[GreenYouth] ‘We’re the Only Plane in the Sky’

[Sukla Sen]

‘We’re the Only Plane in the Sky’

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/were-the-only-plane-in-the-sky-214230

Where was the president in the eight hours after the Sept. 11 attacks?
The strange, harrowing journey of Air Force One, as told by the people
who were on board.

By GARRETT M. GRAFF

September 09, 2016

Eric Draper/George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

Nearly every American above a certain age remembers precisely where
they were on September 11, 2001. But for a tiny handful of people,
those memories touch American presidential history. Shortly after the
attacks began, the most powerful man in the world, who had been
informed of the World Trade Center explosions in a Florida classroom,
was escorted to a runway and sent to the safest place his handlers
could think of: the open sky.

For the next eight hours, with American airspace completely cleared of
jets, a single blue-and-white Boeing 747, tail number 29000—filled
with about 65 passengers, crew and press, and the 43rd president,
George W. Bush, as well as 70 box lunches and 25 pounds of
bananas—traversed the eastern United States. On board, President Bush
and his aides argued about two competing interests—the need to return
to Washington and reassure a nation and the competing need to protect
the commander in chief. All the while, he and his staff grappled with
the aftermath of the worst attack on American soil in their lifetimes,
making crucial decisions with only flickering information about the
attacks unfolding below. Bush struggled even to contact his family and
to reach Vice President Dick Cheney in the White House bunker.

The story of those remarkable hours—and the thoughts and emotions of
those aboard—isolated eight miles above America, escorted by three
F-16 fighters, flying just below the speed of sound, has never been
comprehensively told.

This oral history, based on more than 40 hours of original interviews
with more than two dozen of the passengers, crew and press
aboard—including many who have never spoken publicly about what they
witnessed that day—traces the story of how an untested president, a
sidearm-carrying general, top aides, the Secret Service and the
Cipro-wielding White House physician, as well as five reporters, four
radio operators, three pilots, two congressmen and a stenographer
responded to 9/11.


Prologue

Andy Card, chief of staff, White House: We woke up in Sarasota,
Florida, at the Colony Resort. There was a terrible stench in the
air—the red tide had killed a lot of fish that had washed up on the
shore. I remember being struck by that smell coming from Air Force One
the night before. We’d gone off to dinner in Tampa. It was unusual for
President Bush to stay out late like that, but it was a relaxing
evening.

Ari Fleischer, press secretary, White House: The day couldn’t have
begun any better or more beautifully.

Gordon Johndroe, assistant press secretary, White House: The day
starts off very normally—the president went for a run, and I took the
[press] pool out with the president. I remember I got stung by a bee,
and I asked Dr. Tubb if he had something he could give me for the
swelling. He said, “Yeah, we’ll get you something when we get to the
airplane.” Needless to say, I promptly forgot about it that day.

Sonya Ross, reporter, Associated Press: This was a garden variety
trip. It was low-ranking staff and a lot of the top journalists didn’t
come. It was a scrub trip.

Mike Morell, presidential briefer, Central Intelligence Agency: I
walked into his suite [for the president’s morning intelligence
briefing]; he was surrounded by breakfast foods and he hadn’t touched
any of it. He asked me if I’d gone to the beach the night before, and
I told him I’d just gone right to bed. The second intifada was well
underway then, and the briefings at that time were very heavy on
Israeli-Palestinian stuff. A good bit of the briefing that morning was
about Israeli matters. There was one thing that caught his attention,
and he picked up the phone to call Condi [Rice] to ask her to follow
up on it. There was nothing in the briefing about terrorism. It was
very routine—just him, me, Andy Card and Deb Loewer from the Situation
Room.

Andy Card: The president was in a great mood. He had that George W.
Bush strut that morning.

B. Alexander “Sandy” Kress, senior education adviser, White House: The
whole point of the trip was education. He was pushing No Child Left
Behind as Congress was coming back to Washington. [Secretary of
Education] Rod Paige and I briefed him ahead of his remarks to the
press. It was a beautiful day—we were in his suite. He was in a really
good mood. We were out of the Oval and he was relaxed. Those were
probably the last carefree moments he had in his term.

Andy Card: I remember literally telling him, “It should be an easy
day.” Those were the words. “It should be an easy day.”

I. Emma Booker Elementary School, Sarasota, Fla.

Ari Fleischer: Back in 2001, no one had iPhones or BlackBerrys. I had
this high-tech pager on my belt—it was two-way, in that you could send
back one of like 14 preprogrammed responses. For the day, it was
pretty fancy-fancy stuff. As we were driving to the first stop for the
day, I got a page from Brian Bravo, who put together the White House
news clips.

Brian Bravo, press assistant, White House: My job was to just scour
the news—TV, the AP wire, Bloomberg. I just spent my time at the desk
[in the White House], feeding the news all day to the White House
staff. I actually had a buddy in New York who called me. He worked in
a tall office tower and had seen the first plane hit. It was
word-of-mouth intel, but then I started to see TV starting to cover
it. To get to the pagers they used back then on the road, I’d have to
parse any story down to a few short words. I just said, “A plane has
hit the World Trade Center.” At that point, no one knew what it meant.

Ari Fleischer: I got out [of the motorcade] thinking this must’ve been
some kind of terrible accident.

Brian Montgomery, director of advance, White House: When the motorcade
arrives, I get out and I was running towards the limo—I always run
towards the limo—and Mark Rosenker, the head of the White House
Military Officer, says to me, “Dr. Rice needs to talk to the
president.”

Ari Fleischer: Karl Rove told [the president] first.

Karl Rove, senior adviser, White House: We were standing outside the
elementary school. My phone rang. It was my assistant Susan Ralston,
saying that a plane had hit the World Trade Center—it wasn’t clear
whether it was private, commercial, prop, or jet. That’s all she had.
The boss was about two feet away. He was shaking hands. I told him the
same thing. He arched his eyebrows like, “Get more.”

Dave Wilkinson, assistant agent-in-charge, U.S. Secret Service: Eddie
Marinzel and I were the two lead agents with the president that day.
The head of the detail was back in Washington. We heard, “There’s an
incident in New York.”

Brian Montgomery: There was this group of students, all young ladies
in uniforms and teachers, all oblivious to all of this. They had no
idea what was going on. The president was very gracious and greeted
them, and then said, “I need to go take an important telephone call.”
He went into the holding room and went directly to the STU-III [the
secure telephone].

Ari Fleischer: There’s always a secure telephone waiting for the
president, but in the nine months he’d been president, I don’t think
we’d ever used one before an event like that. Condi was holding for
him.

Andy Card: We were standing at the door to the classroom, when Deb
Loewer [from the White House Situation Room staff] came up and said,
simply, “Sir, it appears that a twin-engine prop plane crashed into
one of the World Trade Center towers.” We all said something like what
a tragedy. I remember I was thinking about the passengers—how much
they must’ve worried as they realized what was about to happen. It was
only a nanosecond, and then the principal opened the door and the
president went into the classroom to meet the students.

Brian Montgomery: We’re trying to get a TV for the hold room—all we
could find was this massive 30-inch TV on a cart with rabbit ears.

New Window

‘The Safest and Most Dangerous Place in the World at the Exact Same
Time’: Click to view gallery. | George W. Bush Presidential Library
and Museum

Dave Wilkinson: We take everything extremely seriously, anything that
could affect the presidency. We began speaking to experts back at the
White House. No one knew anything. We’re asking ourselves, “Is there
any direction of interest towards the president?” That’s the phrase,
“direction of interest.” Or is this just an attack on New York?

Sandy Kress: I was back in the media room. There was some buzz about
the first plane, people were watching it on a TV. Then there was a
stampede across the media room as they saw the second plane hit.

Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Florida): I was brand new. I was a freshman
[congressman]. We’d gone into the media center, when the main event
was going to be, while we wait for the president and the children to
read together in the other room. We were clustered around the TV and
watched the second plane hit.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark, superintendent of communications, Air Force
One: From all indications, it was going to be a simple trip. I had
breakfast with one of the navigators, and we were talking about how we
were having breakfast in Florida and we’re going to be back in time
for lunch.

Col. Mark Tillman, presidential pilot, Air Force One: We were all
getting ready, based on the estimated departure time. All of us had
already shown up at the plane.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: There were two TV tuners, worldwide television
tuners [at my workspace on Air Force One]. They were like old-school
rabbit ears—UHF and VHF frequencies. We didn’t have the ability to
tune into CNN, Fox, or anything else. It was the Today Show, the
strongest signal that day, and they’re showing pictures [of the
Towers], smoke billowing out. I saw the second airplane strike. I
said, “Oh shit.” I just dropped everything and ran downstairs to get
Colonel Tillman: “You’ve got to come see this.”

Col. Mark Tillman: It didn’t make any sense. It’s a clear-in-a-million day.

President George W. Bush participates in a reading demonstration the
morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, at Emma E. Booker Elementary
School in Sarasota, Florida. | George W. Bush Presidential Library and
Museum

Staff Sgt. William “Buzz” Buzinski, security, Air Force One: Our job
is to protect the asset [Air Force One]. The Secret Service is
principal protection. We’re asset protection. We protect the plane 24
hours a day, even after the president has left. One of the advance
[Secret Service] agents had told us about the first plane. Then about
17 minutes later, I see the same guy sprinting across the tarmac. He
said, “Another plane hit the towers.” I knew instantly it was
terrorism. We started to increase security around the plane—made it a
tighter bubble.

Staff Sgt. Paul Germain, airborne communications system operator, Air
Force One: We thought it was weird even just when the first plane hit.
People who know airplanes, that’s some real stuff right there. Big
airplanes just don’t hit little buildings. Then, as soon as that
second plane hit, that switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree.

Col. Mark Tillman: Everything started coming alive. We were hooked
into the PEOC [the White House bunker] and the JOC [Joint Operations
Center], for the Secret Service. They’re all in the link now.

