Dick Cheney reveals personal order to destroy Washington-bound hijacked 9/11 airliner

By Ephraim Hardcastle
PUBLISHED: 19:38 EST, 7 March 2013 | UPDATED: 20:05 EST, 7 March 2013

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Former US vice president Dick Cheney says he personally gave a ‘take it out’ order after hearing one of the hijacked 9/11 airliners (United Airlines Ft 93) was headed for Washington. ‘I gave the instructions that we’d authorise our pilots to take it out,’ he admits in a new documentary, The World According to Dick Cheney. The 9/11 Commission was told President George W Bush authorised this action but this wasn’t true. Cheney ‘blindsided’ the President, having him flown in circles for hours, while he ran the show. Can’t wait for the movie!

'I gave the instructions that we'd authorise our pilots to take it out,' Cheney admits in a new documentary, The World According to Dick Cheney

Our latest Eurovision Song Contest hopeful, Bonnie Tyler, 61, says she won’t repeat fellow veteran star Engelbert Humperdinck’s second-from-bottom showing in 2012. ‘That was very embarrassing,’ she confides. ‘I’m very successful across Europe. I think it will hold me in good stead.’ Oh dear. That’s what they said about Engelbert – that he had a healthy fan base in Eastern Europe.

 

The John Lewis Partnership proposes a bonus for all levels of staff of 17 per cent (about nine weeks’ pay), including executive chairman, Charlie Mayfield. Boris Johnson take note. The London mayor says bankers need bonuses of over 100 per cent. Yet John Lewis is acknowledged to be one of the best-run retail operations in the country. Unlike the banks, it’s untouched by corruption or mis-selling scandals.

 

Former Oasis star Noel Gallagher, 45, says there are no characters left in pop music. ‘It’s very corporate, and you know what I’ve seen people doing at the Brits? I saw the drummer from Muse smoking an electronic cigarette ... I had to say to him, “Really? Really? Is that where you are at? Do me a favour mate, either have a proper one outside, or don’t have one”. It lit up green when he had a drag of it. Nonsense. He said that immortal line, “Oh, you know how it is mate”. And I said, “I’m sorry mate, I actually don’t”.’ Noble Noel, another ageing rocker raging at the dying of the light.

 

Nick Clegg’s decision to send his son to the London Oratory school appeases those who favour comprehensives over fee-paying education. Saying it was Roman Catholic wife Miriam’s decision allows Mrs Clegg to take his penalty points, so to speak. But the Oratory’s no bog-standard comprehensive. Its 150th anniversary is being celebrated on September 6 with a £125-a-ticket, black tie ball at the Hurlingham Club.

 

Canada's colourful former premier Pierre Trudeau chose to die of cancer rather than wait for the onset of dementia, it’s claimed. His son, Justin, says Trudeau, who died in 2000 aged 81, courageously turned down treatment for prostate cancer after realising he had Parkinson’s. Independently wealthy, playboy Trudeau dated Barbra Streisand before marrying bi-polar ‘flower child’ Margaret Sinclair, 22, in 1971, when he was 52. They divorced in 1984. Private Eye spoofed Margaret’s memoirs, saying her lovers included Gandhi – ‘legs like pipe cleaners but under the sheets a demon lover’ – and Idi Amin.

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