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Subject: Crisis Preparation, Coordination, Delegation, Decisiveness, Communication, Teamwork & Leadership - 911 Example
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 13:49:28 +1100
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Crisis Preparation, Coordination, Delegation, Decisiveness, Communication,
Teamwork & Leadership - 911 Example
----- Original Message -----
From: M G G Pillai
To:
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 11:34 AM
Subject: WP: America's chaotic road to war (fwd)
> WASHINGTON POST
>
> America's Chaotic Road to War
>
> Bush's Global Strategy Began to Take Shape in First Frantic Hours
> After Attack
>
> By Dan Balz and Bob Woodward
> Washington Post Staff Writers
> Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A01
>
> First in a series
>
> Tuesday, September 11
>
> Shortly after 9:30 p.m., President Bush brought together his most
> senior national security advisers in a bunker beneath the White
> House grounds. It was just 13 hours after the deadliest attack on
> the U.S. homeland in the country's history.
>
> Bush and his advisers sat around a long table in the conference
> room of the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, or PEOC.
> Spare and cramped, the bunker was built to withstand a nuclear
> attack, with sleeping berths and enough food for a few people to
> survive for several days.
>
> "This is the time for self-defense," he told his aides, according
> to National Security Council notes. Then, repeating the vow he
> had made earlier in the evening in a televised address from the
> Oval Office, he added: "We have made the decision to punish
> whoever harbors terrorists, not just the perpetrators."
>
> Their job, the president said, was to figure out how to do it.
>
> That afternoon, on a secure phone on Air Force One, Bush had
> already told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that he would
> order a military response and that Rumsfeld would be responsible
> for organizing it. "We'll clean up the mess," the president told
> Rumsfeld, "and then the ball will be in your court."
>
> Intelligence was by now almost conclusive that Osama bin Laden
> and his al Qaeda network, based in Afghanistan, had carried out
> the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the
> aides gathered in the bunker-the "war cabinet" that included
> Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, national security adviser
> Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and CIA
> Director George J. Tenet-were not ready to say what should be
> done about them. The war cabinet had questions, no one more than
> Rumsfeld.
>
> Who are the targets? How much evidence do we need before going
> after al Qaeda? How soon do we act? While acting quickly was
> essential, Rumsfeld said, it might take up to 60 days to prepare
> for major military strikes. And, he asked, are there targets that
> are off-limits? Do we include American allies in military
> strikes?
>
> Rumsfeld warned that an effective response would require a wider
> war, one that went far beyond the use of military force. The
> United States, he said, must employ every tool
> available-military, legal, financial, diplomatic, intelligence.
>
> The president was enthusiastic. But Tenet offered a sobering
> thought. Although al Qaeda's home base was Afghanistan, the
> terrorist organization operated nearly worldwide, he said. The
> CIA had been working the bin Laden problem for years. We have a
> 60-country problem, he told the group.
>
> "Let's pick them off one at a time," Bush replied.
>
> The president and his advisers started America on the road to war
> that night without a map. They had only a vague sense of how to
> respond, based largely on the visceral reactions of the
> president. But nine nights later, when Bush addressed a joint
> session of Congress, many of the important questions had been
> answered.
>
> Meeting in secret, often several times each day, Bush and his
> advisers deliberated, debated and ultimately settled on a
> strategy that is still emerging, an unconventional and risky
> worldwide war against terrorism. This series of articles is an
> inside account of what happened from Sept. 11 to Sept. 20, based
> on interviews with the principals involved in the
> decision-making, including the president, the vice president and
> many other key officials inside the administration and out. The
> interviews were supplemented by notes of NSC meetings made
> available to The Washington Post, along with notes taken by
> several participants.
>
> This contemporaneous account is inevitably incomplete. The
> president, the White House staff and senior Cabinet officers
> responded in detail to questions and requests. But some matters
> they refused to discuss, citing national security and a desire to
> protect the confidentiality of some internal deliberations.
>
> 6:30 a.m.
>
> The President in Florida: Disbelief and Determination
>
> President Bush rose early the morning of Sept. 11, and went for a
> four-mile run around the golf course at the Colony Beach and
> Tennis Resort on Longboat Key, Fla., where he was staying.
>
> On Bush's schedule that day was what White House aides call a
> "soft event"-reading to about 16 second-graders in Sandra Kay
> Daniels's class at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in
> Sarasota. The night before, Bush had dined with his brother,
> Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former governor Bob Martinez and other
> state Republicans. It was a relaxed evening, full of joking and
> talk about politics, including some handicapping of Jeb Bush's
> possible opponents in his 2002 reelection campaign.
>
> Bush's motorcade left for the school at 8:30 a.m. As it was
> arriving, pagers and cell phones alerted White House aides that a
> plane had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Bush
> remembers senior adviser Karl Rove bringing him the news, saying
> it appeared to be an accident involving a small, twin-engine
> plane.
