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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.”

“I was trying to clear the fog of war, and there is a fog of war, says 
the president. "Information was just flying from all directions.”

Chief of staff Card brought in the reports. There was word Camp David 
had been hit. A jet was thought to be targeting Mr. Bush’s ranch.

“I remember hearing that the State Department might have been hit, or 
that the White House had a fire in it. So we were hearing lots of 
different information,” says Card.

They also feared that Air Force One itself was a target. Cheney told the 
president there was a credible threat against the plane. Using the code 
name for Air Force One, Mr. Bush told an aide, “Angel is next.” The 
threat was passed to presidential pilot Colonel Mark Tillman.

“It was serious before that but now it is -no longer is it a time to get 
the president home,” Tillman says. “We actually have to consider 
everything we say, everything we do could be intercepted, and we have to 
make sure that no one knows what our position is.”

Tillman asked for an armed guard at his cockpit door while Secret 
Service agents double-checked the identity of everyone on board. The 
crew reviewed the emergency evacuation plan. Then came a warning from 
air traffic control – a suspect airliner was dead ahead.

“Coming out of Sarasota there was one call that said there was an 
airliner off our nose that they did not have contact with,” Tillman 
remembers.

Tillman took evasive action, pulling his plane high above normal 
traffic. They were on course for Washington, but by now no one thought 
that was a good idea, except the president.

“I wanted to come back to Washington, but the circumstances were such 
that it was just impossible for the Secret Service or the national 
security team to clear the way for Air Force One to come back,” says 
Bush.