>> can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org. up next on booktv patrick creed and rick newman talk about the rescue efforts that's a place at the pentagon following the attack on september 11, 2001. the crashing of american airlines flight 77 caused a fire in the pentagon which local firefighters fought for over 24 hours. this is about 30 minutes. ..

i hope you all will enjoy. we are going to review with the things i read some passages from the book and the key points. i handed off to my co-author, rick newman. >> thanks, pat researched this and thought for about three years. i didn't know until the end of 2005, when pat found his way to my agent to represented me in new york and i just finished writing another book about the aviation unit in vietnam. and i was looking forward to another project in my agent called and said we heard from the skype was interesting material about the pentagon. would you be interested in taking a look at it? i started flipping through and said wow, this is really something. i was covering the pentagon on 9/11. i'm a reporter for "u.s. news and world report." i was there for weeks

afterwards. i never thought about going and asking the firefighters what they saw where the fbi agents. and pat who thinks that a firefighter for better or worse, he was interested and looked at this from the deciding goal. , he was interested and looked at this from the deciding goal. , he was interested and looked at this from the deciding goal. and all kinds of things that she never from the deciding goal. and all kinds of things that she never would have thought about because of course new york overshadowed everything that happened at the pentagon, the scale of the disaster in new york was imponderable. so by the time people you know just where they were already repairing and completely repaired. it was as if almost nothing had happened there. there was not a lot of public controversy about what should we do about the memorial, you know, we don't know, should we be

revealed? it went out of our consciousness and we find you almost have to remind people that there was an attack at the pentagon as well as a new york we won't forget about united 93 to crash. i think we'd like to talk about a few other things that interested us in this story and we'll talk about a couple passages. if anyone wants to ask questions, it's better than probably listing two s. one of the things that interested me is just how much confusion and chaos there was at the beginning. no one knew what was going on. there were eyewitnesses who it in the plane hit the building, but the firefighters didn't know what had happened. they just knew the plane had crashed in the pentagon was on fire, but they didn't put the

two together. there were people who didn't know there was a problem because the pentagon is so large that on the other side of the building, they barely even felt a shudder. so you had just a lot of chaotic things going on. agencies were racing to the scene was the command post, nobody knows. of course in the area, the plane hit the western side of the building and they penetrated about three of the hallways but sir crowe the building. by the time the massive fire starts at about 40% of the building. in that part of the building, it's a huge rescue effort and the firefighting effort. so some of the things were going on. pat, if you want to offer a

couple of your thoughts about interesting points that stood out to you as you are getting started on this and maybe we can go into a couple care nurse in the book. >> sure, we have different things that interest us. for me, it was the human drama and heroism. it was the people. i kept hearing what individual firefighters did with the department of defense, about how a navy flight surgeon and another naval officer crawled into a hole while a group of other people are looking at the same hole, going it's impossible to crawl in there. these are people with no protective gear. as a matter of fact, commander dave commander tarantino, the character in the book is standing over here. if you step forward, and this is what he was wearing when he crawled through that hole to give you an idea. [applause] we have mike reagan sitting here in the senate from fairfax sheraton probably doesn't want me pointing him out.

[applause] other members of the fire and brinkley who i talk too long ago and were very helpful from virginia task force urban search and rescue team. the stories these people told me what absolutely flamed me. i was like, how are these people not on "good morning america" every day? how are these people not on the nightly news and even though new york is so tragic, it was theirs tories. and when you read the book, you're going to read the stories. we have the fbi agents. i don't much forget we have jen hill, fbi photographer in the back. joan collins, an agent who helped with evidence collection and probably a bunch more people from arlington who are firefighters and some retired firefighters as well. not going to meet everyone, but i hope you get a chance to talk to some people. >> we both had a lot of holy cow moments as they sat and listened to stories.

