Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror (2021) s01e02 Episode Script
A Place Of Danger
[woman] It was a beautiful fall morning,
and I knew I had a staff meeting
to get to in the Pentagon.
The Pentagon's a very big building.
It's enormous.
So we know it's one of the largest
office buildings in the world.
It has five sides,
five rings, five floors.
I worked, at the time,
on the second floor on the E-ring,
the most exterior ring in the Pentagon.
I told my husband,
"I'm late. I have got to get out of here
because I have a meeting at 9:00."
And I just gave everybody a kiss,
and said, "I'll see you when I get home."
So there were approximately 16 of us
in this staff meeting.
And when it got to me,
there was the loudest noise
I had ever heard,
and it got dark.
[indistinct radio chatter]
It was so dark in the room
you could not see your hand
in front of your face.
I knew I was on
the right-hand side of the table.
When I came to,
I was on the left-hand side of the table.
I don't know if I was blown
to the other side of the table,
but I know that's not where I sat.
I sat on the right-hand side of the table.
[reporter 1]
Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
We're looking at a live picture
from Washington,
and there is smoke pouring out
of the Pentagon.
So at that point,
my mind took over and said,
"I need to get out of this building."
[sirens wailing]
[reporter 2] The fire just erupted
as far away as we've seen now,
from the center, where the crash occurred.
[Wills] I started to crawl.
As I crawled out of the door,
someone grabbed the back of my pants,
and I said, "Who is it?"
And she said, "It's Lois."
I said, "Come on, Lois. I got you.
Stay with me. I got you."
Not knowing there were people behind Lois.
So as I crawl through the Pentagon,
there were cubicles.
And so I'd crawl under a cubicle,
and I'd say, "We have to back up."
And as we crawl, she'd stop and say,
"I can't go any further."
And I'm like, "Lois, you have to.
I have to get you out of this building."
[emotionally] Um
Sorry.
Sorry.
I said, "I can't leave you here."
"I can't tell your children
that I left you in this building."
Um
So she said, "I can't go any further."
She said her nylons
were sticking to her legs
because the floor was so hot.
And so I told her, I said,
"Just get on my back. I'll carry you."
At that point, I just wanted to give up.
But I knew I couldn't,
because I had these people with me.
And I just thought, "God, please.
You gotta get us out of here."
The only thing going through my mind is,
"I brought these people here.
We're gonna die."
[dramatic music plays]
So it was a soldier who was there,
myself, and my colonel.
And we were just beating on this window.
The window popped open
and I could see down
that these guys were down there.
They were saying,
"Jump! Jump! We got you!"
So, the young soldier who was there,
my colonel and I lowered him
out the window
because he had been burned pretty bad.
So, he was the first one we lowered down.
The lady, Lois, uh,
we lowered her out of the window next.
And there was another lady behind her.
She got to the window and she was
She looked me dead in my eyes,
she said, "Colonel, I'm scared."
I said,
"But I got to get you out of here."
She's like, "But I can't."
I'm like, "Yes. You can."
So, I mean, I literally peeled her fingers
off the ledge and just let her drop.
The guys caught her,
so that leaves my colonel and I
in the window.
And he said, "Okay. It's time to go."
So I told him, "Sir, if we're quiet,
maybe we could hear people,
and we can go back and get them."
So he and I sat in that window,
and it was just as quiet
You couldn't hear anything.
[distant sirens]
He and I started yelling and screaming
and banging on the window,
and nobody came.
[dramatic music plays]
So, at this point he gives me an order.
He said, "Colonel, you will
get out of this window, right now."
The only order ever in my military career
that I did not want to obey.
I knew people were still in there.
But I knew I had to.
And as I proceeded out of the window,
eventually I fell.
And from there,
I don't know what happened.
I had severe smoke inhalation.
I had burns on my back,
and on my arms, and on my legs.
The nurses and others
tell me the rest of the story.
This one nurse, she said,
"We didn't think you were gonna make it,"
and that I had just gone unconscious.
She said,
"We then took you to a triage area
that was outside of the Pentagon,"
and she said,
"This person is not gonna make it.
We gotta get her to the hospital."
I was put in a truck that was passing by.
They flagged the truck down
and they put me in the back of this truck.
[man] Just a passenger truck?
A pass Just a passenger truck
that was passing by the Pentagon,
and they flagged it down
and put me in this truck,
and the nurse got in the truck with me.
They continued to do CPR and CPR on me.
I remember opening my eyes,
and then that was the end of it.
[dramatic music plays]
[helicopter propellers beating]
[reporter] Still have conflicting
reports over what size plane hit.
We heard one eyewitness tell us
that it was a small plane
that he seemed to see as he was coming
across the 14th Street Bridge
[dramatic music plays]
[man] United 93,
that traffic for you is one o'clock,
12 miles eastbound, three-seven-zero.
[man 2] Negative contact.
We're looking, United 93.
[men] Hey! Hey!
- [man 3] Hey!
- [man 4] Somebody!
[air traffic controller]
Somebody call Cleveland?
[Bouchat]
United 93, it too was fully fueled.
It was bound for San Francisco.
It was delayed, and only took off
minutes before
American Flight 11 crashed
into the North Tower.
[Homer] Mayday! Get out of here!
We're all going to die here!
[man 1] You got United 93?
[man 2]
United 93, south of Chardon? Descended.
- [man 1] What?
- [man 2] Looks like he descended.
[man 1] I don't think so.
United 93, verify three-five-zero.
[man 2] United 93, Cleveland.
United 93, Cleveland.
If you hear the center, ident.
The pilot hijackers had actually
transmitted audio communications,
and we think they believed
that they were transmitting
those communications back
to the cabin of the airline,
but they actually were transmitting them
to air traffic control.
[hijacker speaking indistinctly
over radio]
please sit down
and keep remaining sitting.
We have a bomb on board, so
[reporter 1] We're getting reports now
that the White House is being evacuated.
We don't know precisely
what caused that decision to be made.
[reporter 2] This comes less than an hour
after the double explosions
in New York at the World Trade Center.
[reporter 3]
We have this as a major development.
The Federal Aviation Administration
has shut down all air traffic nationwide.
This country has been immobilized
by these terrorist attacks
in terms of air travel today.
[man] The airport's being evacuated.
They need to go home.
[reporter 4] There could be terrorists
hijacking aircraft
and heading toward buildings
that are well-known.
Who knows? Perhaps in other cities.
[reporter 5]
We're also getting reports at the Capitol,
the treasury building
also being evacuated.
[woman] Later, we learned that Flight 93
was either coming
into the White House or the Capitol,
and I think most believe
it was the Capitol.
The Capitol Police started yelling,
"Evacuate! Evacuate!"
We ran out of the Capitol,
and I asked the security where to go,
and they said, "Just run, run, run."
And I looked back, and all of this smoke
was coming from the Pentagon.
[distant police sirens]
[answering machine beeps]
[woman] Honey, are you there?
Jack, pick up sweetie.
Okay. Well, I just wanted
to tell you I love you.
We're having a little problem
on the plane.
I want to tell you I love you. Please tell
my children that I love them very much.
And I'm so sorry, babe.
I hope to be able
to see your face again, baby.
[Maguire] On Flight 93,
the passengers who were able
to make phone calls
to their loved ones on the ground
learned what had happened
on some of the other flights.
And a brave group of those passengers
made the decision to storm the cockpit.
And that plane went down
in Somerset County, Pennsylvania,
near Shanksville.
Killing all 40 on board.
United 9-3.
Have you got information on that yet?
[man] Yeah. He's down.
- [technician] He's down?
- [man] Yes.
- [technician] When did he land?
- [man] He did not land.
- [technician] He's down, down?
- [man] Somewhere northeast of Camp David.
- [technician] Northeast of Camp David.
- [man] That's the last report.
They don't know exactly where.
[Lee] I always have to memorialize
and think about those on Flight 93,
because, in many ways, they took
that plane down and saved many lives,
including my own.
On Flight 93 was Wanda Green,
who was the cousin of my chief of staff,
Sandré Swanson.
And so this hit personally,
because Wanda was one
of the flight attendants who took over
and made sure that that plane
did not come into the Capitol.
It was the most personal
and most tragic moment.
They're heroes, they're sheroes,
they're people whose legacy and whose life
I honor each and every day.
[distant sirens wailing]
[reporter 1] So, the pieces of this story
continue to come together.
Uh, I have to say,
in my 30 years as a journalist,
I have never seen anything like this.
Never covered a story
of the dimensions of this.
[reporter 2] Here's what we know. Just
before 9:00 Eastern time this morning,
a plane crashed
into one of the Twin Towers
of the World Trade Center.
A few minutes later,
a second plane crashed
into the other tower.
Both skyscrapers are on fire.
- [man 1] No way.
- [man 2] Come on.
[man 3] I think we gotta keep going.
[firefighter1]
All right, we're in Stairway "B,"
Tower Two on the four-eighth floor.
[firefighter 2] Mayday! Mayday!
[firefighter 3] Who's calling that?
[man] Over the radio comes,
"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!
Get out of the building."
All of a sudden, the North Tower
started to shake violently.
[Kern] There's suddenly a loud roar.
Where we were was shaking.
It sounded like rolling thunder times 20.
It was just a weird,
horrible, scary sound.
