THE WHITE
HOUSE
Office
of the
Press
Secretary
(Crawford,
Texas
Internal
Transcript
August
22,
2002
INTERVIEW OF
KAREN
HUGHES
BY
SCOTT
PELLEY,
CBS
RE EIVED
Hilton
Hotel MAY 2 2
2003
Portland,
Oregon
National
Commission on
Terrorist
ttacks
7:05 P.M.
PDT
Q
Talking
on the
airplane, Karen, there
was
that moment when
you
were
returning
to the
White House
and
things
were
not the way
they normally
were.
Paint that picture
for me.MS.
HUGHES:
Well,
it was in
some
ways,
as I was
explaining
to
you, nothing matchesthe horror, as I did and as many Americans did,
that
plane fly into that
second
tower. A lot ofpeople saw it on television; I did. Nothing matches
that
horror.
But in
some
ways it was almost
as
chilling
to
drive back into downtown Washington when
I
did, which
looked
almost like
a
ghost town, and there were men in black
—
I don t really know if they
were
military or they were
Secret
Service,
but
they
had
machine guns drawn. They
were
holding their machine guns
in the
streets
of
downtown Washington.
And
that s
a
sight
you
expect
to see in a
foreign
capital,
maybe, during a coup, but never expect to see
that
in our capital, in downtown Washington.And
I had an
experience once
as a
reporter where
I was
going
to a
hurricane,
and
everyone
else
was
driving away,
and
that
was how I
felt
as we
drove
into downtownWashington.
We
were driving
in, we
were
the
only
car
driving
in.
Everyone
else
was
going
the
other way,
on the
outskirts
of the
city.
And as we got
closer
and
closer,
no one was
there.
And itwas
almost like
the
surreal ghost town
you
would
see
after devastation, except
for
there
were
police
in the
streets, again
probably
eight blocks from
the
White
House
—
there
was a
hugeperimeter
that
they
had set up. And they were either military or maybe
Secret
Service,
dressed
all
in
black,
holding machine guns, as we drove up. And I never expected to see something like
that
in our
Nation s
Capital.
Q And
when
you
entered
the
White
House?
MS.
HUGHES:
Well,
actually,
when
we
went into
the
White
House
I had a
militarysergeant
who
drove
me and
picked
me up. The
Vice
President
had
sent
a car out to get me
because
they weren t letting,
I
don t
think, civilian traffic
back
into
downtown Washington.
So
they sent
a
driver
to
pick
me up. He
brought
me in and
told
me to go in an
entrance
that
is not an
6
entrance I
usually
go in. And I walked in and there was no one in sight. And I knew it was a day
that
you didn t want to surprise anybody. And so I yelled,
hello.
And two, again, kind of
SWAT
team
members
came running, running through the
hall
with, again, guns drawn, and took me tothe location where I met the Vice President.
Q You
walked into
the
White
House
and it was
empty,
and you
called,
hello.
MS.
HUGHES:
And
there
was no one
there.
Of
course,
it had
been evacuated.
I was
actually
on the
phone with
my
assistant when
it was
evacuated,
and she
said,
Karen,
I ve
got togo,
they re screaming
at us to get out of
here.
And I
said, well,
go, and
hung
up. And so for
minutes after that
had no
contact with anyone.
Air
Force
One had
taken
off
from
Florida.
I d
been talking
to my
deputy,
Dan
Bartlett,
who was
with
the
President,
on his
cell
phone,
and
they
had
taken off.
So I had no
contact with them
any
longer.
And
they
evacuated
the
White
House,
and
I
knew
I
needed
to get
there.
I
needed
to go
somewhere.
I had a
duty,
a job to do, but I
wasn t really sure where.
Q
Let s
talk about
the
first
time
you
spoke
to the
President
on the
telephone from
Air
Force
One.
Do you
recall
the
first
conversation? What were
his
priorities, what
was he
asking
you for?MS.
HUGHES:
I
spoke
with him
—
I don t recall the exact time. He wanted me to go out
and
brief
the country about how the government was
functioning.
It was a very shortconversation,
as I
recall.
He was
getting
ready
to
—
I
don t even remember exactly where
he
was.
The
first time
I
tried
to
call
him was earlier in the
day.
He had had a
conversation with
the
VicePresident where they had agreed
that
the President would be the
first
one to go out and speak on
behalf of the
government,
as was
appropriate.
