They say it's one of those times you'll never forget where you were, like the Kennedy assassination. When the second plane hit the World Trade center I was standing in the Sit Room, watching it on the widescreen Tv in the operations center, along with Dr. Rice and the rest of the senior staffers who were still there. I couldn't believe what was happening; yet there it was right in front of my very eyes. Nearby this time the words "Al-Qaida" started flowing from the mouths of people who would know about them, and it was painfully positive that we were in the midst of a weighty terrorist attack.
I heard the phone at Wwd ringing about twenty feet from where I was standing, so I went back to my desk and answered it. It was the first and only conference call I participated in at the White House, and it was Tim calling from home along with Raymond and Pam, the Deputy Director of Records, who was in the Eeob office with Raymond. Tim asked me if everything was Ok and I told him I was fine. He said that this was a real emergency, and that if it got authentically bad I shouldn't stay. We hung up and I sat at my desk trying to wrap my mind Nearby what was happening. It was surely real, and I had no idea what was still to come.
Widescreen Monitor
A few minutes later I checked my email, and there was something from the Nsc's menagerial office that had been copied from the general White House email system. Every person at the Nsc was attached to a classified computer network, and part of that was a classified email principles on which the vast majority of our business was conducted. We also had unclassified email way straight through the White House system, but unless I was emailing a friend or relative from that account, I normally only checked my classified email during the day. When I opened the email from admin what I read was unexpected, to say the least. Incommunicable service had ordered an evacuation of the White House complex, which included the White House, Eeob and Treasury Department, because the White House was a possible target for the other hijacked planes still out there. Seconds later I saw the Exec Sec secretaries, purses in hand, hurrying out of the White House without saying a word to me. Should I go, too? My job didn't authentically put in order me to do anything in a situation like this, but I knew how the Sit Room worked and that I would be able to find some way to help. I still don't know why I never left; it wasn't a known decision and I don't remember even seriously inspecting the possibility of leaving at a occasion like that.
A few weeks later I found out at a Incommunicable service briefing that by the time the evacuation order was given, the White House would have only had about two minutes before impact, so who knows if leaving would have even made a discrepancy if it was authentically attacked.
Instead, the plane we feared was heading for the White House crashed into the Pentagon, less than a mile from my apartment and my daily Metro destination going to and from work. Almost immediately, reports of other attacks beginning filtering into the Sit Room. A car bomb exploded at the State Department. A plane crashed into Camp David. A plane crashed into Site R. A plane is down in Kentucky, or Ohio, or Pennsylvania. I walked straight through the operations center to the communications area of the Sit Room, which was manned by enlisted communications specialists from some branches of the military. I asked if there was anything I could do to help and was told that we needed to confirm that we could impart with other government agencies, then I was assigned the task of sending out a reply request to the State Department, Pentagon, Cia, Nsa, Coast Guard, Dia, and some other departments. Thankfully, they all replied and we at least had some solace in knowing that the reports we had received of other explosions were wrong.
Sometime between the Pentagon attack and the final plane going down in Pennsylvania, I took a quick bathroom break and had to leave the Sit Room for a couple of minutes. A lot of thoughts go straight through your head when all of a sudden you're alone in a situation like that, and I tried to block them out as best I could. But it was that occasion when I returned to the Sit Room that will stay with me forever. I walked past my desk and back into the operations center, and just stopped to watch what was taking place. Duty officers and Nsc staffers on all the derive phones, the counter-terrorism staff in the second Sit Room conference room, smoking buildings on the Tv. There were still planes in the air, and it was then that I realized I might not make it home alive. I can't impart the feeling, one of sheer terror and then acceptance, like having a loaded gun pointed between your eyes and knowing that that bullet is your fate. There was nothing I could do to stop anything was next, and if I was going to die that day I wanted to keep myself busy until the end.
I remember Almost everything that happened, but I've always had a qoute with the exact timeline of how things went down. It's probably because so much was taking place simultaneously and I wasn't paying concentration to the clock. One of the most jarring sights that day was that of the Vice President being hustled straight through the Sit Room by his Incommunicable service detail straight through a back exit that led to the President's accident Operations center (Peoc), a bunker under the White House that would be safer than the Sit Room if the White House was a target, yet enjoyed the same communications and brain that came into the Sit Room itself. Dr. Rice joined the Vice President in the Peoc, along with Karen Hughes and some others who walked by me on their way to relative safety. That part of it never bothered me, because as one of the lowest-level staffers in the Nsc I knew that I was expendable were anything truly tragic to happen and I suitable that.
All told, there were about forty people in the Sit Room that day, most of who belonged there less than I did. At least I worked down there and was cleared for everything coming in. The people from other West Wing offices should have been long gone, along with the others who evacuated earlier, and spent the majority of their day sitting in the conference room watching the news. The rest of us had one eye glued to the Tv and one eye on anything else we were doing.
