La demografía de las elecciones de medio tiempo en Estados Unidos

Los resultados de las elecciones, desglosados por rasa, sexo, grado de educación, edad y lugares. Con datos de CNN y DER SPIEGEL. Sin comentario…

 

James Comey, el hombre que hace temblar a los presidentes de EE UU

Como quisiéramos a un jefe de policia de este talante…

El exdirector del FBI James Comey jura ante el Comité de Inteligencia del Senado, el pasado jueves. JONATHAN ERNST REUTERS

El exdirector del FBI, humillado e insultado por Trump, ha decidido devolver el golpe. Esta es la historia de un funcionario respetado y obsesionado por la integridad.

Jan Martínez Ahrens, 10 junio 2017 / EL PAIS

11 de marzo de 2004. El presidente George W. Bush había citado en el comedor privado de la Casa Blanca a un tipo duro. Sentado en una silla que le quedaba pequeña, ese hombre de 2,03 metros se negaba a autorizar por su flagrante ilegalidad el programa de escuchas indiscriminadas Viento Estelar. Y su firma era necesaria. Incapacitado el fiscal general por enfermedad, era él, su adjunto, quien dirigía el Departamento de Justicia. El vicepresidente, Dick Cheney, ya le había explicado la situación: si no había autorización, morirían americanos y la sangre correría a cuenta de él. Bush, con menos rudeza, le repitió el argumento.

Bush, en primer plano, y Cheney.

Cuando ya estaba todo dicho, recuerda el biógrafo Garrett Graff, el fiscal miró a su anfitrión y sin alterarse le respondió: “Como dijo Martín Lutero aquí me planto. No puedo hacer otra cosa”.

Así es James Brien Comey. El hombre que hace temblar a los presidentes. El mismo que 13 años después de enfrentarse a Bush y Cheney ha puesto contra las cuerdas a Donald Trump con su testimonio ante el Comité de Inteligencia del Senado. Sólo y sin papeles, el destituido director del FBI ejerció este jueves de último guardián de la legalidad. Acusó al presidente de mentir y difamar, denunció las presiones para desactivar la investigación de la trama rusa, pero sobre todo reveló al mundo el modo de operar del multimillonario. Las artes oscuras que el presidente le exhibió en tres reuniones privadas y seis conversaciones. El propio Comey, en un estilo cinematográfico, las ha relatado al Senado. El presidente lo niega todo.

27 de enero de 2017. Trump le había llamado para invitarle a cenar a la Casa Blanca. Comey creyó que iba a acudir más gente. Pero cuando llegó, le hicieron pasar al Salón Verde y le sentaron en una pequeña mesa oval. Dos asistentes de la Marina eran los únicos testigos. Servían y desaparecían. En esa intimidad, el presidente le preguntó si quería seguir como director del FBI y le recordó que era un puesto que muchos ambicionaban.

Comey entendió el mensaje: “Mis instintos me dijeron que esa cena buscaba establecer una relación clientelar. Eso me preocupó mucho, dada la independencia del FBI”. Para salir del apuro, le habló de su carácter apolítico, pero el comandante en jefe insistió. “Necesito lealtad. Espero lealtad”.

Las cartas habían quedado sobre la mesa. “No me moví ni hablé o mudé mi expresión facial durante el embarazoso silencio que siguió. Simplemente nos miramos el uno al otro”.

Trump en el Despacho Oval.

Ese fue el comienzo. En las horas, semanas y meses siguientes, Trump no dejó de presionarle. Bajo una atmósfera asfixiante, el director del FBI, siempre según su relato, se sintió sucesivamente “asombrado, confuso, turbado”. Pidió ayuda a su superior, el fiscal general, y le comunicó que no quería volver a verse con el presidente a solas. Pero todo siguió igual, hasta que el pasado 9 de mayo fue despedido. Una medida extraordinaria que sólo había ocurrido una vez antes en la historia del FBI. Como remate, Trump le llamó públicamente demente y fanfarrón, y su portavoz declaró que ni en el FBI le querían.

“Trump erró por completo, Comey es un hombre capaz de expresar sus sentimientos en voz alta y que cautiva a sus agentes por empatía, pero no es un siervo; es un curtidísimo fiscal y jefe de agentes federales. No es político. Con él no funcionan los insultos y amenazas”, explica un alto funcionario de seguridad que le trató en la época de Barack Obama y que pide mantenerse en el anonimato.

James Comey y su familia.

 Humillado, Comey sacó su lado duro. A sus 56 años, casado y con cinco hijos, no pensaba dejarse pisotear. Había luchado contra la mafia, perseguido abusos racistas, investigado al presidente Bill Clinton y encarado a Bush. Fue fiscal federal en Nueva York y fiscal general adjunto de Estados Unidos. Su apabullante trayectoria le había permitido, pese a figurar como elector republicano, ser escogido en 2013 por Barack Obama para dirigir el FBI. “Para él, la integridad lo es todo”, señala su biógrafo y amigo Garret Graff.

Pasó entonces al ataque. Como buen agente y experto conocedor del tablero de Washington, había tomado nota de todas sus conversaciones con Trump, y empezó a filtrarlas. Las detonaciones sacudieron la Casa Blanca. Se volvió su enemigo número uno. No era la primera vez.

Sus mayores problemas siempre han procedido del trato con los políticos. Ahí se ha mostrado torpe. Su decisión de reabrir el caso de los correos privados de Hillary Clinton a sólo 11 días de las elecciones para cerrarlo poco después, cuando el daño ya estaba hecho, aún levanta ampollas en las filas demócratas. Comey ha defendido que lo hizo porque era su deber. Y que ocultarlo habría sido traicionar la confianza pública. “A veces es un poco boyscout”, dice un buen conocedor de Comey.

Esa rectitud es una de sus características. Se trata de un hombre pétreo; altivo para muchos. Quienes le conocen vinculan esta inflexibilidad a sus sentimientos religiosos. Aunque nació en el seno de una familia católica irlandesa, pronto se hizo evangelista e influido por el teólogo Reinhold Niebuhr escribió su tesis: Los cristianos en política. Bajo esa luz, el debate entre el poder y la integridad siempre le ha perseguido, pero nunca le ha anulado. Como enemigo es peligroso. Sus conocidos recuerdan que sabe dónde lleva el arma. Y si es necesario la usa. Con Trump han sido sus notas, esos memorandos que amenazan con abrir un proceso de impeachment. Con Bush, el puñal fue otro.

Ocurrió al final de aquella conversación en el comedor privado. Cuando el presidente volvió a pedirle que aprobara la orden de escuchas masivas, Comey se inclinó y le dijo: “Si lo hace, debe saber que el director del FBI dimitirá hoy mismo”. Bush parpadeó. Nadie se lo había dicho. Pero no tardó en darse cuenta de qué era lo mejor que podía hacer. Ante la crisis que se le abría, decidió ceder.

James Comey (izquierda) y el entonces director del FBI, Robert Mueller, en 2004.

 El director del FBI era en aquellas fechas el legendario e implacable Robert Mueller. El amigo y mentor de Comey. El mismo que ahora ha sido elegido fiscal especial para investigar la trama rusa y cuyo poder representa la mayor amenaza para la presidencia de Trump. «Si hay alguien con mejor reputación que Comey, es Mueller y este no va a parar», señala el alto cargo en seguridad. “Y que nadie piense que Comey se va a retirar del escenario. Él y Mueller han trabajado muchos años juntos y confían plenamente uno en el otro”, indica Graff.  La Casa Blanca, con Comey y Mueller, tiene un problema. Saben disparar y no les tiembla el pulso.

Immigration Agents Took a Woman From El Salvador With a Brain Tumor Out of the Hospital

Maya Rhodan, 23 febrero 2017 / TIME

Law enforcement officials moved a 26-year-old woman from a Texas hospital where she was being treated for a brain tumor back to a detention facility against her will, according to her legal representative.

The undocumented El Salvadoran woman, who is being identified only as Sara to protect her privacy, began complaining of headaches while in a detention facility in early February, according to The Daily Beast, which first reported the story. On Feb. 10, she collapsed, and she was later taken to a hospital, where she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Melissa Zuniga, a paralegal who is working on the case, said in an email that Sara told her on Wednesday night that she had been taken back to a detention facility with her hands and ankles in restraints.

» She was brought in a wheelchair and is not being given treatment even though her nose continues to bleed and she has told them her head is exploding,» Zuniga said in an email.

According to The Daily Beast, Sara admitted to crossing the border illegally in November of 2015 but claimed she had done so because she feared an aunt in El Salvador would kill her. A Border Patrol agent, meantime, testified that Sarah told him she had come to the United States for work.

Although Sara was detained in 2015, her case has gotten renewed attention because of recent executive orders from the Trump Administration aimed at increasing deportations.

VIDEO: NUEVAS ORDENES DE TRUMP:
//players.brightcove.net/293884104/SJa0Thl7_default/index.html?videoId=5332921270001

Federal agents in Texas move hospitalized Salvadoran woman awaiting emergency surgery to a detention facility: LA TIMES

The Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. (Louis DeLuca / Associated Press)

Barbara Demick, 23 febrero 2017 / LOS ANGELES TIMES

A critically ill woman from El Salvador who was awaiting emergency surgery for a brain tumor was forcibly moved from a Texas hospital to a detention center by federal agents, raising concerns about President Trump’s directive to more aggressively pursue people living in the country illegally.

Sara Beltran-Hernandez, 26, a mother of two young children, was bound by her hands and feet and removed by wheelchair from Huguley Hospital in Fort Worth late Wednesday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who brought her to a detention facility in Alvarado, Texas.

“It is heartbreaking and inhumane,’’ said Chris Hamilton, a Texas lawyer who tried to visit the woman Wednesday night at the detention center, where he was threatened with arrest for trespassing.

“This is unacceptable under our Constitution, and unacceptable from a standpoint of basic human rights,” Hamilton said. “This woman is critically ill and in severe pain.”

Lawyers who have been representing Beltran-Hernandez in an asylum petition said they plan to file an emergency appeal in Texas to get their client returned to the hospital.

“The medical team and legal team are focused on getting Sara the medical treatment she desperately needs,” said Lorena Massoni, a paralegal working on Beltran-Hernandez’s case.

This is how Trump’s expanded deportation policy is being felt across the U.S.

Beltran-Hernandez  was picked up by immigration agents in November 2015 while trying to get from El Salvador to New York to visit her mother and other relatives who live in Queens. She has been detained ever since at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, while her family petitioned for asylum, citing threats of violence against her, from a domestic partner, among others.

Beltran-Hernandez was transferred from the detention center to the hospital in Fort Worth this month after complaining of headaches, nosebleeds and memory loss. Doctors diagnosed a brain tumor and put her on a waiting list for emergency surgery, which was supposed to take place this weekend, according to her legal team. They were stunned when the agents removed her from the hospital Wednesday.

“They had tied up her hands and ankles,” Melissa Zuniga, another paralegal on the case, said in a text message. “I don’t understand why at all when she’s extremely sick and being moved in a wheelchair.”

Beltran-Hernandez’s relatives have not been allowed to visit her, although they have spoken to her on the telephone.

Beltran-Hernandez is back at the Prairieland Detention Center, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The agency said in a statement Thursday, “During her stay at the hospital, ICE ensured that she was able to speak to her family and to her attorney by phone. Like all detainees in our care, Ms. Beltran will continue to have access to 24 hour emergency medical care and to any required specialized treatment at an outside facility.’’ The statement also said that a doctor had determined she was stable enough to be discharged and that she will be seen again by a medical specialist next week.

The abrupt removal of the critically ill woman is a dramatic example of what many observers believe might become the new normal: immigration agents implementing the Trump administration’s call to aggressively deport people in the country illegally regardless of whether they have committed serious crimes.

“The most pernicious thing is that immigration enforcement authorities are filtering through government at every level seeing who they can scoop up,’’ said Rory Lancman, a councilman from Queens. Lancman is not involved with the Beltran-Hernandez case but is active on behalf of other immigrants in his district.

“If immigration agents are in our schools, our healthcare system, our courts, lives will be lost,” he said.

‘Buena suerte con el muro’: el video que busca mostrarle a Trump lo complicado que será su plan

Fue creado con más de 200.000 imágenes satelitales de la zona fronteriza con una extensión de 3.144 kilómetros.

<p><a href=»https://vimeo.com/189015526″>Field of Vision – Best of Luck with the Wall</a> from <a href=»https://vimeo.com/fieldofvision»>Field Of Vision</a> on <a href=»https://vimeo.com»>Vimeo</a>.</p>

Mónica Cruz, 25 enero 2017 / EL PAIS-VERNE

Este miércoles, Donald Trump firmó un decreto para la construcción de un muro entre Estados Unidos y México. Este fue el emblema de su campaña y una de sus estrategias para detener el flujo de migrantes indocumentados a su país. Desde que Trump anunció el plan en el verano de 2015, varios analistas y políticos han cuestionado su viabilidad, especialmente por la extensión de más de 3.144 kilómetros de la frontera. Por esta razón, este miércoles los tuiteros en Estados Unidos han rescatado este video de octubre de 2016, realizado por el medio The Intercept, que muestra a través de fotografías satelitales esta gran distancia y las condiciones geográficas complejas de la zona. La versión en Vimeo del video tiene más de 560.000 reproducciones. Se titula: Best of Luck with that wall (Buena suerte con ese muro).

El cineasta Josh Begley y la documentalista Laura Poitras (una de las periodistas que publicó los documentos filtrados de Edward Snowden), crearon el video a partir de más de 200.000 fotografías satelitales tomadas de Google Maps y unidas para dar la impresión de que una cámara viaja a través de ella de punta a punta. “La frontera sur (de EE UU) es un espacio que se ha reducido a metáfora”, escribe Begley en un artículo de The Intercept. Ya ni siquiera es geográfica. Parte de mi intención es insistir en esa realidad geográfica. Al enfocarse en ese paisaje físico, espero que la audiencia obtenga un mayor sentido de la enormidad de todo esto y tal vez imagine lo que significa ser un blanco político en ese terreno”.

El presidente ha cambiado los detalles del plan como su altura y costo de construcción, pero la meta de obligar a México a pagar por él no ha cambiado. El Gobierno mexicano ha negado en varias ocasiones obedecer a este plan. Desde que Trump anunció el plan en el verano de 2015, varios analistas y políticos han cuestionado su viabilidad, especialmente por su costo. Un estudio realizado por el Washington Post estima un que este sería de aproximadamente 25.000 millones de dólares y no 12.000 millones de dólares como ha dicho Trump. Uno de los factores que aumentaría el costo del muro, según el artículo, son las zonas montañosas, las que están divididas por el Río Bravo o cerca de los océanos Pacífico y Atlántico.

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El editorial del New York Times que endosa a Hillary Clinton

Editorial Board, 25 septiembre 2016 / THE NEW YORK TIMES

In any normal election year, we’d compare the two presidential candidates side by side on the issues. But this is not a normal election year. A comparison like that would be an empty exercise in a race where one candidate — our choice, Hillary Clinton — has a record of service and a raft of pragmatic ideas, and the other, Donald Trump, discloses nothing concrete about himself or his plans while promising the moon and offering the stars on layaway. (We will explain in a subsequent editorial why we believe Mr. Trump to be the worst nominee put forward by a major party in modern American history.)

But this endorsement would also be an empty exercise if it merely affirmed the choice of Clinton supporters. We’re aiming instead to persuade those of you who are hesitating to vote for Mrs. Clinton — because you are reluctant to vote for a Democrat, or for another Clinton, or for a candidate who might appear, on the surface, not to offer change from an establishment that seems indifferent and a political system that seems broken.

