Previous posts in this series:

Ten Days After: Introduction
Ten Days After: Day One

On September 12, 2001, military and civilian personnel returned to the still-smoldering Pentagon — three fifths of the building remained open — to discuss possible retaliation. Meanwhile, the White House made excuses for the President’s actions of the day before. R.W. Apple, Jr., reported for The New York Times,

Stung by suggestions that President Bush had hurt himself politically by delaying his return to Washington on Tuesday, the White House asserted today that Mr. Bush had done so because of hard evidence that he was a target of the terrorists who hijacked airliners and slammed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, said this afternoon that officials had ”real and credible information” that the White House, not the Pentagon, had been the original target of American Airlines Flight 77, which was hijacked about 45 minutes after leaving Dulles International Airport in Virginia.

Another senior official said that after that plane hit the Pentagon, a chilling threat was phoned to the Secret Service.

”Air Force One is next,” the official quoted the caller as saying. The threat was accompanied by code words that indicated knowledge of White House procedures, the official said.

Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s adviser, said in an interview this morning that Mr. Bush had twice on Tuesday — in the morning and in the early afternoon — argued strenuously that he should return immediately to the capital. Mr. Rove reported that the Secret Service insisted that the situation here was ”too dangerous, too unstable” for the president to come to Washington.

”We are talking about specific and credible intelligence,” Mr. Rove said, ”not vague suspicions.”

But neither Mr. Rove nor other officials explained why this information was not made public on Tuesday. Partly because it was not, Mr. Bush was criticized for spending the day traveling a zigzag route from Sarasota, Fla.; to Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, La.; then to Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha; then back to Washington. He did not land at the White House until 7 p.m., almost exactly 10 hours after he learned of the first attack.

In fact, Air Force One had not traveled a “zigzag” route from Sarasota; it had flown in circles over Sarasota for more than an hour while the President tried to decide where to go next. And several days later the threat against Air Force One was revealed to be a White House fabrication.

Apple continued,

On television, in newspapers and in animated discussions in offices across the country, Mr. Bush’s conduct was compared unfavorably with that of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who went to the scene of the attacks in Lower Manhattan; to John F. Kennedy, who stayed in Washington throughout the Cuban missile crisis of 1963, when many feared that nuclear war was imminent, and to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who remained at the Pentagon after it was hit and for a time helped in the evacuation of the dead and wounded.

The president’s conduct, said an article this morning in the staunchly conservative Boston Herald, ”did not inspire confidence.”

On September 12 thick, acrid dust hung in the air in lower Manhattan. The families of those who haven’t come home begin to hang “missing” notices on walls ans lampposts all over the city.

Petra Bartosiewicz:

I am at the foot of the smoking wreck, Building Seven. This is ground zero, the heart of the blast zone.

I know maybe I shouldn’t be here. But after two days in the city, interviewing families, victims, officers, and relief workers, and after having ridden the elevator with the mayor as he returned to his command center from the wreckage on that first night, silent, covered in soot, mouth turned down, eyes sick with grief, something has drawn me here. There have been no reports yet from the inside; no time in the chaos of these early hours to bear witness.

The city block is an ash-covered canyon. Buildings on either side rise silent and black, their windows shattered. Two fire fighters on extension ladders in front of the mountain of rubble fade in and out of vision between waves of purple-gray smoke and hissing steam, spraying impossibly small arcs of water across the wreckage. Water trickles beneath my feet, mingling with ash and shards of broken glass in a gritty mud paste.

William Langewiesche:

Early on I found a piece of high ground from which to watch the changes. It was inside the severely damaged and deserted Bankers Trust building, a black steel structure forty floors high, which stood across Liberty Street from the ruins and was eventually draped in dark safety netting and hung with a large American flag. In 1999 the German company Deutsche Bank had absorbed the Bankers Trust Corporation, and with it had acquired this building, whose offices it had occupied until the attack. During the South Tower’s collapse steel spears and column sections had plunged into Bankers Trust, tearing a huge gash in its north face, destroying a load-bearing column for ten floors, spilling tons of office innards, and leaving the partially demolished floor slabs to sag like hammocks over a deadly void. In a crater at the base a mound of rubble lay laced with the remains of people who had been killed in the South Tower or on the street. There was serious concern at first that the building would not stand, but it did, and sturdily, because of redundancies in its design. The back offices, away from the Trade Center, were fine. And apparently no one had died inside. Firemen checked the spaces quickly, leaving their fluorescent-orange graffiti—SEARCHED—on each floor. In the dust that coated one wood-paneled wall someone, maybe from the Boston Fire Department’s team, drew a sad face and scrawled,

Kill All Muslims
9-11-01
B.F.D.

Early this year some workmen found human bone fragments on the roof of the Deutsche Bank building, which was adjacent to the World Trade Center complex and significantly damaged on September 11. After allowing some employees to return briefly to retrieve belongings, Deustche Bank locked up the 41-story building and covered it with a black shroud while litigation over the site’s fate went forward. (The Project Rebirth site has more photos.) During an inspection in 2002, a number of mummified human remains were found in the building. It’s believed the bodies had been ejected into the building when WTC 2 collapsed.