I remember the ceiling tiles falling
that were above us.
Smoke started pouring into where we were.
We had no idea what was happening,
but we ran as fast as we could.
The smoke, now,
was pouring in from everywhere
and was just about so thick
that I probably couldn't see
from me to you.
We didn't know it, but what was happening
was the South Tower was collapsing.
[man shouting indistinctly
through megaphone]
[man] Oh my God!
[people screaming]
[woman] Shit!
- We should run!
- [man] Oh shit!
[woman] Oh shit!
[reporter]
There has just been a huge explosion.
We can see billowing smoke rising.
And I can't I'll tell you,
I can't see that second tower.
[man] I hope I live. I hope I live.
It's coming down on me.
Here it comes. I'm getting behind a car.
[ominous music plays]
[Kern] It was the first to collapse,
even though it was the second one hit.
[Frederick]
I started to run, and all of a sudden
this huge ball of white smoke
just came like locusts over me.
[panicked shouting]
I couldn't see. So I fell.
And I just laid there.
So I couldn't hear nothing.
I couldn't see nothing.
[man] And I remember people
running up Liberty Street.
Liberty Street turns into Maiden Lane,
which is where our offices were.
And they're running up Liberty Street.
And this mud cloud
was chasing them up the street.
And it looked like it had a mouth.
And the cloud just engulfed them.
Like, it swallowed them.
[man 1] Keep moving!
[man 2] Oh shit! Oh shit! Okay, not yet.
- Anthony! You okay?
- Yeah.
Will you let me in. Please? Oh my God!
Oh my God!
Watch out.
[Green] You see this crowd coming at you,
and all you're really thinking is,
"Oh shit."
I step back, and as I step back
to the doorway to the office,
the cloud hits the building
and the whole building shakes.
You could hear glass breaking.
[man] Oh shit.
[emergency sirens blaring]
[Green] Everybody's screaming,
and it's just chaos at that point.
And I realized that I don't know
where my undercover team is.
I hadn't heard from them
since the buildings got hit.
And I'm standing looking out the window,
and I'm saying,
"I don't know where they are.
Somebody's gotta be dead."
What am I going to tell their mother,
wife, daughter, child
about how I allowed them
to go into this situation
and now they're dead?
These are the same people who I could've
been at their barbecue last weekend.
[wind gusting]
[Frederick] As I laid there,
it seemed like a beam of light
came straight through the cloud.
So I said to myself, "Maybe I'm dead,
and maybe God came to get me."
And then all of a sudden,
it just opened up like the Red Sea.
And that's when I heard people
screaming and yelling, "Help! Help!"
[man] Yo, Mike! Mike! Mike, I'm over here!
[indistinct chatter]
[two-way radios squawking]
[Frederick] I finally cleared my face.
I was dazed.
[dramatic music plays]
[alarm blaring]
[crying]
[Kern]
Two people who seemed to be in shock,
that we grabbed and made come with us,
they were covered
from head to toe with with tan soot.
Finally got to the Borders bookstore.
We used the ax to get into the store
and got out to Church Street.
[dramatic music plays]
[Kern] When I could see the sky,
I turned around to look
and did not see the South Tower.
And for the first time,
I started to realize
what must have happened
just 15 minutes or ten minutes earlier.
I knew that people were lost.
I was praying that
the nine people in my care
[clears throat]were not lost.
My tower was still standing,
the North Tower
with a giant multi-story hole
with hot flames and smoke pouring out.
[Hansson] I heard the mayday
to get out of the building.
So I knew that inside the tower
was a place of danger.
I didn't know what that danger was,
but I knew we had to get out,
and I knew no one
was answering the radio anymore.
And at the 19th floor,
we got stopped by a firefighter,
um, who came out of the hallway and said,
"I have a bunch of civilians
down at the end of the hall."
"They're not leaving.
I need help getting them to leave."
[firefighter 1] Tommy, listen carefully.
I'm sending all the injured
down to you on 40.
You're gonna have
to get them down to the elevators.
There's about 10 to 15 people
coming down to you.
[firefighter 2] Yes. Okay.
[firefighter 1] Ten civilians coming down.
[Hansson] Some guys were doing some
extraordinarily unselfish things,
and saying,
"I'm going to stay behind and make sure
everyone starts to get out themselves."
[emotional music plays]
I took an oath, and I believe in my oath.
My oath is to help people
even if it is gonna cost me my own life.
It was quite new to all of us.
There was no playbook.
We went into the hallway,
and, at this point,
all the lights were now out,
but the emergency lighting was working,
so you had some visibility.
Saw this large man on the floor.
I told the officers, you know,
just grab his legs,
we'll grab his arms
and we'll just drag him.
And that's what we did, dragged him
down the three flights of stairs
and got into the lobby.
When we got there,
some of them said to hold up,
there was people jumping.
[wistful music plays]
[woman] There's a person falling
There's people falling out.
- [man] Oh my God!
- [woman] Oh my God!
[man] Oh!
[Frederick]
The people who were stuck at the top,
who had no choice
but to either jump or burn to death,
because they had no way of getting out.
That bothers me.
That sticks to me like You have no idea.
[indistinct police radio chatter]
[Hansson] When we got into the courtyard,
it was a complete whiteout.
You could see maybe
about ten or 15 feet in front of you.
I can only compare this
to walking in a blizzard.
And then we heard another loud noise.
The roar was so loud
that my first interpretation was
that it was another plane coming in.
I ran about two steps
and then it went pitch-black
and just engulfed in thick black smoke.
[people screaming]
[reporter] Good Lord.
There are no words.
[Hansson] I ran another two steps
and then just got into the fetal position.
And at that point,
I thought there'd be a fireball
behind the smoke
and resigned to the end of my life.
I thought it was gonna be over.
I had just some quick thoughts,
saying goodbye to my family.
I think I mouthed the words,
you know, "goodbye" to my wife.
And, um
and then I had a prayer,
and that prayer was just,
make this quick and make it painless.
[reporter]
A catastrophe on the tip of Manhattan.
[police siren wailing]
[Kern] And then it became,
"Find a phone. Find a phone.
Gotta find a phone."
I finally found a phone that worked
in an abandoned subway station
at Canal Street
and got a hold of my wife.
I remember breaking down.
And I think the same was true
on the other end.
And so we probably didn't say anything
to each other for quite a while.
It was just to know
we were connected again.
It was just very important.
[wistful music plays]
[Green] We had all this ash
falling down to the ground.
And it almost seemed like snow,
because that's how soft
it was hitting the ground.
And there were people there
who were just walking around in a daze.
If I had to compare them
to anything that's happening now
it's like that TV show The Walking Dead.
Because I'd walk up to people and ask
who they were and where they're going,
and most of them couldn't tell me.
[dramatic music plays]
[Hansson] I was having
a lot of difficulty breathing.
All that debris
had been sucked into my throat.
It was like someone
stuck a sock into my throat.
We eventually ran into a chief
from the Division of Safety,
who indicated that there's nothing
you can do anymore.
He says, "The two towers had collapsed."
He says, "You made it out alive."
The customs building,
at World Trade Center Number Six,
there's an overhang,
and I was in that overhang.
So the middle of the building was crushed,
but the two ends had held up,
and I was under one of those ends.
I know a couple of the police officers
were killed that were right behind us.
[ominous music plays]
[reporter]The scope of this disaster
is impossible to comprehend.
[Frederick] There was a bar
where a lot of people were there,
sitting in there looking at the news.
So we try to ease our way in there,
and then we saw George Bush,
the president, talking.
And that's when they showed us
the pictures of what happened.
That the planes hit the World Trade.
[interviewer] Is that really the first
time you knew it was a plane?
First time.
Did not know. Did not see.
Didn't know what it was.
[siren blurts]
[man] We went to go over
to the Emma E. Booker Elementary School,
where the president was going
to meet with some second graders
and read a book with them,
and then give a speech
about leaving no child behind
in education.
I'm standing at the door to the classroom
where the president
and the principal would go.
And I'm standing with the president
and the principal of the school
when Deb Loewer, who was a Navy Captain,
and the director
of the White House Situation Room,
and the acting National Security Advisor
of the trip,
came to the president and said,
"Sir, it appears a small
twin-engine prop plane
crashed into one of the towers
at the World Trade Center in New York."
The president, the principal,
and I all had exactly the same reaction.
"Oh what a horrible accident."
"The pilot must have had
a heart attack or something."
Good morning.
After that, the principal of the school
then opened the door to the classroom,
and she and the president
walked into the classroom.
And that was only a nanosecond,
because Captain Loewer
then came back up to me and said,
"Oh my God."
"Another plane hit the other tower
at the World Trade Center."
the whole word says, get ready.
- [children] Running!
- Yes. "Running."
[Card] I really did think
about what I was going to say.
I then opened the door to the classroom,
I stepped into the classroom.
As the students were reaching down
under their desks to pick up their books
is when I walked forward
and walked up to the president.
He did not see me coming.
I leaned over
and I whispered into his right ear,
"A second plane hit the second tower."
"America is under attack."
[camera shutters clicking]
[suspenseful music plays]
We arrived at Sarasota Airfield,
and the doors open up,
and we get out of the limousine,
and I was struck by something
that is a protocol no-no.
The engines for Air Force One
were already turned on.
