The Only Plane in the Sky

by Garrett M Graff

  President Bush was in the middle of a press event at Emma Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, when he was informed that America was under attack.

  Vice President Cheney, in Washington, initially watched the events unfold from his White House office; moments later, he was rushed out by Secret Service.

  At 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into Wedge 1 of the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Security cameras captured the resulting impact. The date on the surveillance camera was mistakenly set a day off to read September 12.

  The stairwells of both towers filled up as the morning unfolded, with workers heading down and firefighters heading up.

  Mike Kehoe, who would ultimately survive the day, was one of many firefighters who made their way up the stairs in the North Tower to evacuate the higher floors.

  AP photographer Richard Drew captured one of the most horrifying images of 9/11 at 9:41 a.m., a photo from the North Tower that came to be known as “The Falling Man.” The man has never been positively identified.

  At 9:59 a.m., the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. The North Tower followed at 10:28 a.m., 102 minutes after the first plane hit the building, shocking onlookers who did not believe it was possible for the Towers to completely fall.

  New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani immediately made his way downtown, passing St. Vincent’s Hospital with his team.

  After the Twin Towers fell, lower Manhattan was enveloped in ash and smoke, forcing thousands to leave Manhattan on foot over the Brooklyn Bridge.

  About 30 minutes after it was hit, Wedge 1 of the Pentagon collapsed. Nearly everyone rescued from the wreckage was found within that half hour.

  As military and civilian workers rushed to help, firefighters struggled to fight the raging inferno inside the building.

  Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was in a different wedge of the Pentagon when the attack occurred, but quickly made his way to the crash site to evaluate the damage and offer assistance.

  The FBI also made their way to Arlington to secure evidence and debris for the eventual investigation into the day’s events.

  The White House bunker, known as the PEOC, filled up throughout the morning.

  By midmorning, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been secured and brought to the bunker, where they coordinated with officials on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, many of whom were fearful another attack was imminent.

  As officials in Washington gathered on the ground, President Bush and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card found themselves aboard Air Force One with little idea of where to go.

  After the towers collapsed in New York, taking citizens out of the city by water was one of the only viable options for officials to sanction.

  As thousands of people lined piers trying to escape, ferries and private boats were commandeered as shuttles, resulting in the largest maritime evacuation since World War II.

  A little bit after 10:00 a.m., United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into the soft ground of an old mine in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers thwarted the hijackers’ suspected plan to attack Washington, D.C.

  Responders from Somerset County immediately rushed to the scene, forced to improvise their response to an unprecedented event.

  As teams arrived at the crash site, they were horrified to realize that there was no one to rescue, bringing efforts to a brief standstill.

  Teams of FBI agents and responders shifted their attention to recovering evidence from the impact zone.

  One of the only intact remains of United Flight 93.

  NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson was the only American not on planet Earth for September 11. He documented the view of New York post-attack from the International Space Station.

  For much of the morning, President Bush, his staff, and members of the press accompanying him were still in the air, trying to find a secure place to land. At 2:50 p.m., they were finally able to deplane at Offutt Air Force Base, outside Omaha, Nebraska.

  Still unsure of whether the attacks were over, officials took every action to protect the president, stationing Secret Service outside the Offutt bunker.

  By midafternoon, President Bush was finally able to speak via secure videoconference with key advisors and national leaders.

  As the dust cloud around the collapse site began to dissipate, the damage done to Lower Manhattan became clear, and striking.

  In the wake of the attack, New York City’s tunnels, bridges, and highways were all sealed off.

  Maritime evacuations continued throughout the day, shuttling the injured and survivors to Brooklyn and New Jersey.

  From the moment the alarm sounded after the first plane hit, to the aftermath of the Towers’ fall, off-duty firefighters, police, and responders rushed to Ground Zero to help in rescue efforts. Many would spend the following days on the pile searching for friends and survivors.

  The fallen facade of the World Trade Center near Church and Liberty Streets.

  At 4:36 p.m., Air Force One departed Offutt to take the president home to Washington, D.C. The plane was escorted by F-16s.

  Back at the White House, President Bush met with staff and advisors to determine that the active attacks on the United States were over, and made plans to address the nation later that evening.

  Around 7 p.m., lawmakers gathered back at the Capitol, singing a spontaneous rendition of “God Bless America.”

  Firefighters worked through the night to contain the blazing rooftop fire at the Pentagon.

  After the president’s address, Vice President Cheney and his wife, Lynne, left Washington to spend the night at Camp David.

  By September 12th, armed fighters like this Vermont Air National Guard F-16 were patrolling the skies over major American cities.

  The recovery efforts at what ultimately came to be known as Ground Zero proceeded in a ghostly landscape.

  Detective David Brink worked the rescue and recovery effort at Ground Zero for months following the attacks.

  FEMA veterinarians also contributed to recovery efforts by managing rescue dogs.

  In the days and weeks after September 11, posters calling for information about missing loved ones wallpapered New York City storefronts, subway stations, and telephone poles.

  Wedge 1 of the Pentagon in the aftermath of the attacks.

  The helmet that protected FDNY Lt. Mickey Kross as the North Tower fell on top of him.

