Reporter recounts moment George W Bush was told about 9/11 as aide whispered ‘America is under attack’

Bush was jogging around a Florida golf course before dawn when I first saw him on September 11, 2001. As one of two correspondents traveling with Bush that day, I was covering what was expected to be a routine event with schoolchildren to promote his education policies. He had been president of the United States less than eight months.

Within hours, the untested Bush was confronting the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor in 1941. The tragedy unfolded as Bush visited the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida.

As the president was meeting staff and students, I was in a nearby press center set up for reporters. We watched a live television broadcast showing smoke pouring from one of the World Trade Center twin towers in New York. It had been hit by a plane in what we initially assumed was an accident.

Then, as we watched, a second plane struck. Bush was at the school, reading to children. Cameras captured the shocked look on his face as a White House aide entered the classroom and whispered to him about the second plane, saying "America is under attack." By the end of the week, Bush would show a range of emotions as he came to grips with events that marked a turning point in his presidency and in American life — horror and anger at the attacks, grief and tears for the victims, and defiant promises to make those responsible pay.

The former president, now 80, plans to attend a ceremony on Friday to mark the 25th anniversary of the attacks at Ground Zero in New York. On Wednesday evening, he will share his reflections on the anniversary at his presidential library in Dallas, while 16 artworks he has painted reflecting the courage and sacrifice of that day will be on display. "It became evident ... that the world had changed," Bush would later tell CBS's 60 Minutes II.

Bush spent the rest of his presidency working to prevent another such attack. The hijackings exposed security vulnerabilities, spurring increased safety measures at airports and public buildings. His administration drew fire for the harsh interrogation tactics used on some Islamic militant suspects, and his 2003 invasion of Iraq was seen by many as a costly mistake.