Andy Card: Another plane hit the other Tower. My mind flashed to three
initials: UBL. Usama bin Laden. Then I was thinking that we had White
House people there—my deputy, Joe Hagin, and a team were in New York
preparing for the U.N. General Assembly. I was thinking that Joe was
probably at the World Trade Center, that’s where the Secret Service
office was, in the basement.

Mike Morell: I was really worried that someone was going to fly a
plane into that school. This event had been on schedule for weeks,
anyone could have known about it. Eddie [Marinzel, the lead Secret
Service agent] wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as
possible.

Rep. Adam Putnam: There’s some debate within the staff that I can hear
about how the president needs to address the nation. They’re saying,
“We can’t do it here. You can’t do it in front of fifth-graders.” The
Secret Service is saying, “You’re doing it here or you’re not doing at
all. We’re not taking the time to do it somewhere else. We need to get
him secure.”

Dave Wilkinson: We’re talking to folks back at the White House, we’re
beginning to get the motorcade up and running, getting the motorcycle
cops back, we’re ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice. All of a
sudden it hits me: The president’s the only one who doesn’t know that
this plane has hit the second building. It was a discomfort to all of
us that the president didn’t know. The event was dragging on, and
that’s when Andy Card came out.

Andy Card: A thousand times a day, a chief of staff has to ask “Does
the president need to know?” This was an easy test to pass. As strange
as it sounds, as I was standing there waiting to talk to the
president, I was reflecting on another time that I’d had to be the
calm one: I’d been acting chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush
when he threw up on the Japanese prime minister. I was all business in
that moment. He’d refused to get in the ambulance—he didn’t want
anyone to see the president get in the ambulance—and in the limo, he’s
still sick and he’s getting sick on me. In the hotel, I take out my
laminated “in case of emergency” card. I went down my checklist. I was
telling people, “He’s not dying, he’s still the president.” My job
that day was to be calm, cool, and collected. Not the same magnitude,
of course, but I knew my job on 9/11 was to be calm, cool, and
collected.

At left, George W. Bush calls New York Governor George Pataki, FBI
Director Robert Mueller and Vice President Dick Cheney shortly after
he learns of the September 11 attacks from Emma E. Booker Elementary
School. White House Chief of Staff Andy Card talks on a cell phone. At
right, Bush watches TV news coverage of New York. | George W. Bush
Presidential Library and Museum

Karl Rove: I remember [Andy Card] pausing at the door, before he went
in, it seemed like forever, but it was probably just a couple
heartbeats. I never understood why, but he told me, years later, that
he needed to spend a moment formulating the words he wanted to use.

Andy Card: When I was standing at the classroom door, I knew I was
delivering a message that no president would want to hear. I knew that
my message would define the moment. I decided to pass on two facts and
an editorial comment. I didn’t want to invite a conversation because
the president was sitting in front of the classroom. I entered the
room and Ann Compton, of ABC, in the press pool, gestured, “What’s
up?” I gestured back to her, two planes crashing. She gestured “What?”
Then the teacher asked the students to take out their books, so I took
that opportunity to approach the president. I whispered in his ear, “A
second plane hit the second Tower. America is under attack.” I took a
couple steps back so he couldn’t ask any questions. The students were
completely focused on their books. I remember thinking what a bizarre
stage we’re standing on. I was pleased with how the president
reacted—he didn’t do anything to create fear.

Ellen Eckert, stenographer, White House: There are six stenographers
who work for the [White House] press office. One of us always travels
with the president. I always said I typed fast for a living all over
the world. [That morning] was uneventful until Andy walked in.

Ari Fleischer: For Andy to interrupt a presidential event, [we knew]
it had to be of monumental consequence. You just didn’t do that.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: Everything started lighting up. We saw Andy
Card whisper in the president’s ear. We still didn’t know what the
hell was going on. We’re just monitoring the Secret Service and staff
radio channels. It was chaos. What’s next? All of a sudden, other
reports start coming in—explosion at the White House, car bomb at the
State Department. We’re under attack. I was 35 years old. My military
career and my perspective is, I’m thinking Cold War, the big bad
Soviet bear. This was an extensive attack. Could this be a
nation-state?

Gordon Johndroe: Having been in that room—and it wasn’t an issue until
the Michael Moore documentary [Fahrenheit 9/11]—it would have been odd
if he’d jumped up and ran from the room. It didn’t seem like an
eternity in the room. He finished the book and went back into the hold
room.

Karl Rove: When the president walked back into the staff hold, he
said, “We’re at war—give me the FBI director and the vice president.”

Ellen Eckert: As we’re walking out of the classroom, everyone’s pager
started going off.

Rep. Adam Putnam: Matt Kirk, our White House liaison, says to [Rep.
Dan Miller (R-Fla.), the other congressman traveling with the
presidential party, and me], “We might be the only plane back to D.C.
today.” He tells us that if we want a ride, we need to not have anyone
notice us. If anyone notices us, they won’t let us back on board. We
need to be inconspicuous quickly, so we went and just got in our
vehicle in the motorcade. You could see the windows and hatches of the
motorcade open up, the visible expression of the armaments that are
always around the president.

Karl Rove: Eddie Marinzel [from the Secret Service] came up to the
president, he was sitting in one of those tiny elementary school
chairs, and Eddie said, “We need to get you to Air Force One and get
you airborne.” They’d determined this might be an effort to decapitate
the government.

Dave Wilkinson: We ended up with a compromise—Andy Card said we have a
whole auditorium full, waiting for the next event. There was no
imminent threat there in Sarasota, so we agreed [the president could
give a statement before we left.]

Brian Montgomery: It was the fear of the unknown. We didn’t know if
someone had put a biological agent or chemical agent at the school. He
went to the auditorium. I remember looking at the students when he
said, “America is under attack,” and these girls, their faces were
saying, “What’s he’s telling us?”

Andy Card: He gave a very brief statement, he started off and I
cringed right away. He said, “I’m going back to Washington, D.C.” And
I thought, you don’t know that. We don’t know that. We don’t know
where we’re going.

Gordon Johndroe: I told the press we’d be leaving right for the
motorcade. We have this joke, mostly with the photographers—no
running. No running to catch the president. This time, I told them,
“Guys, we’re going to have to run. We’re going to have to run to the
motorcade.” Going down the highway, our 15-passenger van was barely
keeping up.

Dave Wilkinson: The motorcade left there and in a very aggressive
fashion we got to the aircraft. Intelligence information is always
sketchy. When we’re riding is the first time that we hear that’s
there’s something vague about a threat to the president. That
ratcheted things up.

Rep. Adam Putnam: On the motorcade back, there are all these
protesters—it was still all about the recount—signs like, “Shrub stole
the election.”

Andy Card: In the limo, we’re both on our cellphones—he’s frustrated
because he can’t reach Don Rumsfeld. It was a very fast limo ride. We
didn’t know that the Pentagon had just been attacked, so that’s why we
couldn’t get Rumsfeld.

Dave Wilkinson: We asked for double-motorcade blocks at the
intersection. Double and triple blocks. Not just motorcycle officers
standing there with their arms up, but vehicles actually blocking the
road. Now we’re worried about a car bomb. The whole way back, we were
using the limos as a shell game, to keep the president safe. At the
airport, we’re no longer worried about the president waving to people.
No handshakes, no hugs goodbye, it’s out of the motorcade, up the
stairs, we just don’t know what the hell is going on.

Mike Morell: When we got back to the plane, it was ringed by security
and Secret Service with automatic weapons. I’d never seen anything
like that before. They re-searched everyone before we could reboard,
not just the press. They searched Andy Card’s briefcase, he was
standing right in front of me in line. They went through my briefcase,
which was filled with all these classified materials, but I wasn’t
going object that day.

Col. Mark Tillman: As the motorcade’s coming in, I’ve got the 3 and 4
engines were already running.

Andy Card: When the limo door opened, I was struck that the engines on
Air Force One were running. That’s normally a protocol no-no.

Buzz Buzinski: You never lose the excitement of seeing the motorcade.
I’m on the back stairs watching as they pull up. I was wondering,
“What’s the president thinking? What’s Andy Card thinking? What are
they doing to make it happen?” You could feel it. You could feel the
tension. We’d been attacked on our soil. You could see it their
face—Andy Card, Ari Fleischer, the president.

Sonya Ross: They brought out the bomb-sniffing dogs. They were
drooling all [over] the luggage. I had dog spittle all over my bags.

Buzz Buzinski: Everyone other than the president and his senior staff
enter through the back stairs, so about 80 percent of the passengers
came past us. You could see fear and shock. People couldn’t believe
what they had just seen. They didn’t know what to do.

Sandy Kress: Getting on the plane was different than it ever had been.
There was a lot of attention to our credentials, who we were. We had
to show ID and our badge, not just the badge. And this even though the
crew knew most of us.

Eric Draper, presidential photographer, White House: The Secret
Service wanted to get him on the plane as quickly as possible. I
figured that I’ve got to stick like glue to the president. Obviously,
I know it’s going to be a big day. My goal was to find him as quickly
as possible on board, but Andy Card said at the top of the stairs,
“Take the batteries out of your cellphone. We don’t want to be
tracked.” That brought me up. “Are we a target?” I wasn’t thinking of
that.

Col. Mark Tillman: President Bush comes up the stairs in Sarasota, now
you watch him come up the stairs every day, that famous Texas swagger.
He was focused that day. No swagger. He was just trucking up the
stairs. He was a man on a mission. As soon as the passengers are on
board, I fire [engines] 1 and 2.

Andy Card: We’re starting to roll almost before the president gets
into the suite.

Rep. Adam Putnam: There was one van, maybe a press van, that was
parked too close to the plane’s wing. I remember a Secret Service
agent running down the aisle; they opened the back stairs, he ran down
to move the truck. He never made it back on board. They didn’t wait
for him.

