Vice president Dick Cheney. How did the morning of your september 11, 2000 will begin . You know, there was a feeling of almost backtoschool. Wed not been out for the summer but generally we take the last week of August Bill offered he passed an energy bill, we felt like we were settling in well proved there is a sense of, okay, now back to Business Permit economic issues at the time, where on the front end of a recession. It was a clear beautiful day, and i distinctly remember being so happy to be working at the white house. And relative to the energy issue, my plans for that day were to meet with the labor leaders some later on Hand Labor leaders, the teams jurors were supporting our Energy Plan because of such a job creator. And that is what i had planned for that beautiful day. Host so as you walked through the gates of the white house on that morning, do you remember what time you entered in some of the first things you did . Guest well, senior staff had to be there every day at 6 30 a. M. Or 7 00 a. M. I believe that senior Staff Meeting at 7 00 a. M. Or 7 30 a. M. At the latest but i cant remember even in the longest days of the year, i drove to work in the dark and i came home in the dark. I am sure i was there by 6 00 a. M. As to be the normal case. Host when did you first get worried about a Plane Hitting the first tower at the World Trade Center in new york . Guest well, i had a a west Wing Office an old executive building office. And that morning i happen to have been in my west Wing Office, which was a floor above the Vice President s. And every office has at least one tv, a lot of offices of more than one tv. And its always turned on to Cspan Or Something thats actually giving us real news. It was on that tv. And i found it suspicious. It just did not feel right. I mean i thought about this a lot and my having Revisionist And Memory . But i really remember recalling at the time something is not right, i just had a feeling about it. And again, was preparing for my date with the Energy Task Force business. Even before the second Plane Hit, he went down to the Vice President s office, again a floor below mine, took the stairs down to check my gut. So, it was then, i was there when the second Plane Hit. And we knew instantly that this is not an accident. It was some kind of act of terror and an act of war as the President Subsequently called it. And Vice President , then went right into action. We had to the first he tried to do, among the first things he attempted to do was Call Mayor Rudy giuliani. Called the city, find out what it was we could do. Obviously try to call the president first. The president was traveling, there was a Connectivity Elapse and getting through to the president. And we just right into work mode. Host let me go back there to the 15 20 minutes between the first plane in the second plane. Obviously, all of america, the white house knew it was immediately an act of terrorism. But you said your Gut Instinct did not feel right after the first Plane Hit the first tower. Can you elaborate a little bit more and what you were thinking of what prompted you to go down to a deVice President and his staff . Guest well, let me say this. I knew it was such an usual and tragic events, my gut might have been directing me too go down there knowing that the president was not an office. That responsibility would fall to us to be a federal response mechanism. Clearly, the origin of the act had nothing to do with our having to respond in some way to help offer whatever federal resources we could to come to bear. Which was obviously going to be a high incident high casualty event. My gut might have been were going to have to weigh in on this somehow at the federal level as opposed to this being an active war, act of terrorism. Obviously it by number two planes and dont hit buildings on a crystalclear day. I know a little bit about flying my mother flew. You can only explain that by, the Partner Pilot theres no immediate good explanation for a Plane Hitting that kind of building on that kind of day. Do remember the faces, the expression when the second Plane Hit the second tower. Do you have a recollection of what people with their faces said at the time . I was with the Vice President. His speechwriter was there. Its not that i dont remember , i just said there wasnt the faces, this is inexplicable but we know we have to respond. And we just started working. As i said, we got on the phones for the secretary of state was traveling. People were not in their regulation spots at the time. So there was automatic effort to go down, not the chain of command so much but the operational elements from department of transportation, to department of state, two dod, to start going through what we knew we would have to do to get our ducks in order. So, there wasnt time to have an emotional response. We went right into work mode. Host and as she went downstairs to the Situation Room and there are now some famous iconic photographs of you, and Karen Hughes and national Security Adviser Condoleezza rice, the Vice President speaking with all of you. Can you give us a sense of what was happening in that room . What was said . What you remember . Yes, it took a while for everybody to actually get to the