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Donald Rumsfeld on 9/11: An enemy within Matthew Everett What was Rumsfeld
doing on 9/11? He deserted his post. He disappeared. The country
was under attack. Where was the guy who controls America’s defense? Out
of touch! --A senior White House official On September 11, 2001, the United States suffered
its worst attack since Pearl Harbor. Yet, as evidence shows, the country
was in many ways undefended for the entire duration of the assault. The
Air Force was nowhere to be seen until it was too late. [1] The commander
in chief of the armed forces, President George W. Bush, continued with
a pre-planned photo op at a school in Florida, only leaving the place
at 9:35, just before the time the Pentagon was struck. [2] The acting
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers was on Capitol Hill.
Despite seeing the television reports of the World Trade Center after
it was first hit, he continued with a scheduled meeting there, and supposedly
was not notified when the second plane hit at 9:03. He therefore did not
head back to the Pentagon until around the time it too was hit, and only
joined the critical air threat conference call shortly before 10 a.m.
By that time, the attacks were nearly over. [3] Furthermore, new evidence shows that for the critical
two hours in which the attacks occurred, the country was effectively without
a secretary of defense. An analysis of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s
actions on 9/11 reveals several occasions when he was alerted to the attacks
that were taking place. Each time, if he were not already doing so, he
should have leapt into action and assumed his responsibilities in coordinating
a crisis response, and helping to protect the people of America. Yet,
instead, his responses were consistent: He did nothing. Donald Rumsfeld on 9/11 Donald Rumsfeld started the morning of 9/11 with
an 8 o’clock breakfast meeting with several members of Congress, held
in his private dining room at the Pentagon, to discuss the subject of
missile defense. During this meeting, according to his own recollection,
Rumsfeld warned that “sometime in the next two, four, six, eight, ten,
twelve months there would be an event that would occur in the world that
would be sufficiently shocking that it would remind people again how important
it is to have a strong healthy defense department that contributes to
-- that underpins peace and stability in our world.” He was subsequently
informed of the first attack in New York promptly after it happened. He
says: “[S]omeone walked in and handed [me] a note that said that a plane
had just hit the World Trade Center.” [4] Larry Di Rita, a special assistant to Rumsfeld,
had sent this note. Although initial news reports had been unclear, with
some of them suggesting the WTC might have been hit by just a small plane,
according to Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Torie Clarke:
“Even in the accidental crash scenario, the military might be involved
in some way. Rumsfeld needed to know.” Yet after receiving Di Rita’s note,
rather than initiating or joining any emergency response process, Rumsfeld
continued as if this were just an ordinary day. As he later recounted:
“[W]e adjourned the meeting, and I went in to get my CIA briefing.” [5] Inside her office in the Pentagon, Torie Clarke
saw the second plane hitting the World Trade Center live on television.
It was now obvious that the U.S. was under attack. As she later described:
“[I]mmediately, the crisis management process started up.” Along with
Larry Di Rita, she headed to Rumsfeld’s office. When they arrived there,
Di Rita told the defense secretary: “Sir, I think your entire schedule
is going to be different today.” By this time, the Pentagon’s Executive
Support Center (ESC) was going into operation. Located down the hallway
from Rumsfeld’s office, the ESC comprises several conference rooms that
are secure against electronic eavesdropping. It is, according to Clarke,
“the place where the building’s top leadership goes to coordinate military
operations during national emergencies.” One would therefore have expected
Rumsfeld to have gone straight there, or to the National Military Command
Center (NMCC), located next door to it. Yet, as before, he continued as
if this were an ordinary day. He told Clarke and Di Rita to go to the
ESC and wait for him. “In the meantime, he would get his daily intelligence
briefing, which was already scheduled for nine thirty.” Rumsfeld “wanted
to make a few phone calls,” so he “stayed in his office.” [6] What Donald Rumsfeld did in the next half-hour is
unclear. Even in his prepared testimony to the 9/11 Commission, he said
nothing about his actions during this crucial period leading up to the
attack on the Pentagon. [7] But important new details of his response
