Inside the President's War Room: A chilling account of 9/11

George W. Bush on the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks with CIA Director George Tenet, Vice-President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Photo / US National Archives

It's 9.03am on September 11, 2001 at Emma E. Booker school in Sarasota, Florida, and President George W. Bush is watching a class of small children read words from the board. "Smile", they chant, "like". White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card is watching on, anxiously.

"The President is the only one who doesn't know that the [second] plane has hit the buildings," Card recalls today (it was still thought at the time that the first had been a terrible accident). "I had to deliver a message that he didn't expect to hear, and was almost unbelievable."

The world remembers the moment when Card walked over and whispered into Bush's ear, words including: "America is under attack." The President remained seated for seven minutes, the news cameras recording the subtle changes in his expression as he began to process modern America's darkest moment.

In an astonishing documentary, featuring groundbreaking interviews, including with Card and President Bush himself, we learn what really happened in the minutes and hours after the World Trade Centre attacks.

"I could see the horror on the faces of the news people who just got the same news," Bush says. "During a crisis, it's really important to set a tone and not to panic. So I waited for the appropriate moment to leave the classroom.

"I didn't want to lurch out of the chair, scare a classroom full of children. So I waited."

Adam Wishart, the award-winning director, explains: "The point of this film is to put yourself into the President's seat and ask: what would you have done? This project started with a fascination about how political leaders make decisions — what they are like during a crisis and how it might feel to be 'in the room'."

The result, 9/11: Inside the President's War Room, contains a minute-by-minute account of the day, told through interviews with all the major political players including Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and press secretary Ari Fleischer; 70 hours of tape distilled into an hour and a half.

Wishart, who watched 9/11 unfold while "sitting in my flat in Ladbroke Grove, finishing the edit of my first book", is most proud of the opening scenes, covering the Florida school between 9.07 to 9.30 that morning, as the "machinery of government" sparked into gear. We hear about competing concerns, from the worries of the security service to the advice of the chief of staff. Should the President be rushed to safety? Speak to the nation immediately? Return to Washington and assume control? "None of us had the playbook," says Card.

We learn that Bush was desperate to return to DC, but his team was having none of it, and ushered him to an air force base in Nebraska. "This really throws light on the media perception of the 'Bush running scared' narrative of the time," says Wishart.

"I was interested to see his anger expressed, at the time and 20 years on."

The twin towers of the World Trade Center burn behind the Empire State Building in New York on September 11, 2001. Photo / AP

Wishart, whose work includes a film about the murdered private detective Daniel Morgan, is interested in "debunking this myth of politicians as venal cardboard cut-outs: specifically that George W. Bush was stupid compared with the 'reality-distorting charisma' of Bill Clinton". After an hour with Bush, he says he found the former president "extraordinary and compelling, full with genuine empathy" — and elements of this do shine through.

The director was moved to see footage of Bush crying in the Oval Office on September 13, after a press office question about prayer from the Christian Science Monitor. He reluctantly had to cut it because "I wanted to end the film with Bush's amazing ad-libbed speech to the firefighters at Ground Zero on September 14" — a patriotic address, ending with battered and exhausted firefighters chanting: "USA! USA!"

The documentary is full of intimate and telling details, such as the Air Force One crew hyperventilating with fear as they travelled to the Nebraska air base, convinced they would be bombed or shot down, and the aide who was still standing, briefing the President when the plane took off. There was no satellite TV on Air Force One — the presidential team had to glean snippets of details from local television stations as they flew over different towns. A then junior press secretary describes feeling as if they were in a book or a movie: "How am I part of it?"

When the secret services decided to usher Vice-President Dick Cheney to safety in the White House bunker, they grabbed him by his collar and belt, and hauled him over his desk — causing a female member of staff, annoyed at being left behind, to ask: "What are we, chopped liver?"

The interviewees recall the fraught discussion that led to a heartbreaking decision by Cheney to "take the track" and shoot down the hijacked United 93, then believed to be on course for the White House. The assembled company knew they'd be killing their own civilians. In the end, the terrorists were overrun by passengers and crew, and the plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

Unlike most films on 9/11, there is no testimony from survivors. "I did feel nervous about leaving out what happened to 3000 people elsewhere," says Wishart. "But then I came across Theodore Olsen."

Olsen was Bush's solicitor-general in 2001: his wife, Barbara, an attorney and conservative commentator, was a passenger aboard the hijacked American Airlines flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon. Her original plan was to fly to California on September 10, but she delayed her departure until the next morning so she could wake up with her husband on his birthday.

Olsen's segments are the most devastating to watch. He relays the moment Barbara called him from the air, once it was clear the plane had been hijacked. "Ted, what can I do?" she asked — then the line went dead. Later in the documentary, Olsen reads out a note his wife left on his pillow that morning: "I love you more than I ever thought it possible to love: you are my best friend, lover and everything to me."

The film leaves the viewer with the notion of a team of politicians wrestling with shock, horror, and brewing anger, but with unshakeable resolve. The end of the film examines the realisation that al-Qaeda was behind the attacks and the decision to invade Afghanistan. "When I'm asked about what we did with such speed, I want to say to people: what would you have done?" asks Condoleezza Rice. And from George W. Bush: "I did what was necessary to protect the country. There is no distinction between those who commit terror and those who harbour it.

"I'm comfortable with the decisions I made. There weren't any more attacks on America after 9/11. We'll let historians sort all of that out."