1:36 P.M. ET EVACUATED WEST The interior of the plane seemed cold and empty as we fastened our seatbelts. Beneath each television monitor embedded in the bulkhead wall there are three digital clocks. In green LED displays the first is labeled WASHINGTON. The second is LOCAL. The third time says DESTINATION. As Air Force One began to roll, the first two clocks read 1:36 p.m. The DESTINATION numerals changed in a snap to 12:36
20
p.m. Central time. It was our only official confirmation that the president was being flown west, away from Washington. The president was being evacuated.
2:51 P.M. ET “I’M COMING HOME” Leadership in the heat of a crisis is a defining moment for a president. George W. Bush had been in office less than eight months, but he knew it was crucial to be visible and direct with the American people. “I knew I needed to give an address to the nation that night,” he told the History Channel years later, “and I damn sure wasn’t gonna give it from a bunker in Omaha, Nebraska.” But that’s exactly where the president was taken roughly six hours after the first attacks. I was allowed to phone in a pool report, on the record, that he would convene a National Security Council meeting but not reveal the location. Once again, local TV channels were white house history quarterly
above and opposite
President Bush exits Air Force One at Offutt Air Force Base near Bellevue, Nebraska (above), the headquarters of the Strategic Command, where he will spend an hour in video conference with the Presidential Emergency Operations Center at the White House (opposite).
NATIONAL ARCHIV ES AND R EC OR DS ADMINISTRATION
I was allowed one more phone call to let the national media back home know that Air Force One was going to take to the skies again. The fastest way to share that in a pool report was to call in to ABC’s live coverage, where anchor Peter Jennings asked the obvious: “Where are you going, Annie?” My response was honest, but not reassuring. “Peter, I have no idea.”