chorused the children, then “kit!” then “seal” and “steal,” and so on, as Ms. Daniels beat time. Then, “Boys and girls, pick your reader up from under your seat. Open your book up to Lesson 60, on page 153.” The children and the President picked up the readers.
In a nearby room, members of Bush’s staff had been watching the news coverage from New York—the Marine assigned to carry the President’s phone had asked for the television to be turned on. One of those watching as Flight 175 hit was Captain Deborah Loewer, the woman who had run to tell the President about the initial crash. “It took me about thirty seconds,” she recalled, “to realize this was terrorism.”
Loewer spoke rapidly to chief of staff Andy Card, and—we calculate within about ninety seconds—Card was in the classroom and whispering in the President’s ear. By one account he said, “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.” As likely, given Loewer’s role as Situation Room director, is a version that had Card telling Bush, “Captain Loewer says it’s terrorism.”
IN NEW YORK at about that time, high in the South Tower, Brian Clark of Euro Brokers was pausing to pull Stanley Praimnath out of a wrecked wall, glimpsing fires raging through cracks in walls.
Operators at the Fire Department were logging a stream of emergency calls:
9:04 MC [male caller] CAGGIANO … STS [states] PEOPLE TRAPPED ON THE 104 FLR … IN BACK ROOM … STS 35–40 PEOPLE
9:04 MC—STS 103 FLR—CAN’T GET OUT—FIRE ON FLR—PEOPLE GETTING SICK
IN THE CLASSROOM in Florida, Bush’s expression changed. Told of the second strike, the President pursed his lips, gazing back at his chief of staff as he moved away. ABC’s Ann Compton, watching him, thought “his eyes got wide.” Teacher Daniels thought he seemed distracted. Natalia Jones-Pinkney, one of the pupils, thought he “looked like he was going to cry.” “His face just started to turn red,” said Tyler Radkey, another student. “I thought, personally, he had to go to the bathroom.”
In the adjacent room, the Marine carrying Bush’s phone turned to the local sheriff and said, “Can you get everybody ready? We’re out of here.” Not so—not yet, for the President did not move.
“On the count of three,” teacher Daniels said, “everyone should be on page 153 …” The children obeyed, and so did Bush. “Fingers under the title,” came the order. “Get ready!” The children chorused the title of a story: “The Pet Goat …”
For long and unforgettable minutes, the President of the United States sat dutifully as the second graders read:
The girl had a pet goat. She liked to go running with her pet goat. She played with her goat in her house. She played with her goat in her yard. But the goat did something that made the girl’s dad mad. The goat ate things. He ate cans and he ate cakes. He ate cakes and he ate cats. One day her dad said, “That goat must go. He ate too many things.”
On the other side of the room, press secretary Ari Fleischer had held up a handwritten sign for Bush’s attention. It read, in large black letters, “DON’T SAY ANYTHING YET.”
IN THE NORTH TOWER, realtor James Gartenberg and secretary Patricia Puma had by now realized they were stuck in their office. “A fire door has trapped us,” Gartenberg told a WABC reporter who reached him on the phone. “Debris has fallen around us. I’m with one other person … on the 86th floor, facing the East River … I want to tell anybody that has a family member that may be in the building that the situation is under control at the moment … So please, all family members take it easy.”
It was a brave statement, but neither Gartenberg nor Puma would survive.
The flood of calls to the Fire Department continued:
09:07 CALL FLR 103—ROOM 130—APPROX 30 PEOPLE—LOTS OF SMOKE—FC [female caller] IS PREGNANT
09:08: FC SCREAMING
09:08: FC STS FIRE DEPARTMENT NEEDED TO PUT OUT FIRE
09:09: MC STS 2WTC—PEOPLE ARE JUMPING OUT THE SIDE OF A LARGE HOLE—POSS NO ONE CATCHING THEM
09:09: ON FLR 104—MC STS HIS WIFE IS ON THE 91 FL—STS STAIRS ARE ALL BLOCKED—STS WORRIED ABOUT HIS WIFE
IN FLORIDA, the children chorused on:
The goat stayed … the girl made him stop eating cans and cakes and cats and cakes. But one day a car robber went into the girl’s house. He saw a big red car in the house and said, “I will steal that car.” He ran to the car and started to open the door. The girl and the goat were playing in the back yard. They did not see the car robber. More to come.
The President, seemingly all attention, asked, “What does that mean—‘More to come’?” It meant, a child told him brightly, that there would be “More later on.”
• • •
MORE WAS IN FACT already happening. Since 8:56, well before Bush began listening to the second graders, FAA ground controllers had begun worrying about a third airliner. American Flight 77, bound for Los Angeles out of Washington’s Dulles Airport, had failed to respond to routine messages, and deviated from its assigned course. Its transponder was turned off and it could not be seen on radar. The controller of the moment, in Indianapolis, knew nothing of the events in New York. He thought the plane had experienced serious technical failure and was “gone.”
Soon after 9:00, as the second hijacked airplane crashed into the South Tower, controllers began circulating information that Flight 175 was missing, perhaps crashed. Air Force Search and Rescue and the police were alerted, American Airlines notified. Some at American, meanwhile, thought for a while that it was Flight 77—not United’s 175—that had crashed into the Trade Center’s South Tower. “Whose plane is whose?”: the gist of one conversation between an American manager and his counterpart at United summarizes the general confusion.
United dispatcher Ed Ballinger, responsible for sixteen of the airline’s transcontinental flights, had learned that a Flight 175 attendant had called reporting a hijacking. He composed a cautious message to 175 that read, “How’s the ride? Anything Dispatch can do for you?” It was too late. By the time the message went out, at 9:03, the crew and passengers on board the plane were beyond help. In the same minute, Flight 175 struck the South Tower.
Four minutes after that, Boston area Air Traffic Control advised all commercial airplane pilots in its sector to secure their cockpits. Boston also recommended that the FAA’s Command Center issue a nationwide warning, but the Command Center failed to do so. At 9:19 at United, however, dispatcher Ballinger acted on his own initiative and began sending messages to all “his” flights. They read: “Beware any cockpit intrusion. Two a/c [aircraft] hit World Trade Center.”
By 9:05, aware now of the Flight 11 hijacker’s transmission about having “planes,” FAA’s New York Center issued orders forbidding any aircraft to leave, arrive at, or travel through, their airspace until further notice. “We have several situations going on here,” a New York Center manager told the Command Center. “We have other aircraft that may have a similar situation going on here.” With 4,546 airplanes under their control in the United States that morning, the managers were facing into a situation covered by no training manual.
CONTROLLERS REMAINED totally ignorant of the true status of American 77, the third plane in trouble— though not for want of trying on the part of one of its crew. At 9:12, flight attendant Renee May—assigned to First Class on this latest missing aircraft—got through by phone to her mother in Las Vegas. She spoke just long enough to say six hijackers had taken control, and that passengers and crew were being moved to the back of the plane. She asked her mother to call American Airlines and raise the alarm. Then she got out, “I love you, Mom,” before the call was disconnected.
May’s mother got through to American in Washington, waited while she was put on hold, then relayed her daughter’s message. With staff already distracted by news of events in New York, some wondered whether Flight 77 had hit the World Trade Center. The import of May’s call became lost in the general confusion.
In the West Wing of the White House, the videoconference of senior officials was yet to get under way. After the second strike, meanwhile, Vice President Cheney had picked up a phone and said, “I need to talk to the President … The Cabinet is going to need direction.”
