Is That Legal?

A reader writes:

Sitting in my office, working, hearing that "something" had happened, getting frustrated with the web news sites and running out and buying a little black and white TV because it was actually cheaper than buying a radio.

What doesn't stand out - After hearing so many details about the events of that day, I can no longer tell what I actually learned as it happened what I learned later - everything has melded together such that my brain tells me I saw the planes hit - even though I know that's not possible.

Another reader:

We had a funding review for my graduate research group in Albany that week. We were scheduled to fly from Orlando to Albany around 11am that morning. We were gathering in our lab, surfing the internet when the news came. I was married less than 3 months earlier, and I was thinking about things that most newlyweds don't and shouldn't.

Another:

Prof. Muller:

I was in your Crim Law class on 9/11 (or, at least, I would have been). What stood out to me was the feeling that civilization--the very basis of the law--was under attack, and the realization that lawyers and lawyering are only possible because the police, firefighters and soldiers do the heavy lifting of preserving it.

Another:

I was in the seventh grade, and I remember that I had just been transferred to advanced classes that Monday. I had pulled on my backpack and was leaving through the front door for school when I noticed my mother sitting on the couch and just staring at the TV. I stopped, because my mom had the strangest expression on her face and I was worried about her. I stepped over into the next room and said, "Mom, what's wrong?" And she told me that someone had crashed a plane into the WTC.

I didn't understand what she meant, but I could watch the TV and see that something bad had happened. I still had to go to school, though, so I left, closing the door behind me. It didn't seem to really impinge on my classmates - I lived in El Paso, then, and NYC was two hours ahead of us - but by lunch, everyone was talking about it.

After school, I was walking home when my dad drove up and dragged him into the car. That was when I started getting scared, because my father never came and picked me up.

And the last thing I remember about that day was sitting in the gigantic line to get on Fort Bliss while my father told me that someone - they didn't know who - had probably killed tens of thousands of people that morning.

Another:

The look on my wife's face as I came into the living room.

The first sight of the towers burning - both had been hit - as I turned to look at the TV.

My 5-year old son's confusion. All he seems to have known was that his parents were - wrong. He had never seen grief before.

The sight of the first tower collapsing.

The hushed talking of the people in line outside the blood center. Waiting to give blood in a small Texas town, the line was at least 500 feet long, and probably more, when I got there, and kept growing through the afternoon. We all spoke of what we had seen and heard, and some people had radios and were passing along news updates. A special edition paper came out, and someone brought a few dozen copies to the people waiting in line. We read them over each others' shoulders, then passed them along. Even though we were under the DFW flight path, there were no planes. We all kept looking up, watching for them.

The first planes I saw were when I was driving home from the blood center. A pair of F-16s were orbiting North of Fort Worth.

The (false) reports of a car bomb at the State Department. That made me think that this was a more than one-dimensional attack, and that was when I first got scared, which was enough to let the rage break through. I'm still furious.

Watching the President's address that night, where he stated the first half of what would become the Bush Doctrine: we will treat nations that harbor terrorists the same way we treat the terrorists.

The feeling, as I went to bed, that the world tomorrow and the world yesterday were almost disconnected from each other, almost two different realities.

Another reader:

Going down to vote in a local primary election at about 9:30 am central time, already aware of the attacks, and being told by another voter that a plane had also hit the Sears Tower.

Another:

My kids first day of pre-school. We went right in and they had their first day because no one knew what was going on.

It's a day you'd think you'd remember a long time, but I really will remember it forever because of the combined memory.

Another:

I was just starting my third year of law school and had started working at the coffee place down the block from my apartment.... I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and my law school was in Brooklyn.

I arrived at work at 6:30am and opened the coffee place. The weather was wonderful, the regulars coming in and out. My coworker showed up and how later as we busily hummed along. The CD player pumped out The Beatles as we bopped along.

At around 8:50 one of the guys who worked in the real estate office across the street ran in asking if we had a TV. We did not. "Turn on the radio!" He yelled, "A Plane hit the World Trade Center!"

My co-worker went to the radio to change it from CD to RADIO while I scoffed, "Aw hell, they'll give any drunk a pilot's license these days."

The information was sketchy at first and then we heard at 9:03 as the second plane hit the tower. Silence fell in our little coffee place. I suddenly found I couldn't stand and went to sit on the floor. That second plane meant it wasn't just some drunk guy. I found myself shaking.

And then they announced the pentagon.

And then they announced flight 93

And then they announced a fire on the National Mall (which, it turned out, was nothing, but we didn't know that at the time).

