Fighting the Pentagon Inferno

The destroyed section of the Pentagon after the terrorist attack of September 11.

His own building was burning. Lower Manhattan, too. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld knew little else about what was happening to America as he huddled with his brain trust near the National Military Command Center, deep inside the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

When word had first started to circulate about a plane hitting the World Trade Center in New York, Joint Staff officers at the Pentagon grew anxious. When a second plane struck, there was no doubt about it—a terrorist attack was underway. Then came something even more unthinkable: a huge explosion on the western side of the Pentagon, followed by a massive inferno. The nation's military headquarters was under attack, too.

As flames roared and security officials shouted evacuation orders, thousands of people fled the Pentagon. But others raced to their duty stations inside the NMCC, the military's highly secure "nerve center." Above it, in a suite of rooms known as the Executive Support Center—the ESC—Rumsfeld headlined a group of generals, admirals, and other military leaders confounded by the sketchy information they were getting. A second plane was barreling toward Washington, possibly headed for the Pentagon—a follow-on attack, just like in New York. There were reports that the State Department had been attacked and that out in Colorado, several cargo trucks, possibly packed with explosives, were speeding toward Cheyenne Mountain, where NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, was based.

Meanwhile, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had grudgingly left the Pentagon on a helicopter, headed for Site R, the secret backup facility in the Maryland woods. Site R would be the military's primary command center if something managed to take down the Pentagon. A skeleton crew usually manned the facility, but bringing it fully online was more complicated than just flipping a switch. It would take a couple of hours, at least, to get a complete staff in place and test all the communications links to the Pentagon, the White House, and the rest of government. Until all the communications links were live, the NMCC represented a single point of failure in the military chain of command.

A secure videoteleconference was underway in the NMCC, connecting the Pentagon, the White House situation room, and the bunker beneath the White House. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, spoke frequently with Vice President Dick Cheney, who was in the bunker. President Bush, on Air Force One, came on the teleconference occasionally, along with officials at NORAD and the National Security Council.

Cheney had already authorized the military to shoot down any other hijacked aircraft, and there were vigorous efforts underway to get fighter jets in the air over major cities. Plenty of fighters were available at bases around the country. But few were prepared for live-fire missions; arming the fighters with missiles and other weaponry was taking longer than anybody would like.

There were a variety of other problems. Vice Adm. Tom Wilson, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, reminded Rumsfeld and others in the conference room that for the last several days, the Russians had been conducting probing missions to test U.S. air defenses. They'd send Bear bombers flying toward Alaska, to see how long it took American AWACS surveillance planes to react, then turn around just before entering U.S. airspace. It was a typical cat-and-mouse game between the Russians and the Americans. Except NORAD was now on hair-trigger alert, and any suspicious aircraft might be treated as hostile and shot down. "Somebody needs to call the Russian Embassy and tell them to knock that shit off," Wilson said.

"Do it," Rumsfeld ordered.

As military leaders grappled with the unfolding national catastrophe, smoke began to permeate the NMCC. The complex was on the other side of the Pentagon, away from the fire; when the plane had hit the building's western wall, people in the NMCC had felt nothing except a strange shudder, like a freight elevator making a hard landing in the shaft. But as the fire raged—so hot that water from fire hoses evaporated before even hitting the flames—smoke spread throughout the entire building. In the NMCC, eyes were watering, and noses running.

Rumsfeld and his lieutenants were in a separate conference room, and the air was getting hazy there, too. They were directed to another room, off the NMCC, where the air was clearer. Rumsfeld, somehow, seemed impervious to the smoke, coughing occasionally but showing no discomfort. Myers became concerned about all the military personnel staffing the facility, who were his responsibility. "Sir," he said to Rumsfeld, "you do understand, all those people out there will stay as long as you're here," implying they might have to leave the NMCC and relocate someplace else. Rumsfeld said nothing.

An engineer sent by the Pentagon's building managers brought a device that measured the oxygen in the room. His measurements showed that oxygen levels were falling. "Within an hour, it may be difficult to breathe in here," the engineer warned.

A short while later, a colonel from the Joint Staff—wearing an olive flight suit and a handgun in a shoulder holster—arrived at the fire chiefs' command post, outside the Pentagon, to plead the case for the NMCC to remain in operation. The fire commanders were facing the biggest, most complicated fire any of them had ever seen. A searing blaze, fed by thousands of gallons of jet fuel from the plane that had struck the building, consumed an amount of office space nearly equivalent to the entire Empire State Building. In addition to the fire, the Pentagon was also a crime scene—and a war zone. Search crews still fought through flames to look for survivors. Soldiers lined up in formation, trying to force their way past firefighters, to get back into the burning building and save comrades. FBI agents desperately tried to salvage evidence as firetrucks drove over pieces of the plane and firefighters bashed through piles of flaming debris.

As the fire chiefs listened to the colonel from the Joint Staff, they were flabbergasted to learn that anybody other than firefighters was still in the building. Even more astonishing: Rumsfeld planned to open the building for business the following day.

"We've got to keep the NMCC open," the colonel stressed.

"OK," said Ed Plaugher, the fire chief for Arlington County, Va. "Do you really want your people in there making decisions, possibly illegitimate decisions, under the influence of carbon monoxide?"

The colonel gave him a puzzled look. Plaugher continued. "Carbon monoxide is odorless and colorless," he explained. "And in a hot, smoky fire, there's usually tons of carbon monoxide. One of the first side effects is, it makes you do wacky things. In house fires, people who have lived there for 50 years will try to get out by walking into a closet. Do you really want people in that situation making command and control decisions?"

The colonel paused, pondering the risks. Then he asked, "If we monitor for it, does that change the picture?"

"How many people do you have?" Plaugher asked.

The NMCC normally had a staff of over 100, but the colonel said they were operating on a stripped-down crew of fewer than 50. The two men negotiated. Plaugher began to realize that the colonel had been sent out to plead the case for a decision that Rumsfeld and his staff had already made. He wasn't going to coax the military commanders out of their bunker, no matter what. Besides, Plaugher realized, as he looked at a fighter jet that was now circling overhead, the military guys inside the building had a lot of other important things to worry about.

They worked out a rough compromise. The colonel assured Plaugher that they'd get some equipment in place, pronto, to monitor carbon monoxide levels. The fire department, meanwhile, had some spare air bottles on reserve. "Let me give you enough breathing apparatus so that if something goes wrong, you can get people out of there," Plaugher offered. "It will give you an hour's worth of breathing time, which will be enough if you have to evacuate." It was a deal. The military would continue to man their war room. And the fire crews would keep battling the fire.

Adapted from Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11 by Patrick Creed and Rick Newman. Copyright © 2008, Patrick Creed and Rick Newman. Published by arrangement with Random House, New York.

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