of my mission to build coalitions and relationships and find ways we can work together.” Kate Marinis (now Walters), Mehlman’s executive assistant, was in early that day to watch Secretary of Commerce Don Evans on NBC’s Today show. She saw the coverage of the first plane that struck the first tower and then the live coverage of the second plane. “A lot of progress was made with [the Teamsters] to get to the point of this meeting,” but after seeing second plane she had to call Hoffa’s assistant to cancel it. Marinis could hear commotion in the hall and looked out to see people leaving. “I knew we needed to leave,” she recalls, “but don’t remember any officers coming in the office to tell us.” Sara Taylor (now Fagen), one of the regional political directors on Mehlman’s team, recalls Mehlman “telling us we need to go.” She and Marinis and a few others followed Mehlman down the stairs to the Seventeenth and G Street NW exit. Taylor saw the UD officers yelling to “get the [expletive] out.” Taylor tripped and lost her shoe and then her colleagues in the pandemonium. She made it to the Mayflower Hotel on Connecticut Avenue NW and watched the horror on TV with other White House staff gathered in the hotel lobby. Marinis was also temporarily separated from Mehlman and tried to call her fiancé Logan Walters, President Bush’s personal aide who was not traveling with the president that day, but her phone was not working. She walked with some other colleagues to the Madison Hotel on Sixteenth Street NW and saw the towers fall on the TV in the lobby. She later received word to meet Mehlman and others from her office at the DaimlerChrysler office, and she worked there until late afternoon. When some staff members were cleared to go back to the White House, she went home to her apartment. Marinis also recounts how her parents were flying from Houston to Washington that day, and, thirty minutes into the flight, the pilot announced, “There’s been an incident in Washington and we have to turn around.” Marinis’s parents were not seated next to each other on the flight, and “the woman sitting next to my mother told her a plane crashed into the White House.” It was a frantic thirty minutes until her parents landed and reached Marinis on her cell phone. She assured them she was fine, but, “There was just so much misinformation,” she recalls. In the evacuation, Ken Mehlman had walked briskly from the OEOB to Lafayette Park and
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“collected as many of [his] staff as [he] saw” because he knew they “shouldn’t be standing there.” They walked to Georgetown, where the group went to staffer Josh Deckard’s apartment. Mehlman stopped only briefly, because “I got word that staff was assembling at the DaimlerChrysler office.” Deckard remembers that before Mehlman left he bought lunch for the group so they could alternate watching events unfolding on TV and using the landline to call family. Once at DaimlerChrysler, Mehlman quickly established “a command post”41 with Brad Blakeman and other West Wing staff members who also began arriving, including Israel (“Izzy”) Hernandez, Rove’s special assistant; Ashley Estes (now Kavanaugh), personal secretary to the president; and later Logan Walters, the president’s personal aide.
OVAL OFFICE STAFF Ashley Estes and Logan Walters had been at their desks in the office outside the Oval Office when the first plane struck the first World Trade Center. When they saw the live coverage of the second plane, Walters headed to the chief of staff ’s office and “heard the door burst open to watch the VP being hustled to the PEOC.” Returning to the outer Oval Office, he and Estes were trying to figure out what they could do to help as the nerve center was in Florida and the vice president and others were in the PEOC. They thought one of them should stay there. Estes moved to the Mess and evacuated when ordered to leave by the agents. She connected with Linda Gambatesa in Lafayette Park and went briefly to Gambatesa’s former office at General Motors before they joined the group at DaimlerChrysler. Walters remembers an agent coming to take him to the Situation Room and being asked by a duty officer, “Is anyone at the ranch [the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas]? There is a plane flying there.” Walters reached the ranch manager and told him, “You need to leave the ranch. Get away as far as possible.” In a brief moment of respite from the dramatic tension, Walters hears the ranch caretaker calmly say, “Okay then,” and turn to his wife: “Mama, let’s get in the truck, we’ve got to go.” Walters explained that the military aides started connecting all calls through the PEOC so none were coming to the Oval by that point. Walking back to his office, Walters saw “the Secret Service Uniformed Division officer standing at his post alone
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Ken Mehlman, deputy assistant to the president for political affairs, and Brad Blakeman, deputy assistant to the president for appointments and scheduling, quickly established “a command post” with other West Wing and EOP staff members in the DaimlerChrysler offices. Top left, left to right, Ken Mehlman, Israel Hernandez, Brad Blakeman, and Joel Kaplan. Top right, standing, Taylor Griffin, Ken Lisaius, Jeanie Mamo, Wendy Nipper, Jimmy Orr Center right, Logan Walters stands at desk where Israel Hernandez, and Ashley Estes are at work. Kristen Silverberg is seen with Associate Counsel Courtney Elwood in background. Bottom: Evacuated EOP staff gather in the DaimlerChrysler conference room for updates from the White House including plans for the president’s schedule from Brad Blakeman.