[woman] It was a beautiful fall morning,
and I knew I had a staff meeting to get to in the Pentagon.
The Pentagon's a very big building. It's enormous.
So we know it's one of the largest office buildings in the world.
It has five sides, five rings, five floors.
I worked, at the time, on the second floor on the E-ring,
the most exterior ring in the Pentagon.
I told my husband, "I'm late. I have got to get out of here
because I have a meeting at 9:00."
And I just gave everybody a kiss, and said, "I'll see you when I get home."
So there were approximately 16 of us in this staff meeting.
And when it got to me,
there was the loudest noise I had ever heard,
and it got dark.
[indistinct radio chatter]
It was so dark in the room…
you could not see your hand in front of your face.
I knew I was on the right-hand side of the table.
When I came to, I was on the left-hand side of the table.
I don't know if I was blown to the other side of the table,
but I know that's not where I sat.
I sat on the right-hand side of the table.
[reporter 1] Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
We're looking at a live picture from Washington,
and there is smoke pouring out of the Pentagon.
So at that point, my mind took over and said,
"I need to get out of this building."
[sirens wailing]
[reporter 2] The fire just erupted
as far away as we've seen now, from the center, where the crash occurred.
[Wills] I started to crawl.
As I crawled out of the door, someone grabbed the back of my pants,
and I said, "Who is it?" And she said, "It's Lois."
I said, "Come on, Lois. I got you. Stay with me. I got you."
Not knowing there were people behind Lois.
So as I crawl through the Pentagon,
there were cubicles.
And so I'd crawl under a cubicle, and I'd say, "We have to back up."
And as we crawl, she'd stop and say, "I can't go any further."
And I'm like, "Lois, you have to. I have to get you out of this building."
[emotionally] Um…
Sorry.
I said, "I can't leave you here."
"I can't tell your children that I left you in this building."
Um…
So she said, "I can't go any further."
She said her nylons were sticking to her legs
because the floor was so hot.
And so I told her, I said, "Just get on my back. I'll carry you."
At that point, I just wanted to give up.
But I knew I couldn't, because I had these people with me.
And I just thought, "God, please. You gotta get us out of here."
The only thing going through my mind is,
"I brought these people here. We're gonna die."
[dramatic music plays]
So it was a soldier who was there, myself, and my colonel.
And we were just beating on this window.
The window popped open…
and I could see down that these guys were down there.
They were saying, "Jump! Jump! We got you!"
So, the young soldier who was there,
my colonel and I lowered him out the window
because he had been burned pretty bad.
So, he was the first one we lowered down.
The lady, Lois, uh, we lowered her out of the window next.
And there was another lady behind her.
She got to the window and she was--
She looked me dead in my eyes, she said, "Colonel, I'm scared."
I said, "But I got to get you out of here."
She's like, "But I can't." I'm like, "Yes. You can."
So, I mean, I literally peeled her fingers off the ledge and just let her drop.
The guys caught her,
so that leaves my colonel and I in the window.
And he said, "Okay. It's time to go."
So I told him, "Sir, if we're quiet,
maybe we could hear people, and we can go back and get them."
So he and I sat in that window,
and it was just as quiet-- You couldn't hear anything.
[distant sirens]
He and I started yelling and screaming
and banging on the window, and nobody came.
[dramatic music plays]
So, at this point he gives me an order.
He said, "Colonel, you will get out of this window, right now."
The only order ever in my military career that I did not want to obey.
I knew people were still in there.
But I knew I had to.
And as I proceeded out of the window,
eventually I fell.
And from there, I don't know what happened.
I had severe smoke inhalation.
I had burns on my back, and on my arms, and on my legs.
The nurses and others tell me the rest of the story.
This one nurse, she said, "We didn't think you were gonna make it,"
and that I had just gone unconscious.
She said, "We then took you to a triage area
that was outside of the Pentagon,"
and she said,
"This person is not gonna make it. We gotta get her to the hospital."
I was put in a truck that was passing by.
They flagged the truck down and they put me in the back of this truck.
[man] Just a passenger truck?
A pass-- Just a passenger truck that was passing by the Pentagon,
and they flagged it down and put me in this truck,
and the nurse got in the truck with me.
They continued to do CPR and CPR on me.
I remember opening my eyes,
and then that was the end of it.
[dramatic music plays]
[helicopter propellers beating]
[reporter] Still have conflicting reports over what size plane hit.
We heard one eyewitness tell us that it was a small plane
that he seemed to see as he was coming across the 14th Street Bridge…
[dramatic music plays]
[man] United 93,
that traffic for you is one o'clock, 12 miles eastbound, three-seven-zero.
