On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card was faced with a historic decision. Should he inform President George W. Bush, who was speaking that morning at an elementary school in Florida, that a second plane had crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center? Card knew that America was in the middle of an emergency. He had to decide what to tell the president -- and how. But he didn’t want to provoke a reaction or cause a response from the president as he was sitting in front of the news cameras surrounded by elementary school children. Card decided that his message would be short and direct. He told the president, “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack.”
In doing so, Card activated one of the most covert and never-before-used plans of the federal government: Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP), which was stipulated in Presidential Decision Directive 67 by the Clinton administration in 1998.
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