CHAPTER 12 - GENERAL RICHARD MYERS
Summary
Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) General Myers unequivocally claimed the month after 9/11 that he was away from the Pentagon and did not hear of the 2nd WTC impact until the Pentagon strike (Military-Myers), but then backpedaled and said he heard just after it happened (Myers, Com-Myers MFR, NBC-Myers). However, White House Terrorism advisor Richard Clarke (Clark), CJCS General Hugh Shelton (Shelton), and Army Secretary Thomas White (PBS-White) all said Myers was present at the Pentagon before and/or during the Pentagon strike.

Myers also gave a highly detailed firsthand account of Brigadier General Winfield acting as the NMCC DDO and receiving presidential shoot down authorization via Vice President Cheney while tracking Flight 93 unmistakably before 10 AM (Myers) – all of which was corroborated by Winfield (ABC-Winfield) and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (PBS-Wolfowitz, Pentagon-Wolfowitz, NYT-Wolfowitz). However, Myers also absurdly told the 9/11 Commission that he didn’t arrive at the NMCC until after 10 AM (Com-Myers MFR) and publicly endorsed its narrative that Winfield was not the DDO and the military never learned about Flight 93 pre-impact (Com-Myers Test).

Sources:
Armed Forces Radio and Television Services, 10/17/2001, “Interview: General Richard B. Myers”
Drs. Alfred Goldberg and Rebecca Cameron, 4/19/2001, “Pentagon Attack Interview with Paul Wolfowitz” (transcript)
General Hugh Shelton, 2009, “Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior,” pgs. 432-33
New York Times, 9/15/2001, “AFTER THE ATTACKS: SKY RULES; Pentagon Tracked Deadly Jet But Found No Way to Stop It”
PBS Frontline, 10/26/2004, “Rumsfeld’s War”
PBS News, 9/14/2001, “Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with PBS NewsHour”
Richard Clarke, 2004, “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror,” pgs. 3-5
Senate Armed Services Committee, 9/13/2001, “U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) Holds Hearing On Nomination of General Richard Myers to be Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff”
NBC News, 9/11/2002, “General Richard Myers Interview with Jim Miklaszewski”
NBC Today Show, 3/12/2009, “An Insider’s Look at the Global War on Terror”
Richard Myers, 2009, “Eyes on the Horizon: Serving on the Front Lines of National Security,” pgs. 151-152
9/11 Commission, 2/17/2004, “Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers”
9/11 Commission, July 2004, “9/11 Commission Report,” pgs. 34, 38, 463 (Ch. 1 Footnote 199, citing 2/17/2004 Myers interview)

9/11 Commission Rejects Evidence General Richard Myers Joined White House Teleconference Early and Was Involved In Flight 93 Shootdown Prep; Myers Flip Flops to Point of Absurdity
General Richard Myers was the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during 9/11, filling in for General Hugh Shelton who was out of the country. During an October of 2001 interview with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Services, Myers claimed that he was in a meeting with then-Senator and later 9/11 Commission Max Cleland from before the 2nd WTC impact until just before the Pentagon impact at 9:37. He stated:

“I was meeting with [Senator Cleland] in preparation for my hearing, my confirmation hearing to be the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff… Sometime during that office call the second tower was hit. Nobody informed us of that. But when we came out, that was obvious. Then right at that time somebody said the Pentagon has been hit… somebody handed me a cell phone, and it was General Eberhart… talking about what was happening and the actions he was going to take. We immediately, after talking to him, jumped in the car, ran back to the Pentagon.”

Senator Cleland corroborated this statement just two days after the attacks during General Myers’ confirmation hearing. He stated:

“General, it's a good thing that… we were meeting here and not us meeting in the Pentagon because about the time you and I were having our visit… at just about that very moment, the Pentagon was being hit.”

However, the claim that nobody notified the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the entire time span from before the second WTC impact until just after the Pentagon impact was far-fetched since it was widely understood after the second impact that America was under attack. Therefore, General Myers later altered this narrative in three sources – a September 2002 NBC interview, a February of 2004 9/11 Commission interview, and his and his 2009 autobiography.

In those sources, Myers said that shortly after the meeting began, a member of Senator Cleveland’s staff informed them that the second World Trade Center tower had been hit, so they immediately ended the meeting. Myers then briefly watched news coverage in Cleland’s outer office, then took a phone call from NORAD Commander General Ralph Eberhart, then took a phone call from his executive assistant who urged him to return to the Pentagon. As he left the Capitol and got into his car, someone told him the Pentagon had been hit.

