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Biden Blasted for ‘Bunker’ Blunder
Vice president’s slip of tongue opening up a new discussion regarding Cheney and 9-11
By Victor Thorn
Once again, mainstream media sources failed to report the real story behind the story. At the Gridiron Club’s annual white-tie gala May 17 in Washington, Vice President Joe Biden disclosed classified information regarding Dick Cheney’s infamous underground bunker beneath the Naval
Observatory in D.C.
Being that Biden took over residence from Cheney in the vice presidential manor this past January, he related to fellow diners (journalists included) how a young Naval tour guide “showed him the hideaway, which is behind a massive steel door secured by an elaborate lock with a narrow connecting hallway lined with shelves filled with communications equipment. The officer explained that when Cheney was in lock down, this was where his most trusted aides were stationed.”
Heckled by pundits for the umpteenth time, Biden dismissed his statements by saying that he was actually referring to an “upstairs workspace.” But his words were obviously misleading because in December, 2002, neighbors living adjacent to the vice president’s residence complained of “strange explosions” emanating from beneath Cheney’s home. In response, the Naval Observatory’s superintendent sent each a letter. “Due to its sensitive nature in support of national security and homeland defense, this project’s specific information is classified and cannot be released.”
The memo also stated that “the work was urgent and needed to be done on a highly accelerated schedule.”
Cheney (who denied the very existence of this “Bat Cave”), then ordered Google to obscure his residence from their satellite maps.
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With these revelations in mind, some commentators have erroneously stated that Vice President Cheney hunkered down in this bunker during the 9-11 terrorist attacks. But construction didn’t officially begin on this enclave until December, 2002. Actually, at approximately 9:10-9:20 a.m. on Sept. 11, Cheney was scurried to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) beneath the White House East Wing. Here, a crucial event took place which had a profound effect on the purported Pentagon strike.
According to Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, he entered the PEOC at 9:25 or 9:26 a.m., whereupon he witnessed an aide repeatedly giving the vice-president frantic updates. He provided the following public testimony to the 9-11 Commission on April 23, 2003.
During the time that the airplane [Flight 77] was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in to 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?” The vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?”
A growing number of researchers insist Flight 77 never struck the Pentagon. But, an event did take place at 9:38 a.m. where a certain amount of damage occurred, resulting in 125 deaths. But what are we to make of the “orders” which this aide questioned Dick Cheney about?
In an excellent article by Professor David Ray Griffin on April 28, 2008, entitled “9-11 Contradictions: When Did Cheney Enter the Underground Bunker?”, he writes, “The expected orders, especially on a day when two hijacked airliners had already crashed into buildings in New York, would have been to shoot down any non-military aircraft entering the ‘prohibited’ airspace over Washington.”
But since Cheney was repeatedly asked about these “orders,” Griffin concludes quite perceptively: “The question made sense only if the orders were to do something unusual—not to shoot the aircraft down. It appeared, accordingly, that Mineta had inadvertently reported Cheney’s confirmation of stand-down orders.”
Obviously, Flight 77 was never shot down over our nation’s capital (nor did it strike the Pentagon). In a May 5, 2008, article, 9-11 researcher Aidan Monaghan stresses that ample notice was given to government officials.
“The FAA notified the military about the suspected hijacking of Flight 77 at 9:24 a.m., if not before. The FBI’s D.C. field office was also notified that Flight 77 had been hijacked at about 9:20 a.m.”
In essence, the Pentagon and White House had an eternity to react, but failed to do so. Somebody ordered the stand-down, and operationally at least, one of those men was Dick Cheney.
Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s probable hands-on involvement in the execution of 9-11 can be traced back to what journalist James Mann calls “The Armageddon Plan” in the March, 2004 issue of The Atlantic magazine. During the Reagan administration—when Cold War paranoia still ran high—Cheney and Rumsfeld joined 40-60 other federal officials in a highly classified program dealing with COG (continuity
of government).
During these secretive operations, various shadow government teams were formed in the event of a nuclear strike by the Soviets. In an article for The Guardian by Tom Vanderbilt entitled “Is This Bush’s Secret Bunker?”, he describes how “the president could repair to Mount Weather; Congress had its secret bunker in Culpeper, Va.; the Pentagon was given a rocky redoubt called Site R [Raven Rock] in the mountains of southwest Pennsylvania; while the nation’s air defenses were run out of NORAD.”
Vanderbilt describes Mount Weather as “a sprawling underground complex bristling with mainframe computers, air circulation pumps, and a television/radio studio for post nuclear presidential broadcasts.”
As each of these teams was dispatched to clandestine locales, mock “presidents” were appointed to each. Not surprisingly, both Cheney and Rumsfeld were designated to be “commanders-in-chief ” of their respective squadrons.
Mann also explains how “the capstone to all these efforts was a special airplane, the National Emergency Airborne Command Post, a modified Boeing 747 based at Andrews Air Force Base and specially outfitted with a conference room and advanced communication gear. In it, a president could remain in the air and run the country during a nuclear showdown.”
Considering these words, fast-forward to Sept. 11, 2001 when bedlam broke loose in D.C. As Mann concludes in his expose, “Cheney and Rumsfeld suddenly began to act out parts of a script they had rehearsed years before. Operating from the underground shelter beneath the White House, called the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, Cheney told Bush to delay a planned flight back from Florida to Washington.”
In the meantime, Rumsfeld sent others, like Paul Wolfowitz, to out-of-
town bunkers.
In essence, while one team ran the show in NewYork City from Rudy Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) on the 23rd floor of WTC 7; another team consisting of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and General Richard Meyers remembered their special training via the Armageddon Plan. When questioned a few days after 9-11 by NBC’s Tim Russert in regard to their actions at the time, Cheney responded furtively, “We did a lot of planning during the Cold War with respect to the possibility of a nuclear incident.”
When Joe Biden spilled the beans about Cheney’s not-so-secret bunker, he didn’t know how close he came to opening up an entirely different can of worms.
Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and the author of many books on 9-11 and the New World Order. These include 9-11 Evil: The Israeli Role in 9-11 and Phantom Flight 93.
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(Issue # 23 & 24, June 8 & 15, 2009)
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