room. And it hadnt been really used for its intended purpose whats was to be a Bomb Shelter since its inception. We had drills and whatnot in there, but i think youd be surprised its a very small room. It has a lot of instruments in it. But the getting people there, karen was trapped in her neighborhood uptown. I think condoleezza rice, national Security Director was there and her aide. And i had been ordered, as had everybody in the west wing to evacuate. But was tracked down by a Mail Aide at the behest of the Vice President to make my way back to the room. When i got and again, there were a few people there. But the Vice President was squarely seated in the center. And a Work Activity was going on. And again, i would like to say it was emotional, but it really was work of a workable worker. Norman from the department of transportation, the secretary of transportation we are trying to locate first and foremost all of the planes for identify the planes, ground all the planes, and strangely george Herbert Walker Bush was on a plane. He had to be downed. There is a lot of priorities of what we needed to do. People were not being barked at by any means, but is a very methodical and organize Work Environment. And i remember distinctly remember and i think i even wrote this down somewhere, that the country would be, proudest up the right word, the country would be comforted to know that their elected officials and the elected position were really functioning at a high level and i secondly thought that because the Vice President and bushs top Security Team had such deep experience, not just on the subject but also deep experience of working with each other, theyd been together in the first gulf war. They had not served in congress together, that not worked for other President S. They knew how each other worked. And i remember distinctly thinking what an asset that was and how blessed we had a fully functioning experience an adult relationship team. I worked in a couple of white houses very complicated operation and these people had all served together previously, really expedited to respond coherently on that day. Splint limited back to couple moments after 9 00 a. M. In the second Plane Hit the second tower other planes heading to washington d. C. For their other reports of the bombs going off at the State Department which later proved to be not true. What was security like for you in the white house . Was your sense around the Vice President . How did the secret service react directly to him in the room . Chaos is too strong but the initial Security Reaction was topnotch of course for the Vice President while we were in his office making calls to new york, making calls to the president , this is also an iconic story picked him up, he was a burly man, came behind his desk, picked him up by himself and a whisked him away. That face i do remember. My jaw dropped and the jaws of my colleagues dropped because we had never seen anything like that. And we were already at the highest levels of clearance. And never quite heard anything like that. And then, there was an all call to evacuate. Initially ordered to evacuate to the mass which is the floor , the lowest floor accessible in the west wing. We all sat around there for some minutes. And then out of nowhere came the skull run, run, run their headed for the white house. Run for your life. Run for your life. Because i had meetings that day i was in a purple Pencil Skirt and red Patent Leather Spike heels. As of the best run for your life in. I have to say is not that i didnt take it seriously, it was so out of the movies. So i did not run. I left and another number people begin walking and running that bunch up in different places but i got halfway off the campus, off the ground and why i even had my Cell Phone, how might Cell Phone was functioning i have no idea because famously all connections were cut that day, my phone rang and it was millies in the Vice President wants you back your. I had to go through this of security checkpoints were military were stationed with big guns. Course they knew me but they didnt care. They were not about to let me back in. I had had my Cell Phone to the Mail Aide with the Vice President to tell these various checkpoints to get me back down which is no easy place to get too. It is quite a labyrinth to get in there. I think the security for people of the cabinet secretaries and certainly the Vice President , obsolete present on the road, all that function well. The evacuation and securing of thousands of people who work on the white house grounds, at least hundreds appeared to be exactly what you might expect in such an uncharacteristic situation. There really wasnt any. The Staff Members themselves, or smart enough and organized enough to get themselves into a place where they could communicate with each other and be available to be called upon. By the end of the day every senior Staff Member did end up getting called upon to do something. We went for the brief. You are outside before he went inside the white house, did you have a sense of what was happening around the white house grounds . Did you see anything that struck you . Guest yes. It was quite i remember thinking contemporaneously this is like mad max. One of my favorite