He told Bush that ‘America is under attack’

Afsin Yurdakul Reporter • E-mail

Former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was, famously, the man who broke the news of the full enormity of the Sept. 11 attacks to President Bush during an appearance at a Florida elementary school. Now in private life after six years in one of the toughest jobs in politics, he talked to msnbc.com’s Afsin Yurdakul about his experiences on that fateful day eight years ago. Excerpts from their conversation follow.

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Please tell me what the past eight years have been like for you, personally and professionally.

Obviously, September 11, 2001, changed an awful lot of things for America and the world and, yes, it changed me as well. It kind of put things in perspective. In terms of my own life, I think that my interest — or my expectation — as chief of staff was to be relatively invisible and not have people know who the chief of staff to the president was when I served, but that picture of me whispering in the president’s ear on September 11 gave me an identity that I have whether I like it or not, and, so, I will be remembered for that moment.

In terms of changing America, it taught us to pay attention to some of the realities of the world. That there are people in the world who want to do us harm, and that meant that we had to improve our ability to collect intelligence, analyze it and act on it.

In terms of the world, it showed us — and I think President Bush put it well — that “You’re either with us or against us” when it comes to fighting terror.

When you entered that classroom to inform the president about the attacks, what exactly were your feelings, as a human being, not only as chief of staff?
We arrived in Florida the night before after participating in an arrival ceremony for the prime minister of Australia in Washington, D.C. We arrived in this resort in Sarasota. And when we arrived, there was this terrible stench in the air, and that was because the fish had died and washed up on the beach — because of red tide — and it stunk. …

When I got up in the morning, I was worried about the stench more than I was worried about almost anything else. I knew the president was going to go for a run, a pretty serious run, in the morning and I didn’t know if he’d feel sick or not. So I talked to the president’s physician about whether the president would be sick and he said, “Oh no, he’d be fine.” And I went in and saw the president and said, “It stinks out there, but the doctor says you’ll be fine. When you get back, we’ll do our intelligence briefing and it will be an easy day.”

He went to his run and came back and we had our intelligence briefing and loaded into limousines and went over to the school. There was a buzz as we were getting to the school. Some people said, “Anybody hear about the plane crash in New York City?” but still not a lot of information. And the president, the principal of the school and I were standing at the door when one of the staffers for the National Security Council came up and said, “Sir, it appears there’s been a small twin-engine plane crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City.” And the reaction, kind of unspoken, was “Oh, it’s a horrible accident. The pilot must have had a heart attack or something.” And the principal then opened the door of the classroom and escorted the president in and the door shut.

Then that staffer came back to me and said, “Sir, it looks like it wasn’t a small twin-engine plane, it was a commercial jetliner. My mind flashed (pauses) and I can’t explain why, but my mind flashed to the fear that must have been experienced by the passengers on the plane. I just thought “Gee, they must have known the plane is going up, it must have been a horrible experience.” I still thought, I guess, that it could have been an accident, a mechanical failure or something.

And then — it seems like a nanosecond later — that staffer came to me and said, “Oh my gosh” — he used another word — and said another plane hit the other tower at the World Trade Center. And I knew that it was not an accident, and it couldn’t have been a coincidence.

My mind focused on the al-Qaida network, because I knew that they had attacked the World Trade Center before. I don’t know why I thought that but I did and I just presumed that it was an Osama bin Laden or and al-Qaida attack, and I knew I had to tell the president.

I wrestled with that. You know, one of the tough jobs for the chief of staff is to try to decide what to tell the president needs to know. This was relatively easy — yes, the president needs to know. But what do I tell him?

I made the decision that I would pass on two facts, make one editorial comment and do nothing to invite a question or start a dialogue.

I opened the door to the classroom and the press pool was gathered at the back of the classroom. I walked up to the president and leaned over and whispered into his right ear: “A second plane” — I was very very succinct, very purposeful with my diction — “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.” And I stood back from the president so that he couldn’t ask me a question and then I inched my way back to the door. I was all business. I was all business.

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