Thirteenth Street NW, where she was relieved to find her mother, along with Social Secretary Cathy Fenton. Figg reconnected by phone with Blakeman, who was at the DaimlerChrysler office directing the staff on the changes that needed to be made to the president’s schedule. According to Figg, Blakeman told her that the president “wanted us to plan a trip to New York for him.” Word spread, and more staff were coming in to the DaimlerChrysler office. Among them were Photo Office Editors Michael Davis and Lynden Steele, who took photographs throughout the day, as well as senior staff members Clay Johnson; Larry Lindsey, assistant to the president for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council; Albert Hawkins, assistant to the president for cabinet affairs; and Nick Calio, assistant to the president for legislative affairs. Calio had been in his second floor West Wing office at 6:30 a.m. before going to a postoperative check-up, having had knee surgery ten days earlier. Before leaving the medical building, he made a detour to his allergist’s office on another floor, where the receptionist had a small TV on her desk and told him, “Mr. Calio, you’ll be interested in this, a plane flew into the World Trade Center.” Calio turned right around and walked out and drove back to the White House. He took a call from Andy Card about making a decision on the Congressional Picnic. Calio had earlier thought about the gorgeous weather for a large outdoor event. Pulling into the gate before evacuation began, he saw agents with weapons swarming the grounds and chasing tourists away. He said, “Andy, I don’t think there’s any decision at all. We cancel.”36 Calio went into the West Wing and briefly up to his office to check on his staff before going back down to the ground floor. There, outside the Mess, he encountered Carl Truscott, head of the President’s Protective Detail, and Hector Irastorza, deputy assistant to the president for management and administration, who both told Calio, “We are getting everybody down here.”37 Just a week before, Calio had been given a classified briefing by Truscott on the reopening of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House. Calio was “a vocal advocate, too vocal for the Secret Service, about reopening it.” The Secret Service gave Calio the briefing and explained what would happen to his office right above the front door of the West Wing facing Pennsylvania Avenue if a truck
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with a bomb went off. Calio reports, “I changed my mind pretty darn quick.”38 When the order was given to evacuate the Mess and run from the building, Calio left but was “limping terribly” and was ultimately separated from his staff. He walked as far as Connecticut Avenue and H Street NW. With no cell service he asked to use the phone in the nearby Equinox restaurant, where he knew the owner. He went first to his old office at 1350 I Street NW to make some calls, reach his staff, and try to get through to the Hill. Members of his staff—Kirsten Chadwick, Bob Marsh, and Jack Howard—met up with him and walked across the street to the DaimlerChrysler office, where the “communications were better.” Calio and his team “started to do a checklist of everything we needed to think about.” Some of Calio’s House and Senate liaison staff, including Legislative Assistant Christal West (now Atkinson), had offices on the ground floor of the White House East Wing. They evacuated through the North Gates from East Executive Avenue, making their way to the Hilton Hotel on Sixteenth and K Streets NW. There they watched the first tower fall on the TV in the lobby. “Kirsten went to meet up with Nick,” West recalls. “The rest of us walked north to my apartment at Nineteenth and S Street NW to get a landline, take turns using the phone, and watch the news” before going back to the White House that night to get their vehicles.
“WE’VE GOT A SITUATION” Cabinet Secretary Albert Hawkins had been in the OEOB that morning for the 8:30 a.m. daily staff
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Evacuated staffers look to the sky for incoming aircraft as officer C. K. Djossou directs people away from the White House.