"The United States has been attacked again by resolute and committed foes readily willing to accept self-destruction in order to fulfill their mission of terror.

"I expect each station and each officer to redouble efforts of collecting intelligence on this tragedy. The Counterterrorism Center is the focal point for all information on this subject, and we antic.i.p.ate that a good percentage of the most valuable information concerning the attacks and their perpetrators will come within the next 48 hours." They had to get information before the trail grew cold. He said they should be careful and protect their families. "I also ask all of you to join me in a silent prayer for the thousands who perished today and for their loved ones now so terribly alone."

BUSH WANTED TO give a speech that night to the nation on television, and his chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, had come up with a draft. It included the sentences, "This is not just an act of terrorism. This is an act of war." This reflected what Bush had been saying all day to the NSC and his staff.

Take it out, Bush instructed Karen Hughes. "Our mission is rea.s.surance." He wanted to calm already jumpy nerves.

"I did not want to add to the angst of the American people yet," Bush said later. He wanted to go on television and be tough, show some resolve but also find some balance - be comforting, demonstrate that the government was functioning and show the nation that their president had made it through. There had been some doubt as he had hopscotched most of the day from Air Force base to Air Force base.

About 6:30 P.M., the president was finally back at the White House dealing with the speech draft in the small study off the Oval Office. Drawing on a presidential campaign speech in 1999 at The Citadel military academy, Gerson had written that, in responding to terrorism, the United States would make no distinction between those who planned the acts and those who tolerated or encouraged the terrorists.

"That's way too vague," Bush complained, proposing the word "harbor." In final form, what would later be called the Bush Doctrine said, "We will make no distinction between those who planned these acts and those who harbor them." It was an incredibly broad commitment to go after terrorists and those who sponsor and protect terrorists, rather than just a proposal for a targeted retaliatory strike. The decision was made without consulting Cheney, Powell or Rumsfeld.

The president did consult with his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. She wondered if that kind of far-reaching declaration and policy p.r.o.nouncement belonged in a speech that was meant to console the shaken nation. "You can say it now or you'll have other opportunities to say it," Rice advised him. It was her style not to commit herself unless the president pressed. But in the end she favored including it that night, because, she thought, first words matter more than almost anything else.

"We've got to get it out there now," Bush said. It had been a policy he had been inching toward. Might as well say it.

In the West Wing, there was debate about whether the president needed to make a firm declaration of the obvious - that this was war. White House communications director Dan Bartlett, 30, was deputized to suggest that to the president.

"What?" Bush barked. "No more changes."

Bartlett showed him a proposed change about being at war.

"I've already said no to that," the president replied.

Bartlett went back to his West Wing colleagues. "Thanks, you can take the message next time."

PRESIDENT BUSH SPOKE to the nation for seven minutes from the Oval Office. He declared his policy - go after terrorists and those who harbor them.

"None of us will forget this day," he said. "Yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in the world."

After the speech, Bush chaired an expanded NSC meeting that turned out to be unwieldy. So at 9:30 P.M. he gathered his most senior princ.i.p.al national security advisers in the White House bunker. It was at the end of one of the longest and most chaotic days in each of their lives.

"This is the time for self-defense," the president said, making the somewhat obvious point. There was a sense it was not over, and they were meeting in the bunker not because it was comfortable - it wasn't - but because it was still dangerous. They had neither a handle on what had happened nor what might be next nor how to respond. "We have made the decision to punish whoever harbors terrorists, not just the perpetrators," he told them.

The president, Rice, Hughes and the speechwriters had made one of the most significant foreign policy decisions in years, and the secretary of state had not been involved. Powell had just made it back from Peru. And now, he said, "We have to make it clear to Pakistan and Afghanistan, this is showtime."

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime, an extreme Islamic fundamentalist militia group which came to power in 1996, was harboring al Qaeda terrorists in exchange for substantial bankrolling by bin Laden. Neighboring Pakistan's powerful intelligence service, the ISI, had had a giant role in creating the Taliban and keeping them in power. The hard-line regime, whose strict interpretation of Islamic law and draconian rule led to the oppression of women, ma.s.s hunger and the flight of nearly one million refugees, earned international condemnation for destroying the giant centuries-old Buddha statues at Bamiyan.

"This is a great opportunity," Bush said, somewhat locating the pony in the pile of manure. It was a chance to improve relations especially with big powers such as Russia and China. "We have to think of this as an opportunity."

The members of the war cabinet had lots of questions, none more than Rumsfeld. On his single sheet of paper, he had the questions he thought the president and the rest of them needed to address and eventually answer: Who are the targets? How much evidence do we need before going after al Qaeda? How soon do we act?