But in the
meantime, they
had
diverted
his
planeand he was going to
Barksdale,
Louisiana. And so it was taking forever.
And so I was
very frustrated
as a
communicator,
I
felt
that
the
public
was
hearing
the
State Department
has
been evacuated,
the
White
House
has
been
evacuated
—
it
sounded
as if the
government
was
basically
shut
down.
I was
seeing
and
knew
that
it was
functioning verysmoothly, that Secretary Mineta was there ordering the planes down, and the Vice
President
andPresident were
in
constant communication,
that
the
National Security Advisor
was
beginning
the
process
of
pulling
together
the
national
security team, that
the
continuity
of
government plans
and
the
continuity
of operations plans were being implemented. So I was seeing how smoothly
the
government
was
functioning;
yet I
realized
the
view
the
public
was
getting
was
quite
different.
And so I tried to call the President because I knew that if I had a chance to
talk
with him,
that
he would
probably
be
fine
with
me calling a
r port r
just to get the word out that thegovernment was functioning well. And
that
was another one of the most chilling
moments
of the
day
for me. It was when Air
Force
One was
--right
after the threat had
been
received, and theywere apparently doing
some
defensive maneuvers. Of
course,
we didn t know that at the time.
And
the
military
operator came back to me and, in a voice
that
to me sounded very shaken, said,
ma am,
I m sorry, we
can t
reach Air Force One. And
that
was after the Vice President had
communicated to me
that
there
had
been
a
threat
against
the
plane.
I
later found
out
that
it was
000065
not
as
credible
a
threat
as we
thought
at the
time.
But,
of
course,
at the
time
it was
very
frightening.
Q What did that mean to you?
MS.
HUGHES:
Well,
it was
just
a
—
the
Towers
had
been hit,
the
Pentagon
had
been hit,there were all kinds of
reports
still at the time about
possibly
car
bombs
and other planes, andthen suddenly, the
operator
said, we can t reach Air
Force
One. And you just have to wonder
what
is happening. In the early hours we
still didn t
have any idea exactly what was happening.We knew, as Andy so succinctly put it, that America was under attack.
Q
When
the
President arrived from
Offutt
Air
Force
Base
you
were among
the first
people
that
he
saw.
Can you characterize
him?
We see him
come
off the
helicopter
in the
videotape; he is clearly angry. That is the expression that he s wearing. He walks into the Oval,
he
sees
you—
what
is the
first
thing
he
says?
MS.
HUGHES:
I
don t remember exactly what
he
said.
I
walked down, because
we had
talked while he was on the plane
flying
back and
be
had
basically
dictated and given me somethoughts about what
he
wanted
to say in his
address
to the
country.
He had
felt
very
strongly,
and I had
felt
very strongly,
that
he
needed
to
address
the
nation that night;
that
we d been
through
a horrible, horrible experience and
that
people needed to hear from the President. And
so he had
talked with
me
about what
he
wanted
to
say,
and I had
worked
on
—
one of our
speech
writers, Mike Gerson,
our
chief speechwriter,
had
worked
on
some ideas some other
people
had contributed
some
ideas, and then the President talked with me directly about what hewanted
to
say.
And I
sort
of pulled
that all
together.And I met him on the porch, there outside the Oval Office, as he walked back. And he
had
called again from
the helicopter,
wanting
to see the
draft
of his
address
to the
nation.
And so
I walked down there to meet him. And I
think
I had the same
feeling
that
all
Americans did
that
I just
felt
an enormous sense of relief to see our President back at the White House, to see himwalk
across
that lawn,
and to see
that
familiar
picture
of the
President landing
by
helicopter
on
the
South Lawn, walking back into
the
Oval Office.
To me, it was a
very reassuring sight.
He was
very determined.
The way I
describe
it
—
people
ask me all the
time,
did he
change. And you don t develop those kind of qualities of leadership in an instant. I say that hewas more so. He s always been very determined and very dedicated and very disciplined. He
was
more
so.
He s always been very energetic;
he was
more
so.
I
told
you
that
he, in the
days afterward,
one
morning
greeted
me by
saying,
let me
tell
you how to do
your
job
today,
and he was
just
totally
in
command.
And
that s
the way I
found
him
throughout
the
week.
I
really
felt
that
he
carried
the
rest
of us
through.
He was so in
command, he was laser-focused. He was asking questions, he was probing, trying to
find
out,
trying to
assess,
very much
in
charge
the
morning
after
September
11th, the
September 12thmorning.
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