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need rules of engagement. He had approved my recommendation that they be authorized to fire on a civilian airliner if it had been hijacked and would not divert. Thousands of Americans had already been killed, and there was no question about taking action to save thousands more. Still, the enormity of the order I had just conveyed struck all of us in the PEOC, and a silence fell over the room. Then Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Bolten leaned forward in his chair and suggested we get in touch with the president to let him know what had just happened. At 10:18, I picked up the secure phone in the drawer beside me and called Air Force One, which had left Florida and was heading west as the president’s aides looked for a secure location from which he could address the American people. When the president came on the line, I told him about the shootdown order.

There soon followed some tense moments when we got word that an aircraft was down, south of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Had it been forced down? Had it been shot down by one of our pilots following the authorization I’d conveyed? Eventually we learned that an act of heroism had brought United Airlines Flight 93 down in the fields near Shanksville. Aware of the fates of the other planes hijacked that morning, the passengers on Flight 93 stormed the cockpit. By sacrificing their own lives, those brave men and women saved the lives of many others, possibly including those of us in the White House that morning.

Eric Edelman, my deputy national security advisor and a veteran foreign service officer, entered the PEOC with a message for me from Steve Hadley, the president’s deputy national security advisor. “Mr. Vice President,” he said, “Steve believes you should evacuate.” I told Eric I wasn’t going anywhere. I knew the president was safe. And I knew I had to maintain my ability to communicate, as frustrating as our communications challenges were that day. “Eric, if we leave here and get on a helicopter to evacuate, it will be at least forty-five minutes before I can be back in touch with anyone. That’s valuable time we can’t afford to lose. Tell Hadley we’re staying put.”

Lynne, who’d been sitting at the end of the conference table, brought me news of our family. She had heard from the Secret Service that they were getting our kids and grandkids to secure locations. At 10:28, the second tower came down, and there was a collective gasp in the room. Mothers and fathers were in that building, and wives and husbands, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters. They weren’t combatants in a war, but people going about their lives. They had been killed, and their families would be plunged into grief by terrorists who had no regard for innocent lives.

Within minutes of the tower collapsing, I was told that another plane headed in the direction of Washington had hit the ground on the border of Ohio and Kentucky. Then came word of another hijacked plane, this one just five miles out from the White House. “Take it out,” I said. “If it looks threatening, take it out.”

At 10:39 I had a chance to update Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, who was in the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon. A transcript exists of our conversation:

VP: There’s been at least three instances here where we’ve had reports of aircraft approaching Washington—a couple were confirmed hijacked. And, pursuant to the president’s instructions, I gave authorization for them to be taken out. Hello?

SecDef: Yes, I understand. Who did you give that direction to?

VP: It was passed from here through the operations center at the White House, from the shelter.

SecDef: Okay, let me ask the question here. Has that directive been transmitted to the aircraft?

VP: Yes, it has.

SecDef: So, we’ve got a couple of aircraft up there that have those instructions at this present time?

VP: That is correct. And it’s my understanding they’ve already taken a couple aircraft out.

SecDef: We can’t confirm that. We’re told that one aircraft is down but we do not have a pilot report that did it.

As the 9/11 Commission would later