My mother had retired from her Wall Street job six month before. She still went down there in the mornings to go to the gym. I called her. She had stayed home because of a bad head cold. My father had left to go to the social security office. He originally was going to go to the office down by city hall, but had decided to go to the one near Times Square instead. My husband had flown in from being out of town on a project on September 10th. He was asleep when it happened, in our bed.

As we always say the weather was spectacular, one of those glorious fall days that only happen a few times a year here in New York. The humidity just right. The temperature 74. A cool breeze blew towards the east. It was surreal. It was as if nothing bad had happened seven and a half miles downtown.

Until about 2pm when the walking wounded arrived.

They were covered with white stuff. Some had masks, some had scarves, some had blood on their faces. The looked shell shocked. We gave them water and hoped it was enough.

School was cancelled until Friday, but I didn't even go then. I couldn't. I used to joke that I didn't understand why people in Israel stayed. That the moment they started to bomb New York, I was out of there.

Well I'm still here and I get it a little more now. This is my home and I love it here and I'll be damned if I'll leave because some asshole starts bombing. That opinion is subject to change however.

Another:

I was teaching an Urban Studies course at the time and was in such a state of denial that I was perfectly prepared to go and teach my class that afternoon. I was ready to walk in, tell my students that it had been "a very weird day," and then proceed, however implausibly, with a lecture on 19th century minstrel shows. Thank goodness the University of Minnesota decided to cancel classes that day.

Another reader: I was an active duty Marine at the time and, strangely, not horrified since I knew I'd play a small part in our response to the attack. It's only now, as a civilian, that I feel the full horror of that day.

Also, my then-future wife, while she was travelling in Europe, tracked me down to see if I was okay. Tomorrow is her birthday, and we will be married 4 years come October.

Another reader:

I was at my home-office in upper Manhattan, working on a project for a company in Hoboken. I called my contact there to go over a few details. We talked briefly about the project, but he was distracted. From his office window, he'd just seen a plane hit one of the WTC towers. It didn't strike me as particularly important -- small planes seemed to crash into things all the time -- and I was even a little surprised when he said it was on TV. His mind wasn't on the project though, so I hung up and turned on the news. Almost immediately, the second plane hit, and soon after, the towers, and reality, crumbled.

I sat glued to the TV for hours until restlessness overcame me and I wandered outside in a state of semi-shock. I don't remember whether there was any traffic or if there were more people out than on a normal weekday afternoon. There was no mistaking it for a normal afternoon, though. Those who were out were standing in small, muted groups, or, like me, walking aimlessly around the neighborhood. It was the sort of day when a complete stranger would fall into step beside you and without out a word of greeting, the two of you would talk quietly and intensely for a few blocks and then separate without a word of farewell. There was no need for introductions or explanations. We were all reeling from the same blow.

Sometime later a tide of blank-faced, silent people washed through the neighborhood. In my memory, they look like refugees, but -- as I discovered later -- they were just commuters, returning on foot to their homes in Queens or the Bronx. I wanted to speak to one of them, but it would have been like interrupting a funeral procession. On any other day, such a sight would have demanded immediate explanation, but on that day there didn't seem to be much point in trying to make sense of anything.

Says another:

I was in Washington for a deposition. I had stayed at a hotel immediately behind (north of) the White House.

I did not turn on the TV in my room as I showered and dressed that morning. I did not hear the impact of the plane hitting the Pentagon. I had no clue that anything unusual had happened. Until I reached the hotel lobby.

That's where I saw a crowd of people, unusual for its size and rapt attention to the TV at such an early hour, watching the TV's in the hotel lobby bar. I looked over as I walked through the lobby and saw a tall building in flames. Not realizing what building it was or why it was in flames, I continued onward, thinking to myself that there must have been a tragic explosion or fire in a skyscraper somewhere.

Then I stepped out of the hotel onto the street, with a view to the back of the White House. I immediately noticed two things that made me realize that something was very different.

First, everyone was on a cell phone. I know that Washingtonians are busy people and that cell phone use is frequent. But I mean EVERYONE. So many people had phones to their ears that it caught my attention.

Second, there were people on top of the White House holding weapons that I had never seen before. I had been to Washington many times and had seen the White House many times. I know there are always sharpshooters up there, but I had never noticed anyone with THIS type of weapon. I am no military expert, but I believe they were ground-to-air missile launchers. The kind of thing you might use if you expected to have to shoot down an airplane. At any rate, they were HUGE -- clearly not ordinary rifles or machine guns.

