Original subtitles

9/11: Inside Air Force One 11-S: Dentro del Air Force One Documental, 2019 Director: Martin Guigui

[soft dramatic music] ♪

- This was the most rapid ascent that I could remember.

- We flew straight up. - Air Force One was a target.

We had to protect the president.

[plane whooshing]

- We're under attack.

And I said, "I'm getting on Air Force One,

and I'm gonna be in Washington pretty soon."

- Washington was a war zone.

The skies are not safe.

- It was surreal, in a sense.

I said, "I'm coming home," and they said,

"We recommend you not do so."

- He kept getting more and more angry.

- The president was hot to trot.

He wanted to get back to Washington.

But then, 10:32, we got the report saying Angel is next.

- Angel is the code word for Air Force One.

- It has to be an insider.

Nobody else would use that code word.

- We lost all communications.

- Sabotage--somehow, somebody had gotten to the system

aboard Air Force One.

- Air Force One was flying blind.

- There was so little clear information coming in to us.

- Air Force One and the president

were disconnected from every other level of the crisis.

- We didn't know how many hijackers there were.

We didn't really know who the enemy was.

- But we did know now it was on.

It was fully on.

♪

- Flying Air Force One,

you're constantly reminding yourself that

you have the president of the United States

onboard the aircraft.

[soft piano music]

♪

Angel is iconic.

Angel is the United States Secret Service's code word

that they use to refer to Air Force One.

- It is a powerful, powerful, powerful image.

It did not matter whether we were in Maine or Mongolia,

whether we're in the state of Georgia

or the country of Georgia,

that plane, to this day when I see it on TV,

it still makes the hair rise on the back of my neck,

and I mean that from my heart.

[plane whooshing]

- September 10th, 2001--

it was no different than any other trip.

The plan was to leave Washington D.C.,

Andrews Air Force Base,

take the president on an education visit

to the state of Florida.

It was a two-day trip.

That's all that was planned for.

- Two full days in one state, Florida,

where he would talk about education

morning, noon, and night.

It was about as low-priority as any White House trip

I had ever taken.

This was gonna be a real sleeper of a trip.

- Hey. - Just warming up.

Come on, Stretch. Come on.

Come on, Stretch!

- I knew the president was gonna go

for a run that morning.

I went outside to check on things with the motorcade

and how the advance team was doing,

and I noticed the terrible stench.

"Whew! That stinks."

It was the red tide killing the fish

that had washed up on the beach.

I actually was worried that

the stench might cause the president to be sick,

and I remember saying to him, "Oh, by the way,

"the terrible stench is out there,

"but I checked with the doctor,

and no, you're not gonna get sick,"

and he looked at me like, "You're an idiot,"

which I got that view quite a few times from him.

- Thank you, sir. - Can we talk about tax cuts?

- I'd rather not.

We can talk about it at the next event.

- Very good.

- He took his shower.

Then we sat down, had a CIA briefing.

- On the morning of September 11th itself,

there was nothing in the briefing specifically related

to Al-Qaeda or even generally related to terrorism.

[haunting piano music]

In the spring and early summer of 2001,

we were picking up chatter among Al-Qaeda operatives

about something big was to occur,

some significant attack.

People used--actually used the word "catastrophic."

I delivered the famous August 6th briefing:

"Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S."

♪

- Pre-9/11 America was a country that

felt pretty secure within our borders.

Turmoil overseas

really didn't say to the American people,

"This is likely to hurt us here at home."

- There wasn't anything specific.

There was no mention of a specific threat.

It was not actionable in any way.

"But you do need to know, Mr. President, that Bin Laden

would like nothing more than to bring the fight here"

- And then 9/11 happened.

- This just in.

You are looking at obviously a very disturbing live shot..

- I just witnessed a plane

that appeared to be cruising...

- Unconfirmed reports that a plane has crashed

into one of the towers there.

- We were in the motorcade headed to the event.

As Secret Service agents, we always assume the worst,

but at the same time,

we understood there's a lot we just don't know.

Is this a terrorist incident? Is this a accident?

Suicidal thing by a pilot?

What is this?

♪

- We arrived at the school when all of us--the presiden,

the principal, and I-- had the same reaction.

"Oh, what a horrible accident.

The pilot must have had a heart attack or something."

And then the principal of the school

and the president walked into the classroom.

- Sound it out. Get ready.

kids: Smile. - What word?

kids: Smile. - Yes, "smile."

- I was standing three paces to the president's left.

All of a sudden, the radio call came over to e

that the second plane hit the building.

- Another one just hit the building. Wow.

- [gasps] - Oh, my God.

Another plane has just hit.

- This is a whole different deal.

- You saw a plane?

- Yes, I just saw a plane go into the building.

- We're standing in the staff room

watching the television set that they had on there,

and it hit me right then,

this was the attack that we had heard so much about

in the late spring, early summer.

This is what they were planning.

- Ready. kids: Light.

- Yes, "light." Ready.

kids: Light.

- Then all of the sudden, it had hit me that

the president's the only one that doesn't know

that the second plane has hit the building,

because he's still talking to the kids,

and he's reading to the kids.

[foreboding music]

And it became increasingly uncomfortable in the room,

and again, we're only talking about another minute or two,

but it still became increasingly uncomfortable,

and quite honestly,

I knew that with the news media in the back of the roo,

it was probably a matter of time when one of them's

gonna just shout out to the president that,

"Hey, did you know a second plane has hit the building?"

kids: Plane. - Yes, "plane."

- And then I performed a test that chiefs of staff

have to perform all the time,

and it's usually not an easy test:

does the president need to know?

You get that test a thousand times a day.

This was an easy test to pass.

Yes.

- 60 on page 153.

- I bend over, and I whisper into his ear,

"A second plane hit the second tower.

America is under attack."

That's an unbelievable message to deliver.

- I was stunned.

No one interrupts a president,

even in a classroom full of second graders.

[shutters clicking]

I looked at the president's face...

- At the count of three, everyone should be on page 150.

- And there was a look of gravity,

of concern,

I don't think I'd ever seen on George Bush's face before.

♪

- About that same time, the press corps

that had been crammed

in this small elementary school classroom...

Started getting the same message I had just gotten.

kids: N-E-A-K...

- It was surreal in a sense, like watching a silent movie

of bad news being delivered to the country.

- Mr. President, are you aware of the reports

of the plane crash in New York?

- We'll talk about it later.

- That was--definitely looked like it was on purpos.

- Why do you say "very deliberately"?

- The pilot aimed right for the building.

- I do remember standing there wondering

whether somebody might fly a plane

into Booker T. Elementary School.

After all, it had been public for some time

that the president was going to be

at this particular place at this particular time.

- I thought about walking over

to the lead Secret Service agent

and mentioning this to him, but he had a look on his face

like he was just as worried as I was,

so I decided he didn't need to be told.

- The president of the United States is the target.