>
> In fact it was American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 out of
> Boston's Logan International Airport. Based on what he was told,
> Bush assumed it was an accident.
>
> "This is pilot error," the president recalled saying. "It's
> unbelievable that somebody would do this." Conferring with Andrew
> H. Card Jr., his White House chief of staff, Bush said, "The guy
> must have had a heart attack."
>
> That morning the president's key advisers were scattered. Cheney
> and Rice were at their offices in the West Wing. Rumsfeld was at
> his office in the Pentagon, meeting with a delegation from
> Capitol Hill. Powell had just sat down for breakfast with the new
> president of Peru, Alejandro Toledo, in Lima. Tenet was at
> breakfast with his old friend and mentor, former senator David
> Boren (D-Okla.), at the St. Regis Hotel, three blocks from the
> White House. Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the Joint
> Chiefs of Staff, was halfway across the Atlantic on the way to
> Europe. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was bound for
> Milwaukee. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, on the job for
> just a week, was in his office at FBI headquarters on
> Pennsylvania Avenue.
>
> At 9:05 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175, also a Boeing 767,
> smashed into the South Tower of the trade center. Bush was seated
> on a stool in the classroom when Card whispered the news: "A
> second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack."
>
> Bush remembers exactly what he thought: "They had declared war on
> us, and I made up my mind at that moment that we were going to
> war."
>
> A photo shows Bush's face with a distant look as he absorbed what
> Card had said. He nodded and resumed his conversation with the
> class. "Really good," he said before excusing himself and
> returning to the holding room. "These must be sixth-graders."
>
> 9:30 a.m.
>
> The Secretary of State in Peru: 'Go Tell Them We're Leaving'
>
> In Lima, Powell abruptly ended his breakfast with the Peruvian
> president after getting word of the second strike on the trade
> center and made plans to return to Washington. "Get the plane,"
> he told an assistant. "Go tell them we're leaving." He had a
> seven-hour flight, with poor phone connections, ahead of him.
>
> At the St. Regis Hotel, aides hurriedly approached Tenet's table
> next to a window overlooking K Street. "Mr. Director, there's a
> serious problem," one of them said.
>
> Through much of the summer, Tenet had grown increasingly troubled
> by the prospect of a major terrorist attack against the United
> States. There was too much chatter in the intelligence system and
> repeated reports of threats were costing him sleep. His friends
> thought he had become obsessed. Everywhere he went, the message
> was the same: Something big is coming. But for all his fears,
> intelligence officials could never pinpoint when or where an
> attack might hit.
>
> "This has bin Laden all over it," Tenet said to Boren. "I've got
> to go."
>
> He had another reaction in the first few minutes, one that raised
> the possibility that the FBI and the CIA had not done all that
> they could to prevent the terrorist attacks from taking place.
>
> "I wonder," Tenet was overheard to say, "if it has anything to do
> with this guy taking pilot training." He was referring to
> Zacarias Moussaoui, who had been detained in August after
> attracting suspicion when he sought training at a Minnesota
> flight school.
>
> Moussaoui's case was very much on Tenet's mind. The previous
> month, the FBI had asked the CIA and the National Security Agency
> to run phone traces on Moussaoui, already the subject of a
> five-inch-thick file in the bureau.
>
> At 9:30 a.m. the president appeared before television cameras,
> describing what had happened as "an apparent terrorist attack"
> and "a national tragedy." He appeared shaken, and his language
> was oddly informal. He would chase down, he said, "those folks
> who committed this act."
>
> Bush also said, "Terrorism against our nation will not stand." It
> was an echo of "This will not stand," the words his father,
> President George H.W. Bush, had used a few days after Iraq
> invaded Kuwait in August 1990-in Bush's opinion, one of his
> father's finest moments.
>
> "Why I came up with those specific words, maybe it was an echo
> from the past," Bush said in an interview last month. "I don't
> know why. . . . I'll tell you this, we didn't sit around
> massaging the words. I got up there and just spoke."
>
> 9:32 a.m.
>
> The Vice President in Washington: Underground, in Touch With Bush
>
> Secret Service agents burst into Cheney's West Wing office.
> "Sir," one said, "we have to leave immediately." Radar showed an
> airplane barreling toward the White House.
>
> Before Cheney could respond, the agents grabbed the vice
> president under his arms-nearly lifting him off the ground-and
> propelled him down the steps into the White House basement and
> through a long tunnel that led to the underground bunker.
>
> Meanwhile, American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 that had
> taken off from Dulles International Airport, turned away from the
> White House and flew back across the Potomac River, slamming into
> the Pentagon at 9:39 a.m.
