A White House View of 9/11

well good evening i'm don carlton i'm the executive director of the university staff briscoe center for american history on behalf of my colleagues at the briscoe center as well as my colleagues at the obj library especially its director mark updegrove i welcome you to tonight's program the briscoe center and the lbj library have forged a close partnership in our program this evening a white house view of 9 11 is another example of what has become a very special collaboration it's included our joint sponsorship of a major exhibit about walter cronkite as well as our current exhibit news to history and i want to thank the lbj library staff and markup to grow for their tremendous support tonight we gather to reflect on the events of september 11 2001 and to hear from senior members of the bush administration about that day's events there are certain dates that are deeply etched in the american collective consciousness perhaps the two most notable examples in the 20th century are december the 7th 1941 and november the 22nd 1963. the events that occurred on those days were burned into the memory of all who experienced them the shocking attack on pearl harbor the tragedy of john f kennedy's assassination those moments are what walter cronkite once said called quote tragic collective national experiences unquote they were entirely unexpected shocking and terrible attacks that were seemingly aimed at the very heart of an entire society those events have become part of our collective memory as a people and in the new century came the bright morning of september 11 2001. although more than a decade has passed since the horrific events of that day unfolded i'm sure that each and every one of you remembers vividly where you were and what you were doing when you first heard of the attack on the world trade center the indelible images of the twin towers collapsing the smoking rubble at the pentagon and the charred field in pennsylvania have also been seared into our nation's collective memory tonight's program brings us a unique group of eyewitness accounts of that day as seen from the president's inner circle we'll have karl rove karen hughes and clay johnson all senior members of the bush administration come up on stage for a panel discussion in the second part of our program but first we begin with a special presentation by photojournalist eric draper eric served as george w bush's chief photographer for the entire eight years of the bush presidency and he was given the title of special assistant to the president the first white house photographer to be named a commissioned officer to a united states president prior to joining the white house draper was with the associated press he is currently a freelance political corporate and editorial photographer i met eric as a result of the briscoe center's program to collect and preserve the archives of american photojournalists eric agreed to designate the briscoe center here at the university as the permanent home for his personal photo archive when i invited eric to place his collection at the center he asked if we would be interested in helping him publish publish a book of his white house photos well that question was very easy to answer i immediately said yes i'm delighted that our discussion resulted in the book front row seat which was released this summer as part of the brisco center series at the university of texas press it's a wonderful book beautifully designed and produced by the talented folks at the university of texas press eric's photos are also part of our exhibit here at the obj library news to history being the official white house photographer for any presidency is a distinction in and of itself but to have that front row seat for a day like september 11 is a singular experience one that eric will now share with us please join me in welcoming eric draper thank you don you know it's always special to come here to austin texas because for me this is where it all began this is where i made my my personal pitch for the job and also this is where i interviewed for the job with the chief of staff andy card and i never forget during that interview what andy card told me back in austin this is uh in december of 2000 when it all started he said that working at the white house was like trying to drink water through a fire hose at full throttle and he was right 911 f the war in afghanistan the war in iraq the colombia shuttle disaster funerals for two presidents and a pope another close presidential election the worst u.s natural disaster in history the worst economic crisis since the great depression i traveled to nearly 70 countries with president bush 49 states sorry vermont i made nearly 1 million pictures during my eight years as the chief white house photographer and for all you techies out there the storage for the digital database came in around 50 terabytes of information and as the chief white house photographer my goal was to photograph everything that was on the president's schedule but also even beyond that i tried to capture the humanity of the presidency and president bush gave me that opportunity to photograph him not only as commander-in-chief but as a father as a husband as a dog owner and as a texan and then there are the surprise moments which i relished as a photojournalist capturing those moments that you just can't plan for i call this photo timing is everything and then there are moments that i could plan for like the first entry into the oval office in january 20th 2001 the first signature as president now let me set the uh let me give you some context here this is uh on day one after all of the ceremonies the soaring in ceremony the parade the first entry into the oval office and all the inaugural balls that happened that night i was able to uh take the last and final ride to the final ball with the president mrs bush and i captured this this image here and it's it's a human moment and what i love about it is um it's this is a great illustration of the president's personality you know he's out there he's an extrovert he's just out there and mrs bush is more reserved the first landing of marine one on the south lawn and i could prepare for a lot of things but nothing could prepare me for september 11 2001. i was with the president at the elementary school in sarasota florida that morning and the first image here shows the president after he left the classroom and this is after the famous whisper in the president's ear when andy card said that america is under attack and i didn't know exactly what was happening until i walked into that room and saw the television screen and saw the live images of the burning towers and i was just kind of frozen in shock like a lot of people were in that room but the president he never looked up at the tv because i was waiting for that moment that he acknowledged what was happening because that was one way of connecting him with what was happening in new york so what he did was he picked up a new that notepad you see in his hand on the table and he started collecting his thoughts writing his first thoughts preparing for his first statement to the nation and to the world in response to the attacks and something that's really fascinating uh that piece of paper is actually on display in the bush library um and something interesting also you the the timing of all these images are is pretty critical you can see the time here in the clock this is about almost like 9 18 and inside the classroom the president and his staff are basically everyone was gathering information about what was happening in new york everyone had pagers and cell phones this is before the smartphone in the blackberry age and again this is uh the president uh talking on the phone and i was still waiting for that moment until he actually stopped to see what was happening on tv but it wasn't until around 9 25 and dan bartlett is pointing in that picture and he's alerting everyone in the room because they were replaying the video of the second tower hitting excuse me the second plane hitting the second tower and for the first time president bush sees that image that spurned into everyone's memory flight 75 hitting the south tower and at this stage everything was focused on new york and and no one knew the scope of what was to come the president walks into the room with filled with press and filled with school children and he started his statement with a moment of silence aboard air force one and this is around 10 o'clock the vice president had been evacuated to a secure location from the west wing flight 77 has crashed into the pentagon flight 93 has been hijacked the entire u.s airspace has been shut shut down and the discussion going on here on the plane here this is andy card and the president the president really wanted to return to washington and andy card is basically telling the president no it couldn't happen and he was not happy and this is a group effort here telling the president just wasn't safe to return to washington and this is around the time that we started hearing a lot of false reports flying around the plane we heard that a car bomb exploded in front of the state department false we heard that a fast-moving object was headed towards the president's ranch it was false and then came the most surreal moment when the president himself came out of the cabin and he said i just heard that angel is the next target and angel is the code name for air force one um so the president's on the phone uh and huddled in the corner there that's andy card with uh secret service agent eddie marinzo on the left lieutenant colonel tom gould who was the military aide and mark rosenker was the director of the white house military office determining where where to take the president i mean i i had no clue where we're headed and around 10 20 flight 93 has crashed around 10 40 the president watches the live images of the collapse of the twin towers and and this is just definitely just a horrific moment just because uh just knowing how many people were dying in the towers at the time and and uh it was just silenced and the president stood there for several minutes didn't say a word and by this time we learned that we're headed to barksdale air force base in louisiana and air force one is is the only place where you can actually watch yourself land live on tv and that's what i experienced during that flight as we approached uh louisiana and there was a tv in the conference room that was on and they break in and they say air force one spotted over louisiana and it's really just surreal to watch ourselves land and on the ground i thought my story would actually end at that moment because the humvee served as the president's limo and he sped away and disappeared the rest of the staff were huddled onto buses and we ended up luckily ended up following the president's route and i ended up catching up with the president again who had just started his very first full briefing on the situation he's connected via teleconference with all the agencies uh around the country and getting his first full briefing about the attacks and we're on the ground in louisiana for nearly two hours and i can see the frustration building on the president's face because he really wanted to return to washington he wanted to lead from the oval office our