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Pentagon "Inaccuracies" On 9/11 Air Defense Probed
Wed Aug 2, 10:04 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Pentagon said its inspector general is investigating whether officials provided "knowingly false" information to a special commission that investigated the September 11, 2001 attacks.



A secret inspector general's report in May 2005 concluded that Defense Department officials provided inaccurate information about the air defense response to the attacks, but did not say whether it was "knowingly false," said Lieutenant Colonel Brian Maka.

The inspector general "will be issuing a report in the near future that will directly address the question of whether the testimony was knowingly false," he said.

Vanity Fair, meanwhile, published a detailed account of the air defense response drawn from audiotapes made in the northeastern command center of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) as the attacks unfolded.

The tapes show that no command was given to shoot down United Flight 93 as implied by Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials, the magazine said.

The airliner crashed in a field in Pennsylvania before anyone in the military chain of command even knew it had been hijacked

Cheney was not informed of the possibility that the United flight had been hijacked until 10:02 am, just one minute before it impacted the ground

Among other inaccuracies, Major General Larry Arnold and Colonel Alan Scott testified they began tracking United Flight 93 at 9:16 am, but the plane had not been hijacked at that point.

NORAD's northeastern headquarters was not notified of the hijacking for another 51 minutes, the Vanity Fair account said.

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States uncovered the inaccuracies during the course of its investigation, and the Pentagon corrected the 2003 testimony in May 2004, Maka said.

The Washington Post reported that some staff and commission members concluded that the inaccuracies were a deliberate attempt to mislead the commission, and debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation.

As a compromise, the commission asked the inspector generals of the Pentagon and the Transportation Department to perform an inquiry into whether the information was knowingly false.

A secret Defense Department inspector general's report in May 2005 concluded that the Defense Department "did not accurately report to the 9/11 Commission on the air defense response to the September 11, 2001 hijackings."

"The inaccuracies in part, resulted because of inadequate forensic capabilities and insufficient actions taken to ensure complete and accurate reporting of the events related to the 9/11 hijackings."

But it did not directly address the commission's question as to whether they were "knowingly false."

[Bulsajo]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/view/

part 1 deals with the Cheney/United93 incident, among other things.