Worldandnation: Cheney: Fighters had orders to shoot down hijacked jets

Cheney: Fighters had orders to shoot down hijacked jets

©Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- When congressional leaders were told to board helicopters and evacuate the Capitol during the tense minutes after Tuesday's terrorist attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney gave them the order.

As the hours passed and a few suspect aircraft remained unaccounted for, it was Cheney who told them to stay out of town. The vice president spoke to the Hill leaders four or five times that day, and several of them said they did not hear from President Bush until the next morning.

Cheney was not seen publicly all week, causing some to inquire discreetly about his health. He re-emerged Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press.

One of Cheney's most compelling disclosures was that President Bush ordered U.S. fighter jets to shoot down civilian aircraft if necessary to protect the nation's capital immediately after terrorists crashed hijacked planes in New York and Washington.

Calling it "the toughest decision" the president made during the crisis, Cheney said Bush issued the order as the government went into full "button-down mode" to try to make sure terrorists could not "decapitate" the U.S. government.

U.S. fighter pilots would have fired on any plane, Cheney said, if it had been on a direct path that threatened the capital and ignored warnings to divert.

"As a last resort, our pilots were authorized to take them out," Cheney said.

It is believed to be the first time the government has publicly acknowledged a readiness to use military force against a passenger aircraft for a specific national security purpose.

Asked about the decision, Bush did not go into detail. "I gave our military the orders necessary to protect Americans," Bush said. "Of course that's difficult," Bush added. "Never did, in anybody's thought process about how to protect America, did we ever think that the evil-doers would fly not one, but four commercial aircraft into precious U.S. targets -- never."

Cheney said he had urged Bush to give the orders as a precaution against a terrorist strike.

"It turned out we did not have to execute on that authorization," Cheney said. "But there were some, a few, moments when we thought we might."

"The president made the decision, on my recommendation as well . . . that if the plane would not divert, if they wouldn't pay any attention to instructions to move away from the city, as a last resort, our pilots were authorized to take them out," Cheney said.

"We'd, in effect, put a flying combat air patrol up over the city," Cheney said. "It doesn't do any good to put up a combat air patrol if you don't give them instructions to act if, in fact, they feel it's appropriate."

Cheney also showed why he is being called "the war minister" in political circles. While Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were giving vague, cautious answers on other networks, Cheney delivered blunt, clinical assessments of the war ahead.

"It is a mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena," Cheney said, arguing that the United States will have to pay unsavory sources for intelligence.

Belying his reputation for blandness, Cheney went on to give the most vivid, intimate account of Tuesday's events to emerge from the White House.

"While I was there, over the next several minutes, watching developments on the television and as we started to get organized to figure out what to do, my Secret Service agents came in and, under these circumstances, they just move," he said. "They don't say 'Sir,' or ask politely. They came in and said, 'Sir, we have to leave immediately,' and grabbed me."

"Your feet touch the floor periodically, but they're bigger than I am, and they hoisted me up and moved me very rapidly down the hallway, down some stairs, through some doors and down some more stairs into an underground facility under the White House," he continued. "As a matter of fact, it's a corridor, locked at both ends, and they did that because they had received a report that an airplane was headed for the White House."

Cheney, 60, has had four heart attacks and a quadruple bypass operation, and had an electronic defibrillator implanted in June. When he disappeared from public view during such a stressful time, friends and opponents began to wonder if he was well.

White House officials are sensitive to the possibility of Cheney overshadowing Bush, and officials from both parties speculated that was the reason Cheney was out of sight.

The first public glimpse of the vice president since the hijackings came Saturday in footage from Bush's 2 1/2-hour national security meeting at Camp David. When Cheney broke his silence on NBC, he spoke from a lodge at Camp Greentop, next to Camp David, the presidential retreat where he has been sleeping for safety's sake since the attacks.

Cheney was uncharacteristically frank about his role in the first hours of the crisis. He said he gave suggestions for the statement Bush would make before leaving the school he was visiting in Sarasota, ordered the evacuation of Cabinet members, told Bush to delay his return flight because it looked like he had been targeted and warned him to stay in Nebraska even as some advisers argued the symbolic value of a quick return to the Oval Office.

"We'd have been absolute fools not to go into button-down mode, make sure we had successors evacuated, make sure the president was safe and secure," Cheney said. He said the agents grabbed him and took him to the basement when the Secret Service learned through its arrangement with the Federal Aviation Administration that an airliner "was headed on a track into" the White House.

"I got down into the shelter, the first thing I did -- there's a secure phone there. First thing I did was pick up the telephone and call the president again," he continued. "I said, 'Delay your return. We don't know what's going on here, but it looks like, you know, we've been targeted. ' "

"Once I left that immediate shelter, after I talked to the president, urged him to stay away for now, I went down into what's called a PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center," Cheney continued.

Cheney's remarks showed that his Cold War experience loomed large in his response to Tuesday's chaos. Bush and his staff were criticized for his decision to stop at two Air Force bases before getting back to Washington nine hours after leaving Florida.

"One of the key requirements always is to protect the presidency. It's not about George Bush or Dick Cheney. It's about the occupant in the office," Cheney said. "We erred on the side of, I'd say, responsibility."

- Information from Cox News Service was used in this report.