So Cheney and Bush, testifying together, can cobble a coherent, consistent story. Rice, presumably in separate testimony, confirms a phone conversation between the two about shootdown policy. But she heard only one end of the conversation, and who knows whether she wasn't actually remembering a call later in the morning in which Cheney explains the strategy ex post facto to Bush?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50745-2004Jun17.htmlCheney, who told the commission he was operating on instructions from Bush given in a phone call, issued authority for aircraft threatening Washington to be shot down. But the commission noted that
"among the sources that reflect other important events that morning there is no documentary evidence for this call, although the relevant sources are incomplete." Those sources include people nearby taking notes, such as Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Cheney's wife, Lynne.
Bush and Cheney told the commission that they remember the phone call; the president said it reminded him of his time as a fighter pilot. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who had joined Cheney, told the commission that she heard the vice president discuss the rules of engagement for fighter jets over Washington with Bush.
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