The protocol normally is,
you don't start the engines
until the president
is safely on the plane.
This plane started rolling down the runway
even before the door was shut
and the president had taken his seat.
[reporter]That's either US Air Force
or Navy aircraft, fighter aircraft,
now on patrol in what we've described
as the "no-fly zone."
[Card]
Every plane was told they had to land.
And the president received a call
from Vice President Cheney
asking if the president
would authorize our fighter pilots
to shoot down commercial jetliners
if they were not complying
with what was supposed to happen.
[man] Vice president has cleared.
Vice president has cleared us
to intercept tracking
and shoot them down if they
do not respond, per CONR CC.
[Card] When we learned that Flight 93
crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania,
that was soon after the president
had given the authorization.
I will admit, some of us wondered,
"Did we shoot it down?"
Obviously, we did not.
You could hear the fog of war,
not just have your vision clouded.
The fog of war was in the voices.
The president was very agitated
with me on Air Force One,
because he wanted
to go to Washington, D.C.
And I said, "Mr. President,
you don't wanna make
that decision right now."
I would talk to the pilot.
I would talk to the Secret Service agents.
They were not prepared
to go back to Washington, D.C.
And we were fortunate
to have two military aides on the trip.
I said, "I want options. I want
to take the president to a safe place
where we can decide what goes on next."
We ended up landing
in Barksdale Air Force Base.
We were struck by how the fighter jets
were so close to us,
escorting us down to land,
that you could actually see the faces
of the pilots in the planes.
[Bush]
I ask the American people to join me
[camera shutters clicking]
in saying a thanks
for all the folks
who have been fighting hard
to rescue our fellow citizens
and to join me in saying a prayer
for the victims and their families.
[Card]
Then we went from Barksdale Air Force Base
to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
And when we got to Nebraska,
we went down to a deep tunnel underground
to the Strategic Air Command.
And all of these flat-screen TVs
are in the room,
and you have admirals and generals
in there and they're talking,
and you could hear the communication
of the FAA and the military.
The president was
clearly disruptive to that group,
because the officers didn't know
whether to stand or sit.
We went to another room
and had a secure video conference
back to Washington, D.C.
and heard from George Tenet,
Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney.
We were able
to have a better understanding
what was happening in Washington, D.C.
with regard to Andrews Air Force Base.
Later, we piled on Air Force One
and then flew back to Washington, D.C.
And as we're leaning on the couch,
looking out the window on Air Force One
as we're coming
into Andrews Air Force Base,
you could see the smoke billowing
out of the Pentagon.
And the president was right beside me.
He said, "That's the face
of war in the 21st century."
[helicopter propellers beating]
I really felt an urgency to be at my post
when the commander in chief
returned that evening.
Bush gets off the helicopter
comes over to Karen and I,
we greet him and he doesn't say a word.
He just nods and walks right by us
into the Oval Office,
which was being prepared for a television
address to the nation that night.
[Bush] Terrorist attacks can shake
the foundations of our biggest buildings,
but they cannot touch
the foundation of America.
These acts shatter steel
but they cannot dent
the steel of American resolve.
[Card] He made it pretty clear
that we were going to respond.
This would not stand.
And there was no doubt
in the president's mind
that that would mean military action.
Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel,
had already started looking at,
what are all of the issues
that have to be considered
on going to war.
We knew it was a terrorist attack,
and we knew mainly it was al-Qaeda.
[ominous music plays]
In the National Security Council meetings,
I'd get to sit in as White House counsel
in every National Security Council
meeting.
And there was chatter about al-Qaeda
interested in doing something spectacular.
We knew immediately that this was a war.
This was not gonna be
a law enforcement matter.
We weren't just going to use the police,
the FBI to respond to this,
to investigate this.
We were gonna use our military,
of course, the FBI, and law enforcement.
We were gonna pull all levers of power.
We were gonna exercise our economic might,
we were gonna take advantage
of our foreign relationships
across the world.
That's how we were gonna respond.
[all] God bless America ♪
My home sweet home ♪
[Lee] We all went to the Capitol steps,
stood together,
and sang "God Bless America."
And, you know, people felt this sense
of unity and wanted to be there.
The mood in the country was fear,
sorrow, grief, and anger.
And it was a moment
where there were so many complex emotions
coming together at once.
You know,
a roller coaster ride in many respects.
Of course, the families and communities
that lost loved ones,
the mourning and the grieving was great.
And the fear, not knowing what was next,
was very pronounced.
I know at the Capitol,
we weren't sure what was going on
and what came next.
And so that fear was there with everyone.
Then the anger,
not knowing who or what, but angry.
Everyone was angry,
myself included, about whoever did this.
They deserved to come to justice.
We were mourning, we were grieving,
we were angry, we were in a lot of pain.
[Bush] America today is on bended knee
in prayer for the people
whose lives were lost here.
[man] We can't hear you!
I can hear you!
[crowd cheers]
I can hear you,
the rest of the world hears you,
and the people
[crowd cheering]
And the people
who knocked these buildings down
will hear all of us soon.
[dramatic music plays]
[Gonzales] The best word
to describe his mood was "determination."
He had a job to do.
He knew why he had been elected president,
for this moment.
[Bush] This is an enemy who preys
on innocent and unsuspecting people,
then runs for cover.
But they won't be able
to run for cover forever.
[Gonzales] The president understood
that this could not have been possible,
except for the fact that,
in Afghanistan,
the Taliban had provided a safe haven
for al-Qaeda to plan,
successfully, this attack.
And the president
made the decision very quickly
that not only would we go after
those responsible for the attacks,
but we would also go after those
who harbored and helped plan,
gave people an opportunity
to carry out these attacks.
We believed that in order to rid,
or at least diminish
the capabilities of al-Qaeda,
it would be important to hurt the Taliban.
[Lee] In many respects,
what I was hearing was revenge.
It was anger and revenge.
Revenge. I want to get even.
They know who's behind all this.
They know what country
is supporting all these people.
They need to clean their clock, I mean,
into the Stone Age. This is ridiculous.
I think we should bomb them back.
I really do.
The enemy's got to be eradicated,
and you cannot talk with the enemy.
They can't push us around.
We're the number one nation.
Let's do something about it.
We want to respond. You don't attack
America like this and get away with it.
Not only those who harbor terrorists,
but those who in any way,
any aid or comfort whatsoever
will now face the wrath of our country.
You think this is the start
of a war against terrorism?
I believe it is,
and God willing, it will be.
Now the time for talking is over,
and it's time for action to start.
[Gonzales]
As the lawyers in the White House,
working with John Ashcroft and the lawyers
of the Department of Justice,
we would be asked by the president,
"Is there something
that I can do to protect America?"
"Is there something
that I can do in self-defense?"
"Is there something
I can do in response to this attack?"
"Is there something I can do
to attack those,
to punish those responsible
for these attacks?"
And so we quickly looked
at the president's emergency powers,
both by statute and, of course,
looking at his constitutional authority
as commander in chief,
which gives the president
very expansive authority,
but generally when acting in self-defense,
following an attack on the nation
we experienced that day.
[Card] The president knew that
he was going to have a military response.
The question is, do you need
to have congressional authority?
This was outside
of the normal structure of a war.
Can you declare war on a terrorist group?
Does Washington
have the institutional understanding
of what that means?
Do we have to go to Congress
to declare war against a terrorist group?
The president wanted
to get Congress's buy-in.
And there was a debate
about "What does that mean?"
And he could've probably argued
that he didn't need their buy-in,
but he wanted to get their buy-in,
so we were looking to craft something
that Congress would have
a chance to respond to,
both the House and the Senate.
And so that was the use of force.
[Gonzales] The general feeling was that
an authorization to use military force
would signify congressional support,
both politically and monetarily.
And it would buttress, it would support
the president's constitutional authority
as commander in chief.
I made a decision
that I would have Tim Flanagan, my deputy,
take the lead
in terms of drafting the AUMF
and working with aides at Congress.
The recognition the president
has the constitutional authority
to use force as commander in chief,
so we felt that that was important.
And so it was broad enough that it would
allow us to go after al-Qaeda
and those who assisted
or harbored al-Qaeda
in carrying out these attacks.
So, it's a pretty broad
grant of authority.
[reporter] Today, congressional leaders
toured the wreckage at the Pentagon,
and vowed the president will get
whatever he wants.
But behind closed doors,
some democrats and republicans
balk at what some see
as the president's request
for sweeping powers.
[reporter] This draft resolution
from the White House
authorizes use of armed forces
against all those who planned,
authorized, harbored,
committed or aided in the attacks,
and to deter and preempt
any future acts of terrorism.
[Lee] A lot of members
of Congress were feeling,
"What do we do? How do we do it?
What's the appropriate response?"
We did receive, from the administration,
a draft authorization to use force.
And so much of the discussion
after 9/11 was around that authorization.
The AUMF is the Authorization
to Use Military Force.
In this instance, it was 60 words.
And it says, "The president
is authorized to use force."
It did not name where, when, and how.
It just said, "Against any nation,
organization, associated forces,
or individuals connected to 9/11."
If the president thinks
we should go to war,
bring that authorization to Congress,
let us debate it, let us work on it,
and if we decide that it's reasonable
and that that's what we should do,
it's in the United States'
national security interest to go to war,
then Congress will vote for it.
But the AUMF was so broad.
