Emails reflect 9/11 horror at Bush White House

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President Bush and White House staff members at a 9/11 remembrance in 2005.(Photo: J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE, AP)

Tags

"Turn on CNN ..."

"WH/Congressional Conference Call Cancelled ... "

"Today is Pearl Harbor."

A package of emails released by the George W. Bush Presidential Library to The New York Times reflects the anxiety, and horror of White House officials amid the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

"In messages to one another and the outside world on Sept. 11, 2001, aides to Mr. Bush pivoted from business as usual to shock and confusion and the opening of a new era of war," the Times reports.

Early that morning, with the president in Florida for an education event, White House emails trafficked in normal kinds of activities: Passing around news clippings, scheduling meetings, and the like.

Then came the "turn on CNN" message at 8:56 a.m., shortly after a plane struck one of the towers at the World Trade Center in New York.

In the hours that followed — after a second attack on the World Trade Center, after a third plane crashed into the Pentagon, after a Washington-bound aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania — White House staffers grappled with how that day would change so many lives.

The 14th anniversary of 9/11 is Friday.