second stop was offutt air force base in nebraska where the president received more briefings behind those doors that's a secret service agent guarding the door aboard air force one that's the air force one crew in the conference room and what made the day even more surreal air force one was not equipped with satellite tv at the time and so in order to receive reception we had to fly over a major city and so our the news that everyone was getting aboard the plane it was would just fade in and fade out it just has made the day seem even more like a nightmare the president on the phone with the vice president and around this time we finally learned that we're headed back to washington dc and and for me personally it was the first time that i had the opportunity to call my wife who had just moved to dc five days prior to 9 11. so i knew she was at home and uh i never forget i as she answered the phone the first words i said were honey i'm getting home a little late tonight and i can hear here laughing through her tears the president with the harriet myers as we approached washington and this is around the time that we started noticing the f-16 fighter jets escorting the plane they had been with us all day apparently and we didn't see them until we started to make the approach to washington so out of the left side of the plane you can see the jets almost touching the wing of air force one out of the right side of the plane you can still see the plume of smoke rising from the pentagon and the president returned to the white house and he was able to have his first face-to-face meeting with the vice president in the peoc which i didn't know existed before that day that's the the president's presidential emergency operations center september 12th the morning after condoleezza rice watches the sun rise as the president makes his very first phone call of the day to british prime minister tony blair also on september 12th the president visited the pentagon to see the damage firsthand and to thank first responders september 14th the day of national prayer that was a very long emotional rollercoaster of a day that it started out here at the national cathedral and this is the moment after the president delivered his remarks and he returned to his chair and his father reached over to touch his hand very a very tender moment on our way to new york city we left washington we're actually this image here was taken aboard marine one and the president is looking out at the pentagon as we flew over on our way to andrews air force base and this is also the very first day the president started wearing the flag pin at ground zero the president uh was waiting through the hundreds of firefighters uh there that were it was like it was like felt like standing on a raw nerve because you can feel the intensity of the emotion you can feel the frustration you can feel the fatigue you can see the fatigue in their eyes and you can feel that they are looking for the president for for leadership they're they're hugging the president they're crying with the president they're telling the president go get him george and you can feel it building to this moment the the bullhorn moment when the president stood atop the rubble and delivered the famous line that we can hear you the world hears you and the people who knock things buildings down we'll hear from all of us soon and the um being at the white house for eight years i had the opportunity to witness so many stories come full circle well the firefighter in the background that screamed i can't hear you and prompted that famous historic moment the president met him four years later and i actually uh saw this guy in the crowd he was at a political rally in pennsylvania and he's in the crowd screaming i can't hear you i am the guy i'm the guy and uh it took me it took me a while for him to convince me and and it was him and his his name was our rocco chiracelli and so i said you know i've got to get you backstage to meet the president and so i was able to get him backstage it was a very emotional meeting both men were crying and hugging and the firefighter told the president uh mr president you know my son's going to west point you've changed my life and the president stopped him and he said no you changed my life after the uh the moment at ground zero the president visited for nearly two hours with the family of the victims of 911 and and this is again just a very intense situation here the president walks into a room filled with nearly 400 people uh all grieving but all just holding out that there was hope that survivors would found it was for me the most difficult situation ever to photograph in i mean i was confronted a couple of times by some of the family because they they didn't know who i what i was doing there and and so it was really hard to respect their privacy and to make pictures and and the president hugged and cried with which with each and every one of them there were um people walking around with handwritten notes saying have you seen my father have you seen my mother there were children carrying uh photographs of of their parents and it was just the saddest situation ever to photograph and it's really very intense and during that meeting with the families the president was given a badge and this badge was worn by george howard a new york port authority officer who died on 9 11 wearing that badge it was given to him by his mother arlene howard and during that that moment that the president received the badge arlene howard told the president don't you forget my son and the president said i'll never forget and so i felt it was very important symbolically to have that badge photographed in the president's hand because the president actually carried that badge during the weeks and the months that followed 911 and he would actually pull it out of his pocket and tell the story of uh about george howard to remind people what happened that day so one day in the oval office this is like late october i asked the president if i could photograph it in his hand and he said of course and he pulls it out of his pocket and i make my picture and that's my last slide thank you this is what they call the moment of transition i was going to do a little tap dance but up to grove vetoed it while we're setting up it's going to be my great pleasure to introduce our panelists for the remainder of tonight's program ambassador karen hughes has more than 30 years of public policy communications and political experience and she is currently worldwide vice chair of burstin marsteller hughes served as counselor president george w bush in 2001 and 2002 as strategic advisor to the president on policy and communications clay johnson was a senior member of president george w bush's administration for eight years and on september 11 was assistant to the president for presidential personnel clay johnson served with governor bush and austin as his appointments director and chief of staff and he planned and directed the bush-cheney transition into office currently clay johnson is president of the texas state history museum foundation here in austin karl rove served as senior advisor to president george w bush from 2000 to 2007 and from 2004 to 2007 he served as deputy chief of staff at the white house he oversaw the offices of strategic initiatives political affairs public liaison and intergovernmental affairs and was deputy chief of staff for policy karl rove writes a weekly op-ad for the wall street journal he's a contributor to fox news and he's the author of the book courage and consequence my life as a conservative in the fight tonight's panel will be moderated by my good friend lbj director mark updegrove so please join me in welcoming our distinguished guests welcome as dr carlton mentioned we all have memories of 9 11 all of us in this room know where we were on 9 11 but your experiences are particularly significant given who you worked for at the time carl rove as you saw in those photographs that eric just shared with us was with the president throughout the course of that day and clay johnson and karen hughes were in washington and we'll spend the balance of this evening hearing their stories of that day and their reflections and carl we'll begin with you you were with the president in sarasota florida at the elmer e booker elementary school in what was to be an address about education reform it's ironic in some ways because george bush expected and wanted to be the education president and at the end of that day he ended up being a war president what is your recollection of the start of of 9 11. well first of all i really enjoyed eric's paper pictures until i realized that was me and i had hair and it wasn't gray so um don mentioned the bright day and it was really i remember that morning we got up early president went running and it was a very bright and wonderful day i mean it's just picture-perfect weather and we went to the elementary school emma booker elementary school in about 8 48 my phone rang and it was my assistant susan ralston who said a plane's flown into the world trade center we don't know whether it's jet or prop commercial or private and the president was about 10 15 feet away shaking hands with administrators and teachers and so i went over and told him and he had a funny look on his face and said get more details about a couple minutes later conde called and had the same sketchy information and he went into the classroom he was a reading demonstration promoting no child left behind his signature education legislation and i had to go scurry up a tv because there was not a tv that worked in the in the uh in the staff hole there's wherever the president travels there's always a room nearby called the staff hold where they a couple of days beforehand they show up with big boxes and unpacked you saw the picture and eric of a black telephone unit i mean you push o on that button and some guy under cheyenne mountain colorado answers and a minute later you can be talking to anybody anywhere in the world and they guard him until about 20 minutes after the president departs and then they take him back but that day the staff hold had the phones but they didn't have a television set so i spent the opening moments of the war on terror by stealing a television set from a nearby classroom and i remember it i had to plug it in plug it into the power unit but i also had to plug it into the wall to get a signal a cable tv and the first hole i plugged it into didn't work the second one i plugged it into uh it went pop i'm lying on the ground doing this in a suit and it goes pop and it comes on and the voices are saying what did we just see what did we just see and that was the second plane flying into the world trade center uh andy card the chief of staff determined that he needed to go tell the president and uh clay and i were and you were recently with andy and at another major texas university whose name will go on mention a m and i remember at the time andy and he walked over to the door separating the staff hold from the classroom and he hesitated and this was a moment where you know time is moving rather rapidly and for andy to go stand at the door i mean it was like eternity i'm sure it was only a couple of seconds but i never knew why until the three of us were together and heard andy explained