Never-before-seen photos reveal the Bush administration’s shocked reactions to the September 11th attacks, moments after the towers were struck.
Each image depicts the crushing gravity of that fateful day, as reflected in the eyes of President George W. Bush, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet and many other White House staffers.
The photos were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from journalist Neirouz Hanna of PBS Frontline. The photos were taken by the vice president’s staff photographer.
You can see more of the recently-released photos on Flickr, and our selection of photographs below:
Vice President Cheney watches television Photo: The U.S. National Archives
CIA Director George Tenet listens to President Bush’s address in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) Photo: The U.S. National Archives
President Bush with Vice President Cheney and Senior Staff in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) Photo: The U.S. National Archives
Vice President Cheney in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) Photo: The U.S. National Archives
President Bush with Vice President Cheney and Senior Staff in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) Photo: The U.S. National Archives
Secretary of State Colin Powell in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) Photo: The U.S. National Archives
We’ve all heard the stories of people who get stranded out in the middle of nowhere and go to some crazy lengths to survive. Since most people don’t prepare for getting get stuck out in the elements, they typically don’t bring a complete collection of survival gear with them.
If you find yourself marooned somewhere that doesn’t get cell-phone service and you’re unable to contact a lifeline, things start to get a little stressful. Luckily, most people have enough materials either on their person or nearby to send out a signal that just might save their life.
Send out smoke signals
This is probably the most universally known last-ditch-effort signal to send to rescue crews. Smoke can billow up and be seen for miles. Since you’re using a fire source to create the smoke, always keep your surroundings in mind. Yes, you want to be rescued, but don’t burn down the forest around you to do it. It can get real dangerous real quick.
Ground-to-air signals
Unfortunately, this type of signal is best when the material you use to spell out a message is nearly the opposite shade of the material on which it lays. After all, you don’t want to distress signal to become camouflaged with the environment. That will kill any hope of being located.
Make any message short and big. Writing “SOS” is the most popular and is widely recognized.
Water dye
Most of the population enjoys a relaxing day, chilling on a boat as it sails in a large body of water. But what if you’re out in the ocean and that boat sinks? Should that terrible event come to life, most boats are outfitted with survival cases, containing extra water, some rations, and dye used to signal overhead planes.
Typically, the dye is a bright-green color, which contrasts greatly with dark seawater. The dye is dissolves bit by bit, creating a trail that leads to the boat or life preserver as it drifts.
Eye-level ground markers
Since you can’t be everywhere at once to spot incoming rescue, creating eye-level ground markers is a great idea. Even in your absence, these are clear indicators that someone’s around.
The eye-level tags can be clothes or any other material as long as it stands out against the surroundings.
Whistles
Sounds travel fast and far, but yelling for long periods is rough on your throat. If you just so happen to have a whistle in your car or in your pocket, that’s great. Since you probably don’t, you can construct a temporary one by cutting out a wedge in a hollow piece of wood.
Aim right for the eyes.
Reflect light with a mirror
Extremely bright lights can be seen from several miles away. Now, you can’t generate generate a light as bright as that fiery ball in the sky, but you sure can reflect that f*cker. Using a mirror or a makeup compact you can reflect and redirect the sun’s rays to capture a rescuer’s attention from afar.
Destiny Monique is a Marine Corps veteran who used her military experience to break into modeling and acting. She has appeared in tons of magazines domestically and abroad and now owns her own modeling company.
In this Spotlight episode, Marine Corps veteran turned professional photographer Cedric Terrell tells Destiny Monique’s unusual transition story.
Destiny spent four years in the Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton, with her service also taking her to Iraq and Kuwait. When she entered the acting and modeling industry, she knew that there was plenty of competition. So she used her military resume to her advantage, and booked plenty of magazine spreads, taking her as far as Spain, over the following years.
She took her experience with her career to start a company called Models for America. With her modeling network, she photographs models for trading cards and posters and sells the works online, with a portion of the proceeds going to charity.