>
> In the tunnel below the White House, Cheney stopped to watch a
> television showing the smoke billowing out of the World Trade
> Center towers, heard the report about the plane hitting the
> Pentagon and called Bush again. Other Secret Service agents
> hustled Rice and several other senior White House officials
> included in an emergency contingency plan into the bunker with
> the vice president.
>
> Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, summoned by the White
> House to the bunker, was on an open line to the Federal Aviation
> Administration operations center, monitoring Flight 77 as it
> hurtled toward Washington, with radar tracks coming every seven
> seconds. Reports came that the plane was 50 miles out, 30 miles
> out, 10 miles out-until word reached the bunker that there had
> been an explosion at the Pentagon.
>
> Mineta shouted into the phone to Monte Belger at the FAA:
> "ன்'Monte, bring all the planes down." It was an unprecedented
> order-there were 4,546 airplanes in the air at the time. Belger,
> the FAA's acting deputy administrator, amended Mineta's directive
> to take into account the authority vested in airline pilots.
> "We're bringing them down per pilot discretion," Belger told the
> secretary.
>
> "[Expletive] pilot discretion," Mineta yelled back. "Get those
> goddamn planes down."
>
> Sitting at the other end of the table, Cheney snapped his head
> up, looked squarely at Mineta and nodded in agreement.
>
> Over the Atlantic, Shelton ordered his plane to return to
> Washington. But he couldn't get approval from air traffic
> controllers, who were diverting all planes, even the one used by
> the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was ready to defy
> the controllers, figuring it was easier to ask later for
> forgiveness, when his deputy called to say he had obtained the
> necessary clearance.
>
> In his Pentagon office, Rumsfeld felt the huge building shudder.
> He looked out his window, then rushed out toward the smoke,
> running down the steps and outside where he could see pieces of
> metal strewn on the ground. Rumsfeld began helping with the
> rescue efforts until a security agent urged him to get out of the
> area. "I'm going inside," he said, and took up his post in the
> National Military Command Center, the Pentagon war room.
>
> Pentagon officials ordered up the airborne command post used only
> in national emergencies. They sent up combat air patrols in the
> Washington area and a fighter escort for Air Force One. They also
> ordered AWACs radar and surveillance planes airborne along the
> East Coast and, fearing another round of attacks, along the West
> Coast as well.
>
> Commanders worldwide were ordered to raise their threat alert
> status four notches to "Delta," the highest level, to defend U.S.
> facilities. Rumsfeld raised the defense condition-signaling U.S.
> offensive readiness-to DefCon 3, the highest it had been since
> the Arab-Israeli war in 1973. U.S. officials also sent a message
> to the Russians, who were planning a military exercise not far
> from Alaska, urging them to rethink their plans.
>
> After Bush's statement at Booker Elementary School, his motorcade
> raced back to Sarasota Bradenton International Airport. As Bush
> boarded Air Force One, a Secret Service agent, showing a trace of
> nervousness, said, "Mr. President, we need you to get seated as
> soon as possible."
>
> The plane accelerated down the runway and then almost stood on
> its tail as it climbed rapidly out of the airport. It was 9:55
> a.m.
>
> 9:55 a.m.
>
> The Vice President in the Bunker: 'Should We Engage?' 'Yes.'
>
> Once airborne, Bush spoke again to Cheney, who said the combat
> air patrol needed rules of engagement if pilots encountered an
> aircraft that might be under the control of hijackers. Cheney
> recommended that Bush authorize the military to shoot down any
> such civilian airliners-as momentous a decision as the president
> was asked to make in those first hours. "I said, 'You bet,'ன்"
> Bush recalled. "We had a little discussion, but not much."
>
> Bush then talked to Rumsfeld to clarify the procedures military
> pilots should follow in trying to force an unresponsive plane to
> the ground before opening fire on it. First, pilots would seek to
> make radio contact with the other plane and tell the pilot to
> land at a specific location. If that failed, the pilots were to
> use visual signals. These included having the fighters fly in
> front of the other plane.
>
> If the plane continued heading toward what was seen as a
> significant target with apparently hostile intent, the U.S. pilot
> would have the authority to shoot it down. With Bush's approval,
> Rumsfeld passed the order down the chain of command.
>
> In the White House bunker, a military aide approached the vice
> president.
>
> "There is a plane 80 miles out," he said. "There is a fighter in
> the area. Should we engage?"
>
> "Yes," Cheney replied without hesitation.
>
> Around the vice president, Rice, deputy White House chief of
> staff Joshua Bolten and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief
> of staff, tensed as the military aide repeated the question, this
> time with even more urgency. The plane was now 60 miles out.
> "Should we engage?" Cheney was asked.
>
> "Yes," he replied again.
>
> As the plane came closer, the aide repeated the question. Does
> the order still stand?