It did not mention al-Qaeda at all.
I kept speaking out in our meetings
saying, "No, no, no, it's too broad."
Many members saying,
"Yes, yes, yes, but we got to do it."
Then I said,
"This is about our Constitution,
and we can't give any authority away
to any president."
Those discussions were taking place
at the same time
that the memorial was being planned
at the National Cathedral.
I'll never forget it. It was a rainy day.
I went to the cathedral,
and the head of the cathedral,
his name was Reverend Nathan Baxter.
During his eulogy, he said,
"As we act, let us not become
the evil who we deplore."
It was at that moment I was settled.
I could not give any president
the authority to use force
that was so open-ended.
[Cantor] I rise today
in support of this resolution.
Civilized society has long sought
to end the use of violence,
but the perpetrators of terrorism
and states that harbor them
are the enemies of civilized society.
They only understand the use of force,
and the time has come
to speak to them on their terms.
The resolution before us
empowers the president
to bring to bear the full force
of American power abroad.
We are coming after you
and the fury of hell is coming with us.
[Lee] I was the only one
in the House or the Senate that voted "no"
on the Authorization to Use Military Force
as it relates to 9/11.
- [interviewer] Nobody in the Senate?
- Nobody in the Senate.
[Hastert] Gentlewoman from California
is recognized for a minute and a half.
Mr. Speaker, members, I rise today,
really, with a very heavy heart
one that is filled with sorrow
for the families and the loved ones
who were killed and injured this week.
Only the most foolish and the most callous
would not understand the grief
that has really gripped our people
and millions across the world.
September 11th changed the world.
Our deepest fears now haunt us.
Yet, I am convinced
that military action will not prevent
further acts of international terrorism
against the United States.
By the time I got back to my office,
the death threats and the
You do not wanna know what all happened.
But bottom line is,
there were over 60,000 emails,
phone calls, letters.
About 50% were literally death threats,
hostile remarks,
people calling me all kinds of names,
a traitor, committed acts of treason.
You You should be hung.
[dramatic music plays]
Emotions are normal to feel.
That's part of human nature.
But we also have to balance that
with our rational thinking.
We have to make sure
that we don't make irrational decisions
when our emotions are so high.
So many people think
by saying you disagree,
you're committing an act of treason,
and in times of national security threats.
And I'm saying, "Wait a minute.
That's when you want someone to say no."
That's when you want
your elected officials
to rise above the anger,
to have some rational thinking
and response.
And you could not send these troops
in harm's way forever.
[reporter] The military scenarios
that the president
has before him are extensive.
A senior military official tells ABC News
they even include ground troops.
[Card] On September 14th, when I was
in the Oval Office early in the morning,
the president walks up to me and he said,
when everybody is leaving the room,
he said, "Andy, I want to convene
the war council tomorrow at Camp David."
[dramatic music plays]
The principles were there,
and it included lawyers
the FBI director,
the defense department, obviously,
the State Department, the vice president.
And there was no doubt
that we were getting ready to go to war.
What does it mean to do that?
The president said, "I don't want
to send a million-dollar cruise missile,
and hit a five-dollar tent."
"That's not the kind of response
that we want to have."
And so it was a very robust discussion
about what it meant.
The president was actually inviting
every leader in the world.
He said, "This is your chance
to be with us or against us."
"If you're not with us,
you're against us."
Underneath our tears is the
strong determination of America
to win this war.
And we will win it.
Americans are asking,
"Who attacked our country?"
The evidence we have gathered
all points to a collection of loosely
affiliated terrorist organizations
known as al-Qaeda.
The leadership of al-Qaeda
has great influence in Afghanistan
and supports the Taliban regime
in controlling most of that country.
In Afghanistan,
we see al-Qaeda's vision for the world.
[Gonzales] Everyone had confidence
we were gonna be successful in this war.
There was no question about that.
Um, it was a question
of how long it would take.
[Chandrasekaran]
Afghanistan was an incredibly
complex challenge for the US military.
It's a landlocked country
halfway around the world.
It's geographically very challenging.
There's steep mountain ranges
that ring half the country.
It's bordered by countries
that have a strained relation
to the United States,
if they have a relationship at all.
Pakistan, Iran,
former Soviet republics
like Tajikistan, China.
And so, how do you even get the troops in?
[Rumsfeld] The only defense
against terrorism is offense.
You have to simply
take the battle to them.
How do you do that?
You don't do it
with conventional capabilities.
You do it
with unconventional capabilities.
And there are clearly forces on the ground
that are anxious
to rid the country of al-Qaeda
and to rid the country of Taliban.
[Chandrasekaran] What eventually starts
to take hold at the Pentagon, the CIA,
is a plan to try to make use
of Afghan resistance fighters
called the Northern Alliance.
[machine-gun fire]
[drill sergeant shouting]
[soldiers respond]
The leader of that whole movement
was a brave fighter
against the Soviet occupation
named Ahmed Shah Massoud.
Massoud was lionized by his followers,
but with good reason.
He was a fearsome commander
on the battlefield.
He was able to keep the Taliban at bay
for many parts of Northern Afghanistan.
[dramatic music plays]
[man, in Arabic] What was it like
to work with your brother?
[Massoud, in Arabic]
I felt that my brother was a real hero.
He always acted honorably,
and gave people a lot of confidence.
It felt like we had a champion
who would never be defeated.
My brother had a strong moral compass.
And was a very religious man.
He was always thinking
about freedom for Afghanistan.
By the time of the Taliban,
poverty had become widespread,
and there was no education.
There was no healthcare for people,
no economy,
there was no governance at all.
All they would do was repress people.
They had a total
misconception of religion.
The only thing they talked about
was to suppress women
and not let anyone speak up.
It was a dictatorial religious system.
Because of this,
Afghanistan was heading for a crisis
and had become a center
of international terrorism.
And especially of drug trafficking.
My brother,
along with some people in the North,
decided to form a coalition
to fight against the Taliban.
[no audible dialogue]
[Chandrasekaran]
A few days before the 9/11 attacks,
two al-Qaeda suicide fighters,
disguised as Western journalists,
went to go interview Massoud.
[crowd shouting angrily]
And in their video camera
was concealed a massive bomb.
And Massoud was assassinated.
It was a tactically brilliant move
by Osama bin Laden
and the al-Qaeda leadership
to take out the principal rival
and the principal threat
on the battlefield to the Taliban
and to Mullah Omar's government,
recognizing that if the Americans
were to attack Afghanistan,
somebody like Massoud
would be a vital ally to them.
[Massoud, in Arabic]
Al-Qaeda along with the Taliban
believed that the biggest obstacle
to turning Afghanistan
into a center of international terrorism
was my brother,
Amir Sahib Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Therefore, they decided
to remove him from their path.
[somber funeral music plays]
[Filkins] In 2001 at 9/11,
about 90% of Afghanistan
was controlled by the Taliban,
which left 10% of it,
this tiny little piece of territory
in the far north of Afghanistan.
And so, when the attacks happened,
my editor at The New York Times
said to me,
"Get yourself to Northern Afghanistan
with the rebels."
"I don't know how to get there. Do it."
I flew to Tajikistan
and crossed into this tiny little area
controlled by the Northern Alliance.
And there was a front line that was like
something out of the first World War.
You could look across the front line,
300 yards away, you could see the Taliban.
And they were just sitting
in the trenches.
And then the B-52s came.
And I had rented this mud hut
that was one of the nicer huts in town,
because it had windows.
I remember it was probably
five o'clock in the morning,
and I was awakened
by the rattling of the windows.
And they were just shaking.
It felt like an earthquake.
I thought it was an earthquake, actually.
It's a very active earthquake zone.
It was the bombs.
[ominous music plays]
[explosions]
I looked out across the Taliban trenches,
and the B-52s bombed the trenches
all up and down the whole horizon.
You could see these gigantic
kind of black circles.
The whole sky was kind of crisscrossed
with the contrails of the B-52s.
It looked like a piece of modern art.
They would circle for the longest time
and drop a 2,000-pound bomb.
[bomb exploding]
They bombed every day like that
for several days,
and then finally the Taliban line cracked.
[dramatic music plays]
[reporter] The Taliban got in their
pickup trucks, loaded their small arms,
and headed south
to their spiritual base in Kandahar.
[Chandrasekaran] The Taliban regime
was hunkered down in Kandahar.
That's where they're gonna
make their last stand.
[ominous music playing]
December, 2001,
the United States thought
it had bin Laden cornered
in the Tora Bora Mountains.
[Chandrasekaran] Intelligence gets
to US forces and Afghan forces,
but inexplicably, the US doesn't send
a huge contingent of special ops soldiers
to try to capture or kill bin Laden.
It's left to a ragtag group
of Afghan fighters
with a small number of American advisors.
It's a puzzling decision.
It's inexplicable in many ways,
when the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks,
the leader of al-Qaeda,
are all within the grasp of US forces,
that we don't mount
a much bigger effort to go after them.
[Graff] There was no higher mission,
no more important hunt in the world
than finding Osama bin Laden.
He was the number-one target,
the most hunted man in the world.
[man] We lived in a constant state
of awareness that it could happen again,
that we could find ourselves facing
another similar attack.
You got people saying he's in a cave.
People saying he's dead.
People saying he's in Pakistan.