Understanding the mental cost of taking someone’s life can be nearly impossible for those people who have never experienced it. In this StoryCorps video, Joseph Robertson, an infantryman who served during the Battle of the Bulge, tries to explain to his son-in-law the guilt he has carried since he killed a German soldier approaching his position.
StoryCorps, which works nationwide to collect oral history, has a veteran specific program, Military Voices Initiative, where veterans and service members can tell their stories.
In case you missed it, the U.S. Navy published a moto video about its submarine force called “The Silent Service.” It gives remarkable details — which are likely inaccurate — about the number of troops, types of submarines, and weapons on board.
The promotional video opens with an inspiring quote by Admiral Nimitz:
It is to the everlasting honor and glory of our submarine personnel that they never failed us in our days of peril.
It dives into the capabilities. (See what we did there?)
YouTube: US Navy
The types of missions . . .
YouTube: US Navy
The types of missiles . . .
YouTube: US Navy
And, of course, no submarine video is complete without the money surfacing shot . . .
You’ve probably heard of North Korea, but there are probably a few things about the totalitarian nation you didn’t know.
Despite having its borders closed to prevent its people from leaving and outsiders from coming in, there is actually a great deal known about the country. The U.S. and South Korea have gathered intelligence about the hermit state since the 1950s from defectors, undercover reporters, activists, and many other ways.
The country has made it illegal to watch “The Interview” starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, possessing Bibles, watching South Korean movies, and distributing pornography, which are all punishable by death. Yet, smoking weed is no big deal.
This video shows these and other crazy facts about the infamous country:
The USAF’s Missy Lynn began her makeup career on the military base doing makeup for wives, kids, and friends.
Posted by Team Mighty
YouTube beauty fashionista Missy Lynn (Air Force) has her own channel on StyleHaul. Now her YouTube career has opened up new doors. See how she’s stepped through one and into a new chapter of her life.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation teamed up with the crew of the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) to grant Peter, a 16-year-old cancer survivor, his wish to become a Navy pilot for a day.
“Since fourth or fifth grade I wanted to be a naval aviator,” said Peter, in a video produced by the U.S. Navy. “We live within twenty miles of Annapolis and so you have the Naval Academy there, everyone is a Navy fan.”
He didn’t know what to expect when he learned that he was going to be on an aircraft carrier. Little did he know that he would be traveling by air and landing on its deck. Peter got the Navy’s V.I.P. treatment and did way more than he could imagine.
What started as a way for Soviet ground troops to take out German tanks in World War II has since turned into a global weapons phenomenon: The rocket-propelled grenade.
While the original anti-tank technology was meant to have a one-off use, the modern RPG is a reloadable weapon, with a shaped-charge explosive used by militias and official military forces alike.
“The Russians were extremely impressed by the panzerfaust,” said Will Fowler, an explosives expert, in the video below. “It was the basis for their RPG-2 program which went on to the now-famous RPG-7.”
With varying degrees of celebration.
When an RPG is fired, it leaves the barrel at 383 feet per second. An additional rocket fires and deploys stabilizing fins as the shell spins toward a target.
The RPG’s cone shape forms a jet of explosive energy outward when the shell strikes its target. That’s where the weapons gets its armor-penetrating power.
The RPG is a simple, cheap, and efficient system that can completely destroy a soft-skinned vehicle and can cause grievous harm to some up-armored ones.
Troops who encounter an RPG round in combat are lucky to survive to tell the tale.
“When I was in Iraq, the RPG was a deadly weapon,” Staff Sgt. Matthew Bertles, a U.S. Army M240 gunner, told the show Weaponology. “An RPG struck my 240, blew me back, destroyed our vehicle, and injured me.”
The United States Postal Service is intrinsically linked with the military. Military mail operates as an extension of the USPS and the postal service is one of the largest employers of veterans in the country with over 97,000 as of 2020. What many people may be surprised to learn is that the iconic right-hand drive mail trucks used by the USPS was manufactured by Grumman (now Northrop Grumman), the same defense contractor that made iconic Navy fighter planes like the F6F Hellcat and the F-14 Tomcat. However, the postal fleet of Grumman Life Long Vehicles have exceeded their service life. On February 23, 2021, the USPS announced that Oshkosh Defense had been awarded the design and manufacture contract for the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle to replace the LLV. “[It’s] the most dramatic modernization of the USPS fleet in three decades.”