to the Pentagon strike itself have been revealed in the account of Aubrey
Davis, an officer with the Pentagon police, who was assigned to be Rumsfeld’s
personal bodyguard the morning of 9/11. This account appears in Andrew
Cockburn’s recent biography, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic
Legacy. From watching televised reports of events in New
York, Davis had concluded that America was under attack and the Pentagon
could be a target. Of his own initiative, he’d made his way to move the
secretary of defense to a better-protected location. Just after 9:37 a.m.,
while Rumsfeld was in his office with his CIA briefer, Davis was standing
outside his door. Then, he says, he heard “an incredibly loud ‘boom,’”
as the Pentagon was struck. Cockburn describes: “Fifteen or twenty seconds later,
just as [Davis’s] radio crackled with a message, the door opened and Rumsfeld
walked out, looking composed and wearing the jacket he normally discarded
while in his office.” Cockburn told an interviewer: “I couldn’t discover
what he was wearing inside his office that morning -- but normally he
would take off his suit jacket and put on a sort of like a vest, because
he found it chilly in the office. So . . . I think he had time to change
his clothes, put on his going-outside jacket, come out.” How could Rumsfeld
have changed his clothes in the space of just 15 to 20 seconds? If he
was already dressed to go outside when the Pentagon was hit, was this
just a fortunate coincidence? Or is it possible that he knew in advance
that the Pentagon was going to be attacked, and therefore had put on his
jacket ready to respond when this happened? As the defense secretary appeared, Davis repeated
to him what he’d just heard on his radio: Reportedly, an airplane had
hit a section of the Pentagon known as the Mall. Rumsfeld set off without
a word and without informing any of his command staff where he was going,
heading swiftly towards the Mall, with Davis and some colleagues trying
to keep up behind him. Finding no sign of damage there, Davis told the
secretary: “[N]ow we’re hearing it’s by the heliport,” which was the next
side of the building. Interfering with a crime scene Despite Davis’s protestations that he should turn
back, Rumsfeld continued onwards, and the group soon found its way outside,
emerging close to the area of impact. Davis recalls: “There were the flames,
and bits of metal all around. The secretary picked up one of the pieces
of metal. I was telling him he shouldn’t be interfering with a crime scene
when he looked at some inscription on it and said, ‘American Airlines.’
Then someone shouted, ‘Help, over here,’ and we ran over and helped push
an injured person on a gurney over to the road.” [8] It may sound hard to believe that Rumsfeld’s immediate
response to the Pentagon attack was to rush to the crash site like this
and help carry a stretcher, rather than staying inside to carry out his
responsibilities as secretary of defense. Yet he was caught on camera
doing so, and video footage is available proving the fact. [9] He didn’t stay there for long, however. Though he
was away from his office for around 20 minutes, as Cockburn points out:
“Given the time it took to make their way down those Pentagon corridors
-- each side of the enormous building is the length of three football
fields -- Rumsfeld was actually at the crash site for only a fraction
of that period.” [10] When Rumsfeld dashed out to help at the crash scene,
his intention was presumably to present an image to the public of an American
hero, looking after the vulnerable and injured at a time of crisis. Perhaps
this was why, just days later, his spokeswoman, Torie Clarke. made a point
of informing an interviewer: “Secretary Rumsfeld was one of the first
people out there after it happened.” No doubt hinting towards the actions
of her boss, she’d continued: “There’s example after example of heroism,
of people who helped at the crash site, trying to help victims and get
people to ambulances.” [11] Yet Rumsfeld’s actions were not heroic at
all. America was under attack. He was the secretary of defense. There
could have been another plane heading for the Pentagon, perhaps intending
a double-strike on the place, like what had just occurred at the World
Trade Center. Or maybe a plane was on a crash course for another populated
area. He had a crucial role to play in helping to protect his country.
But by heading outside without informing his staff where he was going,
he was unable to carry this out. Breaking the chain of command As we now know, Rumsfeld’s actions hindered the
emergency response to the ongoing attacks. For the 20 minutes or so that
he was gone from his office, other officials were desperately trying to
contact him, but were unable to do so. Aubrey Davis was receiving frantic
calls over his radio saying: “Where’s the secretary? Where’s the secretary?”