On September 12, New York City firemen and others looked through the debris lower Manhattan for survivors. John Cloud, Time magazine, wrote this about the last survivor to be found, Genelle Guzman-McMillan, in September 2002:

Anyone who watched the avalanche, even from behind the safety of a TV screen, knows how extraordinary it is that someone could survive it. New York City’s medical examiners are still trying to identify 19,858 pieces smashed from the bodies of the 2,819 people who were slain. Steel beams weakened to their breaking point; solid concrete was pulverized. But somehow Genelle’s tumbling body found an air pocket. She was buried in the rubble for more than 26 hours; on Sept. 12, around 12:30 p.m., she became the last of just four people caught in the debris to be found alive. (An additional 14, mostly fire fighters, survived relatively unscathed in a lower part of stairway B that stayed upright.)

Some victims’ families received only a shard of bone to put in a coffin; many got nothing. Genelle’s family got her back with a crushed right leg and a few other injuries—but basically whole. Relatives held a joyous 31st-birthday party for her in January, after she had fully recuperated. By May, she was walking without so much as a leg brace, an accomplishment that astonished a doctor who had told her she would walk with one for the rest of her life. It’s difficult to envision how those who were extricated from the fiery heap survived. Like Genelle, two Port Authority cops were buried but not mortally wounded by hurtling chunks of stone and metal—even as people in close proximity were killed. Pasquale Buzzelli—who worked with Genelle on the 64th floor and was also in stairway B at 10:28 a.m.—fell when the stairwell broke under him but somehow landed atop a rickety pile of debris. These four were rescued before they were burned in creeping fires or crushed in mini-collapses in the later hours of Sept. 11 and after. It’s not known whether anyone else could have been found alive—just that Genelle was the last.

It would be several more days before New Yorkers would publicly acknowledge that no one else would be found.

In Washington, reporters grilled White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer on the report of a threat against Air Force One.

Q And if Air Force One happened to be a target, isn’t it true that when the President went to Louisiana, at that point, once he took off from Louisiana, there were no flights in U.S. airspace?

MR. FLEISCHER: No, at that moment there were still reports of airplanes that had not yet been identified as to their whereabouts. That’s another reason that the White House and the President operated in the secure manner that they did. At that moment, when the President had left Florida and was on his way to a base that no one knew where the President was heading to, there were still reports of planes that had not yet been brought onto the ground per the FAA’s order.

The order to clear U.S. airspace had been given only minutes before Air Force One took off from Sarasota, so certainly there were many planes still in the air. However, no one asked Fleischer about the fact that Air Force One had circled Sarasota for over an hour because the President couldn’t make up his mind where to go next.

Q If I could follow up, though, but when Air Force One left Louisiana and headed to Nebraska, I believe at that time there were no U.S. planes, or any planes, still in U.S. airspace. So then why did the President go to Nebraska and not back here to the White House?

MR. FLEISCHER: Because the information that we had was real and credible about Air Force One. And the manner in which Air Force One operated maintained the security of Air Force One at all times. And that also is one of the reasons why Air Force One did not come back to Andrews, where some people thought it would.

Q If we could make the connection here, that would suggest, Ari, then, that the threat against Air Force One came in the form of another aircraft?

MR. FLEISCHER: No, I’m not indicating what form it came in, John, and I will not.

Q Ari, at what time did the White House get this information?

MR. FLEISCHER: On the flight from Sarasota to the first location.

Q So did the evacuation of the White House come as a result of that information?

MR. FLEISCHER: That’s a detail that I’m not going to get into, Terry. But all appropriate security precautions were taken.

When a reporter asked if Osama bin Laden was involved, Fleischer would neither confirm nor deny al Qaeda’s involvement with the attacks.

In Washington, President Bush met with his National Security Team. After the meeting he assured the nation “we will not allow this enemy to win the war by changing our way of life or restricting our freedoms.” Also,

This morning, I am sending to Congress a request for emergency funding authority, so that we are prepared to spend whatever it takes to rescue victims, to help the citizens of New York City and Washington, D.C. respond to this tragedy, and to protect our national security.

“Whatever it takes” would prove not to mean, um, “whatever it takes,” exactly.

More September 11 links that go with the last post:

Will Bunch:

On the second anniversary of 9/11, in 2003, I wrote a story in the Daily News that, among other things, mentioned that Bush had spent at least five minutes reading “The Pet Goat” in that Sarasota classroom. It was an indisputable fact, and yet I received hundreds of emails from readers, many asking if I would be fired for reporting such a simple and inconvenient truth. When Michael Moore showed the actual footage in “Fahrenheit 911” months later, much of the nation was shocked to learn for the first time what really happened that day.

It took that long for people to acknowledge the seven minutes. How long will it take before we can tell them that Air Force One circled Sarasota, Florida, for more than an hour that morning because the President couldn’t make up his bleeping mind where to go? (The South Tower collapsed just as Air Force One took off from Florida. Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania the North Tower collapsed while Air Force One circled and Bush, Cheney, and the Secret Service discussed the President’s flight itinerary.) If the circling is news to you, go read my last post.

I really like what Jill of Feministe wrote. I was going to quote from it but … it’s all good. Go read the whole thing. After you’ve read Jill’s post, contrast with what my big fan the Confederate Yankee wrote — pure, unadulterated horse shit from someone who sure as hell wasn’t in New York or Washington that day.

