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2002-09-12

Writing about September 11th poses many problems. On the one hand, you almost feel a need to write deeply, and to paint in broad strokes about how the day changed your life, and made you think in Clintonesque platitudes about ?our common humanity.? And at the same time you reflexively feel obligated to either declare your newfound love of country, or to step back and temper your patriotism with some sort of pseudo-intellectual criticism of American foreign policy. And so in writing about that day I am trying not to simply add to the same tired patriotic or demagogic arguments or declarations, but at the same time be true to what I felt that day that when I was working at the White House.

It was eight o?clock on September the Eleventh when I passed through security, skipped up the grand staircase to the second floor and entered my office. The lights flickered alive, and I turned on the decade-old television propped atop a file cabinet as my coworkers began to stream in. The CBS Morning News was on and Bryant Gumbel was nodding as his guest gushed about some topic or other that, in any event, I didn?t especially care about. ?Have we staffed out the education remarks for Thursday yet?? someone asked. ?No, they?re still with Public Liaison?? another trailed off. Every day began like this: it was going to be a quiet day in the White House?s Office of Speechwriting.

And while that sounds melodramatic and reads like the intro to a cheap cliffhanger movie, the reality for those of us who were awake and beginning our morning work just after eight o?clock in the morning on September 11 was precisely that. We weren?t shaken awake by our hysterical roommates, and we experienced the same weird sensation of turning to the television at one moment and seeing normal, perky morning television and turning back a minute later and seeing a gaping, smoldering hole in the side of a familiar building. We wondered dumbly what had happened, as if it wasn?t obvious, as if we didn?t somehow already know the answer. We all told ourselves that there had been some sort of mistake, but we all knew deep inside that planes don?t just hit buildings at angles and in locations that, coincidentally, would do the most damage possible. We knew what had happened, and so nobody really believed the news anchors when they said that a small plane had hit the World Trade Center and yet the raw footage clearly showed enormous engines under the wings of a banking, diving, clearly under control airplane.

I can?t speak to how everyone else at the White House reacted during those initial moments. We left our office door open and people on their way to the West Wing or to the political offices down the hall briefly stopped by and, unsure what to make of the scene, continued on their way. Within my office people tried to continue their work; preparing for a flurry of presidential speeches to come over the next few days. Certainly the more important people, the ones who worked closely with the president and were able to make things happen, were on the phones and funneling the raw information on to the president?POTUS. I tried to call my parents back in California?a circus act that took me about fifteen minutes to perform because the phone lines were already jammed?everyone else in my office was on the phone, and I imagine everyone else in every other office was too, or would be soon. Nobody knew what was going on, and we hadn?t even come to the self-important realization that ?nothing will ever be the same again.? We remembered Oklahoma City and how most of us had probably, until Timothy McVeigh was captured, fantasized about B-52s turning by their fiery deliverance the sands of Arabia into a sheet of glass. We held our judgment; we knew who had done the deed, but everyone tried to wait and see, tried to remain intellectual and removed from the situation.

Until the Pentagon was hit.

And then, within about twelve seconds, the arrogant objectivity and removal from the situation was gone. If someone had the ability to crash multiple planes into high-profile targets and they had just hit a target of lesser importance and fame than the one in which you were standing, you don?t worry about the effects of U.S. foreign policy on the environment or on the poor, and you don?t worry about who might have been upset about the rejection of Kyoto or who is upset that U.S. planes are protecting the Holy Land from Iraqi assault.

And what followed was sort of a personal experience that I imagine was different for everyone. The press said that the White House was evacuated shortly before 11:00 a.m., but we were all gone a good 45 minutes before that, so I don?t know who the Secret Service was able to evacuate. The streets were crowded with staffers from the White House, from banks, lobbying firms, and everywhere, and it was one of those impossible moments when nobody bragged about where they worked or how important they were. We were all flesh and blood and in that moment totally aware, albeit latently, of our mortality. Everyone walked?few people ran?away from The Ellipse because we all expected it to be hit within minutes but nobody wanted to look as terrified and clueless as we were.

And with distance from the potential new Ground Zero our strength returned, our resolve, and once the towers came down, our hearts filled with love for country and complete and utter hatred for the enemy?whoever he was.

For my part, the day had many lessons to offer. I learned how and where to give blood, and I learned how many people really cared about me when I was finally able to check my Instant Messenger and voice mail messages. I thought of the thousands of energetic, young, thoughtful people my age and a few years older working in the Towers that day, and about how many didn?t get out fast enough because nobody really thought that the Towers would come down.

I can?t say that I took away one specific, lasting lesson from September 11, 2001. It?s just a day of memories. I think often, and in private, about Flight 93 and where it might have been going, about whether it would have killed me had brave Americans not decided otherwise. I think about the geopolitics of it all, and I suppose I simply don?t care why it all happened. I know why, but I just don?t care, and maybe that?s one of the lasting effects of proximity to it all.

Selfishly though, I suppose I felt privileged to be at a place that was in the crosshairs and yet wasn?t hit. I felt almost special to be able to say that I was at a certain place when everything went down, but I think now that that kind of thinking was just a way of not confronting their logical extension: that yes, in fact, I and everyone else at the White House that morning, had narrowly dodged a bullet.

It?s a feeling that no new AU freshman (I imagine) will be able to understand in the same way because they weren?t here for September 11 or for anthrax, and while they could worry about the possibility that their local city hall might become the target of Radical Islamists, they probably knew as well as any of us that the real targets were in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Paris, London, and?above all else?in Washington, D.C.

Asking what it was like to be at the White House on a year ago September 11 is an impossibly loaded question. Everyone had their own unique experience, and everyone took away different things. By virtue of my proximity to events and to potential events I suppose I took a rather uncompromisingly Spartan view of things. But my experience is no ?better? or ?worse? than anyone else?s. The closer you come to proximity to the events of that day the more upsetting, I think, everything becomes. Certainly if you were in one of the Towers or at the Pentagon or aboard Flight 93, you were in a place nobody would ever want to be. And, once you put your politics aside, nobody would have wanted to be in President Bush?s shoes after his chief of staff, Andy Card, whispered in his ear, ?Mr. President, a second plane has hit the World Trade Center, America is under attack.? Proximity is fun to think about when you?re a safe distance away, but as someone who was too close for comfort that day, I wish I had just stayed at home and been shaken awake like everyone else.