Fall and Rise

by Mitchell Zuckoff

  Amid the confusion, unrelated to Flight 93, radar technicians spotted an unknown plane that appeared to be headed for the White House. Within minutes, Nasypany received an answer to his question about whether American fighter jets would have shootdown authority if they encountered a hijacked plane. He called out: “Negative. Negative clearance43 to shoot.” Nasypany instructed his team to tell fighter pilots to continue standard procedures: only identify and tail any reportedly hijacked planes. As it turned out, the unidentified plane was a fighter from Langley, flying over the White House to protect it.

  Shortly after ten, Nasypany had no reason to think that all the planned hijackings had been carried out. He wanted more assets, and he wanted to keep his options open, in the event that orders changed and it became necessary to instruct fighter pilots to force down a commandeered jet heading toward a heavily populated area.

  An official at the Air National Guard base in Syracuse, New York, told Nasypany that he had two fighters that would launch within fifteen minutes. Thinking that Flight 93 remained airborne, and planning ahead for other potential hijackings, Nasypany asked one question: “Are they loaded?”44

  “We’ve got hot guns,” the commander said. “That’s all I’ve got.”

  Nasypany would have preferred missiles. He answered: “Hot guns, well, that’s good enough for me, for the time being.”

  At 10:14 a.m., more than ten minutes after the crash of Flight 93, Nasypany pressed his team for more information about the lost plane. NEADS Tech Sergeant Shelley Watson called the FAA’s Washington Center for an update.

  Watson: “United Ninety-Three,45 have you got information on that yet?”

  Washington Center: “Yeah, he’s down.”

  Watson thought they’d finally caught a break and that a hijacked plane had landed safely. She asked excitedly: “He’s down?”

  Washington Center: “Yes.”

  Watson: “When did he land? Because we have confirmation—”

  The FAA official became agitated: “He did not land.”

  The message registered. Watson’s voice drooped: “Oh, he’s down down.”

  At 10:15 a.m. on September 11, no one outside al-Qaeda knew whether United Flight 93 was the last of the “planes” mentioned by Atta or whether other hijackings might still be in progress or about to occur. No more planes were taking off, and the FAA’s Ben Sliney had ordered every plane to land at the closest airport. But neither he nor any other American official knew whether any of the several thousand planes still flying might be in danger. With so much uncertainty, debates continued among military and government officials about potentially shooting down hijacked passenger jets.

  President Bush remained aboard Air Force One, soon to be headed toward Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and from there to another base, in Nebraska. When American Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, Secret Service officials had convinced Bush that it would be best to stay clear of more possible attacks on Washington until they were certain the threat had passed. Meanwhile, Vice President Cheney, in the shelter beneath the White House, received continuing, erroneous reports from the Secret Service stating that planes with terrorist pilots were approaching Washington. One report, between 10:10 and 10:15 a.m., claimed that a hijacked plane was eighty miles from the capital.46 Cheney gave the order for military pilots to engage, then repeated his authorization minutes later when he was told that a hijacked plane was sixty miles away.

  At the direction of the Secret Service, outside the normal military chain of command and without the knowledge of NEADS, fighter jets were instructed to launch from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Those fighter pilots received orders to protect the White House and to take out any plane that threatened the Capitol. They launched with permissive rules of engagement47 that gave pilots discretion to use deadly force if they encountered an airborne version of the few-or-many Trolley Problem.

  News reached Cheney in the bunker about an aircraft that had crashed in Pennsylvania. But soon after, around 10:30 a.m., Cheney was told about another supposedly hijacked aircraft five to ten miles away. An aide conveyed Cheney’s reaction to a multiagency conference call about airborne threats: “The vice president’s guidance was we need to take them out.”

  That lethal authorization order reached NEADS at 10:32 a.m., delivered in the form of a message from General Larry Arnold, commander of the Continental Region for NORAD. It read: “Vice president has cleared us to intercept tracks of interest and shoot them down48 if they don’t respond.” (By “tracks of interest” he meant hijacked passenger jets that refused to heed commands.)

