9/11: INSIDE THE PRESIDENT'S WAR ROOM

9/11: Inside The President's War Room
Tuesday 31 August 2021
20:30
BBC One

Director/Producer: Adam Wishart
Executive Producer: Neil Grant

A Wish/Art Production for BBC One

Twenty years ago, at 09.03, the second of four hijacked planes hit the South Tower of the World Trade Centre in Manhattan, New York.  America was under attack.  President George W. Bush was sitting in front of a classroom of seven year-olds in Florida.  Members of the President's security detail thought that the next plane could be aimed at them.

As the clock ticks the presidency is forced to make a series of critical decisions, while still struggling to make sense of what is unfolding.  Should they order fighter jets to shoot on American civilians?  Should the seminal Presidential speech declare war, or calm a nation?  How would the leadership of the most powerful nation on Earth grapple with the national and international implications?

This feature-length documentary tells the definitive timeline story of the Presidency through 12 hours of that momentous day - as it changed him, changed the United States Of America, and changed the world - told with direct testimony from those in power at the time: President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell and numerous other senior White House personnel.

It begins with blue-sky innocence, as a relatively new President orientates himself towards a domestic agenda and it ends as the machinery of Government flexes and responds to the threat and begins to contemplate the possibility of war.  The events of that day led to two decades of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As America and its allies now withdraw from Afghanistan and the Taliban resume control, this is the story of how it all began.