The sooner they acted, Rumsfeld said, the more public support they would have if there's collateral damage. He was being careful. Since the military had no plan and no forces in the immediate area, he wanted to keep expectations low. He dropped a bomb, telling them that some major strikes could take up to 60 days to put together.

The notion of waiting 60 days for something major - until November 11 perhaps - just hung in the room.

Rumsfeld had more questions. Powell thought they were a clever disguise, a way to argue rhetorically and avoid taking a position. Rumsfeld wanted others to answer his queries. It was a remarkable technique, Powell thought.

Still, the questions were good, and Rumsfeld went on. Are there targets that are off-limits? Do we include the American allies in any military strikes? Last, the secretary of defense said, we have to set declaratory policy, announce to the world what we're doing.

Cheney noted that Afghanistan would present a real challenge. A primitive country 7,000 miles away with a population of 26 million, it was the size of Bush's home state of Texas but had few roads and little infrastructure. Finding anything to hit would be hard.

The president returned to the problem of the al Qaeda terrorists and their sanctuary in Afghanistan. Since bin Laden relocated there from Sudan in May 1996, the Taliban had allowed al Qaeda to establish their headquarters and training camps in the country.

We have to deny al Qaeda sanctuary, Tenet said. Tell the Taliban we're finished with them. The Taliban and al Qaeda were really the same.

Rumsfeld said that they should employ every tool of national power, not just the military but legal, financial, diplomatic and the CIA.

Tenet said that al Qaeda, though headquartered in Afghanistan, operated worldwide, on all continents. We have a 60-country problem, he said.

"Let's pick them off one at a time," the president said.

Rumsfeld, not to be outdone in identifying difficulties, said the problem was not just bin Laden and al Qaeda, but other countries that supported terrorism.

"We have to force countries to choose," Bush said.

The meeting was adjourned. The president, untested and untrained in national security, was about to start on the complicated and prolonged road to war without much of a map.

CONDOLEEZZA RICE WENT to the national security adviser's office in the corner of the West Wing after the meeting. A former Stanford political science professor and then provost, she had worked on the NSC staff as a Russian expert during the presidency of Bush senior. Rice, 46, was perhaps the person in the upper reaches of Bush's national security team who was most alone. Her mother was dead and her father had died a year ago. Following the attacks that morning she called the only family she had, her aunt and uncle in Birmingham, Alabama, to tell them she was all right, then went back to work.

Beginning in the presidential campaign when she was Bush's chief foreign policy adviser, Rice had developed a very close relationship with Bush. Tall, with near perfect posture, a graceful walk and a beaming smile, she had become a permanent fixture in the presidential inner circle. The president and first lady had in a sense become her family.

That night, she acknowledged to herself that she was in a fog. She tried to focus on what had to be done the next day.

If it was bin Laden and al Qaeda - it almost surely was - there was another complication. The questions would sooner or later arise about what the Bush administration knew about the bin Laden threat, when they knew it and what they had done about it.

ABOUT A WEEK before Bush's inauguration, Rice attended a meeting at Blair House, across from the White House, with President elect Bush and Vice President-elect Cheney. This was the secrets briefing given by Tenet and Pavitt.

For two and one half hours, Tenet and Pavitt had run through the good, the bad and the ugly about the CIA to a fascinated president-elect. They told him that bin Laden and his network were a "tremendous threat" which was "immediate." There was no doubt that bin Laden was coming after the United States again, they said, but it was not clear when, where or how. Bin Laden and the network were a difficult, elusive target. President Clinton had approved five separate intelligence orders, called Memoranda of Notification (MON), authorizing covert action to attempt to destroy bin Laden and his network, disrupt and preempt their terrorist operations. No authority had been granted outright to kill or a.s.sa.s.sinate bin Laden.

Tenet and Pavitt presented bin Laden as one of the three top threats facing the United States. The other two were the increasing availability of weapons of ma.s.s destruction - chemical, biological and nuclear, including weapons proliferation concerns - and the rise of Chinese power, military and other.

In April, the National Security Council deputies' committee, made up of the No. 2's in each major department and agency, recommended that President Bush adopt a policy that would include a serious effort to arm the Northern Alliance, the loose confederation of various warlords and tribes in Afghanistan that opposed the Taliban regime that harbored bin Laden.

The CIA estimated that the Northern Alliance forces were outnumbered about 2 to 1, with some 20,000 fighters to the Taliban's roughly 45,000 military troops and volunteers.