At that point I knew something very strange had happened. But I still didn't know what. So I -- like everyone else I saw -- pulled out my cellphone and called my wife. Except that I couldn't get through. The circuits were all busy. So I continued along to the deposition site, unsuccessfully trying to place my call. When I reached the deposition site, I found the deponent panicking and the staff in the office running around going crazy.

It was only then that I learned what had happened: two jets had crashed into the World Trade Center and another jet had crashed into the Pentagon. (We did not yet know about United 93.) Rumors abounded of other threats -- a car bomb on Capitol Hill, other hijacked airplanes headed to the White House and the Capitol, and on and on.

We immediately cancelled the deposition and I let the grateful deponent try to go home to her family. The office closed, and everyone congregated around the TV for news updates. United 93 crashed in Pennsylvania -- where had it been headed? One Twin Tower collapsed -- how could that possibly happen? The other tower collapsed -- utterly unthinkable.

The rest of the day was consumed with trying to escape Washington. It was surreal, bizarre, and unforgettable in its own way -- especially the part where I walked right past the burning Pentagon as they were evacuating the day care. But the part that stays with me was the incremental and stunning process of learning what had happened, and trying to come to grips with each successively incredible revelation -- coordinated plane crashes, then the collapse of two of our most famous buildings....it was unthinkable then, and hasn't gotten much better in the intervening five years.

It took hours to learn what had happened, but it took days for it to sink in.

And to know that the culprit responsible for it all remains free five years later and isn't even being seriously hunted anymore? Well, that might be the most unthinkable thing of all.

My cousin Ruth:

Being dragged out of bed a few minutes after six by a flurry of calls on my cell phone.

Listening to the message on the cell phone -- a wrong number -- about someone being late for a meeting because a plane hit the World Trade Center and it's on fire and things are falling and she doesn't know where anyone is.

Telling my lover about the crazy person on the phone and then turning on the radio and finding out she wasn't crazy.

Getting to work and deciding it was okay to keep the TV in the classroom on.

The kids cheering when school was cancelled for the day.

My student teacher's horror that the kids were cheering, and my horror at my lack of surprise that the kids were cheering.

Walking the streets of downtown San Francisco, and finding them eerily empty.

Finding a parking space, finding lots of parking places, in Union Square.

Beginning to cry when I heard the first Muslim-bashing.

Another reader:

Walking up the middle of a still, silent, empty Fifth Avenue on a sunny September 12th afternoon.

Being furious that the one other person I saw was carrying a shopping bag: what could be so important that you had to go buy it today? Is that how it's going to be? We pretend nothing happened, we ignore it like we ignore everything anyone does to us, us the Great Satan whose fault it all is? Turning into a cross street in disgust, heading down 6th Ave. Seeing some workmen up on ladders in front of a building. You too, it's just business as usual today for you too? --And then getting closer, and realizing what they were doing: fastening an enormous American flag across the facade.

Oh.

Another:

I will never forget the sound of my father's voice screaming over the phone that the tower was collapsing. I worked rotating shifts then and was actually watching a movie. I had a TV, but no cable. My phone rang and it was my father, in Erie, PA, calling to tell me to turn on the TV. He was frantic. I think he only wanted to make sure that his sons were still alive, even though there was no possibility that either of us were anywhere near NYC or (later) DC. As he was trying to explain what was going on, one of the towers collapsed. I remember him saying that one had collapsed already and OH MY GOD THE OTHER TOWER IS FALLING!

I’ve heard my father afraid. I’ve heard him angry, even furious. I’ve never before, nor since heard him horrified. I’d prefer never to hear him that way again.

I carried the phone downstairs and knocked on my new neighbor's door. We had not yet met and here I was waking them up (they had evening shifts that day) wearing only short pants, no shirt, no shoes, trying to convince them to turn on their TV. I was sure that it wasn't possible that my father was correct. I was sure that as soon as I could get the TV on I would see something else. Maybe some sort of War of the Worlds thing. We became friends, my neighbors and I. not because of that incident, but for others.

The video of the attacks and the collapses I have seen several times, always recorded. I was doing something else when it was playing live. The collapses were shown over and over again in the typical TV fashion, played until you are almost sick of them and then they stopped, like they were swept into a memory hole. It was as if the TV stations imagined themselves our parents and suddenly tried to cover our eyes, to prevent us from seeing the horror that had occurred. It was as if they suddenly realized we were angry about it and were seriously considering retaliation, revenge, a reckoning. It as if we suddenly woke up from a dream where we had imagined that the world was safe, but now we knew better. Now we knew that we had to act. The images suddenly disappeared; our intellectual betters decided that they wanted no part of this. They stopped showing the pictures, hoping that we would stop demanding the blood of our enemies. They had successfully paper over all the previous wounds, but they were astonished to find that they could not paper over this one. America got its wake-up call. For me, the sound of America waking up will always be the sound of my father, screaming in horror, over the telephone.

