Where were you on the morning of 9-11?

[DoYouEverWonder]

Remember those old Perry Mason movies? He would get the witness on the stand and the all time favorite question would be asked – Where were you on the night of the July 4th?

Unfortunately, Perry Mason is dead and no one in Congress or the DOJ seems to be interested in a real 9-11 investigation. A real investigation where the key witnesses, Bush and his top administration officials, would all be under oath and in a public forum be forced to answer the question – ‘Where were you on the morning of the September 11th?’

Instead we are left to our own devices and must piece together the answer from the statements they made to the press and to Congress in the days following the attack. Perry would have a field day with the holes in their stories and the contradictions.



That morning the president's key advisers were scattered. Cheney and Rice were at their offices in the West Wing. Rumsfeld was at his office in the Pentagon, meeting with a delegation from Capitol Hill. Powell had just sat down for breakfast with the new president of Peru, Alejandro Toledo, in Lima. Tenet was at breakfast with his old friend and mentor, former senator David Boren (D-Okla.), at the St. Regis Hotel, three blocks from the White House. Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was halfway across the Atlantic on the way to Europe. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was bound for Milwaukee. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, on the job for just a week, was in his office at FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26

George Bush –

Bush's motorcade left for the school at 8:30 a.m. As it was arriving, pagers and cell phones alerted White House aides that a plane had hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Bush remembers senior adviser Karl Rove bringing him the news, saying it appeared to be an accident involving a small, twin-engine plane.

In fact it was American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 out of Boston's Logan International Airport. Based on what he was told, Bush assumed it was an accident.

"This is pilot error," the president recalled saying. "It's unbelievable that somebody would do this." Conferring with Andrew H. Card Jr., his White House chief of staff, Bush said, "The guy must have had a heart attack."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26

On December 4, 2001, Bush was asked, "How did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?" Bush replied, "I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower--the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident. But I was whisked off there. I didn't have much time to think about it." Bush repeated the same story on January 5, 2002, stating, "First of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error, and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake...."

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031006&s=alterman


An aide had just whispered to Miller the news of the first plane crash in New York, but if the President yet knew, his greeting as he got out of the limo did not give it away. He did, however, make an unscheduled stop in a communications room, where he talked with Condoleeza Rice in Washington. He then proceeded into a classroom where 16 second graders, led by their teacher, Sandra K. Daniels, were going to demonstrate their reading skills.

About eight minutes into Daniels’ lesson, the world fell apart. While Mr. Bush continued reading for a few more minutes, the White House staff considered their options and decided the President would return to Washington at once but would first make a brief statement to the crowd—and news cameras—assembled in the media center.

http://www.sarasotamagazine.com/Pages/hotstories/hotstories.asp?136

Dick Cheney –


Cheney was in his West Wing office when he received word that a plane had struck the World Trade Center. He watched TV and hoped that his instincts were wrong.

"It was a clear day, there were no weather problems, and then we saw the second airplane hit in real time," Cheney told CNN's John King in an interview in the vice president's office.

"At that moment, you knew this was a deliberate act. This was a terrorist act."

He called President Bush in Florida and spoke with top aides. Then his door burst open.

"My agent all of a sudden materialized right beside me and said, 'Sir, we have to leave now.' He grabbed me and propelled me out of my office, down the hall, and into the underground shelter in the White House," Cheney said.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/11/ar911.king.cheney/index.html


At about 9:35 a.m., Vice President Cheney was standing by his desk, looking at the TV in the corner. A Secret Service agent said to him, in a tone that brooked no dissent, "Sir, we have to leave now." The agent grabbed the vice president by the back of his belt and aimed him at the door. "They practice this," says Cheney. "You move. Whether you want to be moved or not, you're going. They don't exactly pick you up and carry you. It's more like they propel you forward."

Cheney was unflappable about his hasty exit. As he was swept through the outer office, the vice president reached out and grabbed a magazine, a copy of that week's Economist, off the table. "I'm always carrying something in case I get hung up someplace," Cheney explains. "I've got to have something to read." Down the hallway, past the empty Oval Office, the vice president was rushed into a tunnel outside a bombproof bunker known as the PEOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/newsweek123101.html

Condoleezza Rice -

(After 9:03 a.m.)

National Security Advisor Rice has just started her usual national security staff meeting at 9:00. Shortly after 9:03, an aide hands her a note saying a second plane has hit the WTC. Rice later claims that she thinks, “This is a terrorist attack,” and then leaves the meeting, quickly walking to the White House Situation Room. However, according to counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke, Rice leaves the meeting for Vice President Cheney's office. Clarke meets her there a few minutes later and only then does she go down to the basement bunker.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/searchResults.jsp?searchtext=Rice&events=on&entities=on&articles=on&topics=on&timelines=on&projects=on


As I was trying to find all the principals, the Secret Service came and said, you have to leave now for the bunker. The Vice President's already there. There may be a plane headed for the White House. There are a lot of planes that are in the air that are not responding properly.

In the bunker, the Vice President is joined by Rice and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/abcnews091102.html


About six blocks from the school, a news photographer overheard a radio transmission. Press Secretary Ari Fleischer would be needed
on arrival to discuss reports of some sort of crash. The radio also said that Mr. Bush had a call waiting for him at his holding room in the school from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Mr. Fleischer told the press what Ms. Rice told the president - a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. Nobody knew how serious the situation was.

Bush entered a Booker classroom at about 9 a.m.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0917/p1s1-usgn.html

Donald Rumsfeld


In his Pentagon office, Rumsfeld felt the huge building shudder. He looked out his window, then rushed out toward the smoke, running down the steps and outside where he could see pieces of metal strewn on the ground. Rumsfeld began helping with the rescue efforts until a security agent urged him to get out of the area. "I'm going inside," he said, and took up his post in the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon war room.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26

Q: One is, where were you on September 11th? Were you at the Pentagon when --

Wolfowitz: I was in my office. We'd just had a breakfast with some congressmen in which one of the subjects had been missile defense. And we commented to them that based on what Rumsfeld and I had both seen and worked on the Ballistic Missile Threat Commission, that we were probably in for some nasty surprises over the next ten years.

Q: Oh, my gosh.

Wolfowitz: I can't remember, then there was the sort of question of what kind of nasty surprises? I don't remember exactly which ones we came up with. The point was more just that it's in the nature of surprise that you can't predict what it's going to be.

Q: Do you remember then the impact of the plane into the Pentagon? Or had you first heard stories about New York? What was --

Wolfowitz: We were having a meeting in my office. Someone said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Then we turned on the television and we started seeing the shots of the second plane hitting, and this is the way I remember it. It's a little fuzzy.

Q: Right.

Wolfowitz: There didn't seem to be much to do about it immediately and we went on with whatever the meeting was. Then the whole building shook. I have to confess my first reaction was an earthquake. I didn't put the two things together in my mind. Rumsfeld did instantly.

Q: Did he really?

Wolfowitz: Yeah. He went charging out and down to the site where the plane had hit, which is what I would have done if I'd had my wits about me, which may or may not have been a smart thing to do. But it was, instead the next thing we heard was that there'd been a bomb and the building had to be evacuated. Everyone started streaming out of the building in a quite orderly way. Congregated on the parade ground basically right in front of the Pentagon which would have been about the worst place to have a crowd of a couple of thousand people in that moment if we'd again had our wits about us. But we were out of the building anyway.

http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html

General Myers -

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2001 -- Air Force Gen. Richard Myers wasn't in the Pentagon when terrorists attacked it Sept. 11, but the event was still a nightmare for him.

Watching the events unfold on television was "like watching a bad movie," the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told American Forces Radio and Television Service Oct. 17.

Myers said he was on Capitol Hill that morning in the offices of Georgia Sen. Max Cleland to discuss his confirmation hearing to become chairman. While in an outer office, he said, he saw a television report that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.
"They thought it was a small plane or something like that," Myers said. So the two men went ahead with the office call.
Meanwhile, the second World Trade Center tower was hit by another jet. "Nobody informed us of that," Myers said. "But when we came out, that was obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody said the Pentagon had been hit."

Somebody thrust a cell phone in Myers's hand. Gen. Ralph Eberhart, commander of U.S. Space Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, was on the other end of the line "talking about what was happening and the actions he was going to take."

On Sept. 11, Myers was vice chairman. He was sworn in as chairman Oct. 1. His predecessor, Army Gen. Henry Shelton, was "somewhere over the Atlantic" en route to Europe when the attacks occurred, so it was critical for Myers to get back to the Pentagon.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2001/n10232001_200110236.html

[ixion]

1. It's funny, ya know... I can remember VERY SPECIFICALLY

what I was doing that day.

The inherent conflicts in the narrative(s) mentioned above, though, are so drastic, so pronounced, that it reeks of 'plausible denial'. :grr:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. I do too

I remember that morning in great detail. I was living in Portland, and as a self-employed person, I slept in a bit that morning, and so the main events were over by the time I woke up.

In fact, I first learned about 9/11 on DU, because in those days, the titles of the latest threads were on the front page. I had not turned on the radio or TV before sitting down to check my e-mail.

The last e-mail in my inbox was from a translators' mailing list, and it was posted by an American translator living in Japan and probably watching late-night TV. "Oh my God," it said, "turn on your TV NOW." That's all.

I didn't know what he was referring to, so after ascertaining that there was nothing in my inbox that required immediate attention, I went to DU and saw the headlines about the World Trade Center being destroyed. (Having visited the World Trade Center, I couldn't get my mind around the idea of those two towers being destroyed.)

When I saw the post (I think it was Khephra's :cry: ) that said "It's true. Both towers are gone," I turned on NPR, because I still couldn't believe it. They, too, were talking about the destruction of the WTC, and I still couldn't process it, so I turned on CNN, because I knew that for all their other faults, they would provide pictures.

I was frightened and bewildered and wondered what was coming next.

A phone call came from my church's "phone tree." Our priest, who had grown up in New Jersey and who could see the towers being built from his bedroom window, had called a noon memorial service. I spent the rest of the morning calling people on my branch of the "tree," and got ready to go to the service.

When I came home, I turned on CNN again, and some time during that afternoon, I saw the video of Bush's reaction to the news. Even making allowances for his dim-wittedness, it was a blasé reaction, and from that moment on, I suspected LIHOP.

ON EDIT: Baby boomers remember JFK's assassination in detail, and my parents' generation remembers Pearl Harbor. I used to ask my students what event had the same significance for them, and they could never agree on an answer. I'm convinced that 9/11 will be the "Kennedy assassination" for those who were not yet born in1963 or were too young to remember. What do these three events have in common? Simply that the political and emotional climate of the country changed drastically after them.

[adigal]

107. I can, too, but my husband, a FDNY firefighter at the time

was working in Manhattan that day.

I was told by a custodian at work as I went to get some breakfast in the cafeteria. I ran upstairs, and the secretary told me that my husband had called at 9:15, and that he was being sent down there. I thought , all day, that he was dead. Later, I found out he had told the secretary, who was totally overwhelmed that day with calls and panicking people all around her, that we was NOT yet being sent down there. The ladder company from his firehouse was one of the few who had to stay and protect the area they were in. I'll never know why his company was not chosen to go down there because all of the neighboring companies that went down had lost a lot of guys.

