The book tells the story of the official response to 9/11 by North American authorities.
asserted
book → tell → authorities
This excerpt, drawn from multiple chapters, focuses on senior Canadian officials.
asserted
excerpt → draw → officials
Jean Chrétien, the 67-year-old Canadian prime minister who’d led his Liberal Party to a parliamentary victory in 1993, lived at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, Canada’s equivalent of the White House.
asserted
who → lead → House
Built in 1866, the 35-room mansion was set on four acres in the fashionable New Edinburgh neighborhood, overlooking the Ottawa River.
asserted
mansion → build → River
With Parliament in recess, and all of his ministers out of town, he was working from home that morning.
asserted
he → work → home
Having suffered Bell’s palsy at the age of 12, making the left side of his face weaker than the right side, Chrétien spoke in a very distinct lopsided way out of the left side of his mouth, with a heavy accent in both French and English.
asserted
Chrétien → suffer → French
It gave him a quality of being authentic, a tough, straightforward yet self-deprecating man who didn’t put on the airs of the intellectual lawyer and avid reader that he actually was.
asserted
he → give → lawyer
For example, he dealt with President Clinton by playing golf.
asserted
he → deal → golf
And he dealt with President Bush by talking about baseball.
asserted
he → deal → baseball
Coming downstairs from the residence just before 8:30 a.m., he walked into the ground-floor living room to greet the new premier of Saskatchewan, Lorne Calvert.
asserted
he → come → Saskatchewan
They’d never met and were scheduled to talk about farm aid.
asserted
They → meet → aid
But after the usual pleasantries, their meeting was cut short by an aide coming into the room to tell Chrétien that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.
asserted
plane → cut → York
Like so many people that morning, Chrétien thought, it must have been a small plane flown by a pilot who didn’t know what he was doing.
asserted
he → think → what
Then the second plane hit.
asserted
plane → hit → ?
Calvert made his exit and Chrétien went to his ground-floor office to assess the situation.
asserted
Chrétien → make → situation
He and his aides sat and watched CNN, until he decided he was going to phone George Bush to express Canada’s sympathy and support.
asserted
he → sit → sympathy
His aides talked him out of it.
asserted
aides → talk → it
They convinced Chrétien there would be time for that tomorrow.
asserted
They → convince → that
Right now, they said, the president is busy.
asserted
president → say → ?
Your call will only get in the way.
asserted
call → get → way
Chrétien agreed and, instead, tried to reach the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Paul Cellucci.
asserted
Chrétien → agree → Canada
He’d been governor of Massachusetts when George Bush sent him to Ottawa.
asserted
Bush → send → Ottawa
But that morning, Cellucci was on a plane heading back to Ottawa from Winnipeg.
asserted
Cellucci → head → Winnipeg
The prime minister eventually got the deputy chief of mission on the phone and assured him that Canada was prepared to do whatever needed to be done.
asserted
whatever → get → him
When they hung up, Chrétien admitted that while the offer stood, there actually wasn’t much Canada could do.
uncertain
Canada → hang → ?
Little did he know.
asserted
he → know → ?
Reaching his cabinet wasn’t easy.
asserted
Reaching → reach → cabinet
They were spread out across the country, with some outside the country, in an era when email and smartphones weren’t plentiful.
asserted
email → spread → era
Chrétien and his staff had mobile phones, clumsy early versions that, they often complained, didn’t work very well.
asserted
they → have → phones
So for the rest of the morning they stayed where they were, contacting the few people they could while watching on television as events unfolded in the States.
uncertain
events → stay → States
They kept trying to convince Chrétien to leave the residence and go to a safer place.
asserted
They → keep → place
Chrétien refused.
asserted
Chrétien → refuse → ?
They tried again a little while later.
asserted
They → try → ?
He refused a second time, and then a third.
asserted
He → refuse → ?
The Mounties pressed him whenever they could, genuinely concerned that he might not be safe.
uncertain
he → press → him
After all, no one knew if the terrorists were heading north of the border.
asserted
terrorists → know → border
What Chrétien didn’t mention to his security detail, or anyone else at the time, was that he worried about the same thing.
asserted
he → mention → thing
One terrorist in particular concerned him greatly.
asserted
terrorist → concern → him
Now he began phoning everyone he could think of to ask if anyone knew about any possible ties between the terrorists in New York and the one that worried him, Ahmed Ressam.
uncertain
that → begin → him
If it turned out that Ressam had somehow been involved, this would not just be Jean Chrétien’s worst nightmare, it could be Canada’s as well.
uncertain
it → turn → ?
…and 206 more, not listed.
The Aporia
