, they said it sure is, so I went back in the building to the Command Center and was joined shortly thereafter by the Secretary of Defense. The Deputy Secretary actually went to another location at that point. We did what had to be done in terms of the command and control of the day. {stickdog's note: Just as soon as we did our best to make sure the attacks were successful by picking our asses between 9:03 and 9:38, that is.}


So Myers claims he was at Senator Max Cleland's office at 8:40 and after hearing about the first plane hitting the WTC on TV, he went in to Cleland's office and met with Cleland for an hour. Nobody called him and told him that a second plane had hit, that the air corridor had been closed between Washington and Cleveland, that a plane had been hijacked in Ohio and was flying back to the Pentagon. Then he also claims that when he walked out of Cleland's office over an hour later, he was handed a portable phone and it was the head of NORAD -- the North American Aerospace Defense Command -- telling him that the Pentagon had been hit.

Now these are unbelievable assertions. Doesn't the man have a beeper? Doesn't the man have his own cell phone? Doesn't the man have an entire staff who knows where he is? General Myers was, after all, the acting head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military. Wouldn't anybody think to inform him that an indeterminate number of passenger jets were being hijacked and exploded into skyscrapers? And what did Max Cleland tell the Senate that he and General Myers were talking about during this crucial, fateful hour? Cleland claimed that the two of them sat there for a full hour while the continental USA was suffering its worst attack via air power in its entire history, and they discussed the dangers of terrorism. Now this is like a satire, isn't it?

Here are some excerpts from General Myers' testimony at his Joint Chiefs of Staff Senate confirmation hearing on 9/13/01, just two days after 9/11. Note how Senator Max Cleland enters the "discussion" with an out-of-the-blue non-question non sequitur to keep any of the other Senators from questioning General Myers' ridiculously shaky alibi.

http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/mycon.htm

Senate Armed Services Committee Holds Hearing On Nomination of General Richard Myers to be Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff, Washington, D.C., SEPTEMBER 13, 2001.

SENATOR LEVIN: ... Was the Defense Department contacted by the FAA or the FBI or any other agency after the first two hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center, prior to the time that the Pentagon was hit?

GENERAL MYERS: Sir, I don't know the answer to that question. I can get that for you, for the record ... That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck. ... I was with Senator Cleland when this happened and went back to the Pentagon. And they were evacuating, of course, the Pentagon at the time. And I went into the National Military Command Center because that's essentially my battle station when things are happening.

SENATOR LEVIN: Was the Defense Department contacted by the FAA or the FBI or any other agency after the first two hijacked aircraft crashed into the World Trade Center, prior to the time that the Pentagon was hit?

GENERAL MYERS: Sir, I don't know the answer to that question. I can get that for you, for the record.

SENATOR LEVIN: Thank you. Did the Defense Department take -- or was the Defense Department asked to take action against any specific aircraft? Did you take action against -- for instance, there have been statements that the aircraft that crashed in Pennsylvania was shot down. Those stories continue to exist.

GENERAL MYERS: Mr. Chairman, the armed forces did not shoot down any aircraft. When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS, radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked. But we never actually had to use force.

SENATOR LEVIN: Was that order that you just described given before or after the Pentagon was struck? Do you know?

GENERAL MYERS: That order, to the best of my knowledge, was after the Pentagon was struck. {stickdog's note: OOOOPS!}

SENATOR CLELAND: ... General, it's a good thing that, as I look back at that morning, that you and I were meeting. It's a good thing we were meeting here and not us meeting in the Pentagon because about the time you and I were having our visit, discussing the need to boost our conventional forces, to look at the question of terrorism and attacks on the United States, at just about that very moment, the Pentagon was being hit.

GENERAL MYERS: Yes, sir. {stickdog's note: Thanks for coming to my rescue with a bullshit alibi, sir!}

SENATOR REED: ... But it seems to me, in a very narrow point of force protection, that in terms of the Pentagon, a major military facility, you had absolutely no advance warning that such an attack was being contemplated, prepared, planned or executed. Is that correct?

MYERS: There was no strategic warning that this was contemplated or planned, to the best of my knowledge.