you forget you're supposed to be writing this because you're so enthralled by this story. you have to make yourself up and say what happened next? i'm going to read the story of one guy indulges set this up. this is a navy seal named craig powell, who colleagues described as a paul bunyan like figure. i guess he's about 604, six-foot five. he'd only been in the pentagon for a couple days. he just transferred from another posting. you thought this was very close to where the plane hit. so the first thing he did, so things fell off the wall and it was kind of like an earthquake happening. the first thing he did with the cure-all for classified information in the area because he's going to have to basically evacuate. in most burning building come over there some kind of problem, everybody runs out. at the pentagon, some people ran out, some people closer to what

was going i knew there was a huge problem and they started trying to figure out who could they help, where did they need to go? so craig powell went into the hallway and went one direction. nothing the flames. he slammed the door and went the other direction and try to figure out where did he need to go? he knew people were in the hallway, how could he get to the people down the hallway? so he kind of ends up in an open-air service that rents about halfway through the building. i am going to read about a page. if this gets too loud or too boring, someone can discreetly cost in the front row or something. i'll get the message. [laughter] to powell from the blasted 202-628-0205 big smoking holes in the wall, each as big as the mouth of the cave. because the track people, female officer he ran into a earlier were inside the soles. he looked up, about one he could see two faces sticking through a crevice where linda had been pried loose from the frame. let's puckered trying to coax in as much air as possible.

a service road, half a dozen people tried to build a scalpel to reach the people trapped in the window. they were getting very far. hardly anything in the alleyway to build a scaffold with. look, powell said to them come his authoritative voice and towering stature quickly getting attention. by the time you got a scaffold, they're going to be toast. he gathered several people around. farming that, like you see rescuers do. five or six others gathered around an extended their arms. above a couple people had been banging with hints of the working to to pry at last they can jump out and escape the fire. finally decreased a big enough open. we'll catch you as you come out. a petite woman appeared at the window and came down like she was jumping off a diving board into a swimming pool, arms and legs together. the moment she jumped, the human net discriminated. eminence didn't let chanel. it was extremely in the heavy object to sending upon you. others didn't seem to know what

to do. the women came straight down who caught her by the hips and brought her to the ground safely. a second woman appeared at the window. come on, even though he was not a one-man net. as she climbed up on the tee she was very large. amen he said preparing himself, this is cannot stop. and it did. that woman knocked him over. he injured his back and legs in the process. another woman jumped out without even waiting for him to stand up and he couldn't stand the content together, so he just sort of rolled his body into where she was falling, not to break her fall so she didn't land completely >> on the pavement. and then, he got up and kept walking down the service route. he found this whole were these two navy officers, one of whom was dave tarantino had just a underneath a huge flame. i'm getting this run, you can correct me. just trying to go in and rescue

people. so whether people go in at a three-star general was very fit to craig powell, you need to see in church out here because we need somebody with a military mindset who can keep things under control last year. finally he says i've got to get inside. he goes inside. the smoke has banked down to about one foot above the floor. and he thinks what he needs to do is stand inside this hall, holding up the ceiling like this, while other people are trying to pull people out. he's pressing on the wire cage. electrical wires are hitting the wire cage and shocking him. he is completely in the middle of this but like smoke and now he can see, he feels like he's been in towering inferno. overhead, powell's strength was about to give. he pushed at the wire cage, but flames are at his face he couldn't breathe, body screaming in pain and is starting to crumble. he looked at his escape route, expecting little room to

collapse when he put his arms away. when he looked back, the building sagged, but held. powell didn't have to let go, they could've got in a few markets out. then there is a terrific roar. everything inside the hole suddenly flared up, the room completely collapsed. the entire area erupted in flames. i am going to read just one more craig powell passage because it's always interesting what happens at the real end of the story. so he helped rescue a bunch of people and he went around the pentagon, trying to look for how else could he hope. and finally, there was the fire department had finally taken charge and he figured there's not much else he could do. he figured he would go home. how is he going to get home? he may still get him to say what he got to work much as get on the bus and ride the bus home. he figured he'd get home the same way he got to work. he boarded a bus, headed for the park-and-ride and reston, where

his car was parked. the bus is nearly empty with fewer than a half-dozen other passengers. strapping steel stood out among him. it was as if he'd been smeared with charcoal. pain patches on his skin revealed cuts and scrapes. clothes were torn away from rolling the link link and a grammy putt on the service road. like hungry and out of nose. everybody stared as he shuffled to his feet moving like an arthritic garrido spoke to him. i would've just love to be on that bus and see what that guy looked like. as the bus drove off come the case back at the scenic of the ambulances lined up and firefighters outside order five, waiting for their turn to get in the building. police cars everywhere. at the beginning pentagon people were fending for themselves by doing everything they could to save comrades. hordes of people slamming the building. this is why america is a great nation he told himself. no one in the world he felt could be doing this better. that is the great stories here.

