NATIONAL ARCHIV ES AND R EC OR DS ADMINISTRATION
Counselor to the President Karen Hughes delivers a press briefing at the J. Edgar Hoover Federal Bureau of Investigation Building.
KAREN HUGHES: “I HAD TO GET TO WORK” Presidential Counselor Karen Hughes was scheduled to represent the White House at a Habitat for Humanity home-building event on the morning of September 11. As the event was near her neighborhood in Washington, she did not attend the White House senior staff meeting that morning. In her book Ten Minutes from Normal, Hughes describes the phone call she received from her assistant, Jill Angelo, from her second floor West Wing office. “Karen, a plane has hit the World Trade Center and I think it’s pretty bad.”45 Hughes called her deputy, Dan Bartlett, who was traveling with the president, to verify that the president knew what happened. As she finished getting ready for the Habitat event, she turned to the television to see “the large dark shape of an airplane heading right toward, then crashing into, the second tower.” Hughes was “horrified” and “dropped to her knees.”46 She reached Bartlett’s phone again and talked to Karl Rove and Press Secretary Ari Fleischer through him. They all agreed the president needed to make a statement and get back to Washington. She did not know that the vice president, Andy Card, and Condi Rice had recommended he stay away, recognizing that “this crisis would be even worse if something happened
to the president.” Hughes was on the phone with Angelo when, “her voice shaky but composed,” Angelo said, “Karen, the Secret Service is yelling at us to get out of here.” “Suddenly I was oddly disconnected,” recalls Hughes, but she knew “I had to get to work.”47 Hughes received a message on her pager at 10:07 a.m.: “You are needed in the shelter ASAP.”48 She did not know where the shelter was. On her way to her son’s school to get him, she was reached on her phone by Deputy Chief of Staff Bolten. “The Vice President is looking for you to make a statement,” he said, and would send a military driver to get her.49 She headed back home to await her escort. When Hughes reached the bunker, the vice president was on the phone, as was Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta, who was overseeing the grounding of all the planes across the country. Cabinet Secretary Albert Hawkins was collecting information about airports, banks, search-and-rescue teams, and emergency operations, information important to get out to the public to show that the government was functioning.50 Hughes talked to the president after Air Force One landed in Louisiana and got his approval to go out and do a press briefing on his behalf. The Secret Service did not think it was safe to brief from the White House.
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