President George W Bush
On the morning of September 11, President Bush was scheduled to visit Emma E. Booker Elementary School, Sarasota, Florida, for a photo opportunity for him to promote the passage of his education plan. He arrived at 8:55 and was aware of the first plane impact before he entered the school, believing it to have been a "horrible accident". White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who were both with the president at the time, recalled also believing the first impact to have been an accident. The principle of the school later recalled: "[The President] said a commercial plane has hit the World Trade Center, and we’re going to go ahead and go on, we’re going on to do the reading thing anyway."
Bush would later claim on several occasions that, while he was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, he "saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on, and I used to fly myself, and I said, 'There's one terrible pilot.' And I said, 'It must have been a horrible accident.' But I was whisked off there - I didn't have much time to think about it." A Bush spokesman later calls Bush’s repeated comments “just a mistaken recollection” - the only known footage of the first plane impact was not broadcast on television until later that day.
Bush was in the school classroom, just about to begin a reading of The Pet Goat with the children, when, at 9:05am, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card whispered in his ear that "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack." Bush then sat with the children reading for “for eight or nine minutes,” before getting up to leave. During this time, Bush's Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was in the back of the classroom holding a pad on which he had written "DON'T SAY ANYTHING YET." He tells the children, “Thank you all so very much for showing me your reading skills.” One student also asks Bush a question, and Bush gives a quick response on his education policy. A reporter asks, "Mr. President, are you aware of the reports of the plane crash in New York? Is there any..." This question is interrupted by an aide who has come into the room, saying, “All right. Thank you. If everyone could please step outside.” Bush then says, “We’ll talk about it later.”
The President then went into an empty classroom next door and to meet with his staff there. The Secret Service later tells the 9/11 Commission that while he is in the holding room at the Booker Elementary School, they are “anxious to move the president to a safer location, but did not think it imperative for him to run out the door.” The 9/11 Commission Report claimed that "No one in the traveling party had any information... that other aircraft were hijacked or missing. Staff was in contact with the White House Situation Room, but as far as we could determine, no one with the president was in contact with the Pentagon." At 9:29 he began his scheduled press conference in the library of the school, making his first public comments about the attack:
“Today we’ve had a national tragedy. Two airplanes have crashed into the World Trade Center in an apparent terrorist attack on our country.”
After the speech, at 9:34 Bush departed from the school in the presidential motorcade. En route, Bush learned of the Pentagon being hit, and receives a telephone call from Vice President Dick Cheney. At 9:43, the motorcade reached Sarasota airport where the president and his staff boarded Air Force One, which took to air at 9:56, with no fighter escort. According to a 9/11 Commission staff report, a second phone call between Bush and Cheney takes place shortly after takeoff, during which Bush authorizes the shoot-down of hijacked aircraft. Later, on hearing about the crash of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania, Bush asked "Did we shoot it down or did it crash?" The 9/11 Commission Report later said that confirmation from President to shoot down airplanes was not received until 10:25. Air Force One flew to Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, Louisiana.
Vice President Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney learned that the first plane had hit the first Tower shortly before 9:00. He later recalled being puzzled by the reports: “I was sitting there thinking about it. It was a clear day, there was no weather problem—how in hell could a plane hit the World Trade Center?”[27] But when he saw the second plane hit, "that’s what triggered the thought: terrorism, that this was an attack.".
Condoleezza Rice and Richard Clarke arrived in Cheney's office a few minutes later. Cheney told Clarke, “It’s an al-Qaeda attack and they like simultaneous attacks. This may not be over.” Rice asked Clarke for recommendations, and he said “We’re putting together a secure teleconference to manage the crisis.” He also recommends evacuating the White House. According to Clarke and others, at about 9:10 Cheney goes from his White House office to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), a bunker below the East Wing of the White House, shortly followed by Rice. When Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta arrived in the PEOC at about 9:20, he claims that Cheney and Rice were already there and that Cheney was directing operations. Other reports say that Cheney was being taken down to the bunker at around 9:30.
Although admitting that there “is conflicting evidence about when the vice president arrived” in the PEOC, the 9/11 Commission concluded that the “vice president arrived in the room shortly before 10:00, perhaps at 9:58.” This conflicts Dick Cheney's own account as he described to Tim Russert on September 16, 2001. He stated that he arrived in the PEOC before the Pentagon was hit, and that from there he "was in a position to see all the stuff coming in, receive reports, and then make decisions in terms of acting with it"
Shortly after the Pentagon had been hit, Cheney made a telephone call to President Bush. According to Newsweek, Cheney was located in a tunnel on the way to the PEOC underground bunker, when he made this call. Shortly after this call, Richard Clarke institutes Continuity of Government plans. Additionally, Clarke received a phone call from an aide at the PEOC who said "tell the Pentagon they have authority from the president to shoot down hostile aircraft, repeat, they have authority to shoot down hostile aircraft." Cheney called Bush again at 9:56, at which time he reportedly approved the order to shoot down any hijacked planes, upon Cheney's recommendation.
Cheney "arrived" in the PEOC at around 9:58. At 10:02, he started receiving reports from the Secret Service of a fourth hijacked plane headed towards Washington. At 10:10, the Secret Service, viewing projected path information about Flight 93 rather than actual radar returns, did not realize that Flight 93 had already crashed and a military aide therefore asked Cheney for authority to shoot it down, which he quickly gave. Cheney called the president at 10:18 to confirm the authorization.
Acting Joint Chief of Staff Richard Myers
On the morning of 9/11, Acting Joint Chief of Staff Richard Myers was having a routine meeting with Senator Max Cleland on Capitol Hill. The meeting started at 9:00 and Myers by that time was aware of the first plane hitting the first Tower, having seen live news coverage. "They thought it was a small plane or something like that," Myers recalled, “I said 'How could a pilot be that stupid, to hit a tower? I mean, what' —but then you think, 'Well, whatever'.". Myers went ahead with his meeting as planned. "Meanwhile the second World Trade Center was hit by another jet. Nobody informed us of that," Myers said. "But when we came out, that was obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody said the Pentagon had been hit."
After learning that the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon hadn't yet been evacuated, Myers headed straight there and was soon joined by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld had been outside surveying the damage and checking the progress of rescue operations. Myers described confusion at in the Command Center: "I didn't know what to believe at the time," he said. "We had these events, and then subsequently the airplane went down in Pennsylvania. We were trying to tie this together."
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