Bush

Bush: 'We will pass this test'

Sept. 12, 2001

PRESIDENT BUSH bows his head for a moment of silence following the plane crashes into the World Trade Center, during a visit to the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla., Tuesday.

staff and wire reports

President George W. Bush vowed that the full force of the United States government would be brought to bear against the terrorists responsible for Tuesday’s devastation, and warned that those who harbored them would incur the same punishment.

"Our freedom came under attack," Bush said, noting that "thousands of lives were suddenly ended" by the terrorists. Throughout Tuesday, officials had been reluctant to estimate the number of casualties at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, where the rubble burned into the night. Passengers and crew of the four aircraft totaled 266, all presumed dead.

Speaking to the public at 6:30 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time, Bush said that the terrorists had provoked "a quiet, unyielding anger" but had failed to frighten the American people into chaos and retreat with their "series of deliberate and deadly terrorist acts."

"Today our nation saw evil, the worst of human nature, and we responded with the very best of America," the president said, commending the response of emergency workers.

With smoke still pouring out of rubble in Washington and New York, Bush declared: "These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve."

He spoke for less than five minutes from the desk that Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy used before him. Beside the door, a TelePrompTer operator fed Bush the words that he and his speechwriters hastened to pen just an hour earlier.

He stumbled a couple of times even as he strove to maintain a commanding air. Aides pushed an American flag and one with the presidential seal behind him for the somber occasion.

Immediately afterward, Bush joined a late-night meeting of his National Security Council and planned to remain overnight at the White House.

Bush thanked world leaders for their support, and then quoted from the 23rd Psalm: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me."

As chaos unhinged New York and Washington, Bush was spirited from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska — and then, accompanied by three decoy Marine helicopters, safely back to the White House.

"The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake, we will show the world that we will pass this test," Bush declared earlier as terrorist strikes on the nation’s centers of commerce and government forced him into virtual hiding.

He bounced between military installations, in what former President Clinton said was part of a Secret Service and military plan to keep the president safe.

"He needs to take every conceivable precaution in the event there are more attacks planned and there is a plan to attack the leadership of the United States," Clinton said in an interview.

The United States received no warning of the attacks on the Pentagon and New York’s World Trade Center towers, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said.

By teleconference, Bush joined a meeting of his National Security Council in Washington.

"Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward and freedom will be defended," he said from this tightly guarded Louisiana air base.

With the White House itself and Camp David under threat of attack, the president’s whereabouts were kept secret. He made a brief statement from a conference room here, assuring Americans that he was in regular contact with his command post in Washington: Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the White House national-security team.

"Our military at home and around the world is on high-alert status and we have taken the necessary security precautions to continue the functions of your government," Bush said.

"We have been in touch with the leaders of Congress and with world leaders to assure them that we will do whatever is necessary to protect America and Americans."

He then boarded Air Force One at 11:30 a.m. MDT for a secret destination that turned out to be Nebraska’s Offutt Air Force Base, home to the U.S. Strategic Command, which controls the nation’s nuclear weapons. Until three years ago, the Strategic Command also housed the so-called Doomsday Plane that had been specially equipped to serve as a flying White House in the event of nuclear war.