USA: Condoleezza Rice Interview
KERRY O'BRIEN: President Bush wasn't in Washington as the second wave of terrorist planes headed for the Pentagon and either the White House or the US Congress.
He was at a school in Florida.
But the President's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was at her post in the White House as the nightmare began to unfold.
She spoke candidly with me last week about how she managed to coordinate America's response to such a dramatic and unprecedented crisis.
KERRY O'BRIEN: Condoleezza Rice, you've described September 11 as a day "when the darkly possible became a horrific reality".
A day, no doubt, that's scorched in your mind.
What were you doing when you got the news and how did it hit you?
DR CONDOLEEZZA RICE, US NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: I was standing at my desk in the West Wing of the White House getting ready to go down to my meeting with my senior staff and my executive assistant came in and said, "A plane has hit the World Trade Center".
And I thought, "What a strange accident".
And so I called the President, who was at an education event in Florida, and he said the same thing, "What a strange accident".
A little later on, I went down to my senior staff meeting and the executive assistant handed me a note and it said a second plane had hit the World Trade Center.
And I thought, "My God, this is a terrorist attack".
And the next few hours are like a blur.
I remember going into the situation support room to try to reach the National Security Council principals, to try to get them together, and turning around, and there was a picture on television of a plane having hit the Pentagon.
KERRY O'BRIEN: So you had no inkling of those other elements that might unfold?
DR CONDOLEEZZA RICE: No, and for several hours the most difficult thing is that we didn't know what else was coming because there were planes still in the air, we were trying to ground civil aviation, there were still planes in the air, some were supposedly not responding properly to command to go to the ground.
So it was a very tense environment.
KERRY O'BRIEN: Moments of great human tragedy often strike with a great sense of unreality.
Did you feel that you were operating in an environment of unreality?
DR CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I certainly felt that I was operating in an environment of unreality.
I'm a specialist in international politics.
I've done dozens of simulations of crisis and war.
I worked for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
I've been on the National Security Council before.
You go through crisis simulations, in which something awful happens and you have to manage it.
KERRY O'BRIEN: But it's never the same?
DR CONDOLEEZZA RICE: But it's never the same and I have to admit I felt a bit like I was floating out of my own body, watching some of this.
As I got down to the bunker, when the plane hit the Pentagon, the secret service came in and said, "There is a plane headed for the White House, we believe, "you have to go to the bunker".
"The Vice-President is already there".
And when I got there, and saw the Vice-President, I started to do the things that you have to do to manage a crisis, but I have to say that it still seems like an experience that happened to someone else.
KERRY O'BRIEN: It must have been a particularly deep shock when the most powerful military machine that the world has ever seen was struck at its heart.
DR CONDOLEEZZA RICE: It was, first and foremost, a shock that we were so vulnerable.
It was secondly, of course, a shock that people using means that cost them, as the President has said, less than the cost of a single tank could inflict such danger.
And third, it was a surprise.
And though we knew a great deal about al-Qa'ida, we knew they were trying to hurt us, it was still a surprise how they did it.
And it's an important warning to all of us that surprise is always a factor in major attacks.
KERRY O'BRIEN: No matter how well prepared you might think you are.
DR CONDOLEEZZA RICE: No matter how well prepared you may think you are.
KERRY O'BRIEN: I know you've had no confirmation one way or the other -- or I don't think you have -- but do you believe it is likely that Osama bin Laden is dead?
DR CONDOLEEZZA RICE: I really don't know if he's dead or alive.
The President may have put it best when he said, "If he's alive we'll still get him and if he's dead, then we got him".
I think we just have to assume that we don't know.
The key is to make sure the al-Qa'ida network is disrupted.
Osama bin Laden, of course, we'd all like to "get him".
But this was never a one-man network and every leader that we wrap up, every command and control installation that we destroy is one less ability, one less capability for al-Qa'ida to do the sort of thing that it did on 9/11.
KERRY O'BRIEN: There will be more of that exclusive interview later in the program.