Shortly After 12:00 p.m. September 11, 2001: Pentagon Finally Informs White House that Flight 93 Was Not Shot Down

The Pentagon finally informs those inside the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) below the White House that Flight 93 was not shot down by the US military. When they’d first learned of a plane going down in Pennsylvania, many of the people in the PEOC thought the military might have shot it down (see (10:25 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Newsweek, 12/31/2001; Washington Post, 1/27/2002] However, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice later recalls, “We couldn’t get an answer from the Pentagon” as to what had happened. In one call to the Pentagon, she’d insisted, “You must know. I mean, you must know!” [Hayes, 2007, pp. 339] It takes until about two hours after Flight 93 crashed for the Pentagon to confirm there was no shoot down. [Washington Post, 1/27/2002; MSNBC, 9/11/2002; 9/11 Commission, 5/23/2003] Several early news reports suggested that military fighter jets might have shot down an aircraft, perhaps Flight 93 (see 11:28 a.m.-11:50 a.m. September 11, 2001). And when F-15 pilot Daniel Nash returns to his base later in the afternoon after flying a combat air patrol over New York, he will be told that a military F-16 had shot down an airliner in Pennsylvania (see (Shortly After 2:15 p.m.) September 11, 2001). [Cape Cod Times, 8/21/2002]