National security officials recall responding to 9/11 as it unfolded

0:00A day that divides history. It is a solemn anniversary. 25 years inside 11. Tonight, national security officials who add a front row seat to history and responded to America's deadliest attack as an unfolded. Coming up, I'm company. Hello and welcome to Compass Points. September 11, 2001 was a day of terror, a day of extraordinary courage, a day of tragedy still felt by so many. It was also a day of chaos and confusion. And as always, it fell to the national security professionals working for the administration to respond in real time, to try to distill fact from fiction, to convey information to key principles, including President Bush, so actions could be taken while our country was under attack.

1:00Two of those national security officials joined us tonight. Retired rear admiral Deborah Loer was the director of the White House situation room, and she was traveling with the president on September 11. And Rob Hargis was the senior duty officer in the White House situation room that morning. Thanks very much, both of you. We're coming in on this solemn anniversary. Deborah, that morning you'd been directing the White House situation room for six months. You were on the road with the president and Sarah Sorter of Florida. Rob, you've been the intelligence officer there and became a senior duty officer in the White House situation room. You were in Washington at the time. And right as the first plane hit, you guys got on the phone. And right before the second plane hit, around 9-01, you're on the phone together. Correct. Tell me what happens, Rob. Sure. We, typically if the president's traveling, there was a national security council representative with the president, that trip, it happened to be Admiral Loer.

2:00She was traveling with the traveling party. And so typically we would be in touch with whoever that person was. For us that day, it was easy because it also happened to be our boss, Captain Loer, Captain Loer at the time. Eventually, Admiral Loer. And so we were providing updates on a host of things. But that morning we were really updating her on any news we had heard about the first aircraft that had hit. Again, no one at that point definitively knew it was a commercial airliner. And so we were on the phone providing an update to Captain Loer. Let me jump in. Unusual for us to do when I was in the communication room. We checked all of our circuits. And I asked for a television. We normally don't have a television. Rob had a television in the situation room. So at 901, a television rolled into the communication room. And I had it turned. In the school in the cinema. In the school in Sarasota. Yes, thank you. So I had the TV turned on. We turned it to a cable news channel. And I was watching, I called Rob.

3:02We're on the phone at 901. And we're both watching the picture of the tower burning. So then Rob says to me. As we're rolling through our updates, we had the newest piece of technology we had in the White House situation room was a brand new 52 or 55 inch flat panel plasma. And it put off about 150 degrees of heat. But it was big. And we were in the sit room watching the first tower on fire, trying to work our calls with FAA and others to determine what was the nature of that first crash. And there was a moment where John Sherman, Marcy Cailer, the other two duty officers in there with me. We saw the second plane flying from the left of the screen initially thinking, perhaps the right side of the screen, thinking it was a replay. And then instantly recognizing the first tower was already on fire. And of course, we can see right there. I mean, the moment that we all were watching, see the plane turn into the tower. That was the moment. And that's exactly what Rob and I were seeing.

4:04We were speaking to each other on the phone. We went quiet. Both of us saw the plane turn and impact. And Rob said to me words to the effect, I got to go. And I said, call me back. And we both slammed our headsets down and went to work. And the key conclusion that you came from being able to watch that plane turn into the tower and then the explosion was what? Rob had informed me that the first aircraft had been a commercial airliner, the weather was perfectly clear. It was no, so that had been, it could be a tragic accident. The second airliner that we saw together, commercial airliner, perfectly clear, it was a national incident. And that's what I took away, that's what Rob took away. And that's what we started to notify our seniors of that event.

5:05And that senior that you notified in the room was Andy Card, the Ministry of Staff. What did you say to him? I went from the communication room into the classroom. Andy Card was standing there. It was unusual for me to come into that room. So I told Andy a second aircraft had impacted into a second World Trade Center tower. The nation is under attack. And that phrase? I stepped away. Why were you so confident in that phrase? Absolutely confident. Looking at all the parameters that had been shared with me from the White House situation room and my own experiences, that is exactly what I deduced and exactly what Rob and the team in this situation room deduced and our notifications proceeded in that manner throughout the entire national security structure. And that is exactly what Andy Card whispers into the president. Of course we have that. I believe that's correct. Yeah, the chief staff goes up to the president and whispers. The second tower has been hit.