[NV Whino]

2. I was in my office working

and learned of it via an e-mail from France. Then started tracking down info on the Internet. (No TV reception in my area.)

[no_hypocrisy]

3. I was on the couch, drinking coffee, on the phone with my sister-in-law

with the Today Show on low-volume. The first "Special Report" came on ca. 8:45 a.m. I commented to my sister-in-law that this was reminiscent of the plane that flew into the Empire State Building in the 30s or 40s. A minute later, my sister-in-law reported getting a slew of e-mails and that meant something was up and she had to go. Less than 1/2 hour later, the second plane hit. The rest of the day was surreal.

[unhappycamper]

5. I was in Arlington, VA about one mile from the puzzle palace.

Actually heard the explosion.

I was down there turning an application over to a team of Indian programmers.

[EstimatedProphet]

99. I was around there too-see below

I was inside at the time though, so I didn't hear the explosion. But there were plenty of jets.

[leveymg]

118. I was on the GW Parkway 3/4 mile from the Pentagon

headed into work in DC. I was just passing National Airport when the local Pacifica Station interrupted its morning call-in show to report the impact of the second plane at the WTC. As traffic slowed to a crawl, I watched a line of planes setting down, one right after the next, and saw emergency equipment racing up the airport access roads next to the highway. Just as traffic was about to gridlock on the Parkway, I found a gap in the median barrier and turned around. There were practically no cars coming from the dircetion of the Pentagon and the 14th Street Bridge. It was then that the WPFW announcer said that the Pentagon had been hit.

As I drove back toward Alexandria, I called my wife. Driving west toward my house about 20 minutes later, I looked up and saw a single C-130 transport headed in the same direction. It was the only aircraft I saw or heard for several days, other than the occasional booming of fighter jets.

It was just awfully quiet.

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. It is curious that none of the posters here

has more than a single memory of where they were and what they were doing, while *'s staff all have multiple alibis, er, memories.

[DoYouEverWonder]

8. Another commonality

is that most people have appropriate reactions to hearing such horrible news.

While the reactions of Bush & Co are almost inhuman. They all admit to sitting around, most of them watching it on TV, and doing nothing for over a half hour. Rummie and Wolfowitz are the worst, when they heard that a second plane had hit the WTC, they decided to continue with their meeting because there wasn't anything they could do about it anyway? WTF? The Sec of Defense didn't think there was anything for him to do about it?

[leftchick]

17. I agree

their lack of human response is just chilling.

[Olney Blue]

41. And Cheney grabbing an "Economist" magazine to read in the bunker....

:scared:

[Lefty48197]

86. Richard Clarke has some disturbing things to say about the Cheney's

while they acted under pressure. Apparently, Mary kept changing the channel to CNN and away from Clarke and the emergency response team. Dick kept hanging up the open telephone line.

[Olney Blue]

87. Not Fox news? That's interesting.....

[goclark]

100. Their actions were very telling

Wonder why he would hang up the OPEN telephone line?

Wonder why his wife just happened to stop by in the early morning, visiting?

Wonder why she payed more attention to CNN ~ what could have made anything else HER priority?


Tin Hat Time ~ sorry.

[ixion]

10. exactly

sort of makes you go 'hmmmmm' :wtf:

[riderinthestorm]

23. It's inconceivable that these Admin officials can't be specific

So inconceivable that anyone who isn't already in the LIHOP or MIHOP category is being willfully blind.

Especially since they perpetually refer back to 9-11 as such a huge dramatic event that it essentially changed everything for them, and our country.

If they truly, viscerally felt that way, the details of where they were that morning, and what they were doing would be burned into their brains.

Just like it is for the rest of us....

[cassiepriam]

7. My husband was in Wash DC on business, in a hotel next to the Pentagon.

He called me and told me not to turn the TV on, he said that there had been a mishap with a plane, and not to worry.

I had just had a serious fall the week before and was not in good shape, he did not want me to go on melt down.

For the next week Wash was under marshall law and he could not get home. And he was at Ground Zero as far as I was concerned.

I relied on good friends to hold me together, and I did not turn on the TV until he got back home. Then I cried for a week as I watched for the first time the horrific pictures.

[leftchick]

9. Lynn Cheney was in the WH bunker

according to Richard Clarke she was a real pain in the ass too.

[cali]

11. In the garden.

I'd just cut an enormous bouquet of flowers for a sick friend. One of my neighbors came by and told me about it. I had a difficult time grasping what she was saying. Neither of us has a TV, so we went over to another friend's and watched it for about an hour, until we couldn't take it anymore. For the rest of the day, a bunch of us gathered over at yet another friend's place. These people have the most amazing gardens. They field grow antique perennials for a living. We waited until our kids came home on the bus and then had tea and explained it as best we could to them. When I finally returned to my own place, at twilight, I found my flowers wilted in a big pile on the lawn.

[AlCzervik]

12. I remember that entire day down to not eating dinner, i was brushing my

teeth and i had cspan on when they started reporting that something had happened.

[Lady Effingbroke]

13. Still asleep (I had worked late the night before).

My friend called and woke me up and told me to turn on my TV, saying that something terrible had happened in New York...

[Hekate]

150. My daughter phoned and woke us up. There was a tv where she worked

She was working in a medical office at the time, and I think the office manager kept a tv around. They must have turned it on when the news came on the radio.

We live in Calif, and my husband works late, so we sleep late. To this day I can't figure out how far along events in New York were when I staggered to the kitchen tv and turned on CNN. I just remember sagging against the counter and saying "Jesus God" over and over.

After awhile I went out front in my bathrobe to get the newspaper -- my neighbor was just leaving for work and laughingly asked what I was doing up at that hour. I could hardly choke out a reply: "Turn on CNN -- we've been attacked!"

Then it was back to CNN -- making some coffee -- watching those searing images. My daughter prodding me to find out if friends and relations on the East Coast were okay -- making calls -- my friend who worked in DC heard the plane hit the Pentagon -- my sister in Massachussetts said each of her two kids had a friend who had a grandma on one of those planes that flew out of Boston -- my husband's cousin had moved away from New Jersey beforehand... Now my sister's kids have young friends who are soldiers in Iraq, and at least two of them have died there.

Before 9-11-2001 I never watched tv in the daytime. Never. Now it's like an addiction -- I have to check in.

"Jesus God" I don't even pray like that; it just came out of the deepest part of me that day.

Hekate

[Kingshakabobo]

14. Getting ready for work, drinking coffee and watching three TVs...

I was on the phone with my buddy watching tv as the second plane it. I immediately said: it's that f--king Osama bin Laden. My buddy said WHO?

[peacebird]

15. driving across Wilson Bridge I heard news of first plane hitting...

Once at Naval Research Lab we went upstairs to watch the tv news because someone said a second plane had hit.

As we stood there a co-worker said, that plane is too low.... we ran to the windows as the plane hit the Pentagon across the river from us...

I think every person there started dialing their loved ones - Mom - I'm okay... honey don't worry.... or worse the ones who tried to get through and couldn't. Not knowing is the hardest.

I smelled the smoke all morning as we tried to evacuate but the beltway was at a standstill. Watching armed helicopters patrolling the perimeter of the city, swooping up the Potomac.

my husband made it home from DC hours before I did, but then he commutes by bicycle.

[Carni]

19. This is one thing I have been VERY curious about

Hundreds--maybe thousands of people should have seen that plane coming in low over DC and of course New York had already been hit... so isn't it a little suspect (or at the very least totally incompetent) that the Whitehouse couldn't fashion some type of intervention of the plane in DC?

[DoYouEverWonder]

37. Do you mind if I ask

Did you actually see the plane or just the explosion? If you did see the plane, could you describe it? I'd love to know more about what you witnessed.

Thanks?

[benburch]

94. Thank you for posting that.

I have been called every species of liar, right wing shill, Bush operative, and shithead for my insistence that there is nothing suspicious about the damage to the Pentagon whatsoever, and that it was caused by a 757 Jetliner just as reported.

[ronnykmarshall]

16. On a treadmill at the gym

All the TV's were on the news and our local NBC station was monitoring NY1 when the second plane hit. They reporter yell OH FUCK!

I freaked out and ran home to call my best friend in NYC. I didn't tried to go to work that day and turned my car around when I heard on the radio that the North Tower came down.

I'll never forget it. The guy on the local RW station (KFI) said "there's been an explosion in the North Tower and it has collapsed".

[alcibiades_mystery]

18. Lower Manhattan, USA

1st hit: Chambers and Broadway
2nd hit: Wall Street and Broadway
1st Collapse: South Street and Governour's Lane
2nd Collapse: On-ramp, Brooklyn Bridge from FDR Drive

[DoYouEverWonder]

29. Glad you got out of there

As soon as the first plane it, it was definitely time to go, no matter what anyone else was saying.

That's why they call it survival of the fittest.

[helderheid]

20. Was he watching the WTC channel? How did he watch the 1st plane hit when

that footage didn't come out until much later in the day? He repeats that he watched the 1st plane hit twice . I didn't know we had a World Trade Center Channel that happened to be on when he was in the school in Florida.

I will NEVER forget where I was. I had sent my husband off to work and was taking care of my 10 month old when the phone rang. It was my mother telling me to turn on the TV - the second plane had just hit. I sat on the floor holding my son and just sobbed.

[HawkerHurricane]

21. On a warship, between Hawaii and San Diego...

returning from a 6 month deployment overseas along with the rest of the Constellation battle group.

We had 'tigers' on board, civilians getting a week long taste of navy life.
Due to the time difference, it was very early morning when we found out. When we heard that a second plane had hit the second tower, we knew we were under attack... and some were predicting 10,000 dead. We were lucky, the towers were no where near full to capacity, and the evacuation got many people out.

We were not afraid, or in shock... we were angry. We wanted a target. Rumor said it was Saddam. I said that Saddam wasn't that stupid. At least one person told me we should nail him, just on principle. I wonder if he's still saying that. I do know he would not re-enlist.

There were rumors... we would return to Hawaii, drop off the 'tigers', and head back to the middle east. No. We would continue to San Diego, drop off the tigers, but stay out to sea. No.

In the end we returned to San Diego on schedule, pull in... but leaves were cancelled, and full watches were set. That was on September 15th.

[VTMechEngr]

42. I was in a Dynamics class at Virginia Tech

When the class ended at 9:15, I went to a dining hall and got some take out breakfast. I then headed back to my Room and only then did I see an IM window that my buddy has repeated each of the events into. I found out at about 9:45 when still thinking he was joking, I tried to load CNN and the image of the plane striking the tower popped up.

On edit: Supposed to reply to OP. Oops

[riderinthestorm]

22. At home in my pajamas, coffee in hand

I can even remember the clothes I was wearing!

I had gone into the tv room with my youngest daughter to turn on the tv so she could watch Sesame St. while I scanned my emails (it was my day off and it was a routine for both of us).

I turned on the tv probably 5-6 minutes after the first plane had struck and we were glued to the sofa for the next few hours - even my daughter, who was 4 years old at the time.

When the second plane struck we watched it live and I said to my husband, as god is my witness, "that goddamn Bush* is behind this!"

[helderheid]

96. you were smarter than me. But the event woke me up.

[Blue_Roses]

120. I can still remember it so vividly

I had just got my coffee and was watching the morning news. My daughter was in preschool and my baby was just waking up. As I held my child, I sat there and watched in horror as this unfolded.

