'Angel Is Next:' Ex-Air Force One Pilot Recalls Crew's Response to Threats on 9/11

Retired Col. Mark Tillman knew two commercial airliners had crashed into the World Trade Center when he took Air Force One into the sky above Sarasota, Fla., the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. But soon President Bush’s Air Force One pilot heard the warning Vice President Dick Cheney gave the president, and three words began the series of evasion flights throughout the country that day:
“Angel [the presidential airplane’s call sign at the time] is next.”
“It’s a big sky, so for anybody to attack us, you’re normally thinking it’s going to be somebody on the ground with some kind of man-powered rocket or some kind of fighter coming in to shoot you down,” Tillman said. “But on this day, it was in your own country. On Sept. 11, it was America.”
The president’s staff and Air Force One crew learned later that it was a false alarm, but at the time Tillman was taking no chances. Information at the time was that there could be as many as seven to 10 hijacked airliners.
President Bush learned that American Airlines Flight 11 had crashed into the North Tower before a scheduled stop to promote his education bill at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla. When Chief of Staff Andrew Card told the president, “A second plane has hit the World Trade Center. America is under attack,” Tillman was watching the events unfold on TV on board the Boeing VC-25.
“That’s when the staff starts getting into gear, advising the president of what is going on,” Tillman said. “You can actually start hearing the radios between the Secret Service, the staff and a lot of agencies around the world.
“I have to assume the worst. I assume the president was about to be under attack, so we got everything ready with the plane. All I was trying to do was make sure that when it was time to get the president on board, I knew exactly where to take him, how much gas, the right support, as well as the right firepower to make sure the president would be safe the whole time.”
Air Force One left Sarasota at about 9:55 a.m., with an armed guard at the cockpit door while Secret Service agents double-checked identities of passengers. Just before departure, Tillman saw a man at the end of the runway with a video camera, so he took the VC-25 in the opposite direction.
“Air Force One, you have unidentified aircraft behind you,” Jacksonville Center told Tillman as he made his ascent above Florida. “They’ve shut their transponder off, they’re above you and descending into you.”
But as Tillman turned toward the Gulf of Mexico, the plane didn’t follow. It turned out to be just an airliner that had lost its transponder.
“But the whole day was like that,” he said. “The whole day, there were threats that weren’t really threats, but you still had to counter them. On that day, we were concerned somebody had followed us, and we were the next target. We were told Air Force One was going to be next, so we had to counter that.”
The president decided not long after that false alarm that he wanted to be on the ground so he could address the American people. The staff considered Pope Air Force Base, N.C., but decided instead to leave the East Coast for an Air Combat Command or Strategic Air Command base. Tillman and military aides chose Barksdale Air Force Base, La., because of the high security due to the B-52 Stratofortress mission. Air Force One radio operators notified the Barksdale command post at the last second, and the wing commander had to prepare the base within minutes to receive the president.
“The Air Force rocked that day,” Tillman said. “They did everything perfect, but that’s the beauty of the Air Force. You don’t need to get the [crisis action team] together and spend hours working a checklist. When something happens, everybody knows what their job is to make it happen. That’s what they did that day, and not only there, but all across the country.
“Offutt Air Force Base [Neb.] did the exact same thing. Andrews Air Force Base [Md.] knew they had to receive the president of the United States. They’re used to doing it every day for the president, but on that day, it was different. On Sept. 11, there was an actual threat against the president.”
After leaving Barksdale, the fighter support Tillman requested arrived at 11:30 a.m., with four Texas Air National Guard F-16 Fighting Falcons from the 147th Fighter Wing based at Ellington Field in Houston. Air Force One landed at Offutt, but took off again at 4:33 p.m. after staff determined the situation in Washington had settled down enough to bring the president back.
“Everybody on the plane was preparing for what needed to be done for the country,” Tillman said. “What a lot of people don’t understand was on Air Force One, the president had all of his top leaders with him. He had the ability to connect with any of the military leadership. He had his chief of staff and Secret Service with him. Everything was on board in a self-contained package, so he could make a lot of great decisions for the country on board, and that was what the president was doing.”
As Air Force One made its journey across the Midwest, the Texas ANG F-16s were joined by other fighters, including F-16s from Andrews and Langley Air Force Base, Va., as the president’s plane approached Washington. Lt. Col. Marc Sasseville, one of the pilots from the D.C. Air National Guard, gave the president a thumbs-up from just off Air Force One’s wing.
“I can’t speak for the president, but for me to look out and see a fighter pilot right there with you, that’s the classic Air Force mission,” Tillman said. “You’ve got the fighter on your wing, and he’s protecting the president of the United States. It just doesn’t get any better than that.”
But Tillman made a 360-degree turn over the Shenandoah Valley to allow the Texas fighters to catch up because he wanted the F-16s from President Bush’s home Guard unit to lead Air Force One into Andrews.
“My message since Sept. 11 has been the military trains day in and day out,” Tillman said. “But we don’t train for airliners hitting buildings, and we don’t train for fighters to escort Air Force One. It’s the beauty of the U.S. Air Force and the military as a whole that we can adapt to all the changes that can occur.”
During the next seven years, Tillman returned President Bush to New York numerous times, including for Sept. 11 anniversary ceremonies. But he wasn’t able to attend Ground Zero himself until after he and the president retired following President Obama’s inauguration in January 2009.
“Everyone needs to go there to see that and remember the thousands who were killed that day,” Tillman said. “The procedures that President Bush, his administration and the military have put into place have saved us, and the same with President Obama and his folks.
“But no one can forget what happened on Sept. 11. A lot of people were killed, not only in the towers, but also at the Pentagon, and that was unacceptable. We’ve got to be ready, and we will continue to be ready, but we lost a lot of our brothers and sisters that day.”