The Only Plane in the Sky

by Garrett M Graff

  Joe Wassel, communications officer, Office of the Secretary of Defense: The secretary was very concerned about where Mrs. Rumsfeld was during all of this. Occasionally he would be in the middle of something and would ask, “Have we found Joyce yet?” Security found her at Bolling Air Force Base in a general’s home sitting with the general’s wife watching it all unfold on television.

  Col. Matthew Klimow: My wife, Edie, had been coping in her own way with the situation. Finally Mary Turner, our secretary, got hold of her and said, “The general and Matt Klimow are OK.” She drove to Williamsburg Middle School here in Arlington, Virginia, where our 12-year-old son was attending school. There were parents lined up outside. A teacher went to fetch my son, Daniel, and when Daniel came down the hall and saw his mother, the first words out of his mouth were, “Is Dad still alive?” She said, “Yeah.”

  Lt. Col. Rob Grunewald, information management officer, U.S. Army, Pentagon: Around noon, I say, “I’m going inside to call my wife,” because cell phones weren’t working. I go in and it’s really eerie because there’s nobody in the Pentagon. All the doors were locked. People were so security conscious that they locked all their doors and shut their doors. I could find no place to call my wife. Finally, I found an electrical closet and called my wife. She was all in a panic, and she said, “How are you?” I said, “I’m fine. I made it out.” She says, “You sound terrible.” At that point, I realized I had a terrible cough.

  Staff Sgt. Christopher Braman, chef, U.S. Army: Seconds became minutes, minutes became hours. It was 1:47 in the afternoon. I shared a cell phone amongst 100 people—we couldn’t get a call out. Whoever could get a signal, we used the phone. As it was my turn, I could taste the adrenaline in my mouth as I was shaking, and I could hear the fear in my wife’s voice when she answered. I said, “I’m OK. I love you. And I’m staying.”

  Ileana Mayorga, management specialist, Volunteer Arlington: At 1:00 the phone started ringing, people who want to come and help. I put the names of all these people in an Excel sheet and what it is that they wanted to do. They wanted to help dig out the people at the Pentagon. They wanted to secure the area themselves. They wanted to enlist to go and fight. I had a man who called and he said, “I am 80 years old. I still fit in my pilot uniform from World War II. I can still see. I can still hear. I have kept up with my training as a pilot. Tell whoever you can tell that I’m ready to report for duty.” That broke my heart, this 80-year-old man saying that.

  Chris Combs, special agent, FBI, at the Pentagon: By early that afternoon, unsolicited citizens were showing up with food and water. I can very distinctly remember being at the command center and all of a sudden every supermarket showed up with more food. All the vegetables, fruits—all kinds of fruits. I don’t know if I was that hungry, but it was the best grapes I’ve ever had.

  Ileana Mayorga: We had people from all over the United States calling. We had a company, a trucking business, and they had heard that they needed trucks to remove the debris. I was able to talk to one of the persons at the incident command, and they said, “Yes, we need trucks, but we need trucks that are new, because we need to preserve everything that we remove. Something that is old will be rusted, and so it is not going to help us.” I called that lady. I said, “I’m sorry, yes, we need trucks, but they have to be new.” The lady said, “At least I can purchase one. Tell them that I will purchase one that is new, so we can come and help.”

  Kyra Pulliam, dispatcher, Arlington County Police Department: We had one officer who stopped a pickup truck that had volunteer firefighters from Maryland, ready to go down and help.

  Mike Walter, senior correspondent, USA Today Live: Later in the day, there was this kid, probably about 18 years old, showed up. He was trying to get past the police line. He had piercings and all this stuff, like, “Jeez, who’s this guy?” He was getting very emotional, and he said to the police, “Please, I need to go, I need to give blood, I need to help these people.”

  Ileana Mayorga: It was completely amazing, the feeling of support, of unity. I felt so proud that my community, the Hispanic community, were calling. Suddenly the phones were ringing and saying, “This is the country that we chose to come to. Nobody will destroy our country.” They would say, “I’m not legal in the United States. Do you think they will accept me to do volunteer work?”

  Lt. Michael Nesbitt, Defense Protective Service, Pentagon: We have two phone closets—if we lost those phones, the Pentagon would be basically shut down. One individual, Al Tillis, the head of Verizon, had to walk home to Old Town, Alexandria [about five miles]. He rode his bike back here and kept the phone lines up. He didn’t leave for five days.