SENATOR BILL NELSON: ... General Myers, The second World Trade tower was hit shortly after 9:00. And the Pentagon was hit approximately 40 minutes later. That’s approximately. You would know specifically what the time-line was. The crash that occurred in Pennsylvania after the Newark westbound flight was turned around 180 degrees and started heading back to Washington was approximately an hour after the World Trade Center second explosion. You said earlier in your testimony that we had not scrambled any military aircraft until after the Pentagon was hit. And so, my question would be: why? {stickdog's note: why, indeed!}

GENERAL MYERS: I think I had that right, that it was not until then. I'd have to go back and review the exact time-lines.

SENATOR BILL NELSON: ... If we knew that there was a general threat on terrorist activity, which we did, and we suddenly have two trade towers in New York being obviously hit by terrorist activity, of commercial airliners taken off course from Boston to Los Angeles, then what happened to the response of the defense establishment once we saw the diversion of the aircraft headed west from Dulles turning around 180 degrees and, likewise, in the aircraft taking off from Newark and, in flight, turning 180 degrees? That's the question. I leave it to you as to how you would like to answer it. But we would like an answer.

GENERAL MYERS: You bet. I spoke, after the second tower was hit, I spoke to the commander of NORAD, General Eberhart. And at that point, I think the decision was at that point to start launching aircraft...

{stickdog's note: OK, so if General Myers talked to General Eberhart after the second tower was hit, why did he then meet with Cleland for over 30 minutes to talk about "the question of terrorism and attacks on the United States"? I mean, wasn't he aware that America was currently experiencing just such an attack--the very worst such attack in its entire history? How in the world did he manage to while away 30+ minutes with Cleland such that he didn't arrive at the National Military Command Center, his admitted "battle station when things are happening," until the Pentagon was being evacuated (about 9:40 at the earliest)? Didn’t having hijacker terrorists hit the two tallest buildings in the United States with passenger jets qualify as a time "when things are happening"?}

In this case, if my memory serves me -- and I'll have to get back to you for the record -- my memory says that we had launched on the one that eventually crashed in Pennsylvania. I mean, we had gotten somebody close to it, as I recall. I'll have to check that out. {stickdog's note: Note that Myers' memory is somehow failing him just TWO days after one of the most memorable events in most Americans' lives!}

SENATOR BILL NELSON: ... Commenting from CNN on the time-line, 9:03 is the correct time that the United Airlines flight crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center; 9:43 is the time that American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. And 10:10 a.m. is the time that United Airlines flight 93 crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. So that was 40 minutes between the second tower being hit and the Pentagon crash. And it is an hour and seven minutes until the crash occurred in Pennsylvania.

SENATOR LEVIN: The time that we don't have is when the Pentagon was notified, if they were, by the FAA or the FBI or any other agency, relative to any potential threat or any planes having changed direction or anything like that. And that's the same which you will give us because that's . . .

GENERAL MYERS: I can answer that. At the time of the first impact on the World Trade Center {stickdog's note: at 8:46 EDT}, we stood up our crisis action team. That was done immediately. So we stood it up. And we started talking to the federal agencies. The time I do not know is when NORAD responded with fighter aircraft. I don't know that time.

SENATOR LEVIN: Or the time that I asked you for, which was whether the FAA or FBI notified you that other planes had turned direction from their path, their scheduled path, and were returning or aiming towards Washington, whether there was any notice from any of them, because that's such an obvious shortfall if there wasn't.

GENERAL MYERS: Right. {stickdog's note: Right? Right??? That's your answer?}

SENATOR LEVIN: And in any event, but more important, if you could get us that information.

GENERAL MYERS: It probably happened. As you remember, I was not in the Pentagon at that time, so that part of it is a little hazy. {stickdog's note: Remember again that this is just two days after 9/11. I mean, wasn't Myers even the LEAST bit curious about the US military's complete failure to defend our skies that day?} After that, we started getting regular notifications through NORAD, FAA to NORAD, on other flights that we were worried about. And we knew about the one that eventually crashed in Pennsylvania. I do not know, again, whether we had fighters scrambled on it. I have to . . .

SENATOR LEVIN: If you could get us those times then. We know you don't know them.

GENERAL MYERS: But we'll get them. {stickdog's note: Yep. Just as soon as we piece together SOME shred of any sort of half-believable cover story.}