The 9/11 Machine

by Greg Enslen

  “Glad you’re awake, sir. I’m Doctor Rory. You had a pretty bad laceration on your head from the crash—it looked like there was some glass in the wound as well. Debris from the other helicopter must have come through the window and struck you in the head. It’s fine—it wasn’t a serious wound. You’ve also broken your left leg, probably from the landing. You’re all fixed up now.”

  “Good,” he answered. “Can I get some water?”

  She nodded and called outside of the small room. In a moment, Gore’s chief of staff entered, handing him a bottle of water.

  “You said the leg was broken?” Gore asked the doctor. “But it didn’t hurt that bad.”

  “Adrenalin,” the doctor answered. “It’s amazing—it masks the pain. You’re all splinted up now, and the head wound looks fine.”

  His chief of staff nodded. “Good. The meeting’s already started—you up for it?”

  The available members of the cabinet were videoconferencing. Gore nodded and climbed from the bed.

  Out in the hallway, he saw several armed soldiers between the infirmary and the larger press area, which was full of support staff and White House staff—there hadn’t been time to get the press onto Air Force One. Gore leaned on his crutch and gingerly made his way aft to the primary conference room.

  The screens were lit up, and several people were arrayed around the table. Vice President Joe Lieberman’s face took up one whole screen.

  “There you are,” the Defense Secretary said from his screen. “Good to see you, sir.”

  Gore nodded as the other members of his cabinet applauded lightly and wished him well. The president sat down heavily in a chair that an airman held out for him, leaning his crutch against the table.

  “No big deal—the helicopter got shot down, we crashed, I cut my head and broke my leg.”

  The room grew quiet as the president spoke, and he wondered if they were all thinking the same thing. Not only was this a coordinated attack, but the terrorists had anticipated his evacuation to Andrews Air Force Base and Air Force One and had set up a group of soldiers with automatic weapons and surface-to-air missiles, in an attempt to take him out as he fled to safety.

  “So what do we know so far?”

  The vice president cleared his throat—it sounded remarkably clear, considering he was in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) under the East Wing of the White House. “Well, it appears to have happened nearly as predicted, but three months later. There is still one plane in the air, unaccounted for, but we think it will be heading toward the White House or Capitol building.”

  Gore nodded. “Yes, it was over Maryland when I was landing. What happened to it? And what about the second World Trade Center plane?”

  “There was only one World Trade Center plane, so far,” Lieberman said, and on another monitor the scene from New York appeared. One of the Trade Center buildings was on fire, but the South Tower was undamaged. “While you were in the air, a plane crashed into the Pentagon—a large part of it is on fire.”

  President Gore looked at the monitors and noticed someone was missing. “Where are the Joint Chiefs?”

  “The video link into and out of the Pentagon appears to be down,” Lieberman said, looking at Gore. “They were on with us when the plane struck—it apparently hit the outer ring, western side, away from the river and the offices of the senior military staff. The broadcast center is under the innermost ring, so they should be broadcasting. They were on the air with us for a while, but then the connection was broken, so they’ve got people working on it now.”

  Gore nodded. “OK, so only one Trade Center building and the Pentagon—that makes two planes unaccounted for. What else do we know? Any planes in the vicinity of D.C., or Minnesota, or Fort Knox?”

  Some of the other cabinet members looked at him strangely, and he remembered that they were not all familiar with what he was talking about.

  Lieberman seemed equally surprised. “No other planes, sir.”

  “OK,” Gore answered. “We need to ground all FAA air traffic immediately, in case there are other planes. Make sure there’s nothing in the airspace around Fort Knox or the Mall of America in Minnesota.”

  On one of the other screens, the static disappeared, and a man in a military uniform appeared. His hair was disheveled.

  “Mr. President. Good to see you, sir.”

  Gore nodded. “You too, Anderson. What do you have for me?”

  The chairman of the Joint Chiefs straightened his uniform. “The situation here is under control—the fires are out, but they did burn a portion of the building. The plane impacted the southwest side of the outermost ring, near the helicopter pad.”

  The others nodded.

  “Reports are that it was a Boeing 757, but others are saying it was a missile. We’re working to confirm—”

  “Oh, no,” Gore heard someone say and looked at the other monitors. Lieberman was holding up his hand, his face as white as a sheet.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Lieberman said, his face ashen. “I’m just getting the information now, sir, about that missing plane over Maryland. It apparently has crashed in downtown Baltimore. The jets scrambled and forced the plane to turn, and the hijackers crashed it into the harbor area, near the football stadium. There was a football game going on at the time in the Baltimore stadium, a Ravens game. I haven’t gotten any more information than that, sir.”

  The room went quiet.

  “OK,” Gore said after a long moment. “The FAA has my orders—land every plane in U.S. airspace. All international flights approaching the United States need to be diverted and landed at non-sensitive airports or military bases, if necessary. I want every plane down, now. Scrambled jets are to force any planes down that don’t comply with the mandatory FAA grounding.”

  Lieberman nodded, then looked up at the screen. “What if they don’t land voluntarily? If it looks like the hijackers plan to crash into a target, are the jets authorized to shoot them down?”