6:06We're just about to hear it now. There it is. The nation is under attack. It's under attack. The president excuses himself, comes out. You both go back into that side room. What does he ask you? What are you brief on? When the president comes through the door into the small communication room, I led him to the television. Again, that was superb that we had the TV there that day. And we got a photo of that. And he was watching that. And he was watching that. That is the reason behind it. And so he was watching the TV. I would guess for 30 seconds, 35 seconds as I explained, I basically clarified for the president everything I had heard from Rob and his team in this situation room. And from that point, we were often running. At that point, I believe, Secretary Card, chief of staff, Card was in communication with the situation room. The president was in communication with the vice president and with Dr. Rice. And you may, you could follow from there because there are many other phone calls. Sure. Yeah, Nick.

7:06It's one of the principal jobs or duties missions of the White House situation room is to alert inform and connect or alert connect and inform. And it was, for lack of a better term, we were the easy button. So if you were a member of the National Security Council or the assistant to the president for national security affairs that, for short, the national security adviser, Dr. Rice, who was the national security adviser at that time, if they wanted to be connected to anybody inside the national security community or the government, they would call the sit room and just say, can you get me Secretary Powell? Can you get me Secretary Rumsfeld? Whoever it might be. So we were a communications node. And so our job was to connect people, but also brief people up. And they might ask a question. They might call in and say, what's the status? Where is this person going to or where have they been? And so we became a node for communications and information at that level. And vice president Cheney and then eventually Dr. Rice ended up in a different location of the White House.

8:07And we kept them in communication with the president while he moved to the aircraft, on the aircraft, and then to their other locations through the course of the day. And one of the fascinating things in any crisis is that, you know, in the situation room, you're getting calls from all of the principals that you just said, from foreign leaders. But you're also getting calls almost in a private manner. And then you, for example, got a call from your college roommate. What did he tell you and what did you learn on that phone call? Yes. In the midst of the crush of calls, somebody turned to me and said, Rob, you have a call from Jim Demos, who is my undergraduate college roommate. Good, good friend. And I thought, well, that's peculiar. And it's peculiar enough where I'm going to actually take this call. Jim was from New York. And I grabbed the line. I said, Jim, very busy right now. What can I do for you? And he said, I know you're busy. I don't know who else to go with, go to with this information. His father's girlfriend, Lynn Simpson, had worked on the 88th, 89th floor of the first tower

9:09that was hit. And she'd been knocked to the ground. She was trapped on that floor. And they could not get out the emergency doors or the stairwell doors. She had gotten a hold of Jim's father. And had explained the situation, John, his father got a hold of Jim, an attorney at that point. Jim had him on the other line. And it was explaining to me that there were X number of people alive trapped on the 88th or 89th floor. And I said, I'll let you know, can you tell me, is anyone trying to get him? I didn't know. I took that information, kind of put it in the back of my head a little bit later, when inside the situation room asked me, do we even have any idea how high up people might still be alive? And I happened to have that information. And I said, there's at least 18 people on the 89th floor, 88th floor. And someone said, oh, is that from Port Authority? Is that from FDNY? And I said, that's from my college roommate. Yeah. Let me finish that story, because there's a photo of Lynn Simpson, because she survived that day. Barely.

10:09And I was just going to say, I'm not going to say that, because the firefighters were willing and able to go up those stairs and rescue her. And that is the scene in Lower Manhattan that morning, which obviously the shock is still for us. The Pentagon is hit next. And this is another example of information not necessarily being official. So how do you first hear the Pentagon has been hit? Just before the Pentagon was hit, I was on the phone with the Deputy Director of Operations of the National Military Command Center. We love our acronyms, the DDO of the NMCC. So one star general, I think it was an Army general that day. And we were talking some updates about aircraft and things. And while that's going on, we had a White House communicator that was coming into the White House to help augment our staff. And was driving along a road called 395 between Pentagon City and the Pentagon. And was on the phone with our communicator, Scott Hire, Navy communicator, and told Scott, hey, there's an aircraft over Crystal City right now.