When there is a terrorist incident

taking place in this country,

we automatically assume the president is a target of thi.

If all of a sudden we do get a threat toward the presiden,

or that direction of interest changes toward Sarasota,

then we're only gonna have seconds to react.

So I said, "Guys, we have got to leave here.

We've got to leave immediately."

But the president was adamant about the fact,

"I have got to send a message to the American people.

Citizens need to hear from me at this time."

[soft indistinct chatter]

[applause]

- I had been in crises before as governor of Texas--

nothing like this, of course.

[tense music]

The people that were watching me

give this statement were horrified,

'cause they hadn't gotten the news.

Today, we've had a national tragedy...

- I could tell you one thing emphatically,

and that is no one knew what was going on.

- In an apparent terrorist attack on our country.

- No one knew what was going on.

- Terrorism against our natin will not stand.

- We've got multiple radios

tuned to all the different agencies.

We started getting pieces of information.

We were told Air Force One was a target.

[plane whooshing]

There is an aircraft in the Florida area

that's descending with its transponder off,

and it's not talking to any f the air traffic controllers,

so it's got the same MO as all the hijacked aircrafts.

We're sitting on the ground in Sarasota

with the idea that a plane could attack us from above.

A large aircraft sitting on the ground,

so Air Force One was a sitting duck.

- And now if you'd join me in a moment of silence.

[shutters clicking]

- The Secret Service said to all of us,

"Get in the motorcade now,

"because when the president is done, we are leaving,

and we're not waiting for anybody."

- Thank you very much.

- Sir, do you have any more information...

[applause]

- That was it.

And then, all hell broke loose.

[dramatic music]

- It was like no other motorcade we've probably see.

This was at break-neck speed

to get to the aircraft as soon as possible.

♪

- We heard the engines of Air Force One

already grinding away,

so I said,

"The pilot must really want to get out of here.

He must not know if this is even a safe place."

- The agents are over our heads yelling,

"Move it, move it, move it!"

- There was some reference from the Secret Service that

maybe there'd be somebody with a stinger missile

sitting at the end of the runway.

[plane whirring]

♪

- As we started to taxi, the Secret Service advises

that someone has come up to the end of the runway

with what they perceived to be a long gun.

I had planned to taxi down to that end of the runway

and take off.

I would go right by

whoever they considered to be the threat.

At that point, I turned around,

and we went the opposite direction.

- Colonel Tillman said to me,

and I can remember it like it was yesterday--he said,

"Well, I can take the steepest takeoff,

you know, you could ever imagine."

I told the president,

"Mr. President, you got to sit down."

- We're gonna make sure that we don't get near

that tree line, so we're gonna climb out steep

to make sure that no ground fire

could reach us at that point.

♪

- We took off so fast, it was dizzying.

- We flew right up pretty straight.

male narrator: It's 9:54 a.m.

Angel has taken wing.

But with only four hours of fuel on board,

and the skies filled with threats,

where can they go?

- I kept thinking, the president is running,

but there's no place to hide.

The skies are not safe.

♪

♪

[plane whooshing]

narrator: Just over an hour after the attack

begins in New York, Angel takes wing.

- Air Force One has engines on it that are designed,

you know, for a heavy aircraft,

yet the plane never gets that heavy.

It has tremendous maneuverability.

It goes extremely fast.

It is literally a little sports car,

only it's about the size of a football field.

The takeoff out of Sarasota was extreme.

If there was anybody that was gonna fire at the aircraft,

the chances of them hitting it are relatively low

if the plane's got a high angle of attack.

♪

But the Secret Service identifies the threat

as just a man that's filming at the end of the runway.

There were a lot of unknowns at the time we were countering.

Those were the kind of fog of war facts

that we were getting at the time

that were being passed to us

and that we were hearing over the radios.

narrator: Angel has only four hours of fuel on board,

and many urgent questions.

How well is the military prepared to respond?

Who's in command here and on the ground?

And how much danger is Angel in

right now?

- The main focus the entire day

was answering the question,

"Is the president in danger?"

We may not even have begun to understand

the magnitude of this.

There could be 30 planes in the air.

- My plan was to get him to Washington, D.C.

as quick as possible.

narrator: But as the president is taking off,

Washington is turning into a war zone.

- We were in our office doing our thing.

All of a sudden, an airliner overflew the White House.

And I will tell you,

if you're not a Marine One pilot,

nobody overflies the White House, ever.

It's prohibited airspace.

Within moments, we had breaking news.

Fire and explosion over at the Pentagon.

We were a city under siege.

And within minutes, all the loudspeakers

blared to life to evacuate the White House.

[sirens wailing] - Everybody out! Everybody out!

- A Secret Service agent

stationed outside my door burst in.

He said, "Sir, we have to leave, now."

Put his left hand on my left shoulder

and grabbed the back of my belt with his right hand,

and just lifted me out of the chair

and propelled me out of the room.

[soft suspenseful music]

He took me downstairs into a tunnel

that runs from the West Wing

under the mansion all the way over to the

East Wing, the Presidential Emergency Ops Center.

narrator: One of the most top secret areas

of the entire White House complex

is located underneath the East Wing:

the Presidential Emergency Operations Center,

or PEOC.

It's a hardened bunker buried deep underground,

and this is where Major Darling is stationed

all day long.

- I'm not really at liberty to discuss its exact locatio,

its depth, or its capabilities.

All I can tell you is it's pretty impressive.

And when that door swings open and it closes behind you,

and it's vacuum sealed, you know that

you're in someplace that's pretty special.

[tense music]

narrator: Now, with the vice president in place,

the PEOC becomes the White House command center.

And like Angel,

the White House itself is in the crosshairs.

- When I first arrived inside the PEOC,

there was a lot going on.

They opened up lockers down there,

passed out weapons, more weapons to the agents,

gas masks, things like that.

Nobody knew what was gonna happen,

just that the word had come in

that the White House might be a target.

There was an airplane headed at a very high rate of speed,

believed hijacked, that was headed for Crown.

[sirens wailing]

Crown is the code name for the White House.

[phones ringing]

- The phones are now ringing off the hook.

It's the Situation Room saying,

"We have an unidentified aircraft

"eight miles out coming down the Potomac River

headed to the White House."

- Vice President Cheney says,

"Don, we have an unidentified aircraft

"seven miles out coming at the White House.

"Do I have an F-15, an F-16, an F-18?

Do I have anything over at Washington, D.C.?"

And while he's talking to Rumsfeld,

the Secret Service and I are going,

"Six, five, four..."

He goes, "Stop counting.

"If the Secret Service can't deal with it on the roof,

everybody stand by for impact."

♪

And I remember going, "Holy mackerel,

"the world's greatest super power

"doesn't have a way to defend itself.

"We're gonna take a body blow

"right here at the White House on 9/11.

The terrorists are going to get to the White House."

