Combating Terrorism: 'It Starts Today'

Bush believed that how the White House communicated its goals and thinking about the war effort would be critical to the overall success of the campaign. Communication was a key to retaining public confidence in his leadership and the campaign itself. Without that confidence, at home and abroad, he would have trouble holding together the coalition. He wanted to impress upon his communications team the enormous challenges it faced.

"I knew full well that if we could rally the American people behind a long and difficult chore, that our job would be easier," he recalled in the interview. "I am a product of the Vietnam era. I remember presidents trying to wage wars that were very unpopular, and the nation split."

Bush pointed to a portrait of Abraham Lincoln that hangs in the Oval Office. "He's on the wall, because the job of the president is to unite the nation. That's the job of the president. And I felt like, that I had the job of making sure the American people understood. They understood the severity of the attack. But I wasn't sure if they understood how long it was going to take and what a difficult process this would be."

We're going to be entering missions where U.S. military personnel will be at risk, Bush told his advisers. We need to be careful. He told Hughes she would be in charge of the communication effort. He wanted Defense and State and other agencies all operating from the same plan. Make sure the left hand knows what the right hand is doing, he said.

For nearly an hour, Bush talked about what he expected from his communications team. His advisers remember it as a mostly one-way conversation. Bush stressed the unconventional aspects of the war -- the role of law enforcement, of intelligence-sharing, of disrupting the terrorists' financial network, the role of the CIA and the fact that much of the war would be invisible. He said there would be parts of the campaign that they could not talk about. He wanted the advisers to think of ways to showcase all elements of the war they could talk about, particularly the financial piece and not just the visible portion of the military action.

This would not be a rerun of the Gulf War, he told his advisers, despite what many Americans might be expecting. As a result, a more innovative communications strategy was needed. He asked his advisers to think unconventionally about how to explain the mission, the risks and the time it might take to complete the tasks ahead.

We cannot tolerate leaks, he said insistently. Lives will be at stake. Rumsfeld and the Pentagon would talk about operations; White House officials would not. We will not be able to confirm some actions or operations. Your jobs will not be easy.

"I was very clear off the beginning," Bush said in the later interview. "This is one area of communications where I knew exactly what I needed to say. And I wanted them to understand, because their job is to be a part of the dissemination process. And that this was this: We're in for a difficult struggle; it is a new kind of war; we're facing an enemy we never faced before; it is a two-front war, initially, Afghanistan and at home. America had never been attacked before. We had to describe to the American people that we were under attack and we're going to do something about it."

"I also had the responsibility to show resolve. I had to show the American people the resolve of a commander in chief that was going to do whatever it took to win. No yielding. No equivocation. No, you know, lawyering this thing to death, that we're after 'em. And that was not only for domestic, for the people at home to see. It was also vitally important for the rest of the world to watch. These guys were watching my every move. And it's very important for them to come in this Oval Office, which they did, on a regular basis, and me look them in the eye and say, 'You're either with us or you're against us.' "

Twice during the meeting with his communications team, Bush was interrupted for calls with foreign leaders, including one with Mexican President Vicente Fox, whose ranch he had visited shortly after taking office. As the two ranchers spoke, Bush slipped into the vernacular of the Old West to reveal his feelings about finding and capturing bin Laden. "Wanted dead or alive. That's how I feel," Bush said.

When Bush finished meeting with the members of his communications team, he excused them and turned to Rice and asked her to stay behind. "I know what I want to do and I'm going to do it tomorrow at the NSC," he told her when they were alone. He then outlined the orders he wanted to issue.

There was no real discussion as the two sat in the Treaty Room, just Bush dictating a list of actions he would order the next morning.