JEM
President_Bush's_Movements_and_Actions_on_9/11
Fri May 9 15:29:17 2003
208.152.73.91

This posting is very long, but it provides thorough documentation on
George Bush's abject dereliction of duty on September 11. It's hard to know
what Bush considers "duty," since he's been AWOL from the Alabama Air
National Guard for 31 years.
There is excellent data here on NORAD's inexplicable failure to muster
air defenses in the Eastern corridor of the United States on 9/11. It is
standard operating procedure--"SOP," in military parlance--to muster air
defenses *anytime* there's a hijacking, or even when a commercial aircraft
deviates more than a few degrees from its flight course.
For those who still harbor doubts, here's a link
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/timelinecomplete.html  to
Paul Thompson's 9/11 Timeline comprised exclusively from mainstream news
sources. -- JEM
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For photos, maps and links to referenced articles,
go to the link:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essayaninterestingday.html
>
An_Interesting_Day:
President_Bush's_Movements_and_Actions_on_9/ 11

By Allan Wood and Paul Thompson
May 9, 2003


"It was an interesting day." - President Bush, recalling 9/11 [White House,
1/5/02]

At approximately 8:48 a.m. on the morning of September 11, 2001, the first
pictures of the burning World Trade Center were broadcast on live
television. The news anchors, reporters, and viewers had little idea what
had happened in lower Manhattan, but there were some people who did know.
By that time, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the North American
Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the National Military Command Center,
the Pentagon, the White House, the Secret Service, and Canada's Strategic
Command all knew that three commercial airplanes had been hijacked. They
knew that one plane had been flown deliberately into the World Trade
Center's North Tower; a second plane was wildly off course and also heading
toward Manhattan; and a third plane had abruptly turned around over Ohio
and was flying back toward Washington, DC.

So why, at 9:03 a.m. - fifteen minutes after it was clear the United States
was under terrorist attack - did President Bush sit down with a classroom
of second-graders and begin a 20-minute pre-planned photo op? No one knows
the answer to that question. In fact, no one has even asked Bush about it.

Bush's actions on September 11 have been the subject of lively debate,
mostly on the internet. Details reported that day and in the week after the
attacks - both the media reports and accounts given by Bush himself - have
changed radically over the past 18 months. Culling hundreds of reports from
newspapers, magazines, and the internet has only made finding the "truth"
of what happened and when it happened more confusing. In the changed
political climate after 9/11, few have dared raise challenging questions
about Bush's actions. A journalist who said Bush was "flying around the
country like a scared child, seeking refuge in his mother's bed after
having a nightmare" and another who said Bush "skedaddled" were fired.
[Washington Post, 9/29/01 (B)] We should have a concise record of where
President Bush was throughout the day the US was attacked, but we do not.

What follows is an attempt to give the most complete account of Bush's
actions - from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska to Washington, DC.

Preparations

Bush's appearance at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota,
Florida, on September 11, 2001 had been in the planning stages since August
[Booker web site], but was only publicly announced on the morning of
September 7. [White House, 9/7/01] Later that same day, 9/11 hijackers
Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi traveled to Sarasota and enjoyed drinks
and dinner at a Holiday Inn only two miles down the sandy beach from where
Bush was scheduled to stay during his Sarasota visit. [Longboat Observer,
11/21/01, Washington Post, 1/27/02]

On the night of September 10th, Bush stayed at the Colony Beach Resort -
"an upscale and relatively pristine tropical island enclave located
directly on the Gulf of Mexico, a spindly coral island ... off Sarasota,
Florida." [AP, 07/29/01] Zainlabdeen Omer, a Sudanese native living in
Sarasota, told the local police that night that someone he knew who had
made violent threats against Bush was in town and Omer was worried about
Bush's safety. The man was identified only as "Ghandi." A police report
states the Secret Service was informed immediately. [Hopsicker, 7/22/02]

After a private dinner with various Florida politicians (including his
brother Jeb) and Republican donors, Bush went to bed around 10:00 p.m.
[Sarasota Magazine, 11/01, Washington Post, 1/27/02] Surface-to-air
missiles were placed on the roof of the resort [Sarasota Herald-Tribune,
9/10/02], and an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) plane circled
high overhead. [Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism - From Inside the Bush
White House, by Bill Sammon, 10/02, p. 25] It's not clear if this type of
protection was standard for the president or whether security was increased
because of possible threats.

An Assassination Attempt?

