Dick Cheney gave the go-ahead for the interception to take place to Commander Anthony Barnes, pictured, who was liaising directly between the Vice-President and the Pentagon
A Navy Commander has spoken for the first time about phonecall he made on 9/11 to then Vice-President Dick Cheney to gain the authority to shoot down a commercial aircraft.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, four planes were hijacked by Al-Qaeda militants who used them to topple the trade center’s twin towers and hit the Pentagon. Flight 93 was the fourth plane.
During the chaos of the morning, the only plane in the sky appeared to be a United 757 heading directly for the nation’s capital.
Worried for the safety of those on the ground, F-16 fighters were scrambled from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland under direct orders from the Vice-President to bring the plane down, United 93, at all costs.
Dick Cheney gave the go-ahead for the interception to take place to Commander Anthony Barnes who was liaising directly between the Vice-President and the Pentagon.
‘Once the plane became hijacked—even if it had a load of passengers on board who, obviously, weren’t part of any hijacking attempt—having seen what had happened in New York and the Pentagon, you really didn’t have any choice. It wasn’t a close call,’ then Vice-President Dick Cheney said
Vice-President Dick Cheney is pictured watching the events of September 11th unfold
‘I asked the vice president for permission to shoot down an identified hijacked commercial aircraft that question and he answered it in the affirmative. I asked again to be sure. “Sir, I am confirming that you have given permission?” For me, being a military member and an aviator—understanding the absolute depth of what that question was and what that answer was—I wanted to make sure that there was no mistake whatsoever about what was being asked. Without hesitation, in the affirmative, he said any confirmed hijacked airplane may be engaged and shot down.
Commander Barnes startling phone call is detailed in a new book, The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11.
He continues: ‘I knew, without a doubt in my mind, that that was a historical precedent—that never before had we given permission to shoot down a commercial airliner. I got back on the phone—it was a general of some sort in the Pentagon—and on that secure line I was talking on, made sure that he understood that I had posed the question to the National Authority [the vice president] and the answer was in the affirmative. We made sure that we did not stutter or stumble because the emotion at that point was very, very high. Fortunately we didn’t have to use that authority.
‘Once the plane became hijacked—even if it had a load of passengers on board who, obviously, weren’t part of any hijacking attempt—having seen what had happened in New York and the Pentagon, you really didn’t have any choice. It wasn’t a close call,’ then Vice-President Dick Cheney said.
Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice meet in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) during the terrorist attacks on 9/11
Vice President Dick Cheney, right, speaks to President George W. Bush by phone September 11, 2001 inside The Operations Center at The White House after the attacks. With Cheney are staff members including Presidential Counselor Karen Hughes, left, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, center
Those in charge decided to take no chances after the Pentagon was also attacked on 9/11 when a hijacked American Airlines flight slammed into the building causing extensive damage to the west face of the building
While Commander Barnes was speaking, a pair of F-16 fighter pilots volunteered to go on a ‘suicide’ mission to take down the hijacked plane.
Lt. Heather ‘Lucky’ Penney, an F-16 pilot with the D.C. Air National Guard based at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland was among the group of pilots who had been ordered airborne out of fear that the hijacked plane was heading for the White House or Capitol.
The pilots were told that they would have to bring the plane down without using live ammunition or missiles, effectively killing themselves and everyone on board.
Penney was a young blonde in her twenties at the time of the terrorist attacks and was so enamored with flying that jet fuel practically coursed through her veins.
She was one of the first rookie female fighter pilots who signed up as soon as she heard the news that combat aviation was being opened to women.
Lt. Heather ‘Lucky’ Penney, an F-16 pilot with the D.C. Air National Guard based at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland was ordered to intercept the hijacked airliner heading towards D.C.
Lt. Col. Marc Sasseville, an F-16 pilot with the U.S. Air Force joined Penney in her mission to bring down the hijacked aircraft
Penney’s mission was to intercept the hijacked plane that was on course for Washington, and destroy it however she could.
Recalling that fateful day, the rookie pilot was told there was only one way to bring down the plane.
‘We wouldn’t be shooting it down. We’d be ramming the aircraft. I would essentially be a kamikaze pilot,’ she told Politico in an interview featured in a new book.
At the time, there were no armed F-16s at the ready at Andrews Air Force Base, and it would take nearly an hour to get them armed. There was simply no time.
Combat jets needed to be in the air to protect Washington, and they had to get airborne immediately.
