CHAPTER 1

WHERE WAS DICKCHENEY?

At 8:54 a.m. somewhere over Ohio on September 11, 2001, oneof the four hacked airliners on scheduled flights from theEast Coast to the West Coast strayed off course, turned backeast and headed for, you could say, two of the most significantbuildings in, or symbols of, America: the White House and thePentagon. Presumably no one but those two hacking pilotswould decide whether to strike one or the other or both whenthey got closer to their targets. About ten minutes before thefirst two hacked planes of the morning, AA 11 and UA 175,destroyed the World Trade Center, the third plane, AA 77,swooped down over Washington D. C. and hit the Pentagon,killing 125 people inside. The fourth plane, UA 93, turned offcourse about thirty-five minutes later, and, after a group ofbravely resisting passengers attempted to take control, forcedthe plane down in a field in Shanksville, Pa. They were moreheroic than they or anyone knew at the time, as they probablysaved the lives of the soon-to-be de facto leader of the UnitedStates and the others not evacuated from the White House.And the White House itself.

It is now clear that from the time of the first hacking thatmorning the United States government committed a series ofmonumental national-security failures. The major immediatefailure was Cheney's in that he appeared at the emergencycontrol bunker beneath the White House some fifty-fiveminutes after the time he later implied. Where he was in themeantime, as the third and fourth hacked planes streakedtoward the nation's capital, no one seemed to know. Both heand Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld were desperately needed:with the president away in Florida, they were the only two nowauthorized by military protocol to order the shooting downof the attacking commercial planes with civilian passengersaboard. But Rumsfeld was also missing. Cheney's second majorfailure, and in this case Bush's as well, was in ignoring theCIA, the FBI and counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke's,warnings that a catastrophe such as 9/11 could happen at anytime.

The first failures were that the Boston FAA flight controllerswho violated protocol by not notifying the military andrequesting Air Force assistance when the first hacking, of AA11, occurred at 8:19 that morning, according to the final reportof the 9/11 Commission, which investigated the events leadingup to and including 9/11. Nor, apparently, did the Cleveland orIndianapolis FAA controllers inform the military of the coursechanges of both the second and third planes, AA 77 and UA 93.Those were "alarming" occurrences indicating a "catastrophicsystem failure," and the FAA should have asked for immediatemilitary assistance; the 9/11 commission report suggested theyhad not. As a result of these and other failures, AA 77 was ableto reach Washington, swoop low right through what one wouldhave expected to be a swarm of Air Force jet fighters. But it wasnever made clear precisely how long they were delayed beforethey were able to scramble and take to the sky. In any case,AA 77 was able to penetrate the center of the largest nationaldefense system in the world without a shot being fired.

After the second World Trade Center Tower was hit, at 9:03,the entire world, including the vice president, seemed to realizethat the United States was under terrorist attack. Cheney saidhe was lifted right off his feet by Secret Service and carried tothe bunker. But the 9/11 Commission, which investigated theattacks, concluded that he did not arrive until fifty-five minuteslater. Why? Where was he? No one then seemed to know. Nowwe do know, thanks in large part to Jane Mayer's reportingfor The New Yorker and her book, The Dark Side, which willbe treated in detail in chapter 5: "9/11 The Cheney Version.As for Rumsfeld, Brigadier General W. Montague Winfield ofthe Pentagon's command center said, "For thirty minutes wecouldn't find him."

During this critical time the emergency-operationsbunker was without its acting commander-in-chief of themilitary or its secretary of defense to direct the defense of thenation at the height of the new wave of attacks. And WhiteHouse counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke had warnedCheney that more attacks should be expected. During his andRumsfeld's absence, at 9:38, AA 77 crashed into the Pentagon.Perhaps they could have successfully ordered it shot downand saved the lives of 125 people in the building. The fateof the passengers aboard AA 77 had probably already beensealed, as with the passengers aboard UA 93, which crashedwhen its passengers staged a revolt and forced it down in afield in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Few seem to have realizedthat those brave passengers may well have saved the lifeof the Acting President of the United States and the othersstill in the White House by leaving only one plane to attackWashington DC, whose pilot, for whatever logistical reason,decided to hit the Pentagon, which had not been evacuated,instead of the White House.

CHAPTER 2

TWO GUYS

What did we expect?

Two such different guys, George W. Bush and RichardB. Cheney, with such vastly different pasts, characters,backgrounds, interests, attitudes, temperaments. Yet they gotalong beautifully. That may have been part of the problem.Perhaps they got along too beautifully. Perhaps it would havebeen better, especially during their first term in office, whenthe principal damage was done, had George stood up to Dickmore—at least on the small things (to paraphrase Woody Allen)like the war in Iraq. But each man's particular characteristicsand skills might have made this impossible....