For the record, I wrote about my personal experiences of September 11 four years ago, and haven’t much written about it since. Although I don’t think what I wrote came close to what I was really feeling, I don’t want to go back there and write it over again.

Other New York City bloggers remembered September 11. Steve Gilliard:

I know there are people who think they’re paying respect by gawking at Ground Zero or by saying that all Americans are part of this.

They are full of shit. Not that they mean it, but they are.

You are not part of this and be glad of it. Be very glad you didn’t have to see people burning alive or smell them or lose anyone you know. Be glad you didn’t have to worry about anyone not coming home.

I want people to understand something.

There is a massive gap between 9/11 the day and 9/11 the event. The event lasted long after people went home, buried their dead and went on with life. It turned into arguments, questions, and most of all a void. That’s not transferrable, it’s not something you can give. Either you were part of it or you weren’t. And if you were, even if you didn’t know anyone who died, you saw their faces, read their stories, saw the grief of the living long after everyone else walked away.

And if you weren’t, be glad.

Because you’ll never know what it’s like to look up in the sky and see a hole where two buildings once were. And you’ll never have that eerie feeling of seeing the familiar turned into rubble.

Also at Steve’s, a commenter wrote:

All those people.

Steel.

PVC.

Fiberglass.

And asbestos.

Rent to bits molecular, hanging in the air next to death. And smoke. Hanging for weeks. South of Park Row, the city dusted by a fine snow of terror.

My wife worried about going back to work. She walked around ankle deep in the remains of millions of square feet of a mini-city brought down suddenly that day. She coughed like an old west “lunger” for a week. And still, worried about whether it was safe to go back down there because of all the sh*t in the air. The sh*t that blasted through crevices and into the shop window of a jeans store on Broadway, death-washing the trendy denims it touched a mealy gray.

That stuff hung in the air for days on end, and my wife worried about what it could do. She works in insurance and deals with lawsuits for asbestos victims and the ilk–so she knows the risks.

But hey…Saint f*cking Rudy and his faux-moderate aide-de-camp Sister Christie of the Hatchet-Face Order said for all to hear “The coast is clear–all is well!”…which really meant “Get back to work b*tches so’s we can run the spin about ‘pluck’ and ‘stick-to-it-iveness’, and f*ck you if you can’t take a lung or two full of God-knows-what that sh*t in the air is.”

Speaking for my brother and sister New Yorkers, I’d like to cordially invite the Confederate Yankee and Michelle and the rest of the rightie blogosphere that’s having a big whoop-it-up faux-patriotic pornfest today in honor of 9/11 to shove it up their asses.

Steve M. beat me to it:

I don’t know how much of a chance there is that I’ll die in a terrorist attack someday, but if it does happen, let me say in advance, to any right-wing blogger who wants to bask in self-satisfaction by waving my remains around and posturing:

Go fuck yourself. I will not be your bloody shirt.

If terrorists kill me, I don’t know what the meaning of my life or my death will have been, but I won’t have lived and died just so you can pound your chest and try to make all the world believe that no one hates my killers more than you do, that no one grieves for me more than you do.

Michelle Malkin says of her 9/11 “honoree,” Giovanna Porras,

I will not forget her.

Show of hands: Anyone believe that?

If the New Yorkers sound a bit bitter — the kind of rah-rah crap coming from the Right today strikes many who were there as akin to Fred Phelps crashing servicemen’s funerals with his gay-bashing message. It’s stomping on genuine grief and sorrow to promote their ideological agenda. And I feel the same way about the clowns the Rude Pundit describes here.

Elsewhere, my buddy The Talking Dog hasn’t forgotten Richard Pearlman.

The Onion gets serious. Don’t miss it.

An aside: Read what Digby says about last night’s audience for “The Path to 9/11.”

Update: Dan Froomkin on Bush’s continuing political exploitation of 9/11.

Update update: Thanks, Kos.

As explained yesterday, instead of writing about the September 11 attacks themselves I want to look back at the initial reaction of the Bush Administration and the nation. (Note: all times given must be approximate, as no two sources seem to have exactly the same times.)

Some parts of the initial reaction have been written about copiously — the famous seven minutes, for example. However, I’m going to skip over the familiar stuff to look for things less pawed-over. Over the next few days I also plan to compare some initial news stories written five years ago with the corrected information that trickled out later. Over time, some peoples’ stories, um, changed.

Collective memory of the September 11 attacks has shrouded President Bush in a rosy glow of heroism and purpose. Looking back, however, I am struck by how much he actually resembled his detached and bumbling post-Katrina self.

For example, it’s remarkable how much confusion still surrounds what should be a simple, straightforward fact — when was President Bush first told about the attacks? According to the Cooperative Research Complete 911 Timeline, various people in the President’s motorcade and reporters waiting at Booker Elementary School learned about the crash of Flight 11 before the President arrived. The initial official story, however, was that President Bush was not told about the first crash until after he was inside the classroom. Over the next few months other versions of the story would trickle out — according to the timeline, several people later claimed to have told the President about the first crash before he entered the classroom. The President himself later said he saw the first crash on television before he entered the classroom, but the first crash wasn’t shown on television that soon.

