Jolie Rouge
09-11-2003, 08:50 PM
I had been around combat and covered terrorist attacks across the world as a foreign correspondent, but I still had to struggle to comprehend September 11 for what it finally represented.
We journalists are accustomed to handling news emergencies, and on that morning we initially went into our emotionally detached, professional reporting mode. I heard about the New York attacks as I was preparing to leave for work with my wife, who is also a veteran journalist. We instantly realized what it could mean for us personally. "See you in six weeks," my wife said as I dropped her off.
I headed straight to my regular post at the Pentagon, knowing my editors at National Public Radio wanted a quick military assessment of what had happened. In a hurried conversation at about 9:30 a.m., a senior defense official told me the two planes that had struck the World Trade Center towers had apparently been hijacked out of Boston, and that in response the Pentagon leadership had mobilized a "crisis action team." I was on the air with that news at the moment a few minutes later when the third plane was crashed into the Pentagon, one wedge away from the press working area (the Pentagon is divided into five sections, or "wedges"). Seated in my radio broadcasting booth, I did not feel or hear the impact, and it was only when I heard the evacuation order over the public address system that I knew something had happened.
More than a terrorist incident
Along with 23,000 other people, I was promptly herded out of the Pentagon and away from the site of the crash. As I left the building through the inner courtyard, I heard a Pentagon police officer referring to "many casualties" over his radio. I could see flames and the black smoke billowing over the roof. Cell phone communication had been interrupted, and my first thought was to find a pay phone, so I could report back to NPR and get in touch with my wife. After making contact through intermediaries, we both turned our attention to our news gathering responsibilities.
But it was a few hours before I understood the extent to which I was observing a pivotal event in the life of my country. Hundreds of journalists, military officers, and other Pentagon workers stood that afternoon staring at the smoking V-shaped gap on the southwest side of the Pentagon where the plane had hit. The damage and the loss was not comparable to what was suffered in New York, but in combination with the targeting of the World Trade Center, the attack on the U.S. military headquarters meant that what had occurred that day was more than a terrorist incident. We knew by then that a fourth hijacked airplane had been headed toward the White House or the United States Capitol. "What you've seen here is a full assault on the United States of America," said Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, the Pentagon spokesman, standing at a gas station across from the burning building.
A short time later, with most streets and roads blocked, I took off walking toward NPR headquarters about four miles away in Washington, D.C. In my pocket were tapes of interviews done outside the Pentagon. I crossed the 14th Street bridge over the Potomac River, from the Pentagon area in Virginia to downtown Washington. The bridge, normally packed with six lanes of traffic, was empty except for occasional police cars. Armed patrol boats slowly cruised the river waters below, something I had never seen before. Walking up 14th Street to the Mall, I was stopped on every corner by military policemen. Armored Humvees were parked at key downtown intersections. The city was quiet, and the streets were largely deserted.
Because of my reporting experience abroad, the atmosphere that afternoon was not unfamiliar. Walking through downtown Washington reminded me of being in Sarajevo under siege or in Kuwait in 1991 or in Panama City or San Salvador during the days when those cities were combat zones, when the tension was thick and their streets empty except for patrolling soldiers. But this was Washington, D.C., my hometown, where I lived with my family. A few hours earlier it had been a normal, busy weekday morning. Admiral Quigley's comment stuck in my mind: Some one had launched a full assault on the United States of America, my own country, threatening me and my family and community.
Historians said nothing comparable had happened in this country since 1814, when the British Army invaded Washington and burned the White House during the third phase of the War of 1812. Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, but that was a strike on an American military base more than two thousand miles from the U.S. mainland. The September 11 attacks were designed as a multi-pronged, violent effort to bring down key U.S. facilities in the nation's political and financial capitals. The assault shook the country to its core, ending a long era when, at least to its citizens, the United States had seemed beyond the reach of its enemies.
The initial reaction of U.S. citizens was to rally in solidarity as a single people. But the display of unity and patriotism did not temper the nation's loss of innocence on September 11, the day Americans realized they could no longer take the protection of their homeland for granted. The luxury of life in the U.S.A. had only partly been about material comfort. Just as important was the political comfort Americans enjoyed as a people generally unworried about their own security. September 11 made clear that the civil liberties U.S. citizens considered theirs by birthright--the freedoms to speak, dress, travel, and associate almost any way they want--and the traditions of openness and tolerance that characterize American society have rested, to an extent we may not have realized, on a national sense of safety. After September 11, the United States would confront difficult choices it had theretofore managed largely to avoid.