[radio tuning]

[radio chatter]

All of a sudden, all the satellite radios

blared back to life.

It's not a bogie.

[helicopter whirring]

It's a medevac helicopter

heading to the Pentagon to save lives.

We had no fighters in the area.

Had it been a bad guy,

we would have taken a hit.

♪

- At that point,

those of us in the press cabin learned

that the Pentagon had now been hit.

This was no longer a terrorist attack

on the financial heart of the United States in New York.

This was now an attack on the American government.

narrator: In spite of the attack,

the Pentagon actually continues to function.

Deep inside, off the D ring,

the National Military Command Center begins

a top-secret phone call:

the air threat conference call.

Its hundreds of pages are a real-time record

of the nation's military and civilian leaders

as they struggled to respond to the attack

and to keep the president safe.

The transcript was only recently declassified,

and like no other 9/11 document,

it reveals just how vulnerabe the president is...

- This is NORAD. Do you have any information

on final destination of Air Force One?

- This is STRATCOM.

Negative.

narrator: And how chaotic the military response is as well.

- This is the PEOC.

Can you give us an update on fighter CAP

of Washington, D.C., area?

- Conference, conference, this is Air Force.

We don't have that information at this time.

Can NORAD provide? - This is NORAD.

We have no further informatin at this point.

Stand by, scrambling assets.

- The air threat conference call was in many ways

the conference call from hell.

When you read the transcript, and when you hear it

playing out in real time,

it exposes the vulnerability

of our nation's top command to the chaos of that day.

No one really knew what was going on.

There could be a threat on the president's plane.

There could be another attack in Washington.

So, if there had been a more serious threat out there,

one capable of taking Air Force One,

he was vulnerable.

- It was a situation where, from the standpoint

of our defensive capability, we were totally flat-footed.

[dramatic music]

- But we did know now it was on.

It was fully on.

There was some sort of coordinated terrorist attack

that did not just include New York,

so you can imagine that completely changed things.

There's no way we can take te president back to Washington

until we figure out what the heck's going on.

narrator: But that's a question no one can answer,

neither the president nor any of the millions

wondering where the next attack will be.

And it turns out the next threat

is against Angel itself.

[somber music]

♪

narrator: Air Force One has served as the backdrop

to momentous historic events,

both inspiring and tragic.

And today, Angel is again

the backdrop to history.

- I was in the president's cabin just taking notes

as a witness to history, verbatim notes on everything

and anything that the president did or said.

At 9:45 a.m., the president says,

"We're at war."

He deliberately did not say that to the nation

on September 11th,

but for those of us who heard him say,

"We're at war,"

it was just a chill down the spine.

- I realized I had become a wartime president.

We're at war. We're under attack.

And I said, "I'm getting on Air Force One,

and I'm gonna be in Washington pretty soon."

narrator: But shortly after takeoff,

a debate erupts over their destination.

- The president's adamant. "I'm going to Washington."

[sirens wailing]

[helicopter whirring]

But until we know what's going on,

there is no way in good conscience

the Secret Service could take the president

of the United States back to Washington, D.C.

- I said, "Mr. President, I don't think

you really want to make that decision right now."

I said, "The Secret Service is very nervous about

"going back to Washington D.. We've got to learn more.

I don't think you want to make that decision."

- "This is not your call, Mr. President.

This is a Secret Service call."

We've got to follow the protocols that are called for

in this type of incident to protect the Oval Office,

protect the office of the presidency,

and make sure that we protect our president.

But the president kept continuing to say,

"I need to be in the Oval Office.

"The American people need the strength

of a president being there."

- He said, "I'm ordering you!

We're going back to Washington."

He kept getting more and more angry.

- The president was vehement,

adamant, aggravated, irritated.

He was stomping mad.

Anybody who was on the plane saw and heard the argument.

- As a wartime president and being the commander in chief,

you want to be in the center of the action.

- The president said to us, you know,

"I'll be criticized for this. You guys don't realize that."

He was ticked off because we had him out there

basically running from the bad guys,

as he sort of saw it.

But we continued to explain to him that

it ultimately wasn't his call.

I think that made him even madder,

and we came dangerously close to sort of

a mini constitutional crisis here because

we did have the president wanting to go one way,

the Secret Service saying, "You're going the other,"

and the military caught in the middle.

[soft dramatic music]

- Technically, I'm the commander of the aircraft,

so it's my decision, you know, what that aircraft's gonna do.

But that's--you know, that's not really the case.

I'm gonna make sure the aircraft's safe,

but the command authority is downstairs

with the president and Andrew Card.

- I just felt that he had to do his job as president,

and I couldn't guarantee that

he could do his job in Washington, D.C.

if D.C. itself was under a significant attack.

I tried to be very polite, not argumentative.

I just kind of refused to implement it

without telling him that I was refusing to implement it.

The president was very angry with me,

and he held that anger for a long time.

narrator: It's 10:10 a.m.,

barely 20 minutes after takeoff.

With the president now overruled,

Angel turns away from Washington, D.C.,

flying unescorted and unprotected.

- So, Air Force One is alone...

No support structure,

alone in the sky with no fighter escort.

- Now, to this point, we never traveled

with fighter support at Air Force One.

You never needed fighter support in the United States.

- I called the Presidential Emergency Operations Center,

and I asked for a fighter escort

to give us a bubble around the airplane

should a threat arise that we were unaware of at the time.

I did some quick math and figured,

"Okay, it's gonna take them 30 minutes to an hour

to get their aircraft ready and airborne."

narrator: Up to an hour to defend the president.

Thanks to post-Cold War cutbacks, on 9/11,

the military has a total of just 14 fighters on alert

to defend the entire continental United States,

which means, for the moment,

the president is suspended high above the attacks

on his country with no clear destination

on the most high-profile target in the sky.

- This aircraft is representing the republic,

our republic, the United States of America.

Air Force One is one of those national symbols

that is immediately recognizable by anyone

around the world.

It just shows fluidity, motion, and timelessness.

narrator: The flying White House is actually bigger

than the physical White House.

- It's 230 feet long,

the wingspan is 195 feet,

and it's six stories tall.

narrator: And in fact,

there are two Air Force Ones,

twin 747-200s

housed at Joint Base Andrews in the ultra secure hangar

of the Presidential Airlift Group.

These 747s are the latest generation

of presidential aircraft.

- It's a standard commercial airliner 747

with a lot of modifications.

The nose of the aircraft has been redesigned

for the president's quarters.

[mellow music]

- The president has his own shower

and twin oval sinks in the presidential bathroom.

- And then as you move aft through the plane,

the president has his own office space.

♪

The aircraft has the same capability

as a normal office would have.

- There's one room that's a hospital room,

where literally they could stretch the president out

onto a platform and do surgery if they had to.

Parts inside look kind of like a living room.

There's a sofa along the walls with lamps

that are nailed down.

