always wrong. never make a statement based on the first report. >> journalists, take note. to head into a precedent. i was not going to rely on these quick words that the airplanes had hit. -- i was about to head into a press event. i was not going to rely on these quick words that the airplanes had hit. it was not even going to say that i knew they had hit at all. all i had with these press reports. as i was about to go into this event at the hotel, was handed a telephone by someone at the embassy. the telephone on the other and was hand -- held up to a television where the president was saying something to the effect that this act of terrorism will not stand.

he used the phrase, "will not stand." i turned to my colleague from the pentagon and said that was exactly what the president's father said when saddam hussein invaded kuwait. he was not famous for coining phrases. he made one or two. "no new taxes" was one of them. [laughter] i remember his extremely strong and and characteristic statement that the invasion of kuwait would not stand. a said to myself it was a remarkable coincidence the president would use precisely that phrase. it was a phrase that connoted war. i still did not confirm anything to the press. the president's statement made it clear that something terrible had happened in new york.

what happened then was my team spent the evening -- it is a typical thing in useful for journalists to know this. when something like this happens, a major event happens, very often you will get more current information from watching television and listening to the press and you will from the intelligence services. the reason for that is that there are more journalists. they are all over the place. we spent the evening at the u.s. embassy in moscow watching television. the next morning, we have a military plane organized to take us back. civilian air traffic had been shot down over the united states. >> let me ask you as the official from the pentagon, when there is a crisis like this, the military as a doomsday scenario

already out there. when the first airplane dropped off the transponder, the faa contacted norad. 16's scrambledxteen immediately. the joint military command notified the fbi at 8:55. the airplanes in the air were in newe to stocp anything york. the ones that went up in washington after the pentagon was hit, would they have had the authority automatically to stop the airplanes? does the pentagon react in a moment like this with all the authority it already has? would it have stopped that

jetliner from hitting another building in washington? >> you are talking about whether people moving in the frantic turmoil of the crisis like this would not interpret their rules of. 0 engagements00 selling them. .. . it shoots down an airplane full of civilians. -- you are asking if the rules of engagement would allow them to shoot down an airplane full of civilians. >> they would not have the authority without having been given the code to use under certain circumstances. i was on air force one, in getting to air force one with the first indications came in about the pentagon. we were trying to find secretary rooms filled. among the questions asked when the president was on the airplane on the phone was

whether he would give authority for pilots to shoot down commercial jetliners. i was sitting directly across the desk when the conversation was taking place. it was remarkable for me. the president was the only person i knew who could be announced that president hu had empathy -- who could be asked that question with empathy. these are roughly the question. the answers he gave. he said i cannot imagine being a 22-year-old pilot being told to shut down its commercial jetliner. that would be very hard. he said yes, they have the authority. >> that was related to secretary ron spelled? >> we got on board air force one. we have just heard the third plane hit the pentagon. then we heard the fourth plane

had gone down. the initial route port was near camp david. it turned out to be across the line in pennsylvania. -- the initial report was that was near camp david. it turned out to be crossed the line in pennsylvania. president bush thought there were six in the sky. the president gave the order to shoot down. he also gave the order to go to def-con 3 for the first time since 1973. that is how serious the stakes were. at that moment, we thought there were six more. people were being told across the country that the mall was on fire, there was a car bomb at the state department. no one knew the full extent of this. >> what kind of authority did the president need at that moment that he did not have?

>> attended the instant transcript of the president's directive. -- i was handed the instant transcript of the president's directive. one of the military personnel that manned the situation desk handed it to me. the immediate question was about the president's authority to do this. i knew that any legal analysis was going to be woefully behind the event. the order had been given. i also knew immediately that it was completely justified in terms of the commander in chief's authority to repel if needed. knowing this would be examined in the light of history afterwards, but also got on my cell phone -- i also got on my cell phone, unreasonably illegal thing to do in the situation room. i got on the phone with the department of defense announced the question about authority. after a pause, he came back and

said immediately that someone had already looked it up. there is authority under what i think was the norad statute that gives the authority to deal with imminent threats in u.s. airspace. >> michael chertoff, you knew and the time -- at the time of september of 2001 that there were bad guys out there that were likely in the united states. did you immediately start thinking that we have got to go start finding some of these people who may also be planning something? under the constitution, did you have to spell out exactly what authority you had? >> the way it unfolded on september 11 is because if you people have phoned in from the

