Tony Blair has given more details about how he came close to ordering a passenger jet over UK airspace to be shot down "some time after" 9/11 because it was not responding to air traffic control.
He said fighter jets had been prepared to take off after the plane "appeared to be deviating for the path it was in" and new protocols drawn up in the wake of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre gave him the authority to blow the plane up.
"We were really not very far away from having to take a final decision as to whether to bring the plane down, because we had the provision to do that," he said.
Asked how close he came to giving the order to shoot it down.
"It came quite close. It was a situation where I ended up talking directly to the officer who was in charge of the operation and trying to work out whether the plane in question was for some reason a mishap which obviously was the overwhelming likelihood, but what if it wasn't?" he said in an interview with Jon Sopel on BBC World News. Read More
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