A Pretext for War (12 page)

“Secure calls just take a while to establish sometimes,” said one senior Bush advisor. “It’s just the nature of encryption—encryption moving at 35,000 feet, at 500 to 600 miles an hour.”

Secret Service agents passed messages to the communicators using their special code words. Bush was “Trailblazer,” Laura Bush was “Tempo,” Cheney was “Angler,” Air Force One was “Angel,” the White House became “Crown,” and the Capitol “Punchbowl.” “Angel to Crown, Angel to Crown” was often heard. Other code words were used for the hidden doomsday bunkers; Site R became WAR-46 and the alert doomsday plane was GORDO.

Rather than use his radio, Tillman called air traffic control over the onboard telephone and refused to tell them their destination or even what direction they were headed. “We have no clearance at this time; we are just going to fly across the United States,” he said to one controller he spoke to. On the ground, there was confusion. “Okay, where’s he going?” asked one air traffic controller. “Just watch him,” said another. “Don’t question him where he’s going. Just work him and watch him. There’s no flight plan in, and right now we’re not going to put anything in. Okay, sir?” “Copy that,” the other controller replied.

In a further security measure, passengers were ordered to turn off their cell phones and Secret Service agents yanked their batteries to prevent signals from revealing the plane’s location. They were also instructed that when they landed they could say only that the President was at “an unidentified location in the United States,” and nothing more. “The strange part about it was, here we are turning off cell phones and taking precautions, and we see ourselves landing at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana on the TV,” said Draper. “So much for not being found.”

Air Force One landed at Barksdale at 11:45. Congressman Miller looked out the window and was amazed at the array of soldiers in helmets and flak jackets packing automatic weapons, as well as the assortment of armored vehicles that had surrounded the plane. Bush was immediately taken to Building 245, the Headquarters of the Eighth Air Force, in a blue Dodge Caravan. Leading the motorcade was a green Humvee with an airman visible in the gun turret. By then signs on the base were displaying “DEFCON DELTA” in large black type, the highest state of alert. From the headquarters, Bush went to the commanding general’s quarters, where he spoke over a secure line with Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld.

Then he videotaped a two-minute address—just 219 words—to the nation that was to be shown later. “He looked nervous,” said
The New York Times
reporters David E. Sanger and Don Van Natta, Jr.
The Washington Post
reporters Dan Balz and Bob Woodward agreed. “When Bush finally appeared on television from the base conference room,” they wrote, “it was not a reassuring picture. He spoke haltingly, mispronouncing several words as he looked down at his notes.” Judy Keen of
USA Today
noted that Bush “looked grim. His eyes were red-rimmed.” An administration official later admitted, “It was not our best moment.”

By then many in the press were beginning to question why the President hadn’t returned to Washington during the grave crisis. The question was put to presidential counselor Karen Hughes, then at FBI headquarters. “Where’s the President?” asked one reporter. “Is he coming back to D.C.?” asked another. Instead of answering, she simply turned on her heels and walked out of the room. NBC’s Tim Russert, host of
Meet the Press
and the Washington bureau chief, also remarked about the nation needing the leadership of its president. Yet, rather than return to Washington, the decision was made to keep moving as quickly as possible in the opposite direction. It was a risky choice. “If he stayed away,” reported London’s
Daily Telegraph,
“he could be accused of cowardice.”

In another secret wartime move, NORAD and the Secret Service decided to divert an AWACS airborne early-warning aircraft, with the capability to watch the skies for hundreds of surrounding miles, from a training mission off the coast of Florida to follow Air Force One. Fighters were also ordered aloft to protect the plane. “Air Force One, got two F-16s at about your—say, your ten-o’clock position,” said one ground controller. “We were not told where Air Force One was going,” recalled NORAD Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold. “We were told just to follow the President. We scrambled available airplanes from Tyndall [Air Force Base, Florida] and then from Ellington in Houston, Texas.”

