As a native New Yorker, the Twin Towers were a familiar and comforting daily sight, a marker of identity as much as a useful way to get one’s bearings from anywhere in the City with a clear sight-line. Terrorism came to American soil that day in a manner we were not expecting – or prepared for.įor me, September 11 was very personal. An attack by a nation-state would have been more predictable, and in a perverse way, more orderly, than what we were dealing with on September 11. We knew quickly that Al-Qaeda was responsible, but we didn’t have a clear picture of how enduring or severe the attacks would be. National Command Authority (military-speak for the President) was diverted and hard to reach, as were Agency and department heads, who were being moved to secure locations. and of explosions in other major American cities. There were reports of car bombs in Washington, D.C. American Airlines flight 77 had crashed into the Pentagon, and United Airlines flight 93 crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.Īmerica was under attack, but information was sketchy. Less than an hour later, the South Tower collapsed, followed by the North Tower. I had not seen American Airlines flight 11 crash into the North Tower almost 20 minutes earlier, but had been called almost as soon as it happened. At just after 9 am on September 11, 2001, I watched United Airlines flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
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