Presidents, Telephone Calls and National Security

An emergency 3 a.m. telephone call similar to the one Hillary Clinton received in her campaign ad actually occurred during the Carter administration. But the federal government, including the Department of Defense, you should be happy to know, has plans for emergencies already laid out that do not necessarily include the president. The 3 a.m. call went not to President Carter but to his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. It was from someone at the Pentagon. It awoke Brzezinski and told that a rocket had been launched by the Soviet Union. Brzezinski ordered the caller to check it out and to call him back in a minute. The second call told Brzezinski that at least twenty rockets were on their way. Brzezinski was ready to wake up President Carter before five more minutes elapsed, but first he told the caller to recheck. In a minute the caller told him that it was a false alarm, that what were thought to be rockets were either geese or an atmospheric interference. Later Brzezinski was asked if he had awakened his wife during the calls. According to the columnist Jonathan Power, Brzezinski replied with an ironic smile, “If we were all going to die in the next few minutes it was better to let her sleep through it!”

Like Brzezinski's wife, President Carter was left to sleep undisturbed. And during waking hours, emergencies are also on automatic, with a president not having to torture his mind with decision making -- if it is not a question of launching nuclear weapons. That is how is was on September 11, 2001.

At 8:46 a.m., the first plane crashed into New York City's Trade Center, while President Bush was in a motorcade to an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida. Notification was sent to the motorcade but not to Bush, although his limousine was equipped with a secure telephone. His motorcade arrived at the school between 8:55 and 9 a.m. The president's assistant, Andrew Card, kept Bush on his schedule to a classroom with school children. At 9:05, Andrew Card interrupted Bush in the classroom and told him of a telephone call he needed to take. Bush did not take the call until 9:23 -- a conference call with Condoleeza Rice, Vice President Cheney, Robert Mueller of the FBI and Governor Pataki of New York. Meanwhile, agencies of the government were taking action: at 9:17 the FAA had shut down all New York City area airports, and at 9:21 the New York City Port Authority had ordered all bridges and tunnels in the New York City area closed.

Confident that others in government were doing their job, at 9:30 Bush was not performing his role as The Decider. Instead he addressed the nation on camera, from the elementary school, telling the nation that the country had suffered an "apparent terrorist attack."

It is doubtful that Hillary would be required to speak to the nation within an hour of her emergency call at 3 a.m. She might get the same treatment that Vice President Cheney received. At 9:32, Secret Service agents burst into Cheney's White House office, lifted him from his chair and took him to the security of the underground bunker in the White House basement.

At 9:40 a.m. in the White House bunker, it was the president's Transportation Secretary, Norman Mineta, who was giving orders. He was told that there were 4,546 airplanes in the air and that they were being brought down "per pilot discretion." Mineta yelled back: "F...k pilot discretion. Get those goddamn planes down." The FAA responded, stopping all flight operations at U.S. airports and ordering all planes in the air to land at the nearest airport. Only military and medical flights were permitted to fly, and Air Force One. At 9:55, President Bush boarded Air Force One at the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport and began his flight to Washington.

Also at 9:55, Cheney, in the White House bunker, was asked whether a passenger airliner -- United Airlines Flight 93 -- should be shot down. Cheney answered yes.

At 10:32, Cheney called Air Force One and reported danger to the president's plane and that a fighter plane was on its way as an escort. By phone to Cheney, Bush made the kind of general policy statement that does not require a lot of political experience or operational details, the kind that could easily be made if he had been awakened at 3 in the morning. He announced: "We're going to find out who did this, and we're going to kick their asses."

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