Gordon Johndroe: We took off and it was something out of [the movie]
Independence Day. That thing took off like a rocket. The lamps are
shaking they’d fired up the engines so much.

Karl Rove: [Col. Tillman] stood that thing on its tail—just nose up,
tail down, like we were on a roller coaster.

Ellen Eckert: We were climbing so high and so fast I started to wonder
if we’d need oxygen masks.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: It was the uncertainty. As we’re taking off,
you’re still getting all this misinformation. Your head was spinning,
trying to figure out what had actually happened. The only thing we
knew for sure, because we’d seen it with our own eyes, was that the
World Trade Center had been hit.

Aboard Air Force One, en route to Barksdale Air Force Base in
Louisiana. Pictured from left are: Andy Card; Ari Fleischer, Press
Secretary; Blake Gottesman, Personal Aide to the President; Karl Rove,
Senior Adviser; Deborah Loewer, Director of White House Situation
Room, and Dan Bartlett, Deputy Assistant to the President. | U.S.
National Archives

Col. Dr. Richard Tubb, presidential physician, White House Medical
Unit: The people who are the permanent, apolitical staff—the medical
unit, the flight crew, the military aide—they were all well-versed in
their emergency action plans, irrespective of who the president was,
but they—we—didn’t have the relationship yet with the political staff.
That trust was still coming. It’s a very different worldview for each
side. It’s only time over time that you build those relationships, and
there hadn’t been that much time. It’s hard enough for any
administration—but that particular transition was so abbreviated and
ugly as the 2000 campaign was—it was even harder. Those guys were
still trying to put their government together. Everyone was excited
because they were just coming back from the summer vacation and felt
that they were going to hit their stride.

Andy Card: I really think President Bush—I know President Bush took
office on January 20, 2001—but the responsibility of being president
became a reality when I whispered in his ear. I honestly believe as he
contemplated what I said, I took an oath. Preserve, protect, and
defend the Constitution. It’s not cutting taxes, it’s not No Child
Left Behind, it’s not immigration, it’s the oath. When you pick a
president, you want to pick a president who can handle the unexpected.
This was the unexpected. That’s what the president was wrestling with
that day. He recognized the cold reality of his responsibilities.

Eric Draper: Soon after we got on board, I see [the president] pop out
of the cabin, he’s heading down the aisle. He says, “OK boys, this is
what they pay us for.” I’ll never forget that.

Andy Card: Even before we left the school, there was angst from the
Secret Service that we don’t know what’s out there. As we were
boarding the plane, someone had picked a reference to “Angel.” That’s
the code name for Air Force One. Is someone sitting around with a
Stinger missile? Was someone waiting for us at Andrews? Mark [Tillman]
was reluctant to fly us back to Washington.

Karen Hughes, communications director, White House: September 10th was
my anniversary, so I had stayed back in Washington. I was scheduled to
do a Habitat for Humanity event with [Secretary of Housing and Urban
Development] Mel Martinez that required us to wear blue jeans.
President Bush didn’t allow blue jeans in the West Wing, so I’d just
planned to spend the morning at home. When the attacks began, the vice
president sent a military driver to pick me up and bring me to the
White House, because D.C.’s streets were so clogged.

Maj. Scott Crogg, F-16 pilot, call-sign “Hooter,” 111th Fighter
Squadron, Houston: I had just gotten off alert at Ellington Field [in
Houston], normally we pull 24-hour alerts, mostly for drug
interdiction. I’d just gotten back into bed and was watching TV and
saw the reports of a plane hitting the tower. Being an airline pilot,
an air defense pilot, and the operations officer for the 111th, this
was something that intrigued me. I wanted to stay up to see what
happened. Then when that second plane hit, it eliminated any doubt. I
had to get back to work.


II. Airborne, Somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico

The president’s private cabin and office, the “airborne Oval Office,”
sit at the front of Air Force One on the main deck; stairs lead up to
the flight deck and communications suite. Other cabins house the White
House Medical Unit, staff, guests, security, the press and crew.

Col. Mark Tillman: The initial conversation was that we’d take him to
an Air Force base, no less than an hour away from Washington. Maybe
let’s go ahead and try to get him to Camp David. That all changed when
we heard there was a plane headed towards Camp David.

I made the takeoff, climbed out, probably 25,000 to 30,000—I gave it
to the backup pilot. I had three pilots on board that day. I said just
keep flying towards Washington.

Ari Fleischer: As we were flying out of Sarasota, we were able to get
some TV reception. They broke for commercial. I couldn’t believe it. A
hair-loss commercial comes on. I remember thinking, in the middle of
all this, I’m watching this commercial for hair loss.

Col. Mark Tillman: Jacksonville Center [Air Traffic Control] was
warning us about an unidentified plane in the area. I said let’s
change direction and see if it follows. It didn’t.

Andy Card: Blake Gottesman was my personal aide, but he was filling in
that day as the president’s aide. I said, “Blake, it’s your job to
make sure that people don’t come up to the suite.” No one comes up
unless the president calls for them.

Ari Fleischer: We got a report there are six aircraft still flying in
the U.S. that aren’t responding and could still be hijacked. We’re
thinking that there are still six missiles still in the sky. We’re
getting a report that a plane “was down near Camp David.”

Karl Rove: Andy and I are there with the president. The president gets
this call from Cheney—we didn’t know who it was at the time, we just
knew the phone rang. He said “yes,” then there was a pause as he
listened. Then another “yes.” You had an unreal sense of time that
whole day. I don’t know whether it was 10 seconds or two minutes. Then
he said, “You have my authorization.” Then he listens for a while
longer. He closes off the conversation. He turns to us and says that
he’s just authorized the shoot-down of hijacked airliners.

I’d never heard the word ‘decapitation attack’ before.”

Andy Card: The president is sitting at his desk, and I’m sitting
directly in front of him. I witness the president authorize the Air
National Guard to shoot down the hijacked airliners. The conversation
was sobering to hear. What struck me was as soon as he hung up the
phone, he said, “I was an Air National Guard pilot—I’d be one of the
people getting this order. I can’t imagine getting this order.” There
was a greater degree of reality than many other presidents would have
experienced.

Karl Rove: He was so even-handed. He was just so naturally calm during the day.

Dave Wilkinson: We didn’t expect the breakdown of communications.
Every kind of communication that day was challenged. Even the
president talking to the Situation Room was challenged. The
communications network did not hold up.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: All the comms that we would normally have, some
of them are no longer available. We’ve got multiple systems—commercial
and terrestrial systems—and they’re all jammed. I started to have
tunnel vision: What the hell is going on? Did someone sabotage our
comms? It wasn’t until later I realized all the commercial systems
were all just saturated. It was all the same systems the airplane
pilots were using at the same time, talking to their dispatchers. We
as Air Force One didn’t have any higher priority than American This or
United That.

Col. Mark Tillman: We started having to use the military satellites,
which we would only use in time of war.

Ari Fleischer: I’d never heard the word "decapitation attack" before,
but people like Andy, who had been there during the Cold War and had
the training, he knew what was going on. The training and the thinking
of the military and the Secret Service is just so profoundly
different, but that was the psychology and mood that took hold aboard
Air Force One. There are still missiles out there and the Secret
Service says to the president, “We don’t think it’s safe for you to
return to Washington.”

Maj. Scott Crogg: It was very somber [at the air base]. We got these
cryptic messages from Southeast Air Defense Sector. We knew we’re on
the hook now—it might not be for Air Force One, but for anything.
Houston’s the fifth-largest metro region, it’s got all this oil and
gas infrastructure. I asked maintenance to put live missiles and arm
up the guns. Two heat-seeking missiles and rounds from a 20-mm gun
isn’t a lot to take on a hijacked plane, but it was the best we could
do.

Andy Card: Then we hear that Flight 93’s gone down. We’re all
wondering, Did we do that? It wasn’t a big deal on the plane. It
lingered deepest in the president’s conscience. Most people on the
plane hadn’t been privy to that conversation.

Col. Mark Tillman: All of us thought, we assumed we shot it down.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: All the folks were coming up to the
communications deck with various requests, a Secret Service agent
comes up and says, “The president wants to know the status of the
first family.” He had this look on his face. I have to tell him I
don’t have a way to find out. I can’t fathom what that was like for
the president.

Dave Wilkinson: Once we heard a plane had crashed into the Pentagon,
that’s when we said, “Well, we’re not going to go back to Washington.”
It’s all about that “direction of interest.” At the start, the
threat’s right now in New York. Then the plane hit the Pentagon, and
it was about our seats of government. Hearing all of this, we’re
thinking that the further we’re away from Washington, the safer we
are.

Col. Mark Tillman: We get this report that there’s a call saying
“Angel was next.” No one really knows now where the comment came
from—it got mistranslated or garbled amid the White House, the
Situation Room, the radio operators. “Angel” was our code name. The
fact that they knew about “angel,” well, you had to be in the inner
circle. That was a big deal to me. It was time to hunker down and get
some good weaponry.

Maj. Scott Crogg: We dispatched two fighters to go protect Air Force One.

Col. Scott Tillman: Now our security’s tremendous, but we had press on
board, there were press that weren’t part of our regular traveling
party. We put a cop at the base of the stairs. No one was allowed
upstairs. That was something we’d never done before.

Buzz Buzinski: Will Chandler [the lead Air Force security officer] was
summoned to the front. Then he stayed up there, providing security at
the cockpit stairs. That got us thinking: Is there an insider threat?
[Colonel Tillman’s] putting someone at the flight deck. You just don’t
know who’s who.

Staff Sgt. Paul Germain: Colonel Tillman says at that point, “Let’s
just go cruise around the Gulf for a little bit.” That was our Pearl
Harbor. You train for nuclear war, then you get into something like
that. All the money they pumped into us for training, that worked. We
could read each other’s minds.