Big, comfortable first-class seats, 19 televisions,

38 telephones scattered around the cabin.

- In the bubble of the aircraft,

there's an entire radio office,

so there's multiple stations.

There's usually four to five radio operators

that are onboard the aircraft.

The communications gave the president the capability

to call anywhere in the world at any time

in no matter what phase of flight we're i.

- As a Secret Service Agent on the presidential detail,

there are moments when you sort of think to yourself,

you know, "This is pretty cool."

Right? "This is pretty cool."

narrator: But on this day, for over half an hour,

Air Force One is holding over Florida

when word comes Angel has been targeted.

[tense music]

- Be aware we have received threats.

- Understand you have received threats?

- That's correct, but we can confirm where they came from.

It was a telecon.

- I'll always remember the call coming in.

"Angel is next."

At 10:32 that morning,

the president got off the phone with the vice presiden,

turned to the mil. aide, and said,

"A call came into the White House switchboard saying,

quote, "Angel is next."

"Angel." That's not a public code wor.

Nobody should know the name of Air Force One.

Imagine what that means.

- We're now airborne over the Panhandle, northern Florida,

and we're the next target.

How are they going to attack us?

Every aircraft in the sky

could be a threat to us.

- We train for every conceivable emergency

you can imagine,

but not even I or anyone else that day

could have imagined this scenario.

[phones ringing]

- I picked up the phone call,

and it was the Situation Room again.

The gentleman on the other end said,

"Major, we have a credible source

that Angel is the next target."

[tense music]

- "Angel" would have been a term that

insiders would have known,

but the general public generally did not.

The White House took it incredibly seriously.

- So now we're thinking, who could have that code word?

Could this be-- it has to be an insider.

♪

Nobody else would use that code word.

- There was a lot of emotion on Air Force One.

We didn't know what threats there would be.

And we were appropriately paranoid.

- We're running through in our minds,

the pilots and the navigators,

"All right, how are they gonna attack us?"

Maybe they're gonna do it from the inside,

maybe somebody onboard the aircraft,

or maybe something in the aircraft.

- Colonel Tillman asked me to come to the cockpit.

He said, "Will, are you aware what's taken place?"

And I said, "Yes, sir."

I've known Colonel Tillman for a very, very long time.

He has a way of telling you things

or showing you things by his facial expression.

He looked me in my eye.

"This is serious. Let's lock it down."

We went into an extreme security mode.

Going back through the aircraft,

we're gonna look out for bombs.

It could be drugs, it could be powders,

anything that could be potentially harmful.

♪

- Colonel Tillman assigns an armed security policeman

to the base of the steps that go up to the cockpit.

Think about that.

In the safest of safest

of the inner of the most inner sanctums

for the president, Air Force One,

the pilot has reason to believe there could be an inside job.

- The president's in the nose of the aircraft.

We had these agents up,

standing between sort of the midpoint of the aircraft,

not allowing anyone,

anyone from the back of the plane to come up

to the front of the plane for any reason whatsoever.

narrator: If there's a threat on the plane,

they've done all they can.

But what if the threat is from outside?

- To think that an airliner or a general aviation aircraft

was gonna try to, you know, ram itself into us,

that was something we could just never,

you know, defend against.

Air Force One doesn't have the capability

to be offensive,

so you just never thought about it.

narrator: But today, everyone is thinking about i.

- We didn't know at that point in time

how many hijackers there were.

narrator: The military aide on board

has already called for fighter escorts.

But that request has generated

more confusion than clarity.

Even after three separate requests for fighters,

the Air Force seems to wonder if escorts are even needed.

- This is Air Force Ops Center here.

Should we be providing escort on Air Force One?

narrator: The PEOC tries agan to get an answer.

- This is PEOC.

Can you let us know when we have fighter craft

that have intercepted Air Force One?

narrator: And so does the Pentagon.

- Have the fighter aircraft intercepted Air Force One

to provide escort?

narrator: But NORAD has no answers.

- We have no indication at this time.

- What's reflected on the air threat conference call

is that there were numerous attempts,

numerous requests made, and no one was really sure

if it was happening or not.

That confusion resulted in, you know,

potentially inadequate coverage for the president

as he's traveling across the country.

narrator: Which means Angel can't rely on

anyone else for her own protection.

[dramatic music]

Fortunately, there are a number of

highly classified countermeasures on board.

- Air Force One comes with a whole suite

of protective capabilities

to meet any threat it would come across,

either from an air-to-air threat,

a ground-to-air threat,

and even during a nuclear engagement.

- On the underbelly, the aircraft has special

armor plating to keep it safe from electromagnetic pulses

that would come from a nuclear weapon.

The aircraft can also dispense chaff.

That's little pieces of metal foil

that's dropped out the back of the aircraft

and scatters around, so if a radar-guided missile

is trying to lock in on the aircraft,

all of a sudden, it just has a huge cloud in front of it,

and it'll lose the aircraft.

It also has flares.

They can pump them out just like you've seen

in so many movies with flares coming out

the side of an aircraft and dropping down,

and it pulls a heat-guided missile away from the airplane.

narrator: Even with its capabilities,

Colonel Tillman still has to take evasive action

and climbs higher than anything else in the sky.

- Airliners are normally in the mid-30,

30,000 regime.

I was gonna take the plane all the way up to 45,000 fee.

My concept was, if anyone is gonna try to attack us,

we're gonna be able to know that they're

intentionally trying to climb into us.

[soft dramatic music]

♪

narrator: On a day filled with air attacks,

flying high seems to be the safest plan,

but there's an unintended consequence.

- Radio communications became very sketchy.

- Angel was supposed to be designed

so in a time of stress, a time of war,

it has the best communications in the world.

It didn't work. It broke down.

narrator: Angel has soared into safety,

but right out of range.

- You've failed the president if you've lost communications.

We failed the president.

- Air Force One and the president

were disconnected from what was going on

at every other level of the crisis,

decisions having to be made

without his input.

narrator: Almost an hour after takeoff,

Angel flies on, destination unclear.

It's been two hours since the attack began.

The Pentagon is in flames,

and both towers have collapsed.

♪

While Angel may have climbed out of range

of an air attack...

[dial tone]

It now faces another problem:

communication.

- I mean, the communications weren't terrible,

but they were sporadic.

- Communications are usually flawless on Air Force One,

and that's why it was so remarkable

to see the communications break down

the way they did on 9/11.

- Think about today when you're on a cell phone,

you say, "Can you hear me? Are you there?"

And you kind of hold the phone to your ear and go, "Hello?"

That's what it was like aboard Air Force One that da.

narrator: On a typical day,

Angel has more than 20 phone lines,

both commercial and military,

to ensure that the president is never out of touch.

- The morning of 9/11, that went down to two.

narrator: Just two.