A CIA covert program of maintenance for the rebel forces of several million dollars a year was already in place. But worries about the Northern Alliance abounded. First, it was not really an alliance, because the various warlords could probably with some ease be bought off by the Taliban. The warlords flourished in a culture of survival - meaning they would do anything necessary. Several were just thugs, serial human rights abusers and drug dealers. In addition, the Russians and Iranians - who both supported the Alliance with substantial amounts of money - had strong influence with some of the warlords.

In the Clinton administration, the State Department had flatly opposed arming the Alliance because of these real concerns. It was Richard Armitage, Powell's deputy, who had agreed to lift State's objections that spring. Armitage had checked with Powell, who had agreed that bin Laden was a sufficient threat to justify arming the Northern Alliance on a large scale.

During July, the deputies' committee recommended a comprehensive plan, not just to roll back al Qaeda but to eliminate it. It was a plan to go on the offensive and destabilize the Taliban. During August, many of the princ.i.p.als were away. It was not until September 4 that they approved and recommended a plan that would give the CIA $125 million to $200 million a year to arm the Alliance.

Rice had a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) ready to go to the president on September 10. The door had been opened and they were ready to walk through it. The NSPD was numbered 9 - meaning eight other matters had been formally a.s.sessed, vetted, agreed upon and signed off on as policy by the president before al Qaeda.

The question that would always linger was whether they had moved fast enough on a threat that had been identified by the CIA as one of the top three facing the country, whether September 11 was as much a failure of policy as it was of intelligence.

AT 11:08 P.M., September 11, the Secret Service awakened the Bushes and hurriedly escorted them to the bunker. An unidentified plane seemed to be heading for the White House. The president was in his running shorts and a T-shirt. Mrs. Bush was in her robe and without her contact lenses. Their dogs, Spot and Barney, scampered along. In the long tunnel leading to the bunker, they met Card, Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, who were racing along.

The errant plane was soon identified, but the Secret Service still wanted the president to spend the night in the bunker. Bush looked at the small bed and announced he was going back to the residence.

Rice had a Secret Service detail a.s.signed to her, and an agent said they didn't want her to go home that night to her Watergate apartment. Maybe you ought to stay here, the agent said, so Rice agreed to sleep in the bunker.

"No," the president said, "you come stay in the residence."

Like his father during his White House years, the president tried to keep a daily diary of some thoughts and observations. He dictated that night: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today."

Bush would recall that he had two thoughts, "This was a war in which people were going to have to die. Secondly, I was not a military tactician. I recognize that. I was going to have to rely on the advice and counsel of Rumsfeld, Shelton, Myers and Tenet."

He was now a wartime president. Soldiers and citizens, the entire world, would pick up instantly on his level of engagement, energy and conviction. The widely held view that he was a lightweight, unconcerned with details, removed, aloof and possibly even ignorant would have to be dispelled. He had much work to do.

VICE PRESIDENT d.i.c.k Cheney, who had been the efficient, solid rock standing behind or to the side of President Bush during the first nine months of the administration, antic.i.p.ated he would have a major role in the crisis. Heavyset, balding, with a trademark tilted head and a sly, knowing smile, the 61-year-old Cheney, a conservative hard-liner, had been training all his life for such a war. His credentials were impeccable - at 34, White House chief of staff to President Ford; congressman from Wyoming for 10 years, rising to become the No. 2 House Republican leader; defense secretary to the first President Bush during the Persian Gulf War.

Cheney had flirted with running for president himself in 1996, but decided against it after testing the waters - too much fund-raising and too much media scrutiny. In the summer of 2000, Bush had asked Cheney to be his vice presidential running mate with these words, "If times are good, I'm going to need your advice, but not nearly as much as if times are bad. Crisis management is an essential part of the job."

On the morning of Wednesday, September 12, Cheney had a moment alone with Bush. Should someone chair a kind of war cabinet for you of the princ.i.p.als? We'll develop options and report to you. It might streamline decision making.

No, Bush said, I'm going to do that, run the meetings. This was a commander in chief function - it could not be delegated. He also wanted to send the signal that it was he who was calling the shots, that he had the team in harness. He would chair the full National Security Council meetings, and Rice would continue to chair the separate meetings of the princ.i.p.als when he was not attending. Cheney would be the most senior of the advisers. Experienced, a voracious reader of intelligence briefing papers, he would, as in the past, be able to ask the really important questions and keep them on track.

Without a department or agency such as State, Defense or the CIA, Cheney was minister without portfolio. It was a lesser role than he had perhaps expected. But he, as much as any of the others, knew the terms of presidential service - salute and follow orders.