Buzz Buzinski: Will [Chandler] told us, “Guys, this is our time. 100
percent security, all of the time. We gotta get the president back.”

Dave Wilkinson: Colonel Tillman took us to a height where if an
aircraft was coming towards us, we’d know it was no mistake. Talking
to him, I was confident we were safer in the air than we were anywhere
on the ground.

Col. Mark Tillman: I took us up to 45,000 feet. That’s about as high
as a 747 can go. I figured I wanted to be above all the other air
traffic, especially since everyone was descending to land.

Ann Compton, reporter, ABC News: We were standing in the press cabin.
A lot of people were too nervous to sit down. A Secret Service agent
was in the aisle and he pointed at the monitor and said, “Look down
there, Ann, we’re at 45,000 feet and we have no place to go.”

Karl Rove: There was acrimony. President Bush doesn’t raise his voice.
He doesn’t pound the desk. But as we made it across the Florida
peninsula, they [Andy Card and Tom Gould] kept raising objections
[about returning to Washington]. At one point, Cheney and Rumsfeld
called [and advised against returning to Washington].

Ari Fleischer: Andy took the side of the Secret Service. Looking back,
it’s pretty obvious that you don’t put Air Force One down at a known,
predictable location when the attack’s still unfolding. You preserve
the office of the president. It was pretty straightforward.

Dave Wilkinson: He fought with us tooth and nail all day to go back to
Washington. We basically refused to take him back. The way we look at
is that by federal law, the Secret Service has to protect the
president. The wishes of that person that day are secondary to what
the law expects of us. Theoretically it’s not his call, it’s our call.

Eric Draper: As a group, you had Tom Gould, Andy Card, and a couple
Secret Service guys saying you couldn’t return to Washington. He was
visibly frustrated and very angry. I was just a few feet away, and it
felt like he was looking through me. It was really intense. He just
turned away in anger.

Karl Rove: Gould came in and said, “Mr. President, we don’t have a
full fuel load. We’ve got too many extraneous people on board. We
can’t loiter over Washington if we need to.” He suggested, let’s get
to a military base, drop off the unessential personnel, fill up with
fuel, and reassess. The president got the argument, but he wasn’t
happy about it.

Ari Fleischer: We didn’t have satellite TV on the plane. The news
would frustratingly come in and go out. So I was not aware of the
punishing coverage that the president was receiving for not returning
to Washington. The anchors were all asking, “Where’s Bush?” They
instantly criticized him.

Sonya Ross: We didn’t know where we were going, but they must’ve been
circling, because we kept watching the local feed of a Florida station
going in and out. That was our tiny window into the outside world.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: We had limited communications, that’s for sure,
but the president and Air Force One were never without secure
communications. We just had two lines—one for the president and one
for the mil aide. We were never out of touch entirely. All the other
staff or the other Secret Service agent, we just couldn’t provide them
the calls they needed. There were a couple times when the vice
president wasn’t available, but we never lost communications with the
ground.

Andy Card: One of the president’s first thoughts, from Sarasota to
Barksdale, was Vladimir Putin.

America could have had no better ally on 9/11 than Russia and Putin.”

Gordon Johndroe: [Putin] was important—all these military systems were
all put in place for nuclear alerts. If we went on alert, we needed
Putin to know that we weren’t readying an attack on Russia. He was
great—he said immediately that Russia wouldn’t respond, Russia would
stand down, that he understood we were under attack and needed to be
on alert.

Ari Fleischer: Putin was fantastic that day. He was a different
Vladimir Putin in 2001. America could have had no better ally on
September 11th than Russia and Putin.

Ellen Eckert: We were watching that second plane hit on a replay. It
wasn’t hitting me yet what had happened, until I saw that second plane
hit. I remember thinking “Holy mother of God.” I was sitting back with
the press corps and they said, “Go find out what’s happening.” I’m
like, “Oh, right, they’re going to tell the steno what’s happening.”
Ari came back to the press cabin, and said, “Please don’t call
anybody, please don’t tell anyone where we are for national safety,
keep our location secure.” Everyone said, “Absolutely, how’s the
president?” Everyone was really obedient.

Sonya Ross: Khue Bui [one of the photographers] was crouched in front
of me and we were talking about our families, people we knew in New
York. Ann [Compton of ABC News] and I were trying to come up with
timelines—what time was it when Andy Card came in and whispered to the
president. Ann’s time and my time were about two minutes apart. We
were listening through headsets to the television, but we weren’t
really paying attention. Then I heard the reporter say, “The tower’s
collapsing.” I looked at the TV and had a completely shocked reaction.
I heard Khue’s camera snap.

Eric Draper: We were in the president’s office when the Towers fell.
You knew that there’d be a loss of life in a catastrophic way. The
room was really silent. Andy Card, Ari, and Dan Bartlett were there.
There’s an image of the president, with his hands on his hips, just
watching. Dan had a friend who worked in the Towers. He was very
emotional. Everyone peeled off one by one and the president just stood
there, alone, watching the cloud expand.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: There were times when the emotion would just
well up. Just that sick feeling, that sorrow. It was the overwhelming
stress, like when a friend or family member is dying. That’s the
closest thing I can explain what it felt like that day.

Andy Card: I asked the military aides, “Where are we going?” I want
options. I want a long runway, a secure place, good communications.
They came back and said Barksdale AFB. I said, “Don’t tell anyone
we’re coming.”

Dave Wilkinson: Colonel Tillman said, “What about Barksdale?” It was
about 45 minutes away. We discussed it, it’s the perfect
compromise—it’s close and it’s secure and we can let off a lot of
passengers there. We needed somewhere that had armored vehicles.

Bush confers with, from left, Karl Rove, Andy Card, Dan Bartlett and
Ari Fleischer, prior to delivering remarks at Barksdale Air Force Base
in Louisiana. | U.S. National Archives

Andy Card: I went into the president’s cabin and told the president,
“We’re going Barksdale.” And he said, “No, we’re going back to the
White House.” He was pretty hot with me. “I’m making the decision,
we’re going back to Washington, D.C.” He’s firm as can be. I just kept
saying, “I don’t think you want to make that decision right now.” He
went back and forth. It wasn’t one conversation, it was five, six,
seven conversations. He was really frustrated with me.

Eric Draper: I remember following the president and Andy Card into the
nose of the plane, the president’s cabin. They’re in a very heated
discussion over returning to Washington. They’re arguing, but also
having the president take telephone calls at the same time. They’re
watching the live news coverage. It was controlled chaos.

Andy Card: We were all thinking about the very credible idea that
there was more to come. Is there a plane heading to Los Angeles? A
plane headed for Chicago? Something on the train? Is there a truck
bomb heading across the George Washington Bridge? We had lots of angst
over the White House itself. We even had the fog of war trying to
figure what was going on in the White House. There’s a fire in the
Eisenhower Office Building—well there was, but it was just in a
garbage can.

Col. Mark Tillman: We asked for the fighter support. We heard, “You
have fast movers at your 7 o’clock.” They were supersonic, F-16s from
the president’s guard unit. They led us into Barksdale.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: We’re flying around, all we still have is local
TV. The only benefit was that anything broadcasting was broadcasting
the attack. Whatever I locked into, it’d only be good until we flew
out of range. We were trying to understand from those pictures like
anyone else. It was a whole paradigm shift from what I’d thought about
conflict and war growing up. It was a new age.

Sandy Kress: There was a lot of discussion about who did it. There was
nothing anybody knew. But it was lots of talk—and some fear. I
remember the plane banking back across the Gulf. We knew there was a
change of plans and direction, but something was diverting the plane.

Rep. Adam Putnam: [Rep. Dan Miller and I] went up to the president’s
cabin and he gave us a briefing. He told us that “One way or another”
all but a couple planes were accounted for. That was his phrase “one
way or another.” He told us Air Force One was headed to Barksdale and
was going to drop us off there. When we left the cabin, I turned to
Dan and said, “Didn’t you think that was an odd phrase?” He didn’t
notice it. I said “‘One way or another,’ that sounds like that there’s
more to it than that.” I said, “Do you think there’s any way we shot
them down?” We were left hanging.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck, commander, Barksdale Air Force Base, Shreveport,
La.: I was the commander of the 8th Air Force. We were in the midst of
this big annual exercise called GLOBAL GUARDIAN. They loaded all the
bombers, put the submarines out to sea, put the ICBMs at nearly 100
percent. It was routine, you did it every year.

A captain tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Sir, we just had an
aircraft hit the World Trade Center.” I started to correct him,
saying, “When you have an exercise input you have to start by saying,
‘I have an exercise input.’ That way it doesn’t get confused with the
real world.” Then he just pointed me to the TV screens in the command
center. You could see smoke pouring out of the building. Like everyone
else in aviation that day, I thought, “How in a clear-in-a-million day
could someone hit the World Trade Center?”

Karen Hughes: Since I was home, I saw quite a bit of TV coverage just
like the American people were seeing it, and I realized that it looked
like the American government was faltering. I was on the phone with my
chief of staff at the White House when she was told to evacuate. I
could actually see the Pentagon burning. But I knew that lots of
government was functioning—planes were being grounded, emergency plans
were being implemented. I thought someone should be telling the
American people that, so I wanted to talk to the president.

When I called the operator to try reach Air Force One, the operator
came back on the line and said, “Ma’am, we can’t reach Air Force One.”
Mary Matalin had passed along that there was a threat against the
plane. It was just chilling. For a split second, I was so worried.

Gordon Johndroe: I was sitting across the table from Mike Morell in
the staff cabin. I asked, “Mike, is something else going to happen?”
And he said, “Yes.” That was a real gut punch. We were going to be
attacked all day long. There were so many rumors—the State Department,
the Mall, the White House.