[man 2] Negative contact. We're looking, United 93.
[men] Hey! Hey!
-[man 3] Hey! -[man 4] Somebody!
[air traffic controller] Somebody call Cleveland?
[Bouchat] United 93, it too was fully fueled.
It was bound for San Francisco.
It was delayed, and only took off minutes before
American Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower.
[Homer] Mayday! Get out of here!
We're all going to die here!
[man 1] You got United 93?
[man 2] United 93, south of Chardon? Descended.
- [man 1] What? - [man 2] Looks like he descended.
[man 1] I don't think so. United 93, verify three-five-zero.
[man 2] United 93, Cleveland.
United 93, Cleveland. If you hear the center, ident.
The pilot hijackers had actually transmitted audio communications,
and we think they believed that they were transmitting
those communications back to the cabin of the airline,
but they actually were transmitting them to air traffic control.
[hijacker speaking indistinctly over radio]
…please sit down and keep remaining sitting.
We have a bomb on board, so…
[reporter 1] We're getting reports now that the White House is being evacuated.
We don't know precisely what caused that decision to be made.
[reporter 2] This comes less than an hour
after the double explosions in New York at the World Trade Center.
[reporter 3] We have this as a major development.
The Federal Aviation Administration has shut down all air traffic nationwide.
This country has been immobilized by these terrorist attacks
in terms of air travel today.
[man] The airport's being evacuated. They need to go home.
[reporter 4] There could be terrorists hijacking aircraft
and heading toward buildings that are well-known.
Who knows? Perhaps in other cities.
[reporter 5] We're also getting reports at the Capitol,
the treasury building also being evacuated.
[woman] Later, we learned that Flight 93
was either coming into the White House or the Capitol,
and I think most believe it was the Capitol.
The Capitol Police started yelling, "Evacuate! Evacuate!"
We ran out of the Capitol,
and I asked the security where to go,
and they said, "Just run, run, run."
And I looked back, and all of this smoke was coming from the Pentagon.
[distant police sirens]
[answering machine beeps]
[woman] Honey, are you there?
Jack, pick up sweetie.
Okay. Well, I just wanted to tell you I love you.
We're having a little problem on the plane.
I want to tell you I love you. Please tell my children that I love them very much.
And I'm so sorry, babe.
I hope to be able to see your face again, baby.
[Maguire] On Flight 93,
the passengers who were able to make phone calls
to their loved ones on the ground
learned what had happened on some of the other flights.
And a brave group of those passengers made the decision to storm the cockpit.
And that plane went down in Somerset County, Pennsylvania,
near Shanksville.
Killing all 40 on board.
United 9-3. Have you got information on that yet?
[man] Yeah. He's down.
-[technician] He's down? -[man] Yes.
-[technician] When did he land? -[man] He did not land.
-[technician] He's down, down? -[man] Somewhere northeast of Camp David.
-[technician] Northeast of Camp David. -[man] That's the last report.
They don't know exactly where.
[Lee] I always have to memorialize and think about those on Flight 93,
because, in many ways, they took that plane down and saved many lives,
including my own.
On Flight 93 was Wanda Green,
who was the cousin of my chief of staff, Sandré Swanson.
And so this hit personally,
because Wanda was one of the flight attendants who took over
and made sure that that plane did not come into the Capitol.
It was the most personal and most tragic moment.
They're heroes, they're sheroes,
they're people whose legacy and whose life I honor each and every day.
[distant sirens wailing]
[reporter 1] So, the pieces of this story continue to come together.
Uh, I have to say, in my 30 years as a journalist,
I have never seen anything like this.
Never covered a story of the dimensions of this.
[reporter 2] Here's what we know. Just before 9:00 Eastern time this morning,
a plane crashed into one of the Twin Towers
of the World Trade Center.
A few minutes later,
a second plane crashed into the other tower.
Both skyscrapers are on fire.
-[man 1] No way. -[man 2] Come on.
[man 3] I think we gotta keep going.
[firefighter 1] All right, we're in Stairway "B,"
Tower Two on the four-eighth floor.
[firefighter 2] Mayday! Mayday!
[firefighter 3] Who's calling that?
[man] Over the radio comes,
"Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Get out of the building."
All of a sudden, the North Tower started to shake violently.
[Kern] There's suddenly a loud roar.
Where we were was shaking.
It sounded like rolling thunder times 20.
It was just a weird, horrible, scary sound.
I remember the ceiling tiles falling that were above us.