  Nasypany finally had clear authority. Nevertheless, no one at NEADS shared that order with the fighter pilots circling high over Washington, D.C., New York City, and elsewhere across the country. In fact, the lead fighter pilot from Langley still hadn’t heard anything about hijackings. He still thought he was protecting the capital from Russian cruise missiles. As he flew over the damaged Pentagon, the pilot said to himself, “The bastards snuck one by us.”49

  With no other confirmed hijackings, and with continued uncertainty about the implications of a shootdown order, NEADS commander Colonel Robert Marr, Major Nasypany, and weapons director Major James Fox decided that it would be prudent to wait50 before telling fighter pilots about the vice president’s authorization. They figured they’d have time to give the shootdown order, if it became necessary.

  At 10:39 a.m., Cheney updated51 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who’d been helping the wounded at the Pentagon.

  Cheney: “There’s been at least three instances here where we’ve had reports of aircraft approaching Washington—a couple were confirmed hijack. And, pursuant to the president’s instructions, I gave authorization for them to be taken out. Hello?”

  Rumsfeld: “I understand. Who did you give that direction to?”

  Cheney: “It was passed from here through the [operations] center at the White House, from the [bunker].”

  Rumsfeld: “Okay, let me ask the question here. Has that directive been transmitted to the aircraft?”

  Cheney: “Yes, it has.”

  Rumsfeld: “So we’ve got a couple of aircraft up there that have those instructions at this present time?”

  Cheney: “That is correct. And it’s my understanding they’ve already taken a couple of aircraft out.”

  Rumsfeld: “We can’t confirm that. We’re told that one aircraft is down but we do not have a pilot report that did it.”

  In fact, no hijacked flights had been shot down, and none would be, and neither Major Kevin Nasypany nor anyone else at NEADS or NORAD had passed along shootdown authority to the fighter pilots from Otis or Langley. As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary. But Cheney’s comments revealed the depths of confusion, misinformation, and chaos52 at the highest levels of the U.S. government fully two hours after the crisis began.

  As fighters patrolled the skies over the United States, it remained unknown whether the ground stop ordered by the FAA’s Ben Sliney had interrupted plans for more attacks. One plane that raised questions was United Flight 23, seventh in line for takeoff53 from John F. Kennedy International Airport, bound for Los Angeles, when flights were halted.

  Aviation and law enforcement officials told reporters that when the captain announced over the intercom that they were returning to the gate, four young men sitting in first class who appeared to be Middle Eastern became agitated, stood, and consulted one another. They reportedly refused flight attendants’ orders to return to their seats. When the plane reached the gate, the men apparently bolted before they could be questioned.

  Flight dispatcher Ed Ballinger, who’d sent one of his cockpit intrusion warnings to United Flight 23, said he was told a similar story54 about the passengers’ strange behavior by airline officials. In that version, the men initially refused to get off the plane. In either case, federal officials never commented publicly about the incident.

  Any possible threat in the air ended by shortly after noon.55 Ev
ery one of the thousands of planes ordered to land at the nearest airport had done so without incident, an extraordinary feat of coordination by air traffic controllers, pilots, and airport officials. Thirty-eight of those planes landed in the tiny community of Gander, Newfoundland, where they deposited nearly seven thousand passengers and crew members from more than a hundred countries, plus seventeen dogs and cats.56 An outpouring of kindness, hospitality, and generosity from the people of Gander became a bright spot on a dark day.

  As the skies cleared, the FAA and NEADS established an open conference call that would be named the Domestic Events Network. From that moment on, it would operate around the clock, seven days a week, never to be interrupted to this day. As one investigator put it, its creation acknowledged the fact that the FAA never notified the nation’s military air defenders at NORAD, NEADS, or anywhere else of “any of the four hijacked flights57 in time to enable them to respond to the threat before the planes crashed.”