Brian Montgomery: I asked [Mike Morell] who he thought this was. He
said “UBL.” No hesitation. “Who’s UBL?” Those of us not up on the
lingo of Langley, we had no idea.

Mike Morell: The president called me into his cabin. It was packed
with people. The Democratic Front for Liberation of Palestine had
issued a claim of responsibility for the attack. The president asked
me, “What do you know about these guys?” I explained that they had a
long history of terrorism, but this group doesn’t have the capability
to do this. Guaranteed.

As I was leaving, he said to me, “Michael, one more thing. Call George
Tenet and tell him that if he finds out anything about who did it, I
want to be the first to know. Got that?” I said, “Yes sir.”

Sonya Ross: I got the first readout [report] from Ari. The answers we
were getting there were pretty incomplete. Ari and his team were
giving us the best answers they could. I was nervous. I was
thinking—it seems really morbid—but I was thinking, “What if they come
after the president? We all turn into ‘and 12 others.’ No one knows
your name if you go down with the president. But Eric Washington, he
was the CBS sound guy, he had his seat reclined, his feet up. He said,
“What are you worried about? You’re on the safest plane in the world.”

Air Force One was the safest and most dangerous place in the world at
the same exact time.”

Gordon Johndroe: [Air Force One] was the safest and most dangerous
place in the world at the exact same time.

Karen Hughes: When I finally did reach Air Force One and spoke with
the president, the first thing he said to me was “Don’t you think I
need to come back?” He was just champing at the bit to come back. I
told him, ‘Yes, as soon as you can.’ Everyone has different roles and
I wasn’t thinking about the national security side—I was just thinking
about it from a PR perspective.

Andy Card: Mark [Tillman] said, “I don’t care what he says, I’m in
charge of the plane.”

Dave Wilkinson: The president once told me that the biggest piece of
advice he’d gotten from his mother when he became president was always
do what the Secret Service says. I reminded him of that several times
that day. The president and I knew each other very well—we’d spent a
lot of hours at his ranch—and kind of tongue-in-cheek several times
that day, I said, “Remember what your mother said.”

Ari Fleischer: One of the recurring themes of September 11th is how
much of the initial reporting was wrong. I keep that in mind every day
now as I watch President Obama and world events. In normal situations,
there are many ranks and many filters in government, so that only that
which is proven and vital reaches the president. All of that broke
down on 9/11. No one in the security apparatus wanted to be negligent
in not passing things along. The media was part of that too. All those
filters broke down.

Andy Card: The fog of war is real. You can be in a car accident and
everyone in the car crash has a different perspective. Take that and
multiple that a million times. The first estimates of the casualties
were so way off. 10,000 people in New York, 1,000 people at the
Pentagon.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: There were so many people coming up to the
upper deck, because we weren’t picking up the phones downstairs. It
got too crowded. Finally, someone came up and told everyone to get
out. The only member of the staff that was up with us was Harriet
Miers—she was sitting at one of the CSO seats, with a legal pad taking
historical record.

Andy Card: The president’s wondering about his wife, his kids, his
parents. Then he’s wondering, is there another city? What’s next? And
we’re all thinking, we can’t do anything about it. We’re in a plane,
eight miles high in the sky.

Dave Wilkinson: We called Mark Rosenker up to the front of the plane
and told him to get us on the phone with the commander at Barksdale.
He gave us full assurance that the base would be locked down.

Andy Card: I was comforted to find Barksdale was already on alert. It
was going to be secure. No random terrorist would have mapped that
Barksdale was where the president was going to go. We didn’t have to
ring some bell and everyone would run out of the firehouse. Everyone
was already out.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: We were already in a practice THREATCON Delta, the
highest threat condition. I said lock her down for real. My deputy
came in, Lt. Colonel Paul Tibbets—his grandfather was the pilot who
flew the Enola Gay [which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima]. He
told me that at THREATCON Delta, general officers have to wear
sidearms. I tried to refuse, but he insisted. So I was wearing my
sidearm, which I never do.

We got this radio request—Code Alpha—a high priority incoming
aircraft. It wanted 150,000 pounds of gas, 40 gallons of coffee, 70
box lunches, and 25 pounds of bananas. It wouldn’t identify itself. It
was clearly a big plane. It didn’t take us long to figure out that the
Code Alpha was Air Force One.

Ann Compton: We were landing going into Barksdale, Ari came back to
the press cabin and said, “This is off the record, but the president
is being evacuated.” I said, “You can’t put that off the record.
That’s a historic and chilling fact. That has to be on the record.” It
was a stunning statement, about the president trying to hold the
country together but facing a mortal enemy. The president cannot be
found because of his own safety. That sent chills down my spine.


III. Barksdale Air Force Base, Shreveport, La.

Col. Mark Tillman: Going into Barksdale, there’s this plane that
appears. The initial fighters were with us. I still remember the F-16s
starting in on this guy. Bearing, range, altitude, distance. You see
the F-16 rolls off, they ask, “Hey, who has shoot-down authority?” I
say, “You do.” That was a big moment. It turned out just to be a crop
duster, some civilian flyer who didn’t get the word.

Gordon Johndroe: You cannot hide a blue-and-white 747 that says
“United States of America” across the top. You can’t move it secretly
through the daylight. Where does local TV go when there’s a national
emergency? They go out to their local military base. We’re watching
ourselves land on local television. The announcer’s saying, “It
appears Air Force One is landing. We don’t have any specific
information whether the president was on board, but Air Force One was
last seen leaving Sarasota.” The pool is looking at me like, “We can’t
report this?”

Brian Montgomery: As soon as we landed, Mark Rosenker [director of the
White House Military Office] and I went off the back stairs. There’s
this guy who looks like General Buck Turgidson from Dr. Stranglove,
big guy, all decked out in a bomber jacket. He was straight out of
central casting. We said, “What do you need?” He said, “See those
planes? Every one is loaded with nukes—tell me where you want ’em.” We
look over and there are just rows of B-52s, wingtip to wingtip. I
joked, “Gosh, don’t tell [the president!].”

We got this radio request—Code Alpha—a high priority incoming
aircraft. It wanted 150,000 pounds of gas, 40 gallons of coffee, 70
box lunches and 25 pounds of bananas. It wouldn’t identify itself.”

Buzz Buzinski: Barksdale was going through a nuclear surety
inspection. They already had these cops in flak jackets and M-16s.
They were all locked and loaded. It’s pretty no-joke when you’re
assigned to a nuclear base already. But you still knew that this was
going to be different. As soon as we landed, they surrounded the
aircraft.

Capt. Cindy Wright, presidential nurse, White House Medical Unit:: I
remember just how different it was, landing at Barksdale. Everything
just had changed in an instant. We’d got off the plane and we were at
war.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: When we landed there, looking out towards the
flight line, it looked like a war game. You had guys in flak jackets,
weapons, heavy equipment and vehicles, guns mounted on top. All facing
away from the aircraft.

Dave Wilkinson: My biggest concern was the Humvees. Would they be
there? We had guys from our local field office rushing over, but they
didn’t get there until after. When I saw the four or five Humvees pull
up, I had a real sense of relief. One of the other agents raised the
concern that the Air Force wanted to drive the president—we [the
Secret Service] are normally the only people who drive the president.
I said, “That’s the least of our concerns. If the general’s signing
off on the guy driving, that’s fine with me. Let’s just let him drive
the vehicle.”

Col. Mark Tillman: We let the president out through the bottom stairs,
because you want that low vantage point in case there’s a sniper.

Ari Fleischer: Normally, there’s a whole infrastructure that flies
ahead of the president. It’s an armed city, full of Secret Service
agents and armored vehicles. But on that day, even the Secret Service
is down to just the essential crew aboard the plane. All that was
waiting for him in Barksdale was this uparmored Humvee, with room for
a standing gunner. The regular Air Force driver, he was nervous and
just driving as fast as could be. The president told him to slow down.
The president said later he most felt in danger [on 9/11] right there
on the runway.

Andy Card: The guy was driving really fast, and in a Humvee the center
of gravity isn’t as low as you think. The president said, “Slow down,
son, there are no terrorists on this base! You don’t have to kill me
now!”

Col. Mark Tillman: I went down to the tarmac to see about having the
plane refueled. We could carry 14 hours of fuel. I wanted 14 hours of
fuel. I was worried that they weren’t going to have enough fuel
trucks, but it turned out we’d happened to park over a hot refueling
tank they used for bombers. This civilian is arguing with our crew,
“The fuel pits are only authorized for use in time of war.” This Air
Force master sergeant—God bless him—overhears this and roars, “We are
at war!” He whips out his knife and starts cutting open the cover.
That defines to me what the day was like.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: [The president] had landed already and I was on my
way to meet him. He was on his way to the conference center. I gave a
sharp salute, and his first words to me were, “I guess I put you on
the map.” He was really disarming that way. He told me he needed a
secure phone to call Governor Pataki, so I took him to my office. As
he started making calls, he stopped for a second: “Tell me where I
am?” I said, “You’re on the east side of the Red River in Bossier
City, Barksdale Air Force base, near Shreveport, Louisiana.”

Brian Montgomery: Once the president got into that private office,
Andy Card came out and said this is an opportunity to call your loved
ones, but don’t tell them where you are.

Rep. Adam Putnam: We get to Barksdale, keep in mind that we haven’t
really had good TV images. We were all overwhelmed with emotion,
because we were all catching up to where everyone else had had a
couple hours to process. I called my wife and said, “I’m safe. I can’t
tell you where I am.” And she said, “Oh, I thought you were in
Barksdale? That’s what I saw on TV.”

Maj. Scott Crogg: The horn went off again [at Ellington Field in
Houston] and [F-16 pilot Shane Brotherton and I] launched. There was
so little information, you had to do things on faith. When we
launched, we didn’t even know what the mission was. We were told, "You
need to intercept the Angel flight." Well, we had no idea what that
meant. We’d never heard Air Force One called that before.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: Andy Card and Karl Rove came into my office with him.