PRESIDENT BUSH, LIKE many members of his national security team, believed the Clinton administration's response to Osama bin Laden and international terrorism, especially since the emba.s.sy bombings in 1998, had been so weak as to be provocative, a virtual invitation to hit the United States again.

"The antiseptic notion of launching a cruise missile into some guy's, you know, tent, really is a joke," Bush said later in an interview. "I mean, people viewed that as the impotent America. ... a flaccid, you know, kind of technologically competent but not very tough country that was willing to launch a cruise missile out of a submarine and that'd be it.

"I do believe there is the image of America out there that we are so materialistic, that we're almost hedonistic, that we don't have values, and that when struck, we wouldn't fight back. It was clear that bin Laden felt emboldened and didn't feel threatened by the United States."

Until September 11, however, Bush had not put that thinking into practice nor had he pressed the issue of bin Laden, Though Rice and the others were developing a plan to eliminate al Qaeda, no formal recommendations had ever been presented to the president.

"I know there was a plan in the works.... I don't know how mature the plan was," Bush recalled. He said the idea that a plan was going to be on his desk September 10 was perhaps "a convenient date. It would have been odd to come September the 10th because 1 was in Florida on September the 10th, so I don't think they would have been briefing me in Florida."

He acknowledged that bin Laden was not his focus or that of his national security team. "There was a significant difference in my att.i.tude after September 11.1 was not on point, but I knew he was a menace, and I knew he was a problem. I knew he was responsible, or we felt he was responsible, for the [previous] bombings that killed Americans. I was prepared to look at a plan that would be a thoughtful plan that would bring him to justice, and would have given the order to do that. I have no hesitancy about going after him. But I didn't feel that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling."

AT 8 A.M., September 12, Tenet arrived at the Oval Office for the President's Daily Brief, the TOP SECRET/CODEWORD digest of the most important and sensitive intelligence. This briefing included a review of available intelligence tracing the attacks to bin Laden and his top a.s.sociates in al Qaeda. One report out of Kandahar, Afghanistan, the spiritual home of the Taliban, showed the attacks were "the results of two years' planning." Another report said the attacks were "the beginning of the wrath" - an ominous note. Several reports specifically identified Capitol Hill and the White House as targets on September 11. One said a bin Laden a.s.sociate - incorrectly - "gave thanks for the explosion in the Congress building."

A key figure in the bin Laden financing organization called Wafa initially claimed that "The White House has been destroyed" before having to correct himself. Another report showed that al Qaeda members in Afghanistan had said at 9:53 A.M., September 11, shortly after the Pentagon was. .h.i.t, that the attackers were following through with "the doctor's program." The second-ranking member of bin Laden's organization was Ayman Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician often referred to as "the Doctor."

A central piece of evidence involved Abu Zubayda, identified early as the chief field commander of the October 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer USS Cole that killed 17 sailors in the Yemeni port of Aden. One of the most ruthless members of bin Laden's inner circle, Zubayda, according to a reliable report received after September 11, had referred to the day of the attacks as "zero hour."

In addition, the CIA and the FBI had evidence of connections between at least three of the 19 hijackers and bin Laden and his training camps in Afghanistan. It was consistent with intelligence reporting all summer showing that bin Laden had been planning "spectacular attacks" against U.S. targets.

For Tenet, the evidence on bin Laden was conclusive - game, set, match. He turned to the agency's capabilities on the ground in Afghanistan.

As the president knew, the CIA had had covert relationships in Afghanistan authorized first in 1998 by Clinton and then reaffirmed later by him. The CIA was giving several million dollars a year in a.s.sistance to the Northern Alliance. The CIA also had contact with tribal leaders in southern Afghanistan. And the agency had secret paramilitary teams that had been going in and out of Afghanistan without detection for years to meet with opposition figures.

Though an expanded covert action plan had been in the works for months, Tenet told Bush an even more expanded plan would soon be presented for approval, and it would be expensive, very expensive. Though Tenet did not use a figure, it was going to approach $1 billion.

"Whatever it takes," the president said.

AFTER THE INTELLIGENCE briefing, Bush met with Hughes. He told her that he wanted a daily meeting to shape the administration's message to Americans about the fight against terrorism. Hughes, who was focused on details of the day ahead, proposed that the president make an early public statement and reminded him that he would need remarks for a scheduled visit to the Pentagon that afternoon.

"Let's get the big picture," Bush said, interrupting her. "A faceless enemy has declared war on the United States of America. So we are at war."