>
> "Of course it does," Cheney snapped.
>
> The vice president said later that it had seemed "painful, but
> nonetheless clear-cut. And I didn't agonize over it."
>
> It was, "obviously, a very significant action," Cheney said in an
> interview. "You're asking American pilots to fire on a commercial
> airliner full of civilians. On the other hand, you had directly
> in front of me what had happened to the World Trade Center, and a
> clear understanding that once the plane was hijacked, it was a
> weapon."
>
> Within minutes, there was a report that a plane had crashed in
> southwestern Pennsylvania-what turned out to be United Flight 93,
> a Boeing 757 that had been hijacked after leaving Newark
> International Airport. Many of those in the PEOC feared that
> Cheney's order had brought down a civilian aircraft. Rice
> demanded that someone check with the Pentagon.
>
> On Air Force One, Bush inquired, "Did we shoot it down or did it
> crash?"
>
> It took the Pentagon almost two hours to confirm that the plane
> had not been shot down, an enormous relief. "I think an act of
> heroism occurred on board that plane," Cheney said. Later,
> reports of cell phone conversations before the plane crashed
> indicated that some passengers had fought with the hijackers.
>
> In a national emergency, a secret "continuity of government" plan
> is supposed to protect the country's constitutional leadership.
> It designates which officials should be taken to the underground
> bunker at the White House, which Cabinet members should be taken
> to secure locations, and where to move congressional leaders.
>
> Senior administration officials were given briefings on the
> procedures shortly after Bush was inaugurated and some had toured
> the White House bunker. But others who were told to go to the
> bunker Sept. 11 had no idea where to find it and still others who
> should have been on the list were left off until they received
> authorization. Some Cabinet security details initiated plans to
> protect and move agency officials; some did not.
>
> In the early confusion that day, there was a series of
> frightening but ultimately false reports: A plane was down near
> Camp David and another was down near the Ohio-Kentucky border; a
> car bomb exploded outside the State Department; an explosion near
> the Capitol, fires on the Mall and at the Eisenhower Executive
> Office Building; a plane heading at high speed toward Bush's
> ranch in Crawford, Tex.
>
> Secret Service agents ordered the White House and the Eisenhower
> Executive Office Building evacuated at 9:45 a.m., first telling
> staffers there to file out in an orderly way, then screaming at
> them to run as fast as they could across Pennsylvania Avenue to
> Lafayette Park on the other side. At one point, some women were
> told to remove their shoes so they could run faster. Some
> staffers were advised to remove the White House identification
> from around their necks so they couldn't be singled out by
> possible snipers outside the White House gates.
>
> Other than those officials taken by the Secret Service into the
> White House bunker, no one knew where to go, what to do or how to
> communicate with one another.
>
> In the bunker, conditions were not ideal. There were secure video
> links to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies
> and military installations, but no way to broadcast on television
> from the bunker, no way to link government officials to the
> public. For a time, no one could make the audio on the TV sets
> work.
>
> Capitol Hill was more chaotic. From the bunker, Cheney officially
> implemented the emergency continuity of government orders, which
> provided for evacuating the third and fourth in the line of
> presidential succession-Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert
> (R-Ill.) and the president pro tem of the Senate, Sen. Robert C.
> Byrd (D-W.Va.), who chose to go home. Other top leaders on
> Capitol Hill were forced to improvise. "We had no plan and we
> certainly had trained with no plan," said House Minority Leader
> Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).
>
> Capitol Police ordered an evacuation of the building shortly
> after the Pentagon was hit, but no one had instructions on where
> to go. Gephardt went to his home nearby. Senate Majority Leader
> Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) went to the Capitol Police
> headquarters near Union Station, then joined some of his staff at
> a nearby town house. Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.)
> also was taken to the police headquarters but decided it was
> unwise for the leaders to be clustered in a nonsecure facility.
> He asked to be taken to Andrews Air Force Base.
>
> Many cell phones weren't working because the system was
> overburdened. For more than an hour, Daschle's staff did not know
> where he was. Rank-and-file lawmakers didn't have guidance from
> their leaders or from Capitol Police. It was not until late in
> the morning or early in the afternoon that orders were given to
> remove Daschle, Lott, Gephardt and other members of the
> leadership to a secure location outside Washington.
>
> When they arrived for the trip at the West Front of the Capitol,
> Gephardt recalls an "unimaginable" scene: helicopters ringed by
> black-suited SWAT teams carrying automatic weapons, as other SWAT
> team members looked down from atop the Capitol.
>
> At the secure location outside Washington, there were too few
> phone lines for the congressional leaders. Communication with
> Cheney was frustrating. Coordinating with lawmakers left behind
> in Washington was difficult, sometimes contentious.
>
> Many members had drifted back to Capitol Police headquarters.
