Article content

With fears of a sniper on the tarmac and a plane descending towards it, Air Force One was flying in a random pattern to avoid attack with an armed guard posted out front of the cockpit.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or 'Somebody's going to pay': George W. Bush's press secretary relives 9/11 in a day-long series of tweets Back to video

“We’re going to find out who did this and we’re going to kick their ass,” U.S. President George W. Bush said from his cabin on the plane — according to one of dozens of tweets written Thursday by former White House press secretary to commemorate the 13th anniversary of 9/11. “Somebody is going to pay for it,” Bush reportedly said later.

Taken together, Ari Fleischer’s tweets and photos provide an extensive play-by-play from inside the Bush brain trust on the day of the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

“I got a page on my pager (we didn’t have blackberries then and the iPhone hadn’t been invented), telling me a plane hit 9/11,” reads one of Mr. Fleischer’s posts, which begin with President Bush reading to schoolchildren while news of the terrorist attack broke.

Many of the tweets come from Mr. Fleischer’s notes taken throughout that day.

“I have some 6 pages of notes on a legal pad,” he tweeted Thursday. “The originals are in a bank vault now.”

Fleischer, who preluded the 9/11 “live tweeting” with several critical posts about U.S. President Barack Obama’s handling of the ISIS terrorist threat, currently runs a communications company that works with sporting organizations and athletes.

Read Mr. Fleischer’s tweets: