4 Saracini: NYT, 12/31/01;
5 attendants: CR, 454n41, www.afanet.org, www.airlineride.org;
6 usual mix: FBI 302, 10/01/01, “FBI 302s, Arestegui,” B10, T7, CF, Bernstein, 180, INN.com, 2/1/08, The Sun (Ireland), 9/11/06, Northeastern University Voice, 12/11/01;
7 Arabs First or Business: UA175 manifests, “Flight 175 Misc. Manifest—Check in—Boarding,” B17, T7, CF & Exhibit P200018, U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Cr. No. 01-455-A, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of VA;
8 boarding card: FBI 302 re int. of [name redacted], 9/12/01, “Flight 175 Info.,” B16, T7, CF;
9 buy ticket: FBI 302 re Gail Jawahir, 9/21/01, INTELWIRE;
10 in line: FBI 302 re Mike Castro, 9/15/01, “302s of Interest Flight 175,” B17, T7, CF;
11 Flight 175 course/We figured/suspicious: “Flight Path Study—UA Flight 175,” NTSB, 2/19/02, MFR 04016823, 10/1/03. As noted above, none of the hijacker transmissions from Flight 11 heard by ground control included these precise words;
12 Channel 9: Time, 9/14/01, PRWeek, 3/10/08 & see Farmer, 124, 143;
13 Allentown: MFR 04016828, 10/1/03;
14 Policastro: MFR 04017221, 11/21/03, MFR 04017218, 11/21/03;
15 Hanson: FBI 302 re Lee Hanson, 9/11/01, “FBI 302—Mace and Flight,” B11, T7, CF, Bernstein, 7;
16 “We might”: MFR 04016823, 10/1/03, MFR 04016828, 10/1/03, “Flight Path Study—UA Flight 175,” NTSB, 2/19/02, map;
17 8:58: FBI 302 re [name redacted], 9/28/01, INTELWIRE, NY Daily News, 3/9/04, but see CR, 8;
18 Sweeney: Hyannis News, 9/13/01, Metrowest Daily News, 9/18/01, WP, 9/14/01;
19 Peter Hanson 2nd call: FBI 302 of Lee Hanson, 9/11/01, “FBI 302—Mace and Flight,” B11, T7, CF;
20 “planes, as in plural”: Position 15, Parts 2 & 3, “ATCSCC Tape Transcript,” B1, T8, CF, CR, 23, 460n131;
21 “He’s going in”: WP, 9/17/01;
22 Statue of Liberty: Peter Lance, 1000 Years for Revenge, NY: Regan, 2003, 12;
23 rocked: Bamford, Pretext, 28.
24 Mosiello: int. Steven Mosiello, TF, 10/23/01. Mosiello was one of 503 firefighters, paramedics, and emergency medical technicians who contributed oral history interviews after 9/11. The interviews were released by city authorities—and transcripts were published by The New York Times as “World Trade Center Task Force” interviews—in 2005. They will be cited frequently—sourced as “TF”—in the chapters that follow (NYT, 8/12/08).
25 O’Clery: Conor O’Clery, May You Live in Interesting Times, Dublin: Poolbeg, 2009, 4;
26 Praimnath: NYT, 5/26/02, Staff Statement 13, CO, Dwyer & Flynn, 92;
27 Clark: “A Survivor’s Story,” transcript, PBS Nova, Bernstein, 222, CR, 293, CTV News (Canada), 9/6/02, CNN, 9/9/02;
28 Many others: “Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center,” NCSTAR 1, NIST, 23,41.
CHAPTER 4
1 CNN break: transcript, 09/11/01, www.transcripts.cnn.com, Bamford, Pretext, 16;
2 Sawyer/Gibson: transcript, “ABC News Special Report: Planes Crash into World Trade Center,” 09/11/01, & tape on www.youtube.com;
3 “stupidity”: “Five Years Later: Media Recollections of 9/11,” 9/11/06, citing Dorian Benkoil, www.mediabistro.com;
4 pilot drunk: Dwyer & Flynn, 86;
5 Hayden: James Bamford, The Shadow Factory, NY: Doubleday, 2008, 86.
6 Tenet: Bob Woodward, Bush at War, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2002, 3–. Tenet reversed the sequence of the attacks in his book, inaccurately indicating that the first plane crashed into the South Tower of the Trade Center, the second into the North Tower. What he meant, though, becomes clear as one reads on. (George Tenet with Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm, NY: HarperCollins, 2007, 161–).
