story1029.xml

story1029.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-16

I'm a news writer for CNN International. I've worked for the various CNN domestic and international networks since 1985 (helping cover all major news events that have occurred in the world since the mid-1980s). On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I'd finished my overnight shift at 7:30 a.m. ET and gotten back by around 8:00 to sleep. At 10:40, I was sound asleep when my cell phone rang. It was my girlfriend calling me from her car while enroute to her workplace. She apologized for waking me but felt I probably wouldn't mind being woken under the circumstances, given the fact that she'd just learned from her car radio that the World Trade Center wasn't there anymore, the Pentagon was on fire and a car bomb had just exploded at the State Department (fortunately, I would soon learn the report about the car bombing was incorrect; unfortunately that would not be the case regarding the other reports). She told me the national calamity had been caused by several domestic passenger jets which had been hijacked that morning. Ironically, where I was at that moment there was no television because the residence had only been recently purchased and satellite TV service hadn't been installed yet (ironically, installation had been scheduled for mid-afternoon that day). So, there I was, in the television news business -- having assisted CNN in the coverage of all the major news events of the past 16 years -- yet there was no television for me to watch in those early stages of the most important event of my generation. Having immediately called work to be told that I wouldn't be needed there for a few hours, all I could do for those first minutes was make use of my own imagination -- trying to picture what had just happened. The theatre of my mind couldn't handle the task. It could not comprehend the number of deaths that must have occurred that morning, nor picture the city of New York without those two tall towers standing in the midst of lower Manhattan as they had for some 30 years, nor imagine that famous five-sided center of U.S. military strength in flames. My mind couldn't even conceive of how four American passenger jets could have been hijacked in the continental United States. It had been my flawed impression for years that a domestic hijacking in the U.S. was basically impossible -- airport security was impregnable, I'd assumed. I mean, when was the last time we'd had a domestic hijacking? It had to have been one of those nutty Cuban gunmen or crazy D.B. Cooper back in the early 1970s, right? Immediately, I began to sense that if all these things could suddenly happen in our country in one morning in the year 2001, then we as a people were probably facing deep, deep trouble. The import of this tragedy was clear. JFK's assassination in 1963 had reminded every individual of the fragility of life. We knew that if a young powerful man who had as much going for him as he had could be taken out so suddenly, then any of the rest of us could also die suddenly due to accident or design. But now, September 11 was teaching us that even huge masses of people could also be suddenly taken out -- I mean, literally, suddenly taken out with absolutely no warning. At least during the Cold War, we'd all known that we'd probably get about 20 minutes to prepare for death once it was announced that Soviet ICBMs were on their way to the United States. So, even since mid-morning last September 11, I've looked at my immediate surroundings in a new light. I now know that my familiar environments of home and work and other places can suddenly, quickly, and irreversibly be taken from me forever (assuming I am not taken too) with not even my receiving as little as 20 minutes' notice. Living with this new reality is dreadful but live with it we will. Brave Londoners had to live with their new reality imposed by Nazi Germany. We will do what this moment in history requires of us and, in the end, we will prevail.