Twenty years ago, at 9.03am, the second of four hijacked planes hit the South tower of the World Trade Centre in New York.
America was under attack. President George W. Bush was sitting in front of a classroom of seven year-olds in Florida. Members of the President’s security detail thought that the next plane could be aimed at them.
This feature-length documentary tells the definitive timeline story of the Presidency through 12 hours of that momentous day - as it changed him, changed America, and changed the world - told with direct testimony from those in power at the time: President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell and numerous other senior White House staff.
It begins with blue-sky innocence, as a relatively new President orientates himself towards a domestic agenda and it ends as the machinery of Government flexes and responds to the threat and begins to contemplate the possibility of war. The events of that day led to two decades of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As America and its allies now withdraw from Afghanistan and the Taliban resume control, this is the story of how it all began.
Airs Tuesday 31st August at 8:30pm on BBC One and iPlayer.