All I know is that he's running.
[ominous music plays]
Subtitle translation by:
and I knew I had a staff meeting
to get to in the Pentagon.
The Pentagon's a very big building.
It's enormous.
So we know it's one of the largest
office buildings in the world.
It has five sides,
five rings, five floors.
I worked, at the time,
on the second floor on the E-ring,
the most exterior ring in the Pentagon.
I told my husband,
"I'm late. I have got to get out of here
because I have a meeting at 9:00."
And I just gave everybody a kiss,
and said, "I'll see you when I get home."
So there were approximately 16 of us
in this staff meeting.
And when it got to me,
there was the loudest noise
I had ever heard,
and it got dark.
[indistinct radio chatter]
It was so dark in the room
you could not see your hand
in front of your face.
I knew I was on
the right-hand side of the table.
When I came to,
I was on the left-hand side of the table.
I don't know if I was blown
to the other side of the table,
but I know that's not where I sat.
I sat on the right-hand side of the table.
[reporter 1]
Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
We're looking at a live picture
from Washington,
and there is smoke pouring out
of the Pentagon.
So at that point,
my mind took over and said,
"I need to get out of this building."
[sirens wailing]
[reporter 2] The fire just erupted
as far away as we've seen now,
from the center, where the crash occurred.
[Wills] I started to crawl.
As I crawled out of the door,
someone grabbed the back of my pants,
and I said, "Who is it?"
And she said, "It's Lois."
I said, "Come on, Lois. I got you.
Stay with me. I got you."
Not knowing there were people behind Lois.
So as I crawl through the Pentagon,
there were cubicles.
And so I'd crawl under a cubicle,
and I'd say, "We have to back up."
And as we crawl, she'd stop and say,
"I can't go any further."
And I'm like, "Lois, you have to.
I have to get you out of this building."
[emotionally] Um
Sorry.
Sorry.
I said, "I can't leave you here."
"I can't tell your children
that I left you in this building."
Um
So she said, "I can't go any further."
She said her nylons
were sticking to her legs
because the floor was so hot.
And so I told her, I said,
"Just get on my back. I'll carry you."
At that point, I just wanted to give up.
But I knew I couldn't,
because I had these people with me.
And I just thought, "God, please.
You gotta get us out of here."
The only thing going through my mind is,
"I brought these people here.
We're gonna die."
[dramatic music plays]
So it was a soldier who was there,
myself, and my colonel.
And we were just beating on this window.
The window popped open
and I could see down
that these guys were down there.
They were saying,
"Jump! Jump! We got you!"
So, the young soldier who was there,
my colonel and I lowered him
out the window
because he had been burned pretty bad.
So, he was the first one we lowered down.
The lady, Lois, uh,
we lowered her out of the window next.
And there was another lady behind her.
She got to the window and she was
She looked me dead in my eyes,
she said, "Colonel, I'm scared."
I said,
"But I got to get you out of here."
She's like, "But I can't."
I'm like, "Yes. You can."
So, I mean, I literally peeled her fingers
off the ledge and just let her drop.
The guys caught her,
so that leaves my colonel and I
in the window.
And he said, "Okay. It's time to go."
So I told him, "Sir, if we're quiet,
maybe we could hear people,
and we can go back and get them."
So he and I sat in that window,
and it was just as quiet
You couldn't hear anything.
[distant sirens]
He and I started yelling and screaming
and banging on the window,
and nobody came.
[dramatic music plays]
So, at this point he gives me an order.
He said, "Colonel, you will
get out of this window, right now."
The only order ever in my military career
that I did not want to obey.
I knew people were still in there.
But I knew I had to.
And as I proceeded out of the window,
eventually I fell.
And from there,
I don't know what happened.
I had severe smoke inhalation.
I had burns on my back,
and on my arms, and on my legs.
The nurses and others
tell me the rest of the story.
This one nurse, she said,
"We didn't think you were gonna make it,"
and that I had just gone unconscious.
She said,
"We then took you to a triage area
that was outside of the Pentagon,"
and she said,
"This person is not gonna make it.
We gotta get her to the hospital."
I was put in a truck that was passing by.
They flagged the truck down
and they put me in the back of this truck.
[man] Just a passenger truck?
A pass Just a passenger truck
that was passing by the Pentagon,
and they flagged it down
and put me in this truck,
and the nurse got in the truck with me.
They continued to do CPR and CPR on me.
I remember opening my eyes,
and then that was the end of it.
[dramatic music plays]
[helicopter propellers beating]
[reporter] Still have conflicting
reports over what size plane hit.
We heard one eyewitness tell us
that it was a small plane
that he seemed to see as he was coming
across the 14th Street Bridge
[dramatic music plays]
[man] United 93,
that traffic for you is one o'clock,
12 miles eastbound, three-seven-zero.
[man 2] Negative contact.
We're looking, United 93.
[men] Hey! Hey!
- [man 3] Hey!
- [man 4] Somebody!
[air traffic controller]
Somebody call Cleveland?
[Bouchat]
United 93, it too was fully fueled.
It was bound for San Francisco.
It was delayed, and only took off
minutes before
American Flight 11 crashed
into the North Tower.
[Homer] Mayday! Get out of here!
We're all going to die here!
[man 1] You got United 93?
[man 2]
United 93, south of Chardon? Descended.
- [man 1] What?
- [man 2] Looks like he descended.
[man 1] I don't think so.
United 93, verify three-five-zero.
[man 2] United 93, Cleveland.
United 93, Cleveland.
If you hear the center, ident.
The pilot hijackers had actually
transmitted audio communications,
and we think they believed
that they were transmitting
those communications back
to the cabin of the airline,
but they actually were transmitting them
to air traffic control.
[hijacker speaking indistinctly
over radio]
please sit down
and keep remaining sitting.
We have a bomb on board, so
[reporter 1] We're getting reports now
that the White House is being evacuated.
We don't know precisely
what caused that decision to be made.
[reporter 2] This comes less than an hour
after the double explosions
in New York at the World Trade Center.
[reporter 3]
We have this as a major development.
The Federal Aviation Administration
has shut down all air traffic nationwide.
This country has been immobilized
by these terrorist attacks
in terms of air travel today.
[man] The airport's being evacuated.
They need to go home.
[reporter 4] There could be terrorists
hijacking aircraft
and heading toward buildings
that are well-known.
Who knows? Perhaps in other cities.
[reporter 5]
We're also getting reports at the Capitol,
the treasury building
also being evacuated.
[woman] Later, we learned that Flight 93
was either coming
into the White House or the Capitol,
and I think most believe
it was the Capitol.
The Capitol Police started yelling,
"Evacuate! Evacuate!"
We ran out of the Capitol,
and I asked the security where to go,
and they said, "Just run, run, run."
And I looked back, and all of this smoke
was coming from the Pentagon.
[distant police sirens]
[answering machine beeps]
[woman] Honey, are you there?
Jack, pick up sweetie.
Okay. Well, I just wanted
to tell you I love you.
We're having a little problem
on the plane.
I want to tell you I love you. Please tell
my children that I love them very much.
And I'm so sorry, babe.
I hope to be able
to see your face again, baby.
[Maguire] On Flight 93,
the passengers who were able
to make phone calls
to their loved ones on the ground
learned what had happened
on some of the other flights.
And a brave group of those passengers
made the decision to storm the cockpit.
And that plane went down
in Somerset County, Pennsylvania,
near Shanksville.
Killing all 40 on board.
United 9-3.
Have you got information on that yet?
[man] Yeah. He's down.
- [technician] He's down?
- [man] Yes.
- [technician] When did he land?
- [man] He did not land.
- [technician] He's down, down?
- [man] Somewhere northeast of Camp David.
- [technician] Northeast of Camp David.
- [man] That's the last report.
They don't know exactly where.
[Lee] I always have to memorialize
and think about those on Flight 93,
because, in many ways, they took
that plane down and saved many lives,
including my own.
On Flight 93 was Wanda Green,
who was the cousin of my chief of staff,
Sandré Swanson.
And so this hit personally,
because Wanda was one
of the flight attendants who took over
and made sure that that plane
did not come into the Capitol.
It was the most personal
and most tragic moment.
They're heroes, they're sheroes,
they're people whose legacy and whose life
I honor each and every day.
[distant sirens wailing]
[reporter 1] So, the pieces of this story
continue to come together.
Uh, I have to say,
in my 30 years as a journalist,
I have never seen anything like this.
Never covered a story
of the dimensions of this.
[reporter 2] Here's what we know. Just
before 9:00 Eastern time this morning,
a plane crashed
into one of the Twin Towers
of the World Trade Center.
A few minutes later,
a second plane crashed
into the other tower.
Both skyscrapers are on fire.
- [man 1] No way.
- [man 2] Come on.
[man 3] I think we gotta keep going.
[firefighter1]
All right, we're in Stairway "B,"
Tower Two on the four-eighth floor.
[firefighter 2] Mayday! Mayday!
[firefighter 3] Who's calling that?
[man] Over the radio comes,
"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!
Get out of the building."
All of a sudden, the North Tower
started to shake violently.
[Kern] There's suddenly a loud roar.
Where we were was shaking.
It sounded like rolling thunder times 20.
It was just a weird,
horrible, scary sound.
I remember the ceiling tiles falling
that were above us.