[applause] >> make one more quick acknowledgment. when i got started on this project, remember telling my friends, hey, i'm going to write a book. he got a lot of, that's nice, pat, good for you. a lot of people still don't believe that even though my pictures on the jacket. it was a thrill to do. one of the people very early on said not a bad idea. what do you need? was the former chief of arlington county, tom hawkins. he just walked in the back. these were in the green shirt on the right. tom hawkins was chief of arlington county for many years at the time of 9/11 was the chief of the city of alexandria fire department. he did a lot to help prepare not only arlington and alexandria but the entire region for terrorist attacks and a lot of what happened or what will this do to people i cared and the others i mentioned you prepared to reach in with planning and

contingency. glad to have him here. thanks for all your help at the boat. [applause] >> i'm going to talk about another part of the story that i thought really intrigued me and if someone would interrupt us with some intelligence questions, we'll stop reading from her book. there was such a conflict between the different missions people had at the pentagon. you had firefighters who were there to put out a fire. this is a crime scene and effectively a war zone and also the nation's military headquarters. firefighters try to put up the biggest fire any of them had never seen. the fbi is there to collect evidence and try to keep this all in pristine condition while firefighters are just chomping over parts of the airplane and driving over it with fire trucks. and then you have inside the pentagon most of the pentagon had evacuated, but you have the war planners and the operational

people and the fact in a national military command center, who just didn't work. of all the days come and this was not the date they were about to leave their desks. see what firefighters outside in the fire chiefs that everybody was out of the building. they figured surely they've got some backup plan down the street, where they just moved the command-and-control operations that we can get in there and fight the fire. that wasn't the case. defense secretary and as people stayed in the building and the national military command center, which was the nerve center of the pentagon if you will begin to fill with smoke. there was talk inside the nmc feed about having to evacuate. they were worried about carbon monoxide levels. they said we are not leaving this building. he did declare that the pentagon is open for business. but that was news to the fire chiefs for a while. and in the middle of the day on

9/11, a colonel from the joint staff went and found the fire chiefs out at their command post outside the pentagon. this is what the colonel said to fire chief ed blogger. we've got to keep the nmc see open. okay he said, do you really want your people there make decisions, possibly illegitimate decisions. colonel given a puzzle book. he continued, carbon monoxide is odorless and colorless he explained in a high smoke and fire it is tons of carbon monoxide. the first side effect is a mix cd wacky things. people over there for 50 or so try to get out there walking in the closet. you want people making command-and-control situation. as a taxpayer, i don't. colonel paz, pondering the risks. if the monitor for her, does that change the picture? how many people do you have? the nmcc usually is more than a hundred but they were operating on fewer than 50. the two men negotiated and went

to plead the case for rumsfeld and his staff a dirty mate. he wasn't going to coax the military members out of their bunker no matter what. besides, as he looked at one of the fire chesser could never have come in the military guys inside the building had a lot of other important things to worry about. he would get a rough compromise. fissured plogger they get equipment in place pronto to monitor carbon monoxide levels. the fire department meanwhile had some spare and cba gear on reserve. plogger says let me give you put it in so some of those can get people out of there. you will give you an hour to present what enough if you have to evacuate. and that's how the pentagon stage an operation on 9/11. i would love to your questions. or we'll keep reading. [inaudible] >> the airplane had to but locke says. these are -- there's the flight

data recorder and a voice recorder, two different ones. of course they're actually orange although they are called the plot boxes. they were -- i think we have somebody here who can answer that question better than i. jen hill is an fbi photographer in the back there. again, correct me if i is the story wrong, but i think we've got it right. the hunt for the black boxes is pretty important right off the bat because nobody knew what the heck i've gone on with these airplanes. they didn't know who the hijackers were in those black boxes could have told them a lot about that, especially the cockpit voice reporters. for about three days there is a pretty intense hunt for the black boxes. remember there's just not that bright kids, as high as it can get inside the building. a whole airplane and the contents of a hundred thousand square feet of office space just plowed in crazy ways.