  Gore sat back. This was one of those decisions he hated making. Such a loss of life…

  “No, don’t shoot any planes down. Just force them down. We have to protect the Capitol and any other major facilities or population centers, but I’m not going to make it worse by shooting down a plane full of innocent civilians.”

  The Pentagon spokesman spoke up. “Are you sure, sir?”

  Gore nodded. “Yes, I don’t want to make this situation even worse.”

  “But there may be more casualties.”

  “I know, but I’m not killing innocent Americans.”

  3.17

  The Patriot Act

  In the months that followed the Christmas Day attacks, the nation reeled at the loss of life in the four coordinated terrorist attacks. The lone Trade Center tower stood as a testament to its fallen compatriot, and the destruction at the Pentagon was more extensive than previously estimated. But it was the images of devastation and loss of life at the destroyed Baltimore Ravens stadium that became the primary image identified with the attacks.

  Spirits and the American psyche were buoyed when it was discovered that the passengers on the Baltimore plane had fought back—family members of the passengers had been able to speak to some of the passengers before the plane went down. Between the phone conversations and the knowledge that F-16s were chasing their aircraft, the passengers had decided to act. They’d coordinated their efforts and launched a counterattack on the hijackers, who were evidently all in the cockpit. The heroic passengers of United flight 93 had evidently not been able to breach the cockpit doors in time. The pilot, having been forced away from downtown D.C. by fighter jets, had crashed the plane into what must have been a pre-chosen secondary target, killing tens of thousands.

  But President Gore had remained calmly in control of the nation throughout the crisis, a steady hand at the wheel. Dr. Donald Ellis noted, along with many other people around the world, that President Gore seemed less inclined to go to war than other
wartime presidents in the nation’s history. Ellis couldn’t help but compare Gore to the other presidents he had known before, and Ellis quickly realized that he had made a serious mistake in attempting to predict Gore’s behavior.

  Gore took his time, gathering information about al Qaeda and the Taliban, not using any of the foreknowledge available to him or information about the other timelines to construct his case. The CIA and FBI gathered independent data over the next three months as the United States recovered from the staggering body blow inflicted upon it by a loosely-organized cabal of international terrorists. And the president was a diplomat, enjoying the goodwill that poured in from the rest of the world over the horrible Christmas attacks.

  In January 2002, Gore and Lieberman personally went in front of the assembled U.N. Security Council with information about the attacks. They showed that agents of al Qaeda had carried out the attacks and that the Afghanistan-based Taliban had provided them with safe haven. After a week of deliberations, the Security Council voted to allow the United States to invade Afghanistan.

  Also in January 2002, President Gore was agonizing over the passage of the Patriot Act. He knew that in the original timeline it had been passed into law in October 2001, six weeks after their attacks, but there were so many provisions in the Act that he was categorically opposed to. He met with Lieberman on several occasions to work out the final details.

  During one conference, they had been discussing the section on surveillance. “I still think we should improve airline safety,” Lieberman stated again as they worked through the pile of papers on the conference room table between them.

  Gore looked up at him.

  “Personal liberty and freedom. We mustn’t forget that this country was established on personal freedoms. I’m reluctant to expand the reach of wiretaps, and I’ve seen what can happen with the indefinite detentions. You read those Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib reports.”

  Lieberman nodded. “Disturbing to read about, even though none of that really happened. At least, not yet.”

  “It’s not going to happen,” Gore said. “Not on my watch.”

  Lieberman nodded, conceding the point. “But I still think we should increase border security, and I think upgrading the TSA with more scanners and inspectors is necessary.”

  Gore shook his head. “I don’t think more airport security is the answer. It’s intrusive, it’s unnecessary, and it treats each airline passenger as a potential terrorist. At the very least, it would make the people suspicious of their government. I won’t restrict flights or rework airline safety measures—I think it violates citizen’s personal rights.”

  Lieberman shook his head but held his tongue. Gore was the president, and he set the agenda. This version of the Patriot Act would leave out many of the provisions of the “original” bill that Lieberman had studied in depth. He just hoped that the U.S. government didn’t regret not flexing those additional powers.

  3.18

  Afghanistan

  The war in Afghanistan began shortly thereafter, and Gore threw the weight of the entire U.S. military behind it. Many, including Dr. Ellis, expected him to simply throw a few dozen missiles at the country, but Gore surprised many by sending ground forces into the country.

  The Taliban was defeated quickly, and Gore made the tactical decision to not build bases or establish any kind of military presence in Afghanistan. He’d read about his “predecessors” in the other timelines—they had become bogged down in lengthy, Vietnam-style wars that would last a decade, cost half a trillion dollars, and have no real or lasting impact on the world’s geopolitical scene.

  So Gore made his intentions known—he would invade, bring down the Taliban, put into place a temporary government, and then ask the U.N. peacemakers to step in and do the heavy lifting when it came to “nation-building,” a word that sounded promising to Gore but, in accounts from the other timelines, often became a synonym for intractable wars with no concrete resolution.

