Decision Points

by George W. Bush

  Shortly after the PDB, we left for a visit to Emma E. Booker Elementary School to highlight education reform.

  On the short walk from the motorcade to the classroom, Karl Rove mentioned that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. That sounded strange. I envisioned a little propeller plane horribly lost. Then Condi called. I spoke to her from a secure phone in a classroom that had been converted into a communications center for the traveling White House staff. She told me the plane that had just struck the Trade Center tower was not a light aircraft. It was a commercial jetliner.

  I was stunned. That plane must have had the worst pilot in the world. How could he possibly have flown into a skyscraper on a clear day? Maybe he’d had a heart attack. I told Condi to stay on top of the situation and asked my communications director, Dan Bartlett, to work on a statement promising the full support of federal emergency management services.

  I greeted Booker’s principal, a friendly woman named Gwen Rigell. She introduced me to the teacher, Sandra Kay Daniels, and her roomful of second-graders. Mrs. Daniels led the class through a reading drill. After a few minutes, she told the students to pick up their lesson books. I sensed a presence behind me. Andy Card pressed his head next to mine and whispered in my ear.

  “A second plane hit the second tower,” he said, pronouncing each word deliberately in his Massachusetts accent. “America is under attack.”

  Andy Card delivering the terrible news. Associated Press/Doug Mills

  My first reaction was outrage. Someone had dared attack America. They were going to pay. Then I looked at the faces of the children in front of me. I thought about the contrast between the brutality of the attackers and the innocence of those children. Millions like them would soon be counting on me to protect them. I was determined not to let them down.

  I saw reporters at the back of the room, learning the news on their cell phones and pagers. Instinct kicked in. I knew my reaction would be recorded and beamed throughout the world. The nation would be in shock; the president could not be. If I stormed out hastily, it would scare the children and send ripples of panic throughout the country.

  The reading lesson continued, but my mind raced far from the classroom. Who could have done this? How bad was the damage? What did the government need to do?

  Press Secretary Ari Fleischer positioned himself between the reporters and me. He held up a sign that read “Don’t say anything yet.” I didn’t plan to. I had settled on a plan of action: When the lesson ended, I would leave the classroom calmly, gather the facts, and speak to the nation.

  About seven minutes after Andy entered the classroom, I returned to the hold room, into which someone had wheeled a television. I watched in horror as the footage of the second plane hitting the south tower replayed in slow motion. The huge fireball and explosion of smoke were worse than I had imagined. The country would be shaken, and I needed to get on TV right away. I scribbled out my statement longhand. I wanted to assure the American people that the government was responding and that we would bring the perpetrators to justice. Then I wanted to get back to Washington as quickly as possible.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a difficult moment for America,” I began. “… Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country.” There was an audible gasp from the audience of parents and community members, who were expecting a speech on education. “Terrorism against our nation will not stand,” I said. I closed by asking for a moment of silence for the victims.

  Later, I learned that my words had echoed Dad’s promise that “this aggression will not stand” after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The repetition was not intentional. In my notes, I had written, “Terrorism against America will not succeed.” Dad’s words must have been buried in my subconscious, waiting to surface during another moment of crisis.

  The Secret Service wanted to get me to Air Force One, and fast. As the motorcade charged down Florida Route 41, I called Condi from the secure phone in the limo. She told me there had been a third plane crash, this one into the Pentagon. I sat back in my seat and absorbed her words. My thoughts clarified: The first plane could have been an accident. The second was definitely an attack. The third was a declaration of war.

  My blood was boiling. We were going to find out who did this, and kick their ass.

  The shift to wartime was visible at the airport. Agents carrying assault rifles surrounded Air Force One. Two of the flight attendants stood at the top of the stairs. Their faces betrayed their fear and sadness. I knew millions of Americans would be feeling the same way. I hugged the flight attendants and told them it would be okay.

  I stepped into the presidential cabin and asked to be alone. I thought about the fear that must have seized the passengers on those planes and the grief that would grip the families of the dead. So many people had lost their loved ones with no warning. I prayed that God would comfort the suffering and guide the country through this trial. I thought of the lyrics from one of my favorite hymns, “God of Grace and God of Glory”: “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of this hour.”

  While my emotions might have been similar to those of most Americans, my duties were not. There would be time later to mourn. There would be an opportunity to seek justice. But first I had to manage the crisis. We had suffered the most devastating surprise attack since Pearl Harbor. An enemy had struck our capital for the first time since the War of 1812. In a single morning, the purpose of my presidency had grown clear: to protect our people and defend our freedom that had come under attack.

  The first step of any successful crisis response is to project calm. That was what I had tried to do in Florida. Next, we needed to sort out the facts, take action to secure the nation, and help the affected areas recover. Over time, we had to devise a strategy to bring the terrorists to justice so they would not strike again.

  I called Dick Cheney as Air Force One climbed rapidly to forty-five thousand feet, well above our typical cruising altitude. He had been taken to the underground Presidential Emergency Operations Center—the PEOC—when the Secret Service thought a plane might be coming at the White House. I told him that I would make decisions from the air and count on him to implement them on the ground.