The iconic boxy LLV (USPS)
The Grumman LLV was manufactured from 1987 to 1994 and was intended to have a lifespan of 24 years. Built at Grumman’s Montgomery, Pennsylvania plant, over 140,000 LLVs are in service with the USPS. The truck has also been exported and is used by Canada Post. Despite their intended lifespan, the majority of LLVs have been in use for over 27 years due to a service life extension program in 2009. The USPS has introduced vehicles to augment the LLV like the Dodge Caravan Cargo minivan, but a dedicated replacement was needed.
The NGDV contract includes an initial $482 million investment and calls for the delivery of 165,000 U.S.-built vehicles over a 10-year period with the first deliveries in 2023. Oshkosh Defense is no stranger to government contracts. The company currently supplies the majority of the military’s wheeled vehicles. These include the FMTV, HEMTT, JLTV (the Humvee replacement), and M-ATV, just to name a few. Like the improvements that these vehicles featured over older military vehicles, the NGDV promises to feature a number of improvements over the LLV.
The NGDV promises plenty of improvements over the LLV (USPS)
Designed to meet 21st century needs, the NGDV will be larger, taller, and include airbags and air conditioning. It will also be equipped with back-up cameras, a forward collision warning system, automatic front and rear braking, and blind spot detectors. The NGDV will remain right-hand drive, but will feature an enlarged windscreen to improve visibility. These additions are huge improvements over the LLV and will greatly increase the safety and working conditions for the letter carriers that operate them.
Another issue with the LLV was its fuel efficiency. Despite an average EPA fuel economy of 17 mpg, the actual average fuel economy reported by the USPS is 10 mpg. This is due to the extensive stop-and-go nature of residential mail delivery. To address this, the NGDV will be available with two different engines. The first is a low-emission traditional internal combustion engine. The second is a battery-powered motor. To futureproof the NGDV, vehicles fitted with internal combustion engines will be able to be retrofitted with electric motors in the future. This will allow the USPS to slowly adapt its fleet as electric vehicle infrastructure grows while still meeting the needs of routes that electric vehicles wouldn’t be able to reach until then.
The LLV is expected to remain in service past the NGDV’s introduction in 2023. Total replacement of the LLV by the NGDV is not yet forecated. In the meantime, Oshkosh Defense is working to finalize the NGDV’s design and tool a dedicated assembly plant. If you’ve ever wanted a surplus Grumman product, but couldn’t afford an F-14, a retired LLV might be your best bet.
A country who doesn’t have nuclear weapons isn’t necessarily just adhering to its treaty obligations with the United Nations. Just ask Iran and North Korea, who both signed the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by 1968.
But it was what North Korea figured out how to do better than Iran that keeps most countries from attempting to get nuclear weapons: creating Uranium-235.
Why would a country want nuclear weapons? They’re expensive to create and maintain, and they cause a huge headache for you once the world discovers you’re trying to build them. After that, your country is a social pariah state and crippling sanctions bring down every other aspect of your economy.
Mark VI nuclear bomb at the National Museum of the United States Air Force. (Wikipedia)
For the answers, we can look to President George W. Bush’s Axis of Evil. North Korea has nuclear weapons and isn’t worried about being invaded. Saddam Hussein is dead, killed almost four years after the United States invaded Iraq. With those two facts in mind, you can make a pretty good guess why the Iranian regime would want to pursue them.
With nuclear weapons so widespread and the earliest nukes being built during World War II, you might think that building a deployable nuclear weapon would be easy to figure out, if your spies got you all the classified information. Well, if we’re talking about how to assemble the individual parts, building a nuke could almost like reading an Ikea assembly booklet, considering how much classified info is for sale out there.