Karl Rove: This is the first point where he gets fully briefed. All
three strikes are over, so we know the extent of the damage. His first
instinct was to bring together the leaders of government, but everyone
had dispersed. It’s just amazing how technology has changed. At the
time, the only way to get everyone together was to go to Offutt Air
Force Base, the nearest facility that had multiple-site video
teleconferencing. Now the president travels with a black Halliburton
case that has a screen that can do it through any broadband outlet.
It’s amazing.

Col. Mark Tillman: I went into the base situation room. I told them I
needed to get this guy underground. Where were all the places that I
could do that? Offutt was the best choice.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: People forget how much confusion there was that day
about what was actually going on. We’d never been attacked like that
before, at least since Pearl Harbor. Intel [officers] were coming in
all the time. One said that there was a high-speed object moving
towards his Texas ranch [in Crawford]. I saw him start thinking about
who was at the ranch. It turned out to be a false report.

Maj. Scott Crogg: I was thinking—I’ve done these Combat Air Patrols
over southern Iraq for hundreds of hours, enforcing the no-fly zone,
and now I’m doing it over the United States. It was really strange. No
one else was airborne. It just felt so serious. We had all this
resolve that day.

Ellen Eckert: To wait for the president, they took us to the Officers’
Club. I was basically the only person on the trip who smoked
cigarettes—or so I thought. While we’re standing there, all of a
sudden everyone’s asking for a cigarette. “Wait, you don’t smoke?”
Everyone was so whipped up.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: Everyone was busy doing their own thing. The
president was looking over the remarks he wanted to give the country.
He asked the room, “I use the word ‘resolve’ twice in here—do I want
to do that?” No one was answering him, so I said, “I think Americans
probably want to hear that.”

Brian Montgomery: We got with someone from the base, and found this
rec room or something like that with a bunch of memorabilia on the
walls. Gordon and I started rearranging everything—got some flags,
found a podium. We knew this was important. Everyone wanted to see the
president.

Gordon Johndroe: Barksdale was a blur. It was really chaotic. No one
really remembers the president’s statement there. It was bad lighting,
bad setting, but it was important to have him say something to the
nation. That statement is lost to history.

Sonya Ross: I dictated a brief report to my colleague Sandra Sobieraj
[back in Washington], and then I left my phone on, so she could hear
the president’s brief statement. The statement was supposed to be
embargoed until we left, so I was trying to curl the phone up under my
notebook, so no one would notice it was still on. It gave us a brief
head start, because the wire [services], we always need to be first.
He said, “Our military at home and around the world is on high alert
status. And we have taken the necessary security precautions to
continue the functions of your government.” He reiterated that it was
a terrorist attack and urged people to be calm. It was very general.

Ellen Eckert: I’d never seen the president look so stern. I was lying
on the ground at the president’s feet. We didn’t know if the [TV news]
feed was working, it was so iffy, so I was there lying down with my
mic above my head in case no one else was recording his remarks.

Andy Card: We didn’t want attention to where we were until we left. We
videotaped the statement, so that it went out as we left.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: After the press conference, he came back to my
office. He hadn’t seen video of the Towers come down yet. He was
sitting on my couch and watched the Towers fall. He turned to me, just
because I was there, and said, “I don’t know who this is, but we’re
gonna find out, and we’re going to go after them, we’re not just going
to slap them on the wrist.” I said, “We’re with you.” I knew he meant
every word.

Ari Fleischer: Andy Card made the decision to chop down the number of
passengers. We didn’t know where we were going. We had no
infrastructure. We had no motorcade. Anybody non-essential had to be
left behind, that included all the congressmen, which they weren’t
pleased with. Several White House staffers had to get off. Andy asked
if we could take the press down to three. I thought five was the
absolute minimum.

Sandy Kress: Most of us had stayed on the plane in Barksdale. We were
sitting on the runway for a good bit. We were thinking, “Is this a
broader attack? Was someone out there looking for us?” It was towards
the end of the stop in Barksdale that Brian [Montgomery] came through
and told us that we were all staying behind in Louisiana. We
understood that the president was continuing on, but that he was not
going back to D.C. Our role had been to help him with that trip, and
that was over. It made sense.

Rep. Adam Putnam: As we’re just waiting on board, supply trucks come
up and start unloading food—tray after tray of meat, loaf after loaf
of bread, just hundreds of gallons of water. We realize they’re
equipping that plane to be in the air for days. It was really
unnerving.

Gordon Johndroe: We thought at that point that we were not going to
Washington for several days. We needed to shrink down our footprint.
We didn’t know how many people could be fed, watered, clothed, and
supported wherever we were going. It was difficult telling half the
press pool that they weren’t coming with us. It was half "We’re
missing the story of our lifetimes," and then their personal reaction:
"You’re leaving us in Louisiana and the airspace was shut down."

Sonya Ross: They herded us out to a blue school bus. Some of us had
rumors that they’d shrink the pool. I was thinking I had to fight to
get a spot. I didn’t want to have to explain to my boss that I got
left behind. I was just going to do my best to get on the plane.
Gordon came on the bus. He read off who was going to come with them:
AP reporter, AP photographer, TV camera, TV sound, and radio. Everyone
else, he said, was going to be left behind. At that point, Judy Keen,
the newspaper reporter from USA Today, and Jay Carney, the magazine
pooler, they raised a stink. I just scooped up my stuff and ran.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: In the conference room, waiting for the
transportation to be squared away, we were sitting around the table,
wondering what brought the Towers down. At that point, no one
understood that steel melted at such-and-such a temperature. We just
couldn’t believe the towers had come down. When it came time to take
the president back [to Air Force One], they brought up this Humvee
with a .50-cal machine gun mounted on top. I don’t know if he was
fearing a Governor Dukakis moment in that tank, but he wanted to ride
in a different vehicle. He pointed to our supervisor of flying
vehicle. It was a white minivan, which we called “Soccer Mom,” so we
drove him out in a minivan.

Karl Rove: As we’re driving back out, [the president] says to me
something like, “I know this is a dodge, just they’re going to try to
keep me away, but I’m going to let them have this one [and go to
Offutt] and then we’re going home. “

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: [As the president’s heading up the stairs] I said
to him, “These troops are trained, ready, and they’ll do whatever you
want them to.” He said to me, “I know.” We traded salutes. He was on
the ground an hour and 53 minutes.

Buzz Buzinski: I saw [the president] walk up the front stairs. You
could see how mad he was. You could tell how much emotion he had, the
anger inside. As soon as he got on board, it was all business.

Sandy Kress: They sent the vice president’s plane down for us, and we
eventually boarded it to go back to D.C.

Sonya Ross: As we left, they didn’t know how long we’d be gone. They
told us that they’d arrange accommodations if we had to be gone a day
or two. I told my bureau chief, “I don’t know where we’re going and I
don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”

Ellen Eckert: Ari told me I was off the plane. The press were not
happy, but I was fine—I was thinking, I’m safe here in Louisiana. But
then the plane’s fired up, it’s loud, we’re all standing nearby, and
Gordon came back to the back stairs, he yells, “Ellen, Ari says get on
the plane! He’s changed his mind!” That’s not what I want to do—but
then I thought I’m ashamed of myself. Everyone else was getting on
that plane. I was the last one on board.


IV. Airborne, Somewhere Over the Plains

Maj. Scott Crogg: We watched Air Force One come up, but we still don’t
really know anything. It’s pretty impressive, seeing Air Force One
come up in the air.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: As he takes off, two F-16s pulled up on his wing.
That made me think that we were finally getting our act together. I
forgot I ever said this, but Kurt Bedke, one of the other officers,
told me later that as we watched them fly away I said to him, “Do you
feel like you’re in a Tom Clancy novel?”

Maj. Scott Crogg: We just started following [Air Force One] north. At
some point, I was expecting them to turn east and head to Washington.
The longer we’re heading north, the more realize something’s still
unsettled. They still don’t feel safe returning to Washington. We only
had maps for Texas and Louisiana that day on board. There was no idea
that we’d go any further than that. I asked for a tanker to come meet
up, and after I hook up, I asked him for every radio channel between
here and Canada.

Andy Card: We could finally get some television coverage. You could
see the buildings on fire. You saw the replay of the collapse. There
were lots of tears. There were lots of quiet moments staring at a TV
screen. No conversation. There were prayers. And the fear. It wasn’t
even a roller coaster, because we were just in the pits. Oh my god,
that’s terrible. And that’s worse. And that’s even worse. All the
time, we’re being handed notes, taking telephone calls, giving orders.

Maj. Scott Crogg: It was an eerie silence on the radio. There’s just
no one in the air. We’re just talking among ourselves [the fighter
pilots] on our radios. “I wonder if we’re going to Canada?” A lot of,
“Man, this is fucked up.” I’m also talking the guys through what
happens if we have to shoot someone down. The world’s watching, let’s
be by the book and let’s do everything we can to protect the
president. You’re going to do everything you can to avoid it, but, as
a last resort, if a plane’s going to try to hit Air Force One, I need
you guys to think about it. I’m saying, “We’re going to do our best to
get them to say ‘you’re approved’ over the radio.”

You’re going to have think about how you’re saving lives by taking
lives. You have to think through that the missiles might not do the
job. You may have to employ the gun. Typically our gun sight doesn’t
account for a plane that big. We know this would be a plum target, but
we also figure no one would expect Air Force One right now to be
flying north over Kansas.

Col. Mark Tillman: The whole day was eerie. There were no radio calls.
Controllers were telling us about suspicious planes—I had no idea
there were so many crop dusters in America.

Eric Draper: Everyone was starving for information. We couldn’t hear
anything unless the plane was flying over a major city.