Smoke started pouring into where we were.
We had no idea what was happening, but we ran as fast as we could.
The smoke, now, was pouring in from everywhere
and was just about so thick
that I probably couldn't see from me to you.
We didn't know it, but what was happening was the South Tower was collapsing.
[man shouting indistinctly through megaphone]
[man] Oh my God!
[people screaming]
[woman] Shit!
-We should run! -[man] Oh shit!
[woman] Oh shit!
[reporter] There has just been a huge explosion.
We can see billowing smoke rising.
And I can't-- I'll tell you, I can't see that second tower.
[man] I hope I live. I hope I live.
It's coming down on me.
Here it comes. I'm getting behind a car.
[ominous music plays]
[Kern] It was the first to collapse, even though it was the second one hit.
[Frederick] I started to run, and all of a sudden
this huge ball of white smoke just came like locusts over me.
[panicked shouting]
I couldn't see. So I fell.
And I just laid there.
So I couldn't hear nothing. I couldn't see nothing.
[man] And I remember people running up Liberty Street.
Liberty Street turns into Maiden Lane, which is where our offices were.
And they're running up Liberty Street.
And this mud cloud was chasing them up the street.
And it looked like it had a mouth.
And the cloud just engulfed them. Like, it swallowed them.
[man 1] Keep moving!
[man 2] Oh shit! Oh shit! Okay, not yet.
-Anthony! You okay? -Yeah.
Will you let me in. Please? Oh my God!
Oh my God!
Watch out.
[Green] You see this crowd coming at you,
and all you're really thinking is, "Oh shit."
I step back, and as I step back to the doorway to the office,
the cloud hits the building and the whole building shakes.
You could hear glass breaking.
[man] Oh shit.
[emergency sirens blaring]
[Green] Everybody's screaming, and it's just chaos at that point.
And I realized that I don't know where my undercover team is.
I hadn't heard from them since the buildings got hit.
And I'm standing looking out the window, and I'm saying,
"I don't know where they are. Somebody's gotta be dead."
What am I going to tell their mother, wife, daughter, child
about how I allowed them to go into this situation
and now they're dead?
These are the same people who I could've been at their barbecue last weekend.
[wind gusting]
[Frederick] As I laid there,
it seemed like a beam of light came straight through the cloud.
So I said to myself, "Maybe I'm dead, and maybe God came to get me."
And then all of a sudden, it just opened up like the Red Sea.
And that's when I heard people screaming and yelling, "Help! Help!"
[man] Yo, Mike! Mike! Mike, I'm over here!
[indistinct chatter]
[two-way radios squawking]
[Frederick] I finally cleared my face. I was dazed.
[dramatic music plays]
[alarm blaring]
[crying]
[Kern] Two people who seemed to be in shock,
that we grabbed and made come with us,
they were covered from head to toe with… with tan soot.
Finally got to the Borders bookstore.
We used the ax to get into the store and got out to Church Street.
[dramatic music plays]
[Kern] When I could see the sky,
I turned around to look…
and did not see the South Tower.
And for the first time,
I started to realize what must have happened
just 15 minutes or ten minutes earlier.
I knew that people were lost.
I was praying that the nine people in my care…
[clears throat] …were not lost.
My tower was still standing, the North Tower…
with a giant multi-story hole…
with hot flames and smoke pouring out.
[Hansson] I heard the mayday to get out of the building.
So I knew that inside the tower was a place of danger.
I didn't know what that danger was, but I knew we had to get out,
and I knew no one was answering the radio anymore.
And at the 19th floor, we got stopped by a firefighter,
um, who came out of the hallway and said,
"I have a bunch of civilians down at the end of the hall."
"They're not leaving. I need help getting them to leave."
[firefighter 1] Tommy, listen carefully.
I'm sending all the injured down to you on 40.
You're gonna have to get them down to the elevators.
There's about 10 to 15 people coming down to you.
[firefighter 2] Yes. Okay.
[firefighter 1] Ten civilians coming down.
[Hansson] Some guys were doing some
extraordinarily unselfish things, and saying,
"I'm going to stay behind and make sure everyone starts to get out themselves."
[emotional music plays]
I took an oath, and I believe in my oath.
My oath is to help people even if it is gonna cost me my own life.
It was quite new to all of us.
There was no playbook.
We went into the hallway,
and, at this point, all the lights were now out,
but the emergency lighting was working, so you had some visibility.
Saw this large man on the floor.
I told the officers, you know, just grab his legs,
we'll grab his arms and we'll just drag him.