Running down the other guy won’t suffice to make that argument. The best case for Hillary Clinton cannot be, and is not, that she isn’t Donald Trump.

The best case is, instead, about the challenges this country faces, and Mrs. Clinton’s capacity to rise to them.

The next president will take office with bigoted, tribalist movements and their leaders on the march. In the Middle East and across Asia, in Russia and Eastern Europe, even in Britain and the United States, war, terrorism and the pressures of globalization are eroding democratic values, fraying alliances and challenging the ideals of tolerance and charity.

The 2016 campaign has brought to the surface the despair and rage of poor and middle-class Americans who say their government has done little to ease the burdens that recession, technological change, foreign competition and war have heaped on their families.

Over 40 years in public life, Hillary Clinton has studied these forces and weighed responses to these problems. Our endorsement is rooted in respect for her intellect, experience, toughness and courage over a career of almost continuous public service, often as the first or only woman in the arena.

Mrs. Clinton’s work has been defined more by incremental successes than by moments of transformational change. As a candidate, she has struggled to step back from a pointillist collection of policy proposals to reveal the full pattern of her record. That is a weakness of her campaign, and a perplexing one, for the pattern is clear. It shows a determined leader intent on creating opportunity for struggling Americans at a time of economic upheaval and on ensuring that the United States remains a force for good in an often brutal world.
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Similarly, Mrs. Clinton’s occasional missteps, combined with attacks on her trustworthiness, have distorted perceptions of her character. She is one of the most tenacious politicians of her generation, whose willingness to study and correct course is rare in an age of unyielding partisanship. As first lady, she rebounded from professional setbacks and personal trials with astounding resilience. Over eight years in the Senate and four as secretary of state, she built a reputation for grit and bipartisan collaboration. She displayed a command of policy and diplomatic nuance and an ability to listen to constituents and colleagues that are all too exceptional in Washington.

Mrs. Clinton’s record of service to children, women and families has spanned her adult life. One of her boldest acts as first lady was her 1995 speech in Beijing declaring that women’s rights are human rights. After a failed attempt to overhaul the nation’s health care system, she threw her support behind legislation to establish the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which now covers more than eight million lower-income young people. This year, she rallied mothers of gun-violence victims to join her in demanding comprehensive background checks for gun buyers and tighter reins on gun sales.

After opposing driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants during the 2008 campaign, she now vows to push for comprehensive immigration legislation as president and to use executive power to protect law-abiding undocumented people from deportation and cruel detention. Some may dismiss her shift as opportunistic, but we credit her for arriving at the right position.

Mrs. Clinton and her team have produced detailed proposals on crime, policing and race relations, debt-free college and small-business incentives, climate change and affordable broadband. Most of these proposals would benefit from further elaboration on how to pay for them, beyond taxing the wealthiest Americans. They would also depend on passage by Congress.

That means that, to enact her agenda, Mrs. Clinton would need to find common ground with a destabilized Republican Party, whose unifying goal in Congress would be to discredit her. Despite her political scars, she has shown an unusual capacity to reach across the aisle.

When Mrs. Clinton was sworn in as a senator from New York in 2001, Republican leaders warned their caucus not to do anything that might make her look good. Yet as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, she earned the respect of Republicans like Senator John McCain with her determination to master intricate military matters.

Her most lasting achievements as a senator include a federal fund for long-term health monitoring of 9/11 first responders, an expansion of military benefits to cover reservists and the National Guard, and a law requiring drug companies to improve the safety of their medications for children.

Below the radar, she fought for money for farmers, hospitals, small businesses and environmental projects. Her vote in favor of the Iraq war is a black mark, but to her credit, she has explained her thinking rather than trying to rewrite that history.

As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton was charged with repairing American credibility after eight years of the Bush administration’s unilateralism. She bears a share of the responsibility for the Obama administration’s foreign-policy failings, notably in Libya. But her achievements are substantial. She led efforts to strengthen sanctions against Iran, which eventually pushed it to the table for talks over its nuclear program, and in 2012, she helped negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

Mrs. Clinton led efforts to renew diplomatic relations with Myanmar, persuading its junta to adopt political reforms. She helped promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an important trade counterweight to China and a key component of the Obama administration’s pivot to Asia. Her election-year reversal on that pact has confused some of her supporters, but her underlying commitment to bolstering trade along with workers’ rights is not in doubt. Mrs. Clinton’s attempt to reset relations with Russia, though far from successful, was a sensible effort to improve interactions with a rivalrous nuclear power.

Mrs. Clinton has shown herself to be a realist who believes America cannot simply withdraw behind oceans and walls, but must engage confidently in the world to protect its interests and be true to its values, which include helping others escape poverty and oppression.

Mrs. Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, governed during what now looks like an optimistic and even gentle era. The end of the Cold War and the advance of technology and trade appeared to be awakening the world’s possibilities rather than its demons. Many in the news media, and in the country, and in that administration, were distracted by the scandal du jour — Mr. Clinton’s impeachment — during the very period in which a terrorist threat was growing. We are now living in a world darkened by the realization of that threat and its many consequences.

Mrs. Clinton’s service spans both eras, and she has learned hard lessons from the three presidents she has studied up close. She has also made her own share of mistakes. She has evinced a lamentable penchant for secrecy and made a poor decision to rely on a private email server while at the State Department. That decision deserved scrutiny, and it’s had it. Now, considered alongside the real challenges that will occupy the next president, that email server, which has consumed so much of this campaign, looks like a matter for the help desk. And, viewed against those challenges, Mr. Trump shrinks to his true small-screen, reality-show proportions, as we’ll argue in detail on Monday.

Through war and recession, Americans born since 9/11 have had to grow up fast, and they deserve a grown-up president. A lifetime’s commitment to solving problems in the real world qualifies Hillary Clinton for this job, and the country should put her to work.

‘We’re the Only Plane in the Sky’

Where was the president in the eight hours after the Sept. 11 attacks? The strange, harrowing journey of Air Force One, as told by the people who were on board.

Garrett M. Graff, 9 septiembre 2016 / POLITICO

Nearly every American above a certain age remembers precisely where they were on September 11, 2001. But for a tiny handful of people, those memories touch American presidential history. Shortly after the attacks began, the most powerful man in the world, who had been informed of the World Trade Center explosions in a Florida classroom, was escorted to a runway and sent to the safest place his handlers could think of: the open sky.

For the next eight hours, with American airspace completely cleared of jets, a single blue-and-white Boeing 747, tail number 29000—filled with about 65 passengers, crew and press, and the 43rd president, George W. Bush, as well as 70 box lunches and 25 pounds of bananas—traversed the eastern United States. On board, President Bush and his aides argued about two competing interests—the need to return to Washington and reassure a nation and the competing need to protect the commander in chief. All the while, he and his staff grappled with the aftermath of the worst attack on American soil in their lifetimes, making crucial decisions with only flickering information about the attacks unfolding below. Bush struggled even to contact his family and to reach Vice President Dick Cheney in the White House bunker.

The story of those remarkable hours—and the thoughts and emotions of those aboard—isolated eight miles above America, escorted by three F-16 fighters, flying just below the speed of sound, has never been comprehensively told.

This oral history, based on more than 40 hours of original interviews with more than two dozen of the passengers, crew and press aboard—including many who have never spoken publicly about what they witnessed that day—traces the story of how an untested president, a sidearm-carrying general, top aides, the Secret Service and the Cipro-wielding White House physician, as well as five reporters, four radio operators, three pilots, two congressmen and a stenographer responded to 9/11.

Prologue

Andy Card, chief of staff, White House: We woke up in Sarasota, Florida, at the Colony Resort. There was a terrible stench in the air—the red tide had killed a lot of fish that had washed up on the shore. I remember being struck by that smell coming from Air Force One the night before. We’d gone off to dinner in Tampa. It was unusual for President Bush to stay out late like that, but it was a relaxing evening.

Ari Fleischer, press secretary, White House: The day couldn’t have begun any better or more beautifully.

Gordon Johndroe, assistant press secretary, White House: The day starts off very normally—the president went for a run, and I took the [press] pool out with the president. I remember I got stung by a bee, and I asked Dr. Tubb if he had something he could give me for the swelling. He said, “Yeah, we’ll get you something when we get to the airplane.” Needless to say, I promptly forgot about it that day.

Sonya Ross, reporter, Associated Press: This was a garden variety trip. It was low-ranking staff and a lot of the top journalists didn’t come. It was a scrub trip.

Mike Morell, presidential briefer, Central Intelligence Agency: I walked into his suite [for the president’s morning intelligence briefing]; he was surrounded by breakfast foods and he hadn’t touched any of it. He asked me if I’d gone to the beach the night before, and I told him I’d just gone right to bed. The second intifada was well underway then, and the briefings at that time were very heavy on Israeli-Palestinian stuff. A good bit of the briefing that morning was about Israeli matters. There was one thing that caught his attention, and he picked up the phone to call Condi [Rice] to ask her to follow up on it. There was nothing in the briefing about terrorism. It was very routine—just him, me, Andy Card and Deb Loewer from the Situation Room.

Andy Card: The president was in a great mood. He had that George W. Bush strut that morning.

B. Alexander “Sandy” Kress, senior education adviser, White House: The whole point of the trip was education. He was pushing No Child Left Behind as Congress was coming back to Washington. [Secretary of Education] Rod Paige and I briefed him ahead of his remarks to the press. It was a beautiful day—we were in his suite. He was in a really good mood. We were out of the Oval and he was relaxed. Those were probably the last carefree moments he had in his term.

Andy Card: I remember literally telling him, “It should be an easy day.” Those were the words. “It should be an easy day.”

I. Emma Booker Elementary School, Sarasota, Fla.

Ari Fleischer: Back in 2001, no one had iPhones or BlackBerrys. I had this high-tech pager on my belt—it was two-way, in that you could send back one of like 14 preprogrammed responses. For the day, it was pretty fancy-fancy stuff. As we were driving to the first stop for the day, I got a page from Brian Bravo, who put together the White House news clips.

Brian Bravo, press assistant, White House: My job was to just scour the news—TV, the AP wire, Bloomberg. I just spent my time at the desk [in the White House], feeding the news all day to the White House staff. I actually had a buddy in New York who called me. He worked in a tall office tower and had seen the first plane hit. It was word-of-mouth intel, but then I started to see TV starting to cover it. To get to the pagers they used back then on the road, I’d have to parse any story down to a few short words. I just said, “A plane has hit the World Trade Center.” At that point, no one knew what it meant.

Ari Fleischer: I got out [of the motorcade] thinking this must’ve been some kind of terrible accident.

Brian Montgomery, director of advance, White House: When the motorcade arrives, I get out and I was running towards the limo—I always run towards the limo—and Mark Rosenker, the head of the White House Military Officer, says to me, “Dr. Rice needs to talk to the president.”

Ari Fleischer: Karl Rove told [the president] first.

Karl Rove, senior adviser, White House: We were standing outside the elementary school. My phone rang. It was my assistant Susan Ralston, saying that a plane had hit the World Trade Center—it wasn’t clear whether it was private, commercial, prop, or jet. That’s all she had. The boss was about two feet away. He was shaking hands. I told him the same thing. He arched his eyebrows like, “Get more.”

Dave Wilkinson, assistant agent-in-charge, U.S. Secret Service: Eddie Marinzel and I were the two lead agents with the president that day. The head of the detail was back in Washington. We heard, “There’s an incident in New York.”

Brian Montgomery: There was this group of students, all young ladies in uniforms and teachers, all oblivious to all of this. They had no idea what was going on. The president was very gracious and greeted them, and then said, “I need to go take an important telephone call.” He went into the holding room and went directly to the STU-III [the secure telephone].

Ari Fleischer: There’s always a secure telephone waiting for the president, but in the nine months he’d been president, I don’t think we’d ever used one before an event like that. Condi was holding for him.

Andy Card: We were standing at the door to the classroom, when Deb Loewer [from the White House Situation Room staff] came up and said, simply, “Sir, it appears that a twin-engine prop plane crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers.” We all said something like what a tragedy. I remember I was thinking about the passengers—how much they must’ve worried as they realized what was about to happen. It was only a nanosecond, and then the principal opened the door and the president went into the classroom to meet the students.

Brian Montgomery: We’re trying to get a TV for the hold room—all we could find was this massive 30-inch TV on a cart with rabbit ears.

‘The Safest and Most Dangerous Place in the World at the Exact Same Time’: Click to view gallery. | George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

Dave Wilkinson: We take everything extremely seriously, anything that could affect the presidency. We began speaking to experts back at the White House. No one knew anything. We’re asking ourselves, “Is there any direction of interest towards the president?” That’s the phrase, “direction of interest.” Or is this just an attack on New York?

Sandy Kress: I was back in the media room. There was some buzz about the first plane, people were watching it on a TV. Then there was a stampede across the media room as they saw the second plane hit.

Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Florida): I was brand new. I was a freshman [congressman]. We’d gone into the media center, when the main event was going to be, while we wait for the president and the children to read together in the other room. We were clustered around the TV and watched the second plane hit.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark, superintendent of communications, Air Force One: From all indications, it was going to be a simple trip. I had breakfast with one of the navigators, and we were talking about how we were having breakfast in Florida and we’re going to be back in time for lunch.

Col. Mark Tillman, presidential pilot, Air Force One: We were all getting ready, based on the estimated departure time. All of us had already shown up at the plane.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: There were two TV tuners, worldwide television tuners [at my workspace on Air Force One]. They were like old-school rabbit ears—UHF and VHF frequencies. We didn’t have the ability to tune into CNN, Fox, or anything else. It was the Today Show, the strongest signal that day, and they’re showing pictures [of the Towers], smoke billowing out. I saw the second airplane strike. I said, “Oh shit.” I just dropped everything and ran downstairs to get Colonel Tillman: “You’ve got to come see this.”

Col. Mark Tillman: It didn’t make any sense. It’s a clear-and-a-million day.

President George W. Bush participates in a reading demonstration the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. | George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

President George W. Bush participates in a reading demonstration the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. | George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

Staff Sgt. William “Buzz” Buzinski, security, Air Force One: Our job is to protect the asset [Air Force One]. The Secret Service is principal protection. We’re asset protection. We protect the plane 24 hours a day, even after the president has left. One of the advance [Secret Service] agents had told us about the first plane. Then about 17 minutes later, I see the same guy sprinting across the tarmac. He said, “Another plane hit the towers.” I knew instantly it was terrorism. We started to increase security around the plane—made it a tighter bubble.

Staff Sgt. Paul Germain, airborne communications system operator, Air Force One: We thought it was weird even just when the first plane hit. People who know airplanes, that’s some real stuff right there. Big airplanes just don’t hit little buildings. Then, as soon as that second plane hit, that switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree.

Col. Mark Tillman: Everything started coming alive. We were hooked into the PEOC [the White House bunker] and the JOC [Joint Operations Center], for the Secret Service. They’re all in the link now.

Andy Card: Another plane hit the other Tower. My mind flashed to three initials: UBL. Usama bin Laden. Then I was thinking that we had White House people there—my deputy, Joe Hagin, and a team were in New York preparing for the U.N. General Assembly. I was thinking that Joe was probably at the World Trade Center, that’s where the Secret Service office was, in the basement.

Mike Morell: I was really worried that someone was going to fly a plane into that school. This event had been on schedule for weeks, anyone could have known about it. Eddie [Marinzel, the lead Secret Service agent] wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as possible.

