asked the usual security questions— Did you pack your own baggage? Has it been out of your sight? —but had to keep repeating them until the men could answer.
Each checked a bag and had a carry-on. Jawahir printed out their boarding passes.
“Would it be okay if I put both of these in one envelope?” she asked. The men seemed uncertain what she meant, but agreed anyway.
Jawahir circled the gate number to make sure that they could figure out where to go. Then she slid the boarding passes into the envelope and handed it to them.
“Now, you need to go through security,” she said, pointing them in the proper direction.
The two men took the envelope without a word. They walked calmly through security, then headed toward Gate 19 to board the awaiting plane.
• • •
The attacks were over in less than three hours. But it was the eighteen months after 9/11 that set America on the course that it pursued for more than a decade.
Decisions that only weeks before the hijackings would have been inconceivable tore through the White House in a desperate race to armor the United States against unseen enemies. Each perceived threat—al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Iraq, biological attacks, and other weapons of mass destruction—fueled revisions in the long-held philosophies of America’s leaders.
Secret relationships were established with foes like Syria and Libya; past disputes with any nation, any organization, and any individual were set aside in search of supporters for the new American cause. Suspected terrorists were delivered into the hands of foreign torturers, allies were threatened with devastation, wars were fought by unprecedented means. Detention, intelligence collection, the treatment of citizens—each piece of the national security puzzle was reexamined and revised, at times setting American against American in a furious debate about what was right, what was pragmatic, what was counterproductive, and what was wrong.
The struggle during that period of just over five hundred days played out on a global stage, from the White House to the Kremlin, from the grandeur of the British Parliament to the dusty caves of Afghanistan. Decisions emanating from every level of the American government rippled around the world, transforming the nature not only of allies and enemies, but of the United States itself.
This, then, is more than a recounting of events in an age of terror. Rather, it is the narrative of a wrenching transformation of international allies and enemies in a period of unprecedented tumult. It is a tale of triumph and fiasco, of choices born from necessity, fear, and misplaced conviction. In the end, it is a portrait of an America struggling to find its way, torn between the needs for security and the hopes for an uncertain future.
BOOK ONE
A WAR OF UNKNOWN WARRIORS
1
Crowds poured out of the White House and raced down the driveway toward Lafayette Park. The exodus had erupted at 9:22, nineteen minutes after a hijacked plane smashed into the World Trade Center, the second to hit the towers that morning. No evacuation had been ordered; rather, staff members, fearful that a third plane might crash into the executive mansion, had spontaneously dropped what they were doing and rushed for the exits.
From a limousine driving on West Executive Avenue alongside the White House fence, Norm Mineta, the secretary of transportation, uneasily watched the crush of fleeing workers. He had been summoned to the White House just after the second airliner had hit, and now saw evidence of the panic rippling through the nation’s capital. Mineta turned to a security agent beside him.
“Is there something wrong with this picture?” he asked. “We’re driving in and everybody else is running away.”
After being cleared through the northwest gate, the limousine eased past the swelling mob and pulled to the portico at the West Wing entrance. The secretary emerged from the car and walked through the lobby, where
Each checked a bag and had a carry-on. Jawahir printed out their boarding passes.
“Would it be okay if I put both of these in one envelope?” she asked. The men seemed uncertain what she meant, but agreed anyway.
Jawahir circled the gate number to make sure that they could figure out where to go. Then she slid the boarding passes into the envelope and handed it to them.
“Now, you need to go through security,” she said, pointing them in the proper direction.
The two men took the envelope without a word. They walked calmly through security, then headed toward Gate 19 to board the awaiting plane.
• • •
The attacks were over in less than three hours. But it was the eighteen months after 9/11 that set America on the course that it pursued for more than a decade.
Decisions that only weeks before the hijackings would have been inconceivable tore through the White House in a desperate race to armor the United States against unseen enemies. Each perceived threat—al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Iraq, biological attacks, and other weapons of mass destruction—fueled revisions in the long-held philosophies of America’s leaders.
Secret relationships were established with foes like Syria and Libya; past disputes with any nation, any organization, and any individual were set aside in search of supporters for the new American cause. Suspected terrorists were delivered into the hands of foreign torturers, allies were threatened with devastation, wars were fought by unprecedented means. Detention, intelligence collection, the treatment of citizens—each piece of the national security puzzle was reexamined and revised, at times setting American against American in a furious debate about what was right, what was pragmatic, what was counterproductive, and what was wrong.
The struggle during that period of just over five hundred days played out on a global stage, from the White House to the Kremlin, from the grandeur of the British Parliament to the dusty caves of Afghanistan. Decisions emanating from every level of the American government rippled around the world, transforming the nature not only of allies and enemies, but of the United States itself.
This, then, is more than a recounting of events in an age of terror. Rather, it is the narrative of a wrenching transformation of international allies and enemies in a period of unprecedented tumult. It is a tale of triumph and fiasco, of choices born from necessity, fear, and misplaced conviction. In the end, it is a portrait of an America struggling to find its way, torn between the needs for security and the hopes for an uncertain future.
BOOK ONE
A WAR OF UNKNOWN WARRIORS
1
Crowds poured out of the White House and raced down the driveway toward Lafayette Park. The exodus had erupted at 9:22, nineteen minutes after a hijacked plane smashed into the World Trade Center, the second to hit the towers that morning. No evacuation had been ordered; rather, staff members, fearful that a third plane might crash into the executive mansion, had spontaneously dropped what they were doing and rushed for the exits.
From a limousine driving on West Executive Avenue alongside the White House fence, Norm Mineta, the secretary of transportation, uneasily watched the crush of fleeing workers. He had been summoned to the White House just after the second airliner had hit, and now saw evidence of the panic rippling through the nation’s capital. Mineta turned to a security agent beside him.
“Is there something wrong with this picture?” he asked. “We’re driving in and everybody else is running away.”
After being cleared through the northwest gate, the limousine eased past the swelling mob and pulled to the portico at the West Wing entrance. The secretary emerged from the car and walked through the lobby, where
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