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Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., calls Sept. 11 a “day of disgrace” for U.S. anti-terrorism efforts. George Friedman, chairman of Stratfor Global Intelligence, calls it “one of the major intelligence failures in U.S. history.” And Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., is more succinct, saying America was caught “flat-footed.”
While thousands of American citizens paid for this failure with their lives, there is another measure of the uncertainties created by the intelligence community’s failure: The long journey President George W. Bush was forced to take returning from Florida to Washington that tragic day.
In a statement made at 9:31 a.m. in Sarasota, Fla., that fateful morning, Bush called the initial strike on the World Trade Center an “apparent” terrorist attack. From Florida, Bush left for Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and then moved again to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, where he held a meeting with top officials before finally heading to Washington, D.C.
Some in the media were caustic in their description of the flight. The New York Times called it a “zigzag course.” The New York Daily News charged, “A shocked and shaken President Bush – who was hopscotched around the country yesterday in an extraordinary effort to keep him safe. …”
Journalists were whispering about the president’s absence. And even some friends are disturbed by the implications that the president or Washington may not have been safe. One former official with the first Bush administration said he was “deeply disappointed by his zigzagging across the country.”
“We had control of the skies by 10 o’clock,” the source added. “I was hoping to see a Churchillian or Reaganesque sign of defiance. Bush was poorly served by his staff.”
According to the White House, presidential advisers and Secret Service agents argued against the president’s return to the nation’s capital.
On Thursday, presidential adviser Karl Rove read from notes he took as Bush vented his anger. “I’m not going to let some tinhorn terrorist keep the president of the United States away from the nation’s capital,” he said during the six-hour flight. “The American people want to see their president, and they want to see him now.”
Finally, he won out. But it is still unclear what the Secret Service feared in Washington or beyond.
Was there a worry that this new generation of terrorists had acquired chemical, biological or nuclear weapons of mass destruction? Was there finally a means of penetrating the White House?
“I don’t think this was a concern,” said Stratfor’s Friedman. He thinks the Secret Service’s response was reasonable.
“The attacks were built around the air and the president’s schedule and route were known,” he said. “[The Secret Service] took him to STRATCOM [United States Strategic Command] – the most secure world at the center of military communications.”
The morning after the attack, Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council, told reporters, “We had specific credible information that both [Air Force One and the White House] were intended terrorist targets, and that the plane that hit the Pentagon may have been headed for the White House.”
The White House reiterated this not once, but three times with three different spokesmen. In the final instance, Attorney General John Ashcroft declared, “Our government has credible evidence that the White House and Air Force One were targets.”
Part of that credible evidence was an explicit call to the Secret Service: “Air Force One was next.” Government officials report that part of that threat indicated the terrorists knew the code words for the president, Secret Service procedures and Bush’s whereabouts.
What was the nature of the threat, however?
At least one former Air Force officer and defense specialist contacted by Human Events said that it was “unlikely” Air Force One could be struck by a jet. Add to that the fact that American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon at 9:40 a.m. By 9:49 a.m. the Federal Aviation Administration had grounded all domestic flights.
Still, Bush was nowhere to be seen between his statement at Barksdale at 1:04 p.m. and his arrival at the White House at 6:55 p.m. In the interim, presidential Counselor Karen Hughes made a statement and said Bush had convened the National Security Council at Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska.
Deadly unknowns
It is still unclear where the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania was headed. Speculation about its target has ranged from Camp David in Maryland, to the Capitol, to the White House.
Former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North told Fox News that his sources had a different theory. It “was probably not Camp David but was more likely Fort Detrick, which, of course, has beneath it the national emergency military command center,” said North.
This “second Pentagon,” located 55 miles from Washington in Frederick, Md., not far from Camp David, has emergency operations rooms deep in the earth. It is also home to the nation’s main germ-warfare research laboratory. The damage of a hit there by a plane laden with tons of jet fuel is actually unknown. Thanks to heroic efforts by the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93, citizens in Frederick didn’t find out.
President Bush wasn’t the only person kept away for safety reasons during the tumult and uncertainty. Vice President Dick Cheney and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., were removed from Washington.
Most pundits don’t believe there will be any serious political fallout from Bush’s distance from the capital, but the source who worked near the first President Bush said that his son’s absence “heightened the panic.”
Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia all declared states of emergency that day. Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening said that the Department of Defense had given him a list of 11 possible targets, including the World Trade Center in Baltimore and the state Capitol in Annapolis.
Washington Mayor Anthony Williams did not specify his reasons for declaring a state of emergency except to indicate that he wanted to be prepared.
What is clear is that on Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. citizens learned not to underestimate the skill, planning and lust for destruction of America’s enemies. If the president and his handlers did not feel safe in Washington – even after the air traffic was grounded and the area around the White House secured – why should anyone else?
On Thursday, President Bush spoke defiantly to his critics and to reporters in the White House.
“I believe I took the appropriate – I know, I don’t believe – I know I took the appropriate actions as the commander in chief to be in a position to be able to make the decisions necessary for our government to handle the crisis,” Bush said.
The lesson for the government and for the country is that we need to significantly boost our ability to track the movement, capabilities and intentions of terrorists and potential terrorists, so that whatever security specialists feared might happen in Washington last Tuesday never comes to pass.
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