As news and “jumbled miscommunications” flooded in about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said he “knew the world had changed.”

Fleischer, who served under President George W. Bush and was traveling with him on 9/11, joined WTOP’s Anne Kramer and Shawn Anderson on Wednesday to discuss what he remembers about “the most unimaginable day,” and what goes through his mind each year on the anniversary.

Q: You had such a unique experience, Ari, that day, being in the middle of the nation’s response, reaction to the terrorist attacks, President Bush in Florida for that elementary school event, along with you and the staff. Can you walk us through some of those first moments of learning about the first plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center?

Fleischer: Well, we were just pulling up to an elementary school in Florida, and I got a page back then on my old-fashioned pager — we didn’t have smartphones — and it said a plane hit the World Trade Center, and everybody thought this had to be a terrible accident. And then I got a second page in that little school room. I was about 15 feet over the president’s left shoulder, leaning against a wall, and my pager went off and said a second plane hit the second tower. And interestingly, about 30 seconds later, that’s when Andy Card walked into the room and whispered in the president’s ear, Second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack. And at that moment, as soon as I got that second page, I knew the world had changed, that this had to be terrorism, and that launched a whole change in the United States of America.

Q: Talk to us about what were the next concerns in the moment for the commander-in-chief and Air Force One. It appears there was some sort of mixed message about an attack on the presidential jet. What kind of confusion was going on at that point?

Fleischer: There was immense confusion. It’s one of the interesting things looking back in time at how much of the filters that normally stop bad information from working its way all the way up to the president broke down, because on a day when the unimaginable happened, America was under attack, nobody wanted to be caught not passing information up the chain. And so when we boarded Air Force One, we left the school in the motorcade. That’s when the third plane hit the Pentagon. We boarded Air Force One, and we were told there was still some six unidentified aircraft flying in the sky that had not responded to the order to land. Then we heard that there was a car bomb at the State Department. That turned out to be false. That the Mall was on fire. That turned out to be false. Later that morning, we heard that there was an unidentified aircraft heading toward the president’s ranch. That turned out to be false. And at 10:32 that morning, I’ll never forget it, a call came in and went through the Situation Room to the PEOC, that’s the bunker underneath the White House where the emergency management was underway with Vice President Cheney. And then Cheney called up to Air Force One to tell the president, a call came in saying, Angel is next. Angel at that time was the Secret Service code word for Air Force One. So now our people are thinking, could there be an inside job on Air Force One? That turned out to be a whole jumbled miscommunications, and there was no threat to Air Force One. It was the most unimaginable day of real threats. Four planes hit places, killed people, and all kinds of rumors of much worse were underway at the same time.

Q: Ari, what was President Bush like in his demeanor and all that, and had you gone through any dress rehearsals to prepare for anything like this?

Fleischer: You know, you do tabletop exercises, and I participated in one prior to inauguration, prior to Jan. 20 Inauguration Day, but nothing like this. President Bush, and really everybody around him, from the Secret Service to the military to the nuclear aide who carries the nuclear football, the most surprising thing is on the most emotional day America could have, everybody was so unemotional, and you had to be. The president was just steely resolved. The team around him emulated that. There was no crying, no panic, no highs, no lows. It was we have a job to do. And when I look back, I think, how could we all have been so unemotional? And it really was because we were in the thick of it. And that is what you better be. That is how you better behave when you’re in the middle of the world’s worst catastrophe,

Q: As President Bush returned to the White House that evening of the attacks on Marine One, you’ve shared the story of what he said when he looked down and saw the Pentagon. Can you share that with us?

Fleischer: Well, when you fly from Andrews Air Force Base to the White House, there are a number of routes that Marine One normally takes, and that day we took the most majestic, beautiful route, which is straight above the Capitol dome, right down the Mall. Washington Monument is dead ahead of you. You bank right and land on the South Lawn. But as we banked right, the Pentagon came clearly into the view for the president, and it was still smoldering. You can see smoke coming out of it. And the president just kind of said out loud to nobody in particular, “‘The mightiest building in the world is on fire.” That’s the face of 21st-century war. And what struck me was not only just the poignancy of seeing the Pentagon smoldering, but the president’s realization of the asymmetrical attacks that terrorists bring in the 21st century. They don’t need armies. They don’t need navies or air forces. They needed terrorism, and they were able to accomplish it that day. And that was, when I look back, I’m so grateful that we have not been attacked in any similar manner since Sept. 11, and that’s a real tribute, in my opinion, to the things President Bush did. And then, frankly, the bipartisan template that’s been created and largely followed by everybody since Bush to get aggressive and go after terrorism.

Q: Do you think, and you just mentioned looking back, what do you think the administration did right, Ari, and then maybe did wrong or could have done differently?

Fleischer: It’s always easy to second guess when something so catastrophic happens like that, but in the weeks and months after, the did right is we took the fight to the enemy. There were people who were urging President Bush don’t use military force. I remember that there were there were groups saying that war is not the answer. We took the fight to the enemy, and ever since then, we’ve kept the enemy on the run. And I think that’s a fair statement, and it’s one of the reasons we have not been attacked again. We’ve been so aggressive abroad, and even the successors to President Trump, have gone after terrorists. Successors to President Bush, I should say, have gone after the terrorists around the world, and it’s prevented them from organizing and attacking us the way they would if they could. Things did wrong, certainly we wish we could have captured Osama bin Laden. I’m glad President Obama was successful in doing it. You know, the decision that was made was to go in with a light military footprint and not hundreds of thousands of troops in Afghanistan. We wanted to avoid mass casualties of Americans in Afghanistan. That limited our ability to do other things in Afghanistan. So, in the Bush years, I would point to that. I think you could look beyond the Bush years at a whole other series of things that were done both right and wrong.

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