We journalists are accustomed to handling news emergencies, and on that morning we initially went into our emotionally detached, professional reporting mode. I heard about the New York attacks as I was preparing to leave for work with my wife, who is also a veteran journalist. We instantly realized what it could mean for us personally. "See you in six weeks," my wife said as I dropped her off.
I headed straight to my regular post at the Pentagon, knowing my editors at National Public Radio wanted a quick military assessment of what had happened. In a hurried conversation at about 9:30 a.m., a senior defense official told me the two planes that had struck the World Trade Center towers had apparently been hijacked out of Boston, and that in response the Pentagon leadership had mobilized a "crisis action team." I was on the air with that news at the moment a few minutes later when the third plane was crashed into the Pentagon, one wedge away from the press working area (the Pentagon is divided into five sections, or "wedges"). Seated in my radio broadcasting booth, I did not feel or hear the impact, and it was only when I heard the evacuation order over the public address system that I knew something had happened.
More than a terrorist incident
Along with 23,000 other people, I was promptly herded out of the Pentagon and away from the site of the crash. As I left the building through the inner courtyard, I heard a Pentagon police officer referring to "many casualties" over his radio. I could see flames and the black smoke billowing over the roof. Cell phone communication had been interrupted, and my first thought was to find a pay phone, so I could report back to NPR and get in touch with my wife. After making contact through intermediaries, we both turned our attention to our news gathering responsibilities.
But it was a few hours before I understood the extent to which I was observing a pivotal event in the life of my country. Hundreds of journalists, military officers, and other Pentagon workers stood that afternoon staring at the smoking V-shaped gap on the southwest side of the Pentagon where the plane had hit. The damage and the loss was not comparable to what was suffered in New York, but in combination with the targeting of the World Trade Center, the attack on the U.S. military headquarters meant that what had occurred that day was more than a terrorist incident. We knew by then that a fourth hijacked airplane had been headed toward the White House or the United States Capitol. "What you've seen here is a full assault on the United States of America," said Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, the Pentagon spokesman, standing at a gas station across from the burning building.
A short time later, with most streets and roads blocked, I took off walking toward NPR headquarters about four miles away in Washington, D.C. In my pocket were tapes of interviews done outside the Pentagon. I crossed the 14th Street bridge over the Potomac River, from the Pentagon area in Virginia to downtown Washington. The bridge, normally packed with six lanes of traffic, was empty except for occasional police cars. Armed patrol boats slowly cruised the river waters below, something I had never seen before. Walking up 14th Street to the Mall, I was stopped on every corner by military policemen. Armored Humvees were parked at key downtown intersections. The city was quiet, and the streets were largely deserted.
Because of my reporting experience abroad, the atmosphere that afternoon was not unfamiliar. Walking through downtown Washington reminded me of being in Sarajevo under siege or in Kuwait in 1991 or in Panama City or San Salvador during the days when those cities were combat zones, when the tension was thick and their streets empty except for patrolling soldiers. But this was Washington, D.C., my hometown, where I lived with my family. A few hours earlier it had been a normal, busy weekday morning. Admiral Quigley's comment stuck in my mind: Some one had launched a full assault on the United States of America, my own country, threatening me and my family and community.
Historians said nothing comparable had happened in this country since 1814, when the British Army invaded Washington and burned the White House during the third phase of the War of 1812. Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, but that was a strike on an American military base more than two thousand miles from the U.S. mainland. The September 11 attacks were designed as a multi-pronged, violent effort to bring down key U.S. facilities in the nation's political and financial capitals. The assault shook the country to its core, ending a long era when, at least to its citizens, the United States had seemed beyond the reach of its enemies.
The initial reaction of U.S. citizens was to rally in solidarity as a single people. But the display of unity and patriotism did not temper the nation's loss of innocence on September 11, the day Americans realized they could no longer take the protection of their homeland for granted. The luxury of life in the U.S.A. had only partly been about material comfort. Just as important was the political comfort Americans enjoyed as a people generally unworried about their own security. September 11 made clear that the civil liberties U.S. citizens considered theirs by birthright--the freedoms to speak, dress, travel, and associate almost any way they want--and the traditions of openness and tolerance that characterize American society have rested, to an extent we may not have realized, on a national sense of safety. After September 11, the United States would confront difficult choices it had theretofore managed largely to avoid.