NYT p1:To the Minute, Panel Paints Grim Portrait of (9/11) Terror

[DeepModem Mom]

THE TIMETABLE
To the Minute, Panel Paints a Grim Portrait of Day's Terror
By ERIC SCHMITT and ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published: June 18, 2004

(You can click to the right of the article for two timeline graphics for the time periods 8 to 9:30 a.m., and 9:30 to 10:45 a.m.)


WASHINGTON, June 17 — At 9:36 a.m. on Sept. 11, halfway through America's most calamitous morning, military air defense officials learned that American Airlines Flight 77 was just six miles — and little more than a minute — away from the White House.

An air defense commander in upstate New York ordered three Air Force fighter jets to intercept the third airliner hijacked that morning. But he soon discovered that the Virginia-based fighters were not heading north toward Baltimore as instructed, but streaking east over the Atlantic Ocean. "I don't care how many windows you break," the commander barked, ordering the jets to turn around and "crank it up" to the White House.

At that moment in Washington, Secret Service agents were hustling Vice President Dick Cheney to a secure underground White House bunker. In Sarasota, Fla., President Bush's motorcade was speeding away from an elementary school, initially headed in the wrong direction, to rush the president to the airport — and up into the sky, to safety.

The nation has relived that morning countless times since Sept. 11, 2001, but never with the harrowing detail and minute-by-minute drama of the staff report released Thursday by the independent commission investigating the attacks....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/18/politics/18minutes.html

[gandalf]

1. See! No conspiracy!

"Now we now everything. These conspiracy nuts should apologize and recognize that their lies are baseless now!" (that's what the FR... would say)