Bush awoke a little before 6:00 a.m. on September 11, pulled on shorts and
an old T-shirt and laced up his running shoes. [CBS, 11/1/02] At 6:30 a.m.,
Bush, a reporter friend, and his Secret Service crew took a four-mile jog
in the half-light of dawn around a nearby golf course. [Washington Post,
1/27/02, Washington Post, 09/11/01]

At about the same time Bush was getting ready for his jog, a van carrying
several Middle Eastern men pulled up to the Colony's guard station. The men
said they were a television news crew with a scheduled "poolside" interview
with the president. They asked for a certain Secret Service agent by name.
The message was relayed to a Secret Service agent inside the resort, who
hadn't heard of the agent mentioned or of plans for an interview. He told
the men to contact the president's public relations office in Washington,
DC, and had the van turned away. [Longboat Observer, 9/26/01]

The Secret Service may have foiled an assassination attempt. Two days
earlier, Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, had
been murdered by a similar ruse. Two North African men, posing as
journalists from "Arabic News International," had been requesting an
interview with Massoud since late August. Ahmad Jamsheed, Massoud's
secretary, said that by the night of September 8, "they were so worried and
excitable, they were begging us." An interview was arranged for the
following day. As it began, a bomb hidden in the video camera exploded,
killing the two journalists. Massoud was rushed by helicopter to a hospital
in Tajikistan, but was pronounced dead on arrival (although his death was
not acknowledged until September 15). [International Policy Institute for
Counter-Terrorism, 10/30/01, Newsday, 10/26/01] The assassination is widely
believed to have been timed to remove the Taliban's most popular and
respected opponent in anticipation of the backlash that would occur after
the 9/11 attacks. [BBC, 9/10/01, BBC, 9/10/01 (B), Time, 8/4/02, St.
Petersburg Times, 9/9/02] The Northern Alliance blamed al-Qaeda and the
ISI, Pakistan's secret service, for the attacks. [Radio Free Europe,
9/10/01, Newsday, 9/15/01, Reuters, 10/4/01]

Nearly three hours after the incident at the Colony, another Longboat Key
resident reported a run-in
with possibly the same men. At about 8:50 (when reports of the first World
Trade Center crash were first broadcast), while standing on the Sarasota
bay front waiting for the presidential motorcade to pass by, this man saw
two Middle Eastern men in a dilapidated van "screaming out the windows
'Down with Bush' and raising their fists in the air." The FBI questioned
the man, but it's not known if this was the same van that had visited the
Colony. [Longboat Observer, 9/26/01]

Later on the morning of September 11, the Secret Service searched a
Sarasota apartment looking for further corroboration of Zainlabdeen Omer's
report of an assassination threat. Three Sudanese men were questioned for
about ten hours. The Secret Service also raided a beauty supply store in
Sarasota, whose owner, identified as "Hakim," told the agents that "Ghandi"
was a member of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, a group fighting
against the fundamentalist Muslim government in Sudan. [Hopsicker, 7/22/02]

Monica Yadav of Sarasota's ABC News 40 reported that a few days after the
Secret Service visit, the beauty supply store was closed up and Hakim was
long gone. Yadav also learned that Zainlabdeen Omer had suddenly quit his
jobs and vacated his apartment. "All I know is he can't leave town," a
friend of Omer's told Yadav. "Omer got in a lot of trouble with the law."
The Special Agent in charge of the Presidential detail in Sarasota told
Yadav that Bush was never in any danger and the various warnings and
possible terrorist connections were all "just a coincidence." [Hopsicker,
7/22/02] Yet, as we will see below, there are more details of a threat
against Bush before he left Sarasota.

Bush Is Briefed as the Hijackings Begin

After his jog, Bush showered, then sat down for his daily intelligence
briefing around 8 a.m. "The President's briefing appears to have included
some reference to the heightened terrorist risk reported throughout the
summer, but contained nothing specific, severe or imminent enough to
necessitate a call to [National Security Advisor] Condoleezza Rice."
[Telegraph, 12/16/01]

While Bush was being briefed, the planes that would be hijacked began
taking off. American Airlines Flight 11 was first, leaving Boston's Logan
Airport at 7:59 a.m. The others soon followed, except for United Flight 93,
scheduled to leave at 8:01, but which was delayed on the runway for about
40 minutes. [Boston Globe, 11/23/01] (For more information on the four
flights, see Flight 11, Flight 175, Flight 77, Flight 93.)

At approximately 8:13, Flight 11 was instructed by air traffic controllers
at the FAA's Boston Center, in Nashua, New Hampshire, to climb to 35,000
feet. The plane did not obey the order and its transponder was turned off.
Air traffic control manager Glenn Michael said, "we considered it at that
time to be a possible hijacking." [AP, 8/12/02, emphasis added] According
to FAA regulations, that was the correct decision: "Consider that an
aircraft emergency exists ... when ... there is unexpected loss of radar
contact and radio communications with any ... aircraft." [FAA Air Traffic
Control Regulations, Chapter 10, Section 2-5 ]