In an essay separate from the timeline, Allan Wood Paul Thompson of Cooperative Research painstakingly pulled together newspaper stories and other documentation to examine the President’s actions on September 11 (be sure to read the entire essay; lots of juicy bits):

Official accounts, including the words of Bush himself, say Bush was first told of what was happening in New York City after he arrived at the school. [Telegraph, 12/16/01, CBS, 9/11/02] However, this statement does not stand up to scrutiny. There are at least four reports that Bush was told of the first crash before he arrived at the school.

The first media reports of Flight 11’s crash into the World Trade Center began around 8:48, two minutes after the crash happened. [New York Times, 9/15/01] CNN broke into its regular programming at that time [CNN, 9/11/01], though other networks, such as ABC, took a few more minutes to begin reporting. [ABC, 9/14/02] So within minutes, millions were aware of the story, yet Bush supposedly remained unaware for about another ten minutes.

This detail is important because, as we now know, the crisis unfolded for some time with no centralized direction from the President or anyone else in the Administration. NORAD, the FAA, various air traffic control towers, and other governmental agencies were on their own to figure out what was happening and how to work together to manage the emergency. As this timeline makes clear, the result was chaos. Initial news stories to the contrary, the President was mostly out of touch all day. Vice President Cheney presumed to take charge without the constitutional authority to do so, yet he was unable to orchestrate anything resembling a coordinated response. His order to shoot down hijacked planes was issued ten minutes after the last hijacked plane had crashed. Several accounts of the day report that, eventually, some mid-level managers in various agencies finally took charge and begin issuing the orders they weren’t getting from the Bush Administration.

Wood and Thompson document that, even if the President was not informed of the first attack while in the motorcade — which is doubtful, considering that people riding with him were informed — he was told by several people as soon as he arrived, before he entered the school. Yet The Decider made the decision to continue with the planned photo-op instead of attend to the crisis.

In the first half hour after the attacks, Bush White House officials and staff demonstrated several traits I wrote about much later — they are utterly flummoxed by unexpected events; they can’t communicate with each other; and it’s often not clear who’s in charge. The one thing you can count on is that, in case of emergency, the person in charge won’t be the President. In fact, his staff often seems determined to protect him from unexpected events. He is often the last to be told what is going on. (This is pretty standard “enabling” behavior. By many accounts the President flies off the handle when he’s told bad news; thus, his staff has been conditioned to avoid telling him bad news until the absolute last minute.)

However, in this case one suspects he was told right away. The multiple stories about when were, I believe, meant to cover up the fact that the President initially failed to recognize the situation as one that required a president’s attention.

Eric Alterman wrote [emphasis added],

That fateful morning, Bush was visiting the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota. The moment he learned of the attacks is a matter of deep dispute. CIA chief George Tenet was informed of the first crash almost immediately and is reported to have remarked to his breakfast companion, former Senator David Boren, “You know, this has bin Laden’s fingerprints all over it.” But the President’s aides maintain that he was not told about the attack for more than fifteen minutes, well after viewers saw the first building engulfed in smoke on CNN, and even after he interrupted his schedule to take a call from Condoleezza Rice upon leaving his limousine, after the first crash took place.

The various accounts offered by the White House are almost all inconsistent with one another. On December 4, 2001, Bush was asked, “How did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?” Bush replied, “I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower–the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly myself, and I said, well, there’s one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident. But I was whisked off there. I didn’t have much time to think about it.” Bush repeated the same story on January 5, 2002, stating, “First of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error, and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake….”

This is false. Nobody saw the jetliner crash into the first tower on television until a videotape surfaced a day later. What’s more, Bush’s memory not only contradicts every media report of that morning, it also contradicts what he said on the day of the attack. In his speech to the nation that evening, Bush said, “Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government’s emergency response plans.” Again, this statement has never been satisfactorily explained. No one besides Bush has ever spoken of these “emergency plans,” and the mere idea of their implementation is contradicted by Bush’s claim that at the time, he believed the crash to have been a case of pilot error.

We’ve all seen the video of Andy Card walking into the classroom to whisper into President Bush’s ear about the second crash into the WTC towers. As I remember it viewers originally were allowed to believe this video shows Bush being informed of the first crash. John Ibbitson wrote for the Globe and Mail (September 12, 2001):

Mr. Bush was reading to a group of schoolchildren at Emma Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla., yesterday morning when an aide whispered to him word of the first attack on the World Trade Center.

For some reason, Secret Service agents did not bustle him away. Instead, within minutes, even before the attack on the Pentagon, the President made a statement to reporters, promising “to hunt down and to find those folks that committed this act. Terrorism against our nation will not stand.”

Esther Shrader reported for the Los Angeles Times [“U.S. Command Takes Wing Amid Chaos,” September 12, 2001]

For a few minutes, however, before the enormity of the attack was clearly known, the president tried to stick to his schedule.

“Really good readers, hoo!” Bush said in praise of a class of 18 second-graders at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota. “Must be sixth-graders,” he joked. At another point, he posed an oft- asked question to schoolchildren, asking how many of them read more than they watch television.

