7:59am September 11, 2001

American Airlines Flight 11 with 92 people on board takes off from Boston to Los Angeles.

8:14am

United Airlines Flight 175 with 65 people on board takes off from Boston to Los Angeles.

8:15am

I left my room at the Colony Resort to get into my car in the motorcade. The motorcade was scheduled to leave the hotel at 8:30 for a 20-minute drive to the Emma E. Booker Elementary School.

8:30am

President Bush had gone for an early morning run and then had his morning intelligence briefing. He boarded his limo and we took off for the school. As the radio in my car said, "All cars, all stations - Trailblazer has departed."

8:41am

United Airlines Flight 93 with 44 people on board departs from Newark, NJ for San Francisco.

8:46am

United Airlines flight 11 is flown by hijackers into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, killing all on board and many more inside the building.

Moments later as the motorcade pulled up to the school, I received a text from Brian Bravo in the WH press office alerting me to the news that an airplane has flowin into the Twin Towers. (No smart phones then. Just pagers and cell phones.)

I hopped out of my car and headed for POTUS to tell him. The President was shaking hands with the principal of the school and others who were there to meet him. After he finished shaking hands, Karl Rove gave the President the news.

Here’s who greeted President Bush upon his arrival:

Btw, pictures like the one above or the flight list of who was on AFOne are from the “mini”, a detailed pocket-sized booklet that has every detail of the potus’s travel schedule. I have tons of them, from every trip I was on. Here’s the cover from that day:

Everywhere presidents go, a holding room is set up, protected by the USSS (Secret Service) with secure phone lines pre-installed. POTUS went into the hold to talk on the phone with national security advisor Condi Rice. At that point, all of us presumed an accident occured.

Bush told Condi to gather all the details and he told her to make any resources available to NY that were needed. We didn't know the extent of the damage and hoped it was caused perhaps by a small plane that went off course for some reason.

Bush left the hold and entered Room 301 of the Emma E. Booker Elementary school to read to the kids and to hear how well they were able to read.