White House Lied About the Threat to Air Force One
[Excerpted from an article by Jerry White, September 28, 2001.]
In the immediate aftermath of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Bush’s movements became a matter of controversy within political and media circles. As the destruction in New York and Washington unfolded and unconfirmed reports emerged of a car bomb at the State Department and the danger of further hijackings, Bush, who began the day in Florida, was flown from one military installation to another by the Secret Service
Looking pale and shaken, he taped a brief initial message from an underground bunker at an Air Force base in Louisiana. Several hours later "when all non-US military aircraft in American air space had been grounded" Bush was flown to another fortified location at the Strategic Air Command headquarters in Nebraska. The president did not return to Washington until 7 p.m., nearly 10 hours after the initial attack.
Bush’s failure to return to Washington sparked pointed criticism, including from within the Republican Party.
New York Times columnist William Safire, a one-time Nixon aide and fixture within the Republican Party, suggested that Bush had panicked and all but abandoned his post in the first hours of the crisis. Writing in a September 12 op-ed piece, Safire said, "Even in the first horrified moments, this was never seen as a nuclear attack by a foreign power. Bush should have insisted on coming right back to the Washington area, broadcasting 'live and calm' from a secure facility not far from the White House."
Stung by such criticisms, Bush’s chief political strategist Karl Rove and other top administration officials worked feverishly to reassure the political, corporate and military establishment, and bolster Bush’s authority among the population at large. By the afternoon of September 12, the Associated Press and Reuters were carrying stories, widely circulated throughout the media, that were intended to diffuse criticism of Bush’s actions the previous day. They quoted a White House spokesperson saying, "There was real and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were targets of terrorist attacks and that the plane that hit the Pentagon was headed for the White House." White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer repeated this claim at an afternoon news briefing that same day, saying the Secret Service had "specific and credible information" that the White House and Air Force One were potential targets.
In a further column in the New York Times on September 13, entitled "Inside the Bunker," Safire described a conversation with an unnamed "high White House official," who told him, "A threatening message received by the Secret Service was relayed to the agents with the president that ‘Air Force One is next.’" Safire continued: "According to the high official, American code words were used showing a knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible."
Safire reported that this information was confirmed by Rove, who told him Bush had wanted to return to Washington but the Secret Service "informed him that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts."
Two weeks after these astonishing claims, the administration has all but admitted it concocted the entire story. CBS Evening News reported September 25 that the call "simply never happened."
The fact that top officials, at a time of extraordinary crisis and public anxiety, lied to protect the president’s image has immense implications. If, within 24 hours of the terror attacks, the White House was giving out disinformation to deceive the American public and world opinion, then none of the claims made by the government from September 11 to the present can be taken for good coin.
If Bush lied about his activities on the day of the attacks, why should anyone assume he has not lied about the government’s investigation, the identity of the perpetrators, the motives and aims of US war preparations, and the intent and scope of expanded police powers demanded by his administration to wiretap, search and seize, and detain suspects?
This entire episode provides ample grounds for the American people to treat all claims by the government with the utmost suspicion and not accept any of its assertions without independent and verifiable information.
The phony Air Force One story not only exposes the duplicitous methods of the Bush administration, it also underscores the shamelessness and complicity of the media. When the White House came out with the story of a terrorist phone threat against the president’s plane, the media uncritically repeated it, with banner headlines and chilling segments on the evening news. As it has throughout the present crisis, the media functioned unabashedly as a propaganda arm of the government.
But when the White House, two weeks later, retracted the story, most networks failed to even report the fact, as did leading newspapers such as the New York Times. The Washington Post, for its part, buried the government’s about-face on its inside pages. No media outlet made an issue of this incriminating admission, or discussed its broader implications. Well before the official retraction, it was widely accepted in the Washington press corps that the administration had made up the Air Force One story. In her column in the September 23 New York Times, Maureen Dowd noted that Karl Rove had "called around town, trying to sell reporters the story" now widely discredited "that Mr. Bush didn’t immediately return to Washington on Sept. 11 because the plane that was headed for the Pentagon may have really been targeting the White House, and that Air Force One was in jeopardy, too." Dowd and her colleagues believed the government was lying, but the public had no way of knowing the story was not credible since the news media refused to openly challenge it.
One thing is clear: the government lied to the people of America and the world. Either it lied on September 12 when it issued the story of the threat to Air Force One, or it lied two weeks later when it retracted the story. The millions of people who are being told they must accept unbridled militarism and the gutting of their democratic rights in the name of a holy war against terrorism must draw the appropriate conclusions from this indisputable fact.