According to the Cooperative Research timeline, Bush was informed of the second crash at 9:06 and left the classroom ten minutes later, at 9:16. From 9:16 to 9:29 he met in an empty classroom with his staff and worked on a statement for the press. Esther Shrader of the LA Times wrote,

Bush returned to a “holding room” at the school, where he called the vice president, New York Gov. George Pataki and FBI Director Robert Mueller.

In the same room, meanwhile, White House deputy counselor Dan Bartlett was on another phone talking to his boss, presidential counselor Karen P. Hughes. They were discussing what Bush would say in his public remarks in the school’s library, where 200 or more children, parents and teachers were awaiting him.

When Bush got off the telephone, he asked for some paper, and an aide handed him a sheet of lined, legal paper. The president began scribbling notes on it. Then Bush was given a handful of large index cards, upon which he began writing.

Bush Appeared to Choke Back Tears

In the library, meanwhile, word began circulating through the crowd, and soon a somber silence fell over the room.

At 9:27, the president emerged from behind the curtains without any introduction, and with a puff of his cheeks, exhaled deeply and strode grimly to the lectern to deliver a brief statement.

“I’ve ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families and to conduct a full- scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act,” Bush said in part. “Terrorism against our nation will not stand.”

At his speech’s end, Bush appeared to choke back tears and his voice caught briefly in his throat.

You can watch this speech at the end of this video. If anyone sees the President appear to “choke back tears,” let me know. Click here for a transcript of the statement.

At 9:30 the Secret Service finally hustled the President away to the Sarasota airport and Air Force One. At 9:37 another hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon. Some time after this Vice President Cheney told the President to stay out of Washington. Cheney possibly was on his way to an underground bunker at the time, but the Vice President’s precise whereabouts and actions that morning are also disputed (see timeline).

At 9:45 the FAA orders all airspace over the United States to be cleared. The order is given by Ben Sliney, the FAA’s national operations manager, on his own initiative. It was Sliney’s first day on the job.

The WTC South Tower collapsed at 9:59. United Airlines Flight 93 crashed at Shanksville, Pa.,at 10:06. The North Tower collapsed at 10:29. As the crisis continued, the President of the United States couldn’t decide where to fly next.

Air Force One took off sometime between 9:55 and 9:59, then flew in circles over Sarasota, according to Jake Tapper at Salon:

Reporters on Air Force One, meanwhile, had no idea where they were headed. The plane had taken off at 9:55 a.m. but it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Glued to a TV on which they watched the horrific images come in one after another — live footage of the second World Trade Center tower collapsing, reports that a plane crashed into the Pentagon — the reporters assumed that Air Force One was circling around the same spot since the signal stayed so strong. Just before 11 a.m., the plane started increasing its elevation significantly. It was heading west.

William Langley wrote for the Telegraph:

Air Force One lifted off from Sarasota at 9.57. A few minutes earlier, the South Tower of the World Trade Centre had collapsed. It was unclear whether anyone on Air Force One – including the pilot – knew where the Boeing 747 was headed. “The object seemed to be simply to get the President airborne and out of the way,” said an administration official.

“Mr Cheney was begging him not to make an immediate return to Washington. Mr Bush expressed his doubts, but the Secret Service was hassling him, and finally he said: `OK, let’s get moving, and we’ll talk about it then.’ ” …

… For much of the next two hours the presidential jet appeared to be going nowhere. The journalists on board – all of whom were barred from communicating with their offices – sensed that the plane was flying in big, slow circles. …

At 11.45, Air Force One landed at Barksdale Air Force base near Shreveport, Louisiana. The official reason for landing at Barksdale was that Mr Bush felt it necessary to make a further statement, but it isn’t unreasonable to assume that – as there was no agreement as to what the President’s movements should be – it was felt he might as well be on the ground as in the air.

Jake Tapper:

Bush walked into Building 245, where the sign said “Headquarters — Eighth Air Force.” A more telling sign was written in large black type on an 8 1/2-by-11-inch piece of paper, affixed to the glass window on the door to the building. “Def Con Delta,” the sign said — the highest state of military alert.

Just after 12:30 p.m. EDT, Bush delivered some brief remarks that were taped and later given to the networks. “Make no mistake: The United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts,” Bush said. The number of staffers, reporters and Secret Service agents were pared down for the next trip. Bush staffers that made the cut were Card, senior advisor Karl Rove and communications staffers Dan Bartlett, Ari Fleischer and Gordon Johndroe.

At 1:31 p.m., Air Force One took off again, this time for a destination once again unknown.

John Aravosis quotes Peter Jennings:

On September 11, 2001, the president was missing in action for most of the day after the planes struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon, prompting ABC News’s Peter Jennings to inquire where the hell he was: “I don’t mean to say this in melodramatic terms,” Jennings told his audience at 12:30 p.m. eastern time. “Where is the president of the United States? The president of the United States led— I know we don’t know where he is. But pretty soon the country needs to know where he is. And it seems to, I think, me, anyway—I apologize—the president needs to talk to us. He left Florida a couple of hours ago. Our people in Washington are clearly listening and checking this as best they can. But one of the important factors at the moment is that the political leadership in the country be present.”

