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WP Version Of How Bush Learned Of First Plane Crash Contradicts Bush's "Bush's motorcade left for the school at 8:30 a.m. As it was arriving, pagers and cell phones alerted White House aides that a plane had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Bush remembers senior adviser Karl Rove bringing him the news, saying it appeared to be an accident involving a small, twin-engine plane. In fact it was American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 out of Boston's Logan International Airport. Based on what he was told, Bush assumed it was an accident. "This is pilot error," the president recalled saying. "It's unbelievable that somebody would do this." Conferring with Andrew H. Card Jr., his White House chief of staff, Bush said, "The guy must have had a heart attack." "...At 9:05 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175, also a Boeing 767, smashed into the South Tower of the trade center. Bush was seated on a stool in the classroom when Card whispered the news: "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack." Bush remembers exactly what he thought: "They had declared war on us, and I made up my mind at that moment that we were going to war." A photo shows Bush's face with a distant look as he absorbed what Card had said. He nodded and resumed his conversation with the class. "Really good," he said before excusing himself and returning to the holding room...." --Balz and Woodward 01.27.02. Bush's 9.11 Story Bush "said yesterday: "I saw an airplane hit the tower - the TV was obviously on - and I used to fly myself, and I said, 'There's one terrible pilot.' And I said, 'It must have been a horrible accident.'" Of the second strike, Mr Bush told the youngster [,third grader, Jordan,]: "I wasn't sure what to think at first."...The story that he was watching TV contradicts reports from correspondents at the time that he got the news in a phone call from his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. It also adds further puzzles: why he was being made to wait; why he did not at least delay his entry into the classroom; and why is it obvious that an elementary school would have a TV set in the corridor?" --Guardian, 12.5.01 EXCERPT FROM TRANSCRIPT..."Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my chief of staff, Andy Card -- actually I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on, and I use to fly myself, and I said, "There's one terrible pilot." And I said, "It must have been a horrible accident." But I was whisked off there -- I didn't have much time to think about it, and I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my chief who was sitting over here walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower. America's under attack." --CNN, 12.04.01 "Mr. Bush was informed that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in a telephone conversation with Ms. Rice shortly before walking into a second-grade classroom at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla. White House officials said he knew only that it was a single aircraft and not necessarily a terrorist attack. The president did not appear preoccupied until a few moments later, around 9:05 a.m., when his chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., entered the room and whispered into the president's ear about the second plane attack. At that moment Mr. Bush's face became visibly tense and serious." --NYT, 9/12/01. I was watching the major news channels right after the first plane struck the first tower at around 8:45. My recollection is that footage of that accident was not made available until sometime after the sceond tower was hit by the second plane. That's because any shot of the first plane hit would have been happenstance and probably recorded by an amateur. If that's correct, Bush's thought when he saw the footage between 9:10 and 9:15, "There's one terrible pilot," would be stunningly inappropriate, since it would only have come after phone conversations with Rice at around 8:55 (first plane), after seeing the first tower on fire at around 9:00, after getting Card's whispered message about the second plane crash at around 9:05, and after staying in the classroom for another 5 minutes or so. Given that scenario, Bush's viewing of the second plane hitting the second tower would only have taken place after his classroom visit, which ended before 9:15. At around 9:15 he addressed the nation. according to the 9.12 NYT. Thus, the only way Bush could have seen the first plane crash prior to seeing the second plan crash would have been to have seen it on a non-public Secret Service TV transmission, which he didn't say had happened, but then, where did the secret service immediately get the pictures and send them to Bush within ten minutes of the crash? None were available to the public until around 10:00, if memory serves, and those weren't reported to have been supplied by the government. By 10:00 Bush was leaving Saarasota. Given the available facts, the most benign conclusion, then, is that Bush was factually incorrect when he told Jordan that he saw the first plane hit the first tower prior to his going into the classroom. He actually could have seen the tower on fire, heard the reporter say that a plane hit it, and concluded, "There's one terrible pilot," making his remark too typically inappropriate, but not stunningly so. This would be just one more example of Bush's problems with his use of language and facts, which we have beem calling to our readers' attention for quite some time. --Politex, 12.09.01 Perhaps Bush was watching the TODAY SHOW. I saw it there, on TV, almost "live" when it happened - when the first plane hit at about 8:48 - because the Today Show cut right to it. It was immediate. I was in Boston.I had time to shower before the second plane hit, which it did just as I was leaving the bathroom. So the shot of the first plane hitting - we did think it was a rogue private plane from the picture - was almost immediate....--Julia I'm a graduate student in psychology. I was fascinated to read your report this morning. This is an interesting example of a memory error. I doubt that Bush was deliberately lying. Most likely he does have a visual memory of seeing the the crash on TV, and he has mixed up the source of the memory--moving it to and earlier time and place. I was shocked when I took a graduate cognitive psychology course and learned about all the ways that human memory can fail. As people get older they have more trouble with source memory. Ronald Reagan sometimes mistook events he had seen in movies with real-life memories. --Ann When Bush said that he saw the first plane hit the first World Trade Center tower before reading to the children, he made a major gaffe. He could not possibly have seen the first plane hit because... No television station had any footage of the first plane hitting the WTC that morning. I checked this myself at http://tvnews1.televisionarchive.org/prog Peter Jennings of ABC even said at one point (around 9:25am), and I quote from transcript "No, nobody who saw--watching 'Good Morning America' today, for example, saw, at least those of us working on television, saw a first plane crash into the building. Much of the country watching television this morning will have seen the second plane crash into the other tower..." All the stations started their coverage a few minutes after the first WTC tower was hit. In those 15-20 minutes before the second plane clearly plowed into the second tower, the announcers were not sure what had happened. They were debating whether it was a bomb, a missile, a small propeller plane, or a large jet.... --Illarion What i don't understand is: why, when he was told of the second plane, did he go on reading a story about a goat for another 20 minutes? When it was known that new york was under attack, 4 planes were hijacked, there was one heading for dc, etc., why wouldn't the president of the United States get up and do something? try to help, like take charge? why is this not news? for whatever reason it happened...this should be of major concern to people. can you imagine if Clinton had done that? --Claude for the industrial strength version... Bush Watch is a non-advocacy site paid for by Politex, a non-affiliated U.S. citizen. Editorial Policy: All entries are dated and documented as needed. Text (c) Politex. Permission of author required for reprinting. Duration of working link not under our control. Updated daily at various times. Send all e-mail to Politex.

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