Spoken from the Heart

by Laura Bush

  By the time I had reached my motorcade, Flight 93 had crashed in a Pennsylvania field and the west side of the Pentagon had begun to collapse. Judd Gregg walked alone to the underground Senate parking garage and retrieved his car, the last one left there. He pulled out of the garage and headed home, across the Fourteenth Street Bridge and past the Pentagon, thick with smoke and flame.

  In the intervening years, Judd and I, and many others, were left to contemplate what if Flight 93 had not been forced down by its passengers into an empty field; what if, shortly after 10:00 a.m., it had reached the Capitol Dome?

  We arrived at the Secret Service building via an underground entrance and were escorted first to the director's office and then belowground to a windowless conference room with blank walls and a mustard yellow table. A large display screen with a constant TV feed took up most of one wall. Walking through the hallways, I saw a sign emblazoned with the emergency number 9-1-1. Had the terrorists thought about our iconic number when they picked this date and planned an emergency so overwhelming? For a while, I sat in a small area off the conference room, silently watching the images on television. I watched the replay as the South Tower of the World Trade Center roared with sound and then collapsed into a silent gray plume, offering my personal prayer to God to receive the victims with open arms. The North Tower had given way, live in front of my eyes, sending some 1,500 souls and 110 stories of gypsum and concrete buckling to the ground.

  So much happened during those terrible hours at the tip of Manhattan. That morning, as the people who worked in the towers descended, water from the sprinkler system was racing down the darkened stairwells. With their feet soaked, for some the greatest fear was that when they reached the bottom, the rushing water would be too high and they would be drowned. A few walked to safety under a canopy of skylights covered with the bodies of those who had jumped. Over two hundred people jumped to escape the heat, smoke, and flames. I was told that Father Mychal Judge, the chaplain for the New York City Fire Department, who had come to offer aid, comfort, and last rites, was killed that morning by the body of someone who had, in desperation, hurled himself from the upper floors of one of those towers.

  The early expectation was for horrific numbers of deaths. Manhattan emergency rooms and hospitals as far away as Dallas were placed on Code Red, expecting to receive airlifted survivors. Some fifty thousand people worked inside the towers; on a beautiful day, as many as eighty thousand tourists would visit an observation deck on the South Tower's 107th floor, where the vistas stretched for fifty miles. Had those hijacked planes struck the towers thirty or forty or fifty minutes later, the final toll might well have been in the tens of thousands.

  Inside Secret Service headquarters, I asked my staff to call their families, and I called the girls, who had been whisked away by Secret Service agents to secure locations. In Austin, Jenna had been awakened by an agent pounding on her dorm door. In her room at Yale, Barbara had heard another student sobbing uncontrollably a few doors down. Then I called my mother, because I wanted her to know that I was safe and I wanted so much to hear the sound of her voice. And I tried to reach George, but my calls could not get through; John Meyers, my advance man, promised to keep trying. I did know from the Secret Service that George had taken off from Florida, safe on board Air Force One. I knew my daughters and my mother were safe. But beyond that, everything was chaos. I was told that Barbara Olson, wife of Solicitor General Ted Olson, had been aboard the plane that hit the Pentagon. At one point, we also received word that Camp David had been attacked and hit. I began thinking of all the people who would have been there, like Bob Williams, the chaplain. Another report had a plane crashing into our ranch in Crawford. It got so that we were living in five-minute increments, wondering if a new plane would emerge from the sky and hit a target. All of us in that basement conference room and many more in the Secret Service building were relying on rumors and on whatever news came from the announcers on television. When there were reports of more errant planes or other targets, it was almost impossible not to believe them.

  George had tried to call me from Air Force One. It is stunning now to think that our "state-of-the-art" communications would not allow him to complete a phone call to Secret Service headquarters, or me to reach him on Air Force One. On my second call from the secure line, our third attempt, I was finally able to contact the plane, a little before twelve noon. I was grateful just to hear his voice, to know that he was all right, and to tell him the girls were fine. From the way he spoke, I could hear how starkly his presidency had been transformed.