Another reader:

I was hard at work in my cubicle, and got up to go around the corner to ask a coworker about some code. He happened to be walking in the door from the hallway outside, and told me that he had just come from the canteen and heard that a plane had crashed into the WTC.

I immediately thought of the Empire State Building getting hit in a fog many, many years ago, and assumed it was the same thing. He said that no, it was perfectly clear up there. I then thought that it had to have been a light plane. It wasn't the first time that something like that had happened, heck, somebody crashed on the White House lawn a few years ago. It had to be a lone nut at worst, in a cessna. But in the back of my head, I started to worry. Surely not. But could it? There had been that Egyptian copilot who crashed his airliner into the ocean...

I asked my question and went back to work. But just a few minutes later, he came back and told me that a second plane had flown into the other tower.

There never was any question after that. Things just solidified. We were under attack. I started getting angry.

I walked to the canteen, and watched the replays on the TVs overhead. I didn't get to see the second one live, but I've seen the clips, the stunned reactions from broadcasters on the air so many times that it feels like I have. I just stood there in anger, muttering "We're at war. We are at war." Thoughts of Pearl Harbor began to pop into my mind, especially when I came back to check again and the Pentagon had been hit. There were reports of bombs, and snipers, and it looked like an all-out decapitation strike might be underway. I couldn't understand why the Capitol hadn't been hit; that would have hurt our psyche far worse as a nation, but I eventually came to understand that our foes didn't really get that, and their one shot was taken down in America's first counterattack.

Perhaps the worst part was when I went to see my manager about something around lunchtime. I asked her how she was holding up, and by her cheery voice I realized that she had been inside her office all morning and didn't even know. I had to stand there... and tell her that it looked like 50,000 innocent people had just died, and that we were at war. Fortunately, they hit us too early in the day, to high up the buildings, and the evacuations worked relatively well. We could have lost ten times as many as we did, rather easily.

I sit here and wonder, five years later, how so many can simply forget or dismiss the cruelty or the evil of the attack.

Another:

The utterly spectacular weather.

The feeling when I walked into my office in midtown Manhattan and saw
a colleague leaving, in an obvious and panicked hurry. He said, "what
with the two planes that hit the Towers, I am getting out of a tall
building." I said, "wait, I thought it was only one plane." His
response to me has been seared into my memory: "John, do you have any
idea what is going on here?"

Walking, with a vast mass of dazed New Yorkers, "uptown" towards
Central Park, to get away from the Times Square area where I worked,
due to the fear that "Times Square could be next." We didn't know
where we were going, just that we needed to get away from big
buildings.

The sinking feeling, during that strange walk uptown in the sunshine,
when I overhead a man with a hand held radio say, "Jesus, they just
hit the Pentagon."

Watching CNN in a bar on 85th Street from noon to about 4 pm, with
probably 100 frightened people gathered around the lone television
set.

Walking home that night, emotionally devasted, and having to show my
ID to a National Guardsman with a Machine Gun to get into my
neighborhood, since I lived south of 14th Street.

Calling Mom and Dad that night, and letting the tears come out.

Falling asleep that night to the sound of sirens, which seemed to
incessantly ring in the air for 48 hours after that day.

Sept 12:
The line of people outside my apartment, which stretched from St.
Vincent's to my place at 11th Street and 5th Avenue. They were
waiting to meet with a rep from the hospital to learn the whereabouts
of their loved ones-- thinking (at the time) that they still might be
somewhere in that ER.

The heartwrenching fliers they handed me as I walked to get a cup of
coffee, the faces, and the direct questions: "have you seen my
husband?"

Reading 3 full newspapers on the 12th: the only time in my life I
have read the Times, the Post, and Daily News all cover to cover.

The photos of the jumpers, God, the jumpers.

The large number of people who wore surgical masks as they walked
around the neighborhood, running errands, exploring the setting, so as
to avoid inhaling the smoke-- which had turned Northward on the 12th
and made the air smell like burnt rubber. Seeing all those people
wearing surgical masks only added to the sense that NY was a total
warzone.

The UA Union Square Movie Theatre at Union Square and 14th, which was
showing all of its movies for free, all day, and the sign out front:
"Come in and see a movie for free; we know you have had a rough day,
come in and take your mind off things. Free popcorn and soda too."

The massive refrigerated meatlocker trucks that stretched all the way
up the West Side Highway from my wife's apartment to 23rd street.
They sat there waiting to find the remains of those lost, and wound up
finding so much less than they had expected to find.