that he was trying to collect his thoughts so that he could walk in and tell the president what he needed to know in a way that the president would not feel compelled to ask a question because the president had 30 or 40 press with cameras and tape recorders and a room full of you know fourth and fifth graders and educators and administrators and this was not a moment where you know there needed to be a discombobulation so andy went in and told the president a second plane has flown into the world trade center america is under attack and stepped back uh the president had to make a decision what to do and you know this reading demonstration was rolling to a close so he decided rather than to jump up and run out of the room he'd wait until it finished so it was another four minutes or five minutes before he emerged into the room and in the interim the tension inside the staff hold it sort of grown i mean this is a first-rate group of people there you saw some of them harriet myers then major tom gould of the air force major paul montanus of the other marines and senior staff of the president but there was palpable tension and anxiety in the room because we're watching what the rest of america is watching and i'll never forget it bush came into the room and um he was unnaturally calm and cold almost and he said we're at war get me the director of the fbi and the vice president and there was a sense of steel in his voice that was unnaturally calming as well for us all so we jumped on the phones and began to call this is the moment which the vice president is being grabbed by a couple of secret service agents had literally carried down the hallway in the west wing to the secret entrance to the peoc the president's emergency operations center underneath the south lawn and we can't get him but we get mueller and we start talking to other people the president as you saw was writing a statement what you didn't see was that he wrote most of the statements sitting in a little chair made for candy gardeners at a table made for fourth graders most of the adult furniture had been taken out of the room and he's sitting there scribbling this statement which gave him about a minute to give and as he was getting to the end of scribbling out what he wanted to say and he's talking with dan bartlett karen's deputy and ari fleischer and me eddie marenzo who is the secret service guy with the incredibly bad ties came over and said to the president said mr president we need to get you to the airport at airborne as quickly as possible they were worried that this was the president's whereabouts was known and they were worried that this was an effort to decapitate the government and that someone might fly an airplane into the emma booker elementary school or there might be a you know suicide bomber nearby so the president made a statement we went and we got in the limit we got in the car i normally didn't ride with the president in the limo but that day sort of said and pointed to the stagecoach which was then the code name for the limousine and i got in with him and we went off to the airport now presidential motorcades generally go about 40 45 miles an hour we we were going like a bat out of hell at about 85 miles an hour and during the course of the ride to the airport the president got the phone call about the strike on the pentagon now i can only hear one side of the conversation but when the opening words are is rumsfeld alive that was the first thing the president said in response to it you know that ain't good news and i remember being so i mean when i heard that i just had to look away from the president and so i looked out the window of the car and i realized that if i could roll down the window of stagecoach that about a foot away from the car matching our speed 80 85 miles an hour was a police car and i realized suddenly that there was one on every side of the car which is you know i'd never seen it before and never saw it again when we got to the airport later in the day i said to eddie marinzo i said eddie what was that all about and he said we were worried that a suicide bomber might never be by a truck mom or a car bomb and so we wanted to improve the president's chances of survivability give him an extra foot or two more for the blast to go off so we surrounded the car with a hope that they block any suicide attack on the on the stagecoach which you know sort of horrifying later on it got to thinking what the hell was i doing in that car with him but uh human shield yeah yeah karen and i was once the decoys in kosovo when the president flew into an airport controlled by the russians we we were in the loyal airplane and they flew us in ahead of our head of the president the president was out there orbiting and we're going in for the airport and we say to the guy who's ending the radar council what the heck's going on he said we're trying to see if we can draw any fire well that was my day to draw fire so but uh we got to the airport and uh you know there's a certain ceremony for any president when they get to mount up the steps air force one i'm sure you've seen it on television they have you know there's a group of people at the bottom of the stairs who say goodbye to the president local dignitaries and then the president mounts the stairs and gets to the top of the stairs and turns around and waves to the crowd most of the time many times there's no crowd but it's they're always television cameras so pretend there is a crowd it's a wave to the crowd the president goes on to the plane and then a minute or two later they allow the staff to get on the plane and uh you know 10 or 15 minutes later they rev up the engines and button the plane up and it takes off well i'm standing at the bottom of the stairs i remember eddie was sitting eddie marenza was standing with his foot on the lower step and i was standing at the bottom of the stairs and the president got about halfway two thirds of the way up and eddie turned and he said you could tell something went off in his ear piece and he turned to me and said uh go and he didn't mean meander he meant go and so i started running up the stairs and colleagues started running up behind and i got about halfway up the stairs of air force one and looked over to my right and underneath the wing they were making the press discard all of their equipment their cameras their tape recorders their computers their laptops their bags and they had a bomb dog going over them and they were making the press go onto the plane with nothing but what was on their their person and to check and see if somebody was trying to smuggle a bomb on board and as they cleared equipment they just went over and threw it into the bottom of air force one so i got up to the top of the steps and air force one's at 747 and you get on and very few people go to the left to the left is that room that eric showed you the with the bed and the head and the shower and couch where where the president and andy were having their discussion everybody turns to the right and the first door is the president's private cabin and the next door is the steps up to the cockpit and then there's a medical unit a galley and then there's the senior staff cabin where karen and clay and i would hang out when we're on trips and then there's a conference room and then a and the seating for other people i i i was on my way to the senior staff cabin and i didn't get there because the president again whistled in motion to sit across the chair from him in his private cabin and uh you know i sort of sat down and sort of got ready and you know sort of and but i noticed it was really noisy uh the engines were already revved up and normally you never heard them because they'd button up the plane and then turn on but the engines were already up and people were running through the running onto the plane and down the hallway and then they stopped because they'd all entered and the engines were revved up and we started moving all of a sudden the stairs disappeared they're on the back of a truck i think they're on the back of a truck and bang they were gone and the door is open and we're moving and i remember an airman comes running up the hallway air force one and grabs a strap and leans out over 20 feet of air and grabs the door and pulls it shut and arms the door and we're moving down the runway i mean we are moving and we get to the end of the runway and colonel tillman flips this plane around like it is a cessna i mean just literally flips this big 747 guns the engines and you can just hear the plane vibrating and then let's go and we go rocketing down the runway and we get airborne and that plane stands on its tail and i'm sitting in the chair across from the president looking up at him trying to be like okay everything's okay because there you know they thought some guy might have a man pad a shoulder launch missile line and weight at the end of the runway and they wanted to get airborne as quickly as possible so we did and then we had this conversation you saw the general parts of it the president said i'm going back to washington and cheney said no rumsfeld said no secret service said mr president we can't guarantee the airspace over washington andy card said no and the president kept saying i'm going to washington and clay's known the president longer than any of us and he's not an angry guy but he came pretty close to being angry i remember at one point he snapped at eddie morenzel who came in to make the argument he said you cut him off saying eddie you tell andy if he wants to make that argument to me again come make my make it himself and another point andy did make the argument and and he cut him off saying i am the president like andy needed to be reminded of that the fir the first thing he said to me that day was don't you think i need to get back there and i said yes sir i do and he said well i'm coming next time i'm not letting them keep me away anymore yeah well the guy who finally figured it out was tom gould who was the air force officer and he said mr president we don't have a full fuel load we have too many people on board we don't have a full fuel load we get back to washington and we're not able to land we won't be able to orbit long enough so we need to go to a nearby secure facility drop unnecessary personnel get a full fuel load and then we can go to washington so if we can't land then we can orbit it sounded good where'd that one come from yeah but that was clearly a dodge because we were we're at this point over the northeast part of florida over near cape canaveral and we got naval air station jacksonville north of us and we got eggland air force base slightly to the west of us and they say mr president the most secure facility is barksdale air force base the headquarters of the eighth air force in northern northwestern louisiana and the reason was it was on not lockdown from the day before there'd been a nuclear test drill and so the entire base was already on lockdown and completely secure so we land there and and eric's right we catch the signal the local television station had had sent a camera crew on the flight path into barksdale and they were the first people to know where we were nobody knows in america where we were except the local cbs affiliate in shreveport louisiana so much for security uh and we land