Let's go back over the official version of that terrible day. As a response to the two attacks taking place in New York, the FBI director, Robert Mueller III, activates the CONPLAN [The United States Government Interagency Domestic Terrorism Concept of Operation Plan (CONPLAN), downloadable from http://www.fbi.gov /publications/conplan/conplan.pdf]: all government agencies are informed of the catastrophe and requested to put themselves at the disposition of the Strategic Information and Operations Center (SIOC) of the FBI and the Catastrophic Disaster Response Group (CDRG) of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Major public gathering places, susceptible to terrorist attack, are evacuated and closed off.
Suddenly, at around 10:00 am, the Secret Service (that is, the Service charged with protecting high-level individuals) gives a new type of warning: the White House and Air Force One are in danger. Vice-President Cheney is removed to the PEOC (Presidential Emergency Operations Center), the underground command facility located beneath the West Wing of the White House. The Continuity of Government (CoG) plan is put into effect. The country's top political leaders, government members and Congressmen, are taken away to safe places. Marine helicopters take them off to two gigantic nuclear-disaster shelters: High Point Special Facility (Mount Weather, Va.) and the Alternate Joint Communication Center, known as "Site R" (Raven Rock Mountain, near Camp David); veritable underground cities, vestiges of the Cold War, designed to accommodate thousands of people.
For his part, George W. Bush, who is en route to Washington, changes course. The Presidential airplane, Air Force One, lands at Barksdale AFB (Louisiana), then at Offutt AFB (Nebraska). The latter is the headquarters of the US Strategic Command, that is, the {home base from} where the nuclear defense system is controlled. Between the two bases, the presidential airplane keeps at low altitude, steering a zigzag course, with fighter escorts. At the bases, the president travels across the tarmac in armored vehicles so as to avoid sniper fire.
This plan of protecting high-level personnel remains in effect until after 6:00 pm, when George W. Bush gets back on board Air Force One to return to Washington.
Speaking with Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" [Full interview text available at http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/629714.asp] on 16 September, Vice-President Cheney describes the alert issued by the Secret Service and the nature of the danger (cf. Appendix).
According to his own testimony, the vice-president had been suddenly informed by his security officers that he was in danger, and he had been forcibly evacuated into the White House bunker. A hijacked Boeing, which would have to prove to be Flight 77, wheeled around above Washington. Not finding the White House landmarks, it's going to crash into the Pentagon instead. While all government officials and Congressmen are being evacuated, the Secret Service is informed of another threat against Air Force One. A new hijacked plane is threatening to go and engage the presidential aircraft in air combat.
Once again, the official version does not stand up to analysis.
The vice-president's testimony is intended to identify the threat: suicide airplanes heading for the White House and Air Force One. He too takes up the lie spelled out in our first chapter: the story of Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon. He even fixes it up some, picturing the suicide plane spinning around in the skies above Washington, searching for a target. It's nevertheless a struggle to admit that the Secret Service, instead of activating the air-defense system, can only think to stick the vice-president down in a bunker. More distressing, Cheney invents a new passenger plane chasing Air Force One like some outlaw out of a Western movie, looking to crash into the president in midair beneath the helpless gaze of the US Air Force.
Despite these non-verisimilitudes, this fable does not sufficiently explain everyone's behavior. Indeed, if the threat boils down to suicide planes, then why shield the president from eventual sniper fire, even on the very tarmac of strategic military bases? How can we believe that Islamic terrorists could have positioned themselves in such well-protected areas?
Dick Cheney's testimony, overall, is intended to make us forget the White House press secretary Ari Fleischer's declarations and the confidential statements of White House Senior Adviser Karl Rove [see notably The Options by Nicholas Lemann, in the New Yorker of 25 September 2001 http://www.newyorker.com]. Their information leads one to ask oneself about eventual interior trails, whereas war propaganda only wants to see outside enemies.
On 12 and 13 September, the press [For example: White House Said Targeted by Sandra Sobieraj, in the Washington Post of 12 September 2001, http://www.washingtonpost.com; and Inside the Bunker in the New York Times of 13 September 2001, http://www.nytimes.com] asserts that, according to the White House spokesman (Ari Fleischer), the Secret Service had received a message from the assailants indicating that they were intending to destroy the White House and Air Force One. More surprising, according to the New York Times, the assailants had authenticated their call by using Presidential ID and transmission codes. And even more stunning, according to WorldNetDaily [Digital Moles in White House? Terrorists Had Top-Secret Presidential Codes, in WorldNetDaily, 20 September 2001 http://www.worldnetdaily.com], the assailants had, in addition, been in possession of codes belonging to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Air Force Intelligence (AFI), Army Intelligence (AI), Naval Intelligence (NI), Marine Corps Intelligence (MCI), and State Department and Department of Energy information services. Each of these codes is only held by a very small number of officials. No one is entitled to possess several of these. Also, to admit that the assailants possessed them presupposes either that there exists a means of cracking them, or that moles have infiltrated each of these intelligence services. Technically, it does seem possible to recreate the American agencies' codes by using the computer system that created them, Promis. Now, these computer algorithms had been stolen by FBI Special Agent Robert Hansen, who was arrested for espionage in February 2001 [Bin Laden's Magic Carpet—Secret US Promis Software by Michael C. Ruppert, in From the Wilderness of 20 November 2001 http://www.copvcia.com]. {As for} former CIA director James Woolsey, the codes would instead have been obtained by moles. And Woolsey, who today lobbies for the anti-Saddam Hussein cause, {has maintained} that that operation is the handiwork of the dangerous Iraqi secret services. A third hypothesis would be that the Secret Service was infiltrated and let itself be brainwashed: the assailants would never have had possession of the codes, but—thanks to complicities—they would have succeeded in making them believe they did.