Smoke started pouring into where we were.
We had no idea what was happening,
but we ran as fast as we could.
The smoke, now,
was pouring in from everywhere
and was just about so thick
that I probably couldn't see
from me to you.
We didn't know it, but what was happening
was the South Tower was collapsing.
[man shouting indistinctly
through megaphone]
[man] Oh my God!
[people screaming]
[woman] Shit!
- We should run!
- [man] Oh shit!
[woman] Oh shit!
[reporter]
There has just been a huge explosion.
We can see billowing smoke rising.
And I can't I'll tell you,
I can't see that second tower.
[man] I hope I live. I hope I live.
It's coming down on me.
Here it comes. I'm getting behind a car.
[ominous music plays]
[Kern] It was the first to collapse,
even though it was the second one hit.
[Frederick]
I started to run, and all of a sudden
this huge ball of white smoke
just came like locusts over me.
[panicked shouting]
I couldn't see. So I fell.
And I just laid there.
So I couldn't hear nothing.
I couldn't see nothing.
[man] And I remember people
running up Liberty Street.
Liberty Street turns into Maiden Lane,
which is where our offices were.
And they're running up Liberty Street.
And this mud cloud
was chasing them up the street.
And it looked like it had a mouth.
And the cloud just engulfed them.
Like, it swallowed them.
[man 1] Keep moving!
[man 2] Oh shit! Oh shit! Okay, not yet.
- Anthony! You okay?
- Yeah.
Will you let me in. Please? Oh my God!
Oh my God!
Watch out.
[Green] You see this crowd coming at you,
and all you're really thinking is,
"Oh shit."
I step back, and as I step back
to the doorway to the office,
the cloud hits the building
and the whole building shakes.
You could hear glass breaking.
[man] Oh shit.
[emergency sirens blaring]
[Green] Everybody's screaming,
and it's just chaos at that point.
And I realized that I don't know
where my undercover team is.
I hadn't heard from them
since the buildings got hit.
And I'm standing looking out the window,
and I'm saying,
"I don't know where they are.
Somebody's gotta be dead."
What am I going to tell their mother,
wife, daughter, child
about how I allowed them
to go into this situation
and now they're dead?
These are the same people who I could've
been at their barbecue last weekend.
[wind gusting]
[Frederick] As I laid there,
it seemed like a beam of light
came straight through the cloud.
So I said to myself, "Maybe I'm dead,
and maybe God came to get me."
And then all of a sudden,
it just opened up like the Red Sea.
And that's when I heard people
screaming and yelling, "Help! Help!"
[man] Yo, Mike! Mike! Mike, I'm over here!
[indistinct chatter]
[two-way radios squawking]
[Frederick] I finally cleared my face.
I was dazed.
[dramatic music plays]
[alarm blaring]
[crying]
[Kern]
Two people who seemed to be in shock,
that we grabbed and made come with us,
they were covered
from head to toe with with tan soot.
Finally got to the Borders bookstore.
We used the ax to get into the store
and got out to Church Street.
[dramatic music plays]
[Kern] When I could see the sky,
I turned around to look
and did not see the South Tower.
And for the first time,
I started to realize
what must have happened
just 15 minutes or ten minutes earlier.
I knew that people were lost.
I was praying that
the nine people in my care
[clears throat]were not lost.
My tower was still standing,
the North Tower
with a giant multi-story hole
with hot flames and smoke pouring out.
[Hansson] I heard the mayday
to get out of the building.
So I knew that inside the tower
was a place of danger.
I didn't know what that danger was,
but I knew we had to get out,
and I knew no one
was answering the radio anymore.
And at the 19th floor,
we got stopped by a firefighter,
um, who came out of the hallway and said,
"I have a bunch of civilians
down at the end of the hall."
"They're not leaving.
I need help getting them to leave."
[firefighter 1] Tommy, listen carefully.
I'm sending all the injured
down to you on 40.
You're gonna have
to get them down to the elevators.
There's about 10 to 15 people
coming down to you.
[firefighter 2] Yes. Okay.
[firefighter 1] Ten civilians coming down.
[Hansson] Some guys were doing some
extraordinarily unselfish things,
and saying,
"I'm going to stay behind and make sure
everyone starts to get out themselves."
[emotional music plays]
I took an oath, and I believe in my oath.
My oath is to help people
even if it is gonna cost me my own life.
It was quite new to all of us.
There was no playbook.
We went into the hallway,
and, at this point,
all the lights were now out,
but the emergency lighting was working,
so you had some visibility.
Saw this large man on the floor.
I told the officers, you know,
just grab his legs,
we'll grab his arms
and we'll just drag him.
And that's what we did, dragged him
down the three flights of stairs
and got into the lobby.
When we got there,
some of them said to hold up,
there was people jumping.
[wistful music plays]
[woman] There's a person falling
There's people falling out.
- [man] Oh my God!
- [woman] Oh my God!
[man] Oh!
[Frederick]
The people who were stuck at the top,
who had no choice
but to either jump or burn to death,
because they had no way of getting out.
That bothers me.
That sticks to me like You have no idea.
[indistinct police radio chatter]
[Hansson] When we got into the courtyard,
it was a complete whiteout.
You could see maybe
about ten or 15 feet in front of you.
I can only compare this
to walking in a blizzard.
And then we heard another loud noise.
The roar was so loud
that my first interpretation was
that it was another plane coming in.
I ran about two steps
and then it went pitch-black
and just engulfed in thick black smoke.
[people screaming]
[reporter] Good Lord.
There are no words.
[Hansson] I ran another two steps
and then just got into the fetal position.
And at that point,
I thought there'd be a fireball
behind the smoke
and resigned to the end of my life.
I thought it was gonna be over.
I had just some quick thoughts,
saying goodbye to my family.
I think I mouthed the words,
you know, "goodbye" to my wife.
And, um
and then I had a prayer,
and that prayer was just,
make this quick and make it painless.
[reporter]
A catastrophe on the tip of Manhattan.
[police siren wailing]
[Kern] And then it became,
"Find a phone. Find a phone.
Gotta find a phone."
I finally found a phone that worked
in an abandoned subway station
at Canal Street
and got a hold of my wife.
I remember breaking down.
And I think the same was true
on the other end.
And so we probably didn't say anything
to each other for quite a while.
It was just to know
we were connected again.
It was just very important.
[wistful music plays]
[Green] We had all this ash
falling down to the ground.
And it almost seemed like snow,
because that's how soft
it was hitting the ground.
And there were people there
who were just walking around in a daze.
If I had to compare them
to anything that's happening now
it's like that TV show The Walking Dead.
Because I'd walk up to people and ask
who they were and where they're going,
and most of them couldn't tell me.
[dramatic music plays]
[Hansson] I was having
a lot of difficulty breathing.
All that debris
had been sucked into my throat.
It was like someone
stuck a sock into my throat.
We eventually ran into a chief
from the Division of Safety,
who indicated that there's nothing
you can do anymore.
He says, "The two towers had collapsed."
He says, "You made it out alive."
The customs building,
at World Trade Center Number Six,
there's an overhang,
and I was in that overhang.
So the middle of the building was crushed,
but the two ends had held up,
and I was under one of those ends.
I know a couple of the police officers
were killed that were right behind us.
[ominous music plays]
[reporter]The scope of this disaster
is impossible to comprehend.
[Frederick] There was a bar
where a lot of people were there,
sitting in there looking at the news.
So we try to ease our way in there,
and then we saw George Bush,
the president, talking.
And that's when they showed us
the pictures of what happened.
That the planes hit the World Trade.
[interviewer] Is that really the first
time you knew it was a plane?
First time.
Did not know. Did not see.
Didn't know what it was.
[siren blurts]
[man] We went to go over
to the Emma E. Booker Elementary School,
where the president was going
to meet with some second graders
and read a book with them,
and then give a speech
about leaving no child behind
in education.
I'm standing at the door to the classroom
where the president
and the principal would go.
And I'm standing with the president
and the principal of the school
when Deb Loewer, who was a Navy Captain,
and the director
of the White House Situation Room,
and the acting National Security Advisor
of the trip,
came to the president and said,
"Sir, it appears a small
twin-engine prop plane
crashed into one of the towers
at the World Trade Center in New York."
The president, the principal,
and I all had exactly the same reaction.
"Oh what a horrible accident."
"The pilot must have had
a heart attack or something."
Good morning.
After that, the principal of the school
then opened the door to the classroom,
and she and the president
walked into the classroom.
And that was only a nanosecond,
because Captain Loewer
then came back up to me and said,
"Oh my God."
"Another plane hit the other tower
at the World Trade Center."
the whole word says, get ready.
- [children] Running!
- Yes. "Running."
[Card] I really did think
about what I was going to say.
I then opened the door to the classroom,
I stepped into the classroom.
As the students were reaching down
under their desks to pick up their books
is when I walked forward
and walked up to the president.
He did not see me coming.
I leaned over
and I whispered into his right ear,
"A second plane hit the second tower."
"America is under attack."
[camera shutters clicking]
[suspenseful music plays]
We arrived at Sarasota Airfield,
and the doors open up,
and we get out of the limousine,
and I was struck by something
that is a protocol no-no.
The engines for Air Force One
were already turned on.
The protocol normally is,
you don't start the engines
until the president
is safely on the plane.