The Sunday newspaper's list of final words, final phone calls, final
emails, which, like Eric, prompted me to break down and cry
uncontrollably.

Another reader:

Growing up in Israel, you are used to massive tragedies. Still, viewing the planes hit the World Trade Center on TV is still awful, frightening and way too concrete. I had two sons at NYU in lower Manhattan. You are worried to no end. The cell phones rang busy. Finally, email worked and my kids were together and fine.

For people who grow up here, life has changed. For people used to strife - Africans, Central Americans, Israelis – it’s deja vu; welcome to the club. The world didn't change; America came down towards the average.

Another:

We arrived in Canada for a month of fishing on September 9, 2001.

On 9/11, we were in a campground making breakfast and a small group of Germans walked past our campsite and asked if we were American. We said yes and they said "God bless you and we are standing with you today."

I had no idea what they were talking about. So I just kind of nodded and said "Thank you" or something and just chalked it up to some strange cultural difference.

Later that morning we turned on the radio and heard what had happened.

Throughout the rest of our stay there, I can't tell you how many Canadians (and tourists from other countries) went out of their way to say a kind word to us, tell us that we were in their prayers, and so on.

When I look back on that incredible outpouring of support and solidarity and see the way our government has pissed it all away - it is just tragic.

An old friend writes:

Sitting alone in a 25 person conference room with a big plasma screen watching replays of the second plane and the collapse of both towers ... sure that my meeting was cancelled, but not quite sure what to do next.

The line at the cash machine of people making emergency withdrawals in case the banking system collapsed.

Returning home to hug my wife (who was fully aware of how our world had changed) and our kids (who were blissfully unaware, but will never really know the same childhood as we did).

The eerie silence of no commercial planes (only military) for the rest of the week.

Walks through our small community that afternoon, with adults sharing knowing, reassuring looks, and several weeks later when all screens were tuned to CNN showing the beginnings of the Afghani invasion.

Another:

California, late morning, sleeping.

Warm, lazy. My mother in law calls back on the intercom, "Terry might want to get up and put on his funny clothes (my uniform, National Guard). The World Trade Center just blew up."

I thought about it and went back to sleep; if they needed me, they'd call, and NY was a long way away.

Maia got up, and when she came back to bed she asked why a plane hitting the WTC would make it fall down. I said I didn't know. As I drifted back to sleep I thought, "damn, that means the Windows on the World wine cellar is gone."

When I woke up, and went to watch the TV I was stunned. Angry, sad, horrified, numb.

The world, as we recall, stopped. The LA County Fair was running, and Maia and I were working at the Dairy display (a 24 hour a day operation, even though the fair is only open during the day). We dicided to go in, even though we weren't scheduled (being up until something like 3 the previous morning, looking after cows was why we slept until 10:00).

The cows would need milking, no matter waht else was going on in the world. We were among a very small number to show up (the milker, and us) so we washed cows, and loaded them up, and the cell phone rang, telling me to come to the Armory.

So I did. A time of strangeness. Things were going to be different (recall that at this point the smallest estimate of the dead was 10,000) Someone called to report something suspicious, down the block, and we went to check it out (civilian clothes, no weapons. Just a look see, if it had been an attack we were toast).

Maia called to say she was going to be helping with the evening milking. Around 9 p.m. I got a call that she was on her way to the hospital, because a pipe had broken on the pasteuriser and clobbered her in the head.

So I went to pick her up. Tired, frantic, confused, sad, angry still.

The next day I read an account by a friend, he had been in the area (his office was in Seven WTC, or some such).

He was angry, and terrified, and cool headed, with fury I'd known he had, but rarely seen; and said the song he was hearing in his head was "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", which I sang to myself with a new understanding; hearing it with the devotion of Puritan New England. Sung as an actual song of battle it's something to make the blood run cold, and the knees weak.

On the radio, that afternoon, I heard Wynton Marsalis performing the third movement of Haydn's trumpet Concerto (perhaps my favorite piece of classical music). The lilting rise and fall of the solo, the glorious ascent to the heavens it makes.

It made me remember, for just a moment, the sublime nature man can attain. It, to quote the psalm, restored my soul.

All those things are in my mind, the fall (and that prosaic moment when something I wanted to visit went away,and made it real, before I knew just what it was) the cows; who needed milking, no matter what tragedies the world was suffering, the chill of anger, hate and purpose, (as told in the hymn) and the quiet glory that Hayden brought back to me.

In twenty four hours I was taken through every single aspect of the human condition, with memories to make them all concrete.

And I'd give that understanding up in a moment.