It's still so clear.

[Hekate]

151. Do you remember Mr.Rogers' special prog for parents on how to handle this?

My kids are grown and gone, but since I watch PBS I saw the advance ads for his special -- and since I'm a Fred Rogers fan, I watched it.

He did a beautiful job, I think, of helping parents protect and explain what was going on to their children. I hope in bad times to come that PBS will replay that special, especially since Mr. Rogers is no longer around to do it himself.

The other thing PBS did, at least here in California, was announce that they would keep all their children's programming on schedule without interruptions, because they believed the little ones would need a safe space while the grownup world was going nuts.

Given how obsessively I watched the tv from 9-11 on, I was glad I didn't have any little ones at home myself. I don't know if I could have handled it very well myself.

Hekate

[LibDemAlways]

24. I live on the west coast. The phone next to

the bed rang very early. The voice was that of a neighbor. She didn't even identify herself. Her exact words were "The World Trade Center has been hit. Go turn on the tv."

I can also tell you the exact circumstances in which I learned of the death of JFK - even though I had just turned 11 a few days earlier. GHW Bush claims he doesn't remember where he was that day. Something is either very wrong with these people, or they are terrible liars.

[chicofaraby]

25. I was at work on 9-11

And I was at work on 9-10.

And I was at work on 9-12.


It didn't change me.

[mcscajun]

26. Cheney: "I've got to have something to read."

:wtf:

Seriously. He planned to have some "Leisure time" in the bunker? Nothing IMPORTANT to do, Mr. Vice President???

Repeating, :wtf:

I remember every detail of that morning and where I was and what I was doing. Unflappable is NOT a term I'd use to describe myself during that time.

I was on the way to work in Lower Manhattan, but still in New Jersey, driving toward the NJ Turnpike Bayonne Extension (line of sight to the towers is there). I couldn't see the towers yet from where I was, but heard a news report of the first plane striking the WTC. Like many, especially older New Yorkers (I was born and raised there) who remember historical accounts of a plane striking the Empire State Building, I thought at first it was an accident, maybe involving a private plane. Still driving, still not in sight of the towers, I then heard the report of the second plane. I knew IMMEDIATELY that this was no accident. I didn't need to see the towers live or on TV to know this. I KNEW we were under attack.

Moments later, as the road turned east, I saw the towers and the smoke pouring from them. Most cars were still lined up for the toll plaza and pointing toward NYC. I started dialing family members and friends on my cell phone to let them know I was alright, because my usual route would take me to the PATH train and then up from beneath the towers to the streets of lower Manhattan. I made exactly four calls before the cell phone system became overloaded and circuits jammed. I was scared, plain and simple...I steered my car away from the NYC-bound lanes and headed south on the NJ Turnpike, not even knowing where I was going to go to get back on a westbound route. I kept the newsradio on, thinking of my co-workers and friends in the area, hearing reports of planes still in the air, and then the horrifying report of the first tower collapse. All I wanted to do was get home and inside. Reading? I couldn't even THINK of casual or light reading. I, like most people, was Glued to the TV, with occasional breaks to touch base with folks online and commiserate.

There's more to my story, but at least mine is consistent and unwavering. It amazes me (or maybe it shouldn't, considering) that these people can't seem to break a sweat in even the most critical of circumstances, or show any emotion or humanity. Ugh.

[DoYouEverWonder]

33. Unbelievable

Sounds like he was planning to spend a long time in the bathroom.

[B Calm]

27. Driving an 18 wheel truck through Indiana on my way to LaPorte..

[globalvillage]

28. Denver

Flew out of Logan through DC to Denver on 9/10. I remember waking in my hotel room to the news of the first plane crashing into the WTC. Many of my co-workers were still in Boston, scheduled to fly out on 9/11, a few were preparing to board when it happened. Another had a flight scheduled to Denver from Pittsburgh, so I was frantically trying to reach them all to find out where they were. The one coming from Pittsburgh had cancelled his plans. The folks who were stuck in Boston eventually decided to drive home to Omaha.
We had a meeting scheduled on the morning of 9/11, not knowing yet exactly what was going on, but spent the morning together watching the news unfold. I could not reach my family for several hours, and when I did, my daughter was calm, but anxious and frightened, and wanted me to be at home.
I was stuck in Denver for several days. I remember cancelling my flight home on the 12th, making reservations to take the train home,and calling Avis to let them know I would be keeping my rental car. I recall shopping for something clean to wear on the afternoon of the 12th at K-mart(?), and the only people in the store seemed to be in a similar situation, in business clothes shopping for underwear. Finally, I was able to take the train from Denver to Pittsburgh. The train was full, but relatively silent. It seemed to take forever.
Funny, I stay in a lot of hotels, but could not tell you the details of most. On this trip, though, I remember every detail of the room, what I ate the night before, and what I was wearing.
We drove from Pittsburgh to Boston for our next meeting in November, stopping in Manhattan on the way. I recall the sights and smell of NYC, even months after the attack. It was several months more before I would fly again.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

30. Please see this Video Clip! Bush leaving FLA on Air Force One!!!

Please note that he isn't crowded by the Secret Service and even has a photo op by waving before entering AFO. Also notice that there is no jet escort. He didn't have an escort until just before he landed in Louisiana. That was about 45 min. to an hour after he took off. There is an excellent link on CBS news a year after 9/11 that has an account of his time in AFO. Also note that he had a photo op in AFO that the pics were given as a perk at a GOP fundraiser.

The Shrub Leaving Florida
http://www.attackonamerica.net/AirForceOneLeavingSarasota.ra

[Fountain79]

31. I was at my university's recreation center working out...

and I remember seeing the info on the news and thinking. How sad, someone accidently flew their plane into the tower. At that point the second plane hadn't crashed yet and their was no mention of the Pentagon and/or Pennsylvania. I just thought a small prop plane had hit the building.

[linazelle]

32. "This is pilot error..."

BUSH KNEW

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

34. Personally. I live about 50 miles due north of NYC, near the flight path

of the planes coming down from Boston.

It was an exquisite morning. I was watching the Today Show and it was cut into with a newsflash from local NBC news. They were reporting that a plane hit the WTC. They were interviewing on the phone a witness who described the plane as a small jet. I was watching in shock and then saw the second plane hit. I knew then it was a deliberate attack. Not too long afterward I lost tv reception. I then surfed the cable networks and CNN was covering it. When the first tower went down I got on the phone and called my ex-husband. He works in midtown Manhattan and I was told he was out of the office for a meeting. Paranoia set in and my older son (he was home from school sick) and I were on tenterhooks for 3 hours until my ex called and said he was in a meeting near Grand Central which is in midtown..and he was fine.

I recall reports of planes being missing and also that all planes were being called down to land. About an hour after that, my son and I heard a jet and we ran onto my deck. We saw a plane heading due south and we both had the same thought and my son verbalized it...Mom, where's Indian Point (the nuclear power plant)? I told him it was southwest of here. We both held our breaths until we saw the plane move southeast.

To this day I believe that if "terrorists" really wanted to harm us, they would have targeted Indian Point........ and to this day, there is hardly any protection of that facility.

[petgoat]

88. It was one of the most beautiful mornings of all time

and yes... Indian Point would have been the place to hit.


I was driving into town from Westchester County. I heard on the radio just before
I left that a plane hit the north tower, and I assumed it was a small plane.

Driving, I learned of the second strike. Coming down the Sprain Brook Parkway, you
crest a hill and get a view of Manhattan. It was a sparkling day and there was a
beautiful white thunderhead rising from the end of the island and I wondered then
if there might not be a biological component to the attack.

I decided to keep my appointment. They'd closed the bridges at the Harlem River, but I
found a place to park on Fordham Road and walked across. The subway wasn't running and
I walked about three miles south down Broadway before a bus came along. The driver
wouldn't let me pay.


Several hours later I went down to the Hudson river. A guy said the tunnels were closed
and he asked if I thought he could swim to Jersey. I told him not to do it--that he could
probably swim it but with the boats rushing around it would be dangerous.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

114. Thank you for sharing your experience on that day. I know the crest

on the Sprain that you're talking about and also know the path that you took into the city so it was exceptionally vivid for me. Your account of the man who wanted to know if he could swim to NJ was interesting as on that day, not only was my heartbreaking for all of the lives lost but also for the survivors..the people of NY who were thrown into such confusion, wanting so much to get to the safety of their homes, and not finding easy ways to do so.


You know, as I'm sitting here recalling that day, I am reliving some of the same emotions I felt then, as I do whenever I think about it. The thing is that I am also experiencing great anger and frustration that the true perpertrators are running our govenment and are going scott free.....

[Paladin]

35. At Work---On The 72nd Floor Of A 75-Story Building.....

...in downtown Houston; the tallest building in the country, west of Chicago. Needless to say, we were a tad freaked out, and it seemed like we evacuated the place in a hurry---but by the time we got to the streets, downtown Houston looked like a ghost town.....

[elehhhhna]

115. LOL I was in my office at 59 & 610 - Israeli Counsulate's in the Bldg...

FBI Evidently told us to evac after the hits but Sr. Management didn't TELL US. When I called to tell them I was sending everyone home, the dingy *itch VP who was sleeping with the Sr. VP said "They just want a day off."

I quit about a month later when it finally hit me: These assholes would defy an order from the FBI and NOT TELL US TO GET OUT? SCREW THEM.

[Paladin]

141. Disgusting Behavior

Wonder what they'd think if they knew their sub-human behavior was being recounted on a site that's read by tens of thousands of people, all over the world? Any way to clue them in?

[elehhhhna]

153. ain't no cluing them in. they're reep-bots

[DireStrike]

36. I was a handful of blocks north of the WTC

In high school. What a surreal day.

[WyLoochka]

38. In Cumberland RI

getting ready to fly home to AZ out of Boston Logan the next day! While packing, used cousin's computer to check email and BuzzFlash for the latest.

Learned about what happened on BuzzFlash, flipped the teevee on and immediately called the car rental agency to reserve a car to drive home.

[Chico Man]

67. I'm in Cumberland right now

Interesting.

I was in Johnston RI at work on 9/11.

[Strangefire]

39. I was at a cemetery.

Bringing flowers to the grave of a Jane Doe found three years previously here in Wisconsin and never identified. It's something I try to do every few months, but in this case I hadn't been out to the cemetary in nearly a year. I didn't have to work on September 11, though, and since it was a beautiful day I decided to drive out there.

On my way there, I realized my radio was off, so I turned it on, and that's when I heard that the towers had been destroyed. When I arrived at the cemetery, I left the flowers at Jane Doe's grave and stayed in the parking lot for a good hour or so, just listening to the reports on the radio. When I returned home I watched the images on t.v., and remember thinking that nothing would ever be the same in this country.

[longship]

40. I was on vacation in Sedona, Arizona

My wife and I were vacationing in Arizona with friends. We were bumbing around Sedona that morning, planning our day. We stopped into a shop just before noon, hours after the towers collapsed. The clerk in the store told us that the WTC towers were hit by highjacked airliners and collapsed. It was unbelievable. I had a portable radio with me and turn it on to a news station, and sure enough, it was true.

My first thought was, "Oh dear! The poor people who died."

My second thought was, "Oh! Oh Dear! Dubya is going to exploit this! This country is gonna be in big trouble because of this."