After the removal of most of the aides and press from Air Force One, it was again airborne. “Ari Fleischer told us, ‘I can’t tell you where we’re going,’” recalled ABC News correspondent Ann Compton. “And you got the distinct feeling it was because he didn’t know. Because they didn’t know.” White House stenographer Ellen Eckert said, “I remember thinking it was like being on the
Twilight Zone
plane because there was nobody around anymore.”

At five minutes past noon, CIA Director George Tenet passed to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld the key information NSA had intercepted at 9:53, about fifteen minutes after the Pentagon had been hit. A bin Laden operative in Afghanistan had telephoned a number in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and asked if he had “heard good news?” At the same time, he had indicated that at least one more target was yet to be hit. Ten minutes later, United Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania on its way to a fourth target in Washington.

Air Force One’s mysterious destination was Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, Nebraska, home of the United States Strategic Command—STRATCOM—the successor to the Cold War Strategic Air Command, SAC. Its deep bunker is the principal location from which the United States would direct World War III.

For several hours forklifts had been setting up a serpentine network of concrete barricades on the entrance roads to the base. Guards in camouflaged helmets and protective vests were posted around the perimeter, large trash containers were being hauled away from buildings, and bomb-sniffing dogs were checking all vehicles, resulting in the backup of hundreds of cars waiting to enter the gates.

Earlier that morning, of the five levels of security—Normal, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta—Offutt was as usual at Normal. Following the attacks on New York and Washington, it was moved up to Bravo. Now it was at Delta. “Delta means an area,” read a sign posted at Offutt’s Kenney Gate, “where a terrorist attack has occurred or where intelligence has been received that terrorist action against a specific location or person is likely.”

At 2:50 eastern time, Air Force One, accompanied by two F-16 jet fighters, landed at Offutt. A motorcade of eight vehicles drove out to meet it, and about fifteen minutes later Bush went “down the bunny hole,” said ABC’s Ann Compton. The tiny, cinder-block structure was the emergency escape exit for the underground command center.

“You go downstairs and go downstairs and go downstairs and you go downstairs,” recalled Karl Rove. “I mean, it’s a long way down, and then you emerge and go through a series of hallways and special doors, blast doors and so forth, and then you enter into a conference center, which is, you know, several stories underground.”

Three stories down was the command center, a cavernous two-story war room with banks of dark wooden desks curved away from a giant projection screen on which was displayed the status of military forces around the world. To defend against biological warfare or lethal gas, the air pressure in the center is kept somewhat higher than the surrounding area and a sophisticated filtering system is used. The President took his seat surrounded by a multiservice battle staff.

It was like a scene from
Dr. Strangelove,
or
Seven Days in May
. Never before had all the pieces been in place for the instant launch of World War III. The military alert level was at its highest level in thirty years. The Vice President was in the White House bunker, senior administration officials were at Site R, congressional officials had been flown to Mount Weather, the Secretary of Defense and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in the Pentagon War Room, and the President of the United States was in the nuclear command bunker at STRATCOM.

Only a few feet away from Bush was the fire-engine-red double-locked “clanker box” containing the authentication codes required to send America’s nuclear arsenal skyward. Another set of the codes was nearby in a black briefcase known as the “football,” which is always carried by a military officer never more than a few yards from the President’s side. A third authentication code, abbreviated in case of an emergency, was on a card in the President’s wallet.

Once the codes are sent to American missile bases and ballistic submarines around the world, two people would open separate locks on their “clanker boxes”—so called because of the clanking sound made by the alarm when the safe is opened. Inside are thick envelopes stamped “Top Secret—SIOP ESI” containing documents and computer disks. SIOP ESI stands for “Single Integrated Operational Plan—Extra Sensitive Information.” They are the nuclear war plan options—where, and how hard, to hit such targets as North Korea, Iraq, Iran, China, Russia, or Afghanistan.

