story677.xml

story677.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-05-28

My name is G. Stuart (Gregg) Smith. (I have an audio .wav file of this that I will also try to transmit.) I am news director at WUFT-TV, the PBS station at the University of Florida. I was in Washington on September 10th and 11th to train at the Associated Press Broadcast Center at 1825 K Street, NW for a new computer system we purchased from the AP. I had checked out of my hotel and walked the few blocks to the AP building and entered the reception area about 9 a.m. A number of people were standing around looking at the bank of four TVs at scenes from the World Trade Center. I called my station to see what we were doing to localize the story in Gainesville. After making sure things were on track there, I went back to the AP training room to continue working with the ENPS newsroom software. Within a few minutes our trainer noted a bulletin on the AP wire that a plane had hit the Pentagon. Since I was only a few blocks from the White House, which I figured might be a target, I decided to become a reporter again at that point.
So I left the AP building and began walking toward the White House. There were already hundreds of people out on the street and vehicles in bumper-to-bumper traffic. As I turned down 17th Street, people huddled around cars listening to radios. Many were shaking their heads and holding their hands over their mouths in disbelief. As I crossed a street a man yelled from his van that the World Trade Center had collapsed. I couldn?t believe it?it didn?t seem like that could happen.
As I got closer to the White House I tried calling my station on my cell phone to report on the situation. I couldn?t get through. My first thought was that the terrorists had bombed the cell phone towers. I kept trying to get through, since I did see some people on cell phones. I reached the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 17th Street, across from the Old Executive (Eisenhower) Office Building, still trying to get through on my cell phone. In the intersection uniformed Secret Service officers had their backs to the White House, keeping an eye on the small crowd on the street corner (some were journalists with cameras, others just gawkers). The officers had closed 17th Street on the west side of the EOB and were also directing traffic away from the area as quickly as they could. At that point I noticed Mary Matalin, an aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, try to cross 17th, but an officer refused to let her inside the secured area ? even though she flashed an ID and was a recognizable official.
In the distance, over the EOB and the White House I could see smoke from the Pentagon. Two fighter jets also screamed high overhead, somewhat reassuring, but another indication that our nation?s capital was under attack.
Shortly after that, several uniformed Secret Service officers started yelling for people to move off the corner and farther down 17th away from the White House. At that point I was able to get through on my cell phone to the station. The assistant news director of WUFT-FM, Dave Schermer, recorded about three minutes of me on the phone at the scene. You can hear Secret Service officers in the background, very adamant about moving people even farther down the street. They did not say at the time, but I imagine they believed that Flight 93 that eventually crashed in Pennsylvania was headed for the White House and they were trying to get people out of harm?s way.
After hanging around at Pennsylvania and 18th for awhile, I decided there was little more I could do as a reporter. I had no camera and was not credentialed to report at any of the federal facilities. So I walked back to the AP building. I met up with my station?s tech guy, Arlindo Albuquerque, who was also training there. We decided to end our training (in fact, the AP had sent our trainer off as a messenger). We were scheduled to fly out that evening, but flights were grounded everywhere. Fortunately, Arlindo had a rental car which he arranged to keep to drive back to Florida.
We packed up our computer gear and borrowed a dolly; an AP staffer helped us take our gear to the parked car about five blocks away. As we walked along K Street, we made faster progress than the near-standstill traffic trying to get out of town. When we finally got in the car, we nudged into the traffic and headed for Georgetown, the fastest exit we figured from Washington. I heard a ?whump, whump? and feared there had been more explosions from another attack. But soon a radio reporter said it had just been sonic booms from military jets.
What normally would be a ten minute drive, turned into an hour-and-a-half ordeal. We finally made it to the Key Bridge crossing into Virginia, where we got a clear view of the Pentagon down river and two fighter jets circling above.
In the Virginia countryside going down I-95 one man draped an American flag from an overpass. As we headed back to Florida we listened intently for any news; after what I had witnessed in Washington, I couldn?t believe the reports that Flight 93 may have been targeting Camp David. We stopped for the night in South Carolina so we could see President Bush address the nation. I watched with disbelief as the video of the attacks replayed?then before the President?s speech, watching a replay of representatives and senators singing God Bless America on Capitol Hill, tears welled in my eyes. I have since thought many times about the brave souls on Flight 93 and silently thanked them ? for they may have given their lives to spare mine on September 11th.