25 Years Ago – My September 11th Story

I was coming out of a great operational assignment as a Military Intelligence Officer. Just prior to PCS’ing I spent 120 days commanding a small Combined Joint Task Force of Army, Marines and Kuwaitis conducting SIGINT operations along the Kuwait – Iraq border. Coming out of that job, I was targeting a role as a Brigade S2 or part of a Division G2 shop. Was not to be.

On the fateful morning of the 9/11 attacks, I was at a PERSCOM offsite about 1.5 miles from the Pentagon, for training new Assignment Officers. We were mostly gathering as the aircraft hit the Twin Towers in NYC. Shortly thereafter, the Pentagon suffered the same fate when a commercial airliner was used as a weapon. We stepped outside and could see the black smoke rising and hear the sirens in the distance. Training was canceled, and officers were told to go home and await instructions out of fear that other high-rise buildings could be targeted. A call tree would be utilized for guidance and further instructions. We all worked in two high-rise buildings known as the Hoffman Buildings where US Army PERSCOM was mostly located.

I was back at my house by noon processing what had just happened like the rest of America. I knew war had arrived but nothing like this had happened in our history. Yes, Pearl Harbor is US homeland and had been attacked, but it was an ocean away and remotely situated. This war hit our financial capital and was just outside the District of Columbia, the nation’s capital. How was this missed?  The 9-11 Commission would spend years trying to answer this. Like many of you, I watched the news. All it did was anger me even more. After a couple hours of that, I went for a run, and as customary for me when running, I said a rosary, this time for all the victims and their families. Our young children had questions, and we mostly didn’t have answers. Who did this? Why did they do this? Answers like, “There are lots of bad people in our world” and “we don’t really know yet.”

That night and for months to come, we’d hear the Jets flying over our house and neighborhood. Being relatively close to Washington, D.C., the National Command Authority had implemented a Combat Air Patrol over the National Capitol Region. Increased security, more police and more inspections became the rule.

Weeks and months brought clarity regarding who our attackers were. Those working the Usama Bin Laden (UBL) threat knew that day. Was the threat missed or was the threat not acted on? A preponderance of the evidence indicates the latter. The threat was allowed to gather, rehearse and execute its plan. If you look at the preemptive strikes taken to eliminate Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and the blow back against the Trump Administration for taking preemptive action, you now know why weak leaders allow the threat to manifest.

Woe is me. Nothing worse than being a self-assessed, high-speed US Army Major assigned to a desk job at PERSCOM managing 700 Majors while they get to go fight and win the nation’s war.  Like every other PERSCOM officer, I had to devise a plan to get out of there and join a real Army unit. Well, that wasn’t happening for any of us. The PERSCOM Commander had a message for us: “Shut up and color.” My colleagues and I would ride the pine and make the best of our PERSCOM jobs. Which I did. I helped officers who had left the Army return, helped officers get promoted, helped officers secure career-enhancing jobs, and helped five officers in particular who had been passed over for LTC get promoted. One of these, Tom S., was my very first boss as a brand new 2LT. God had a plan.

Cue up the sarcasm: the good news is war eventually came my way with a couple deployments to Iraq after PERSCOM. If not for incompetent civilian and military leaders, I might not have gotten my chance. (Gotta love and respect Army humor. It is a force multiplier.)

The homeland is more secure than it was 25 years ago. However, I would argue we have a more serious internal threat from enemies living here at home, inside the wire. I genuinely dislike intrusive laws that invade our privacy. It pisses me off going through metal detectors at airports putting my hands over my head. That is not winning the war on terrorism. It is treating your citizens like suspects. We can and must do better. We are not there yet.