cal Osama bin Laden, took control of four American
aircraft and plunged two of them into the World Trade
Center buildings complex in New York City and one
into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.; a fourth was
brought down in a field in Pennsylvania when pas-
sengers on board attempted to wrest control from the
hijackers. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the worst
terrorist attack ever on the American homeland. Bin
Laden hid in Afghanistan under the protection of its
rulers, a fundamentalist Muslim group known as the
Taliban (“Students of Islam”), and their leader, Mullah
Mohammad Omar, a radical Islamic scholar. President
George W. Bush demanded that bin Laden be turned
over to American authorities; when the Taliban refused,
he ordered airstrikes on al-Qaeda and Taliban targets
inside Afghanistan and initiated Operation Enduring
Freedom, the invasion of Afghanistan. Franks, as com-
mander of CENTCOM, became the lead general of
the operation, overseeing the complete rout of Taliban
forces, with the assistance of Afghan fighters from the
anti-Taliban Northern Alliance troops.
Along with Franks, the war was run by General
Richard Myers, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. Franks’s
main task was to coordinate the military response, gath-
ering forces in the region and deciding on strategy. Be-
cause of computers and satellite technology, he was able
to run the operation from Fort MacDill in Florida, al-
though on several occasions he went into the war theater
to coordinate maneuvers. Franks became the public face
of Operation Enduring Freedom, holding near-daily
press conferences to update the world on how the war
was going. He had the complete confidence of his su-
perior, Secretary Rumsfeld, who called him “a wise and
inspiring commander.” Nevertheless, he was criticized
in some quarters for his style and compared unfavorably
to one of his predecessors as CENTCOM commander,
Norman schWarzkoPf. But he sidestepped the criti-General Tommy Franks speaks with the media during the invasion of Iraq
FRAnkS, tommy RAy