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were unidentified planes tracking in our direction,” he says.

Cheney was rushed deep under the White House into a bunker called the 
Presidential Emergency Operations Center. It was built for war, and this 
was it. On her way down, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice 
called Mr. Bush.

“It was brief because I was being pushed to get off the phone and get 
out of the West Wing,” says Rice. “They were hurrying me off the phone 
with the president and I just said, he said, ‘I’m coming back’ and we 
said ‘Mr. President that may not be wise.’ I remember stopping briefly 
to call my family, my aunt and uncle in Alabama and say, ‘I’m fine. You 
have to tell everybody that I’m fine’ but then settling into trying to 
deal with the enormity of that moment, and in the first few hours, I 
think the thing that was on everybody’s mind was how many more planes 
are coming.”

The Capitol was evacuated. And for the first time ever, the Secret 
Service executed the emergency plan to ensure the presidential line of 
succession. Agents swept up the 15 officials who stood to become 
president if the others were killed. They wanted to move Vice President 
Cheney, fearing he was in danger even in the bunker. But Cheney says 
when he heard the other officials were safe, he decided to stay at the 
White House, no matter what.

“It’s important to emphasize it's not personal, you don’t think of it in 
personal terms, you’ve got a professional job to do,” says Cheney.

Cheney was joined by transportation secretary Norm Mineta who remembers 
hearing the FAA counting down the hijacked jets closing in on the 
capital.

Says Mineta: “Someone came in and said ‘Mr. Vice president there’s a 
plane 50 miles out,’ then he came in and said ‘Its now 10 miles out, we 
don’t know where it is exactly, but it’s coming in low and fast.’”

It was American Flight 77. At 9:38 a.m., it exploded into the Pentagon, 
the first successful attack on Washington since the War of 1812.

As the Pentagon burned, Mr. Bush’s limousine sped toward Air Force One 
in Florida. At that moment, United Flight 93 - the last hijacked plane - 
was taking dead aim at Washington. At the White House, the staff was in 
the West Wing cafeteria, watching on TV. Press Secretary Jennifer 
Millerwise was in the crowd when the order came to evacuate.

“I no sooner walked outside when someone from the Secret Service yelled 
‘Women drop your heels and run, drop your heels and run,’ and suddenly 
the gates that never open except for authorized vehicles just opened and 
the whole White House just flooded out,” she recalls.

In Florida, as Mr. Bush boarded Air Force One, he was overheard telling 
a Secret Service agent “Be sure to get the First Lady and my daughters 
protected.” At 9:57 a.m., Air Force One thundered down the runway, 
blasting smoke and dust in a full -hrust take off. Communications 
Director Dan Bartlett was on board.

“It was like a rocket,” he remembers. “For a good ten minutes, the plane 
was going almost straight up.”

At the same moment, 56 minutes after it was hit, World Trade Center 
Tower Two began to falter, then cascade in an incomprehensible avalanche 
of steel, concrete and human lives.

“Someone said to me, ‘Look at that’ I remember that, ‘Look at that’ and 
I looked up and I saw and I just remember a cloud of dust and smoke and 
the horror of that moment,” recalls Rice of the TV newscast.

She also felt something in her gut: “That we’ve lost a lot of Americans 
and that eventually we would get these people. I felt the anger. Of 
course I felt the anger.”

Down in the bunker, Cheney was trying to figure out how many hijacked 
planes there were. Officials feared there could be as many as 11.

As the planes track toward Washington, a discussion begins about whether 
to shoot them down. “I discussed it with the president,” Cheney 
recalls. “‘Are we prepared to order our aircraft to shoot down these 
airliners that have been hijacked?’ He said yes.”

“It was my advice. It was his decision,” says Cheney.

“That’s a sobering moment to order your own combat aircraft to shoot 
down your own civilian aircraft,” says Bush. “But it was an easy 
decision to make given the – given the fact that we had learned that a 
commercial aircraft was being used as a weapon. I say easy decision, it 
was, I didn’t hesitate, let me put it that way. I knew what had to be 
done.”

The passengers on United Flight 93 also knew what had to be done. They 
fought for control and sacrificed themselves in a Pennsylvania meadow. 
The flight was 15 minutes from Washington.

“Clearly, the terrorists were trying to take out as many symbols of 
government as they could: the Pentagon, perhaps the Capitol, perhaps the 
White House. These people saved us not only physically but they saved us 
psychologically and symbolically in a very important way, too,” says 
Rice.

Meanwhile, Tower One was weakening. It had stood for an hour and 43 
minutes. At 10:29 a.m., it buckled in a mirror image of the collapse of 
its twin.

The image that went round the world reached the First Lady in a secure 
location somewhere in Washington. “I was horrified,” she says. “I 
thought, ‘Dear God, protect as many citizens as you can.’ It was a 
nightmare.”

By 10:30 a.m., America’s largest city was devastated, its military 
headquarters were burning. Air force One turned west along the Gulf 
Coast.

“I can remember sitting right here in this office thinking about the 
consequences of what had taken place and realizing it was the defining 
moment in the history of the United States,” says President Bush. “I 
didn’t need any legal briefs, I didn’t need any consultations, I knew we 
were at war.”

Mr. Bush says the first hours were frustrating. He watched the 
horrifying pictures, but the TV signal was breaking up. His calls to 
Cheney were cutting out. Mr. Bush says he pounded his desk shouting, 
“This is inexcusable; get me the vice president.”