> Desperate for information, they set up a conference call with
> their sequestered leaders. During one call, a small group of
> House members demanded that the speaker order everyone back for a
> late-day session in the Capitol as a show of defiance. Over the
> speaker phone, Rep. Doug Ose (R-Calif.) said it would be an act
> of cowardice if lawmakers did not hold a session that day.
>
> The leaders agitated to get out of their bunker and back to
> Washington, but Cheney resisted. Terrorist threats persisted and
> there was no way to guarantee their security, he said. Sen. Don
> Nickles (R-Okla.) protested. We're a separate branch of
> government-why do we need the approval of the White House, he
> complained.
>
> "Don," the vice president replied, "we control the helicopters."
>
> Continue to Page Two
>
> 2002 The Washington Post Company
>
>
>
> America's Chaotic Road to War
>
> Bush's Global Strategy Began to Take Shape in First Frantic Hours
> After Attack
>
> By Dan Balz and Bob Woodward
> Washington Post Staff Writers
> Sunday, January 27, 2002; Page A01
>
> Continued From Page One
>
> 10:32 a.m.
>
> The President on Air Force One: 'Still a Threat to Washington'
>
> Cheney called Bush on Air Force One, on its way from Florida to
> Washington, to say the White House had just received a threat
> against the plane. The caller had used its code word, "Angel,"
> suggesting terrorists had inside information. Card was told it
> would take between 40 minutes and 90 minutes to get a protective
> fighter escort up to Air Force One.
>
> Bush told an aide that Air Force One "is next." He was in an
> angry mood. "We're going to find out who did this," he said to
> Cheney, "and we're going to kick their asses."
>
> Air Force One was still en route to Washington when Cheney called
> again at 10:41 a.m. This time, he urged Bush not to return.
> "There's still a threat to Washington," the vice president said.
> Rice agreed, and had told the president the same thing.
>
> There was little debate or discussion. Cheney was worried the
> terrorists might be trying to decapitate the government, to kill
> its leaders. Bush agreed.
>
> Within minutes, those on board the president's plane could feel
> it bank suddenly and sharply to the left, its course now westerly
> toward Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. It was within easy
> range, and once there food and fuel could be loaded and the
> president could have access to its more sophisticated
> communications systems.
>
> The threat to the plane turned out to be false. Someone inside
> the White House had heard a threat to Air Force One, perhaps in a
> phoned-in call, and passed it up the line using the code word
> "Angel." Others thought the threatening caller had used the code
> word. It took days for the incident to be sorted out and weeks
> before the White House publicly acknowledged it.
>
> As Air Force One headed to Barksdale, Russian President Vladimir
> Putin called the White House, seeking to speak with the
> president. Rice took the call instead. The Russian president told
> Rice the Russians were voluntarily standing down their military
> exercise as a gesture of solidarity with the United States.
>
> News reports portrayed Washington as shut down, the Capitol and
> the White House evacuated, federal agencies emptied out, the
> streets under patrol. In their underground bunker, Cheney and the
> others began to worry that the rest of the country and capitals
> around the world would assume that the U.S. government was not
> functioning.
>
> White House counselor Karen P. Hughes was at her home in
> Northwest Washington when she received a page telling her that
> "Angler" was trying to reach her. "Angler?" she wondered, before
> realizing it was the code name for the vice president, a devoted
> fly fisherman.
>
> Cheney asked her to begin working on a presidential statement
> that could be delivered as soon as Bush landed at Barksdale.
> Cheney's wife Lynne, who had been brought to the bunker by the
> Secret Service, and his counselor, Mary Matalin, also went to
> work on it.
>
> White House press secretary Ari Fleischer was drafting a
> statement on Air Force One as it neared Barksdale and called
> Hughes for consultation. One phrase drew an instant response.
> "This morning we were the victims of . . ." Fleischer read from
> the text.
>
> "Wait a minuteன்we aren't the victims of anything," Hughes
> interjected. "We may have been the targets, we may have been
> attacked, but we are not victims."
>
> Bush had insisted that he be the first to speak for the
> government. But his team in Washington grew increasingly
> frustrated with the time it would take for him to reach Barksdale
> and appear before the cameras. Hughes considered giving an
> interview to the Associated Press to reassure the public that the
> government was working. She tried to reach the president through
> the White House signal operator.
>
> "Ma'am, we can't reach Air Force One," the operator said.
>
> 11:45 a.m.
>
> The President in Louisiana: Reassuring a Nation
>
> Air Force One arrived at Barksdale, where it was immediately
> surrounded by military personnel wearing green fatigues, flak
> jackets and helmets, and bearing automatic weapons. Reporters
> were told they could say only that the president was at "an
> unidentified location in the United States."
>
> Bush soon spoke to his wife, first lady Laura Bush, who was in a
> secure location, for a second time that day and touched base with
> Cheney again.