Be that as it may, the secret-code affair reveals that there exist one or more traitors at the highest level of the American state apparatus. They're the ones who are liable to post snipers to attack the president even on the interior of strategic USAF air bases. And it's to protect himself from their traps that President Bush uses armored vehicles on the tarmac at Barksdale and Offutt.
Another aspect of this affair is that it reveals the existence of a parallel negotiation. If the assailants got in contact with the Secret Service and used secret codes to authenticate their call, they had a specific goal in mind. Their message contained either a demand or an ultimatum. From then on, if you admit that the threat had dissipated by the end of the day, the only conclusion you can draw is that President Bush negotiated with them and gave in to blackmail.
Having at their disposal the authentification and transmission codes for the White House and Air Force One, the assailants could usurp the position of the president of the United States. They could, as they pleased, give instructions to armies, including ordering a nuclear attack. The only way that could allow President Bush to continue commanding his armies was for him to physically put himself at the headquarters of the US Strategic Command at Offutt, and from there to issue or retract all orders personally. That's why he went there himself, in the flesh. To go there directly proved impossible, because of fuel. Air Force One, which isn't designed to fly at low altitude, had used up all its reserves, and it couldn't be refueled in the air without exposing itself to danger. A stopover was thus scheduled at Barksdale, one of Offutt's five alternate sites.
The secret-code affair isn't the only element of the official version to have disappeared. Another fact, duly noted, was forgotten. At 9:42 am on 11 September, ABC broadcast live footage of a fire at the White House annex, the Old Executive Building. The TV channel contented itself with showing a fixed shot of the building with curls of smoke escaping. No information filtered through about the blaze, nor about its exact magnitude. No one had the presumptuousness to attribute the fire to a kamikaze plane. 15 minutes later, the Secret Service took Dick Cheney out of his office and ordered the evacuation of the White House and its annex. Sharpshooters were deployed in the vicinity of the presidential residence, armed with rocket-launchers and capable of staving off an assault by paratroopers. In short, they had to prepare themselves for a threat whose nature was quite different from that described later by Vice-President Cheney.
Now let's re-read the text of President Bush's address, taken down at Barksdale and released with changes by the Pentagon at 1:04 pm:
THE PRESIDENT: I want to reassure the American people that the full resources of the federal government are working to assist local authorities to save lives and to help the victims of these attacks. Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.
I've been in regular contact with the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the national security team and my Cabinet. We have taken all appropriate security precautions to protect the American people. Our military at home and around the world is on high alert status, and we have taken the necessary security precautions to continue the functions of your government.
We have been in touch with the leaders of Congress and with world leaders to assure them that we will do whatever is necessary to protect America and Americans.
I ask the American people to join me in saying a thanks for all the folks who have been fighting hard to rescue our fellow citizens and to join me in saying a prayer for the victims and their families.
The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake: We will show the world that we will pass this test. God bless.
[[Cut and pasted from http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010911-1.html]]
What hits you about this short speech is that the president carefully avoids naming the assailants. He no longer uses the words "terrorism" or "terrorist." He lets it be understood that we might be talking about the beginning of a classical military conflict, or just about anything else. He evokes a "test of our resolve" which will be passed, seeming to announce still more catastrophe. Most surprisingly, he doesn't offer any explanation at all of his absence from Washington, giving the impression that he ran away from the danger to which his fellow citizens remained exposed.
Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, gave two press briefings improvised aboard Air Force One during its long wandering. With the same meticulous care as President Bush, he too avoided the words "terrorism" and "terrorist."
In such a context, one can interpret the activation of the Continuity of Government (CoG) procedure in two different ways. The simplest explanation is to consider that the president and political leaders had to be protected from traitors who were liable to start a fire in the Old Executive Building and to steal the secret codes from the president and intelligence services.
One can also consider that, inversely, the CoG plan wasn't put into action in order to protect political leaders from traitors, but rather by the traitors themselves in order to isolate them. Indeed, Vice-President Cheney's testimony is strange. He maintains that Secret Service men took him out of his office and conducted him to the White House bunker without waiting to see if he agreed. He lets it be understood that it was the same way with other government members and congressmen. And what is an operation where secret services carry off democratically-elected officials and assign them to bunkers "for their safety," if not a coup d'état, or at least a palace coup?
Let's go back over the available elements: a fire is announced in the White House annex. Responsibility for the attacks has been claimed [[Les attentats ont été revendiqués]] during a phone call to the Secret Service. The assailants have put forth demands, nay, an ultimatum, and authenticated their communication by using the presidential transmission and authentification codes. The Secret Service set into motion the CoG procedure and put the principal political directors under cover. President Bush negotiated in the afternoon and calm returned in the evening.
The attacks therefore were not commissioned by some fanatic who thought he was carrying out a divine punishment, but by a group deep within the apparatus of the American state, a group who succeeded in dictating policy to President Bush. Instead of a coup d'état aiming to overthrow governmental institutions, isn't this about a power grab by a particular group hidden within the breast of those institutions?
[[END OF CHAPTER THREE]]