Context of '10:08 a.m. September 11, 2001: Guards Surround the White House'

Gary Lee Yarborough. [Source: Eye on Hate (.com)]Robert Jay Mathews, the leader of the white supremacist group The Order (see August 1984 and After), Order member Gary Yarborough (see October 18, 1984), and a number of their fellow members have rented five houses in small rural communities near Mount Hood, east of Portland, Oregon, in which to hide from the FBI (see August 1984 and After). George Duey and several Order members moved on to the Puget Sound region, where they rented three secluded vacation homes on Smuggler’s Cove near Greenbank on Whidbey Island. On November 23, Mathews contacts Order associate Thomas Martinez and asks him to fly to Portland for a brief meeting. Mathews is unaware that Martinez is now an FBI informant (see October 1, 1984). Mathews and Yarborough meet Martinez at the Capri Hotel in Portland. The FBI had planned on following Mathews back to his new safe house after the meeting, but when they see Yarborough, the agents on site change the plan. The morning of November 24, the agents surround the hotel, waiting for the two fugitives to leave. Mathews leaves his room, spots the surveillance, shouts a warning to Yarborough, and flees across the parking lot. Mathews and an FBI agent exchange gunfire; the agent is wounded in the leg and Mathews suffers a minor wound to his right hand. Mathews manages to escape on foot. Yarborough attempts to flee through the bathroom window at the end of the building, but falls into a tangle of bushes and is captured. The agents secure Mathews’s car, which contains a number of weapons (including a silenced MAC-10 submachine gun and a hand grenade), $30,000 in cash from a recent Order robbery (see July 19, 1984), and documents, including rental agreements for the Mount Hood homes and a book of encoded names and phone numbers. Mathews hitches rides to his Mount Hood hideout, telling anyone who asks that he hurt his hand while working on his car. He tells his followers to leave the Mount Hood homes and flee to Whidbey Island. It is at a Whidbey Island house that Mathews will be killed during a standoff with the FBI (see December 8, 1984). [HistoryLink, 12/6/2006]

Armed agents deploy around the White House. [CNN, 9/12/2001]

Laura Bush, the president’s wife, is driven, by members of the Secret Service, to the White House from the Secret Service headquarters in Washington, DC, and is then escorted down to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) below the White House. [Bush, 2010, pp. 203-204] Bush was brought to the Secret Service headquarters this morning for her own safety (see (10:10 a.m.-10:55 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and (10:55 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Woodward, 2002, pp. 17; Kessler, 2006, pp. 136]
First Lady Reassured that No More Attacks Will Occur - There, she spent much of the afternoon “like most other Americans, glued to the television,” according to Us Weekly magazine. Bush was, however, “perhaps more at ease than the average American because her [Secret Service] agents were receiving news before it was reported on television.” Bush will later recall: “[A]fter some time, we started hearing from our agents that most of the planes [in US airspace] had been accounted for, fairly early in the day, I think, before they really started announcing it on television. So at some point we started feeling reassured that [a terrorist attack] wasn’t going to happen again that day.” After Bush and those with her learned that the president would be returning to Washington today (see (4:00 p.m.) September 11, 2001 and (4:33 p.m.) September 11, 2001), Bush’s Secret Service agents decided that the first lady could go back to the White House.
First Lady Arrives at White House - At 6.30 p.m., she will recall, Bush gets into a Secret Service motorcade and is driven to the White House by Dave Saunders, one of her agents. [CNN, 9/11/2001; Us Weekly, 10/15/2001; Kessler, 2006, pp. 136; Bush, 2010, pp. 203] It is a short journey, as the Secret Service headquarters is just a few blocks from the White House. [Washington Post, 8/23/2009] Bush is driven along the deserted streets and then her vehicle goes at full throttle through the gate of the White House. She notices “[h]eavily armed men in black” swarming over the White House grounds. She then gets out of the vehicle, preceded by her Secret Service agents.
First Lady Taken to Underground Conference Room - Bush is “hustled inside” the White House, she will recall, and taken “downstairs through a pair of big steel doors that closed behind me with a loud hiss, forming an airtight seal.” She then walks along the hallway below the White House to the PEOC, and is taken into the conference room adjacent to the PEOC’s “nerve center.” Those already in the room include National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, White House counselor Karen Hughes, and deputy White House chief of staff Josh Bolten. Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne Cheney, are also there. Lynne Cheney comes over and hugs the first lady. She then whispers into the first lady’s ear, “The plane that hit the Pentagon circled the White House first” (see 9:34 a.m.- 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001). This information, Bush will comment, causes a “shiver” to “vibrate down [her] spine.” [Bush, 2010, pp. 203-204] President Bush will join the first lady in the PEOC at 7:10 p.m., after he arrives at the White House (see 7:10 p.m. September 11, 2001). [Bush, 2010, pp. 137-138; Bush, 2010, pp. 204-205] Staffers who were with the first lady at the Secret Service headquarters went to the White House and then headed home at around 4:30 p.m. (see (4:30 p.m.) September 11, 2001). [National Journal, 8/31/2002]

The Bush escalation plan will involve up to 50,000 troops being sent to Iraq, not the 21,500 as touted by Bush and his officials. The 21,500 are actual combat troops, but logistical and support troops will also need to accompany the combat troops into Iraq. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says, “Over the past few years, [the Defense Department’s] practice has been to deploy a total of about 9,500 per combat brigade to the Iraq theater, including about 4,000 combat troops and about 5,500 supporting troops. [This] puts the cost of the president’s decision in even starker terms. If the president proceeds with his plan, thousands more US troops will be at risk, billions more dollars will be required, and there will be a much more severe impact on our military’s readiness.” House Budget Committee chairman John Spratt (D-SC) adds,“These additional troop deployments will cost between $7 billion and $10 billion this year alone—$4 billion to $7 billion more than the administration’s estimate.” Spratt says such an increase in troop levels will be difficult for the US military to maintain; the abnormally high deployment levels for the past four years have “taken a toll” on the military. House Armed Services committee chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) says the report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “appears to conflict with the estimate given by the chief of staff of the Army in his testimony. We will want to carefully investigate just how big the president’s troop increase really is. Is it 21,500 troops, or is it really closer to 33,000 or 43,000?” Martin Meehan (D-MA), chairman of the House Armed Services subcommittee on oversight and investigations that has launched a review of Iraq-related costs, says he also is concerned: “I am disturbed that the administration’s figures may not be fully accounting for what a true force increase will entail; if combat troops are deployed, their support needs must not be shortchanged.” [Army Times, 2/2/2007]