And that's what we did, dragged him down the three flights of stairs
and got into the lobby.
When we got there, some of them said to hold up,
there was people jumping.
[wistful music plays]
[woman] There's a person falling-- There's people falling out.
-[man] Oh my God! -[woman] Oh my God!
[man] Oh!
[Frederick] The people who were stuck at the top,
who had no choice…
but to either jump or burn to death, because they had no way of getting out.
That bothers me. That sticks to me like-- You have no idea.
[indistinct police radio chatter]
[Hansson] When we got into the courtyard, it was a complete whiteout.
You could see maybe about ten or 15 feet in front of you.
I can only compare this to walking in a blizzard.
And then we heard another loud noise.
The roar was so loud
that my first interpretation was that it was another plane coming in.
I ran about two steps and then it went pitch-black…
and just engulfed in thick black smoke.
[people screaming]
[reporter] Good Lord.
There are no words.
[Hansson] I ran another two steps and then just got into the fetal position.
And at that point,
I thought there'd be a fireball behind the smoke…
and resigned to the end of my life.
I thought it was gonna be over.
I had just some quick thoughts, saying goodbye to my family.
I think I mouthed the words, you know, "goodbye" to my wife.
And, um…
and then I had a prayer, and that prayer was just,
make this quick and make it painless.
[reporter] A catastrophe on the tip of Manhattan.
[police siren wailing]
[Kern] And then it became,
"Find a phone. Find a phone. Gotta find a phone."
I finally found a phone that worked
in an abandoned subway station at Canal Street
and got a hold of my wife.
I remember breaking down.
And I think the same was true on the other end.
And so we probably didn't say anything to each other for quite a while.
It was just to know we were connected again.
It was just very important.
[wistful music plays]
[Green] We had all this ash falling down to the ground.
And it almost seemed like snow,
because that's how soft it was hitting the ground.
And there were people there who were just walking around in a daze.
If I had to compare them to anything that's happening now
it's like that TV show The Walking Dead.
Because I'd walk up to people and ask who they were and where they're going,
and most of them couldn't tell me.
[dramatic music plays]
[Hansson] I was having a lot of difficulty breathing.
All that debris had been sucked into my throat.
It was like someone stuck a sock into my throat.
We eventually ran into a chief from the Division of Safety,
who indicated that there's nothing you can do anymore.
He says, "The two towers had collapsed." He says, "You made it out alive."
The customs building, at World Trade Center Number Six,
there's an overhang, and I was in that overhang.
So the middle of the building was crushed, but the two ends had held up,
and I was under one of those ends.
I know a couple of the police officers were killed that were right behind us.
[ominous music plays]
[reporter]The scope of this disaster is impossible to comprehend.
[Frederick] There was a bar where a lot of people were there,
sitting in there looking at the news.
So we try to ease our way in there,
and then we saw George Bush, the president, talking.
And that's when they showed us the pictures of what happened.
That the planes hit the World Trade.
[interviewer] Is that really the first time you knew it was a plane?
First time.
Did not know. Did not see.
Didn't know what it was.
[siren blurts]
[man] We went to go over to the Emma E. Booker Elementary School,
where the president was going to meet with some second graders
and read a book with them, and then give a speech
about leaving no child behind in education.
I'm standing at the door to the classroom
where the president and the principal would go.
And I'm standing with the president and the principal of the school
when Deb Loewer, who was a Navy Captain,
and the director of the White House Situation Room,
and the acting National Security Advisor of the trip,
came to the president and said,
"Sir, it appears a small twin-engine prop plane
crashed into one of the towers at the World Trade Center in New York."
The president, the principal, and I all had exactly the same reaction.
"Oh what a horrible accident."
"The pilot must have had a heart attack or something."
Good morning.
After that, the principal of the school then opened the door to the classroom,
and she and the president walked into the classroom.
And that was only a nanosecond,
because Captain Loewer then came back up to me and said,
"Oh my God."
"Another plane hit the other tower at the World Trade Center."
…the whole word says, get ready.
-[children] Running! -Yes. "Running."
[Card] I really did think about what I was going to say.
I then opened the door to the classroom, I stepped into the classroom.
As the students were reaching down under their desks to pick up their books
is when I walked forward and walked up to the president.
He did not see me coming.
I leaned over and I whispered into his right ear,
"A second plane hit the second tower."
"America is under attack."
[camera shutters clicking]
[suspenseful music plays]
We arrived at Sarasota Airfield,
and the doors open up, and we get out of the limousine,
and I was struck by something that is a protocol no-no.
The engines for Air Force One were already turned on.