finally, i think on september 14th, very early in the morning they were looking not one area where certain parts of the airplane had accumulated and i believe jen pulled something out that was so charged, she got this could only be a piece of garbage or some kind of record that she didn't really need. she was talking to a trash bag when an agent said hold on, let me take a look at that. that turned out to be one of the black boxes. they said we found that one, so the other one is nearby because it's in the same area of the airplane. they started digging and found the other one. one was destroyed, so they immediately rushed these two ntsb headquarters in washington d.c. the airplane had been doing. they salvage that they were actually able to reconstruct with good detail, the altitude air speed and things like that

heard the voice recorder was destroyed, said they were not able to reconstruct a transcript of what's going on in the cockpit during the last 30 minutes. that would have been pretty helpful. anybody else? >> were there any tapes at the beginning of a major incident? >> we were able to -- we had wonderful cooperation from the county fire department. they let us listen to decay. rick was the first person to describe all the tapes tapes. it's fascinating to hear because for instance, the first firefighter on the scene, derek specter from arlington is trying to keep desperately to call on the radio and say everybody notes in a crash. nobody know for sure in the first few seconds. he's commenting on at the pentagon. they said it: the building and nobody can hear them because on a radio if you're talking and

somebody else pushes a button to talk, it can cover up in a contact over you. everyone is talking over each other. finally one of the arlington captain stopped up and said, be quiet. track 105, tell us what's going on. you can hear the tape or derek takes half a second and very clearly describes what he sees into the pentagon. those tapes are -- also, two of the arlington senior firefighters, who are so experienced, bob cornwall and chuck kids, were talking about they are ordering pizza because these guys are such cool characters and in doing this so long. the top back and forth, yet got some fire, give me a couple more guys. to listen to them under pressure come on everyone else's and hysteria was very interesting and fascinating to hear. [inaudible]

the question once i got sent back to iraq. yeah, it was great to work on a project for nearly three years. when i finally got someone to sign into the book, a month later i got called up. >> remind them that your army reserve. >> i'm an army reservist who got called up unexpectedly and wasn't thrilled. luckily, a few weeks before, rick had fallen out of the heavens and was there to take over the project. the big story besides the drop in the bucket that i did what i could do from iraq was housebreak rain with the story back in the states. he made contact with the fbi. he made contact with a lot of the fairfax county folks, we interviewed a lot of people. rick is a reporter. i was figuring it out as i went. he took a good project and made it a great boat.

>> go-ahead. [inaudible] -- it's not just a great read, but it's an important chapter in american history. i'm curious because many of the people you a top to, what they said in other places, my opinion is the explosions were triggered in the pentagon. i'm curious, as you are working on this, they are turning to create an alternative history? >> we had a lot of wire discussions about this. and i mean, we agreed. my approach from the beginning was we need to be aware that those people think what they think and that, you know, they will just probably say we are part of the conspiracies. for the record, we are not part of the conspiracy and we are not even aware of any conspiracy. so we decided, do we want to

make this kind of an argument for reality or do we just want to tell this tory of what happened there? so we don't address those theories in the book. and that's very deliberate. were not trying to prove something that did happen for something that did happen. we're trying to tell the story of the people who were there. let people make of it what they will. >> a quick point on that was when you read anything someone who says the plane did not strike pentagon, the first question to ask is how those people ever been to the pentagon? were they there? at brinkley, any doubt that a plane hit the pentagon in your mind? details? structural engineer working inside the building? tarantino, any doubt in your mind? they were there when it happened. >> just in case all these people are part of the conspiracy, we

didn't get as much as we thought we would. >> word of the plane and up? >> the pictures that you see, where people say there's no plane debris is very selective photographs. there's tons of pictures and we have some in the book where there's debris everywhere. pictures taken from very far away don't pick up pieces from the plane about the size of the book and smaller because with the plane did, it was going 500 miles an hour. the majority of the wreckage was inside the building and a fire was burning over a thousand degrees didn't look much like plane debris. people compare to regular plane crashes, when you look at a plane crash, usually the pilot is trying to save the plane. that was not the case. think more of it, cause the attack on a ship in world war ii. these people were trying to destroy the plane, the building and everything else in the way.

completely different situation. look hard at the evidence and look at it critically and there's a lot of good sites out there that debunk the myths as well. [inaudible] >> -- i don't know whether he was their observation or whether it came from their book, but they mention the remains of the hijackers were found. i think this is what they said, deeper in the pentagon than remains of the passengers on the assumption that the hijackers were in the front of the plane and the passengers were in the back. >> that is from our book. and that comes from this remarkable work the fbi did. you know, the fbi never sort of announced that all of our evidence is now public domain. but after the moussaoui trial ended in 2005, a lot of the evidence they put together for the pentagon became public. there is just a remarkable diagram of where all the victims were found inside the pentagon.