My worst fears were more than prescient. People suffered. Thousands died. However, ChimpCo shamelessly exploited the events to foist much more suffering and death on the world. We can get over 9/11, but I don't know when we will all recover from the horrible, evil world that ChimpCo has given us since 9/11.

[Blue_In_AK]

43. I was in bed asleep

My niece called about 5:00 a.m. in tears to let us know what was happening. We immediately got up and flipped on the TV news to watch unfolding events in horror.

[mopinko]

44. i got a phone call from a co-worker of my hubby.

he was out of town on business, but the guy did not know where. they had an office in the wtc, and he was afraid that that was where he was. the first tower had already fallen, and i turned on the tv just in time to see the second fall.
my hubby was in toronto. he was there for a conference, which carried on, since they couldn't go anywhere anyway. by the next day, we started worrying that he would not be able to get home. they had announced they were tightening border controls, and he did not have his birth certificate.
on sept 12, i went downtown here in chicago to get a copy, to see if i could get it to him before he headed home. it was a ghost town, ringed by cop cars. i sent his cert by overnight. it never got there. it was returned about 6 months later. a couple other conferees from the area ended up getting the last rental car in toronto, and driving home.

[ananda]

45. I was..

.. at work in my old classroom that happened to have a wittle channel one tv
hooked up to cable, with cable service. (No more of that now, of course).

Anyone, someone told me what was happening, so my students and I stayed
glued to cable news all the rest of the day. It was bizarre, surreal... especially
when the news announcer would be telling what Bush was doing -- sitting in
a Florida elementary school classroom reading My Pet Goat -- then being flown
willynilly to Nebraska. I never did get that... but the news announcers were
so pro Bush and Pentagon, it never got the proper coverage anyway.

There was also a certain element of schadenfreude finding out what celebrities
were on the planes.

I found myself really absorbed by the topic for months, and it took me at least a
month to get over my shock and awe and anger before I could realize that going
to war on Afghanistan or wherever was not the answer.

Sue

[DarkTirade]

46. I work late nights, so...

I was in bed and I heard my roommates talking about it outside my door.
I didn't really grasp what was happening until somebody told me when I got to campus that morning. Of course, within a few minutes of me getting there, they decided to cancel classes for that day.
(Off topic... but I ran into the girl who told me what happened on campus a few weeks later and she was walking her two lizards, savannah monitors... they were so cute. I already wanted to get me a herp, but this inspired me to actually go out and get one as soon as I moved into a place that allowed pets. So I ended up with two cuban tree frogs and a leopard gecko. :) )

[sproutster]

47. In Alaska I had woken up, and was part of a big gaming online community

I had just sent my son off to work and sat down to check email. On my ICQ I had a bunch of weird messages with frownie faces and one person changed their name to TURNONCNN. So I turned on the television.

I couldn't comprehend what was going on. I saw the towers smoking... I thought we had been bombed or taken over. I kept hearing about hijacked planes but didn't put it together with the towers.

I was immoble, finally I called my boss in tears telling him to turn on the news and should I go get my child?

[PCIntern]

48. Interestingly,

I was working in my dental practice and the husband of one of my staff called - he's a police officer - and told us what was going on after the first plane hit.

I posted a staff member at the TV which was in my private office and when she said that the Pentagon was hit, I began to close the office because who knows what was next?

So it turned out that no fewer than 25 people were in my office between the first plane hitting and the collapse of the towers and they all remember that I'm the one who told them what happened that day, and told them to call their families and go home.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

49. I got out of the shower, and the first tower had been hit...

I got on the bus headed to work and walked into the cafeteria where there was a tv, the second plane had hit. We had an hour or so before the auction was starting (auto's, I was driving). We'd get into a car, get in line to drive it past the buyers, park it back in the row, and get another. Every time I jumped into a new car, I would fiddle frantically with the radio to get more info. We were right by the airport, and it was so surreal, no planes flying overhead, except military jets. And all these buyers were just business as usual, like nothing was going on.

I remember every minute of that day up to getting home and planting myself in front of the tv, watching the endless reruns. It became foggy then.

[Maraya1969]

50. I WANT TO SEE THE RECORDINGS FROM THE NEWS CAMERAS

If he was being interviewed after he was told the country was under attack and it was being recorded I WANT TO SEE IT.

And I want to know why the reporters would continue with the news clip if they knew the Towers were hit.

I learned here a few days ago about the photo op after * found out about the attack. I think that needs to come out and be played if it was recorded!

:nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke: :nuke:

[Mythsaje]

51. I was working the graveyard shift

at a distribution warehouse. It was close to the end of the shift and news trickled in...no one quite knew what any of it meant.

I got in my car and headed home and by the time I got there I knew something very bad had gone down, though I wasn't quite sure what it was.

I got home and turned on the TV within minutes of the second tower impact.

I doubt I'll ever forget that day.

[Peggy Day]

52. I though Cheney was holding war games that day

Am I mistaken?

http://tvnewslies.org/html/9_11_facts.html

[Gregorian]

53. Listening to Jonathan doing the Late Risers' Club on WMBR.

Sitting at the computer. He said he heard that a plane had crashed into the WTC, or something. I remember it like I'm there right now.

And the look on Junior's face when Andrew Card wispered to him says GUILTY all over it. Does it not? My bullshit detector goes off every time I see it.

[Swamp Rat]

54. They are so full of shit!

The PLANNED it! :mad:

[laruemtt]

55. i was working at home.

around 9 o'clock dh called from work and said, 'turn on the tv.' that's all he said. i turned it on and couldn't interpret what i was seeing. his niece worked in WTC2 on the 57th floor. she got out. i know a lot of you knew immediately what was going down, but i didn't come to my senses for months before i realized *co's complicity.

[phattyt]

56. I remember...

I remember very clearly that morning. I was a senior in high school (I lived on the west coast) and I just got up to go take a shower for the morning (somewhere around 6AM). My dad had the TV on and told me that a plane hit the WTC. Still in my early-morning malaise I sat down and stared at the TV almost vacantly. It was only a minute or two later when I saw live the second plane crashing into the other tower. The rest of the day was almost a blur. I can recall getting to school at around 7:30AM and then heading straight to the library where a bunch of students and most all of the staff were huddled together watching the TV. It definitely was one of the most surreal moments of my life...

[LuckyLib]

57. It was a three part terror. My husband, a commercial airline pilot,

was dressed, getting ready to leave on a five day trip. I heard something weird on NPR and went downstairs to turn on the TV (something we never have on in the morning). My husband stood there watching the second plane, shook his head and said "The pilots are either dead or incapacitated. They would never do this." We left the house to vote (it was primary day) and he was approached by media at our polling place asking if he were a pilot. He replied, "Yes, but I have no comment." He went on to the airport, only to return as airspace was closed. My sister, a Flight Attendant for American, was on vacation, but the week before had flown Flight 11 out of Boston. She was devastated. My daughter, on a school trip to the east coast, was in Williamsburg, near DC, preparing to visit the Capitol. The students boarded their bus and headed home to the midwest. In three separate ways our family could have been more closely connected, and the saddness for families who lost loved ones still resonates.

[helderheid]

58. God how chilling

[driver8]

102. A good friend of mine in Boston -- her Mom is a flight attendant

for American and also had flown flight 11 out of Boston the week before.

As you can imagine, she was also devastated.

[AuntPatsy]

59. I was on the phone with the tv on news. I recall standing up and

just watching in horror. After the second one hit I immediately began making phone calls to ensure family members were safe than I believe I slept walked for a good twenty four hours.

Within three days I was doubting the accuracy of the events as stated by the news and I was not even political at the time, call it a feeling, hunch, whatever, but it was downhill from there.

[kineneb]

60. watering my garden

and listening to KQED on a headset radio. I was supposed to go to SFSU and give a lecture on medieval musical instruments to the first-semester Music History class that day. I got a call from the teacher that all classes were cancelled and the students instructed to go home. Later I had to pick up Hubby, becaused they had closed many of the businesses in downtown San Francisco and sent their workers home.

[CJCRANE]

61. I'd deliberately

gone into a small room with no internet or phone connection to write a yearly appraisal (I normally work in an open plan office).

When I came out I switched on my cellphone and a message popped up: "WTC attacked, WWIII has started".

Everyone in the office was trying to get onto news websites on their PCs, others in the building had switched on TVs wherever they could find them. I spent as much time as I could on CNN's website and didn't get much work done (I kept thinking "there's 50,000 people in there").

In the evening I flicked endlessly between channels trying to find any new coverage or insight I could.

Postscript: A couple of months later I left my job and now had time on my hands. I scoured the internet trying to find out what was really going on in the world. Then I found DU.

[NYdemocrat089]

62. I was in school, and I thought it was Saddam.

It should be stressed that I was in sixth grade, and my knowledge of the world was limited.

We had been in gym class when the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon took place. I don't know if Flight 93 had crashed yet - although it might have and hadn't been reported yet. When my teacher came to take us back to class it seemed like something was wrong. She had a horrible look on her face, and when we walked into the class the TV was on showing the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in flames. I had no idea what was going on. In elementary school we had been given the idea that America was the greatest country on Earth; America was envied and loved by all. Our history classes hadn't shown us the horrors that have taken place throughout history. I was shocked, and since I wasn't aware of terrorists who would want to kill innocent Americans, I immediately assumed Saddam Hussein (the only "bad guy" I knew a lot about at the time) had been responsible. Later I learned that some man named Osama Bin Laden who lived in a strange place called Afghanistan was responsible. We spent a great deal of time in Social Studies learning about the Middle East and we did a lot of current event discussions when war started in Afghanistan. I began watching the news everyday, and it started my interest in politics and current events.

[PCIntern]

63. Great!

I was in 5th Grade when Kennedy was killed - it commenced my career in amateur political sleuthing because everything they said that day was clearly a lie in terms of who did what when. I recall seeing those Dallas Police faces and knew even at age 10 that they were up to no good.

Same faces in 2001...

Don't ever lose sight of the ball. You're lucky you have the Internet - we had pamphlets and underground publications with an occasional MSM question, but by and large we thought we were almost alone.

[theSaiGirl]

64. What is this .... "recovery therapy" session ?

It's like the "Where were you when you heard Kennedy got shot ?" ..
I remember all that too. Am currently 54, and recall, with crystal clarity, the before, during and after the JFK hit.

But it does feel therapeutic to recall the sequence of 9/11 .. yet once more.

On the morning of 9/11 I was driving into work, downtown Balt., when it was first reported over the radio that a small private jet had likely flown accidentally into the WTC North Tower.
This was reported on Howard Stern at approximately ten-to-nine.
Within ten minutes, the 2nd hit was reported.

When I arrived at work, the building had been evacuated, and the city was in confusion with sirens and cars rushing about to pick up school kids, due to apparent school closures.
Unable to enter the high-rise office building where I worked, I moved to a coffee-shop on Baltimore Street. We sat out front at tables. The weather was perfect.
Sometime before ten, probably at about quarter-to, someone ran out and said the radio had reported a "truck-bomb" at the Pentagon.
Within minutes, the same individual ran out again, to say the radio had updated the report to "another plane crash ... a Boeing commercial jet .. into the wall of the Pentagon"....

