https://web.archive.org/web/20021204195603/http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/liar.htm

Video footage did surface later. But at 9 AM on September 11, 2001 Mr. Bush could not have seen the first plane hitting the World Trade Center on TV. Period.

This in itself does not prove Mr. Bush was consciously lying.

It is theoretically possible that Mr. Bush's memory played a trick on him. There might have been a TV in the hallway of the Booker, and it might have been tuned to the News, and Bush might therefore have heard about the WTC crash and seen footage of the building burning and later he might have thought he remembered seeing footage of the plane hitting the building. Theoretically, this might be the case.

However, based on the testimony of Gwen Tose Rigell, Principal of the Booker School, where Bush was that morning, in fact this was not the case.

Principal Rigell is quoted by MSNBC reporter Ashleigh Banfield as saying:

"'I actually heard the first plane had hit from the president, and he said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center and that it was a commercial plane,' says Rigell. 'He said but we're going to go on, and in my mind I had created this picture of a plane knocking off some bricks on the corner of the World Trade Center.'" (1) {End quote from Rigell}

Obviously if Principal Rigell's school had had a TV in the hallway tuned to news of the World Trade Center burning, everyone would have flocked around it and Rigell would have seen it too. She would not have formed a false impression "in my mind". She and everyone else in the school would have known the attack was very serious.

In that case Principal Rigell would not have told MSNBC, "I actually heard the first plane had hit from the president," and she would not have said, "I had created this picture of a plane knocking off some bricks in the corner of the World Trade Center," meaning it was a minor incident. Instead she would have said, "I watched the gruesome news on TV." (1)

So Bush lied.