The terrorists' message threatening Air Force One was transmitted in that day's top-secret White House code words. As the clock ticked away, the Secret Service reached a frightening conclusion: The terrorists had obtained the White House code and a whole set of top-secret signals.
This made it possible for a hostile force to pinpoint the exact position of Air Force One, its destination and its classified procedures. In fact, the hijackers were picking up and deciphering the presidential plane's incoming and outgoing transmissions.
The discovery shocked everyone in the president's emergency operations center – Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta. Their first question was: How did the terrorists access top-secret White House codes and procedures? Is there a mole, or more than one enemy spy in the White House, the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA or the Federal Aviation Administration?
Intelligence and counter-terror sources report that, while rescuers in New York and Washington were sifting through rubble inch by inch, US government experts were changing codes one-by-one – and even more difficult, replacing procedures and methods of encryption. The nagging question of a mole in the highest reaches of the U.S. government and intelligence community – with direct or indirect links with bin Laden – remains. Since no single individual has access to every top-level code at any given time – a single mole would not answer the case; it would have to be a large, widely spread number. U.S. experts do not believe bin Laden was capable of infiltrating double agents into the heart of the U.S. administration on a large scale.