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THE WHITE HOUSE
Office
of the Press Secretary
RECEIVED
Internal
Transcript August 6, 2002
JUN
.
7
2003
INTERVIEW
OF
National
Commission
n
NATIONAL
SECURITY
ADVISOR
CONDOLEEZZA
RICE
erronstAttacks
BY
TERRY MORAN
OF ABC
Vice President's Ceremonial Office4:56 P.M.
EDT
Q September
llth,
the President is in Florida, theSecretary of State is in
South
America. As the NationalSecurity Advisor, what was your day shaping up like?DR. RICE:My day wasshapingup as afairly normalday. I
got
up
that
morning, I went into the
office,
I had done myintelligencebriefingand I wasstandingat thedesk
getting
ready to go down to my senior
staff
meeting, and my executiveassistantcame in and said a plane had hit the World TradeCenter.
And-
Ithought, well,
that's
aterrible accident.Andin
my own
mind
it was
probably
a
twin-engine plane
of
some kind.
And I
called
the
President
in
Florida
and
told him,
and hehad
exactlythesame response.So I
told
myexecutive
assistant, well, let me
know what happens.
And
I
wentdownstairs
to
start
my
senior
staff
meeting.
And a few
minutes
in,
I got a
note
that
said
that
a
second plane
had hit the
WorldTrade Center,
and I
thought, well, this
is a
terrorist attack.
Q
A general question: On
that
morning, how would youdescribe
the
mood
of the
American people when
it
came
to the
threat
of
terrorist attacks
in the
United
States?DR. RICE: That morning when Americans woke
up I
believethey knew that
the
threat
of
terrorism
was
there,
but
associated
it
with terrorism
abroad.
Americans knew that therehadbeenabombingof anAmerican ship,theCole.
They
knew
that
theAmerican embassies
in
Tanzania
and
Kenya
had
been
bombed.
Terrorism
had
been
a
part
of the
American experience,
of
course.
425
 
And
then,
of
course,
we had the
domestic terrorist incident
inOklahoma
City.
It had all
been
a
part
of our
experience,
butprobably
until
that morning,
on
September
llth,
no one
associated
terrorism with
the
kind
ofdramatic,
mass casualty
event that
we
experienced.
Q If
you'd
thought that first plane
that-hit
the
first
tower was an
accident,
why did you
call
the
President?
DR.
RICE: Because
if the
President
of the
United States
is
out
of the
White
House
and
something
bad has
happened
in the
United
States, it's important
for him to
know. Frankly,
we
tell
him
those sorts
of
things
so
that
he
isn't
told first
by the
press
that
a
plane
has hit the
World
Trade
Center.
But it was
kind
of
normal
procedure.
And
what
was
different
about thatmoment
was
that
nobody
could
be
certain, there seemed
to be
someconfusion about what kind
of
plane
it
was.
And I
remembersomeone saying
-- and I
don't
actually
remember
who now
saying,
it's
an
awfully
big
fire
for a
small plane.
And in
retrospect,
that
was a
tip.
Q And did you
have
any
hunch
at
that
point that
it
might
be
terrorism?
DR.
RICE:
It
just
didn't
come
to
mind immediately that
it
might
be
terrorism.
We
knew
a lot
about
al
Qaeda.
We
knew
that
al
Qaeda really coveted
an
attack against American interests,maybe even against
the
United States.
We had
gone through
a
summer
in
which
we had
heightened states
of
aLert
abroad
for our
embassies
and for our
forces, because
we
were
getting
a lot of
chatter
in
terrorist channels.
But
most
of it was
pointing
all
of it was
pointing abroad, that there
was
going
to be
some
kind
of
attack abroad.
And the
human mind
doesn't
always
put
two
and two
together very quickly,
and so, no, in
that
firstattack,
it
didn't
come together
for
me.
When
the
second plane
hit,
though,
it
came together very, very quickly.
Q So you
called
the
President after
the
first plane
hit
the
first
tower, told
him
what
had
happened. What
did he
say?
DR.
RICE:
He
said, what
a
terrible
-- it
sounds
like
a
terrible
accident; keep
me
informed.
And he
went then
off to
begin
his
event
in -- the
education event that
he had
going
on
in
Florida.
And I
wejit
down
and
went
on to my
staff meeting.
I
know
that
it was
Andy
Card
who
told
him
that
a
second
plane
had
hit
the
World Trade Center,
and I
believe
he
said something
like,
America
is
under
attack.
And
there's
a
picture that
I
426
 
will
never forget
of thePresident's
face when
he was
told
that.
The
remarkable thing
is
he
finished reading
to
these third-graders, and then
left
and got ready to try and come back.Q That picture is etched in American memory now. You
know him so
well,
you
know
that
face
so
well. What
do you see
in
him at
that moment?DR.
RICE:
At
that
moment, I saw a sense of horror, really,
could
this
be.
And I
suspect
that
right after
that
moment,
hismind had to
have been racing
to
think about what
to
do.
Buthe's
an amazingly disciplined person and he clearly made adecision that he was going to stop, finish this, and then I
talked
later to Rod Paige, the Secretary of
Education,
who was
with
him, and Rod said
that
the President said to him, I've got
to
go back to Washington.
You're
going to have to
carry
thisevent. And then he left. And it
wasn't
until later that theSecretaryofEducation knew whathadhappened.ThePresident
was—that
calm.Q
Let
me go back to how you found out about the second
plane.
You went to the Situation Room.
DR.
RICE:
I
went
to my
staff
meeting,
which
is
held
in the
conference room within the Situation Room. And I was goingaround asking each of my senior directors to report on their
part
of the world, something we do every day. And I was about
three
people in when the executive assistant came in, handed me
a
note
that
said
a
second
plane
had hit the
World Trade Center.
And
senior
staff
members have said
that
I
stopped
in
mid-sentence
and
said,
I
have
to
go.
Because
I
knew
that
this
was aterrorist
attack.
And then I went into the Situation Room proper, which is
off
the
conference room,
and I
began
to try to
gather
thenational
security principals. Colin Powell
was in Peru. I
first
thought
he was in
Colombia,
and
that
concerned
me andworried me,
given
the
fact
of
terrorism that
has
been
a
problem
in
Colombia.Ithen triedtofind George Tenet;Iwantedto
find
my own
counterterrorism person, Dick Clark.
I was
trying
to
find
Don Rumsfeld. And in
that
moment,
when
I was trying tomake all those
phone
calls, it seems to me like
it's
a very
short
period of time until I turned around and saw on television
.that
a
plane
had hit the
Pentagon.
In
retrospect,
I now
know
that
some periodof
time
actually elapsed whileI wasdoing
that,
but the
human brain sort
of
shortens
that
period
of
time.
427
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