I knew then, instantaneously ... and said so outright to those around me ..
"Impossible !!! Not with NORAD. Not with Andrews AFB ten minutes from the Pentagon. Not with the air-defense grid over DC and surrounding environs ... not a big, fat commercial jet (apparently flying in from Ohio, after being "hijacked from Dulles") ...
no way something like that could have evaded NORAD.
No way they could have hit the Pentagon with either a massive SNAFU or a deliberate stand-down of some kind."

Nothing smelled right about it.
Who would risk that kind of disgrace ?
The courts-martials and mea culpas and resignations ... ?

I remember saying then, "Heads will roll for the Pentagon. No one will escape blame for that one ... not Rumsfeld, not the JCS ... no one.

Boy... was I wrong.

It turns out tha AA Flight 77 may never have existed.
At least, not according to the BTS database.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_77


)

[DoYouEverWonder]

70. That was not my intention

for how this thread would go when I started it but apparently we all still need to tell our stories. It's one of the few ways we have to deal with this horrific event.

[Igel]

65. At home, wife had just gone off to teach

English to a bunch of elderly Russian emigres at a Jewish Community Center. She had to be there at 9 am, she was a volunteer teacher.

I settled in with coffee to read newspapers online; my dissertation topic was in freefall, for reasons too annoying to detail. The NYT and LAT were hard to get to load. When the NYT main page loaded it said a plane hit the WTC. I have the distinct impression I assumed it was a small plane and an accident; perhaps the article led me to the inference. Dunno.

With US newspapers hard to load, I went overseas. Mlada fronta Dnes out of Prague, a couple of Russian papers, I was also regularly reading some Venezuelan papers.

Wife came home far, far too early: the JCC was evacuated as the "students" were arriving, the buses were sent back; some terrorist something or other in NYC, she said, no details, but the JCC was greatly panicked. They assumed Islamic anti-Jewish terrorist, and that attacks on large JCCs could follow. On went the tv, I think I saw the 2nd plane hit. A lot of people, both students and staff, also had friends and family in NYC.

I didn't see much of a reason to react emotionally. I was more interested in figuring out who was behind it, and whether the choice of possible actors had implications for additional attacks.

[Lilith Velkor]

66. In a bed 5 miles from the Pentagon, sleeping

I worked nights then, so I didn't find out about anything until 2pm or so.

[Catchawave]

68. In Annapolis Maryland...visiting a friend

The next four hours were a blur until I could reach my daughter, who was a bike messenger in the Financial District at the time. She was fine. Longest hours of my life, I tell ya :cry:

[localroger]

69. At work

We had received a phone call, since one of our workers had a daughter who works in NYC. The Internet was not working, we had a very slow ISDN connection and nothing would load. We had a TV we use for screening manufacturer videotapes and I was trying to rig up a piece of hookup wire to act as an antenna. We could see there was special coverage. I was trying to get the wire in a good position for reception when the first tower fell. If I live to be 100, I will be able to resume the exact awkward pose I was in as I tried to get a better signal with a piece of hookup wire stuck in the center of an F connector socket. Shortly after I looped the hookup wire around a curtain rod and I was sitting with the others, who were drifting in and out of the lobby in various stages of disbelief, when the second tower fell.

[SmokingJacket]

71. At home alone with my babies; husband on a plane...

I was doing some housework upstairs and had just spoken to my husband on the phone -- he was about to get on a plane for a business trip. I went downstairs and turned on the radio. That's when I heard the news. I sat at the kitchen table and listened for a long time; then when the first tower fell I got up and called my mother who has TV. It was so shocking. The second tower fell when I was on the phone to her.

My husband didn't call till much later, but somehow I knew he wasn't involved and wasn't really worried. Weirdly enough.

I remember later in the day walking up to the store and telling my older son that the sky was so clear because there were no planes that day. It really was a super clear, brisk early fall day.

At the bagel shop an Asian man picked up the just-delivered NY Times -- amazingly, there was already a special edition with the flaming towers on it, right around 2 pm -- and started exclaiming in broken English. Obviously, seeing the pictures on the cover of the Times was the first he'd heard of it. It was interesting to observe his shock; since I was alone when it happened, I didn't get to see anyone else experience it.

What a weird day. I took a bath at about 10 that night. 5.5 years ago, and it's fresh as yesterday in my memory.

This is the quote that gets me: "There didn't seem to be much to do about it immediately and we went on with whatever the meeting was." WHAT????? How crazy is that?

[uppityperson]

72. In the car after dropping child off at school,turned on NPR"2nd tower fell

Had to pull over and listen, crying too much to drive. Drove home in a fog to watch it on TV, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Trying to figure out how many people died. So sad. Going outside to listen to the quiet skies of no airplanes flying for days.

[givemebackmycountry]

73. Denver Broncos vs New York Giants first game at the new Mile High

We were at that game.
Monday Night Football.
Broncos win.
We were nationwide.

We partied with a bunch of NYFD and NYPD guys in the parking lot.
The DROVE out for the game in these big RV's.

Next morning, passed out in the Embassy Suites in Denver.
Phone rings, it's my buddies mom who lived in Denver.
She was like 76.

"Turn on the TV, turn on the TV!!"

Pretty much, it's been fucked up since that.

[FooFootheSnoo]

74. I was just waking up when the first tower was hit

I was still in bed. I remember I had my feet propped up because I was pregnant and my feet were swollen. My husband had the Today show on. The first tower had already been hit. My husband was saying it was a terrorist attack, I told him it was just an accident. A few minutes later we watched as the second plane flew into the other tower. He went to work and I watched the news. My boss called and told me not to come to work, so I watched the news all day long. I called one of my friends in another time zone and woke her up. I told her to get out of bed and turn on the tv. It was surreal. 10 days later my daughter was born 3 months early. I can't seem to think of one event without thinking of the other.

[DoYouEverWonder]

76. That's very early

I hope your daughter is okay? I use to work with premies.

[ulysses]

75. working from home.

My wife called to tell me to turn on the news. I did and then logged in to DU and found this: http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=4274&forum=DCForumID35&archive=yes

[LiberalEsto]

77. Doctor's office

Can't remember the reason for the appointment. The doctor walked into the room with looking absolutely shocked. He told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. We muddled through the appointment quickly. I drove home and turned on the tv and sat spellbound, watching the horror unfold.

[DoYouEverWonder]

78. To everyone on this thread who posted

their story about that morning, would you be willing to tell that story under oath? Of course you would. Why not?

Now consider that both Bush and Cheney have never testified to investigators or to Congress about this matter while they were under oath. Why not? Only someone with something to hide would refuse.

[lovuian]

92. I would and I have witnesses but your right that is amazing

and suspicious!!!

[driver8]

103. Man, that absolutely pisses me off.

These bastards refused to testify under oath regarding 9/11 and nothing was said.

I actually have a knot in my stomach right now I am so angry.

Unbefuckinglievable.

[Independent_Liberal]

79. I was in school.

It was my senior year in high school. I remember it like it was yesterday. When Columbine happened, I was a freshman in high school. I remember how the schools reacted on both of those days. Right after Columbine, the teachers were too afraid to let kids go outside unsupervised. On 9/11, several parents came up to the school to take their kids home. I was very scared and sad on both days.

Columbine and 9/11 are two events in American history that will probably one day be considered as dramatic as the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK, Pearl Harbor, the Gulf of Tonkin, and the Oklahoma City bombing. I wasn't around during JFK, RFK and MLK. For anybody who was around during those three events, where were you, and how did you feel?

[kwyjibo]

80. It was an absolutely gorgeous day

in Austin.

My boyfriend's father called us and woke us up to say that my boyfriend's brother was ok. He worked in NYC. I remember getting out of bed after I heard him say on the phone "the World Trade Center has been destroyed???"

I went to the tv and sat on my knees in front of it and cried when I saw the buildings burning. It took a while for me to realize how many people were dead and dying right then. I watched tv for hours and then went to a class that ended up being cancelled. My most vivid memory from that day was looking at the beautiful fluffy clouds in the bright blue sky while I drove to school. I felt so guilty that I got to see something so gorgeous when the people in NYC had a sky full of smoke and dust.

[BIG Sean]

81. In the WTC about 20 minutes before the first plane hit

I only wish I could forget that day.

[Olney Blue]

93. Welcome to DU, BIG Sean.

[Buddyblazon]

82. I was living in Hollywood...Yucca and Cahuenga...

pretty much Hollywood and Vine.

I had a friend from Colorado in town. He was staying on the couch in my little apt. for the week.

I was awoken to screaming. "NO NO NO!".

I jumped up, "What's wrong.".

He pointed at the screen on the TV. His screaming was the first tower coming down. We sat in shock. Then freaked out when the second one came down. My windows were open and you could here people in their apartments shrieking. Very surreal.

I went to work. I worked in the Int'l dept. of Skechers in Manhattan Beach. I wasn't there for 15 mins. when they told us to go home. We had quite a few people at our showrooms in NYC, and nobody had heard from any of them. So, they just decided that we should not be there while they made an accounting for every employee in New York.

I had received dozens of emails from all our distributors overseas. All of them offering their sympathies from the companies. So before I left, I felt I should write an email to all of them thanking them for their concerns.

I can't remember exactly what I wrote, but I remember the overall theme. It was short and said something to the equivalent of:

"Thank you for your prayers. We are all in a state of shock right now. I hope that our nation can react with grace."

I just knew when I was writing it. I knew that there was a good chance that whatever our leaders did, it was probably going to be bad, without thought, and make our country look reactionary. I just knew these asshole too well.

And whatyaknow. I was on the money.

In a way, I felt like the email was an attempt to cover the asses of many Americans in advance for future actions by an idiotic administration. Just wanted them to know that some of us would rather we handle it with dignity than the chicken little way I knew was coming.

[driver8]

104. I live in Los Angeles also and work at Warner Bros.

I work evenings and got a call from work telling me to stay home -- the studio was shutting down.

It was an amazing day so some friends and I went and played golf. It was very surreal...we were all sort of dazed and not really with it. I felt guilty that we were out enjoying the day but I knew if I stayed home it would drive me nuts.

A few days later I started having panic attacks and eventually had to see a psychiatrist for some meds.

[Norwood]

83. I was asleep

I was still leaving with my mother at the time and she came to my room and told me that they were flying planes into buildings in NYC. She was in shock and so was I. I only had one class that day and only about 9 students out of about 30 showed up.

[DemGirl7]

84. I was just waking up to get ready for classes

And my household turned into a nuthouse quickly, because I have an older sister who works in the building across the street from the WTC, and me & my mom spent the whole morning and afternoon trying to call to see if she was ok. We had no luck trying to get in contact with her, neither did her fiance, who we called a few times to see if he heard from her. We were so worried that she wasn't ok, but we were very much relieved when we eventually were able to get in contact with her early in the evening, and she was ok, even though one person from her company did die, and one of her friends at work had a break down.

[Cobalt Violet]

85. Americans use to do painting jobs way back then.

I was painting a church.

[williesgirl]

89. Suburb of DC getting a mammogram - watching on TV while waiting.

Worried where in N. VA my daughter was at that moment and couldn't reach her. Also couldn't reach my brother, neices or nephew in Arlington since all cell phones were overwhelmed. Watched jets fly low overhead and wondered if any of the helicopters were armed. Scared to death. Worried sick about family, friends and country.