scary movies of all times, there were cars abandoned on the street. I initially was going to try to get home to cross over the bridge over the potomac i lived in northern virginia to get my 2yearold and a 5yearold at the time, to try to get with them. Try to get to the tabs, the cabs were abandoned they did not turn off their motors they were flung open. I dont know where the smoke was coming from. I could not possibly been airborne. There is a smokiness to the air. People running or confused. I was a movie set kind of feeling, surrealistic. What go back to the issue of trying to get in touch with President Bush was at the florida at the time edit education event. We know he is trying to do, get back to washington moving to different Air Force bases before returning late in the afternoon. But that initial hour where you and the others trying to reach members of the bush staff, what was that like . There were issues of connectivity. And security. Their concern about, i think this has been chronicled im not telling any secrets, real concern about having the president and the Vice President in the same place. A concern about decapitation. I visited the city to reject F Effort of the chairs is to decapitate the head of government, striking where they did and where they failed to do that plane that went down in pennsylvania was planned for the capitol. The president immediate for rent desirably made it very clear coming back to washington. The Security Apparatus of people who know the chain of command and all of that say its better we not all be in the same place but thats obviously the objective. I dont think that sat well with the president but he is obliged to keep the securities foremost in his mind. So then that came they were determining the best place in terms of Security And Connectivity that became the pursuit what was the safest place we can get the president to that we can be connected to him to get his orders and he importantly can talk to the american people. We knew right at the outset will be very, very important for the president , for the american people to see and the people in the world to see the president. That was the demand of that task to find the best connectivity and secure place for the president recollects the Plane Hit the pentagon, when did you hear about that . Where were you . And what was your reaction to that attack . Guest again we never lost work mode. The rest is fuzzy. There was a real concern in getting information about the casualties at dod. We had heard secretary rumsfeld, at first we thought he had been hit in them he heard he was pulling the bodies out of the rubble. We could not get a 20 on. Again this is fuzzy. I member all of us being pretty concerned the secretary of defense and what exactly had happened there. There was such havoc at dod there. It is not clear they were thinking how to get a hole of us. That might have been happening. And the Bomb Shelter this a couple different rooms. They were taking different bits of information and different places. In my role is doing with the Vice President was telling me too do, i was pretty much situated in that room with him trying to do those things that he and the president were sorting through in order to be done very. You will see history unfolds from a very unique Vantage Point. Do you remember what you are thinking, what your emotions were, what was going to your mind that morning . I remember obviously having a concern for my family. And my kids in particular. My husband was in washington. And when i realize a traffic, there is no way to get back to virginia short of walking, i remember thinking very clearly that no matter how difficult it would be to crawl over Cut Glass to get back to those kids. And he indeed did. Im not sure how he got back to this day. Theres not a lot of phones and all of the phones were secure he did not want to use them up on family calls that i called my Husband Office to take two cars, get two kids get them in one place. I just wanted to know my girls were safe. I said i know james will get there somehow tell him i am safe. I had a moment of fear for my kids because their school is right by the pentagon. I dont know, i just knew they would be taken care of. And then the rest of the day was work, work, work. We had two emotional moments. The one has been chronicled in those iconic photos when the second building fell, i cannot describe the emotion. There is no way. It is disbelief. The other when that was truly emotional, not that that wasnt emotional. But an emotion he could understand what it was as when we learn, i feel for some reason we heard this through Haley Barbour that Barbara Olson had been a dear friend to all of us and the wife of the ag or the solicitor general at the time was on the plane i forget which one it was. It mightve been the one that hit the pentagon. She had somehow been able to communicate with ted olson, her husband, she knew what was going on trade that plane went down. We learn somebody was so close to all of us, the horror, seeing buildings collapse, sitting planes go into buildings, that did not jive with any Experience Anyone had. But to isolate to a person sitting on that plane brought it home to everybody. That is a moment of real Terror And Emotion for all of us. Not just losing Barbara Olson but House Average the attack had been very. Again saying to this time period good morning into early afternoon, do you remember the communication between President Bush and Vice President cheney and what that was like from your Vantage Point . Guest for my hearing of it, just hearing the Vice President side of the conversation it was very orderly, he was dealing with the priority topics and what order. It has been ten years and i am paraphrasing but to make sure were extent russians are standing down their weapons, and the issue of the shoot to kill civilian planes and that order from the president was discussed. But cheney is notoriously unflappable man. He was focused. I mean there is no hand wringing, clutching, wailing or anything like that. Its those issues had to be dealt with to figure out what was going on. We look to see if theres any further things we could secure the country against. Communicate with the world that we were fine and we could defend the country. Those kind of big decisions. They werent conversations they were more elements of factors that need to be considered when making those kinds of decisions. Like if there are any planes still left in the air. There is a way, there is a method, there is a template for communicating with them. And there is a trigger so to speak when the extent to which you can allow them to remain non responsive. Our Defense Committee knows how to do all that kind of stuff. That was not conversational. They were more going to the templates of what needed to be done. The back and forth im half are calling it in half mixing it up with what ive subsequently read. He really wanted to be in that command post. He really did want to talk to the american people. I remember that being a recurring again not a conversation but a recurring topic. Split limit go back to the issue of the passenger planes and the orders to shoot to kill. You kind of went there with the procedure would be pretty obvious he saw it happen with the first three planes that went down with passengers on board. Did you send any angst, concern, or your own internal feelings that potentially the u. S. Could strike down a jetliner but did have civilian passengers on board . Guest there is not time to think of it like that. If there had been a nonresponsive civilian filled plane that appeared to be destined to do greater damage, or great damage, there would not have been an option, i am sure it was no easy call for anybody. I do remember it may be of reticence, it was not an issue because they were done. There werent any. There is a protocol where every attempt would have been made to not take that last resort, to have fighter planes maneuvered the civilian plane. all worked on his statement with a number of things going on. I saw him on tv but what sticks out of my mind more is seeing him when he returned, when he didnt return to the white House Complex, and we were all standing in the outer office to his Oval Office and he had written down some key points he wanted to make. I remember thinking being so proud of him and he was in command and focused and had already had the seeds of what subsequently became the bush doctrine. We would consider you a terrorist and he had thought that through and working through in his mind what he wanted to say and it was a not how i felt contemporaneously because there was nothing, but it was comforting. Americans and the world should take solace of the fact real leadership in place these are people who knew how to make decisions even though no one had experienced anything similar to this they were experienced in the Way Government works and in the way conflicts unfold and what america means to the world. A lot is going on in your mind but i remember looking at him because we had been friends for a long time i had worked with president 43 and president 41. To see him in that leadership on display in such a tragic situation. Host the emotions were raw around the country and the world. How did you view your job or what was your job to try to begin the process that day in particular to ease the concerns and fears of the american people by showing the president and giving the american people a sense of what was happening within the white house . Well a little told story was we had to minimize and ameliorate some of our own fears. That Evacuation Process didnt give people a lot of confidence that worked there nor did it give our Families Confidence or our ongoing working on these issues. It was scary for our families. So, Missus Bush the first we started fleshing out or forming talks about how the staff should console and consult and get their family lives straight because if we were not functioning, there wasnt anything we would be able to do to work towards securing the country and think straight, and she was absolutely right about that. So there were a lot of Family Counseling sessions and things like that, bringing your kids to work. A lot of times i was at an undisclosed secure location so i didnt bring my kids around that much. But the president knew right from the outset that the way to make, to comfort people if thats possible, or to eradicate fear would be to show action on things we could immediately get our arms