A new article by Cheney biographer Stephen Hayes distorts the meaning of the Mineta Testimony

A new article by Cheney biographer Stephen Hayes distorts the meaning of the Mineta Testimony

by Arabesque

The Cheney Imperative by Stephen Hayes contains a very interesting passage:

A little more than an hour later, Mr. Cheney was seated below the presidential seal at a long conference table in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, better known as the bunker. When an aide told Mr. Cheney that another passenger airplane was rapidly approaching the White House, the vice president gave the order to shoot it down. The young man was so surprised at Mr. Cheney's immediate response that he asked again. Mr. Cheney reiterated the order. Thinking that Mr. Cheney must have misunderstood the question, the military aide asked him a third time.

The vice president responded evenly. "I said yes."

These early moments and all that followed from them will define Mr. Cheney's vice presidency. He was aggressive in those first moments of the war on terror and has been ever since.

Hayes “take” on this event is rather surprising and could be interpreted in other and more unflattering ways—one of which is high treason “defining” Mr. Cheney’s presidency.

What is not clear however, is whether or not Mr. Hayes got this story directly from Dick Cheney—which is possible, since he is a biographer of the infamous Vice President, or from Norman Mineta. It is worth contacting Hayes (without mentioning Mineta) to find out where he got this story from. This could be a big find if the vice president himself confirms the Mineta Testimony.

Here is how Mineta described this event:

During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say 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?"

David Ray Griffin explains the significance of the Mineta Testimony:

This testimony by Mineta was a big threat not only because it indicated that there was knowledge of the approaching aircraft at least 12 minutes before the Pentagon was struck, but also because it implied that Cheney had issued stand-down orders. Mineta himself did not suggest that, to be sure. He assumed, he said, that “the orders” mentioned by the young man were orders to have the plane shot down. Mineta's interpretation, however, does not fit with what actually happened: The aircraft was not shot down. That interpretation, moreover, would make the story unintelligible: If the orders had been to shoot down the aircraft if it got close to the Pentagon, the young man would have had no reason to ask if the orders still stood. His question makes sense only if the orders were to do something unexpected---not to shoot down the aircraft. The implication of Mineta's story is, therefore, that the attack on the Pentagon was desired.

Stephen F. Hayes on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_F._Hayes

Stephen F. Hayes is a columnist for The Weekly Standard, a prominent American Neoconservative magazine. Hayes has been selected as the official biographer for Vice President Richard Cheney.

Hayes authored a book on this subject entitled: The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America

The title of this book fully demolishes the credibility of Mr. Hayes. Al Qaeda's involvement with Iraq was debunked by even George Bush of all people.