Ari Fleischer's September 13th Daily Press Gaggle
[Excerpted from Yahoo News]
The James S. Brady Briefing Room -- 10:03 a.m. EDT
Q(uestion) Ari, ... Terry's colleague yesterday reported that some of the people in the Pentagon were a little bit skeptical about your comments yesterday that the White House and Air Force One were targets of attack, given that the plane had come from the south. What do you make of that?
FLEISCHER: And who are these people?
Q Well, I don't know, they weren't my sources.
FLEISCHER: Well, I wouldn't have said it if it wasn't true.
Q Can you confirm the substance of that threat that was telephoned in, the words, Air Force One is next, and using code words?
FLEISCHER: Yes, I can; that's correct.
Q Ari, the threat -- go back to the threat, please.
FLEISCHER: Randy's question was asking me to confirm the report about Air Force One as a target, using code words, and I confirmed that.
Q Why couldn't you confirm that yesterday, when we were all asking you -- yesterday we asked you a thousand times what evidence you had and you weren't able to give us that information? Is there a reason you couldn't?
FLEISCHER: I was not the one who gave it to the press. It's in the press today, but it's the press today and throughout all of this I have to find the right balance in this White House -- and you all have seen this before, being helpful to you all, which is my job, and also sharing information in a way that provides the information best. So that's why, Ron.
Q You have gone a lot farther, Ari. The people here at the White House had gone a lot farther in providing information now, than the Attorney General, who said he couldn't provide this information out of need to protect the ongoing probe. Why is the White House -- you and Karl Rove, as quoted in the New York Times today -- are you worried about the President's image, in terms of trying to defend, keeping him out of Washington and when the Attorney General is saying that we can't reveal this information?
FLEISCHER: We haven't revealed any of the sources or methods.
Q But you're providing far more detail about it now than he was, or willing to.
FLEISCHER: I'm just not going to reveal any -- believe me, I understand sources and methods and I'm not indicating anything of that nature.
Q What are you confirming?
Q Did someone call and say Air --
FLEISCHER: Air Force One is a target.
Q Did they say, "Air Force One is next"? I think the Times is saying, "Air Force One is next."
FLEISCHER: I think it was, Air Force One is a target.
Q And did they refer to it by its code name?
FLEISCHER: Yes, they did.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following is a transcript of remarks by President Bush in a telephone conversation with New York Mayor Guiliani and New York Governor Pataki:
(Excerpt)
Q Mr. President, what is your understanding of the threat to Air Force One? And do you believe that the terrorists attempted to assassinate you, sir?
BUSH: I will not discuss the intelligence that our country has gathered.
Q Do you believe they tried to assassinate you?
BUSH: I believe I took the -- I know -- I don't believe, I know I took the appropriate actions as the Commander in Chief, to be in a position to be able to make the decisions necessary for our government to handle the crisis.
Found at: Yahoo.
The Bush-Was-in-Danger Story Falls Apart
By Jake Tapper[Excerpt from Salon]
White House staffers like senior advisor Karl Rove and spokesman Ari Fleischer insisted to reporters that Air Force One was a target of terrorists on Sept. 11, and that was why Bush spent much of the day flying to different locations -- first Louisiana, and then to Nebraska -- before finally returning to Washington, D.C., from Florida. By Sept. 13, a reporter asked Fleischer whether, since law enforcement, military and Secret Service personnel didn't back Rove and Fleischer's claims about the threat to Air Force One, "people are going to want to know more information about whether or not that's a credible assertion." Especially since no one other than White House political and communications staffers asserted that the plane was a target.
"I think that people understand it's credible," Fleischer replied.
But on Tuesday, CBS News reported that the story was inaccurate, the result of a "misunderstanding" by staffers. The Associated Press reported that "administration officials said they now doubt whether there was actually a call made threatening the president's plane, Air Force One." Officials went on to say that they had not been able to find a record of such a call, though they maintained that they had been told of a telephone threat.
As conservative writer Andrew Sullivan wrote Wednesday, "There was plenty of reason for the president to get to a secure communications base as soon as possible on September 11, and plenty of reason to avoid Washington during an extremely uncertain time. So why the lies? Were these people spinning at a time of grave national crisis?"
Moreover, CBS News reported that radar evidence indicated that the American Airlines Flight 77 plane that hit the Pentagon was not a threat to the White House, despite the claims of administration officials to the contrary. "That is not the radar data that we have seen," Fleischer said when asked about the radar data that conflicted with his account. "The plane was headed toward the White House."
Now, reporters are left to wonder what's still to come. And they've been regularly reminded that criticism is not appreciated, and will not be easily tolerated.
Fleischer added to the tension on Wednesday when asked about Maher's statement that the U.S. has "been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly."
Fleischer called Maher's comments "a terrible thing to say, and it's unfortunate." His ominous follow-up remarks, that "Americans ... need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is," would seem to portend further strains in the relationship between the White House and even its loyal opposition as the nation moves toward war.
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