and you know, when you get into what it took to actually construct that, i mean, they couldn't use the gps device inside the building because you couldn't reach the satellites. they were support columns whose offices were all gone. so you get there and you didn't know where you were. they would walk in with a floor plan so they could try to say, okay, this person we are going to tag in this way, this victim. we are going to located here. but they book on the floor pan and didn't know where they were. so they developed a system, where they would find the nearest intact support columns and those have been labeled at a point. and they were sort of mark off from their how far the victim, how far from that the victim was found. and over time, develop this and remarkably detailed diagram as to where virtually some are not identified, but were virtually

every big thomas found. so that work enabled them to figure out that the bodies of the hijackers remains of the hijackers were found closer to the outside of the building. in other words, they traveled the least distance inside the building. i mean, it's believed the passengers were huddled in the back of the airplane and i would say the majority of the dems who were passengers ended up further into the building. >> i can't imagine it was an entire bodies that remained. maybe some of our eyewitness said -- >> just because another guy to talk to talk with you offline about that. one of the things we tried very hard to do was to preserve a lot of the dignity of the survivors and their families. and so we tried not to go into that too much. i'd be glad to talk to you, but some of the firefighters for the intimately involved in removing the remains and searching for

them. so we try not to dwell on that too much. it was terrific. like i said, if some of them want to talk about that offline, we'd be glad to, but it was awful, terrible and you can imagine a plane going 500,000 are hitting a masonry building. there is that stuff with that. anybody else? okay, thanks for listening and thanks for coming in such lousy weather, risking the tornadoes or whatever is out there. thank you. [applause] we will be signing books at the table that is over there. >> for more information about "firefight" or its authors, patrick creed and rick newman, visit firefight the book.com. >> i think that probably everybody mr. in between the uniform and even people not wearing a uniform are here

because of "the warrior ethos" and family. when you think back to when he joined first made the decision, you probably had something to do with that. either he were -- she felt like you really had to the warrior ethos come your high school athlete or competitive person and you are looking for venue where you could use it. he said i want to join the most elite unit i can join or maybe you felt there was an absence of god in your life. that might have been a drifter wondering, am i going the right way? semi heading for jail or some kind of a life that is not going to really bring out all that's in me. and so you say to yourself, i want to go somewhere with this kind of code of honor exists and where it can be taught to me. so i think -- i'm putting myself in your minds. i think that's the reason, certainly why i joined and they

think -- i hope that is what you guys are too. the other thing i think that's really honorable about making that choice is in america today, it really is a choice. i mean, if we were born in ancient sparta origin macedonia, the warrior ethos would be the only thing there was. as general mullen and i were talking yesterday conecuh 1% of the armed forces coming out of 1% of the population. and so, that is a real choice everybody made here, particularly, if you think about it, the values of the civilian society and i am not knocking anything here, but are quite opposite to the warrior ethos values. for the conscious choice to choose the warrior ethos for yourself is a pretty amazing thing. then they just talk about the values for one second. if you think about it in civilian life, probably the paramount value is freedom.

individual autonomy that a person can be whatever they want to be. a rock star, jumbotron, president of the united states. whatever they want to be in that his life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. and rightly so. that is kind of what makes america great. but when you choose the warrior ethos, duty becomes the value and service so that you can't wear your hair in a ponytail if you choose to and you can't decide i don't feel it to plane for another couple of months or i don't feel it to point at all. so that's one value. a second value that the greater culture at large holds up really high is money, wealth, the pursuit of affluence and celebrities so that somebody like donald trump or somebody like that is lionized throughout the culture, words nobody's going to get rich in this room. instead of money, with the

warrior culture offers its honor. in fact, there is a great tory about -- i'm going to tell you a few ancient stories. i won't put you to sleep. when this year accused and in sicily were under siege by the athenians, and as general holland is up on this, the spartans came to their aid. and the way the spartans, whenever they hoped another country, they never sent money either never sent an army, they sent one man, one army on trade general. when he came to syracuse, cedric uses a wealthy city in sicily and they had really virtually no army. so he had to somehow form an army out of these kind of crazy civilians. and so when he went to pick his officer corps, he gave these instructions. he said search for men who care not about wealth or power, but you crave on her.

