3:00 p.m.-3:10 p.m. September 11, 2001: President Bush Is Taken to the Underground Command Center at Offutt Air Force Base

President Bush gets off Air Force One and is taken to a command center several stories underground at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. [Salon, 9/12/2001; Bamford, 2004, pp. 89] At 2:50 p.m., the president’s plane landed at Offutt, home of the US Strategic Command (Stratcom), which controls America’s nuclear weapons (see 2:50 p.m. September 11, 2001). [Associated Press, 9/11/2001; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 326] About 10 minutes later, Bush emerges from the plane. [Salon, 9/12/2001] Admiral Richard Mies, commander in chief of Stratcom, along with a driver and a Secret Service agent, has come in a car to meet Air Force One on the runway. After getting off the plane, Bush gets into the back of the car with Mies. [Sammon, 2002, pp. 121; NET News, 12/27/2011; Politico Magazine, 9/9/2016] His staffers, meanwhile, get onto buses. [Studies in Intelligence, 9/2006 ] The vehicles are driven away from the plane and across the large base. [Sammon, 2002, pp. 121]
Bush Goes to the Underground Command Center – Bush and his staffers are then taken to Stratcom’s underground command center. [CBS News, 9/2/2003] They are taken by Mies through the center’s fire escape in order to reach it. [NET News, 12/27/2011; Omaha World-Herald, 9/9/2016] They are driven to a small, concrete building, resembling a hut, go through a door in it, and then head down a staircase. [White House, 8/12/2002; Fleischer, 2005, pp. 147-148] “We went down and down and down, pretty far underground,” Brian Montgomery, the White House’s director of advance, will later recall. [Politico Magazine, 9/9/2016] “It’s a long way down,” Karl Rove, Bush’s senior adviser, will describe, “and then you emerge and go through a series of hallways and special doors, blast doors… and then you enter into a conference center, which is… several stories underground.” [ABC News, 9/11/2002]
Exercise Means Extra People Are in the Command Center – The command center, according to author James Bamford, is “a cavernous two-story war room with banks of dark wooden desks curved away from a giant projection screen on which [is] displayed the status of military forces around the world.” [Bamford, 2004, pp. 89] Eight giant video screens are loaded with data and numerous military personnel are seated at computer terminals that are hooked into satellites monitoring activities around the world. [Washington Post, 1/27/2002; Omaha World-Herald, 2/27/2002] Stratcom was in the middle of a major training exercise, called Global Guardian, when the attacks began this morning (see 8:30 a.m. September 11, 2001 and Before 9:00 a.m. September 11, 2001) and consequently many more people are in the command center than would normally be there.
Bush Is Briefed on the Attacks – When Bush enters, Rear Admiral Jay Donnelly, the operations officer in the center, announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, the president.” Everyone comes to attention. Bush then tells them to sit down. Mies gives Bush a briefing in the command center. “The president sat down and I briefed him on what each of [the] screens was displaying,” he will recall, adding, “Gave him, as best I could, an update from [Stratcom’s] perspective of what was happening based on what we knew.” [Omaha World-Herald, 9/8/2002; NET News, 12/27/2011] After being briefed, Bush and Andrew Card, his chief of staff, will be taken to a teleconference center. [CBS News, 9/2/2003; Rove, 2010, pp. 261] There, Bush will conduct a meeting of the National Security Council in a secure video teleconference (see (3:15 p.m.) September 11, 2001). [Washington Times, 10/8/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 326; NET News, 12/27/2011]