As we get closer to the 20th anniversary of 9/11 we will become more and more inundated with 9/11 documentaries and tributes. One of the biggest to be release is 9/11: Inside the President’s War Room, a look at how the events occurred to George W. Bush and his staff on that day. The documentary only really covers the day and a few days afterwards and that is what makes it a great and insightful watch.
9/11: Inside the President’s War Room is made by Apple TV+ and you can currently watch it on BBC. The documentary takes you behind the scenes with footage, photographs and interviews surrounding the president on the day of the attacks. It is a side of the story that obviously doesn’t get as much highlight as the actual event unfolding in New York. What the documentary does though is inform the viewer of how crucial some decisions were and how difficult it was for the President and his staff on 9/11.
I think outside of the US everyone has one kind of way of seeing George W. Bush and it probably isn’t great. We simply see whatever is presented on the news in front of us and not the everyday actions of the president at the time. It wasn’t like nowadays where you can simply see anything and everything online and that is even a point which the documentary goes into.
Inside the President’s War Room highlights the fact that the president had very poor technology around him and nothing near him that could’ve helped with making crucial decisions or even finding out information. A whole portion of the documentary is centred around Air Force One at the time and how in order to find out any information they had to fly over cities to capture the signal from TV antennas in order to get the slightest picture of the news. Overall a lot of the events of the documentary are astonishing and hopefully fixed now.
Its small details like that which I love in documentaries, it’s only a single detail but it is so important to the entire day for some of the most important people in the US. The documentary is filled with these small facts and as the documentary keeps going, at one point minute by minute, you begin to understand how crucial and crazy the events occurred for everyone outside of New York as well.
From the President being told about the event whilst in a school classroom to potential danger to Air Force One to grounding every plane in the United States, 9/11: Inside the President’s War Room has it all. It is a fantastic documentary filled with insights and untold stories of what occurred from George W. Bush’s point of view. Bush’s interviews for the documentary are crucial to the documentary’s success and hearing the story from him and not just from a narrator or someone else is what makes it a must-watch documentary. If you’re going to watch any documentary this 9/11 anniversary then it should be 9/11: Inside the President’s War Room because there simply is nothing like it and some events will stick with you for a long time to come.