  “I’d bet my children’s future”

  * * *

  Airborne, Somewhere over the Plains

  Even hours after the attacks were over, the president’s team still believed it was not safe for the president to return to Washington. Instead, they headed from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana to Offutt Air Force Base, outside Omaha, Nebraska. During the Cold War, Offutt had been the home of the nation’s nuclear forces, Strategic Air Command, and it had the military’s best communications abilities outside of the Pentagon, as well as a secure underground bunker.

  Lt. Gen. Tom Keck, commander, Barksdale Air Force Base: As he takes off, two F-16s pulled up on his wing. That made me think that we were finally getting our act together. Curtis 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 “Hooter” Crogg, F-16 pilot, 111th Fighter Squadron, Houston: We 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 I realize something’s still unsettled. They still don’t feel safe returning to Washington. I asked for a tanker to come meet up, and after I hooked up, I asked him for every radio channel between here and Canada.

  Ann Compton, reporter, ABC News: In each cabin on board Air Force One, three digital clocks stare out from the bulkhead—the LED numerals show the time in Washington, the time at the current location, and the time at the plane’s destination. The three clocks read 1:36 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, until the destination clock snapped to Central Time, 12:36 p.m. That was our only—stunning—confirmation that Air Force One was headed west, away from Washington.

  Andy Card, chief of staff, White House: 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 “Hooter” Crogg: It was an eerie silence on the radio. There’s no one in the air. We’re 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. 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.

  Ari Fleischer, press secretary, White House: There was no live television. It put us in a very different spot than most Americans that day. People around the world were 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.

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

  Ellen Eckert, stenographer, White House: The plane is like The Twilight Zone. There’s 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, “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.”

  Maj. Scott “Hooter” 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.

  Mike Morell, presidential briefer, Central Intelligence Agency: 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 Osama bin Laden. I told him, “I’d bet my children’s future on that.”

  “A large, smoldering hole in the ground”

  * * *

  Afternoon in Shanksville

  In Shanksville, rescuers quickly realized there was nothing to rescue. In their place, hundreds of state troopers and scores of investigators from the FBI, FAA, National Transportation Safety Board, and other agencies moved in to secure the scene of the attack and begin examining the wreckage. They knew they’d be there for a while.

  Andrea Dammann, special agent, Evidence Response Team, FBI: That first day it was pretty much looking at the site, seeing what had happened, and trying to figure out what resources we needed to bring in.

  Tony James, investigator, FAA: I recognized part of the landing gear and part of the engines. The FBI said, “Well, what we’d like to do is recover the cockpit.” I said, “You’ll never find the cockpit. You’ll never find the people because they, they vaporize and go away because this airplane hit really hard.”

  Wells Morrison, supervisory special agent, FBI: We recovered a number of items of evidentiary, significant evidentiary value at our crash site. Unlike the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we didn’t have the tons and tons of debris on top of our aircraft, so we were able to recover things. We recovered items that we believe were used as weapons—small knives and things of that nature—from our crash site.

  Sgt. Patrick Madigan, commander, Somerset Station, Pennsylvania State Police: This site was one of the richest, as far as evidence, of the planes that crashed on September 11th.

  Wells Morrison: The first item—this is interesting—with all the utter devastation that occurred, the first significant item of evidentiary value was recovered by a state trooper standing post the evening of 9/11. It was the wallet of one of the hijackers, and it was intact, lying on the top of the ground. We also recovered what basically was a “to do” list from one of the hijackers. It was very productive.

  Sgt. Denise Miller, Indian Lake Police Department: We watched for persons that were still trying to get into the area to get souvenirs. It was comical: we saw, as we were sitting in the field, a herd of sheep following something—the sheep were following people walking through the field to get to the site. We turned them back around.

  T. Michael Lauffer, trooper, Pennsylvania State Police: We arrested a couple people that were coming in. Everyone wanted to see what was going on, I guess. They actually had mail from the flight, and they were carrying it out through the woods. We rounded them up. I remember it was a guy and a girl.

  Braden Shober, firefighter, Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company: As things progressed there were remnants of little brush fires, spot fires that would flare up now and then. Because they didn’t want all the equipment out and disturbing the scene, one would flare up and they’d have to send a crew of a couple guys in with Indian tanks that you wear on your back and spray water, take a rake, and knock these down.

  Rick King, assistant chief, Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company: A good five, six hours afterwards—I hadn’t been off the crash site that whole time, anywhere—we started to go out to the road. I saw satellite trucks everywhere.

  Lt. Robert Weaver, Pennsylvania State Police: That first eight, 10 hours, went by like minutes. Before you knew it, we had a small city up there in an old mining company, and we had hundreds of people.

