Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (103 page)

By now it was about three minutes
past nine. Both towers of the World Trade Center had been hit by large
commercial airliners with thousands of people feared dead. One crash took place
on live television. Another commercial jet bound for Los Angeles—American
Airlines Flight 77— was missing and may have been headed for still another
target. Other flying bombs were possibly orbiting. NORAD had launched fighters
to intercept and possibly shoot down one of the aircraft, requiring the
president's permission. Frightened Americans across the country were transfixed
in front of their televisions. Commentators were declaring that the United
States was under massive airborne attack. Yet as America was suffering its
worse assault in history, the president of the United States remained largely
in the dark, knowing far less then the average couch potato watching Diane
Sawyer.

At the time, George W Bush was
sitting on a stool in Sarasota, Florida, listening to a small class of second
graders read him a story about a girl's pet goat. It was the day's routine
photo-op, prepackaged propaganda for the press designed to demonstrate his
concern for education. Just before entering the class, Condoleezza Rice, the
national security advisor, informed the president of the devastating jet plane
crash into Tower One. Nevertheless, Bush decided stay on message and go forward
with the publicity event. Florida, after all, had been the most crucial
battleground of the last election, and could be in the next.

About 9:06, four minutes after the
attack on Tower Two, White House Chief of Staff Andy Card leaned over and
whispered the brief message in the president's right ear. "A second plane
has hit the World Trade Center," he said. "America is under
attack." Almost immediately an expression of befuddlement passed across the
president's face.

Then,
having just been told that the country was under attack, the commander in chief
appeared uninterested in further details. He never asked if there had been any
additional threats, where the attacks were coming from, how to best protect the
country from further attacks, or what was the current status of NORAD or the
Federal Emergency Management Agency. Nor did he call for an immediate return to
Washington. Instead, in the middle of a modern-day Pearl Harbor, he simply
turned back to the matter at hand: the day's photo op. Precious minutes were
ticking by, and many more lives were still at risk. "Really good readers,
whew!" he told the class as the electronic flashes once again began to
blink and the video cameras rolled. "These must be sixth graders!"

As President Bush continued with
his reading lesson, life within the burning towers of the World Trade Center
was becoming ever more desperate. At 9:06 the police helicopter radioed the
message, "Unable to land on roof." As it pulled away from Tower One,
the hundreds or thousands still trapped on the upper floors saw their last hope
disappear. Without someone to break open the locked doors to the roof, or pluck
them from it, all they could do was hang out of windows trying to find some
smoke-free air to breathe. Some flapped draperies to try to attract attention.
The towers had now become sky-high chimneys.

Within minutes, people began
jumping, preferring a quick death to burning alive or suffocating. "People
falling out of building," said the pilot of the chopper.
"Jumper," he added. And they just kept coming. "Several jumpers
from the window [Windows on the World] at One World Trade Center." By 9:09
people were also beginning to throw themselves out of Tower Two. "People
are jumping out the side of a large hole," said a caller to fire rescue.
"Possibly no one catching them."

Like people trapped on a sinking
ship seeking the highest point above the water, those in the twin towers,
blocked from going down, were climbing up as high as they could go. But it
would be a climb to nowhere. "One hundred twenty people trapped on the 106
^th
floor," exclaimed a caller in Windows on the World at 9:19. "A lot of
smoke. . . . Can't go down the stairs!" "Evacuation to the top floor
of World Trade Center," said another caller a few seconds later. The
problem was the same at Tower Two. "Hundred and fifth floor," a
caller yelled. "People trapped! Open roof to gain access!" But,
ironically, although some would make it to the roof through open doors, other
doors were locked to keep potential jumpers, and simple spectators, off.

For more than half an hour, air
traffic controllers in both Washington and Indianapolis had been searching
madly for American Airlines Flight 77, which had taken off from Dulles Airport
about 8:10. At 8:56 all contact was lost. "You guys never been able to
raise him at all?" asked a radar operator at Indianapolis Control.
"No," said the air traffic controller. "We called [the] company.
They can't even get ahold of him so there's no, no, uh, no radio communications
and no radar." Finally, at 9:24, the FAA alerted officials at NORAD, who
immediately sent out a scramble order to their Air National Guard unit at
Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia.

Four minutes later, Dulles tower
air traffic control operator Danielle O'Brien spotted an unidentified blip on
her radar screen. Although she didn't know it at the time, it was the missing
Flight 77. Seventy minutes earlier she had bid farewell to the flight crew with
her uncustomary "good luck." The alarmed controllers quickly called
to warn their colleagues at Reagan National Airport, which was located close to
downtown Washington. "Fast moving primary target," they said,
indicating that a plane without a transponder was heading their way.

At the time, the plane was about
twelve to fourteen miles southwest of Dulles and moving at lightning speed. Tom
Howell, the controller next to O'Brien, glanced over at her screen and his eyes
grew wide. "Oh my God!" he yelled. "It looks like he's headed to
the White House! We've got a target headed right for the White Housel" At
full throttle, American Airlines Flight 77 was traveling at about 500 miles per
hour directly toward P-56, the prohibited air space surrounding the White House
and the Capitol. Because of its speed and the way it maneuvered and turned,
everyone in the radar room of Dulles Airport's tower assumed it was a military
jet.

Among the passengers on Flight 77
were the hijackers from the Valencia Motel and Barbara Olson. Originally,
Barbara Olson had planned to fly to Los Angeles on Monday, September 10. But
because her husband's birthday was on the 11th, she decided to leave the next
morning so she could spend a little time with him on that day. After saying
good-bye early in the morning, she called him at the Justice Department about
7:40, just before boarding her plane.