>
> "I think it's important for the people to see the government is
> functioning, because the TV shows our nation has been blasted and
> bombed," the president told Cheney. "Government is not chaotic.
> It's functioning smoothly." He described the attackers as
> "faceless cowards" and said America had to prepare for "a new
> war" against this new enemy.
>
> By 12:16 p.m., the FAA command center reported that U.S. airspace
> had been cleared of all commercial and general aviation aircraft;
> only military and lifeguard flights were airborne. Twenty minutes
> later, according to the red digital clock in the conference room
> near the Barksdale base commander's office, Bush entered, looking
> grim. Reporters in the room noted that his eyes were red-rimmed.
> It had been more than three hours since Bush or any senior
> official had said anything publicly.
>
> When Bush finally appeared on television from the base conference
> room, it was not a reassuring picture. He spoke haltingly,
> mispronouncing several words as he looked down at his notes. When
> he got to the last sentence, he seemed to gain strength. "The
> resolve of our great nation is being tested," he said in even
> tones. "But make no mistake: We will show the world that we will
> pass this test."
>
> His remarks were fed by the media pool to the networks, causing a
> short delay before the nation could see the commander in chief.
> The entire statement consisted of just 219 words, and the
> president took no questions from reporters.
>
> Shortly after 1:30 p.m., Air Force One took off for Offutt Air
> Force Base in Nebraska, where there were secure facilities that
> would allow the president to conduct a meeting of his National
> Security Council in Washington over a video link.
>
> On the plane, Bush expressed his irritation over being away from
> the White House. "I want to go back home ASAP," he told Card,
> according to notes of the conversation. "I don't want whoever did
> this holding me outside of Washington."
>
> Some aides recall Bush saying he would return to Washington later
> in the day, unless there was some extraordinary new threat. The
> senior Secret Service agent aboard Air Force One told Bush the
> situation was "too unsteady still" to allow his return.
>
> "The right thing is to let the dust settle," Card said.
>
> As he was leaving Barksdale, Bush made another round of calls,
> including one to Rumsfeld expressing shock over the damage at the
> Pentagon. "Wow, it was an American airliner that hit the
> Pentagon," Bush said. "It's a day of national tragedy, and we'll
> clean up the mess, and then the ball will be in your court and
> Dick Myers's court to respond."
>
> Air Force General Richard B. Myers was slated to become the new
> chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in three weeks.
>
> 2:36 p.m.
>
> The President on Air Force One: A 'Comforting Call'
>
> En route to Offutt, the president reached his father on the
> phone. His aides left him alone in the cabin.
>
> "Where are you?" Bush recalled asking his father.
>
> The former president said he and his wife, Barbara, were in
> Milwaukee, on their way to Minneapolis.
>
> "What are you doing in Milwaukee?" the president inquired.
>
> "You grounded my plane," the former president said.
>
> It was, said Bush, "a comforting call."
>
> "I told him, 'We're going to be fine.' I said I knew exactly what
> we need to do, the team is functioning well."
>
> 2:50 p.m.
>
> The President in Nebraska: National Security Council Meets
>
> Air Force One landed at Offutt. Before leaving his plane, Bush
> repeated to his lead Secret Service agent, "We need to get back
> to Washington. We don't need some tinhorn terrorist to scare us
> off. The American people want to know where their president is."
>
> The president was driven the short distance to the U.S. Strategic
> Command headquarters and was ushered into the secure command
> center, a cavernous room with multi-story video screens and
> batteries of military personnel at computer terminals hooked into
> satellites monitoring activities around the globe. As Bush
> arrived, they were tracking a commercial airliner on its way from
> Spain to the United States. It was giving out an emergency
> signal, indicating it might be hijacked.
>
> Bush remembers a voice booming out from a loudspeaker. "Do we
> have permission to shoot down this aircraft?"
>
> "Make sure you've got the I.D.," the president responded. "You
> follow this guy closely to make sure."
>
> It was another false alarm.
>
> At 3:30 p.m. Bush convened the day's first meeting of his
> National Security Council; the others were piped in by secure
> video links from various command centers in Washington.
>
> CIA Director Tenet reported that he was virtually certain bin
> Laden and his network were behind the attacks. A check of the
> passenger manifests of the hijacked flights had turned up three
> known al Qaeda operatives on American Airlines Flight 77, which
> had struck the Pentagon.
>
> One of them, Khalid Al-Midhar, had come to the CIA's attention
> the previous year, when he traveled to Malaysia and met with a
> key al Qaeda suspect in the 2000 terrorist bombing of the USS
> Cole. The FBI had been informed about Al-Midhar and he had been
> put on a watch list, but he had slipped into the United States
> over the summer and the bureau had been looking for him since.
