In 2001, a United Airlines Boeing 757 jetliner designated Flight 93, bound from Newark International Airport to Tokyo by way of San Francisco, is hijacked by several members of the terrorist group Al Qaeda and diverted toward Washington, D.C. Cell phone calls from the passengers to loved ones indicate that the terrorists plan to deliberately crash the plane into the White House or the Capitol. The plane never reaches Washington. Instead, it crashes in an empty field just outside the town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, 150 miles northwest of the U.S. capital. Investigators will later determine that the passengers and crew of the doomed plane had attempted to seize control of it from the terrorists, and that their captors had crashed the plane in Pennsylvania to prevent that from occurring. All 44 passengers are killed, along with the hijackers.Flight 93 by Eric LippsThe government will also learn, through interrogation of the Al Qaeda operatives arrested prior to the hijacking, that the seizure of Flight 93 was part of a much larger plan targeting not only the White House or Capitol but also the Pentagon and both towers of New York City's World Trade Center. The other planned hijackings had been aborted when airport security was tightened in August in response to warnings from intelligence operatives; the decision to proceed with what became the Flight 93 hijacking had been made only at the last minute, when Qaeda operatives found a hole in Newark International's newly tightened security screening.

President Gore, who had been visiting a school in Florida when news of the terrorist takeover and crash of Flight 93 reached him, cuts short his trip and returns immediately to Washington. FAA and FBI investigators are immediately dispatched to the crash site. Based on reports of what passengers had said via cell phone about the terrorists' objective, the Secret Service details of both the President and the Vice-President are placed on heightened alert, as part of a general security alert in Washington. Suggestions that the nation's two top elected officials go into hiding for their protection are, however, rejected. 'I cannot lead this nation from some fortress hidden in some undisclosed location,' explains the President. 'That's not how we do things in America. And if the day comes when that's how we have to do things, this country won't be America anymore.'

In New York, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is not yet aware that his city was being targeted by the same people who brought down Flight 93. However, business operations in the World Trade Center and throughout the five boroughs slow down as distracted workers listen for fresh news of the tragedy.