President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney provided joint testimony to the 9/11 Commission on April 29, 2004. “On the shoot-down order [for hijacked planes on 9/11], Bush backed Cheney’s account that he had obtained permission from the president first. None of the logs or notes taken that day confirmed such a call, but Bush and Cheney were firm in their mutual recollection and attributed the lack of documentation to the confusion of the day. ‘I just think it was the fog of war and the communications scramble that morning,’ Cheney said later. ‘I think there were calls that weren’t recorded.’ Some of the commissioners remained unconvinced, though. While the vice president had no power to issue a military order on his own, few could fault him if he had taken the initiative in the most exigent of circumstances to prevent the destruction of the White House.”
– Peter Baker, Days of Fire, Page 325