Rep. Adam Putnam: There’s some debate within the staff that I can hear about how the president needs to address the nation. They’re saying, “We can’t do it here. You can’t do it in front of fifth-graders.” The Secret Service is saying, “You’re doing it here or you’re not doing at all. We’re not taking the time to do it somewhere else. We need to get him secure.”

Dave Wilkinson: We’re talking to folks back at the White House, we’re beginning to get the motorcade up and running, getting the motorcycle cops back, we’re ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice. All of a sudden it hits me: The president’s the only one who doesn’t know that this plane has hit the second building. It was a discomfort to all of us that the president didn’t know. The event was dragging on, and that’s when Andy Card came out.

Andy Card: A thousand times a day, a chief of staff has to ask “Does the president need to know?” This was an easy test to pass. As strange as it sounds, as I was standing there waiting to talk to the president, I was reflecting on another time that I’d had to be the calm one: I’d been acting chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush when he threw up on the Japanese prime minister. I was all business in that moment. He’d refused to get in the ambulance—he didn’t want anyone to see the president get in the ambulance—and in the limo, he’s still sick and he’s getting sick on me. In the hotel, I take out my laminated “in case of emergency” card. I went down my checklist. I was telling people, “He’s not dying, he’s still the president.” My job that day was to be calm, cool, and collected. Not the same magnitude, of course, but I knew my job on 9/11 was to be calm, cool, and collected.

President George W. Bush participates in a reading demonstration the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. | George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

At left, George W. Bush calls New York Governor George Pataki, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Vice President Dick Cheney shortly after he learns of the September 11 attacks from Emma E. Booker Elementary School. White House Chief of Staff Andy Card talks on a cell phone. At right, Bush watches TV news coverage of New York. | George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

At left, George W. Bush calls New York Governor George Pataki, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Vice President Dick Cheney shortly after he learns of the September 11 attacks from Emma E. Booker Elementary School. White House Chief of Staff Andy Card talks on a cell phone. At right, Bush watches TV news coverage of New York. | George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

Karl Rove: I remember [Andy Card] pausing at the door, before he went in, it seemed like forever, but it was probably just a couple heartbeats. I never understood why, but he told me, years later, that he needed to spend a moment formulating the words he wanted to use.

Andy Card: When I was standing at the classroom door, I knew I was delivering a message that no president would want to hear. I knew that my message would define the moment. I decided to pass on two facts and an editorial comment. I didn’t want to invite a conversation because the president was sitting in front of the classroom. I entered the room and Ann Compton, of ABC, in the press pool, gestured, “What’s up?” I gestured back to her, two planes crashing. She gestured “What?” Then the teacher asked the students to take out their books, so I took that opportunity to approach the president. I whispered in his ear, “A second plane hit the second Tower. America is under attack.” I took a couple steps back so he couldn’t ask any questions. The students were completely focused on their books. I remember thinking what a bizarre stage we’re standing on. I was pleased with how the president reacted—he didn’t do anything to create fear.

Ellen Eckert, stenographer, White House: There are six stenographers who work for the [White House] press office. One of us always travels with the president. I always said I typed fast for a living all over the world. [That morning] was uneventful until Andy walked in.

Ari Fleischer: For Andy to interrupt a presidential event, [we knew] it had to be of monumental consequence. You just didn’t do that.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: Everything started lighting up. We saw Andy Card whisper in the president’s ear. We still didn’t know what the hell was going on. We’re just monitoring the Secret Service and staff radio channels. It was chaos. What’s next? All of a sudden, other reports start coming in—explosion at the White House, car bomb at the State Department. We’re under attack. I was 35 years old. My military career and my perspective is, I’m thinking Cold War, the big bad Soviet bear. This was an extensive attack. Could this be a nation-state?

Gordon Johndroe: Having been in that room—and it wasn’t an issue until the Michael Moore documentary [Fahrenheit 9/11]—it would have been odd if he’d jumped up and ran from the room. It didn’t seem like an eternity in the room. He finished the book and went back into the hold room.

Karl Rove: When the president walked back into the staff hold, he said, “We’re at war—give me the FBI director and the vice president.”

Ellen Eckert: As we’re walking out of the classroom, everyone’s pager started going off.

Rep. Adam Putnam: Matt Kirk, our White House liaison, says to [Rep. Dan Miller (R-Fla.), the other congressman traveling with the presidential party, and me], “We might be the only plane back to D.C. today.” He tells us that if we want a ride, we need to not have anyone notice us. If anyone notices us, they won’t let us back on board. We need to be inconspicuous quickly, so we went and just got in our vehicle in the motorcade. You could see the windows and hatches of the motorcade open up, the visible expression of the armaments that are always around the president.

Karl Rove: Eddie Marinzel [from the Secret Service] came up to the president, he was sitting in one of those tiny elementary school chairs, and Eddie said, “We need to get you to Air Force One and get you airborne.” They’d determined this might be an effort to decapitate the government.

Dave Wilkinson: We ended up with a compromise—Andy Card said we have a whole auditorium full, waiting for the next event. There was no imminent threat there in Sarasota, so we agreed [the president could give a statement before we left.]

Brian Montgomery: It was the fear of the unknown. We didn’t know if someone had put a biological agent or chemical agent at the school. He went to the auditorium. I remember looking at the students when he said, “America is under attack,” and these girls, their faces were saying, “What’s he’s telling us?”

Andy Card: He gave a very brief statement, he started off and I cringed right away. He said, “I’m going back to Washington, D.C.” And I thought, you don’t know that. We don’t know that. We don’t know where we’re going.

Gordon Johndroe: I told the press we’d be leaving right for the motorcade. We have this joke, mostly with the photographers—no running. No running to catch the president. This time, I told them, “Guys, we’re going to have to run. We’re going to have to run to the motorcade.” Going down the highway, our 15-passenger van was barely keeping up.

Dave Wilkinson: The motorcade left there and in a very aggressive fashion we got to the aircraft. Intelligence information is always sketchy. When we’re riding is the first time that we hear that’s there’s something vague about a threat to the president. That ratcheted things up.

Rep. Adam Putnam: On the motorcade back, there are all these protesters—it was still all about the recount—signs like, “Shrub stole the election.”

Andy Card: In the limo, we’re both on our cellphones—he’s frustrated because he can’t reach Don Rumsfeld. It was a very fast limo ride. We didn’t know that the Pentagon had just been attacked, so that’s why we couldn’t get Rumsfeld.

Dave Wilkinson: We asked for double-motorcade blocks at the intersection. Double and triple blocks. Not just motorcycle officers standing there with their arms up, but vehicles actually blocking the road. Now we’re worried about a car bomb. The whole way back, we were using the limos as a shell game, to keep the president safe. At the airport, we’re no longer worried about the president waving to people. No handshakes, no hugs goodbye, it’s out of the motorcade, up the stairs, we just don’t know what the hell is going on.

Mike Morell: When we got back to the plane, it was ringed by security and Secret Service with automatic weapons. I’d never seen anything like that before. They re-searched everyone before we could reboard, not just the press. They searched Andy Card’s briefcase, he was standing right in front of me in line. They went through my briefcase, which was filled with all these classified materials, but I wasn’t going object that day.

Col. Mark Tillman: As the motorcade’s coming in, I’ve got the 3 and 4 engines were already running.

Andy Card: When the limo door opened, I was struck that the engines on Air Force One were running. That’s normally a protocol no-no.

Buzz Buzinski: You never lose the excitement of seeing the motorcade. I’m on the back stairs watching as they pull up. I was wondering, “What’s the president thinking? What’s Andy Card thinking? What are they doing to make it happen?” You could feel it. You could feel the tension. We’d been attacked on our soil. You could see it their face—Andy Card, Ari Fleischer, the president.

Sonya Ross: They brought out the bomb-sniffing dogs. They were drooling all [over] the luggage. I had dog spittle all over my bags.

Buzz Buzinski: Everyone other than the president and his senior staff enter through the back stairs, so about 80 percent of the passengers came past us. You could see fear and shock. People couldn’t believe what they had just seen. They didn’t know what to do.

Sandy Kress: Getting on the plane was different than it ever had been. There was a lot of attention to our credentials, who we were. We had to show ID and our badge, not just the badge. And this even though the crew knew most of us.

Eric Draper, presidential photographer, White House: The Secret Service wanted to get him on the plane as quickly as possible. I figured that I’ve got to stick like glue to the president. Obviously, I know it’s going to be a big day. My goal was to find him as quickly as possible on board, but Andy Card said at the top of the stairs, “Take the batteries out of your cellphone. We don’t want to be tracked.” That brought me up. “Are we a target?” I wasn’t thinking of that.

Col. Mark Tillman: President Bush comes up the stairs in Sarasota, now you watch him come up the stairs every day, that famous Texas swagger. He was focused that day. No swagger. He was just trucking up the stairs. He was a man on a mission. As soon as the passengers are on board, I fire [engines] 1 and 2.

Andy Card: We’re starting to roll almost before the president gets into the suite.

Rep. Adam Putnam: There was one van, maybe a press van, that was parked too close to the plane’s wing. I remember a Secret Service agent running down the aisle; they opened the back stairs, he ran down to move the truck. He never made it back on board. They didn’t wait for him.

Gordon Johndroe: We took off and it was something out of [the movie] Independence Day. That thing took off like a rocket. The lamps are shaking they’d fired up the engines so much.

Karl Rove: [Col. Tillman] stood that thing on its tail—just nose up, tail down, like we were on a roller coaster.

Ellen Eckert: We were climbing so high and so fast I started to wonder if we’d need oxygen masks.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: It was the uncertainty. As we’re taking off, you’re still getting all this misinformation. Your head was spinning, trying to figure out what had actually happened. The only thing we knew for sure, because we’d seen it with our own eyes, was that the World Trade Center had been hit.

Aboard Air Force One, en route to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Pictured from left are: Andy Card; Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary; Blake Gottesman, Personal Aide to the President; Karl Rove, Senior Adviser; Deborah Loewer, Director of White House Situation Room, and Dan Bartlett, Deputy Assistant to the President. | U.S. National Archives

Aboard Air Force One, en route to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Pictured from left are: Andy Card; Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary; Blake Gottesman, Personal Aide to the President; Karl Rove, Senior Adviser; Deborah Loewer, Director of White House Situation Room, and Dan Bartlett, Deputy Assistant to the President. | U.S. National Archives

Col. Dr. Richard Tubb, presidential physician, White House Medical Unit: The people who are the permanent, apolitical staff—the medical unit, the flight crew, the military aide—they were all well-versed in their emergency action plans, irrespective of who the president was, but they—we—didn’t have the relationship yet with the political staff. That trust was still coming. It’s a very different worldview for each side. It’s only time over time that you build those relationships, and there hadn’t been that much time. It’s hard enough for any administration—but that particular transition was so abbreviated and ugly as the 2000 campaign was—it was even harder. Those guys were still trying to put their government together. Everyone was excited because they were just coming back from the summer vacation and felt that they were going to hit their stride.

Andy Card: I really think President Bush—I know President Bush took office on January 20, 2001—but the responsibility of being president became a reality when I whispered in his ear. I honestly believe as he contemplated what I said, I took an oath. Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. It’s not cutting taxes, it’s not No Child Left Behind, it’s not immigration, it’s the oath. When you pick a president, you want to pick a president who can handle the unexpected. This was the unexpected. That’s what the president was wrestling with that day. He recognized the cold reality of his responsibilities.

Eric Draper: Soon after we got on board, I see [the president] pop out of the cabin, he’s heading down the aisle. He says, “OK boys, this is what they pay us for.” I’ll never forget that.

Andy Card: Even before we left the school, there was angst from the Secret Service that we don’t know what’s out there. As we were boarding the plane, someone had picked a reference to “Angel.” That’s the code name for Air Force One. Is someone sitting around with a Stinger missile? Was someone waiting for us at Andrews? Mark [Tillman] was reluctant to fly us back to Washington.

Karen Hughes, communications director, White House: September 10th was my anniversary, so I had stayed back in Washington. I was scheduled to do a Habitat for Humanity event with [Secretary of Housing and Urban Development] Mel Martinez that required us to wear blue jeans. President Bush didn’t allow blue jeans in the West Wing, so I’d just planned to spend the morning at home. When the attacks began, the vice president sent a military driver to pick me up and bring me to the White House, because D.C.’s streets were so clogged.

Maj. Scott Crogg, F-16 pilot, call-sign “Hooter,” 111th Fighter Squadron, Houston: I had just gotten off alert at Ellington Field [in Houston], normally we pull 24-hour alerts, mostly for drug interdiction. I’d just gotten back into bed and was watching TV and saw the reports of a plane hitting the tower. Being an airline pilot, an air defense pilot, and the operations officer for the 111th, this was something that intrigued me. I wanted to stay up to see what happened. Then when that second plane hit, it eliminated any doubt. I had to get back to work.

II. Airborne, Somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico

The president’s private cabin and office, the “airborne Oval Office,” sit at the front of Air Force One on the main deck; stairs lead up to the flight deck and communications suite. Other cabins house the White House Medical Unit, staff, guests, security, the press and crew.

Col. Mark Tillman: The initial conversation was that we’d take him to an Air Force base, no less than an hour away from Washington. Maybe let’s go ahead and try to get him to Camp David. That all changed when we heard there was a plane headed towards Camp David.

I made the takeoff, climbed out, probably 25,000 to 30,000—I gave it to the backup pilot. I had three pilots on board that day. I said just keep flying towards Washington.

Ari Fleischer: As we were flying out of Sarasota, we were able to get some TV reception. They broke for commercial. I couldn’t believe it. A hair-loss commercial comes on. I remember thinking, in the middle of all this, I’m watching this commercial for hair loss.

Col. Mark Tillman: Jacksonville Center [Air Traffic Control] was warning us about an unidentified plane in the area. I said let’s change direction and see if it follows. It didn’t.

Andy Card: Blake Gottesman was my personal aide, but he was filling in that day as the president’s aide. I said, “Blake, it’s your job to make sure that people don’t come up to the suite.” No one comes up unless the president calls for them.

Ari Fleischer: We got a report there are six aircraft still flying in the U.S. that aren’t responding and could still be hijacked. We’re thinking that there are still six missiles still in the sky. We’re getting a report that a plane “was down near Camp David.”

Karl Rove: Andy and I are there with the president. The president gets this call from Cheney—we didn’t know who it was at the time, we just knew the phone rang. He said “yes,” then there was a pause as he listened. Then another “yes.” You had an unreal sense of time that whole day. I don’t know whether it was 10 seconds or two minutes. Then he said, “You have my authorization.” Then he listens for a while longer. He closes off the conversation. He turns to us and says that he’s just authorized the shoot-down of hijacked airliners.

«I’d never heard the word ‘decapitation attack’ before.”

Andy Card: The president is sitting at his desk, and I’m sitting directly in front of him. I witness the president authorize the Air National Guard to shoot down the hijacked airliners. The conversation was sobering to hear. What struck me was as soon as he hung up the phone, he said, “I was an Air National Guard pilot—I’d be one of the people getting this order. I can’t imagine getting this order.” There was a greater degree of reality than many other presidents would have experienced.

Karl Rove: He was so even-handed. He was just so naturally calm during the day.

Dave Wilkinson: We didn’t expect the breakdown of communications. Every kind of communication that day was challenged. Even the president talking to the Situation Room was challenged. The communications network did not hold up.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: All the comms that we would normally have, some of them are no longer available. We’ve got multiple systems—commercial and terrestrial systems—and they’re all jammed. I started to have tunnel vision: What the hell is going on? Did someone sabotage our comms? It wasn’t until later I realized all the commercial systems were all just saturated. It was all the same systems the airplane pilots were using at the same time, talking to their dispatchers. We as Air Force One didn’t have any higher priority than American This or United That.

