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President had always given that order.
    â€œYou tell me to do it,” Fred replied.
    At that moment, Paul handed me the white phone to the PEOC. It was Fenzel. “Air Force One is getting ready to take off, with some press still on board. He’ll divert to an air base. Fighter escort is authorized. And…” He paused. “Tell the Pentagon they have authority from the President to shoot down hostile aircraft, repeat, they have authority to shoot down hostile aircraft.”
    â€œRoger that.” I was amazed at the speed of the decisions coming from Cheney and, through him, from Bush. “Tell them I am instituting COG.” I turned back to Fred: “Go.”
    â€œDOD, DOD.” I tried to get the attention of those still on the screen in the Pentagon. “Three decisions: One, the President has ordered the use of force against aircraft deemed to be hostile. Two, the White House is also requesting fighter escort of Air Force One. Three, and this applies to all agencies, we are initiating COG. Please activate your alternate command centers and move staff to them immediately.”
    Rumsfeld said that smoke was getting into the Pentagon secure teleconferencing studio. Franklin Miller urged him to helicopter to DOD’s alternate site. “I am too goddamn old to go to an alternate site,” the Secretary answered. Rumsfeld moved to another studio in the Pentagon and sent his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, to the remote site.
    General Myers asked, “Okay, shoot down aircraft, but what are the ROE?” ROE were Rules of Engagement. It was one thing to say it’s okay to shoot down a hijacked aircraft threatening to kill people on the ground, but we needed to give pilots more specific guidelines than that. I asked Miller and Greenwood to make sure DOD had an answer to that question quickly. “I don’t want them delaying while they lawyer that to death.”
    Lisa slipped a note in front of me: “CNN says car bomb at the State Department. Fire on the Mall near the Capitol.”
    Ralph Seigler stuck his head around the door: “Secret Service reports a hostile aircraft ten minutes out.”
    Beverly Roundtree arrived and distributed gas masks. Cressey suggested we activate the Emergency Broadcast System.
    â€œAnd have them say what?” I asked.
    â€œState, State…” I called to get Rich Armitage’s attention.
    The Deputy Secretary of State had been a Navy SEAL and looked it. He responded in tactical radio style: “State, here, go.”
    â€œRich, has your building just been bombed?” I asked.
    â€œDoes it fucking look like I’ve been bombed, Dick?”
    â€œWell, no, but the building covers about four blocks and you’re behind a big vault door. And you need to activate your COG site.”
    â€œAll right, goddamn it, I’ll go look for myself,” Armitage said, lifting himself out of the chair and disappearing off camera. “Where the hell is our COG site…”
    Fred returned. “We have a chopper on the way to extract the Speaker from the Capitol. Did you want all departments to go to COG or just the national security agencies?” The Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, was next in line to the presidency if Bush and Cheney were killed or incapacitated. Soon, he would be skimming across the backed-up traffic and on his way to a cave.
    â€œEverybody, Fred, all departments. And check with the Capitol Police to see if there is a fire.”
    â€œAlready did,” Fred replied. “It’s bogus. No fires, no bombs, but the streets and Metro are jammed with people trying to get out of town. It’s going to be hard to get people to alternate sites.”
    Seigler was back: “Hostile aircraft eight minutes out.”
    Franklin Miller pulled me aside. Miller and I had been staff officers together at the State Department in 1979. Ever since then we had been friendly, but competitive. Miller went to