and i would guess that is pretty much what is failing this room here. another difference between the civilian values and warrior ethos values is in civilian life, people want the creature comforts. they want air conditioning and they want an easy life. if you can take a pill to lose 20 pounds, don't do that. whereas, and the warrior culture adversity of the willing embrace is a huge part of it. the rougher the better and when people tell stories and a warrior culture, it is always the most hellish stories possible, right? and i know i am a marine and when marines talk about their history, they don't really talk about the great victories, but they talk about her worst casualty scenarios, like tarawa, iwo jima, chosen reservoir, that kind of thing.

adversity is one of the great warrior virtues. i'm trying to think of one other, but it's slipping my mind. i want to say one other thing about special forces in particular. in my opinion, i think that you guys are the pinnacle of said ted -- the warrior ethos because not only are special forces, soldiers possess the military skills, which you know, we all know how difficult it is in the set of her skills, particularly working with indigenous forces, indigenous scenarios is the highest level because a small group of men have to go into a completely foreign culture and exercise influence without authority. not able to make people do what you want to do by money or power

or anything, but really only by personal magnetism and personal honor and integrity and personal warrior who peers so that is about as high as a kid. and i salute everybody for that. so let me get into a little about what i think the warrior ethos is. and i am going to start with and stories from this book, for quick with a one minute stories about ancient sparta. when i talk about the warrior ethos today, i'm really talking about the classic old-time ancient warrior east coast, which one of the things i hope we get into some questions, i would love to hear what you say about a modern world, rules of engagement and some of the dubious gray areas. but this is old school we are about now. these are four quick stories about the spartan women come in the ancient spartan women. somehow it always starts with women. these stories come from plutarch, a book called the

really a and a part of that book called scenes of the spartan women. if you have never read this or saints of the spartans, i highly recommend it. there's all these little nuggets. so here's for stories. a messenger returns to sparta from a battle. in the women all gather around to find out what happens, what is happening to demand. into one mother, the messenger says mother, your oldest son was killed facing the enemy. and the mother says, he is my son. and he says to her, your younger son is alive and unhurt. he ran away from the enemy. she says, he is not nice on. one story. second story, another messenger returns for another battle and another of purchasing and says harold, how fair is our country? herald verse into tears and his mother, i'm so sorry to tell you all five of your sons were killed facing the enemy.

she says come in useful, i did not ask you about my sons. i guess you better country. he says mother, we were victorious. she says that man hath he and turns around and goes home. the third story, somehow -- i don't know how this happened, but to spartan brothers were fleeing from the enemy back towards the sea. their mother happened to be coming down the road. this may be slightly apocryphal. in any event, she sees them coming, lists her skirt over their head and says where do you think you two are running to comment back here from where you came? [laughter] and we don't know the end of the story, but hopefully the two brothers turned around and went back the other way. then the final spartan mother's story is the shortest one of fall, one of the spartan mother who hands her son her shield and is sending them off to battle and says come back with this.

so back to me as really a hard-core culture. you know when your own mother is kicking you know in ass, there's something to that. so i'm going to refer back to those. there's a reason i told them, not just because i loved the stories. the warrior ethos panoply of all data primitive hunting band and the virtues that were needed for us to go hominids and with only a couple spears to take on mastodons and stuff like that. i think it was really designed originally i think to accomplish two things. one, to overcome fear, the god of the battlefield and to make people work together. and so, since theodore is probably the most primal emotion, self-preservation, other emotions and other things have to be brought in to counter

that and a cultural way. i think that's my feeling of what the warrior ethos comes from. there were at least three things that were kind of recruited to counter fears and to make people work together. and that was on her, shame and love. let's start with change for a second. people don't think of shame as a positive. but certainly, almost every great warrior culture is a shame-based culture, whether it is samurai culture, where someone suffers dishonor, they have to kill themselves. and certainly posturing while he is a shame-based code of honor and the marine is a shame-based culture and certainly sparta was a shame-based culture. for instance, go back to those stories when you think about the mother whose son was alive, but had run away from the enemy. she says he is not my son.

it's an application of shame to make people there's a great story about alexander the great, excuse me a second. when he and his army were in india there is tenure is very want, needarmy was ready to go home. they had enough of this stuff. so it was a serious moment. so alexander pulled the army together and stripped in front of them. and you could see across his whole body was just one wound after another. he had been wounded with arrows, javelins, rock and big folders. they burned everything possible. so he said to his men, look at these wounds on my body.