Yet he was unable to answer these. As he recalls: “I kept saying, ‘We’ve
got him,’ but the system was overloaded, everyone on the frequency was
talking, everything jumbled, so I couldn’t get through and they went on
asking.” [12] One of the officials trying to contact Rumsfeld
was Captain Charles Leidig, who was temporarily in charge of the Pentagon’s
National Military Command Center. At 9:39 a.m., Leidig opened an air threat
conference call, declaring: “An air attack against North America may be
in progress.” The NMCC then requested that the secretary of defense be
added to this conference. [13] Rumsfeld in fact had a vital role to play
in coordinating the military response to an attack on the U.S. Andrew
Cockburn explains: “Though most people assume that the chain of command
runs from the president to the vice president, the cold war bequeathed
a significant constitutional readjustment. In an age when an enemy attack
might allow only a few minutes for detection and reaction, control of
American military power became vested in the National Command Authority,
which consists of the president and the secretary of defense. Collectively,
the NCA is the ultimate source of military orders, uniquely empowered,
among other things, to order the use of nuclear weapons. In time of war,
therefore, Rumsfeld was effectively the president’s partner, the direct
link to the fighting forces, and all orders had to go through him. Such
orders were supposed to be transmitted from . . . the National Military
Command Center.” Cockburn adds that the NMCC is “the operational center
for any and every crisis, from nuclear war to hijacked airliners.” [14] The secretary of defense’s specific responsibility
in the event of an airplane hijacking was made clear in a July 1997 military
instruction, which was slightly revised in June 2001. This stated: “In
the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious
means by the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]. The NMCC will, with
the exception of immediate responses as authorized by reference d, forward
requests for DOD [Department of Defense] assistance to the secretary of
defense for approval.” [15] Yet Rumsfeld was out of the loop. A few minutes
after the NMCC requested that he be added to the air threat conference,
the defense secretary’s office reported back that he was nowhere to be
found. As Cockburn concludes: “The chain of command was broken.” [16] A senior White House official, who was in its Situation
Room on 9/11, trying to coordinate an emergency response, has angrily
condemned Rumsfeld’s actions at this time: “What was Rumsfeld doing on
9/11? He deserted his post. He disappeared. The country was under attack.
Where was the guy who controls America’s defense? Out of touch! How long
does it take for something bad to happen? No one knew what was happening.
What if this had been the opening shot of a coordinated attack by a hostile
power? Outrageous, to abandon your responsibilities and go off and do
what you don’t need to be doing, grandstanding.” [17] Rumsfeld’s actions after the Pentagon was hit were
extraordinary. If 9/11 was indeed a surprise attack, as the U.S. government
claims, then he could have been putting thousands of lives at risk. What
if more planes had been on a crash course towards populated areas? In
fact, emergency responders had to be evacuated from the Pentagon site
at around 10:15 a.m., due to an incorrect report of another hijacked plane
approaching Washington, D.C. [18] And according to Vanity Fair,
“False reports of hijackings” continued “well into the afternoon” of 9/11.
[19] So why did Rumsfeld abandon his post in the middle of the worst attack
on the United States for 60 years? There is a simple and logical explanation.
Though chilling in its implications, it needs to be seriously considered
as a possibility: Donald Rumsfeld had foreknowledge of what would happen
that morning, and therefore he knew that the Pentagon would not be hit
again. Either people ‘in the know’ had informed him of what was going
to happen beforehand, or else he knew because he had been a participant
in the planning of the attacks. Rumsfeld heads back inside Rumsfeld left the crash site and was back in the
Pentagon by “shortly before or after 10:00 a.m.” He says he “had one or
more calls in my office, one of which I believe was with the President.”
[20] However, according to the 9/11 Commission: “No one can recall the
content of this conversation, but it was a brief call in which the subject
of shootdown authority was not discussed.” [21] Then, at around 10:15, he finally entered the Executive
Support Center. In it already were Stephen Cambone, his closest aide,
Larry Di Rita, and Torie Clarke. He gave them their first confirmation
that a plane had hit the building, saying: “I’m quite sure it was a plane
and I’m pretty sure it’s a large plane.” He spent a short time at the
ESC before moving on to the National Military Command Center next door
at around 10:30. [22] Prior to this, even after he’d re-entered the Pentagon
at 10 o’clock, those in the NMCC had apparently been unaware of Rumsfeld’s
whereabouts. Brigadier General Montague Winfield later recalled: “For
30 minutes we couldn’t find him. And just as we began to worry, he walked
into the door of the National Military Command Center.” [23] Once there, Rumsfeld’s priority was, according to
the 9/11 Commission, “ensuring that the [military fighter] pilots had
a clear understanding of their rules of engagement,” so they “would have
a better understanding of the circumstances under which an aircraft could
be shot down.” Rumsfeld has explained that, “Throughout the course of
the day,” along with acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard
Myers, he “returned to further refine those rules.” Yet, as Cockburn points
out, this was “an irrelevant exercise,” as Rumsfeld did not complete and
issue his rules of engagement “until 1:00 p.m., hours after the last hijacker
had died.” [24] So here we have it: America was under attack, starting
at 8:14 a.m. (the alleged takeover of Flight 11) and ending minutes after
10 a.m. (when Flight 93 supposedly crashed into a field in Pennsylvania).
Yet the only thing we know the secretary of defense did in response, so
as to protect the American people, was issue some instructions to fighter
pilots -- at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. An enemy within Andrew Cockburn concludes that Donald Rumsfeld’s
actions on 9/11, in particular his desertion of his post in order to be
seen helping at the Pentagon crash site, “changed him from a half-forgotten
twentieth-century political figure to America’s twenty-first-century warlord.
