Takeover
Chapter One
Inside the Bunker
1.
As the United States of America reeled, Vice President Dick Cheney
took control.
At a quarter past ten o'clock on the morning of September 11, 2001,
a choking cloud of debris and death, once the south tower of the
World Trade Center, engulfed lower Manhattan. Flames and black smoke
poured from the upper stories of the north tower. In northern
Virginia, just across the Potomac River from downtown Washington,
the Pentagon's western wall crumbled into its own blaze. Three miles
away, the aboveground portions of the White House complex stood
empty, evacuated just minutes earlier by the Secret Service as
hijacked American Airlines flight 77, bound for the military
headquarters, had barreled toward the nation's capital with its
target yet unknown.
Three stories into the bedrock beneath the White House's East Wing,
behind body armor-clad guards holding shotguns and MP5 machine guns,
loomed a sealed vault door - the entrance to the Presidential
Emergency Operations Center. Originally built as an air ... read full excerpt from Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy ebook