This plane started rolling down the runway
even before the door was shut
and the president had taken his seat.
[reporter]That's either US Air Force
or Navy aircraft, fighter aircraft,
now on patrol in what we've described
as the "no-fly zone."
[Card]
Every plane was told they had to land.
And the president received a call
from Vice President Cheney
asking if the president
would authorize our fighter pilots
to shoot down commercial jetliners
if they were not complying
with what was supposed to happen.
[man] Vice president has cleared.
Vice president has cleared us
to intercept tracking
and shoot them down if they
do not respond, per CONR CC.
[Card] When we learned that Flight 93
crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania,
that was soon after the president
had given the authorization.
I will admit, some of us wondered,
"Did we shoot it down?"
Obviously, we did not.
You could hear the fog of war,
not just have your vision clouded.
The fog of war was in the voices.
The president was very agitated
with me on Air Force One,
because he wanted
to go to Washington, D.C.
And I said, "Mr. President,
you don't wanna make
that decision right now."
I would talk to the pilot.
I would talk to the Secret Service agents.
They were not prepared
to go back to Washington, D.C.
And we were fortunate
to have two military aides on the trip.
I said, "I want options. I want
to take the president to a safe place
where we can decide what goes on next."
We ended up landing
in Barksdale Air Force Base.
We were struck by how the fighter jets
were so close to us,
escorting us down to land,
that you could actually see the faces
of the pilots in the planes.
[Bush]
I ask the American people to join me
[camera shutters clicking]
in saying a thanks
for all the folks
who have been fighting hard
to rescue our fellow citizens
and to join me in saying a prayer
for the victims and their families.
[Card]
Then we went from Barksdale Air Force Base
to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
And when we got to Nebraska,
we went down to a deep tunnel underground
to the Strategic Air Command.
And all of these flat-screen TVs
are in the room,
and you have admirals and generals
in there and they're talking,
and you could hear the communication
of the FAA and the military.
The president was
clearly disruptive to that group,
because the officers didn't know
whether to stand or sit.
We went to another room
and had a secure video conference
back to Washington, D.C.
and heard from George Tenet,
Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney.
We were able
to have a better understanding
what was happening in Washington, D.C.
with regard to Andrews Air Force Base.
Later, we piled on Air Force One
and then flew back to Washington, D.C.
And as we're leaning on the couch,
looking out the window on Air Force One
as we're coming
into Andrews Air Force Base,
you could see the smoke billowing
out of the Pentagon.
And the president was right beside me.
He said, "That's the face
of war in the 21st century."
[helicopter propellers beating]
I really felt an urgency to be at my post
when the commander in chief
returned that evening.
Bush gets off the helicopter
comes over to Karen and I,
we greet him and he doesn't say a word.
He just nods and walks right by us
into the Oval Office,
which was being prepared for a television
address to the nation that night.
[Bush] Terrorist attacks can shake
the foundations of our biggest buildings,
but they cannot touch
the foundation of America.
These acts shatter steel
but they cannot dent
the steel of American resolve.
[Card] He made it pretty clear
that we were going to respond.
This would not stand.
And there was no doubt
in the president's mind
that that would mean military action.
Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel,
had already started looking at,
what are all of the issues
that have to be considered
on going to war.
We knew it was a terrorist attack,
and we knew mainly it was al-Qaeda.
[ominous music plays]
In the National Security Council meetings,
I'd get to sit in as White House counsel
in every National Security Council
meeting.
And there was chatter about al-Qaeda
interested in doing something spectacular.
We knew immediately that this was a war.
This was not gonna be
a law enforcement matter.
We weren't just going to use the police,
the FBI to respond to this,
to investigate this.
We were gonna use our military,
of course, the FBI, and law enforcement.
We were gonna pull all levers of power.
We were gonna exercise our economic might,
we were gonna take advantage
of our foreign relationships
across the world.
That's how we were gonna respond.
[all] God bless America ♪
My home sweet home ♪
[Lee] We all went to the Capitol steps,
stood together,
and sang "God Bless America."
And, you know, people felt this sense
of unity and wanted to be there.
The mood in the country was fear,
sorrow, grief, and anger.
And it was a moment
where there were so many complex emotions
coming together at once.
You know,
a roller coaster ride in many respects.
Of course, the families and communities
that lost loved ones,
the mourning and the grieving was great.
And the fear, not knowing what was next,
was very pronounced.
I know at the Capitol,
we weren't sure what was going on
and what came next.
And so that fear was there with everyone.
Then the anger,
not knowing who or what, but angry.
Everyone was angry,
myself included, about whoever did this.
They deserved to come to justice.
We were mourning, we were grieving,
we were angry, we were in a lot of pain.
[Bush] America today is on bended knee
in prayer for the people
whose lives were lost here.
[man] We can't hear you!
I can hear you!
[crowd cheers]
I can hear you,
the rest of the world hears you,
and the people
[crowd cheering]
And the people
who knocked these buildings down
will hear all of us soon.
[dramatic music plays]
[Gonzales] The best word
to describe his mood was "determination."
He had a job to do.
He knew why he had been elected president,
for this moment.
[Bush] This is an enemy who preys
on innocent and unsuspecting people,
then runs for cover.
But they won't be able
to run for cover forever.
[Gonzales] The president understood
that this could not have been possible,
except for the fact that,
in Afghanistan,
the Taliban had provided a safe haven
for al-Qaeda to plan,
successfully, this attack.
And the president
made the decision very quickly
that not only would we go after
those responsible for the attacks,
but we would also go after those
who harbored and helped plan,
gave people an opportunity
to carry out these attacks.
We believed that in order to rid,
or at least diminish
the capabilities of al-Qaeda,
it would be important to hurt the Taliban.
[Lee] In many respects,
what I was hearing was revenge.
It was anger and revenge.
Revenge. I want to get even.
They know who's behind all this.
They know what country
is supporting all these people.
They need to clean their clock, I mean,
into the Stone Age. This is ridiculous.
I think we should bomb them back.
I really do.
The enemy's got to be eradicated,
and you cannot talk with the enemy.
They can't push us around.
We're the number one nation.
Let's do something about it.
We want to respond. You don't attack
America like this and get away with it.
Not only those who harbor terrorists,
but those who in any way,
any aid or comfort whatsoever
will now face the wrath of our country.
You think this is the start
of a war against terrorism?
I believe it is,
and God willing, it will be.
Now the time for talking is over,
and it's time for action to start.
[Gonzales]
As the lawyers in the White House,
working with John Ashcroft and the lawyers
of the Department of Justice,
we would be asked by the president,
"Is there something
that I can do to protect America?"
"Is there something
that I can do in self-defense?"
"Is there something
I can do in response to this attack?"
"Is there something I can do
to attack those,
to punish those responsible
for these attacks?"
And so we quickly looked
at the president's emergency powers,
both by statute and, of course,
looking at his constitutional authority
as commander in chief,
which gives the president
very expansive authority,
but generally when acting in self-defense,
following an attack on the nation
we experienced that day.
[Card] The president knew that
he was going to have a military response.
The question is, do you need
to have congressional authority?
This was outside
of the normal structure of a war.
Can you declare war on a terrorist group?
Does Washington
have the institutional understanding
of what that means?
Do we have to go to Congress
to declare war against a terrorist group?
The president wanted
to get Congress's buy-in.
And there was a debate
about "What does that mean?"
And he could've probably argued
that he didn't need their buy-in,
but he wanted to get their buy-in,
so we were looking to craft something
that Congress would have
a chance to respond to,
both the House and the Senate.
And so that was the use of force.
[Gonzales] The general feeling was that
an authorization to use military force
would signify congressional support,
both politically and monetarily.
And it would buttress, it would support
the president's constitutional authority
as commander in chief.
I made a decision
that I would have Tim Flanagan, my deputy,
take the lead
in terms of drafting the AUMF
and working with aides at Congress.
The recognition the president
has the constitutional authority
to use force as commander in chief,
so we felt that that was important.
And so it was broad enough that it would
allow us to go after al-Qaeda
and those who assisted
or harbored al-Qaeda
in carrying out these attacks.
So, it's a pretty broad
grant of authority.
[reporter] Today, congressional leaders
toured the wreckage at the Pentagon,
and vowed the president will get
whatever he wants.
But behind closed doors,
some democrats and republicans
balk at what some see
as the president's request
for sweeping powers.
[reporter] This draft resolution
from the White House
authorizes use of armed forces
against all those who planned,
authorized, harbored,
committed or aided in the attacks,
and to deter and preempt
any future acts of terrorism.
[Lee] A lot of members
of Congress were feeling,
"What do we do? How do we do it?
What's the appropriate response?"
We did receive, from the administration,
a draft authorization to use force.
And so much of the discussion
after 9/11 was around that authorization.
The AUMF is the Authorization
to Use Military Force.
In this instance, it was 60 words.
And it says, "The president
is authorized to use force."
It did not name where, when, and how.
It just said, "Against any nation,
organization, associated forces,
or individuals connected to 9/11."
If the president thinks
we should go to war,
bring that authorization to Congress,
let us debate it, let us work on it,
and if we decide that it's reasonable
and that that's what we should do,
it's in the United States'
national security interest to go to war,
then Congress will vote for it.
But the AUMF was so broad.
It did not mention al-Qaeda at all.
