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Mr Bush convened the team the next day. “We need to be patient. We’ve got a good plan. Be steady. Don’t let the press panic us. Be confident and patient. It’s all going to work.”

“Rice believed it was one of the most important moments in the war,” Mr Woodward writes. Mr Bush also refused to leave the White House despite daily intelligence briefings pointing to an imminent terrorist strike on the building.

“Those bastards are going to find me exactly here,” he said. “And if they get me, they are going to get me right here.”

One of the book’s most fascinating insights was the constraining legacy on modern US war plans by the American hostage crises in Iran and Lebanon that beset the Carter and Reagan Administrations.

No bombing could start in Afghanistan until airborne combat search-and-rescue teams were in place to rescue any downed pilots. That meant getting the acquiescence of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to the north of Afghanistan, which initially refused to give permission for the use of their air bases. That delayed the first airstrikes by at least two weeks.

Mr Bush did not just face pressure in Afghanistan. On October 30, last year, he was about to throw the ceremonial first pitch at a World Series baseball game before 15,000 fans in the New York Yankees stadium. He told the Yankees shortstop that he planned to pitch from the base of the pitcher’s mound, rather than on top of it from where the professionals throw, because it would be a shorter and easier distance. He was told that if he threw from the base of the mound, he would be booed.

“Do you think they would really boo me, a wartime President?” Mr Bush asked. “Yeah, this is New York.” The President said that he would throw from the top of the mound.

“And don’t forget, Mr President, if you bounce it, they’ll boo you.” He threw a perfect pitch and the stadium erupted.

“Watching from owner George Steinbrenner’s box, Karl Rove (Mr Bush’s political strategist) thought: ‘This is like being at a Nazi rally’.”

Mr Woodward also gives details of the first CIA team, codenamed Jawbreaker, that was sent into Afghanistan. “Gary”, the chief agent, arrived in a helicopter with nearly £2 million in cash “between his legs in a large strapped metal suitcase”.

The CIA bought off more Taleban than it killed, with $70 million in bribes, a figure Mr Bush declared a bargain.

But the CIA had it tough: when targeting US bombing strikes they had to use old Russian maps, translating the co-ordinates to English maps with pencils and rulers.

The road from Watergate

Bob Woodward became one of America’s most celebrated journalists after breaking the Watergate scandal with his colleague Carl Bernstein the ultimately destroyed the presidency of Richard Nixon.

The two Washington Post reporters later described the affair, which brought down Richard Nixon, in the 1974 book All the President’s Men. In 1976 it was made into a film, in which Woodward was played by Robert Redford. He has become one of the most influential journalists of his generation and a man to whom the powerful now open their doors. Assistant managing editor at The Washington Post, Woodward has authored or co-authored eight top non-fiction bestsellers, including books on the Clinton presidency, US leadership during the Gulf War, the Hollywood drug culture, the Supreme Court, and the Federal Reserve.

Woodward's bestsellers

• The Final Days — With Carl Bernstein
• The Man who would be President: Dan Quayle — With David S. Broder
• Wired: The short life and fast times of John Belushi — With Scott Armstrong
• The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court — With Scott Armstrong
• Veil: The secret wars of the CIA, 1981-1987
• All the President’s Men — With Carl Bernstein
• The Choice
• The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House
• Shadow: Five presidents and the legacy of Watergate
• Maestro: Greenspan’s Fed and the American boom
• Bush at War
• Source: Nielsen Bookscan

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