During testimony given to the 9/11 Commission, then Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta had the following exchange with 9/11 commissioner Lee Hamilton regarding the plane coming into the Pentagon:

MR. MINETA: …There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, “The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.” And when it got down to, “The plane is 10 miles out,” the young man also said to the vice president, “Do the orders still stand?” And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?”…

MR. HAMILTON: The flight you’re referring to is the –

MR. MINETA: The flight that came into the Pentagon.

MR. HAMILTON: The Pentagon, yeah.

The 9/11 Commission would assert that the military “had at most one or two minutes to react” to Flight 77 before it hit the Pentagon, however, Mineta’s testimony indicates that they had 10 to 12 minutes, leading many to suspect the orders were stand-down orders. They omitted Mineta’s testimony from both their final report and the official version of the video record, however, they did imply Mineta was mistaken, stating that the discussion between Cheney and the aide occurred later than he claimed, and that it was referencing a shoot-down order for Flight 93, which crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

Q: Has anyone ever found out who that “young man” was that Mineta was referring to?

This question was posed to David Ray Griffin in the following video at the 45:40 to 47:00 mark.

The basis for his answer, “CIA-veteran Ray McGovern speaks about a personal encounter with Norman Mineta, where Mineta should have said, the young man was a ‘scared civilian’. This would exclude [Douglas] Cochrane, because he was a ‘naval aide’ and must have been wearing an uniform.”

But the problem with that is, we people who “suspected” it was a military man in the room that day taking those orders did not just base our opinion on the logic that it is is not the job of a scared civilian or a Secret Service agent to be taking military orders, but on empirical evidence uncovered by 9/11 researcher James Dorman AKA jimd3100 indicating this is the case.

“March 2, 2004
New Requests:
(2)VP Military Aide (I believe his last name is Cochrane): The person at the Vice President’s side in the PEOC who should have been intimately involved in the military communications chain is his military aide.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15740811/DM-B8-Team-8-Fdr-Email-From-Hyde-to-F

Furthermore, when researcher Jeff Hill spoke to Cochrane and posed his first question, “When you were in the PEOC with Cheney and you asked him, if the orders still stand?… What orders were you referring to?” Cohrane replied (Note: his testimony is sealed so he can’t say much) that he was “really not prepared to talk about this subject at all.” However, he could have easily said: I’m sorry you have me confused with somebody else. I never asked Vice President Cheney if any orders still stood.

If this were the truth it only makes sense that he would make such a statement, as opposed to offering numerous non-responses to Hill’s continued questioning, along with providing Hill the cryptic statement, “Like I said I appreciate your inquisitive nature, ah, I am somewhat of a history buff myself. I appreciate your quest for knowledge, but I don’t have anything else to add. And, and frankly this is kind of an imposition to call me on my government cell phone. I’m really not, I don’t think it’s appropriate, certainly not appreciated.”

Why go on approximately 7 minutes like that, when it could have ended with:

I’m sorry you have me confused with somebody else. I never asked Vice President Cheney if any orders still stood. You’d have to track that person down to get your answers, thank you.

As Kevin O noted on 911blogger.com:

WOW

At 4:00 in the video, Cochrane says ‘Oh, I DO remember Secretary Mineta,’ like his memory had just clicked and it surprised him. I would take this to mean Cochrane was almost certainly present at the events in question.

Then he goes back to refusing to make any meaningful comments. But he NEVER DENIES that he was the ‘young man’ in Mineta’s story. It sounds like he is very averse to lying, and so he just blocks out any real reply to that question. He never says “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

With him ‘remembering Mineta’, and then avoiding the real issue, I would guess he knows more than he is saying. He could easily be Mineta’s ‘young man.’

Now the million dollar question, were the orders for a stand-down or a shoot-down? As pointed out to me by James Dorman:

It seems very clear from the evidence that no shoot down order was given until 10:20 and none relayed to the military until 10:31. If an order was given before 10:20 by the President, then there is no reason to believe it was a shoot down order. Which would seem to indicate it was a stand down. But this would be given in private (to Cheney during one of their conversations-or Rumsfeld when they both can’t remember what they talked about.)

Either that, or Cheney just issued a shoot-down order on his own before talking to Bush at 10:20, but that doesn’t make the situation any better actually, as only the President and Secretary of Defence could issue such an order. As “SnowCrash” recently reported at 911blogger:

Breaking news: Jimd3100 vindicated

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/08/military-officials-ignored-cheneys-911-shoot-down-order/

Like clockwork, saw this right after writing this:

* We already know that ‘officially’ a shootdown order was never given and couldn’t have been given by anybody else but the NCA.

http://truthaction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=46090#46090

And Jimd3100 added:

It took about 10 years, but the MSM is finally starting to understand that Cheney giving shoot down orders is the same thing as a stand down.

http://truthaction.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=46104#46104

Then.. browsed to Rawstory and there it was… They acknowledge it and try to cover it up with excuses of “chaos”..