all got for you and your service. you'll notice they are all in the front here there's nothing in the back. he says i will make you a deal. if anyone of you can stand forth from the army. strip decides me. if your words are greater than mine, i will turn the army around right now and will walk home. and not a man came forward. instead, the whole army burst into each ear and they bade his forgiveness for their want of spirit to bathe him only to be done further forward. so that is kind of great leadership. that is an application of shame. they go forward inspired a, then the status of pretty young girls had these anthems of shame, that if someone failed inaction and came back to the city, there were a number of things that happen to them. that pretty young galaxies to

gather around and sing songs of ridicule and that would -- the next time that i cannot, you would be sure he didn't. in other words, shame is a technique to make the application a shame worse than fear of the enemy. okay, let's talk about honor for a second, which is the opposite of shame. i'm sure you guys know this a lot better than we do. in a posh to culture, let's say, honor is the most prized possession of a man and much more important than money, land, women, anything. as long as a man has honor, he's okay. if he doesn't have honor, life isn't worth living. so on her is that high-level, which a person internally will not put himself fall from. there is a famous gunnery sergeant in the marine corps called tony featherstone.

and he tells his young marines when they complain about their salaries come he says in the marine corps you get to salaries. you get a financial sorry of a psychological salary. the financial salaries that come up with the psychological salary and this applies to everyone in this room, is knowing that you are part of a core -- i don't need to repeat it. you know what it is. so that psychological salary is honor. and that is something that is worth a lot. how can you put a dollar figure on not? >> you can watch this and other programs online and tv got to work. up next, former price president dick cheney talks about his experience during 9/11 and the lessons he's learned since then. mr. cheney is interviewed by stephen hayes, senior writer at the weekly standard and author of cheney. [applause]

[applause] >> good morning, everybody. welcome to the american enterprise institute. i am danielle pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies here at aei. let me first remind everybody to please turn off their telephones or put them on vibrate and ask everybody when the session and to please remain seated in order to allow our speakers to leave the room. a final housekeeping note, the hook sellers are available with the book in the reception after the end of the event. went aei president arthur brooks, who unfortunately couldn't be here, invited vice president cheney to join us today, it was with a view to

remembering the attacks of 9/11 10 years later and considering some of the lessons learned and those that were not since that day. but the first thing to recall about 9/11 and about the long war that we are still fighting it for many who gave their lives. the families, the sacrificed loved ones and the awful lot. first and foremost, now is the time to remember the many brave americans who died at home, our fighting men and women who risk everything so that we can live in freedom and are invaluable allies from too many countries to name who share our cause. as some of you now, vice president cheney recently published a memoir, "in my time," written with his daughter, liz cheney. we understand it will debut at number one on "the new york

times" bestseller list. [applause] today come he joins us with weekly standard senior writer and best-selling air, steve hayes for a conversation about that attack on our nation, about decisions made since then and some reflections on an amazing life in politics and pretty much whatever else he and steve choose to talk about in the time remaining, we'll have a q&a session moderated by steve. lynne cheney has been a scholar at aei for many years. dick cheney is again a member of our board of trustees. we are so glad to have them as part of our aei family and we think them and you all for joining us here today. [applause]

>> i want an arrest. >> remember you're a reporter. [laughter] >> i i just want to say where the normal turn it over to mr. hayes. the book i wrote is a memoir, covers all seven years of my life. the early years are short. wasn't a lot of good stuff to write about in that period of time. but the last half of the book roughly focuses on the bush cheney administration and the book opens in the prologue with recounting the events as i saw them on 9/11. and much of the last half of the book deals with what we had to do during the course of our

subsequent seven and a half years in order to keep the country safe return of the controversies involved in things like the terrorist surveillance program and enhanced derogation and so forth. so that's a large part of the book is relevant with respect to 9/11 in the aftermath. although i don't want to mislead anybody on other subjects as well going back to the fact i guess i've been in five republican administrations. i worked closely with the fifth, the reaganite as part of the house republican leadership. so i try to cover all of that period of time and obvious we there's a lot we had to leave out, but there's enough there that steve is trying to make a living writing articles about. so i'm going to turn it over to him. >> excellent. thank you to danny for having a period just to give you an idea

what i thought it would try to do this morning. and when to start with questions about 9/11 specifically and push you in particular about your personal views on these things because i know you've got to put yourself on the couch like that. public self reflection. and then i am going to go and talk about a number of different ways in which the policies that emanated from 9/11 to you in large part helped to drive and try to fill in some gaps. i spent a lot of time looking at the interviews he's done since the book came out. i read it out twice. and some questions i have remaining for you. so i think that's how i'd like to proceed. as danny mentioned, we'll throw it open to everybody for additional questions that will probably be much better than mine. so i thought the first place we would start us on the morning of 9/11. i would be interested to know when you first knew we were under attack. now when you first heard about it, but when did you know we