About an hour and a half later,
Olson heard about the hijackings and quickly turned on his office television,
worried that one of the planes might be Barbara's. But after a brief mental
calculation, he figured her plane could not have gotten to New York that
quickly.

Suddenly a secretary rushed in.
"Barbara is on the phone," she said. Olson jumped for the receiver.
"Our plane has been hijacked!" she said quickly, but then the phone
went dead. Olson immediately called the command center at Justice and alerted
them that there was yet another hijacked plane—and that his wife was on it. He
also said she was able to communicate, even though her first call had been cut
off.

Minutes later Barbara called back.
Speaking very quietly, she said the hijackers did not know she was making this
call. All the passengers, she said, had been herded to the back by men who had
used knives and box cutters to hijack the plane. The pilot had announced that
the plane had been hijacked shortly after takeoff.

Ted Olson then told her about the
two other planes that had flown into the World Trade Center. "I think she
must have been partially in shock from the fact that she was on a hijacked
plane," Olson recalled. "She absorbed the information."

"What shall I tell the pilot?
What can I tell the pilot to do?" Barbara said, trying to remain calm.
Olson asked if she could tell where the plane was. She said she could see
houses and, after asking someone, said she thought the plane was heading
northeast.

They then reassured each other
that at least the plane was still up in the air, still flying. "It's going
to come out okay," Olson told his wife, who agreed. But Ted Olson knew the
situation was anything but all right. "I was pretty sure everything was
not going to be okay," he recalled. "I, by this time, had made the
calculation that these were suicidal persons, bent on destroying as much of
America as they could." "I love you," Barbara said as they
expressed their feelings for each other. Then the phone suddenly went dead
again. While waiting for her to call back, Olson remained glued to the
television. It was now about 9:30.

At that same moment, NORAD's three
F-16s, each loaded with six missiles, were wheels up from Langley Air Force
Base. It was the closest alert base to Washington, only 130 miles away. The
pilots' job was somehow to find Flight 77 before it found its target and
possibly shoot it down. But that would require the authorization of the
president.

At 9:30, nearly half an hour after
being told that the country was under attack, President Bush was still at the
Emma E. Booker Elementary School, far from the madness in New York. Having
finished his photo op with the second graders and been given a quick update on
the state of the crisis, he strolled into the school's library. He had
originally planned to give a speech promoting his education policies. Instead,
still seemingly unaware of the magnitude of what was taking place, he told the
children and teachers that he would have to leave. "I, unfortunately, will
be going back to Washington," he said, because the country had suffered
"an apparent terrorist attack."

With one brief exception, that was
the last anyone would see of either the president or vice president until long
after the crisis ended.
Air Force One
was not going to Washington. The
commander in chief was headed for the safety of a bunker deep under Nebraska.
At first, an administration spokesman said flying to Omaha was a result of a
threat against
Air Force One
called into the White House. But later the
administration was forced to admit that such an event never took place.

Within the tower at Dulles
Airport, the tension was almost visible. The supervisor in the radar room began
a countdown as the unknown plane got closer and closer to the White House.
"He's twelve miles west," he said. "He's moving very fast
eastbound. Okay, guys, where is he now? .. . Eleven miles west, ten miles west,
nine miles west." About that point, the supervisor picked up the phone to
the Secret Service office at the White House. "We have an unidentified,
very fast-moving aircraft inbound toward your vicinity," he said.
"Eight miles west. Seven miles west."

At the White House, Secret Service
officers quickly rushed into Vice President Dick Cheney's office. "We have
to move," said one agent. "We're moving now, sir; we're moving."
Once out, they hustled him down to the Presidential Emergency Operations
Center, a special bombproof bunker under the East Wing of the building. The
rest of the White House staff were told to get out and away from the building
as quickly as possible. "All the way to H Street, please," one
uniformed Secret Service officer yelled.

"Six miles," said the
supervisor. "Five miles, four miles." He was just about to say three
miles when the plane suddenly turned away. "In the room, it was almost a
sense of relief," recalled traffic controller Danielle O'Brien. "This
must be a fighter. This must be one of our guys sent in, scrambled to patrol
our capital and to protect our president, and we sat back in our chairs and
breathed for just a second. In the meantime, all the rest of the planes are
still flying and we're taking care of everything else."

But then the plane suddenly turned
back, completing a 360-degree loop. "He's turning back in!" O'Brien
yelled. "He's turning back east-bound!" O'Brien's fellow traffic
controller, Tom Howell began to yell to the supervisor. "Oh my God, John, he's
coming back!"

"We lost radar contact with
that aircraft," recalled O'Brien. "And we waited. And we waited. And
your heart is just beating out of your chest, waiting to hear what's
happened."

At that same moment, Catholic
priest Father Stephen McGraw was in traffic so heavy it was almost at a
standstill. He was on his way to a graveside service at Arlington National
Cemetery but had mistakenly taken the Pentagon exit onto Washington Boulevard.
Suddenly McGraw felt the teeth-rattling roar of a large aircraft only about
twenty feet above. He looked out just as the plane clipped an overhead sign and
then toppled a lamppost, injuring a taxi driver a few feet away. "It
looked like a plane coming in for a landing," he said. "I mean, in
the sense that it was controlled and sort of straight." A second later, at
9:37, American Airlines Flight 77 smashed into the gray concrete wall of the
Pentagon, hitting with such force that it penetrated four of the five
concentric rings of corridors and offices surrounding the center court, long
nicknamed Ground Zero.

"I saw it crash into the
building," said McGraw. "There was an explosion and a loud noise, and
I felt the impact. I remember seeing a fireball come out of two windows [of the
Pentagon]. I saw an explosion of fire billowing through those two windows. I
remember hearing a gasp or scream from one of the other cars near me. Almost a
collective gasp it seemed."