Salon: First Buddy (Condoleezza)

[kskiska]

Condi Rice has rarely used her close relationship with Bush to offer dissent or hold back administration hard-liners. That doesn't bode well for her tenure at State.

| It was the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and America was under attack. In this moment of crisis President Bush rushed aboard Air Force One and took off without giving a destination or any instructions on how to respond to the emergency. Vice President Cheney, deep in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center under the White House, was told a fourth airliner was 80 miles from Washington. Knowing that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon, Cheney must have feared that one could be headed for the White House. "In about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing," he gave the order to shoot down the plane without pausing to worry about the passengers.

There was no plane heading toward Washington, however, and even if there had been, the U.S. fighter jets in the area had no weapons onboard. The fourth hijacked airliner had already crashed in a Pennsylvania field. But Cheney did not have that information. Nor did he have the authority to order the destruction of the plane.

Bush and Cheney, who refused to testify under oath or in public and insisted on appearing together before the 9/11 commission, asserted that the president had given his approval in a telephone conversation. The only problem is, there is no record of that conversation. The 9/11 commission's report concluded that "there is no documentary evidence for this call."

Faced with a situation in which the president exercised no authority and the vice president exceeded his, what did Condoleezza Rice do? She did what a good aide does -- covered up for them. She said she remembered the call but was unable to give any specifics.

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http://salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/11/17/condi_rice/index.html