Ray Anderson: The husband of the principal at Hoffman Boston Elementary in Arlington was on the plane that hit the Pentagon—it flew right over her building. She had some notion that that might be the case, but she stayed at her post as principal of the school, doing what I was doing at my school until the day was over. Then, at the end of the day, she found out her notion was correct.
Theresa Flynn: We had in the library 100, 150 people standing there—we had a television at either end of the library. There’s not a sound other than the news. The news anchors were beginning to spout theories about Osama bin Laden. A young boy—he was in ninth grade at the time—he turned to me and said, “Why did they do this to us?,” which was a big question from the kids. I said, “Well, they don’t like us very much.” He said, “Why not?”
“We have no place to go”
* * *
Aboard Air Force One, Somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico
Whisked aboard Air Force One minutes after the Pentagon attack, President George W. Bush and his entourage tried to understand the carnage below—and figure out where they could go themselves. When President Bush and Vice President Cheney finally connected by phone they discussed the day’s most momentous order: authorizing fighters to down hijacked aircraft. It remains unclear whether that conversation took place before Vice President Cheney issued his shoot-down order in the PEOC.
The custom Boeing 747 that served that day as Air Force One contained the president’s private cabin and office—known as the “airborne Oval Office”—at the front of the plane on the main deck; from there, stairs led up to the flight deck and communications suite. Other cabins toward the rear of the aircraft on the main deck housed the White House Medical Unit, staff, guests, security, the press, and crew. Isolated far above the earth, their communication networks disrupted, the passengers and crew tried to figure out what had transpired on the ground, and existed in a time frame all their own.
Dave Wilkinson, assistant agent in charge, U.S. Secret Service: Once we heard a plane had crashed into the Pentagon, that’s when we said, “We’re not going back to Washington.” It’s all about that direction of interest. At the start, the threat’s in New York. Then the plane hit the Pentagon, and it’s about our seats of government.
Col. Mark Tillman, presidential pilot, Air Force One: The initial conversation was that we’d take him to an air force base, no less than an hour away from Washington. Maybe we’d try to get him to Camp David. That all changed when we heard there was a plane headed toward Camp David.I I made the takeoff, climbed out, probably 25,000 to 30,000 feet, and I gave it to the backup pilot. I had three pilots on board that day. I said to keep flying toward Washington.
Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, commander of the 1st Air Force, NORAD, Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida: We were talking to the Secret Service and they were on again, off again about whether they wanted us to follow him. There was an AWACS [airborne surveillance] aircraft off the East Coast doing a training mission, so we diverted that aircraft toward Sarasota to pick up the president when he took off. They said, “Okay, we will follow the president. Where is he going?” We said, “We don’t know.”
Ari Fleischer, press secretary, White House: 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?
Andy Card, chief of staff, White House: 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.”
Karl Rove, senior adviser, White House: Andy [Card] and I were with the president. He got a call from Cheney. 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 listened for a while longer. He closed off the conversation. He turned to us and said that he had just authorized the shoot-down of hijacked airliners.
Andy Card: 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.”
Dave Wilkinson: Every kind of communication that day was challenged. Even the president talking to the Situation Room was challenged.
Master Sgt. Dana Lark, superintendent of communications, Air Force One: People 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.” 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.
Karl Rove: He was so even-handed. He was so naturally calm during the day.
Master Sgt. Dana Lark: 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 saturated. It was all the same systems the airplane pilots were using at the same time, talking to their dispatchers.
Col. Mark Tillman: We started having to use the military satellites, which we would only use in time of war.
Andy Card: One of the president’s first thoughts, from Sarasota to Barksdale [Air Force Base, Louisiana], was Vladimir Putin [president of Russia].
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.
Gordon Johndroe, assistant press secretary, White House: Putin was important—all these military systems were 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.
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, knew what was going on. The Secret Service said to the president, “We don’t think it’s safe for you to return to Washington.”
Andy Card: Then we hear that Flight 93’s gone down. We’re all wondering, Did we do that?
Col. Mark Tillman: All of us, we assumed we shot it down.