The protocol normally is, you don't start the engines
until the president is safely on the plane.
This plane started rolling down the runway
even before the door was shut and the president had taken his seat.
[reporter]That's either US Air Force or Navy aircraft, fighter aircraft,
now on patrol in what we've described as the "no-fly zone."
[Card] Every plane was told they had to land.
And the president received a call from Vice President Cheney
asking if the president would authorize our fighter pilots
to shoot down commercial jetliners
if they were not complying with what was supposed to happen.
[man] Vice president has cleared.
Vice president has cleared us to intercept tracking
and shoot them down if they do not respond, per CONR CC.
[Card] When we learned that Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania,
that was soon after the president had given the authorization.
I will admit, some of us wondered, "Did we shoot it down?"
Obviously, we did not.
You could hear the fog of war, not just have your vision clouded.
The fog of war was in the voices.
The president was very agitated with me on Air Force One,
because he wanted to go to Washington, D.C.
And I said, "Mr. President,
you don't wanna make that decision right now."
I would talk to the pilot. I would talk to the Secret Service agents.
They were not prepared to go back to Washington, D.C.
And we were fortunate to have two military aides on the trip.
I said, "I want options. I want to take the president to a safe place
where we can decide what goes on next."
We ended up landing in Barksdale Air Force Base.
We were struck by how the fighter jets were so close to us,
escorting us down to land,
that you could actually see the faces of the pilots in the planes.
[Bush] I ask the American people to join me…
[camera shutters clicking]
…in saying a thanks…
for all the folks who have been fighting hard
to rescue our fellow citizens…
and to join me in saying a prayer for the victims and their families.
[Card] Then we went from Barksdale Air Force Base
to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
And when we got to Nebraska,
we went down to a deep tunnel underground to the Strategic Air Command.
And all of these flat-screen TVs are in the room,
and you have admirals and generals in there and they're talking,
and you could hear the communication of the FAA and the military.
The president was clearly disruptive to that group,
because the officers didn't know whether to stand or sit.
We went to another room and had a secure video conference
back to Washington, D.C.
and heard from George Tenet, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney.
We were able to have a better understanding
what was happening in Washington, D.C. with regard to Andrews Air Force Base.
Later, we piled on Air Force One and then flew back to Washington, D.C.
And as we're leaning on the couch, looking out the window on Air Force One
as we're coming into Andrews Air Force Base,
you could see the smoke billowing out of the Pentagon.
And the president was right beside me.
He said, "That's the face of war in the 21st century."
[helicopter propellers beating]
I really felt an urgency to be at my post
when the commander in chief returned that evening.
Bush gets off the helicopter…
comes over to Karen and I, we greet him and he doesn't say a word.
He just nods and walks right by us into the Oval Office,
which was being prepared for a television address to the nation that night.
[Bush] Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings,
but they cannot touch the foundation of America.
These acts shatter steel…
but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.
[Card] He made it pretty clear that we were going to respond.
This would not stand.
And there was no doubt in the president's mind
that that would mean military action.
Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel,
had already started looking at, what are all of the issues
that have to be considered on going to war.
We knew it was a terrorist attack, and we knew mainly it was al-Qaeda.
[ominous music plays]
In the National Security Council meetings, I'd get to sit in as White House counsel
in every National Security Council meeting.
And there was chatter about al-Qaeda interested in doing something spectacular.
We knew immediately that this was a war.
This was not gonna be a law enforcement matter.
We weren't just going to use the police, the FBI to respond to this,
to investigate this.
We were gonna use our military, of course, the FBI, and law enforcement.
We were gonna pull all levers of power.
We were gonna exercise our economic might, we were gonna take advantage
of our foreign relationships across the world.
That's how we were gonna respond.
[all] ♪ God bless America ♪
♪ My home sweet home ♪
[Lee] We all went to the Capitol steps,
stood together, and sang "God Bless America."
And, you know, people felt this sense of unity and wanted to be there.
The mood in the country was fear, sorrow, grief, and anger.
And it was a moment where there were so many complex emotions
coming together at once.
You know, a roller coaster ride in many respects.
Of course, the families and communities that lost loved ones,
the mourning and the grieving was great.
And the fear, not knowing what was next, was very pronounced.
I know at the Capitol, we weren't sure what was going on
and what came next.
And so that fear was there with everyone.
Then the anger, not knowing who or what, but angry.
Everyone was angry, myself included, about whoever did this.
They deserved to come to justice.
We were mourning, we were grieving, we were angry, we were in a lot of pain.