  We remained in that drab conference room for hours, eventually turning off the repetitive horror of the images on the television. Inside, I felt a grief, a loss, a mourning like I had never known.

  A few blocks away, in the Chrysler offices near Pennsylvania Avenue, a group of White House senior staff began to gather. After the evacuation, some of those who were new to Washington had been wandering, dazed and shaken, in nearby Lafayette Park. By midafternoon, seventy staff members had congregated inside this office building, attempting to resume work, while Secret Service agents stood in the lobby and forbade anyone without a White House pass from entering. Key presidential and national security staff and Vice President Cheney were still sealed away in the small underground emergency center deep below the White House.

  As the skies and streets grew silent, there was a debate over what to do with George and what to do with me. The Secret Service detail told me to be prepared to leave Washington for several days at least. My assistant, Sarah Moss, was sent into the White House to gather some of my clothes. John Meyers accompanied her to retrieve Spot, Barney, and Kitty.

  Then we got word that the president was returning to Washington. I would be staying as well. Late in the afternoon, I spoke to George again. At 6:30 we got in a Secret Service caravan to drive to the White House. I gazed out the window; the city had taken on the cast of an abandoned movie set: the sun was shining, but the streets were deserted. We could not see a person on the sidewalk or any vehicles driving on the street. There was no sound at all except for the roll of our wheels over the ground.

  We drove at full throttle through the gate, and the agents hopped out. Heavily armed men in black swarmed over the grounds. Before I got out, one of my agents, Dave Saunders, who had been driving, turned around and said, "Mrs. Bush, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry." He said it with the greatest of concern and a hint of emotion in his voice. He knew what this day meant for us.

  I was hustled inside and downstairs through a pair of big steel doors that closed behind me with a loud hiss, forming an airtight seal. I was now in one of the unfinished subterranean hallways underneath the White House, heading for the PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, built for President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. We walked along old tile floors with pipes hanging from the ceiling and all kinds of mechanical equipment. The PEOC is designed to be a command center during emergencies, with televisions, phones, and communications facilities.

  I was ushered into the conference room adjacent to the PEOC's nerve center. It's a small room with a large table. National Security Advisor Condi Rice, Counselor to the President Karen Hughes, Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, and Dick and Lynne Cheney were already there, where they had been since the morning. Lynne, whose agents had brought her to the White House just after the first attack, came over and hugged me. Then she said quietly into my ear, "The plane that hit the Pentagon circled the White House first."

  I felt a shiver vibrate down my spine. Unlike the major monuments and even the leading government buildings in Washington, the White House sits low to the ground. It is a three-story building, tucked away in a downward slope toward the Potomac. When the White House was first built, visitors complained about the putrid scent rising from the river and the swampy grounds nearby. From the air, the White House is hard to see and hard to reach. A plane could circle it and find no plausible approach. And that is what Lynne Cheney told me h
ad happened that morning, a little past 9:30, before Flight 77 crossed the river and thundered into the Pentagon.

  At 7:10 that night, George strode into the PEOC. Early that afternoon, he had conducted a secure videoconference from Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska with the CIA and FBI directors, as well as the military Joint Chiefs of Staff and the vice president and his national security staff, giving instructions and getting briefings on the latest information. Over the objections of the Secret Service, he had insisted upon returning home. We hugged and talked with the Cheneys a bit. Then the Secret Service detail suggested that we spend the night there, belowground. They showed us the bed, a foldout that looked like it had been installed when FDR was president. George and I stared at it, and we both said no, George adding, "We're not going to sleep down here. We're going to go upstairs and you can get us if something happens." He said, "I've got to get sleep, in our own bed." George was preparing to speak to the nation from the Oval Office, to reassure everyone and to show that the president was safely back in Washington, ready to respond.