As it turned out, Bush was hiding at air force bases in Louisiana and Nebraska, claiming the Secret Service wouldn’t let him out. (It’s hard to imagine Clinton or Reagan allowing himself to be corralled that way.) Bush didn’t return to Washington until after 6 p.m.

According to Jake Tapper, “The tape of Bush from Louisiana hit cable news channels at around 1:20 p.m., but it got garbled on each one and had to be rewound and fixed.” Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani had made several televised statements from lower Manhattan.

William Langley, The Telegraph, picks up the story in Shreveport, Louisiana:

From Barksdale, Mr Bush spoke again to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, and also to Charles Schumer, a New York senator. At noon the US military was ordered on to Defcon Delta; 15 minutes later the country’s borders with Canada and Mexico were closed.

The fog of war was growing denser, but the media were now starting to ask potentially awkward questions about the President’s whereabouts, and why he had not returned to Washington. However grave a crisis, a President – or, at least, his handlers – must give thought to the top man’s image, and by the time Bush reached Barksdale, three hours after the first attack, concern was mounting among his advisers that the distance he was maintaining from the action could have dire political consequences.

But still the debate raged between Mr Bush, Mr Cheney and the Secret Service. In an office on the base, Andrew Card, the White House Chief of Staff, was working the phones, taking soundings on the President’s dilemma from whatever trusted quarters he could reach. When he emerged, Mr Card, too, advised that it would be reckless to return to the capital.

The President appeared to be in a double bind: if he insisted on going to Washington he could be accused of concentrating the terrorists’ possible targets in one place and thereby endangering the functioning of government; if he stayed away he could just as equally be accused of cowardice.

No one is sure where the story reported at this time of a “credible terrorist threat” to Air Force One came from. What can be safely said is that it served the White House’s immediate purposes, even though it was completely untrue. As it was, while Mr Bush was on the ground at Barksdale, the White House let it be known that a threat – supposedly “quoting a recognised code” – had been received, to the effect that “Air Force One is next”.

The picture changed instantly. No more could the President be accused of sheltering in the safety of far-away Louisiana; now he was a hunted man – the main target. Within a week, though, Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, had all but admitted the story was completely untrue.

Who cooked it up? Most fingers point at Mr Cheney. “It did two things for Dick,” says a well-informed Washington official. “It reinforced his argument that the President should stay out of town, and it gave George W an excellent reason for doing so.”

A few minutes before 1pm, therefore, after just over an hour on the ground, Mr Bush agreed to fly to Nebraska. “As much as anything,” said Andrew Card later, “he didn’t want to use up any more time talking about it. He knew he’d be criticised, whatever. But it was the right thing to do.”

The President was taken back to his plane in a camouflaged Humvee surrounded by armed guards, and at 1.15, Air Force One took off – as Mr Cheney had wanted – for Offutt, Nebraska. Twelve minutes later a State of Emergency was declared in Washington.

Jake Tapper:

At 2:50 p.m. Air Force One landed at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Neb. About 10 minutes after landing Bush emerged from the plane, which was guarded by soldiers clad in fatigues and gripping machine guns. At 3:06, his motorcade passed through the security gate outside the United States Strategic Command. Instead of walking into the command building, however, Bush entered a short, square building that looked like it sheltered the top of an elevator shaft. He went “down the bunny hole,” ABC News’ Anne Compton told Peter Jennings. There he had a national security briefing. …

…At least someone was answering questions. At FBI headquarters in downtown Washington, presidential counselor Karen Hughes reassured Americans that “while some federal buildings have been evacuated for security reasons and to protect our workers, your federal government continues to function effectively.” Hughes said that “immediately after the first attack in New York this morning” the federal emergency response plan was implemented. Where’s the president? Hughes was asked. Is he coming back to D.C.? She didn’t take any questions, turning on her heel, and didn’t even look at the reporters as she walked out of the room.

NBC’s Washington bureau chief Tim Russert made some pointed remarks about the nation needing the leadership of its president, whose whereabouts were suddenly unknown. He’d never known Air Force One to take off without knowing where it was going, he said. But then again, today was unfortunately unlike any other day.

About 4 pm, after the security briefing broke up, President Bush spoke to White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who informed his boss the absence from Washington was becoming a political problem. Air Force One left Offutt at 4:36 and landed at Andrews Air Force base just after 6.30 pm. About 25 minutes later “Mr Bush re-entered the White House to applause from the skeleton staff who had been permitted to remain,” wrote William Langley. One wonders what the applause was for.

Just before 7:30 that evening, hundreds of members of the House and Senate gathered on the Capitol Building steps to sing “God Bless America.”

In the critical hours after the attacks, the President couldn’t find the right words. On the morning of September 11, he called the terrorist hijackers “those folks who committed this act.” After some hours fluttering about in Air Force One like a frightened pigeon, President Bush returned to Washington in time to address the nation that evening, at 8:30 eastern time, from the Oval Office. That short speech, written by Karen Hughes, was not so clumsy, but neither did it rise to the occasion. The White House speechwriting staff called it the “awful office” address. David Frum called it a “doughy pudding of stale metaphors.” The Telegraph reported,

His delivery, however, was halting and seemed to lack the gravitas the nation was expecting. Rather than his stature being emphasised, he appeared to have shrunk.