around. Stopping beefing up a kind of intelligence that we didnt have initially to be able to track the communications. Tracking the finance. One thing we did that was novel to any white house as ive worked and should be employed in any kind of emergency like that is all not just the cabinet members every day being communication, but all the communications directors of each Agency And Cabinet met after the white house senior staff to talk about everything that we each respective Agency And Cabinet was doing towards the effort to secure the nation and defend the nation and what was then called Homeland Defense. So we could communicate what we were doing because the President Said right out of the bat to us that this is not going to be an effort to storming the beaches or having cameras when we had in place for the first gulf war. This is going to be fought in a way that People Cant Touch and feel and see, so it is incumbent on us to communicate what are the templates of congress. They said intelligence proclivities or finance networks, capturing however many terrorists we can get our hands on separate from the effort to what was being undertaken with the Defense Strategy going into afghanistan and such. So communications was a very early order from the president to help the nation understand the extent of our effort and the novelty of this enemy. Host relax isnt the right word but is there a moment that day that you could take a deep breath and feel things were under some semblance of control, september 11, 2001, for you personally . Guest honestly, i never felt i felt it was a completely inexplicable day, but i never felt we were out of control. I was gratified, relieved and i did cry im sure when i did finally get home at one, two, 3 00 in the morning. I cant even remember now. My youngest daughter was asleep in my husbands arms. My husband was still up and he had been called. I never did speak to him all day that he had been called and was conveyed to him i was safe and my neighbors subsequently told me he was running up and down our neighborhood with beer bottles saying shes safe, shes safe. So thats my families emotions after the Fact Moment that i remember, but again for however long it was the next two years or however long i stayed after that, we just worked. That event was quickly found by anthrax attacks and the whole nation was on high alert. The Security Apparatus was on high alert. We knew we didnt have the right kind of Intelligence Capacity set up. Fortunately, the Vice President had in his portfolio what was then called Homeland Defense and he had met with the various commissions, the Gilmore Commission Et cetera. We were going to be meeting with Senator Feinstein and others after we got back from the Summer Break to talk about this very subject because there was an understanding pre 9 11 of the concern about germs and chemicals, you know, biological warfare, chemical warfare. So we had fortunately and fortuitously a real grounding in ways to get to facilitate and accelerate a Homeland Defense or Homeland Security Effort subsequently the whole department was erected but at that moment we needed it to be in the hands of and how do we do this. We didnt get all that done by September 20th when the president addressed the nation and identified this supersonic public service tom ridge. My point of all this is every day there was a new challenge, unique challenge. Something a lot of business we knew we had to do and a lot of it we were it was new, but it was all hands on deck and on high alert 24 7. There were no weekends. There was no parties. We just everybody worked at all agencies. And for the longest time, it became sort of a joke in washington that the undisclosed secure location. The Vice President and the president were always kept in separate cities and for the longest time, which meant the senior staff were separated so it was an i dont want to say unnatural, but it was a the Work Environment took serious exertion for many months afterwards. Host did you work on President Bushs speech of the nation from the Oval Office . He had know, the short answer is no. I remember his showing it to me in that circle and he had it all basically written out himself, his main points. Im sure as he did all things he was pretty clear on what he wanted to say and he had it written down. We hadnt eaten all day and it happened to be the day that the congressional barbecue where all the members of congress come to have a barbecue on the lawn and theres all this barbecue around and we are passing and now i dont know how late it was but the first food all day and we were passing around his and he was pulling it back all greasy and had a barbecue fingers on it and whatnot but it was his words and not im sure it was somehow massaged to get it into death to Teleprompter And Whatnot as is always the case, but it was definitely his thoughts and words. Host was Dick Cheney on September 10th a different Dick Cheney on september 12 . Thats a good question. I think because of his work as secretary of defense, his work on Homeland Defense, theres an interview or to preceding 9 11 i think it was in the new yorker and other places when asked what keeps him up at night he said bioterrorism. And he has been long steeped and