Col. Mark Tillman: We started having to use the military satellites, which we would only use in time of war.

Ari Fleischer: I’d never heard the word «decapitation attack» before, but people like Andy, who had been there during the Cold War and had the training, he knew what was going on. The training and the thinking of the military and the Secret Service is just so profoundly different, but that was the psychology and mood that took hold aboard Air Force One. There are still missiles out there and the Secret Service says to the president, “We don’t think it’s safe for you to return to Washington.”

Maj. Scott Crogg: It was very somber [at the air base]. We got these cryptic messages from Southeast Air Defense Sector. We knew we’re on the hook now—it might not be for Air Force One, but for anything. Houston’s the fifth-largest metro region, it’s got all this oil and gas infrastructure. I asked maintenance to put live missiles and arm up the guns. Two heat-seeking missiles and rounds from a 20-mm gun isn’t a lot to take on a hijacked plane, but it was the best we could do.

Andy Card: Then we hear that Flight 93’s gone down. We’re all wondering, Did we do that? It wasn’t a big deal on the plane. It lingered deepest in the president’s conscience. Most people on the plane hadn’t been privy to that conversation.

Col. Mark Tillman: All of us thought, we assumed we shot it down.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: All the folks were coming up to the communications deck with various requests, a Secret Service agent comes up and says, “The president wants to know the status of the first family.” He had this look on his face. I have to tell him I don’t have a way to find out. I can’t fathom what that was like for the president.

Dave Wilkinson: Once we heard a plane had crashed into the Pentagon, that’s when we said, “Well, we’re not going to go back to Washington.” It’s all about that “direction of interest.” At the start, the threat’s right now in New York. Then the plane hit the Pentagon, and it was about our seats of government. Hearing all of this, we’re thinking that the further we’re away from Washington, the safer we are.

Col. Mark Tillman: We get this report that there’s a call saying “Angel was next.” No one really knows now where the comment came from—it got mistranslated or garbled amid the White House, the Situation Room, the radio operators. “Angel” was our code name. The fact that they knew about “angel,” well, you had to be in the inner circle. That was a big deal to me. It was time to hunker down and get some good weaponry.

Maj. Scott Crogg: We dispatched two fighters to go protect Air Force One.

Col. Mark Tillman: Now our security’s tremendous, but we had press on board, there were press that weren’t part of our regular traveling party. We put a cop at the base of the stairs. No one was allowed upstairs. That was something we’d never done before.

Buzz Buzinski: Will Chandler [the lead Air Force security officer] was summoned to the front. Then he stayed up there, providing security at the cockpit stairs. That got us thinking: Is there an insider threat? [Colonel Tillman’s] putting someone at the flight deck. You just don’t know who’s who.

Staff Sgt. Paul Germain: Colonel Tillman says at that point, “Let’s just go cruise around the Gulf for a little bit.” That was our Pearl Harbor. You train for nuclear war, then you get into something like that. All the money they pumped into us for training, that worked. We could read each other’s minds.

Buzz Buzinski: Will [Chandler] told us, “Guys, this is our time. 100 percent security, all of the time. We gotta get the president back.”

Dave Wilkinson: Colonel Tillman took us to a height where if an aircraft was coming towards us, we’d know it was no mistake. Talking to him, I was confident we were safer in the air than we were anywhere on the ground.

Col. Mark Tillman: I took us up to 45,000 feet. That’s about as high as a 747 can go. I figured I wanted to be above all the other air traffic, especially since everyone was descending to land.

Ann Compton, reporter, ABC News: We were standing in the press cabin. A lot of people were too nervous to sit down. A Secret Service agent was in the aisle and he pointed at the monitor and said, “Look down there, Ann, we’re at 45,000 feet and we have no place to go.”

Karl Rove: There was acrimony. President Bush doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t pound the desk. But as we made it across the Florida peninsula, they [Andy Card and Tom Gould] kept raising objections [about returning to Washington]. At one point, Cheney and Rumsfeld called [and advised against returning to Washington].

Ari Fleischer: Andy took the side of the Secret Service. Looking back, it’s pretty obvious that you don’t put Air Force One down at a known, predictable location when the attack’s still unfolding. You preserve the office of the president. It was pretty straightforward.

Dave Wilkinson: He fought with us tooth and nail all day to go back to Washington. We basically refused to take him back. The way we look at is that by federal law, the Secret Service has to protect the president. The wishes of that person that day are secondary to what the law expects of us. Theoretically it’s not his call, it’s our call.

Eric Draper: As a group, you had Tom Gould, Andy Card, and a couple Secret Service guys saying you couldn’t return to Washington. He was visibly frustrated and very angry. I was just a few feet away, and it felt like he was looking through me. It was really intense. He just turned away in anger.

Karl Rove: Gould came in and said, “Mr. President, we don’t have a full fuel load. We’ve got too many extraneous people on board. We can’t loiter over Washington if we need to.” He suggested, let’s get to a military base, drop off the unessential personnel, fill up with fuel, and reassess. The president got the argument, but he wasn’t happy about it.

Ari Fleischer: We didn’t have satellite TV on the plane. The news would frustratingly come in and go out. So I was not aware of the punishing coverage that the president was receiving for not returning to Washington. The anchors were all asking, “Where’s Bush?” They instantly criticized him.

Sonya Ross: We didn’t know where we were going, but they must’ve been circling, because we kept watching the local feed of a Florida station going in and out. That was our tiny window into the outside world.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: We had limited communications, that’s for sure, but the president and Air Force One were never without secure communications. We just had two lines—one for the president and one for the mil aide. We were never out of touch entirely. All the other staff or the other Secret Service agent, we just couldn’t provide them the calls they needed. There were a couple times when the vice president wasn’t available, but we never lost communications with the ground.

Andy Card: One of the president’s first thoughts, from Sarasota to Barksdale, was Vladimir Putin.

«America could have had no better ally on 9/11
than Russia and Putin.”

Gordon Johndroe: [Putin] was important—all these military systems were all put in place for nuclear alerts. If we went on alert, we needed Putin to know that we weren’t readying an attack on Russia. He was great—he said immediately that Russia wouldn’t respond, Russia would stand down, that he understood we were under attack and needed to be on alert.

Ari Fleischer: Putin was fantastic that day. He was a different Vladimir Putin in 2001. America could have had no better ally on September 11th than Russia and Putin.

Ellen Eckert: We were watching that second plane hit on a replay. It wasn’t hitting me yet what had happened, until I saw that second plane hit. I remember thinking “Holy mother of God.” I was sitting back with the press corps and they said, “Go find out what’s happening.” I’m like, “Oh, right, they’re going to tell the steno what’s happening.” Ari came back to the press cabin, and said, “Please don’t call anybody, please don’t tell anyone where we are for national safety, keep our location secure.” Everyone said, “Absolutely, how’s the president?” Everyone was really obedient.

Sonya Ross: Khue Bui [one of the photographers] was crouched in front of me and we were talking about our families, people we knew in New York. Ann [Compton of ABC News] and I were trying to come up with timelines—what time was it when Andy Card came in and whispered to the president. Ann’s time and my time were about two minutes apart. We were listening through headsets to the television, but we weren’t really paying attention. Then I heard the reporter say, “The tower’s collapsing.” I looked at the TV and had a completely shocked reaction. I heard Khue’s camera snap.

Eric Draper: We were in the president’s office when the Towers fell. You knew that there’d be a loss of life in a catastrophic way. The room was really silent. Andy Card, Ari, and Dan Bartlett were there. There’s an image of the president, with his hands on his hips, just watching. Dan had a friend who worked in the Towers. He was very emotional. Everyone peeled off one by one and the president just stood there, alone, watching the cloud expand.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: There were times when the emotion would just well up. Just that sick feeling, that sorrow. It was the overwhelming stress, like when a friend or family member is dying. That’s the closest thing I can explain what it felt like that day.

Andy Card: I asked the military aides, “Where are we going?” I want options. I want a long runway, a secure place, good communications. They came back and said Barksdale AFB. I said, “Don’t tell anyone we’re coming.”

Dave Wilkinson: Colonel Tillman said, “What about Barksdale?” It was about 45 minutes away. We discussed it, it’s the perfect compromise—it’s close and it’s secure and we can let off a lot of passengers there. We needed somewhere that had armored vehicles.

Bush confers with, from left, Karl Rove, Andy Card, Dan Bartlett and Ari Fleischer, prior to delivering remarks at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. | U.S. National Archives

Andy Card: I went into the president’s cabin and told the president, “We’re going Barksdale.” And he said, “No, we’re going back to the White House.” He was pretty hot with me. “I’m making the decision, we’re going back to Washington, D.C.” He’s firm as can be. I just kept saying, “I don’t think you want to make that decision right now.” He went back and forth. It wasn’t one conversation, it was five, six, seven conversations. He was really frustrated with me.

Eric Draper: I remember following the president and Andy Card into the nose of the plane, the president’s cabin. They’re in a very heated discussion over returning to Washington. They’re arguing, but also having the president take telephone calls at the same time. They’re watching the live news coverage. It was controlled chaos.

Andy Card: We were all thinking about the very credible idea that there was more to come. Is there a plane heading to Los Angeles? A plane headed for Chicago? Something on the train? Is there a truck bomb heading across the George Washington Bridge? We had lots of angst over the White House itself. We even had the fog of war trying to figure what was going on in the White House. There’s a fire in the Eisenhower Office Building—well there was, but it was just in a garbage can.

Col. Mark Tillman: We asked for the fighter support. We heard, “You have fast movers at your 7 o’clock.” They were supersonic, F-16s from the president’s guard unit. They led us into Barksdale.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: We’re flying around, all we still have is local TV. The only benefit was that anything broadcasting was broadcasting the attack. Whatever I locked into, it’d only be good until we flew out of range. We were trying to understand from those pictures like anyone else. It was a whole paradigm shift from what I’d thought about conflict and war growing up. It was a new age.

Sandy Kress: There was a lot of discussion about who did it. There was nothing anybody knew. But it was lots of talk—and some fear. I remember the plane banking back across the Gulf. We knew there was a change of plans and direction, but something was diverting the plane.

Rep. Adam Putnam: [Rep. Dan Miller and I] went up to the president’s cabin and he gave us a briefing. He told us that “One way or another” all but a couple planes were accounted for. That was his phrase “one way or another.” He told us Air Force One was headed to Barksdale and was going to drop us off there. When we left the cabin, I turned to Dan and said, “Didn’t you think that was an odd phrase?” He didn’t notice it. I said “‘One way or another,’ that sounds like that there’s more to it than that.” I said, “Do you think there’s any way we shot them down?” We were left hanging.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck, commander, Barksdale Air Force Base, Shreveport, La.: I was the commander of the 8th Air Force. We were in the midst of this big annual exercise called GLOBAL GUARDIAN. They loaded all the bombers, put the submarines out to sea, put the ICBMs at nearly 100 percent. It was routine, you did it every year.

A captain tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Sir, we just had an aircraft hit the World Trade Center.” I started to correct him, saying, “When you have an exercise input you have to start by saying, ‘I have an exercise input.’ That way it doesn’t get confused with the real world.” Then he just pointed me to the TV screens in the command center. You could see smoke pouring out of the building. Like everyone else in aviation that day, I thought, “How in a clear-and-a-million day could someone hit the World Trade Center?”

Karen Hughes: Since I was home, I saw quite a bit of TV coverage just like the American people were seeing it, and I realized that it looked like the American government was faltering. I was on the phone with my chief of staff at the White House when she was told to evacuate. I could actually see the Pentagon burning. But I knew that lots of government was functioning—planes were being grounded, emergency plans were being implemented. I thought someone should be telling the American people that, so I wanted to talk to the president.

When I called the operator to try reach Air Force One, the operator came back on the line and said, “Ma’am, we can’t reach Air Force One.” Mary Matalin had passed along that there was a threat against the plane. It was just chilling. For a split second, I was so worried.

Gordon Johndroe: I was sitting across the table from Mike Morell in the staff cabin. I asked, “Mike, is something else going to happen?” And he said, “Yes.” That was a real gut punch. We were going to be attacked all day long. There were so many rumors—the State Department, the Mall, the White House.

Brian Montgomery: I asked [Mike Morell] who he thought this was. He said “UBL.” No hesitation. “Who’s UBL?” Those of us not up on the lingo of Langley, we had no idea.

Mike Morell: The president called me into his cabin. It was packed with people. The Democratic Front for Liberation of Palestine had issued a claim of responsibility for the attack. The president asked me, “What do you know about these guys?” I explained that they had a long history of terrorism, but this group doesn’t have the capability to do this. Guaranteed.

As I was leaving, he said to me, “Michael, one more thing. Call George Tenet and tell him that if he finds out anything about who did it, I want to be the first to know. Got that?” I said, “Yes sir.”

Sonya Ross: I got the first readout [report] from Ari. The answers we were getting there were pretty incomplete. Ari and his team were giving us the best answers they could. I was nervous. I was thinking—it seems really morbid—but I was thinking, “What if they come after the president? We all turn into ‘and 12 others.’ No one knows your name if you go down with the president. But Eric Washington, he was the CBS sound guy, he had his seat reclined, his feet up. He said, “What are you worried about? You’re on the safest plane in the world.”

«Air Force One was the safest and most dangerous place
in the world at the same exact time.”

Gordon Johndroe: [Air Force One] was the safest and most dangerous place in the world at the exact same time.

Karen Hughes: When I finally did reach Air Force One and spoke with the president, the first thing he said to me was “Don’t you think I need to come back?” He was just champing at the bit to come back. I told him, ‘Yes, as soon as you can.’ Everyone has different roles and I wasn’t thinking about the national security side—I was just thinking about it from a PR perspective.

Andy Card: Mark [Tillman] said, “I don’t care what he says, I’m in charge of the plane.”

Dave Wilkinson: The president once told me that the biggest piece of advice he’d gotten from his mother when he became president was always do what the Secret Service says. I reminded him of that several times that day. The president and I knew each other very well—we’d spent a lot of hours at his ranch—and kind of tongue-in-cheek several times that day, I said, “Remember what your mother said.”

Ari Fleischer: One of the recurring themes of September 11th is how much of the initial reporting was wrong. I keep that in mind every day now as I watch President Obama and world events. In normal situations, there are many ranks and many filters in government, so that only that which is proven and vital reaches the president. All of that broke down on 9/11. No one in the security apparatus wanted to be negligent in not passing things along. The media was part of that too. All those filters broke down.

Andy Card: The fog of war is real. You can be in a car accident and everyone in the car crash has a different perspective. Take that and multiple that a million times. The first estimates of the casualties were so way off. 10,000 people in New York, 1,000 people at the Pentagon.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: There were so many people coming up to the upper deck, because we weren’t picking up the phones downstairs. It got too crowded. Finally, someone came up and told everyone to get out. The only member of the staff that was up with us was Harriet Miers—she was sitting at one of the CSO seats, with a legal pad taking historical record.

Andy Card: The president’s wondering about his wife, his kids, his parents. Then he’s wondering, is there another city? What’s next? And we’re all thinking, we can’t do anything about it. We’re in a plane, eight miles high in the sky.

Dave Wilkinson: We called Mark Rosenker up to the front of the plane and told him to get us on the phone with the commander at Barksdale. He gave us full assurance that the base would be locked down.

