Newly Declassified Documents Reveal that President George W. Bush Authorized Shootdown of Hijacked Airplanes on 9/11—But Only After Three Planes Had Already Crashed…

by Jeremy Kuzmarov at CovertAction Magazine

Newly released documents from the National Archives detail how President George W. Bush authorized the shootdown of hijacked airplanes at 10:00 a.m. EDT on 9/11 after Bush had learned that two had already crashed into the World Trade Center towers.

But these orders were too late to save the people who died in the Twin Towers or 183 people who died when the western side of the Pentagon was struck by American Airlines Flight 77 at 9:37 a.m. (the fourth hijacked plane, Flight 93, crashed southeast of Pittsburgh in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, at 10:03 a.m. after passengers reportedly took over the plane).

The sixty-four thousand dollar question is why Bush did not order the shootdown of the planes earlier—when it could have saved people’s lives.

Bush had been alerted just minutes after a hijacked plane crashed into the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m., while he was on a visit to schoolchildren in Sarasota, Florida.

After an aide whispered news of the second attack on the Twin Towers,…