  PAPD officer Sharon Miller’s cap was recovered from the rubble at Ground Zero during clean-up efforts.

  Citizen responder Welles Crowther wore one of his red bandanas as he rescued fellow coworkers in the South Tower.

  Responders and members of the military unfurl a garrison flag over the facade of the Pentagon on September 12.

  The Pentagon Memorial, comprised of 184 benches—one for each victim—opened in 2008.

  The Tower of Voices memorial at the Flight 93 National Memorial, dedicated in 2018.

  The Tribute in Light over the National September 11 Memorial, dedicated on the tenth anniversary of the attack.

  Acknowledgements

  The journey that grew into this book began in August 2016, a month before the fifteenth anniversary of the attacks, when I had the serendipity to sit at a Hoover Institution dinner in California next to Eryn Tillman. Two nights later, she introduced me to her husband, a.k.a. Colonel Mark Tillman, who loved my idea of reconstructing President Bush’s travels on September 11th and opened up the door to his crew on Air Force One so that I could write about being aboard the most famous plane in the world on one of its most historic flights. My friends Gordon Johndroe and Ann Compton helped reconstruct who was onboard the president’s plane on 9/11, Andy Card helped me track down numerous Bush alumni, and Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell and Maj. Matt Miller helped me explore Offutt Air Force Base, and later, Barksdale.

  I’d like to thank my talented one-time colleagues at POLITICO Magazine—Steve Heuser, Elizabeth Ralph, and Bill Duryea—for ed
iting and publishing the original article on which this book is based, “We’re the Only Plane in the Sky,” and to Steve, especially, for plucking the Ellen Eckert quote to become its title. From there, I want to give an extra special thanks to POLITICO’s owner, Robert Allbritton; its editor, John Harris; and its counsel, Kathy Hanna, for all believing in me and this project and letting it grow into this larger, expansive history. I am grateful for your hard work, creativity, and friendship in helping me share this with readers.

  This project—even more than most books, which are never as solitary an exercise as many realize—has a literal cast of thousands to thank and acknowledge. Altogether, this book, while mine, stands as the collective product of seventeen years of work by scores of oral historians, journalists, scholars, and officials who collected the stories of 9/11—many of whose names I know, others whose names I don’t. I’m grateful to all of them, named and unnamed here.

  The National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York was a deep supporter of this project throughout the two years it took to come to fruition. On my first day at the museum, Jess Chen led me through it and its heart-wrenching collection and exhibits; I will never forget turning around for the first time and seeing the crushed Ladder 3, nor standing in the galleries to listen to the victims’ 911 calls and voicemails. Alice Greenwald, Amy Weinstein, and Jan Ramirez generously shared with me their knowledge and their archives, helping too to track down stray facts, voices, and make available every research request we could muster. Amy and Jan have built an unparalleled archival monument in their collection, an enduring gift for generations ahead. Amanda Granek helped nail down research details, and I’m grateful as well to Anthony Gardner, Alexandra Drakakis, Stephanie Schmeling, Bethany Romanoski, and Michael Chui, as well as my friends Allison Blais and Joe Daniels.

  Moreover, this work would not exist without the hard work over the years of those who helped transcribe, edit, and publish the 9/11 Museum’s oral history collection, including Anna Altman, Meredith Davidson, Jazmine da Costa, Luisa Diez, Anna Duensing, Jessica Evans, Katelyn Gamba, Elizabeth Gorski, Donna Kaz, Hillary Kirkham, Josh Levine, Wenonah Nelson, Kathryn O’Donnell, Molly Sloan, and Katrina Waizer, among others.

  At the 9/11 Tribute Museum, I’m deeply grateful to then-curator Meri Lobel and her colleague, Connor Gaudet, who together built and assembled their oral history collection, and CEO Jennifer Adams Webb, who saw the value of this project and supported it too, as well as the interns, volunteers, and others who worked on their collection. Even after she left the Tribute Museum, Meri helped edit drafts, correcting everything from street names to titles, and providing a thorough copyedit.

  At the Arlington County Public Library oral history project, their team included Heather Crocetto, Judith Knudsen, Joe B. Johnson, Diane Gates, and Bonnie Baldwin. At the Pentagon, the historians and interviewers involved in their effort to capture the building’s story included Nancy Berlage, Rebecca Cameron, Alfred Goldberg, Richard Hunt, Diane Putney, Stuart Rochester, Roger Trask, and Rebecca Welch. I’m thankful too for the work and help of Todd Harvey at the Library of Congress and Kathleen Johnson in the historian’s office of the House of Representatives.

  At the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania, I’m grateful to Brynn Bender, Barbara Black, Donna Glessner, and Kathie Shaffer, as well as their team of interns and volunteers who helped gather the stories of how their community was affected by the attack.

  Moreover, while many of the above institutions had the good sense to capture the stories of 9/11 as soon as possible, their limited resources meant that many had never been transcribed, so Donna and Kathie spent months working with me to help transcribe dozens of oral histories that had been recorded but never put to paper. Donna read an early draft of the book deeply, providing pages and pages of thoughts, helping ensure the accuracy of the Flight 93 section, and suggesting additions to ensure the full sweep of the day was captured.

