9:03 a.m.-9:05 a.m. September 11, 2001: Deputy White House Chief of Staff Learns of Second Crash at WTC and Goes to Tell National Security Adviser Rice about It

Josh Bolten, the deputy White House chief of staff, learns of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center and then, according to his own account, goes and tells National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice what has happened. With many of President Bush’s senior staff members, including White House chief of staff Andrew Card, traveling with the president in Florida, Bolten is the acting chief of staff at the White House this morning. He has run the senior staff meeting and, after the meeting ended, noticed the coverage of the first crash at the WTC on the television in his office. He’d thought the crash was a “freak accident,” he will later comment. “But then,” he will say, “the TV pictures kind of made me wonder.” Bolten went down to the White House Situation Room to see if he could learn anything more. The Situation Room, according to Bolten, “is supposed to be the information nerve center of the White House, where they are monitoring all of the TV stations, all the intelligence sources.” It is “where the Defense Department and CIA and everybody funnels in information to the president and to the White House.” After he enters the Situation Room, Bolten learns of Flight 175 hitting the second WTC tower, presumably seeing it live on television at 9:03 a.m. (see 9:03 a.m. September 11, 2001). “[I]t was at that moment that I realized this is not an accident,” he will recall. Bolten will say that he then heads into the conference area of the Situation Room, where Rice is conducting a meeting with her senior directors. After he enters the room, Rice says, “Here’s Josh Bolten,” and then starts introducing him to her senior directors. Bolten will say he gives Rice “the timeout signal” and asks her to step outside the room with him. He then tells her, “A second plane has hit; this is not an accident, it is an attack.” [C-SPAN, 10/6/2013] Rice, however, will contradict Bolten’s account. In interviews in which she discusses this morning’s events, she will make no mention of Bolten coming into her senior directors’ meeting. She will say she learns a second plane has hit the WTC not from Bolten but from her executive assistant, Tony Crawford, who comes into her meeting and hands her a note that tells her about the crash (see (9:04 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [White House, 10/24/2001; White House, 11/1/2001; BBC Radio 4, 8/1/2002 ; White House, 8/6/2002] Bolten will say that after he tells Rice about the crash, the two of them head upstairs to Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and talk to Cheney there (see (Shortly After 9:03 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [C-SPAN, 10/6/2013]