11:10And Scott yelled that to me from the back of the situation room. And I said, everything's grounded. And he said, no, no. He's saying there's an aircraft over, and then he said, oh my God, the Pentagon's just been hit. And so I relayed that to the DDO, to the Battle Watch camp. My counterpart essentially in the Pentagon, yes. And I said, I think you just got hit by a plane. And he said, that's impossible. I would know. And about a second later, I could hear claxons or alarms go off on the back. He dropped an expletive and said, I've got to go. And we dropped the call, at which point we knew the Pentagon had been hit. At one point, the White House is evacuated. And you get calls, multiple calls from your boss. And you should leave, you should leave, you should leave. You refused, why? We had gotten calls from the National Security Council's executive secretary, Steve Began, who was traveling with Andy Cardo, one of Andy Cardo's deputies, Joe Hagen. They were in New York as well, advancing the president's upcoming trip to the United Nations

12:10for an address he was going to give their later in September. And as the White House was evacuated, obviously that word got out. As people called in, again, looking to be connected, it was, hey, we heard the White House is being evacuated. Why are you still there? And kind of took it under advisement. We knew we had to continue to keep the aircraft and the principles there. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, cat lower connected we knew that we had Dr. Rice, the vice president, eventually Dr. Rice's deputies, Steve Hadley, the secretary of transportation or monadot, were all in the bunker, which is a different part. You got a picture of it? Yeah. Different parts of the White House. You're in the situation room different area. This is the Vice President leading in the emergency operation. There in the President's emergency operations center, physically separate from us. And it was our understanding that when the communication circuits had been designed, probably back in the 60s, that the situation room and the P.O.C. had exquisite communications links between the two. Because if the President went down there, we could keep the President informed. We had excellent links between the White House

13:11situation room and the aircraft. But there were not excellent links for communications between the aircraft and the President's emergency operations center because he was never going to be in both places at the same time. You had to stay. You felt you had to stay. We felt obligated. We did. We felt obligated that in order to keep the President as well informed and connected to his principles, that we should stay in that position. And we did not essentially unhook from our seats that day. So Admiral, that brings us to you. You take off from Sarasota. Correct. You're on Air Force One. You're briefing the President, talking to the President, talking to the Principles. What's the mood? What's the mood? Concern, not having enough information, wanting to know more. That was the mood. Very concerned about the next move. So once we were in the air, we established circuits back with the White House situation room. And the President spoke to the Vice President. That conversation led to the understanding

14:15that there have been two impacts in New York, another impact at the Pentagon. There was concern that there had been an explosion at State Department, which we know that that was debount, but it took time to get that information. And the Vice President and Dr. Rice, and then the Secret Service encouraged the President not to come back immediately to Washington, DC. And that's you on Air Force One with the President, with any correct. And that actually is us getting ready to land at Barc Stale Air Force Base. Barc Stale Air Force Base, Treesport, Louisiana. Right. President wanted to speak to the nation. Correct. Let's take a listen. He immediately expressed the attack in existential terms. Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward. And freedom will be defended. Why Barc Stale? And why did the President feel the need to make that statement? I was after we left Sarasota, and we began to proceed

15:19towards a different location, not the Washington, DC location. We, the aircraft, was en route. And I was asked several questions. One of the questions was, can I do a press conference from the aircraft? And I looked at the President and said, certainly, you can do a press conference from the aircraft. We can make that happen. And then I realized as he was telling me what he wanted, he wanted a fool. He wanted the video, he wanted the audio, he wanted all of that. So he could really be speaking to the nation. And I told him, we don't have that video capability. And it was, I was the bad. I had the bad news. We don't have the capability. But we'd have to land to do that. And talking to the pilot, the pilot made the decision with the President, saying, I want to do a press conference. The nearest location was Barc Stale Air Force Base. The next stop was the off-air force base in Nebraska. You know there are threats against Air Force One. Correct.

16:20You have an opportunity to make a personal phone call. What was that call? That was coming back to Washington, DC, from off-air force base. And I had been literally on a marathon around the entire day and not stopped. The communicators called me and asked me if I had anybody that I wanted to speak with. And I said, no, I thought about it. I said, no, I'd like to speak to my parents. So they said, we'll take care of that. And I went to my little mini office on Air Force One and sat down. The phone was buzzed. I put the phone to my ear. And I heard the communicator say to my mom, who had just stands into phone, will you take a phone call from Air Force One? And my mother then yelled across the room, you hurt. It's Debbie on the phone. And I spoke for about two to three minutes with my parents and told them that I'm OK.

17:21We're all going to be OK. And that was about the extent of that. And you were worried, though. I can tell it's still emotional for you when you think about it. You were worried that everything was not going to be OK. Throughout the day, there were moments when it was we did not. At that point, I really knew things were going to be OK. But earlier in the day, they were at least two periods during the day when we were unsure of where Air Force One was going to be flying, to which location and for how long we were going to be gone. The government, we had initiated through the White House the Continuity of Operations Program for our government, the Continuity of Government Program, and the Continuity of the Presidency, which are those are very extensive, complex programs. And this is the only time that I can think of that those three programs were all initiated, because there was such a significant threat to our government.