I spent the rest of my day with the communicators and knew early on that we should expect more attacks; they ended up not happening, but that was puny consolation when all was said and done. I busied myself collecting letters of condolement from foreign governments that had begun pouring in and anything else the communicators needed me to do. I soon got a new job: keep an open line with Barksdale Afb in Louisiana, where the President was heading after spending the morning in Florida. I picked up a derive phone and called Barksdale, and after that all I had to do to keep the line open was hold the receiver and make sure we didn't get disconnected. Not a tough job, but one that could be crucial if a split-second decision was needed. Once Offutt Afb, Nebraska, was chosen as the President's temporary command center, I hung up with Barksdale and set up a line to Offutt. We were disconnected at some point after Air Force One landed in Omaha, but I was there to rejoinder as soon as the phone rang.
"Sit Room, this is Andy."
"Andy, what are you doing there?" I recognized the voice of Captain Loewer, Usn, the Director the Sit Room and the Nsc representative traveling with the President.
"Hi Capt. Loewer, how are you?" It was a unintelligent query and a reflex that I couldn't stop in time. I fast added, "I'm retention a line open between us and Offutt," which seemed to satisfy her.
I was in the communications area, retention the phone, when the Twin Towers started coming down. Towers of metal and glass had come to be towers of smoke; it took a few seconds to register what had just happened, but once I did I felt sick. How many people were in there? How many workers? How many rescuers? I had grown up on Long Island and the Twin Towers were a landmark I would spot every time I went into or near the city, and now they were gone. Forever. Along with thousands of people, men and women going about their daily lives who were callously murdered by an enemy the public would learn to fear.
Everyone always talks about the World Trade center and the brave souls who fought over the Pennsylvania countryside, but they seem to forget about the smoldering hole in the side of the Pentagon that killed Almost two hundred and wounded many others. I was reminded every day on my way to and from work, when the bus to the Metro passed the side of the Pentagon that was struck.
The shoot down order had been given Nearby the time the Towers collapsed, and those of us in the communications area saw and heard the Vice President receive that order. There was a bank of small Tv screens in the communications part of the Sit Room that were monitored when meetings took place to ensure video and audio quality, and since the President and Vice President were videoconferencing, their conversations passed straight through the Sit Room. It was an startling order: soldiery jets authorized to shoot down commercial airliners. The purpose was to save lives, but I couldn't fantasize sitting in the cockpit of an F-16 and being ordered to target a 200-seat passenger plane.
There was only one time that day when I feared the shoot down order would lead to casualties. A helicopter was flying over the Pentagon, and the Nsc Senior Director for Defensewas on the phone with the Pentagon command center yelling at them to get the chopper down. Shoot it down if necessary. It turned out that the helicopter belonged to one of the local news channels and it soon backed away from the restricted airspace over the Pentagon, maybe rescue the lives of those on board.
Some time that morning I met up with Sarah, an assistant to one of the Deputy Chiefs of Staff and one of those West Wingers that shouldn't have been there. We took a few minutes to make a list of Every person in the Sit Room; I wrote the names of the Nsc and Sit Room staffers and she noted the others, and then sent it from my unclassified email catalogue to a friend of hers who worked exterior the White House. I tried not to think about the surmise for doing this, but it was positive that there needed to be a record of who was there in case the worst happened.
While I was at my desk sending the email, my boss Tim called again. He was surprised to hear me rejoinder the phone and asked if they were letting people back into the complex. I told him I didn't think so but that I had never left, and the only latecomers I saw were Sit Room Duty Officers who were off-duty at the time of the attacks and rushed in to help out; I was told that some of them had gotten pulled over for speeding on the way there but were immediately let go once they showed the police their White House credentials.
By this time, the Sit Room had quieted down but was still filled with tension, Every person waiting for the next shoe to drop. Unknown to me the amazingly dedicated men and women of the White House Mess, U.S. Navy cooks, had also ignored the evacuation order. They buzzed the Sit Room door and were let in, pushing carts filled with burgers, sandwiches, chips and drinks. It was early afternoon, but I felt like I had been there for days. Time authentically does slow down during moments of crisis, and that day seemed like it would never end. Grateful for something to eat, most people hungrily grabbed anything they could and had a quick lunch. I tried, but after half a sandwich I couldn't eat and decided that a few sodas would have adequate caffeine to get me straight through the rest of the day. I was also authentically craving a cigarette. I left the Sit Room and, after a quick stop at the men's room, stepped out of the West Wing onto West menagerial Avenue.
Silence. Dead silence. On a general weekday, the closed-off street between the White House and the Eeob was populated with employees going from one construction to another, or exterior for a break or quick conversation. I had also worked fullness of weekends and holidays when few people were Nearby and even fewer cars were parked on West Executive. Those days, I would normally see Incommunicable service agents walking Nearby and the random staffer taking care of some leftover work, and though quiet, the complicated still seemed alive. Not on September 11th. Dead silence. Not a bird in a tree or a squirrel running by was making any noise, and as I looked across West menagerial at the Eeob I saw the black smoke from the Pentagon rising above the Potomac River.
Inside the Situation Room on 9-11 (Part 2 of 3)