7 Rumsfeld: int., Larry King show, CNN, 12/6/01, & testimony, 5/23/04, www.defenselink.mil, notes of int. Rumsfeld, B7, T2, CF;
8 Clarke: Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies, NY: Free Press, 2004, 1;
9 Cheney: ibid., 2, Meet the Press, NBC, 9/16/01, WSJ, 8/15/07;
10 Rice: Newsweek, 12/31/01.
11 Bush in Sarasota: Sarasota Magazine, 11/01. In the early hours of the morning of September 11, a police report shows, a Sudanese man had contacted Sarasota police to say he feared an associate and two companions then visiting Sarasota might pose a threat to the President—who was staying at the Colony resort hotel on nearby Longboat Key. The associate, it was later reported, had links to the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army. Officers and Secret Service agents went to an address on 32nd Street in Sarasota, a law enforcement source told the authors, and found eleven Arab men up and about—“apparently at morning prayer.” One of the men had a card for a resort not far from the President’s—the Longboat Key Club. The men were questioned, held until the President had left, then released. There was nothing to indicate they were linked to the 9/11 plotters, the source told the authors. There appears to be no substance to other reports of threats to the President at Longboat Key (Incident Report, Sarasota Police Dept., 4:07 A.M., 9/11/01, obtained by authors, conv. Monica Yadav, ABC 7 [affiliate], int. Sheriff’s Dept. source, ints. Carroll Mooneyhan, Murf Klauber, Katy Moulton).
12 Draper: Albuquerque Tribune, 9/10/02;
13 Morell: Tenet, 165–.
14 President first learned: At 9:17 that morning, in a conversation live with presenter Peter Jennings, reporter John Cochran stated from Sarasota that as Bush “got out of his hotel suite this morning, was about to leave, reporters saw the White House chief of staff, Andy Card, whisper into his ear. The reporter said to the President, ‘Do you know what’s going on in New York?’ He said he did, and he said he will have something about it later. His first event is [in] about half an hour at an elementary school in Sarasota.” This report has been taken to indicate that President Bush was already aware of the first impact on the Trade Center as he left his hotel. This would be impossible, however, as the President reportedly left his hotel at 8:35, some eleven minutes before the crash of American Flight 11. Bush did tell a reporter he would “talk about it later,” but at a later stage, well into his visit to Booker Elementary, after the second airplane had hit and just before 9:17 when Cochran spoke to Peter Jennings. The authors conclude that, in the rush of unfolding events, Cochran conflated disparate events—perhaps not reporting all of them firsthand (Cochran: “ABC News Special Report: Planes Crash into World Trade Center,” transcript, 9/11/01 & tape on www.youtube.com; 8:35 at hotel: WP, 1/27/02; “talk … later”: ABC News, 6/22/04).
15 Loewer: AP, 11/26/01;
16 Card: Rep. Adam Putnam in GW Hatchet, 4/8/02;
17 “The first report”: Washington Times, 10/7/02;
18 “I thought”: CBS, 9/10/03;
19 “We’re going”: AP, 8/19/02.
20 three alarms: Dwyer & Flynn, 47–;
21 first responders: Staff Statement 13, 14, CO;
22 “twenty-four hours”: int. Richard, World Trade Center Task Force, 10/10/01;
23 Instructions not heard: Staff Statement 13, CO;
24 “no need”: Dwyer & Flynn, 72;
25 9:02: CR, 289;
26 4,000 people: USA Today, 12/20/01;
27 On Channel 5: NYT, 8/27/10;
28 “One plane’s”: Bamford, Pretext, 92, 89;
29 Rumsfeld: Torie Clarke, Lipstick on a Pig, NY: Free Press, 2006, 217–, int. Torie Clarke on WBZ (Boston), 9/16/01, int. Donald Rumsfeld by Alfred Goldberg and Rebecca Cameron, 12/23/02, “Rumsfeld on Intel,” B7, T2, CF;
30 “With all hell”: Tenet, 162;
31 Clarke: Richard Clarke, 1–;
32 “Get ready”: footage of Bush’s visit to Booker Elementary is viewable on www.youtube.com;
33 phonics-based: New Yorker, 7/26/04.