  On the phone with Dick Cheney aboard Air Force One on 9/11. White House/Eric Draper

  Two big decisions came quickly. The military had dispatched Combat Air Patrols—teams of fighter aircraft assigned to intercept unresponsive airplanes—over Washington and New York. Air-to-air intercepting was what I had trained to do as an F-102 pilot in the Texas Air National Guard thirty years earlier. In that era, we assumed the targeted aircraft would be a Soviet bomber. Now it would be a commercial airliner full of innocent people.

  We needed to clarify the rules of engagement. I told Dick that our pilots should contact suspicious planes and try to get them to land peacefully. If that failed, they had my authority to shoot them down. Hijacked planes were weapons of war. Despite the agonizing costs, taking one out could save countless lives on the ground. I had just made my first decision as a wartime commander in chief.

  Dick called back a few minutes later. Condi, Josh Bolten, and senior members of the national security team had joined him in the PEOC. They had been informed that an unresponsive plane was headed toward Washington. Dick asked me to confirm the shootdown order I had given. I did. I later learned that Josh Bolten had pushed for clarification to ensure that the chain of command was respected. I thought back to my days as a pilot. “I cannot imagine what it would be like to receive this order,” I told Andy Card. I sure hoped no one would have to execute it.

  The second decision was where to land Air Force One. I felt strongly that we should return to Washington. I wanted to be in the White House to lead the response. It would reassure the nation to see the president in the capital that had been attacked.

  Shortly after we took off from Sarasota, Andy and Eddie Marinzel, the wiry athletic Secret Service agent
from Pittsburgh who led my detail on 9/11, started to throw cold water on the idea. They said conditions in Washington were too volatile, the danger of attack too high. The FAA believed six planes had been hijacked, meaning three more could be in the air. I told them I was not going to let terrorists scare me away. “I’m the president,” I said firmly. “And we’re going to Washington.”

  They stood their ground. I hated the image of terrorists putting me on the run. But as much as I wanted to get back, I recognized that part of my responsibility was to ensure the continuity of government. It would be an enormous propaganda victory for the enemy if they took out the president. The military aide and Secret Service agents recommended that we divert the plane to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, where we could refuel. I relented. A few minutes later, I felt Air Force One bank hard to the west.

  One of my greatest frustrations on September 11 was the woeful communications technology on Air Force One. The plane had no satellite television. We were dependent on whatever local feeds we could pick up. After a few minutes on a given station, the screen would dissolve into static.

  I caught enough fleeting glimpses of the coverage to understand the horror of what the American people were watching. Stranded people were jumping to their deaths from the top floors of the World Trade Center towers. Others hung out of windows, hoping to be rescued. I felt their agony and despair. I had the most powerful job in the world, yet I felt powerless to help them.

  At one point, the television signal held steady long enough for me to see the south tower of the World Trade Center collapse. The north tower fell less than thirty minutes later. I had held out hope that the desperate souls trapped on the upper floors would have time to escape. Now there was no chance.

  The collapse of the towers magnified the catastrophe. Fifty thousand people worked in the buildings on a typical business day. Some had been evacuated, but I wondered how many were left. Thousands? Tens of thousands? I had no idea. But I was certain that I had just watched more Americans die than any president in history.

  I kept up-to-date on the latest developments by calling Dick and Condi in the PEOC. We tried to establish an open line, but it kept dropping. In the years ahead, Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin oversaw major upgrades to the communications systems of the PEOC, Situation Room, and Air Force One.

  When we did receive information, it was often contradictory and sometimes downright wrong. I was experiencing the fog of war. There were reports of a bomb at the State Department, a fire on the National Mall, a hijacked Korean airliner bound for the United States, and a call-in threat to Air Force One. The caller had used the plane’s code name, Angel, which few people knew. The most bizarre report came when I was informed of a high-speed object flying toward our ranch in Crawford. All of this information later proved to be false. But given the circumstances, we took every report seriously.

  One report I received proved true. A fourth plane had gone down somewhere in Pennsylvania. “Did we shoot it down, or did it crash?” I asked Dick Cheney. Nobody knew. I felt sick to my stomach. Had I ordered the death of those innocent Americans?

  When the fog lifted, I learned about the heroism aboard Flight 93. After hearing about the earlier attacks in phone calls to loved ones on the ground, the passengers had decided to storm the cockpit. In some of the last words recorded from the doomed flight, a man named Todd Beamer can be heard rallying the passengers into action by saying, “Let’s roll.” The 9/11 Commission later concluded that the revolt of the passengers aboard Flight 93 may have spared either the Capitol or the White House from destruction. Their act of courage ranks among the greatest in American history.

  I had been trying to reach Laura all morning. She had been scheduled to testify before a Senate committee in support of our education initiative around the same time the planes struck the World Trade Center towers. I placed several calls, but the line kept dropping. I couldn’t believe that the president of the United States couldn’t reach his wife in the Capitol Building. “What the hell is going on?” I snapped at Andy Card.