Andy Card: I was comforted to find Barksdale was already on alert. It was going to be secure. No random terrorist would have mapped that Barksdale was where the president was going to go. We didn’t have to ring some bell and everyone would run out of the firehouse. Everyone was already out.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: We were already in a practice THREATCON Delta, the highest threat condition. I said lock her down for real. My deputy came in, Lt. Colonel Paul Tibbets—his grandfather was the pilot who flew the Enola Gay [which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima]. He told me that at THREATCON Delta, general officers have to wear sidearms. I tried to refuse, but he insisted. So I was wearing my sidearm, which I never do.

We got this radio request—Code Alpha—a high priority incoming aircraft. It wanted 150,000 pounds of gas, 40 gallons of coffee, 70 box lunches, and 25 pounds of bananas. It wouldn’t identify itself. It was clearly a big plane. It didn’t take us long to figure out that the Code Alpha was Air Force One.

Ann Compton: We were landing going into Barksdale, Ari came back to the press cabin and said, “This is off the record, but the president is being evacuated.” I said, “You can’t put that off the record. That’s a historic and chilling fact. That has to be on the record.” It was a stunning statement, about the president trying to hold the country together but facing a mortal enemy. The president cannot be found because of his own safety. That sent chills down my spine.

III. Barksdale Air Force Base, Shreveport, La.

Col. Mark Tillman: Going into Barksdale, there’s this plane that appears. The initial fighters were with us. I still remember the F-16s starting in on this guy. Bearing, range, altitude, distance. You see the F-16 rolls off, they ask, “Hey, who has shoot-down authority?” I say, “You do.” That was a big moment. It turned out just to be a crop duster, some civilian flyer who didn’t get the word.

Gordon Johndroe: You cannot hide a blue-and-white 747 that says “United States of America” across the top. You can’t move it secretly through the daylight. Where does local TV go when there’s a national emergency? They go out to their local military base. We’re watching ourselves land on local television. The announcer’s saying, “It appears Air Force One is landing. We don’t have any specific information whether the president was on board, but Air Force One was last seen leaving Sarasota.” The pool is looking at me like, “We can’t report this?”

Brian Montgomery: As soon as we landed, Mark Rosenker [director of the White House Military Office] and I went off the back stairs. There’s this guy who looks like General Buck Turgidson from Dr. Strangelove, big guy, all decked out in a bomber jacket. He was straight out of central casting. We said, “What do you need?” He said, “See those planes? Every one is loaded with nukes—tell me where you want ’em.” We look over and there are just rows of B-52s, wingtip to wingtip. I joked, “Gosh, don’t tell [the president!].”

«We got this radio request—Code Alpha—a high priority
incoming aircraft. It wanted 150,000 pounds of gas,
40 gallons of coffee, 70 box lunches and 25 pounds of bananas.
It wouldn’t identify itself.”

Buzz Buzinski: Barksdale was going through a nuclear surety inspection. They already had these cops in flak jackets and M-16s. They were all locked and loaded. It’s pretty no-joke when you’re assigned to a nuclear base already. But you still knew that this was going to be different. As soon as we landed, they surrounded the aircraft.

Capt. Cindy Wright, presidential nurse, White House Medical Unit: I remember just how different it was, landing at Barksdale. Everything just had changed in an instant. We’d got off the plane and we were at war.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: When we landed there, looking out towards the flight line, it looked like a war game. You had guys in flak jackets, weapons, heavy equipment and vehicles, guns mounted on top. All facing away from the aircraft.

Dave Wilkinson: My biggest concern was the Humvees. Would they be there? We had guys from our local field office rushing over, but they didn’t get there until after. When I saw the four or five Humvees pull up, I had a real sense of relief. One of the other agents raised the concern that the Air Force wanted to drive the president—we [the Secret Service] are normally the only people who drive the president. I said, “That’s the least of our concerns. If the general’s signing off on the guy driving, that’s fine with me. Let’s just let him drive the vehicle.”

Col. Mark Tillman: We let the president out through the bottom stairs, because you want that low vantage point in case there’s a sniper.

Ari Fleischer: Normally, there’s a whole infrastructure that flies ahead of the president. It’s an armed city, full of Secret Service agents and armored vehicles. But on that day, even the Secret Service is down to just the essential crew aboard the plane. All that was waiting for him in Barksdale was this uparmored Humvee, with room for a standing gunner. The regular Air Force driver, he was nervous and just driving as fast as could be. The president told him to slow down. The president said later he most felt in danger [on 9/11] right there on the runway.

Andy Card: The guy was driving really fast, and in a Humvee the center of gravity isn’t as low as you think. The president said, “Slow down, son, there are no terrorists on this base! You don’t have to kill me now!”

Col. Mark Tillman: I went down to the tarmac to see about having the plane refueled. We could carry 14 hours of fuel. I wanted 14 hours of fuel. I was worried that they weren’t going to have enough fuel trucks, but it turned out we’d happened to park over a hot refueling tank they used for bombers. This civilian is arguing with our crew, “The fuel pits are only authorized for use in time of war.” This Air Force master sergeant—God bless him—overhears this and roars, “We are at war!” He whips out his knife and starts cutting open the cover. That defines to me what the day was like.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: [The president] had landed already and I was on my way to meet him. He was on his way to the conference center. I gave a sharp salute, and his first words to me were, “I guess I put you on the map.” He was really disarming that way. He told me he needed a secure phone to call Governor Pataki, so I took him to my office. As he started making calls, he stopped for a second: “Tell me where I am?” I said, “You’re on the east side of the Red River in Bossier City, Barksdale Air Force base, near Shreveport, Louisiana.”

Brian Montgomery: Once the president got into that private office, Andy Card came out and said this is an opportunity to call your loved ones, but don’t tell them where you are.

Rep. Adam Putnam: We get to Barksdale, keep in mind that we haven’t really had good TV images. We were all overwhelmed with emotion, because we were all catching up to where everyone else had had a couple hours to process. I called my wife and said, “I’m safe. I can’t tell you where I am.” And she said, “Oh, I thought you were in Barksdale? That’s what I saw on TV.”

Maj. Scott Crogg: The horn went off again [at Ellington Field in Houston] and [F-16 pilot Shane Brotherton and I] launched. There was so little information, you had to do things on faith. When we launched, we didn’t even know what the mission was. We were told, «You need to intercept the Angel flight.» Well, we had no idea what that meant. We’d never heard Air Force One called that before.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: Andy Card and Karl Rove came into my office with him.

Karl Rove: This is the first point where he gets fully briefed. All three strikes are over, so we know the extent of the damage. His first instinct was to bring together the leaders of government, but everyone had dispersed. It’s just amazing how technology has changed. At the time, the only way to get everyone together was to go to Offutt Air Force Base, the nearest facility that had multiple-site video teleconferencing. Now the president travels with a black Halliburton case that has a screen that can do it through any broadband outlet. It’s amazing.

Col. Mark Tillman: I went into the base situation room. I told them I needed to get this guy underground. Where were all the places that I could do that? Offutt was the best choice.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: People forget how much confusion there was that day about what was actually going on. We’d never been attacked like that before, at least since Pearl Harbor. Intel [officers] were coming in all the time. One said that there was a high-speed object moving towards his Texas ranch [in Crawford]. I saw him start thinking about who was at the ranch. It turned out to be a false report.

Maj. Scott Crogg: I was thinking—I’ve done these Combat Air Patrols over southern Iraq for hundreds of hours, enforcing the no-fly zone, and now I’m doing it over the United States. It was really strange. No one else was airborne. It just felt so serious. We had all this resolve that day.

Ellen Eckert: To wait for the president, they took us to the Officers’ Club. I was basically the only person on the trip who smoked cigarettes—or so I thought. While we’re standing there, all of a sudden everyone’s asking for a cigarette. “Wait, you don’t smoke?” Everyone was so whipped up.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: Everyone was busy doing their own thing. The president was looking over the remarks he wanted to give the country. He asked the room, “I use the word ‘resolve’ twice in here—do I want to do that?” No one was answering him, so I said, “I think Americans probably want to hear that.”

Brian Montgomery: We got with someone from the base, and found this rec room or something like that with a bunch of memorabilia on the walls. Gordon and I started rearranging everything—got some flags, found a podium. We knew this was important. Everyone wanted to see the president.

Gordon Johndroe: Barksdale was a blur. It was really chaotic. No one really remembers the president’s statement there. It was bad lighting, bad setting, but it was important to have him say something to the nation. That statement is lost to history.

Sonya Ross: I dictated a brief report to my colleague Sandra Sobieraj [back in Washington], and then I left my phone on, so she could hear the president’s brief statement. The statement was supposed to be embargoed until we left, so I was trying to curl the phone up under my notebook, so no one would notice it was still on. It gave us a brief head start, because the wire [services], we always need to be first. He said, “Our military at home and around the world is on high alert status. And we have taken the necessary security precautions to continue the functions of your government.” He reiterated that it was a terrorist attack and urged people to be calm. It was very general.

Ellen Eckert: I’d never seen the president look so stern. I was lying on the ground at the president’s feet. We didn’t know if the [TV news] feed was working, it was so iffy, so I was there lying down with my mic above my head in case no one else was recording his remarks.

Andy Card: We didn’t want attention to where we were until we left. We videotaped the statement, so that it went out as we left.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: After the press conference, he came back to my office. He hadn’t seen video of the Towers come down yet. He was sitting on my couch and watched the Towers fall. He turned to me, just because I was there, and said, “I don’t know who this is, but we’re gonna find out, and we’re going to go after them, we’re not just going to slap them on the wrist.” I said, “We’re with you.” I knew he meant every word.

Ari Fleischer: Andy Card made the decision to chop down the number of passengers. We didn’t know where we were going. We had no infrastructure. We had no motorcade. Anybody non-essential had to be left behind, that included all the congressmen, which they weren’t pleased with. Several White House staffers had to get off. Andy asked if we could take the press down to three. I thought five was the absolute minimum.

Sandy Kress: Most of us had stayed on the plane in Barksdale. We were sitting on the runway for a good bit. We were thinking, “Is this a broader attack? Was someone out there looking for us?” It was towards the end of the stop in Barksdale that Brian [Montgomery] came through and told us that we were all staying behind in Louisiana. We understood that the president was continuing on, but that he was not going back to D.C. Our role had been to help him with that trip, and that was over. It made sense.

Rep. Adam Putnam: As we’re just waiting on board, supply trucks come up and start unloading food—tray after tray of meat, loaf after loaf of bread, just hundreds of gallons of water. We realize they’re equipping that plane to be in the air for days. It was really unnerving.

Gordon Johndroe: We thought at that point that we were not going to Washington for several days. We needed to shrink down our footprint. We didn’t know how many people could be fed, watered, clothed, and supported wherever we were going. It was difficult telling half the press pool that they weren’t coming with us. It was half «We’re missing the story of our lifetimes,» and then their personal reaction: «You’re leaving us in Louisiana and the airspace was shut down.»

Sonya Ross: They herded us out to a blue school bus. Some of us had rumors that they’d shrink the pool. I was thinking I had to fight to get a spot. I didn’t want to have to explain to my boss that I got left behind. I was just going to do my best to get on the plane. Gordon came on the bus. He read off who was going to come with them: AP reporter, AP photographer, TV camera, TV sound, and radio. Everyone else, he said, was going to be left behind. At that point, Judy Keen, the newspaper reporter from USA Today, and Jay Carney, the magazine pooler, they raised a stink. I just scooped up my stuff and ran.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: In the conference room, waiting for the transportation to be squared away, we were sitting around the table, wondering what brought the Towers down. At that point, no one understood that steel melted at such-and-such a temperature. We just couldn’t believe the towers had come down. When it came time to take the president back [to Air Force One], they brought up this Humvee with a .50-cal machine gun mounted on top. I don’t know if he was fearing a Governor Dukakis moment in that tank, but he wanted to ride in a different vehicle. He pointed to our supervisor of flying vehicle. It was a white minivan, which we called “Soccer Mom,” so we drove him out in a minivan.

Karl Rove: As we’re driving back out, [the president] says to me something like, “I know this is a dodge, just they’re going to try to keep me away, but I’m going to let them have this one [and go to Offutt] and then we’re going home. “

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: [As the president’s heading up the stairs] I said to him, “These troops are trained, ready, and they’ll do whatever you want them to.” He said to me, “I know.” We traded salutes. He was on the ground an hour and 53 minutes.

Buzz Buzinski: I saw [the president] walk up the front stairs. You could see how mad he was. You could tell how much emotion he had, the anger inside. As soon as he got on board, it was all business.

Sandy Kress: They sent the vice president’s plane down for us, and we eventually boarded it to go back to D.C.

Sonya Ross: As we left, they didn’t know how long we’d be gone. They told us that they’d arrange accommodations if we had to be gone a day or two. I told my bureau chief, “I don’t know where we’re going and I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”

Ellen Eckert: Ari told me I was off the plane. The press were not happy, but I was fine—I was thinking, I’m safe here in Louisiana. But then the plane’s fired up, it’s loud, we’re all standing nearby, and Gordon came back to the back stairs, he yells, “Ellen, Ari says get on the plane! He’s changed his mind!” That’s not what I want to do—but then I thought I’m ashamed of myself. Everyone else was getting on that plane. I was the last one on board.

IV. Airborne, Somewhere Over the Plains

Maj. Scott Crogg: We watched Air Force One come up, but we still don’t really know anything. It’s pretty impressive, seeing Air Force One come up in the air.

Lt. Gen. Tom Keck: As he takes off, two F-16s pulled up on his wing. That made me think that we were finally getting our act together. I forgot I ever said this, but Kurt Bedke, one of the other officers, told me later that as we watched them fly away I said to him, “Do you feel like you’re in a Tom Clancy novel?”

Maj. Scott Crogg: We just started following [Air Force One] north. At some point, I was expecting them to turn east and head to Washington. The longer we’re heading north, the more realize something’s still unsettled. They still don’t feel safe returning to Washington. We only had maps for Texas and Louisiana that day on board. There was no idea that we’d go any further than that. I asked for a tanker to come meet up, and after I hook up, I asked him for every radio channel between here and Canada.

Andy Card: We could finally get some television coverage. You could see the buildings on fire. You saw the replay of the collapse. There were lots of tears. There were lots of quiet moments staring at a TV screen. No conversation. There were prayers. And the fear. It wasn’t even a roller coaster, because we were just in the pits. Oh my god, that’s terrible. And that’s worse. And that’s even worse. All the time, we’re being handed notes, taking telephone calls, giving orders.

Maj. Scott Crogg: It was an eerie silence on the radio. There’s just no one in the air. We’re just talking among ourselves [the fighter pilots] on our radios. “I wonder if we’re going to Canada?” A lot of, “Man, this is fucked up.” I’m also talking the guys through what happens if we have to shoot someone down. The world’s watching, let’s be by the book and let’s do everything we can to protect the president. You’re going to do everything you can to avoid it, but, as a last resort, if a plane’s going to try to hit Air Force One, I need you guys to think about it. I’m saying, “We’re going to do our best to get them to say ‘you’re approved’ over the radio.”

You’re going to have think about how you’re saving lives by taking lives. You have to think through that the missiles might not do the job. You may have to employ the gun. Typically our gun sight doesn’t account for a plane that big. We know this would be a plum target, but we also figure no one would expect Air Force One right now to be flying north over Kansas.

Col. Mark Tillman: The whole day was eerie. There were no radio calls. Controllers were telling us about suspicious planes—I had no idea there were so many crop dusters in America.

Eric Draper: Everyone was starving for information. We couldn’t hear anything unless the plane was flying over a major city.

Ari Fleischer: There was no live television. It put us in a very different spot than most Americans that day. People around the world were just riveted to their television sets. We had it intermittently on Air Force One. We had it in Barksdale at the base commander’s office. But there’s no email on Air Force One back then. When you’re in the air, you’re cut off. It was absolutely stunning, standing next to the president as he was talking to the vice president then holding the phone off his ear because it cut off.