34 picked up readers: The President held his book the correct way up, contrary to persistent claims that he held it upside down. A photograph purporting to show him holding a book upside down—on another occasion—was doctored. In the original AP photograph
of that occasion, Bush was clearly holding the book the correct way up (claims: e.g., refs. to the “Pet Goat” story on Google, Jude Cowell blog, 11/19/08, www.judecowell.wordpress.com, Asia Times, 10/30/04; doctored: “Dubya, Willya Turn the Book Over?” 11/16/02, www.wired.com).
35 news coverage: Televisions were available at the school. President Bush would be excoriated, later, for appearing to claim—in Florida in December 2001 and subsequently—that he had seen TV coverage of the first plane hitting the Trade Center. What he said in December was: “And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in [authors’ italics], and I saw an airplane hit the tower—the television was obviously on, and I used to fly myself, and I said, ‘There’s one terrible pilot.’ ” Bush was in error in saying that he saw one of the strikes on TV before entering the classroom. There was no live footage of the first strike on the Trade Center. The footage of Flight 11’s impact, shot by documentary filmmaker Jules Naudet, was on video and not shown until much later. Bush, moreover, would be in the classroom with the schoolchildren—not watching television—when the TV showed live pictures of the second plane flying into the Trade Center. The footage of the second strike, however, was shown again and again in the minutes and hours that followed. What Bush recalled having seen on TV at the school was surely one of the reruns, transmitted after he had left the classroom. A photograph taken at the school features Bush standing near a TV screen—one that appears to show smoke billowing from the Trade Center. Given the tumultuous events that followed on September 11 and later, and given the President’s infamous propensity to muddle his utterances, there is no reason to attach significance to his error in saying he saw one of the strikes on television before entering the classroom (there were TVs: Summers tour of school, int. Dwana Washington; “And I was sitting”: interview George Bush, 12/04/01, www.whitehouse.gov; much later: Paul Thompson, The Terror Timeline, NY: Regan, 2004, 388, & see Friend, 187; photo: AP).
36 Marine: Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 9/10/02.
37 “It took me”/“Captain Loewer says”: AP, 11/26/01.
38 “A second plane”: CR, 38. To calculate the timing of the classroom session and when Bush was informed of the second strike, the authors studied the footage of the session available on YouTube and in the relevant section of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, which includes specific time points. The authors’ calculation as to the delay before Bush was told of the second strike—“ninety seconds”—would mean that Card interrupted him somewhat after 9:04—a little earlier than the 9:05 timing cited in the Commission Report. The delay was in any case minimal (Fahrenheit 9/11, Sony Pictures, 2004, CR, 38).
39 Brian Clark: Bernstein, 224–;
40 emergency calls: NY Daily News, 9/30/01.
41 Compton: ABC News, 9/11/02;
42 Daniels: St. Petersburg Times, 9/8/02;
43 Jones-Pinkney/Radkey: AP, 9/11/06;
44 “Can you get”: St. Petersburg Times, 7/4/04;
45 “The Pet Goat”: eds. Siegfried Engelmann & Elaine Bruner, Reading Mastery 2, Storybook 1, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1995;
46 “DON’T SAY”: Washington Times, 10/7/02.
47 Gartenberg/Puma: WABC (NY), 9/11/01, eds. Der Spiegel, 85–, 212–.
48 Flight 77: Farmer, 160–, 186, “Air Traffic Control Recording,” NTSB, 12/21/01, CR, 8–, 24–;
49 “Whose plane”: MFR 04017175, 11/20/03, CF;
50 Ballinger/Boston warned: Staff Report, “The Four Flights and Civil Aviation Security,” 8/26/04, CF, CR, 455n67;
51 Command Center failed: ibid.;
52 Boston advised/NY issued: CR, 23, “Staff Report”;
53 “Beware”: CR, 11. One such message went to Flight 175, which, still unknown to Ballinger, had already crashed;
54 4,546: Pamela Freni, Ground Stop, NY: iUniverse, 2003, 59.