  * * *

  Tom Ridge, governor of Pennsylvania: I was enjoying a long weekend away from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in my home community of Erie, Pennsylvania. After word of the attacks, I had to immediately get to Shanksville. A couple of us, my staff and members of the state police detail, boarded an old army Chinook helicopter. As we were flying to Shanksville, there wasn’t much conversation. I do remember that it was very silent, very solemn, everyone deep in their own thoughts. As we descended into the area, I expected to see what I had—and what Americans had unfortunately seen—during the coverage of commercial aviation accidents: a field littered with significant pieces of the airplane, the fuselage, the tail, the engine, the wings. I’ll never forget my shock—my amazement—at seeing what was basically a large, smoldering hole in the ground.

  Rick King: A big, two-winged Chinook helicopter came flying toward us, and then came over top the crash site. You could see, plain as day, a guy leaning out the window in a white shirt, and it was Governor Tom Ridge.

  Sgt. Patrick Madigan: Governor Ridge flew in and landed at the site. He wanted a briefing, what was going on at that time, and I gave him what information I had, which was really limited at that time. I remember him making the statement that anything we needed to do our job, he’d make sure that was provided for us. I recall him being very, very concerned and very determined.

  William Baker, 911 addressing specialist and deputy director, Emergency Management Agency, Somerset County: I remember Governor Ridge standing right across the table from me, and he said, “Obviously this is related to the other incidents.”

  Jere Longman, reporter, New York Times: They had a staging area in a cornfield where Governor Ridge had a press conference.

  Rick Earle, reporter, WPXI-TV, Pittsburgh: Tom Ridge came in there and he stole a line from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address about people won’t remember what we say here, but they’ll never forget what these people did here.

  Steve Aaron, deputy communications director for Governor Tom Ridge: The thing that most stands out to me that day was the flight home. You get back on the helicopter, and the rear of the helicopter is open, and so the whole way home is this beautiful sunset. It was a gorgeous day. We can’t talk to each other because of the helicopter noise, so we’re all sitting there with our thoughts.

  “This is what we have for the nuclear winter”

  * * *

  At Mount Weather

  The day’s attacks activated a system aimed at preserving the continuity of government of the United States, a classified system never before used. Within hours, helicopters from the air force’s 1st Helicopter Squadron scooped up congressional leaders from the West Lawn of the Capitol and from Andrews Air Force Base and flew them to a mountain bunker originally built for the Cold War. Over the course of the day, other staff and personnel also flowed out to that “undisclosed location,” later revealed to be Mount Weather, in Berryville, Virginia, 80 minutes west of Washington, while other officials were evacuated to Raven Rock, another massive mountain bunker intended to serve as the backup Pentagon and built in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, near Camp David.

  Rep. Dennis Has
tert (R-Illinois), House Speaker: I was heading out to Andrews Air Force Base. I finally talked to the vice president. He was still in the White House. He said he brought all the planes down. After having a discussion with the vice president, he said, “You’re going to an undisclosed location.” Next thing, I was in a helicopter, flying over the south side of Washington. We flew over Reagan National Airport, and there’s nothing moving on the tarmac. I looked out the other side of the helicopter and there were flames pouring out of the Pentagon building and blue-black smoke.

  Sen. Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota), Senate Majority Leader: I was called and told that the decision had been made to evacuate to this undisclosed location. I could bring one staff person, Laura Petrou.

  Laura Petrou, staff director for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota): We were told to report to the West Lawn of the Capitol. The helicopter was right there, with several armored vehicles around. I was already in the helicopter or about to get in, when somebody looked at me and said, “You have clearance, right?” I said, “No.” They said, “Well, doesn’t matter.”

  Brian Gunderson, chief of staff for House Majority Leader Richard Armey (R-Texas): We all piled into this helicopter, and the safety instructions were shouted at us over the helicopter’s engine.

  Laura Petrou: I remember thinking, I have no idea where we’re going or how long we’re going to be there.

  Rep. Dennis Hastert: I ended up at an undisclosed location. Sen. Lott was there, as was Sen. Daschle and Dick Gephardt, the minority leader, other members of the leadership.

  Brian Gunderson: We went deep in the countryside and then landed at the undisclosed location. We got out, and this gentleman walks up to the helicopter who I gather was the mayor of this facility. He said something very chipper, something along the lines of “Welcome to—,” and the name of this place. I remember being impressed that even though it’s this guy’s job to be ready for an event like this, he was, in fact, ready, and very calm about it. This day starts like any other, and next thing you know, he’s got all these government officials descending on him in these Huey helicopters.