and uh i remember you know landing at a military installation with any president is pretty amazing you know flags music snappy salutes uniforms you know brass i mean it's really impressive not that day we got off in the command structure the eighth air force was there in their combat uniforms every one of them with a sidearm and i've seen i haven't seen that many guns since the south texas hunting party i mean it was everybody had a weapon and i have to correct eric the the president did not ride in a humvee the humvee was the security vehicle the president rode in a powder blue dodge mini caravan which is not very presidential but there was an armed humvee right behind him with a 50 caliber machine gun on top and the place is deadly silent and when the president's car begins to move the airman manning the 50 cal puts a live round in the chamber cocked it back and put a live round on the chamber and you could hear it sounded like a bell and at that point the time news reporter who was with us in the pool completely lost it came completely unglued i thought i'd have to i was in charge of the press trying to get him into the little vehicle we were getting into and he came completely unglued particularly when the president's vehicle sped out of out of the distance that was jay carney president obama's press spokesman anyway that that was i don't mean to i don't mean we need to go to washington thoughts of things have happened in washington in the meantime but that was by this time it's about 11 00 o'clock in the morning and we're we're in shreveport louisiana with a rather rested president uh desiring to get back to washington so we'll come back to louisiana in a moment but clay you were in the white house that morning talk about uh the morning of 9 11 from your perspective okay uh there's a senior staff meeting at 7 30 and so get there at seven or so go down to the roosevelt room 7 30 meeting over at eight i had an appointment at my office on the second floor of the west wing and at nine i was supposed to go down and see tim flanagan who's the deputy white house counsel to talk about some appointments matter and as i was walking out of my office about a few minutes before nine the assistants out there there's a tv in the corner and they show the world trade towers and smoke coming out so what's that and they said some private plane flew into the world trade towers oh god that awful wow down the hall flynn flanagan there were three or four of us in the meeting at nine whatever time the second plane flew in 9 13 or something 903 so about 9 10 the woman comes in but his assistant comes in hands him a note he looks at it and says another one hands him back the note the rest of us are and what is it he said a second plane then about that time the assistant comes in and said we've been asked to go all of us don't go back to your office go back i mean go downstairs to the white house mess which is a low floor floor which is the most underground the most the lowest large space in the white house uh and gathered there and uh i did stop long enough i called in and said turn on the tv hung up um so we're down there couldn't have been more than five minutes someone comes in and says everybody uh women take off your heels everybody leave the north gate go across to the other side of lafayette square don't tell you what to do just go to the north side and go over there so we all and they said go fast as fast as you can go uh so we do that and then we're over there and uh now what now we do and anita mcbride who's laura's uh chief of staff was chief of staff said my husband works over here diamond chrysler the office has about four blocks lots of spare rooms let's go over there so a bunch of people went over there probably 30 40 and it grew to probably double that in the morning and we just we were over there uh nick caglio's legislative affairs assistant the president me they were anita uh we over there over there and watching on televisions and um we're just stunned like everybody else in america was so that's that's what was going on until about noon when we came back and i will cover that when you go to the next phase uh karen you were neither with the president nor at the white house but like many of us you were at home very unusual almost any other morning of my entire time at the white house i would have been either with the president or at the white house but september 10th is my wedding anniversary and so i had decided to stay in washington with my husband so we could have an anniversary dinner we'd never missed an anniversary before and my deputy traveled to florida with the president and so when it became clear that i wasn't going to florida mel martinez the secretary of housing and urban development asked me to represent the white house at a habitat for humanity event that morning and it was going to be a build and so we were supposed to wear your blue jeans and your t-shirt and president bush out of respect for the office didn't allow blue jeans in the west wing so i had taken the opportunity to sleep a little late and miss that 7 30 horrible senior staff meeting and i was literally just i was supposed to be at the habitat event at 9 30 and so i was just stepping out of the shower when the phone rang and it was my assistant at the white house who told my husband will you tell karen that a plane has hit the world trade center well my husband uh knows me well enough to know that something like that would just prompt a whole host of questions that he couldn't answer so he said you better tell her yourself and took the phone to the shower and handed it to me as i was stepping out and and so you know my my mind was small plane heart attack terrible accident i said to my assistant have you called dan who was my deputy with the president and she said i just did before i called to you and so i hung up the phone and called dan and he was with the president in the room where you saw the pictures with eric um i turned on the television and as i did saw the second plane hit the second tower and i remember drop my first instinct was to drop to my knees and say a prayer for the people in the building and somebody later asked me why not the people on the airplane it never occurred to me there were people on the airplane i mean it was just too horrific so i immediately called dan and i said dan a second plane has hit the second tower and so he's that's when he pointed at the tv for all of you all in florida i called dan and said a second plane has hit the the second tower and i'll never forget this question because it struck me as such a guy kind of question he said what kind of plane and i thought i said i don't know i set up you know a big plane like a passenger plane never again occurring to me that it was in fact a passenger plane um and so i then spent the next um you know i was on the phone with dan we we agreed that the president had to make a statement um i thought when they left florida that they were coming back to washington i was not aware that the vice president and andy had recommended that he not come back to so you know dan and i were planning through he's got to call the mayor of new york he's got to call the governor we've got to activate the federal emergency response and i knew i had to get to the white house but i didn't know where to go the tv was reporting that the white house did i was on the phone actually with my assistant jill angelo and she said the secret service is telling us we have to leave and i could hear them yelling in the background and then i said well get out of there go and so she along with the others ran from the white house and then there was this strange silence i didn't know what to do i knew i had to get to work but they were reporting that downtown washington was being shut down and evacuated the white house had been evacuated there were false reports of a car bomb at the state department um i started getting pages to uh call you know you're needed at the emergency center now well i had never seen the emergency center i had no idea where it was or what it was we'd only been there seven months i'd never had the tour so you know the disaster preparation um the uh then i then i got a page called signal well i also asked my husband kind of a stupid question you know do you know the first signal and he said what signal and i'd always called the white house operator but the white house operator had been evacuated with the white house and so i didn't know how to call and my pa you know so they were sending me all these pages but i wasn't aware of how to get in touch with them and so i decided well my in the meantime i realized that my son would see the news and worry because he frequently texted me from called me from school and when something major happened on the news and so i asked my husband to call my son and tell him i was okay i was at home and as he started to look up the number the phone rang and it was our son and he said come get me and so i thought well while i'm trying to get in touch i'll go make sure we pick up robert it was real close and we went to pick up robert and finally i was able i got a number and was and called and the vice president said i need you to call the plane they're on the way to louisiana and they're they're going to make a statement they're working on a statement and um he indicated there was something that he said that indicated to me he didn't think he liked it or i would like it and so i i called the plane i got a hold of ahri um and or i asked ari to read me the statement and the first line said america today was the victim of and i just had this horrible reaction i was like we are not victims our country we may have been attacked but our country is not a victim and so we were working on the statement and you know talking the whole the whole time and finally when i talked to the vice president he had said he would send a military driver to bring me back to downtown washington and it seemed like it took forever the traffic was horrible in washington as you can imagine the driver got me i went back into downtown washington and you know as you can imagine mine was the only car headed that way everybody else was fleeing the city i could see the pentagon burning over the driver and i realized as i'm sitting there that he must have very good friends there and i said to him i'm i'm sure you have a lot of friends there this is a horrible day for our country and he said yes ma'am and you know it was just sort of silence so we could see the pentagon burning um the uh we we got to downtown well along the way i got a page from ron fournier who's the associated press reporter who covered the white house always on top of things and wanted to know what was going on and i realized that the american people all they were seeing was chaos you know the white house shut down the state department shut down i realized we've got to make a statement we've got to explain what our government is doing to respond to these and i knew if i talked to the president he would say that was fine and so i tried to call the plane and at that point we traveled with the president a lot of different places i'd seen him make calls all over the world from air force one and i called i finally got a hold of the signal operator and said i need to talk to the president and for what seemed