I take meds for pre-Alzheimers but have NO trouble remembering that horrible day nor those that followed. These fools are liars.

[TOhioLiberal]

90. What I remember about 9/11...

I was taking my mother to a couple of Doctor's appointments that morning. Her 1st appointment was at 8 or 8:30 am. In the office was a TV bolted to the wall, like in the hospital. It was off, apparently broken. A steady stream of people from other offices stopped by to try the TV.

As we were leaving after her appointment, I saw the TV near the reception area, showing the 1st tower smoking. It had to be one of the endless cycle of reruns, because I no sooner thought to myself, 'God, what a horrible accident!', then the second plane dove in. It was total shock and I knew it was no accident, I just didn't know how far from an accident it was.

I had the radio on in the car on the way to her second appointment. Let me tell you, hearing what was going on was almost as chilling as seeing it happen.

Her second appointment, was about 10 am. They had the radio on, and I listened some more. Suddenly you could hear the people saying Oh my God, Oh my God...and then this low sort of rumble, as the 1st tower fell. i'll never forget it.

I remember going to work that afternoon, and the 7-11 next door jacking up the gas prices to close to 4 bucks a gallon.

I also remember that day being the one and only time I gave GWB the benefit of the doubt.

[lovuian]

91. I was on the internet helping people with laptops find ways

out of NY and helping people all over the country getting information... a bunch of us on a Messageboard coordinated and took different channels and wrote the others the news...
if this ever happens again have a group take ABC NBC CBS CNN MSNBC AND FOX... you have to understand the information coming out was scattered all over the place and we were all looking for another plane initially...It worked amazingly well... people needed to know what highways were working ... I saw the planes hit the WTC and couldn't believe my eyes...Horrible day...

Believe it or not some people in NYC the only access they had to the outside world was their laptops...

I was so proud of the group of people I worked with spent all day
and most of the night helping others get the information...

I know what being an American is and we are incredibly self sacrificing in times of trouble...


Peace

[benburch]

95. I was in bed and heard that a plane had hit the WTC on WBBM-AM radio.

I turned on CNN in time to see the gout of flame and debris from the second strike. From the angle they had on, it looked like a second explosion in the first tower, but soon we knew that it was the second of the two towers hit by another plane.

Almost at once I reached the conclusion that it was an Al Queda attack. I had followed the progress of the trial from the first attempt to destroy the WTC, knew that sentencing was scheduled for later that day. and knew that they had chosen the date because of this fact.

After seeing the first tower fall, I got myself going and went to work. By the time I got to the drive-through coffee place en-route to work, the second tower had fallen, and I was angry, sick, and disgusted.

Then I heard on the radio about the Pentagon, and about another aircraft down in PA.

When I got to work, no work at all was happening. All were watching CNN on the TV, and we saw the towers fall over and over.

By noon, I was working out the physics of how they fell, and I think to this day that I understand exactly why they did. This in spite of being called all manner of names by people who now insist that buildings cannot fall like that and that they much have been packed to the rafters with bombs labeled "Property of the Bush Family Evil Empire - If lost drop into any mailbox. Postage guaranteed."

[petgoat]

105. Ah, so you "Just Knew" it was al Qaeda.

Well, that and your assumption that controlled demolition = Bush explosives explains
your attitude about controlled demolition.

[benburch]

122. Well, it could have been the trilateral commission.

Or the Bilderbergers.

Or the Bavarian Illuminati.

Or the Discordians.

Or the OTO.

Or the Knights of Columbus.

You pick. YOU are the Conspiracy Theorist after all!

[petgoat]

131. Actually, YOU are the Conspiracy Theorist

You are the one who leaps to the conclusion that any consideration of explosives
automatically includes Bilderbergers or Discordians.

It is logical to consider the controlled demolition hypothesis and the whodunnit
separately, rather than hamstring your investigation with premature conclusions.

I try to avoid excessive theorizing myself and stick to the evidence and the
questions it raises.

[benburch]

139. OK, your hallucinated explosives planted themselves.

That was some good Peyote!

[petgoat]

140. Now there's a one-size-fits-all argument.

Maybe that even works in Elgin.

Where do you get the idea that explosives plant themselves? Dr. Van Romero, an explosives
expert, said that a few charges in strategic points could have brought the buildings down.

Zipper theory says a few failed truss "clips" caused the floors to "unzip" and "pancake"--
sounds like a suicide crowbar could have brought the towers down.

Truss theory says that saggy floors buckled the perimeter columns and brought the buildings down--
in that case a suicide abrasive cutoff wheel could have cut enough trusses in five minutes
to bring them down.

So how many person-hours do you think it would take to plant enough explosives to demolish the
building? Consider that the roofs of elevator cars would make ideal movable staging for planting
them in elevator shafts, and consider that radio control means no messy wiring.

Also consider the possibility of a device that could be dropped down the elevator shafts scattering
explosive dust or vapor, which could then be ignited.

[magellan]

97. I was living in England

My husband and I worked from home. I went downstairs to make a copy of something early in the afternoon and saw the news about a plane hitting the WTC. They were saying it was a small plane. I called my husband downstairs. In a matter of minutes we, our secretary and our next door neighbors were crowded around the little tv in our kitchen. We saw the second plane hit and knew it was a terrorist attack.

The phone line was jammed for a long time but I finally got through to my family here in the US. I was talking to my sister when the towers fell. It was horrible...we grew up near NYC and both remember when the towers were built, all the controversy about them. If it was a clear day we could see the towers way off across the river on our way to work.

[EstimatedProphet]

98. I was in Arlington VA, a couple miles from the Pentagon

I heard from the receptionist that a plane had hit the WTC, and a few minutes later that another plane had hit the other WTC. We were dismissed from work immediately. I was parked about 8 blocks from my building, and on the walk back there was NO ONE on the street-really unusual for 9 am-except for some SS type that was talking into an earbud. I heard jets scrambling too. When I got to my truck I found out everyone was in their cars trying to get out, and what was usually a 10 minute drive was over an hour. At the time I didn't have a TV, so I didn't see any footage until much later in the day at a bar.

[malmapus]

101. Still in bed, by the time I woke up..towers were gone already

It was my off day (my company had cut my hours down to where I was off Tue, and Thurs). My girlfriend had gotten up, we lived in San Francisco, and was getting ready for work. She had turned on the TV, and I remember hearing McCain's voice (I still held respect for him back then). I was slowly coming to, then I heard him say, "these are the actions of war," or something to that effect. I jumped out of bed, and tried to figure out what the heck he was talking about.

I remember my girlfriend coming back into the room to say good byes when they showed footage of the towers earlier both on fire. We both kinda just stared at the TV for god knows how long.

But yeah, this was around 9:00am PST so both towers were gone..

[NMMNG]

106. I was at work

I was an office assistant at the time--answering the phone, filing, sorting the mail, greeting and directing visitors, distributing memos and sundry other office duties. I ended up fielding dozens of the incoming calls from people who were seeing the news reports about the events and relaying the updates to my office mates (the ones who weren't able to leave the office to go see it on TV themselves).

[tavalon]

108. I will never forget one single minute of that day

Nothing is fuzzy. Liars may remember the events of that day fuzzily. People on drugs, prescribed or not, may remember that day fuzzily. I however will never remember anything fuzzily about that day.

[DoYouEverWonder]

111. 'Liars may remember the events of that day fuzzily.'

and only traitors can sit on their asses and let it go down.

[BlueGirlRedState]

109. I was at work, and received an email from a close friend

"I think J--- is on that plane."

My friend's husband was traveling from Boston to LA although he lived outside of Chicago. He travelled a lot and his wife didn't keep track of his flight numbers. She spent the entire day waiting for American Airlines to confirm he was on the plane. He was.

I watched with my co-workers, 8 or so of us jammed into a cubical, watching a tiny internet feed as the second plane slammed into the 2nd tower. We held hands and cried as we watched the towers collapse.

[tavalon]

110. I'm a nightshifter

I wasn't working the previous night though. I keep the same schedule and had been doing some painting in my kitchen. I haven't had cable TV for years and usually didn't even bother to have on any music when I was doing home improvement projects but that morning I had one of the morning shows on the radio, on a station I generally disliked the DJS on but they had an amusing show on and I was not annoyed so I painted and I listened. Then one of them cut in and said a plane had hit one of the twin towers in New York. I thought, "how odd, I wonder if it was one of those tiny planes and wouldn't that be restricted airspace?" I kept painting and since it was light, I got out the red paint and went to mix it to do a layer on the front door. I spilled some on my jeans and went back into the kitchen to clean up. That's when I heard about the second plane. I sat down at the table and the view I had out my back yard, while unremarkable will remain with me forever. I forgot to get the paint off of my pants and a few minutes later, I went to my TV to see if I could rig it to show anything. I got of all things, Faux News (this was before, when I was a quiet, uninformed sheep) I sat for about an hour, stunned, watching the footage and the carnage, over and over and over again. And then, I found my purse, my keys and I left for the blood bank. I spent the next three hours with paint all over me, waiting in the huge waiting area to give blood. I asked if they needed a volunteer phlebotomist (I'm a nurse). They didn't so I gave my blood, went home and slept very fitfully. The only fuzzy memory I have is whether I had my first night terror in a decade that day or on one of the ensuing sleep cycles. For the uninformed, a small percentage of us still sleepwalk as adults and fewer of us, who have usually had extreme trauma such as that that happened in Vietnam or in my case, my childhood, which I've nicknamed Vietnam, can have night terrors which are basically walking nightmares. I've broken bones and on this occasion had a egg sized bump on my head because in my nightmare, I was in a different bedroom and when I raced to get away from the snipers, I hit the wall full force. No concussion somehow.

I remember even more details but I don't care to bore and yet these assholes who should have done anything and everything in their power to stop this, can't quite remember details. Goddamned snakes, every one!

[Number9Dream]

112. On vacation - Beach Haven, NJ

We were on vacation, looking forward to another beautiful September day at the shore. I was getting ready to go windsurfing and the weather channel was on the TV, when I heard Heather Tesch talking about the events at the WTC. I'll remember it as long as I live.

[ProfessorGAC]

113. At The Airport, Waiting For A Flight To Atlanta

When the word got around, i went to a newstand that had a TV on, and the lady was watching the news break-in of the first tower burning. When the second plane crashed into the other tower, i just went out to the car, because i knew there was NO WAY the planes would be flying that day.
The Professor

[Notoverit]

116. On the phone - being asked to look out the window...

A cousin called, as I wasn't watching news at the time. Was getting ready to go vote in the mayoral primaries. When I went in, there were 2 smoking towers. After voting, only 1 was standing. Saw the second fall from my roof.

[sagesnow]

117. It was my day off...

I was watching Martha Stewart in my kitchen when the emergency news flash interrupted. My first thought was that it was another situation where a pilot had a heart attack (like golf pro Payne Stewart) and went off course.
When the second plane hit, a chill when down my spine- this must be war was my first thought. I called my sister, who was not interested. I called my Dad who thought I was exaggerating.
Later that afternoon I was traveling east on Highway 34 toward Malvern, IA to visit a friend. There was a large white jet flying low over the cornfields. It was Air Force one- I'm certain because all other airline flights in the US were grounded and it has the flag and some insignia on it. Bush was in it flying to Strategic Air Command underground headquarters in Bellevue, NE.
I missed the crime committed in NYC, but I saw the President's get away plane fly over.