airplanes, within a matter of minutes or an hour, we were able to identify the people we thought were the likely hijackers. it came largely from our ability to be manifest from the airlines and being able to get some of the descriptions that people phoned in from the airplanes. the phone with those in to family members. we directed that information. it allowed us to begin to identify the means. when you had the means, if you are able to get data that connected them to other people. we knew we were dealing with a number of hijackers. we believed there were other airplanes in the air that might be hijacked. there was a report of a bomb going off at the state department. there was a rumor that taxicab drivers in washington were part of the plot and were going to go to public buildings. the most urgent thing was to identify anybody out there who might be planning to carry out

further attacks. in hindsight, everything is inevitable. when you are operating in real time, nothing is inevitable. you do not know what will happen. the critical question was to identify people who were threats. secondly, what do we do to stop them from doing things? in the next 24 to 48 hours we had three ways to incapacitate people. one was to address them for a crime. one was if we did not have the evidence to arrest but they were in the country illegally, we could use our immigration authorities. the third was difficult but was to hold people as material witnesses for further investigation and allow the judge to hold them without releasing them. those were basically the authorities were used as we

follow the paper trail from the hijackers to anyone they interacted with. >> when you got back to the united states, to what extent did the pentagon think out legally, constitutionally some of these actions? eventually, we will get down the road to guantanamo. to what extent were constitutional issues in the mix in the first 72 hours? >> one way they came up right away was when the president said that our reaction had to go beyond the standard law- enforcement approach taken by the government for decades when we suffered terrorist attacks. the 9/11 attack was much larger than that and represented an ongoing threat. he was talking about the kinds

of things that secretary chertoff was just talking about, how do we prevent the next attack? there was a widespread view and fear that they're going to be followed attacks. he described the national effort required at war. this was within 48 hours or so, the president used the term "war." at the pentagon, we had to conceive of the nature of this war. if you are at war, you have an enemy. how do you define the enemy? if you are at war, it is very important to have a war aim. in 1990 when saddam hussein invaded kuwait, president bush senior set a war aim and build an international coalition based on that of expelling the iraqi forces from kuwait.

that later became highly significant when people were suggesting that setting it up at the beginning wind up being a major factor. we were conscious that if you are going to set a war aim, it had to be something appropriate, sensible, and flexible. we were talking about this when we were not even fully sure who had done this, how large the enemy network was. we had a big discussion about setting the war aim. we announced ourselves what happens if there are a series of attacks of this kind. if our aim is to prevent the next attack, what are the consequences to the united states? immediately, we thought about the danger to the constitution. we thought about the fact that a series of terrorist attacks could transform the nature of our society. we had already taken prudent measures to close down air travel over the united states, to clamp down on the borders.

there were all sorts of civil liberties issues involved. >these were just discussions. this was not anything that was turned into operations or executed. >> airplanes did land. borders were closed. >> one of the great stories of september 11 is the phenomenal work that the faa did to get all those airplanes safely on the ground. >> i remember a question that came up about whether the president have the authority to ground all the airplanes. the answer came back quickly from the faa. yes. >> that was from the lawyers at the faa. >> the statutory authority of the secretary of transportation to ground the airplanes. >> vice-president cheney months after this told me that when he went down to the president's

emergency operations center or peoc that they gave him a yellow pad, pencil, and the tail number of every airplane that had not landed. one by one, he was able to check them off. i am sure he probably did more than that. that is all he fessed up to. >> i think it is so vital for people to understand what the stakes were. secretary chertoff used the word casually a few minutes ago, "decapitation." it was a word i have not heard in my career until then. remember how peaceful the 1990's were a broad? it is the old notion that the soviets have enough nuclear power to take out the president,

vice president, speaker of the house, every member of the house and senate to decapitate the united states government. the military has drilled for this since the cold war. the decapitation programming went into place. this is how united states change that day in terms of government and military. a word most to denver heard of became terribly real -- a word that most had never heard of became terribly real in that moment. >> we have a microphone waiting. give the high sign if you like to pursue any of these particular lines with the panelists. >> any article in the constitution has and it to defend and protect constitution. it does not mean preserve, protect, and defend the president. it means protecting the presidency. part of the responsibility for

the continuity of the presidency and the government. that is where you get into the argument about fighting the decapitation of the government. that falls under the federal emergency management agency, the department homeland security. the defense department provides the bulk of support for the effort. >> mr. secretary, did you stay in washington after the attack? >> i knew that the deputy was elsewhere. the attorney general flew back and got there in the afternoon. i stayed there with director mueller because the critical thing was to identify and stop anyone out there who might carry out followed attacks. we had to give him the authority to g