Ellen Eckert: The plane is like the Twilight Zone. It’s really eerie. There’s just no one on board anymore. The staff cabin is empty, the guest cabin is empty. That’s when it was really coming apart for me. I saw one of the agents was standing in the hallway, and I went up to him, «So this is the safest place to be? This is Air Force One, right?» He said, «Well, listen, don’t mention this, but we might as well have a big red X on the bottom of this plane. We’re the only plane in the sky.» That was scary. I went into the bathroom and used one of those Air Force One notepads to write a letter to my family—six siblings and two parents. They’re never going to see this, it’s going to burn up in a fiery inferno. One of the flight attendants opened the door and comforted me and gave me a washcloth to wipe. “We’ve got this. We’re all together.”

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: [As we flew to Offutt] some of the commercial systems finally began to become available. One of the phones actually rang, I picked it up, it was my chief: “How are things going?” “Well, chief, we’re a little busy.” None of the crew were allowed to make calls to our families. Everyone was just locked in. It probably actually helped a lot of us get through the day.

Maj. Scott Crogg: Fifteen minutes after we tanked up, we saw Air Force One start to descend. I did the math and figured out they were probably headed to Offutt. Well, now we had a full tank of gas. You can’t land like that in a small plane, so we were doing afterburner 360s at 7,000-feet to burn off enough gas to land our planes.

Mike Morell: On the way from Barksdale to Offutt, the president asked to see me alone—it was just me, him, and Andy Card. He asked me, “Michael, who did this?” I explained that I didn’t have any actual intelligence, so what you’re going to get is my best guess. He was really focused and said, “I understand, get on with it.”

I said that there were two countries capable of carrying out an attack like this, Iran and Iraq. But I believed both would have everything to lose and nothing to gain from the attack. When all was said and done, the trail would lead to UBL. I told him “I’d bet my children’s future on that.”

He asked when we’d know. I walked him through recent cases—in the [1998] East Africa [Embassy] bombings, it had been a couple days, the [2001] USS Cole [bombing] had taken a couple months, the [1996] Khobar Towers [bombing] it had taken over a year. It may be quick or it may be a long while. The whole time, I didn’t realize the CIA had already figured it out.

When I finished, he didn’t say anything, we just sat there. It felt like three, four, five minutes. It was getting awkward. I finally said, “Is there anything else, Mr. President?” He said, “No, Michael, thank you.”

V. Offutt Air Force Base

Buzz Buzinski: Landing at Offutt was probably the one funny moment of the day. I’m a big guy—6-foot-4, 270—but Will [Chandler’s] also a huge guy, he’s a 6-3, 250. We always said he’s got hands the size of a TV screen. Well, we’re the first two off the plane. The rear stairs are always down first, you get off and guide the front stairs in. When we get off, underneath the jet are five or six maintainers, who were trying to plug the plane into ground power. No one told us they’d be there—all we see are this group of five guys. Chandler yells: “Clear the area!” He just let out this bellow. Well, it was like cats scattering—they dropped radios, dropped the cable. They’re panicked—there’s this big guy coming at them. It was hysterical. I just laughed.

Adm. Richard Mies, commander, U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), Offut Air Force Base, Omaha, Nebraska: Without knowing whether he was coming to Omaha, we’d taken the initiative to start preparing, working with the 55th Wing, which runs Offutt. We’d started to evacuate the main quarters that could be used for VIPs, and install some of the protection there that’d be needed in case he needed to spend the night.

We didn’t know that he was coming to Offutt until about 15 minutes before. There wasn’t much communication with Air Force One at all. There wasn’t going to be any pomp and circumstance. I had my driver and a Secret Service agent who we had, and the three of us went out to the runway to greet Air Force One. It was just a plain Chrysler.

Dave Wilkinson: By the time we got to STRATCOM, there were like 15 to 20 planes still unaccounted for [nationwide]. People will say it was only six, but there were a lot more than that. For everything we knew, they were all hijacked. But, even as we landed, they started to kick them off quickly.

Adm. Richard Mies: I decided to bring the president down into the command center via the fire escape entrance. That was the most expedient option. I’d never used it before. It was there for emergencies. I had them open it from the inside.

Brian Montgomery: There were a lot of airmen in battle gear lining the route to the bunker. We pull up to this five-story office building, and instead of walking in the front door, the admiral says, “No, we’re going in there.” We head into this concrete building, just a door. We went down and down and down, pretty far underground.

At left, President George W. Bush arrives Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. At right, Bush, Admiral Richard Mies, left, and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card conduct a video teleconference at the base. | Courtesy of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

At left, President George W. Bush arrives Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. At right, Bush, Admiral Richard Mies, left, and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card conduct a video teleconference at the base. | Courtesy of the George W. Bush Presidential Library

Gordon Johndroe: The president went into the bunker. It was chilling. I’m watching [the president] with the press from the motorcade and they go into this building and they’re gone. When we got to Omaha, we were tired. Our energy, the stress had ebbed and flowed. A sadness kicked in when we got to Omaha. We didn’t really have time to reflect before then.

Ellen Eckert: When he went into the bunker, wow. That’s still a scene in the movie in my head all these years later. Clearly the only way to go was down. We just stood outside, waiting. We smoked a million cigarettes, all my new chain-smoking friends.

Eric Draper: I finally had a chance to call my wife, I said, “Honey, I’m going to be home a little late tonight.” I could hear her laugh through the phone, even as she was crying. She said, “I saw you with the president, so I knew you were OK.”

Adm. Richard Mies: We went directly into the command center. That really caught his attention. All these soldiers, they’re all in battle dress. CNN was prominently displayed—a lot of footage of the two towers. We had four to six TV screens, all energized. I sat him down where I normally sit, and walked him through what he was seeing, so he had an awareness.

Andy Card: It’s right out of a TV movie set—all these flat-screen TVs, all these military people, you can hear the fog of war, all these communications from the FAA and the military. But it’s tough for the military folks—they all want to stand and show respect to the commander in chief, but you can tell they want to sit and do their jobs. Everyone is schizophrenic, half-sitting and half standing, everyone’s moving around. After a few minutes, the president turned to me, “I want to get out of here, I’m making it hard for these people to do their job.”

Maj. Scott Crogg: All the rules that fighter pilots spend their lives living by were now out the window. When we landed [at Offut] we got more gas and picked up maps for the rest of the country. There are always maps and approaches for the country in base operations, but all the maps always say, «Do not remove from base operations.» We just took all of them and stuffed them in our bag.

Colonel Tillman walked into base operations and we finally started to get some information. The president was actually an alumni of our unit in Houston. Colonel Tillman told us, “he feels comfortable with you guys and wants you to continue us.” We told him we’d sit back about five miles—you don’t get that close to something that valuable, for all sorts of reasons—but if something happened, we can eat up that range real quick.

Adm. Richard Mies: The VTC was just the three of us, the operator, and his military aide. There were just five of us at most. There was no real audience. We listened as everyone reported in. Richard Clarke [of the National Security Council], [Transportation Secretary] Norm Mineta, [Deputy Secretary of State] Richard Armitage, [National Security Adviser] Condi [Rice], [CIA Director] George Tenet. Most of the initial conversation in the VTC was focused on who did this. There was a lot of speculation. It was too early to make definitive. Then we were talking about: How do we restore some sense of normalcy quickly, both for New York and for the country? And then how does the president get back to Washington?

Mike Morell: When Tenet explained that he had evidence pointing to Al Qaeda, the president turned around and looked at me—his look clearly said, “What the fuck happened here?” You were supposed to tell me first. I tried to explain with my look that I was sorry—I didn’t know how my message had gotten lost. I went to a nearby office and called Tenet’s assistant, angry. I felt like I’d let the president down.

Andy Card: When George Tenet said it was Al Qaeda, it wasn’t like dawn breaking over Marblehead. We all suspected that it was Al Qaeda. I’d thought that since the classroom door. It wasn’t that dramatic of a moment actually. It was just a confirmation. Think of what it would’ve happened if he’d told us that it was Russia, China, or another nation-state? Or an American splinter group?

Dave Wilkinson: We felt like we were probably pretty safe and it could be prudent to go back. Everyone went around the room [on the video conference], the vice president kicked it off, and everyone said their piece. Finally, the president said to Brian [Stafford], my boss [the Secret Service director], “Brian, Dave and Eddie are just doing their job and telling me I can’t go back to D.C., but I think it’s time for me to come back.” Brian did a good job—he explained [to the president] that it was a heightened security environment, and we’re were going to relocate you and move you if the slightest thing comes up.

Brian Montgomery: Once we got to Offutt, you would have had to tie him down to keep there overnight.

Julie Ziegenhorn, public affairs officer, Offutt Air Force Base: We were working at our desks and all of a sudden, there was the President striding down the hallway. He walked right out the front door, waving to us. He shouted, “Thanks for all you’re doing!”

Gordon Johndroe: We’re there with the pool and our Secret Service agent says, “Oh my gosh, we’ve got to go right now. The president’s leaving.” Ann [Compton] was on with Peter Jennings. I didn’t want to panic her or the nation by making it seem like we were leaving abruptly, but we needed to leave. I mouthed, “We have to go.” She was on the radio and she said, “I’m told we’re leaving. I don’t know where we’re going.” Peter Jennings said, “Godspeed, Annie.”

Col. Mark Tillman: We thought he was going to be there for a while. I was in base operations and someone came in and said, “I think the president’s headed back to the plane.” I said, “Nah.” He said, “No, I’m pretty sure I just saw him drive by.” I started to race back to the plane. He’d already gotten there. He’s waiting at the top of the stairs and told me, “Tillman, we got to get back home. Let’s get back home.”

Maj. Scott Crogg: No one told us that Air Force One was leaving, so we’re like, “Oh shit, are they starting up?” We’re racing to get our planes in the air, but it takes some time. We met the minimum safety requirements and hit the air. A 747 configured like that, gosh, that’s a fast airplane. We didn’t want to go supersonic, it’d burn up too much fuel, so we talked to them, and we had to reel them in.

VI. Airborne, En route to Andrews Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.

Col. Mark Tillman: I’m doing .94 Mach. The fighters only have so much gas. We went as fast as we could across the United States. F-16s were coming out of D.C. to meet us, everyone was joining up with us. We had F-15s with us too.

Mike Morell: On the flight to Andrews, I finally got this packet full of all the intelligence CIA had. It included the talking points that George Tenet had used to brief the president, but there was still a lot he hadn’t been able to say. I shared all those details with the president. The second half of the packet was a set of intelligence passed to us by a European ally explaining that it had detected signs that Al Qaeda was planning a second wave. When I was showing that to the president, I could tell from his reaction, it struck him: “Gosh, this could happen again.” This isn’t over.

Andy Card: When he talked to his dad, his dad reinforced George W. Bush’s desire to get back to Washington. That made me feel a little guilty, but by then we were on our way back.

Eric Draper: I asked Andy Card at one point, “Who did this?” “Al Qaeda.” I’d never heard of Al Qaeda before.

Andy Card: By the time we’re coming from STRATCOM, it was kind of skeleton crew aboard. The closer we got to Washington, the more the president wandered.

Brian Montgomery: I found the president at the front of the staff cabin at one point. I just said, “We’re going to hit ’em hard, right, when this is all over?” He just said, “Yes, yes, we are.” I knew that look in his eyes. He was mad.

Ellen Eckert: The president came back to the press cabin, I asked him if he was doing OK, and he said yes. I asked, “Have you spoken to Mrs. Bush?” He said, “Yes, she’s fine.” He patted me on the back, twice. Then Doug Mills [the AP photographer] said, “Keep your spirits up.”

The president said, “We won’t let a thug bring this country down.”

Sonya Ross: I was typing away [in the press cabin], working on my notes [when the president came in], and I don’t think he saw me at first. I started typing that quote down, and he heard me typing and turned to me: “Hey, off the record!” He didn’t say anything else.

Ellen Eckert: He gave Sonya the stink eye.

Gordon Johndroe: There was one time when President Bush slipped back there—I was in the staff cabin with Andy Card and don’t know how he got back there—and he came in and said, “I just spoke with the press.” He saw my face and said quickly, “Don’t worry, it’s OK. It was off the record.” He was trying to be a very calm and comforting presence to everyone.

The president is consoled by presidential nurse Cindy Wright, of the White House Medical Unit, aboard Air Force One. | Eric Draper/George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

The president is consoled by presidential nurse Cindy Wright, of the White House Medical Unit, aboard Air Force One. | Eric Draper/George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

Eric Draper: Everyone was trying to take it all in. I took this picture of Cindy Wright, a White House nurse, rubbing the president’s back. At another moment, the president had his arm around Harriet Miers as they walked down the plane.

Capt. Cindy Wright: What’s funny about that picture is I don’t really remember being compassionate or ministering to him—I do remember that he came in to check on me and the team. It was amazing to me that he was walking through the plane checking on us. I was in the medical compartment. It was still fairly new in the administration, so we knew each other from talking and being at the ranch, but that was the first time we hugged—I’m a big hugger, and he is too.

Ann Compton: We were finally able to say on the record—I called my bureau and told them—that the president was heading back to Washington and would address the nation from the Oval Office.

Sonya Ross: I had started on the White House beat on September 11th, six years earlier. I said to Ari at some point, “This is my White House anniversary.” He laughed, “Some anniversary party you threw.”

Col. Dr. Richard Tubb: The thing at that moment I was most worried about was a biologic [attack]. In the unlikely but high-risk scenario, I thought there was little harm to be prophylaxing the staff with antibiotics. It seemed like almost science fiction. I gave everyone on the plane a week of Cipro. I hoped by the time they ran out, we’d have figured out the fog of war and know whether we needed to continue measures.

Brian Montgomery: I noticed that Dr. Tubb was walking and talking to each person. He’d lean over and whisper to each person, pat them on the shoulder, and he’d hand over a little envelope, like what the military uses to put pills in. He got to me and said, “Monty”—that was my nickname—“how do you feel?” I said, “Other than the obvious, physically, I feel fine.” “You don’t feel disoriented?” “Nope.” Then he said, “Have you ever heard of Cipro? We don’t know what might’ve been in that school, so we’re just being careful.” I asked him, “What’s it used for?” He told me, “In case it’s anthrax.”

Col. Dr. Richard Tubb: It was scary later realizing later that fall anthrax wasn’t as unimaginable as we’d thought. That was a turning point for our society. I was suddenly real pleased with how we’d reacted on the plane.

At left, Marine One prepares to land on the South Lawn of the White House. At right, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice waits at the South Portico for Bush to return. | U.S. National Archives

At left, Marine One prepares to land on the South Lawn of the White House. At right, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice waits at the South Portico for Bush to return. | U.S. National Archives

Mike Morell: It was about an hour from touching down, pretty late in the day, a lot of people were asleep, and the lights on Air Force One were turned down. The president came back into the staff compartment. I was the only one awake. I said, “How are you doing?” “I’m just fine, thanks for asking.” One of the things that struck me, he transformed right before my eyes from a president who was struggling a bit with the direction of his administration on September 10th, to a wartime president, just in a matter of hours. I could already see this new confidence and power in him.

Gordon Johndroe: I don’t really remember eating, but the stewards put out some sandwiches and chips. The Air Force bills you for your meals aboard Air Force One, through the White House Military Office. I remember a couple days later getting a bill for $9.18. The bill said for meals on September 11th between Sarasota-Barksdale, Barksdale-Offutt, Offutt-Washington.