[BigMcLargehuge]

119. I was at work in Portsmouth NH

I heard about the attack just before walking over to Dunkin Donuts to get morning coffee with my workmates. They have a TV hung over the order line and we stood for about a half hour and watched the early footage, then went back to work.

I listened to most of the coverage on the radio while I was working on a basic wireless course.

[Spider Jerusalem]

121. In bed with my then-girlfriend.

We'd just finished a rather sweaty morning session of lovemaking, when her father called her and said 'the World Trade Center is gone'. We got dressed and turned on CNN, and my strongest memory of that morning was an eerie and overwhelming sense of unreality. I couldn't quite wrap my head around it. It just seemed too far outside 'normal' life to possibly be happening. The whole day felt like a bad dream, especially later, when I was driving home...there was NO traffic at all on the freeways, and all of the traffic control signs were flashing 'HARTSFIELD ATLANTA INT'L AIRPORT CLOSED--NATIONAL EMERGENCY'. It felt like being the last man on earth after a nuclear war.

[seemunkee]

123. At my mothers house, helping my brother with funeral arrangements

My mother had passed away two days before. We were taking care of insurance, funeral, estate issues. The first plane had hit when I was pulling up to the house. My mothers body was at the airport when they grounded all air traffic.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

124. In South Lake Tahoe...

visiting with my Mom. I was asleep when she came to my door and woke me by saying, "I think you'd better come in here and see this. A plane has hit the World Trade Center."

The rest of the day was spent glued to the TV and DU.

At one point I remember thinking, 'I hope they get the WTC repaired soon. I've love to go there again and hang out at the observation deck.'

I never once that morning thought the towers would fall. Never.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

125. I had work that day. I remember checking the online New York Times

before heading in to work, and I think there was some blurb or breaking news line at the top of the paper about airliner crash/WTC or something, no story... and then the NYT site didn't seem to be loading.

I remember listening to the radio driving in to work and hearing something about the Pentagon on fire, and was thinking ?what??? like they got the stories confused...

Went to work, and saw the footage of events intermittently all day in between work.

I can't remember but I think I was actually on call that day and working all night.

[Fovea]

126. It was two months after my stroke and heart attacks

and I was home, where I was trying hard to get re-oriented to life.

I actually found myself thinking back to election night 2000 when I was in Quebec. I was telling all these programmers from around the globe that America would overcome the controversy and spring back to normal.

I sat there wondering if I was going to like the new normal. For the record, I don't.

Then the first building fell, and I couldn't believe it. I still don't.

[RandomKoolzip]

127. Nashville, TN. I thought the world was ending.

My brother worked a block away from the WTC, and I just knew he was dead.

Then he called me on his cell phone a few hours later. He didn't even know it was terrorism; he thought it might have been an earthquake. All he knew was that there was some huge explosion and all the buildings around him were evacuated.

It was a horrible fucking day.

[foreverdem]

128. I was at work in midtown Manhattan

My husband called me and told me that a plane had hit one of the towers. We thought it was some kind of freak accident, but then I ran to the pantry area on my floor and saw on TV as another plane crashed into the south tower. One guy who was on my floor actually saw it happen from the window next to his cube, he just happened to look up at the moment of impact of the first plane. He ran to the pantry, his face was white as a sheet. All of us watching the TV at that moment knew it was no accident.

I think the eeriest thing for me was to be able to see the towers burning from the windows of my building. It was like it was right in front of you, close enough that you could actually touch it, but at the same time it was hard to believe what you were seeing.

I could not wait to get home that day, it seemed like it took me forever to get there.

[Midlodemocrat]

129. I had just returned from walking my youngest to school.

Booted up the computer and saw on Compuserve about the first plane hitting. Then I turned on the TV and saw the second plane go in.

I was terrified. My brothers worked in the Empire State Building at the time and some of the people in the office had seen the first plane go in. I desperately tried to get ahold of my brothers, but couldn't because the phones were all down.

I finally got through to one sister in law who was getting ready to leave for their lake house. She was pregnant. My brother was in Allentown, PA (coincidentally, 9/11 is his birthday) and didn't know any thing about an attack. My dad in his Alzheimer's induced haze told him, but my brother thought he was having a senior moment. He finally got through to his wife to tell her to head for their lake house.

My other brother was sitting on the tarmac at LaGuardia when the planes struck. Needless to say, the plan returned to the terminal, where thousands of people just stood around watching the reports on TV.

I went upstairs to tell my husband that I had located my brothers and as I rounded the corner into our bedroom, the first tower fell. I just fell on the bed sobbing. I couldn't imagine the pain those trapped felt and I was convinced that the total number of dead was going to be much higher than it was. When the second one collapsed, I started panicking. I wanted my children. I wanted to go to school and bring them home and just have them with me.

I didn't. Partly because I didn't want my children to know about this horror. Too late. The middle school principal got on the intercom and announced that the terrorists had struck 'many landmarks in NYC and DC'. My eldest came home crying that she thought her uncles had perished. I wish to this day that that principal hadn't done that, but instead let the children find out from their parents. Two kids at that school lost their dads that day at the Twin Towers. They should have learned about that from someone who loved them; not the squawk box.

Once the FAA grounded all the planes, I remember standing on my back deck and looking at the amazingly blue sky and hearing nothing. Eerie. Nothing.

At the time of the attacks, I was convinced that there were going to be coordinated attacks all across the country. I woke my brother up in CA, because he took the Golden Gate Bridge into work. I was convinced that there were other attacks which were imminent. I am glad I was wrong.

[JHB]

130. I live right across the Hudson from the WTC...

...but that week I was house-sitting for my vacationing parents, since they live much closer to where I work. We were starting another beautiful day in the cube farm when I realized the departmetal secretary behind me was repeating "Oh my God!", over and over, louder each time. news sites were jammed, so tried DU, bartcop, and a few other boards trying to get news. At first I tried to play the calming voice, since it wasn't clear yet whether it was terrorism or just some terrible accident. But then we found out it wasn't a small plane it was an airliner, then the second plane hit, and it was obviously deliberate.

Local TV was out (they broadcast from the WTC mast), but they hooked up a cable feed in the lunch room. They sent us home by noon, since no one could concentrate on work (a lot of fire- and police-relatives in the company, plus some with relatives who worked in the towers. One was among the victims). I couldn't get back to my own place until Friday, thanks to the travel restrictions, to check on my landlord, who also worked at the WTC. He was there for the '93 bombing too, so he knew to get out at the first sign of trouble.

[rniel]

132. Woke up to

My television is my alarm. Comes on the news channel loud and woke me up sometime around 7am. First thing i see on my tv is a video of after the first plane crashed into the building. I must be an idiot or hadn't woken up all the way yet, but my first thought was that it was an accident for some reason. I can't believe that was my first reaction, but I just wasn't in the mode of believing we could've been attacked.

[Beetwasher]

133. I'm LUCKY To Be Alive!

I was getting off the 4 train at Fulton and B'way and was pretty much in the shadow of the second tower when the 2nd plane hit. Fiery chunks of debris rained down around me, others who were nearby weren't as lucky as I was and got hit w/ debris.

[KansDem]

134. Saw circular contrails in the sky. I thought "How strange..."

I was on my way to work and saw contrail(s) marking a perfect circle. I had never seen this before and thought it quite strange. Only when I got to work and saw colleagues huddled around a radio did I understand what I saw: Planes had been recalled to their airports.

[Brazenly Liberal]

135. Folding laundry and watching the news

I always have the news on in the background during the day, so it's not strange I happened to have it on then. When the first one hit, I remember it didn't seem right. the assumption was that it was an accident, but it didn't seem right that a plane would be flying so low over NYC. Even then, though, the assumption was that something was wrong with the pilot or that a mechanism had failed, causing it to lose altitude.

But the instant the second one hit, the truth was clear. It was deliberate, no doubt about it.

All sorts of wild rumors came fast and furious. We heard there was a bomb in the Capitol building at one point.

But my strongest memory of that day is my brother. We were worried about him because he was out of the country and we didn't know if it was going to be a bad day for Americans overseas.

He was in London, shopping, and walked over to see what people were looking at in the window of an electronics store - it was a television tuned to the scene in New York. As soon as they learned he was American, they were all over him offering condolences and reassurances. For the rest of his stay, the people of England couldn't have been more solicitous and kind. From there, he went on to Germany and it was the same - outpourings of sympathy and kindness everywhere he went when people learned he was American.

The reception was much different when he went last year. All that goodwill has been squandered by the enfant terrible who sullies the WH.

[FlaGranny]

136. I remember well.

I got up and started working (at home) and decided to take a break and got on DU a little before 9 a.m. DU is where I first heard about it. Then went and turned on the TV and stayed connected to DU most of the day.

[Sugarcoated]

137. I remember driving to work that morning thinking

it was one of the most beautiful days here outside of Philadelphia I'd ever seen. I had that 'it's good to be alive feeling', which was very rare for me following the cancer death of my sister (she was only 36), I was pretty traumatized from it, so it was such a great to feel that way again.

I worked at the time in a big office type place with low cubicles, and had (of all days!) loaned my walkman to a young coworker. He comes walking up to me and says he heard on Stern that the a plane had flown into the World Trade Tower. I couldn't compute what he was saying, why he seemed to be trying to get me to react (thinking it was a small plane, pilot error), so he drew a picture. "Here's the tower. See? Now here's a hole." Draws a big hole. "Plane hit building". That's when I noticed there was a stir in the place, no one working, chatter everywhere. A woman walked by crying with someone's arm around her, heading for the cafeteria phones.

But there's people in those top floors, and people down below with debris raining down on them - WTF?

I think by then the second plane had hit and I knew a guy had one of those tiny portable B&W TVs. I ran up just in time to see the first tower collapse. But a black and white 10" screen doesn't do it justice, it looked abstract to me. I went into shock, I walked up to a lady in my dept. and I was saying how unbelievable it was, and she was sort of not very upset about it, and I just burst into tears and blurted, "Oh, God, those poor people!" Someone said there would be a prayer circle in the cafeteria, and though I'm not very religious I felt right to do that. As we stood there with our heads down, I remember my tears just plopping onto the floor.

I have a big phobia of heights - two months before 911 my brothers and I took my mom to NYC for a retirement gift. I was dreading getting to the Towers cause I knew my brothers were going to want to go up to the top. And I'd probably have bit the bullet so as not to appear a wimp, but I only had about $30 in my pocket and it cost $13 to go up, so I was gonna back out probably. But the sign said "0 Visibility Today", so we didn't. I just kept thinking of those people trapped at the top floors, the worst nightmare ever. I replayed their circumstances over and over in my mind. I had panic attacks and irrational fears of nuke attacks for a long time after that.

After driving home in a fog, yearning to have a leader to make me feel safe, and there's Bush looking like a scared rabbit. I was so wishing it was Gore, if only Gore was there, or even McCain. Back in 2000, I really didn't know I was a Democrat, thought I was an issues voter. Funny thing though, Democrat issues always seemed to line up with my own, but I didn't know anything political really. I might've voted for McCain cause I liked him. Bush was an incompetent idiot from the minute I set eyes on him. To be honest, I was still in a bit of a daze from the election theft.