like an eternity there's silence and finally she comes back on and her voice was shaking and she said ma'am we cannot reach air force one i'd never had that happen before and of course i can't remember if at that point the threat to angel the plane had been relayed to me i think it had and so for a few moments there i really thought something could have happened to the president and all my friends on air force one and we drove further and further we got to downtown washington and it was just the most chilling clay and i were talking backstage it was in some ways some of the most chilling images of the day because there was nobody out and on every corner there were men dressed in black holding these big weapons and that's all you could see that was all that was moving in downtown washington and so it looked like a foreign capital after a coup there was a lighthearted moment we got to the first perimeter checkpoint and military drivers said to the the guard who came up very suspiciously with this gun pointed at the at the car because they were worried about suicide bombers the military driver said i have karen hughes and i'm taking her to the vice president and i heard the guy the guy wasn't about to let me through he radioed his supervisor his supervisor i heard him come back and say how do you know it's karen hughes are you sure it's karen hughes and the officer looked in the car and said yep i've seen her on tv so a rare light hearted moment that day i finally get to the white house after several more checkpoints and they dropped me off at the east side which is not where we usually went in we went on in the west side and nobody was there and so i said to the driver what do i do and he said we'll go in and they'll take you to wherever you're supposed to go well i've never seen if the president's there the marine is always standing guard at the door there's always somebody there i walked in there's nobody there there's no receptionist there's nobody and i thought well you know this is not a good day to be sneaking into the white house and so i sort of yelled hello is anybody here you know i didn't know what to do and i hear these heavy footsteps guys running down the hall and their weapons are drawn as i walk into the door and yell and somebody here explain who i was they they led me through a series of its um of tunnels and uh facilities to get to the emergency operations center um and each one it's like a submarine door closing you know the pressurized sense you you get the feeling and i i got to the presidential operations center and when i walked in what immediately struck me was in contrast to the chaos that i'd been watching on television and hearing in the news reporting it was completely calm the vice president was on the phone the secretary of transportation norm mineta was on the phone they were talking to the president they were grounding the planes they were activating the emergency response they were putting the embassies on alert you know they were sending rescue teams to new york and my immediate thought again as a communicator was i've got to communicate this to the public i've got to explain to people what i'm seeing here and so you know then i began working with um our staff that was in the the bunker trying to gather up stories from all of the cabinet agencies about what they were doing to respond because i remember thinking facts and action will be comforting you know people need to hear what the government's doing and i need to i need to talk to them about facts and action and uh i knew once i could get a hold of the president that he would say of course go out and brief um and i finally did as you were traveling between louisiana and nebraska was the first time i talked to him and as i said the first thing he said to me was don't you think i need to come back there and i said yes sir because i did um and i didn't know about the security threats i mean that wasn't my job my job was the job of communicating to the public and i thought it was important for the president to be in washington um and uh so he said of course go out and brief and so then we began the process of assembling the the materials for my statement um and i remember feeling a huge responsibility i first of all i didn't want to be the one to make the statement i want i'd be happy to write it but i didn't think it should be me that made it and the vice president was adamant he was like no it has to be you and i thought maybe it should be him or conde rice but i think they were very conscious of not having an al haig moment and if if any of you remember the moment when president reagan was shot and al haig went to the white house press room to announce that don't worry everything's fine i'm here i'm in charge i'm in charge here exactly they and the vice president said to me no people are used to you they know you're you know they they know you speak for the president and i think also nobody thought i was trying to pull off any coup or anything i wasn't trying to to be in charge there or take over in any way and so the secret service though wouldn't let me brief from the white house briefing room they thought it was too dangerous so they literally surrounded me five agents or six around me like a human like a shield with their guns drawn and they walked me out of the white house into a car and took me to the justice department and i'd never had anything like that happen before i remember as i you know as i prepared the statement and one other little detail about the statement there was a there was a computer in the bunker and so i was writing my statement on the computer and it wasn't until i came time to print the statement out that i realized that this printer probably hadn't been used since you know the 1960s or something maybe the cuban missile crisis i don't know but it barely printed it was like barely legible and so i i still have a copy of it the originals in the archives but a copy of the statement you can barely read it because there was almost no ink in the in the printer in the bunker but but i remember feeling a huge responsibility to try to be calm and and decisive and in command you know for a badly shaken country so i think that was probably the hardest thing i've ever done in my professional career we had discussed it and decided that i couldn't take questions and of course we knew that would make the media really mad because they hated not to be able to ask questions but all the information that we had confidence in was in my statement and and we knew that my inability to answer the first question would be who did this and i couldn't answer it at that point and my inability to answer would be detrimental to our mission to try to reassure people and instill a sense of calm right carl let's go back to barksdale air force base in louisiana the president bush when he talks or writes about 9 11 uh talks about the the fog of war that he was experiencing can you talk a little bit about what was happening uh at that at that base and and what the president was feeling and experiencing yeah well there is a fog of war and uh karen and clay alluded to it there was the report about the attack on the uh on on the state department with a car bomb there was this uh a talk of the attack on angel and what turned out to have happened was look whenever you have an incident i don't care how big or little it is there's a nut out there in america who calls the secret service and makes a threat and what had happened is in the aftermath of the attacks on the world trade center somebody picked up the phone and called and said the air force one is next and as this got reported up the chain of command somewhere in the chain of command somebody invoked angel somebody took the code word the then code word for air force one and said the threat is that angel is next and this gave it obviously greater credibility than just some nut calling the switchboard saying you know i'm gonna get the president but you know there is a fog of war but what got me that day was the clarity of certain things you know like um andy and i were sitting there and the president got a phone call and we could only hear obviously his side of the conversation and it was cheney didn't know that until afterwards but the president said yes listen for a while yes listen for a few moments more said you have my authorization yes listen for a few more moments and then hung up and in about as even a tone of voice as a human being can have he said i've just given authorization for the military to shoot down any aircraft inbound to a critical target not under the command of its crew and i remember just sort of like a moment of horror and i think he was chewing a cigar and he said something in fact i can't remember the words because it was just it was so such an awful moment he said something about how terrible would be to be a young pilot to get that order but there was such clarity about the necessity of it so yeah there was a fog war we got to when we got to barksdale and karen and ari and dan and everybody worked over the statement and he then gave it they then said he said i'm coming home i'm coming to washington and they said mr president we can't guarantee the security of the airspace he said i'm coming to washington they said mr president we've dispersed the government cheney's in the peoc rumsfeld is now secure fbi director secure cia director all of these people are in secure facilities the secretary of state is in central america and south america peru so they said mr president uh we if we can fly you to offutt air force base we have facilities there that allow us to link everybody together by secure video conference it's the nearest facility we can't do it at barksdale we can do it at office so mr president how about if you fly off it it's an hour and 15 minutes away closer than washington and when then you can be briefed by everybody we'd had a briefing there eric had the picture of it and there was a video link but it was you had to be in a in one of those facilities if you look closely at that photograph there's not very many important people in those facilities today president obama travels with a halliburton case that's about this size and about this deep and he can plug it into any internet outlet any cable tv outlet and have a secure video conference with a number of people simultaneously all around the world but back then the technology was such that this was the closest we could go so we flat off it and the president is steaming and he said look i know this is just a dodge this is the last this is the last this is the last time that they're going to be able to pull this off so we get to off it and we landed off of which is a world which is a cold war you know headquarters of sac and it's got these impossibly long runways they look like you know concrete roads you know for they go on for miles and so the air force one goes off to this corner of the field away from any building except there's like what looks like a telephone equipment shed right there and we get off the plane we go over to the telephone equipment shed which is about the size of you know for one person to walk into to work on your phone equipment and we walk in and go down about 300 400 feet into this facility designed to withstand a nuclear blast way under the omaha prairie nebraska