Shortly After 10:00 a.m. September 11, 2001: President Bush’s Speechwriter Told that President Should Hold Those Who Harbor Terrorists Responsible for Attacks

David Frum, a speechwriter for President Bush, spends an hour on the phone with Richard Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, and Perle tells him the president needs to say he will hold not just terrorists but also the nations that harbor them responsible for the morning’s attacks. [Vanity Fair, 7/2003] Frum is currently at the headquarters of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank in Washington, DC, while Perle is at his vacation home in the south of France. [Packer, 2005, pp. 40] Frum went to the AEI headquarters after he was evacuated from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House (see (9:45 a.m.) September 11, 2001). On the way, he was joined by John McConnell, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief speechwriter. After they arrived at the AEI headquarters, sometime after 10:00 a.m., Chris DeMuth, AEI’s president, offered the two men the use of offices, telephones, and Internet connections. [Frum, 2003, pp. 115-117]
Frum and Perle Discuss Attacks and How the US Should Respond – Frum therefore talks over the phone with Perle for about an hour. [Vanity Fair, 7/2003] “We had a very long conversation,” Frum will later recall, “and touched on a lot of things: where [the attacks] had come from and the mistakes of the past, things to be avoided.” The thing that emerges “most clearly” from the conversation, according to Frum, is how important it is for the president to “make it clear at the start: this was not going to be more law enforcement—they were not going to be indicting these terrorists—that this was to be understood as war.” [PBS Frontline, 7/7/2004] Therefore, Perle says to Frum, “Whatever else the president says, he must make clear that he’s holding responsible not just terrorists but whoever harbors those terrorists.” [Vanity Fair, 7/2003]
Speechwriters Leave AEI to Join Other White House Staffers – Frum and McConnell will subsequently leave the AEI headquarters and head to the DaimlerChrysler building in Washington, where dozens of White House employees go to continue their work. There, the two men will work on a statement for Bush to deliver when he returns to the capital. [Frum, 2003, pp. 117-118, 120; Politico, 9/9/2011] After he arrives back at the White House, Bush will give a speech to the nation from the Oval Office (see 8:30 p.m. September 11, 2001). [CNN, 9/12/2001; Washington Post, 1/27/2002] The speech Frum and McConnell work on, however, will have been discarded, with the president using something different. [PBS Frontline, 7/7/2004] But Bush will say in his speech that America “will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” [US President, 9/17/2001] Referring to the speech, journalist and author George Packer will comment: “Bush followed Perle’s advice to the word and then expanded on it: The rest of the world was either with America or with the terrorists.” [Packer, 2005, pp. 40]