Ari Fleischer: There was no live television. It put us in a very
different spot than most Americans that day. People around the world
were just riveted to their television sets. We had it intermittently
on Air Force One. We had it in Barksdale at the base commander’s
office. But there’s no email on Air Force One back then. When you’re
in the air, you’re cut off. It was absolutely stunning, standing next
to the president as he was talking to the vice president then holding
the phone off his ear because it cut off.

Ellen Eckert: The plane is like the Twilight Zone. It’s really eerie.
There’s just no one on board anymore. The staff cabin is empty, the
guest cabin is empty. That’s when it was really coming apart for me. I
saw one of the agents was standing in the hallway, and I went up to
him, "So this is the safest place to be? This is Air Force One,
right?" He said, "Well, listen, don’t mention this, but we might as
well have a big red X on the bottom of this plane. We’re the only
plane in the sky." That was scary. I went into the bathroom and used
one of those Air Force One notepads to write a letter to my family—six
siblings and two parents. They’re never going to see this, it’s going
to burn up in a fiery inferno. One of the flight attendants opened the
door and comforted me and gave me a washcloth to wipe. “We’ve got
this. We’re all together.”

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: [As we flew to Offutt] some of the commercial
systems finally began to become available. One of the phones actually
rang, I picked it up, it was my chief: “How are things going?” “Well,
chief, we’re a little busy.” None of the crew were allowed to make
calls to our families. Everyone was just locked in. It probably
actually helped a lot of us get through the day.

Maj. Scott Crogg: Fifteen minutes after we tanked up, we saw Air Force
One start to descend. I did the math and figured out they were
probably headed to Offutt. Well, now we had a full tank of gas. You
can’t land like that in a small plane, so we were doing afterburner
360s at 7,000-feet to burn off enough gas to land our planes.

Mike Morell: On the way from Barksdale to Offutt, the president asked
to see me alone—it was just me, him, and Andy Card. He asked me,
“Michael, who did this?” I explained that I didn’t have any actual
intelligence, so what you’re going to get is my best guess. He was
really focused and said, “I understand, get on with it.”

I said that there were two countries capable of carrying out an attack
like this, Iran and Iraq. But I believed both would have everything to
lose and nothing to gain from the attack. When all was said and done,
the trail would lead to UBL. I told him “I’d bet my children’s future
on that.”

He asked when we’d know. I walked him through recent cases—in the
[1998] East Africa [Embassy] bombings, it had been a couple days, the
[2001] USS Cole [bombing] had taken a couple months, the [1996] Khobar
Towers [bombing] it had taken over a year. It may be quick or it may
be a long while. The whole time, I didn’t realize the CIA had already
figured it out.

When I finished, he didn’t say anything, we just sat there. It felt
like three, four, five minutes. It was getting awkward. I finally
said, “Is there anything else, Mr. President?” He said, “No, Michael,
thank you.”


V. Offutt Air Force Base

Buzz Buzinski: Landing at Offutt was probably the one funny moment of
the day. I’m a big guy—6-foot-4, 270—but Will [Chandler’s] also a huge
guy, he’s a 6-3, 250. We always said he’s got hands the size of a TV
screen. Well, we’re the first two off the plane. The rear stairs are
always down first, you get off and guide the front stairs in. When we
get off, underneath the jet are five or six maintainers, who were
trying to plug the plane into ground power. No one told us they’d be
there—all we see are this group of five guys. Chandler yells: “Clear
the area!” He just let out this bellow. Well, it was like cats
scattering—they dropped radios, dropped the cable. They’re
panicked—there’s this big guy coming at them. It was hysterical. I
just laughed.

Adm. Richard Mies, commander, U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), Offut
Air Force Base, Omaha, Nebraska: Without knowing whether he was coming
to Omaha, we’d taken the initiative to start preparing, working with
the 55th Wing, which runs Offutt. We’d started to evacuate the main
quarters that could be used for VIPs, and install some of the
protection there that’d be needed in case he needed to spend the
night.

We didn’t know that he was coming to Offutt until about 15 minutes
before. There wasn’t much communication with Air Force One at all.
There wasn’t going to be any pomp and circumstance. I had my driver
and a Secret Service agent who we had, and the three of us went out to
the runway to greet Air Force One. It was just a plain Chrysler.

Dave Wilkinson: By the time we got to STRATCOM, there were like 15 to
20 planes still unaccounted for [nationwide]. People will say it was
only six, but there were a lot more than that. For everything we knew,
they were all hijacked. But, even as we landed, they started to kick
them off quickly.

Adm. Richard Mies: I decided to bring the president down into the
command center via the fire escape entrance. That was the most
expedient option. I’d never used it before. It was there for
emergencies. I had them open it from the inside.

Brian Montgomery: There were a lot of airmen in battle gear lining the
route to the bunker. We pull up to this five-story office building,
and instead of walking in the front door, the admiral says, “No, we’re
going in there.” We head into this concrete building, just a door. We
went down and down and down, pretty far underground.

At left, President George W. Bush arrives Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, at
Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. At right, Bush, Admiral Richard
Mies, left, and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card conduct a video
teleconference at the base. | Courtesy of the George W. Bush
Presidential Library

Gordon Johndroe: The president went into the bunker. It was chilling.
I’m watching [the president] with the press from the motorcade and
they go into this building and they’re gone. When we got to Omaha, we
were tired. Our energy, the stress had ebbed and flowed. A sadness
kicked in when we got to Omaha. We didn’t really have time to reflect
before then.

Ellen Eckert: When he went into the bunker, wow. That’s still a scene
in the movie in my head all these years later. Clearly the only way to
go was down. We just stood outside, waiting. We smoked a million
cigarettes, all my new chain-smoking friends.

Eric Draper: I finally had a chance to call my wife, I said, “Honey,
I’m going to be home a little late tonight.” I could hear her laugh
through the phone, even as she was crying. She said, “I saw you with
the president, so I knew you were OK.”

Adm. Richard Mies: We went directly into the command center. That
really caught his attention. All these soldiers, they’re all in battle
dress. CNN was prominently displayed—a lot of footage of the two
towers. We had four to six TV screens, all energized. I sat him down
where I normally sit, and walked him through what he was seeing, so he
had an awareness.

Andy Card: It’s right out of a TV movie set—all these flat-screen TVs,
all these military people, you can hear the fog of war, all these
communications from the FAA and the military. But it’s tough for the
military folks—they all want to stand and show respect to the
commander in chief, but you can tell they want to sit and do their
jobs. Everyone is schizophrenic, half-sitting and half standing,
everyone’s moving around. After a few minutes, the president turned to
me, “I want to get out of here, I’m making it hard for these people to
do their job.”

Maj. Scott Crogg: All the rules that fighter pilots spend their lives
living by were now out the window. When we landed [at Offut] we got
more gas and picked up maps for the rest of the country. There are
always maps and approaches for the country in base operations, but all
the maps always say, "Do not remove from base operations." We just
took all of them and stuffed them in our bag.

Colonel Tillman walked into base operations and we finally started to
get some information. The president was actually an alumni of our unit
in Houston. Colonel Tillman told us, “he feels comfortable with you
guys and wants you to continue us.” We told him we’d sit back about
five miles—you don’t get that close to something that valuable, for
all sorts of reasons—but if something happened, we can eat up that
range real quick.

Adm. Richard Mies: The VTC was just the three of us, the operator, and
his military aide. There were just five of us at most. There was no
real audience. We listened as everyone reported in. Richard Clarke [of
the National Security Council], [Transportation Secretary] Norm
Mineta, [Deputy Secretary of State] Richard Armitage, [National
Security Adviser] Condi [Rice], [CIA Director] George Tenet. Most of
the initial conversation in the VTC was focused on who did this. There
was a lot of speculation. It was too early to make definitive. Then we
were talking about: How do we restore some sense of normalcy quickly,
both for New York and for the country? And then how does the president
get back to Washington?

Mike Morell: When Tenet explained that he had evidence pointing to Al
Qaeda, the president turned around and looked at me—his look clearly
said, “What the fuck happened here?” You were supposed to tell me
first. I tried to explain with my look that I was sorry—I didn’t know
how my message had gotten lost. I went to a nearby office and called
Tenet’s assistant, angry. I felt like I’d let the president down.

Andy Card: When George Tenet said it was Al Qaeda, it wasn’t like dawn
breaking over Marblehead. We all suspected that it was Al Qaeda. I’d
thought that since the classroom door. It wasn’t that dramatic of a
moment actually. It was just a confirmation. Think of what it would’ve
happened if he’d told us that it was Russia, China, or another
nation-state? Or an American splinter group?

Dave Wilkinson: We felt like we were probably pretty safe and it could
be prudent to go back. Everyone went around the room [on the video
conference], the vice president kicked it off, and everyone said their
piece. Finally, the president said to Brian [Stafford], my boss [the
Secret Service director], “Brian, Dave and Eddie are just doing their
job and telling me I can’t go back to D.C., but I think it’s time for
me to come back.” Brian did a good job—he explained [to the president]
that it was a heightened security environment, and we’re were going to
relocate you and move you if the slightest thing comes up.

Brian Montgomery: Once we got to Offutt, you would have had to tie him
down to keep there overnight.

Julie Ziegenhorn, public affairs officer, Offutt Air Force Base: We
were working at our desks and all of a sudden, there was the President
striding down the hallway. He walked right out the front door, waving
to us. He shouted, “Thanks for all you’re doing!”

Gordon Johndroe: We’re there with the pool and our Secret Service
agent says, “Oh my gosh, we’ve got to go right now. The president’s
leaving.” Ann [Compton] was on with Peter Jennings. I didn’t want to
panic her or the nation by making it seem like we were leaving
abruptly, but we needed to leave. I mouthed, “We have to go.” She was
on the radio and she said, “I’m told we’re leaving. I don’t know where
we’re going.” Peter Jennings said, “Godspeed, Annie.”