[Bush] America today is on bended knee…
in prayer for the people whose lives were lost here.
[man] We can't hear you!
I can hear you!
[crowd cheers]
I can hear you, the rest of the world hears you,
and the people--
[crowd cheering]
And the people who knocked these buildings down
will hear all of us soon.
[dramatic music plays]
[Gonzales] The best word to describe his mood was "determination."
He had a job to do.
He knew why he had been elected president, for this moment.
[Bush] This is an enemy who preys on innocent and unsuspecting people,
then runs for cover.
But they won't be able to run for cover forever.
[Gonzales] The president understood that this could not have been possible,
except for the fact that,
in Afghanistan, the Taliban had provided a safe haven
for al-Qaeda to plan, successfully, this attack.
And the president made the decision very quickly
that not only would we go after those responsible for the attacks,
but we would also go after those who harbored and helped plan,
gave people an opportunity to carry out these attacks.
We believed that in order to rid,
or at least diminish the capabilities of al-Qaeda,
it would be important to hurt the Taliban.
[Lee] In many respects, what I was hearing was revenge.
It was anger and revenge.
Revenge. I want to get even.
They know who's behind all this.
They know what country is supporting all these people.
They need to clean their clock, I mean, into the Stone Age. This is ridiculous.
I think we should bomb them back.
I really do.
The enemy's got to be eradicated, and you cannot talk with the enemy.
They can't push us around.
We're the number one nation. Let's do something about it.
We want to respond. You don't attack America like this and get away with it.
Not only those who harbor terrorists,
but those who in any way,
any aid or comfort whatsoever…
will now face the wrath of our country.
You think this is the start of a war against terrorism?
I believe it is, and God willing, it will be.
Now the time for talking is over, and it's time for action to start.
[Gonzales] As the lawyers in the White House,
working with John Ashcroft and the lawyers of the Department of Justice,
we would be asked by the president,
"Is there something that I can do to protect America?"
"Is there something that I can do in self-defense?"
"Is there something I can do in response to this attack?"
"Is there something I can do to attack those,
to punish those responsible for these attacks?"
And so we quickly looked at the president's emergency powers,
both by statute and, of course, looking at his constitutional authority
as commander in chief,
which gives the president very expansive authority,
but generally when acting in self-defense,
following an attack on the nation we experienced that day.
[Card] The president knew that he was going to have a military response.
The question is, do you need to have congressional authority?
This was outside of the normal structure of a war.
Can you declare war on a terrorist group?
Does Washington have the institutional understanding
of what that means?
Do we have to go to Congress to declare war against a terrorist group?
The president wanted to get Congress's buy-in.
And there was a debate about "What does that mean?"
And he could've probably argued that he didn't need their buy-in,
but he wanted to get their buy-in, so we were looking to craft something
that Congress would have a chance to respond to,
both the House and the Senate.
And so that was the use of force.
[Gonzales] The general feeling was that an authorization to use military force
would signify congressional support, both politically and monetarily.
And it would buttress, it would support the president's constitutional authority
as commander in chief.
I made a decision that I would have Tim Flanagan, my deputy,
take the lead in terms of drafting the AUMF
and working with aides at Congress.
The recognition the president has the constitutional authority
to use force as commander in chief, so we felt that that was important.
And so it was broad enough that it would allow us to go after al-Qaeda
and those who assisted or harbored al-Qaeda
in carrying out these attacks.
So, it's a pretty broad grant of authority.
[reporter] Today, congressional leaders toured the wreckage at the Pentagon,
and vowed the president will get whatever he wants.
But behind closed doors, some democrats and republicans
balk at what some see as the president's request
for sweeping powers.
[reporter] This draft resolution from the White House
authorizes use of armed forces
against all those who planned, authorized, harbored,
committed or aided in the attacks,
and to deter and preempt any future acts of terrorism.
[Lee] A lot of members of Congress were feeling,
"What do we do? How do we do it? What's the appropriate response?"
We did receive, from the administration, a draft authorization to use force.
And so much of the discussion after 9/11 was around that authorization.
The AUMF is the Authorization to Use Military Force.
In this instance, it was 60 words.
And it says, "The president is authorized to use force."
It did not name where, when, and how.
It just said, "Against any nation, organization, associated forces,
or individuals connected to 9/11."
If the president thinks we should go to war,
bring that authorization to Congress, let us debate it, let us work on it,
and if we decide that it's reasonable and that that's what we should do,
it's in the United States' national security interest to go to war,
then Congress will vote for it.
But the AUMF was so broad.
It did not mention al-Qaeda at all.
