WH Shoots down story.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2001/10/gary-north/white-house-shoots-down-air-force-one-story/
On September 11, President Bush was lecturing to a class of
elementary school students in Florida. He was called outside the room
and briefed on the attacks on the World Trade Center. He then went back
into the room, briefly mentioned the deaths, and then departed for the
airport.
A few hours later, he surfaced on national TV from a military air
field in Shreveport, Louisiana. He spoke a few words, got back on the
plane, and it took off. A few hours later, he surfaced in Omaha, at the
Strategic Air Command site. The next day, he returned to Washington.
He took some heat from columnists who thought that he had belonged in
the Capitol, not in Omaha. The most influential of these critics was
William Safire, the New York Times columnist. In his column for September 12, he made critical remarks about the President’s absence.
At that point, the President’s spinmeisters got to work.
Someone with enough clout to be described by Safire in his September
13 column as a high White House official then called him. He gave Safire
the official explanation for the President’s absence. Because the Times makes old columns available only for a fee, I rely here in the summary of events provided by the World Socialist Web Site (Sept. 28).
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.”
Safire fully understood the threat to the nation that a break of security regarding the code would mean.
Safire pointed to one such question in his September 13
New York Times column. Referring to the White House claim that the
terrorists had knowledge of secret information about Air Force One,
Safire asked: “How did they get the code-word information and
transponder know-how that established their mala fides? That knowledge
of code words and presidential whereabouts and possession of secret
procedures indicates that the terrorists may have a mole in the White
House — that, or informants in the Secret Service, FBI, FAA, or CIA.”
The story of the broken code was picked up by the Associated Press.
The article is now old by Web standards, and is no longer easily
available. Most of the links to it take you to dead ends. But I found
one newspaper site that still carried it, Foster’s Daily Democrat a newspaper in S.E. New Hampshire.
This is dated September 13. For the historical record, I reprint it here.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hopscotching across half the country while America
was under attack, President Bush vented his frustration with Secret
Service officials telling him Air Force One was at risk of a terrorist
assault.
“I’m not going to let some tinhorn terrorist keep the president of
the United States away from the nation’s capital,” he said during the
six-hour flight that took him from Florida to Louisiana and Nebraska
before returning to the White House. “The American people want to see
their president and they want to see him now.”
White House counselor Karl Rove read the quote from several pages of
notes he took on a legal pad while Bush dealt with attacks in Washington
and New York.
Rove and other White House officials have slowly revealed details of
the journey to counter critics who have questioned whether Bush
overreacted by touching down at two Air Force bases before returning to
Washington.
Bush’s top political strategist said some people raised questions
with him, but their doubts were dispelled “when they were told there was
specific and credible evidence of a threat” against the White House,
Air Force One and the president himself.
Bush was in Florida, visiting a second-grade class, when White House
chief of staff Andrew Card told him two planes had crashed into the
World Trade Center in New York. Bush stepped outside the classroom to
get briefed on the events, then spoke publicly to condemn the terrorist
strike.
Soon after, a plane slammed into the Pentagon. Bush and his entourage were rushed aboard Air Force One.
The hijacked plane “was on a flight path directly for the White House
and it hit the Pentagon instead,” White House press secretary Ari
Fleischer said. National security officials monitoring intercepted
communications speculated that the hijackers had trouble controlling the
plane and spotting the White House for all the trees on the South Lawn,
and so headed for the wide-open Pentagon instead, according to a Secret
Service official briefed on the situation.
Within that same hour on Tuesday, the Secret Service received an
anonymous call: “Air Force One is next.” According to a senior
government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, the caller knew
the agency’s code words relating to Air Force One procedures and
whereabouts.
“We want to get the plane up and we want to get it up very high,” the
head of the Secret Service detail told Bush, according to Rove’s notes.
They wanted to head toward the Florida panhandle to pick up fighter
jets scrambling to give Air Force One air cover.
Bush told Card, “I want to move on to Washington.”
Vice President Dick Cheney, holed up in a secure bunker beneath the
White House, told Bush the threat should be taken seriously and he
should not return to Washington just yet.
Bush was told there were six planes unaccounted for, all potential
missiles. “The situation is not stable,” the head of Bush’s detail told
the president. Cheney’s lead Secret Service agent, meanwhile, told the
vice president he had no choice but to remain inside the complex because
there was no time to bring a helicopter in and taking him out by car
through gridlocked streets was too risky.
