“An aircraft coming at you”
The vice president was meeting with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Deputy Director Sean O’Keefe. On the vice president’s schedule was a meeting with John McConnell, who served as senior speechwriter for both him and President Bush. McConnell had just finished writing remarks for President Bush to deliver on Friday, September 14, at a ceremony to rename the Old Executive Office Building as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. He turned to writing the remarks for the vice president to deliver at a separate event that coming Friday and had requested time with him on September 11, to discuss the speech. Walking over from his office in the OEOB to the vice president’s office, he remembers looking up at the Palladian window in the West Sitting Hall of the White House and thinking what a beautiful day it was. He was greeted in the small outer office by the vice president’s personal secretary, Debbie Heiden. As O’Keefe left the office, he told McConnell that the vice president had seen the TV report about a plane that just crashed into the World Trade Center. McConnell and the vice president sat down to discuss the upcoming speech. Then both saw the live TV coverage of the second plane (United Flight 175) crashing into the South Tower at 9:03 a.m. McConnell reports that the vice president immediately got up and went to Chief of Staff Andy Card’s office to tell Card’s executive assistant, Melissa Bennett, to “get Andy on the phone.” It was not long before National Security Adviser Condi Rice, Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, Chief of Staff to the Vice President Scooter Libby, and Counselor to the Vice President Mary Matalin were all in the vice president’s office. The vice president had a brief but intense conversation with the president around 9:15 a.m.18—shortly after the president left the classroom in Florida—and, according to McConnell, was momentarily furious when the call dropped. With all these people in the vice president’s office, McConnell knew “I was not needed here and I went back to my office in the OEOB.” The meeting of these principals in Cheney’s office continued until the vice president’s lead Secret Service agent, Jimmy Scott, burst through the door at 9:36 a.m.19 Minutes earlier, the Secret Service operations center had received a call from air traffic control tower supervisor Victor Padgett at Ronald Reagan National Airport reporting “an aircraft coming at you and not talking with us.”20 Making sure the message was clear, the supervisor
added, “What I’m telling you, buddy, if you’ve got people, you’d better get them out of there. And I mean right goddamned now!”21 The Secret Service flew into action, with agents sprinting through the West Wing to reach the vice president and positioning themselves on the stairways to protect him as he moved to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC)—the secure bunker deep under the White House. Joel Kaplan, a top aide in the chief of staff ’s office, remembers seeing “about four Secret Service agents sprint down the hall from the Oval [Office] area to the vice president’s office.” He saw them again seconds later with the vice president, looking “like they were carrying him by his arms.” Bennett remembers looking up from her desk in the chief of staff ’s office and seeing “the agents move the VP so fast; we could barely see him they were so close to him.” A young staffer in the chief of staff ’s office who also supported the vice president’s West Wing office, 20-year-old Josh Deckard, remembers that he was “almost knocked over” by the Secret Service agents racing the vice president down the hallway, “holding him by the back of his belt.” McCormack, who had rushed back to the West Wing, arrived just as the vice president was “hustled out from behind his desk and encircled by Secret Service agents to move him to the secure bunker.” Agent Jim Scott later told McCormack, “We had 56 seconds to move him.” On the way down to the PEOC, the vice president and his agents received another report.22 The plane reportedly bound for the White House—later identified as American Airlines Flight 77—had instead hit the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m.23 It was now unmistakable that the United States was facing a coordinated attack aimed not only at New York but at the seat of government in Washington. The vice president called the president from a phone in the tunnel on the way to the PEOC,24 describing the nature of the attack and urging him to stay away from Washington.25 Cheney then made his way to the PEOC, where he was joined by National Security Adviser Condi Rice and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, along with other national security principals. In keeping with standard emergency procedures, Lynne Cheney, the vice president’s wife, had also been brought to the PEOC. His photographer, David Bohrer, was there as well. Bohrer had been caught up in the scrum around the vice president’s office when McCormack quickly told him to “go with him.” As a result, Bohrer
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