prairie and we walk in and it's like at a doctor strange love we walk in and there's like this three-story electronic board and we're up up here and the president then goes down to the floor of this facility and they have this gigantic board and they then link him in and then they describe what's going on and and this is the fog of war seven aircraft inbound over the atlantic with their transponders not squawking thought to be under the control of hijackers one is 30 minutes outside of philadelphia and has been aircraft have been scrambled and if they can't divert the aircraft off the new jersey coast they have orders to shoot it down there's supposedly a aircraft on the uh on the tarmac and yellowknife in the yukon territory under the control of hijackers and canadian special forces are inbound and retake control of the plane and of course none of this is true uh but this is also the first time where al qaeda is mentioned by george tenet very strong suggestion that al qaeda is behind this given the 1993 bombings and so they finish and the president says i'm coming home and they say the same old arguments again and the president says he's had enough of it and he says basically i have confidence in you do your best but the nation needs to hear from me from the oval office not from some bunker underneath you know the prairies of nebraska and he was pretty blunt about it but i thought it was interesting they started off by saying you know do your best have confidence in you typical bush style so we go back i'm being struck at how how this the first time i saw him that day after i talked with him on the phone but i saw him was from nebraska and he convened a meeting of the national security council via teleconference and normally i would not be part of the national security council but that day he wanted me in the room and for several weeks afterward we did but i'll never forget the moment i saw him he practically came through the tv screen and he said we are at war against terror and from this day forward this is the new priority of our administration and i just remember the clarity of thought and the focus and the steely determination and that was the that was the time at which george tenet first mentioned al qaeda and uh when he finished he said he was coming home and start working on an address so we go we go back up now we don't have to walk up the stairs i remember i think we went up in an elevator draper would remember yeah so we go up in the elevator and we get out and we're actually in a different part of the facility so they're actually buildings and they've got a they've got a motorcade makeshift motorcade thrown together by the omaha office the secret service and the art guys so we get in this motorcade to drive back across the airport to where they've repositioned the plane and loaded up and with fuel and everything and uh as we're driving there i'm not in the limo i'm i'm in my normal space which is uh i can't remember the name of the car right now but anyway i'm about four four behind and as we're driving across this impossibly long runway i mean that's about half a mile wide and it's like six miles long we're driving on it and i s out of the corner i see a fuel truck moving to intercept our and it looks like about when it's going to get to us it's going to hit our car so i'm saying i've come this far and i'm going to be immolated in a fire truck and a fuel truck explosion so anyway he stops at some point they some air force security guy jumps out of a vehicle and makes him stop but we get on the plane we're flying back and the president is working through the statement with uh karen and and conde and others and via telepho they're faxing it to the plane and talking over the phone and so forth but finally that finishes and he's pretty well satisfied with with noodling on it and uh so we're all sort of decompressing for a minute he goes forward to take a power nap and uh i'm standing in the corridor of the plane with with somebody i can't remember who it was but we were looking at just absolutely looking out to the left-hand side of the plane and up plows the f-16 and my colleague is really excited about and says you know get your camera get your camera get your camera and so i went back into the president's office and there was a aircraft on the right-hand side as well and i went back and we're taking pictures of him thinking this was really cool and then we got sober real quick because we realized this was not a ceremonial escort we'd entered what was called the national capital airspace and these guys had drawn the black bean and they were the last line of defense if something came towards air force one that got through the outer fighter cover these guys jobs were to put their plane between whatever that threat was in air force one so they were they were not ceremonial and you saw the pictures that eric took several years later i was going through the atlanta airport and this very trim guy comes up to me and says are you karl rove and i said yeah and he introduced himself he said we were together on september 11th i said really where were you he said i was on your left wingtip he was a he was a stockbroker air national i mean the air reserve who'd been on active duty that day and he was on our left side so we got back into washington and they were still nervous about the airspace over washington so colonel tillman brought in air force one and i kid you not it was the reverse of the takeoff we're down we're going down like this i mean he didn't go like the we're like this and again i'm in the same place i'm strapped in across from the president looking down at him trying to be calm and at the last minute tillman you know pancakes this onto the runway it was the most incredible feat of flying i've ever seen he just pancakes it onto the runway and we're we're we're safe on the ground at andrews so we go to get on marine one and they're actually three marine ones there's marine one and two other helicopters they look exactly alike they're all sikorsky green helicopters with white tops and they all take off at roughly the same time out of andrews they get to six 800 1200 feet and then there's a leisurely ballet of the you know sort of like the old piece and the pod you know where's the p you know and they have a ballet of this ballet that takes place and they come into the washington it's a very leisurely drive it's a great way to get to and from the airport i found uh no frequent flyer miles but easier than finding a parking space and you're flying in and then the two break off and one of them goes to land on the south lawn and but they get up there pretty high and it's a very it's a wonderful view well not that day we got about five feet off the ground in marine one and we started making our way off of andrews air force base by going down the uh greens on the golf course and with treetops above us i mean we're literally five five feet off the ground and we're weaving our way off the base and we get to the fence line andrews is in the suburb the maryland suburbs so it's surrounded on two three sides by just suburbs and we get to the fence line in marine one and i'll never forget it the pilot just we're going 20 30 miles an hour we get to that fence line and he just punches it and we come charging out of that fence line and i'm i'm sitting the president is sitting forward looking and backward looking chair across him i'm sitting on a bench across rooms so i'm looking out the window and i see out of the fence line a hundred yards to the norfolk it explodes another sikorsky helicopter just like that right out of the tr out of the out of the trees and we're going 160 miles an hour pretty damn quick and we are we are in the nap of the earth we are we are as close to the ground as you can get making our way in to washington by hugging the earth and at one point i'm looking out and there are apartment buildings to the right and houses to the left and then they're above us because we're in this we're in this this valley just streaking over the parkway and at one point it looks like we're going to go under a bridge and at the last minute he pulls it up and over and i mean it is and i mean it's exhilarating but it's scary as hell and unusual so we come over the last uh we come over the last ridgeline separating maryland from the potomac we come up and over and there's an air force base there at marine air and marine joint command where they where they have hmx1 marine one and we come barreling through bowling air force base at ground level if we can if there were cars on 295 we would have been knocking out their windows and we are moving maneuvering at this high speed through the buildings at bowling air force base and we're about ready it looks like to to land in the potomac and at the and at the last second the pilot pulls a hard right so hard i can feel the g's in a helicopter and at that moment the pentagon comes into view it's about 6 30 6 40 in the evening and there's smoke pouring out of the pentagon and you can see the smoke and we go through the plume of smoke nobody has said a single word the entire flight until that moment and the president very quietly said take a look you're looking at the war at the face of war in the 21st century and at that we came up and over the south lawn of the white house below the below the washington monument we were below the break between the you know the 1834 break between the building and not building it we we're below that and we come up and over and land on the on the south lawn the president has a speech at 8 30 my my last contribution of the day was there was a line in the speech that reflected how many people had died and we didn't we realized we didn't know how many and i've been talking to pataki and giuliani during the day so i volunteered to call him and find out i remember calling giuliani's phone and his uh his guy tony carbonetti answered the phone and i said you know we got the speech we're going to mention how many people died how many people died and i can remember the odd sense of relief when he said well we think about 3 100. i mean it's uh it's terrible to say that but the thought was i mean each of those buildings held like 15 000 people worked in those buildings so the idea that on that day 3 100 people i can remember sort of a palpable sense of relief and we stuck the number in we said thousands and and put the speech to bed clay what was happening at the white house that afternoon prior to the president's arrival that evening well as i said we were over there with the white house 75 people or so their diamond requests are building half a dozen blocks away from the white house and a couple of people have been in communication with their counterparts in the peoc and they said about noon that they want to bring the assistance to the president there were four or five of us back over there um you talk about alexander hague when we got in there into the diameter chrysler spaces kristen silverberg from austin and really neat person came with me to clay i think you're the i'm pretty sure you're the tallest person here but i think you're also the senior most person here um why don't you get up and kind of get us organized i'm thinking no no so um so what cameron's talking about the street so walking back the half dozen of us went downstairs about