The Eleventh Day_ The History and Legacy of 9_11 - Anthony Summers [14]
Then at 9:03, Flight 175 hit the South Tower. For the networks, broadcasting live, the task of reporting became incalculably complex—and totally impromptu. This from the ABC Good Morning America transcript:
SAWYER: Oh, my God! Oh, my God!
GIBSON: That looks like a second plane has just hit …
SAWYER: Terrible! … We will see that scene again, just to make sure we saw what we thought we saw.
GIBSON: We’re going to give you a replay … That looks like a good-sized plane, came in and hit the World Trade Center from the other side … it would seem like there is a concerted attack …
SAWYER: We watch powerless …
On Channel 5’s Good Day New York, the anchorman Jim Ryan took a flyer and got it right. “I think,” he said, “we have a terrorist act of proportions we cannot begin to imagine at this point.”
At the NSA, director Hayden said, “One plane’s an accident. Two planes is an attack,” and ordered that top priority be given to intercepts originating in the Middle East.
At the Defense Department, assistant secretary for public affairs Torie Clarke, accompanied by colleague Larry Di Rita, hurried to Secretary Rumsfeld’s office with the news. He said he would take his daily intelligence briefing, then meet them at the Executive Support Center where military operations are coordinated during emergencies. They left Rumsfeld standing at the lectern in his office—he liked to work standing up—one eye on the television.
Word of the second strike was slow to reach CIA director Tenet, still in his car racing back to headquarters. “With all hell breaking loose,” he remembered, “it was hard to get calls through on the secure phone.… I was in a communications blackout between the St. Regis and Langley, the longest twelve minutes of my life. It wasn’t until I arrived at headquarters that I learned that, as we were tearing up the George Washington Parkway at something like eighty miles an hour, a second plane had hit.”
Counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke learned of the second attack as he drove up to the White House. He was told Condoleezza Rice wanted him “fast,” and found her with the Vice President. “The Secret Service,” Rice said, “wants us to go to the bomb shelter.” Cheney, famous for his imperturbability, was looking a little shaken. He “began to gather up his papers,” Clarke recalled. “In his outer office the normal Secret Service presence was two agents. As I left, I counted eight, ready to move [Cheney] to the PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, a bunker in the East Wing.”
Clarke, for his part, headed for the West Wing, to prepare for the videoconference of counterterrorism and other senior officials he would soon chair. He asked, “Where’s POTUS?”—White House shorthand for the President—and learned Bush was at the school in Florida.
“GET READY TO READ all the words on this page without making a mistake. Look at the letter at the end everyone, with the sound it makes. Get ready!”
As the second plane hit the Trade Center, George Bush had been listening intently to teacher Kay Daniels and her class of second graders. The teacher was going into a routine the children knew well, using a phonics-based system designed to promote reading skills. She intoned, “Boys and girls! Sound this word out, get ready!” “Kite!” chorused the children, then “kit!” then “seal” and “steal,” and so on, as Ms. Daniels beat time. Then, “Boys and girls, pick your reader up from under your seat. Open your book up to Lesson 60, on page 153.” The children and the President picked up the readers.
In a nearby room, members of Bush’s staff had been watching the news coverage from New York—the Marine assigned to carry the President’s phone had asked for the television to be turned on.