I kept speaking out in our meetings saying, "No, no, no, it's too broad."
Many members saying, "Yes, yes, yes, but we got to do it."
Then I said, "This is about our Constitution,
and we can't give any authority away to any president."
Those discussions were taking place at the same time
that the memorial was being planned at the National Cathedral.
I'll never forget it. It was a rainy day.
I went to the cathedral,
and the head of the cathedral, his name was Reverend Nathan Baxter.
During his eulogy, he said,
"As we act, let us not become the evil who we deplore."
It was at that moment I was settled.
I could not give any president the authority to use force
that was so open-ended.
[Cantor] I rise today in support of this resolution.
Civilized society has long sought to end the use of violence,
but the perpetrators of terrorism and states that harbor them
are the enemies of civilized society.
They only understand the use of force,
and the time has come to speak to them on their terms.
The resolution before us empowers the president…
to bring to bear the full force of American power abroad.
We are coming after you…
and the fury of hell is coming with us.
[Lee] I was the only one in the House or the Senate that voted "no"
on the Authorization to Use Military Force
as it relates to 9/11.
-[interviewer] Nobody in the Senate? -Nobody in the Senate.
[Hastert] Gentlewoman from California is recognized for a minute and a half.
Mr. Speaker, members, I rise today, really, with a very heavy heart…
one that is filled with sorrow for the families and the loved ones
who were killed and injured this week.
Only the most foolish and the most callous would not understand the grief
that has really gripped our people and millions across the world.
September 11th changed the world.
Our deepest fears now haunt us.
Yet, I am convinced…
that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism
against the United States.
By the time I got back to my office, the death threats and the--
You do not wanna know what all happened.
But bottom line is,
there were over 60,000 emails, phone calls, letters.
About 50% were literally death threats,
hostile remarks, people calling me all kinds of names,
a traitor, committed acts of treason. You-- You should be hung.
[dramatic music plays]
Emotions are normal to feel. That's part of human nature.
But we also have to balance that with our rational thinking.
We have to make sure that we don't make irrational decisions
when our emotions are so high.
So many people think by saying you disagree,
you're committing an act of treason, and in times of national security threats.
And I'm saying, "Wait a minute. That's when you want someone to say no."
That's when you want your elected officials
to rise above the anger,
to have some rational thinking and response.
And you could not send these troops in harm's way forever.
[reporter] The military scenarios
that the president has before him are extensive.
A senior military official tells ABC News they even include ground troops.
[Card] On September 14th, when I was in the Oval Office early in the morning,
the president walks up to me and he said, when everybody is leaving the room,
he said, "Andy, I want to convene the war council tomorrow at Camp David."
[dramatic music plays]
The principles were there, and it included lawyers…
the FBI director, the defense department, obviously,
the State Department, the vice president.
And there was no doubt that we were getting ready to go to war.
What does it mean to do that?
The president said, "I don't want to send a million-dollar cruise missile,
and hit a five-dollar tent."
"That's not the kind of response that we want to have."
And so it was a very robust discussion about what it meant.
The president was actually inviting every leader in the world.
He said, "This is your chance to be with us or against us."
"If you're not with us, you're against us."
Underneath our tears is the…
strong determination of America…
to win this war.
And we will win it.
Americans are asking, "Who attacked our country?"
The evidence we have gathered
all points to a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations…
known as al-Qaeda.
The leadership of al-Qaeda has great influence in Afghanistan
and supports the Taliban regime in controlling most of that country.
In Afghanistan, we see al-Qaeda's vision for the world.
[Gonzales] Everyone had confidence we were gonna be successful in this war.
There was no question about that.
Um, it was a question of how long it would take.
[Chandrasekaran] Afghanistan was an incredibly
complex challenge for the US military.
It's a landlocked country halfway around the world.
It's geographically very challenging.
There's steep mountain ranges that ring half the country.
It's bordered by countries that have a strained relation
to the United States, if they have a relationship at all.
Pakistan, Iran,
former Soviet republics like Tajikistan, China.
And so, how do you even get the troops in?
[Rumsfeld] The only defense against terrorism is offense.
You have to simply take the battle to them.
How do you do that?
You don't do it with conventional capabilities.
You do it with unconventional capabilities.
And there are clearly forces on the ground
that are anxious to rid the country of al-Qaeda
and to rid the country of Taliban.
[Chandrasekaran] What eventually starts to take hold at the Pentagon, the CIA,
is a plan to try to make use of Afghan resistance fighters…
called the Northern Alliance.