- It was extremely stressful to sit there

and try to battle through and understand

why some of our circuits that had worked perfectly

just the day before coming into Sarasota, Florida,

at this moment in time were not working for us.

narrator: Angel's system crashes so suddenly

that those on board assume it can only mean one thing.

- Sabotage.

I won't lie, it crossed my mind

that somehow somebody had gotten to the system

on board Air Force One.

- Everyone was wondering, "All right,"

you know, "Is this part of the attack?"

narrator: What no one yet realizes is that

communication lines everywhee are swamped this morning.

- The radio operators were breaking out

options that we'd use in case of a nuclear attack

using different kind of military satellites.

♪

- Phone calls cutting off was endlessly frustrating

for the president.

The president was hot to trot.

He wanted to get back to Washington.

We're a nation under attack.

He understands the ability to

command and control everything from Washington

and from the facilities at the White House.

He wanted to get back.

[somber music]

♪

- In the press cabin toward the rear,

there's a television mounted in the front bulkhead wall,

and that was our lifeline.

- We were flying over TV stations' zones,

and up would come the news,

and then we'd get out of the zone,

and it would flicker off

because we didn't have DirecTV on Air Force One the.

- I think the average Americn on the ground

had a more textual feel for what was going on,

a more emotional feel, because if you could watch

the collapse of the building, and the crowd running,

and the dust covering people,

you would just gasp as everybody gasped

and watched it all and took it in

in utter shock and silence.

We didn't have that type of minute-by-minute coverage.

- Flying on Air Force One,

we were so far removed

from what was going on, the danger on the ground,

and there was so little information,

clear information, coming in to us.

narrator: But it turns out

there's very little clear information

flowing between any government agencies that day,

especially between the FAA and the military,

the very ones who are supposd to be keeping Angel safe

from other airplanes in the sky.

- If there was one essential agency

to give real-time accurate information,

it was the FAA.

narrator: That's because the FAA is the only agency

whose radar is capable of tracking the location

of the hijacked planes.

NORAD, the military's radar, can't.

- All of the NORAD radars are on the perimeter

of the United States looking outward,

because that's where they anticipated

the threats would be.

Their radars didn't look internal to the United State.

narrator: Without data from the FAA,

the military doesn't know where to send its fighters.

But for almost an hour,

the FAA is not on the air threat conference call,

despite numerous urgent requests to get them on.

- This is NORAD.

Please confirm the FAA is on this conference.

- Is the FAA in the conference?

- FAA. Are you in the conference?

narrator: But all the Pentagon can do is say...

- We are trying to contact the FAA on a different line.

- They didn't realize that

the FAA's teleconferencing capabilities

were incompatible with the teleconferencing capabilities

needed for an air threat conference call.

It's one of those things you don't want to find out

the day of the battle.

narrator: Even after a workaround

is finally figured out, communication between the FAA

and the military is almost impossible.

- The FAA and NORAD evolved separate vocabularies

to describe what's going on in the sky,

and it caused confusion at

a lot of different levels that morning.

Terms like "scramble code" took on different meanings

over time in different agencies.

- NORAD, do you have scramble code for your fighters?

- Do not understand your terminology "scramble code."

Are you looking for a mode 3 or a call sign?

- Say that again.

- I don't understand your term, sir.

- They're speaking a different language.

Neither understands the other's lingo.

- That's a microcosm, really,

of the entire American government's

preparation for and response to 9/11.

- It's the inability of the agencies

to coordinate effectively

in this high-level call

that has left the president out there

not knowing where he needs to go

because they don't seem to have a grasp

of the scope of the attack

and where the president's the safest.

[soft suspenseful music]

narrator: An hour and a half after takeoff,

two and a half hours since the attack began,

the president is still in limbo,

still flying with no fighter support,

still fearing an attack...

[radio tuning]

When the radio crackles to life,

a warning that there are unidentified aircraft

on their tail.

- The radio operators have no idea who these guys are.

They're supersonic.

They're coming up on us very fast.

narrator: It looks like the attack

they've been bracing for all morning

is finally here.

narrator: Angel is soaring 45,000 feet above the

unable to return to Washington.

- We're at such a height that--where it's like

we're on a highway all to ourselves,

so if anyone starts to drive onto that highway,

we'll know immediately they're up to no good.

- [inaudible]

Air Force One is--

apparently has some people coming in behind it.

- Houston Center advises us that we have fast movers

coming up on us from our rear.

- If any of you are on this frequency, please respond.

- We're asking them what the status is.

I am out of the seat now near the radio operators.

- Air Force One, go ahead.

- So, I get on one of the headsets.

Sure enough, we've got fighters coming up at us.

We don't know who they are.

- Air Force One, it's your 12:00, and...

- Everybody's making ideas of,

"Okay, this may be how we're gonna be attacked."

♪

- I remember looking out of the window,

and there was two fighters.

- They were jumping us. They were right there on us.

And then we hear this, you know,

"Air Force One, this is Cowry 4-5."

You could hear the Texas twang in their voice.

They explain to us they're a flight of two F-16,

and they are our cover,

and that was the coolest thing ever in my life.

- And it turns out they were fighters

from my old guard unit in Houston.

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- As we start approaching, I see it's a 747,

and then I see, wow, that's actually Air Force On.

This is...

This is no joke. This is the real deal.

We each had two heat-seeking missiles

and a hot gun.

I'm being trusted with live missiles

right next to the president of the United States.

- I can still recall,

with the president looking out the window,

when the fighter jets first arrived,

and just feeling a sense of calm

that if this scenario, this terrorist incident,

takes a turn in any direction,

I think now we're prepared.

narrator: It's taken an hour and a half

and a dozen urgent calls

for those fighter escorts to reach the president.

In less time than that, and with far fewer calls,

the country's defense policy has made a historic shift.

Now, for the first time ever,

the military is authorized to shoot down hijacked plane.

- The Region Commander has declared that

we can shoot down aircraft

that do not respond to our direction.

Copy that? - Copy that, sir.

narrator: How that authorization happened

is a window into the improvised nature

of the day's response,

and raises questions about the president's ability

to command from 45,000 feet.

It begins with yet another phone call

to the PEOC underneath the White House.

- I don't know if the president

was in the midst of getting airborne.

I don't know if he was airborne exactly at that time.

The phone rings.

"We have another hijacked plane

16 miles south of Pittsburgh inbound Washington, D.C."

And who's standing right next to me

but Vice President Cheney?

- An Air Force officer said that

there was an airplane they believed hijacked

headed towards Washington

at a high rate of speed.

Did they have authorization to take it out?

- He did not hesitate.

He said, "I want you to listen to me.

"I want two F-15s.

"I want them out of Otis Air National Guard Base.

"Let me know when they're airborne.

Stand by to shoot this aircraft down."

- And I said, "Yes.

"If it's believed hijacked, it won't divert.

Take it out."

And it was about that fast.

- And without hesitation, Vice President Cheney said,

"You are weapons free."

And I remember covering the receiver,

turning slightly to my right to stare briefly

at the vice president, because the vice president

is not a part--

is not part of the military chain of command.

It goes from the president to the Secretary of Defense,

from the Secretary of Defense

through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

out to our four-star combatant commanders around the world.

The vice president essentially asserted himself

back into the military chain of command.

- So the question is, did the vice president act on his own,

or was he acting at the direction of President Bush?

narrator: In other words, with the country under siege,

who's calling the shots?

- The president and vice president both recall

having a conversation shortly before 10:00

where the president authorized the shoot-down.

The 9/11 Commission Report was that every other major decision

was recorded in somebody's notes that morning.

That call never was.

So, I think the vice president did what everybody else

in the chain of command did that day,

he improvised our national defense.

- I think Dick Cheney may have jumped the gun a little bit.

♪

- The vice president had already

given the order to shoot the plane down

but needed the president to confirm that,

needed the president to okay it and approve it,

'cause it was ultimately the president's call.

And he did. - Dick Cheney and I talked.

He was at the PEOC at this point in the White House

and gave the command.

Any airplane that was flying in the sky

without proper transponder signal

would be identified by fighters and shot down.

- After the president had authorized or echoed

the authorization for our fighter jets

to shoot down commercial jetliners,

he hung up the phone and he said to me,

"I can't believe I just gave that order.

"I was a fighter jet pilot.

I cannot imagine getting that order."

narrator: The order and its origin are both unprecedente,

and both come as a surprise to the Secretary of Defense,

who first hears about them from the vice president,

as the air threat conference call makes clear.

- Vice President Cheney tells Secretary Rumsfeld...

- I gave authorization for them to be taken out.

- And then there's a long pause.

- Hello? - [laughs]

And I'm sure the Secretary of Defense was thinking,

"What?" [laughs]

"You did what?" Even though it's not said,

I mean, the pregnant pause says it all.

- The thought of a 25-year-old pilot

flying, getting the weapons,

taking off, flying over Washington, D.C.,

and...

having to make that calculation

as to whether or not to shoot at an American airline

filled with Americans and passengers,

innocent passengers, and making the judgment that

that plane represented a threat--

you think about that.

- Now it's all on me.

So, now I'm the judge, jury, and executioner.

Would it be easy?

No, you know,

it might haunt you a little bit afterwards,

but...

that's what I signed up to do.

[tense music]

narrator: Just moments later, shortly after 10:00 a.m.,

it appears everyone's worst fears have been realized.

- All the SATCOM radios blared to life.

- There's a report of black smoke...

- We got word that there was a plane down in Pennsylvania.

- All air was just literally sucked out of the complex.

- Yeah, he's down. - He's down?

narrator: Had the U.S. just shot down a commercial jet?

♪

- There's a report of black smoke,

and it's in the last position I gave you.

narrator: Shortly after 10:00 a.m.,

Angel learned that United Flight 93

was down in rural Pennsylvania.

There were no survivors.

The conclusion seemed clear.

First, the shoot-down authorization was issued,

and then this.

- United 93, have you got information on that yet?

- Yeah, he's down.

- He's down? - Yes.

- Nobody moved just for a second.

Nobody even breathed.

- Question from the vice president is,

is that the result of fighter engagement?

- We could not confirm or deny that.

- FAA, do you have any information

on how that aircraft went down?

- At this time, no, we do not.

- All eyes were on the vice president.

He turned around, he walked right over to me,

and he goes, "Major,

"for the congressional investigation,

state your full name."

And I remember standing up and snapping to and going,

"Mr. Vice President, it's Major Bob Darling.

Major Darling."

He goes, "Major Darling, to the vice president,

"to the National Military Command Center,

we just shot that plane down."

- It was a very sober thought,

so it was a very, very,

very dramatic chain of events,

which invited even greater paranoia.

- It was probably 30 seconds later

where somehow we got the communications back

basically saying that the plane was not shot down.

It appears that it was just-- it just crashed.

I can only tell you the sense of relief,

I think, from all of us in the room,

even the though the sadness knowing this plane had crashd

and all those brave souls that had been lost,

but I don't think I'd be honest if I didn't say

there wasn't also sort of a feeling of relief that

we had not shot the plane down.

- You were sort of in a state of back and forth

between elation and despair.

narrator: The chaos around Flight 93

fuels the president's desire

to gain control of the situation

by returning to Washington and addressing the nation.

[somber music]

- First job of the president is to protect the nation.

The first job of any president is to keep us all alive.

The other job of the president at the same time is

to always talk to the country and communicate

with the country to help people to understand,

to know what is coming, what he might do next,

to give a sense of purpose and direction.

That's an essential part of democracy.

- And again, I don't mean to say this in melodramatic terms.

Where is the president of the United States?

- The Secret Service is not saying exactly

where the president of the United States is.

- We know that the White House and the State Department

and CIA have been evacuated.

- This is a nation that has not heard publicly

from its government.

- The country looks to the president to be reassuring.

No, we don't know where he is, but pretty soon,

the country needs to know where he is.

- In our little huddle in the Oval Office,

the president decided

that he needed to talk to the nation within an hour.

My recommendation to Andy Cad and the Secret Service,

and to the president eventually,

was to land at Barksdale Air Force Base.

narrator: Located in Shreveport, Louisiana,

Barksdale Air Force Base is home

to the storied Eighth Air Force,

the nation's massive fleet of strategic bombers.

It's just 15 minutes' flying time

from Angel's current location over Louisiana.

- We got the call.

"There's a code alpha inbound."

And I said, "What's a code alpha?"

and they said, "Big.

"They need 150,000 pounds of gas,

"70 boxed lunches, 25 pounds of bananas,

40 gallons of juice and coffee."

We figured immediately--

figured out that it was Air Force One.

[plane whooshing]

[indistinct chatter]

- Touchdown.

- The base was in lockdown

because they were doing an exercise

or a drill of some sort.

- I remember I had never seen anything quite like it,

actually,

to see the B52s lined up with pilots in the seat,

and it was almost like,

you know, we were getting ready to invade someone.

narrator: As it happens, we are.

[soft suspenseful music]

- On 9/11, our forces are preparing to go to war

against a fictitious enemy called Slamoni,

or Slamonia.

narrator: Air Force One has landed in the middle

of a military war game

called "Global Guardian."

- Bombers will never, in peacetime,

fly with a nuclear weapon on board,

and so, during Global Guardian,

it gives a chance for the young airmen

to go and actually load nuclear weapons

on the bombers.

narrator: In other words,

bombers fitted with nuclear weapons

are sitting side-by-side with the president's plane.

- Bringing him to a base

that's undergoing a nuclear exercise

when you've got planes that are hot on the ramp, and--

probably the wrong place to have brought the president.

- We were, at the time,

particularly at our bomber bases,

in a pretty vulnerable situation,

so I wanted to get the nuclear weapons

back into their storage areas

so that there was no potential for

a significant attack.