Master Sgt. Dana Lark: I’ve never felt more fatigued. I can’t remember anything as physical as that day. It just sucked everything out of you.

Mike Morell: The president’s mil aide [Tom Gould] was looking out the window on the left side of the plane, he motioned me over. “Look.” There was a fighter jet on the wingtip. He told me there was another one on the other side of the plane. In the distance, you could see the still-burning Pentagon. Throughout the day, all this is happening and you don’t really have the chance to feel the emotion. But that got me. Tears filled my eyes for the first time that day.

Maj. Scott Crogg: It was really a shock, but I remember thinking that the hole in the building, relative to the whole size of the Pentagon, is relatively small. It was symbolic. It’s a painful wound, but we’re big enough to absorb it.

Andy Card : We kneeled on the benches to look outside, you could see the fighter jets came up pretty close to Air Force One. You just don’t see that on Air Force One.

Karl Rove: I watched the fighters and I realized this was no ceremonial escort—this was the last line of defense in case there was a MANPAD [surface-to-air missile] on the approach to Washington. They were going to put themselves between Air Force One and whatever the threat was.

Col. Dr. Richard Tubb: As we’re coming in on final [approach], Dan Bartlett comes into my office and says, “Thanks, I took all those pills. Anything else I need?” I said, “What?! Absolutely not! That was supposed to be a week’s worth!” I’m flipping through the Physician’s Desk Reference, that huge book, trying to figure out what the toxic level of Cipro is.

Brian Montgomery: [Dan] was real worried for a moment. After all that happened that day, Dan was going to die from Cipro poisoning.

Col. Dr. Richard Tubb: I looked into it and told him, “Listen, you’re going to be fine. You might want to take an antacid.”

Col. Mark Tillman: It was a long day. As we’re landing, I’m thinking, all I’ve got to do is get him on the ground, then I can hand him off to the Marines. I’m watching the fighters scream by underneath, doing suppression, trying to figure out if there was anything waiting for us. The landing itself, after everything, was entirely normal.

George W. Bush meets with his National Security Council in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center of the White House after addressing the nation. | U.S. National Archives

Maj. Scott Crogg: We’d landed right behind Air Force One, so we saluted as Marine One took off. We knew the president was heading to the White House.

Ari Fleischer: There are several different routes that Marine One can take back, we took the most scenic, directly over the Capitol, down the Mall, at the Washington Monument, you bank right.

Andy Card: We only flew at tree-top level, zig-zagging, to make it harder for a missile to hit us. We were really low to the water on the Potomac.

Ari Fleischer: Out of the front left of the chopper, the president had a clear view of the Pentagon. The president said to nobody and everybody, “The mightiest building in the world is on fire. This is the face of war in the 21st century.”

Epilogue

Mike Morell: [In 2011], the very first telephone call that President [Barack] Obama made after we were sure we’d killed Osama bin Laden was to President [George W.] Bush. President Obama knew that I’d been with him on 9/11, and so he asked me to fly down to Dallas after the raid to brief President Bush personally. I went down about two weeks later and walked President Bush through every aspect of the raid. I thought I could see in his face some sense of closure.

(Note: All titles and military ranks are presented as people were on September 11, 2001, and interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.)

Journalist Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) is the author of The Threat Matrix: The FBI at War, and a former editor of POLITICO Magazine. His next book, Raven Rock, about the U.S. government’s Doomsday plans, will be published in May 2017. He can be reached at garrett.graff@gmail.com.

Operaciones Especiales de EE.UU. en Latinoamérica: ¿Diplomacia paralela? De WOLA

Documentos revelan que entrenamientos por fuerzas especiales en la región se triplicaron entre 2007 y 2014.

Sarah Kinosian y Adam Isacson, 31 agosto 2016 / WOLA

Las fuerzas más élites de las fuerzas armadas de los Estados Unidos han aumentado sus despliegues en todo el mundo, y Latinoamérica y el Caribe no son la excepción. Sin embargo, a la par que las actividades de las fuerzas especiales aumentan, la ya de por sí poca transparencia e información disponible sobre sus acciones se reduce.

Las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales (Special Operations Forces, SOF)—las Boinas Verdes del Ejército, los SEALs de la Marina y otras unidades altamente entrenadas—son letales, ágiles y buscan establecer relaciones cuasi-diplomáticas en otros países, mientras mantienen un perfil bajo. Llevan a cabo misiones que van desde persecuciones en el Medio Oriente, a la recolección de información en Mali, a apoyar las incursiones contra pandillas en El Salvador. Dado que entre sus principales misiones se incluyen asuntos civiles y operaciones psicológicas, su propósito es tan político como militar.

Según documentos obtenidos por la Oficina en Washington para Asuntos Latinoamericanos (WOLA) a través de la Ley de Libertad de Información (Freedom of Information Act, FOIA), el número de misiones de entrenamiento llevados a cabo por las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales en Latinoamérica se triplicó entre 2007 y 2014, un período en el que la ayuda militar a la región, en general, estaba disminuyendo.

Esto encaja en una tendencia mundial de fuerte incremento de estas fuerzas. Desde los ataques terroristas del 11 de septiembre del 2001, las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales se han duplicado en número hasta casi 70,000 y su presupuesto se ha triplicado, y actualmente supera los US$17 mil millones al año. En 2015, se desplegaron en 135 de las 196 naciones del mundo.

Este crecimiento era de esperarse. Las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales se desplegaron a gran escala en Irak y Afganistán durante el apogeo de las intervenciones de los Estados Unidos en esos países. Desde entonces, la presencia estadounidense en ambos países se ha reducido, dejando a miles de militares disponibles para ser enviados a nuevas misiones en más países.

Muchas de esas misiones se llevan a cabo a través de un programa de capacitación denominado el Entrenamiento de Intercambio Conjunto y Combinado (Joint Combined Exchange Training, JCET), formalizado mediante una adición en el año de 1991 a la ley del Departamento de Defensa de EE.UU. Durante los entrenamientos JCET—que a menudo se asemejan a los ejercicios conjuntos, con algunas tareas durante el curso—las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales practican nuevas habilidades de combate y técnicas como puntería de pistola y rifle, el combate urbano, la recolección de información o el control de disturbios. El propósito oficial de los entrenamientos es que las SOF mantengan sus propias habilidades. Aún más importante, también se están familiarizando con el terreno, la cultura, el lenguaje y las fuerzas armadas del país anfitrión.

Pero los JCETs van más allá de la formación de las fuerzas estadounidenses. Instruyen a sus homólogos latinoamericanos sobre tácticas militares a la vez que están obteniendo “acceso a la región con una mínima huella”, según los documentos. Los informes destacan que las “actividades [de los JCETs] a menudo fortalecen la influencia de EE.UU. en los países anfitriones”.

En Latinoamérica

La ayuda militar y policial para Latinoamérica y el Caribe ha disminuido desde el 2010, como los paquetes de ayuda del Plan Colombia y la Iniciativa Mérida se han reducido. Durante estos mismos años, sin embargo, los despliegues de las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales han aumentado en la región, particularmente en Centroamérica.

Entre 2007 y 2014, el número de misiones de entrenamiento de las Fuerzas Especiales se triplicó de 12 JCETs entrenando 560 miembros de fuerzas de seguridad en un año, a 36 JCETs entrenando a 2,300.

A partir de 2008, los documentos muestran un cambio de enfoque de América del Sur a Centroamérica, explicando que la región se había convertido “cada vez más plagada de violencia y tráfico ilícito”.

Honduras ha sido el país más visitado en el hemisferio occidental, con 21 misiones en el transcurso del de ocho años. La mayoría de los cursos de formación se llevaron a cabo entre 2011 y 2014, una época en que las graves acusaciones en contra de las fuerzas de seguridad de Honduras—el asesinato, la tortura, la violación y la extorsión—en gran parte no fueron investigadas ni castigadas. Otros cuatro entrenamientos se llevaron a cabo en el 2009; en junio de este año (tres meses antes del fin del año fiscal del gobierno estadounidense), las fuerzas armadas hondureñas ayudaron a derrocar al presidente electo en un golpe.

Además de los entrenamientos JCET, las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales de los Estados Unidos han jugado un papel importante en la lucha del país contra las pandillas. Fueron fundamentales en la construcción de los Tigres, un equipo élite SWAT que fue creado en el 2013 para combatir el crimen organizado. Las Boinas Verdes estadounidenses ahora asesoran y monitorean sus operaciones y capacitan a los agentes de los Tigres en puntería y combate cuerpo a cuerpo.

El Salvador, que ahora cuenta con un oficial de enlace de las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales en la embajada de EE.UU., fue un cercano segundo lugar a Honduras, con 19 misiones. La mayoría tuvieron lugar entre 2012 y 2014. No hay información disponible sobre cuáles son las unidades con que las fuerzas estadounidenses están trabajando allí, pero es probable que sean algunas de las diez o más fuerzas de elite que el gobierno salvadoreño ha desplegado en las calles en su guerra interna contra las pandillas. Allí, en este esfuerzo, las fuerzas de seguridad han sido acusadas de ejecuciones extrajudiciales, la manipulación de escenas del crimen y las desapariciones forzadas, entre otros crímenes.

Las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales también trabajan en estrecha colaboración con las fuerzas de seguridad de Colombia, quienes ahora se despliegan en todo el mundo para llevar a cabo cursos de formación, incluyendo Centroamérica. El país fue sede de 19 misiones JCET entre 2007 y 2014.

Curiosamente, ha habido un menor número de despliegues en Guatemala en comparación con el resto de Centroamérica. Esto podría ser debido a cuestiones de derechos humanos que impidieron que el ejército guatemalteco recibiera asistencia militar de EE.UU. durante muchos años.

La “guerra global contra el terrorismo” es la misión principal de las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales, y su expansión ocurrió dentro de su contexto. Incluso en una región como Latinoamérica, donde el terrorismo es menos común y donde grupos delictivos que controlan territorios, poblaciones y gobiernos son la mayor amenaza, las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales de EE.UU. llevan a cabo “entrenamientos de lucha contra los narcoterroristas”. Esta lógica puede explicar por qué los países más pequeños con las comunidades islámicas considerables, como Belice, Guyana y Trinidad y Tobago, están bien representados en la lista de destinos de JCET.

Durante los últimos ocho años, alrededor de 4,000 miembros de las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales de los Estados Unidos han capacitado casi 13,000 miembros de las fuerzas de seguridad de Latinoamérica con un costo de $73 millones.

Una Tendencia Creciente

A nivel mundial, esta tendencia sólo va a crecer. En el 2013, el entonces comandante general del Mando de Operaciones Especiales de los Estados Unidos (U.S. Special Operations Command, SOCOM) Joseph Votel dijo: “Queremos estar en todas partes, saber todo…” Y están en camino. El presupuesto del 2016 del Departamento de Defensa muestra los planes para desplegar más entrenamientos JCET en 2015 y 2016 que nunca antes.

Oficiales de Operaciones Especiales de Enlace (Special Operations Liaison Officers, SOLOs) están actualmente en 14 embajadas clave de Estados Unidos para asesorar a las fuerzas de operaciones especiales de esos países. Cuatro de ellos se encuentran en Latinoamérica: Brasil, Colombia, El Salvador y Perú. Para el 2019, SOCOM tiene fondos para expandir a 40 países. No está claro lo que esto significaría para Latinoamérica.

Preguntas 

Si las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales se encuentran en los países para promover el interés de los Estados Unidos, y los JCETs son una herramienta en el terreno para lograr eso, el público de EE.UU. tiene que empezar a hacer más preguntas.

¿Con quién estamos trabajando? 

En los países donde actualmente las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales tienen una mayor presencia, es importante saber a quienes están entrenando los EE.UU. En Honduras, las fuerzas de seguridad han estado implicadas en “ejecuciones ilegales y arbitrarias y otras actividades criminales”, según el Departamento del Estado. En El Salvador, el Departamento de Estado también encontró el ejército y la policía de haber participado en “ejecuciones ilegales y malos tratos”.

Pero los despliegues de las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales tienen pocas salvaguardias para asegurarse que las tropas no están trabajando con unidades que matan, torturan o abusan a su propia gente. ¿Estas unidades son conocidas por ser corruptas o por trabajar con el crimen organizado, o por trabajar con un grupo político o étnico en contra de otro? Los que puedan saber si hay un problema—funcionarios en el Departamento de Estado, el Congreso o expertos independientes—no pueden intervenir en esto porque tienen muy poca oportunidad de revisar lo que está pasando y se han dado muy pocos detalles, o ninguno en absoluto.. Aparte de los embajadores de Estados Unidos en esos países, otras agencias civiles tienen poca o ninguna visibilidad en tiempo real sobre el programa.

Para el público, incluso los datos históricos no están disponibles: los informes ordenados por el Congreso que WOLA obtuvo a través del FOIA sólo incluyen los totales de los despliegues, aprendices y los costos: no se identifican las unidades militares o policiales “asociadas”.

¿Quién realmente está haciendo la política exterior de EE.UU. en lugares como Latinoamérica—el Departamento de Estado o las Fuerzas Armadas?

Esto es parte de un debate en Washington sobre quién realmente lleva a cabo la política de EE.UU. en el extranjero y los mensajes que se envían sobre cómo resolver los problemas. Los entrenamientos JCET son parte de una tendencia más amplia de las fuerzas armadas estadounidenses usando su propio presupuesto para entrenar a las fuerzas armadas de otros países, con muy poca participación ni supervisión de nuestros diplomáticos o comités de asuntos exteriores del Congreso.

Se llaman las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales, “diplomáticos guerreros“, porque tienen habilidades letales, pero también están capacitados para relacionarse y asociarse con los civiles en países extranjeros. Algunos líderes alistados de alto rango reciben entrenamiento diplomático, tomando clases de gramática y aprendiendo cual tenedor tienen que usar durante las cenas de alto nivel. Este canal separado de la diplomacia está creciendo, con implicaciones no examinadas para el proceso de la política exterior de los Estados Unidos.

¿Cuáles son los beneficios de JCETS? Es el verdadero objetivo del programa entrenar a las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales de EE.UU.? ¿El entrenamiento que las fuerzas de Estados Unidos reciben justifica el costo? ¿Qué obtienen los ciudadanos estadounidenses por tener tantos despliegues militares en todo el mundo?

En una investigación de 1998 en el programa del entrenamiento JCET, el Washington Post encontró que “las fuerzas de operaciones especiales estadounidenses han establecido lazos militares en al menos 110 países, sin el estorbo del debate público, la supervisión civil eficaz o la participación de los altos funcionarios de relaciones exteriores de Estados Unidos”.

Parece que muy poco ha cambiado en dieciocho años, mientras que estos despliegues han seguido creciendo. Aunque los JCETs son solamente una pequeña parte de la historia, son representativos de una tendencia más amplia.

Llevó años de investigación para obtener la información de este artículo e incluso entonces, ha disminuido la transparencia. Desde el 2010, los informes sobre los JCETs ordenados por el Congreso se han vuelto más clasificados. El informe del 2009 tenía 47 páginas, no redactadas, disponibles al público. El informe del 2010 tenía ocho páginas.

A medida que las operaciones militares de los Estados Unidos en todo el mundo han cambiado, también han cambiado las preguntas que tenemos que hacer sobre el uso de las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales. Sin embargo, conseguir respuestas es cada vez más difícil.

Vea también la nota de La Prensa Gráfica sobre el tema

 

EUA triplicó envío de operaciones especiales hacia El Salvador

Sobre las 19 misiones que han realizado las fuerzas élite del Ejército estadounidense en el país hay poca información pública, por lo que se desconoce el detalle de cada una de las misiones, según un informe reciente de WOLA.

