Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta testified before the 911 Commission on May 23, 2003 and offered an interesting account of Vice President Cheney’s behavior as Flight 77 approached the Pentagon. 2 The essential testimony is in boldface.

MR. HAMILTON: We thank you for that. I wanted to focus just a moment on the Presidential Emergency Operating Center. You were there for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the vice president. And when you had that order given, I think it was by the president, that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be controlled by terrorists, were you there when that order was given?

MR. MINETA: No, I was not. I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane [was] coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, “The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to, “The plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the vice president, “Do the orders still stand?” And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” Well, at the time I didn’t know what all that meant. And –

MR. HAMILTON: The flight you’re referring to is the –

MR. MINETA: The flight that came into the Pentagon.

MR. HAMILTON: The Pentagon, yeah.

MR. MINETA: And so I was not aware that that discussion had already taken place. But in listening to the conversation between the young man and the vice president, then at the time I didn’t really recognize the significance of that.

And then later I heard of the fact that the airplanes had been scrambled from Langley to come up to DC, but those planes were still about 10 minutes away. And so then, at the time we heard about the airplane that went into Pennsylvania, then I thought, “Oh, my God, did we shoot it down?” And then we had to, with the vice president, go through the Pentagon to check that out.

MR. HAMILTON: Let me see if I understand. The plane that was headed toward the Pentagon and was some miles away, there was an order to shoot that plane down.

MR. MINETA: Well, I don’t know that specifically, but I do know that the airplanes were scrambled from Langley or from Norfolk, the Norfolk area. But I did not know about the orders specifically other than listening to that other conversation.

MR. HAMILTON: But there very clearly was an order to shoot commercial aircraft down.

MR. MINETA: Subsequently I found that out. …

My own brief analysis of Cheney’s remarks is straightforward:

The young man’s reports to Cheney of the airliner’s impending approach is followed by his urgent question whether “the orders still stand?” The young man was questioning the order. That question had to be about whether the order NOT to destroy the approaching plane still stood. Given the two prior attacks against the Twin Towers using the commercial airliners as weapons, an order to destroy the plane approaching the Pentagon would be the only order to give and would not be subject to question by the young man as the plane approached. Furthermore, had Cheney’s order been to fire on the plane approaching the Pentagon (which first came near the White House), the anti-aircraft capacity of the Pentagon (or White House), would have sufficed to take out that plane, and certainly to have attempted to take out that plane. Since the Langley/Norfolk jets are at least 10 minutes away and out of range, Cheney’s order is about the on-site Pentagon or White House defenses. Neither a shoot-down nor an attempted shoot-down occurred, and since Mineta does not speak of a last-second change in orders by Cheney, the only supportable conclusion is that Cheney’s order was NOT to defend the Pentagon, an order so contrary to both common sense and military defense that it, and it alone, explains the questioning by the young man.

There are several reasons why Cheney’s behavior matters, but first and foremost is that Vice President Dick Cheney is in the command position in defending the Pentagon as the airliner approaches. To appreciate the significance of this fact it helps to return to the basics of producing 911 as a USG Intelligence Community domestic covert operation. One essential component of the plan is to gain control of the commercial airliners and to have a reliable means of guiding them to their targets. 3 Another essential component is to make sure that nothing interferes with the airliners reaching their targets.

Cairns is also experiencing a slight drop in occupancy - almost 1% - with fewer Japanese visitors checking in. Australia,…

We need some way of gaining access to the ICBM launch mechanism in either Europe, China, India or America. Once we launch these nukes at various cities many of the global issues will be resolved.

The PRP is the Personal Responsiblity Program administered throughout all of the Services by the Dept of Energy….In other words…DOE writes the rules the military must follow to handle nukes…..Fail a DOE inspection and your career is over….There are no second chances….At least there wasn’t pre-bush

I started to write a lengthy description of what would be required to get 6 nukes from storage onto an aircraft….Not including actually leaving the base with it…But as I was writing all of the procedures I couldn’t help thinking about our new and improved “enemy combatant” policies…And I really don’t want to get waterboarded in some foreign country while my wife wonders why the hell I didn’t come home from work…

It is truly a sad day in this country when 6 missing nukes is just a bad oops because they didn’t loose them or blow anyone up ha ha…. but talking about it publicly may be a punishable offense

I’m not sure which one of those scares me the most..

I will say this….I think a conservative estimate would be about 50 people of varying ranks would have had to come in direct contact with either just the nukes or the nukes and the aircraft “BEFORE” it left Minot….Nukes are kept in a seperate area aboard the base. Nukes have different color coding….Normal practice dummy rounds are blue…Normal live ordinance is Green…. Every single one of the people who came in close proximity to the nukes or aircraft would have been trained to pay special attention to procedures and checklists….Lots and lots of checklists…They would also know what constitutes an obvious complete base locked down security violation….Like say an aircraft sitting on the runway with nukes and no security detachment guarding it… I would say at least 20 of the 50 would have had to sign documents either transferring or accepting responsibility and /or custody for the nukes including serial numbers. There would have been maybe 10 different and seperate agencies or units aboard the base either directly or indirectly involved in the transfer.. You don’t just tell Dumb and Dumber to go get 6 nukes and hang them on a B-52…The aviation department is a completely different world than the guys that guard and maintain nukes…The aviation part would have inspected the aircraft first by the general maintenance department in preparation for the flight…probably again within several hours of the scheduled departure another pre-flight inspection….then again by the enlisted crew of the aircraft prior to departure and again by the pilot or co pilot before departure.. There may also have been a seperate department tasked soley with loading ordinance and verifying where or not the ordinance was properly ARMED…..There would have to have been someone fairly senior in the maintenance department who reviewed all of the documentation and signatures to ensure everything including the documents associated with the loading of the nukes prior to releaseing the aircraft “safe for flight”….Then someone from the crew would review that information again before accepting the aircraft….Every single one of these people would have to be on the PRP….Every single one of these people would have had to follow a specific protocol if the flight involved nukes.

Basically…. there is no freaking way 6 live nukes gets ACCIDENTALLY loaded on any aircraft by any branch of the service at any time on any base unless somewhere along the line….THERE WAS AN ORDER TO LOAD 6 LIVE NUKES……IT JUST COULDN’T HAPPEN…Its that simple

Only ONE of those deaths was AFTER the B52 incident, And you listed that one TWICE.

Since the story broke 7 days ago, about the missing nuke\clandestine operation from Minot, we have the following for those who are paying attention:

1. All six people listed below are from Minot Airforce base
2. All were directly involved as loaders or as pilots
3. All are now dead
4. All within the last 7 days in ‘accidents’

http://www.kfyrtv.com/News_Stories.asp?news=10465
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070915/BREAKINGNEWS/70915012
http://www.kxmc.com/News/161562.asp
http://www.kxmc.com/getArticle.asp?ArticleId=140988
http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/07/20/news/state/136489.txt
http://www.komotv.com/news/local/9679367.html

Silly me, seeing more than there is to this story. I guess this is just another coincidence.

But no doubt now that there will be more coincidences in the near future because as I have stated before, you need about fourteen signatures to get an armed nuke onto a B-52, and they may have told their wives and friends.