You're really asking two different questions here. It's not really that convoluted, but there are multiple levels of confusion even within the particulars. OK - here we go...
First, all evidence points to the fact that the shoot-down order was articulated before Sec. Mineta's evacuation to the PEOC. In his testimony to the Commission, however, Sec. Mineta misrepresented the announcement of the authorization to have come in regard to AA77 when in fact it was given in response to UA93. This is the subject of discussion in
an earlier thread where a very compelling case (modesty aside) is made using the primary evidence presented through the
9-11 Commission Final Report. To make a long story short, if you disregard Sec. Mineta's recollection of times and flight numbers and try to place his testimony of events in the time-line it matches well with the facts that surround the tracking and projection of UA93's flight path and other unrelated events that happened in the same time frame.
For convenience, I'll reproduce my original post below:
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Sec. Mineta's testimony in this regard is not reliable. Once you tease out the particulars, it's easy to show that his time-line if quite a bit off as illustrated by live media reports presented that day, other official testimony, subsequent statements by the participants of those events and physical evidence presented to the Commission.
For instance. in
his testimony to the Commission, Sec. Mineta relates the time-line of events from his arrival at the White House:
MR. ROEMER: Nice to see you, Mr. Secretary, and nice to see you feeling better and getting around as well, too.
I want to follow up on what happened in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center and try to understand that day a little bit better. You said, if I understood you correctly, that you were not in the room; you were obviously coming from the Department of Transportation, where you had been busy in a meeting in official business, but you had not been in the room when the decision was made -- to what you inferred was a decision made to attempt to shoot down Flight 77 before it crashed into the Pentagon. Is that correct?
MR. MINETA: I didn't know about the order to shoot down. I arrived at the PEOC at about 9:20 a.m. And the president was in Florida, and I believe he was on his way to Louisiana at that point when the conversation that went on between the vice president and the president and the staff that the president had with him.
MR. ROEMER: So when you arrived at 9:20, how much longer was it before you overheard the conversation between the young man and the vice president saying, "Does the order still stand?"
MR. MINETA: Probably about five or six minutes.
According to the testimony provided above, Sec. Mineta claims the following events occurred between 0920 and 0926:
- Sec. Mineta arrives at PEOC:
This is disputed by the USSS alarm log presented the the Commission that shows the time as 0937 (Report pp. 39-40), by Secret Service agents Nelson Garabito,and Terry van Steenburgen who testified to the Commission that the VP had not yet evacuated at 0933 at the time time of the Reagan Nat'l Airport call to the White House Secret Service detail (Report p. 39), by Secret Service agent Rocco Delmonico who testified to the actual timing of the evacuation (Report pp. 39-40) among others.
- President Bush departed for Barksdale, AFB:
This is deputed by countless media reports (CNN, USSS shift log of Sept. 11, 2001 (Report p. 39) and by your (Mutton-Head's) own claims (Bush stayed in the classroom reading My Pet Goat until after 0915.)
[*]Pres. Bush and VP Cheney concluded a phone call:
This is disputed by Lynne Cheney's arrival time at the PEOC ("According to contemporaneous notes, at 9:55 the Vice President was still on the phone with the President advising that three planes were missing and one had hit the Pentagon." Report p. 40)
[*]President Bush issued a shoot-down order through VP Cheney:
This is disputed by VP Cheney, the PEOC Shelter Log, White House phone logs, AF-1 phone logs, and Ari Fleisher which place the call around 1010. (Report pp. 40 - 41.)
[*]VP Cheney passed the order to the military:
This is disputed by DoD Transcript for its Air Conference Call which placed the time that the order was disseminated at 1014. (Report p. 42)
[Edit for clarity: Note that I am not claiming these events did not occur - I am claiming that none of them occurred in the 0920-0926 timefarme as Sec. Mineta's testimony asserts.]
Actually, what Sec. Mineta witnessed being tracked is UA93:
At 10:02, the communicators in the shelter began receiving reports from the Secret Service of an inbound aircraft —presumably hijacked— heading toward Washington.That aircraft was United 93.The Secret Service was getting this information directly from the FAA.The FAA may have been tracking the progress of United 93 on a display that showed its projected path to Washington, not its actual radar return.Thus, the Secret Service was relying on projections and was not aware the plane was already down in Pennsylvania.217
At some time between 10:10 and 10:15, a military aide told the Vice President and others that the aircraft was 80 miles out. Vice President Cheney was asked for authority to engage the aircraft.218 His reaction was described by Scooter Libby as quick and decisive, “in about the time it takes a batter to decide to swing.” The Vice President authorized fighter aircraft to engage the inbound plane. He told us he based this authorization on his earlier conversation with the President.The military aide returned a few minutes later, probably between 10:12 and 10:18, and said the aircraft was 60 miles out. He again asked for authorization to engage.The Vice President again said yes. 219
The call-outs, the confirmation request... Sound familiar?
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In the second quoted section, the footnotes cited refer to those from Chapter 1 of the 9-11 Commission Final Report - "We Have Some Planes".
The second question is did the authorization occur before the end of the attacks. The answer to that question is no. Reading "We Have some Planes" under Transmission of the Authorization from the White House to the Pilots you will find that NORAD HQ transmitted the authorization at 1031.
10:31 Vice president has cleared to us to intercept tracks of interest and shoot them down if they do not respond per [General Arnold]."229
VP Cheney articulated the shoot-down order as early as 1014 to DOD's NMCC as found in the transcript of the Air Threat Conference Call.
To further complicate matters, even after receiving the NORAD HQ instruction, NEADS battle staff indicated confusion over the effect of the authorization.
Floor Leadership: You need to read this.. . .The Region Commander has declared that we can shoot down aircraft that do not respond to our direction. Copy that?
Controllers: Copy that, sir.
Floor Leadership: So if you're trying to divert somebody and he won't divert-
Controllers: DO [Director of Operations] is saying no.
Floor Leadership: No? It came over the chat.. . .You got a conflict on that direction?
Controllers: Right now no, but-
Floor Leadership: Okay? Okay, you read that from the Vice President, right? Vice President has cleared. Vice President has cleared us to intercept traffic and shoot them down if they do not respond per [General Arnold].230