> Tenet said al Qaeda was the only terrorist organization in the
> world that had the capability to pull off such well-coordinated
> attacks. And, he said, intelligence monitoring had overheard a
> number of known bin Laden operatives congratulating each other
> after the strikes. He said information collected before Sept. 11
> but only now being processed indicated that operatives had
> expected something big. But none of it specified the day, time or
> place of the attacks in a way that would have allowed the CIA or
> FBI to preempt them.
>
> "Get your ears up," the president told Tenet and the others. "The
> primary mission of this administration is to find them and catch
> them."
>
> Cheney voiced concern that more hijacked planes could be out
> there.
>
> Tenet said that since all the attacks had taken place before 10
> a.m., that was probably it for the day but there was no way to be
> sure.
>
> FBI Director Mueller expressed concerns that investigators still
> did not know how the terrorists had penetrated airport security.
> Tenet said it was essential to know this before flights resumed.
>
> "I'll announce more security measures, but we won't be held
> hostage," Bush insisted. "We'll fly at noon tomorrow," he said,
> although it took three more days for commercial flights to resume
> and then only on a reduced schedule.
>
> Someone mentioned that New York officials had asked whether they
> should urge people to go back to work the next day, particularly
> those working in banks and the financial markets.
>
> "Terrorists can always attack," Rumsfeld said. "The Pentagon's
> going back to work tomorrow."
>
> People in New York should go back to work, the president said.
> "Banks should open tomorrow, too."
>
> Bush asked about coming back to Washington, although he had
> already told his traveling party that he would fly back
> immediately after the video conference. Cheney suggested the
> president return and make a statement at Andrews, but the Secret
> Service still insisted that it was not safe.
>
> "I'm coming back," Bush said.
>
> As the meeting was ending Bush said, "We will find these people.
> They will pay. And I don't want you to have any doubt about it."
>
> The American public had seen Bush only twice during the day, both
> times in less than ideal circumstances. In the White House
> bunker, Bush's advisers felt someone had to appear in public to
> provide information about what the government was doing to deal
> with the crisis.
>
> Cheney was the logical candidate, but one administration official
> said there were concerns that his appearance would remind people
> of then-Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, who on the day
> President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, came into the White
> House briefing room and declared, "As of now, I am in control
> here."
>
> Instead, Hughes was deputized to make a statement, which she did
> from the FBI building, since the Secret Service refused to allow
> the press into the White House briefing room. Hughes described a
> government still functioning, but took no questions.
>
> As Air Force One headed for Washington, the president placed a
> sympathy call to Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, whose wife,
> Barbara, had been killed in the plane that smashed into the
> Pentagon. Bush then conferred with Hughes. He wanted to make a
> short address to the nation that night from the Oval Office.
>
> The president's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, working from
> home, had e-mailed Hughes a rough draft, which she substantially
> reworked, based on her conversation with Bush.
>
> One sentence in the draft from Gerson read, "This is not just an
> act of terrorism. This is an act of war." That squared with what
> Bush had been saying all day, but he told Hughes to take it out.
> He was not ready to talk publicly about going to war.
>
> "Our mission is reassurance," Bush told her.
>
> "One of the things I wanted to do was, I wanted to calm nerves,"
> Bush said in the interview. "I wanted to show resolve, and I
> wanted the American people to know a couple of thingsன்one that
> this was an unusual moment, but that we will survive, and we'll
> win.
>
> "But I didn't want to add to the angst of the American people
> yet, I guess is a good way to describe that. I felt like I had a
> job as the commander in chief to first, not be warlike, but to be
> moreன்as good as I could to be firm, but to be as comforting as
> possible, in a very difficult moment for the country."
>
> Bush said in the interview that he was seeking to reassure the
> country "that I was safe . . . not me, George W., but me the
> president; reassuring that our government was functioning, and
> that we're going to take care of the American people; reassuring
> that those who did this would be brought to justice. In other
> words, there had to be some sense of balance in the speech. On
> the other hand, I also knew I had plenty of time to make warlike
> declarations, which happened the next morning."
>
> 6:34 p.m.
>
> The President in Washington: Formulating a Policy
>
> Air Force One landed at Andrews. On his way back to the White
> House, his Marine One helicopter flew over the Pentagon to give
> the president a first-hand look at the damage. At the White
> House, he went to the small study off the Oval Office to confer
> with Rice, Hughes, Card, Fleischer and others about the speech.
>
> Gerson had gone back to the campaign speech on national defense
> that Bush made in 1999 at The Citadel, in which he said that
> those who sponsored terrorism or attacks on the United States
> could count on a "devastating" response. In the draft text Gerson
> sent to Hughes that day, he had written, "We will make no
> distinction between those who planned these acts and those who
> permitted or tolerated or encouraged them."