On a day when the president was intermittently visible, only Rumsfeld,
along with New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, gave the country an image of
decisive, courageous leadership.” [25] Yet, as a closer analysis shows,
Rumsfeld’s behavior that morning was sinister and highly suspicious. The
fact that an individual in such a position of responsibility should have
acted as Rumsfeld did at such a critical moment should be of concern to
us all. Notes [1] Two F-15 fighter jets were reportedly launched
from Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts at 8:46 a.m. Yet, according
to the 9/11 Commission, they did not arrive over Manhattan until 9:25
a.m. See 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report
of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,
Authorized Edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp.
20 and 24. In fact, the accounts of numerous eyewitnesses who were in
Manhattan that morning suggest the F-15s did not arrive there until even
later, some time after 10 a.m. See the following entry in Paul
Thompson’s Complete 9/11 Timeline: Three F-16s were also ordered into
the air from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia at 9:24 a.m. However,
according to the 9/11 Commission, they headed east over the ocean instead
of north, as originally instructed. They were therefore further away from
the Pentagon when it was hit than they had been when they took off. See
9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 27. [2] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report,
pp. 38-39. [3] Senate Armed Services Committee, U.S.
Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) Holds Hearing on Nomination of General Richard
Myers to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 107th Cong.,
1st sess., September 13, 2001. Interview:
General Richard B. Myers Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff With Petty
Officer Quinn Lyton, USN. Armed Forces Radio and Television Service,
October 17, 2001; 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report,
p. 38. [4] Robert Burns, “Pentagon Attack Came Minutes
After Rumsfeld Predicted: ‘There Will be Another Event.’” Associated Press,
September 12, 2001; “Secretary
Rumsfeld Interview With Larry King.” Larry King Live, CNN,
December 5, 2001; Torie Clarke, Lipstick on a Pig: Winning in the No-Spin
Era by Someone Who Knows the Game. New York: Free Press, 2006, p.
218. [5] “Secretary Rumsfeld Interview With Larry King”;
Torie Clarke, Lipstick on a Pig, pp. 217-218. [6] Assistant
Secretary Clarke Interview With WBZ Boston, WBZ Boston, September
15, 2001; Torie Clarke, Lipstick on a Pig, pp. 216-219; Andrew
Cockburn, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy. New
York: Scribner, 2007, p. 5. The first chapter of this book, detailing
Rumsfeld’s actions on 9/11, is available
online. [7] “Testimony
of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld Prepared for Delivery
to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States.”
9/11 Commission, March 23, 2004. [8] Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, pp. 1-3;
“Andrew
Cockburn: Author, ‘Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy.’”
Q&A, C-SPAN, February 25, 2007; “Journalist
and Author Andrew Cockburn on Donald Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic
Legacy.” Democracy Now! March 7, 2007. [9] See, for example, CNN Tribute: America Remembers.
CNN, August 20, 2002. Footage
of Rumsfeld helping carry a stretcher, taken from this documentary, is
available online. [10] Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, p. 3. [11] Assistant
Secretary Clarke Interview With KYW Philadelphia, KYW Radio, Philadelphia,
September 15, 2001. [12] Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, p. 2; “Andrew
Cockburn: Author, ‘Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy.’” [13] “Statement
of Capt. Charles J. Leidig, Jr. Commandant of Midshipmen United States
Naval Academy Before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon
the United States.” 9/11 Commission, June 17, 2004. 9/11 Commission,
The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 37-38. [14] Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, pp.
4-5. [15] Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CJCSI
3610.01, Aircraft
Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects,
Washington, D.C.: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, July 31, 1997.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, CJCSI 3610.01A, Aircraft
Piracy (Hijacking) and Destruction of Derelict Airborne Objects.
Washington, D.C.: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, June 1, 2001. [16] Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, p. 5. [17] Ibid. p. 4. [18] Arlington County, Virginia, report, Titan Systems
Corp., Arlington County: After-Action Report on the Response to the
September 11 Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon. 2002, p. A-30. [19] Michael Bronner, “9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes.”
Vanity Fair, August 2006. [20] “Testimony of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald
H. Rumsfeld Prepared for Delivery to the National Commission on Terrorist
Attacks on the United States.” [21] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report,
p. 43. [22] Torie Clarke, Lipstick on a Pig, p.
221; Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, pp. 5-6. [23] 9/11:
Interviews by Peter Jennings. ABC News, September 11, 2002. [24] 9/11 Commission, The 9/11 Commission Report,
pp. 44 and 465; “Testimony of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
Prepared for Delivery to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States”; Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, p. 7. [25] Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, p. 3. |
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