  Venting my frustrations to Andy Card. White House/Eric Draper

  I finally connected with Laura as Air Force One descended into Barksdale. Laura’s voice is always soothing, but it was especially comforting to hear that day. She told me she had been taken to a safe location by the Secret Service. I was very relieved when she told me she had spoken to Barbara and Jenna, both of whom were fine. Laura asked when I was coming back to Washington. I told her that everyone was urging me not to return, but that I would be there soon. I had no idea whether that was true, but I sure hoped so.

  Landing at Barksdale felt like dropping onto a movie set. F-16s from my old unit at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston had escorted us in. The taxiway was lined with bombers. It made for a striking scene, the power of our mighty Air Force on display. I knew it was only a matter of time before I put that power to use against whoever had ordered this attack.

  There was no presidential motorcade assembled at Barksdale, so the commanding officer, General Tom Keck, had to improvise. The agents hustled me down the stairs of the plane and into a vehicle, which blasted off down the runway at what felt like eighty miles an hour. When the man behind the wheel started taking turns at that speed, I yelled, “Slow down, son, there are no terrorists on this base!” It was probably the closest I came to death that day.

  I connected with Don Rumsfeld on a secure phone in General Keck’s office at Barksdale. Don had been hard to track down because he had become a first responder at the Pentagon. After the plane hit, he ran outside and helped emergency workers lift victims onto stretchers.

  I told Don that I considered the attacks an act of war and approved his decision to raise the military readiness level to DefCon Three for the first time since the Arab-Israeli War of 1973. American military installations around the world heightened security precautions and prepared to respond immediately to further orders. I told Don our first priority was to make it through the immediate crisis. After that, I planned to mount a serious military response. “The ball will be in your court and [Joint Chiefs Chairman] Dick Myers’s court to respond,” I told him.

  By 11:30 Louisiana time, it had been almost three hours since I had spoken to the country. I was worried people would get the impression that the government was disengaged. Laura had expressed the same concern. I taped a brief message explaining that the government was responding and that the nation would meet the test. The sentiment was right, but the setting—a sterile conference room at a military base in Louisiana—did not inspire much confidence. The American people needed to see their president in Washington.

  I pressed Andy on when we could head back to the White House. The Secret Service agents felt it was still too uncertain. Dick and Condi agreed. They recommended that I go to the Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. It had secure housing space and reliable communications. I resigned myself to delaying my return once again. As we boarded the plane at Barksdale, the Air Force loaded pallets of extra food and water into the belly. We had to be ready for any possibility.

  After we arrived at Offutt, I was taken to the command center, which was filled with military officers who had been taking part in a planned exercise. Suddenly, a voice crackled over the sound system. “Mr. President, a nonresponsive plane is coming in from Madrid. Do we have authority to shoot it down?”

  My first reaction was When is this going to end? Then I outlined the rules of engagement I had approved earlier. My mind ran through the worst-case scenarios. What were the diplomatic ramifications of shooting down a foreign plane? Or what if we were too late and the terrorists had already hit their target?

  The voice on the loudspeaker returned. “The flight from Madrid,” he intoned, “has landed in Lisbon, Portugal.”

  Thank God, I thought. It was another example of the fog of war.

  We moved to the communications center, where I had called a national security meeting by videoconference. I had thought carefu
lly about what I wanted to say. I started with a clear declaration. “We are at war against terror. From this day forward, this is the new priority of our administration.” I received an update on the emergency response. Then I turned to George Tenet. “Who did this?” I asked.

  George answered with two words: al Qaeda.

  Before 9/11, most Americans had never heard of al Qaeda. I had received my first briefing on the terrorist network as a presidential candidate. Arabic for “the base,” al Qaeda was a fundamentalist Islamic terror network hosted and supported by the Taliban government in Afghanistan. Its leader was Osama bin Laden, a radical Saudi from a wealthy family who had been expelled from the kingdom when he opposed the government’s decision to allow American troops to be there during the Gulf War. The group held extremist views and considered it their duty to kill anyone who stood in their way.

  Al Qaeda had a penchant for high-profile attacks. Three years earlier, the terrorists had carried out simultaneous bombings of two American embassies in East Africa that killed more than two hundred and wounded more than five thousand. They were also behind the attack on the USS Cole that claimed the lives of seventeen American sailors off the coast of Yemen in October 2000. By the afternoon of 9/11, the intelligence community had discovered known al Qaeda operatives on the passenger manifests of the hijacked planes.

  The CIA had been worried about al Qaeda before 9/11, but their intelligence pointed to an attack overseas. During the late spring and early summer of 2001, we had hardened security at embassies abroad, increased cooperation with foreign intelligence services, and issued warnings through the FAA about possible hijackings on international flights. In the first nine months of my presidency, we had helped disrupt terrorist threats to Paris, Rome, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and other places.