BETTY ONG (on radio): The cockpit's not answering.
Somebody's stabbed in business class.
And, um, I think there is Mace.
That we can't breathe.
I don't know, I think we're getting hijacked.
WOMAN: Which flight are you on?
ONG: Boston to Los Angeles.
Hello?
MOHAMMED ATTA: Nobody move, everything will be okay.
If you try to make any moves,
you will injure yourself and the airplane.
Just stay quiet.
MAN: We have ah, a problem here.
We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York.
MAN 2: Is, is this real-world or exercise?
MAN 1: No, this is not an exercise, not a test.
(siren blares in distance)
(cameras clicking, people talking in background)
ARI FLEISCHER: September 11 unfolded from clear blue skies,
perfect, cool weather in Florida.
The president went for an early-morning jog.
MAN: How far did you go altogether?
Four-and-a-half.
Four-and-a-half miles?
I think so.
MICHAEL MORELL: I went down to get into the president's motorcade,
and it was on the ride from the hotel to the elementary school
that the first plane hit.
I remember Ari turning around in the van and saying,
"Michael, do you know anything about a plane
hitting the World Trade Center?"
DAN BARTLETT: We were just pulling up to the school
when the first tower had been hit.
He had a quizzical look on his face.
"Was it bad weather?"
You know, he was a pilot-- didn't make sense.
CHILDREN: More!
DANIELS: Yes, more! Get ready!
DANIELS: Yes, might! Get ready!
NARRATOR: While President Bush sat
in the Emma Booker Elementary School classroom
in Sarasota, Florida,
his staff was scrambling for information.
At just after 9:00 a.m.,
Chief of Staff Andy Card interrupted the reading.
The teacher told the students to take out their books,
and I whispered into his right ear:
"A second plane hit the second tower.
America is under attack."
FLEISCHER: So I wrote on the back of a yellow legal pad,
"Don't say anything yet."
I put my back to the press corps
and I flashed the card to the president.
He made one of those little nods like that.
MAN: Thank you, press-- if you can step out the door
MAN 2: Mr. President,
are you aware of the reports of the plane crash in New York?
We'll talk about it later.
MAN 1: Thank you, all-- if you could step out
the door we came in.
FLEISCHER: And then we got the press out of the room
where the reading was being done,
assembled in the holding room.
♪ ♪
BARTLETT: Immediately, we have
what is commonly called "the fog of war."
FLEISCHER: As the president's on a secure phone,
the rest of us are working our phones,
trying to figure out what we can figure out,
starting to work on a statement for the president to deliver.
It was controlled chaos in that room,
and it was information gathering
under immense, immense pressure.
WOMAN (on phone): I saw a large plane, a jet,
go immediately headed directly into the World Trade Center.
It, it just flew into it, into the-- into the other tower,
coming from south to north.
I watched the planes fly into the World Trade Center.
REPORTER: We're just getting initial reports of that.
And again, we must tell you
that we're trying to get as much information,
but it is trickling in.
NARRATOR: After a brief televised address,
Bush and his entourage sped toward the Sarasota airport.
(sirens blaring, horns beeping)
Normally, a motorcade goes, like, 40 miles an hour.
We got on the highway, and we were doing
85 miles an hour.
Little was said.
NARRATOR: In the car,
Bush learned a third plane had been hijacked,
and flown into the Pentagon.
The phone rang.
And the president picked it up and began talking.
And I could only hear one side of the conversation,
but I knew it was bad when he said, "Is Rumsfeld alive?"
MORELL: We got back to the airport,
and I remember seeing Air Force One
ringed by Secret Service agents with automatic weapons visible.
And I had never seen that before.
I remember getting on the plane,
and I remember the plane taking off
much more rapidly than it usually took off
and ascending at a very steep angle.
FLEISCHER: The president wanted to get back to Washington.
He thought it was important for the nation
to see the president back in Washington.