noon we were escorted over to the east part east wing in the white house and there were no cars no people weird weirdest thing and you looked at every intersection it's like if you could look eight blocks down this way there were eight heavily armed people in black one at each intersection no cars no nothing people were dogs were sniffing all the trash cans um and the guy that the agent that escorted us back there was the largest human being i've ever seen and had arms and guns and just was huge and i i thought well maybe as i thought about it a week or two you know later i thought well maybe i was just so glad i imagined him to be superman and then i would see him all the time he really was that big i mean it was just an incredible guy so when we go in the peoc um and i remember walking in and we walk into the briefing room there or the small conference room and i see the vice president sitting down and karen on one side and kind of the other and i said well this guy is being really well served with two really talented people so we got lots of expertise on the phone to help the president make really good decisions here and norman neto was sitting on the other side he's a wonderful wonderful guy and so there was conversation and communication and then occasional visit with the president and so on and so on so this is going on something something is fog of war so norm is there he's closed down told every commercial every flight to land and there are a bunch of tv screens behind him and he says he puts down the phone and he says mr vice president we have it on good authority that it was a private plane that uh flew into the pentagon and he's as he's saying that literally as he's uttering the words cnn yes it was delta flight or american flight whatever so here is the head of the transportation department who doesn't know as much as cnn does and so it's norm is was a really good transportation secretary wonderful guy really just the best you can imagine and so when the cops think it was just fog or war it was just you know what are the next targets and so over so there were there so the staff was wondering then they're milling about and so then towards the latter part of the afternoon mid 3 30 4 4 4 o'clock 4 30. uh josh bolton said go do you go do this clay and that'll die call this person get him out there and let's communicate with the governors and then do some intergovernmental stuff and so he was kind of assembling some things and so when we could go back into the offices in the white house about five i think or 5 30 and so we went back and started doing our our uh tasks and uh we knew the president was going to speak at least at 8 30. and um so i think most everybody stayed until he had spoken and just watched it on television and then and went home and i remember walking in um and then and some people were there and you know just one like what was it like i mean the questions were there there were no questions it was just the seriousness of it the gravity of it one things i'm asked uh i think everybody's asked this who served in the administration is how do how do you know what to do when something like this 911 happens or how do you know what to do when when this thing happens or that unbelievable thing happens and all i know is what i saw at every turn was incredible professionalism i mean i saw you and conde you know with the vice president and you know there was no panic there was no nothing it was it was there was taking care of business that was focusing on what we're trying to do norman at his work in the phones you talk about the president the voice to taking control communicating what it is getting firm in everybody's mind what the situation is what the priorities were it was really professional really really professional eric talked about the president's almost preternatural calm in the face of this crisis you as uh i believe carl mentioned have known the president longer than anyone on the panel since your days at phillips exeter and then on to yale andover andover excuse me uh he went to exeter what uh what about the president your experience the president would lead you to believe that he would be able to rally the nation as he did in that moment yeah i don't well it's a goofy parallel uh i think the primary thing about the president that that uh people always had a sense of about him in high school college and every policy person he ever worked for that ever worked for him as governor or president was you know in any kind of briefing the presence there and he is by definition the least knowledgeable person on whatever the subject is any subject he's the least knowledgeable but every policy person said when you asked him within a meeting who was the wisest person in that meeting and they would say well it was the president well why would you say that you know way more than he does he said you'd be given eight ten twelve key facts or something it made a difference you know what the main only difference what the subject was he could say isn't the real key to this that flower he always asked the question that got right to the heart of the matter it was just right and so the way i thought of it is just watching it on news and hearing you all tell the stories who were with him that's a another example that just this is this is if we're at war give it a talk we have to give a speech we have to rally to this and so forth and so it's not like what do we do it was just getting get understanding immediately what's required what's called for the gravity the situation um getting back the messaging the what the military is doing et cetera just just the comfort level with what the task at hand the worst situation can be is not knowing what to do or not knowing gosh what do i do now i don't know it's so you know complicated he just immediately grasped it and wrapped both arms around it and he had great clarity i mean i remember the day after 9 11 i walked into the oval office and he he looked at me and said let me tell you how to do your job today and he very logically said we're at war and so you are in charge of communicating this war and and people are you know already he's thinking five steps ahead people are going to get weary but i'm not we have to prepare them for how long this is and what a process this is and you know he just he has great clarity of thought i think and that results in a very steely determination and a great deal of the calm environment let's go back uh eric uh led up to the 14th of september in his presentation and that very dramatic visit to new york you were with the president both carl you were with president karen you were as well what are your recollections of that day well first i i just remember the horror of seeing it um you could still you know as our helicopters got closer you could smell it it permeated the air the smell the horror of the sight i mean we'd seen it so much on tv but somehow just being there it was it was so i loved eric's description it was like standing on a raw nerve it was just the emotion and the i emailed a friend when i got home that night and i said that i was struck by by three things first of all horror i mean because being there you really saw the horror of the situation how and i remember thinking you know how could anybody no matter their training no matter their zealousness no matter what they believed how could they not pull up before flying a plane into that building full of people and you know just in the second emotion was terrible sadness i just um you know it was so sad all the people that had lost loved ones and and you could see it you could feel the visceral anger in in sadness at the site as the workers you you know we had not planned for the president to speak at that at ground zero because he had given very eloquent remarks earlier the day at the national prayer service and that was supposed to be that was supposed to be the remarks for the day but it became very clear as eric said that that people wanted to hear from their president and and it was there was nothing scripted it was completely spontaneous on his part yeah it's actually an accident it's a complete accident all due to a little woman named nina bishop nina bishop nina bishop is a white house advanced person she was assigned a state department she is about five six she's a biker married to a bike messenger so she has zero body fat and if you took a foam fire hose and wet her for about an hour she might be 90 pounds the night before there had been a meeting of the advanced team and they decided that there wasn't going to be any remarks because he had this major speech at the national cathedral and nina disagreed uh nina thought uh the president needed to speak and so she consciously thought through what member of the president's senior staff was most manipulatable most malleable most prone to give in to her idea and that was me so we come into the northwest we first visited the southeast corner of ground zero and karen's right i mean we were 30 miles south of new york when we entered the plume of smoke the prevailing wind was from north to south and you could just smell it for 30 miles we had the the cabin on nighthawk 2 which was the chopper that karen and i were on with ari fleischer it was just a critic you could just smell it and we went first to the southwest corner which is where the facing from the 110th floor of the world trade center literally was stabbed in the ground like some gigantic trident and then we went around in the northwest corner which is where they were pulling out all of the you know all of the rubble and that's where nina was and so we pulled us on a little street south going north to south the motorcade is only four or five vehicles and there's it goes south for about half a block and then turns right and there's only enough room for two vehicles to turn to the right and so they're three or four vehicles behind and i remember when we pulled into this little street it felt like there was a hum we were in we were not in normal vehicles we were in armored suvs and so i felt like there was this hum and i i suspect you had the same feeling when you opened the door you realized it wasn't a hum it was the sound of this crowd and it was unbelievable it was like a you were hit with a wall of sound and they were chanting usa usa and i got out of the vehicle and walked to the front and looked to my left and there was cardinal egan who's a palomin with the religious leadership of the city of new york you know the sedum jews you know orthodox you know blah blah blah blah all of them waving u.s flags and all of them chanting usa and i mean it was like completely emotional and i almost lost it i mean because you couldn't look at these men there was cardinal egan weeping and at that moment i felt this tug and i turned around in this nina and nina says they want to hear their president he needs to speak and it was a sensible idea i said you're right do we have a sound system she said no i said where do you want him to speak from she said i don't know he just needs to speak what about the running boards and he you know there were wide running boards on these suvs but he'd only be this far far off the ground so i said you go get a bullhorn go get go get you know can you get a bullhorn she said yeah i can get one i said go get a bullhorn and i looked