  But on Iraq, Gore overplayed his hand. He repeated the actions he’d taken to convince the U.N. to sanction the Afghan invasion, but in this case, he met a wall of opposition. When he presented proof of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and lobbied the U.N. for sanctions, the first step to bringing the nation down, he found fewer sympathetic ears. International sympathies were running out, and Gore couldn’t count on the world to support every American action.

  In the previous timeline, President Bush had used the bully pulpit and the military might of the most powerful nation on Earth to convince the world that the Taliban and Saddam Hussein needed to be removed.

  But Gore seemed reluctant to force the will of the American people on the rest of the world—it was as if he had decided that free will and the right for a country to determine its own destiny were of the ultimate importance. In many speeches, he came across as begging the world to help America deal with the threat in Iraq. In the eyes of some, President Al Gore was not an international leader, but a simpering salesman, cajoling the world to “do the right thing” and join his coalition of forces.

  April and May 2002 came and went, and President Gore was no closer to invading Iraq. He knew it needed to be done, that the Hussein threat would not simply go away, but he couldn’t bring himself to break from the world and unilaterally invade without the tacit approval of the U.N.

  Gore was convinced that he could sanction and embarrass Saddam Hussein into giving up his position, but it was not to happen. Slowly, he lost his influence with the rest of the world.

  Nations began to look away from the United States for direction, for advice. They stopped looking to the U.S. or the U.N. for permission to invade neighbors or run skirmishes along borders or seize boats on international waters.

  Pulling out of Afghanistan didn’t help the situation, either.

  Gore had assumed that routing the Taliban would be seen as a positive, and he had assumed that a new, moderate government would quickly form. But the nation, mired in two thousand years of invasions and infighting and tribal warfare, could not suddenly put in place a working government. The pullout of American forces on the last day of March 2002 had caused a massive power vacuum, and it was quickly filled by drug lords, Pakistanis with dreams of expanding their nation’s footprint, and a hundred low-level Taliban officials who had gone to ground and avoided capture by the Americans.

  Within days, Afghanistan was embroiled in a bloody civil war.

  It played out on the evening news, and every day, America’s failures seemed more obvious. What had seemed like a good idea—wipe out the Taliban, then allow the nation to self-determine its next course of action—had been woefully naïve.

  The nations of the world began to doubt the United States—doubt its military might and its resolve to defeat evil around the world. There was talk that the United States would simply abandon its aggressive verbal campaign against Saddam Hussein and the current government in Iraq.

  And, soon after, people and governments began to doubt the resolve of the Americans in supporting and protecting their best friend in the Middle East: Israel.

  In late May, when Iran began to threaten the sovereignty of Israel, Gore could not bring himself to make the hard decisions.

  It began with Israel making unscheduled and completely illegal flyovers of several locations in western Iran. To reach those locations, Israel had to overfly portions of Iraq, but carefully circumvented Saddam Hussein’s extensive anti-aircraft batteries. Iran had recently begun claiming they had reached the ability to process and create their own nuclear fuel. Israel couldn’t afford to let those centrifuges get operational, so they began covert flyovers to assess Iran’s nuclear capability. Israel had plenty of satellite access due to their close ties with the West, but low-altitude flyovers allowed them to do radiation counts from heights as low as 2,000 feet above the suspected facilities. By lowering sensitive Geiger counters from tow lines, the planes were able to establish baseline radioactive levels in and around the
facilities and to pinpoint the locations of Iran’s “research institutes.”

  These flights over two hostile nations were inherently dangerous. Israel carried out over a hundred before they had an incident. On June 20, 2002, one of the planes lost hydraulic pressure and crashed, breaking apart on impact. The pilot, Ganei Omer, parachuted to safety but was promptly captured by Iranian officials.

  From the wreckage of the plane (the towed radiation detection equipment had survived the crash) and the coerced confessions of the 22-year-old pilot, Iran proved that Israel was violating its airspace. Israel also flew over Iraqi and Iranian airspace on three more occasions as they worked to rescue the pilot.

  On the last unsuccessful rescue sortie, on June 24, an Israeli Air Force plane shot down three Iranian planes. The Iranian planes were older and slower, and one of the three happened to crash into a hospital, damaging the building and causing even more deaths.

  It was at this point that Gore made a critical mistake—he spoke out against Israel.

  After private consultations with Israeli leaders, he went on the record at a White House press conference as saying that Israel had been “out of line” in violating international law by flying illegal reconnaissance missions over Iran.

  Perhaps it was fear that motivated Gore, or perhaps his memories of that horrible Christmas day and the helicopter crash. His limp was still noticeable, and a cast was still on. The president hobbled to the podium, looking weak. He felt weak as well; weak, un-presidential, indecisive.

  But it didn’t seem to matter—there was nothing that he could do to go back and fix the Christmas attacks. Even with years of forewarning, he hadn’t been able to prevent them. With the foreknowledge, he had been able to mitigate the disaster somewhat—after Gore and the FBI had lost track of the hijackers, it had seemed prudent to assume that the Trade Center was still a target, and the number of people in the buildings had been reduced to a minimum. Because of this, portions of the North Tower of the World Trade Center had been empty on the day of the attacks. And because the hijackers had decided to only attack one of the World Trade Center buildings, the South Tower was spared and still stood in New York City.