Dave Wilkinson: 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 between the White House, the Situation Room, the radio operators. “Angel” was our code name, but 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 “Hooter” Crogg, F-16 pilot, 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. When that second plane hit, it eliminated any doubt. I had to get back to work. It was very somber at the air base. We got these cryptic messages from Southeast Air Defense Sector. I asked maintenance to put live missiles on the fighters and arm up the guns. Two heat-seeking missiles and rounds from a 20mm gun isn’t a lot to take on a hijacked plane, but it was the best we could do. We dispatched two fighters to go protect Air Force One.
Col. Mark Tillman: We put a cop at the base of the stairs [leading to the cockpit]. That was something we’d never done before.
Staff Sgt. William “Buzz” Buzinski, security, Air Force One: Will Chandler, the lead air force security officer, was summoned to the front, and he stayed up there, providing security at the cockpit stairs. That got us thinking:
Is there an insider threat?
Staff Sgt. Paul Germain, airborne communications system operator, Air Force One: Colonel Tillman said at that point, “Let’s go cruise around the Gulf for a little bit.” This was our Pearl Harbor. You train for nuclear war, but then you get into something like this. All the money they pumped into us for training, that worked.
Dave Wilkinson: Colonel Tillman took us to a height where if an aircraft was coming toward us, we’d know it was no mistake. 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.
Ann Compton, reporter, ABC News: We were standing in the press cabin. 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.”
Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser, White House: I called the president, and he said, “I’m coming back.” I said, “You stay where you are. You cannot come back here. Washington is under attack.”
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, Andy Card and [presidential military aide] Tom Gould kept raising objections about returning to Washington. At one point, Cheney and Rumsfeld called and said the same thing.
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 it 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, presidential photographer: He was visibly frustrated and very angry. I was a few feet away, and it felt like he was looking through me. He 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.”
Sonya Ross, reporter, AP: 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.
Ari Fleischer: We didn’t have satellite TV on the plane. The news would frustratingly come in and go out. 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.
Karen Hughes, communications director, White House: 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 to 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 chilling. For a split second, I was so worried.
Sonya Ross: 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. 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.
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. Everyone peeled off one by one and the president stood there, alone, watching the cloud expand.
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 Air Force Base. I said, “Don’t tell anyone we’re coming.”
Dave Wilkinson: It was the perfect compromise—close and secure and we could let off a lot of passengers there. We needed somewhere that had armored vehicles.
Andy Card: I went into the president’s cabin and told him, “We’re going to Barksdale.” He said, “No, we’re going back to the White House.” He was pretty hot with me. I 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.
Col. Mark Tillman: We asked for fighter support. We heard, “You have fast movers at your seven o’clock.” They were supersonic, F-16s from the president’s guard unit. They led us into Barksdale.
Maj. Scott “Hooter” Crogg, F-16 pilot, 111th Fighter Squadron, Houston: The horn went off again at Ellington Field in Houston and F-16 pilot Shane Brotherton and I launched. We didn’t even know what the mission was. We were told, “You need to intercept the Angel flight.” We had no idea what that meant. We’d never heard Air Force One called that before.
Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Florida), aboard Air Force One: 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 there’s more to it than that.” I said, “Do you think there’s any way we shot them down?” We were left hanging.
Gordon Johndroe: I was sitting across the table from [CIA presidential briefer] Mike Morell in the staff cabin. I asked, “Mike, is something else going to happen?” He said, “Yes.” That was a real gut punch.
Brian Montgomery, director of advance, White House: 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, presidential briefer, Central Intelligence Agency: The president called me into his cabin. It was packed with people. The Democratic Front for the 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 they didn’t have the capability to do this. Guaranteed. As I was leaving, he said to me, “Michael, one more thing. Call [CIA Director] 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?”
Sonya Ross: 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.”
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 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 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 to 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 tongue-in-cheek several times that day, I said, “Remember what your mother said.”
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 who was up with us was [White House Staff Secretary] Harriet Miers—she was sitting at one of the CSO seats, with a legal pad taking down the 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? 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 [the director of the White House Military Office] 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.
Lt. Gen. Tom Keck, commander, Barksdale Air Force Base: We were already in a practice THREATCON Delta, the highest threat condition. I said lock her down for real. My deputy 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: As 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.”
The Only Plane in the Sky Page 22