After the speech, Bush met with his National Security Council. In Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke reported what Bush said —

“I want you all to understand that we are at war and we will stay at war until this is done. Nothing else matters. Everything is available for the pursuit of this war. Any barriers in your way, they’re gone. Any money you need, you have it. This is our only agenda.” When Rumsfeld points out that international law only allows force to prevent future attacks and not for retribution, Bush yells, “No. I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.” [pp. 23-24]

Tomorrow: What happened on September 12?

We’re having a festival of retrospectives of What Happened on September 11.” I want to do something a little different — review the first few days after September 11. In particular, I want to look at the period that began with the collapse of the second WTC tower on September 11 to September 21, when the nation’s pundits were lauding the President for his leadership and resolve and speech making.

When I reviewed news stories of September 11 and the ten days after I was surprised to find copious foreshadowing of the mess Bush would make. It was all there, from delayed reactions to Iraq to bullying and bluster, and all in the public record. Yet few of us noticed at the time. President Bush’s performance after September 11 is remembered — by the general public and MSM, anyway — as strong and purposeful, yet hindsight reveals many of the same traits that caused him to bleep New Orleans. Bennet Kelley wrote recently,

With this anniversary coming on the heels of the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, it is striking how President Bush’s response to the horror and barbarity of Sept. 11 parallels his response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina — both of which are defined by Bush’s three rules of crisis management. The first rule is to disclaim any responsibility for the calamity by claiming that no one had anticipated or imagined planes being used as missiles or levees breaching despite abundant evidence to the contrary and then opposing any independent inquiry of the catastrophe that would expose that claim.

The second rule is to deliver an impassioned speech in a dramatic setting expressing resolve and promising action. After September 11, Bush spoke at Ground Zero, the National Cathedral and before Congress pledging that he “will not forget this wound to our country or those who inflicted it (and) will not yield … rest (or) relent in waging this struggle for freedom and security for the American people;” just as he had stood in New Orleans’ Jackson Square and promised to “confront … poverty with bold action” after Katrina.

President Bush’s third rule of crisis management is inaction. Just as Bush has offered no bold action to confront poverty, by the first anniversary of 9/11, Bush was offering only lip service to the fight against bin Laden as he ignored CIA calls in November 2001 to dispatch Marines to Tora Bora to prevent bin Laden’s escape. By March 2002, he conceded that “I just don’t spend that much time on him.” By 2005, the administration would shut down the CIA’s bin Laden unit even though its former head believes that al-Qaida “remains the single most important threat to the (nation)”, while the campaign in Afghanistan receives less than 20 percent of the troops and one-third of the resources spent on the much smaller and less populous Iraq .

Few Americans saw the trap we were about to hurl ourselves into, but Ed Vulliamy wrote for the Observer only twelve days after the attacks:

Between the cascades of applause, Bush’s long-awaited definition of the coming battle cleared a way for the waging of a potentially limitless global war, unfettered by borders or constraint of time, until its awesome tasks of obliterating terrorism and deposing the regimes that nurture it are achieved. But behind Thursday night’s explosive display of unity there are fractures and tensions the new President must ride – within his administration, in the nation and across the world. …

…There are still few smiles on the streets of America’s most exuberant city. But within that fog of despair is a kernel of anger, hatched on the day, last weekend, that Bush came to New York. Until then his performance had been a chronicle of invisibility, insincerity and political stumbling. Then he climbed the rubble that was once the World Trade Centre, and hit his own stride.

He promised the world would soon hear the voice of New York, and suddenly he was a President. Next day, Saturday, Bush remained visibly in authority – albeit flanked by the sinister guiding hand of Vice-President Dick Cheney, dressed as though he was going to fly the first fighter bomber himself. …

… Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Cheney’s closest advisers favour early strikes against Afghanistan, Iraq and, if necessary, Lebanon. The scope of their war includes Hizbollah in the Lebanese Beqaa valley, and all bases at which terrorists are trained across the Middle and Far East. Rumsfeld has not included Iraq but believes the war should embrace ‘proliferation’ as a target. …

… During the Cabinet shouting match, Powell stood up and said the Pentagon’s plans would ‘wreck’ the coalition. Powell is not impressed by the quick-hit plans, which involve the establishment and securing of ground bases in enemy territory, dropped in with air cover, from which special operations troops and ‘snake eaters’ would mount ‘in-and-out’ attacks. Such attacks would have to be unilateral, for reasons of secrecy. But all Bush’s staff know he is ready to go it alone, if that is what is needed, so long as he has Britain and a sound Pakistan on board.

During the argument at Camp David, Bush turned to Powell and said: ‘General, the United States can do whatever it wants in self-defence.’ The President’s giveaway line on Thursday night was that promising how ‘this country will define our times, not be defined by them’.

He was not talking about the usual stuff, the popularity of Coca-Cola, or the two Michaels, Jordan and Jackson. When the new President that emerged last week tells other countries they are either with the United States or against the United States – as defined by the United States – he means just that.