- I think I would have fainted if I'd realized the extent

of which we had landed in the middle of a war game.

We had a lot of questions,

but we had very few answers from Air Force One.

- And that's all I'm gonna indicate at this moment.

You'll have additional information shortly.

- A blue Dodge Caravan van

pulled up next to the plane.

The president got in one side.

- And some airman or sergeant or whatever he was

was driving as fast as he could,

and we're bouncing around, and I said,

"Man, slow this thing down," you know?

"This is probably the greatest danger I'll have all day."

- With the exception of the president

driving his own pickup truck at the farm,

that is the only time that the president,

his entire eight years, was driven by anyone else

other than a Secret Service agent.

- President Bush was relieved to have good communications.

He spoke with the vice president.

He spoke with the national security team.

You know, "Where do we go? What are we going to do?

When do we get back to Washington, D.C.?"

And then he worked on some remarks there

in the commandant's office.

- He said, "You know, America's gonna watch me

"and see if I am perspiring,

"or my voice cracks, or I'm nervous,

and they'll see what kind of demeanor I have."

And I could tell he was psyching himself up.

He was getting his head in the game

for making a press conference

that would go around the world instantaneously.

He was making corrections

and crossing out words and says,

"I used the word 'resolve' twice.

Should I say 'resolve' twice?"

So I said, "Sir, I think the American people

"want to know that we have strong resolve,

and saying that is probably a good idea."

And he said, "Okay."

- President Bush wanted so much

to address the American people,

to assure them that the government

had not been brought to its knees.

- [exhales]

[shutters clicking]

Freedom itself was attacked this morning

by a faceless coward,

and freedom will be defended.

narrator: He seems to be speaking about his presidency

as much as he is about the country.

- 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.

- The president didn't know it,

but that camera's not plugged into anything.

This was not going out live to the American people.

It was a long time before the president's words were heard.

All I could do was, on my cell phone,

call in to ABC News,

tell them what the president had said.

- ABC's Ann Compton is with the president at the moment,

and we have her on the telephone. Annie.

- The president has just made a statement, Peter.

World leaders have been assured that

the U.S. will do whatever it takes

to protect America and Americans.

Let me know if we're being taken out of here.

We may be scrambled out of here.

- Okay. - Are we leaving? Okay.

Peter, so we are leaving, and--

- Where are you going, Annie?

- Peter, I have no idea.

Ari Fleischer had told us

that the president would keep moving,

but he couldn't tell us where,

and I definitely had the impression that's because

he had no idea where we were headed.

[plane whirring]

[soft dramatic music]

♪

narrator: Almost five hours since the attack began,

Angel lifts off once again.

- After we took off from Barksdale,

the president turned to Andy Card aboard Air Force One,

and he said, "Well, I wanna go home as soon as possible.

"We don't need some tin-horned terrorist to scare us off.

"The American people want to know

where their dang president is."

narrator: The president wants an answer

to the biggest question of the day.

- He said, "Michael, who did this?"

And I said, "Mr. President,

"I have not seen any intelligence

"or any information that would take us to

"a perpetrator.

"I think when we get to the end of the trail,

we will find Bin Laden."

I told him that I would bet my children's future on that.

At which point he said to me, "When will we know?"

I told him, "Mr. President, we may know soon.

"Based on the history that I just told you,

we may know soon, or it may take some time."

He didn't say a word. He sat there.

He sat there for almost five minutes

and didn't say anything, and neither did Andy.

I started to feel uncomfortable,

and so I finally said,

"Mr. President, is there anything else?"

And he said, "No, Michael. Thank you very much."

And so I got up and walked out.

At that moment, he was alone with his thoughts.

narrator: Alone,

and seemingly unable to influence the day's event.

- The number one job of the president of the United Stats

is to protect the country from attack,

is to protect your citizens from attack,

and you just failed.

You just failed in your number one responsibility, right?

That must weigh terribly on you.

And you don't know what's going on.

And you're having trouble communicating.

It must be extraordinarily frustrating

at the same time.

- Remember, he was elected after a very divided election

where the Supreme Court made a decision,

and so I was very impressed how President Bush

actually shifted gears from being a president

that was focusing on economic policy

and domestic policy to focus on the real job of a president.

I was respectful of the burden he carried.

The burden, unfortunately, is a very lonely burden.

narrator: But the president is not entirely alone.

Many Americans are taking action

that will help speed Angel's return to Washington,

like giving the order to land every plane in the sky.

- The land order was the first of its kind,

and it ran through my mind that,

at the time I was issuing the order that the--

this was going to cost billions,

because I was going to displace

the entire aviation fleet in the United States,

and the passengers and everything associated with it.

narrator: September 11th is Ben Sliney's first day

on the job as the FAA's national operations manager.

Despite the agency's trouble communicating with NORAD,

his order is received loud and clear.

- When I gave the order to land all the aircraft,

there was almost a cheer.

It wasn't articulated,

but I could feel a surge in the personnel

that they were gonna do something positive,

and it was going to accomplish something.

I can see them in my mind's eye literally--

if I'm the epicenter, they're, like--

like dropping a rock into water,

there are waves that are spreading out.

Those individuals went out,

and they spread their waves further.

Each individual that I gave the direction to

communicated that order to five or six or eight

or ten air traffic control facilities,

who in turn spread it out

to other air traffic control facilities.

[soft music]

♪

narrator: Even as commercial flights come down,

the skies are not yet safe enough

for Angel to return to Washington,

but there's one place the president can go.

- Let's just say that it is the safest place

for the president to continue the continuity of operations

for the presidency in any kind of war--

nuclear war, or any kind of major incident.

narrator: And for Angel,

it's less than an hour's flying time away.

narrator: It's been over five hours

since the attack began on the East Coast.

Angel continues flying away from Washington.

- This is all classified,

but there are places around the country

where the president could go to meet responsibilities

in case of a nuclear attack.

♪

narrator: And one of them is just

over an hour's flying time away:

STRATCOM, the United States Strategic Command,

located at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha.

- We're responsible

for all our nation's strategic deterrent forces,

all our nuclear forces,

the intercontinental ballistic missiles,

and also our bombers that carry nuclear weapons.

- STRATCOM is a military facility

that has all of the capacitis of the underground bunkers

and is part of the National Response Plan.

The president could actually set up shop there,

if you will, basically, and run the presidency from there.

narrator: The destination is supposed to be secret,

but Angel is spotted on approach.

- Up on the television screen,

the crew was still trying to pull up signals

from television stations on the ground,

and here was a reporter standing on a highway saying,

"Air Force One is coming here to land."

I looked out my window,

and there indeed was the satellite truck

and a young male reporter standing by a highway.

We were flying right over his head.

♪

When we landed, they brought the president

out through the lower stairs in the nose of the aircraft

to keep him low profile, as invisible as possible,

into another kind of makeshift motorcade.

