With Arlene Howard.
As I was getting ready to say goodbye, Arlene reached into her purse and held out her hand. It contained a metal object. “This is my son’s badge. His name is George Howard. Please remember him,” she said as she pressed the badge into my hand. I promised I would.
George Howard's badge. I still carry it today.
I served 2,685 days as president after Arlene gave me that badge. I kept it with me every one of them. As the years passed, most Americans returned to life as usual. That was natural and desirable.
It meant the country was healing and people felt safer. As I record these thoughts, that day of fire is a distant memory for some of our citizens. The youngest Americans have no firsthand knowledge of the day. Eventually, September 11 will come to feel more like Pearl Harbor Day—an honored date on the calendar and an important moment in history, but not a scar on the heart, not a reason to fight on.
For me, the week of September 11 will always be something more. I still see the Pentagon smoldering, the towers in flames, and that pile of twisted steel. I still hear the voices of the loved ones searching for survivors and the workers yelling, “Do not let me down!” and “Whatever it takes!” I still feel the sadness of the children, the agony of the burn victims, and the torment of the broken families. I still marvel at the bravery of the firefighters, and the compassion of strangers, and the matchless courage of the passengers who forced down that plane.
September 11 redefined sacrifice. It redefined duty. And it redefined my job. The story of that week is the key to understanding my presidency. There were so many decisions that followed, many of them controversial and complex. Yet after 9/11, I felt my responsibility was clear. For as long as I held office, I could never forget what happened to America that day. I would pour my heart and soul into protecting the country, whatever it took.
*The source of the reporting, a foreign intelligence service, remains classified.
n October 17, 2001, I boarded Air Force One for my first trip out of the country since 9/11. We were headed to Shanghai for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, a gathering of twenty- one leaders from Pacific Rim nations. The Secret Service was anxious about the trip. For weeks, we had received chilling intelligence reports about potential follow-up attacks. Yet strengthening America’s relationships in the Far East was one of my top priorities, and I wanted my fellow world leaders to see firsthand my determination to battle the terrorists.
As Air Force One touched down at the Shanghai airport, I thought back to the dusty, bicycle-filled city I had visited with Mother in 1975. This time we made the forty-five-minute drive to downtown Shanghai on a modern highway. We sped past a sparkling new section of the city called Pudong. I later learned the government had moved roughly one hundred thousand people off the land to enable the construction. The skyscrapers and neon lights reminded me of Las Vegas. For Shanghai, the Great Leap Forward had finally arrived.
The next morning, I squeezed into a blue tent at the Ritz-Carlton with Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Andy Card, and the CIA briefer. The structure was designed to protect the national security briefing from potential eavesdroppers. We turned on a video monitor and Dick Cheney’s face popped up from New York City. He was wearing white tie and tails for his speech at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, an annual charity event organized by the Catholic archdiocese.
As soon as I saw Dick, I could tell something was wrong. His face was as white as his tie.
“Mr. President,” he said, “one of the bio-detectors went off at the White House. They found traces of botulinum toxin. The chances are we’ve all been exposed.”
The CIA had briefed me on botulinum toxin. It was one of the world’s most poisonous substances. Nobody said a word. Finally, Colin asked, “What’s the time of exposure?” Was he doing the mental math, trying to figure out how long it had been since he was last in the White House?
Deputy National Security Adviser Steve Hadley explained that the FBI was testing the suspicious substance on mice. The next twenty-four hours would be crucial. If the mice were still scurrying around, feet down, we would be fine. But if the mice were on their backs, feet up, we were goners. Condi tried to lighten the mood. “Well,” she said, “this is one way to die for your country.”
I went to the summit meetings and awaited the test results. The next day, Condi got a message that Steve was trying to reach her. “I guess this is the call,” she said. After a few minutes, Condi came back with the news.
“Feet down, not feet up,” she said. It was a false alarm.
Years later, incidents like the botulinum toxin scare can seem fanciful and far-fetched. It’s easy to chuckle at the image of America’s most senior officials praying for lab mice to stay upright. But at the time, the threats were urgent and real. Six mornings a week, George Tenet and the CIA briefed me on what they called the Threat Matrix, a summary of of potential attacks on the homeland. On Sundays, I received a written intelligence briefing. Between 9/11 and mid-2003, the CIA reported to me on an average of 400 specific threats each month. The CIA tracked more than twenty separate alleged large-scale attack plots, ranging from possible chemical and biological weapons operations in Europe to potential homeland attacks involved sleeper operatives. Some reports mentioned specific targets, including major landmarks, military bases, universities, and shopping malls. For months after 9/11, I would wake up in the middle of the night worried about what I had read.
I peppered my briefers with questions. How credible was each threat? What had we done to follow up on a lead? Each piece of information was like a tile in a mosaic. In late September, FBI Director Bob Mueller inserted a big tile when he told me there were 331 potential al Qaeda operatives inside the United States. The overall image was unmistakable: The prospect of a second wave of terrorist attacks against America was very real.
With the national security team in the Situation Room in late October 2001.
Condi Rice, George Tenet, Andy Card, and Dick Cheney.
Prior to 9/11, many had viewed terrorism primarily as a crime to be prosecuted, as the government had after the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. After 9/11, it was clear that the attacks on our embassies in East Africa and on the
On 9/11, it was obvious the law enforcement approach to terrorism had failed. Suicidal men willing to fly passenger planes into buildings were not common criminals. They could not be deterred by the threat of prosecution. They had declared war on America. To protect the country, we had to wage war against the terrorists.
The war would be different from any America had fought in the past. We had to uncover the terrorists’ plots. We had to track their movements and disrupt their operations. We had to cut off their money and deprive them of their safe havens. And we had to do it all under the threat of another attack. The terrorists had made our homefront a battleground. Putting America on a war footing was one of the most important decisions of my presidency.
My authority to conduct the war on terror came from two sources. One was Article II of the Constitution, which entrusts the president with wartime powers as commander in chief. The other was a congressional war resolution passed three days after 9/11. By a vote of 98 to 0 in the Senate and 420 to 1 in the House, Congress declared:
In the years ahead, some in Congress would forget those words. I never did. I woke up every morning thinking about the danger we faced and the responsibilities I carried. I was also keenly aware that presidents had a