However, other sources of evidence contradicted this narrative. First, in his March of 2004 book, “Against All Enemies,” White House counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke wrote that when he initiated the White House teleconference shortly after the second plane struck the World Trade Center, General Myers immediately joined from the Pentagon along with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Clarke stated:

“As I entered the Video Center … I could see people rushing into studios around the city: Donald Rumsfeld at Defense... [and] Air force four-star General Dick Myers was filling in for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs…” 

Clarke went on to record this highly specific exchange of words with Myers as having taken place at 9:28:

Clarke: “JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff], JCS. I assume NORAD has scrambled fighters and AWACS. How many? Where?”

Myers: “Not a pretty picture Dick. … We are in the midst of Vigilant Warrior, a NORAD exercise, but … Otis has launched two birds toward New York. Langley is trying to get two up now.” …

Clarke: “Okay, how long to CAP [Combat Air Patrol] over D.C.?” …

Myers: “Fast as we can. Fifteen minutes?”

The 9/11 Commission made no mention of Clarke’s account, did not seek to re-interview him when his book was released four months before its report was finished, and did not cite any transcript or recording of the teleconference.

A second source of contradictory evidence is General Hugh Shelton, whom Myers was substituting for as the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11 since Shelton was out of the country. In his 2009 book, Shelton described a phone conversation with General Myers while he was inside the Pentagon’s NMCC (National Military Command Center) when the Pentagon was attacked. The description is noteworthy for its highly specific and strange dialogue in which Myers initially mistook the Flight 77 impact for a hand grenade. Shelton wrote:

“Meanwhile, Dick [Myers] was on the phone, and the first report was that a hand grenade had just gone off in the Pentagon parking lot. …he was able to give me a complete status report from the NMCC (National Military Command Center).

‘We’re still trying to determine what’s going on but the hallways here are filling up with smoke. That was no damn hand grenade in the parking lot.’

…At that point I heard some commotion in the background, then Dick was back online.

‘Sorry, Chairman. Okay, we just got the word-the prior report was incorrect; it was not a hand grenade that exploded, it was another commercial airline that struck the Pentagon.’”

A third source of contradictory evidence is Thomas White, Secretary of the Army. In an interview with PBS Frontline that aired in October of 2004, White indicated that General Myers was at a breakfast meeting in the Pentagon when the first plane hit the World Trade Center, not in Senator Cleland’s office on Capitol Hill. White told PBS Frontline:

“Don Rumsfeld had a breakfast, and virtually every one of the senior officials of the Department of Defense – service chiefs, secretary, deputy, everybody, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [General Myers]. And as that breakfast was breaking up, the first plane had hit the World Trade tower.”

Regarding the timing of his arrival in the NMCC and who led the teleconference call there, Myers contradicted himself to the point of absurdity. According to his February of 2004 interview memorandum, the 9/11 Commission staff informed him of its narrative that “there was no evidence NORAD was effectively tracking [Flight 93] inbound to Washington”. Myers accommodated beautifully, telling the staff that he did not arrive in the NMCC until around or after Flight 93 crashed. The memorandum stated:

“Myers estimated his arrival time at the NMCC to be around 1000 or 1010.”

Myers then raised no objection when he testified at the June of 2004 public hearing where the 9/11 Commission staff presented its narrative that the military never heard of the Flight 93 hijack before it crashed and that Captain Charles Joseph Leidig led the NMCC teleconference.

However, in his 2009 autobiography entitled, “Eyes on the Horizon,” (quoted at length by the NBC Today Show) Myers said he entered the NMCC shortly after the 9:37 Pentagon impact. Upon entering he observed Brigadier General Winfield leading a teleconference which included NORAD, the White House, and the FAA (implied, not stated outright). He also said he heard Winfield receive Presidential Bush’s shoot-down authorization via Vice President Cheney. And most importantly, he said all of this took place before he briefly walked out of the NMCC to Donald Rumsfeld’s office suite down the hall, at which point he saw the 9:59 South Tower collapse on CNN.

