In a message dated 9/16/01 12:26:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Did you listen to VP Cheney's interview this morning on _Meet the
Press_? �Because Pres. Bush was out of town, as soon as word of the
hijackings reached the White House, the Secret Service whisked* the VP to
the bunker under the WH, from where he called AF1 and told the Pres. that
he should not return to Washington but go to a secure location, in
accordance with the plans that had been made for a situation in which
Washington was targeted for attack. �That is also why VP Cheney has spent
much of the past week at Camp David: �so no single attack could get both
the Pres. and VP.
Bob Z.:
Spin as far as I am concerned. The pres should have been getting back to
Wash DC. If someone needed to be elsewhere get Cheney out of town. Dick
told W what to do and W listened. Should have been the other way around.
Me:
Do you know the security information that they had, Bob? If so, tell us.
Otherwise, he had better information to make this decision than you did.
This is hardly the time to make political profit by attacking the President
- as two Massachusetts Democratic Congressmen have just learned, to their
regret. I thought he should have been in DC, too. But I didn't know that
the White House was a target at the time. As I do now, it seems to me not
unreasonable to think that the assasination of the President would make
things a lot worse. The Secret Service - which has a reputation for never
leaking or lying - has reported that it had a credible threat against the
President made by a person who had inside information on the security
situation. Given that, his decision was both reasonable and commendable.
It was, in fact, courageous. He had to know that he would face critcism
from those who will take any opportunity to attack the President - even at
a time like this - and he still decided to preserve the conti
nuity of government. This was, as far as I know, the first time in history
that continuity of government plans came into effect, in fact. Under that
situation, the President has few choices about what he can do, and
preserving his own life should, in fact, be one of his first priorities.
Gautam