At the same time, it was the last thing
the Secret Service would ever want to happen.
RICHARD CLARKE: We did not want to bring the president back
into what, frankly, was a war zone.
There were F-15s circling the White House,
armored vehicles, like tanks.
The Pentagon had blown up.
Most of the city had been evacuated.
We didn't know what was yet to happen.
The White House might be a target
for such an airplane attack.
Everybody back.
NARRATOR: In the president's absence from Washington,
Vice President Dick Cheney assumed operational control
of the federal government
from a secret bunker under the White House,
where he was patched through to Air Force One.
JOSHUA BOLTEN: There were several occasions when the vice president
was talking to the president, and they got cut off.
The communications were, were frustratingly primitive.
NARRATOR: Straining to hear each other,
Bush and Cheney discussed what to do
with planes still in the air,
some of which were not communicating
with ground control.
Bush directed Cheney to ground every flight
in U.S. airspace.
But one plane did not heed the order.
BOLTEN: United Flight 93 was not responding to communications
and was now headed toward Washington, DC.
NARRATOR: After consulting with Cheney,
Bush authorized fighter jets to shoot down United Flight 93.
BOLTEN: It was quiet around the table,
because everybody appreciated the gravity of that moment.
We were dispatching the U.S. military
to shoot down a civilian aircraft
loaded with innocent Americans.
MAN (on radio): The region commander has declared
that we can shoot down aircraft that do not respond
to our directions-- copy that?
MAN 2: Copy that, sir.
MAN 3: Vice president has cleared.
BOLTEN: We didn't hear anything about what happened to it
for some time,
until eventually, we heard that it turned out
that it was a bunch of brave American civilians
who, who brought that plane down on their own.
NARRATOR: Although the president insisted on returning to Washington,
the Secret Service remained adamant
that it was not yet safe.
After a brief stop to refuel in Louisiana,
Air Force One, flying at 45,000 feet
and zig-zagging to avoid a possible missile attack,
headed for Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska.
CLARKE: We put him in one of the most secure places we could,
the headquarters of Strategic Command.
We had a video set up so that we could talk to him,
and we could see him walking into the bunker.
Very determined.
He sat down, and before anybody could say anything,
he looked at us, up on the TV screens,
and said, "I am coming back to Washington.
"Don't argue with me.
I'm coming back-- now!"
NARRATOR: By 4:30 p.m.,
Air Force One was headed back to Washington.
BARTLETT: I'll never forget the images--
arriving into DC airspace on Air Force One,
with two fighter jets so close to our wings,
you could see the stubble of the beard of the pilot.
And then to look down on our nation's capital,
and it just be deserted,
and seeing smoke billowing out of the Pentagon.
You could have heard a pin drop on that airplane.
In all the chaos, it was eerily silent.
(people talking in background)
NARRATOR: Finally back at the White House,
Bush and his team readied the most important speech
of his presidency so far,
which he would deliver to the nation that night.
BARTLETT: There was a lot of debate internally
about what was the appropriate message.
It was certainly clear to President Bush
that his presidency was fundamentally altered
on that day.
WOMAN: Two minutes.
♪ ♪
BUSH: Today our fellow citizens, our way of life--
our very freedom--
came under attack
in a series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts.
NARRATOR: Midway through the speech,
Bush made a statement that would lay the groundwork
for a sweeping war on terror,
shifting the course of American foreign policy
and defining his presidency.
We will make no distinction
between the terrorists who committed these acts
and those who harbor them.
NARRATOR: In the span of just over 12 hours,
a president who had been scorned as inexperienced and unprepared,
overshadowed by his father,
and unappreciated by the country,
had been thrust into a crisis
the likes of which few presidents had ever faced.
FLEISCHER: He became a war president, as he would put it.
The nation rallied because we were attacked,
but I think the nation also had question marks
about its nine-month-long president at that point.
Who are you?
What will you do?
♪ ♪