This was Jimd3100′s article exposing this in July 2010:
http://911blogger.com/news/2010-07-28/do-orders-still-stand-who-was-he

Thank you James.

All that Pat Curley could come up with as a defence at the Screw Loose Change blog in his post “Truther: Cheney’s Order Was Shootdown, Which Proves…. Standown!” was, “One obvious question: If Bush and Rumsfeld ‘knowingly’ stayed out of the loop, why was Cheney’s order issued too late?”

If Cheney knew they were knowingly staying out of the loop then maybe he didn’t want to issue an early order and make them look even worse.

Dorman responds:

If he can’t look at this……

Jets had orders to shoot at airliners
Bush made move to defend District

Minutes after terrorists crashed hijacked planes into the World Trade Center, President Bush ordered military jets into the air around Washington with orders to shoot down any airliner that refused to turn away from the city, Vice President Richard B. Cheney said yesterday.
http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=WT&p_theme=wt&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EE9861D0C1AD826&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM

And then hear for himself how this is an obvious outright lie……..because

1 hour after the second plane hit the wtc we hear this……..

http://www.rutgerslawreview.com/wp-content/uploads/special/911/Audio/%28104%29%20100901%20UA93%20Negative%20Clearance%20to%20Shoot.mp3

http://www.rutgerslawreview.com/2011/full-audio-transcript/

Then he is a waste of time.

The bottom line is that no shoot-down orders were issued until after the attacks were already over; a timespan of over two hours.

Related Info:

Pumpitout Radio: Foreknowledge and Lack of Air Defense

This past Sunday Jim Hoft of www.thegatewaypundit.com ran the headline “Classy… Truthers Chant “9-11 Was an Inside Job” Outside Ground Zero Memorial.” This makes it sound as if we were disrupting the memorial ceremonies taking place. I was there and this is not true. The truth is anyone wearing a 9/11 truth t-shirt or holding a sign who tried to enter the Ground Zero site were escorted to a barricaded area set up by the city away from the memorial site. It was in the vicinity, but not close enough to where we could be heard at the ceremonies.

As Michael J. Hampson of Rutgers School of Law has argued “…the practice of moving political protesters into free speech zones at presidential appearances is an unconstitutional restriction on free expression. Such a procedure violates the protesters’ First Amendment rights…”

Also see the May 2003 ACLU report, Freedom Under Fire: Dissent in Post-9/11 America.

In any event, had truthers been allowed their constitutional right to peaceably assemble instead of being herded into a free speech zone the plan was not to be disruptive.

As The New York Times reported on September 9th in the article “9/11 ‘Truthers’ to Tone Protests Down, for a Day“:

“No bullhorning during the memorial.”

That’s always been the rule of thumb among “truther” demonstrators at ground zero on Sept. 11, out of respect for relatives of victims of the terror attack, said Mike Skuthan, 32, a Web designer from Long Island who attends the demonstrations every year.

The demonstrations may be more subdued this year, said Luke Rudkowski, 25, a journalist from Brooklyn…

…When Mr. Rudkowski gathers with other activists at ground zero on Sunday morning near the official, private memorial service, he says, he will be in nonconfrontational mode.

Other activists agreed that Sunday calls for a subdued approach.

And as the site groundzero2011.com noted:

The early birds will start arriving around 7am, and at this time we usually line up peacefully along the black fences of St. Paul’s Chapel on Vesey Street between Church St. & Broadway. The official MTA/Port Authority 9-11 memorial service usually lasts from 8am – 12pm with two moments of silence at 8:45am and 9:03am. During this time it is important to show the utmost respect for those who lost their lives that day and their grieving families so there is usually no bullhorns, shouting, screaming, yelling, etc…

Next we normally gather at the ‘Remembrance Fountain’ in front of Building 7. This is where we read aloud the names of our ‘Forgotten Heroes’. The First Responders who lost their lives after 9/11 and are not acknowledged during the “official” remembrance ceremony at Ground Zero. From here we usually line up and march to other important areas such as Police Plaza, City Hall, Union Square, Times Square, the CFR building, the Federal Reserve, etc.

Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit also noted that someone was holding a sign near Trinity Cathedral reading “Google: Jews control the USA!,” but this person was not with the 9/11 protesters.

Hoft may think we were being disrespectful just by being there and expressing our freedom of speech in any capacity that day, well here are some people who disagree, just to name a few.

Here is a related little incident that happened to members of a WeAreChange group I helped start back when I lived in Indianapolis.

Another event that took place that evening in NYC was the premiere of the film, 9/11: Explosive Evidence – Experts Speak Out, (attended by truthers who came all the way from Denmark) which can now be viewed for free online.