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AP
Photo
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| President
Bush speaks to Vice President Dick Cheney by phone aboard Air
Force One after departing Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
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By SONYA ROSS
Associated Press Writer |
BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE,
La. - As chaos unhinged New York and Washington, President Bush commanded the
full force of the United States government to "hunt down and to find" the
terrorists responsible.
"Terrorism against
our nation will not stand," he declared Tuesday. In Florida for a pair of
education speeches, the president scrapped his schedule and said, at the first
reports of attacks on New York's World Trade Center, that he was hastening back
to Washington.
But, with the White
House evacuated under threat of attack and his wife hunkered down in an
unidentified secure location, the president and Air Force One were rerouted -
under escort by military fighter jets - to this Louisiana air base.
In a conference
room dotted by portraits of decorated Air Force officers, the commander in chief
announced that the U.S. military was on "high-alert status."
"Freedom itself was
attacked this morning and I assure you freedom will be defended. Make no
mistake. The United States will hunt down and pursue those responsible for these
cowardly actions," Bush said. First lady Laura Bush spoke with her husband by a
secure military phone line before he took off from Sarasota, Fla.
Mrs. Bush and a
handful of aides were whisked by motorcade from Capitol Hill, where she was to
have testified to a Senate committee on education, to a hide-out away from the
White House. There, the sequestered group huddled around a single TV in their
hide-out and channel-surfed for the latest news, according to one person in the
group.
Mrs. Bush also
checked with her twin daughters at college to make sure they were safe.
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