Posted on 09/11/2001 8:55:15 PM PDT by Pokey78
WASHINGTON
If you called yesterday afternoon to the White House switchboard, that famously efficient Washington institution, you would hear a brief recording saying to hold for an operator and then the line would go dead.
For many hours, the most eerie thing about the American capital, under attack for the first time since the British burned the White House in the War of 1812, was the stillness at the center of the city.
New York was a clamorous inferno of pain, confusion and fear, with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani on the scene in the rubble of the World Trade Center towers and on TV trying to reassure residents about schools and transportation and hospitals.
Manhattan had the noise of the grave. Washington had the silence of the grave. Downtown you could smell the smoke and see the plume rising from a Pentagon full of carnage and fire and see the flag over the emptied White House flying at half-staff.
But until the nation's leaders reappeared on television after nightfall to speak of what President Bush called their "quiet, unyielding anger," no one understood what had happened. No one knew what might happen next. Would there be a gas attack? Would the White House blow up? Would another plane crash into the Capitol?
People were so hungry for clues that they gathered, as their parents did after Pearl Harbor, around radios, huddled in small groups a block from a cordoned-off White House.
A doctor, Mark Cinnamon, 54, held up a radio broadcasting Peter Jennings interviewing Gov. George Pataki, while 15 strangers leaned in to listen. "We're just sharing, with an old battery-operated radio some guy handed me," he said.
On a gorgeous blue fall day, terrorism had turned into war. The city that leads the world took on a weird neutron-bomb quality. No one even tried to pretend, as we are supposed to, that no matter what, terrorists cannot disrupt our government.
For much of the day we weren't sure where the president was. There were statements floating in from him from various secure zones in the air or underground. The vice president was out of sight. We didn't know where the first lady was. The secretary of state was in the air somewhere. The Capitol had been evacuated. Congressional leaders had gone off to a bunker somewhere. The Joint Chiefs of Staff could not be immediately accounted for. The C.I.A. and F.B.I. were stunned. Most vividly at his post was Donald Rumsfeld, who helped rescue victims at the Pentagon and stayed all day in the smoky command center.
White House officials had fled the building five minutes after the plane crashed into the Pentagon at 9:45 a.m., streaming out with some men screaming and some women barefoot and carrying their high heels.
"That floored me," said one federal official, stranded at a bus stop. "This is supposed to be the most secure place in the world. I said, `Why are you running? You can leave but just slow down a little.' "
Federal buildings were evacuated, coffee shops shuttered, dress shops barred. A few tourists wandered around in shorts looking confused as military planes patrolled above. D.C. police carried rifles, and Secret Service agents in black Mustangs and green Luminas blocked off the streets adjacent to the White House.
The country cannot be completely protected from fanatics willing to die. And yet, it was chilling to see how unprepared those in charge of planning seemed, after years of warnings about just such an attack. The top Congressional leaders were calling each other, unsure whether to stay or go, or where to go.
"There was some confusion; no alarm bells went off," said Mitch Daniels, the Bush budget director, about the scene in the Old Executive Office Building, adding that people had decided to go "by word of mouth."
Even the president didn't seem sure of where to go.
"He is at the very top of the United States," said Tammie Owens, a subway supervisor in a bright yellow uniform, who felt that a president, like the British royal family during the blitz, needed to reassure people with his presence. "And the White House is where he should be."
David McCullough, the historian who wrote the biographies of Harry Truman and John Adams, disagreed. Mr. McCullough happened to be in town for a Laura Bush book festival and had just volunteered to give blood at a hospital. "All presidents do what they're told on matters of security," he said. "The most important thing is that the president is alive and safe and knows what's going on. We haven't seen this level of destruction on our home ground since the Civil War. This isn't the `Titanic' movie. It's real."
I'm glad David McCollough said that. It sure puts Maureen Dowd in her place, the little twit! And it counters what Brian Williams was saying to Tim Russert this afternoon when he was lamenting that Pres. Bush was not on TV 'felling our pain' so to speak. I frankly don't care what Pres. Bush FEELS! I just want to know he is safe and can prosecute a war against these terrorists!
After the speech, he was all over himself, talking about a death thread to the president and how he had been told he needed to be in the air and that's why he flew to Omaha.
I can't remember his name. Sorry.
A lot of conservatives developed some fondness for Dowd (and for that drunken ass, Hitchens) during the Clinton impeachment, because they sometimes wrote pieces that seemed to agree with us. But they NEVER really "agreed" with us- they were just disappointed that Clinton was hurting the chances of the Marxists taking over this country.
God Bless McCullough.....that Dowd would critize our President for doing his duty as Commander in Chief on this Day of Infamy is dispictable.
In addition to being a complete asshole, Dowd is a shithead lying journalist too.
To prove me wrong, she could provide tape of the uniformed subway employee who regaled her with stories of the royal family's behavior during the blitz.
Pig.
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