The question “who was the president during 9/11” is answered by clear reporting: President George W. Bush was in office on Sept. 11, 2001 and was informed of the attacks while visiting an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida.
Reuters reports that Bush “had only been in office for about eight months” when the September 11 attacks occurred and that he was at the Emma E. Booker School reading to children when his chief of staff told him, “A second plane hit the World Trade Center; America’s under attack.”
After being briefed, Bush was flown to multiple secure military sites and later made a public statement calling the events a national tragedy, Reuters notes. Days after the attacks he visited Ground Zero in New York, where he addressed firefighters and said, “The people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”
The site of the Bush Presidential Center also documents the administration’s response to the attacks and describes the period as transformational for U.S. policy and security planning, placing Bush’s presidency at the center of the national response.
For readers looking for more on Bush’s role on the 25th anniversary, the site has a firsthand Reuters feature recalling the president’s movements that morning and his subsequent visits; the feature provides on-the-ground reporting of his trip from Sarasota back to Washington and to Ground Zero.
Across contemporary commemorations and archival material, reporting consistently identifies George W. Bush as the sitting president on Sept. 11, 2001 — the central fact behind the question “who was the president during 9/11.”
Sources
- Reuters — recounted Bush’s presence in Sarasota, his being informed at Emma E. Booker School, the decision to move him by plane, and his Ground Zero visit on Sept. 14, 2001.