I kept speaking out in our meetings
saying, "No, no, no, it's too broad."
Many members saying,
"Yes, yes, yes, but we got to do it."
Then I said,
"This is about our Constitution,
and we can't give any authority away
to any president."
Those discussions were taking place
at the same time
that the memorial was being planned
at the National Cathedral.
I'll never forget it. It was a rainy day.
I went to the cathedral,
and the head of the cathedral,
his name was Reverend Nathan Baxter.
During his eulogy, he said,
"As we act, let us not become
the evil who we deplore."
It was at that moment I was settled.
I could not give any president
the authority to use force
that was so open-ended.
[Cantor] I rise today
in support of this resolution.
Civilized society has long sought
to end the use of violence,
but the perpetrators of terrorism
and states that harbor them
are the enemies of civilized society.
They only understand the use of force,
and the time has come
to speak to them on their terms.
The resolution before us
empowers the president
to bring to bear the full force
of American power abroad.
We are coming after you
and the fury of hell is coming with us.
[Lee] I was the only one
in the House or the Senate that voted "no"
on the Authorization to Use Military Force
as it relates to 9/11.
- [interviewer] Nobody in the Senate?
- Nobody in the Senate.
[Hastert] Gentlewoman from California
is recognized for a minute and a half.
Mr. Speaker, members, I rise today,
really, with a very heavy heart
one that is filled with sorrow
for the families and the loved ones
who were killed and injured this week.
Only the most foolish and the most callous
would not understand the grief
that has really gripped our people
and millions across the world.
September 11th changed the world.
Our deepest fears now haunt us.
Yet, I am convinced
that military action will not prevent
further acts of international terrorism
against the United States.
By the time I got back to my office,
the death threats and the
You do not wanna know what all happened.
But bottom line is,
there were over 60,000 emails,
phone calls, letters.
About 50% were literally death threats,
hostile remarks,
people calling me all kinds of names,
a traitor, committed acts of treason.
You You should be hung.
[dramatic music plays]
Emotions are normal to feel.
That's part of human nature.
But we also have to balance that
with our rational thinking.
We have to make sure
that we don't make irrational decisions
when our emotions are so high.
So many people think
by saying you disagree,
you're committing an act of treason,
and in times of national security threats.
And I'm saying, "Wait a minute.
That's when you want someone to say no."
That's when you want
your elected officials
to rise above the anger,
to have some rational thinking
and response.
And you could not send these troops
in harm's way forever.
[reporter] The military scenarios
that the president
has before him are extensive.
A senior military official tells ABC News
they even include ground troops.
[Card] On September 14th, when I was
in the Oval Office early in the morning,
the president walks up to me and he said,
when everybody is leaving the room,
he said, "Andy, I want to convene
the war council tomorrow at Camp David."
[dramatic music plays]
The principles were there,
and it included lawyers
the FBI director,
the defense department, obviously,
the State Department, the vice president.
And there was no doubt
that we were getting ready to go to war.
What does it mean to do that?
The president said, "I don't want
to send a million-dollar cruise missile,
and hit a five-dollar tent."
"That's not the kind of response
that we want to have."
And so it was a very robust discussion
about what it meant.
The president was actually inviting
every leader in the world.
He said, "This is your chance
to be with us or against us."
"If you're not with us,
you're against us."
Underneath our tears is the
strong determination of America
to win this war.
And we will win it.
Americans are asking,
"Who attacked our country?"
The evidence we have gathered
all points to a collection of loosely
affiliated terrorist organizations
known as al-Qaeda.
The leadership of al-Qaeda
has great influence in Afghanistan
and supports the Taliban regime
in controlling most of that country.
In Afghanistan,
we see al-Qaeda's vision for the world.
[Gonzales] Everyone had confidence
we were gonna be successful in this war.
There was no question about that.
Um, it was a question
of how long it would take.
[Chandrasekaran]
Afghanistan was an incredibly
complex challenge for the US military.
It's a landlocked country
halfway around the world.
It's geographically very challenging.
There's steep mountain ranges
that ring half the country.
It's bordered by countries
that have a strained relation
to the United States,
if they have a relationship at all.
Pakistan, Iran,
former Soviet republics
like Tajikistan, China.
And so, how do you even get the troops in?
[Rumsfeld] The only defense
against terrorism is offense.
You have to simply
take the battle to them.
How do you do that?
You don't do it
with conventional capabilities.
You do it
with unconventional capabilities.
And there are clearly forces on the ground
that are anxious
to rid the country of al-Qaeda
and to rid the country of Taliban.
[Chandrasekaran] What eventually starts
to take hold at the Pentagon, the CIA,
is a plan to try to make use
of Afghan resistance fighters
called the Northern Alliance.
[machine-gun fire]
[drill sergeant shouting]
[soldiers respond]
The leader of that whole movement
was a brave fighter
against the Soviet occupation
named Ahmed Shah Massoud.
Massoud was lionized by his followers,
but with good reason.
He was a fearsome commander
on the battlefield.
He was able to keep the Taliban at bay
for many parts of Northern Afghanistan.
[dramatic music plays]
[man, in Arabic] What was it like
to work with your brother?
[Massoud, in Arabic]
I felt that my brother was a real hero.
He always acted honorably,
and gave people a lot of confidence.
It felt like we had a champion
who would never be defeated.
My brother had a strong moral compass.
And was a very religious man.
He was always thinking
about freedom for Afghanistan.
By the time of the Taliban,
poverty had become widespread,
and there was no education.
There was no healthcare for people,
no economy,
there was no governance at all.
All they would do was repress people.
They had a total
misconception of religion.
The only thing they talked about
was to suppress women
and not let anyone speak up.
It was a dictatorial religious system.
Because of this,
Afghanistan was heading for a crisis
and had become a center
of international terrorism.
And especially of drug trafficking.
My brother,
along with some people in the North,
decided to form a coalition
to fight against the Taliban.
[no audible dialogue]
[Chandrasekaran]
A few days before the 9/11 attacks,
two al-Qaeda suicide fighters,
disguised as Western journalists,
went to go interview Massoud.
[crowd shouting angrily]
And in their video camera
was concealed a massive bomb.
And Massoud was assassinated.
It was a tactically brilliant move
by Osama bin Laden
and the al-Qaeda leadership
to take out the principal rival
and the principal threat
on the battlefield to the Taliban
and to Mullah Omar's government,
recognizing that if the Americans
were to attack Afghanistan,
somebody like Massoud
would be a vital ally to them.
[Massoud, in Arabic]
Al-Qaeda along with the Taliban
believed that the biggest obstacle
to turning Afghanistan
into a center of international terrorism
was my brother,
Amir Sahib Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Therefore, they decided
to remove him from their path.
[somber funeral music plays]
[Filkins] In 2001 at 9/11,
about 90% of Afghanistan
was controlled by the Taliban,
which left 10% of it,
this tiny little piece of territory
in the far north of Afghanistan.
And so, when the attacks happened,
my editor at The New York Times
said to me,
"Get yourself to Northern Afghanistan
with the rebels."
"I don't know how to get there. Do it."
I flew to Tajikistan
and crossed into this tiny little area
controlled by the Northern Alliance.
And there was a front line that was like
something out of the first World War.
You could look across the front line,
300 yards away, you could see the Taliban.
And they were just sitting
in the trenches.
And then the B-52s came.
And I had rented this mud hut
that was one of the nicer huts in town,
because it had windows.
I remember it was probably
five o'clock in the morning,
and I was awakened
by the rattling of the windows.
And they were just shaking.
It felt like an earthquake.
I thought it was an earthquake, actually.
It's a very active earthquake zone.
It was the bombs.
[ominous music plays]
[explosions]
I looked out across the Taliban trenches,
and the B-52s bombed the trenches
all up and down the whole horizon.
You could see these gigantic
kind of black circles.
The whole sky was kind of crisscrossed
with the contrails of the B-52s.
It looked like a piece of modern art.
They would circle for the longest time
and drop a 2,000-pound bomb.
[bomb exploding]
They bombed every day like that
for several days,
and then finally the Taliban line cracked.
[dramatic music plays]
[reporter] The Taliban got in their
pickup trucks, loaded their small arms,
and headed south
to their spiritual base in Kandahar.
[Chandrasekaran] The Taliban regime
was hunkered down in Kandahar.
That's where they're gonna
make their last stand.
[ominous music playing]
December, 2001,
the United States thought
it had bin Laden cornered
in the Tora Bora Mountains.
[Chandrasekaran] Intelligence gets
to US forces and Afghan forces,
but inexplicably, the US doesn't send
a huge contingent of special ops soldiers
to try to capture or kill bin Laden.
It's left to a ragtag group
of Afghan fighters
with a small number of American advisors.
It's a puzzling decision.
It's inexplicable in many ways,
when the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks,
the leader of al-Qaeda,
are all within the grasp of US forces,
that we don't mount
a much bigger effort to go after them.
[Graff] There was no higher mission,
no more important hunt in the world
than finding Osama bin Laden.
He was the number-one target,
the most hunted man in the world.
[man] We lived in a constant state
of awareness that it could happen again,
that we could find ourselves facing
another similar attack.
You got people saying he's in a cave.
People saying he's dead.
People saying he's in Pakistan.
All I know is that he's running.
[ominous music plays]
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