Col. Mark Tillman: We thought he was going to be there for a while. I
was in base operations and someone came in and said, “I think the
president’s headed back to the plane.” I said, “Nah.” He said, “No,
I’m pretty sure I just saw him drive by.” I started to race back to
the plane. He’d already gotten there. He’s waiting at the top of the
stairs and told me, “Tillman, we got to get back home. Let’s get back
home.”

Maj. Scott Crogg: No one told us that Air Force One was leaving, so
we’re like, “Oh shit, are they starting up?” We’re racing to get our
planes in the air, but it takes some time. We met the minimum safety
requirements and hit the air. A 747 configured like that, gosh, that’s
a fast airplane. We didn’t want to go supersonic, it’d burn up too
much fuel, so we talked to them, and we had to reel them in.


VI. Airborne, En route to Andrews Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.

Col. Mark Tillman: I’m doing .94 Mach. The fighters only have so much
gas. We went as fast as we could across the United States. F-16s were
coming out of D.C. to meet us, everyone was joining up with us. We had
F-15s with us too.

Mike Morell: On the flight to Andrews, I finally got this packet full
of all the intelligence CIA had. It included the talking points that
George Tenet had used to brief the president, but there was still a
lot he hadn’t been able to say. I shared all those details with the
president. The second half of the packet was a set of intelligence
passed to us by a European ally explaining that it had detected signs
that Al Qaeda was planning a second wave. When I was showing that to
the president, I could tell from his reaction, it struck him: “Gosh,
this could happen again.” This isn’t over.

Andy Card: When he talked to his dad, his dad reinforced George W.
Bush’s desire to get back to Washington. That made me feel a little
guilty, but by then we were on our way back.

Eric Draper: I asked Andy Card at one point, “Who did this?” “Al
Qaeda.” I’d never heard of Al Qaeda before.

Andy Card: By the time we’re coming from STRATCOM, it was kind of
skeleton crew aboard. The closer we got to Washington, the more the
president wandered.

Brian Montgomery: I found the president at the front of the staff
cabin at one point. I just said, “We’re going to hit ’em hard, right,
when this is all over?” He just said, “Yes, yes, we are.” I knew that
look in his eyes. He was mad.

Ellen Eckert: The president came back to the press cabin, I asked him
if he was doing OK, and he said yes. I asked, “Have you spoken to Mrs.
Bush?” He said, “Yes, she’s fine.” He patted me on the back, twice.
Then Doug Mills [the AP photographer] said, “Keep your spirits up.”

The president said, “We won’t let a thug bring this country down.”

Sonya Ross: I was typing away [in the press cabin], working on my
notes [when the president came in], and I don’t think he saw me at
first. I started typing that quote down, and he heard me typing and
turned to me: “Hey, off the record!” He didn’t say anything else.

Ellen Eckert: He gave Sonya the stink eye.

Gordon Johndroe: There was one time when President Bush slipped back
there—I was in the staff cabin with Andy Card and don’t know how he
got back there—and he came in and said, “I just spoke with the press.”
He saw my face and said quickly, “Don’t worry, it’s OK. It was off the
record.” He was trying to be a very calm and comforting presence to
everyone.

The president is consoled by presidential nurse Cindy Wright, of the
White House Medical Unit, aboard Air Force One. | Eric Draper/George
W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

Eric Draper: Everyone was trying to take it all in. I took this
picture of Cindy Wright, a White House nurse, rubbing the president’s
back. At another moment, the president had his arm around Harriet
Miers as they walked down the plane.

Capt. Cindy Wright: What’s funny about that picture is I don’t really
remember being compassionate or ministering to him—I do remember that
he came in to check on me and the team. It was amazing to me that he
was walking through the plane checking on us. I was in the medical
compartment. It was still fairly new in the administration, so we knew
each other from talking and being at the ranch, but that was the first
time we hugged—I’m a big hugger, and he is too.

Ann Compton: We were finally able to say on the record—I called my
bureau and told them—that the president was heading back to Washington
and would address the nation from the Oval Office.

Sonya Ross: I had started on the White House beat on September 11th,
six years earlier. I said to Ari at some point, “This is my White
House anniversary.” He laughed, “Some anniversary party you threw.”

Col. Dr. Richard Tubb: The thing at that moment I was most worried
about was a biologic [attack]. In the unlikely but high-risk scenario,
I thought there was little harm to be prophylaxing the staff with
antibiotics. It seemed like almost science fiction. I gave everyone on
the plane a week of Cipro. I hoped by the time they ran out, we’d have
figured out the fog of war and know whether we needed to continue
measures.

Brian Montgomery: I noticed that Dr. Tubb was walking and talking to
each person. He’d lean over and whisper to each person, pat them on
the shoulder, and he’d hand over a little envelope, like what the
military uses to put pills in. He got to me and said, “Monty”—that was
my nickname—“how do you feel?” I said, “Other than the obvious,
physically, I feel fine.” “You don’t feel disoriented?” “Nope.” Then
he said, “Have you ever heard of Cipro? We don’t know what might’ve
been in that school, so we’re just being careful.” I asked him,
“What’s it used for?” He told me, “In case it’s anthrax.”

Col. Dr. Richard Tubb: It was scary later realizing later that fall
anthrax wasn’t as unimaginable as we’d thought. That was a turning
point for our society. I was suddenly real pleased with how we’d
reacted on the plane.

At left, Marine One prepares to land on the South Lawn of the White
House. At right, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice waits at
the South Portico for Bush to return. | U.S. National Archives

Mike Morell: It was about an hour from touching down, pretty late in
the day, a lot of people were asleep, and the lights on Air Force One
were turned down. The president came back into the staff compartment.
I was the only one awake. I said, “How are you doing?” “I’m just fine,
thanks for asking.” One of the things that struck me, he transformed
right before my eyes from a president who was struggling a bit with
the direction of his administration on September 10th, to a wartime
president, just in a matter of hours. I could already see this new
confidence and power in him.

Gordon Johndroe: I don’t really remember eating, but the stewards put
out some sandwiches and chips. The Air Force bills you for your meals
aboard Air Force One, through the White House Military Office. I
remember a couple days later getting a bill for $9.18. The bill said
for meals on September 11th between Sarasota-Barksdale,
Barksdale-Offutt, Offutt-Washington.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: I’ve never felt more fatigued. I can’t remember
anything as physical as that day. It just sucked everything out of
you.

Mike Morell: The president’s mil aide [Tom Gould] was looking out the
window on the left side of the plane, he motioned me over. “Look.”
There was a fighter jet on the wingtip. He told me there was another
one on the other side of the plane. In the distance, you could see the
still-burning Pentagon. Throughout the day, all this is happening and
you don’t really have the chance to feel the emotion. But that got me.
Tears filled my eyes for the first time that day.

Maj. Scott Crogg: It was really a shock, but I remember thinking that
the hole in the building, relative to the whole size of the Pentagon,
is relatively small. It was symbolic. It’s a painful wound, but we’re
big enough to absorb it.

Andy Card :: We kneeled on the benches to look outside, you could see
the fighter jets came up pretty close to Air Force One. You just don’t
see that on Air Force One.

Karl Rove: I watched the fighters and I realized this was no
ceremonial escort—this was the last line of defense in case there was
a MANPAD [surface-to-air missile] on the approach to Washington. They
were going to put themselves between Air Force One and whatever the
threat was.

Col. Dr. Richard Tubb: As we’re coming in on final [approach], Dan
Bartlett comes into my office and says, “Thanks, I took all those
pills. Anything else I need?” I said, “What?! Absolutely not! That was
supposed to be a week’s worth!” I’m flipping through the Physician’s
Desk Reference, that huge book, trying to figure out what the toxic
level of Cipro is.

Brian Montgomery: [Dan] was real worried for a moment. After all that
happened that day, Dan was going to die from Cipro poisoning.

Col. Dr. Richard Tubb: I looked into it and told him, “Listen, you’re
going to be fine. You might want to take an antacid.”

Col. Mark Tillman: It was a long day. As we’re landing, I’m thinking,
all I’ve got to do is get him on the ground, then I can hand him off
to the Marines. I’m watching the fighters scream by underneath, doing
suppression, trying to figure out if there was anything waiting for
us. The landing itself, after everything, was entirely normal.

George W. Bush meets with his National Security Council in the
Presidential Emergency Operations Center of the White House after
addressing the nation. | U.S. National Archives

Maj. Scott Crogg: We’d landed right behind Air Force One, so we
saluted as Marine One took off. We knew the president was heading to
the White House.

Ari Fleischer: There are several different routes that Marine One can
take back, we took the most scenic, directly over the Capitol, down
the Mall, at the Washington Monument, you bank right.

Andy Card: We only flew at tree-top level, zig-zagging, to make it
harder for a missile to hit us. We were really low to the water on the
Potomac.

Ari Fleischer: Out of the front left of the chopper, the president had
a clear view of the Pentagon. The president said to nobody and
everybody, “The mightiest building in the world is on fire. This is
the face of war in the 21st century.”


Epilogue

Mike Morell: [In 2011], the very first telephone call that President
[Barack] Obama made after we were sure we’d killed Osama bin Laden was
to President [George W.] Bush. President Obama knew that I’d been with
him on 9/11, and so he asked me to fly down to Dallas after the raid
to brief President Bush personally. I went down about two weeks later
and walked President Bush through every aspect of the raid. I thought
I could see in his face some sense of closure.

(Note: All titles and military ranks are presented as people were on
September 11, 2001, and interviews have been condensed and edited for
clarity.)

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Journalist Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) is the author of The Threat
Matrix: The FBI at War, and a former editor of POLITICO Magazine. His
next book, Raven Rock, about the U.S. government’s Doomsday plans,
will be published in May 2017. He can be reached at
garrett.gr...@gmail.com.



Read more: 
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/were-the-only-plane-in-the-sky-214230#ixzz4JvYz0bbO
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