Regarding his first entry into the NMCC, Myers stated:

“People moved quickly through the smoky corridors toward the exits. Speakers in the ceiling blared repeatedly, ‘Evacuate the building! Evacuate the building!’ We ran against the flow of the crowd to the National Military Command Center… When we entered the Command Center, all the officers on duty were working calmly at their stations, despite… the fact that the Pentagon had just been struck…”

Regarding the teleconference’s leadership and attendees, Myers stated:

“Army Brig. Gen. Montague Winfield was the duty officer in charge of the center that morning… he was participating in a conference call linking the NMCC, North American Aerospace Command (NORAD), and the White House, which had been under way since just before we arrived at the Pentagon… General Winfield was doing a good job of managing the information flow and keeping the chain of command plugged in, linking the… relevant military and civilian organizations [such as the FAA].”

Regarding Flight 93 and shoot down authority, Myers stated:

“We learned that there was apparently a fourth hijacked aircraft, United Airlines Flight 93 out of Newark, bound nonstop for San Francisco… A military aide in the White House relayed an important message. ‘NORAD estimates the aircraft is headed toward Washington,’ Winfield said. ‘Vice President Cheney has forwarded the President’s authorization to go Weapons Free if that plane is confirmed hijacked and threatens the White House or the Capitol.’ Weapons Free, I thought — permission to shoot down the hijacked plane.”

Regarding his brief exit from the NMCC after all the aforementioned events, Myers stated:

“…I went to find Secretary Rumsfeld. As I left the Current Actions Center, CNN showed the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsing [at 9:59] in an avalanche of smoke and debris… One of Rumsfeld’s aides told me he was ‘outside,’ helping with the wounded. I left word that I was returning to the NMCC.”

Similarly, two days after 9/11, while under oath during his confirmation hearing as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Myers stated:

“…we had launched on the one that eventually crashed in Pennsylvania. I mean, we had gotten somebody close to it, as I recall.” 

Similarly, Deputy Secretary of Defense on 9/11 Paul Wolfowitz gave an April of 2002 interview with Dr. Alfred Goldberg and Dr. Rebecca Cameron, who were performing government-funded research for the Department of Defense’s 2007 publication Pentagon 9/11. During the interview, Wolfowitz stated:

“We went into the NMCC, where… General Myers [was] …We proceeded with discussions by secure video conference. One issue was what to do about the plane over Pennsylvania, getting orders to get fighters up to intercept it, and… getting approval from the President to shoot it down.”

Correspondingly, three days after 9/11, Wolfowitz stated on PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:

“We responded awfully quickly … and, in fact, we were already tracking in on that plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. I think it was the heroism of the passengers on board that brought it down. But the Air Force was in a position to do so if we had had to.” 

Also, the New York Times echoed the next day:

“Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, said today that the Pentagon had been tracking that plane and could have shot it down if necessary; it crashed about 35 minutes after the Pentagon crash.”

Sources:
Armed Forces Radio and Television Services, 10/17/2001, “Interview: General Richard B. Myers”
Drs. Alfred Goldberg and Rebecca Cameron, 4/19/2001, “Pentagon Attack Interview with Paul Wolfowitz” (transcript)
General Hugh Shelton, 2009, “Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior,” pgs. 432-33
PBS Frontline, 10/26/2004, “Rumsfeld’s War”
PBS News, 9/14/2001, “Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with PBS NewsHour”
Richard Clarke, 2004, “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror,” pgs. 3-5
Senate Armed Services Committee, 9/13/2001, “U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) Holds Hearing On Nomination of General Richard Myers to be Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff”
NBC News, 9/11/2002, “General Richard Myers Interview with Jim Miklaszewski”
NBC Today Show, 3/12/2009, “An Insider’s Look at the Global War on Terror”
New York Times, 9/15/2001, “AFTER THE ATTACKS: SKY RULES; Pentagon Tracked Deadly Jet But Found No Way to Stop It”
Richard Myers, 2009, “Eyes on the Horizon: Serving on the Front Lines of National Security,” pgs. 151-152
U.S. Congress; Senate Armed Services Committee, 9/13/2001, “U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) Holds Hearing On Nomination of General Richard Myers to be Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff”
9/11 Commission, 2/17/2004, “Memorandum for the Record: Interview of General Richard Myers”
9/11 Commission, July 2004, “9/11 Commission Report,” pgs. 34, 38, 463 (Ch. 1 Footnote 199, citing 2/17/2004 Myers’ interview)