around before i went to andy i wanted to have a place for the president to stand and i'm not an advanced guy i don't script well but i turned around and there was this fire truck i remember right right right below me it said 76 engine company that was the top of the truck it had been smashed down this huge fire truck so there was no more than maybe six feet tall with a bunch of rubble on top three guys standing on top of it and it's but it's visible to everything so i wanted to make certain when i went to andy i had an idea so i look up with these three guys and as i look at them they're three guys a old guy a latino guy and an anglo guy and the anglo jumps off the back of the truck so there are two guys standing on the top of this truck and i'm sitting there in my suit and tie and buttoned up and so i look at these guys and i say is this thing stable and they look at me like you're the man from mars and i said is this thing stable and they the latino guy says yeah stable and i said jump up and down now they really look at me weird but they jump up and down and it looks stable enough and so i said stay there somebody may need your help and i went to remove their when they jumped up and down there was a paving block near the bottom on top of the the the the tires had been blown out by the pressure they literally exploded and and so the the tire wheel was down here and on top of it there was a paving block that jiggled so i went to take the tape paving block and throw it away so that the president would step on it and when i did so the fire the policeman standing next to me grabbed my hand and said don't move it there may be a body part underneath so i went to andy and said to andy they want to hear the president he needs to speak to this crowd and he immediately said you're right that was my idea was nina's idea and he said where and i said he can do it over here and at that moment nina shows up with the bullhorn commandeered from a con edison guy and gives it to the president's aide and at this point the latino drops jumps off the back of the of the truck and the 69 year old retired firefighter bob beckwith is paying no attention to what's going on he's just sort of looking out over the crowd president makes his way over and puts his hand up and somebody yells to bob and bob looks down and all he sees is some guy trying to make his way up this pile of rubble and so he reaches down and pulls the guy up standing next to him and realizes it's the president of the united states and completely freaks out so this is how the president has to sort of draw throw his armor at him say no you're not going anywhere this guy's like the president and of course then there's the famous moment the colloquy between our guy from pittsburgh and the president and the words that no speechwriter had anything to do with nobody thought about it in advance nobody pre-planned this moment it just happened and it it and when he said it the wall of noise that had been there before sounded like a whisper compared to what exploded out of that crowd karen said she felt sadness i felt anger that day i was i had to fight it i i was so mad at what had happened and in that moment you could just hear the anger come out of these iron workers and steel workers and firemen and policemen i mean it just came out they'd seen they'd seen too many of their comrades and pulled too many bodies from them from the ashes and seen too many body parts and they were just angry and when but it was like a calming moment when the president said they're going to hear from us it was reassuring to people it was an incredible moment i remember i was standing as close as i am to carl right now and the minute he said it i was i was standing with our friend joe alba who is the head of the emergency management agency and i turned to joe and i said that's going to be in this presidential library someday because i realize it was just spoke the words were spoken with such a resolute conviction at such an important time in the emotion it just it just was a perfect message for for the moment and then afterwards we went again for many of us i think the most intense and saddest experience of the whole day we went to the javits center where there were about 400 people these were loved ones of first responders who had not yet been found and so they were you know the mothers wives children brothers fathers of missing police and firefighters who were at that point three days in you know it was very unlikely although there was still some hope but very unlikely that any of them would still be found alive and they were all there in the javits center and we walked into that room and it was just the most intense moment i'd ever experienced in my life it was totally silent it was so overwhelmingly sad and i was i stood in there about 20 minutes the president started i was the president started going around family to family and very quietly sort of putting his arm around him asking them about their loved one after about 20 minutes i couldn't take it anymore it was so i felt like i was going to explode it was so intense in there and so i left the room for a few minutes and he kept working going from family to family talking when i walked back in probably 20 or 30 minutes later the entire mood had changed he had managed to get people to talk about their loved ones he he had a few people even laughing tell me a story about your dad or you know and he cried with each family and he laughed and he was that we were actually traveling with kirby john caldwell who's a reverend from houston who who looked at me and said he does this better than almost any pastor i know and it was just amazing that the depth of the connection and imagine the emotional wear and tear i couldn't stand it i mean imagine the worst emotional wear and tear on the president he spent almost two hours he's been worried he's been nearly two and a half hours no no no fo no other than eric no photo no media nobody ever i don't remember anybody ever writing a story about it never never told anywhere um and at the end of somewhere during the process um somebody came up to me and and introduced me to arlene howard and said this is the mother of a port authority officer and she wants to give her son's badge to the president and so i arranged for her to be a position where she could see him as he was leaving and and she gave him the badge which became a very powerful part not only of not only something for him he was carrying it around and pulling it out of his pocket and we finally i realized that that was very important to him and we ended up concluding his joint session speech to congress with the story of the badge he said and i will carry this it is is my reminder of life's lives ended and a task that does not end um and so but at the end the third emotion i had that day after and i agree with you carl there was such anger there i just i remember the horror and the sadness but at the end as our motorcade left the city that night what a powerful sense of inspiration i don't know if you remember but we left and it was dark after we left the java center and there were thousands of new yorkers lining the streets and they were holding candles and they were shouting thank you to the volunteers and god bless america and it was such a powerful feeling i just remember leaving the city with such amazing inspiration yeah 10 and 12 deep it was it really wasn't remarkable i had a similar experience to karen's when first of all it's it's not fair to call it a room that he entered a room it was the parking garage and they had taken pipe and drape and roped off an area big enough for these 400 family members to be inside but i mean there was this was not a room with comfortable chairs and a nice carpet on the floor to send this was a parking garage in the middle of a convention center and carrick karen karen karen described it i i i i'll admit it i was weeping uncontrollably after 15 minutes and had to leave and and i think only two people were in that room for the full two and a half hours one of them was the president and well secret service of course so they may have shifted in and out and joe hagan the white deputy chief of staff for administration at the white house who's in charge of the advance operation but i i gotta tell you i i remember when i had to leave the room the first time i had to leave the room several times but a little kid he was blonde i remember him he was blonde really blond and he came up and confronted the president and held up with both of his hands the picture of his father police officer and never said a word just held it up to the president and the president talked to him and then took the picture and wrote a note to his father on the back i think the kid may have said his father's name but he wrote it that's about all he said and the president comforted him and then and the little boy just reached out very quickly and grabbed a hold of the president and just held on for life and the president just held him and you know the kid there was no chance he was ever going to see his father alive and all he wanted to do was hold on to the president and have some sense of comfort and this went on for two and a half hours kirby john caldwell was a high flyer on wall street who one day woke up and said is this what life is supposed to be about and went back to houston texas and started a church in a in an abandoned shopping center he's a really remarkable guy and i really felt guilty when i walked out of there say thinking to myself i made i really i have an obligation to throw myself back in there and a few minutes later he came out weeping and for some reason it was comforting if if he if this extraordinary person couldn't take it i i didn't need to feel guilty about not being able to take it but the president did for two to it we arrived into javits center at 4 45 p.m he walked in and there was a shift change that he posed for pictures it couldn't have been more than 20 30 minutes maybe call it a half an hour call it 5 15. we left there at 7 58 one hour and 40 minutes after the schedule said we were supposed to leave there and the entire time in between he was comforting those families before i end the evening with a quote from president bush i'd like to ask those in our audience who served in the in the white house during 9 11 to stand up and be recognized please president bush wrote in his memoir decision points of 9 11 september 11th redefined sacrifice it redefined duty and it redefined my job the story of that week is the key to understanding my presidency for as long as i held office i could never forget what happened in america that day i would pour my heart and soul into protecting the country i want to thank our panelists for sharing their stories of that eventful day i want to thank those who just stood up and our panelists for all they did to help to keep our country secure during the administration thanks so much for coming tonight thank you all thank you

Channel: TheLBJLibrary

Views: 363,268

Rating: 4.4518447 out of 5

Keywords: September 11 Attacks (Event), LBJ Presidential Library, President Lyndon Johnson, Lyndon B. Johnson (US President), Karl Rove (Author), Eric Draper, Clay Johnson, Karen Hughes

Id: Hhp4uF-lIi0

Length: 97min 44sec (5864 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 17 2013