  By 7:30 we were on our way up to the residence. I have no memory of having eaten dinner--George may have eaten on the plane. He tried to call the girls as soon as we were upstairs but couldn't reach them. Barbara called back close to 8:00 p.m., and then George left to make remarks to the nation.

  We did finally climb into our own bed that night, exhausted and emotionally drained. Outside the doors of the residence, the Secret Service detail stood in their usual posts. I fell asleep, but it was a light, fitful rest, and I could feel George staring into the darkness beside me. Then I heard a man screaming as he ran, "Mr. President, Mr. President, you've got to get up. The White House is under attack."

  We jumped up, and I grabbed a robe and stuck my feet into my slippers, but I didn't stop to put in my contacts. George grabbed Barney; I grabbed Kitty. With Spot trailing behind, we started walking down to the PEOC. George had wanted to take the elevator, but the agents didn't think it was safe, so we had to descend flight after flight of stairs, to the state floor, then the ground floor, and below, while I held George's hand because I couldn't see anything. My heart was pounding, and all I could do was count stairwell landings, trying to count off in my mind how many more floors we had to go. When we reached the PEOC, I saw the outline of a military sergeant unfolding the ancient hideaway bed and putting on some sheets.

  At that moment, another agent ran up to us and said, "Mr. President, it's one of our own." The plane was ours.

  For months afterward at night, in bed, we'd hear the military jets thundering overhead, traveling so fast that the ground below quivered and shook. They would make one pass and then, three or five minutes later, make another low-flying loop. I would fall asleep to the roar of the fighters in the skies, hearing in my mind those words, "one of our own." There was a quiet security in that, in knowing that we slept beneath the watchful cover of our own.

  Waking the next morning, I had the sensation of knowing before my eyes opened that something terrible had happened, something beyond comprehension, and I wondered for a brief instant if it had all been a dream. Then I saw George, and I knew, knew that yesterday would be with us, each day, for all of our days to come.

  I put on a simple black shirt and gray slacks and went down to meet my staff. With the exception of Andi Ball and a few others, who were in their fifties, most were twenty-two or twenty-three years old. For many, it was their first adult job. Nearly all had been told yesterday to run for their lives and had literally kicked off their high heels and fled from the East Wing out the asphalt path toward Pennsylvania Avenue. Now they were being asked to come back to work in a building that everyone considered a target and for a presidency and a country that would be at war. That morning, they passed piles of strollers scattered across the lawn, left behind by tourists who had grabbed their children and fled the White House grounds.

  In the days that followed, plans were made to clear the street-side offices of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House, where much of the presidential and vice presidential staff worked. The building sits against a narrow sidewalk along a main cross street, and there were fears of a car or truck bomb pulling alongside and detonating. Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House had been closed since the Clinton administration. Huge concrete barriers had been erected to keep traffic from moving past the president's home.

  I wanted to start by reassuring my staff. The night before, I had asked Kathleene Card, a Methodist minister who is married to Andy Card, George's chief of staff, to come in to speak. She tried to quiet their fears. But it was difficult. It was difficult to awaken in this new world. We were all still moving on adrenaline, but with an overlay of anxiety. Would today bring something worse?

  After the latest security briefings, George left the White House for the Pentagon to inspect the damage. I traveled north through Washington to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where many of the injured from the Pentagon were being treated. I visited with the patients and spoke to the doctors and nurses. Those in the military understood that this was only the first wave. Walter Reed would no longer just be a place for veterans, or for active-duty troops to recover from severe training injuries, or for the few casualties from Kosovo. It would be transformed into the closest thing to a combat hospital on U.S. soil, ministering to the brutally injured from the coming war. And they knew that we were at war. George knew it too, had known it instantly, but for me, the realization was more gradual and the ramifications of just what war meant more elusive. Even when we knew that it was Osama bin Laden from the remote reaches of Afghanistan who was behind 9-11, I was still focused on the day-to-day needs of people here at home. How could I help them?

