Posted on 11/08/2001 12:07:26 PM PST by Lucky2
Former first daughter writes first-person account of Sept. 11 for magazine The Associated Press 11/8/01 3:08 PM NEW YORK (AP) -- Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton, who was 12 blocks away from the World Trade Center when it collapsed, has written an account of that day for Talk magazine.
"Before Sept. 11 I wouldn't have believed I had many innocences left," begins the four-page story in the December issue of the magazine. "I had seen people who had lost everything and everyone they loved to war, famine, and natural disasters. ... Despite all that, I woke up that Tuesday morning feeling good about where I was in my life and happy about where I was going."
Clinton was near Union Square, at the apartment of longtime friend Nicole Davison, when the first hijacked airliner hit Tower One. Davison, who had left for work, called Clinton and told her to stay where she was. Like many Americans that day, Clinton turned on the television and watched as the second plane hit.
"I tried to call my mother, but after I said hello to her assistant the line went dead," Clinton wrote. She ventured outside to find a working telephone, and ended up walking downtown -- toward the towers.
"I remember very little about how I got so far downtown. ... I don't know whether I was on the corner or in the middle of the block," she wrote. "I do remember standing in line at a phone somewhere and hearing a deafening rumble."
The noise Clinton heard was the collapse of Tower Two.
Clinton later found Davison and another friend, and the three spent the day working their way uptown. Clinton wrote that a "somewhat irrational medley of thoughts" was running through her head, including concerns about President Bush's tax cut.
"I worried that with the tax cut we wouldn't have enough money to repair New York and D.C. and to help the families of the thousands I knew must have died," she wrote.
At one point, she stopped to pray and thank God that her mother was a senator representing New York and that the city was led by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani -- a leader Clinton wrote she "had been criticizing just the day before for some insensitivity or other."
When Clinton finally got through to her mother, who was in Washington, she burst into tears of relief. She later spoke with her father, who was in Australia.
"The next night I saw my mother, and early Thursday morning I saw my dad in Chappaqua," Clinton wrote. "It was only after I had seen them both that I finally felt secure again in my own skin."
Now studying in Oxford, England, Clinton says she is frustrated to be away from America. She says she encounters anti-American sentiments every day.
"For more than 21 years I lived with the assumption that I was safe, with a sense of security so profound I didn't even know I had it," Clinton wrote. "Today I find myself shocked into a new awareness of how much I loved the country I grew up in."
Before Sept. 11 I wouldn't have believed I had many innocences left
Maybe she should have gone to class once in a while.
Sounds to me like she must feel right at home.
Amazing. The whole time I was watching events unfold on the morning of Sept. 11, I was praying for the people in the collapsing buildings. Oh well, we all have different priorities.
I stopped reading here, she's been trained well.
Like I said, these clinton's are perverse. Using their own daughter like this.
Yeah, every 22-year old mulls over tax cuts while witnessing the worst terrorist attack in history. Ma and Pa can be proud - they done raised a perfect LIAR.
4 pages of this????? Memo to mombonn - pick up the giant economy size of Pepto-Bismol on the way home!
"many innocences"?.....Where exactly did this girl go to school......
Hitlery probably did a little editing and added the part about 'thanking God' her mom was senator!
Chelsea is as creepy as her parents!
The whole family is absent minded
More so than her parents and his administration?? I would think she would be right at home.
It's a good thing she isn't an English major!
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