If air traffic controllers believed Flight 11 had been hijacked at 8:13,
NORAD should have been informed immediately, so military planes could be
scrambled to investigate. However, NORAD and the FAA both claimed NORAD was
not informed until 8:40 - 27 minutes later. [NORAD, 9/18/01, AP, 8/ 12/02,
AP, 8/19/02, Newsday, 9/10/02; one NORAD employee said it took place at
8:31, ABC News, 9/11/02] Indeed, before contacting NORAD, Boston air
traffic controllers watched Flight 11 make an unexpected 100-degree turn
and head south toward New York City [Christian Science Monitor, 9/13/01],
told other controllers of the hijacking at 8:25 [Guardian, 10/17/01],
continued to hear highly suspicious dialogue from the cockpit (such as,
"Nobody move, please, we are going back to the airport. Don't try to make
any stupid moves") [Guardian, 10/17/01, New York Times, 10/16/01], and even
asked the pilots of Flight 175 to scan the skies for the errant plane.
[Guardian, 10/17/01, Boston Globe, 11/23/01]

Is NORAD's claim credible? If so, the air traffic controllers (including
Mr. Michael) should have been fired and subject to possible criminal
charges for their inaction. To date, however, there has been no word of any
person being disciplined at any institution at any level for what happened

on 9/11.

If NORAD's claim is false, and it was indeed informed within the time frame
outlined in FAA regulations that Flight 11 may have been hijacked, that
would mean NORAD did absolutely nothing for almost thirty minutes while a
hijacked commercial airliner flew off course through some of the most
congested airspace in the world. Presumably, that would warrant some very
serious charges. Again, no one associated with NORAD or the FAA has been
punished.

According to phone calls made by fight attendants Betty Ong and Amy
Sweeney, the hijackers had stabbed and killed at least one passenger and
two flight attendants by about 8:21. [ABC News, 7/18/ 02, Boston Globe,
11/23/01, AP, 10/5/01, Los Angeles Times, 9/20/01] (One hijacker may have
been riding in the cockpit and begun the hijacking earlier.) After 8:21,
both women apparently remained on the phone with American Airlines'
headquarters for 25 minutes, until their plane crashed into the World Trade
Center's North Tower. [ABC News, 7/18/02, AP, 10/5/01] These calls make
NORAD's supposed ignorance of a crisis even more dubious.

Bush Leaves for Booker Elementary

Around the same time the Flight 11 hijackers were stabbing passenger Daniel
Lewin - at 8:20 a.m. - Bush's briefing ended and he said good-bye to the
Colony's general manager. [Telegraph, 12/16/01, Sarasota Magazine, 11/01]
The first event on Bush's schedule was what is known as a "soft event" - a
photo-op with children at Emma Booker Elementary School - promoting his
proposed education bill. [Sarasota Herald- Tribune, 9/11/01] After spending
about 20 minutes with the children, Bush was scheduled to give a short
press conference at about 9:30. [White House, 9/7/01, Federal News Service,
9/10/01]

Accounts of when Bush's motorcade left for the school vary from 8:30 to
8:39. [8:30, Washington Post, 1/27/02, 8:35, Sarasota Magazine, 9/19/01,
8:39, Washington Times, 10/7/02] One account has the Bush party leave the
Colony suite at 8:30 and drive away at 8:39. Whenever he left, the
motorcade traveled quickly: "The police shut down traffic in both
directions, leaving roads utterly deserted for Bush's long motorcade, which
barreled along at 40 mph, running red lights with impunity." [Fighting
Back: The War on Terrorism - From Inside the Bush White House, by Bill
Sammon, 10/02, pp. 37-38] At 40 mph, it would take about 14 minutes to
travel the nine-mile distance to the school. Several accounts say the
journey took about 20 minutes [New York Times, 9/ 16/01 (B), St. Petersburg
Times, 9/8/02 (B), MSNBC, 10/29/02], which means that Bush arrived shortly
before 9:00. [8:46, ABC News, 9/11/02, 8:55, Washington Times, 10/7/02,
8:55, Sarasota Magazine, 9/19/01, "just before 9:00," Telegraph, 12/16/01,
"shortly before 9:00," Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/10/02, "just before
9:00," New York Times, 9/16/01 (B), 9:00, Albuquerque Tribune, 9/10/02]

When Did Bush First Learn of the Attacks?

Why does it matter when Bush left the resort and arrived at the school?
Because this is the crucial time when Bush was first told, or should have
been told, of the attacks. Official accounts, including the words of Bush
himself, say Bush was first told of what was happening in New York City
after he arrived at the school. [Telegraph, 12/16/01, CBS, 9/11/02]
However, this statement does not stand up to scrutiny. There are at least
four reports that Bush was told of the first crash before he arrived at the
school.

Two accounts explicitly state Bush was told while in the motorcade. "The
President was on Highway 301, just north of Main Street ... [when] he
received the news that a plane had crashed in New York City." [Sarasota
Magazine, 11/01] (See adjacent map for the location where he is told.)
Another account states, "Bush was driving to the school in a motorcade when
the phone rang. An airline accident appeared to have happened. He pressed
on with his visit." [Observer, 9/16/01]

The first media reports of Flight 11's crash into the World Trade Center
began around 8:48,