- I gathered my driver and a Secret Service agent

and went out to the plane in a simple Chrysler.

There was not a lot of pomp and circumstance.

My goal was to get him to the command center

as quickly as possible.

- I used my cell phone to call in to ABC News live

as the president's motorcade was approaching

this huge headquarters building.

- Annie, can you hear me? - Yes, Peter, I can.

- What are you doing in Nebraska?

- President Bush is here at the home

of the Strategic Command.

He has come to as secure a place as he could,

where he is trying to marshal the forces.

narrator: As imposing as STRATCOM

and its nuclear forces are...

- The president gets out of the car

and goes into a small little cinder block

square building.

- And it just had a staircase inside it.

And it went down, down, down, down, down.

- That's the fire escape, which I had never used before,

but I had the command center open the fire escape,

so we just dropped down the fire escape

and went right into the command center.

He followed me right down.

- He has disappeared down the rabbit hole, Peter,

down through a brick, small building,

he and what skeleton staff are with him,

down into an underground bunker.

- We arrived into a room

that looked like right out of the movies,

you know, "Dr. Strangelove."

- Monitors all over the walls, basically,

monitoring everything from A to Z across the country.

Very impressive.

- To my knowledge, it's the first time

a sitting U.S. president has visited

the Offutt command center in a real world situation.

narrator: Six hours after the first tower was hit,

the president finally gets the chance

to confer with his cabinet.

- The video conference call was an important call,

'cause it gave me a chance to talk to

my national security team.

It was along the lines of, you know, "Tough situation,

but we've got a team in place who can deal with it."

- He was trying to find out

exactly what was happening where,

were there more planes out there,

how much damage had been done,

what we know, what don't we know.

narrator: And in another in a series

of communication failures that characterized the day,

the president only now learns

what the CIA has known for hours.

- Turns out that the CIA pretty early on

knew that three of the passengers

who were on those four planes were Al-Qaeda operatives.

It was not until the president was being briefed

in the underground bunker at Offutt

that Director Tenet told him this information.

Clearly, something went wrong here.

I got up and walked out of the room

and called the director's line again,

using language that I won't use here,

about the CIA's failure to send me the information

that the director briefed to the president.

His executive assistant said,

"Michael, this information was embargoed

"from leaving this building and is still embargoed

from leaving this building," and I said,

"Embargoed from the President of the United States?

Send it to me right now."

You know, even if you're the president,

it's tough to get situational awareness

as events are unfolding.

- And we will try to let you know

when we take off and where we're headed.

narrator: The topic quickly shifts

to the president's main priority.

- I knew I needed to give an address

to the nation that night,

and I damn sure wasn't gonna give it from a bunker

in Omaha, Nebraska.

I said, "I'm coming home."

And they said,

"We recommend you not do so."

And I said, "Fine, I'm coming."

- We're getting on the plane. We're with the Secret Service.

- You have to go around, sir. - All right.

Can we get an escort?

narrator: After a full day of being out of the loop,

hidden from view, and overridden,

the president finally gets his way.

- I was going home.

narrator: At 4:33, over 7 1/2 hours

since the attack began,

Angel takes off from Omaha,

heading at long last for Washington.

But the day is not yet over.

- The report said that what happened today,

what happened on September 11th,

was the first of what would be

two waves of attacks.

There's going to be a second wave.

[soft dramatic music]

♪

- We left off the Air Force base heading home

as fast as the plane would go.

Fighters took off after us,

and they're having to catch up to us,

cause, I mean, we are going extremely fast.

We're doing about .92 Mach heading across the country.

♪

narrator: Angel's nose is finally pointed east.

Within two hours,

the president will be back in the center of power.

The CIA is now sending intelligence to Air Force On,

but their latest report is almost too much to bear.

- That report said that what happened today,

what happened on September 11th,

was the first of what would be

two waves of attacks,

so implicitly saying there's going to be a second wave.

The president read it extraordinarily closely.

I felt that it was almost numbing

to the president.

Here he had just suffered, as president,

the worst attack on the American homeland ever,

and here was his intelligence briefer

showing him a report that says another attack is coming,

just like this one--

the guy who's responsible

for making sure that that doesn't happen.

He didn't say anything.

- For a period of time, there was uncertainty

as to how many attacks there would be.

My overriding attitude was,

"We will defend America."

♪

- The president came back

for the first time on the trip,

and he came to the door of the press cabin

with just the five of us sitting there,

and he waved away our reporters' notebooks.

He did not want to talk on the record.

Presidents at time of crisis have to be very careful

with every word they say.

But he did say something about,

"We're going to get those thugs."

He was focused and determined.

narrator: The skies are now safe,

the capital secured.

The president will address the nation

at 8:30 this evening.

- So as we're descending in,

you could actually see the Pentagon still smolderin,

and for the first time, you could actually see

what we'd been working with the entire day.

It--you know, it was just--

it was sad.

- The president turned to me and said,

"That's the face of war

in the 21st century."

♪

- Fighters do a high-speed pass over the runway.

As far as they're concerned, everything is clear,

and then we bring Air Force One in to land.

[plane whirring]

- Air Force One did great in getting the president

to where he needed to be and to get him back to Washington.

- I give credit to the pilot for being the one who said,

"I think I can land at Andrews Air Force Base.

Andrews Air Force Base has been swept."

- Our day was filled with unanticipated risk,

unanticipated events,

and we countered all those events.

By the end of the day, it was obvious that

we'd accomplished a great mission,

and we had supported the president of the United States.

And that's what you do at Air Force One day to day.

- We did it. That felt fantastic.

But at the same time, you still had that heavy heart.

You knew it was a great mission,

but you knew it was the beginning of something else.

♪

[helicopter whirring]

- What I distinctly remember is the streets were empty

except for checkpoints.

I'd left a bustling city and came back to a city

that was locked down.

- The president knew he was going to be leading

a very different type of administration,

an administration that was going to go to war.

- He walked with great determination...

Right to the Oval Office.

- I remember the rug was rolled up,

Klieg lights had been installed,

a teleprompter was being set up.

- Good evening.

The pictures of airplanes flying into buildings,

fires burning, huge structures collapsing

have filled us with disbelief, terrible sadness.

- I get in my car and go home,

and as I start driving away from Langley,

the day catches up with me and I start crying...

For the first time.

- Immediately following the first attack,

I implemented our government's emergency response plans.

Our military is powerful, and it's prepared.

- I wish I could say the enemy has been defeated.

It has not.

The enemy of terror

is very real today

and is gonna continue to be real for a long time.

- None of us will ever forget this day,

yet we go forward to defend freedom

and all that is good...

I made a lot of tough decisions,

some of which were highly criticized,

and I gave it my best shot.

I did what I thought was right for the country.

Good night, and God bless America.

[dramatic music]

♪