In the September 20, 2001, New York Times, Patrick Tyler and Elaine Sciolino reported (“A NATION CHALLENGED: WASHINGTON; Bush’s Advisers Split on Scope Of Retaliation“),

Some senior administration officials, led by Paul D. Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, and I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, are pressing for the earliest and broadest military campaign against not only the Osama bin Laden network in Afghanistan, but also against other suspected terrorist bases in Iraq and in Lebanon’s Bekaa region.

These officials are seeking to include Iraq on the target list with the aim of toppling President Saddam Hussein, a step long advocated by conservatives who support Mr. Bush.

A number of conservatives circulated a new letter today calling on the president to ”make a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power” even if he cannot be linked to the terrorists who struck New York and Washington last week.

Already we see Colin Powell and the moderates pitted against the Neocons:

”We can’t solve everything in one blow,” said an administration official who has sided with Secretary Powell.

But at the Pentagon today, asked if he felt there was an Iraqi connection to the attacks, Mr. Wolfowitz said, ”I think the president made it very clear today that this is about more than just one organization, it’s about more than just one event. …

… But there are tensions. They stem in part from the basic clash of roles: Secretary Powell faces the pragmatic work of coalition building and careful diplomacy with allies who will take significant risks to support the United States when so much anger is directed at its policies in the Middle East. … There are also ideological differences and even old personal conflicts from the first Bush administration, the Reagan and the Ford administrations cleaving a group of people facing an urgent crisis. …

During a weekend of intense national security planning, Secretary Powell was said by several officials to have urged caution. He argued that to undertake a broad military campaign, especially including Iraq — whose civilian population draws great sympathy in the Middle East for the suffering it has endured since 1991 — would undermine the support Mr. Bush needs now.

On Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney seemed to ally himself with Secretary Powell’s view when he said in a televised interview that the administration did not have evidence linking Saddam Hussein to last week’s attacks.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was said to have joined the consensus position of leaving Iraq and other targets out of initial plans. ”Rumsfeld for whatever reason has decided that Iraq can wait,” one official said, adding that ”he hasn’t given up on it.”

But Mr. Wolfowitz, the Pentagon’s influential deputy secretary, is a conservative thinker who has frequently clashed with Secretary Powell and the State Department. He has continued to press for a military campaign against Iraq that would not only punish Mr. Hussein for his past support for terrorism at home and abroad but would also eliminate the danger he poses to Israel and the West in his quest to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

One account of last weekend’s private discussion among Mr. Bush and his senior aides suggested a tense exchange occurred when Mr. Wolfowitz made the the case for a broad and early campaign, including bombing Iraq. Secretary Powell said targeting Iraq and Saddam Hussein would ”wreck” the coalition.

Mr. Wolfowitz has been more ”concerned about bombing Iraq than bombing Afghanistan,” one senior administration official said.

In his column today Frank Rich calls September 11 “the day that was supposed to change everything and did not.” And he looks at the following days:

Mr. Bush was asked at a press conference “how much of a sacrifice” ordinary Americans would “be expected to make in their daily lives, in their daily routines.” His answer: “Our hope, of course, is that they make no sacrifice whatsoever.” He, too, wanted to move on — to “see life return to normal in America,” as he put it — but toward partisan goals stealthily tailored to his political allies rather than the nearly 90 percent of the country that, according to polls, was rallying around him.

This selfish agenda was there from the very start. As we now know from many firsthand accounts, a cadre from Mr. Bush’s war cabinet was already busily hyping nonexistent links between Iraq and the Qaeda attacks. The presidential press secretary, Ari Fleischer, condemned Bill Maher’s irreverent comic response to 9/11 by reminding “all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do.” Fear itself — the fear that “paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance,” as F.D.R. had it — was already being wielded as a weapon against Americans by their own government.

Less than a month after 9/11, the president was making good on his promise of “no sacrifice whatsoever.” Speaking in Washington about how it was “the time to be wise” and “the time to act,” he declared, “We need for there to be more tax cuts.” Before long the G.O.P. would be selling 9/11 photos of the president on Air Force One to campaign donors and the White House would be featuring flag-draped remains of the 9/11 dead in political ads.

And what about the “unity” we were all supposed to have felt? In a very perceptive column in today’s Boston Globe, Steven Biel writes that while we may have felt a sense of unity after September 11, in fact what we felt was highly individualized.

A week after the attacks, Suheir Hammad, a Palestinian-American poet, wrote from her kitchen window looking across the East River toward where the Twin Towers had stood:

I have never felt less american and more new Yorker — particularly brooklyn, than these past days, the stars and stripes on all these cars and apartment windows represent the dead as citizens first — not family members, not lovers. Compassion and political consensus aren’t identical either, even though the effort to fuse the two began almost immediately. “Our unity is a kinship of grief and a steadfast resolve to prevail against our enemies,” President Bush said at the National Cathedral on Sept. 14, 2001. But a kinship of grief is emotional rather than political, and to be united in sorrow is not the same as being united about how to respond geopolitically to such a calamity. Nor is it the same as remaining united once the messy implications of those responses are revealed.

Beginning tomorrow and for the next ten days, I plan to dredge up the news from five years ago, as it was written at the time. For tomorrow, for example, I have articles about what President Bush did from the time he left the Florida classroom and until he spoke to the nation from the Oval Office that evening. Some of this will be familiar, but some of it might surprise you.