Maybe CBS got it all wrong, then? And Time magazine and the rest of the MSM world. <g>
cbs2.com
<SNIP>...The Capitol was evacuated. And for the first time ever, the Secret Service executed the emergency plan to ensure the presidential line of succession. Agents swept up the 15 officials who stood to become president if the others were killed. They wanted to move Vice President Cheney, fearing he was in danger even in the bunker. But Cheney says when he heard the other officials were safe, he decided to stay at the White House, no matter what.
Down in the bunker, Cheney was trying to figure out how many hijacked planes there were. Officials feared there could be as many as 11. ..
...As the planes track toward Washington, a discussion begins about whether to shoot them down. “I discussed it with the president,” Cheney recalls. “‘Are we prepared to order our aircraft to shoot down these airliners that have been hijacked?’ He said yes.”
“It was my advice. It was his decision,” says Cheney.
“That’s a sobering moment to order your own combat aircraft to shoot down your own civilian aircraft,” says Bush. “But it was an easy decision to make given the – given the fact that we had learned that a commercial aircraft was being used as a weapon. I say easy decision, it was, I didn’t hesitate, let me put it that way. I knew what had to be done.” ...
...Mr. Bush says the first hours were frustrating. He watched the horrifying pictures, but the TV signal was breaking up. His calls to Cheney were cutting out. Mr. Bush says he pounded his desk shouting, “This is inexcusable; get me the vice president.”
“I was trying to clear the fog of war, and there is a fog of war, says the president. "Information was just flying from all directions.”
Chief of staff Card brought in the reports. There was word Camp David had been hit. A jet was thought to be targeting Mr. Bush’s ranch.
“I remember hearing that the State Department might have been hit, or that the White House had a fire in it. So we were hearing lots of different information,” says Card.
They also feared that Air Force One itself was a target. Cheney told the president there was a credible threat against the plane. Using the code name for Air Force One, Mr. Bush told an aide, “Angel is next.” The threat was passed to presidential pilot Colonel Mark Tillman.
“It was serious before that but now it is -no longer is it a time to get the president home,” Tillman says. “We actually have to consider everything we say, everything we do could be intercepted, and we have to make sure that no one knows what our position is.”
Tillman asked for an armed guard at his cockpit door while Secret Service agents double-checked the identity of everyone on board. The crew reviewed the emergency evacuation plan. Then came a warning from air traffic control – a suspect airliner was dead ahead.
“Coming out of Sarasota there was one call that said there was an airliner off our nose that they did not have contact with,” Tillman remembers.
Tillman took evasive action, pulling his plane high above normal traffic. They were on course for Washington, but by now no one thought that was a good idea, except the president.
“I wanted to come back to Washington, but the circumstances were such that it was just impossible for the Secret Service or the national security team to clear the way for Air Force One to come back,” says Bush.
So Air Force One set course for an underground command center in Nebraska. Back in Washington, the president’s closest advisor, Karen Hughes, heard about the threat to the plane and placed a call to Mr. Bush.
“And the military operator came back to me and in a voice that, to me, sounded very shaken said, ‘Ma’am, I’m sorry, we can’t reach Air Force One.’” Hughes recalls. Hughes was out of the White House during the attacks. When she came back, it was a place she didn’t recognize.....
...On Air Force One, Col. Tillman had a problem. He needed to hide the most visible plane in the world, a 747 longer than the White House itself. He didn’t want to use his radio, because the hijackers could be listening to air traffic control. So he called air traffic control on the telephone.
“We actually didn't tell them our destination or what directions we were heading,” says Tillman. “We, we basically just talked to 'em and said, 'OK, fine, we have no clearance at this time, we are just going to fly across the United States.'”
Controllers passed Air Force One from one sector to another, warning each other to keep the route secret.
“OK, where’s he going?” one tower radioed to another.
“Just watch him,” a second tower responded. “Don’t question him where’s he's going. Just work him and watch him, there’s no flight plan in and we’re not going to put anything in. Ok, sir?”
Air Force One ordered a fighter escort, and air traffic control radioed back: “Air Force One, got two F-16s at about your 10 o’clock position.”
“The staff, and the president and us, were filed out along the outside hallway of his presidential cabin there and looking out the windows,” says Bartlett. “And the president gives them a signal of salute, and the pilot kind of tips his wing, and fades off and backs into formation.”
The men in the F-16s were Shane Brotherton and Randy Roberts, from the Texas Air National Guard. Their mission was so secret their commander wouldn’t tell them where they were going.
“He just said, 'You’ll know when you see it,' and that was my first clue, I didn’t have any idea what we were going up until that point,” says Brotherton. He knew when he saw it.
“We, we were trying to keep an 80-mile bubble, bubble around Air Force One, and we'd investigate anything that was within 80 miles,” says Roberts.
Bush says he was not worried about the safety of the people on this aircraft, or for his own safety: “I looked out the airplane and saw two F-16s on each wing. It was going to have to be a pretty good pilot to get us.”
We now know that the threat to Air Force One was part of the fog of war, a false alarm. But it had a powerful effect at the time. Some wondered, with the president out of sight, was he still running the government? He hadn’t appeared after the attack on Washington. Mr. Bush was clearly worried about it. At one point he was overheard saying, “The American people want to know where their dang president is.” The staff considered an address to the nation by phone but instead Mr. Bush ordered Air Force One to land somewhere within 30 minutes so he could appear on TV. At 11:45 a.m., they landed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
“The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake, we will show the world that we will pass this test. God bless,” Bush said to the nation from Barksdale.
At Barksdale, the Secret Service believed the situation in Washington was still unsafe. So the plane continued on to Nebraska, to the command center where Mr. Bush would be secure and have all the communications gear he needed to run the government. Aboard Air Force One, Mr. Bush had a job for press secretary Fleischer.
“The president asked me to make sure that I took down everything that was said. I think he wanted to make certain that a record existed,” says Fleischer
Fleischer’s notes capture Mr. Bush’s language, plain and unguarded. To the vice president he said: “We’re at war, Dick, we’re going to find out who did this and kick their ass.” Another time, Mr. Bush said, “We’re not going to have any slap-on-the-wrist crap this time.”
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