Who knows? No one has contradicted his recollection of being at the Capitol, and being stunned for 40 minutes. Well, except for Kerry.
Yes, he was:
"I was in the Capitol. We'd just had a meeting - we'd just come into a leadership meeting in Tom Daschle's office, looking out at the Capitol. And as I came in, Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building. And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon. And then word came from the White House, they were evacuating, and we were to evacuate, and so we immediately began the evacuation."
Guess what John Edwards did:
KING: How did you hear about it?
E. EDWARDS: The word started passing because we were in Washington. Word started passing around the sale. People were getting cell phone calls about it, and of course there were a lot of people at that sale who had family members at the Pentagon.
So there was a tremendous amount of panic. And people were -- you know, were leaving, quickly dropping what they had in their hands and going immediately home. And there was -- I was actually lucky to get back into Washington, because they started closing the bridges.
KING: Senator, did you go to the -- to the Senate?
J. EDWARDS: What happened with me, Larry, is I dropped Emma Claire, my now 6-year-old daughter, off at school. I was on my way to -- in fact, I was just beside the Capitol on my way to the Senate office building when I received a call on my -- on my cell phone telling me what had happened in New York.
I went on in to the -- to my Senate office building. Then we saw the second plane hit, and, of course, the strike on the Pentagon. I left the Capitol, because I was worried about my family. I left the Capitol, went home. I was there for a period of time.
And, actually, after I was there for a fairly short period of time, the Capitol Police came to my home, knocked on the door, and said that they were gathering up senators to take us to a -- to a safe or secure location. And I said, "Well, what about my wife and my kids?" And they said, "Well, they'll stay here."
And I said, "Well, if they're staying here, I'm saying here." So...
KING: You didn't go.
J. EDWARDS: I did not go. .