If I may switch gears a bit, the Pentagon, like lower Manhattan, was a rough place to be 23 years ago. My XO walked into my office to report the second aircraft had hit the second tower, and I had just spoken to Jack Keane who was letting me know that the Army was fully manning the operations center. I was about to call the staff leads of the Senate and House Armed Service Committees to inform them that our assessment was that this was obviously a terrorist event and that we would pass along information as we had it. At that moment the AA flight from Dulles hit the Pentagon. It was around the corner from my legislative liaison team, and we were fortunate to only suffer only from falling ceiling tiles and dense smoke. The Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel and his folks were struck directly. Many were close colleagues.
We helped people out of that wing of the building for the next several hours. Many were horribly burned.
By late afternoon, we had a pretty good understanding of what happened and any potential other threats. At Jack Keane's request, I took a young major from the G2 over to the Hill around dusk to brief Trent Lott and the rest of the House and Senate leadership about what we knew. They had gathered in a conference room in the Capitol Police headquarters building. In typical Donald Rumsfeld fashion, he had refused to consult with the Congressional Leadership. They had then contacted General Keane who was the Army Vice Chief at that time.
It was fascinating to watch the Congressional Leadership, without a hint of political bias, go through the decision process to insure the government would be open for business the next day.
Cell and landline communications were a mess most of the day. One of my team finally was able to get through to his spouse around mid-afternoon who was then able to let my spouse know that we were fine.
As I say, it was an unpleasant day.
