I wasn’t going to talk about this as I’ve written before online about my experience on 9/11/2001.
But I’ve now heard several people on TV this week, today, being interviewed about their experience that day and I found it curious.
At 5:56AM, on 9/11 I was on the Bainbridge Island ferry, Tacoma, headed into Seattle’s Coleman Dock terminal. The M/V Tacoma has a maximum capacity of 202 vehicles and up to 2,500 passengers.
My wife was at home with our youngest watching TV.
I was sitting in the open area chairs at the point of the ferry when she called. She told me while they were watching TV a plane flew into one of the twin towers in NYC. I asked some questions, she answered.
I am not and was not a journalist. I am not and was not a journalist. I am a military vet, USAF. I did hold a secret level clearance for nuclear weapons. But I was a technical writer and had studied the Soviet Union for decades. In the 1990s I began to notice similarities between active measures by the KGB against America and others (certainly the UK who taught us a lot during WWII and the ABC coalitions about the Soviets).
My comment was that we were potentially and technically in a state of war now, with someone who had just attacked us. Though it’s still “possibly” and accident.
A few people sitting yards away from us, next to my friend I whom I sat with on the ferry sometimes, looked at me nervously and I could see them looking away, but leaning slightly in my direction.
A commercial passenger plane simply does not accidentally fly into the largest building in NYC. But still, it could be an accident. Accidents DO happen. But the coincidence here was remarkable to the point of ridiculousness.
And then she exclaimed aloud. I asked what happened.
She was silent.
Then she said while we were talking, another plane had flown into the other tower.
That was when I said, “Then we are technically and definitely at war with someone. We have just been attacked, twice. We just don’t know yet who attacked us. But it was an attack.”
I had said that louder than I meant to, but also louder because others needed to know, though not unreasonably. After I said it, I felt I should announce it. And yet, I did not. Information? Panic? On a passenger ferry? I was unsure the protocol. So I lowered my voice. Enolugh had heard me to look into it if they were curious enough and I was sure they would hear all about it once they arrived at work.
I looked at my friend next to me who had a very worried look on his face.
I looked around the large cabin and I could see people looking at me from yards away with concerned but questionable looks on their faces.
Were they wondering, ‘Was this guy on the phone nuts?’
I quieted down and considered my wife, our child home sick that day, my son at school, my position on a ferry and the tall building for work I was headed into and began to feel a little exposed. And worried.
I considered our house in the back of Suquamish, Washington, on a couple of forested acres in the woods just off Bainbridge Island. It is the small town where Chief Si'ahl of the Duwamish tribe—Seattle’s namesake, is buried.
I told her there was nothing to worry about as she was safe where she was, my older son (who has a different mother) was safe at school.
She asked if I was safe. I did not feel safe. I looked around the skies out the large ferry windows and saw nothing. I thought about the building I was headed into, not Seattle’s tallest but still a 16 floor building that stuck up higher than surrounded buildings and felt I was lying as I told her, “I’ll be fine, I’m sure I’ll be safe.” She asked me to turn around and come home. But I said I need to at least go into work to see how things were.
I ended up spending the day then many of his headed home a little early out of respect for our frightened families at home. Someone pulled a TV on a cart into our area at work and we had the news on all day.
During that day there were USAF fighter jets flying low over our building.
On the way home there was a Coast Guard RHIB—Rigid-Hull Inflatable Boats (sometimes RIBs) with a mounted .50cal. that followed us to port and remained there for some time every day going back and forth. It was a relief that first day or two but then began to be concerning, worrisome.
Why do I mention all this?
Because I was informed and aware when the planes hit, and I'm not saying that to brag. I've been hearing people talk this week about how clueless they felt in the moment, how they didn't know what was happening.
One person said that when the first plane hit, he was stunned but aware, and when the second one hit, he knew it was Al Qaeda. He was a journalist who'd been stationed in Afghanistan not long before.
My point is simple.
I find it strange that so many people didn't know, at least fairly quickly, that we were under attack, or even ask themselves who was doing it. I find that unsettling.
By the second strike, and certainly by the Pentagon and Flight 93 (where the passengers themselves refused to let the terrorists finish what they started), there was no way this was an accident.
This wasn't rocket science. But it was a learning curve. Now we know. Europe had warned us for years how, if not this kind of attack could happen, we should be more prepared. We ignored them. We were America. Protected by vast oceans on either side. An anachronist view.
This wasn't rocket science. But it was a learning curve.
Now we know. We just weren't looking for it—we didn't think it could happen here.
We were wrong. Ignorance was the failure then. We cannot afford it now.
And yet we have an administration that doesn't fear ignorance—it depends on it. That's not incompetence.
That's autocracy.
