Bush in the classroom, Cheney in the bunker

At 9:05 Andrew Card whispered to the president that a second plane had hit and that America was under attack. Bush told the Commission his instinct was to project calm rather than let the country see an excited reaction; he saw the press behind the children, their phones ringing. He stayed for five to seven minutes while the children read, then went to a holding room. [1]

Critics held up the scene as indecision; others have treated it as a sign he knew in advance. The record shows only that he stayed; it contains nothing to suggest foreknowledge. Air Force One left Sarasota at about 9:54, with the Secret Service and Card against a return to Washington. [1]

Cheney said he called Bush from the shelter conference room, raised the rules of engagement and got his approval. The Commission believed the call would have been before 10:10 to 10:15, but found “no documentary evidence for this call,” while noting the records were incomplete. Others taking notes in the room, including Scooter Libby and Lynne Cheney, did not record a call at that moment. [1]

The notes of the 2004 joint interview, released in 2022, have Bush describing the conversation: “Yes, engage the enemy. You have the authority to shoot down an airplane.” They record that “the President approved this before 10:00.” [2][3]

Some writers took the gap as a sign that Cheney acted on his own. The notes support Bush and Cheney’s account; they cannot settle it, because they are the two men’s own recollections.

Norman Mineta, the transportation secretary, testified in May 2003 that he arrived in the shelter at about 9:20 and five or six minutes later heard a young man tell Cheney a plane was 50 miles out, then 10 miles out, and ask: “Do the orders still stand?” Cheney replied, “Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?” Mineta took it to be about the plane that hit the Pentagon. [1]

The Commission concluded Cheney did not reach the conference room until about 9:58, after the Pentagon was hit. [2] People who believe the Pentagon strike was allowed to happen read Mineta’s “orders” as an order not to shoot. Mineta himself said he did not know what it meant; there is no evidence it was a stand-down order, and Bush and Cheney told the Commission there were “two or three occasions” that morning when reports of incoming planes led to the authorization being reaffirmed. [3]