  Beyond the archives dedicated to these stories, I would be remiss not to recognize the massive contribution of other journalists and 9/11 historians who have researched this hallowed ground before me, above and beyond the formal citations and footnotes.

  In the months immediately following the attacks, the husband-and-wife team of Mitchell Fink and Lois Mathias captured a wealth of important stories in their book, Never Forget, some of which exist nowhere else. Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn’s 102 Minutes: The Unforgettable Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers remains too an invaluable guide to the New York attacks, as Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11, by Patrick Creed and Rick Newman, does to the Pentagon’s. In the air, Jere Longman’s Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back and Lynn Spencer’s Touching History: The Untold Story of the Drama That Unfolded in the Skies Over America on 9/11 both are critical guides to what transpired overhead, as are two fascinating aviation symposiums Spencer organized at the University of Texas—Dallas (both of which are archived by C-SPAN at www.c-span.org/video/?295417-1/). Jessica DuLong’s book, Dust to Deliverance: Untold Stories from the Maritime Evacuation on September 11th, mixes fascinating NYC maritime history with wrenching stories of the water evacuation from Lower Manhattan, as does Mike Magee’s All Available Boats: The Evacuation of Manhattan Island on September 11, 2001. Two other books, Covering Catastrophe: Broadcast Journalists Report September 11, compiled by Allison Gilbert, Phil Hirshkorn, Melinda Murphy, Mitchell Stephens, and Robyn Walensky, as well as Running Toward Danger: Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11, compiled by two of my friends, Cathy Trost and Alicia Shepard, helped fill in how journalists responded to the unprecedented story.

  A talented team of Washington Post reporters, several of whom I’ve had the chance to know and all of whom I respect as writers—Monica Hesse, Caitlin Gibson, Jessica Contrera, and Karen Heller—collected numerous stories of children on 9/11, which I’ve supplemented with my own to create the section here on being a child and at college that tragic day. The team at the Los Angeles Times collected dozens of stories on their Tumblr blog in 2011, which proved an invaluable time capsule in the depths of the internet.

  My then-agent, Will Lippincott, and lawyer, Jaime Wolf, both helped make this story a reality, as did my new literary agent, Howard Yoon, and my talented team at UTA: Andrew Lear, Katrina Escuedero, and Howie Sanders, before his departure. My assistant, Vanessa Sauter, enthusiastically sorted through mounds of footnotes, names, and tracked down increasingly obscure queries to translate the project from a draft to a manuscript to a book.

  Jonathan Glickman and Adam Rosenberg at MGM instantly connected with this story. Liz Hannah was my partner for two days retracing Air Force One’s travels on 9/11, walking the corridors and tarmac that President Bush traversed at Barksdale and Offutt, an experience that underscored in a way that words could never capture the fright and fear that would have been evident that day even from the sites of the attacks themselves.

  I owe the single deepest debt of this book to Jenny Pachucki, a talented oral historian who has devoted much of her career to understanding 9/11 and whose fingerprints are on almost every single page of this book. I was lucky enough to snap Jenny up from the National September 11th Museum, where she’d actually collected many of these stories herself, working with Amy and others, and knew many of the voices in the preceding pages personally. For two years, Jenny was my guide through 9/11, helping me understand its nuances, the stories that needed to be captured, the voices, families, facts, legends, myths, and fictions that surround the day. She worked full-time for a nearly a year just gathering, reading, and sorting the oral histories collected in the preceding pages, as well as many more that ultimately didn’t make it into the book. Jenny was my intellectual partner on the project at every step. I am indubitably indebted to her in ways big and small for her parrying of hundreds of my questions—by phone, email, and text—at all hours and days of the week, her travel up and down the East Coast to access archives large and s
mall, and her work organizing more than 10,000 pages of research through countless memos and spreadsheets, as well as her work tracking down numerous photos. This book would literally not exist without her help and the decade of hard work and knowledge she brought to the project. Jenny, I never could have navigated this without you, and I’m thankful for your ongoing, lasting friendship. I hope I’ve done your life’s work proud.

  As I’ve been writing this book, I’ve said it was surely the most interesting and challenging puzzle I’ll ever tackle. Assembling the myriad pieces and voices from that day into the portrait here was unquestionably the hardest and most emotional writing endeavor I’ve ever undertaken. This was my second book painstakingly edited by Jofie Ferrari-Adler and Julianna Haubner; I hope never to write another book without them. As long as the book is now, the first draft started at literally twice the length, and Jenny, Jofie, and Julianna worked for months to shape, organize, and narrow it across ultimately seven drafts, some of which Julianna devotedly diagrammed like Carrie Mathison pursuing a new plot. The four of us had deep, thoughtful, and challenging conversations about the level of editing we could do to the voices herein. We tried at every turn to balance personal style and authenticity with recognizing that spoken speech is often arduous to translate into written speech and ensuring that we captured people saying what they meant to say as they recalled high-stress, traumatic experiences. Jonathan Evans and Judith Hoover did yeoman’s work helping to scrub the manuscript in copyediting. Ultimately, of course, all the editorial decisions (and remaining mistakes) are mine alone.