“They also made it clear they wanted to get us up quickly, and they wanted to get us to a high altitude, because there had been a specific threat made to Air Force One. … A declaration that Air Force One was a target, and said in a way that they called it credible. … So they wanted to get us up quickly. They also wanted to get us up with fighter air cover.”
–White House senior counselor Karl Rove, quoted by Nicholas Lemann in the Sept. 28 New Yorker.
“We have specific and credible information that the White House and Air Force One were also intended targets of these attacks.”
–White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, Sept. 12 briefing.
“Q: [It was] yesterday reported that some of the people in the Pentagon were a little bit skeptical about your comments yesterday that the White House and Air Force One were attacked–were targets of attack, given that the plane had come from the south. What do you–
“Fleischer: Who are these people?
“Q: Well, I don’t know. They weren’t my sources, so–
“(Cross talk.)
“Fleischer: No. There’s–I wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t true.
“Q: Can you confirm the substance of that threat that was telephoned in … that Air Force One is next and using code words?
“Fleischer: Yes, I can. That’s correct.”
–White House “press gaggle” with Ari Fleischer, Sept. 13.
“Vice President Cheney: The president was on Air Force One. We received a threat to Air Force One–came through the Secret Service …
“Tim Russert: A credible threat to Air Force One. You’re convinced of that.
“Vice President Cheney: I’m convinced of that. Now, you know, it may have been phoned in by a crank, but in the midst of what was going on, there was no way to know that. I think it was a credible threat, enough for the Secret Service to bring it to me.”
–NBC’s Meet the Press, Sept. 16.
“Finally, there is this postscript to the puzzle of how someone presumed to be a terrorist was able to call in a threat against Air Force One using a secret code name for the president’s plane. Well, as it turns out, that simply never happened. Sources say White House staffers apparently misunderstood comments made by their security detail.”
–CBS News reporter Jim Stewart on the Sept. 25 CBS Evening News.
“[Administration officials have] been unsuccessful in trying to track down whether there was such a call, though officials still maintain they were told of a telephone threat Sept. 11 and kept Bush away from Washington for hours because of it.”
–Sept. 25 AP report, quoted in the Sept. 27 Washington Post.
Got a whopper? Send it to chatterbox@slate.com. To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.
Whopper Archive:
Sept. 20, 2001: Larry C. Johnson
Sept. 13, 2001: Yasser Arafat
Sept. 7, 2001: Tommy Thompson
Aug. 30, 2001: HHS spokesman Bill Pierce
Aug. 23, 2001: Variety Editor Peter Bart
Aug. 17, 2001: Tom Daschle
Aug 10, 2001: Robert Mueller
Aug. 3, 2001: Barbara Olson
July 27, 2001: Jeffrey Archer
July 20, 2001: George W. Bush
July 13, 2001: George W. Bush
July 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
June 29, 2001: David Brock
June 22, 2001: Edmund Morris
June 15, 2001: George W. Bush
June 8, 2001: Nepali Prince Regent (subsequently, King) Gyanendra
June 1, 2001: Mary McGrory
May 25, 2001: Ari Fleischer
May 18, 2001: York, Pa., Mayor Charles Robertson
May 11, 2001: Ted Olson
May 4, 2001: Rear Admiral Craig Quigley
April 27, 2001: Ben Affleck
April 20, 2001: South Carolina state legislator Chip Limehouse
April 13, 2001: Gray Davis
April 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
March 30, 2001: Spencer Abraham
March 23, 2001: George W. Bush, Rep. Jennifer Dunn, and/or the Treasury Department
March 16, 2001: George W. Bush
March 9, 2001: Russ Freyman, spokesman, National Association of Manufacturers
March 2, 2001: Paul O’Neill
Feb. 23, 2001: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Feb. 16, 2001: Oscar spokesman John Pavlik
Feb. 9, 2001: Lynne Cheney
Feb. 2, 2001: Bobby Thomson
Jan. 26, 2001: Denise Rich
