Within an hour after the first passenger jet hit the World Trade Center, Vice President Dick Cheney told President Bush to stay away from Washington, ordered the Congressional leadership evacuated, dispersed cabinet members to emergency shelters and urged Mr. Bush to direct fighter jets to shoot down any rogue airliner that threatened the Capitol or White House.

As he recounted on television today how he was in constant contact with Mr. Bush on Air Force One, Mr. Cheney, who was in the White House when the attacks occurred, said he also marshaled top administration aides in a secure underground bunker linked to the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense, State and Justice Departments, and effectively ran the government in Mr. Bush's absence. The president was in Florida on Tuesday and returned to the White House that evening.

''I was in a position to be able to see all the stuff coming in, receive reports and then make decisions in terms of acting with it,'' Mr. Cheney said on NBC's ''Meet the Press'' in his first public remarks since the attacks.

When Secret Service agents urged Mr. Cheney to evacuate the White House bunker, he refused to budge. ''I didn't want to leave the node we'd established there,'' Mr. Cheney said. ''If I'd have left, gotten on a helicopter and launched out of the White House, all of that would have been broken down.''