18:22That's why there was real concern as to what the next step would be. And through the day, we learned more and more, bringing the president to off at Air Force Base was a significant action. He had all of the intelligence capability, information capability. There was a strong military presence there that was its strategic command. Admiral Mice was head of strategic command at the time. And he briefed Admiral Mice briefed the president on the entire situation with US forces, the situation in New York, the situation in Shanksville, and the situation in Washington, DC. So the president throughout the day was, he was getting more and more and more information that didn't make life any more comfortable, because he had many decisions to make, as we would proceed from 9-11 in the days that went forward. But things were, by the time we were on our way back from off it, somewhat more calm than they had been.

19:23You're on your way back. You land. You're able to take the Marine One tour of Corusal, Washington, and you send Rob home, as I understand the story, because you need to get some sleep. And Rob, tell me about that drive home. Yeah, typically. What was your view? Typically, we would have entered our shift around 1800, around 6 p.m. Obviously, we had been in those seats all day. We had had a number of remarkable colleagues that had rushed in to the White House, as we recalled them. In fact, one of our challenges that morning was, we had too many off-duty White House sit-room duty officers coming in, because we had two concerns for that. One was, we weren't going to have anybody fresh to turn over to that night. And two, if the White House had been hit, we wouldn't have anybody left to reconstitute it. And so I had said, hey, let me stay in here when the new team comes in. I said to Deb, hey, I've got continuity. Let me get everybody up to speed. And she said, OK. And obviously, there's a lot going on. And six o'clock turns into seven o'clock turns into eight o'clock turns into nine o'clock. And she came back and she said, I told you to go home hours ago.

20:24What are you still doing here? And I said, I've got it. I'm fine. I can keep going. And she said, no, no. I need you to go home and go to sleep, because you have to be back here in about four and a half hours. And so John Sherman and I were the last duty officers to leave. Frank Miller left with us, National Security Council, Senior Director of Defense. And I had to drive back home past the Pentagon. And feeling the smoke smelling the kind of accurate air having to drive past it, I lived a little bit south of the Pentagon. Windows were open in my townhouse at the time. And hearing the combat air patrol, hearing tactical air over DC that evening, that night, 10, 30, 11 o'clock. For the first time since World War II. For the first time since World War II. And being able to smell the Pentagon, I know you lived closer to the Pentagon. Excuse me. And this gets to both of you. I mean, both of you lost colleagues, both of you lost friends in the Pentagon. Right. Yeah, I lost colleagues from Defense Intelligence Agency and folks in the Navy Command Center and in CNOIP that chief enable operations until plot.

21:25The Intel officers that were in there that morning, led by Dan Shanauer and Vince Tolbert, were doing their morning debrief. And a lot of our friends, in fact, our Navy intelligence officer in the White House sit room had come to us just months before that from that job. And he left that job early to come join the sit room staff and his replacement was killed. Jonas Panic was killed in that attack. And it's tough. It's tough. As Ed came in that morning to help augment our team. The first thing he said as he came in past my desk was, thanks for the job. And Ed and I were friends prior to him coming to the White House and we're dear, dear friends to this day. And we'll see each other later today. I'm going to give you the last words here, because I've been in a half or so left. Your view from your patio, in fact, was of the Pentagon. You guys have stayed friends. We can tell, right? Right, you're helping each other finish each other. We finish. You're going to be there. You're going to be together later today. How has that helped you understand that day?

22:26And how today, 25 years later, do you process 9-11? I still have a challenge every year that goes by. Thinking back, what could we have done better? What did we miss? As a government, what could we do better? And then as a people, what can we do better? And what I see today is a fraction in our culture. And I look back to 9-11 and the days after 9-11. We were one people. Everybody was there helping each other. And there was so much that wasn't right about the days after 9-11. You couldn't get around in Washington, DC. You couldn't take, drive a car into the city. There was a one-mile barrier around the downtown area. There were so many things that you couldn't do. But people were helping people.

23:28And when I look back at what we learned, we learned how important it is to relate to your next-door neighbor, how important it is to relate to the guy who lives down the road and to relate to your colleagues. And so what I look at is how we could have done things better at the time, and then how we can take what we learned from back then and bring it to today. What an important lesson that we have to remind ourselves more and more Admiral Lauer. Thank you very much, Rob Hargis. Thank you so much. And thank you for joining us. That's all the time we have for now. I'm Nick Schifrin. We'll see you here again next week on Compass Points.