With the nation under attack and the need to keep the president separated from the vice president, who was in Washington, Bush was taken from a Sarasota, Fla., visit to Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., one of the strongholds of American Cold War defense.
White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card had made the call. But Loewer, a Shawnee High School and Wright State University graduate, was one who suggested Offutt.
Well into the 32-year Navy career in which she would rise to rear admiral, Loewer had served as military assistant to the assistant Secretary and Secretary of Defense.
“Frankly, it was my job to know the bases and their capabilities,” she said.
Offutt, “had all the intelligence, logistics and functional support we needed.”
“We landed there to do the national security/intelligence briefing,” Loewer said, one conducted after the presidential party went “down the rabbit hole,” as one correspondent put it, into the bunker.
For the first time, Loewer and her staff linked a secure communications system President Ronald Reagan had developed for inside the Washington beltway to a military system connected to Offutt.
Although it seemed to work, “during the middle of this military briefing, over the network comes this noise like fingers on the blackboard,” Loewer recalled. “The president looked at Andy (Card, White House Chief of Staff). Andy looked at me.”
Loewer, whose second White House title was Director of Systems and Technical Planning Staff, who had earned degrees in theoretical mathematics and computer science at Wright State University, and who had helped design some of the Navy’s first shipboard computer systems, was clueless.
A call to a senior technician brought lukewarm assurance: “It only happened once, maybe it won’t happen again.”
But while CIA Director George Tenet was briefing the president “all of a sudden — EEEE!!!! — this noise happens again,” Loewer said.
“The president looked at me, and I thought I was dead at the spot,” she said. “He was upset, Andy was upset,” as was she when she made another call.
By then, the source had been discovered.
Back at the State Department, where the secure communication space was a room within a room, staffers had been coming and going through a door to relay information to Deputy Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage.
“That inner door hadn’t seen any oil in a long time,” Loewer said, “and when they opened it ... the noise just permeated the entire communication network,” an echo the State Department people couldn’t hear.
Insisting on a closed door policy, Loewer returned to the briefing room and gave Chief of Staff Card “the most reassuring look I could.”
Loewer said the next notable noise came from the president.
Frustrated all day at being advised not to return to Washington — and convinced by the briefing he’d be safe — “he slapped his hand on the table and said ‘We’re going home.’”
Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0368.
About the Author