Ash and Honor

Publishing for the 25th anniversary of 9/11: A never-before-told account of the military, national security, and aviation response to the devastating attacks against the United States Ash and Honor is a masterclass of narrative journalism, putting into a shocking new context what really happened on September 11, 2001. Investigative journalist Jeffrey Robinson weaves together the stories of more than 60 eye-witnesses to history, many of whom have never spoken publicly. The pilot in the cockpit of what was possibly the fifth plane; the pilots of the fighter jets on a suicide mission to stop the attack; the pilot of Air Force One, facing a direct threat to the plane, who told himself, Time to be Tom Cruise. Officials in a bunker five stories below the White House, where an illegal order was made to shoot down a civilian passenger jet; in a tense meeting in the National Military Command Centres top-secret Air Threat Conference; and in NORADs undergr