Not far away, at Malmstrom Air Base in Montana, nuclear weapons watch officers were at their highest state of alert. They sat with “launch keys” dangling from their necks in control facilities buried sixty feet underground and protected by concrete and rebar walls four-and-a-half feet thick with eight-ton blast doors. Surrounding them were two hundred silos, each armed with an intercontinental ballistic Minuteman III missile, tipped with up to three deadly warheads inside a silver titanium shield.

It was “nerve-racking,” said Air Force Capt. Rob Riegel, who was on duty on September 11. “If we get the authorized presidential directive,” he later explained, “we go through several procedures, the final one of which is to insert the launch key . . . and put our hand on the cooperative launch switches. I have one. My deputy has two. And at the appropriate time, we’ll turn those switches, look for indications, and hope that it works.” He added, “It has to stay in the forefront of our mind how important it is what we do here, and it has to stay in the forefront of our mind how absolutely frightening it can be.”

From the safety of his rabbit hole in Nebraska, George W. Bush conducted a National Security Council meeting via teleconference screens with his top aides back in Washington. “Who do you think did this to us?” he asked CIA Director George Tenet. “Sir, I believe it’s Al Qaeda. We’re doing the assessment, but it looks like, it feels like, it smells like Al Qaeda,” he said. “Get your ears up,” snapped Bush.

By the time it was over it was close to 4:30 on the East Coast, and except for the brief, two-minute taped comments made at Barksdale, no one had seen or heard from the President or even knew where he was. Republicans back in Washington were becoming worried. “I am stunned that he has not come home,” said one Bush fund-raiser. “It looks like he is running. This looks bad.” William J. Bennett, a former education secretary under President Ronald Reagan and a drug czar under former President George Bush, said that it was important for Bush to return to the White House as soon as possible. “This is not 1812,’’ he said. “It cannot look as if the President has been run off, or it will look like we can’t defend our most important institutions.’’

As the President sat in his hideout, officials were following the track of a commercial jetliner traveling from Spain to the United States that was giving off an emergency signal. “Do we have permission to shoot down this aircraft?” said a voice over a loudspeaker. “Make sure you’ve got the ID,” said Bush. “You follow this guy closely to make sure.” The alert eventually turned out to be a simple mistake. Many later considered it something of a miracle that no innocent passenger jets were accidentally shot down that day.

“We were able to determine that aircraft was not being hijacked by calling the company,” said NORAD commander Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold in Florida. “And so I just picked up the conference call and said, ‘Mr. President, we have confirmation—that aircraft has turned around, is on the ground, and we have no other aircraft in the system.’ And with that he got in his aircraft and flew back to Washington.”

With the last plane out of the sky in virtually the entire Northern Hemisphere, Bush finally decided to return. It was after 7:00 when he finally arrived back at the White House, and he gave a brief report to the nation on live television at 8:30. But again, the speech was a disappointment. “Republican advisers to the administration said the speech fell flat, that it failed to meet either the magnitude of the day’s events or the nature of the task ahead,” noted
The New York Times
.

That night before bed, Bush jotted a note in his diary. “The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today,” he wrote. “We think it’s Osama bin Laden.”

PART II

DETECTION

CHAPTER 5

FLORENCE

One hundred and five miles south of Denver, in the arid, remote high desert along the Arkansas River, a sign says “Welcome to Florence, A Great Little Town!” Cradled on three sides by the Rocky Mountains, like cupped hands, the old boomtown is largely protected from the often severe Colorado winters and blustery summer storms. Life for the 3,600 townsfolk centers on Main Street, where one can shop for an old silver horse bit or Victorian glassware at the Blue Spruce Art & Antiques Shop, or get an iced café latte at Coffee Creations. When the alarm sounds at the fire station a few doors down, volunteers from throughout the town hurry to man the trucks. Given the sleepy, bucolic nature of Florence, deep in coal and cattle country, it hardly seems the place one would find America’s most dangerous terrorist.