The Eleventh Day

threats to the President at Longboat Key (Incident Report, Sarasota Police Dept., 4:07 A.M., 9/11/01, obtained by authors, conv. Monica Yadav, ABC 7 [affiliate], int. Sheriff’s Dept. source, ints. Carroll Mooneyhan, Murf Klauber, Katy Moulton).

12 Draper: Albuquerque Tribune, 9/10/02;

13 Morell: Tenet, 165–.

14 President first learned: At 9:17 that morning, in a conversation live with presenter Peter Jennings, reporter John Cochran stated from Sarasota that as Bush “got out of his hotel suite this morning, was about to leave, reporters saw the White House chief of staff, Andy Card, whisper into his ear. The reporter said to the President, ‘Do you know what’s going on in New York?’ He said he did, and he said he will have something about it later. His first event is [in] about half an hour at an elementary school in Sarasota.” This report has been taken to indicate that President Bush was already aware of the first impact on the Trade Center as he left his hotel. This would be impossible, however, as the President reportedly left his hotel at 8:35, some eleven minutes before the crash of American Flight 11. Bush did tell a reporter he would “talk about it later,” but at a later stage, well into his visit to Booker Elementary, after the second airplane had hit and just before 9:17 when Cochran spoke to Peter Jennings. The authors conclude that, in the rush of unfolding events, Cochran conflated disparate events—perhaps not reporting all of them firsthand (Cochran: “ABC News Special Report: Planes Crash into World Trade Center,” transcript, 9/11/01 & tape on www.youtube.com; 8:35 at hotel: WP, 1/27/02; “talk … later”: ABC News, 6/22/04).

15 Loewer: AP, 11/26/01;

16 Card: Rep. Adam Putnam in GW Hatchet, 4/8/02;

17 “The first report”: Washington Times, 10/7/02;

18 “I thought”: CBS, 9/10/03;

19 “We’re going”: AP, 8/19/02.

20 three alarms: Dwyer & Flynn, 47–;

21 first responders: Staff Statement 13, 14, CO;

22 “twenty-four hours”: int. Richard, World Trade Center Task Force, 10/10/01;

23 Instructions not heard: Staff Statement 13, CO;

24 “no need”: Dwyer & Flynn, 72;

25 9:02: CR, 289;

26 4,000 people: USA Today, 12/20/01;

27 On Channel 5: NYT, 8/27/10;

28 “One plane’s”: Bamford, Pretext, 92, 89;

29 Rumsfeld: Torie Clarke, Lipstick on a Pig, NY: Free Press, 2006, 217–, int. Torie Clarke on WBZ (Boston), 9/16/01, int. Donald Rumsfeld by Alfred Goldberg and Rebecca Cameron, 12/23/02, “Rumsfeld on Intel,” B7, T2, CF;

30 “With all hell”: Tenet, 162;

31 Clarke: Richard Clarke, 1–;

32 “Get ready”: footage of Bush’s visit to Booker Elementary is viewable on www.youtube.com;

33 phonics-based: New Yorker, 7/26/04.

34 picked up readers: The President held his book the correct way up, contrary to persistent claims that he held it upside down. A photograph purporting to show him holding a book upside down— on another occasion—was doctored. In the original AP photograph of that occasion, Bush was clearly holding the book the correct way up (claims: e.g., refs. to the “Pet Goat” story on Google, Jude Cowell blog, 11/19/08, www.judecowell.wordpress.com, Asia Times, 10/30/04; doctored: “Dubya, Willya Turn the Book Over?” 11/16/02, www.wired.com).

35 news coverage: Televisions were available at the school. President Bush would be excoriated, later, for appearing to claim—in Florida in December 2001 and subsequently—that he had seen TV coverage of the first plane hitting the Trade Center. What he said in December was: “And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in [authors’ italics], and I saw an airplane hit the tower—the television was obviously on, and I used to fly myself, and I said, ‘There’s one terrible pilot.’ ” Bush was in error in saying that he saw one of the strikes on TV before entering the classroom. There was no live footage of the first strike on the Trade Center. The footage of Flight 11’s impact, shot by documentary filmmaker Jules Naudet, was on video and not shown until much later. Bush, moreover, would be in the classroom with the schoolchildren—not watching television—when the TV showed live pictures of the second plane flying into the Trade Center. The footage of the second strike, however, was shown again and again in the minutes and hours that followed. What Bush recalled having seen on TV at the school was surely one of the reruns, transmitted after he had left the classroom. A photograph taken at the school features Bush standing near a TV screen—one that appears to show smoke billowing from the Trade Center. Given the tumultuous events that followed on September 11 and later, and given the President’s infamous propensity to muddle his utterances, there is no reason to attach significance to his error in saying he saw one of the strikes on television before entering the classroom (there were TVs: Summers tour of school, int. Dwana Washington; “And I was sitting”: interview George Bush, 12/04/01, www.whitehouse.gov; much later: Paul Thompson, The Terror Timeline, NY: Regan, 2004, 388, & see Friend, 187; photo: AP).

36 Marine: Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/10/02.

37 “It took me”/“Captain Loewer says”: AP, 11/26/01.

38 “A second plane”: CR, 38. To calculate the timing of the classroom session and when Bush was informed of the second strike, the authors studied the footage of the session available on YouTube and in the relevant section of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which includes specific time points. The authors’ calculation as to the delay before Bush was told of the second strike—“ninety seconds”—would mean that Card interrupted him somewhat after 9:04—a little earlier than the 9:05 timing cited in the Commission Report. The delay was in any case minimal (Fahrenheit 9/11, Sony Pictures, 2004, CR, 38).

39 Brian Clark: Bernstein, 224–;

40 emergency calls: NY Daily News, 9/30/01.

41 Compton: ABC News, 9/11/02;

42 Daniels: St. Petersburg Times, 9/8/02;

43 Jones-Pinkney/Radkey: AP, 9/11/06;

44 “Can you get”: St. Petersburg Times, 7/4/04;

45 “The Pet Goat”: eds. Siegfried Engelmann & Elaine Bruner, Reading Mastery 2, Storybook 1, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1995;

46 “DON’T SAY”: Washington Times, 10/7/02.

47 Gartenberg/Puma: WABC (NY), 9/11/01, eds. Der Spiegel, 85–, 212–.

48 Flight 77: Farmer, 160–, 186, “Air Traffic Control Recording,” NTSB, 12/21/01, CR, 8–, 24–;

49 “Whose plane”: MFR 04017175, 11/20/03, CF;

50 Ballinger/Boston warned: Staff Report, “The Four Flights and Civil Aviation Security,” 8/26/04, CF, CR, 455n67;

51 Command Center failed: ibid.;

52 Boston advised/NY issued: CR, 23, “Staff Report”;

53 “Beware”: CR, 11. One such message went to Flight 175, which, still unknown to Ballinger, had already crashed;

54 4,546: Pamela Freni, Ground Stop, NY: iUniverse, 2003, 59.

55 May call: Las Vegas to Dallas, 9/12/01, Dallas to Las Vegas, 9/11/01, Dallas to Dallas, 9/11/01, “Misc. Comms from 4 Flights,” B13, T7, CF;

56 mother got through: “Through My Eyes,” by Toni Knisley, submission for National