And, we had plans to go to NYC and take our son to the Statue of Liberty the week after 911. Needless to say, it was a while before we got there.

[Lisa]

138. I came upstairs and found my landlady's daughter unsupervised ...

That morning, I'd been sleeping late after working the previous night. I'm on the west coast, so I was probably one of the last people on the continent to know. A co-worker phoned me and I staggered out of bed to answer it, thinking they wanted me to cover someone's shift -- instead, he said, "turn on the TV". Stupidly, I asked "which channel", and he said "all of them", then hung up.

When I saw what was unfolding onscreen, I went upstairs to talk to my landlady. She was in bed with the flu or something -- she was so out of it, she turned over and went back to sleep (!) when I told her what was going on.

I heard the sounds of the TV coming from their living room, and found their then-7-year-old daughter sitting in front of the TV, petrified and all alone. I still don't know if she missed school because she was feeling sick too, or because her mom was unable to take her. I turned off the TV and asked her if she'd had eaten anything yet -- she said no -- so I fixed her breakfast.

It was a rather surreal day, and the fact that I ended up looking after the kid for several hours actually ended up pushing the events on the East Coast to the side. (I didn't find out until much later that the husband of one of my grade-school friends had died in the Pennsylvania crash.) I was worried about my landlady and her little girl -- it wasn't normal for the kid to be left all alone like that -- and I was thinking about calling and cancelling my afternoon at work, if my landlady wasn't up to looking after her.

My landlady was up and around by lunchtime, but to this day, she hasn't said a word to me about any of this ... not only about the terrorist attacks, but whether she was angry that I knocked on her bedroom door that morning, or glad that I kept an eye on her kid, or anything.

[SlavesandBulldozers]

142. had just finished my first Spanish test in college

was in the gym for weightlifting class. two girls in the class came in and looked scared and said a plane had hit and her brother was in one of the towers (we're in Florida), by the time we switched all the tvs in the gym to news, the second plane had just hit and everybody freaked. i remember that moment of realization that everybody else also seems to recount. i spent the next 2 hours in the gym sitting on an exercise bike watching 4 tvs on different channels with about 3 people.

Once those horrible two hours passed, I went to an ethics class centered on Plato's Republic and Homer's Illiad. I remember the professor being also visibly shaken by the events, and remember vividly him saying that soon our country would begin justifying doing very terrible and frightening things, and would do so - in essence - with the blessings of its people. He wasn't standing on a soapbox, he was just making his point with as much regret as certainty.

[LSK]

143. i was way up in the mountains of Colorado

Specifically taking pictures of Leadville, Co as the sun came up. I heard about it on the way out of town on one of the few radio stations around. I remember how quickly there were talking about Osama. I drove over Cottonwood pass (dirt roads) and I spent the night in Crested Butte, Co.

[NuttyFluffers]

144. Asleep. folks heard on news, watched on tv, screamed; i turned over.

went to bed, i believe, around 4, or was it 6, am. my parents woke up early, heard something hit towers, turned on tv. came and told me, i moaned and told them to go away. mom watched as 2nd plane hit other tower, she screamed. brought dad over to watch, utterly stunned. came and ran over to me saying we were under attack, terrorists, etc. i yawned, said, "that's nice, mumble, mumble, mumble," turned over, went back to sleep. apparently this is what they told me later. i was too sleepy to remember much clearly, or care.

when i woke up it was 4 or 5 pm PST. by then both buildings fell. watched tv about it, had cereal or something, i forget. after an hour i was done (because it was repeating ad infinitum with no new real info by that point). i think i went back to sleep, or was it to play video games? honestly i can't remember now. probably sleep. i really do sleep like the dead. it could be a nuclear holocaust and i'd probably have the same reaction. except i'd be rendered into radioactive ash, but that process is so fast it likely wouldn't wake me.

[aaronbees]

145. Sleeping in Seattle....

And my roomate at the time Matt woke me up, saying something was happening in NYC with an attack. I'd been out the night before and was running a bit late for work actually, but when I took a first groggy look at the TV I knew there was no way I'd be heading in from Queen Anne to work at the BofA building (tallest one in town) to file and organize legal documents. I knew that temp job was dead, as were many things, as the second tower toppled. The whole day and immediate aftermath just kind of upended things further for me, heightening a sense of unreality I felt after finishing graduate school (such a sweet cocoon) and entering BushCo's new America. That night a friend rolled in to town to visit, and the next day we went up in the Space Needle, which he'd wanted to see for a long time. Security was close to nil. The afternoon it happened, I spent some time on the patio, smoking and listening to the absolutely eerie calm quiet come down from the skies. It freaked me out. And I recall that even in the evening after the attack my friends and I were fearful of what Bush would do to twist these events around. We were right.

Strangely, it feels good to remember these things and the immediate intensity of it that day.

[bumblebee1]

146. In bed, asleep

I work a second shift job. My husband called me from his work to tell me a plane hit the WTC. It took me a few seconds to get the fog of sleep out of my head. I then asked him if it was a jet plane. He told me yes. Then I asked if it were a passenger plane. He again told me yes. I remember saying to him, "Somethings going on here. It's not an inept pilot." After turning on the TV, he called again. That's when I told him about the plane hitting the Pentagon and the one that crashed in western PA.

[Guaranteed]

147. I had left the radio on all night.

I didn't have a TV. At the time I was living on the West Coast, near Santa Barbara, alone.

I woke up about 6AM after the radio reports of planes attacking us had been incorporated into my *dreams* for the past half-hour or so. I had thought they were fighter jets attacking NYC, to begin with. I thought it was military, for the first few minutes. I kept listening. Then the reports of the towers collapsing. The radio announcer just kept getting more and more frantic.

I called my grandfather to ask him what people do in times like these. He said to just sit back and let our government do their job.

I didn't see the video until much later in the day. I remember getting my haircut that morning, talking to the barber about it. I told them I hadn't seen what happened, because I didn't have a TV. They said I really should see.

Then I remember going into work that afternoon. Looking at my co-workers. Just the raised eyebrows, shrugs. "Welp..." No one knew what to say. Was pretty crazy.

[Neil Lisst]

148. I was at the office, haggling on the phone with ...

an opposing counsel, when I got a note that nephew was on the phone, saying it was urgent.

I took the call, and he told me a plane had hit a tower.

I told my secretary to cancel my day and go home since we didn't know what this would mean. I picked up my nephew, and my son also came over (they're both adults) and we watched it unfold from the study at my house.

As it was covered as a terror attack, I realized this would mean major military action in the mideast, and a call to patriotism. I also knew it meant young men would be enticed to fight. So I began planning to head that off at the pass right then.

[Ani Yun Wiya]

149. A strange morning.

For many months prior to 9/11, I had been collecting precinct level data from all SOE's in the state of Florida.
On the afternoon of 9/10, I had received mailings from several counties and had spent the night adding this data
to my collection which had on that day increased to a total of 62 counties worth of complete county level election
returns information. I went to sleep at 6:45 A.M. west coast time, thinking about how the NORC study was coming out
that day and wondering if they too would have a "different" set of numbers aside from the several sets already out.
I went to sleep with a feeling that I had "a dragon by the tail".

Forty-five minutes later my wife woke me up to watch what was happening on TV.

First thought was "oh nuts there goes the NORC study".

Second thought was "my, my such rapid ID of the perps".

Many other similar thoughts had me thinking that 11/22/63, 12/12/00 and 9/11/01 all had the same "look and feel".

After many months, many books and newspapers, many websites and uncountable conversations and discussions, I could
only conclude that it is the same "look and feel" because it is the same cast and crew at the heart of these rather
ruinous events. And ever since that day things have only gotten worse for this world and it's people.

[paparush]

152. I remember EXACTLY where I was and what I was doing..but then...

I'm not preoccupied plotting the overthrow/demise of the entire planet. I'm sure that takes a lot of attention to detail.

[itcfish]

154. I Was

I was sitting on the subway on my way to work. I was reading a book and at a stop at 34th Street a young man came in mess and all full of dust and he was crying and shouting. I looked up from my book and said, “Oh just another nut riding the subway” and then a young lady came in, in the same condition crying and saying the WTC had been hit. Then I knew we were in trouble. I ran to my office and the phones were ringing off the hook. People from our offices in Europe were calling like crazy to see if we were alright. My boss who was in Europe, called us and told us to stay in the office in case anyone called from the European media. I had the most seniority and I ordered everyone to go home. We walked from Manhattan over the bridge to Queens. One of the Saddest days in my life.

[LibertyLover]

155. Etched in my brain, like JFK's assassination

I was on the DC metro when the first plane hit and didn't hear anything about it. When I got to my office, one of the lawyers I work with asked if I had heard that the World Trade Center had been hit by a small plane. I hadn't, but mentioned that the Empire State Building had been hit by a bomber during World War II. Alejandro said that the news reporter had mentioned that incident when describing the hit on the Trade Center. Just then his phone rang. It was his wife to say that the 2nd building had been hit. I jumped on the computer, but couldn't get to CNN or MSNBC, so I went to the BBC for information. I alternated between BBC and DU for a while. Then came the news that the Pentagon had been hit. We all ran over to the Pennsylvania Avenue side of the building and watched the smoke curl up. Someone pointed out a fighter jet circling overhead. I explained they were flying CAP (combat air patrol). I went back to my desk to do some drafting when another attorney came by to say that one of the Towers had collapsed. I couldn't believe it. When I lived in New Jersey, I worked for a law firm on Wall Street. I'd take the train to Hoboken, pick up the PATH and take it to the World Trade Center station. If I had still been working in NYC rather than DC, I would have been in the Trade Center train station when the plane hit. Anyway, I tried to call my husband to get news since he was home. I finally got him and asked what was happening. What did I mean, he asked. Usually he gets up and turns on the Today show. That morning he hadn't bothered and had started pottering around the house. He quickly turned on the tv, just in time to watch the 2nd tower collapse in real time. There was no chance I was going to do any work at the office by now. In fact the World Bank sent out an e-mail soon afterwards sending us home. For me the problem was that Metro was closed down and I had no way to get to my car which was parked in Maryland at the last stop on the orange line. So I sat tight and computer surfed. Finally my husband called to say that Metro was running again so I walked over to Foggy Bottom station and got on an orange line out to New Carrollton. The cars were pretty full, but it was very quiet. Driving home on Route 50 was surreal. There was practically no traffic. When I got home my husband and I sat on the couch and watched the coverage. I got my first view of the 2nd plane hitting and the collapses. Two of our friends worked at the Pentagon so we checked to see if they were ok. Both were. One had been home sick and the other on business travel. My high priestess called to say that they were going to do a circle at her house that evening for protection and could I come. I told her no, I was not interested in leaving the house. She was disappointed. It turned out to be a good thing, because I understand that it turned ugly. Besides the governor had instituted a curfew.

I also remember that I kept looking for the president to come on the tv and talk to the nation. I was a member of DU and had not voted for him of course, but still, it was a national disaster and it was what should have happened. When the news reports finally mentioned where and what he was doing (flying around anywhere but back to Washington) it was beyond belief. His place was in DC. The very little respect I had for the man shriveled and died. I got into several arguments with acquaintances who were Bushbots over that issue. One person still will not talk to me because I "denigrated the president of the United States". Oh well.