WASHINGTON (Islamweb & News Agencies) - President Bush and congressional leaders sought to calm a shaken nation and show the government was functioning and determined after Tuesday's deadly terrorist attacks. From the Oval Office, Bush pledged to ``find those responsible and bring them to justice.'' (Read photo caption below)
Bush and other top administration officials and congressional leaders of both parties presented a united front in the face of what Attorney General John Ashcroft called ``one of the greatest tragedies ever witnessed on our soil.''
Security officials had moved quickly to put the president, Vice President Dick Cheney and House Speaker, Denis Hastert out of harm's way. Hastert is next in the line of presidential succession after Cheney.
Hastert and other top congressional leaders were taken to the safety of an underground government bunker in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, about 75 miles west of Washington. Once the military and the Secret Service issued a green light, the congressional leaders and the president headed back to town.
Roads leading out of Washington became clogged with commuters as the government sent home all nonessential workers. Inbound lanes on bridges leading into Washington were closed. Workers traveling out of the city over the Potomac River could see dark plumes of smoke still rising from the Pentagon.
Bush ordered the nation's military to ``high-alert status.''
The tragedy reached inside the Justice Department, where Solicitor General Theodore Olson learned his wife was aboard the American Airlines jetliner that crashed into the Pentagon.Barbara Olson, a former congressional staffer and Republican activist, was headed to Los Angeles and called her husband as her plane was being hijacked, officials said.
President Bush said on Tuesday that the aircraft attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had ``ended thousands of lives'' and in responding America would make no distinction between ``the terrorists and those who harbor them.''Bush, for the first time alluding to the enormity of the casualties in the attacks, said: ``Thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror.''
All 266 people aboard four airliners hijacked early on Tuesday and then crashed into the U.S. landmarks were believed dead as well as thousands more who worked in the New York World Trade Center and others in the Pentagon outside Washington.
``These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat, but they have failed. Our country is strong. Terrorist acts can shake the foundation of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America,'' Bush said in a televised address to the nation.
PHOTO CAPTION:
President George W. Bush talks on the phone with New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani and New York Governor George Pataki aboard Air Force One during a flight following a statement regarding the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, September 11, 2001. Bush was abruptly plunged into the deepest crisis of his brief period in office and how he responds may well determine his political fate. (Doug Mills/Pool via Reuters)
- Sep 11 5:19 PM ET