  The most notice given to Major Kevin Nasypany and his team at NEADS was eight minutes before American Flight 11 hit the North Tower. They had less than four minutes’ notice about American Flight 77, and they were told that it was missing, not hijacked. NEADS was notified about United Flight 175 only eleven seconds before it hit the South Tower. The U.S. military’s guardians of the sky received no advance warning and had no knowledge of United Flight 93 before it crashed.

  In the aftermath, some high-ranking military and political leaders made bold claims,58 in testimony to Congress and statements to the media, in which they suggested that fighter jets were close to shooting down hijacked jets. Those statements were false.

  No one could say with certainty which passengers and crew members spearheaded the counterattack on United Flight 93. Phone conversations and personal histories strongly suggested that Tom Burnett, Jeremy Glick, and Todd Beamer were among the leaders. As a bold man who’d wrestled a gun from a mugger, cracked heads on rugby fields, and run with the bulls in Pamplona, Mark Bingham seemed likely to have been among the rebels.

  Yet they weren’t the only fighters on Flight 93. Joey Nacke had a Superman tattoo on his muscular shoulder for a reason. Toshiya Kuge, Richard Guadagno, William Cashman, and Joe Driscoll didn’t make phone calls announcing their intentions, but they weren’t men who shied from battle. If they had retaken the cockpit, licensed pilot Donald Greene could have been relied upon to grab the controls, presumably helped by former air traffic controller Sonny Garcia. Flight attendant Sandy Bradshaw could have called her pilot husband, Phil, to guide them to the ground. Sandy had ended her last call to Phil by saying she needed to go because “everyone” was running up to first class.

  Sandy wasn’t the only woman on board with a brave streak. CeeCee Lyles, desperate to return to her family, had mastered an advanced survival course as a police detective. At the end of her final phone conversation with her husband, Lorne, she said: “We’re ready to do it now.” After Lorne heard a loud boom and raised voices, CeeCee had yelled: “Okay, baby! It’s happening! It’s happening now!”59 Honor Elizabeth “Lizz” Wainio’s last words to her stepmother, Esther Heymann, suggested that she’d be somewhere close to the action: “They’re getting ready to break into the cockpit. I have to go. I love you. Goodbye.”

  Others among the passengers and crew members didn’t have their last thoughts or words preserved during phone calls, or didn’t mention the counterattack. Some might have been killed or incapacitated earlier. But they are no less worthy of tributes: Christian Adams, Lorraine G. Bay, Alan Anthony Beaven, Deora Frances Bodley, Marion R. Britton, Georgine Rose Corrigan, Patricia Cushing, Jason M. Dahl, Joseph DeLuca, Edward Porter Felt, Jane C. Folger, Colleen L. Fraser, Kristin Osterholm White Gould, Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas, Wanda Anita Green, Linda Gronlund, LeRoy Homer Jr., Hilda Marcin, Waleska Martinez, Nicole Carol Miller, Donald Arthur Peterson, Jean Hoadley Peterson, Mark David Rothenberg, Christine Ann Snyder, John Talignani, and Deborah Jacobs Welsh.

  The forty heroes of Flight 93 couldn’t save themselves. They couldn’t return home to their loved ones. But they were all that stood between the hijackers and the destruction of the U.S. Capitol or the White House. All deserved to be honored and remembered as civilians turned combatants, the saviors of countless lives during the first battle of a new war. If there is a heaven, Lizz Wainio’s grandmothers were waiting there to greet every last one.

  Late in the afternoon, President Bush returned to Washington, D.C., after a brief stop at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, home of the U.S. Strategic Command.

  After landing at Andrews Air Force Base, he flew to the White House aboard the Marine One helicopter. The pilot stayed low and zigzagged, in case a terrorist on the ground had a shoulder-launched missile. The short trip gave Bush a clear view of the Pentagon. To no one in particular, the president said: “The mightiest building in the world60 is on fire. This is the face of war in the twenty-first century.”