55 May call: Las Vegas to Dallas, 9/12/01, Dallas to Las Vegas, 9/11/01, Dallas to Dallas, 9/11/01, “Misc. Comms from 4 Flights,” B13, T7, CF;
56 mother got through: “Through My Eyes,” by Toni Knisley, submission for National September 11 Memorial & Museum, http://ns11makehistory.appspot.com, MFR 04017206, 11/19/03;
57 some wondered: Farmer, 162;
58 videoconference: CR, 36;
59 “I need”: Stephen Hayes, Cheney, NY: HarperCollins, 2007, 331–;
60 “The Cabinet”: Barton Gellman, Angler, London: Allen Lane, 114.
61 “very aware”: Newsweek, 12/3/01;
62 Cheney/Rice: CR, 39, 463n204, St. Petersburg Times, 9/8/02.
CHAPTER 5
1 Olson calls: FBI 302 of Lori Keyton, 9/14/01, “Flight Call Notes and 302s,” B13, T7, CF, FBI 302 of Ted Olson, 9/11/01, INTELWIRE, int. Ted Olson on Larry King Weekend, CNN, 1/6/02, Farmer, 163;
2 undetected: Staff Monograph, “The Four Flights and Civil Aviation Security,” 8/26/04, CF;
3 speeding east/notified Reagan/Secret Service: Flight 77 map and timeline, “Timelines 9-11, 1 of 2,” B20, T7, CF.
4 Ladies and gentlemen: AP, 9/11/01;
5 “We’re under”: Clear the Skies, BBC documentary, 9/1/02.
6 “We’ve got”: Alfred Goldberg et al., Pentagon 9/11, Washington, D.C.: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2007, 13;
7 agents acted: CR, 39–, 464n209, Gellman, 114–, int. of Dick Cheney on Meet the Press, NBC, 9/16/01. Questions have been raised about the timing of Cheney’s move from his office to the underground shelter—to be reported in Ch. 13.
8 P-56/O’Brien: Spencer, 145–;
9 horrified controllers: ibid., 158, USA Today, 8/11/02;
10 fire engine crew: “Arlington County After-Action Report,” www.co.arlington.va.us/fire/edu/about/pdf/after_report.pdf, Annex A, A-4;
11 policeman: Goldberg et al., 13;
12 priest: Penny Schoner, “Analysis of Eyewitness Statements on 9/11, American Airlines Flight 77 Crash into the Pentagon,” www.ratical.org, pt. 8;
13 Anderson/Benedetto/Riskus: ibid., pts. 13, 18, 3;
14 “I looked out”: “Personal Experience at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001,” by Penny Elgas, Smithsonian Institution.
15 Jester: Goldberg et al., 151–;
16 Boger: ibid., 27, 64–;
17 Others heard: ibid., 137, 134;
18 fuel/mph/had struck: ibid., 16–;
19 “simply melt”: statement of Penny Elgas, http://americanhistory.si.edu.
20 “I saw”: The source of this quote is blogger Rebecca Gordon, a resident of Virginia, writing as “Skarlet” on www.punkprincess.com (corr. Rebecca Gordon, 2009, column at Gordon’s blog www.meanlouise.com).
21 “I expected”: Christopher Hilton, The Women’s War, Stroud, U.K.: History Press, 2003;
22 impact: Goldberg et al., 17;
23 dead/injured: ibid., 23–, 49, 117–, 123;
24 Morrison/Cruz/Kurtz/Moody/Gallop: ibid., 28–;
25 Marines: ibid., 53–;
26 firefighters: ibid., 64–, 78–, 93–.