‘Lucky, you’re coming with me,’ Lieutenant Colonel Marc Sasseville shouted.
Mr Sasseville, an F-16 pilot with the U.S. Air Force:, who is now stationed at the Pentagon, said: ‘We don’t train to bring down airliners. If you just hit the engine, it could still glide and you could guide it to a target. My thought was the cockpit or the wing.’
Heather Penney’s mission on the morning of September 11 was to find United Flight 93 – and destroy it however she could
Penney was one of the first rookie female fighter pilots who signed up to join the Air Force
Penney signed up to be a combat pilot as soon as she learned the opportunity was being offered to women
He admitted he thought about the possibility of utilizing his ejection seat to bail out just before striking the jet.
But Penney said it was of much greater concern to eject from her plane and risk missing the target and fail the mission, even if it saved her life.
‘As we were putting on our flight gear in the life support shop, Sass looked at me and said, “I’ll ram the cockpit.” I made the decision I would take the tail off the aircraft,’ Penney recalled.
She said: ‘I knew that if I took off the tail of the aircraft, it would essentially go straight down and so the pattern of debris would be minimized.’
‘As we’re going out to the jets, Lucky and I had a quick conversation about what it is that we were going to do and how we were basically going to do the unthinkable if we had to,’ Sasseville said.
‘This sounds counter-intuitive,’ Penney says, ‘but when the magnitude of the situation hit me, I really lost all emotion. It was really much more focused on, What are the things I need to do to enable us to protect our capital? What are the things I need to do to facilitate us getting airborne?’
Ditching the usual pre-flight preparations, she took off and headed towards where they believed the hijacked aircraft to be.
On morning of September 11th, the F-16 fighter jets were not armed and there wasn’t even time to conduct pre-flight checks
Heather Penney is now a mother-of-two who hasn’t lost her passion for flying
‘I had never been trained to scramble [mobilize] the aircraft. It would typically take about 20 minutes to start the jets, get the avionics systems going, go through all the pre-flight checks to make sure the systems were operating properly, program the computers in the aircraft,’ Penney explained.
‘We usually planned about half-an-hour to 40 minutes from the time you walked out the door to the time that you actually took off. I just got my radios up, and I was yelling at my crew chief, “Pull the chocks!” He pulled the chocks and I pushed my throttle.
‘I was taxiing to go do an immediate take-off. I didn’t even have an inertia navigation unit. I didn’t have any of that set up. It was lucky it was a clear, blue day because we didn’t have all the avionics. They were not yet awake when we took off,’ Penney said.
The scrambled F-16 fighter jets passed over the ravaged Pentagon, flying low and scouring the sky.
Penney recalls how she got into the F-16, taxied and then immediately took off in search of the hijacked place
Vice-President Dick Cheney gave the ultimate authority for the pilots to shoot the plane down.
‘Sass and I fully expected to intercept Flight 93 and take it down,’ Penney said. ‘I genuinely believed that was going to be the last time I took off. If we did it right, this would be it.’
‘I was going into this moral or ethical justification of the needs of the many versus the needs of the few,’ Sasseville noted.
It wasn’t until hours later that the pair found out United 93 had already crashed in a field outside Shanksville in western Pennsylvania.
The 33 passengers of Flight 93, travelling from Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco, had fought back. The passengers, crew and the hijackers all died as they took the plane down.
‘The real heroes are the passengers on Flight 93 who were willing to sacrifice themselves,’ said Penney.
‘They made the decision we didn’t have to make,’ Sassville adds.
United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania killing all 45 people on board
Heather Penney spent the remainder of September 11 in the air, piloting an F-16 like this one, seen escorting the president in Air Force One
Penney spent the remainder of September 11th in the air, clearing airspace and escorting President Bush around the country as he flew in Air Force One.
After the mission, Miss Penney went on to become a major and fly two tours of duty in Iraq.
Now a mother-of-two, she didn’t have to make the ultimate sacrifice on 9/11 – a group of courageous passengers did instead.
‘The real heroes are the passengers on Flight 93 who were willing to sacrifice themselves. I was just an accidental witness to history,’ she said.
The full interviews are part of a new book entitled The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11, published on September 10, 2019.
President George W. Bush is pictured on the phone after learning about the terrorist attack while he was visiting an elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. Also pictured from left are: Deborah Loewer, Director of White House Situation Room, and Senior Adviser Karl Rove