Remembering 9/11 - Our Reflections

First, How many times have we and so many others, anytime there's a fall day with a blue sky, deep blue sky, you'll say, this reminds me of 9-11.

I know.

It was the most incredible day on the East Coast.

Millions of Americans, every day today, 25 years later, every time you see that sky and it's around 9-11, really in the fall, you think of that day.

That's my first recollection.

The second is very personal to me with regard to my activities that day.

I was a whip in the house for Tom DeLay for the majority.

And every fall, the whip team, about 20 of us, I'd say, would go to the White House to meet with the president's legislative staff to go over and begin promoting the president's legislative agenda for that year.

That was what we did.

And that's where I was that morning.

I was in my office, I specifically recall, and a bunch of us loaded into a car, I think five or six of us, too many in a small car.

We ran down to the White House and we were ushered in.

What time was that? That was, it had to be 8 or 8.30, likely 8 o'clock, likely 8 o'clock.

I've been trying to piece together some of these, some of these, the time.

so we were in a meeting with the president's staff when uh about a half hour into the meeting a staffer knocked on the door came in and said there had been an accident at the world trade center there was a they thought a small plane had gone into the world trade center just fyi just want you to know meeting resumed

well

uh 15 minutes later and i did check the time there's about 20 minutes between those planes in the respective towers 15 minutes later the second tower was hit stafford came in and said we're under attack all members back to capitol hill uh i remember very specifically the chaos as i walked out of that meeting around the white house and the grounds people running to and fro i suspect staffers media the whole nine yards had

the pentagon happened by that time i don't

know i don't know but i'll get to that in a second actually uh the white house was a madhouse quite frankly um And I don't know the precise timing with regard to the president in that classroom in Florida.

I do know he left rapidly, got on Air Force One, and Air Force One literally stayed in the air for many hours because we did not know, he did not know what was going on, right? So...

So we run back to Capitol Hill in that car.

We get there.

It's pretty chaotic.

And I have a very specific recollection of sitting down with Steve Krzyzewski, my chief of staff, and discussing, should we let the interns go? That's how.

Wow.