were under attack and what were your very first thoughts at that moment? >> well, i was in my office in the west wing working with my speechwriter when my secretary called and to report that the plane had struck the world trade center in new york. we turned on the television after the first plane had gone in, but before anything else that happened. and the immediate reaction was how is this possible? there is perfectly clear weather, no way to account for it. and as we watched, we saw the second plane hit and that immediately in my mind triggered the notion that this had to be a terrorist attack. two airliners flying at the world trade center within minutes of each other and not have it be anything but a terrorist attack. shortly after that, i talked to the president down in florida and we talked about a state and.

he was getting ready to issue a statement and that was whether or not it was proper to talk about terrorism within the context of that statement that we both agree definitely was and i think the words he used was probably a terrorist attack on the united states. within the relatively short period of time, people began to gather in my office. secretary rice, then national security adviser was fair. scooter libby, chief of staff and probably seven or eight people in the room. and then all of a sudden the door burst open and made the secret service agent came and and came over to the desk where he was sitting. he said sir, we have to leave immediately. i said you know, but to take you out or please come at me. he said we have to leave immediately. but when hand on the back of my

belt and one on my shoulder. i didn't have the option of not knowing where it went. and the cause for that, the reason he had done that is he explained to me as he was taking me down to the presidential emergency operations center and chair the white house was he received a report of the secret service radio that there is a hijacked aircraft out of dulles, headed towards crown, the code word to the white house. and that turned out to be american 77, which of course came in and made a circle and then went at the pentagon. at that point, i was down part way to the pr. i hadn't gotten to the pr kit. and i immediately used a

telephone that was there to place another call should the president and that was their second or third call that morning and to let him know that washington was under attack as well as new york and the secret service had strongly recommended that he not come at. i also recommend that he not come back, believing it was very important for us to stay apart so we didn't become a riper target. and we didn't know at that stage was happening. >> you didn't like that all. >> you ask our reaction that morning was. i went from that spot after i talk to the president, went into the fiat itself and dare i was presented by norm pineda, our secretary of transportation responsible for the faa. norm had a list of six aircraft

that they believe had been hijacked at that point. they actually had flight numbers on them. and of course it was only four, but for a while we thought it was six. and there were two major drivers of what i thought i'd i that morning as we work through that crisis that day. number one was the have to get off the plane out of the sky so we could isolate whatever had been hijacked and account for all the aircraft, including the list we had once we thought it had been hijacked. that point would account for three of them. to a new york one at the pentagon. and so that was a major part of the effort. the other thing that was very important that i focused on was the continuity of government. some of you are probably familiar with over the years we had developed programs and features for preserving the

continuity of government of an all-out global conflict. so that was always this scenario and we actually exercise that system on many occasions and have focused on having ways of taking steps on the wane of succession describe whatever attack we are under so when the dust settled we'd have a president any government be able to function and that's what we referred to as as cockney would be if every man. that day i took the form basically a one was to have been the president and i'm not a job. it was very important for us to stay separated. but secondly is to get a hold of denny hastert, speaker hastert is that it hinders air force base, where his secret detail had arranged for him to be

removed in the presidency and to send team happened to the president and me to take over the function of the president. those are two major concerns that i could buy most of our time. one was that i state getting all the airplanes down out of the sky and the other was guaranteeing there be somebody in the line of succession and a position to be able to take over. >> speaking of the secured undisclosed location, much of the time when the media was reporting you are in a secure undisclosed location, your account david. and that's where you went to evening of september 11th. and i remember having a conversation with you much later in which you describe what that was like, being a camp david played that evening. the way described to me with me was the family gather around the television. he said basically in silence for a couple hours watching reruns

of the planes hitting the towers and of the horror that day. what was that like? , did she do that and what were you thinking at that point? >> it was after the president had returned the national security council address the nation and when we finished that, then went and i got on the white top helicopter on the south lawn and were flown to camp david. it's the only time i've ever taken off in a helicopter without being with the president. i've done a lot over the years, except in those extraordinary circumstances. and when we got to camp david, they take us to ask the mods, which is the presidential lodge stare. but again for security reasons, the secret service was obviously totally focused