9/11 commission staff seems to question whether Bush OKd the command. Fighter pilots never received the vice president’s directions. Vice President Dick Cheney was huddled with top U.S. officials in a bunker below the White House on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when a military aide told him that a hijacked aircraft was 80 miles from Washington and closing in fast. The aide needed to know: Did Cheney want to give warplanes scrambled over Washington orders to shoot it down? Cheney did not hesitate. He authorized fighter aircraft “to engage the inbound plane.” In the decision to issue a lethal order without precedent in American history — to shoot down a plane filled with American civilians — Cheney both struggled with the confusion of that morning and personified it, according to a staff report issued Thursday by the national commission investigating the terrorist attacks. Full Story
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