For 'horrible moment,' Bush White House thought US military shot down Flight 93

Former President George W. Bush discussed his memories of 9/11 with his former secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks this week.

Bush and Rice said they both remember sitting in a bunker in the hours after the attacks, coordinating the U.S. domestic response. Rice recounted how they were working to ground civilian flights across the country and said at one point they thought the U.S. military had shot down United Airlines Flight 93.

"I do want to say one thing to Gen. [Daniel] Caine, because something in what you said, our paths crossed in a strange way. So you mentioned that you heard that as the president, you have to understand the hard decisions that this man had to make, just like that. And one of them was what would happen if a plane was not properly identifying itself, because every plane had become a missile," Rice said.

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President George W. Bush discusses creating the Department of Homeland Security following 9/11. (Getty Images)

"And so we were trying to land, I remember Norm Mineta, the transportation secretary, trying to land planes on a legal pad, yellow pad, legal pad. But you'd given the order through the vice president that should a plane not squawk properly, it should be shot down. Gen. Caine, we thought initially, standing in that bunker, that Flight 93 had been shot down," she continued.

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"Yeah, I thought it was the same thing," Bush said.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joins "Special Report" for an interview on June 26, 2025. (Fox News/Special Report)

"And there was this horrible moment where the vice president kept trying to get confirmation as to what had happened. And for about 10 minutes we thought we'd shot down a civilian aircraft. And that always, to me, represented just how hard the decisions were that you had to take under a lot of pressure," Rice said.

The event, called, "A Legacy of Service: America at the 25th Anniversary of 9/11," saw Bush host many members of his 2001 administration in Texas.

President George W. Bush, first lady Laura Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne Cheney participate in a moment of silence on the south lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., Sept. 11, 2005, to honor the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. (Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images)

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As part of the 25th anniversary commemoration, Bush painted 16 works of art that "reflect on the courage, sacrifice, and resilience that emerged from one of the most defining moments in American history," that will be displayed at Freedom Hall at the Bush Museum through September.

Fox News' Peter D'Abrosca contributed to this report.