  That afternoon, White House staffers lined up in the Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to give blood. Already, overseas, American embassies were choked with flowers. By week's end, millions of people had paused for moments of silence; over 100,000 came to stand in remembrance in Ottawa, on Canada's Parliament Hill. Truck drivers stopped and blew their horns in unison all over Poland. In Berlin, 200,000 Germans marched in support of the United States. Israel, Ireland, South Korea, and many other countries held national days of mourning. In Great Britain, at Buckingham Palace, the queen's band played our national anthem during its changing of the guard, while in Paris, the newspaper Le Monde headlined we are all americans.

  The next morning, September 13, I had been asked to appear on all the major morning television shows. What I could think to offer were words of comfort, both to parents for their children and for the nation at large. I had already written two letters, one for middle and high school students and one for kids still in elementary school, about the tragedy. To the youngest children, I wrote, "When sad or frightening things happen, all of us have an opportunity to become better people by thinking about others. . . . Be kind to each other, take care of each other, and show your love for each other." And that is what I saw, in the footage showing the faces of rescue workers at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, in the eyes of the burned and injured Pentagon soldiers at Walter Reed and Washington Hospital Center, in the people who brought food to grieving neighbors and those who simply sat and grieved with them. I could feel us joined together as a nation.

  Some of the worst victims of the Pentagon attack had been brought to Washington Hospital Center, which has a state-of-the-art burn unit. On Thursday afternoon, George and I went to visit them. I was the first to enter the room of Lieutenant Colonel Brian Birdwell, who had suffered severe burns on his hands and his back. He was covered in white gauze. His wife was at his side, where she had been since he was brought to the hospital. I spoke with both of them, hugged her, and then said that "someone else" was waiting to see them. George walked into the room. He asked Lieutenant Colonel Birdwell how he was doing and told the Birdwells that he was very proud of them both. "You are my heroes," he said, and then George raised his hand to salute the injured soldier on the bed
. For almost half a minute, Lieutenant Colonel Birdwell worked to move his heavily bandaged hand to his head to return the salute. George would not break his salute until after the soldier was finished with his own. In the military, there is no higher sign of respect than for an injured officer to be saluted first by his commander. Then George hugged Mrs. Birdwell.

  At the World Trade Center, we still didn't know exactly how many were dead--initial reports had been in the tens of thousands--or if anyone else might be found alive.

  George had chosen Friday as a national day of prayer and remembrance for the victims of the 9-11 attacks, and we had scheduled a memorial service at Washington's National Cathedral, where less than nine months before George and I had gone for the wonderful celebratory prayer service on the day after his inauguration. There would be private family memorials in communities across the Northeast and in scattered spots around the rest of the country. But this was a time for all of us to mourn as a nation. I had selected a variety of speakers, Reverend Billy Graham to preach, Rabbi Joshua Haberman to read from the Book of Lamentations, and Imam Muzammil Siddiqi to offer verses from the Koran. Even Reverend Graham said he could not, to his own satisfaction, answer the question of why God would allow such tragedy and suffering. He added that he just had to accept that God "is a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering." When George spoke, he said, "We are here in the middle hour of our grief." He recalled those who died, having begun "their day at a desk or in an airport, busy with life." And he remembered the rescuers, "the ones whom death found running up the stairs and into the fires to help others." After the service, George flew north to visit the remains of the Twin Towers. When he returned, he told me of the incredible heart of the rescue workers and of the posters and homemade signs plastered across posts and buildings, made by people searching for missing family and friends in that week of hope. Those were the images we reflected on that night, people holding out every last shred of faith that the ones they loved might have been spared from this tragedy. Because we knew by then that it was not to be. The bodies of some had been consumed by an ocean of fire and ash, and their resting places were the wind, the river, and building niches across Manhattan.