Ezequiel Barrera, 9 septiembre 2016 / LPG

Las fuerzas élites del ejército estadounidense, entre ellos los Boinas Verdes, ejecutaron 19 misiones especiales en El Salvador entre 2007 y 2014. Los datos indican que las misiones de fuerzas élite se triplicaron, porque pasaron de cinco misiones entre 2007 y 2010 a 14 entre 2011 y 2014.

Esta cantidad de misiones hizo que el país esté en la casilla número dos de los países con más intervenciones en Latinoamérica por parte de las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales de Estados Unidos de América, solo por debajo de las 21 misiones ejecutadas en Honduras y arriba de Colombia, según publicó recientemente la Oficina en Washington para Asuntos Latinoamericanos (The Washington Office on Latin America, por sus siglas en inglés, también conocida como WOLA).

Sobre esas misiones hay poca información, señala WOLA. De hecho, hay tan poca información pública que todavía no se sabe cuántas misiones más se han ejecutado entre 2015 y 2016. Tampoco se sabe con detalle en qué consisten esas misiones. Una de las pocas cosas que WOLA logró descubrir sobre esas misiones, a través de la Ley de Libertad de Información estadounidense (similar a la Ley de Acceso a la Información salvadoreña), es que uno de los objetivos de los Boinas Verdes en El Salvador es apoyar en las incursiones contra las pandillas.

“Hay una falta de transparencia de estas acciones por todo el mundo. En un sentido es parte de la estrategia de Barack Obama, a la que llama ‘huella pequeña’ y que consiste en alejarse de las grandes intervenciones y mantener un perfil más bajo, incluso en América Latina”, aseguró a este periódico Sarah Kinosain, investigadora de WOLA.

De acuerdo con Kinosain, una de las razones por la que Estados Unidos brinda poca información sobre las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales que envía a El Salvador y al resto del mundo, y a la vez por la que mantiene perfil bajo, está relacionada con la “estrategia diplomática” que tienen los militares en los país intervenidos.

“La estrategia es tanto militar como diplomática. Están relacionadas entre sí. Por eso incluso se les llama los Guerreros Diplomáticos”, opinó Kinosain.

Según el análisis de WOLA, no está clara la función diplomática de las fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales en los países en los que ha desplegado misiones. El organismo incluso es crítico y dice que “si las Fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales se encuentran en los países para promover el interés de los Estados Unidos y los Guerreros Diplomáticos son una herramienta en el terreno para lograr eso, el público estadounidense tiene que empezar a hacer más preguntas y pedir saber qué obtienen los ciudadanos estadounidenses con tantos despliegues en el mundo, como parte de la política exterior”.

El Salvador es el único país de Centroamérica donde hay un oficial de Operaciones Especiales de enlace, quien se encarga de asesorar y dirigir cada una las misiones. Su oficina está en la embajada de los Estados Unidos en San Salvador. Este periódico realizó gestiones para entrevistarlo, pero no fue posible porque, según explicó la oficina de comunicaciones de la embajada, en los primeros días de septiembre fue relevado el oficial que estaba y en su lugar ha sido designada otra persona. Esa transición hizo imposible la entrevista antes de la publicación de esta nota.

Kinosain, investigadora de WOLA, también explicó que en Washington hay un debate sobre el presupuesto asignado a los Boinas Verdes.

“Dentro de esta discusión en Washington hay cuestiones sobre el presupuesto de Estados Unidos: qué departamento está recibiendo más dinero, quién monitorea los gastos militares. En resumen, dónde está invertido el dinero y quién está monitoreando esto”, dijo Kinosain.

Una de las preguntas que WOLA sugiere es ¿Qué relación tiene el trabajo de las fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales con los recientes comportamientos de los ejércitos y policías de los países intervenidos? En Honduras, por ejemplo, coincidió el Golpe de Estado, orquestado por el ejército, con el momento en que las intervenciones en ese país comenzaron a aumentar. En El Salvador, el Departamento de Estado de los Estados Unidos, ha encontrado que el ejército y la Policía Nacional Civil (PNC) han participado en “ejecuciones ilegales y malos tratos” después de las 19 misiones.

WOLA, además, destaca el caso de Guatemala donde solo han sido desplegadas ocho misiones especiales, debido a la resistencia que pusieron instituciones de derechos humanos en ese país.

“Curiosamente, ha habido un menor número de despliegues en Guatemala en comparación con el resto de Centroamérica. Esto podría ser debido a cuestiones de derechos humanos que impidieron que el ejército guatemalteco recibiera asistencia militar de Estados Unidos durante muchos años”, dice el análisis de WOLA.

Lea el informe completo de WOLA:
Operaciones Especiales de EE.UU. en Latinoamérica: ¿Diplomacia paralela?

A new 50-state poll shows exactly why Clinton holds the advantage over Trump: WASHINGTON POST

It’s a long road to the White House, so The Washington Post polled all 50 states to find out what each candidate needs to do to get there.

Dan Balz, Scott Clement, 6 septiembre 2016 / THE WASHINGTON POST

With nine weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump is within striking distance in the Upper Midwest, but Hillary Clinton’s strength in many battlegrounds and some traditional Republican strongholds gives her a big electoral college advantage, according to a 50-state Washington Post-SurveyMonkey poll.

The survey of all 50 states is the largest sample ever undertaken by The Post, which joined with SurveyMonkey and its online polling resources to produce the results. The state-by-state numbers are based on responses from more than 74,000 registered voters during the period of Aug. 9 to Sept. 1. The individual state samples vary in size from about 550 to more than 5,000, allowing greater opportunities than typical surveys to look at different groups within the population and compare them from state to state.

VEA: How the Post-SurveyMonkey poll was conducted

VEA: New poll shows how Trump-Clinton matchup
is redrawing the electoral map View Graphic

The massive survey highlights a critical weakness in Trump’s candidacy — an unprecedented deficit for a Republican among college-educated white voters, especially women. White college graduates have been loyal Republican voters in recent elections, but Trump is behind Clinton with this group across much of the country, including in some solidly red states.

The 50-state findings come at a time when the average national margin between Clinton and Trump has narrowed. What once was a Clinton lead nationally of eight to 10 points shortly after the party conventions ended a month ago is now about four points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. A number of battleground states also have tightened, according to surveys released from other organizations in recent days.

The Post-SurveyMonkey results are consistent with many of those findings, but not in all cases. Trump’s support in the Midwest, where the electorates are generally older and whiter, appears stronger and offers the possibility of gains in places Democrats carried recently. He has small edges in two expected battlegrounds — Ohio and Iowa — and is close in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, each of which Democrats have won in six consecutive elections.

At the same time, however, Trump is struggling in places Republicans have won consistently and that he must hold to have any hope of winning. These states include Arizona and Georgia, as well as Texas — the biggest surprise in the 50-state results. The Texas results, which are based on a sample of more than 5,000 people, show a dead heat, with Clinton ahead by one percentage point.

Clinton also leads by fewer than four points in Colorado and Florida and is tied with Trump in North Carolina. In Colorado, other polls have shown a larger Clinton lead. In Mississippi, Trump’s lead is just two points, though it’s doubtful that the GOP nominee is in much danger there.

Electoral college advantage for Clinton

In a two-way competition between the major-party candidates, Clinton leads by four points or more in 20 states plus the District of Columbia. Together they add up to 244 electoral votes, 26 shy of the 270 needed to win.

Trump leads by at least four points in 20 states as well, but those add up to just 126 electoral votes. In the 10 remaining states, which hold 168 electoral votes, neither candidate has a lead of four percentage points or better.

VEA: How our new poll compares with past
presidential election results in every state

A series of four-way ballot tests that include Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein project a somewhat narrower Clinton advantage, with more states showing margins of fewer than four points between the two major-party candidates. But even here, at the Labor Day weekend turn toward the Nov. 8 balloting, the pressure is on Trump to make up even more ground than he has in recent weeks if he hopes to win the White House.

The poll finds Johnson is poised to garner significant support. He is currently receiving at least 15 percent support in 15 states. The libertarian’s support peaks at 25 percent in New Mexico, where he served two terms as governor. He is only four points shy of Trump’s 29 percent standing there. His support in Utah is 23 percent, and in Colorado and Iowa it is 16 percent. Stein has less support in the poll, peaking at 10 percent in Vermont and receiving at least 7 percent support in 10 states.

Read the full Post-SurveyMonkey results

Overall, the results reflect Trump’s strategy of maximizing support in older, whiter Midwestern states where his anti-free-trade message and appeals to national identity generally find more fertile ground.

But his struggles elsewhere, including places that have long supported Republicans, illustrate the challenges of that strategy in more diverse states where his stances on immigration and some other positions have turned off Democrats, independents and many Republicans.
Demographic divisions shape the competition

To win the election, Trump must quickly consolidate the Republican vote. With prominent Republicans declaring they will not support Trump and some even announcing they will back Clinton, this represents a major challenge for the GOP nominee. In the Post-SurveyMonkey poll, Clinton is winning 90 percent or more of the Democratic vote in 32 states, while Trump is at or above that level in just 13.

As expected, the Clinton-Trump contest has split the electorate along racial lines. Their bases of support are mirror images: On average, Clinton does 31 points better among nonwhite voters than whites, and Trump does 31 points better among white voters than nonwhites.

The electorate is also divided along lines of gender and education, in many cases to a greater extent than in recent elections. Averaging across all 50 states, Clinton does 14 points better among women than men, and Trump does 16 points better among men than women. Clinton is winning among women in 34 states, and she’s close in six others. Trump leads among men in 38 states, is tied in six and trails in the other six.

It is among college-educated voters, however, where Trump faces his biggest hurdle. In 2012, white voters with college degrees supported Republican nominee Mitt Romney over President Obama by 56-42 percent. Romney won with 59 percent among white men with college degrees and with 52 percent among white women with college degrees.

So far in this campaign, Clinton has dramatically changed that equation. Among white college graduates, Clinton leads Trump in 31 of the 50 states, and the two are about even in six others. Trump leads among college-educated whites in just 13 states, all safe Republican states in recent elections.

Across 49 states where the poll interviewed at least 100 white college-educated women, Clinton leads Trump with this group in 38 states and by double-digit margins in 37. Averaging across all states, Clinton leads by 23 points among white women with college degrees.

Trump’s base among white voters without a college degree remains strong and substantial. He leads Clinton in 43 of the 50 states, and the two are roughly even in five others. She leads among white voters without a college degree in just one state: Vermont.

Overall, Clinton does 19 points better among white college graduates than whites without degrees while Trump does 18 points better among whites without degrees than whites with college educations, on average.

Trump’s challenge in the states that remain close will be to produce significant turnout among white, non-college voters to offset those Clinton margins, but it’s far from clear that there are enough of them to be decisive. Absent that, the GOP nominee must find a way to appeal to these college-educated voters during the final weeks of the campaign.
States and regions shaping the race

Trump’s strength across some of the states in the Midwest is one potential bright spot for the Republican nominee. Clinton’s biggest lead among the contested states in that region is in Pennsylvania, where her margin is just four points. In Wisconsin and Michigan, she leads by a nominal two points, while Trump leads by four points in Iowa and three points in Ohio.

Recent polls by other organizations have indicated that Wisconsin has tightened over the past month. A recent Suffolk University poll in Michigan shows Clinton leading by seven points, and the RealClearPolitics average in Ohio shows Clinton ahead by three points. Overall, among the quintet of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Pennsylvania, Michigan has been the Democrats’ most reliable of the group, always one of the 15 best-performing Democratic states over the past five elections.

The Rocky Mountain West is another area of fierce competition. The Post-SurveyMonkey poll shows Colorado closer than other polls there, with Clinton leading by just two points and the race tied when Johnson and Stein are included. Meanwhile, Clinton and Trump are roughly even in Arizona. In Nevada, Clinton enjoys a lead of five points in head-to-head competition with Trump but by just three points in a four-way test.

Of all the states, Texas provided the most unexpected result. The Lone Star State has been a conservative Republican bastion for the past four decades. In 2012, President Obama lost the state by 16 points. For Democrats, it has been among the 10 to 15 worst-performing states in the past four elections.

The Post-SurveyMonkey poll of Texas shows a dead heat with Clinton at 46 percent and Trump at 45 percent. Democrats have long claimed that changing demographics would make the state competitive in national elections, but probably not for several more cycles.

A comparison of the current survey with the 2008 Texas exit poll (there was no exit poll there in 2012) points to reasons the race appears close right now. Trump is performing worse than 2008 GOP nominee John McCain among both whites and Hispanics, while Clinton is doing slightly better than Obama.

Among men, Trump is doing slightly worse than McCain did eight years ago. The bigger difference is among women. McCain won a narrow majority of women in Texas while Trump is currently below 40 percent. That’s not to say Texas is turning blue in 2016. Given its history, it probably will back Trump in November and possibly by a comfortable margin. But at this stage, the fact that it is close at all is one more surprise in a surprising year.

Emily Guskin contributed to this report.

Rudy Giuliani’s Fear Factor. De Andy Rosenthal

Andy Rosenthal, 19 julio 2016 / THE NEW YORK TIMES

Way back in 1992, people were shocked when Pat Buchanan hijacked President George H. W. Bush’s re-election convention in Houston to declare war on those who didn’t share his right-wing Christian values.

“There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America,” he said. “It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.”

Buchanan was right in a way. That cultural and religious war has come to define American politics, for the worse. His speech showed the depths to which the Republican Party had fallen in practicing the dark art of the politics of fear and division. But the Republicans, it turned out, had a lot farther to fall.

This week, I felt almost nostalgic for kinder, gentler Pat Buchanan as the Republicans opened a national convention that has adopted the most right-wing platform in history and will soon anoint the most unqualified candidate for president in memory.

For President Bush in 1992, fear and division were a sideshow. Now they are the main event.

On the convention’s opening night, Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, gave a speech that was raw anger and hatred. Giuliani’s tirade swamped whatever Trump hoped to accomplish by having his wife talk about what a wonderful guy he is.

Waving his arms and shouting frequently, Giuliani declared: “We must not be afraid to define our enemy. It is Islamic extremist terrorism.”

The former mayor, who has turned the tragedy of Sept. 11 into a career, was picking up on a favorite Republican theme — that not using the phrase he used or an alternative, “radical Islamic terrorism,” somehow suggests a lack of commitment to combating terrorism.

It’s absurd, of course, but the idea is to attack the “other” and still claim there is no bigotry in doing so.

“Failing to identify them properly maligns decent Muslims around the world,” Giuliani said, without explaining how, exactly. “It also sets up a fear of being politically incorrect that can have serious consequences.”

Trump likes to make the same claim that people who object to his attacks on Mexicans, Muslims, women and others are being “politically correct.” That is not political correctness. It is calling out bigotry and racism for what they are.

Giuliani attacked Hillary Clinton over the Obama administration’s decision to help depose the Libyan dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi. He said, rightly, that Libya is now in chaos. But he conveniently left out that President George W. Bush’s decision to wage war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq was the gigantic blunder that set up most of the subsequent horrors in that part of the world.

Giuliani’s speech led nowhere in terms of actual policies or ideas, only to this rather chilling statement: “If they are at war against us — which they have declared — we must commit ourselves to unconditional victory against them.”

I can think of a couple of conditions: Basic human decency and traditional American democratic values.

Giuliani’s speech was effective. It whipped up the crowd in the convention hall and, no doubt, Trump supporters watching on television.

It just would have been better delivered from a balcony, or at the head of a torch-bearing mob.

Andrew Rosenthal is an op-ed columnist for The Times