The problem comes when creating those individual parts. Sure, you can assemble the parts of your new Bjorksnas bedframe in your apartment. But could you grow, cut and refine the birchwood required to create the parts? Fashion the leather from an animal hide? Create the metal fasteners from ore? No. And you would have to build all the facilities required to fashion those parts first.
That’s what Iran is facing in its nuclear program. While much of it would be pretty easy to do for any country with all the information required (which Iran probably has), the U-235 is the hard part. They have to separate two nearly-identical parts of Uranium.
Most Uranium is Uranium-238, the isotope more commonly found in nature. But Uranium-235 is the isotope that allows for the chain reaction that will set off a nuclear blast. Separating the two out of Uranium ore is called “enrichment” and it’s a lengthy process even when the Israelis aren’t bombing your research facilities or assassinating your scientists.
The only physical difference between U-238 and the explosive U-235 is in their weight. During the Manhattan Project, researchers used gaseous diffusion plants and centrifuges that spun the two isotopes. Since U-238 weighs more than U-235, the two isotopes separated, either through the use of different pressure zones or through a series of thousands of centrifuges.
Each method comes with its own set of problems. The gaseous diffusion method requires hundreds of miles of tubing and enormous amounts of energy to keep the diffusion going. The centrifugal method requires very specific rotor configurations, difficult to manufacture under the best of circumstances.
Even more difficult is to maintain them when the CIA sends a computer virus to your facility to destroy all the rotors. No wonder the ayatollahs were so pissed.
It was in the opening days of Operation Desert Storm on Jan. 19, 1991 when fighter jets were roaring through Iraqi airspace, and anti-aircraft crews were waiting for them with surface-to-air missiles (SAM). For Air Force Maj. ET Tullia, it was an unforgettable mission that saw him cheating death not once, but six times.
According to Lucky-Devils, a military website that recounts much of the engagement, U.S. F-16s were trying to attack a rocket production facility north of Baghdad. The account continues:
As the flight approached the Baghdad IP, AAA [Anti-Aircraft Artillery] began firing at tremendous rates. Most of the AAA was at 10-12,000ft (3,658m), but there were some very heavy, large calibre explosions up to 27,000ft (8,230m). Low altitude AAA became so thick it appeared to be an undercast. At this time, the 388th TFW F-16’s were hitting the Nuclear Research Centre outside of the city, and the Weasels had fired off all their HARMs in support of initial parts of the strike and warnings to the 614th F-16’s going further into downtown went unheard.
Many of the F-16 pilots that day had to deal with SAM missiles locking on to them, and were forced to take evasive maneuvers. Maj. Tullia (Callsign: Stroke 3) had to dodge six of those missiles, at times banking and breathing so hard that he was losing his vision.
Again, via Lucky-Devils:
Meanwhile, ET became separated from the rest of the package because of his missile defensive break turns. As he defeats the missiles coming off the target, additional missiles are fired, this time, from either side of the rear quadrants of his aircraft. Training for SAM launches up to this point had been more or less book learning, recommending a pull to an orthogonal flight path 4 seconds prior to missile impact to overshoot the missile and create sufficient miss distance to negate the effects of the detonating warhead. Well, it works. The hard part though, is to see the missile early enough to make all the mental calculations.
The following video apparently shows footage through the view of Tullia’s heads-up display that day, and around the 3:00 mark, you can hear the warning beeps that a missile is locked on. Although the video is a bit grainy, the real focus should be on the hair-raising radio chatter, which, coupled with his heavy breathing, makes you realize that fighter pilots need to be in peak physical condition to do what they do.
Only a lucky few civilians can boast, “I flew in an F-16,” and Gerard Butler is now one of them. The “300” star flies in the rear cockpit in a video published on the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds’ YouTube channel.
“Oh my god, that’s the best thing I ever did in my life,” Butler says as the pilot pulls him out of an aerial roll. Even for a superstar like Butler the experience is incredible; he even pulled out his iPhone to capture the moment. When asked if he’d had enough for the day he says, “No, I wouldn’t mind pulling more Gs.”
