On 9/11, Nebraskans looked up and saw Air Force One. Why George W. Bush came to Offutt

For many Nebraskans, the moment tied to memory was the sound of engines breaking the Sandhills-like silence of closed airspace after hijacked airliners hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. 

Some Omaha-area residents looked up around 1:45 p.m. on that Tuesday and saw, heard and felt two jets flying ahead of a plane that few outside of Offutt Air Force Base brass expected to land near Bellevue — Air Force One.

Bush left Florida on the morning of the attacks and was flown by military escort to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Spotty cell connections there, because of the number of people using local wireless networks, sent him to a better place to communicate securely with staff and military commanders.

That place was the now-former bunker below U.S. Strategic Command, known to many in national defense as StratCom. Long before Zoom was invented, Bush came to Nebraska to videoconference with his far-flung team.

For 90 minutes, the world turned its frightened eyes to Nebraska. Interviews at the time with men and women in the state conveyed an odd mix of fear of possibly becoming a target and pride at Offutt’s role in the response.

Nebraska's governor and two U.S. senators at the time — Gov. Mike Johanns and Sens. Chuck Hagel and Ben Nelson — have spoken about that moment as confirming what they knew, the seriousness of the attacks.

Bush coming to StratCom signaled a nation at war. Hagel and Nelson recently told The World-Herald that the importance of the redundant and resilient global communication networks at Offutt and StratCom cannot be overstated. 

StratCom was built to maintain military and strategic communications during a major conventional or nuclear war. It sits on the backbone of the physical internet and is, in many ways, the nerve center of military deterrence.

"Nebraska has always been very, very important to the national security of this country, and I think it just was a proven example on that day as to how important it was," said Hagel, a Republican and Vietnam veteran who served as defense secretary for President Barack Obama.

Nelson said, "As a person and a Nebraskan, I was proud to have the president in Nebraska. As a member of the Armed Services Committee ... it was an appropriate place for him to be."

Both senators recalled being in Washington when word of the planes striking New York, Washington and Pennsylvania arrived. They recalled worries about the Capitol being struck and evacuating the building with colleagues.

Years later, Hagel and Nelson, like Bob Kerrey, the Nebraskan who served on the bipartisan commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks and the response, still question how the United States was caught unprepared.

All emphasized the lack of reliable information beyond the news stations reporting live from the attack sites and from public officials.

But every official from that era that The World-Herald interviewed for this story said they also remember the sense of national and international unity that followed, something each of them said is lacking today. 

"It was just a sense that we were all in this together," Nelson said.

Hagel, separately, added, "That was another time when we learned the value of our allies and friends."

One of the first things Johanns did, as he told the Journal Star, was to activate the National Guard and talk with law enforcement. Then-Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey said he did the same thing locally, gathering his team and talking security.

"We were like you, just trying to figure out what was going on, and we were worried about where they might strike next," Fahey said.

People in some of Omaha’s biggest buildings and businesses — First National Bank, Union Pacific and Mutual of Omaha — were sent home early, most unaware sightlines for potential attacks were being protected. And nobody knew what buildings might be targeted next.

Local law enforcement in Sarpy County and Bellevue pushed back the perimeter around Offutt Air Force Base and closed off Fort Crook Road at a level of security few had ever seen.

Conversations with people who worked at Offutt on 9/11 have yielded clues about what Bush and his team discussed, answered questions about how many planes were hijacked and shared fears of other attacks.

Before the attacks, StratCom had been conducting an annual nuclear warfighting exercise, a key cog in training for the great-power conflict that makes the Offutt-based command vital to American defense.

Then-Air Force Staff Sgt. Michael Suglia was pulled off that yearly practice, he said in a previous anniversary interview. His boss asked him to make sure other military commands were ready and available.

He learned later that his calls were part of the process of preparing those commanders to brief the president after landing at Offutt. The president needed to communicate in real time with the best available information.

Army officer Mark Kyriss was an assistant to the StratCom commander at the time, Navy Adm. Richard Mies. He described Bush’s Offutt briefing in a prior interview with KMTV as “like something out of a movie.”

Kyriss remembered Bush breaking the ice in a tense room full of military commanders and others seeking leadership in a time of uncertainty. He wouldn’t share what made them crack up.

StratCom staffers then led the president to another room of the subterranean command center, where he and two staffers sat at a table facing a wall of square, tubed televisions.

Photos from the time, including some from the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Dallas, show the president engaging with staff on those screens about how best to respond and how to rally the American people.

In that room, according to Bush’s memoir, “Decision Points,” the president conveyed his belief that the U.S. government would make no distinction between the terrorists who had attacked the country and the nations that had harbored them. 

He told his CIA director, George Tenet, that he wanted to know who was responsible, and he wanted a plan to make sure they paid a steep price for what they had done on American soil.

That Nebraska bunker was the first place where Tenet told Bush that he saw the fingerprints of al-Qaida on the attacks the Bush administration soon blamed on Osama bin Laden.

The Secret Service and Vice President Dick Cheney, a Nebraska native, urged Bush to stay at Offutt at least one night, until authorities could ensure it was safe to return to D.C.

Bush said no, deciding, rather aggressively, according to his book, that he needed to project calm. He left for Andrews Air Force Base that afternoon and scheduled a White House address to the American people. He was frustrated at how long Air Force One had to sit on the tarmac, stealing about an hour.

His decision that day echoed what Bush administration spokesman Ari Fleischer recalled Bush saying before landing at Offutt, a quote Fleischer often repeats as part of his notes from 9/11 that he tweets out on the anniversary.

"I don't want some tinhorn terrorist keeping me out of Washington,” Bush told staffers aboard Air Force One. “The American people want to know where their dang president is."

For 90 minutes on a Tuesday, the answer was StratCom.