After landing at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, Bush
scheduled a national security meeting at 4 p.m. — several hours away.
“I want to go back home as soon as possible,” Bush said, according to Rove, who was with the president all day Tuesday.
Replied the agent: “Our people are saying it’s unstable still.”
The president was told he could get to Offutt Air Force Base in
Nebraska more quickly than to
Washington, thus allowing him to conduct
the national security meeting at a secure location and address the
public for a second time.
Off he went.
The New York Times picked up the story, which was picked up by the Seattle Times on September 16
There was no follow-through. The story of the broken code was dropped
by the mainstream American press. It was amplified by a report posted
on World Net Daily regarding multiple code-breaking successes. Even Pravda ran a version of the amplified story. But not the mainstream press.
Ari Fleischer’s Deflection Two-Step
On September 26, a reporter asked White House Press Secretary Ari
Fleischer about the September 11 warning. Without warning, Fleischer
began to do the “deflection two-step,” which every White House Press
Secretary learns within days of his appointment. The Washington Post reported this in a story buried on page 8 (Sept. 27).
“I’m not going to comment on any particular threats coming toward the
White House,” he said. He went on: “. . . it is not an uncommon
occurrence for people to threaten the government of the United States,
regardless of whether it’s President Bush or any of his predecessors.
And that’s why there are security precautions taken at the White House
as a matter of routine.”
So, the threat to Air Force One was just another routine story. You
know: like the twin towers being hit with jet planes, along with the
Pentagon. According to Mr. Fleischer, “it is not an uncommon occurrence
for people to threaten the United States.”
This man must think that the press is made up of gutless wonders and
fools. I mean, if they weren’t gutless wonders and fools, this
nonsensical reply would have been front-page news on September 27.
The Post ran it on page 8. Other major papers ignored it completely.
Let’s talk about “routine.” Routine in this case involved flying the
President to Louisiana and then to Nebraska. It involved putting the
Vice President into a nuclear bomb-proof bunker. “But that’s not what
this is about,” Fleischer continued. “This has nothing to do with
anything . . . that may or may not have been directed at President Bush.
This is about an attack that took place on our country.”
Was that really all that this was about? Was it only about the war in
general, or was it about answering William Safire’s September 12 column
on the President’s refusal to return immediately to Washington?
Wasn’t
it about the White House’s telling Safire that the caller had cracked
the White House’s daily code?
Fleischer got away with this. He knows his audience.
Safire is too well respected by readers and too feared by politicians
for some high-level official to attempt such a snow job on his own
authority. Someone put him up to it. What idiot was behind this broken
code story? Safire wrote: “According to the high official, American code
words were used showing a knowledge of procedures that made the threat
credible.” Someone in a position to know either lied — really, truly
stupid and highly risky — or else he really believed that the code had
been used by the informant, whoever he was. But Ari Fleischer says to
forget about it. And the press has done just that.
When the story began to spread regarding a code-break, the White
House was trapped. It had to choose: (1) admit that some crank had
called in, and the Secret Service then panicked, making up the story
about the code; (2) admit that the story was a deliberate fake to make
Bush look prudent; (3) admit that an unknown security agent had issued
the warning anonymously on his own authority, and the Secret Service
decided to keep Air Force One away; (4) admit that the code had been
broken; (5) verbally dance around the whole thing. Fleischer chose
strategy #5.
But what was the real cause? Again, I am guessing, but I will go with
version #1: a crank call. The White House security people panicked.
Then they later tried to cover up their panic with the story about the
code. This was a risky strategy, but it turned out to be effective.
Fleischer danced around the whole thing, and he got away with it — just
the way Clinton always did.
Lying is now seen as basic to the Presidency. No one really cares, and surely not the press.
Some White House pooh-bah ordered someone a little lower in authority
to feed Safire a phony story, and Safire reported both the story and
its implications. The press bit, but only lightly. The story was not
pursued aggressively. Some of the press figured out that the White House
had lied. So, Fleischer danced. Then the media buried the
not-quite-a-retraction story.
Conclusion
Truth is the first casualty of war. In wartime, representative
government is almost impossible to control from the bottom. The spinners
at the top feed us what is convenient. The press really doesn’t care,
now that Nixon is gone.
Where is Deep Throat, now that we need him?
October 4, 2001
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© 2001 LewRockwell.com