  Later, wearing a dark suit and a gray tie fit for mourning, Bush appeared on television seated at his Oval Office desk. The time was 8:30 p.m., twelve hours after American Flight 11 crew member Betty Ong first reported, “I think we’re being hijacked.” In a somber tone, his fingers knitted together as though in prayer, Bush expressed sympathy for the dead and their loved ones; praise for first responders; faith in the nation and its military; trust in a higher power; and resolve to punish those responsible.

  Without his knowing it, his address echoed the closing line of President Grover Cleveland’s speech a century earlier at the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. Bush said: “America was targeted for attack because we’re the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.”61

  Later that night, the president wrote in his diary:62 “The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today. . . . We think it’s Osama bin Laden.”

  By the time darkness crept across the country, some one hundred fifty fighter jets63 patrolled over the United States. They dealt with numerous false alarms, but nothing else fell from the sky on September 11, 2001. The toll from inside the four hijacked planes stood at 246 men, women, and children, killed by nineteen suicide terrorists. Attention had shifted from the sky to the ground, where the terrible toll had yet to be tallied, and where smoke and ash still obscured extraordinary stories of heroism and sacrifice, survival and loss.

  Part II

  FALL

  To the Ground

  Chapter 11

  “We Need You”

  September 10, 2001

  Ron Clifford

  Ground Level, World Trade Center

  On the night of September 10, Ron Clifford paced anxiously inside the oversized master bedroom he’d converted into an office in his house in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, an affluent suburb of quiet streets lit day and night by flickering gas lamps.

  A native of Cork, Ireland, who’d spent two decades in the United States, at forty-seven Ron looked like everyone’s favorite priest: comfortably built, with gentle blue eyes, thinning blond hair, and wire-rimmed glasses. He had a storyteller’s warm voice, complete with Celtic lilt, and his mouth curled naturally into a smile. But on this night, Ron felt burdened by worry. The company for which he ran East Coast sales was hemorrhaging money.1 With an unforgiving home mortgage and a wife and daughter to support, Ron believed that his future depended on a high-stakes meeting he’d scheduled for the next day twenty miles away in Manhattan.

  Over and over again Ron checked his research and rehearsed the pitch he’d planned for a West Coast competitor in the field of Internet analytics, a business that helped companies understand how customers used their websites. Ron hoped to convince his rival to hire him and buy his bosses’ cash-strapped company. Seeking every edge, real or imagined, Ron found synchronicity in the meeting’s timing: Tuesday, September 11, would be his daughter Monica’s eleventh birthday. Another comfort was Ron’s confidence that he’d look every inch the desirable partner—several days earlier h
e’d called his elegant sister, Ruth Clifford McCourt, for a pep talk and fashion advice.

  Ron and Ruth’s bond was forged in their youth after a younger brother died in a motorcycle accident and their parents’ marriage crumbled. Ruth came to the United States at sixteen with their mother, while Ron and two other brothers stayed with their father in Ireland. When Ron followed, Ruth steered him to an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and later encouraged him to move to Boston to study architecture. For a time, they lived together in the Boston neighborhood of Brighton, supporting each other as Ron studied and Ruth built her career.

  Ruth was forty-five but looked a decade younger, a head-turning beauty with strawberry blond hair. She trained in London as a skin care specialist, then spent a decade running her own day spa and hair salon in the Boston suburb of Newton, Massachusetts. Now Ruth lived in a large waterfront home in New London, Connecticut, with her husband, David, owner of a gas distribution company, and their four-year-old daughter, Juliana, a sprite with her mother’s charm in miniature.

  Ruth and David had married six years earlier at the Vatican, a privilege that resulted from a celebrity favor trade with a local priest: Ruth introduced the priest to her friend and neighbor the actress Katharine Hepburn, and the priest arranged an audience with the pope. Ruth and Ron’s father, Valentine, died days before the wedding, so Ron read the toast he’d planned to give. Ruth gave Juliana the middle name Valentine.

  After Ron’s wife, Brigid, his sister, Ruth, was Ron’s closest confidante. Their families vacationed together, and rarely did more than a few days pass without Ron and Ruth talking by phone. In recent weeks, Ron, Brigid, and Monica had spent long summer days at Ruth’s house.