continues to be in these asymmetrical warfare issues and he had been before 9 11 but he had been in the dark winter exercises, hed been at the cdc. He knew, he understood all that stuff and he said biological Warfare Or Suitcase issues like that the Vice President thinks large he knew the aspirations of these kinds of terrorists and he did understand the capability. And i think that he was largely different. Its changed everybodys lives, but i think understanding it wasnt like most of america where we had no idea who these people were and what they wanted in the history and all that. He knew all that and he had great longstanding relationships with the leaders in the middle east so i think he always came to he didnt need to serve, he had no political aspirations of his own. He wanted to serve and he was particularly always interested in security issues and i think there is the sense of we are all here for a reason and he really was the right guy in the right place. Host from the speech until just before you left to head home to be with your family do you remember how your Night Eve off . Guest once i got home . Guest before you got home between the end of the evening. Guest as the day went on, more and more senior staff the split of the day for me was Karen Hughes and i had to somehow navigate our way to be able to read a statement to the nation that the government was functioning and the Security Secret Service wouldnt let us to do it, wouldnt let the press onto the white House Complex so we had a place to address the press to get a statement out and that was more of a hassle than we would have expected, but we had to get somewhere the secret service would let the press and that turned out to be doj. After that, by the time we got back and it was quite a sensation, and not in a good way to have to be in an armored car with shooters and security, like real security. That was not comforting. But once we got back it seemed ostensibly clear what we knew for a fact there were no more planes. We didnt know if there were bombs or anything but it appeared safe enough to make their way back to the cabinet, officials to make their way back to the Bomb Shelter and have increased communication with Capitol Hill so then the concentric circles of work expanded and we just got crowded. Critical functions like Larry Lindsey the President S economic advisor at the time knew that we had to communicate with the markets, so the markets would be sufficiently comforted to not collapse on the next day or short i guess is the better word and Larry Lindsey began doing that and norman and i was doing his Thing And Everybody was sort of filtering in doing their thing so then it became almost too many people, not enough air and Vice President s and others saying we cant operate, we Cant Function like this, so critical staff only and people started going back to i guess the regulation offices to work. Once the president got back and we gave the immediate order of business was to get him in an address to the nation and following that he wanted to meet with the security principles which he did do and then things felt orderly in the sense that this is how we conduct cabinet meetings not in the place we normally conduct which would be in the cabinet room, but then it became we got into the rhythm of heres how the white house works at a high level and i dont remember being i dont remember being tired leaving but i do remember being physically not emotionally, but physically exhausted when i finally did get home which meant i really must have been in a repressed way emotionally exhausted as was everybody, but we were all back the next morning at 5 00, 530. Host and real quickly this is an acronym for guest i dont know. I never knew what it was. President ial something. It is an operational center. Its the Bomb Shelter. We have an acronym for everything but all i knew is i would never be able to find my way there and i couldnt to this day without somebody taking me there. I couldnt tell you where it is. Host where will you spend the anniversary of September 11th . Guest you know, i think probably in new orleans. One of the strange things that didnt occur to me until the first anniversary was how much i didnt know what was going on. I didnt have the perspective. No one who was doing what we were doing that day was seeing what the american public was seeing. When i watched the coverage on the first anniversary, i couldnt stop crying. I was shocked. Thats an emotional feeling i feel to this day far more gripping than, and heartbreaking than i did on september 11. I just didnt see it. We werent watching tv. We werent watching people jumping out of buildings. We saw the Building Collapse and had to go right back to work. We didnt see all the chaos that the american people were seeing and it frightens me to the core to think what america must have been feeling watching that. We just were not exposed to it. My kids are now they hate to watch it with me because i cant keep myself under control. They are now 13 and 16 and its important that they understand it and we watch it together and as i understand they will be watching the coverage of the commemoration of the brave responders and no that we lost that day and thats a good thereuniversity of