27 CIA briefer/room shaken: interview of Donald Rumsfeld by Alfred Goldberg & Rebecca Cameron, “Rumsfeld on Intel,” B7, T2, CF;
28 left office/“it was dark”: Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld, NY: Scribner, 2007, 1–;
29 “hundreds”: int. of Rumsfeld;
30 “people lying”: transcript of Rumsfeld int. for Parade magazine, 10/12/01, www.defenselink.mil & see Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, NY: Sentinel, 2011, 336–;
31 examined/gurney: Cockburn, 2;
32 photographed: Goldberg et al., photo section 82–;
33 “suit jacket”: Torie Clarke, 221. Victoria “Torie” Clarke, whose timing of 10:15 we have used, took notes of events that day. Rumsfeld himself believed he was back inside the Pentagon from the crash site “shortly before or after 10:00,” and then used the phone before proceeding to the Executive Support Center (took notes: int. of Rumsfeld; “shortly before or after”: testimony of Donald Rumsfeld, 3/23/04, CO).
34 news reached/escort to advise: CR, 39, 463n206;
 
; 35 President hurried: Bamford, Pretext, 62;
36 “Sounds like”: CR, 39;
37 “They were taxiing”: int. law enforcement officer, now member of Joint Terrorism Task Force, who asked not to be identified;
38 “like a rocket”: CBS News, 9/10/03;
39 northeast/west: corr. Miles Kara, 2011, Stephen Hayes, 341, St. Petersburg Times, 7/4/04;
40 Instead of returning: CR, 39, 325.
CHAPTER 6
1 Melodie/Leroy Homer: int. of Melodie Homer on American Morning, CNN, 9/11/06, CR, 11, 456n70, FBI 302 of Tara Campbell, “FBI 302s ACARS,” B11, T7, CF;
2 Dahl nonplussed: CR, 11, 456n70.
3 “Mayday!”/“Ladies and gentlemen”: “Air Traffic Control Recording,” NTSB, 12/21/01. The hijackers’ transmission is rendered with minor variations—though essentially the same—in the 9/11 Commission Report, the NTSB’s “Air Traffic Control Recording,” and the transcript of the Cockpit Voice Recorder prepared for the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in 2006. We have used the latter (CR, 12, “Air Traffic Control Recording,” Government Exhibit P200056T 01-455-A [ID], “Transcript of the Flight Voice Recorder for UA Flight 93, Commission Copy,” B17, T7, CF).
4 panting: Jere Longman, Among the Heroes, NY: Perennial, 2003, 70, 83;
5 Some investigators: CR, 12.
6 Recorder survived: Every commercial aircraft is required to carry two black boxes that record data about each flight—a Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and a Flight Data Recorder (FDR). Skeptics have raised questions as to the whereabouts of the recorders that were aboard the four flights that crashed on 9/11. Both of Flight 93’s recorders were recovered in readable condition. The CVR for Flight 93 ran on a loop, constantly recording over itself, represented by the thirty-one surviving minutes of sound that we have from inside the cockpit.
The recorders from Flight 77 were found, but only the FDR contained usable data—its CVR was too badly burned to be decipherable.
Both the NTSB and the FBI have said that none of the four recorders from Flights 11 and 175 was located during the cleanup at Ground Zero. A 2003 book reported a claim by former firefighter Nicholas DeMasi to have found three of the four black boxes at Ground Zero during the recovery operation. His account of having found the boxes was corroborated by Mike Bellone, who also worked on the recovery operation. Something that NTSB spokesman Ted Lopatkiewicz told the authors may explain the DeMasi claim. The agency sent several dummy black boxes to Ground Zero, he recalled, specimens to help nonexpert volunteers in the hunt for the real ones. It may be the dummy boxes that DeMasi described (boxes general/re four flights: “Cockpit Voice Recorders & Flight Data Recorders,” www.ntsb.gov, CR, 456n76, corr. Ted Lopatkiewicz, 2009; DeMasi: Gail Swanson, Behind the Scenes at Ground Zero, NY: TRAC Team, 2003, 108–; Bellone: CounterPunch, 12/19/05, NYDN, 9/28/05, NY Post, 4/5/04, “Black Box Cover-Up,” 12/12/04, www.AmericanFreePress.net; FBI/NTSB denied: CounterPunch, 12/19/05).