The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency

by Chris Whipple

The motorcade raced to the airport, where heavily armed Special Forces skirted the tarmac and the engines of Air Force One were already spinning. As the presidential plane took off, Card faced his first real test as chief of staff. Bush was hell-bent on returning to Washington, D.C. But Card knew that was a presidential order he would have to defy. “President Bush was adamant. He even used terms like ‘I am the president of the United States,’ ” Card recalls. “I was trying to be cool, calm, and objective. I had the Secret Service very firm with me. I had the president of the United States very firm with me.” Bush was in Card’s face, furious, screaming at his chief. Card gently pushed back. “I just said, ‘Mr. President. I really can’t recommend that. We have to know more about the nature of the attacks and if others are coming.’ ” Bush finally acquiesced to a detour, agreeing to head for Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana; so began the daylong odyssey that would take the president, Card, and their entourage to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. They finally returned to the capital that evening. “As we’re coming in to land at Andrews Air Force Base,” Card recalls, “we’re all looking out the windows, and you could see the faces of the pilots of the fighter jets that were accompanying Air Force One. And then you could see the smoke billowing out of the Pentagon, and I remember the president saying to me, ‘That’s the face of war in the twenty-first century.’ ”