They needed a plan, a strategy, even a vision, he said, to educate the American people to be prepared for another attack. Americans needed to know that combating terrorism would be the main focus of the administration - and the government - from this moment forward.

Hughes returned to her corner office on the second floor of the West Wing to begin drafting a statement. Before she could open a new file on her computer, Bush summoned her. ; "Let me tell you how to do your job today," he told her when she arrived at the Oval Office. He handed her two pieces of White House notepaper with three thoughts scratched out in his handwriting: "This is an enemy that runs and hides, but won't be able to hide forever.

"An enemy that thinks its havens are safe, but won't be safe forever.

"No kind of enemy that we are used to - but America will adapt."

Hughes went back to work.

BUSH CONVENED HIS National Security Council in the Cabinet Room and declared that the time for rea.s.suring the nation was over. He said he was confident that if the administration developed a logical and coherent plan, the rest of the world "will rally to our side." At the same time, he was determined not to allow the threat of terrorism to alter the way Americans lived their lives. "We have to prepare the public, without alarming the public."

FBI Director Mueller began to describe the investigation under way to identify the hijackers. He said it was essential not to taint any evidence so that if accomplices were arrested, they could be convicted.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft interrupted. Let's stop the discussion right here, he said. The chief mission of U.S. law enforcement, he added, is to stop another attack and apprehend any accomplices or terrorists before they hit us again. If we can't bring them to trial, so be it.

The president had made clear to Ashcroft in an earlier conversation that he wanted to make sure an attack like the ones on the Pentagon and World Trade Center never happened again. It was essential to think unconventionally. Now, Ashcroft was saying, the focus of the FBI and the Justice Department should change from prosecution to prevention, a radical shift in priorities.

After he finished with the NSC, Bush continued meeting with the half-dozen princ.i.p.als who comprised the war cabinet, without most of their deputies and aides.

Powell said the State Department was ready to carry the president's message - you're either with us or you're not - to Pakistan and the Taliban.

Bush responded that he wanted a list of demands for the Taliban. "Handing over bin Laden is not enough," he told Powell. He wanted the whole al Qaeda organization handed over or kicked out.

Rumsfeld interjected. "It is critical how we define goals at the start, because that's what the coalition signs on for," he said. Other countries would want precise definitions. "Do we focus on bin Laden and al Qaeda or terrorism more broadly?" he asked.

"The goal is terrorism in its broadest sense," Powell said, "focusing first on the organization that acted yesterday."

"To the extent we define our task broadly," Cheney said, "including those who support terrorism, then we get at states. And it's easier to find them than it is to find bin Laden."

"Start with bin Laden," Bush said, "which Americans expect. And then if we succeed, we've struck a huge blow and can move forward." He called the threat "a cancer" and added, "We don't want to define [it] too broadly for the average man to understand."

Bush pressed Rumsfeld on what the military could do immediately.

"Very little, effectively," the secretary replied. ::.: Though Rumsfeld did not get into all the details, he was having a difficult time getting some military plans on his desk. General Tommy Franks, the commander in chief or CINC of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which was responsible for South Asia and the Middle East, had told him it would take months to get forces in the area and plans drawn up for a major military a.s.sault in Afghanistan.

"You don't have months," Rumsfeld had said. He wanted Franks to think days or weeks. Franks wanted bases and this and that. Afghanistan was halfway around the world. Al Qaeda was a guerrilla organization whose members lived in caves, rode mules and drove large sport-utility vehicles. Fearing a U.S. military strike, their training camps were virtually empty. Rumsfeld said he wanted creative ideas, something between launching cruise missiles and an all-out military operation. "Try again," Rumsfeld hammered.

Bush told his advisers what he had told British Prime Minister Tony Blair that morning in a secure phone call - that above all he wanted military action that would hurt the terrorists, not just make Americans feel better. He understood the need for planning and preparation but his patience had limits. "I want to get moving," he said.

Bush believed the Pentagon needed to be pushed. "They had yet to be challenged to think on how to fight a guerrilla war using conventional means," he recalled. "They had come out from an era of strike from afar - you know, cruise missiles into the thing."

He understood that his early actions on global climate change and national missile defense had rattled U.S. allies in Europe. America's friends feared the administration was infected with a new strain of unilateralism, a go-it-alone att.i.tude, looking inward rather than engaging the world as the lone superpower might be expected to do.

In an interview, Bush later described how he believed the rest of the world saw him in the months leading up to the attacks of September 11. "Look," he said, "I'm the toxic Texan, right? In these people's minds, I'm the new guy. They don't know who I am. The imagery must be just unbelievable."