>
> "That's way too vague," Bush complained, proposing the word
> "harbor" as an alternative. In final form, what the White House
> came to call the Bush Doctrine was put this way: "We will make no
> distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and
> those who harbor them."
>
> The declaration was a huge step for the administration. Although
> he had talked about the idea in the campaign and aides had been
> working for months on a new policy for dealing with al Qaeda,
> Bush had never enunciated his anti-terrorism policy as president.
> What he outlined that night from the Oval Office committed the
> United States to a broad, vigorous and potentially long war
> against terrorism, rather than a targeted retaliatory strike. The
> decision to state the policy that night was made without
> consulting most of his national security team, including Cheney
> and Powell.
>
> Rice asked whether he wanted to make that kind of far-reaching
> declaration in a speech designed mostly to reassure the nation.
> "You can say it now or you'll have other opportunities to say
> it," she told him.
>
> "What do you think?" he asked.
>
> She said she favored including it that night. First words matter
> more than almost anything else, she thought.
>
> "We've got to get it out there now," Bush said.
>
> Bush then went down into the White House bunker, where he gave
> his wife a hug and conferred with Cheney before going back
> upstairs to freshen up for the speech.
>
> Back in the West Wing, aides were still debating whether the
> president should make a firmer statement about America being at
> war. Hughes told them she was confident she knew where Bush stood
> on that issue but agreed to have it aired one more time. Her
> deputy, White House communications director Dan Bartlett, was
> given the assignment to speak to Bush directly.
>
> The president had just come out of the bedroom and was putting on
> a different necktie when Bartlett arrived. He told Bush he was
> carrying a proposed change to the text.
>
> "What?" Bush said. "No more changes."
>
> Bartlett showed him the proposed language.
>
> "I've already said no to that," Bush said.
>
> Bartlett returned to the West Wing. "Thanks," he said to Hughes.
> "You can take the message next time."
>
> Bush spoke for approximately seven minutes from the Oval Office.
> "A great people has been moved to defend a great nation," he
> said, closing with a statement of resolve. "America has stood
> down enemies before and we will do so this time. None of us will
> ever forget this day. Yet we go forward to defend freedom and all
> that is good and just in the world."
>
> At 9 p.m., Bush met with his full National Security Council,
> followed roughly half an hour later by the meeting with a smaller
> group of key advisers who would become his war cabinet.
>
> Powell, back in Washington from Peru, described the immediate
> diplomatic tasks: dealing with Afghanistan and its ruling
> Taliban, which harbored bin Laden, and neighboring Pakistan,
> which had closer ties to the Taliban regime than any other
> nation.
>
> "We have to make it clear to Pakistan and Afghanistan this is
> showtime," Powell said.
>
> "This is a great opportunity," Bush said, adding that the
> administration now had a chance to improve relations with other
> countries around the world, including Russia and China. It was
> more than flushing bin Laden out, he indicated.
>
> Cheney raised the military problem of retaliating against al
> Qaeda's home base, noting that in Afghanistan, a country
> decimated by two decades of war, it would be hard to find
> anything to hit.
>
> Bush returned to the problem of bin Laden's sanctuary in
> Afghanistan. Tenet said they must deny the terrorists that
> sanctuary by targeting the Taliban as well. Tell the Taliban
> we're finished with them, he urged.
>
> Discussion turned to whether bin Laden's al Qaeda network and the
> Taliban were the same. Tenet said they were. Bin Laden had bought
> his way into Afghanistan, supplying the Taliban with tens of
> millions of dollars.
>
> Rumsfeld said the problem was not just bin Laden and al Qaeda but
> the countries that supported terrorismன்the point of the
> president's address that night.
>
> "We have to force countries to choose," the president said.
>
> 11:08 p.m.
>
> The President at the White House: 'We Think It's Bin Laden'
>
> After the meeting had ended and Bush had returned to the
> residence, he and his wife were awakened by Secret Service
> agents. The agents rushed them downstairs to the bunker because
> of a report of an unidentified plane in the area. Bush was in
> running shorts and a T-shirt as he made his way down the stairs,
> through the tunnel and into the bunker. It proved to be a false
> alarm, and the Bushes returned to the residence for the rest of
> the night.
>
> Like his father, Bush tries to keep a daily diary of his thoughts
> and observations. That night, he dictated:
>
> "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today."
>
> "We think it's Osama bin Laden."
>
> "We think there are other targets in the United States, but I
> have urged the country to go back to normal."
>
> "We cannot allow a terrorist thug to hold us hostage. My hope is
> that this will provide an opportunity for us to rally the world
> against terrorism."
>
> Staff researchers Jeff Himmelman and Lucy Shackelford contributed
> to this report.
>
> 2002 The Washington Post Company
>
> ----------
>
>