[machine-gun fire]
[drill sergeant shouting]
[soldiers respond]
The leader of that whole movement
was a brave fighter against the Soviet occupation
named Ahmed Shah Massoud.
Massoud was lionized by his followers, but with good reason.
He was a fearsome commander on the battlefield.
He was able to keep the Taliban at bay for many parts of Northern Afghanistan.
[dramatic music plays]
[man, in Arabic] What was it like to work with your brother?
[Massoud, in Arabic] I felt that my brother was a real hero.
He always acted honorably, and gave people a lot of confidence.
It felt like we had a champion who would never be defeated.
My brother had a strong moral compass.
And was a very religious man.
He was always thinking about freedom for Afghanistan.
By the time of the Taliban, poverty had become widespread,
and there was no education.
There was no healthcare for people, no economy,
there was no governance at all.
All they would do was repress people.
They had a total misconception of religion.
The only thing they talked about was to suppress women
and not let anyone speak up.
It was a dictatorial religious system.
Because of this, Afghanistan was heading for a crisis
and had become a center of international terrorism.
And especially of drug trafficking.
My brother, along with some people in the North,
decided to form a coalition to fight against the Taliban.
[no audible dialogue]
[Chandrasekaran] A few days before the 9/11 attacks,
two al-Qaeda suicide fighters, disguised as Western journalists,
went to go interview Massoud.
[crowd shouting angrily]
And in their video camera was concealed a massive bomb.
And Massoud was assassinated.
It was a tactically brilliant move by Osama bin Laden
and the al-Qaeda leadership to take out the principal rival…
and the principal threat on the battlefield to the Taliban
and to Mullah Omar's government,
recognizing that if the Americans were to attack Afghanistan,
somebody like Massoud would be a vital ally to them.
[Massoud, in Arabic] Al-Qaeda along with the Taliban
believed that the biggest obstacle
to turning Afghanistan into a center of international terrorism
was my brother, Amir Sahib Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Therefore, they decided to remove him from their path.
[somber funeral music plays]
[Filkins] In 2001 at 9/11,
about 90% of Afghanistan was controlled by the Taliban,
which left 10% of it, this tiny little piece of territory
in the far north of Afghanistan.
And so, when the attacks happened,
my editor at The New York Times said to me,
"Get yourself to Northern Afghanistan with the rebels."
"I don't know how to get there. Do it."
I flew to Tajikistan…
and crossed into this tiny little area controlled by the Northern Alliance.
And there was a front line that was like something out of the first World War.
You could look across the front line, 300 yards away, you could see the Taliban.
And they were just sitting in the trenches.
And then the B-52s came.
And I had rented this mud hut
that was one of the nicer huts in town, because it had windows.
I remember it was probably five o'clock in the morning,
and I was awakened by the rattling of the windows.
And they were just shaking. It felt like an earthquake.
I thought it was an earthquake, actually. It's a very active earthquake zone.
It was the bombs.
[ominous music plays]
[explosions]
I looked out across the Taliban trenches,
and the B-52s bombed the trenches all up and down the whole horizon.
You could see these gigantic kind of black circles.
The whole sky was kind of crisscrossed with the contrails of the B-52s.
It looked like a piece of modern art.
They would circle for the longest time and drop a 2,000-pound bomb.
[bomb exploding]
They bombed every day like that for several days,
and then finally the Taliban line cracked.
[dramatic music plays]
[reporter] The Taliban got in their pickup trucks, loaded their small arms,
and headed south to their spiritual base in Kandahar.
[Chandrasekaran] The Taliban regime was hunkered down in Kandahar.
That's where they're gonna make their last stand.
[ominous music playing]
December, 2001,
the United States thought it had bin Laden cornered
in the Tora Bora Mountains.
[Chandrasekaran] Intelligence gets to US forces and Afghan forces,
but inexplicably, the US doesn't send
a huge contingent of special ops soldiers
to try to capture or kill bin Laden.
It's left to a ragtag group of Afghan fighters
with a small number of American advisors.
It's a puzzling decision.
It's inexplicable in many ways, when the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks,
the leader of al-Qaeda, are all within the grasp of US forces,
that we don't mount a much bigger effort to go after them.
[Graff] There was no higher mission,
no more important hunt in the world than finding Osama bin Laden.
He was the number-one target, the most hunted man in the world.
[man] We lived in a constant state of awareness that it could happen again,
that we could find ourselves facing another similar attack.
You got people saying he's in a cave.
People saying he's dead.
People saying he's in Pakistan.
All I know is that he's running.
[ominous music plays]
Subtitle translation by: