The Winds of War
September 14, 2001
The President’s armored limousine turned onto New York City’s Forty-second
Street. Moments earlier, President Bush had hugged the last of some two
hundred widows and widowers to be at the Jacob Javits Center in midtown
Manhattan. On September 14, 2001, Forty-second Street could have been Main
Street in any midwestern community or a small southern town. The street
was lined ten deep on both sides with people holding signs reading “God
Bless America” and “God Save the U.S.” But this was New York City, the
place where I was born and where my father commuted almost every day of
his working life. It was Ground Zero, the place where America had been
attacked seventy-two hours earlier. The city is not known for its outward
displays of faith, but on September 14, New York City was a quiet, pious
place.
During my two and a half years as the press secretary in the White House,
no day was tougher than September 14. The attack of September 11 fell like
a blow. My day was consumed with reacting to it, wondering how it could
have happened, and learning what we were going to do about it. The
suffering was tremendous, but it was somehow distant. It was on TV, on the
phone, outside the so-called bubble that shields the President and the
entourage around him. September 14 brought it home.
The President was scheduled for a thirty-five-minute meeting with a group
of family members whose loved ones were still “missing” at the World Trade
Center site. Instead, the meeting lasted almost two hours, as he walked
around the room, hugging and consoling every grieving person there.
A New York City police officer came up to him with his niece in his arms
and a picture in his hand. The child, who looked like she was six years
old, pointed to the picture of firefighters. The man she pointed to, the
cop explained, was her father, his brother. He was missing at Ground Zero,
and the little girl wanted to know if the President could help her find
him.
Family after family presented the President with pictures of their missing
loved ones. There wasn’t a person in that room who thought his or her
missing wife, husband, son, or daughter wouldn’t get out alive. Despite
their hopes, nearly everyone in the room, President Bush included, had
tears in his or her eyes. The Secret Service, which usually form a
protective phalanx around the President so no one can get very close for
very long, stood back. They understood the solemnity of the scene before
them. I wouldn’t have been surprised if there were agents with tears in
their eyes.
One woman approached the President with a picture of her husband, also
missing at Ground Zero. He signed it, telling her that when her husband
returned she should let him know that she had met the President and had
the signature to prove it. He wanted to give the families a ray of hope
that their missing loved ones would be found. She thanked him and tucked
the picture into her Bible.
I stood a few feet away from the President and took it in. I had never
witnessed such sadness. People waited for President Bush to make his way
around the room. Some cried out loud. Many sobbed softly. Several had to
link arms to have the strength to stay on their feet in this makeshift
room, with blue curtains acting as walls inside a giant convention hall.
As people waited for their turn to talk to the President, some struck up
conversations with me. One woman told me her brother had served in the
United States Marine Corps during Desert Storm and had been working at the
World Trade Center. She hadn’t seen him since the attack. “If anyone knows
how to get out,” she told me, “it’s him. He’s a Marine. He knows how to
survive for days.” I told her I was sure she was right.
Moments before it was time to go, the President approached an elderly
woman seated in a chair. Her name was Arlene Howard. She sat serenely,
waiting for him. In her hand she held the shield of a Port Authority
Police officer. The shield belonged to her son, George Howard, a Port
Authority cop with the Emergency Security Unit at JFK Airport and a
volunteer fireman in Hicksville, on New York’s Long Island. When the
towers were attacked, he rushed to the scene.
Rescue workers found her son’s body the day after the attack with his
shield still on his shirt. It was given to her as a loving memory. When
the President arrived at her side, she took the shield and gave it to him.
“This is so you remember what happened here,” she said. “This is so no one
will forget.”
Six days later, when the President addressed the nation in a speech to a
joint session of Congress, he held up the shield and said, “I will carry
this: It is the police shield of a man named George Howard, who died at
the World Trade Center trying to save others. It was given to me by his
mom, Arlene, as a proud memorial to her son. This is my reminder of lives
that ended, and a task that does not end.”
As the motorcade sped down Forty-second Street, the President still
clutched George Howard’s shield in his hand, and I stared at the silent
crowds from my vehicle, several cars back. Manhattan never felt so still.
We were on our way to the Wall Street Landing Zone to catch the Marine
helicopters that would take us to New Jersey’s McGuire Air Force Base,
where Air Force One waited. As we passed Times Square, the billboard
carrying that day’s news circled round – “President Bush Calls Up 50,000
Reservists,” it said.
The winds of war were blowing.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Taking Heat
by Ari Fleischer Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
William Morrow
ISBN: 0-06-074762-5
